Chapter 59: Unmasked
Greetings my Spectacular readers! It's time again for a new chapter. I fell really ill last week, and just recovered. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves as we navigate through this busy life. With every fibre of my being I hope you enjoy this chapter!
"NIGHTEYE!"
The tension in the air almost became touchable as Sakura's rage bubbled to the surface. Her chakra flared, a manifestation of her intense emotions, a volatile force. The scene was chaotic, Mirio desperately trying to stanch Nighteye's wounds, and Izuku caught between the urgency of the situation and Sakura's determined fury.
She watched as Mirio fell apart clambering at his teacher, trying to stop the bleeding. It wouldn't help though. His injuries were severe, and Sakura knew that even immediate treatment would likely not be enough to repair this kind of damage.
Losing an arm was bad enough, but if they didn't do something about the wound in his torso there wouldn't be any hope of preserving his life.
Sakura's gaze intensified with a storm of emotions, pierced through the chaos, landing at Izuku's feet. He looked up, a question etched across his face. "You must escape," she declared, tossing him her pouch filled with her medical supplies, "Tie up his arm, and don't move the pike around his stomach,"
Izuku looked at her back, "What are you going to do?"
"Finish this."
In the backdrop of this dire moment, Kai refused to grant them even a semblance of respite. The exits sealed, and their chances of evacuating Nighteye dwindled.
"You think it'll be that easy? I'm going to put an end to you all and your small-minded sense of justice!" Kai's words echoed through the tense atmosphere. "None of you know the value of Eri's power. Quirks progress markedly when you develop them. Through countless experiments, I extracted Eri's power and succeeded in bringing it to its endpoint."
Sakura's fists clenched, her whole being a tempest of fury. The bloodlust emanating from her threatened to suffocate those around her. Kai took a step back, feeling the weight of her rage like a vice tightening around his neck.
"THAT GIRL IS A PERSON! DOES THAT MEAN NOTHING TO YOU!?"
Sakura's words had struck a chord deep within him, resonating with the very question that had been posed to him by his master. The memory of that confrontation, the rejection, the disgust in his master's eyes—all surged back.
When Kai came to him to explain his plan. The one that would bring Shie Hassaikai to the top. Selling the unfinished product of quirk canceling bullets to neutralize the heroes, and then creating a serum to restore the quirks their very product destroyed. With Eri as the catalyst for both products, no one would be able to move in on this business.
And yet without much consideration, his master had shot him down, with that same question. He thought that he would be able to make him see things from his point of view. The bigger picture. Kai thought it might've been the softness his boss held towards his flesh and blood, as Eri was his granddaughter, but even her own mother had abandoned her for her quirk. Why couldn't he see that he could make something great come from that so-called cursed power? He wanted to give back the power that had been taken away from him by those heroes. Did the means to get there really matter this much?
"You... HOW DARE YOU! Don't talk as if you know anything! A MERE INSECT WHO CAN'T SEE PAST THEIR OWN FEET!"
The very ground beneath them trembled, a physical manifestation of Kai's fury. His quirk, a monstrous force, reshaped the facility into a grotesque maw, ready to consume anything in its path. Izuku, quick to react, lifted Mirio and Nighteye into the air, in a desperate attempt to evade the chomping monstrosity that once was the ground.
In the midst of the chaos, Sakura soared, navigating the shifting terrain with an agility that seemed almost otherworldly.
Kai, with a renewed determination, bellowed his intent, "What I'm going to do is tear down the very foundation of this world. You hero pretenders stay out of it."
"THIS TIME THE ONE WHO WILL BE BROKEN IS YOU!"
With a burst of chakra, Sakura propelled herself toward Kai, her movements embodying a wrathful force. Kai, anticipating her attack, shattered the floors again. The battleground became a chaotic dance of destruction.
But Sakura wasn't one to be deterred. She adjusted, turning mid-air, avoiding the fragmented floors that threatened to ensnare her. Her eyes, gleaming with determination, locked onto Kai.
'This time, I'll crush him,'
As Kai attempted to gather himself he couldn't help but sense the change in the air. It was as if it had thickened with the weight of Nemesis' presence. Before he could react, the crushing force descended upon him. He raised his hand in a futile attempt to shield himself, but the blow landed, a swift kick delivered with precision. His arms cracked. Kai skidded across the ground. He attempted to rebuild, to reconstruct, to defy the onslaught. Yet, the relentless force against him persisted.
"Think that'll stop me? I'll just reconstruct—"
His thoughts were severed as Izuku, too, entered the fray, his quirk igniting like a spark of justice. A "SMASH," struck Kai, propelling him backward. He sensed the power but also the subtlety—a stark contrast to Nemesis.
Before he could regain his footing, Nemesis closed in, a relentless force chasing him down. With a kick, a forceful propulsion, Kai found himself airborne. The cycle repeated, turning the once formidable villain into a mere pawn in Nemesis' hands.
With each strike, Kai attempted to heal, to reconstruct, but the pace of Nemesis' assault overwhelmed him. He became a victim of his own creation, caught in a relentless barrage. The room resonated with the symphony of destruction, an orchestra conducted by Nemesis, leaving Kai's ambitions shattered.
The air hung heavy with the scent of dust and the metallic tang of blood.
The absurdity of the situation hung in the air like a heavy mist. Kai, found himself grappling with an unsettling reality. Here was a person, Nemesis, who defied the laws of logic and expectation. Kai had honed his reactions to near-bullet speeds, a testament to his prowess, yet before him stood an enigma, an entity undeterred by the constraints of conventional physics. Was this really due to his quirk alone? Or was there something more lurking beneath the surface?
As Nemesis pressed forward, Kai, for all his foresight and planning, was ill-prepared to comprehend. The battlefield, once a stage for calculated maneuvers, now bore witness to a surreal combat.
Kai, on the receiving end of this relentless assault.
"This is for Eri, and for everyone you've hurt!"
In that climactic moment, Sakura's words hung in the air. The echoes of suffering inflicted upon Eri and countless others reverberated in the cavernous space. Her fist struck with a force that seemed to transcend the physical. The impact resonated like a thunderclap.
Stone yielded to the sheer intensity of the collision. Cracks spiderwebbed from the point of impact, an allegory for the fractures that now cleaved through Kai.
As the dust settled, revealing the altered landscape of the battlefield, Sakura stood.
Izuku heaved a breath he didn't know was lodged in his throat, he looked over at Kai's unconscious form and back to Nemesis. Who was making his way over to Kai! Realizing the implications of this, Izuku intervened. Forcing his body to move forward and in front of the powerful individual.
The air crackled with tension, and the stark reality of their choices hung heavy.
Sakura, a silhouette against the fractured backdrop, met his gaze with an unyielding resolve that betrayed no emotion.
"Hold on Nemesis! He's already down!" Izuku's words echoed. Yet, Sakura's response, devoid of triumph, hinted at a different truth, one Izuku instinctively grasped.
"No, he isn't, his heart is still beating,"
"You can't kill him!" The plea in Izuku's voice resonated with the very essence of heroism. They were meant to save people and stop villains but there was a fine line that heroes could not cross under any circumstances, it was something they were taught from young when having quirk counseling. With that power, there were of course certain regulations that had to be admitted.
Sakura's stoic reply, a simple "Move,"
In that charged moment, Izuku, propelled by One for All, positioned himself as a human shield, standing resolute against the advancing Nemesis. The clash of ideals played out in the silence that surrounded them.
"You've seen what he's done to her, why are you getting in the way?"
"Because if you do this you're not better than he is! Treating another life like it's expendable,"
"Maybe I don't care about being better," Sakura's words, delivered with an unsettling calm, resonated like a dissonant chord in the symphony of heroism. Her unclenched fists, however, spoke of a potential divergence from the path of relentless vengeance. "That seems to be the only certainty in this world,"
"You are! Please think this through! What about Eri?" Izuku's words stopped Sakura's advance. "You won't be able to come back from this and you won't be able to see her again!"
That seemed to halt Sakura in her tracks. She stared hard at Kai. Where would she be going from here now? Was this really the end of everything for her?
As the exchange unfolded, the ceiling above quivered and cracked, yielding to the relentless turmoil below.
"What now?" Izuku coughed as the dust cleared. He readied himself for another battle, but he noticed that the subject that fell wasn't moving further.
It was Rikiya, one of the eight bullets that appeared at the entrance. His form was a bit different than before, he was larger but defeated nonetheless. Sprawled across the debris, was a fallen pawn.
Ochaco, Tsuyu, and Ryukyu had come down with him.
"Deku!"
"You guys okay, kero?" The girls seemed unharmed, aside from looking pale and fatigued.
Sakura's attention turned away from the fallen villains. Approaching the corner where Mirio cradled Nighteye, tears streaming down his face as he begged for his mentor to keep a hold of that short thread of life. Ryukyu, Ochaco, and Tsuyu were stunned in horrific silence when they saw the severity of his condition.
"S-Sir Nighteye…."
Sakura observed the hero's injuries with a critical and medical eye. The pike protruded ominously from his torso, a dire wound. In her anger and determination, Sakura acknowledged the harsh reality—this was beyond a superficial wound. The pike had pierced through Nighteye's back, an injury that typically demanded the resources of an entire medical unit.
Her gaze shifted to her own hands, hesitating momentarily. The enormity of the task at hand pressed upon her. Removing the pike, the very object keeping Nighteye from bleeding out would be a difficult if not near impossible balancing act. And that was just the first phase. This was far from a superficial wound.
"This is really bad," she murmured, more to herself than to Mirio, who looked at her with desperate eyes.
"W-What can we do?" Mirio's voice wavered, tears streaming down his face. "How can we save him?"
Healing wounds like this usually requires an entire medical unit to heal injuries as big as this. On the other hand, if she didn't try to, he likely wouldn't make it to the next day regardless if he made it to the hospital alive. His organs were likely skewered.
Sakura looked at her hand with hesitation. She didn't think it would be possible for her to heal this kind of injury.
'I'd have to remove that pike first,' But the pike was the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.
We can't. That is what she thought but refused to say.
Sakura had gone through enough surgeries to know which ones had a chance of success and which were likely futile. Nonetheless, Nighteye was still breathing somehow, and she couldn't allow them to lose hope to her professional opinion.
'That power….'
Sakura thought back to that night at Kamino, taking that blow through her chest, losing her whole heart. If she could just call on that ability, then maybe he might have a chance of surviving too.
But what gave Sakura pause was that she didn't know if it would even affect other people. And she didn't have a good handle on the chakra to begin with, so calling on it at this time, when she was still under the effects of Kurono's quirk. If she couldn't muster up the ability to bring forth that power and use it to treat Nighteye. Then removing that pike would be killing the hero.
She questioned the transferability of this power — an ability that had mended her own wounds. Did it possess the potency to mend another? The chakra added another layer of complexity to this delicate operation.
Sakura's internal struggle unfolded in the silence of her contemplation. A battlefield medic haunted by the ghosts of past patients, she couldn't easily dismiss the gravity of her decisions. Her vow to do better resonated in the quiet corners of her mind, urging her to tread carefully on the precipice of possibility.
But was this worth the risk?
Her eyes shifted to Nighteye, whose fading vitality etched a somber narrative on his pallid features. Paling skin from blood loss, fading eyes. The urgency of the moment demanded a decision. Sakura made her choice.
Casting aside the cloak of doubt, she maneuvered gracefully around Mirio. Pushing her chakra through her body to keep up her speed and nullify the affects of Kurono's quirk.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to save him," Sakura replied.
"Ho-How?"
"Hold him on his side," Sakura instructed. Mirio, though skeptical, and filled with far more questions, fell on hushed ears as Sakura maneuvered around him. "Do you want to save him or not?"
Mirio followed her instructions then. Sakura just carefully took Nighteye into her hold. She adjusted so that she could grab hold of the piece of stone from his back as that was the larger part. She kept her other hand ready, chakra pouring through to close up the wound as she pulled the pike out from him.
"Wait- isn't that-
"Don't distract me," Sakura seethed, as she watched Nighteye flinch from the pain. "I need to focus,"
Sakura resumed to pull on the pike, blood surged from the wound, as she kept trying to hold her focus and call on that chakra deep within her.
With each pull, Sakura delved into the recesses of her being, beckoning the dormant chakra. Her mind, a battlefield of determination and agony, echoed with the silent mantra, 'Dig deep, I know it's there.' The chakra, an elusive force, remained elusive, requiring an effort akin to coaxing fire from damp wood. But Sakura, her gaze unwavering, was resolute in her pursuit
This was going to hurt her. She knew it but she knew that she would have to power through the pain if she wanted the right results. It wasn't her life on the line right now. That same pain she felt in Kamino, that overwhelmingly suffocating, heavy chakra that gave her the greatest sense of power.
Come,' she whispered inwardly, watching the ethereal dance of chakra flicker in her hands. Blood continued to seep from Nighteye as the pike yielded to Sakura's persistent efforts. The seconds felt like eternities as the stakes climbed higher.
'Come!'
A spark, fleeting yet tangible, teased her senses. Sakura clung to it, an ember in the dark. The process mirrored the challenge of kindling a flame from reluctant wood. But Sakura, a tenacious flame in her own right, refused to surrender.
'Again.'
A burning sensation coursed through her hand, forcing her to release the flame she sought to wield.
'No, again!'
Undeterred, she persisted, grappling with the searing force like one trying to grasp a hot iron. The repetition is a testament to her unwavering will.
Mirio, his concern etched on his face like a haunting refrain, watched as Nighteye, fragile yet tenacious, expelled another surge of blood. The pike, once a sinister anchor to his life, now lay discarded, staining his hero costume in a sinister shade of red.
"SIR!"
"I won't give up!" Sakura's proclamation cut through the air as she invoked her Byakugo. Her own chakra reserve pulling, trying to use that to help her conduct that strange chakra that sat at the center of her being. She needed this power and it was time she made it her own.
Then she felt it at last. That burning sensation engulfed her entire body, but Sakura knew she couldn't let this power run wild across her form, she couldn't let it burn her as freely as before. So she pushed through that pain, forming her concentration to draw the power to her hands, and to run into the wound Nighteye sustained.
Mirio didn't know what was happening to Nemesis, he was more concerned about Nighteye dying in his arms right here and now because he had chosen to listen to this person instead of calling out for an ambulance. Then he watched as Nemesis became engulfed in a strange light that felt like war, too warm to be around.
It began engulfing Nighteye as well before falling onto the wound alone and Mirio watched what could only be considered a miracle happen. As the flesh around his teacher's wound began to move like threads, weaving together, tendons regenerating, muscles forming, even the bones and organs were coming together at that part. His right arm seemed to cauterize and heal out into a stump, but there were no more wounds or bleeding.
Izuku, Ochaco, Tsuyu, and Ryukyu watched from a distance in the same stunned awe.
When there was nothing left but a layer of fresh skin, only then did Nemesis stop.
"Healing….superstrength…." Izuku gasped, 'It can't be!'
He wanted to ask him. He wanted to go to Nemesis through this chaos, and demand to know the truth behind that mask.
Sakura looked at Nighteye's wounds and saw the rise and fall of his chest, though unconscious now likely from the strain.
He was going to live.
She breathed out heavily, drawing back that power and her Byakugo seal, as it settled back into a diamond her heart squeezed tight and she convulsed. Collasping, and chasing to breathe.
"Nemesis!"
"Something's wrong!" Ochaco called.
All Sakura could hear was the footsteps, before she felt her mask being lifted from her face. She caught the brief stunned expressions of Izuku, before closing her eyes and succumbing to the pain.
..
..
In the aftermath of the labyrinthine confrontation, the clamor of ambulances and the piercing wail of sirens painted a chaotic image of this completed mission. The assignment, while a success, there was only exhaustion etched in the faces of the police and heroes, as they carted away the injured. The toll this day had taken on each participant went beyond the anticipated consequences.
The interns, once brimming with vitality and youthful zeal, now bore the visible scars of the conflict. Tamaki, his normally reserved demeanor eclipsed by external wounds, stood testament to the ferocity of the engagement. Ochako and Tsuyu, carried the weight of their efforts etched across their expressions. Eijiro's body was covered in bandages that traced the contours of his neck down to unseen injuries. Nighteye, the mentor whose guidance had led them into the fray, who had once laid in the worst condition of all, was being called low priority now by the paramedics as they took the unconscious man away. His injuries were already clear and gone, the only evidence left was bloody clothes. Ambulances, their sirens wailing a haunting refrain, carried him away.
The law enforcement agencies, in a race against time, rounded up the remnants of the yakuza. Yet, amidst this triumph, a bitter realization lingered — the League of Villains had eluded capture once again.
But Izuku's eyes were now trailing out after the pink-haired girl who was being rushed into the ambulance, while paramedics called for the defibrillator to be started.
"Her heart not beating!"
This in the end was nothing more than a bitter-sweet victory.
Well that's all for now folks!
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-SPECIAL HALLOWEEN CHAPTER: Shinigami amongst Shinobi
-Kunoichi amongst Heroes chapter 58, 59, 60
-Kunoichi amongst Heroes WHAT IF SPIN OFF: Dorms and Exams
-Kunoichi amongst Pirates chapter 23, 24, 25, 26
-Crossroads of Fate chapter 16, 17, 18
-Through the Looking Glass chapter 17, 18. 19, 20, 21
-(SEQUEL) Through the Spyglass chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6
See you soon lovelies!
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