USJ Incident (4)
Chapter 69: USJ Incident (4)
—
Izuku was in his Astral form when Neji did his
Now that he was safe, he couldn't help but… stare down at the boy in silver with wide rage-filled eyes.
"This bastard…"
Was Kacchan safe from this assault? If something happened to Kacchan… actually this Neji was already on his kill list the moment he hurt Kacchan in Battle Training.
Izuku stared at the boy lying on his back drinking something from a small bottle. He blinked seeing the boy's swollen face, bloody lips and broken nose, slowly healing as if they never existed in the first place. But the leftover strain of blood made sure all this wasn't a hallucination.
'Healing Quirk?'
No, it wasn't a quirk. He drank something, Izuku has seen it before too, Neji tried to drink the same thing two times before as well.
'Such advanced medicine… must be made from someone's quirk.'
Next, he drank another potion, a green one. And this seemed to replenish his stamina. Izuku still couldn't figure out where exactly Neji took out these potions from. If they were in his pockets, they would have been crushed because of the fight. A frown crept on Izuku's ghostly face.
'This guy…'
There was a veil of mystery around him. A shaky grin appeared on Izuku's face. He can't kill this kid yet, he would capture him instead. After torturing him for a few months, after he would gauge out all his secrets, only then would he kill him, kill him in the most painful way.
Then Izuku's eyes widened. Neji splashed water on his eyes, again a bottle that he pretended to pick from the ground but it clearly appeared out of nowhere. After that, a truly shocking thing unfolded. A sphere of golden energy, his shockwave Izuku deduced, formed around Neji's fists. It was shining, it was beautiful, and it was destructive. Izuku only decided on the third aspect after Neji jumped in the air and punched at the Nomu-1's beak-like mouth, causing a web of white to spread on the Nomu's body and shattering its beak into pieces as the Nomu staggered a step back.
The punch was clearly strong, but the violent power it had… it wasn't natural.
It was the power of destruction.
Deku had a plan today, a plan that was to catch All Might off guard in case the Nomus failed. However, it seems… he needs to intervene before All Might reaches this place.
—★—
Crack!
Neji's first strike caused the sound of shattering glass to trek out. It was overwhelmingly satisfying, that sound.
[500 DMG!]
500 DMG might not sound that much, but the Nomus' had shock absorption quirks, so the damage was many times less than it should have been against a normal opponent.
Before he could do the 2nd attack, the Nomu-2 swung its punch at his face, Neji didn't dodge the attack, and instead confronted the punch head-on with his own punch after he coated his other fist in shockwave too.
Neji had his Eyes of the Lord activated, it had turned Level 2 in the middle of the last fight, but his eyes were too injured to try them to its fullest. But now that he took a health potion, he could tell the changes. Other than the fact that it showed the best ways to attack, not weak points, but projectories that have the highest chances of hitting, he could also sense that the strain in his eyes was lower than before. Now, his eyes weren't just reading to dodge, but it was also looking for the best way to attack, so having less strain than before was more crucial than one might think.
Strength wise Neji was weaker than Nomu-2, but destructive power-wise his punch was stronger. So the Nomu's hand wiggled under the great pressure of shockwaves and vibrations, causing its bone to break into millions of pieces.
[1000 DMG!]
Shockwave and Vibration are two sides of the same coin, they are a bit different but they complement each other. Shockwave is like a soaring sea, while Vibration is a small pond, but the pond isn't necessarily the weaker one here, for all one knew the pond might be deep enough to reach the earth's core.
The point was: Neji could now mix these two similar energies together, creating a devastating power. He needed both of them to do this, truthfully, if he only had the Vibration, he would have been merely like Yo Shindo from Shiketsu. Or if he only had the shockwave, he would have merely been able to create stronger shockwaves.
Only the mixture of the two could guarantee him this Whitebeard-like power. In fact, because of this mixture, the bond between a pond reaching the depth of the earth and a sea that was soaring with waves, he was able to form cracks in the body of the enemy in contact. He couldn't punch the space, he tried it already, it was a bummer, but he already had some ideas for that.
While the Nomu-2 was thrown back, its arm's skin peeling out and showing its muscles, the Nomu-1 moved towards him.
Neji's eyes allowed him to see through its attacks and at the same time showed the best way to attack.
>A Jab to the chin<
>A chop to the neck<
>A punch to the gut<
>A kick between the legs<
He chose the jab to the chin since he was yet to try and coat his leg with shockwave and vibrations. Then again, calling it 'shockwaves and vibrations' every time sounds a bit rough, so he instead decided to start calling it
His Tremor coated fist launched into the Nomu's chin and caused the creature to spring to the air.
The thing about the last battle was that Neji lost his EL after a few minutes, but even when he had it, he didn't have any choice of attacks since they were all useless. But now? He had EL, a better version of it even, and he had one of the most destructive powers he ever saw a Mortal wield. The power of destruction.
This was still 'shock' that the Nomus could absorb, however the sheer power behind it was too much for them to be completely fine.
Bam!
Crack!
At the 3rd strike, the other Nomu returned to him. This time, Neji could see that the arm of the other Nomu hadn't healed yet, at least not entirely. Meaning he had a chance, some chance.
He then had a crazy idea. What if he mixed tremor to his Taekwondo and Kung-fu moves? He knew it would be hard, very much so, since this was his first time, but if it worked…? This would be a dance more than a battle.
Neji dodged a lunch from the right and a kick from the left, striding like a feather, and then bent his waist and kicked upwards. He covered his right leg in the Tremor energy and kicked at the flat-jawed Nomu's neck, causing it to bend weirdly and the body to fly and crash into a wall in the far.
The other Nomu moved aggressively, punching very fast. Like its confrontation with All Might, the Nomu punched at a blinding speed. Neji knew he wouldn't have been able to follow let alone dodge these punches if it was not for his eyes of the lord, and just then he started to feel some strains on them.
However, the sweet smell of power caused him to chuckle and grin as he fought the Nomu using his martial arts proficiency, which boosted his damage by 10%.
After exchanging more than hundreds of blows, Neji decided to end this right now. He clenched his fist tight, as tight as he could in truth, and then swung it backwards before throwing it forward at the Nomu's chest, all the while dodging its last attack.
Nomu's body shone golden as if it caught fire, and Neji's tremor coated fist pushed his rib-cage inside as if breaking uncooked noodles, and in an instant, with a blast of shockwave, the Nomu was flung in the air and flown out of the building via it's broken roof.
"Huff…"
Neji got a notification.
[You have defeated one of the Nomus!]
[You'll get your deserved EXP after you complete the quest!]
Neji breathed in and out, about to run out of Stamina since coating himself in Tremor eats out Stamina like water kept in a bucket with a hole.
But not like it was that big of a problem, he just drank another few potions before dashing to the other Nomu. He didn't get a notification for that, so it wasn't defeated yet.
As he was about to reach the creature, something stirred. Neji's eyes of the lord flared as he flipped backwards, and in his previous spot, a huge piece of pillar crashed into a crater.
With a frown, his eyes searched. The Nomu was still barely trying to stand up, so he got a few seconds that he wanted to spend on this camper rather than risk his life in the fight.
Then it clicked. He turned into the 2nd platform, the ghost of Izuku was there. He didn't want to, but their eyes met instinctively. Izuku's eyes widened in pure shock, but before he could be certain of his assumption, Neji moved his eyes to the side.
Izuku had just tried to kill him. That bastard. But how did he do it? This meant Izuku could use his quirk in his Astral Form… and from what he saw, Izuku could only attract things to him then reflect things after they reached him. But here, the pillar was clearly attracted to Neji's body.
'...He can set something to attract something else, huh.'
It was not that hard to reach that conclusion. Neji was fairly smart. He then immediately made a plan, actually, he already had this plan in case Izuku did intervene. Neji couldn't hurt his Astral Form, unfortunately, but he had a much simpler idea.
Before the Nomu could get up, Neji blasted on the 2nd floor and rushed past the horrified Deku. He acted as if he couldn't see his ghost, even if it might be useless now after everything has happened, it didn't hurt to pretend.
He dropped to his knees after he reached Izuku's real body and tapped on his neck with two of his fingers. With a jolt, Izuku jumped awake.
"Ah!"
"Oh, hey."
Izuku turned to Neji horrified.
"I was about to fight a strong guy, then I remembered you were unconscious here. Things might get dangerous and you might get hurt, be safe, I will get going."
Before Izuku could fully absorb his words, Neji was already gone.
—★—
Kendo finally let Momo go, knowing the girl won't run off now, and she was right.
Momo simply sat on the ground with thin lips as multiple questions crossed her mind. What were those potions? What just happened with his quirk? And why did he… do that. Why did he do such an attack that most likely killed many people?
Her heart started pumping fast before she sighed without realising.
"At least he's safe now…"
She watched as he fought the Nomu skillfully, dodging its attacks as if he's been trained for this for years. From her point of view, she couldn't see the gleaming octagram, nor could Izuku or Aizawa see it. Even if the distance was shortened, he was moving too fast either way.
Momo finally felt her adrenaline wearing off as she heard an apologetic voice from behind her.
"I am sorry…" she turned to face Kendo. "If I didn't restrain you, then-"
"It's fine," Momo nodded. "It was reckless of me, truly. Thank you for holding me back."
Kendo smiled and stayed silent before asking. "…Do you have any idea what happened to Neji? He's your boyfriend right?"
Mom couldn't help but smile helplessly. He was hiding things even from her, so she felt a little sad hearing Kendo's questions. Though it's just been 2 days since they started dating, she wasn't going to feel entitled enough to assume he should share all his secrets with her.
So she just smiled.
"Sorry, I have no idea."
—★—
Mirio Togata went through something weird today. When he was about to do a test with his quirk, something strange happened. Blackwhips jumped out of his body in all directions and wrapped the people around him tightly. He was only able to calm down with Nejire's help, and he was grateful for that.
All Might, his mentor, had rushed to him not long after that. The man had run out of his time for today, which wasn't anything new to Mirio. The Symbol was overworking himself, Mirio felt it was because he was getting so strong so fast, which relieved All Might about the future.
From the looks of it, he has gotten another step forward into defeating One for All's fated foe, All for One because today he unlocked a quirk that was locked inside the One for All. And it seems he would keep getting more quirks too. Mirio believed he would be able to succeed All Might in a very short time.
But now wasn't the time to think about that blissful future. Now he had people to save, innocent future heroes!
Tenya Ida had run over here all of a sudden, and then he and All Might learned about the attack on USJ.
Mirio didn't know, but this was actually the reason why Neji had even knocked out Kurogiri to begin with so that he couldn't delay Ida like in canon, because he thought he would seriously need help. As for how Shigaraki would escape if Kurogiri was out…? He believed in his gut feeling.
"Sigh…"
Mirio sighed. All Might couldn't transform today anymore, if he did it would just cause him to shorten his time. So even with the risk of Blackwhip getting out of control again, Mirio was jumping from building to building towards the USJ. Good thing was that he had gone there a few times already in his life in UA, so he knew the road.
"Mirio, hurry!!"
The worried voice of his friend, Nejire, caused him to turn to the side briefly before moving faster.
Nejire was worried, her brother was amongst the students who were being attacked. Mirio knew how much the girl cared for her brother, so he did not oppose her idea.
Moreover, it's not as if she is slower than him. She was in fact faster if she went all out, but that'd hurt her own body. Her quirk… grew. It all happened a year ago, even before he got One for All. Without that quirk, he would even say she was the stronger Big Three.
Now, she could blast actual proper shockwaves and fly at a great speed, which was honestly reassuring knowing he wasn't getting too inhumanely strong. It was nice knowing there was still someone in his boundary of speed.
"Look, I see it."
Mirio said, pointing at the dome-like building not so far. Nejire nodded and increased her speed. Mirio could see her clenched teeth, she was in pain, her quirk didn't give her enough endurance to stay fine under this great pressure unlike his, but she continued.
They both stepped inside the building from the broken roof, which shocked them both as they questioned what type of attack caused this much damage exactly.
They jumped onto the floor because Mirio couldn't stay floating, and both of them froze briefly.
In front of them, the ground was destroyed, shattered and cracked into pieces as if some kind of earthquake had hit it. But this wasn't the cause of their surprise, at least not entirely. Moving their gaze at the middle of the field, at the boy clad in a white suit and silver hair, Mirio could only stare as he sat on top of the body of a charred-skin creature, smoke coming out of it.
'Is that guy dead...?' That was his first question.
Mirio was contemplating, but Nejire wasn't. She jumped right at the boy and hugged his head so tightly that Mirio could feel 2nd hand pain.
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