Chapter 27: Vestiges of Defeat and the Promise of Creation

The hug was a refuge in a sea of chaos. For one glorious instant, the world shrank to that single point of contact. Izuku, at the center of the group, felt Ochako's sobs of relief against his chest, a sound that dispelled a tension he didn't know he was holding. He felt Momo's initial stiffness slowly relax as she was drawn into the warmth of the moment. They were together. They were safe.

"I thought I'd lost you…" Ochako murmured, her voice muffled by tears and the fabric of Izuku's costume.

A nauseating sound, a wet crunch of breaking bone, rang out from the central plaza. It was immediately followed by a pained scream, choked and guttural. Their teacher's scream.

They broke from the hug as if struck by an electric shock. The relief on their faces evaporated, replaced by a mask of pure horror.

"Aizawa-sensei!" Ochako's shriek was sharp, filled with renewed panic.

Momo brought a hand to her mouth, her gray eyes wide, unable to form a word.

"No…" Izuku whispered, his gaze locked on the scene unfolding in the distance.

They watched as the monstrous creature, the Nomu, lifted Aizawa like a rag doll and slammed his head against the stone ground again. Blood splattered.

Tomura Shigaraki's voice, raspy and petulant, slithered through the air like poison.

"Oh, look at that. He's breaking. How boring. They're so fragile, these heroes. Nomu, finish him. Then take care of the other brats. We need to hurry if we want All Might to make it in time for the final act."

The threat wasn't a possibility. It was a sentence. The monster raised a fist the size of a ham, ready to crush their teacher's skull. Time had run out.

Moments earlier…

The central plaza was a whirlwind of controlled violence. Eraserhead moved like a panther, a predator in his element. The horde of low-level villains, which had seemed so threatening from a distance, was crumbling before him.

"My Quirk! I can't use my Hardening Quirk!" a reptile-like villain yelled, just before Aizawa's capture weapon wrapped around his ankle and used him as a human flail to take down three others.

"Watch out, it's Eraserhead! Don't look him in the eyes!" another warned.

"Too late!" Aizawa grunted, his red eyes glowing under his goggles as he erased the Quirk of a man firing projectiles from his fingers. He took him down with a brutal kick to the knee and continued his lethal dance.

His mind was a cold calculator: neutralize the low-level ones first, create chaos, use their numbers against them, don't give them time to think.

It was then that a thin, hunched figure stepped into his path, clapping slowly.

"Impressive, impressive," Tomura Shigaraki said, scratching his neck viciously. "You're fast, hero. Really good at your job. But you're just one guy. So boring. You're not the final boss I was hoping for."

Aizawa stopped, his stance defensive, his gaze fixed on the leader.

"I'm not here to entertain you. I'm here to stop you."

"Stop me?" Shigaraki laughed, a dry, unpleasant sound. "You don't even know why we're here. You're just an NPC, an obstacle in the way."

He lunged forward, his hand outstretched. Aizawa dodged, his scarf flying out to catch the villain's arm. But Shigaraki was unnaturally fast. He slipped under the attack and his hand reached again. Aizawa dodged again, striking Shigaraki's shoulder with his elbow to create distance.

But Shigaraki was persistent. On a third attempt, while Aizawa was busy with another villain, his hand shot out and his five fingers brushed against the skin of the hero's elbow, in a spot his costume didn't cover.

"Tag," Shigaraki hissed with childish satisfaction.

Aizawa felt a dull pain and an instant dryness. He looked at his elbow. The fabric of his suit around the area was disintegrating, turning to dust. He felt the skin underneath crack and dry out at an alarming rate.

A disintegration Quirk on contact… Dangerous.

He leaped back, but Shigaraki didn't follow. Instead, he gestured to the muscular, exposed-brain creature that had remained motionless at his side.

"Nomu. Your turn."

The creature moved. Not with the speed of a sprinter, but with the unstoppable force of a freight train. It threw a punch. Aizawa dodged, his eyes glowing red, trying to erase the monster's Quirk.

It's not working, he thought, his mind reeling in disbelief. My Erasure… it's not working on him!

The Nomu's fist caught him on the second swing. The impact was like being hit by a truck. Aizawa went flying, his ribs cracking. He landed hard, his vision blurring.

How? Is it a mutation-type Quirk that can't be erased? No, this is different. It's like he doesn't have a Quirk to erase… it's just… brute strength. Pure, inhuman strength.

The Nomu loomed over him. It grabbed him by the head. And slammed it into the ground. Once. Twice.

Darkness began to eat at the edges of Aizawa's vision. His last coherent thought was a plea.

Run… kids…

In the principal's office, the tension was of a different nature, quieter but no less heavy. Toshinori Yagi, in his skeletal form, paced in front of his desk, phone in hand.

"Come on, come on, pick up…" he muttered, frustrated. "Why aren't they answering? Something's not right."

Principal Nezu entered the room, carrying a delicate teacup.

"Patience is a virtue, Toshinori. Sometimes, a hero's greatest feat is not action, but knowing when to wait for the right moment."

"But I feel so far away from them…" All Might said, his voice tinged with a guilt that ate at him. "This is my negligence. I used up my time this morning stopping that robbery. I should have been more careful."

"That was your heroism," Nezu corrected him gently, offering the cup. "The same heroism that makes you a great symbol and, perhaps—in spite of everything—a great teacher. Don't punish yourself for saving people."

At the USJ entrance, Thirteen's battle against Kurogiri had reached an ominous conclusion.

"Your mist won't stop a black hole!" Thirteen shouted, activating their Quirk, a vortex of nothingness beginning to form at their fingertips. "You'll be sucked in and erased from existence!"

Kurogiri's polite, sinister voice replied from within the mist.

"A truly terrifying ability, Hero Thirteen. Worthy of admiration. Allow me, however, to ask a purely hypothetical question. What would happen if a portal, connected to your own Black Hole, were to open directly behind you?"

Thirteen froze. The sound of their own power turning against them was the last thing they heard before the darkness claimed them.

Meanwhile, in the Ruin Zone, the strategy was taking an unexpected turn.

"Bakugo, we have to get back to the central plaza!" Kirishima yelled, hardening his arms to deflect falling debris from a building Bakugo had just demolished out of sheer frustration. "The others could be in serious trouble!"

Bakugo stopped, panting. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. His expression wasn't that of a raging beast, but of a calculating hunter.

"You idiot," he said, with surprising calm. "And face the final boss who's beating the crap out of our teacher head-on? Is that your brilliant idea?"

"So, what do we do?"

"The target is the mist guy," Bakugo said, his gaze fixed on the distance. "He's the only way all these clowns got in, and he's probably the only way they'll get out. If we neutralize him, they're trapped. We isolate them. We win. It's the most logical play."

Kirishima stared at him, blinking, completely shocked.

"Whoa, dude… that was… actually smart."

Bakugo gave him a crooked grin.

"Of course it was. Now stop whining and follow me. We're going after the ghost."

Present

The image of Aizawa being crushed replayed in Izuku's mind. The Nomu raised its fist for the final blow.

"We have to help him!" Ochako cried, her voice broken with panic and rage. "We can't just stand here and watch them kill him!"

She was about to run toward the plaza, but Izuku grabbed her arm, his grip firm.

"No, Uraraka!" he said, his voice tense and authoritative. "Look at them! It's a trap! Shigaraki is watching us. He wants us to go. He wants that thing to crush us one by one. My priority right now is keeping you two safe."

"But—!"

It was Momo who interrupted them. She stepped forward, placing herself between the two. Her face, though pale, no longer showed fear. Her gaze met Izuku's, and a faint blush appeared on her cheeks as she remembered her recent… "empowerment." But her voice was clear as a bell, filled with a confidence neither of them had heard from her before.

"Midoriya-san is right," she said firmly. "We can't fight them head-on. It would be suicide. But maybe… maybe we don't have to."

Izuku looked at her, intrigued. "What do you mean, Yaoyorozu?"

She took a deep breath, her confidence growing with every word as her brilliant mind connected the pieces.

"Communication with the outside is blocked. Kaminari-san couldn't contact the school. That suggests localized radio-frequency jamming, likely being emitted from somewhere inside the dome. It's an effective isolation tactic."

"And how does that help us?" Ochako asked, impatiently.

"Because local jamming can't block all forms of communication," Momo continued, her eyes shining with a feverish light of genius. "It can't block a direct uplink signal to a satellite. It's technologically unfeasible at this scale. I…" she paused, bringing a hand to her chest, feeling the residual energy of the "Booster" humming under her skin, "...with the energy I can still feel… I think I can build a satellite communication device."

Izuku's and Ochako's jaws dropped.

"I can create a foldable high-gain parabolic antenna, a broadband transmitter, and its own power source—a lithium-polymer battery," she explained, the words tumbling out of her with astonishing speed and precision. "If you give me cover… if you give me time… I think I can build it, aim it, and send a digital distress signal to the U.A. network in under a minute. A signal no one in here will be able to stop."

They stared at her, completely stunned. They were no longer looking at their classmate, the formal, rich girl. They were looking at an engineering genius, a tech wizard, their new, most powerful weapon: one that had just offered them a way out based not on strength, but on pure, overwhelming intelligence.

"Yaoyorozu…" Izuku whispered, a smile of awe and hope slowly spreading across his face. "You're brilliant."