The Abyss (chapter 16) (Patreon)

“And… cut!”

The end of the second episode saw five women draped over Nobuto illuminated by lights. Mirko sat in his lap like it was a throne, her long ears twitching slightly at any noise, while Ryukyu cuddled up to his right side and Uwabami his left.

Finally, Mt. Lady was draped over his left shoulder and Uwabami, while his sister reclined on the sofa behind them, her arm draped over his right shoulder and her nails tickling his jaw.

It was a blatant bit of fanservice, but who was he to complain? It’s usually how these things went anyway.

The peacock walked into the spotlight. “We’re making very good time. Let’s say we reconvene in thirty?”

There weren’t any arguments against, though while the rest separated from him after a few whispered words, two of them had stuck behind.

“You’re getting too comfortable around my baby brother,” Nemuri eventually scolded, flicking one of Mirko’s ears.

The Pro just made herself more at home, unbothered as the lights danced across all the glitter in her hair. “I don’t see him complaining.”

Admittedly, it was more because he had nothing to say that wasn’t liable to make things worse, so he did and said nothing. At least until he saw Manami beckoning him over.

Mirko and his sister both protested his abandoning them, but they’d get over it.

Nobuto noticed Danjuro passionately arguing with a certain peacock halfway to Manami. “Danjuro isn’t protesting the script, is he?” he asked as he reached her, towering over the pint-sized woman like always as she shook her head no.

“Gentle just wants to make sure our entrance is perfect.” She tugged on one of her red pigtails, continuing in a quieter voice. “And thank you, Hero.”

“A hero needs no thanks,” he teased, drawing a huff from her.

The School Festival had gone off without a hitch, in the end, and the music and dance performance 1-A had put on had even done the impossible and made Eri smile, which had Nejire gushing over her for the next few hours.

That he himself had cheered for a certain two girls the loudest, well, he had never claimed to be unbiased.

“Though whose idea was it for us to steal their underwear?” His eyes turned back to Manami at her question, seeing her arms crossed.

“I don’t write the script,” he defended. “You’ll have to talk to my sister.”

Manami’s purple-pink eyes glanced behind him. “Maybe I will.” The way she said it made him think it wasn’t the script she wanted to talk to Nemuri about.

Unfortunately, she had already skipped off in that direction before he could dissuade her.

As he watched them whisper to one another with dread, he caught Uwabami approaching him with two cups of something hot, offering him one.

“Thanks.” He was surprised when it turned out to be hot chocolate instead of coffee, but not unpleasantly so. It wasn’t winter yet, but they were most of the way there.

“It seems I was right,” Uwabami commented, a small smile on her lips as she took a sip from her own cup.

He pouted at her, figuring her out immediately. “I never denied it, if you remember. I asked if you spent a lot of time thinking about me, and you never answered.”

Her Medusa persona had the same vaguely Greco-Roman design, except it had some pink and gold trim in it now. With the way he couldn’t help but keep glancing at the way it curved around her hips and breasts, he was beginning to suspect he had been indulging too much. It used to be just Nejire that kept him busy…

“You’re just like your sister in that regard,” Uwabami commented. “She pouted at me just the same when I reminded her how many times I had pointed out her willful ignorance when it came to you. Well, maybe not with eyes like that,” she added, bumping him with her hip.

“I don’t think you mind me looking,” he shot back at her.

At least the silky smooth hot chocolate she brought him was wonderful. It didn’t take him long to drink it dry while he and Uwabami bantered.

Eventually, the break came to an end, the peacock’s rich voice drawing them back in front of the lights and cameras.

“We’ll be going right into the third and final episode for tonight,” he told them. “With luck we’ll be done before sunset.”

Nobuto resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair as he joined the others under the lights, knowing Jez would be annoyed with him. Instead he weathered Nemuri poking him in his ribs.

“That cutie told me a few things,” she whispered to him.

He caught her eyes. “Should I ask?”

“I can’t say. Sworn to secrecy, you know.”

“That’s a lot of honor for someone who looks like a depraved shrine maiden,” he snarked.

“Whatcha two whispering about?” Mirko said, popping out. The rabbit hero looked even shorter between both of them, even her long ears only slightly inching out over his sister.

Ryukyu pulled her back to the other side of you as the lights brightened again.

And a few moments after that… “Action!”

Nemuri strode ahead, the first few lines being hers. Then it was Mirko and Ryukyu, their movements aggressive as they put on a show of hunting down thieves.

It was almost time for him to say a few lines when he noticed Mirko’s ears twitch, her posture changing completely. The next moment, something came crashing into the large room, leaving a hole looking out at Musutafu.

He tried to ignore all the ruckus, focusing on the dark blur that had come through.

…A Nomu?

It held itself aloft with what looked like fleshy jet engines grafted to its back, its long neck swiveling around. He couldn’t see its face as it was covered by a hood, but he heard it loud and clear when it spoke in a deep and scratchy voice.

“Who is the strongest?” That was new, he thought.

It proceeded to impossibly disgorge a bunch more Nomu from its body, adding to the chaos.

His Quirk ventured out, but it was like touching a stove, its mind not small and barely there as he had expected. All it accomplished was having its head swivel in his direction, and launch itself at him.

Panicking at its sheer speed, he idly noticed Ryukyu transforming into her dragon form and Mirko trying to intercept as he knelt and placed his hands upon the floor.

Activating Overhaul, he punched himself through, and down and down again until he reached the first floor, the golden-skinned woman staring at him with wide eyes. The Nomu hadn’t even flinched, chasing him down through multiple ceilings, its limbs extending grotesquely.

He was packing on as much material as he could, forming a shell around himself, but with just one blow from the thing, most of it cracked away. If Mirko hadn’t knocked it through another wall, it wouldn’t have taken that many blows to reduce him to a red and white smear.

As the Pro chased after the talking Nomu with a toothy smile of her own, having the time of her life, he stood up woozy, another Nomu crawling down through the hole in the ceiling. It slobbered after the fleeing receptionist, though this one’s will thankfully crumpled under his presence, leaving it staring at thin air.

He soon touched his hands to its ugly head, Overhaul pulling it apart at the seams.

The beat of his heart was louder than the sounds of fighting all around him, but he pushed past it. He had suspected that it wasn’t just All For One that was behind the Nomu, and it seemed that he had been all too right.

In the next breath, the world suddenly turned blue, and it was only by the skin of his teeth that he touched his hands to the wreck of a floor again in time. Even then, he felt the sheer heat through the cracks.

He heard a rasping laugh. “Am I interrupting your little show?”

Nobuto thought that was a mistake, as he fused the superheated rubble together and pushed it along, but when he looked, there was nothing left but a blackened and melting hallway.

Then he saw the bit of mud. Shit.

Seeing a rush of blue past the now melted glass doors, he pushed on outside, finding another mud double of Dabi grinning at him with his patchwork lips.

“It’s just me and the Nomu this time,” he croaked out. “I’m not stopping until one of us is ash.”

Avoiding the flames but not a few burns, he sunk the madman into the ground.

Outside now, he grimaced. The place was swarming with mud doubles, a parade of corpse men trying to smother the studio building and an even taller Mt. Lady in flames so blue and bright that they hurt to look at. He saw one of them outright melt from the backlash of the flames they were all producing.

Nobuto at least breathed a little easier when he spotted his sister on Ryukyu’s back in the sky.

Touching his hands to the softer grass and soil, he extended Overhaul’s influence as far as he could, when he noticed a problem. It was so hot that his quicksand wasn’t quicksand for very long, and he couldn’t get much closer either.

It was just too hot, and some of the mud doubles turned their flames on the amalgamation of earth and cement that he was pretending to be.

Mirko’s sudden reappearance further distracted him. “We might have a problem,” she huffed out.

“What happened with that talking Nomu?”

“That’s the problem. I kicked its head off and it just grew a new body.”

Turning to her, he almost choked on his spit when he saw her missing an arm. “What—”

“You’ll just have to fix me up later, Algernon.” He didn’t know how she sounded so unbothered. “For now, stop the bleeding.”

He touched his hand to the ruin around her shoulder, trying to ignore how it felt. The flow of blood stopped, and he had hopefully prevented it from bleeding internally as well.

“Thanks.” Behind her he saw the studio building begin to melt like wax from a candle. “You have a plan?” she asked hopefully.

“You’re the Pro Hero,” he complained.

She shrugged. “There’s only so much I can do with brute force here.”

He saw Mt. Lady trying to fend off the corpse men and the Nomu now, thinking. Even without his sunglasses, he doubted that he could break that thing’s will, at least not in the few seconds he would have before it took his head off instead.

“I’d have to touch my hands to it somehow.” But how? The Nomu moved like lightning through the sky, evading Mt. Lady’s attempts to get a hold of it with ease. “Can you deal with the mud doubles?”

“Piece of cake.” She hopped away before he could say another word.

The barrage of flames started ebbing, and he wrapped the earth around him like armor as he moved forward. Mirko’s confidence hadn’t been unwarranted, as each of the corpse men were rendered mud with the lightest blow from her.

He had to shield his eyes then as the field suddenly erupted in blue flames, burning Mirko but also causing the parade of corpse men to melt away. All except for one.

“I guess it wasn’t meant to be. They break if you so much as sneeze at them,” he heard Dabi croak out. It was hard to hear him over the inferno that had sprung up around him.

If not for the cool earth that stuck to him, Nobuto imagined the heat would be unbearable.

He saw Mirko wonder how to approach him herself, the burns not even giving her pause. But if he couldn’t even get quicksand to stick, he didn’t see what she could do.

Gently impressing himself upon her, he pushed her to help Mt. Lady. His plan was unlikely to work anyway, and all they could do at this point was delaying until more Pros arrived. He saw her turn to look at him before she nodded, hopping away in a blur.

Dabi’s flames lashed out to try and keep her there, but the ground beneath him turning unstable put a stop to that. The corpse man bathed him in blue flames for his trouble instead, forcing him to tear up more and more of the earth to keep him at bay.

It was a stalemate, but Nobuto found that acceptable.

“When we heard the story, we were surprised. Almost every word of it was a lie.” The corpse man’s voice was never pleasant on the ears, but it was even less pleasant now. “Weren’t you supposed to be a hero?” Dabi mockingly asked.

He didn’t answer. There wasn’t any reason to incriminate himself further.

“I wonder what they’d think if they knew their rising star killed a man in cold blood to steal his Quirk.”

“Did Shigaraki throw another hissy fit, walking away with less than nothing?” he shot back.

“Meh. He got over it.” The inferno took a step forward. “You can’t cry over spilt milk, I always say.”

Nobuto glanced at the sky, seeing Mirko and Ryukyu join Mt. Lady in fending off the Nomu. Unfortunately, it seemed like they were somehow losing anyway.

Turning back to the slowly approaching inferno, no plan was coming to mind despite his thoughts bouncing around his head like bullets. He couldn’t even see Dabi under all the flames to impress upon him.

He grimaced, knowing what he had to do.

Pulling his sunglasses away, he let his Quirk impress upon himself instead. He needed Overhaul to do more, reach further, dig deeper into the earth.

Like the last time he’d done it, he felt something beginning to tear in his head. It still worked.

Dabi paused in his approach as a tidal wave of earth was suddenly approaching him. It was only twice as high as a man, maybe, but—

He watched as the inferno ebbed to reveal Dabi propelling himself over it, more flames sprouting out of the corpse man’s hands, putting them on a collision course.

Despite feeling lightheaded, Nobuto took advantage to let his Quirk try and impress himself upon Dabi. It wasn’t easy, his will was almost as much a raging inferno as his Quirk, but he managed to impress something, and that was enough.

The corpse man lashed out at nothing as soon as he landed, but then he stopped. “Right. Your other Quirk. I think I’m beginning to see how it works now.”

The inferno of blue returned with a vengeance, and he responded by turning the earth into an ocean, with waves upon waves.

Wiping some sweat off his brow, another stalemate manifested, but he did notice something. Dabi’s skin was growing blacker as it continued, and the staples holding his jaw together sizzled against his skin nauseatingly, the stink of burnt flesh wafting off of him growing stronger.

At this point, the walking corpse would just end up charbroiling himself alive.

Not that he was in the best shape himself. There was blood trickling from his nose now.

“You wouldn’t mind telling me who’s Doctor Frankenstein, would you?” he shouted over the ruckus. “I doubt you’re cooking the Nomu up yourselves, especially after Kurogiri was captured.”

Hoarse laughter was his answer. “Anything else you want to know?”

“Which hole you hid yourselves in, maybe?”

“We’ve moved on to bigger and better things. You’ll see soon enough,” he crooned.

The confidence was disturbing…

The sound of an explosion and a wave of heat from somewhere that wasn’t Dabi drew his eyes to the sky. Endeavor. It was followed by a slow clap.

“Well, would you look at that, he’s finally showed up.” The words were mocking, but they were just dripping with hatred.

Nobuto rocked the earth again, forcing him into the air again.

“That wasn’t polite,” he continued in his aggravating voice.

“You think that Nomu of yours can take them all on?” Nobuto asked.

“Nah. I just thought it’d be funny to ruin your day.”

He couldn’t tell whether the corpse man intended that to be sarcastic or not. Not that it mattered.

This time, as he moved the earth, he had the wave open like a hungry maw and try to swallow him instead. Even if it didn’t work completely, seeing Dabi thrown to the dirt gave him some small satisfaction.

“Don’t get overconfident,” he snarked, adding insult to injury.

He heard Dabi croak something under his breath, but he couldn’t hear what. He had just touched his hands to the earth again when he heard laughter again.

“Don’t bother; I’m leaving anyway. Rise as high as you can, Hero.”

Nobuto provoked the earth to reach up and swallow him again, but he didn’t fall for the same trick twice, unfortunately. He watched him rocket away, allowing the earth sticking to him to fall away.

Blood was still trickling from his nose, but it had slowed. The bigger issue was the adrenaline fleeing him, and how he was drenched in sweat. He urged Overhaul to fix some of his worst burns, but the lightheadedness had worsened into a headache, and he was hesitant to muck around with himself in this state.

He let himself sit, looking around at the destruction. The COX Studios building had turned into a slab of melted brick and cement, the neon pink sign hanging over its roof having melted into something grotesque.

The fields outside looked like a warzone; burnt grass, craters, trenches…

Another explosion drew his eyes to the sky again. It was five-against-one now with Hawks and Endeavor, but even then, the Nomu was a sight to behold as it put itself back together again and again.

It ended with Mirko and Hawks knocking its head off, only for Endeavor to grab it as it was already regenerating and take it high into the sky. For a moment, it was like a second sun had appeared in the sky, and he felt some of the heat released even from here.

For all his worries and fears, he never lost the simple wonder of seeing a Quirk in action.

He sighed, lying back on the grass. He’d spent so much time getting the hang of his stolen Quirk that he had let everything else slip his mind.

If whoever was behind the Nomu could throw away a monstrosity like that on nothing but a test run, and that was what this was, then this was just the beginning.

It was only a question of how long it would take to drown them all in Nomu…

AN: And so ends the Overhaul Arc and the Nomu Arc begins.