Anastasia glided behind Izuku in astral form, staring at the wall in front of them as people came surging in. Dozens, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people were heading into UA. Izuku used his staff to limp along, his leg more mobile from another month of surgeries from Asclepius. Give it another month or two, and he would be able to walk without assistance.
Next to him, all five wearing the largely phased out white Chaldea uniform, were Mash, Gray (her grey cloak still hanging around her shoulders), Erice and Reines, Trimmau right behind them. Looking around, she briefly noticed a purple haired boy looking up at Trimmau with an open mouth before pushing it aside. It wasn't like perverts were rare at Chaldea.
Then she noticed something in the corner of her vision at the same time as the Count and Ushiwakamaru. A man with a large revolver holstered at his side pushed off the wall they had just passed through, a red poncho around his armored chest and a tan gasmask on his face. All around Izuku, the Servants, Pseudo-Servants and Demi-Servant tried to subtly close ranks while he mumbled out, "I see him. Act natural, you four."
"Hey, you five in the white-"
дерьмо.
Guards subtly raised through the group as the man approached them. Gray's grip on Add's cage became tight, Trimmau subtly shifted one hand to a blade and Mash's fists clenched while Viy appeared on the ground below them as a large shadow. Izuku turned around, hand in his pocket.
Gripping his lighter like it was a lifeline, probably.
"You all are Chaldea's group of wards, ain't ya?" The man said, to which Izuku gave a short nod, "that's what I thought. Y'all can relax, you ain't in trouble."
Everyone lowered their guards slightly.
"Just wanted to say hi to you, kid," the man said , "I was part of the group put on your case. Glad you're alright, that trafficking ring was a piece of work."
What the hell had James put together as a cover story?
"Y-yeah," Izuku stumbled, though didn't seem overly surprised, "Thank you, Snipe.
"You all trying for the Hero Course?"
"Gen Ed," Erice said.
"Business," said Reines at the same time, looking largely unphased.
"Really?" Snipe said, "Woulda thought with you all bein' Wards of a PMC you'd be aiming to get licenced."
"I'm not one for front line combat," Reines said.
"I don't know what I want to do yet," Erice said.
"Fair enough, this is why we have after schooling progams and apprenticeships. Some people don't figure out what they wanna be until later in life, I know-"
"DEKU!?" A voice barked out, drawing attention to the ash blonde with hair like an exploson storming towards them. Izuku locked up, causing everyone to give him strange looks, before the explosions started to crackle from the other boy's palms as he marched towards Izuku.
"O-oh, H-hey Kacchan-" Izuku was stuttering. Why was Izuku stutteri-
Then the boy made a grab at Izuku with an exploding hand and everything went into overdrive.
—
Katsuki was in the middle of grabbing for Deku, fucking
Deku who was apparently alive and well and hadn't offed himself (thank Buddah for that), when everything went wrong. First the lilac haired girl skidded between him and Deku, arms spread wide to guard him. The cloaked girl and the one with a red streak in her hair both lunged forwards and grabbed the arm reaching for Deku with their hands. All of that was strange enough, something to mock Deku about, that he had to be guarded by a bunch of girls. But then the next three people materialized from blue energy and everything became a shitshow.
He had just enough time to see a girl with a giant shadow appear behind Deku and pull him close with the shadow. Then a hand latched onto the hair on the back of his head and his head was forced backwards as his knees were kicked out from under him by a tall man with grey hair and bright red eyes. A second after that, a sword stopped close enough to his throat he could
feel it and he was forced to look down at a girl wearing… not a lot and holding a katana against his throat, her eyes a murderous blue.
"What the-" Snipe started, undoing his holster's grip as he went and grabbing the gun. The man behind Katsuki spoke in a raspy voice.
"What exactly did you think you were about to do?" He snarled out, yellow starting to leak into his red eyes. The girl leaned in, eyes growing harder, "Well? Because it looked like you were about to attack-"
"Count, Ushiwakamaru," Deku said, pulling himself from the shadow and stepping around the still extended hand of Lilac. He quietly reached out, first prying the cloak wearing girl's hand off him, then the other's, "Let him go."
"Let's not do anything drastic," Snipe said, having drawn his gun and slowly inching the hammer into a cocked position.
"Don't bother," Deku said, "the gun won't do anything. Ushiwaka, look at me. Look at me."
They were treating this like a hostage situation…
Where he was the hostage!
"Let go of me-"
"If you can talk," the man growled, staring down at Katsuki, "you can explain why you were about to use what appears to be explosives on my Accomplice."
Accomplice? What the fuck-
"Why do you care-"
"Ushiwaka," Deku continued to urge gently, "I'm over here. Come on. Look this way."
"And take my eyes off the one who was about to assault you, my lord?" Ushiwaka said.
"Yes," Deku gently reached out, touching the hand holding the sword towards Katsuki. It didn't budge for a second, before the girl finally followed his urgings and looked towards him. The difference being like night and day, one second she looked like a villain about to murder him, the next she was looking like a puppy dog, "Look at me, I'm fine. C'mon, thanks for protecting me, but I'm fine. Put down the sword, I'm fine."
Ushiwaka finally lowered the sword, sheathing it at her hip and breathing in. She bowed, unintentionally giving Katsuki a dead-on look at her breasts, "I'm sorry."
"Hey," Deku said, planting a hand on her head without raising his voice, "I get it, Ushiwaka, you're trying to keep me safe. That's what you're here for, but threatening to kill Kacchan because he made a grab at me is taking it too far."
Snipe looked between the two with a cocked gun, finger still off the trigger. Ushiwaka was standing there with her head still bowed, Deku still laying his hand on her head.
"He tried to use explosives on you, my lord," Ushiwaka said softly.
"I'm used to it," Deku shrugged.
"That doesn't make things better," the man gripping Katsuki's hair said, eyes now a crackling gold, "because that implies he regularly does it."
"So what if I do-" Katsuki started, only to immediately regret it as his head was forced back.
"So you attack my friend regularly, and then are surprised when retaliation comes for you-!"
"Count," Deku said turning his attention away from Ushiwaka and focusing on the man, "let him go. Please."
Katsuki angled his hands backwards, firing off large explosions right into the man and lurching forwards…
Only to slam into the ground as the grip on his hair didn't lighten up for a second. The man yanked Katsuki back up, snarling, "Gland."
"I don't want to have to do anything drastic, Count," Izuku said, still rubbing Ushiwaka's head like she was an animal, "just let him go and put this behind us. I'm fine. You protected me, and thank you for that, but we don't need to take this any further."
"Fine," he said, finally throwing Katsuki to the ground and stepping away from him, "but if I ever see him do that again, it will take a Command Spell to stop me from returning the favor."
"Merci," Izuku said as the man vanished, before turning to Katsuki and Snipe and bowing, "I'm sorry. My Quirk can get… defensive of me."
"You're Quirkless, dumbass," Katsuki snarled, hands crackling, only to stop as he noticed Ushiwaka fingering her sword behind Izuku, eyes back to being dull and slightly crazed.
"We are his Quirk," Ushiwaka said, "and it is our duty as such to guard our lord."
"A lot happened while I was gone, Kacchan," Deku said like that explained everything.
"Sentient Quirk, eh?" Snipe said, holstering his gun, "Makes me wonder how much of Chaldea's firepower is just you. Listen, I'm glad this got resolved peacefully, but both of you didn't behave well. You, blondy, did go to attack him on school property. Don't let me catch you doing that shit again or there will be hell to pay, but you, Midoriya, your Quirk's reaction was disproportionate. I dunno what they're teachin' ya at Chaldea, but threatenin' people's lives like that is unacceptable for a hero, understand?"
"Lord Izuku wouldn't want us to have attacked him in hindsight," Ushiwaka, fuck he needed to come up with a nickname for her, said, bowing, "I take full responsibility for my own actions. It will not happen again."
Despite saying that, Katsuki could feel the glare through her hairline.
"Alright then," Snipe said, turning to the girls, "Your reactions were much better, you defended Midoriya and stopped the assault the second you saw it was gonna happen. Good instincts and good job, all y'all."
—
Jesse sat in his chair, chewing on the air as he pulled up Quirk registry after Quirk Registry. Something about all this, these wards of Chaldea, didn't seem right. They were too coordinated, too… used to fighting he supposed. Not a single one of them had dropped their guard from the moment he first spoke to them to when he let them go…
Quirk names were just as weird, at best nonsensical for what they were supposed to do, at worst feeling like they were designed to specifically hide what the kids could do. Mash Kyrielight: Lord Camelot (General body enhancement, higher strength, speed, endurance, the works), Gray Velvet: Gravekeeper (same thing again, plus a sentient box she could turn into a weapon), Utsumi Erise: Erlkönig (Three for three on general enhancers, but add on "overactive", whatever the fuck that meant, black blood she could somewhat control for combat), Reines El-Melloi Archisorte (which, by the way, what kind of name was that?): Volumen Hydragyrum (A programmable mass of Mercury that followed her around). And the big mystery, Midoriya Izuku: (Throne of Heroes: Sentient Quirk that used part of his being (what parts? Body? Mind? Personality?) to manifest "Servants", beings based around aspects of legendary figures to-)
That one went on for another paragraph and a half, and felt like it was covering all bases. Servants were autonomous, but generally responded to orders from Midoriya. Had markings on his body called "Command Spells", absolute orders he could use if a Servant wasn't willing to listen to him, or summon a Servant to his side. Each Servant had an "Alignment", "Class" and "Parameters" like it was a video game.
And in comparison to the almost vague description given by the other kid's Quirk, if felt too detailed. Like they had given just enough cards to keep them from asking questions and then called it good. And that just made Snipe more suspicious.
Those two back at the yard, they had reacted like they hadn't known what Midoriya and that kid's relationship was. Snipe couldn't think of an answer yet, but that raised the question of why they hadn't if they were part of him.
And then there was the question of who they were supposed to be. One was supposed to be a Count… Dracula, De Sade (no, wait, he wasn't a Count was he?), uh… shit… he'd have to pick Mic's brain, he was better at this stuff than Snipe. Then the other one, the one dressed like what he would expect from a horned up fifteen year old's imagination, Ushiwaka… hadn't the kid called her Ushiwakamaru at one point?
"Boss, the name Ushiwakamaru ring a bell?"
"I can't say that it does off the top of my head," Nezu said, "We haven't had a student here named that under my tenure, and there isn't an applicant here named that this year. Why?"
"One of Midoriya's summons," Snipe said, "a girl probably in the… five foot somethin' range? Wore almost nothing and her behavior, kinda like a samurai, I guess? She was a bit crazed if ya ask me."
"I'll have to look into it," Nezu said, "now, the examinees should be starting in three, two, one-" the seven screens came up then as the doors to each testing zone swung open. The next second, everyone in the room's jaws dropped as one.
Testing ground beta's main throughway suddenly looked like someone had just dropped a fucking
artillery barrage on it, every robot shattered to pieces with black flames licking the concrete and metal of the robots.
"Rewind, rewind right now," Midnight demanded as Power Loader typed in the order to do so and slowed the camera to a crawl. Everyone's eyes were locked on the street.
Everyone except Snipe, whose eyes locked onto Midoriya, watching him slowly raise a hand in a pantomiming of a pistol, thumb up to represent the hammer. His eyes were different from how they were outside the school, less skittish, glimmering like hard emeralds. The "hammer" dropped and he faked recoil, mouthing out a 'bang'. Count appeared behind him, taking off in a burst of black and purple flames and launching through the doors before they even finished opening before speeding up so fast he
vanished, even to the high speed cameras.
He then appeared above every robot at once, all but one of the Counts seeming to be a weak reflection, and threw down balls of the black and purple flames down on the robots. The echoes faded as the Count landed, laughing at the carnage in his wake.
"Yeah, it's official," Snipe deadpanned, "That kid's quirk is worrying."
—
Izuku felt himself slide into combat mode as they waited for the doors to open, muttering to himself, "Count, you're gonna take point. The minute the door opens, I want you in there destroying any robot you can get Monte Cristo Mythologe on."
The Count didn't respond vocally, and Izuku continued on while silently bracing for the storm that was coming at Chaldea. He didn't want to do this, he didn't want to deal with the Servants reactions to Kacchan, he didn't want to deal with
Mash's reaction to Kacchan, he didn't want to deal with his own reaction to Kacchan.
The last time they had spoken, Kacchan had told him to kill himself. How did you… how did you deal with that? Especially after everything that had happened since Izuku had shifted into Chaldea that day. The day he had found a home.
"An, you're second line, anything he doesn't burn straight to hell, you and Viy freeze. Also, rescue ops, anyone who gets trapped, use Viy to save them," Izuku continued, before continuing, "Ushiwakamaru, since I can't have weapons on me for this exam, you're on bodyguard duty. If anything gets past the Count and An, I want you piling their heads. Build a mound of the fallen if you have to. But all of you, don't destroy everything, we should give the others a chan-"
"Excuse me," a blue haired boy said, adjusting his glasses, "can you please stop that mumbling, it's very distracting and we all need to focus."
"Ah, sorry," Izuku offered a smile to the boy, "I was getting my Quirk ready for the exam, but yeah, I can stop if it distracts people."
"Ah, you're doing prep of your own? I'm sorry, I don't want to deprive you of-"
"No, no, it's fine," Izuku said, waving his hand, "I had wrapped up. I can-" Izuku jerked as the doors rumbled open, the blue haired boy turned to them, and Izuku quietly raised his right hand in a finger gun pose, left hand on his staff. Behind him, the Count materialized. Izuku mentally traced a line through the horde of students to the first robot, "Bang."
"Enfer Château D'If!" Izuku jerked at the echo of words in his ears, the Noble Phantasm going off as he did. He hadn't meant for the Count to use ECD…
God, Buddha and Akasha, he wasn't looking forward to the conversation they were gonna need to have when they got back to the Border. Because there was no way he was getting out of this without explaining him and Izuku's relationship with Kacchan. Pushing his way through the gaping crowd, he watched the Count rush around the bullets, missiles really, fired from a three point robot and reduce it to a pile of slag with Monte Cristo Mythologe.
"He could at least try to leave some for us," Anastasia huffed as she materialized, eyes flicking down another street and gesturing with the hand not clutching her Viy doll to her chest. A spike of ice erupted from the ground and impaled a charging two pointer through the chassis. Ushiwakamaru appeared in front of Izuku with one hand on Usumidori's hilt, the other gently stroking the sheath so her thumb could brush up against the guard. The second that a three pointer skidding out of the alleyway to their left she vanished and reappeared faster than the eye could blink, the only sign she had moved being Usumidori now unsheathed, her swaying clothes, and the robot head she had dropped next to him.
Izuku settled onto the head to wait, his staff resting against one shoulder and his other hand dangling down like he had a gun in it. As much as he hated it, until they figured out a way to justify his Magecraft, his role in this fight was done short of an unplanned variable.
Didn't mean he let up the Reinforcement on his body though. Be relaxed, but be ready.
—
"He's taking it a bit… lazily, isn't he?" Nemuri asked, watching the boy settle onto the head of the robot.
"We're a minute into the exam and he's got almost fifty villain points," Ectoplasm pointed out, "he could afford to not spend another second fighting with that Quirk of his and he would probably pass. And look at his Quirk-"
"-You noticed it too, Ectoplasm?" Nezu said conversationally, "it makes sense, three Servants, the one in the suit-"
"He called him Count," Snipe interjected.
"Count is taking the vanguard, he has high speed, so he can be where he's needed, and range so he can hit anything trying to outpace him. Then you have the second one, let's call her "Princess" for sake of ease, locking down the area around him with that ice," Nezu continued to analyze, "She can create barriers, freeze the joints- nevermind, freeze the robots fast enough to cause fractures in the metal, and- oh, my, a summon for a summon, that's quite fascinating- sorry, she can do it all from range. That makes her an obvious middle line of defense. Finally you have the last one, who I presume from Snipe's description is Ushiwakamaru?"
"Yeah."
"We're gonna need to talk to him about modifying her costume," Nemuri sighed, if they hadn't let her original costume go for censorship reasons, there was no way anyone was going to let Ushiwaka- whatever in a bikini bottom and some armor.
"Probably, yes, but she appears to be faster than even the Count but limited to the range of her sword. It is therefore the most sound position to keep her near Midoriya, where she can quickly clear the space between them and eliminate a threat not dealt with by Count and Princess. She also, given that she was able to carry one of the heads without any strain, capable of moving Midoriya if their position becomes untenable. And perhaps most impressively, Jesse, were these the ones all outside at the confrontation?"
"Yeah."
"So, he didn't know what the exam was gonna be until Hizashi announced it," Nemuri finished, "So he's either really good with these three in particular."
"Or he's the type of Hero who focuses more on coordinating teams than personal combat," Shouta finished, "makes sense, with his Quirk and that injured leg, he probably can't do much more. If he's gonna be in my class, I might have to go without the logical ruse this year. It would look too much like I'm rigging it against him. I'll just have to pay extra close attention to how everyone else works… damn it…"
"And I want to keep the Chaldean children going into the hero course together," Nezu said, something glimmering in his eyes, "Make it easier to observe them and what they… ah… learned, from their time at Chaldea."
—
Mash stretched as she waited for the doors to open, having switched into a pair of pants from the skirt supplied with the Chaldean uniform. She wasn't Gray, she didn't have unwavering confidence she wasn't going to accidentally flash someone while fighting… and no, the fact that her armor was basically just an armored leotard didn't count, dang it.
She wasn't the best at hand to hand combat without Lord Camelot and the Sword of Strange Hangings, honestly, but she had C-rank strength. She could do this. And besides, it would be interesting to fight a battle without Senpai there to give orders and protect. She'd only done that during the final battle of Lostbelt Camelot, when Senpai had been off dealing with… dealing with Beryl.
Just thinking of him made her fingers ache. Him pinning her down and breaking them one by one, sharp spike of pain after sharp spike of pain she didn't know how to vocalize properly-
No, don't think about that, Mash. Think about happy things. Fou. Senpai. Beni-Enma's cooking.
The doors rumbled open in front of her, and she sprinted forwards in a blur, rushing for the first robot as she went and watching in lock several guns on her. Mash let them hit home, the rubberized bullets bouncing off without so much as a bruise as she drove a knee into the robot's head. The head crumpled like a tin can, and Mash-
"Crap," a voice groaned out, and Mash's eyes jumped to a boy with purple hair and tired eyes about to be hit by a scorpion tail from a two point robot. Mash blurred into motion, sliding in front of the boy and raising one hand perfectly into the trajectory of the tail. Metal hit skin conceptually harder and crumpled inwards, allowing Mash to grab the wiring inside and use it to whip the robot against the wall so hard both shattered, "What the-"
"I hope you're alright," Mash said, offering the boy a small smile as he stared at her, before scoffing and walking away with his hands in his pockets and out of the testing zone. Well, that was a bit ru-
Mash stopped that train of thought as a robot smashed into her in a clear attempt to take her out, giving it a token stumble for its efforts as it shore itself in two right around her. Ah, A-Rank Endurance.
"Holy crap," a boy with black hair and sharp teeth said, staring at her, "You alright?"
"I'm fine," Mash said, brushing the scraps of metal off herself and walking towards the next robot while offering the boy a small smile, "Thank you for asking."
—
Higari felt an eye twitch at the destruction. Oh, he was used to the robots getting damaged, it was ultimately their purpose and fixing them made a good project to get the second and third years back into the swing of things after their vacation. The kids kicking dents, or lifting them high enough to cause them to stop functioning when they dropped, or even the Chaldea girl who literally picked up one robot and whipped it against a wall, that was all expected and acceptable losses.
But when that same girl took a charge and left the offending robot a pile of torn metal and wiring. When "Count" blasted the robots with fire that left melting piles of slag and fragments of metal at best, or when Princess froze them and then had her gigantic shadow backhand them away. When the last girl cleaved some in two
horizontally with her scythe. That was the sort of damage that they were gonna, at best, be spending an entire year fixing. More realistically, most of the robots in Testing Ground Beta were gonna be written off as a total loss.
"Those aren't normal flames "Count" is throwing around," Higari said, "to be able to melt the villain bots, they'd have to be burning at over fourteen hundred degrees Celsius but the kids near them aren't even reacting like they're
hot."
"So Midoriya can give his summons their own Quirk like abilities," Nezu mussed, "it makes sense, many legendary figures, even from real life, have false tales spread about some aspect of their being. If they are how Midoriya views those aspects…"
"The questions are how many Servants does he have, and how long does it take to make more?" Aizawa said, "because if he has enough, or can make more on the fly, how many Quirks does 'Throne of Heroes' actually give him? Because he's already shown off the same abilities as Endeavour's son."
"And that's not including the… impressive pile of heads Ushiwakamaru has acquired," Nezu said, gesturing to the fifteen decapitated robots settled around Midoriya as he leaned against one, chatting with Ushiwakamaru while spinning a glass vial round one hand. Never had Higari had a worse feeling about the "if you can sneak it in, you can use it" rule than with that. With the way Midoriya was going, that was gonna be a nuke or something.
—
Gray took Add out of his cage, activating the Blackmore Magic Crest as she did, her eyes turning golden. Add shivered and then began to unfold as she chanted out the first two lines of her aria, "Gray (Dark), Rave (Unsteady)..."
By the end of those two lines, she was no longer holding a box the size of her fist and was instead holding a large gold and blue scythe. Add, for once, shut up and let her focus on the apparently life defining test she was about to perform. She wondered how Izuku was doing…
Probably hiding his nerves, he was good at that in combat. He was like a different person in combat situations, colder, more distant. And unlike a lot of Magi, it was easy to see this was an act he put on, as it tended to drop the minute something extremely shocking happened.
The doors opened, and Gray blurred into motion, weaving through the crowd thundering forwards with Add in one hand. Once she got a clear shot, she accelerated as fast as her B-rank Agility would let her. In short, she became a bullet. The first robot fired a set of missiles in her general direction, she was too fast to get a lock on, she was sure.
Well, Plus Ultra and all that, right?
Gray darted around the missile fire before leaping high and twisting herself so the blade of Add was angled to intersect with the head of the robot. The rest was 'simple' mystery physics. Rhongomyniad, even sealed, met plain high carbon steel. Rhongomyniad wins like a hot knife through butter.
Gray stuck the landing on the attack, launching herself towards the next one as she went. Add flashed and she bisected the second robot lengthwise with just as much ease as the first's head. This Entrance Exam, understandably, wasn't built with Servants, Pseudo or otherwise, in mind. Or even Magecraft in general, honestly. They had barely scratched the surface on Quirks (not from lack of trying on the mad scienti- er… Caster, department) but it was obviously a different type of Mystery from Magecraft.
The metal they were using, while capable of withstanding Quirks, just weren't up to snuff to withstand a Noble Phantasm, even without a true name release.
—
Izuku looked up at the rumbling in the distance, stopping his spinning of the vial that held one of his Familiars. He watched as a giant robot was released from an elevator, moving towards the testing zone.
Someone had been watching Evangelion… did that even exist in this timeline? Probably for the better if it didn't, that anime was a slog. He didn't get why Jeanne liked it.
Anyways, giant robot, interesting but… honestly, once you saw Tiamat and Kingprotea, big things stopped being impressive. Plus, there had been bigger and more impressive robots in Olympus.
A sentence, Izuku now realized, that would seem completely and utterly incomprehensible to someone who hadn't lived through what Chaldea had. Man, what had his life become?
"Alright," Izuku said, using his staff to stand up and begin to walk forwards, Ushiwakamaru joining him a second later. A piece of cement went flying towards him from the robot's storm of destruction, only for the to be cleaved in two and land safely on both sides of him, "We're switching to rescue ops, Ushiwaka."
"Yes, Milord."
Izuku popped the cork with his teeth, turning the vial at a forty five degree angle with the ground and let the Ether Clump begin to pour out. The substance like liquid clay came out at a steady pace, more that should have been capable of fitting in such a small vial, before finally being punctuated with the loud tinking of two bead sized emeralds on the cement below the Ether Clump. Izuku reached down, touching the muddy substance and letting it wrap around his hand before forming into a large raven on his wrist, emerald eyes staring at everything as Izuku closed one eye and threw it into the air, "Go, Huginn…"
Thoughts, in defiance of physics, began to beat its wings and fly through the air. Izuku watched through his closed eye, scanning for anyone in need of help even as he continued to walk forwards, letting Ushiwakamaru deal with any leftover robots and rubble that got too close. Finally, he found someone, a brown haired girl under rubble directly in the path of the robot.
"Ushiwaka," Izuku said, and the next thing he knew he was off his feet and into a bridal carry as Ushiwakamaru took off like a bullet in the direction of the circling slime. Less than a second later, the ground to a halt as Hugimm dove straight down in a dive that shouldn't have been possible, landing on the ground next to him, "Hey, We're gonna get you out of here, alright?"
The girl nodded, and then said in a voice that hit Izuku in the chest like a blast from a shotgun, "Thank you."
Musa- no, just someone with a… scarcely similar voice to her. That was all.
—
Ochako watched the boy jerk back in the arms of the girl holding him, closed eye snapping open to reveal an eye glimmering like an emerald. After a second, he planted the staff he was holding on the ground and was placed on the ground by the girl, letting Ochako see her clothes.
Or rather, her lack of them. A blush exploded across her face despite the situation she was in as she stared at the girl. That, wah, the-
"Where's your clothes?" She squeaked out, face bright red.
The girl glanced down at her outfit, before shrugging, unintentionally flashing Ochako and sending her flying further into a panic. Meanwhile the boy fished into his pocket and pulled out a vial, uncorking it with his mouth and pouring the muddy substance out onto the ground.
"Stop-" the pair of robots didn't get to finish their threat as the girl suddenly drew her sword, their heads flying off, and what little clothes she was wearing fluttered in the breeze like she had just moved. A super speed Quirk?
The mud formed into a raven with beady emerald eyes, just like the first one. Both of them then melted into slimes like you would see in a video game, sliding beneath the rubble. The boy had closed one eye again, muttering under his breath as he gestured with one hand. His open eye flickered to the robot above them and he sighed, lifting the staff so it was high in the air, "Ushiwakamaru, take care of that thing please?"
"Yes, Milord," the girl said before suddenly appearing on the tip of the staff without so much as a wobble, legs coiling and eyes locked on the top of a building, "The Wandering Tale of Shana-oh, Act Four-"
The next thing Ochako knew, Ushiwakamaru was gone, leaving behind only the echoing words, "-Dan-no-Ura - Eight-Boat Leap!"
Where had she-?
Ochako craned her head, watching the speck of Ushiwakamaru land on the head of the robot as the rubble around her began to be pushed up by tendrils of muddy slime. Ushiwakamaru moved her hands onto the sword with both hands, pulling it back as a loud screeching noise came from where she stood, kicking off the robot to land on a piece of rubble and-
She vanished again, the screeching reaching a pitch so high it sent Ochako's inner ear into free fall, making her nauseous and causing her vision to tilt. Then just as suddenly as it started, it died down, and Ushiwakamaru was walking towards them, sheathing her screeching blade. The second guard touched the sheath, the screeching finally stopped, "The Wandering Tale of Shana-oh, Act Five, Hoemaru - Spider Slayer and Act Two, Usumidori - Heavenly Blade Steps."
Above them, the robot's head slid off the neck, and it crashed into the building on the it's side as the boy finally pulled Ochako from the mess of rubble now being held up by spikes of slime.
"Are you alright?" He said.
"Yes, thank you," Ochako said, noticing the wince at her voice. What was with that? "I'm Uraraka Ochako."
"Midoriya Izuku," he said, gesturing to the side as the girl took her place at it, "and this is Ushiwakamaru."
"Hello," Ushiwakamaru said.
"And those two," Midoriya nodded to the rubble, where the slime had reformed into a pair of giant ravens, "are Huginn and Muninn."
"Thank you for rescuing me," Ochako said, and Midoriya offered a small smile as he held out two vials, the birds landing on them and sliding into them despite how much bigger they were. Midoriya opened his eye, the emerald hardness fading from it as he did and storing them in the white jacket he was wearing.
"Is that not the duty of a Pro Hero?" Ushiwakamaru asked.
"But nobody else came," she pointed out.
—
