Counterattack Plan

Izuku Midoriya could hardly bear to watch Mr. Aizawa being beaten into the ground, but he was powerless to do anything. He composed himself, walked over to Jilan Jiyu's left side, and whispered, "You said there was a way to contact our other classmates. What do we need to do?"

"Sorry, Mr. Aizawa, but the enemies don't seem to be trying to kill him, so the most important thing for us now is to make sure all our classmates are safe."

Jilan Jiyu let go and returned to the pool, beckoning them closer. Once the group had formed a circle, he pulled something sealed in a clear plastic bag from his pocket. "You should all recognize this, right?"

"That's... a walkie-talkie! And it's waterproof!"

Seeing the delighted looks on Izuku Midoriya, Tsuyu Asui, and Minoru Mineta's faces, Jilan Jiyu slowly explained what he had been doing.

Midoriya was thrilled. "So after Jilan and Ojiro dealt with the enemies in the fire zone, you split up to look for the others? That's our class rep for you!"

Tsuyu Asui looked at Jilan Jiyu in amazement, a finger resting against her chin. "Jilan-chan really is dependable..."

Grape raised his hand and shouted, "Does that mean we'll all be okay? Is All Might coming to save us!?"

Jilan Jiyu nodded, looking at Asui in surprise at her familiar way of addressing him. Were they already that close?

"Ojiro is very dependable. With him there, we shouldn't have to worry about the classmates on his side." Jilan Jiyu gave Midoriya an approving look. "I was ready for a fight, but I didn't expect you to have dealt with the enemies so smoothly. I dove down to where they were tied up and got the walkie-talkie from their leader."

"Jilan-chan, how did you get them to hand over something so important?"

"Ah, I have Mineta to thank for that." Jilan Jiyu fell silent for a moment, reluctant to remember what he had seen, but continued, "Some of the grapes Mineta threw down got stuck in their noses, ears, and mouths. They were completely restrained, and because the grapes were so sticky, they had no way to remove them.

"When I swam over, I only had to ask if they had anything important on them, and someone couldn't wait to sell out their boss... That's how I got the walkie-talkie."

"I see...!" Midoriya struck his fist into his palm, looking a little regretful. "I should've questioned them."

"It's not your fault, Midoriya-chan. You did very well already." Tsuyu Asui comforted Midoriya, then asked Jilan Jiyu, "Can't we really wait for All Might?"

Jilan Jiyu had just told them his theory that the enemies' target was All Might. Although Midoriya had some trouble accepting it, he didn't argue with Jilan Jiyu, perhaps because he had the same thought himself.

"What we need most right now is to make sure our other classmates are safe. Only when we hear that they're all right can we put our minds at ease, and Mr. Aizawa can put his mind at ease too."

"...You're right, Jilan-chan. Let's begin."

Seeing that none of the three objected, Jilan Jiyu switched on the walkie-talkie and set it to the code he had obtained from the enemies and the frequency they had agreed on beforehand.

Landslide zone.

"Monster! This guy's a monster!!"

One of the people taking part in the League of Villains' surprise attack on U.A. High School was hiding behind a large boulder, trembling. "What's going on? Is this guy really just a kid?!"

He had been assigned to the landslide zone to help the others intercept and capture the scattered students and use them to threaten All Might. Yet... they were supposed to be the hunters, and one of their prey had completely overwhelmed them!

He alone had been clever enough to hide farther away, escaping that terrifying attack. Even so, he didn't get much time to catch his breath. That person was still searching the area, steadily cutting off his escape routes.

"So this is where you are..."

Hearing that rather cold voice, he lunged forward without hesitation. In an instant, the boulder that had been sheltering him turned into a block of ice, and even the ground around it was covered in frost!

Damn it, why did he have to keep chasing me? I don't even want to attack him anymore!

"Could you stop running? I've run out of patience."

He kept running, with no intention of stopping. He had seen with his own eyes what had happened to his teammates: their entire bodies had been frozen in blocks of ice, with only their faces exposed to the air as the tyrant interrogated them!

Suddenly, he looked down and saw a round black spot growing larger and larger in his trembling shadow.

He looked up in terror. A cone-shaped block of ice roughly ten meters long was flying straight at him through the air. Like a homing missile, it struck the ground directly in front of him!

Boom!

The ice plunged several meters into the ground. He failed to react and slammed into it without slowing down. His mind went hazy, and he collapsed limply to the ground, feeling as though he had a concussion.

His face was pressed against the ground as he watched the red-and-white demon in a U.A. gym uniform walk toward him. All he could do was say in a panic, "Don't kill me! I don't know anything!"

"What a useless guy. Apart from your Quirk, you're no better than a street thug." Shoto Todoroki looked at him with disgust and froze his legs. "I'm impressed you managed to run so far..."

Shoto Todoroki had already obtained information from the group that had tried to attack him. Only this guy had fled when things looked bad, and Todoroki had spent some time finding him to keep him from warning the others.

Incidentally, his Quirk was Chameleon. Hiding in a landslide zone where everything was brown, he had been quite difficult for Todoroki to find, since his vision was still somewhat blurry after Jilan Jiyu had beaten him earlier.

"Th-that devil's back!"

When Shoto Todoroki returned to the enemies he had frozen and prepared to leave the area, he saw their terrified faces and sighed silently.

"Who's the villain here...?"

Suddenly, he heard a solemn voice coming from somewhere on one of them:

"Come in, please. Come in, please. This is zone three. All targets have been captured. What's the situation in zone five?"

Shoto Todoroki went back, melted the ice around the man's torso, and pulled out a walkie-talkie. A somewhat noisy voice came from it, and he seemed to be able to hear Midoriya's indignant roar on the other end.

Is this how the enemies communicate...? Indeed, when there was no signal, walkie-talkies were the most convenient way to communicate. They were widely used in disaster relief, too. Firefighting suits like the one Jilan Jiyu was wearing generally came equipped with a walkie-talkie for disaster relief.

"I've taken down all your people. If you want to save them, then..." You'll have to trade our people for them...

Shoto Todoroki was halfway through his sentence when an excited voice on the other end abruptly interrupted him. "Is that Todoroki!? It's Midoriya! I'm so glad you're okay!"

??? Didn't they say they'd all been captured? Why are they the ones talking to me...?

Full of questions, Shoto Todoroki struggled for a long moment before managing a single sentence.

"...You're all right. That's good."