Chapter Text
Izuku and Iida emerged from the treeline to see a rather disturbing sight. Kaminari and Jiro dead on the ground, their bodies mutilated. Standing behind them were the rest of their class, aiming their aggression at the two boys.
“Stop right there!” Setsuna demanded, to which Izuku and Iida complied. They already knew the situation thanks to Raia, so there was no confusion.
“Okay so how do we sort this out?” Setsuna was ninety-nine percent certain that the Izuku before her was the real one. She’d seen his power, there was no way he’d die to one of these things. But both of the Mosaics that they had killed were capable of copying and evolving Awakened abilities. If one had copied Izuku, they would all be dead. Then again, if they had copied Izuku and his true power, then he wouldn’t have needed to play a long-term con game. He could have just killed them instantly with Gravity Magic.
“Their hearts are the only defining feature,” Maigo said.
“What about memories?”
Aizawa shook his head. “Kaminari and Jiro’s clones knew what we were talking about with the search and rescue team, they knew the locations we were in, and they knew our names and how we would behave. That’s not an acceptable way to determine who’s human and who isn’t.”
Izuku, hearing all that, went to utilize two Magics at once, Gravity and Soul. With Gravity Magic, he was capable of essentially mapping a human body, scanning them. Because gravity affects anything with mass, he had a clear view of human internals. He was able to note the abnormality in Copy-Jiro and Copy-Kaminari’s hearts, and was also able to see that, for the moment, the rest of the class was clean.
And just in case, he used Soul Magic to see that everyone’s Soul looked normal. There was a chance that Mosaics could mimic Souls as well, so Izuku would need to keep an eye out for that.
“Just listen to my heart,” Izuku answered. “It’s low-tech, just need a stethoscope.”
Everyone looked to the biologist, Maigo. She shrugged. “It was what Brandon was gonna try with the townsfolk. But we still don’t know if they use Magic to hide the abnormal movements of a heart with something inside of it. We’ll need a live mimic to know for sure.”
“They looked a bit pale,” Yui noted. “Maybe the copies were paler because their blood flow was bad.”
“Alright, then we’ll have to trust that for now,” Setsuna acknowledged, grabbing a stethoscope from the morgue. She was the safest choice after all. Her body parts could split off and regenerate, so there was no threat upon getting close.
Both Iida and Izuku removed the chest plates of their Hero outfits, revealing impressive physiques beneath them. Maigo directed her in noting certain abnormal sounds.
Setsuna listened to Iida’s heart, then Izuku’s.
“They’re clean as far as I can tell,” She said with a sigh.
“We encountered one in the woods,” Izuku said, walking closer to the class. “It didn’t look anything like a human.”
“They’ve evolved at an extremely rapid pace,” Iida concluded, essentially just relaying information from Raia without mentioning him. In a situation where distrust would run rampant, bringing up a metal man feeding them details whilst also keeping them trapped on the island and wanting to burn it down would invariably make things more difficult.
Izuku briefly considered revealing his Monarch status to the class, but reconsidered upon thinking about what Raia had said. “Its arrival was arranged by the Monarchs to greatly weaken humanity.”
The Mosaics were on Earth to weaken humanity, so that some force, named the Monarchs, could more easily… conquer? Eliminate? Whatever the case, they could have served as information gatherers as well. Revealing his true nature could be dangerous. If this was the start of a war, some sort of first strike, then information was a critical piece of the battles to come. Izuku didn’t need to reveal himself yet, so he’d stay silent.
“These two used Quirks, better versions of Kaminari and Jiro’s even. They evolved their abilities.”
“Wait… then where are the real Kaminari and Jiro?” Izuku asked, suddenly realizing the gravity of the two copies on the ground. It was a lot to process all at once.
“Bakugo and Esil are out looking for them,” Aizawa said. “Brandon’s working with the town’s government positions to try and start a quarantine.”
Izuku nodded. He would’ve liked to go out and help the search effort himself, but he was also the strongest person in the group. He trusted Esil to keep Bakugo and the others safe. She was a pretty powerful force on her own, likely an XS-Rank due to her extremely powerful Barrier and Healing Magic. She was possibly on the cusp of the world’s first National-Rank with a support role. She may have been a Chaos Inhabitant, but she was also on the side of peace for both sides. “We need to focus on the quarantine first. Then we’ll need to find where these things are coming from and kill them, otherwise this won’t stop.”
Aizawa narrowed his eyes, likely curious as to how Izuku knew that, but it was no time to be questioning tactics. Izuku, Momo, and Iida were the smartest of the class, the best at directing teams, and they had the most cumulative knowledge about Villains overall. Momo wasn’t there, so they’d have to rely on Izuku and Iida.
“Set up a perimeter first, congregate everyone we know is human in a central location so we can protect them, then begin marching across the island to exterminate everything left.”
It was, in all honesty, a somewhat risky procedure to gather everyone in a single location. But at the same time, there was no other way to handle it. If everyone was too spread out, then the creatures would be able to start picking people off.
“Catalina Casino,” Aizawa concluded. “It’s big enough to hold the town on the many floors and we can easily monitor the entry points.”
It wasn’t exactly ideal, but Avalon was a pretty small city all things considered. The Catalina Casino, the distinctive dome shape that everyone spotted upon approaching the island, would be extremely crowded trying to house all of the inhabitants, but it was also the only real choice.
“We should sink the boats in the docks so no one can leave,” Yui proposed.
“Uh… about that,” Izuku winced. “No one can leave at all. There’s a barrier around the island. It’s why everything shut off.”
“Who put the barrier up?” Tokoyami asked, to which Izuku shrugged. It hurt him to lie about something that important, but he had no choice.
“At the very least, that’s one less problem to worry about. Nothing can escape,” Iida concluded.
Thankfully, everyone accepted that detail with a simple nod. There was too much to be done to fret over the mystery of everything happening and who was behind it.
“First things first,” Aizawa said as the group began to walk into the city, “We need a live subject so that we can confirm our identification process.”
As they crested the hill that the medical center was situated on, they were greeted with quite the chaotic scene. Everyone was out and about, milling around the streets with candles or even hand-cranked flashlights. Because the technology inside the flashlights was so simple, they worked even in Mana rich environments.
People were gathering around the city hall, which was only a few minutes walk from the medical center. Some people were heading up the hill, having seen and heard the signs of battle.
“What’s going on?”
“Why is the power out?”
“Who’s attacking us?”
They battered the Japanese folks with questions they didn’t understand. Thankfully, Maigo stepped up, answering the questions and waving the rest of the class towards city hall.
The scene at city hall was no different, with people shouting in anger and confusion. Izuku had a difficult time blaming them for their chaotic behavior. They had endured a bunch of people going missing, with no help from their government. Friends and family just disappearing without any outrage from the people who could do something. And now, on top of that, they were locked inside a blackout, one that was of mysterious origins.
When the citizens saw the class approaching, somewhat battered and their clothes cut up from the medical center collapse, their frenzy quelled just slightly. These were people from an entirely different country, who were putting their time and effort into the situation. Just as Izuku couldn’t blame the townsfolk, they felt great shame for having any sort of outrage towards the Heroes that were doing more for them than their own government.
They stepped aside and let the class enter the hall, where even more people were crowded. Thankfully, an official spotted the group and led them over to a locked door, behind which was Brandon and the mayor, a middle-aged woman with brown hair.
“Good, you’re here,” Brandon responded, before swinging his hand through the air and bringing it down on the back of the mayor’s neck with a disturbing CRACK!
The woman fell over.
“What the hell?!” Kirishima went to punch Brandon, but Izuku stopped him.
“It’s a copy!” Izuku shouted, having sensed the same thing.
Setsuna rushed forwards whilst the Mosaic repaired its broken neck. The rest of the class jumped on top of the mayor’s limbs, just in case she repaired in time to fight back.
Everyone was quiet as Setsuna listened to the woman’s heart. “It’s different… for sure. It beats slower and it sounds like a hissing sound instead of pumping.”
“How’d you know she was a copy?” Izuku asked Brandon.
“The mayor I knew would jump into action to get things done. Before you guys showed up, she was trying her damndest to get the government involved. But when I brought up the situation with the mimics, she tried to take a calm, reserved approach. She tried brushing me off.”
“So they have the memories of who they copy, but that doesn’t mean they’ll act exactly the same…” Izuku muttered.
“Uhh…” The class muttered as the Mosaic began to writhe, getting back control of its body from the neck down paralysis. “What do we do?”
“We kill her,” Brandon said, stepping forwards and plunging his hand towards her heart. His fist shimmered for just a second before making contact with the Mosaic’s flesh, and a sound like glass shattering filled the office. His face contorted in anguish for a moment, but he swiftly regained the same dead look in his eyes that Izuku had seen when they first met.
“What was that?” Izuku asked. He was shocked that a C-Rank could so easily dispatch one of the Mosaics, who were supposedly between C and A-Rank. The mayor was probably on the lower end of the spectrum and had people holding her down, but Izuku felt that she was at least B-Rank, judging by the energy he had sensed from her heart.
“A Skill called Lethality. It boosts damage to weak spots on my targets. Sounds more useful than it is.”
Izuku could guess what he meant. Humans had been killing each other since they first existed. All humans had similar weak points. But Villains could come in any shape or size, seemingly. And sometimes their biology didn’t mesh with classical understandings of biology. So Brandon could use it no problem against other humans, or Mosaics with human-like biology, but anything else was kind of a crapshoot.
“It’s up to us now,” Brandon said. “All of you get stethoscopes from the medical facilities and meet me at the Catalina Casino. I’ll address the town. I’m probably the only one left alive that they trust…” He took one last fleeting look at the Mosaic on the floor, her face one of pain and shock. “Dammit…” He left the room, going to address the crowd.
“Alright,” Aizawa said, trying to draw his student’s gaze away from the woman, “We know what we have to do now.”
*******
“I-I-I don’t know what to do!” Jiro’s hands wildly danced in the air. She wanted to do something, to help, but there was nothing to be done.
“Just… calm…” Kaminari winced, every breath, every movement, every word, was painful. All for one simple reason. There was a knife, made of a bony material, stabbed into Kaminari’s heart.
Shortly after making it to the Marine Institute in an attempt to hide from whatever was in the forest, something, cloaked in shadows, had leapt out from the brush and stabbed Kaminari in the chest. But before the figure could finish them off, they heard a growling from the woods and the figure took that as a sign to run.
They still had no idea what was happening, but they had at least found a room in the institute to hide in. Jiro had been able to drag her friend inside and lock the door, though it was unlikely to keep anything out. They just had to hope nothing would find them.
The only positive to the situation was that Kaminari didn’t seem to be bleeding too heavily. And thankfully, both of them had basic first aid knowledge and knew that pulling out the blade would kill Kaminari for certain, as it was the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.
But even just dragging him into the room had shifted the knife ever so slightly and he was bleeding faster than before. Jiro wouldn’t be able to carry him in a way that prevented the knife from moving more. Trying to make it back to Avalon would likely kill Kaminari in the process.
“Okay…” She took a deep breath and steeled her nerves. “I’m going to make it back to the city and get you help.”
Kaminari lightly grabbed her arm and shook his head. “Too… dangerous.”
“I can make it!” She protested. “For all we know there was just one of those things.”
“Growling…” It was all Kaminari could do to say that one word, but thankfully, it was all he needed. The figure that had stabbed him ran away from something else, something more dangerous. He wasn’t telling Jiro to stay because he wanted someone with him, he was telling her to stay because he knew it would risk her life for his. That was an exchange he wasn’t willing to make.
“I-”
The distinctive THUNK… THUNK… THUNK… of footsteps cut Jiro off. The two of them were behind a solid desk, hidden from the doorway’s view, but if something checked inside, they would certainly find them.
“Czzz… Come ooooooouuuut….” The voice wasn’t human. It sounded like a computer glitching, creating disturbing voices by accident. It was trying to mimic humans, and it was failing, perhaps on purpose even. It may have been trying to unnerve them on purpose, to make them easier targets. Neither knew it, but the Mosaics were extremely intelligent.
“Weeeee justzzz want your…” The footsteps and the voice went silent.
Jiro, her body shielding Kaminari, felt a presence fall over her. She looked up to see a creature leaning over the desk, staring down at them. It was just glistening red flesh, with two bloodshot eyeballs staring down at them, hunger in its eyes. Jiro hadn’t even heard the door unlock and open.
“Flesh…” It hissed.
Jiro froze, her body paralyzed by fear. Her body was telling her to run, to fight, to do anything other than nothing.
Thankfully, Kaminari was there. He couldn’t shoot lightning from his position, but he could send an electric shock through his body, to where he was holding Jiro’s arm. It quite literally shocked her out of it, but that didn’t mean she was safe.
Before she could set off any Sonic Magic in the creature’s disturbing face, an elongated limb flew around the desk, grabbing Jiro by the collar of her clothes and flinging her into the wall. She went crashing through it, rolling through the sandy beach.
She recovered just in time to see the creature unhinge its jaw around Kaminari’s head.
“NO!”
As Jiro shouted, a bloody man appeared from behind the monster, with a shimmering gold knife in his hands. He brought it down with all his might onto the creature’s back, cutting straight to its heart and shattering the gem.
Both the man and the monster collapsed in a disgusting heap of flesh and blood atop Kaminari.
Jiro rushed back inside, throwing the flesh creature off Kaminari. Thankfully, it hadn’t landed on the knife in his chest.
The man, bloodied and bruised, looked like some sort of action hero at the end of a movie, barely alive. Just by vibration alone, Jiro could tell he had a fracture in his leg, there was a huge gash on his back, and he had hit his head, judging by the massive bump there.
“You two… are human… right?” He breathed out, the knife clattering from his hands.
“Y-Yeah…” Jiro responded hesitantly.
“Oh thank god… I’ve had to kill… 4 of those things before they could copy me…”
“Who are you?”
“Noah… Alder,” His eyes drooped, but he clenched his fist, barely remaining awake.
“You’re that assassin Brandon told us about…”
He gulped, his throat dry from so long in the wilderness. “I saw one of those things grab someone at night… I tried to chase ‘em, thinking it was just another serial killer or psycho… I didn’t think anything of it, I’ve killed worse. Didn’t expect ‘em to be fucking monsters… I’ve been playing cat and mouse with these things for days… couldn’t make it back to town, couldn’t let them copy me… for Blake… and Lia…”
Jiro knew he had no Awakened powers, yet he had killed something that had thrown Jiro like a ragdoll? Not only that, but he killed four of them?! Blake must’ve been his wife, the one they’d seen in the streets, and Lia was probably his kid. Noah was probably under the assumption that they would mimic his form, return to town, and kill his family before replacing them as well.
“You speak… Japanese?” Kaminari faintly asked.
“Always there to ask the important questions,” Jiro teased him, discreetly wiping away the wetness from the corners of her eyes.
“I’ve been all over… killed people all over the world…” Noah responded. Both he and Kaminari were barely conscious. “The blade is in his aorta. He’ll live as long as you don’t pull it out. But… we need a surgeon.”
“Kinda short on those at the moment!” Jiro deadpanned, trying to keep her head on straight. The two people in front of her were practically dead men walking. Well, maybe not walking…
Noah let out a gargled sigh. “Go… I’ll protect this one…” He said, scooping up his knife. “Just need time to catch my breath… You’re Awakened, so you can make it…” He scowled at the fleshy mimic behind him, a disgusting attempt to take his place in the word. “Swim out, and then follow the coast. You’ll make it to… Avalon’s docks… They can’t swim…”
“But… I… I don’t know how to swim…” Jiro admitted, her face growing red from embarrassment.
“Oh… then we’re probably fucked…”
“But my friends will be looking for us!” She protested.
Noah shook his head. “I had to intercept my copies and put them down before they could head for town. If you’re not actively getting in their way, then they’re probably already at town, convincing your friends that they’re the real… deal…” He trailed off as another sound began to reach them.
Thump… Thump… Thump…
Jiro felt her blood rushing in her ears. Noah was in no state to fight, and Kaminari obviously wasn’t either. It would be up to her to kill this one. She took the knife from Noah without much effort, gripping it tightly, sweat making the leather handle slick.
Thump… THUMP… THUMP!!!
The sound was getting louder and louder… until it was clear that it wasn’t footsteps… it was explosions.
Jiro peeked her head back outside, seeing small bursts of light briefly illuminate two figures in the sky.
Jiro let out a sigh of relief, throwing her arms up and using the glint of the moon on the knife to grab the attention of Bakugo and Esil.
Bakugo hit the ground hard, sending sand spraying in every direction, while Esil landed gracefully without so much as a sound. Her feet hovered over the sand, like she was walking on air.
“So… how do we know they’re real?” Bakugo asked.
“I can see it now… Yes, their Souls are different from the Souls of their copies. They are the real deal.”
“How come you couldn’t tell us that earlier?” Bakugo barked out rudely.
“They are good at creating approximations of the human Soul, which is an indistinct shape all on its own. Trying to compare Souls is like trying to compare brains, it is not easy.” She walked over to Jiro, who was trembling ever so slightly. “Are you injured?”
“No… no…” She fell to her knees in the sand. “Kaminari…”
“Of course,” Esil nodded and went into the small building where Kaminari was lying.
“Oh… hey beautiful… fancy seeing you here…”
Esil smiled kindly at his attempt to lighten the mood. “This will hurt…”
“You know… some men pay money to be stepped on… girls as pretty as… GAH!”
In one swift motion, Esil had yanked the knife out of his chest, drawing it straight up so as to not do anymore damage. She pressed her hands against his chest, pumping her Healing Magic as quickly as possible as blood was spraying out at an alarming rate. Kamiari swiftly passed out, and in another minute or so, he’d die.
But Esil’s Healing Magic was top notch. She couldn’t stop Kaminari from passing out from the intense blood loss, but within just another second, the entirety of the damage was repaired. “He’ll live, but he needs time to recover,” Esil said, directing her attention to Noah Adler, who was similarly unconscious now. His wounds were far less serious, but they had festered for some time in a rather harsh environment. He too would need a great deal of time to recover, especially since he was just human. At the very least, everyone present would live.
“We need to get back to town.” Esil piled up Noah and Kaminari onto her shoulders. It would be a rough ride, but it was the only way to not drag them back through the forest on foot.
“Ugh… I hate giving rides,” Bakugo scowled, crouching down so Jiro could hop onto his back. “Don’t let go, Earphones!”
Jiro tightened her grip as Bakugo began to detonate explosions beneath himself. He was shaky at first, trying to adjust to the weight of two people, but within a few seconds, he got a handle on it. “Let’s go!”
*******
“Guys… I have an idea…” Izuku said as he, Iida, Setsuna, and Yui, headed for the Catalina Casino. Minus Esil, it was everyone that knew about Izuku’s powers. “I have the ability to add power to people’s Souls by using other Souls I have stored. I’m still not one-hundred percent sure how it works, but I might be able to give everyone here a power-up.”
“Doesn’t that mean that the Mosaics will be stronger? If they copy one of us?” Iida asked.
Izuku shrugged. “We’re already talking about beings that surpass most of the class on their own. Just two of them put up a good fight for the whole class and they were lower Ranks. We don’t know how many there are on the island in total.”
“I, for one, would be happy with a power-up,” Setsuna added. Yui nodded along in agreement.
Iida silently pondered for a moment, hand on his chin. “Aside from the possibility of the Mosaics being slightly more dangerous, I don’t see a downside, as we would also become more lethal.” He nodded, giving Izuku the go-ahead.
[Skill: Soul Manipulation, is being activated.]
Since Izuku still had over 5,000 Noble Lux Souls, he decided to utilize those. He gave 100 Souls to everyone in the class, minus himself, Shoto, and Momo, obviously. He was also unable to target Esil for some reason. Presumably Chaos Inhabitant Souls couldn’t be affected by the Skill. 1500 Souls in total were distributed, 100 to 14 students as well as 100 to Aizawa. This left him with 3,538 Noble Lux Souls still, but he didn’t want to use them all at once, so he’d save a few thousand.
It hurt Izuku to give a power-up to Bakugo of all people, but the situation was clearly still a chaotic one, and the threat was substantial. Better to be safe than sorry.
“I guess I could power up Maigo and Brandon too,” Izuku thought to himself. He couldn’t target non-Awakened humans. So he couldn’t just force the entirety of Catalina to Awaken, unfortunately, but there were still plenty of targets.
[Attempting… Error, target is not acceptable.]
[Attempting… Error, target is not acceptable.]
“What…?”
The System rejected both Maigo and Brandon as possible targets. No matter how many times he tried, no matter the amount of Souls, the Skill simply wouldn’t work for them.
“Hmm… Maybe I can ask Raia later…” He turned to his friends. “Well?”
“Uhh…” Setsuna moved her arms around, jumping up and down. “I literally feel the same.” Yui and Iida voiced the same thing as Setsuna.
Izuku sighed. “I guess we still don’t know how all this stuff works…”
“I guess it was worth a try,” Setsuna said, trying to cushion the disappointment.
None of them could’ve known that, deep within, a monumental change was taking place. It would prove its worth soon enough, as the Mosaics were growing restless.