21

Chapter 21: Dust and Ashes

Summary:

Izuku changes up the levels.

Notes:

Some epic fanart from ParanoidPug!

Chapter Text

"Alright villain, you wanna treat this like a game? Then let's play."

Nedzu felt a thrill at his protege's words and couldn't help the sharp smile that came to his face even as his coworkers shivered. He wasn't 100% sure what had prompted the challenge, since Midoriya's near constant muttering had trailed off after giving a passing analysis of who appeared to be the villain's leader, but whatever was about to happen, it was sure to be simply marvelous!

Nedzu had never been more grateful than he was at that moment for his protoge's mumbling habit. For never having received any training when it came to the man in chair position, as it was often fondly called, Midoriya was doing remarkably well! When he addressed his comments to the heroes, Nedzu noted that he was trying to pick the largest threats and most relevant details to mention, all while keeping his head and hacking through the system. Whatever small details his student happened to leave out were covered by his unintentional mutterings, so it all worked out. Nedzu had been a tad concerned when Midoriya had identified the glitch as the effects of a technopathic quirk, but it turned out that his worry was unfounded, as his student had bypassed even that challenge with little issue.

He was so proud.

"He...he sounds so confident." All Might noted quietly.

"He should." Midnight whispered back. "He beat a technology quirk from inside the system."

"And if it wasn't for him, we'd wouldn't know about the attack at all." Present Mic looked slightly pale, most likely wondering if the next thing Midoriya reported would be his husband's murder. Never having had interest in romantic connections himself, Nedzu couldn't even imagine what he must be going through. All they could do now, however, was get there as quickly as possible and trust Midoriya to handle the rest.

Izuku checked the cameras to make sure Eraserhead was still going strong before turning his attention to the students. The plaza wasn't a disaster zone, so he didn't have nearly enough control of it to do anything useful and if Eraserhead were here with him, he'd probably insist that Izuku help the students first. 

Prioritize the rescue. 

The students in the shipwreck zone seemed to be in the most immediate danger. There were just two students, a girl with a frog quirk and a boy with adhesive hair-balls, if Izuku remembered correctly. The frog girl could probably jump to safety with little issue, but the boy was panicking too much for her to do anything without leaving him behind, something that wasn't helped by the fact that the ship was literally sinking. It must have been one of the villains' quirks that damaged it and...yep, they all had quirks that took advantage of the water. 

"Ok, easy enough." Izuku muttered. "Let's just see how useful your quirks are without any water."

Izuku hit a key and the pool started draining. It was slow going at first and Izuku was almost worried that the water level wouldn't go down fast enough to do any good, until he noticed that one of the drain settings was labeled whirlpool.

"Hmm," Izuku clicked on it, "I wonder what that does…"

It was as if the gates of hell had opened up beneath the villains as the water began to vortex down the drain. The villains were yelling, accusing one another of manipulating the water and creating enough general confusion that the frog girl was able to grab the ball boy by the waist and jump them both to safety. As they passed overhead, the boy started throwing his balls at the villain in a panic. Izuku almost wanted to facepalm. What kind of idiot thought it was a good idea to call attention to himself during a villain attack?

It ended up working out even better than Izuku could have hoped for, though, since the balls followed the flow of the water and brushed up against the villains, making them stick to each other. By the time the two students had reached the relative safety of the shore, the pool was almost entirely empty and the villains had somehow formed a ball of bodies that would be almost impossible to escape unless those balls somehow lost their stickiness, which according to Izuku's analysis of the ball boy's quirk, wouldn't be happening anytime soon. 

One zone down...a lot of others to go. 

Todoroki seemed to have things handled in the landslide zone, and Katsuki would probably just get mad if he received any help in the ruin zone, so that left the fire zone, the downpour zone, and the mountain zone for Izuku to choose from…

"Izu-kun!" 

He startled as Mei slammed the door to his workroom open, "Hanzou is a boring class rep! He won't even let me make a little fire!"

"Not now Mei-chan." Izuku said distractedly. The kid with a tail quirk...Ojiro? He was fighting alone in the fire zone and there was a guy approaching him from behind.

Mei came up behind him, "Is that…?"

"The USJ." Izuku took control of one of the flamethrowers and turned it up to high. Ojiro whirled around as he heard the villain scream, but couldn't waste too much time figuring out what had happened, since another villain was already running toward him, using some kind of telekinesis to control the flames. "It was supposed to be a standard rescue exercise for 1A, but…"

Mei was silent for a long moment as Izuku cut off all the fire within fifty feet of Ojiro and his current opponent. The villain's eyes widened in shock as his entire weapon supply disappeared before he could blink, but Ojrio was the first to recover, using his tail like a whip to knock the guy out.

"What can I do to help?"

Izuku glanced over at his best friend, surprised to see her looking serious for one of the first times since he'd met her. It would have been enough to creep him out if he couldn't see the familiar gleam of determination and passion in her eyes as they quickly zoomed in and out, flicking rapidly between the different screens as she took in every detail. 

"Close the door. We don't want the other students panicking." 

As Mei complied, he turned his attention back to the fire zone. Ojiro had started running after he took out his last opponent, but he obviously didn't know where he was going, because he was just running deeper and deeper into the maze. 

He sensed Mei behind him again, so he jerked his head toward the extra chair sitting against the wall and slid over to give her room to sit beside him. With one hand, Izuku grabbed one of the earpieces from the box Powerloader had left on his desk, and with the other, he created a wall of flames right in Ojiro's path to force him to turn tail. Good, he was heading in the right direction now.

Izuku threw the comm to Mei right as she sat down, "Channel three, controls are one the side. I've already gotten access to the disaster zones and the teachers are on their way, so we just need to keep the students alive until they get there."

Mei grinned as she plugged in another keyboard and pulled it toward her, "So I do get to make explosions?"

Izuku couldn't help smiling back, "As many as you want. Here, you can have the fire and downpour zones. I've been using the fire to guide Ojiro, that's the student with the tail, to the exit. I don't know how the ones in the downpour zone are doing…"

"Just leave it to me, Izu-kun!" Mei cackled, using a flamethrower to keep Ojrio from turning down a dead end. "This is so much more fun than listening to the class rep!"

"Midoriya," Powerloader somehow managed to sound both amused and exasperated, "did you really need to give Hatsume access to more dangerous experiments?"

"Oh!" Mei exclaimed, "Are those the teachers?! Hi, Powerloader!" 

"If she handles two of the zones, I can focus on the mountain zone and the plaza." Izuku explained simply. "Don't worry, Mei-chan knows destruction better than almost anyone I know!"

Powerloader groaned, "That's what I'm worried about…"

Izuku turned his attention to the mountain zone just in time to see the girl with the earphone jack quirk, Jiro, push the electricity boy in the path of one of the villains, which didn't make any sense until the villain went down. Izuku rolled his eyes as the electricity boy gave the girls a confident thumbs up..was his name Kaminari? Anyway, how much control did Izuku have? A full earthquake would mess up the students as well, so he should try to avoid that, but...ah, that would work.

As a villain swung to attack the creation quirk quirk girl...Midnight had totally helped design that costume, hadn't she? Whatever, not important right now. Just as the villain was about to land a hit, he found himself launched into the air as a pillar of rock suddenly popped up out of the ground directly beneath him. Izuku grinned. The teachers probably used this feature mostly to change the landscape and give upperclassmen a variety of landscapes and obstacles without having to constantly rely on Cemontoss's quirk, but he could use it to...well, quite literally trip up the invaders, considering that he'd raised up a small ledge and made one of the villains fall flat on their face as they ran toward Jiro. 

Keeping one eye on the mountain zone, Izuku glanced over toward the plaza, "Nedzu, is there anything I can use in the plaza? The only thing I see is the fountain, but that doesn't seem like it's going to be very useful and I don't think the villains have noticed yet, but Eraserhead is starting to slow down." 

There was a soft gasp on the other end of the line, but Izuku couldn't tell which of the teachers it was from. Vaguely, Izuku was aware that one the mountain zone villains had popped up out of the ground and was making his way toward the plaza as well. Finally, Nedzu spoke up, "There's not any disaster simulators there, but every building on campus has defense systems if you can access them."

"Alright, weapons." Izuku muttered and poked around for a moment, "Perfect, found them."

"Good." Nedzu said. "Now, be aware that most of the fire power is not as...precise as this situation requires, and that the more lethal options might take a few minutes to warm up. Be careful, Midoriya."

Izuku nodded, his throat suddenly very dry, "O-ok. Um, that's a lot of pressure."

"Says the kid who's already started fighting back." Hound Dog growled. "Don't overthink it kid. Just do your best and save who you can. Everything else will have to come later."

Izuku glanced at Mei, who nodded at him firmly, and he felt a flood of determination take over him. "Yes sir! I'll do my best!"

He took a moment to look over his weapons options, deciding to use the guns only as a last resort. It looked like the best option he had was some kind of weighted net. He shot one experimentally at a knot of villains that was standing far enough away from the fight that Izuku didn't have to worry about hitting Eraserhead. The net hit the group head on, and instantly, all action stopped as everyone in the plaza turned to look and tried to figure out where the net had come from. The leader started scratching at his neck again.

After his initial success, Izuku was feeling a little more confident, so aimed another net at the leader. If he could trap him, then…

Izuku fired, only for the net to disappear into a purple portal right before it hit it's target. Another portal appeared near Eraserhead and the net came flying out, forcing him to dodge. Izuku grimaced, "Sorry. My bad."

The warp villain appeared next to the leader, looking quite a bit worse for wear from his fight with the students at the entrance. Izuku noticed a few purple balls stuck to the armor on his neck, along with chunks of concrete, so the two students from the shipwreck zone must have made it to the entrance and helped with the fight there. The two villains seemed to be talking, so Izuku scrambled to access the audio from the plaza, turning it up loud enough for both him and Mei to hear the conversation. 

"...allowed one of the students to escape, Shigaraki." The warp villain's voice was deep and smooth. It would almost be calming if it didn't belong to a villain. "He will almost definitely raise the alarm, which means that the heroes will be here soon."

Izuku glanced over at the cameras for the entrance. Which student had escaped? Oh, that was perfect.

"The kid with the engine quirk escaped." Izuku told the teachers. "He should be heading your way now."

"Good." Nedzu said. "That means that the villains won't be expecting us so quickly. Notify us if anything else changes."

"Yes sir." 

The leader was scratching his neck hard enough to bleed, "If you weren't our escape route, Kurogiri, I'd dust you right now! And tell me, why is the information we got so far off? I was told this would be a mob raid, so how come this level is acting like a tower defense?!?!"

Izuku gulped. They'd noticed his interference. He shook his head and forced himself to focus on the hints of the leader's quirk. He'd said something about dust, so did he have a quirk that allowed for dust manipulation? If so, Izuku would need to limit destruction in the plaza…

The villain that Izuku had seen escape from the mountain zone stepped between the two leaders and interrupted their conversation, "We have a problem. I don't know how, because I haven't deactivated my quirk since I stepped through the portal, but someone from the outside got through and seems to be using the building to fight back."

The lead villain, Shigaraki, if Izuku had heard correctly, suddenly stilled, "So, what you're saying is that someone is using cheat codes?"

"Um…"

The warp villain, Kurogiri apparently, interrupted the blocker's confusion with an air of professionality, "I don't suppose there's a way to tell where the interference is coming from? A set of coordinates would be most appreciated."

Shigaraki whirled to pin the blocker with a manic stare, only partially visible behind the creepy hand that the villain was using as a mask, "Yes! Tell us where the cheater is! Now!"

Izuku forgot how to breath and he could barely hear Mei's gasp beside him as she moved to crush his hand. If they figured out they were at the main school, they could warp to get them, which would put the rest of the student body in danger! The teachers were all gone to handle the attack, and if the location of the attack changed, they wouldn't be able to get here in time…

The blocker took a hesitant step back and raised his hands nervously, "That...that's not how my quirk works! I can block certain kinds of electronic signals, but I'm not a tracker! Even if I could track the interference like that, I'd end up with an IP address, which doesn't necessarily tell you where the computer is physically located!"

Shigaraki took his hand away from his neck and spread his fingers, "Then what are you even good for?"

Before Izuku could even react, Shigaraki lunged and gripped the blocker's face. A strangled scream left the man's mouth before it was cut off as first his mouth, then his vocal cords, then his lungs disintegrated under the villain's touch. Within thirty seconds, the only thing left of the blocker was a pile of bones, blood, and…

"Dust." Izuku breathed.