Chapter 22 - Hosu City: Part 3

"So, you're Natsu."

The man turned and faced me. A look of recognition flashes across my face.

"Gray? What the hell are you doing here? This isn't.."

He looks at me mildly shocked, "How do you know my name?"

Izuku looks surprised as well, "Natsu, you know him!?!?!?"

Gray stands there thinking, "Well this is rather troublesome. I was told not to kill you, but that may need to change."

Meanwhile, on the ground, Stain was looking up at Gray, "You bastard, you were watching weren't you."

"I may have seen a small peek. Either way, I'm here to get you out of here."

I charge at him, "Oh no you don't."

I slash down with my blades and out of nowhere, Gray pulls out two wakizashi's made of ice, the short swords that samurai carry. He parry's with his two swords.

"Idiot, my flames will melt through your ice."

He stands there quietly and watches my fire press against his ice.

But it didn't melt, instead, he thrust one of his blades out.

I jump back and dodge, but he manages to scratch into my shoulder.

I can feel the cold on my skin for a while.

"How interesting."

I strike again and this time I phase through his swords. The blades are inches away from his face when he drops the blades and throws up a wall of ice.

Annoyingly, my fire clashes with his ice and I back off.

Midoriya tries to attack Gray, but the latter easily dodges and counters. Trapping the boys lower half in ice, he then turns to me.

"I wish we could play more, but I got some stuff to do."

He picks up Stain and leaps away. I fly up and follow him. Looking back at Izuku, I drop him a fire puppet to help melt the ice. Gray is leaping across rooftops carrying Stain. Meanwhile, I'm shooting fire at him and trying to incapacitate him.

However, the icy bastard keeps on dodging and sending a wave of frosty throwing knives my way.

"Never thought that I would have to use this in Hosu." Lightning rushes throughout my flames and pulses in my body. My speed dramatically increases and I catch up to Gray and Stain knocking both of them off the building onto the street.

Gray makes a slide for himself and lands easily on the ground. Stain is a little less fortunate and rolls on the ground to lessen the impact. On his legs, I can see bits of ice where Gray froze Stain's leg to help him stop the bleeding.

Gray stares at me, analyzing me in his head.

'So this is the lightning that he talked about.'

I take a fighting stance and briefly think about what I know. Based on his reaction to me, I don't think that he's a reincarnator. He didn't acknowledge me as someone familiar but as an enemy. He might be some kind of anomaly or some kind of a joke that Gabriel sent.

His abilities however are quite troublesome. If he's anything based on his appearance, then I'll have a hell of a time melting his ice. And unless I'm wrong, those marks across his body are from the demon slayer powers.

From his hands, he creates a comically large fan and flicks it open. In turn, I wrap lighting imbued fire around my arms and prepare to retaliate.

I burst forward and forced him to fight me in hand to hand combat.

[Dance of the Warrior Gods: Ares, Indra, & Ashura]

I shut off Lightning Dragon Mode and lay down a barrage of attacks to deal some damage. He manages to evade and block almost eight percent of them. I sweep done with my hand to get a chop on his arm, he dodges and lands a jab on my cheek. But with the wind pressure increasing on each blow, he's blocking less and less of my blows and slowly losing ground.

Then he smirks and starts to push back. I'm not sure what he was doing, but whatever it was it was effective. Left, right, kick, jab, elbow, knee, kick, stab. I tried to predict his movements but they were too erratic and too random to make out.

As I lose concentration, I break the flow of the wind that I've been building up. Backing off, I see him grinning back at me.

"I rather enjoyed this little fight of ours, but I'm already late, so see ya."

He picks up Stain and rushes off again. I start to chase him and he disappears. Because of the cold air, I can't smell as well, but I can smell enough to know that he's nearby.

In a flash of black, I fall to the ground and lose strength in my legs. Gray is standing in front of me holding a bloody knife. I look behind at my legs and stare in shock.

He had cut halfway behind my ankle and cut my Achilles tendon.

"That should stop you for a while. Just for good measure. Normally I would kill you, but I have my orders."

Freezing my legs to the ground, he knocks me out with a chop, picks up Stain, and retreats to their little hideout.

*Two Days Later*

I wake up in the hospital and the police chief tells me the story.

After I had passed out, my fire clone had also disappeared, but it had done its job well enough where Izuku could break out of the ice. He got Todoroki to an ambulance and went to look for me. He also notified other heroes and police that the Hero Killer had escaped and a dangerous ice user was with him.

Fortunately, Hawks had seen my little chase and caught up to me to see me lying on the ground with my heels cut open.

Left on its own, it would have taken years to recover, but very luckily for me, the doctors were able to heal it with minimal side effects. I just can't walk for the next week and I'll be good. The only signs of the fight were the two scars across my heel and the scar across my cheek.

Todoroki had taken major damage, the knife had cut halfway through his ribcage and he was currently in critical condition.

Izuku had suffered minor frostbite but other than that he was fine.

Iida had some stab wounds in his arms but he was better than Todoroki.

Stain and Gray successfully escaped and it sounds like there hasn't been any YouTube video of Stain's final words.

Then the chief goes on to chew me out on how what I did was irresponsible, reckless and I should've gone to a pro hero and whatnot.

I was half-listening, thinking about the future of this world.

'This is rather troublesome. Between Stain on the loose and this new ice user, what I know may become not as helpful as I once thought.'

The internship ends today and I am getting discharged tomorrow. Todoroki will not be getting released anytime soon as he is undergoing surgery to fix his ribs.

Hawks decides to visit me. He walks in carrying a plastic bag, places it next to my bed, and sits next to me silently.

"I got you some curry."

"Thanks."

Then we both sit there in silence.

I decide to start the conversation, "Nice weather today."

He looks at me with a half pained face, "You get your tendons cut and the best you can do is point out the weather. Why did I even choose you?"

"Because of my dazzling looks and charming personality I expect."

He grins slightly and looks at me seriously, "So... had fun?"

I take a look outside, while it was an interesting fight, "No, not really. Didn't care too much about Todoroki, but he is a classmate and I regret not being able to save him. Stain and Gray got away and I'm half-crippled."

"Well, at least you have some sense of humility. There's hope for you yet. If you ever want to be a sidekick, my agency is always open."

I look back at the man who's been watching me for the past week, "Thanks."

He turns around and waves goodbye.

I sit back and replay the fight in my head. What I did, what he did, where I went wrong, his fighting style, I tried to remember all of it for future reference.

Cause I have a really bad feeling about this guy.

*All for One POV*

"So how are your hands?"

Stain flexes his metallic fingers and draws his sword.

"Feels almost normal."

When Gray came back with a handless Stain on his shoulder, I knew what I needed to do.

I gave him a set of prosthetic hands and helped him recover.

"Good I'm glad that you like them. So now you will join the League, I'm sure you understand why."

He grimaces and nods his head. I not only saved his life but gave him a future as well.

"So explain to me everything that happens in as much detail as possible."

Stain talks about his fight with Dragneel and I am shocked at the boy's skill.

'How interesting. So he can do all sorts of fun things with his flames. That would be an interesting addition to my collection. Just wait Dragneel, you and All Might will both fall at my hands.'

Gray steps out of the corner he'd been standing in, "The bastard knows my name somehow."

"Your real name?!?!?!"

"No, of course not, that's been gone since I was initiated. Hell, even I've forgotten it. My code name, the bastard knows my code name."

'Hmm, this might be troublesome. I need a plan to capture him. His quirk might be a larger asset than One for All.'

"We need to do something big, so we need more members. With Stain here, some of the more hesitant might be a little more interested now."

AN: Hosu City Arc is done and the plans for the league of villains is going to be interesting to write.