Izuku gave a slight wave to Hawks as he flew away from the rubble in which the Nomu was currently buried under. A feeling of dread settled in his stomach that was quickly crushed whilst he began pooling a large amount of charge into his right arm, his left hand gripping his right elbow to stabilise himself.
His eyes were charged as he was watching for any form of movement within the concrete dust from the collapsed building. A slight wind swept through the area, blowing the dust towards Izuku who had to shield his face and eyes with his left arm but kept the right arm raised with a steadily building charge.
He felt the sting of the concrete dust on his open palm, but he was soon distracted by a loud crashing sound, followed by an ear-piercing shriek. "Izuku, are you sure about this?" A voice rang out from his earpiece, distinctly Nezu. In the background he knew were several other teachers but all remained deathly silent.
"There's no other choice. Do you have the stats?" Izuku responded, referring to some information he had asked for already on his flight over.
"We're working on it."
"Alright. Keep me up to date."
Nezu would've responded the same, but with the news coverage, it was already done for him. The nation had stopped to watch, a tense silence that hovered over Japan with one unspoken question.
"Will he win?"
Because no-one knew what would happen if he didn't. And survival... survival was in but a few minds.
Back at U.A, the teacher's conference room was a deathly silence, each teacher pulling whatever strings they could to get the information Izuku requested, effectively turning into what only the smartest of heroes used their agencies' for; information gathering and communication at the hero's request. And currently, the hero fighting for everyone needed all the help he could get. Luckily for him, some of the foremost and most interconnected individuals in hero society were on his info team.
Yagi Toshinori, formerly All Might, was effectively lending his pull power to each individual teacher and their connections to bring information that may otherwise remain behind any restriction, Nezu being the head communicator summarising all the information for Izuku. Aizawa was helping with strategic analysis whilst Cementoss assisted with defensive manoeuvres. A few teachers were glued to the news, watching as it went down and relaying information to the others whilst everyone else was on research duty.
In all, the teacher's were incredibly tense, but doing their best to support the current star student.
Comparatively, the students were a mess. Whilst most students outside of 3-A and 1-A were not directly involved with Izuku, save for Hastume and Shinso who were both stressed the hell out and, in Hatsume's case, she had very few friends outside of Izuku and Shinso so she and the purple haired boy were in the workshop, side by side as Hatsume stress tinkered and Shinso was pacing.
1-A dorms were chaos, but not in the usual dysfunctional yet functional family sense. Instead, several students were stress eating, Yaoyorozu was doing her best to make Bakugo relax before he blew something else up (no-one was blaming him for the dishwasher, they intended to see if they could get a new one anyway because half the time the bloody thing didn't work).
Iida was almost literally sprinting across the living room floor and Todoroki was being calmed by Inasa. Several other members of the class were pacing, along with some who were using stress balls provided by Yaoyorozu, who was also using one.
Unsurprisingly, the news was on T.V, the volume up to the max to see if they could hear anything going on (which they could in snippets), with the newscasters silent at the gravity of the situation.
But the worst was the 3-A dorms. The common room was a mess and Nejire was shaking slightly as she resisted the urge to use all her energy just to go out there and help him, or even tell him to run away. But she knew she couldn't. Izuku was one of, if not the strongest, of them all. And he was backed against a wall to hold off long enough until he could win, or the government could think of an emergency solution of some kind. And she knew they had one. But she dreaded to think what would happen if they did it.
She had already broken a glass she initially dropped when she saw Izuku going back to fight the Nomu. Her heart was racing and her eyes were watering as she saw the news.
At the same time, Mirio and Tamaki were together, sitting on the same couch with Nejire, just on the opposite arm. Their hands were clutched tightly as Mirio was clenching his other fist and Tamaki kept turning his arm into various different parts.
And Eri...
Eri was being hugged tightly by her Mama, low-key being used as a soft-toy. The little girl wasn't quite fully aware of the gravity of the situation, but just saw it as her Papa going out to fight a big villain on T.V.
She hummed happily, not looking back to her adoptive mother's and uncles' distraught faces as she had her eyes glued on the screen.
Back with Izuku, who was about to fire the first shot, jumped slightly when the Nomu screeched, throwing the building rubble on top of it away. Thinking fast, Izuku did a quick flip with a low powered kick to produce a wave of air that briefly froze the flying debris in it's path before pushing it all away, clearing the dust.
The air wave eventually hit the Nomu that had now burst out of the rubble, but did not even slightly shift it as it turned it's head and began cackling. "D-did the bird... run away?" It asked, an evil grin on its face as its eyes squinted at the young hero before it. "Are... you stronger?"
"We're about to find out aren't we." Izuku responded as the Nomu returned it's growths into a more standard humanoid structure, however it had several vents on its back for its jet propulsion.
And then it's right arm began growing drastically.
It pulsed with the massive muscle fibres and veins within, and it grew to twice the size of the Nomu, close to thrice the size of Izuku. The arm then rapidly launched at Izuku with the intent to completely decimate him.
With barely any space to spare, Izuku dashed to the right, dodging it all as he used a short blast from his left hand to do so. The lightning slightly damaged the road and lightly charred the arm but did little else.
As he came to a standstill and the Nomu prepared to sweep the arm, Izuku fired his charged blast. The green lightning briefly circled around his arm before firing in a deafening bang, his arm being thrown up from the recoil.
It struck the Nomu, who was enveloped in streaks of green as it produced large flat sections of the green plasma on the body of the creature, almost instantaneously eviscerating various sections of the creature's limbs.
It took mere moments to regrow them and was soon making a beeline for the boy, the powerful jets on its back making it a blur to anyone outside of the top ten or big three.
But to Izuku, it wasn't particularly fast. Izuku powered his legs and jumped forwards, hopping over the Nomu and avoiding its attacks as he quickly spun to land on the rubble he was flying towards feet first, planting him firmly on the rubble he was flying towards. It tilted slightly but effectively stopped him as he was now on a taller footing than the Nomu.
It made Izuku ever so slightly taller than the Nomu, even if it was hunching over constantly. The Nomu chuckled. "You're fast... but not manoeuvrable... you couldn't properly fly earlier..." It said, it's wings expanding from it's back and expanding to its immense wingspan before it began preparing its air thrusters.
The wings spread out and the air began coming out of the thrusters on its back at incredible speed, causing the road below to fracture, crack and break as it was building up speed.
As it did this, Izuku spread his arms and with it let his green lightning wings expand. At the speed of light it reached the ends, the cobweb style lattice structure forming his jagged spiked green wings.
"Nezu, start the timer."
"Got it."
With that, Nezu had started a timer Izuku had him set so he could track the amount of time he had before he would start experiencing forms of drawback in the moment, such as reduced output and various distractions such as headaches and fuzziness or, more worryingly, loss of consciousness.
As he did so, he beat the wings once and from the tip of each shot a bolt of lightning, briefly shrinking the wings before he began filling them again and began flying upwards.
Each bolt connected with the respective shoulder of the Nomu, causing it to pause briefly from the impact as Izuku got further away. The Nomu began chuckling, and with a final blast of its jets it blasted into the air after Izuku.
It was easily able to match his current speed as the creature soared through the air after the green streak. To the spectators on the ground that were evacuating, a green blur was flying in tandem to a black one, the two engaging in the intricate dance of air battle as each would aim to land a glancing blow on the other until the other used a burst of speed to dodge, at which point they would quickly retract.
However, the Nomu was smart and began to adapt, soon able to predict Izuku's movements. With that knowledge, it carefully manipulated him into flying towards a building.
Much to the green lightning user's irritation.
Izuku cautiously extended his senses to within the building, checking for any signs of life within. Thankfully there were none as he speed up, his wings still flapping behind him as he angled himself to cut through the building like a hot knife through butter. He brought an arm in front of his face as a secondary shield, then pulses of lightning as a shield that were cycling so fast it created a visible difference in the heat in front of him, thankful for the insulation and protection of the metal gauntlets.
As he flew through the building, the concrete evaporated before him and he emerged on the other side of the building, which quickly began crumbling atop the chasing Nomu.
"Stop running!" It bellowed as it pulled a massive arm back to demolish the crumbling building, debris flying everywhere.
However, with the brief slowdown, Izuku was able to prepare his next attack, building up charge within his right wing.
The thin lattice structure of his right wing layered over several times, creating a wing that was disproportionately bright compared to the other. The jagged green tips were bright flares, blindingly bright if you looked directly at it.
Izuku, with the attack ready, spun around briefly to get an eye on the Nomu, which was rapidly catching up to him.
"Nezu, charge strength 75, capacity 13!" Izuku yelled quickly.
"Understood." Nezu responded immediately after slight clacking.
At U.A, this noise indicated that Nezu had given one of the teachers the job of running the calculating machine the principal and two students had rigged up to gauge the strength of various charges during their testing. It was coded and built, with the help of Hatsume after Power Loader begged that she be taken off his hands for at least five minutes so he could have a cup of coffee without the constant fear of the workshop exploding, to work with extremely low charges, typically of 0.01 charge strength, and even lower capacity.
These numbers were all relative to a fixed system they had set up at some point whilst testing. It was hyper accurate, but with such large numbers would be very slow. It let Nezu and Izuku gauge the strength, recoil, and any other potential impacts of specified charges.
This would be important to limit any damage Izuku ended up doing to himself.
Speaking of, Izuku began flying backwards, watching the Nomu beginning to speed up again whilst the hero student began rotating to land on the top of another building nearby, skidding slightly as he landed, digging his heels in to stop himself as he raised both arms towards the Nomu. The lightning circling his body all was pulled away, instead going into his wings with the left becoming twice the original latticing, whilst the right wing was quadruple the original latticing, with the flare tips burning brighter and crackling towards the ground.
"Clear to fire. Shouldn't be withdrawals and I took the liberty of running some higher numbers as well, you should be good up to strength 100 with capacity 15 for about five shots before you start running into issues." Nezu told him.
"Thanks. And... we'll be hitting that cap very quickly." Izuku responded sombrely. Nezu did not respond. After all, there wasn't much he could say to his student; the one who had the weight of the nation resting upon his shoulders.
Izuku's left wing wrapped tightly around his left arm, forming large surfaces of green lightning along his gauntlet, the lightning also circling around it rapidly.
He brought his left arm to aim at the Nomu, using his right as support whilst he prepared himself. The Nomu was flying straight at him. "Full impact railgun shot!" Izuku yelled, a small pellet ejecting from the palm of his left arm as it fired.
The deafening noise was quick to follow as the lightning was used to fire it. As was the impact.
The projectile slammed into the torso of the Nomu and sent it flying back, the speed of it faster than it could react to let alone move to dodge. It flew back into the ground, slamming through the building the two just tore through and fully bringing it to the ground on top of it.
At the same time, Izuku's left arm got thrown back from the recoil at the elbow, thankfully not injuring him as he then swapped arms. This time however, with his right wing.
This wing, a much tighter lattice with bright flares, then coiled completely around his right arm, forming a bizarre cover. He braced this arm with his left arm at the elbow, and began condensing the lightning into a blade like object, the entire edge the bright, emerald green flares.
He brought his right arm back behind to his back right, waiting for the Nomu to emerge.
And when it did, it charged at him with a fury that he did not anticipate. It jumped at him and swung its right arm back and around, with it revealing dozens of tendrils, forced from beneath the... flesh of it's forearm. Each one lashed towards Izuku at supersonic speed, all targeting various points on him.
Izuku closed his eyes, and just as the first one was about to hit him he opened them again, his pupils narrowed and the whites fractured with green lightning as his gaze locked onto the nearest tendril. He rapidly removed charge from his legs and moved it to his left arm, forming a large blade that extended about a metre. The blade itself was very spiny looking, only the outline being filled and sections that originated from the base of the gauntlet to connect to the edge of the blade.
The edge was a fluorescent green and Izuku began slashing with it, his eyes tracking each target best he could. With sharp, swift strikes he severed almost all the tendrils. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to catch two of them, however was quick to retract his energy into his left arm and quickly grab one, however the other struck him in his right leg, getting stuck part way in.
Izuku gritted his teeth tight, promising he would apologise to his orthodontist as he ripped the one in his left hand away from the Nomu, which proceeded to use the one in Izuku's right leg as leverage to pull the hero student towards him.
Izuku winced in pain but did not flinch as he pulled his right hand above his head, using the momentum of the Nomu flying towards him and pulling him towards it as whipped its other arm back and began filling it with muscle to attack him with.
At this point, Izuku began his attack. "Lightning Lance!" He cried out as the lightning on his right arm formed exactly that. He brought it down in a swinging motion, forcefully severing the Nomu's right arm from it, before pulling it back and stabbing it into the now alarmed creature's torso.
"Disperse!"
With a great flash of lightning, Izuku was thrown back as all the lightning charged within the lance was suddenly dispersed, a great crashing noise came from the attack as both thunder and the Nomu being thrown deep into the ground, effectively destroying its body.
Izuku crashed hard into another building, however quickly repositioned himself despite the pain of his ribs and in his legs.
"Izuku! That did not look like any charges we had specified!" Nezu called over the earpiece as Izuku landed on the ground, feeling an unsurprisingly sharp pain in his leg.
"Yeah... my bad," He chuckled, "Did not mean to release it all at once. Kinda panicked with the thing stabbing my leg."
"Fair. But watch out, its not done yet," Nezu came over the earpiece, "It's reforming itself from its head,"
"Permission to exterminate?" Izuku responded quickly, returning a constant stream of lightning through his body.
"...Permission granted. Take care," was Nezu's response.
Izuku was quick to spread his initial wings once more, beginning to feel a slight drain on his energy levels as he rose to the skies, using a bottle that Recovery Girl gave many students of what was basically a quick clot to prevent the blood from dripping all over town as he fought.
By the time he rose above the building line again, the Nomu had completely reformed and was glaring at him like a predator would glare at prey that dare attack it. This time, it had put more of its mass into the thrusters on its back, and began whirring up charge as Izuku did the same in his hands.
The real fight had hardly just begun.