Through his Psychic Senses, Yasuo 'saw' the huge, hulking humanoid creature move. And in the blink of an eye, that beast had already arrived at the barrier.
CRASH!
It's fist crashed against the barrier, and invisible, spiderweb like cracks that no one but Yasuo could see spread out at the point of impact. The moment the fist hit Yasuo's barrier, a massive shockwave was created and a thunderous sound echoed from the impact.
"That was… fifteen layers…!" Yasuo gasped in disbelief. The barrier that had surrounded his class was made up of fifteen layers – a strength and durability that he was confident no one but All Might could break through.
Another fist from Nomu saw the barrier shattering.
Seeing, or rather sensing, his barriers shattered, left Yasuo in a state of incredulity. Was this creature… as strong as All Might?
The students paled at the sight of the massive creature, who they could see land two fists against what looked like solid air. The first punch stopped short, but the second one definitively broke through something.
Fortunately, Yasuo's instincts somehow manage to kick in before the creature could do any real damage. Instinctively, he threw all the Psychic Energy he could muster at that moment and slammed it against the Nomu.
It was a crazy amount of energy – about as much as he had used when controlling the zero pointer robot's arm during the Entrance Exams. But the crazy amount of energy bounced off the Nomu like water splashed against an unmoving boulder.
The Nomu shrugged off the brunt of the attack but paused, as though waiting for further commands.
Taking this moment of reprieve, Yasuo wrapped his Psychic Energy around his classmates, Thirteen and himself and flew away incredibly quickly. In a split second, they were already high up in the air.
"What the hell is that!?" Eijiro screamed.
"Kurogami, let us help!" Todoroki suggested.
"Yeah, if we joined forces, we could defeat that monster!" Izuku added.
Yasuo wiped away a bead of sweat and shook his head, "You don't understand… that monster… is as strong as All Might!"
At that, the class paled.
"H-how do you know that?" Izuku asked. Hearing someone he thought of as reliable and capable compare a villain to All Might was unthinkable for the One For All holder. So unthinkable that he part of him just knew that Yasuo was mistaken.
"The barrier he broke… it was strong. So strong I thought only All Might could break it. That's how I know." Yasuo answered, not keeping his eyes off the black beast. The moment it moved; he would move his class away to avoid that monster.
"And I don't know if you felt it, but I sent a Psychokinetic attack at that… thing, after it broke through the barrier. The energy I used was enough to break through the zero pointer, but that monster shrugged it off like it was nothing." Yasuo explained.
Yasuo didn't understand how that monster was able to ignore his attack so easily. He was so confused in fact, that that confusion bled into hesitance, caution and even fear. What could he do against an enemy his strongest attacks did nothing against?
"T-that can't be…" Izuku remarked, still in disbelief.
"Don't get ahead of yourself you ink-hair bastard! Comparing yourself to All Might like that, it pisses me off!" Bakugo yelled, floundering in midair, "Let me down! I will blow that thing to bits even if you can't! Let me down, you coward!"
Yasuo ignored his comments, focused solely on the Nomu. In his mind, there was nothing here that was more dangerous than that creature.
---
Back in the mainsquare, Aizawa had seen the hulking humanoid creature disappear from his sights. He knew right then that it had gone after his students. He wanted to turn back to go aid his students, but his surrounding villains prevented him from doing so.
"Your students are dead now… That Nomu… he was designed to kill All Might!" Tomura taunted, as he dodged and weaved Aizawa's attacks. A couple times now, he managed to close his hands on Eraserhead, but because of the Erasure quirk, Tomura could not disintegrate him like he wanted.
Aizawa was internally shocked upon hearing that, and his desire to get back to his students was strengthened. But he knew that the moment he turned his back on the villains, he was dead. His eyes would no longer be on them, and his Erasure quirk could not function. That was a death sentence with so many dangerous villains who sole desire was to kill him.
'Especially that guy with the hand on his face… I got a bad feeling about him. I'm not sure what his quirk does but judging by how he keeps trying to get his hands on me, I can tell it's dangerous.'
"Are you not worried about your students? Nomu is going to kill them, you know?" Tomura continued sneering. The only reason why he had yet to order Nomu to wipe out the students was because he wanted Eraserhead to get distracted. And once Eraserhead looked away, he would finish him off with his own hands.
Only that would make it fun for him. Nomu was like a cheat weapon, and he was reserving it for All Might. If he could kill Aizawa without Nomu, that would make his inevitable victory all the more sweeter. Then, he would kill that cheater student as well after dealing with Eraserhead.
Right now, Tomura was using Nomu as a distraction. But he also decided that the moment things didn't seem to go according to his plans, he would unleash the cheat weapon and annihilate all these disgusting heroes and heroes-in-training.
--
It's not safe for them to stay here, Yasuo concluded. He couldn't split his attention between the monster below him and at the same time keep his classmates and Thirteen safe. What's more, Aizawa-sensei was still fighting the other villains without his help.
"I'm going to send you guys out of USJ. Once you're out, go call for help! Thirteen-sensei, please, keep my classmates out of USJ! It's too dangerous for them!" He disclosed.
"You bastard, you just want to get all the recognition for yourself, don't you!?" Bakugo immediately contended.
Yasuo tsked, 'I don't have time for his nonsense right now.'
"Bakugo! Stop it! If Yasuo is saying it's too dangerous for us, then we have to trust his judgement!" Momo defended. Although the thing she wanted to do most right now was to punish the villains alongside her sensei, Momo also knew how to compartmentalize what she wanted to do and what she needed to do.
Yasuo had one of the strongest quirks she had ever seen, and since he was the saying it was too dangerous for them to interfere, he had to have a reason for it. And if what he said was true, that the black creature was as strong as All Might… then he was right.
"W-what about you, Yasuo? What will you do?" Koji asked the question that was in everyone's head.
Yasuo turned to him with an expression of determination and one the more perceptive ones could recognize as a self-sacrificial resolve, "I have to stay and help Aizawa-sensei."
Many of the students exclaimed at that, "Are you serious!?"
Yasuo no longer wanted to split his attention between the still motionless monster and his classmates. He already made his decision, and though he felt his classmates might not understand it right now, there was a difference between doing what was right and doing what was popular.
He sent another pleading look towards Thirteen, who upon receiving it hesitated but agreed with his request. Seeing that, Yasuo sent his class and Thirteen flying against the dome of USJ, although not before he blasted the walls open with a Psychokinetic blast.
Using his Psychic Sense, he floated his class mates all the way down to the ground and released his Psychokinetic hold on them. From here on, he was going to get serious.
He picked up on what was happening in the mainsquare, and instantly realized what his moment of distraction had resulted in.
Aizawa had a knife pierced through his forearm while the pro-hero was hunched over in pain and laboured breathing. His quirk, like Izuku had pointed out, was not suitable for battles en masse like this. He only had a pair of eyes after all, and no matter how proficient he was at moving his body, his eyes could only look in one direction at any moment.
Being surrounded like he was currently meant that he was mostly getting attacked from his blindspots. The fact that he could hold out such a long time was already impressive enough.
Gathering his Psychic Energy once more, Yasuo ignored the hulking beast below him and focused his will on to the mainsquare.
As he lifted up his arm and slammed it down in the air, a crushing energy similarly slammed down against the villains fighting against Aizawa, sending them colliding against the ground.
Tomura, at that very moment, had finally grasped a hold of Aizawa's elbow. Throughout their entire encounter, Tomura had been slowly analysing Aizawa's fighting style. As a result, he found a pattern. Every boss fight had a pattern, so needless to say, so too did this mini-boss.
"It's hard to tell when you're scampering around, but there are moments when your hair falls in front of your eye every time you finish a given move." Tomura's pinky finger fell against Aizawa's elbow, completing the condition required to activate his Decay quirk. The disintegration began slowly turning Eraserhead's elbow in to dust, starting from his clothes.
"And your max duration is growing shorter and shorter… Don't over do it now, Eraser-"
Suddenly, his grip on Aizawa's elbow was forcefully torn away as something, an invisible, immaterial force crashed down from above.
Tomura was pummelled into the ground as his torso hit the floor first, specks of blood shot out of his mouth.
"Get your hands off my sensei." A youthful voice called out from above.
Aizawa realized that all the villains that were surrounding him were similarly smashed against the ground and looked up, seeing Yasuo floating in mid-air.
"Yasuo! What about the other students!?" He barked, his first concern not for himself but for those he thought of as his precious students.
"I sent them out, sensei. They should be returning to U.A. now to call for help." Yasuo explained, maintaining his Psychokinetic force on the downed villains.
Aizawa breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing that. Yasuo could more then take care of himself, so his only other concern now was making sure these villains didn't escape.
"What about that monster-?"
"N-NOMU! KILL THEM!" Tomura screamed, forcing out a shout despite the immense pressure on his lungs.
With that command, a black blur shot towards Yasuo. But Yasuo had been keeping an eye on the Nomu the entire time, so the moment it moved, he immediately levitated himself and Aizawa out of the way.
The massive beast landed against the concrete where Aizawa had been standing, creating a shockwave at his appearance. It glanced upwards, seeing his two targets floating in mid-air.
The mindless creature thus readied itself and jumped up, straight towards Yasuo and Aizawa.
However, for Yasuo, that was the best case scenario. Fighting airborne was his specialty, and the creature, no matter how strong it was, could not resist once it was in the air.
Yasuo moved himself and Aizawa out of the way, letting the Nomu soar past them harmlessly, before extending his Psychic Energy to grab a hold of the monster in mid-air. His Psychokinetic force acted like restraints; chains that bound the movement of the Nomu.
"Aizawa-sensei, my Psychokinesis can't damage that thing. It can shrug off my strongest attack like it's nothing." Yasuo offered, hoping his teacher had an idea to counteract against this monster.
Eraserhead blankly stated in response, "Did you forget who I am? I will erase its quirk; you know what to do after that."
Though truthfully, he did feel somewhat odd being levitated by Yasuo like this. The physical sensation of it was akin to being lifted by an invisible energy, one that he could not feel with his sense of touch. The mental aspect of it was the slightly emasculating prospect of being manhandled by his student.
Yasuo breathlessly chuckled, "Right, I forgot about that." He looked at the monster that was floating in the air and struggling to break free of Yasuo's control. It flailed around its powerful arms and legs, looking like a person desperately trying to swim through the air, but nothing worked. But because of how strong the creature was, every swing of its arms generated a gust of wind that, to him, promised more than broken bones if those limbs ever made contact with his body.
The Psychokinesis quirk user could sense just how dense the creature's musculature was because of his Psychic Energy being wrapped around it. It was abnormal, almost artificial even, how high-spec the black beasts' physique seemed to be. Rippling muscles and an endless vitality - almost as if it were born and trained solely for the purposes of destruction and mayhem.
Aizawa turned to the monster that Yasuo was restraining and activated his Erasure quirk, "Now." He instructed.
Yasuo took a moment to concentrate, and as he did, the air infront of him was distorted. A distortion that was the result of an immense concentration of Psychic Energy. A bead of sweat fell from Yasuo's forehead as he compressed all of that energy into a single point, or at least he tried to.
The result was a blurry, spherical construct that was so powerful it was visible even to Aizawa, who immediately gulped and saw the need to warn his student, "Don't kill it."
Yasuo was slightly shaken at the warning. So focused he was that the only thing he had been thinking of was how to exceed the might of his previous attack on the Nomu. The sight of the creature shrugging off his attack was seared into his mind, and as a result, he had been too focused on taking back his pride and smashing a hole through the monster.
However, Aizawa's words brought him back from his singular focus. The morality and responsibility that came with being a hero was complicated. While killing a villain in self-defense was generally accepted, the caveat was that it was only permitted if the situation made that the last resort.
Would killing the black beast ensure Aizawa and Yasuo's safety? Of course it would. But was it the only possible way for Yasuo to stop it? …It wasn't something he could answer without even trying his best to subdue the monster before turning to that last resort. Ending a life was permanent. There is no way to say 'I'm sorry' or to make up for it later. So before Yasuo was sure that he had no other choice but to kill, that was not a line he would cross just yet.
Without another word, Yasuo reduced the power in his attack, relieving some of the headache that had been creeping up on his brain. The once visible sphere became invisible once more, an indication that it no longer contained the terrifying power it did before.
Yasuo then sent his now greatly weakened attack flying at the floating Nomu. In a blink of an eye, the Psychic sphere was launched, faster than Aizawa could perceive if he could even have seen it and was sent crashing into the Nomu's chest.
The force of the impact caved in the Nomu's chest, despite its seemingly impenetrable, dense muscles and immense durability. The force of the attack was strong enough that even Yasuo's Psychokinetic hold on the monster that had kept it in mid-air was insufficient to keep it airborne any longer.
The Nomu first flew back, rocketed by Yasuo's attack before being directed towards the ground. If there was any time for Yasuo to come up with a name for a super move, this would have been it. But the boy was too focused on gathering his strength for a follow up attack, nervous that his previous blow would be shrugged off by the monster once more.
BOOM!
A black blur that had been plummeting down crashed into the ground, causing a large shockwave that shook the entire USJ facility, as well as a cloud of dust and debris to shoot up into the air.
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A/N: As we near the end of the USJ arc and approach the Sports Festival arc, I would like to ask you guys for some suggestions for Yasuo's hero name. I'm not good at naming things, so I am opening it up to your creativity! If you find a suggestion you like, give it a like! I'll be asking this for the next few chapters and will collate the ones everyone likes most - then a few chapters before the hero name chapter I will open up a poll for you to vote! So head on over to the comment section and hand over your intellectual property, dear readers!