Chapter Text
“Hold on to these,” Momo said, tossing both Kaina and Miruko a handful of canisters.
“What are they?”
“In giving up his Soul, he lost a weakness, but gained another,” Momo responded, looking into the clouds, where purple Mana was swelling up. “He’s not thinking as clearly anymore. Get close and use one of these on him. Don’t breathe it in yourself.”
“That didn’t completely answer the question, but I get where you’re going!” Miruko yelled, clipping the small bullet-sized canisters onto her armor.
Kaina grimaced. “I know you don’t want to kill him, but-”
“Just trust me… please,” Momo stared at Kaina with pleading eyes through her mask.
“Come on! Stop pussyfooting! Let’s do this!”
“Do what?” Nine asked, standing behind Miruko suddenly. His eyes were hollow, replaced entirely by the purple glow of his Mana.
[The Monarch Apprentice, Nine]
Miruko spun around, kicking at his head. But this time, instead of using his shields, Nine caught the kick in his bare hands. The girls could hear his bones breaking under the force of the impact, but he showed no emotion, just a blank slate, filled with power.
“I will join their ranks. I will become a God and bring order to a new world. I can… bring back my family.”
Kaina swiftly drew a handgun from her thigh holster. It was one of the few fully Magical Metal guns in existence. Her draw was second to none, except for maybe Billy the Kid. But pulling the trigger was useless, Nine moving just far enough to avoid the bullet. He was floating through 3D space like he was manipulating gravity.
“No idea what you’re talking about!” Momo shouted, throwing one of the capsules in his direction as the other girls leapt away. It exploded in a burst of white mist right in Nine’s face.
“Aerosolized propofol. You’re trying to put me into a chemically-induced coma.” As if taunting Momo, Nine took a deep breath, letting the chemical invade his lungs. “Gods don’t sleep.”
“Is that the best line you can come up with?!” Miruko shouted. “You lose your Soul for 2 seconds and suddenly you’re boring!”
“He’s not feeling the effects of the chemical?! Is that a Quirk… or is it because he lost his Soul?” Momo still wasn’t 100% sure what Nine’s true powerset was outside of the natural disasters and the quantum Quirk. The chemical was nearly identical to the one that the Russian’s used on Sapporo. It affected Momo even, so it should’ve affected Nine.
*******
[Quirk: Walking Disaster]
- Quirk Class: XS-Rank
- Cost: Mana is dependent on the weather created. A full lightning storm would consume roughly 10% of a National-Ranks Mana
- Description: The user can create any sort of natural disaster. Storms, tornados, as well as earthquakes, wildfires, etc.
[Quirk: Layered Shields]
- Quirk Class: A-Rank
- Cost: There is no Magical cost, however, the shields can only handle so much force, with the rest being handled by the user’s arms. This force can kill them.
- Description: The user can create nine shields, which absorb any form of damage and apply that lessened force as kinetic energy on the user’s arms. The more they’re layered, the more damage they can absorb and weaken.
[Quirk: Finger Lasers]
- Quirk Class: S-Rank
- Cost: Depends on the concentration of the laser output.
- Description: The user can emit piercing beams of light from the tips of their fingers. The user can use all ten digits at a time or individual finger tips depending on the situation. These lasers are pure Mana, meaning that their concentration can be infinitely increased as long as the user has Mana to spare.
[Quirk: Azure Dragons]
- Quirk Class: XS-Class
- Cost: Each Dragon costs 10,000 Mana to initially summon and 10 Mana per second to maintain it.
- Description: The User can summon any amount of Azure Dragons which emerge from their back. Each of these Dragons has infinite range from their users back, however they can become tangled and knotted if the user is not careful as the dragons must trace their way back to their users body when defeated or reabsorbed. These Dragons are equal to an SS5-Rank monster (Halfway to National-Rank).
[Quirk: Automated Will]
- Quirk Class: S-Rank
- Cost: No physical or magical costs are required.
- Description: The user can exert their own will on their body regardless of the state they find themselves in. This makes the user immune to any sort of physical restrictions, debuffs, and cannot be incapacitated as long as they are conscious. The user can increase their physical abilities by willing themselves to become stronger. The user can nullify pain their body would otherwise feel.
[Quirk: Kinetic Conversion]
- Quirk Class: B-Rank
- Cost: No physical or magical costs are required.
- Description: The user can displace kinetic energy onto any inanimate physical object. However, the user cannot target something with little to no mass, such as gasses, making them incapable of targeting air.
[Quirk: Quantum State]
- Quirk Class: S-Rank
- Cost: No physical or magical costs are required.
- Description: The user can make any inanimate object, that is not being observed, into a quantum version of itself. As Quantum State objects have indeterminable variables until they are observed, the user can alter their variables as long as they are not observed by anyone other than themself. This allows the user to alter speed, mass, energy, and any other variable within physics.
[Quirk: Six Eyes]
- Quirk Class: National-Rank
- Cost: No physical or magical costs are required.
- Description: The user is granted extrasensory perception of the world around them in a one-mile radius. They are able to perceive every single point of data from anything in that radius, meaning they can identify the exact strength, Skills, Mana, Magic, and/or Quirks an enemy may possess, as well as their many physical variables. This perception grants the user immense control over their Mana, reducing the required cost of all Skills, Magic, and Quirks by 99%
*******
Momo almost yelped in surprise upon seeing the pop-ups. Up until then, the System hadn’t shown any of Nine’s data, now it suddenly was. Something about giving up his Soul made him easier for the System to examine.
Skimming the details, everything came together in Momo’s mind. Some of the girls’ guesses had been spot on, like the Quantum State Quirk and the Kinetic Conversion Quirk. And there were the ones that were obvious, like the Walking Disaster Quirk, the Azure Dragons, the Finger Lasers, and the Layered shields. It was the Six Eyes and Automated Will that pulled everything together, depicting Nine’s full powerset.
The Six Eyes Quirk gave him complete awareness of everything around him, allowing him to perceive incoming attacks, no matter how fast or stealthy they were. The Automated Will Quirk made it so that he could queue up motions for his body to complete, allowing him to move faster than otherwise possible. The two Quirks together meant that, even though he was physically slower than the girls, he could tell his body to block any attack. Not only that, but the Automated Will allowed him to move through 3D space however he wanted and cleanse his body of the chemicals Momo tried to administer to him. It sounded like a simple Quirk at first, but it facilitated Nine’s entire strategy.
“Miruko’s our strongest physical fighter, and she can’t get through, so we can’t beat him through physical damage. He has resistances to debuffs and chemicals, so that’s out. His Soul isn’t in the picture anymore so we can’t use that as a weakness… how are we supposed to beat him?!”
Momo looked over to Miruko. “Could you get him into orbit?!” A good deal of Nine’s Quirk strategy relied on the storm, decreased visibility, and having objects to manipulate with Quantum State. In a vacuum, not only would he suffocate, unless Automated Will could prevent that, he wouldn’t have any inanimate objects to enhance or control.
Miruko kicked aside a dozen dragons with wind pressure alone. “Not by brute force! Those shields make it almost impossible! But if we lure him up to a higher altitude he might not catch on and I can drag him the rest of the way!” With her immunity to the vacuum of space, Miruko actually had a very reliable ‘alternate win condition’ as a backup strategy at all times. It just wasn’t easy to pull off against someone like Nine.
“I’m not sure how much intelligence he has left without his Soul, but he does seem kind of out of it!” Momo signaled the other Shadows and girls to start ascending. “Behemoth! Go make sure the fleet is okay!”
“As you command!” Behemoth sunk beneath the waves, swimming towards the naval battle to make a surprise entrance.
“Now let’s- ack!” Momo suddenly found Nine’s fingers around her neck, dragging her higher and higher, faster than any of the Shadows could keep up with. She saw Miruko chasing after them, but they reached the upper atmosphere before anyone could even get close.
“I admire your determination, but this is where it all ends,” He said, grabbing her mask with his free hand and tearing it off her face. Down below, Momo could see storms building up, she could see the Pacific Rim beginning to glow with magma. Nine was getting ready to end the world.
She tried to create a mask to breathe in the rapidly thinning atmosphere, but Nine ripped it off each and every time, dragging her further and further up. She could handle the effects of a vacuum, but she was still vulnerable to suffocation.
“I will-”
“NOW!” Momo reached up and took hold of Nine’s arm, creating layers of steel around it, locking them together. Simultaneously, Miruko, Beru, and Igris appeared around him. Miruko kicked out, predictably getting blocked by a shield. He even reacted fast enough to stop Beru as well. But with one arm completely occupied, he couldn’t stop the Demonic Knight behind him from lopping off both of his arms.
The limbs fell back to Earth, Nine staring at the empty space. “You…” He smiled. “You knew I could hear you… you wanted me to do this…” His Automated Will Quirk kept him from feeling the pain.
Momo grimaced, affixing her mask and taking a deep breath. “I figured you could bring a pocket of atmosphere up with you. You were acting arrogant without your Soul. I was hoping you’d grab one of us and try to show off a little. I knew that limiting one arm would give us a chance and I was right.” She stared into Nine’s, quite literally, soulless eyes. “You’ve lost. Stop this.”
“I don’t think I will…” He said, looking down at the Earth with them. “My body will die here, but they will bring me back as a God.”
“I don’t know who you think you’re talking about, but it doesn’t matter! What good will being a God do when the planet is dead! What’s the point of bringing back your wife and kid if there’s no Earth?!”
Nine pursed his lips, still hovering in place. His Quirk stopped the blood flow to his arms. He wouldn’t bleed out. “I have chosen my path. I will simply find a new world for us to live on. Our own little Garden of Eden.”
“Just so you know, the Garden of Eden was kind of an incest machine,” Miruko dryly commented. The thinner atmosphere meant she no longer had an aerial high-ground. She was just barely staying aloft by kicking.
“Natural Disasters. The one Quirk that seems weakest of all. But Natural Disasters go beyond the planet. A solar flare that-” His eyes went wide just before he could finish his sentence. His perception of time slowed to a crawl... as his head slid right off his body.
Momo immediately dropped the blade, grabbing onto Igris’s arm before she could be captured by the pull of gravity. Beru, meanwhile, snatched Nine’s corpse out of the air at Momo’s behest.
“I… I thought you had a plan?” Miruko stuttered.
“I did,” Momo answered weakly. “But I wouldn’t be able to stop a solar flare…” Her eyes were filled with tears. “I thought I could save him. I wanted to be like Izuku. I thought… I guess I have more of my parents in me than I would like.”
As they descended, Igris attempted to assuage Momo’s guilt. “Well, at the end, he wasn’t completely lost.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw the speeds he was capable of. He could have avoided that swipe. His extrasensory abilities saw it coming, and he still didn’t move.” Igris looked into Momo’s eyes. “I think he was truly hoping for someone to give him peace.”
“Then… there’s only one thing left to do.”
“What’s that?” Miruko asked, watching in awe as the storms and cataclysms began to subside.
“Find whoever this Quaresha is,” Momo’s Soul burned brightly to anyone who could’ve seen it, “And take Nine’s Soul from her corpse.”