Michiko struggled to get the wolf off of her. But to no avail. With it pinning her shoulders she had no way of gaining enough force to push the beast off her. Nor could she reach her sword which was just out of her reach. She could hear Takeshi and Hades fighting, she couldn’t call for him out of fear that she would distract him enough for an opening that could get him killed. Kaida was screaming in pain, and she didn’t know how the others were fairing.
She was, however surprised when Reina suddenly appeared and bit the wolf!?! Ripping off its ear. He was shocked to see that, and honestly a little frightened. She let out a gasp for air as the wolf eased up slightly as its attention was now on Riena. She really couldn’t move still but when Riena said she was going to use her quirk, she readied herself as much as she could. Which wasn’t much, but tightening her muscles.
She did notice the pain in Reina’s eyes as she stood up on her left foot, and when she kicked the wolf, snapping its neck… she couldn’t believe how cool she looked right then. Using such an uncontrollable quirk to her advantage in just mere moments. The quiet girl was really amazing.
As soon as the wolf was yanked off of her she scrambled to her feet clumsily, crawling over to her and wrapping her arms around you.
“Thank you Riena!” She said breathing hard. She looked to Takeshi and saw him gaining the advantage when she asked
“Are you ok?” to the girl next to her.
Reina blinked at the embrace, taken out of her mild bloodlust for a moment as she glanced down to Michiko. The short-haired girl fought the instinct to put her weight on Michiko, instead keeping herself standing under her own power despite her injuries.
The girl couldn’t help but lightly wrap one arm around Michiko--
very lightly, as it was her injured arm and she didn’t want to get any more blood on the other girl’s clothes… well, not like that really mattered now. It was a nice moment, that Reina knew she’d remember for a long time, but she couldn’t let it go on with danger so close.
She gave Michiko a small smile, left eye closing shut as she felt blood from her cut on her forehead running down her brow.
“I’ve been better.” Hm. A real hero probably would have said that they were completely fine. Maybe. She’d keep that in mind for next time.
Reina looked to Michiko’s sword out of the corner of her open eye, lightly activating her quirk for a moment so it lifted to her and she could catch it by the handle. Letting go of Michiko, she took a small step back to hold the weapon out for her. The dark-haired girl then glanced around, assessing the situation. Kaida was being tended to by Roy, she seemed okay for the moment, though her previous cries worried Reina. A woman she recognized as Acion’s older sister was dealing with Hades at the moment--having a pro hero here was encouraging, but not a guarantee of success. And finally Takeshi was left to deal with the pack of wolves, which is where Reina’s mind seemed to linger.
Aurelia could handle herself for now, the girl reasoned.
“Takeshi,” she said simply for Michiko to hear, communicating her intentions as quickly as possible before she stepped onto her injured foot again towards the boy.
As soon as she said Takeshi, Michiko looked over to her brother, ignoring the sword being handed to her as her eyes widened in terror. All the wolves left their previous targets, the first one holding Takeshi’s sword arm, the second knocking him down onto his back, and quickly the rest were following. Depsite this, Takeshi was still putting up a fight, ripping wolfs off of him and slamming them into others. Using the shadows around him to create rods that shot out of the ground, knocking a few away. They could hear Roy calling out that he was being overwhelmed. During this, Takeshi managed to look over to Reina and Michiko, the panicked look in his eyes.
“RUN!” Was all he could muster. Before he was swallowed in the darkness.
Michiko knew what was happening, she knew what hades did with his quirk. She reached out, but that was all her body could do as she screamed Takeshi’s name as they all could hear a bloody scream coming from the darkness. She closed her for a moment, and a second later, she fell...passed out cold. The fear of losing her brother too much for her to bear.
There was silence after Takeshi’s scream, tearing of clothes could be heard and blood sprayed the two girls as an arm was thrown from the feeding frenzy and landed in front of them. It was over in an instant. Unnaturally fast.
A panicked Takeshi was not a sight Reina had ever seen before, and it gave her enough pause that what happened next occurred while she hesitated.
Reina knew what was going on around her, but at same time it felt like she could neither see nor hear anything. Michiko crying her brother’s name, before falling unconscious. Reina found herself catching the girl with her injured arm and fell to a knee. Takeshi’s scream was registered in her mind, and finally the severed arm.
The girl was no longer in her own mind. She knew how she
should’ve been reacting to everything--how a
normal person would react. But nothing was affecting her in the moment. It was all just information. Her desires--her fight or flight, her fear for Takeshi’s life… it was all so overwhelmingly powerful that it instead became the opposite, numbing her rampaging emotions, like when she left her hands under water so hot it instead felt painfully cold to her touch.
There was no thinking to be done. Her quirk was already violently pushing out against her surroundings as she gripped tightly to Michiko.
One of the seven orbs that orbited her crossed in front of her vision. Those little, worthless annoyances, that never wished to follow her commands. Her gaze locked on it, and it expanded suddenly.
A foot wide in diameter now, it
obeyed.
Base level instincts drove the girl. Reina willed the orb to shoot forward through the air, and it did, rising to be hanging above the cloud that enveloped Takeshi.
Reina wanted that cloud gone from existence.
She activated the orb’s pull, making sure it only affected herself. She was dragged up towards it, never loosening her hold on Michiko despite her damaged arm. The girl would be safest at the epicenter. Reina didn’t even have time to consider the rest of her friends--if Takeshi was even still alive, he wouldn’t be for much longer.
The girl felt her shoulder make contact with the activated orb, and did not hesitate. She cranked both her own gravitational pull and the orb’s to the strongest she could muster. Alley walls cracked and groaned. A second later, she reversed the forces of both effects,
pushing violently, disabling the orb’s effect over her to prevent herself from also being blown away.
No longer being pulled by the orb, Reina and Michiko hung in the air and fell for a second, before Reina once again reversed her quirk.
This time, the walls around them collapsed in.
The dark-haired girl couldn’t feel any of the pain from her injuries or exertion, let alone the tears that streamed down her bloodied face. If she was yelling herself, it was difficult to hear over the noise of two buildings falling down on each other.
She looked down at the cloud of darkness, finding herself lowering the orb that was pressed against her back, causing her feet to dip into the black.
The girl was tired, she finally noticed. She couldn’t quit yet, though. At the very least, she could keep Michiko safe from the falling tonnes of brick. If she could get to Takeshi, she could keep him safe too. The rest of her friends would be having to take care of themselves…
Guilt and regret stabbed through her, hurting far more than any of the physical wounds she carried.
”I’m sorry.”As the walls began to crumble, it caused everyone to temperallity lose focus and watch out for falling buildings. As if the very walls were apart of a spell, the fog suddenly seemed to lift, slowly but noticeable. As for the darkness that surrounded Takeshi, it instantly lifted. All Riena would see now is bloody concrete, and a shreds of Takeshi’s trench coat. The only proof that there was a body there was the blood and his severed arm.
Rakasha made his way over to Michiko and the small dark haired girl knowing his brother could handle the sparrow hero. When she suddenly floated into the sky, the gravity went berserk around them, pulling him off his feet towards her. Quite surprised at the power of this little girl, but not enough to allow two tentacle shadows to shot from his back and pierced the ground. Pulling back down and to his knees as he braced himself for the different waves that pushed and pulled till he was steady enough to get back to his feet, the two tentacles still anchoring him to the ground.
He watched the girl as she was holding onto Michiko and was about to put herself into danger going into the darkness for his little brother… His head cocked to the side as he was surprised that the girl cared for Takeshi that much. Was this perhaps Takeshi’s little girl friend? He had intell that he and this girl were spending time together training. It was odd, when Takeshi knew who he was to be married to...and they happened to be in the same class still. Yet he spent time with this one.
No matter. He walked forward a few more steps, each of his tethers moving one at a time to keep him from flying away.
“Hand over Michiko, and i'll let you live. I do lothe killing little girls, but I will if you resist any more.” He said calmly as he pulled his sword from its sheath.
Reina’s eyes widened as she landed softly onto her knees on the blood-stained concrete.
“T-Takeshi…”Eaten alive by wolves. The girl’s stomach dropped, feeling sick, though nothing came of it. Nothing had hit fully yet. Not the pain, not the exhaustion, not Takeshi’s apparent death.
She glanced down at Michiko, stabbed by another pang of crushing guilt. Reina fought for air as her quirk pushed, keeping the falling brick off of her, Michiko, and what remained of Takeshi. Finally, the noise from the collapsing walls stopped, the relative silence replacing it relieving.
The girl glanced over her shoulder, eyeing a figure she hadn’t previously seen with her open eye.
She found herself laughing in contempt at his words. Threatening to kill her? As if that was even a concern of her’s anymore.
The girl looked at the man, gaze weak and exhausted at first glance, though it hid seething fury.
She wanted to kill him. She wanted to kill him and the wolf villain, and she wanted to do it with her own hands.
But… Michiko was more important than trying something so suicidal.
Without even humouring the thought of verbally responding to the villain, Reina moved her active orb directly above her head, pulling herself up, while she
shoved out with her own gravitational field. Debris around her was shot away, some of it towards Rakasha while she and Michiko were lifted fast into the air, orb bringing them towards the unstable, half-wrecked roof of one of the buildings she had pulled a wall off of.
Rakasha sighed irritably as the girl just looked at him. He could see the fury in her eyes. She wasn’t going to give up Michiko. A second later, she proved it by starting to float away now. His eyes shot to the debris that lifted as well, He ducked and weaved at a few that got to close, but there was a bigger one that came directly at him, that couldn’t be dodged with him tethered to the ground. At that moment though, two more tentacles shot out from his back and knocked the large brick debri to the side with incredible force. He looked back up to Riena as she headed towards the roof of one of the buildings.
The two new tentacles reached out and slammed into the remaining wall on the very building she was moving to. He then lifted himself up with those tentacles and released his first two from the ground. He looked like he was floating up as well if it wasn’t for the physical manifestation of shadows acting like legs. He quickly moved up towards the girl, using his arms to push him closer he got close enough to swing his sword, trying to cut her head off.
Reina kept her eye on the villain, not at all surprised when he used his quirk to scale the buildings and follow her. His quirk had something to do with darkness, like Takeshi and the wolf-mask, his in particular making tentacle like objects he could control.
He moved faster than she was expecting, forcing her to react more quickly than she would have thought possible-- she suddenly increased her orb’s pull on her and moved it off to the side over the roof, dragging her fast in that direction. Even that wasn’t quite enough though, so the girl pushed hard with her own gravity, doing what she could to slow and throw off the swing, tossing her already ruined left arm in front of her head for protection. The blade cut into her arm, but at the point the pain was negligible--far better than even risking the chance of her neck taking the blow.
The girl landed hard on the roof, skidding roughly as she did her best to protect Michiko from any damage. She used her orb to stand herself up quickly, heaving for air after the slight winding she had suffered in the dodge.
Reina paused for only the briefest moment to think her options over. As long as she was fighting to keep Michiko from the villain, all she could hope to do was play keepaway and survive as long as possible, to give others the chance to help her. They were in the middle of the city, and the bus crash had happened what felt like an eternity ago now, so there were bound to be pros on the way.
The problem was she knew she was losing fine control over her quirk. She could not keep it zeroed anymore, instead feeling it bounce from slightly pulling, to slightly pushing. Same thing with her orb’s gravity. Trying to pull and push herself around the city when she didn’t have exact control over her quirk could easily end with her falling to her death.
Staying and fighting against someone like this, at such a disadvantage, wasn’t a great option either.
Ah well, when no choice was a good one, what did the choice really matter. She’d keep Michiko from this man’s hands, even if she had to die for it.
Her orb hovered to touch the roof by her feet, and with it she pushed as hard as she could again, causing the already damaged integrity of the stone to give way in a hundred pieces, forced to collapse on the floor below.
Reina grinned against the pain--she was beginning to really feel it now.
Push through for her.As the ground beneath her crumbled way and she fell, she pulled all the rubble towards her with her orb’s gravity, while pushing away with her own--creating a cocoon of debris around her and Michiko.
The girl let out a roar as her body doubled over into itself, gripping Michiko even more tightly. She
pushed with her gravity, and mentally launched her orb forward towards Rakasha at the same time, forcing its gravity to
pull with all the strength she had.
The attack that resulted was the cocoon exploding away from Reina, immediately being affected by the orb’s pull, causing the mass of debris to shoot forward after the orb, barrelling down on it’s target.
“You aren’t laying a finger on Michiko!” the girl’s broken voice screamed.