Dark Shadow and Tokoyami tore across the landscape, dueling Aria Lin for a second time. Aria slashed a huge claw down on Dark Shadow, slamming it into the ground. Before she could follow up, however, Tokoyami flew past her face, the claws in his gauntlet slashing across her face causing her to reel back as blood flew everywhere.
Dak Shadow took the opportunity to flip Aria over, pinning her beneath his immense form.
"I COULD USE SOME HELP EVENTUALLY!" Dark Shadow screeched.
"KEEP TRYING! SHE CAN'T KEEP IT UP FOREVER!" Tokoyami shouted back.
Aria screamed with an animalistic fury and a huge array of spines exploded upward, pushing Dark Shadow off of her. She broke the spines off of her body, then immediately started growing to an even larger size, before clamping her enormous jaw around Dark Shadow's "neck" area and trying to deliver a killing blow. Of course, Dark Shadow being made of solid shadow made that impossible. Even AFO hadn't managed to physically damage Dark Shadow, which had caused Tokoyami to re-evaluate his quirks power.
Dark Shadow merely reached up and started wrapping Aria in a cloak of shadow, attempting to smother her. In response to her rapid loss of movement and control, Aria turned a portion of her external body into blood and slipped out of Dark Shadow's grip.
The battle was playing out similarly to how it had gone in the caverns before. Her multitude of mutation-type quirks and the combined instincts of dozens of animals made her a powerful and unpredictable foe. Not to mention the strange blood-related powers that all her mutations revolved around. She didn't fight according to human logic or combat norms. She was, at least at the moment, a cornered animal that had gone out of control.
Aria reconstituted her form as fast as she had broken it down to escape but with new mutations showing from before. Cursing, Tokoyami made some distance, angling to explore the new powers before committing to a hard engagement.
Instead of running or charging at him as she had previously, she lept. Then, at the peak of her leap, there was a whooshing noise, and she shot like a bullet from mid-air, smashing into Dark Shadow in an explosion of earth.
Dark Shadow, like Aria before him, let his defined form collapse and instead turned into a whirling vortex of shadowy tendrils, wrapping around Aria's new form and constricting like snakes. Entire limbs were severed from Aria's external body in an explosion of blood. The shadow tendrils then wrapped around a closer piece and repeated the process. Despite Aria's attempts to free herself, however, the constricting vines of shadow slowly closed in around her.
Tokoyami thought they might have finally caught her when the situation suddenly started to reverse. Aria's external body morphed into dozens of blood-like vines of her own and started to battle Dark Shadow for dominance. Before long, it had devolved into a mass of black and red tendrils constantly constricting the other. The situation suffered another setback, however, when there was a loud booming noise and Ochako slammed into the ground not too far away from himself.
Ochako righted herself and saw Tokoyami.
"SHADOW!" he roared and Dark Shadow immediately ceased fighting with Aria to return to him. Just in time to wrap itself around his body when Ochahko blurred up to him and kneed him into the air. The blow was blocked by Dark Shadow, but that didn't deter Ochako. With a scream, she followed him into the air, grabbed him, and then simply threw him to the ground.
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Bokugo and Todoroki had come to a horrifying and disturbing realization early in their fight with Ochako. Firstly, she was completely nude, with only the barest strips of clothing clinging to her body. Secondly, they could tell she bore significant injuries all over her body, scabs, welts, and more covered every inch of the front of her body, which wasn't even including the massive burn scarring along her right side. They'd known of the burn scars she suffered in the first assault on Mufustafu, they'd never seen them though, never knew how encompassing they had been. While that was disturbing enough, most of it looked horrifyingly fresh, and based on his own experience with burns... he didn't even want to contemplate the pain she must have been in, or could even still be in. It was hard to judge accurately in the dark, even if his contacts did provide with him excellent night vision.
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Requiem of Revolution
FanfictionIts been three years since the War on Villainy, three years since Japan was ravaged, its people left to rebuild, and the world's faith in heroes shaken to its core. Quirks have become more important than ever and new powers are rising because of it...
