Minoru desperately rolled aside, slapping a grapeshot to the ground where he’d been lying scant moments before Magne’s staff arced down and impacted right where his chest had been.

  The villain shrugged her way through the rest of Todoroki’s ice wall, ice crackling and cascading down around her. “Agile little bastard, aren’t you?” She pulled at her staff and stumbled when she found it stuck to the ice beneath it.

  The interruption to her momentum cost her, and Magne’s eyes widened behind her sunglasses as Bakugo rocketed towards her from above while Todoroki’s ice came racing across the earth towards her from below.

  Letting go of her staff, Magne leaped back, leaving Bakugo to become obscured in a haze of smoke and ice fragments as he exploded his way into the space Magne had been occupying.

  “Guess we’re doing this the hard way,” she said, leaning her head sideways and cracking her neck.

  Bakugo strode out of the settling debris around Magne’s staff with a snarl, but then shouted with surprise as his feet shot out from under him. At the same time, Minoru, who had been pushing himself up nearby, was sent rolling the other direction. Magne must have magnetized both him and Bakugo, and since they were both male they’d repelled one another.

  Minoru desperately shoved himself to his feet to discover that Magne had taken advantage of Bakugo’s tumble and closed with the explosive teen.

  “GO TO HELL!” yelled Bakugo, whipping a hand around with an explosion already prepped in an impressive display of reflexes, given that he was flat on his back.

  Magne, however, simply blocked the attack with a forearm, weathering the explosion that ignited just to the side of her head, and slammed her opposite fist into Bakugo’s gut.

  The teen slammed into the ground.

  Magne brought both hands around, clapping them to Bakugo’s ears and briefly stunning the boy. “If you could hear me, I’d tell you to stay down,” she said. “But since you’d just ignore me, anyway…” She grabbed him by the shirt and bodily heaved him off into the trees behind her.

  “KACCHAN!” shrieked Midoriya as he attempted to force himself to his feet.

  “No!” yelled Todoroki. “You’re one of the people he’s after!”

  Magne glared at Todoroki. “You’re not on the list, so I guess you’ll just be a bonus.”

  Abruptly, Todoroki and Midoriya also went flying apart, their distraction allowing Magne to race for her staff. She reached it, squatted down to grab it near the earth, and began to strain.

  Meanwhile, Yaoyorozu and Awase had reached Minoru. “Mineta!” said Yaoyorozu. “What’s going on?”

  “She’s trying to kill me, kill Midoriya, and capture Bakugo,” said Minoru as fast as he could. “We’ve got to distract her from Midoriya; he looks half-dead already. And I think Todoroki put himself on her list by misgendering her just now.”

  “She can magnetize people around her?”

  “Yeah, and what polarity depends on whether the target is male or female.”

  With a shout, Magne at last succeeded at tearing her staff from the ground, ice fragments flying as the ice the staff was connected to via grapeshot broke apart.

  “Awase, can you please try to find Bakugo?” asked Yaoyorozu. Awase nodded and jogged off towards the woods. “Mineta, you willing to play bait?”

  “I can’t think of a good alternative, unfortunately.”

  “Okay. I have some ideas for what to do about this magnetic villain. You draw her attention, I’ll make sure she doesn’t hit you.”

  The two broke into a run, heading toward the expanding field of ice fragments where Todoroki was desperately trying to keep Magne away from him and Midoriya.

  It was a losing battle. Todoroki was clearly running dangerously cold from his prior exertions against Moonfish, and his reactions were slowing. Magne wasn’t moving terribly fast, but she was careful to make sure Todoroki’s ice never locked her or her staff in place, and despite repeatedly needing to jump aside or pause and break through an ice wall was making steady progress toward Todoroki.

  As Minoru and Yaoyoruzo drew closer, Yaoyorozu broke further to his left as she tried to circle behind Magne while Minoru by unspoken agreement trended right and aimed to attack from the side.

  Once he was close enough, Minoru started pelting grapeshot toward Magne.

  The villain whirled, clearly catching sight of Minoru from her peripheral vision, and swept her staff around to block the grapeshot. The grapeshot of course simply stuck to it.

  Minoru kept coming, making sure to throw most of his grapeshot toward Todoroki’s side, both to keep Magne’s attention off Yaoyorozu and to make getting to Todoroki more difficult.

  Seeing the villain wasn’t focused on him anymore, Todoroki began circling around toward Minoru.

  “Don’t get too close!” shouted Minoru. “She’ll just magnetize us again!”

  Magne sighed. “I hate fighting the smart ones,” she grumbled. “Come to sis, little purple boy.” She pulled her staff around and Minoru once more found himself flying through the air.

  Yaoyorozu chose that moment to strike. She whirled in place, a much-smaller staff of her own launching itself from her forearm into her hand as she brought it around towards Magne.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The villain somehow sense the attack coming, and Minoru felt the force on himself fall off, although he continued to fly towards Magne thanks to his existing momentum. Magne began to spin in place, an arm coming up to block, but Yaoyorozu’s staff slammed into her with an audible crack and when Yaoyorozu let go of it continued to spin around the villain until it collided with Magne’s staff, where it stuck.

  Minoru tumbled past, doing his best to get his momentum under control.

  “You hate fighting smart people?” said Yaoyorozu. “Well, I have bad news for you.”

  Yaoyorozu somersaulted under Magne’s counter-swing and before the villain could bring her staff to bear came up in a crouch on the opposite side of the villain from Magne’s staff, then ripped the front of her shirt up.

  Magne actually faltered for a moment. “Are you…flashing me? Seriously?”

  “You’re not the only one who’s familiar with ferrous metal,” said Yaoyorozu, and as Magne’s eyes widened simple metal darts started flying out of Yaoyorozu’s torso.

  Magne practically threw herself away from her staff as she protected her face with one arm, and must have magnetized Yaoyorozu at the same time because the darts quickly lost their momentum and the staff turned on its own in midair as it fell while Yaoyorozu rocked forward before she was able to brace herself.

  Minoru didn’t miss his chance, and darted in from the side, littering the ground around Magne’s feet with grapeshot.

  Magne stepped on one and stumbled to one knee as her momentum was unexpectedly arrested.

  Yaoyorozu flipped in mid-air, barely dodging under the plummeting staff, landed on one knee, thrust an arm toward Magne, and a thin pair of darts connected to wires shot from a device she’d snatched from where she’d tucked it in the waistband of her shorts. The darts hit Magne and the villain collapsed to all fours, muscles twitching.

  “Lock her down!” shouted Yaoyorozu.

  Minoru darted forward, pulled up the hem of Magne’s shirt, slapped several grapeshot to the sides of the villain’s waist, and the forced the villain’s hand around to cross in front of her body and rest on opposite hips in an improvised, grapeshot-powered straight jacket.

  That done, he quickly backed away, trying to keep his eyes on the villain and not on the distracting amount of stomach and chest that Yaoyorozu was still showing off. Her shirt had gotten pretty badly torn, so she was basically wearing a torn halter top and a bra at this point.

  “Help me with this staff,” Yaoyorozu said. “The thing weighs a ton.”

  Minoru and Yaoyorozu dragged the staff away, securing it on the other side of the path behind a pair of trees. Minoru attached it to the trees with grapeshot, just to be doubly sure it wasn’t going anywhere.

  Todoroki strode over to them. “Good job, Yaoyorozu, Mineta.”

  Minoru shot him a sharp glance. “Where’s Midoriya?”

  Todoroki shook his head. “He limped off after Bakugo as soon as you distracted that villain.”

  Minoru ran a hand down his face. “Of course he did.” He turned to call down the path, where Sato had been lurking with Ojiro in his arms. “Sato, can you please take Ojiro and Kaminari and head for the cabin? We need to go after Midoriya.”

  Sato grunted, hoisted Ojiro higher, and started shepherding Kaminari ahead of him. Minoru would have liked to have his strength on hand, but he was pretty sure the boy’s sugar-based Quirk was close to running its course and at this point Kaminari and Ojiro were both was dead weight, despite the former technically being conscious.

  That taken care of, he turned back to Todoroki. “Alright, let’s go. Midoriya couldn’t have gotten far; he looked dead on his feet.”

  Before they made it to the woods, however, a pair of monsters made out of earth raced around the bend in the path and skidded to a stop almost on top of Magne. Tiger jumped down from the back of one, while Pixie-Bob and Ragdoll climbed down from the second.

  Tiger strode forward. “Students, I am glad to see you safe,” boomed the superhero.

  “We’re not all safe!” said Yaoyorozu. “Bakugo, Midoriya, and Awase are…”

  However, her warning was interrupted by a shout from Midoriya echoing from the woods. “YOU GIVE HIM BACK!”

  Even before Midoriya had finished yelling, Tiger had twisted around and was sprinting into the woods toward his voice.

  Pixie-Bob straightened up from where she had knelt to check on Magne. “You did a good job weathering this one’s attacks,” she said. “But we’ll take it from here. I need you all to head back to the cabin.”

  “What about Bakugo?!” demanded Todoroki. “Midoriya said the villains were trying to capture him and it sounds like they might have succeeded!”

  “Tiger will—“ began Pixie-Bob, but she was interrupted when the nomu burst onto the path from the trees, broken pieces of Sero’s tape trailing behind it like a mummy that had busted partially out of its wrapping.

  “Ittle kitties!” screamed the nomu, and everything went to hell in an instant.

  The nomu launched itself at the pair of Pussycats, chainsaw arms swinging in from both sides to pincer them. Yaoyorozu grabbed Minoru and slung both of them to the side of the path. Todoroki launched a sheet of ice that barely tickled the ankles of the nomu. And darkness boiled up around Magne, leaving bare earth behind. The portal user had found them again.

  Minoru made a snap decision. “Yaoyorozu, we’ve got to get Tiger back here. I don’t think Ragdoll and Pixie-Bob are going to last long against that thing, and if the villains really did kidnap Bakugo, we can’t risk Ragdoll!”

  A look of realization passed across Yaoyorozu’s face. “I think I can get his attention. Do you think you can buy them some time?”

  Shit, he did not want to go a second round with the nomu. “I’ll do what I can.” As Yaoyorozu started to manifest something conical from her stomach, Minoru pivoted and ran back towards the fight.

  Behind him he heard the distinctive sound of a created item emerging into reality, then Yaoyorozu drew a deep breath and her voice echoed across the forest. It sounded like she’d created a megaphone. “Tiger! Pixie-Bob and Ragdoll need you here now! A nomu is attacking us!”

  Minoru focused back ahead. Pixie-Bob was throwing everything she had at the nomu, but it was implacable. It simply leapt forward when earth surged beneath its feet, powered through her earth beasts, and smashed apart other earthen obstacles she raised in its way. Ragdoll was dodging and weaving around its numerous arms as it slashed at her, but was clearly unable to do any significant damage to it, either.

  “Ragdoll, what’s its weakness?” shouted Minoru as he sprinted closer.

  “I don’t know! This thing has several weaknesses, but some of them cancel the others out! I’m having trouble parsing it. I think it might be weak to…oatmeal?”

  Great, that was completely useless. Guess he was going to have to be more direct. Minoru jumped up, grabbing a trailing strand of Sero’s tape just as the nomu lurched forward and tried to skewer Ragdoll with its drill arm. As Ragdoll bent over in an improbable angle to dodge, Minoru found himself launched forward to smack against the nomu’s back right at the base of its six extra arms.

  Working fast, Minoru slapped grapeshot down around the base of as many back-arms as he could reach, ensuring that if the nomu extended them forward it was going to get them stuck in that position. As it indeed proceeded to do with two of its chainsaw arms in an attempt to cut Pixie-Bob in half.

  Out of his peripheral vision, Minoru saw blackness swirling, and he desperately threw himself away from the nomu, rolling awkwardly across the ground and ending up in a heap.

  As Yaoyorozu rushed over and pulled him to his feet, the portal user’s Quirk engulfed the nomu and disappeared with it, leaving the path suddenly empty and quiet.

  Tiger came crashing out of the trees, and zeroed in on Ragdoll and Pixie-Bob. “Ragdoll! Pixie-Bob! Are you alright?!”

  “Yes,” said Pixie-Bob. “Are we safe?”

  “All of the villains I caught a glimpse of are gone,” said Ragdoll. “And all students are still here, except…for Bakugo.”

  Minoru sagged against Yaoyorozu, the strength suddenly leaving his body in a rush.

  They’d lost Bakugo, just like in his previous life. But they’d successfully weathered the villain’s attack. They’d done it.