Inquisitor

- Chapter: 39 -

Eraserhead jumped down the stairs. A line of villains stood and prepared to shoot at him with their quirks.

He activated his quirk and grabbed three of them with his capture scarf. He yanked on the scarf and the three villain's heads smashed into each other's.

"You Dumbasses!! He can cancel out your quirks just by looking at ya. That's Eraserhead."

One of the villains stepped forward. "He cancels out quirks?! Heh heh heh. Let's see if that trick works against us Mutation types!!" The villains then lunged forward to strike Eraserhead with his four arms.

Instead Eraserhead punched him in the face. "No, it doesn't." He threw a strand of his scarf at the villain, who was falling over. "Only against Emitter and Transformation types... However." The strand curled around the villain's ankle. Eraserhead leaned over backward and dodged a punch from another Mutation type. "Statistically, guys like you tend to shine..." Once again, he yanked the capture scarf. "In close-quarters combat.

The first Mutation type that attacked him was flung into the air, and sent crashing down into the others.

In the center of the plaza, a man with light-blue hair, almost white, watched Eraserhead fight. "He's good at hand-to-hand... and those goggles hide his eyes, so we don't know whose quirk he's canceling. Even a whole mob of us isn't slowing him down... I see."

The man started lightly scratching his neck. His whole body covered in mummified hands. "I hate pro heroes. Ordinary villains don't stand a chance against them."

The man made of mist next to him disappeared. The one covered in hands continued to watch the pro hero fight.

---

Katsuo reached the shore with the boat and got off, along with the other two students. They went and hid behind some nearby rocks. Katsuo had stopped the boat somewhere out of sight so the villains wouldn't notice them.

The other two stared in horror at what they saw.

Katsuo was completely frozen.

---

"Twenty-three seconds."

The man covered in hands ran forward, raising one of his own.

Eraserhead looked at him and asked, "So, you're the boss?" and threw a strand at him.

The man caught the bands with his hand and kept on running. "Twenty-four seconds. Twenty seconds."

Eraserhead uttertered a "Tch." and dashed at the villain in turn.

Right before they clashed the villain said, "Seventeen seconds."

Eraserhead went to elbow the man in the stomach.

"It's hard to tell when you're scampering around, but... There are moments when your hair falls in front of your eyes." In his other hand, the man had caught Eraserhead's elbow. "Every time you finish a given move. And your max duration's getting shorter and shorter."

Eraserhead's elbow starting distergrating from the man's fingers. "Don't overdo it now, Eraserhead."

Eraserhead punched the hand villain in the face and backed up. Dodging two villains and knocking them out as he didn so.

The villain started getting up and spoke more. "Your quirk... it's not good in long, group battles, huh? This is kind of different from your usual work, yeah? You specialize in quick sneak attacks. Yet you jumped straight into this fight. Hoping to make the kids feel safe? So cool."

A large shadow fell over Eraserhead from behind him.

"So cool. By the way, hero... I'm not the boss here."

The large bird-man loomed over Eraserhead.

---

Katsuo watched as the bird man he noticed from earlier, broke his father's arm.

Katsuo watched, as it smashed his face into the floor, cracking it.

Katsuo moved, when he saw the mist man appear.

"You two! Get out of here!"

He ran forward to the villains.

The man covered in hands ran at him.

Katsuo saw the villain ready to grab him, and got prepared to counter. When the man reached for his face, he swiveled on his feet and went to grab the man's wrist. Only, the villain touched his mask. Katsuo's hand brushed against the villain stealing his quirk, and danger bells lit up his head.

Katsuo reached up and threw off his mask. It disintegrated before it hit the ground. If he hadn't thrown it off, his face would be gone, and maybe all of him. He stopped himself from grabbing the villain's wrist as he knew it would kill him, and instead jumped back.

Katsuo looked around as he realized his mask was gone.

His breathing instantly got heavier. His heart started pounding. His brain started doubting his options.

He slowed down.

In that moment, the bird thing punched him.

Hard.

The thing's fist hit his stomach with more force than a sledgehammer. Katsuo flew backwards and into a wall, embedding himself into it.

His vision flew around, the world around him seeming both too bright and dark. A ringing roared in his ears, all other sounds seeming to swirl around it.

He heard someone yell his name.

For just a moment his senses were back to normal. He recognized the voice. He turned and saw Izumi running to him. 'I...zumi...'

Katsuo stumbled out of the wall and fell over. He tried to stand up, but couldn't. He felt something dripping out of his mouth. All he could tell was it's color, red.

His thoughts swirled around, nothing making sense to him. He couldn't even latch onto his own thoughts before they vanished and something else came up.

He looked up and saw the creature looming over him. It's fist rearing back yet again.

He couldn't even register the danger it meant.

The creature's fist flew forward. Aimed at his head with enough power to pulverize it.

The doors to the USJ blew open.

The creature's fist stopped moving the instant before it would have killed Katsuo.

"FEAR NOT."

From the blown open door, a huge figure walked through.

"I..."

All Might walked into everyone's vision.

"...AM HERE."

He was not smiling.