Chapter 20

Chapter 20

What does it feel like to fall from a great height?

Wind rushing past your sides, cliffs falling away from you, dizziness, inability to breathe, your insides twisted up?

No.

It’s a searing heat.

It’s blood boiling, burning, rapidly diminishing.

It’s something trapped inside, rampaging and shrieking.

It’s falling but feeling like you’re on fire.

[If this continues, I’ll die]

Kirisame’s head was pounding, her vision blurring. Though only a second had passed, it felt like she'd been fighting for a year.

Amid the howling, piercing wind, a voice grew from far to near, then exploded in her mind.

Kirisame forced herself to pick that voice out of the chaos through the pain. It was a somewhat familiar male voice, also in agony, so gut-wrenching it tasted like blood.

Grab—my—hand

The girl gritted her teeth fiercely, and her right hand, convulsed from pain and weakness, suddenly grasped.

She grabbed the hilt of a platinum-toned tachi.

The black flame in her right eye blazed up, the crane pattern’s wings flared upward, nearly spilling from her eye, casting a dark shadow.

Through blurred vision, she saw the wavering silhouette of a man in white high above. His golden eyes—just like hers—glowed faintly red. He was clearly in agony too, his back trembling as he bent over.

"Tachi Tsurumaru Kuninaga... This sudden appearance... Did I scare you?"

The girl's plummeting body stopped mid-air, hung for a second, then shot upward.

Below, a fierce fight was going on.

A total of twenty-one students and two teachers had been scattered to different locations by an enemy with a teleportation Quirk, each facing enemies numbering several times their own.

Yaoyorozu Momo, Jirou Kyouka, and Kaminari Denki were located in the hill zone. The black mist had dropped them onto one of two mountains connected by a suspension bridge over a sheer cliff.

"The enemy is trying to separate and pick us off one by one, so the other students must be scattered across different areas," said the girl with the high ponytail, her voice still calm and steady amid the slowly approaching enemies.

"Now that you mention it, when I fell, I think I caught a glimpse of something black..." The blond boy touched his head, holding a weapon his teammate had made, his face gradually falling into horror.

"It's... the corner of a black outfit! It just fell!!"

"No way?! This is a cliff area!!"

As if in answer to the headphone girl's words, a black figure shot up from the bottomless chasm in front of them.

Everyone, students and enemies alike, was startled.

Too fast to make out, but when it flashed close, a glint of gold let Yaoyorozu recognize her in an instant.

"Kirisame-san!!"

The second she said it, Kirisame was already on the ground.

—But she didn't slow down at all.

She didn't stop. Like a cannonball, she shot past them at breakneck speed straight up, quickly becoming a black dot.

The three of them were stunned.

"Of course it's Kirisame-san," Kaminari stammered.

"Maybe she's going to back up the teachers..." Yaoyorozu felt something was wrong, but the sneering enemies closing in gave her no time to think.

"Let's focus on the enemies in front of us!"

None of them saw that the figure that shot into the sky never stopped. It kept that speed and crashed into the USJ dome with a thunderous roar, hitting the solid roof. Then it ricocheted downward, and in the next moment, veered and flew straight toward another spot.

Kirisame was in really bad shape.

She knew her ability was hard to control. The swords she fought with had different personalities and unknown powers. One slip during use could be disastrous.

But she'd never been this out of control before.

The sword in her hand had saved her from being splattered on impact, but things hadn't improved at all.

Couldn't put it away, couldn't stop it.

The tachi was rocketing around the sky wildly, changing direction every time it hit something. Under the dome, it spun, flipped, sped up, and slowed down like in a giant dryer.

But she couldn't count on this guy to settle down.

—If he let go at this height, she'd definitely fall to her death. A hundred percent.

The girl, clutching the hilt for dear life, finally let out a pained, blood-choked cry.

The wind in her face made it hard to breathe. That full-force crash had nearly rattled her organs out. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that Kirisame felt like she was on fire.

Kirisame knew her black flame was just her ability manifesting, not real fire with heat or properties. But now, she wasn't so sure.

Maybe a volcano erupted inside her, the girl thought weakly.

The pain was so bad she could barely think.

The situation at the citadel wasn't good either.

The sky, normally the blue-green of late spring, kept flickering to darkness. The sun looked like a faulty old light bulb.

Yagen fell to the ground, clutching his chest. Bottles and jars in the repair room clattered everywhere.

...What's happening?

Ever since Tsurumaru-sama was suddenly summoned away, things had gone wrong.

Newly summoned swords had to endure the agony of being engulfed in fire, forging a bond stronger than with the citadel master.

But ever since the Young Lady's first time at age seven, Yagen hadn't felt this in a long time.

Their bond with their Lady was something none of them had experienced in their long years as sword spirits, so no one knew what was going on.

"It must be a sudden emergency; her ability is temporarily out of control," said Ichigo Hitofuri. Bearing the pain, he gathered his unsteady younger brothers, calming his own worry. "It'll be fine. Let's wait for Tsurumaru-sama to

In the midst of the noise outside the door, the most reliable and most beautiful of the Five Great Swords, Mikazuki Munechika, set down his teacup.

He sighed so softly it was barely perceptible.

The one they were worrying about, Tsurumaru Kuninaga, was now stuck in his true form, lost in a dream.

As a master of surprise attacks as a crane-type tsukumogami, he had occasionally speculated about what his abilities would be, and had secretly hoped that on that day, he would give Kirisame a big surprise she'd never forget.

But even in his wildest dreams, he had never imagined such a situation.

...This wasn't just a surprise—it was downright terrifying.

Unable to maintain his tsukumogami body, the white-haired tachi, dizzy from pain and completely out of control, was experiencing what it felt like when a human with a fever chugs cheap booze.

...No, no, maybe it was a life flashing before his eyes?

Vague fragments flashed through his mind—the face of the long-retired former saniwa, the bureaucrats from the Time Agency, scenes he was sure he'd never lived through, until everything faded into darkness.

As consciousness slipped away, the tachi smiled bitterly.

Well, this was a disaster. The impression he'd leave would be way too strong...

Kirisame was making one hell of a racket.

After she lost control again and crashed into the ornate ceiling with a loud "clang," she successfully caught the attention of those below.

Tomura Shigaraki pressed a hand to the back of his neck, reluctantly looking up.

What he saw was a massive, no-safety-bar aerial rollercoaster crash.

"..."

Shigaraki lowered his head blankly, feeling an even stronger itch on his neck.

"Clanking around is driving me crazy!" The leader of the League of Villains, covered with hands, stopped scratching his neck frantically and revealed a malicious expression. "This can't be some trick, can it?"

He clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Kurogiri, bring her down."

Shota Aizawa, in the middle of a fierce battle, cursed under his breath. "Damn it."

He had just realized that the kid might be having a problem—this loss of control could only mean one thing: a Quirk going berserk.

Usually, this only happened to children who had just manifested their Quirks, or to those who had suffered a major shock or scare. The girl must have been thrown into some situation earlier to cause this sudden loss of control.

Normally, it would be a simple matter of looking at her, but now, even if he could erase her Quirk, catching her would be impossible, and even if he got her down, she'd be surrounded by enemies with no escape.

...Might as well give up already.

Kirisame's old habit reared its ugly head again.

"What are you doing, trying to die?! Pull yourself together, damn it!!!"

A guttural, furious shout pierced across most of the grounds.

Katsuki Bakugo grabbed an enemy by the head, flung him into another, sending them both tumbling. He stood with one foot on the ruins, roaring at Kirisame in the distance.

Though the voice was faint when it reached her, it successfully snapped her back to her senses a bit.

Fighting the urge to vomit, Kirisame gritted her teeth and forced herself to activate her rampaging Quirk, calling out Aizen.

This maneuver made her spit blood, but the effect was significant—she now had the short sword's hilt in her other hand.

...Even if she couldn't decide the direction of movement, as long as she could accelerate at the right moment, she could roughly control her own trajectory.

Blinking hard to stabilize her vision, Kirisame judged the timing as her rampaging Quirk once again launched her into the sky, then accelerated at the perfect moment, twisting her trajectory into a bizarre path, narrowly dodging a pincer attack from below.

The ranged attackers below had their Quirks erased by Shota Aizawa, who had rushed over, leaving them battered and useless. Kurogiri was splitting his attention, fighting with Thirteen while also chasing Kirisame in the air, cursing bitterly under his breath, until he was finally dragged down by the students below and reluctantly abandoned the aerial battlefield.

[Anyway, she won't be coming down anytime soon. Shigaraki can wait a bit.]

Seeing her last move and realizing she wasn't completely unconscious, Shota Aizawa thought the same.

[Anyway, she won't be coming down anytime soon. That's safer than landing on the ground.]

Noticing her trouble but unable to break away, Katsuki Bakugo also thought the same, roaring to give her a push.

[Anyway, she won't be coming down anytime soon. Just stay up there and don't get in the way.]

With that thought, both sides simultaneously lowered their heads and returned to their own battles.

"..."

Kirisame, considered by both friend and foe as someone they could ignore for now, felt terrible.

...For some reason, she felt a bit wronged.

A strange sense of shame and frustration instantly snapped her back to full awareness. Completely letting go of Aizen, no longer caring where she would crash, Kirisame took a deep breath, steadied her arm, which had been sliced open by the sharp ceiling carvings, and focused her pain-racked brain to regain control of her body.

Directly below, Shigaraki was extremely annoyed.

The fly was still buzzing around nearly five minutes after he gave the order, with no change. Having fought this long without seeing a single sign of All Might, Shigaraki felt even more irritated.

Grabbing a hero's elbow and activating his Quirk, the young man thought casually.

—Might as well let Noumu come out and play.

Midoriya, hiding in the pool, felt terrible.

Ever since the brain-exposed monster began to move, the situation had been deteriorating.

Kirisame in the air had likely lost control of her Quirk. He had already broken two fingers, and if he jumped up now, his legs would be useless, meaning either both would be clinging to the sword or both would fall and lose mobility. Asui's tongue couldn't reach that far, and if she forcibly grabbed Kirisame, Kirisame's Quirk might lash out at her.

...He could only hope that Uraraka could break free, or that Kirisame could stay in the air until reinforcements arrived.

The bigger problem, though, was still—

—on the teacher's side.

The black-haired teacher's blood was slowly seeping out from beneath him, the air seeming to freeze.

But none of them noticed. Not Midoriya and his group, who were desperately covering their mouths to keep from screaming; not Tomura Shigaraki, nodding in satisfaction at Noumu's combat power; not Kurogiri, annoyed that he had let a student escape. —The sound from the air was gradually dying down.