Chapter Text
“Good morning, Akari,” Izuku said, greeting the nurse watching over his mother.
The young woman, just a few years older than him, had a sort of rural charm to her. Beautiful in her naturality.
She returned the greeting absentmindedly as she finished up checking the measurements on the equipment surrounding Izuku’s mother.
“No change,” She reported, as she did every time Izuku came to visit. It wasn’t that he asked constantly, rather it was that she was asked the question so frequently of Eternal Slumber patients that she made the comment, even to those who didn’t ask it.
The Eternal Slumber was a condition where the human body accumulated Mana. In most humans, it would filter through harmlessly. In rare cases, the Mana would be adapted into the human body, causing Awakening. But in some, neither happened. They couldn’t filter, not utilize it. The Mana caused them to slip into a coma, which they would never wake from. Out of the thousands suffering from the condition, none had woken.
The only way to persevere those afflicted by the Eternal Slumber was to use certain artifacts to filter the Mana manually. This wouldn’t wake them, but it would keep them from accumulating more and dying. Naturally, anything with magical properties was expensive, so many couldn’t even afford the life support.
“Thank you for the update,” Izuku diligently replied.
“Oh… sorry. Was on autopilot there,” Akari turned to greet the boy properly, but froze in shock upon seeing Momo with him. Not just because she was drop-dead gorgeous, but because Izuku actually had a girl with him, one that wasn’t his sister. “You have… a friend?!”
Izuku grimaced. “Don’t make me sound like that, please.”
Momo smiled, giving a light bow and introducing herself. “I’m Izuku’s girlfriend.”
If Akari and Izuku had been sipping water, they would’ve spit it all out. Akari because she never thought the guy would have a friend let alone a girlfriend. And Izuku out of giddiness.
It was one thing to silently acknowledge the love they had for each other, it was another thing entirely to say it out loud to someone you had just met.
“Well that’s… uh, hi.” Akari looked at Izuku and mouthed, “She’s pretty.”
“She’s also smart and a pretty good fighter,” He responded out loud, moving to his mother’s bedside.
Akari smirked. “Well then, I have other patients to check up on,” She said, expertly dismissing herself from the room.
“Hi mom,” Izuku began delicately taking her hand in his own. It was warm, and full of life. She looked like she could wake up any second, in fact, which made it all the harder to know she couldn’t. She looked a fair bit skinnier than she had when the Eternal Slumber took her, but besides that, nothing had changed. “Sorry I haven’t been around in a bit. It’s been… hectic. But I… Reawakened,” He said, fumbling with his words. “Money’s not a problem anymore. So you don’t have to worry about that.”
The Eternal Slumber was still poorly understood. The general concept was well known, but the interactions it had with the mind of the afflicted was still being studied. Doctor’s weren’t sure if it was a standard coma induced by magical events, or a magical coma. Regardless, they encouraged loved ones to talk to them, or make physical contact, something that had shown signs of aiding recovery in standard coma patients. It was little hope, but it was hope.
“And you know how Kei’s always going on about my lack of friends… well, I brought someone to introduce to you. Her name-”
Momo interrupted, stepping forwards and giving a light bow to introduce herself. “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Midoriya, I’m Momo Yaoyorozu.” Izuku had intended to speak for her, not wanting her to feel awkward talking to his mother in her state, but she didn’t bat an eye. “I’m honored to have met your son, and I know it is unfair to ask you in such a state, but I do hope you’ll approve of our relationship. He has done a great deal for me, and I… care immensely for him,” She said, her cheeks turning a rosy red. “No matter how slim the chances, I hope we get to speak under much different circumstances some day.”
She raised her head, refusing to look directly at Izuku. “I tried to look into the energy,” She said. “I thought maybe I could manipulate it now that I was stronger, but it’s like a mess of a million wires. Even untangling ten causes another twenty to get mixed around. Sorry… I could try staying here a few nights and-”
Izuku cut her short by grabbing her hand. “Momo, no one in the world, not even the National-Ranks, have been able to fix this, and they have family members with the same conditions. I’m glad you tried, but I don’t want you striving for something that might as well be hopeless. I didn’t expect anything by bringing you here today. It was nice to have you with me as… support. I needed that. But tell me honestly. Even if you stayed here for a month, do you really believe you could manage to fix her?”
Momo’s frown deepened. “No… I couldn’t.”
“And that’s okay. There are some things we just have to deal with.” He turned back to his mother, brushing a strand of hair out of her face. He was planning on spending a bit longer sitting there, but before he could even pull up a chair, the room was filled with a high-pitched blaring.
“What the!” Izuku jumped in shock.
“Gate break!” Momo shouted. “That’s the tone and pattern for a Gate breaking open!”
Izuku yanked his phone from his pocket, opening the Hero App. “It’s not even listed on here! They must’ve missed it!” He rushed to the windows, peeking down at the streets below. Just beyond them, maybe a block away, Villains were already flooding the streets.
[Hellhound]
[Cyclops]
[Chimera]
“It’s a Myth-Gate!”
Very often, Villains took after shapes that were common in mythology, dragons, elves, and the like. Most Gates had Villains that were similar to each other, if not the same species, like the Orc Gate. But every now and then, Gates with dozens of types of monsters would pop up, all from a similar batch of mythology. Not only that, but Villains from these Gates were rarely uncoordinated and never fought amongst themselves, which was possible in other Gates.
Izuku opened the window, preparing to jump down to the street below and defend the hospital entrance.
“Wait!” Momo shouted, shadows pooling in her hands to create a face-plate of sorts. “I was thinking about the problem of our identities this morning, and came up with this!” She tossed him the mask, and started making one for herself.
“Baruka!” Izuku called out. “Stay by her side no matter what and keep her safe!”
The Elf nodded, melting into the darkness of Inko Midoriya’s shadow.
Izuku pressed the mask to his face and the second he did so, magical material exploded outwards from it, forming a jagged shape around his body which resembled the invisible armor he wore, only this was a jet-black matte armor. It completely obscured his body.
And with the disguise in place, Izuku leapt from the window, falling the eight or so stories like he was taking a single step down the stairs.
Below them, a woman stuck in a wheelchair screamed as her nurse abandoned her, running into the hospital and crying for her life. The woman did her best to move the chair, but not used to maneuvering it herself, she wouldn’t be able to get out of the way in time.
Just as a hellhound, a dark-furred mutt with glowing red eyes, leapt at her face, a dark shape came crashing down, driving its armored feet into the Villain’s spine, slamming it into the ground and killing it instantly.
“Get her inside,” Izuku said, his voice hidden by the mask.
A High-Orc emerged from his Shadow, picking up the entire wheelchair and carrying the woman, frozen in fear, inside.
“Head for the higher floors!” Momo called out corralling others inside the building, where they’d be easier to defend. She was obscured by her own mask, a long flowing cloak of inky mist hiding her body.
“Heroes?!”
“Oh thank god!”
“Who are they?!”
With his identity hidden, and a Gate break in progress, Izuku saw the opportunity to let loose and meet the approaching Villains head-on with his own army.
“Come Forth.”
Igris shot from his Shadow like a bullet, Damocles whistling through the air and bisecting five Villains at once.
[You have Leveled-Up!]
There was no time to talk, no time to have an open dialogue. They were spreading through the streets like a cancer, attacking anyone they could. It was a matter of “us versus them,” and Izuku made the obvious choice, offering a silent apology to the wave of death he spread.
“Can you take the Chimeras?” Izuku asked Momo, but she was way ahead of him, pulling something from beneath her cloak.
Some of the Chimeras were standard representations of mythology, mixes of a lion, snake, goat, etc. But some also had wings from different creatures. Bats, eagles, and even angelic wings. Most of Izuku’s Shadows were land-locked, and those with ranged attacks like Tusk, would likely damage the surrounding area with their power.
Momo, however, withdrew a precision semi-automatic rifle from under her cloak, the bullets inside of the magazine smoking with a dark energy.
She wasted no time, immediately unloading bullet after bullet with deadly accuracy. Every Chimera that exited the Gate dropped to the ground, either killed by a bullet to the dome, or because their wings had been clipped.
[You have Leveled-Up!]
While Momo made sure none could escape into the air and become a serious threat, Izuku ran alongside his army, jumping a dozen feet into the air and throwing a haymaker into the side of a Cyclop’s face.
“Form a perimeter around the Gate!” Izuku called to his Shadows, directing their attention to the side of a nearby apartment building, exposed and overflowing with Villains. The Gate must have been housed inside an apartment that was empty. It wasn’t that much of a stretch to imagine it hiding away in a small room for seven days before breaking open with no one the wiser.
As the Shadows culled the hoards, encircling the building as Izuku instructed, he ran inside, blurring past the destroyed interior and into the scarred hallways packed with all sorts of monstrous beasts.
They slammed into doorways, shattering them like glass and rushing inside to claim their victims.
A mother grabbed her daughter, rushing from their small kitchen as a Chimera attempted to shove its body through the cramped interior. Several floors up, there was no escape, she could only rush into the bathroom, locking the door behind her as if it would do any good.
The roars and sounds of her home being destroyed made her shake with fear. The bathroom door shook as it rampaged, but then… everything went quiet with a single SNAP! Followed by footsteps rushing out of their apartment and onto the next.
Ever so slowly, the mother opened the bathroom door, peeking out into her destroyed living room, where a Chimera’s head lay motionless. Just its head. The body was nowhere to be seen.
[You have Leveled-Up!]
*******
“I got here as quickly as I could!” A tall round man cried out as he approached the carnage.
“Well then you’re way too late, Fat Gum.” Hawks said, draping his wings across his body like a coat. “Whoever handled this picked them apart.” He kicked at the head of a Hellhound in front of the hospital doors, its spine broken.
“What do you mean, ‘Whoever?’”
“They took down the Gate and left, that’s all I know. Eye-witnesses say there were two Heroes, but over a hundred summoned creatures.”
“A hun- That can’t be right! Even Ectoplasm can’t summon more than a few copies of himself and that’s with a Quirk!”
Hawks shrugged. “Whoever did this was strong as hell. The Gate was at least A-Rank and they took it on themselves, killing the Boss like it was nothing. That, in conjunction with all those summons… We need them…”
Fat Gum nodded. “You’ve been thinking about it too huh?”
“Obviously…”
Fat Gum huffed. “Damn… we’re really going back to Jeju Island after all, huh?”