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Chapter 29: Zero Gravity
🕑 Added 2025-09-26 05:09:58 +0000 UTCDirector Nezu's office was an oasis of calm in the heart of the fortress that was U.A. High. The aroma of high-quality tea floated in the air, and through the enormous picture window, the campus could be seen, peaceful under the midday sun, completely oblivious to the hell that was being unleashed just a few kilometers away.
Toshinori Yagi, in his skeletal form, paced back and forth. His agitation was a discordant note in the room's serenity. The phone lay silent on the desk.
"They're not answering," he muttered for the tenth time, his voice a mixture of frustration and growing apprehension. "Neither Aizawa nor Thirteen. Something's wrong, I feel it in my bones."
"Patience is a virtue, Toshinori," Nezu said from his armchair, taking a sip from his cup with impeccable delicacy. "Aizawa is one of our best undercover heroes, and Thirteen is an expert in crowd control and rescue. The students are in the best possible hands."
"But I should be there!" Toshinori retorted, slamming a fist on the desk that, despite its fragility, made the teacup tremble. "My negligence… my recklessness in using up my time this morning… it left them exposed."
"Your heroism, you mean," Nezu corrected him calmly. "The same heroism that makes you a great symbol and, perhaps, a great teacher. A symbol must be an unbreakable pillar, Toshinori, but a teacher must know how to break a little for their students; how to show them that strength doesn't lie in never falling, but in how you get back up. It is a delicate balance."
Just as Toshinori was about to reply, a device on Nezu's desk emitted a sharp, urgent beep. A red light blinked on the console: a high-priority emergency tone.
"Incoming call," Nezu announced, his expression shifting from philosophical calm to instant alert. "It's a signal encrypted with U.A. protocols, but it's being broadcast from an unregistered device."
He pressed a button to activate the speakerphone.
At first, there was only static. Then, through the interference, a girl's voice came through, choked with panic and effort.
"…Director Nezu… can you hear me?! It's… Momo Yaoyorozu… Class 1-A!"
The two men leaned over the desk, their hearts frozen.
"The USJ… is under attack! Villains! Real villains! Aizawa-sensei and Thirteen have been defeated! They're… they're everywhere! We need immediate backup! Please, the signal is—!"
Her voice cut out, replaced by the sound of a nearby explosion and distant screams. An instant later, Momo's voice was back on the line, but it was no longer a report. It was a blood-curdling scream, a sound of pure agony that seemed to shatter the speaker and pierce Toshinori Yagi's very soul.
"IZUKU!!"
The call went dead. The silence that followed was absolute, deadly.
Nezu dropped his teacup. It shattered against the floor, the dark liquid spreading like a pool of blood.
Toshinori Yagi roared. It was a sound of pure fury and pain. In an explosion of steam and power that made the windows tremble, he transformed. Muscles bulged, his height skyrocketed, and the Symbol of Peace stood tall in the middle of the office, his face not wearing a smile, but a mask of righteous fury.
"NEZU!" his voice was thunder. "GATHER EVERY AVAILABLE HERO ON CAMPUS! GET THEM TO THE USJ NOW!"
He turned toward the window, his blue eyes burning.
"I'M GOING IMMEDIATELY!"
And without waiting for the door, he leaped. He shattered the reinforced glass of the picture window and disappeared into the sky: a golden missile propelled by guilt and fury.
That scream, the one that had frozen the blood of the two men in the office, had been born from the most absolute despair.
Momo had just finished creating the device. It was a work of art, a complex matrix of metal and wiring that had emerged from her skin in less than a minute. She turned, a triumphant smile on her lips, ready to announce her success.
"I have it, Midoriya-san! We can—!"
And then she saw him.
She saw Izuku's broken form on the ground, in a spreading pool of dark, thick blood. She saw the Nomu standing over him, ripping the shattered shield from his arm. She saw the life fading from the eyes of her friend, her class representative, the boy who had called her brilliant.
It was then that her world broke. And she screamed.
The communication device, her masterpiece, her hope, fell from her hands and crashed to the ground. She crawled toward Izuku, heedless of the dust, the dirt, the blood. Her decorum, her logic, her composure—it all vanished, burned away by the fire of her grief.
"No…" she sobbed, her hands trembling as she hovered over him. "No… no, no, no… This wasn't in my calculations! You weren't supposed to get hurt! I was the one who was supposed to be protected! It was my plan! My responsibility!"
She choked on a sob, her tears falling and mixing with the blood on his face.
"Izuku, please! Answer me! Open your eyes!"
Her mind, though fractured by pain, was still working. Her Quirk, still supercharged by the "Booster," responded to her panic.
"You are not going to die," she thought with desperate ferocity. "I won't allow it. Not on my watch."
The skin on her arms glowed, and from it emerged not weapons, but tools of life: an arsenal of advanced medical equipment.
"Bio-foam to stop the internal bleeding… dermal regeneration patches… a portable cardiac stabilizer…"
With a delicacy that contradicted her panic, she began to work. She sprayed the foam over his crushed abdomen and placed the patches on his broken legs. With infinite care, she lifted his bloodied head and rested it on her thighs, cradling him as if he were the most precious thing in the world. She stroked his green hair, matted with blood and dust.
"Everything will be okay, Izuku," she whispered, her voice broken, as tears fell endlessly. "Don't fall asleep, do you hear me? Stay with me. Follow the sound of my voice. We'll talk about physics… I'll explain the second law of thermodynamics, it's fascinating… just don't go… please… please, don't leave me alone…"
While Momo desperately clung to Izuku's life, Ochako's fury found a target.
After launching the Nomu through the air with her gravitational shockwave, she landed on the ground. Her body trembled, not from exhaustion, but from a power she couldn't contain. A crackling, pink aura surrounded her, causing the small stones around her to levitate.
A group of low-tier villains, seeing Momo occupied and the other students in shock, thought they saw their chance.
"The creation girl is distracted!" one of them shouted. "Finish them!"
They ran toward Momo and Izuku.
Ochako turned. Her face, normally a canvas of smiles, was blank. Her eyes, usually warm, were two pits of cold hatred.
She said nothing. She touched the ground with her fingertips.
A nearby concrete pillar, weighing several tons, was ripped from its foundation as if it were a weed. It rose into the air and crashed down on the group of villains with a crushing finality. There were no screams. Only a wet, final sound.
The other students stared at her, horrified.
Another villain, a thin man with a knife in each hand, ran toward her, screaming.
"You damned witch!"
Ochako didn't move. She simply raised a hand. The knife in the villain's right hand stopped mid-air. It floated. Then, with a simple twist of Ochako's wrist, the weapon spun around and plunged into its owner's chest, hilt-deep. The man fell, a look of pure surprise on his face.
She used the debris around her to create sharp projectiles of metal and concrete that dismembered those who approached. Her movements were fluid, graceful, and utterly lethal.
Shigaraki, watching from a distance beside Kurogiri, scratched his neck with nervous fury.
"Who is she?" he hissed, his voice shrill. "Why is she so strong?! She wasn't in the files! Her Quirk is Zero Gravity, it's supposed to be for rescue, not for… this! Her power is—!"
"Tomura Shigaraki." Kurogiri's calm, deep voice cut through his rant. "The mission has failed. They've managed to contact the outside. U.A. reinforcements will arrive at any moment. The Nomu has been damaged, and although it's regenerating, All Might could be on his way. We must leave. Now."
"No!" Shigaraki shrieked. "I'm not done yet! I want to kill that girl! I want to break her!"
Ochako, seeing them try to escape, turned toward them with a mask of pure rage. She no longer cared about anything: not heroes, not villains. She cared about only one thing: the monster that had hurt Deku.
With a scream that was not of words, but of pure, concentrated fury, she slammed both hands on the ground.
A huge section of the central plaza, a disc ten meters in diameter, was instantly torn from the ground, becoming weightless. With another gesture, she threw it like a frisbee toward Shigaraki and Kurogiri.
"Kurogiri!" shrieked Shigaraki.
Kurogiri opened a portal just in time. The massive chunk of earth disappeared inside it, reappearing high above the dome and crashing against the glass ceiling with a deafening roar. They realized with a chill that she wasn't trying to stop them: she was trying to kill them.
Just then, the massive doors of the USJ burst inward in an explosion of metal and dust.
A phalanx of pro heroes stormed the facility: Snipe with his revolvers in hand, Present Mic ready to unleash his sonic Quirk, and Ectoplasm creating clones of himself. The cavalry had arrived.
"Time's up," Kurogiri said calmly.
Taking advantage of the distraction, he opened a portal beneath them and swept Shigaraki and the few remaining villains away, disappearing in a swirl of purple mist.
All Might was the last to arrive, but the first to reach the central plaza. He landed with the force of a meteor, his heroic smile already on his face.
"FEAR NOT, STUDENTS! FOR I—!"
He stopped. The smile vanished, replaced by an expression of absolute horror.
He saw the devastation. He saw the unconscious bodies of Aizawa and Thirteen being tended to by other heroes. He saw injured, terrified students. And he saw… the bodies. The mutilated remains of the villains Ochako had slaughtered.
Then, his gaze found the epicenter of the tragedy.
He saw Momo Yaoyorozu, one of his brightest and most composed students, kneeling on the ground, sobbing over the apparently lifeless body of Izuku Midoriya. And he saw Ochako Uraraka, on her knees a few meters away, the pink aura of power finally fading from her body, sobbing with a desperation so absolute it seemed her very soul was breaking.
"I failed," All Might thought. The realization was a physical blow, harder than any the Nomu could deliver. "My negligence… my absence… forced this child…"
He looked at Ochako's face, streaked with tears and void of all its usual joy.
"…to become this. A murderer. To protect her friend. I wasn't here… and she had to become the monster. I created this tragedy."
Real tears welled in the Symbol of Peace's eyes, carving tracks on his somber face.
Suddenly, a movement caught his attention. At the other end of the plaza, the pieces of the Nomu, which Ochako had thrown against a wall, began to tremble. The chunks of flesh and bone slid across the ground, joining, fusing. It was regenerating, reassembling itself before his eyes, though its appearance was weaker, more unstable.
All Might clenched his fists. His pain and guilt transformed into a righteous, terrifying fury that made the very air vibrate. He stared at the regenerated Nomu as it slowly got to its feet.
"You…" his voice was a growl that rumbled through the entire USJ, a promise of divine retribution. "You will pay for this. For every tear. For every drop of blood."
He drew himself up to his full height, the shadow of his fury blanketing the monster.
"Now… it's my turn."
