Phantoms Dance: Ch 9

-Rain of Sins-

-Phantoms Dance: Ch 9-

Pawn Log 4: Endeavor.

Prideful. Arrogant. Hot headed. Brutish. Quick to anger.

Endeavor is best compared to a bull, his fighting style relies on overwhelming power and speed to completely demolish whatever is in front of him, and getting on his nerves is as easy as taunting him with a red piece of cloth.

He has skill and technique, yes, but his quirks vital flaw has forced him to either play it smart and hold back, only flaring to full output sporadically so he can fight without fear of overheating- or go all out from the first moment and finish the fight so quickly that he doesn't even get the chance to overheat.

Endeavor, obviously, chose the second option.

The obvious counter to this is to play defensively and burn him out, but as much as I am loathe to admit it, he IS a professional Hero for a reason. He's narrow minded and egotistical, not retarded. Every Villain worth their name has tried this against him, and all ultimately failed.

He expects that play, and he's trained extensively to counter it. He has as many options for long range as he does up close, and frankly I doubt there is any material Humankind can synthesize with our current technology that can't be turned to slag at Hellfire's top temperature. 

Good luck "waiting him out" as the walls around you melt and your eyeballs start boiling in their sockets. 

Usually I would advise Entropy to help with this strategy, but that didn't exactly go over well last time. He literally burns it out of his system, and has strong enough control over his quirk to push through even after multiple doses. It took an extraordinarily high volume of Entropy to neutralize his quirk at the festival, and that was with him standing in an enclosed space literally filled with Entropy gas- which is an advantage that I doubt will fall into my lap as easily again.

But my simulations have stumbled upon a counter intuitive solution, one that has a sort of poetic irony in how cruel it is. Instead of bunkering down and letting him bombard you to ash, lock horns with the bull, match his high intensity fighting and force him to flare hotter and hotter and hotter until he literally burns himself to a crisp.

The danger, of course, is what happens when you get hit by that sort of output, but that's why bullfighters use misdirection and focus on dodging out of the bull's path.

Endeavor may not be stupid as a bull to fall for a literal red cape, but I'm a lot smarter than your average bullfighter.

-Rain of Sins-

"Endeavor!" Izuku shouted with his enhanced lungs, easily loud enough for both the Hero and the camera to pick up. "I am the Villain Prometheus, though you may better recognise me for the name the Safety Commision has used to demonize me: The Sovereign of Sin. According to them, I am the highest ranked Villain at large today, but I disagree."

Shadows slowly enveloped him, and spilled forward as the clouds drew closer overhead. Crows and Ravens crying loudly from above as they flocked to their master's call, and pulled the storm with them.

"You are arrogant and prideful, you take what you want by force, you don't care for others, you don't value human life, the only thing you care about is prestige and your stupid pathetic ranking that means NOTHING !"

Thunder roared overhead as Izuku's eyes flared Green.

"Enji Todoroki, you killed my Mother… and you're going to die for that. "

"Are you calling ME a Villain? I'm the number one Hero! I am KING!"

"And that doesn't mean anything." Izuku sneered.

"WHAT!?"

"You heard me. The only reason you got that title was because All Might is getting older, you never actually surpassed him. It was a free handout, pity points to the forever second best." He mocked loudly. "Or were you to stupid to realize that? It wouldn't surprise me, if you had any brains you would have tossed in the towel years ago. People adore All Might, but they have only ever tolerated you. You're supposed to be the new pillar of society? Your own wife was so disgusted with you, she's been milking her condition to stay in the hospital as long as possible.

"You're a fake, Endeavor , a fraud who's best efforts only highlight just how much you fall short of All Might. You're not the number one, you're not even a Hero! You're nothing but a Villai-"

"RAAAAAAGHHHH!" King screamed, hurling a wall of fire at Izuku.

But the scientist was prepared, and had calculated the coordinates for teleportation before he even opened his mouth. He sent them off to Adam, and was whisked away in a gray foam before the flames even made it halfway.

He dropped back into the world right behind a completely oblivious King. He pulled two large vials of thick green liquid from his belt, and stabbed the metal tips into King's shoulders, injecting it straight into his bloodstream.

Izuku lept away as a flaming hand swung at him, and fired a syringe from his gauntlet, but instead of the usual black Entropy, it was full of the green liquid.

King growled as the dart stabbed into his shoulder, and pulled on his quirk to summon another ball of fire.

But unlike before, with what happened at the festival, his quirk didn't start to flicker and shy away from him, instead it leapt eagerly into his hands! Growing, swelling with power, roaring with the need to be used.

A pillar of flame erupted from King's body, and Izuku scrambled away from the blast range.

Several seconds went by, and King had to physically grab at his fire and forcibly push down his quirk to get the flare to die down.

When it cleared, he was standing in a large circle of molten rock, steam billowing off his skin, the flames on his head losing their shape and flaring wildly. He gasped for breath, and every exhale came out with a gust of smoke.

"What is this!?"

"It's Trigger." Izuku said smugly. "More specifically, It's my own version of Trigger. Instead of being an overblown adrenaline shot, mine is a bio engineered chemical that targets the quirk factor in your DNA, and forcibly activates it beyond your natural inhibitors, beyond what is safe for your body to handle."

King stared at him in confusion as his brain processed that, then his mouth broke into a wide sinister grin.

"So you're trying to get me to overheat, huh? But all you've done is give me a power boost!"

A torrent of fire surged towards Izuku, but the brief conversation had given him the time to stand still and triangulate his exact coordinates again.

He warped behind King a second time, shot several syringes into his back, and then rushed off out of the crater, into the surrounding city, a miniature sun hot on his heels.

-Rain of Sins-

"It seems a situation has developed in the East side of Tokyo." Kino said as she closed her phone. "There's been an explosion, and King has been seen fighting the Sovereign."

Nezu frowned and looked back over the map of the city. To the West was a large assortment of red markers (Heroes), supported by Blue markers (HPSC personnel), surrounding a bunch of black markers that had been tipped on their side.

"Have we heard anything from All Might?" He asked, placing his plaw atop a large gold marker that stood next to a large overturned black marker.

"No. And no one has seen him since the explosion. All we've managed to confirm is that the monster is KIA. He might still be out there, but he's injured, out of contact, and for all intents and purposes, out of play."

Nezu's frown deepened, and he pushed the golden piece, tipping it to the edge of falling over before hesitating and setting it back upright.

"Toshinori has done the impossible before, I won't count him out yet."

"Fair enough, but that doesn't change the situation. What can we spare to the East?"

"Not much, everyone involved in the trap is either injured, MIA, or working an emergency evacuation. And even if we pulled them off now, they wouldn't arrive until it was already over."

Kino looked over the map, and the pieces on it. "Hawks should be able to make it in time, if we send him now, but he's not a heavy fighter."

"Ingenium would be able to keep up with him. Together they would be more than capable of rallying the local Heroes and evacuating the civilians."

"Evacuating? Not supporting in the fight?"

"You made Endeavor the new number one Hero." Nezu said with mirth. "It's time for him to prove he can handle his new title as King."

-Rain of Sins-

A fireball blasted apart the wall Izuku was hiding behind, just as he jumped out from behind it and shot another volley of Trigger at King.

The Hero incinerated the vials with something not unsimilar to a solar flare, and grinned savagely as Izuku was forced to frantically doge the meteor shower that fell as a result of it.

"Enough games, Villain. This should have ended under the festival, and I'm not letting it go on any longer!" King laughed and drank greedily from his new power, ignoring the burning pain as he did so. "PROMINENCE BLAST!"

Izuku's eyes went wide as King began enveloping himself in enormous gouts of flame for his ultimate move. Every instinct in his brain screamed at him to get away as fast as he could but he forcibly ignored them, and instead kept running towards Endeavor.

His tail speared into an overturned van as he ran by and ripped one of the back doors off, and just before Endeavor released his attack, Izuku jumped and shield bashed the door into the Hero.

Instead of the majority of the heat being blasted far off into the distance, like it was supposed to, Prominence Burn detonated point blank, catching Endeavor right in the middle of the blast. The car shield was promptly incinerated, reduced to a black nothing, and Izuku was sent flying in the air, his fire proof coat trailing smoke in his wake.

Izuku twisted in the air, trying to get his bearings, and managed to shake enough black spots out of his vision to aim his gauntlets and fire their grappling hooks at a pair of lamp posts as he flew by.

The shots landed, but between the speed of the impact and the tips being slightly melted, the wires wrapped around the poles more in the way a boles was supposed to, instead of the grappling hook it was.

The metal lines audibly snapped taut as the magnetic motors started reeling them back in at maximum throttle, and Izuku's arms nearly popped out of their sockets as he was yanked back through the air fast enough to match the speed of a car. 

He cut the lines as he shot past, not exactly having the time to stop and untangle them, and slammed his feet firmly onto the ground. The metal boots screeched against the concrete, sparks flying as he used the speed to "surf" on the road, right back to King, never giving him so much as a moment to breathe.

King roared and swung a flaming fist, Izuku jumped, corkscrewing in the air as he flew over the Hero's shoulder, cutting into him with his right hand and injecting him with another dose of Trigger with his left.

Enji eagerly drank in the buff to his quirk even as the heat began to sizzle and burn his skin, pulling forth a raging tornado of fire that swirled around him and threw Izuku to the side.

He hit the ground hard, and leaned into the roll, before using his tail to spring to his feet and avoid a plume of fire that would have incinerated him. His face was burnt, and a few ribs were definitely broken, but he ignored them, trusting his regeneration to heal him.

King's fire was almost completely blue, and it was spreading. Previously he had only been maintaining flames on his hands, and on his head to make a mask and a crown, but now the sapphire fire has enveloped his entire face and most of his chest.

Izuku's mind flashed to Dabi, and the crippling burns all over his body from his own blue fire.

He was on the right track.

-Rain of Sins-

Ujiko rushed through an underground facility, waist deep in water as the place flooded.

Normally the labs were flood proof, but then again, normally they didn't have a giant Kaiju fight All Might right above them.

Oh how he was suddenly regretting hiding a lab under the abandoned district.

It was just a few hours ago that Yuyara had called him, telling him to turn on the TV with a tone not unsimilar to an elder sister taddle telling on their brother.

"Bossss, Izuku's made a Godzilla knock off~ He's gonna hurt somebody~!"

And Ujiko had just laughed, finding it all so amusing, and being so proud of his successor! (Oh how they grow up so fast!) Until he realized that big monster was standing on top of one of his largest labs.

And so he rushed to go help, and then it started flooding, and the Lab Head had just kept blabbering on and on into his ear, and was really starting to get on his nerves, and yes George, he was saying this out loud on purpose so SHUT UP AND HELP ME MOVE THE SERVER THROUGH THE NOMU PORTAL BEFORE THE WATER BRICKS IT, AND I FEED YOU TO IZUKU'S PETS!"

-Rain of Sins-

All Might slumped down against the broken wall of a collapsed building, steam billowing from his body, as he slowly shriveled down back into Toshinori.

The monster was dead. It wasn't even a "there's no way it could have survived that" this time. He'd seen the splatter, and while its body was mostly in one piece, everything from its shoulders up was just gone.

A hacking cough shook his form, spilling blood from his mouth, and telling him that he wasn't doing all that great either. But that didn't matter. He was alive, and had survived much worse than this before.

He killed All for One, and if that bastard couldn't put the Symbol of Peace down, then there was no way some overgrown lizard would be able to either.

Toshinori pushed himself back up and used the pain to ground himself, to keep him from slipping off into unconsciousness. The bad guy had been dealt with, but people still needed saving, the damage from the fight had spilled out well beyond the abandoned district.

Left foot. Right foot.

Left foot. Right foot.

Left foot. Right foot.

"Just hold on a little longer… I'm on my way…"

Left foot. Right foot.

Left foot. Right foot.

"I'll save you all… Just wait for me… I'll save you…"

Left foot. Right foot.

"I'll save you… Nana… "

All Might collapsed.

-Rain of Sins-

The Sovereign of Sin slid under a sword made of pure fire, his gauntlets firing several more shots of trigger into King's side, and his tail cutting a deep gash into the Tyrant's upper leg, before he lept away. Even that brief moment of being so close had his metal gear glowing hot, and the heat was only getting more intense every minute.

His rebreather was burning against the skin of his face, and the only reason he hadn't thrown the thing off yet was the threat of smoke inhalation killing him. But as the fight dragged on, it was starting to look like he wasn't going to have much of a choice.

Overhead the storm had completely taken over, forcing the news chopper to retreat, and the clouds blocked out the sun, leaving the living firestorm that Izuku was fighting as the brightest source of light in the area.

The Ravens, Izuku's birds with weather control quirks that made the storm in the first place, were holding back most of the rain, causing the clouds to swell and grow even darker, lighting flashing angrily in their depths.

The light drizzle that made it through was taking the worst of the edge off Endeavor's flames without cooling him off, in fact it was just the opposite. A thick cloud of steam choked the air around the Hero, trapping the heat like a sponge and slowly cooking him alive.

Everything was going as planned, and Izuku nodded in satisfaction as he dashed back in to keep the pressure up.

But the universe works on chaotic laws of jinxes and karma that stood parallel to their twin pillars of mathematics and physics. And because Izuku had been happy things were going according to plan, things suddenly went very much not according to plan.

As Izuku rushed through for another pass, King feinted to the right, causing him to serve left, and then pivoted and caught Izuku by the tail as he went by.

Izuku lashed out, his claws aiming at King's wrist, but the Hero yanked him up high into the air and then swung him into the ground, shattering the concrete. Then he reared back, his hands blazing like a small blue star over his head, and swung them down like a guillotine.

Izuku brought his tail up, the durable graphene titanium mesh coiling into a shield that had taken the train explosion point blank and came out only slightly mangled.

King's strike shattered it like plywood.

Izuku cried out in pain as metal shrapnel ripped into his skin, and from what had happened with his healing quirk and the bullets before, he already knew some of those would heal over before the shrapnel pieces could be pushed out.

King stomped down, pinning Izuku's leg as he tried to get away, and raised his hands again.

Fire coalesced in his palms and spread over his hands, getting hotter and hotter until it was physically painful to look at.

Izuku's mind scrambled for a way out of the mess, but King didn't give him the chance to calculate his coordinates and call for a teleport, and swung down immediately.

The flaming death blow was halfway down to obliterating Izuku's head, before a giant black shape crashed into King's side like a freight train, and threw him down the street.

Jeremy let out a roar that shook the earth and would have put dinosaurs to shame as he stood protectively over his master.

"Jeremy?" Izuku choked out in surprise. "What in the world are you doing here? I thought I told you to stay back and keep anyone from interfering?"

Jeremy huffed in response.

"I wasn't saying I don't appreciate it! Thanks for the save, you're a sight for sore eyes, and I owe you all the strawberries in the world when we get home. But you're not usually the type to disobey orders."

Jeremy growled and lowered into a hunting stance as King got back to his feet.

"That's a good point. Tell you what boy, I'll give you a new order." Izuku cracked his neck and raised his fists. "Help me punch this guy's face in."

King bellowed a war cry and charged forward, his body wreathed in flames. 

Jeremy and Izuku rushed to meet him.

-Rain of Sins-

Star and Stripe flew into the airspace of Japan at a supersonic speed.

A thick, almost supernatural group of black clouds hovered over Tokyo and only Tokyo. 

The East side of the city was burning, blazing with a heat that could easily be seen even through the clouds.

The West side of the city was in ruins, practically collapsing, and flood water rushing through the streets.

The top Hero of America faced the worst choice every Hero would one day be forced to make in their career. Despite all her power, she could only be in one place, and she had to pick where she would help.

…

After a moment of thought, Star headed to where she'd been told All Might had been injured.

West Tokyo.

-Rain of Sins-

Far below Tokyo, the pure silver spoons on a table worth more than entire cities rattled at the fighting raging above.

All for One watched in silence, his gourmet meal left cold and forgotten, his complete attention focused entirely on the world above.

The lights had been snuffed out with a thought, the doors closed and fused shut with a wave of his hand. The only sound was the rhythmic tapping of his fingers on the table.

All for One watched.

-Rain of Sins-

Izuku slid behind a fallen billboard to hide from falling rubble as a nearby office building collapsed- the concrete sagging off the glowing hot metal support beams like rotting flesh from a skeleton.

The Villain was gasping for air, rivers of sweat streaming down his face, his claws were glowing hot, his gauntlets melted at the edges, his coat smoking, his hyper regeneration worked overtime to fix the burns all over his body, and his hands shook uncontrollably. The damage to his spine had only gotten worse as the battle went on, and he was almost certain that several important pieces were more liquid than solid at the moment, which was making motor function much more difficult than it normally should have been.

His muscles were screaming at him to stop, everything hurt, and dehydration raked its nails across his brain in a terrible headache. But he forced himself to his feet, and jumped back out into the battle. If he was resting, Endeavor could be resting, and that was not an option.

Immediately he came under assault from a barrage of fireballs that ripped apart walls and blasted room sized holes into the ground.

Izuku fired another volley of trigger, the syringes melting from the heat before they even got close and shattering against King's body, but the Green liquid seeped into his wounds regardless.

Jeremy screeched in agony in rage as he traded blows with the Hero. He was somewhat fire resistant, just by virtue of his thick leathery scales, but he had been designed to fight against All Might's brute force, not this hellish onslaught.

A fireball impacted him dead center and detonated, pushing him back and burning off large chunks of his raised arms. A fist followed, a fiery hammer that was dripping molten blood, and slammed into Jeremy's jaw, burning his face and toppling him backwards.

The Nomu braced his tail against the ground to catch himself, then threw himself forward.

He wasn't made for this, he wasn't even "made properly", according to the slick standards for Origin Lab genetic sequencing. He had been created by Ujiko shoving as many quirks into a body as was possible, upgraded by Izuku's first bumbling steps into scientific mastery, and kept alive with constant treatments in the vats.

It wasn't even the case of a long range bomber trying to do a fighter jet's mission, it was a last generation rotary plane, kept up to date with frankenstein parts and held together with duct tape and gratuitous welding.

But Jeremy didn't care, he roared and raged, relying on his regeneration to patch him up even as his new scales were blown apart faster than they could be replaced, and brought his fists down again and again and again !

He hit him again, and again, and again, and again, and again, even as the metal dome protecting his previously exposed brain began to melt and deform, and his vision went blurry as his eyes began to boil from being so close for so long, he just. Kept. Swinging!

Izuku rushed by, driving his metal boot into the back of Endeavor's knee, causing him to stumble and fall backwards under Jeremy's blows.

King was on the edge of falling apart, bright blue flames ate at him from the inside out, his entire body was black with soot and burnt flesh, every movement he made cracked the skin open in a blast of steam that revealed glowing orange muscles and sprayed fiery blood to the ground.

They just had to keep the pressure on a little longer.

King screamed, and the fire around them contracted, pulling back into him before exploding out in a blast that sent both the Nomu and the Hero flying away from each other. Izuku was just barely able to jump behind a pile of rubble and avoid the shockwave, but just the heat from it had him clenching his eyes shut in pain as his skin sizzled.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

He opened his eyes and got back to his feet. The street they had been fighting in was completely ruined, Jeremy was picking himself out of the rubble of a building, and King was…

Izuku looked around for the missing Hero, and as he did so he was forced to really look at what their fight had been doing.

The city was ruined. The bomb from the train had done a lot, but this was so, so much worse. 

Everything was on fire. Ruins smoldered, embers floated through the air on gusts of smoke like ghosts of ruin. There wasn't a light on in the entire area, and the sun was blotted out by the clouds above, but it was still as bright as a summer day, the flames casting an angry orange light from all directions.

He had a sudden morbid realization as to why none of the Heroes in the area had jumped in to Help Endeavor.

Anyone who was capable would have been forced to evacuate this.

…But he couldn't hear anyone to evacuate. No screaming, no crying… just the crackling of flames, and the dull rumble of thunder in the far distance.

Hopefully they had all managed to get out, or else… He didn't want to think about what could have happened to them…

A flash of light to Izuku's left caught his attention, and he pivoted, gauntlets at the ready-

Only to find himself staring down the barrel of a fully charged Prominence Burn, with no cover in sight, or thick metal door to shield himself with.

The beam of superheated fire blasted towards him, so hot it didn't even burn blue anymore, it was violet and white. It obliterated everything in its wake, and rushed forwards like an unstoppable tide.

Izuku tried to move, but he was injured, his spine was damaged, and he was caught off guard.

He had only managed to make it half a foot before the beam had covered half the remaining distance between them, and a cold certainty grabbed him by the throat.

This was it. He'd failed. It was over.

He managed to raise his arms in front of him before the light overwhelmed him, but as he could feel his gear start melting into his skin, something large slammed into his side and threw him out of the way.

Izuku cried in pain as he tumbled along the ground, the impact had shattered his leg, and his arms were mangled from the heat. But he was still alive.

Refusing to make the same mistake of getting distracted twice, Izuku immediately forced himself up and looked back where he had been.

Jeremy, unnoble but proud guardian, built to fight, built to defend its ward, stood defiantly atop the pile of rocks, having pushed his master out of the way at the last second.

The Nomu was missing its top half, everything above its stomach was completely gone, except for one outstretched arm that fell to the ground in a burnt crisp.

The corpse swayed and toppled to the ground.

Izuku stared at it with wide, unbelieving eyes. 

Jeremy had gone toe to toe with All Might , that meant he was practically invincible. Right? RIGHT!?

King growled and lumbered to his feet.

Izuku's eyes flashed green as a signal rushed to one of the only functioning parts of his spine outside of the bare essentials.

A single, open broadcast message, to every channel on his network.

[Help]

A flock of shapes descended from the sky, Crows dive bombing towards him. It was the survivors of the fight with the Hero ambush, a grand total of five swept down with broken exoskeletons.

Two aimed for Izuku, while the three most injured went for King.

The three were vaporized before they could land a single blow, each falling to a wild punch. But they bought enough time for the other two to pick up Izuku and take off down the street in a low flight.

King coughed out a wheeze of smoke and evaporated blood. He had put far too much himself into that last attack. 

He could feel himself slipping, everything had stopped hurting a long time ago and was now just numb, he felt like he was freezing despite literally burning alive, and his quirk was becoming more and more difficult to control as if it was oil slipping between his fingers.

But as he watched his opponent try to escape, an irrational fury bubbled from his gut and tinted his vision red. He grabbed hold of everything he had and pushed it together, forcing it into the smallest ball of fire he could, and threw it down the road.

The throw went wide, it didn't hit Izuku, it wasn't even close, but it also didn't matter. The blastwave from the explosion knocked the Crows from the air, tearing a wing off of one, and sending them crashing to the ground.

Izuku landed the hardest, slapping against the ground and trailing a line of blood as he rolled. Red lighting flickered over his body, trying to fix damage, but it was weak, taxed past its limits.

Endeavor did some sort of movement. It could have been a shaky step, a stumble, a wobble,or some combination of all three, but it planted his foot over the broken husk of Jeremy's lower body and he stared Izuku down with a single glowing eye that burned with the fires of Hell. 

The Hero was burning, the air itself was burning, the city around them was burning, everything was burning.

Izuku's breath caught, memories flashing back to that fateful night. The apartment fire. The screaming. The feeling of helplessness as everything fell apart in front of him.

"I'm so sorry kid, we did everything we could… there were no survivors…"

Izuku scrambled backwards, crawling on all fours away from the Demon staring him down.

This was a mistake! This had all been a terrible mistake! He'd been just as blinded by his pride and arrogance as Endeavor! How had he ever thought he could take on the number two Hero in a one v one!?

"Rain!" He called in panic, on the cusp of hyperventilating, sending the message out on all channels. "RAIN!"

The Ravens controlling the storm let go, and everything they had been holding back slammed down at once.

The water that hit the Earth over the next ten seconds couldn't even be called rain anymore, it was more akin to someone dumping a bucket into a sink. A thick, almost solid, blanket of water slammed into the city, smothering flames, shattering windows, and crushing cars into metal pancakes from the impact.

Izuku was smashed against the ground, and King was forced to his knees from the impact, only to immediately be assaulted by a "normal" hurricane class downpour that pelted the world with more water than Tokyo had seen in decades and frozen clumps of hail the size of golf balls.

Enji raged against it, summoning more flames and hurling them at Izuku in wild abandon.

But despite the Trigger pumping through his system in such quantities that the term overdose was underselling, the fire couldn't overcome the rain. In fact, it seemed to be getting weaker and weaker, each flare smaller than the last.

As if the fire itself was dying.

King raised his head, and the water ran down his face, washing away soot to reveal a sad sight. Blood was streaming from the deep cracks in the burnt flesh that exposed white bone, the scar over his left eye had opened up again, showing a socket of gore, and a clump of ash that used to be the right side of his chin fell away, taking a few teeth with it.

During the fight, the fire itself had acted as a mask, hiding the toll it was taking from the world, but now it was being put on display in all its full gorish glory.

"WHA HID YOU HO TO MAE!?" He roared, desperately grasping at the heat which had accompanied him all his life, even through his worst lows, it had always been a comforting warmth that soothed him.

Now it was gone. Extinguished.

"It worked…" Izuku stared at the struggling Hero with an owlish expression. "Ha. Haha… haheaaheahehaHAHAHHEHAEHAHEEA! IT WORKED!"

"my kwurk… YOU SDOL MAY KWURK! "

"No, no, I can't do that without you suspended in a tank. Not yet at least." The Sovereign of Sins giggled hysterically as he dragged himself to his feet. "I was completely honest when I told you what I was using. It's Trigger, my own version of it, that individually targets and force activates the quirk gene. But there's a reason it's still in the experimental phase despite working so well."

The Sovereign started limping towards Enji, his left leg crooked as his quirk healed it back together improperly.

"UA says quirks are like a muscle, you train them, and stress them, and push them, and overtime they will grow. But this version of Trigger is like a steroid, it attacks the quirk factor and pushes it, and pushes it, and pushes it, and pushes it, and pushes it, and pushes it until it RIPS itself apart!"

He laughed.

"Pardon the pun, but with a high enough dose a quirk burns itself out." The Sovereign smiled, a broken grin that stretched far too wide, and was far too sharp to fit on a human face. " Completely! "

"No… NO YOUR RYING!" Enji shouted in horror and fear.

"Oh don't worry, you might eventually get it back, as cells with damaged DNA die, and new ones replace them. But that would easily take decades, and that's without factoring in your physical injuries. Forget just being quirkless, you're going to be crippled! Lame! The so-called top hero , physically disabled. The weakest any human could possibly be!"

The Sovereign loomed over him, just out of reach, and casting a shadow that seemed to envelop Enji's whole world.

The Hero whimpered.

"You know I wanted to kill you. That's why I came here. Revenge. Justice. To set the record straight. But you…" Izuku's eyes trailed to Jeremy's remains. "You have done nothing but take from me… You took my mother. You took my belief in Heroes. You took my ideals. You took my friend. You took so much… You made me a monster…" 

Izuku looked down at himself, his skin burnt, his body battered, his leg healed wrong. Then he looked back up at Endeavor, his eyes glowing a sickly green.

"But now I think death is too benevolent of an end for what you've done to me."

The two Crows from before limped forward, their bodies broken, but their claws as sharp as knives.

Gray foam bubbled into existence, and a black droid with countless needles and tiny blades floated through.

Enji Todoroki screamed as the Sovereign of Sin stepped forward, but no one could hear him over the howling of the storm.

-Chapter End-

-Arc: Phantom's Dance: End-

Keep the change, you filthy animal.

What goes around comes around Enji, and you were the one who made this problem to begin with. Now you've left the mess for everyone else to have to clean up. You let your ambition get the best of you, and got what you deserved in this timeline.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

Sorry, I didn't put any references in the entire chapter to focus entirely on the fight, and I just had to sneak in that Home Alone quote there. Such a classic.

Anyway, this is the fight that we've been leading up to for about a quarter of the story now, I hope I did it justice, and that you all enjoyed it!

As dangerous as the Sovereign of Sin is, Izuku is still inexperienced, and having to punch up above his weight class against Pro Heroes. He has his backup, his creations, and he's definitely not gonna fight fair, but it's still an uphill battle.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

Join the discord and get access to a bunch of memes for absolutely free! (and hentai, there is a lot of hentai. People posted so much in the "off topic" channel I eventually just caved and gave them their own chat.)

https://discord.gg/Hy7g6UqGQd

Shout out to my good friends who help me write these chapters, participate in polls, and give background character ideas, so deserve to get their name signed in the credits.

MidnightHydro! (The Mighty!), and Eternal Guard (The Emboldened!)

Nvsoulsborne, ShelDrake, Tom Tat, and Gage Donaldson

Alex Estrugo, Blue_port, David Phan, Eledu, Elenium935, Helios, Jac, Jaydon Adams, jordan arrow, Max Buckner, phil, Quan Perryman, WiseKitsune, Spam2Spam, Gavin, and GrimDeathKnight