The Downpour Zone lived up to its name. Rain hammered down, turning the submerged streets into a churning mess of muddy water. The six villains surrounding me didn't look like they cared about the weather. They looked like they wanted to introduce my face to the concrete.
"Get him!" the rock-man villain yelled, his fists hardening.
I didn't move. I simply expanded my Anti-Gravity System to its full ten-meter radius, centered on myself. The world within that bubble suddenly felt... empty. The rain, instead of falling, started to drift upwards, forming a chaotic halo above me.
The rock-man, still charging, stumbled. His heavy, mutated feet suddenly found no purchase on the ground. He floated, flailing his arms uselessly, cursing as he spun in the air.
"What the hell?! I can't move!"
The other villains fared no better. A knife-wielding thug with long, sharp fingers tried to stab me, but as he entered my field, his own weightlessness caused him to miss wildly, his blade scraping uselessly against the rain-slicked ground as he drifted past.
"This is ridiculous!" another villain, a speedster type, shouted. He tried to sprint around me, but without friction, his feet just pedaled air. He just zoomed in place, looking like a panicked cartoon character.
"See?" I said, a dry smile on my face as I walked slowly through my field, moving through the weightless water. "I told you we could skip the monologue. Hard to monologue when you're busy floating."
My Cursed Energy was flowing steadily, maintaining the field. This wasn't the "Maximum Output" I'd used on the Zero-Pointer, but a precise, controlled blanket that rendered them helpless. It was like I had taken away their anchors, leaving them to drift.
I didn't want to hurt them more than necessary. I wasn't a hero yet, just a kid trying to survive. But I also didn't have time to wait for Aizawa to come rescue me.
"M-my Quirk! I can't use it!" the rock-man wailed. His hardening Quirk didn't make him immune to gravity, it just made him dense. Now, he was just a dense, floating target.
"That's because your Quirk relies on gravity to work," I explained, walking up to him. I extended a hand, and without touching him, created a micro-burst of gravity that pushed him horizontally. He slammed into the wall of a submerged building, knocking him unconscious.
I repeated the process. A subtle push here, a precise shove there. The knife-wielding villain was sent spiraling into a lamppost. The speedster, still pedaling air, was nudged into a dazed collision with a floating boat. One by one, the six villains were sent crashing into the environment or into each other, all rendered harmless by their own inability to control their weightless bodies.
Within ninety seconds, the Downpour Zone was silent again, save for the incessant rain and the groans of unconscious thugs.
"Well," I sighed, retracting my field as the last villain splashed into the water. "That was mildly inconvenient."
My Cursed Energy was still strong. I hadn't had to push myself to the breaking point. But the thought of Ochaco, of Deku, of Aizawa—they were out there, in other zones, fighting unknown enemies.
I closed my eyes, trying to sense the Cursed Energy signatures. The Downpour Zone was relatively clean now, but the main plaza... it was a maelstrom of violent, negative energy. Aizawa's familiar signature was there, but it was being pushed, battered, fading in and out.
'He's in trouble,' I thought, my expression hardening. 'And if Aizawa is in trouble, it's bad.'
I didn't hesitate. I flared my Anti-Gravity System on myself, reducing my own weight, and pushed off the water with a powerful surge of Cursed Energy. I became a human torpedo, skimming across the surface of the flooded zone, leaving a wake of displaced water.
Dozens of villains lay unconscious, but the man at the center—Aizawa—wasn't the one winning anymore. He was pinned. A monstrous, purple-skinned creature with a bird-like beak and an exposed brain held him down. I watched, frozen for a split second, as the creature grabbed Aizawa's arm.
CRACK.
The sound of bone snapping carried across the plaza.
"Nomu," a raspy voice directed. The man with the hands—the leader—was watching with a sick sort of curiosity. "Break the other one, too. We need to lure the Symbol of Peace out."
The creature, the Nomu, raised a massive fist to finish the job. Aizawa's goggles were cracked, blood streaming down his face, yet he was still trying to glare at the monster to erase its Quirk. It wasn't working.
"HEY!" I screamed, my voice cracking the tension of the plaza.
I didn't wait for a plan. I didn't wait for backup. I flared my Cursed Energy until it felt like my veins were filled with liquid nitrogen. I dove off the ledge, falling toward the plaza floor with a snarl.
The Nomu's head twitched toward me. In its empty, yellow eyes, I didn't see a person. I saw a void.
I hit the ground and lunged, my hand outstretched to catch the Nomu in a Maximum Output field. But I was too slow. Or rather, it was too fast.
The last thing I saw was a blurred fist coming for my solar plexus.