Chapter 29: Chaos
Summary: Izumi's internship is interrupted by the machinations of the League of Villains. Also, she' fairly certain Ryukyu is Extremely Evil.
Chapter 29: Chaos
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Izumi was very uncertain how she felt about patrolling. To be fair, it was only her second patrol ever, so that was probably at least a little bit understandable. Also, Ryukyu was extremely evil, despite supposedly being a heroine. Izumi knew this, because the Dragon Hero had made Izumi patrol both times with Nejire-chan. Izumi liked Nejire, despite the cyan-haired twenty-year-old being an extrovert's extrovert, capable of putting Momo's most extroverted bouncy-mode to shame. Patrolling with her senpai, however, was akin to a foretaste of hell.
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Okay. That was probably an exaggeration. But not much of one! Nejire-chan was popular and recognizable. She was also the exact sort of person who not only could but would stop to talk to a lamppost, only for said lamppost to spontaneously gain sentience, and a Quirk that let it speak, just so it could talk back. All just so that Nejire didn't feel bad about not getting an answer. That the lamppost would have an existential crisis that Nejire would help it through afterward, was also highly likely. Which probably made it a good thing that Nejire-chan hadn't talked to any of them…yet. The lack of sentient lampposts didn't change the fact that the two of them couldn't go more than a single city block, sometimes not even that far, without talking to someone. A street vendor, a curious child, a fan, a perverted old man that seemed to actually feel bad about staring at Nejire's amazing boobs but clearly couldn't help himself.
It totally should have been fine. Fantastic even. Izumi was quite skilled at using gorgeous extroverts as public shields.
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EXCEPT THAT RYUKYU IS EXTREMELY EVIL!
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Izumi tried not to grimace, retreating to her mental happy place of thinking about Momo's momos, as she finally managed to disengage with another well-wisher that had recognized her from the public broadcast of the Heroics Tournament. Ryukyu, in what was sure to be some sort of act of extreme villainy, had decided that the best way to help Izumi with the public-interaction parts of heroics was to throw her into Nejire's lovely-but-possibly-unholy arms. Nejire-chan had actual orders to bring people's attention to Izumi and make sure Izumi interacted with everyone that stopped them! It was exhausting, despite all the tips Ryukyu had given her!
All of which meant that Izumi didn't exactly know how to feel about patrolling. Being able to go out in her Hero Outfit, which was admittedly just a little embarrassing on its own, felt great. Being recognized even felt good too! But all the interaction was killing her, at least on the inside, and there wasn't even anyone to take it out on! After all, the area around any Top 10 hero's agency wasn't exactly a great place to commit crime! Honestly, the fact that 2B was actually being supportive, rather than cackling at Izumi's misery, said a lot. While her partner often tried to get her to be more sociable, even 2B understood that this was a creative form of torture for an introvert. So much so that she'd actually helped Izumi split off an entirely different mental thread of thought and was calmly talking Quirk and invention ideas with Izumi via that parallel thought thread, in an effort to help keep her from having some sort of meltdown. Seriously, 2B was the best. Also, Ryukyu was evil. That really needed to be a better known fact. Even if Izumi reluctantly admitted she was also awesome. Apparently, it was possible to both extremely evil and awesome. Who knew?
Izumi flinched as she saw yet another of Nejire-chan's fans flag her down. Maybe there would be a villain attack to get them out of…
*BOOM*
Izumi filched again, but this time the flinch was almost more 2B's than it was hers, even as part of her panicked and mentally screamed she hadn't meant it! 2B's voice was harsh as she forced Izumi's thought threads back together with a slam and active hyper cognition on her own. The fact that she'd done so without Izumi was possible, but not something she did in anything but emergencies, and Izumi's heart sank, even as the brief flash of pain from her thoughts unexpectedly slamming back into a single thread faded.
"Izumi! That explosion was at the district's emergency services center. Additional explosions have taken out three critical links of the mobile network. The closest towers are all undamaged but offline, and emergency services lost both their primary and secondary servers. HSN is unaffected, but the police, fire, and medical responders have been blinded!"
Izumi was stunned, mind racing at the implications.
"Who?!"
"Unknown, no one has…wait!"
Hyper cognition slowed enough for Izumi to make out a Priority One override on her comm, coming from a hero over the district-level HSN.
"Emergency! Repeat. This is Mr. Brave, declaring a Priority One emergency! All Heroes in range, multiple warp quirk sightings. Multiple villains! There are two here at Kudo and Tase, I'm barely keeping them off the-"
"-Another at Fuko and Ginza, being engaged by Eel Boy and Spring."
"-Exposed brains and multiple quirks! Matches descriptions of the villain from the USJ break in-!"
The reports poured in rapidly, even as Izumi froze in place, trying to figure out where and how to respond. Thankfully, that decision was made for her as Ryukyu came over the coms, her voice overriding the other reports for a moment.
"Nejire-chan, Resolution, deploy to the Fuko and Ginza intersection to reinforced the heroes there! Resolution, you're on civilian protection and evacuation. Don't engaged if you don't have to, but if it's life or death for anyone, you have my permission to do so."
The sound of her hero name abruptly got Izumi's brain moving again, and the orders gave her direction. Nejire-chan responded quickly, but not as quickly as Izumi. By the time Nejire started moving, Izumi had already rapid-deployed a fast recon Pod, with 2B seamlessly taking it over and blasting into the sky. Even with the delay of deploying the Pod, she was barely half a second behind Nejire as the older student blasted off into full flight. Izumi couldn't fly properly without a Flight Unit, but between super jumps and using her telekinesis to redirect herself, she could move even faster than Nejire-chan and fall with style. Both of them arrived at intersection, only five blocks from their starting point…just in time to see Eel Boy being spiked through a window like a volleyball. Another hero was already down and Spring was out of position to keep what was very clearly a Nomu with sledgehammer arms from ripping through a group of panicked civilians.
Thankfully, Nejire-chan was in position. She hammered the Nomu with twin bursts of her Quirk, throwing it toward Spring, who smoothly launched with their own Quirk and hammered into the monster's side. To Izumi's horror, while both attacks did damage, it was far, far less than they should have. Even worse, the bird's eye view the Pod was now giving her made the situation brutally clear. As she landed, she triggered her own admin override of the HSN, forcing 2B's video feed to every Hero Scanner in that area that was accepting video. She waited two heartbeats, then spoke into her com with a clipped message.
"All Heroes, this is Resolution, I was at the USJ. All targets are confirmed as Nomu. Eight targets confirmed. Overwatch is active and broadcasting all locations. Correction, now nine confirmed Nomu, another portal just dumped one on top of Ryukyu! Tap the overwatch feed and respond as possible. Keep an eye out for more portals!"
She dropped back out of the broadcast, releasing it to more reports, grunting in satisfaction as she saw the numbers tapping 2B's Pod feed spike upward. She dropped into hyper-cognition, intent on analyzing the situation and determining how to best protect the remaining civilians as ordered. Three heartbeats later, having done so was the only thing that saved her life as a beam of energy seared right through where she'd been standing. Only a warning from 2B about the Nomu who had fired that beam, combined with hyper cognition, had allowed Izumi to frantically side-jump out of the path of that beam. Sensing the sheer ridiculous heat of it as it passed, she immediately applied one of the pre-packaged sets of transformations that she had been working on with Ryukyu.
The option she went with was one that emphasized two things. Speed and energy resistance. Her full transformation could, in theory, survive the energy release portion of a point-blank nuclear explosion. The shockwave of such a thing was another matter, with not even the best YoRHa tech able to keep someone actually alive through that…even if the resulting corpse would actually probably be recognizable, at least. When carefully examined, Izumi had realized that the reason for the distinction was because the skin of the transformation was insanely energy resistant. This had led to her looking at the individual layers of her 'android body,' and marveling at how much she'd missed before. Yes, YoRHa had achieved a design that was insanely durable to nearly anything you throw at it. But she'd never really taken the time to realize that they'd done so by layering different defenses. The skin was the primary energy defense layer, whereas a metal mesh, dense bones, and some non-Newtonian impact absorption layers were responsible for things like slash and bludgeoning resistance.
Bones were something Izumi didn't have to worry about. Her skeletal structure was one of the first things that had reached 100% conversion, finishing as she reached her full adult height. But the mesh, kinetic absorption layers, and a considerable degree of the synthetic flesh material were all incomplete. Her newly developed 'Striker Mode' gave up the mesh and absorption layers, instead focusing on the energy-resistant skin and all the muscle enhancement needed for full-speed movement. It was essentially the opposite of her other new mode, which she'd designated 'Bruiser.' That mode flipped things around by emphasizing the mesh and absorption layer for purely physical fights, while Striker was meant for hit and run engagements with ranged combatants. Eventually, she wanted more fine-tuning options on those modes, but two were all she'd had to time to make and practice so far.
Thankfully, Striker Mode was essentially perfect for what she found herself facing. This Nomu, while displaying a considerable amount of muscle, was noticeably leaner than the USJ monster. More tellingly, its entirely right forearm was formed into some sort of cannon, which even now was swiveling to target her with the speed of a striking snake, tracking her despite the speed of her dodge. Thankfully, the speed difference between her current base form and Striker Mode was considerable, and she touched down from her jump an instant before it fired again. The dodge was much cleaner this time and moved her forward as well as sideways, the low-but-fast jump eating roughly a third of the distance between her and the Nomu.
As she closed the range, a tiny part of her mind considered her orders…then promptly filed her current action under 'life or death.' There was a good chance that those shots, which she was pretty sure were some sort of plasma, had already killed people. There was a spike of guilt at that thought, but Izumi wasn't particularly eager to test her energy resistance against whatever-it-was. For the usual reasons, of course…but also because her costume definitely wasn't rated for plasma and she wasn't eager for a wardrobe malfunction incident on literally her second day of public heroics. Midnight had told them in no uncertain terms that no one got through their hero career without one or two such issues. But Izumi wasn't eager for hers to occur quite this soon, thank you very much!
Of course, despite that thought, protecting civilians was still the foremost thing in her mind, which is why she didn't hesitate to retaliate for that second blast. The Nomu was perched on a rooftop, four stories up, and had initially been outside her telekinetic range. But her leap forward had brought it within her field of control, if only just, and she was ungentle as she slammed it backward, away from the ledge. That had removed it from her line of sight, so she didn't know if she'd actually hurt it, but that removal also fouled any chance it could fire down into the city with a third shot. Calculating her next jump carefully, she lept up this time. She didn't aim at the building the Nomu had been on, but at the steel and concrete wall of the building next to it. She covered the distance in an eyeblink, landing against that surface and cratering it lightly as she jumped again. This time, she was aimed at the building the Nomu had been in, but coming from an angle that it shouldn't anticipate.
It didn't. But that was, admittedly, as much because it was busy tearing its way out of the air-conditioner unit she'd apparently thrown it into, as it was because of her angle of approach. It pried itself free before she could reach it, and she had to hit the deck to avoid another one of those plasma beams. Still, her forward power slide under the beam left her enough momentum that a small shift of her body brought her rising up in the wake of the beam, Virtuous Contract in hand and slicing at that cannon. She felt triumph for a moment…only for the cannon to be covered in a layer of crystal just as she hit it. She cursed, even as the Nomu was sent spinning backward from the hit, crystal shards flying everywhere. A quick assessment as it recentered itself showed her that the crystal layer had protected the cannon entirely, even if it had been destroyed in the process. Multiple Quirks. Just like the USJ Nomu. And somehow she didn't think it was an accident that the Nomu that had popped out of a portal, already specifically targeting her, was resistant or immune to being cut.
Things got worse a moment later as she realized this thing was fast. Almost as fast as she was in Striker Mode. It recentered and retargeted its cannon on her with lightning speed. Thankfully, she was still faster, and instead of trying to cut or dodge it again, she struck out with Virtuous Contract to drag the monster's aim up. It worked, the newest plasma beam being directed into the sky, even as Izumi formed another brutal fist of telekinetic power and hammered the creature, launching it off the rooftop. She followed an instant later, moving even faster than it as she let Virtuous Contract dissolve…and formed her version of the Dragoon Lance. It was the same Spear she'd used against the Zero Pointer in her exam, and she summoned it now for exactly the same reason as she had then. The lance was fantastic for falling attacks, and the Nomu was now right below her. Face locked in a grim smile, she used her telekinesis to both build speed and generate power at the lance-tip.
The Nomu tried to hit her with a plasma bolt as it saw her coming, but Izumi had far better control in the air than it did. She might not be able to use her telekinesis to fly…but she could certainly use it to help fall with style by nudging her direction. Not to mention using it to speed herself up to considerably more than mere terminal velocity. She rolled around the plasma, coming square on to the Nomu just as she struck, unleashing all the gathered energy as she did so. The Nomu was brutally launched down, embedding in a newly created crater of the thankfully clear street.
Unfortunately, for all the violence of its landing, it had managed to cover itself in those crystals again. It was clearly damaged this time as it crawled out of the crater…but it was also clearly healing. Not as fast as the USJ Nomu had, but fast enough to watch its badly mangled form pull itself back together. Fuck. She was suddenly very glad that Striker and Bruiser Modes had accomplished one extremely important thing. By stripping out many auxiliary systems and focusing on only one critical type of damage resistance at a time, both modes had boosted her active combat stamina from 15-20 minutes…to nearly 45. Somehow, she thought she was going to need it. Just as she was pretty sure she was going to need something else, too. More accurately, someone else. Reaching into her 'inventory,' Izumi pulled out three highly-advanced drones and sent them up to take over overwatch.
"2B. I think you better get down here and into a combat Pod. We're either going to have to find a weakness or strip this thing slowly of whatever fuel it uses to regenerate. I'm thinking the next thing to try is going to be an energy attack, and a Pod laser would be ideal for that."
2B's response was immediate, and Izumi felt her handing off overwatch priorities to the drones right before her recon Pod dematerialized.
"Agreed. I suggest initializing a Type B Pod so I can test its resistance to energy weapons."
Izumi nodded and began doing so, even as she closed with the Nomu to redirect another of its beams upward. Thankfully, she'd long since mastered the art of summoning a Pod while on the move…
... ... ...A/N: So, the League's target shift has resulted in a more serious incident than Hosu, and we learn Izumi's hero name. Almost...incidentally. Sorry about that folks, I know people love to make the reveal super dramatic. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to fit such a scene in. Everywhere I tried to put it just ended up feeling awkward. I'll try to get some properly serious explanations of why she chose that as her Hero name squeezed in sometime in the future.