Chapter 79: The Orchestra of Chaos

Chaos had a soundtrack. In the operations room of Mt. Lady's agency, it was a dissonant symphony: the beeping of monitors, the crackle of police radios, the anxious murmur of the staff, and above all, the muffled roar of a monster coming through the speakers.

Izuku Midoriya sat at the center of this symphony, facing a dozen screens displaying a real-time nightmare. On the main monitor, a gigantic figure, identified by the database as the villain Juggernaut, was tearing through the shopping district. Beside it, on another screen, an equally colossal figure, Yu Takeyama, confronted him. It was a battle of titans that threatened to turn the street into a crater.

The initial panic he had felt upon being thrown into the command chair had been replaced by an icy calm. It was the same mental state he reached in the heat of battle; the world slowed down, the variables became clear. This was his element.

"Alright, Izuku!" Mt. Lady's voice, filled with her usual extravagant bravado, rang in his earpiece, mixed with the crash of a car being crushed. "I'm in position! The big guy's strong, but slower than a turtle with arthritis! What's your first brilliant order? Impress me!"

Izuku took a deep breath, his fingers drumming on the console.

"Don't engage him directly. That's what he's expecting. He's trying to draw you into a brute-force fight so he can destroy everything around you. Girls, situation report."

His teammates' voices came in, clear and professional, each from a different channel.

"Uravity here," Ochako said. A drone's camera showed her position on the eastern perimeter. "Perimeter secured. I've got civilians trapped in an electronics store to your left, Lady. Looks like the entrance is blocked by debris."

"Creati reporting," Momo's voice was as precise as ever. "I'm evacuating the west side. The villain has damaged the structure of that glass office building. It's unstable. One more hit and it could collapse."

"Invisible Girl, in position," Toru's whisper was almost imperceptible. "I'm inside the store. I confirm twelve civilians, three are children. They're scared, but unharmed. Looking for a safe exit."

Izuku processed the information in a nanosecond. The battlefield formed in his mind not as a street, but as a chessboard.

"Understood," he said, his voice now firm and clear, that of a commander. "Mt. Lady, forget the villain for a second. Your target is the office building Momo mentioned. I need you to use it as a weapon."

There was a second of silence on Mt. Lady's line, followed by a disbelieving laugh.

"Use an office building as a weapon? Izuku, I like your style. What do you have in mind?"

"Safe distance and damage control," Izuku replied, his eyes already jumping to another monitor displaying the city blueprints. "We're going to give him a show he won't forget."

The battle turned into a coordinated dance, with Izuku as the orchestra conductor. His orders were swift, precise, and his team executed them with absolute confidence.

"Momo, the villain is about to throw that bus!" Izuku warned, seeing the movement on the main screen. "I need a reinforced polymer ramp on 5th Street, forty-five-degree angle, to divert it toward the park! Avoid impact with the electrical substation!"

"Received! Creating ramp now!" Momo responded.

On the street, her figure moved with efficient grace. She wasn't creating simple barriers; her mind, fed by Izuku's data, worked on improvised engineering solutions. The skin on her arms glowed, and a massive, translucent ramp emerged from the asphalt. The bus, thrown by Juggernaut, slid up it and landed on the grass of a nearby park, far from any critical structures.

"Ramp deployed. Structural damage to the substation avoided. Awaiting further orders."

"Good work, Creati. Stay alert."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, Toru was executing the most delicate part of the mission.

"Izuku, the civilians are too scared to move," she whispered over the communicator, her voice barely a breath of air. "The main exit is blocked."

"I know," Izuku replied, his fingers flying across a keyboard to zoom in on the building's blueprints. "There's a basement emergency exit that leads to a back alley. It's not marked on the public plans, but it is on the city's service schematics. I'm sending the coordinates to your visor now."

Toru, invisible, slipped among the terrified civilians huddled behind the counter.

"Stay calm," she said, her voice a soothing, barely audible presence that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. "I'm a hero. you can't see me, but I'm here to help you. Follow my voice. I'll get you out of here. Don't make a sound and move slowly."

Like a ghostly Pied Piper, she guided the group through the store, through a "Staff Only" door, and down a set of dark service stairs to the exit Izuku had identified. Twelve lives saved without the villain ever knowing they were there.

At the center of it all, Mt. Lady followed Izuku's strange choreography.

"Now, Lady! Feint left! Make him think you're going for a right hook!" Izuku ordered.

"Got it, but this feels ridiculous! I could take him down with one good punch!" she protested, though she executed the feint perfectly.

Juggernaut took the bait, shifting his massive body to block the punch that never came. The movement left him slightly off-balance.

"Perfect! Now, use his imbalance! Don't hit him, push him toward the office building—the unstable one!"

"You're completely insane, Izuku! This thing is going to fall on us!" she yelled through the communicator, but an excited smile played on her face. She did exactly as he commanded.

With a calculated shove, she used her immense strength to make the villain stumble and crash into the base of the damaged office building. The sound of shattering glass and twisting metal was deafening.

"That's the plan!" Izuku replied, his voice vibrating with restrained excitement. "Ochako, get ready! The stage is yours!"

The office building groaned like a dying beast. Cracks spiderwebbed across its glass and steel facade, and it began to tilt dangerously over the street, a Tower of Babel about to fall.

"Ochako, now!" Izuku's voice was a thunderclap in her ear. "The entire facade, from the fifth floor to the twentieth! Make it float!"

Ochako, who had positioned herself on a nearby rooftop with a perfect view of the battlefield, stretched out her hands.

"Understood! Let's do this!"

She touched the building's wall from a distance with her fingertips, an application of her Quirk she had been perfecting. A pink ripple ran through the structure. The enormous curtain of concrete and glass, weighing thousands of tons, peeled away from the building's skeleton with a metallic groan. But instead of falling and crushing everything, it hung suspended in the air, a guillotine of biblical proportions floating in an unnatural silence.

The villain Juggernaut looked up. Pure, absolute panic replaced the fury on his face.

"He's all yours, Lady!" Izuku ordered. "Push him right underneath!"

Mt. Lady understood the plan in that instant. A wild, predatory grin spread across her face.

"With pleasure, my little director."

With a side kick so fast and precise it seemed impossible for someone her size, she struck the villain's side, shoving him directly under the shadow of the floating facade. He was trapped.

"Ochako..." Izuku's voice was now lethally calm, "...reel it in."

Ochako didn't release her gravity completely; that would have been too chaotic. She used her new fine-control ability, the same one she had used against Todoroki, but in reverse. Instead of increasing gravity, she reduced it just enough for the facade to begin its descent, not like a rock, but like a controlled anvil, gaining speed with every second.

The villain screamed and tried to escape, but Mt. Lady blocked his path.

"Momo, containment cage! NOW!" was Izuku's final command.

Just as the villain was about to be crushed, Momo, from her position on the street and having already anticipated the order, created a massive dome of carbon-fiber reinforced polymer that erupted from the ground and enclosed him.

The facade crashed onto the dome with a deafening boom that shook the ground. The dome held, denting but not breaking, trapping the villain in a makeshift prison—unharmed, but completely immobilized and terrified.

The victory was clean. Spectacular. And without a single casualty.

The scene cut abruptly to a dark, foul-smelling alley in Hosu. The only light came from a pale moon filtering between the buildings. Tenya Iida stood over the body of a low-level thug he had just defeated. His Ingenium armor, normally bright, looked dull in the darkness.

He wasn't arresting the man; he was interrogating him. His voice, usually so formal and respectful, was a cold whisper filled with contained rage.

"Tell me about the Hero Killer. I know he operates in this area. I've been following his trail. Where can I find him?"

"I don't know, I swear!" the thug groaned, a broken arm bent at an unnatural angle. "Nobody knows where to find that monster! He finds you! Please, just let me go!"

Iida looked at him with icy contempt.

"Useless."

He knocked him unconscious with a precise blow to the back of the neck. His face, in the gloom, was a mask of frustration and an all-consuming hatred. He walked away, disappearing back into the shadows, a figure of righteousness corrupted by the thirst for vengeance.

Back in Tokyo's shopping district, cleanup crews and police were already at work, securing the perimeter. Mt. Lady, back to her normal size, approached the team, who had gathered on a corner, still buzzing with adrenaline. The media swarmed like wasps, but agency sidekicks kept them at bay.

She stood before Izuku. Her face was unreadable. The team held their breath, awaiting her verdict.

She looked at him for a long second, her eyes scanning the nervous boy sitting in the command chair. And then, a genuine smile—one that wasn't for the cameras, one filled with absolute respect and amusement—lit up her face.

"Not bad, Izuku," she said, her voice regaining its playful tone. "Not bad at all. You turned me into a hero who uses buildings as weapons and lets a teenager tell her what to do. The media is either going to love me or crucify me. Probably both."

She turned to the girls, who instinctively stood at attention.

"You guys, too. Flawless execution. You're good. Really good."

Then, her smile turned mischievous.

"But that was just the warm-up. A simple giant villain. Tomorrow, we're going to do something really fun. Something that requires finesse, charm, and the ability to lie with a straight face."

What could possibly be more fun—and terrifying—than what they had just done? Their real internship, they realized, had only just begun.