BLOODY HELL!!! WE IN TOP 5 RANKING SOMEHOW🤣🤣🔥🔥
I never knew this fanfic would do this well. Thank you all for the support!!
And somehow you people managed to hit 100 powerstone in just an hourđź’€. So here is the bonus chapter as promised.
Next one at 300, as I am again running out of advanced chapters. AND IF you somehow manage to reach this milestone too, then wait for 4-5 hours, as I am going to watch a movie. (Avatar 3)
That's all for me, and thank you for your support.
Happy reading.
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The scream that tore from Honoka Shuzenji's throat wasn't human.
It was the sound of a mother's soul being ripped out through her chest.
"NO! STOP!"
She dragged herself forward through the dirt, her broken leg trailing uselessly behind her like dead weight. Her fingernails dug into the earth, breaking and bleeding as she clawed her way toward the edge, but she didn't feel the pain. She felt nothing but the icy grip of terror seizing her heart.
"PLEASE!" she shrieked, her voice cracking into shards of glass. "LEAVE HIM! HE IS JUST A CHILD! KILL ME INSTEAD! TAKE ME! PLEASE, TAKE ME!"
Muscular ignored her. He held the boy — her boy, her baby—over the cliff like a discarded toy. He didn't even look at her. To him, her suffering was just background noise, a pleasant soundtrack to his cruelty.
"Goodbye, little bug," the villain whispered, his voice filled with sadistic pleasure. "Now I am going to enjoy killing your mother slowly."
He opened his hand.
Gravity took over.
Akira fell. And he vanished into the gray mist of the ravine, swallowed by the void.
"AKIRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"
Honoka collapsed. Her forehead hit the dirt with a thud.
The world stopped.
Time didn't just slow down; it shattered. The sounds of the wind, the distant river — it all faded into a dull, white noise. In the silence of her mind, a film reel began to play. It was vibrant and colorful.
She saw him.
She saw a red-haired, screaming baby in a hospital room, grasping her finger with a strength that surprised her. She remembered the smell of him — milk and baby powder — and the overwhelming, terrifying realization that her heart was now beating outside her body.
"He looks just like you, Akira," she had whispered to the empty air, hoping her dead husband could hear her.
She saw a toddler taking his first wobbly steps in the living room, falling onto his diapered bottom, and then looking up at her not with tears, but with a determined pout that said, I meant to do that.
She saw a five-year-old trying to fix a toaster with a fork because he wanted to know how the heating system worked, nearly electrocuting himself, but grinning through the soot on his face.
She saw him in the kitchen, wearing that ridiculous pink Kiss the Cook apron, flipping an egg with perfect precision while humming a video game theme she didn't recognize.
She saw him on the beach, his face serious beyond his years, holding her while she broke down under the weight of her grief. She felt the warmth of his blue flames wrapping around her, promising her that he wasn't going anywhere.
("I'll be the shield," he had said. "I'll take care of her.")
"No..." she whimpered into the dirt, her tears turning the dust into mud. "My baby... my baby... not you too..."
The sobbing racked her body, convulsing her broken limbs. It was a physical agony worse than the shattered bones. It was the end of her world. The darkness she had fought off for thirteen years finally swallowed her whole.
Thud.
Footsteps. Heavy, wet footsteps approaching her.
Muscular stood over her. He was panting, his chest heaving like a bellows. Blood dripped from his empty eye socket onto the ground next to her head.
"Finally," he grunted, wiping his mouth. "Quiet."
Honoka slowly lifted her head. Her face was a mask of mud and tears. Her amber eyes, usually so full of life and fire, were dead. They were hollow pits of nothingness, reflecting only the abyss she had fallen into.
She looked up at the monster who had killed her son. She felt no fear. She felt no anger. She felt only a desire for the end.
"Kill me too," she whispered. Her voice was flat, devoid of inflection. "End it."
Muscular grinned. It was a gruesome expression on his ruined face.
"Where is the fun in that?" he asked, flexing his remaining hand, the muscle fibers coiling and uncoiling like snakes. "I am going to take it sl—"
VMMMMMMMM.
The air pressure dropped.
It happened instantly. The wind stopped blowing. The birds stopped singing. The dust suspended in the air froze in place.
Muscular paused. He tilted his head, his instincts screaming at him. "What the...?"
Heat.
It wasn't the gentle warmth of the blue flame. It wasn't the scorching heat of the sun. It was the oppressive, suffocating heat of an active volcano. The grass around the cliff edge instantly withered, turning brown and crumbling to ash in seconds. The rocks began to glow with a dull, red light.
BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!
A pillar of fire erupted from the ravine.
It wasn't a stream. It was a tornado. A cyclone of violent, roaring flames that shot three hundred feet into the air, piercing the clouds. The sky turned a terrifying shade of blood-orange, the clouds reflecting the inferno below.
Muscular spun around, shielding his face from the intense radiation.
"WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!" he yelled, stumbling back as the heat blistered his skin.
Honoka stared. Her dead eyes widened, reflecting the inferno. A spark of something — disbelief, madness, hope — flickered in her eyes.
From the depths of the ravine, something rose.
It rode the updraft of the fire tornado. It tore through the flames, scattering them like feathers.
It was a bird. But it wasn't a bird.
It was a deity.
Image(In the comment)
A massive, avian construct made of solidified, crimson energy hovered above the cliff. Its wingspan was immense, easily twenty feet across, casting a shadow over the villain. The feathers weren't soft; they were jagged shards of hard-light fire that burned with the intensity of a dying star. Its tail was a flowing river of magma. Its eyes were two burning white suns that judged the world.
SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
The creature opened its beak and let out a sound that shattered the windows of the distant village. It was a Phoenix Screech — a cry of rebirth and absolute dominance.
It looked like the God of Fire had descended to judge the earth.
Honoka's eyes gained their light again. She pushed herself up on her good arm, ignoring the screaming pain in her leg.
"Akira?" she whispered, disbelief coloring her voice.
Muscular stared up at the flaming creature. His remaining eye twitched. Fear, a sensation he hadn't felt in years, pricked at the back of his mind. It was primal. It was the fear of a prey animal looking at a predator.
But he crushed it. He was Muscular. He was the strongest. He killed heroes. He didn't run.
He laughed. It was a manic, desperate sound.
"HAHAHAHAHA!" he roared, pointing at the sky with a bloodied hand. "I DIDN'T KNOW YOU HAD A BIRD TRANSFORMATION! COME A—"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't even finish the thought.
The bird dived.
It didn't glide. It fell from the sky like a meteor.
Akira — or the entity that was now Akira — slammed into Muscular before the villain could even raise his arms to defend himself.
CRUNCH.
The talons of the Phoenix, massive claws made of superheated plasma, dug into Muscular's shoulders.
"ARGH!" Muscular screamed.
His muscle armor, which had withstood water cannons and bullets, sizzled and burned. The raw meat cooked instantly, turning black and brittle. He tried to fight back, tried to activate his quirk, but he was empty. He was out of gas. The fight with the Pro Hero duo Water Hose and Honoka, had taken everything.
Akira flapped his wings once.
WOOSH.
The force generated was immense. With Muscular trapped in his talons, the Phoenix shot straight up into the air.
Fifty feet. One hundred feet. Five hundred feet.
They broke through the cloud layer. The air was thin and freezing, but the fire kept them in a bubble of immense heat.
Muscular struggled, thrashing in the grip, clawing at the burning talon, but his hands passed through the fire, burning his fingers to the bone. He was helpless.
Akira stopped his ascent. He hovered in the stratosphere, looking down at the world below.
He spun.
He rotated in the air, gathering momentum, swinging the villain around like a ragdoll. The centrifugal force was crushing.
"DIE!"
The voice wasn't just Akira's. It sounded layered, echoing with the rage of a divine being. It was the voice of a son protecting his mother.
"YOU CRAZY FUCKER!"
He released the claws.
He threw Muscular toward the earth.
The villain plummeted, a screaming comet trailing smoke and ash.
But Akira wasn't done.
He folded his wings back. He opened his beak. The flames in his core converged at a single point in front of him. It compressed, darker and darker, until it was almost black.
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!
A beam of concentrated red fire shot from the Phoenix. It chased Muscular down.
It caught him in mid-air.
The beam slammed into the falling villain, accelerating his descent. It pushed him down, burning through his remaining defenses, stripping him bare.
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!"
BOOM.
Muscular hit the bottom of the dried riverbed. The impact cratered the earth.
But the beam didn't stop.
Akira kept firing. He poured his rage, his fear, his promise into the attack. The red column of fire drilled into the earth, incinerating rock and soil, burying the villain under a tomb of molten slag.
Ten seconds.
The beam roared for ten solid seconds, turning the canyon floor into a lake of glass. The heat was so intense it warped the air for miles.
Finally, the fire sputtered.
The red light flickered.
Akira gasped. The adrenaline crash hit him harder than death. The God of Fire vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
The Phoenix avatar dissolved into sparks. The wings faded.
He was just a boy again. Naked, burned, and falling from the sky.
He began to tumble. The air rushed past him, cold and biting against his overheated skin.
Mom, he thought dimly.
He reached deep into the reserves of his core. It was barely a spark, buried under the ashes of the Red Flame, but it was enough.
He ignited a weak, sputtering blue aura around his body. He didn't fly. He glided. He controlled his fall, steering himself toward the cliff edge where a small figure lay in the dirt.
He hit the ground hard, rolling to absorb the impact. He slid through the dust, coming to a stop inches from Honoka.
Steam rose from his skin. He was covered in soot, like he had been forged in a furnace.
Honoka stared at him. She reached out with her working arm, her face a mask of awe and terror.
"Akira..."
He crawled into her arm.
He rested his head on her chest, listening to the frantic rhythm of her heart. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. It was the best sound in the world.
"You good, Mom?" he mustered.
Honoka let out a sob. She wrapped her arm around him, pulling him as close as she physically could, burying her face in his smoky hair.
"Yes," she cried, rocking him back and forth. "Yes, honey. Yes, I am fine. You saved me. You saved me, my hero."
Akira smiled against her chest. His eyes felt heavy. The darkness was creeping back in, but this time, it wasn't the void of death. It was just sleep.
I kept my word, he thought, the final conscious firing of his brain.
He closed his eyes and let the darkness take him.
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Andddd with that, the first arc ends!!!! How did you like it?? Let me know
Plus if you want, you can read up to +10 chapters (It's 8 right now, becuase you guys are too fast with the powerstones ) and support me you can alway join my P@treaon. (Just search up Joe_Mama p@treon on google.)