ShuraZero
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Chapter 90: Embers in the Alley
🕑 Added 2025-07-22 22:11:36 +0000 UTCThe silence that followed Stain's defeat was almost more deafening than the battle itself. The only sound was the drip of a broken pipe somewhere in the darkness and the ragged breathing of the girls. Immobilized in the cocoon of hardened foam, Stain was a grotesque sculpture in the center of the alley. His eyes, visible through an opening, burned with an impotent hatred, a beacon of madness in the gloom.
"Momo, it's over!" Ochako's voice was a trembling thread, a mixture of disbelief and relief. "We got him! We really got him!"
Momo, however, did not share her euphoria. Her face was a mask of cold determination. She momentarily ignored Izuku, who was lying in a pool of his own blood, and walked with steady steps toward the foam cocoon. The sound of her broken heels on the wet asphalt was sharp and deliberate.
Not for revenge. For protocol. To protect them.
"He's not neutralized," she said, her voice as cold as steel. "He's still conscious. He remains a threat until he's unconscious."
Stain's voice, muffled by the foam, was a venomous hiss.
"Fakes… cowards… all of you… The purge… isn't over…"
Momo didn't answer. The skin on her hand glowed, steam rising from it as she created a professional-looking Taser, much more powerful than the one she had made before. The hum of the electrical charge filled the silence. She pressed the electrodes against the hardened foam, which conducted the electricity. Her gray eyes, normally serene, were now two shards of ice.
"This ends now."
She pulled the trigger. An electric arc crackled violently, and the foam cocoon convulsed as Stain's body suffered a brutal shock. Muffled grunts and sounds of a struggle came from within. Momo held the trigger down for five long, silent seconds, her face impassive, until Stain's eyes rolled back in his head and his head fell. Finally, unconscious.
In that same instant, Yu's paralysis vanished. Sensation returned to her limbs with a painful rush of pins and needles that made her groan.
"Dammit… that stings like hell." She looked at her leg, where the dagger had sliced the flesh open. "In the muscle… Doesn't look like it hit the tibial artery. Got lucky."
She ignored her own wound and crawled to Izuku's side, adrenaline giving her strength she shouldn't have.
"Momo, I need gauze, a disinfectant, and a coagulant! Now!" her professional tone took over, though her voice still held an underlying tremor. "Ochako, maintain pressure! But not directly on the sword wound, around it! Avoid the main arteries!"
"I can't look, I can't look…!" Ochako sobbed, her hands shaking so much she could barely apply pressure, her eyes squeezed shut. "There's… there's so much blood!"
Momo, already creating the supplies with feverish speed, knelt on the other side. Her voice was soft but firm, a pillar of calm in Ochako's storm of panic.
"Ochako-san, breathe. Listen to me." She waited until her friend's tear-filled eyes met hers. "Remember the ability Izuku gained when he read my manual. His cellular regeneration is much faster than a normal person's. The wound is terrible, but his system is already fighting back. He will heal."
Ochako looked at her, clinging to her words like a drowning person to a plank.
"Really? You're not… you're not just saying that to calm me down?"
"Logic does not lie, Ochako-san," Momo stated, her own voice gaining strength as she passed Yu a pack of sterile bandages. "His recovery ability is an empirical fact I observed at the hospital. He's going to get better, he's going to wake up, and he'll probably complain that we missed dessert. Everything will go back to normal."
While Yu cleaned the wound with clinical efficiency, Toru approached, hugging herself, trembling from head to toe.
"God…" her voice was barely a whisper. "I really thought we were going to die. Every time he moved… it was like death itself was brushing past us. His gaze… it was like looking into an abyss." She looked at Izuku's motionless body, tears finally welling up. "If you guys hadn't arrived… I don't think he would have survived much longer. He gave us every second he had. Every drop of blood."
Izuku's eyelids fluttered and opened. His vision was a blur. The first thing he registered were faces. Four beautiful girls' faces, looking down at him with a concern so intense it was almost tangible. Yu, Momo, Ochako, Toru. Their silhouettes were framed against the Hosu night sky, tinged orange by distant fires.
Huh…? Is the ceiling… the night sky? And… angels… Four of them… with very large chests… Wait a minute. Again? It can't be!
The familiarity of the situation hit him with an almost comical force.
Ah, no, it's the alley! Pain. A lot of pain.
He tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in his chest and shoulder made him groan and lie back down. The girls immediately fussed around him.
"Don't you move, you idiot!" Yu ordered, her brusque tone hiding immense relief. "You have a hole in your chest the size of my fist. Have some respect for your own anatomy."
"What… what happened?" his voice was hoarse, a sandpaper whisper. "Stain?"
Yu finished applying a pressure bandage, her touch surprisingly delicate. She gave him a small, tired smile.
"Relax, my dear Izuku. You and your fan club took care of the problem. Impressive teamwork." Her gaze fell on Momo and Ochako. "You all should consider starting an agency together. Or better yet, with him. You'd be unstoppable."
Ochako and Momo blushed furiously at the implication.
"Yu-san!" Ochako protested, though without much conviction.
"It is a tactically viable synergy," Momo muttered, avoiding everyone's gaze.
The tension broke for an instant, replaced by a strange, exhausted camaraderie. But it was interrupted by the arrival of two new figures. Two silhouettes of heroes burst into the alley, their costumes a stark contrast to the filthy surroundings. It was Shoto Todoroki and Tenya Iida.
They stopped short, their eyes widening in disbelief. They saw Yu, Toru, and the others, all wounded and covered in grime. They saw Izuku on the ground, gravely injured, his chest hastily bandaged. And they saw the monster they had been hunting, Stain, defeated and wrapped in a foam cocoon.
"It's… it's him!" Iida's voice was a choked whisper, a mix of awe and venomous disappointment. "The Hero Killer! You've… you've captured him!"
Shoto's two-toned gaze assessed the scene with analytical speed.
"Defeated. And you all are… seriously injured. What happened here?"
Yu's eyes narrowed as she recognized Iida's armor. She stood up, limping slightly, and her expression turned severe, that of a mentor about to teach a very hard lesson.
"You. You're Iida, right? Ingenium's brother." She walked toward him, her presence intimidating despite her civilian clothes and her injury. Iida stood straighter, his posture defensive.
"I… I am here on an official mission with—"
"Don't lie to me, kid," Yu cut him off, her voice like a whip. "I see it in your eyes. That stupid, self-destructive rage. I came to this city to sell burgers, not to watch some hero wannabe with a martyr complex get himself killed. Let me guess: you came to Hosu for revenge."
Iida flinched but didn't answer. His silence was a confession.
"Do you have any idea what this monster would have done to you if you had found him alone?" Yu continued, her voice rising. "He would have torn you apart in ten seconds. Your brother is a true hero. He would have never done something so stupid and selfish. You're staining his name with this pathetic crusade! Revenge makes smart-ass kids stupid, and then it makes them corpses!"
She turned and nodded her head toward Izuku, who was being helped to sit up by Ochako. Yu's voice softened, but remained firm, weighted with experience.
"You aspiring heroes should learn from him." Her gaze landed on Izuku with a mix of exasperation and deep respect. "That boy, without a combat Quirk, became a shield, a strategist, and the pillar that held us up. He understood the gravity of the situation and became the foundation that kept us from sinking. He impaled himself on that monster's sword to give us a chance. That's what being a hero is, kid. Not seeking a stupid death for a wounded ego."
And he saved my life… I felt that dagger coming for me. I felt the end. The real, absolute end. And he… that foolish kid got in the way. For me. A shiver ran down her spine, a vestige of the overwhelming fear she had felt. She masked it with a sigh.
She turned to Shoto, her tone shifting to one of pure professionalism. The lesson was over; now she needed information.
"Enough of this. What's going on out there? We saw explosions, it was total chaos when we came in here. What the hell is attacking the city?"
The question hung in the air, a reminder that while this battle was over, the war for Hosu was just beginning.
