….
?!Rumi woke up just as the intruders entered the main hall - it was an instantaneous, predatory intuition, triangulating a heartbeat that wasn't present before.
Something was wrong, her arm pulled tight around Eri.
Three seconds - that was all she had.
She swept the girl into her chest and blew off the bed in one motion, her legs firing with everything she had, and detonated off the mattress
The bedroom door exploded inward off its hinges a half-breath after a millisecond.
Under Rumi's watchful eyes entered an animalistic-looking man. He has blue fur, a wolf-like head, hands, and feet resembling an eagle's talons, and a long reptilian tail.
'A mutant type?' Rumi thought, trying to figure out the humanoid figure.
Chimera's massive frame filled the doorway.
His clawed hand raked through the empty space where they had been sleeping, the mattress tearing open in three deep, parallel furrows that sent white fur filling the room.
'If he actually has the physical output of all three of the animal features, then I can't let him grab me.'
Rumi hit the far wall with both feet, kicked off, and rocketed across the room.
Her right heel connected with Chimera's jaw - a clean, concentrated strike carrying the full rotational force of her body behind it.
'Tsk, that answers my question.'
Rumi knew that any normal man's skull would have come apart.
Nevertheless, the impact snapped Chimera's head sideways, driving him into the doorframe hard enough to crack it. He steadied with a stagger, rolling his jaw as something in his neck popped.
"Tch." He spat blood onto the floor. "Going straight for the kill? Is this how you greet a fellow mutant type–"
Rumi couldn't care less about his blabaring, as she kicked again with the same leg, this time her heel driving straight into his throat.
Cartilage buckled under the pressure. Chimera let out a wet gag, his eagle-like talons clawing uselessly at his windpipe.
By the time he had finished choking, Rumi was already a blur in the hallway. She set Eri down against the wall. Put her own back to the girl and faced forward.
"Mama–" Eri's voice was tiny and shaking.
"Dear…" Rumi didn't look back, her crimson eyes fixed on the hallway, tracking the shapes shifting through the dust. "Stay behind me, and tuck your head. Whatever happens, you don't move until I call your name."
"I am sc–"
"I know, baby." Her voice was hard and gentle at the same time. "But you trust Mama, right?"
She straightened as the hallway stretched ahead, bedroom at her back, bathroom to the right, the living room open in front.
At least, through the drifting plaster dust, she spotted all the intruders.
Chimera, still bent double in the bedroom doorway - one hand clamped over his crushed throat, each breath coming out wet and struggling wheeze and whatever cocky grin he had been kicked clean off his face
At the far end of the corridor, Slice stood lethally, hair fanning outward in a slow spread that turned the corridor into a narrowing kill zone of organic blades.
To the left, at the kitchen's entrance stood Mummy, his bandages unspooling across the floor like serpents.
And in the center of the living room was Nine.
Finally behind Chimera's hunched frame, came another figure leaning out just far enough to see her fingers waggle–
"Hiii~!" Toga's voice was warm as a greeting card. "Wow, you are so fast! That was like… whoosh, bam, whoosh~! Super cool!"
Rumi bared her teeth, a predator's warning - like a rabbit poised to kill with its hind legs.
Nine's plan for a quiet extraction had died in the first three seconds.
But this? This was different.
This wasn't any of that.
Every movement she made started and ended at the same point - Eri, against the wall, behind her. She held her ground, neither advancing nor pressing an attack, making no move to take space or finish anyone off.
…she fought like a mother…
That was the difference and none of them had accounted for - unlike their plan, she didn't advance at them grudgingly. And in quite contrary, she held an invisible boundary between the world and her daughter.
It was as if telling: anything that crossed that line was going to learn exactly why a rabbit is most dangerous when it's cornered over its young.
….
"My apologies... I couldn't finish her."
Chimera's voice is a wet, guttural rattle.
His movements are more cautious, while blood trailed down his chin, teeth rattling loose in his gums from that first devastating kick.
"Still standing, huh?"
She didn't give him a chance to find his footing.
[Luna Fall]
She launched herself at him again, slipping under the clawed swipe before planting her hands and driving both heels into his sternum.
The blow connected, making him cough more blood, but this time he gritted his teeth, and charged again–
–only to be met with a spinning heel that cracked his ribs, followed by a precise kick to his already-ruined throat that reduced his roar to a pathetic, gurgling wheeze.
He was tough, monstrously so, but Rumi is managing to dismantle him quite effortlessly, and they both knew it.
Dabi isn't the only one that has been training over the last years, and is growing strong. Rumi had been right there beside him, and unlike Dabi who was assisted by his [System], her evolution fueled by a singular, burning competitive streak.
She was far too prideful, and persistent, to let her partner leave her in the dust, or worse, to ever find herself holding him back in a fight.
And as far as Dabi could tell, Rumi had definitely surpassed her original strength from the show.
"Mummy! NOW!" Chimera choked out.
From the kitchen entrance, a dozen white, high-tension bandages erupted - bypassed Rumi, and streaked toward the hallway… more specifically towards Eri.
However, Rumi spun off Chimera, intercepted the first wave mid-flight, caught two tendrils with her ankle and shredded them. She landed, pivoted, tore through three more, closed the gap to the kitchen entrance in two strides, and drove her fist into Mummy's face.
His head snapped back as the bandages fell slack, and he crashed into the kitchen counter hard enough to shatter it.
She was back in position before Chimera could take a single step toward Eri.
The entire exchange lasted two seconds. She had crossed the kill zone, neutralized a threat, and returned to her post without leaving Eri exposed for more than a heartbeat.
Chimera stood trembling, blood dripping from his maw, Mummy lay slumped amidst broken granite.
In under a minute, the Number Five Hero had systematically crippled two of the most dangerous two of the three front-line fighters.
Nine watched from the living room, his cold, rectangular gray eyes finally sharpening.
The mission had been simple: abduct the girl.
Eri's quirk was the real objective, and his arrangement with All For One had been straightforward: Nine would claim the quirk, they would take the girl, and both sides would walk away.
He needed the [Rewind] quirk for himself.
His body could only handle a limited number of quirks, and he was already nearing that limit - five in active: a replica of All For One, Air Wall, Scanning, Finger Lasers, and his own Weather Manipulation.
A few slots remained, but each one mattered and a wrong choice meant being permanently stuck with something useless.
[Rewind] removed that risk.
It would let him reset his own state, erase mistakes, and recover from damage in the middle of a fight - turning every future choice into a safe one.
This was the perfect quirk for him at this point.
"She is significantly stronger than the briefing indicated." His voice came from the living room, flat, clinical.
He raised a hand, and a compressed wall of air slammed into Rumi from behind, driving her into the hallway wall with crushing force.
'Damn it.' Rumi hissed internally. 'He is not even looking at me.'
She caught herself, twisted, and kicked off into a steady landing, but the brief recovery gave Chimera enough time to close in.
[Air Wall]: one of Nine's stolen quirk, fully effective indoors without relying on weather.
But that half-second of recovery was all the opening Chimera needed.
"Stay... down!" the beast-man lunged, a clawed swipe aimed at her head.
Rumi slipped under the arc of his arm and, again… drove her heel into his already-damaged ribs, the impact ripping a howl from him.
'This bitch–!' Chimera's thoughts dissolved into white static as the impact detonated through his side. 'She is hitting the same spot on purpose.'
Then an [Air Wall] struck from the left, catching her shoulder and spinning her sideways.
'How is he able to shift his origin points?' She noted, rolling through it and coming back up.
"Chimera, stop being a brute and move!" Slice shouted from the end of the hall. Her hair began to fan out, the needles glinting like surgical steel. "You're blocking my line of sight!"
Rumi rolled through the pressure, popping up just as Slice's hair tore across the corridor in a horizontal sweep.
She snapped back, but a single, wire-thin strand traced her forearm.
'Hufff, It's shallow…' she glanced down at the thin cut spreading across her skin.
"You're so pretty when you bleed, Rabbit-san!" Toga's voice giggled from the shadows of the bedroom. "Can I have just a little more? Just a teeny-weeny drop?"
Nine watched the hallway from the living room, eyes tracking Rumi's movement patterns. He knew his [Weather Manipulation] would bring the entire complex down on the target, so he limited his approach to only smaller Quirks.
'She neutralized Chimera effectively and Mummy is non-functional.' He assessed.
'Slice's hair controls the corridor geometry but won't hold if Usagiyama commits to closing the distance.'
Nine doesn't think he is fighting a losing battle.
He knew under his constant interference his [Air Walls] were definitely cutting her timing from unseen angles, and constantly keeping her on edge.
And not to mention, she can't leave the child's perimeter.
That was a leverage they could hold onto.
Chimera driven by a cocktail of adrenaline and pure, animalistic shame, charged again - or tried to - as Rumi met the charge head-on.
She delivered a straight, brutal thrust to his solar plexus. The blow lifted the three-hundred-pound man clean off his feet, driving him backward through the bathroom door.
'...I can't.' Chimera thought, staring at the cracked ceiling through one eye, the other already swelling shut. 'I can't get up.'
"Chimera is compromised." Nine noted, his tone unchanged. "Mummy, finish the containment."
An [Air Wall] swept across the back of Rumi's knees, forcing a brief buckle. She turned the stumble into a tactical roll, rising just as Mummy re-engaged.
He dragged himself off the ruined kitchen counter, his low jaw hung down clearly broken.
He didn't speak, or, he couldn't - but his bandages lashing out with a frantic, vengeful speed. They coiled like vipers, snapping around Rumi's ankle, her left wrist, and her forearm.
Got you, Mummy thought, his eyes burning with a dull, yellow light.
"Oh, that's not good for her." Toga observed, tilting her head.
Rumi barked, as felt her muscles bulging, strained against the high-tension fabric.
'I need to be fast.' She worked through them in quick succession, ripping each one before it could fully lock, but every break cost her a fraction of a second.
Those fractions were starting to add up.
Slice's hair moved to cut her while practically captured, and while dodging the most, few managed to get through.
Her cheek, shoulder, and the bridge of her nose, had traces of cuts leaving blood running down her face and arms, onto the hallway floor.
However, she didn't even blink.
Just then, Chimera, who was down, dragged himself out of the bathroom. Obviously, he was nowhere near normal, and practically a half dead man, if it wasn't for her beastly nature.
"I didn't know, you were a cockroach too."
Rumi immediately jumped, with a sharp kick to his jaw, the same one she had already damaged beyond recognition.
He was slammed sideways into the wall, slid down it in a smear of blood, then forced himself back up, slower than before.
"Stay down." Rumi said, the words carrying the final edge of a predator's warning before restraint gave way.
"Make... me…." Chimera slurred through a mouthful of broken enamel.
"Sure." Rumi obliged.
She pivoted in a blur, a spinning heel snapping his head into the drywall with a crack that shook the apartment. The follow-up drive buried itself into his already-shattered ribs, flattening him for good.
'That's all I have got left.' Chimera thought, cheek pressed against the floor.
Mummy came in the moment Chimera dropped, bandages firing from every angle at once, layering over each other.
Rumi tore through the first wave, caught the second around her forearm, used the grip to yank him forward instead of fighting the pull, and drove her knee into his already-shattered jaw.
Two down, Rumi sighed, though blood continued to run freely from the cuts across her body, streaking the floor beneath her.
Nine watched without reaction. "Enough."
He stepped out of the living room into the hallway, the regulators in his mask cycling faster, their rising whine bleeding into the air as pressure shifted through the apartment.
Both of Nine's hands rose. Twin beams of violet light - [Finger Lasers] - lanced out, tight and concentrated.
Rumi twisted clear as one punched through the wall behind her, missing Eri by feet, while the other grazed her hip, searing through fabric and flesh, and she kept moving, closing the distance.
The decision carried risk, leaving space behind her, but letting him continue meant death by attrition.
Her kick slammed into his crossed forearms, forcing him back as his boots carved into the floor, the reinforced plating of his life-support corset absorbing part of the blow.
His hand dropped, and an [Air Wall] struck her point-blank in the stomach, folding her breath. Before she could reset, a follow-up laser cut toward her lead leg.
She twisted a fraction too late.
The beam carved into her calf, the muscle buckling under the heat. She caught herself on one hand, spinning through the white-hot agony, and drove her other leg upward under Nine's chin.
CRACK.
His head snapped back as the mask shrieked and his body slammed into the wall, an amber indicator along his collar flickering out.
Nine steadied, fingers brushing his mask as his breathing turned uneven, and when his gaze returned to her, certainty had already given way to cold recalculation.
"Slice." he said. "Cover me."
.
….
[To be continued…]
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