Chapter 112: Uprising

Summary: In which we discover that Angry Momo is terrifying.

Chapter 112: Uprising

Izumi growled, forcing herself to lean on her Combat Flight Unit for every action, trickling only the minimum amount of her own internal QE through her body to keep up the action. She tracked and fired hard-light rounds on two separate targets simultaneously, even as 2B used the CFU's micro-missile ability to guide hits on a half dozen additional targets. It wasn't how the micro-missiles were supposed to be used, having been designed and intended as a swarm attack. But with summoning a Pod for 2B currently out of the question, her companion had adapted, reprogramming the micro missiles on the fly to give them another firing mode.

They weren't supposed to have been deployed into combat today. Izumi was still on restricted duty.

But then the utter fucking sociopaths of the MLA had decided to 'cleanse' Toyama of anyone but their own adherents when they pulled out. Himiko had been among the assets deployed to gather intel on the MLA over the last few months, and she'd replaced someone highly-placed enough to attend major MLA strategy meetings. She'd been present, as such, when Re-Destro had issued the order, and immediately squealed the information out via the HSN. Then she'd gone on to cause chaos by alerting new MLA members from Toyama who had only converted to protect their families, quite a number of whom she'd IDed over the months of undercover work. Those people had immediately reached out to friends and family and, for all intents and purposes, started a citizens' revolt against the MLA before they could activate their 'cleanse.'

To say that the information had hit the Heroes and JSDF like a concussion grenade wouldn't be overstating things. There had been a mad scramble to shift priorities and get boots on the ground at Toyama to support Himiko's little revolt, attempting to save tens of thousands of civilians lives in the process. It was, almost certainly, partially what Re-Destro wanted them to do. But it was a play they couldn't back down from answering, and they'd thrown together an emergency response.

Which included Izumi.

While Izumi was on restricted duty, that was technically only to speed up her healing. She was capable of fighting pretty close to her max output and duration, even if her body had started burning with low grade pain shortly after she started fighting. Knowing pure power wasn't her friend at the moment, Izumi had deployed her Flight Unit both to rapidly cover the distance to Toyama, and to take most of the strain of the fighting off her still damaged QE pathways. Keeping the CFU summoned was about her limit without everything starting to hurt like a bitch and distract her, which meant no Pods and minimal personal enhancement.

Thankfully, most of what the MLA had at Toyama were thugs.

That meant that Izumi was in a target-rich environment where even her relatively low-level ordinance was more than capable of dealing with whole groups of MLA fighters. She didn't need her high-power options to be effective and was breaking up knots of opposition as fast and furiously as she could find them. She was still incredibly frustrated by the situation, however. She could only be in one place at a time, and had to be painfully careful with target selection, as the civilians that were rising up against the MLA didn't have HSN comms or the JSDF equivalent. Hell, most of them didn't even have anything to mark them out from the MLA lower ranks, making it doubly difficult to determine who was who in the chaos.

At least they were winning, and Himko had managed to lead teams into disabling almost all the traps that would have cleansed the city. Though the fact that one district to the north side of the city was thoroughly on fire showed that they hadn't gotten to them all. If they didn't get that out in time, it could even spread to more of the—

"Toyama Central, this is Rescue Flight 7. We're inbound from Osaka towards that fire, twenty minutes out. We picked up volunteers from the local Osaka militia to guard us while we get it under control."

Izumi blinked. She has shifted to handling what little central Command and Control there even was so far in Toyama, letting the pair of Wild Wild Pussycats take over control for the Gate area, since said area was mostly contained at this point. Flickering her attention for a brief moment, she almost sighed in relief as she realized the incoming message was from Thirteen of all people. The Rescue Hero remained mostly focused on just that, Rescue, and had been jetting about Japan as the leader of one of eight larger 'Rescue Teams.' Those teams had JSDF air and ground support, and it sounded like Anan had done an immensely sensible, if controversial, thing by hijacking some of the new militia units for support.

"Rescue Flight 7, this is Toyama Central. Understood inbound to the fire, ETA 2-0-minutes. Recommend you sweep in from the oceanside, as the MLA are withdrawing inland. You'll meet the least resistance that way. I'm sending you the local police frequencies. Some of the civilians have managed to get on air with repurposed police gear and are trying to coordinate search and rescue. They are the most likely to know what the ground conditions are like near the fire."

Izumi put actions to words, forwarding the frequences to Thirteen's HSN feed. A moment later, she got a reply.

"Acknowledged, Central. We concur, we'll sweep in from the west and attempt to make contact with ongoing efforts. We'll do our best to get that fire contained before it spreads farther."

Targeting a group of fucking looters with extreme but mostly non-lethal prejudice, pissed off that even now assholes were still assholes, Izumi responded.

"Good luck, Rescue 7. I don't have many assets here yet, but let me know if you run into anything you can't handle. We still don't have eyes on a few of the MLA heavies that were supposed to be here."

Thirteen acknowledged her, then went off the air, and Izumi saw that the military aircraft's transponder was reporting it already sweeping to go wide around the city and come in from the west. Well, hopefully that was one less problem in this cluster fuck…

... ...

Momo was getting extremely…annoyed.

No, Scratch that.

Momo was fucking pissed.

Control over any displays of temper had been something ingrained in her from a very young age. They were 'unseemly' for someone of her station, after all. To be honest, her general nature was so even keeled that her parents hadn't really had to try all that hard to curb what little temper she'd had. Even in the 'terrible twos' phase that all children seemed to exhibit, she had, by all accounts, been a fairly pleasant and sweet child. Her relationship with Izumi, first as friends and then much more, had only buried any temper farther under the sheer happiness that tended to help her float right through even troubled times with her love.

At most, people around her often enough might rarely spot Momo being 'mildly grumpy.' Usually when she'd been denied Izumi time. Which meant that, even amidst the combat that was going on, several Heroes had stopped dead to watch as the world got their first ever display of Yaoyorozu Momo thoroughly pissed off and ready to rip someone's spine out through their asshole. They, in fact, knew that this was what she intended to do to Re-Destro, as she'd said exactly that as she chased after the terrified, fleeing man, reaping his underlings like a tornado abusing a trailer park, one that owed it money, in the process.

"GET BACK HERE YOU COWARDLY LITTLE FUCK! IF YOU STAND AND DIE LIKE THE SMALL DICKED TIN GOD YOU ARE, I WON'T FEED YOUR SPLEEN TO NEDZU WHILE YOU WATCH!"

Honestly, at this point, more than half the MLA, a significant number of Heroes, and all of the JSDF were just cowering behind cover as Re-Destro's pitch-black 100% Stress form was treated like a pinball every time Keystone caught up to him. Given that the two of them had sort of…broken a few city blocks in their initial fighting, this was a sensible response. Or, more accurately said breaking had occurred during Keystone's opening curb stomping of the MLA leader.

When Re-Destro's custom support armor had still been intact, he'd at least managed to fight back a bit, even if he'd failed to leave a mark on the righteously enraged young woman intent on tearing his asshole out through his forehead. As Momo had systematically targeted and destroyed each piece of armor until all that was left was a codpiece she'd deliberately dented inwards in an attempt to crush Re-Destro's balls, at this point he was really just trying to run.

So far, the farthest he'd managed to get before Black Whip was used to pull him right back to the center of the destroyed zone was less than 400 meters. Speaking of which…there Black Whip went again, the thick black tentacles pulling the now-flickering black mass of Re-Destro back into the rubble and destruction and piledriving him headfirst into the concrete. A moment later, an enraged and glowing Keystone holding a steel I-beam she had to have created just for the occasion appeared and hammered it down between his legs, pushing him farther into the dirt even as he made a high-pitched keening noise. Most of the men present cringed as they realized his groin armor had apparently finally failed.

"DIE SLOWLY AND IN GREAT PAIN YOU PISSANT LITTLE CUNTSTAIN! MAY YOUR ANCESTOR'S COCK SHRIVEL IN THE AFTER LIFE FOR CONCEIVING YOU!"

Miruko, recently arrived on a pile of rubble nearby, produced a marker from somewhere and drew an 8/10 on a piece of twisted sign, holding it up. Several Heroes gawked at her, until they shook themselves out of their stupor long enough to check in with Central and realized the fighting had almost entirely ended. Keystone's…rampage…after she'd heard about Re-Destro's order had broken the back of the MLA defenses in a way not even All Might had managed.

Probably because All Might couldn't summon a 3-story tall naginata made of some material dense enough to survive being put through buildings. Or create a Golem construct with Black Whip that allowed using that naginata like it was a one-handed toy. All while also firing a Giant Fuck Off cannon with the other arm. Admittedly, he had taken to using the naginata to break defensive positions after Keystone broke through to Re-Destro and discarded it in favor of beating the motherfucker with her fists. But that was beside the point.

Most of that point being that absolutely no one was ever going to look at Keystone quite the same way again. Nor were they ever, under any circumstances, going to risk pissing her off enough that she seemed to have fallen into some sort of berserk rage…

"ONE ARM DOWN, I ONLY HAVE THREE MORE LIMBS TO RIP OFF. HOLD STILL SO I CAN MAKE IT SLOWER AND MORE PAINFUL."

Nope. Time to back away slowly. Miruko could handle whatever that was. Hopefully. If not, they would hold a memorial service for the Battle Bunny. Not for Re-Destro, though. They all sort of doubted there would be enough of him left to bury. Not that any of them were sad about it, given what the man had tried to do to Toyama. Those orders had been like something straight out of a World War II horror story. Doubly so, given what they'd been hearing trickling in about the traps their people and the civilian revolt had just barely prevented going off.

Come to think of it. Maybe they should see if they could help tear off a limb or two? None of them were quite brave enough to actually ask, but more than one of them sort of wanted to…

... ...

Izumi sighed, bones and body feeling entirely too much like they were on fire as she set down and finally dismissed her Flight Unit. She'd never moved beyond using the minimum amount of power to maintain the Flight Unit's link to reality, leaning on the batteries she'd placed in it after doing so to provide as much of the QE as possible. Yet she'd done that for hours, swapping in new batteries as needed. Now, she was paying the price as her still-not-fully-healed QE pathways burned in a way that painkillers couldn't hope to address. According to her CFU's med-panel, she hadn't done any lasting damage, but she'd virtually certainly set back the healing process by a solid week. At minimum.

Still, she couldn't regret it. She'd likely saved more lives directly today than she had at any other single time, excepting perhaps the first day of the Invasion. Which, sadly, wasn't to say that she'd saved everyone. She was painfully, painfully aware of the ever-growing number of dead and wounded. Rescue Teams 3 and 5 had managed to join Thirteen and her team in the last few hours. As had a significant relief effort by the JMSDF, who'd forcefully cleared naval mines the MLA had left at the port in order to get more rescue personnel into the city. Yet, as she'd continued to operate as Toyama Central for the Heroes up until just a few minutes ago, Izumi was aware that the official civilian death toll had climbed to over 2,500.

It was virtually certain to go significantly higher before they found everyone.

Almost worse, the sheer amount of Quirk Energy being thrown around had attracted multiple Rift Bubbles while the Heroes were still weakened and divided. Thankfully, the Osaka Militia had actually accounted for one of those bubbles on their own. A shock that Izumi had only figured out the cause of when the Militia Team was given an HSN comm and she'd discovered it was being anchored by one Todoroki Shoto. A name she'd half forgotten about, but one that was being praised highly for the use of his Dual Quirk. Apparently, at some point after leaving UA, her former fellow student had gotten over his hangups and was freely using both aspects of his Quirk.

She didn't know how that had happened, or why, but she was insanely grateful that it had. He'd apparently been critical to both putting out the raging inferno in the north city and to shutting down one of the Rift Bubbles that had formed. Between those two actions, he'd likely saved as many lives as she had, and she was glad he'd apparently found some sort of motivation to stop handicapping himself. Particularly as, without his actions, she wasn't sure they could have achieved containment of the other two Rift Bubbles that had formed. Neither had been shut down just yet, but they were contained for the moment, and she was now confident they would be shut down in time.

Mostly because apparently her girlfriend had gone berserk, brutally eviscerated her way through half the MLA, and likely given a few Heroes PTSD. Then promptly passed out after going a bit 'psycho,' a direct description from a baffled sounding All Might, on Re-Destro. She'd been rushed back to UA and Recovery Girl, since RG was one of the only healers that knew anything about One for All. Apparently, Momo had done something similar to Izumi's own case, managing to overreach her body's limits by wielding too many aspects of One for All, plus Creation, all at once. QE pathway burns for her, too. Which was triply impressive given that One for All had massively widened Momo's pathways as she'd adapted to it. Part, they assumed, of the original way either the Stockpile or Transfer Quirks had worked.

So that's where Izumi was now. Exhausted, hurting, and more than a little worried about her girlfriend's mental state. At least Kyoka had been available to go to Momo's side immediately. So if she woke she'd have a friendly face around. For now, Izumi needed to find some food, then start patching together a system so that someone else could use the drones she'd released from her Inventory to manage overflight. Until then, she didn't dare leave Toyama, and the unique pain of QE pathway burns certainly wasn't going to let her sleep anytime soon…