Fire Zone

No! That was his Quirk-teleportation!

Jilan Jiyu had been ready to give up struggling, but when he felt Earth's gravity still pulling on him, his eyes snapped open. He saw that he was in free fall, plummeting toward the ground!

Everything he could see was red. Flames engulfed the bases of several steel-framed buildings, and the fire was still spreading, though it would be some time before it reached the tops.

Was he lucky? The helmet on Jilan Jiyu's head effectively shielded him from the violent air currents around him, allowing him to breathe steadily.

Jilan Jiyu quickly judged the distance between himself and the roof of the nearest building. He regulated his breathing in midair, wrapped his whole body in the power of Hamon, and, with his body in a leaping pose, managed to grab the edge of the building!

That was close... After a brief pause to catch his breath, Jilan Jiyu pulled himself up with his arms.

Jilan Jiyu looked at the burning building beneath him, struck by an odd sense of familiarity... It was like-Fuyuki City in flames!

"Fuyuki City was swallowed by flames because of the Black Holy Grail, but this place was created by Thirteen. A fire that could be caused by the power of just one person..."

In a fire like this, a hero would be helpless no matter how much power they had. Even if they rescued the injured, the things that had burned down would never come back.

Setting those jumbled thoughts aside for now, Jilan Jiyu lay prone and noticed an agile figure running below the building, with several people in hot pursuit.

"That's... Mashirao Ojiro!"

Dressed in a martial arts uniform, Mashirao Ojiro used the differences in height between the buildings and his agile, sturdy tail to weave through every corner, making use of the terrain to shake off the pursuers close behind him.

Seeing Ojiro put Jilan Jiyu somewhat at ease. He could now be certain they were in USJ's fire zone, and the League of Villains had stationed people here in advance. They must have planned all along to teleport us away like this.

If he was right, the others had probably been teleported to different zones, just like Jilan Jiyu and Ojiro, with multiple enemies waiting for them there as well.

There was no time left to worry about the others. Watching Mashirao Ojiro narrowly avoid a trash can lid thrown by an enemy, Jilan Jiyu made up his mind to help him.

"Even so, there's still very little I can do right now..."

Jilan Jiyu spotted some discarded construction materials on the roof and thought of a way to help him.

As if throwing a javelin, Jilan Jiyu planted one foot on the raised edge of the roof, took a steel pipe, aimed behind Mashirao Ojiro, and hurled it with all his might!

"Go, Spear of Gungnir!"

Like a falling meteor, the steel pipe tore toward the ground behind Mashirao Ojiro in an instant, accompanied by a sonic boom and an unstoppable momentum!

"Clang!"

Like a real javelin, the steel pipe plunged deep into the ground in front of the man leading the chase after Ojiro. It hadn't actually hit him, but as it hummed and swayed, it brushed the tip of his nose.

"Wh-what is that!?"

The man in the torn clothes shrieked and fell backward dramatically, scrambling away on his hands and feet.

"Where did that attack come from? Look around, quickly!"

There seemed to be a leader among them. He didn't panic, instead calmly telling them to look around.

"Boss, over there, at the top of the building!"

Someone quickly spotted Jilan Jiyu, partly because he wasn't hiding.

"There's another one of them..." The leader gritted his teeth. "None of us can fly. Leave him alone for now and catch that slippery loach up ahead first! Don't bother with that firefighter behind us. He's just trying to distract us; he can't hit a thing!"

Hearing their boss say that reassured the group, and they decided to do as he said: ignore Jilan Jiyu for now and catch Ojiro, who had already taken the opportunity to run far ahead.

"Hey, hey, not one of you is coming after me..." Jilan Jiyu took off his helmet. Because he'd been wearing it just now, the direction and force of his throw had been slightly off, and he had almost hit that man. Fortunately, it had only been a close call.

"Do you know? I missed on purpose just now... because heroes don't kill." Jilan Jiyu spoke to himself, raising the thumb of his clenched right fist and gently pressing it down. "But I don't intend to let you go and cause trouble for Tail, either."

As the villains below passed the steel pipe one after another, not a single one noticed that it had slowly turned red, perhaps hidden by the surrounding firelight.

Just then, the man in torn clothes stood up and, still shaken, took another look at Jilan Jiyu on the roof. Seeing the smile on his face, he snapped his head around to look at the steel pipe in front of him!

"Watch out!"

Hearing his desperate scream, the people ahead instinctively stopped and turned around. They saw what happened next with their own eyes:

It was as if the entire steel pipe had been cast from explosives, as though the linear spread of Katsuki Bakugo's explosive blasts had been turned into a high-intensity explosion over a small area. The violent blast instantly engulfed the people closest to it!

The man in torn clothes was farther from the pipe. He had run away before the blast and instinctively raised his guard, yet even so, the sudden rush of air completely tore away the back of his clothes and sent him rolling several meters forward!

When the explosion ended, he opened his dust-filled eyes and found that he had been pushed to the entrance of a burning convenience store. Above his head, a flaming sign was on the verge of falling.

"Just as I thought, attacking U.A. High School was a mistake... I could have become a hero. When did things turn out like this?" The man in torn clothes blinked, the red firelight seemingly filling his entire world. He spread his arms, apparently having given up hope of survival, and muttered to himself, "Someone like me should have expected such a miserable end long ago, but why do I feel sad...?"

Feeling sparks fall on him from time to time, he quietly closed his eyes and waited for the sign's connection to the wall to burn through and end his life.

"Snap."

He heard the sound of plastic burning through. At the very end, the thought that crossed his mind was-That sound is so beautiful, just like one of my strings snapping after being played fiercely...

Strings! That's right, I can't die yet. I still have to... I still have to play!

His tightly shut eyes snapped open, but what he felt was despair. He watched the convenience store sign fall freely toward his head, yet he couldn't even move a finger...

Suddenly, a javelin came flying from who knew where and pierced the sign, continuing on into the concrete wall without losing momentum!

The sign was now less than twenty centimeters from the tip of his nose. He could feel the heat of the flames and the fine hairs on his skin being singed.

A hand gently touched his arm, and he suddenly felt a surge of strength come from it. The man in torn clothes struggled to roll over, getting out from under the sign that could kill him on the spot at any moment.

He looked to his right at the person who had saved him and said with a bitter smile, "You? Why did you save me... Even if you're dressed like a firefighter, I'm still your enemy..."

Before him stood the person who had thrown that deadly explosive javelin: Jilan Jiyu, dressed in an orange firefighter's suit.

"I just wanted to tell you two things." Jilan Jiyu stood up and said calmly, "First, I'm very accurate with a javelin. You were wrong to say I wasn't a threat at all."

"Second, heroes don't kill, even when it comes to enemies trying to kill them."