My Hero Automata

Chapter 35: Raid Event

Summary: The League of Villains makes its next move, to the horror of all...

Chapter 35: Raid Event

They were on Field Gamma, practicing Urban Traversal while under duress, when 2B's shock rushed through her link with Izumi. A moment later, the recon Pod that she'd been about to take upward instead maxed out it's volume and blared out a warning, Izumi only barely reacting fast enough to adjust her hearing.

"EMERGENCY! CANCEL EXERCISE! MASS VILLAIN ATTACK IMMENIENT!"

Even as that terse, high-volume warning went out, Izumi instinctively activated hyper cognition. The first alarming thing her equally instinctive status check turned up was that 2B had pulled in all of her processing power and was simultaneously sending dozens of HSN alerts to every single building and hero on the UA campus. With even 2B's processing power stretched to doing so, Izumi didn't bother asking what was going on, instead she tapped into the video feed 2B was broadcasting...which was coming from one of the discrete overwatch cameras they'd placed in the block around UA, after the USJ incident.

Heart sinking, Izumi watched as not one, but dozens of familiar portals appeared all around the eastern arc of the UA perimeter. A single Nomu stepped out of each, followed by a stream of more ordinary but far more numerous villains, every single one of which was wearing some sort of mass-produced jetpack. The Nomu, all of which were flight capable themselves, had only just started to move toward UA when Izumi caught up to the real-time broadcast...which was the same instant that UA's own security system blared to life with a sound that hadn't been heard since the Era of Chaos.

An Air Raid siren.

UA was one of the three oldest hero universities on the entire planet, Japan's pre-existing culture and the presence of a local supervillain having spurred the officialization of Heroes faster than most countries. Which also meant that UA's security was not for show, nor was it limited to the barrier that everyone thought of as its first line of defense. No. While it was not common knowledge, UA still had active defenses left over from the Era where heroes were fully on the defensive and the school had been assaulted somewhat regularly by ambitious villain groups. Those defenses were, in fact, why UA taught more than heroics. Even today, many of its non-heroics students were from prominent families or children of military and political figures. Which helped explain the anti-air turrets that were abruptly popping out from various places along the UA barrier.

Well maintained as those turrets had been, at Nedzu's assistance, they were also old. The Dean had needed to fight on a nearly yearly basis just to be allowed to keep them, even having to load them with non-lethal capture ordinance to comply with various post All Might, Era of Peace, legislation. Despite that, they were still effective, and it was only their presence which blunted the initial wave of attackers, temporarily knocking the Nomu out of the sky and doing the same with the first couple of dozen jetpack equipped villains. Unfortunately, even as Izumi began to move, physically lifting her two teammates for the exercise and returning all three of them to the central plaza, that brief halting of the enemy swarm began to change. These Nomu had clearly been picked for a reason, as every one of them was able to quickly escape the capture foam that had spread from the turret ammo. The instant they did, they launched themselves at one of the defense guns, which were distracted by the swarm of other flying villains. Even as those villains themselves began to rapidly dissolve into piles of what looked like mud, the Nomu reached the guns...and tore them apart.

All Might had been watching the exercise with the half of the class that had already had their turn. Even as Izumi landed with her two classmates, his own HSN HUD, a high-end holographic model that projected from a clip over his ear, was on display for the first time Izumi had ever seen. His eyes were wide in shock, face totally unsmiling...but he was still the number one hero for a reason. His decision was swift and directed toward the entire class.