Zoro took one step forward.
Muscular didn't move back. But he noticed something in that step. Not the urgency of a man trying to save himself. Something far colder than that.
"One sword in your mouth?" Muscular laughed, but the laugh didn't finish the way it usually did. "You're done."
Zoro said nothing.
He extended his right hand slowly toward Wado Ichimonji. His fingers closed around the hilt. And in the moment his hand met the blade, black Haki flowed from palm to steel the way liquid finds its natural channel. White turning to deep black, from hilt to tip, slow and silent, as if the sword itself were breathing.
Kota saw it. Muscular saw it. Neither of them spoke.
Zoro closed his eyes for one second.
In that second he wasn't thinking about Muscular. He was thinking about the fibers. Their layers, their density, how they regenerate from the inside the moment they're cut from the outside. An ordinary strike hits the surface and stops. But Haki concentrated to a single point doesn't only cut the surface. It reaches what's beneath. The structure that commands the regeneration.
The strike has to reach below the fibers.
He opened his eyes.
"One Sword Style..."
He vanished.
There was no sound before the strike. There was one sound after it. Long and clean, like something very hard splitting from inside rather than outside. The muscle fibers Muscular believed were invincible tore in a single straight line, and with them Sandai Kitetsu and Yubashiri came free and fell to the rock with a cold metallic ring.
"Lion Song."
Zoro stood behind Muscular. His back still to the villain. Wado Ichimonji in his hand, the black blade slowly returning to its original white.
Muscular looked at his arm. He tried to send a command to the fibers at the cut points. Nothing responded. As if the Haki had closed the circuits that commanded regeneration from within.
His knees went first. Then the rest of his body.
But before he touched the ground, a rough broken sound came from his throat. "You... got away from us." His speech was heavy, his tongue stumbling. "But the explosion kid... he's still out there." Another laugh, quieter this time. "This isn't over yet."
Then silence.
Zoro stood looking at the massive body on the ground in front of him. That last sentence hadn't reached him as provocation. It reached him as information.
Bakugo. Targeted. Now.
Kota hadn't moved. From that single step to the final sound, he hadn't blinked. Something inside him was trying to understand what he'd seen and finding no words for it.
Zoro picked up Sandai Kitetsu and Yubashiri from the ground and returned them to their sheaths in the usual order. His right hand was trembling faintly. He held it with his left hand for one second, then released it.
He turned to Kota.
The boy was looking at him with wide eyes that held no tears, but something behind them was about to break.
"Don't cry for those who fell." Zoro's voice was rough and exhausted, but every word in it was deliberate. "Your strength might be useful to someone who hasn't died yet."
He didn't add anything. He didn't wait for an answer.
From below the mountain, Mandalay's voice arrived inside every mind in the forest like a wave: "Urgent warning to all students. Kota is at the northern summit. Anyone nearby..."
She didn't finish the sentence because Midoriya had already gone before it ended.
Midoriya reached the mountain summit gasping, his left hand pulled tight and ready to break it with everything it had, his eyes searching for an enemy.
He found a scene he hadn't expected.
Muscular on the ground. The surrounding trees cut at clean sharp angles. And Zoro standing in the middle, his back bent slightly, his right hand on his knee, breathing deep and slow like a man recalculating what he has left.
Midoriya lowered his hand slowly. He looked at Muscular. At the trees. At Zoro.
This is the monster I was going to face. Zoro, you always surprise me. Is this because of the Haki? I'm starting to understand why All Might said what he said about the danger if All For One learns his secret.
Zoro raised his head and saw Midoriya standing there. He looked at him for one second.
"You're late."
Then he turned toward the forest below, his eyes tracking something Midoriya couldn't see.
"Listen carefully." His tone left no room for comment. "The villains are targeting me and the explosion kid. Tell Mandalay to broadcast that now."
He gestured toward Kota with a simple movement of his head. "Take him somewhere safe."
And he started walking toward the edge of the mountain.
"Zoro-kun, you're injured, you can't..."
"I'm walking."
One sentence. No turning back. And he was already gone in the dark.
At the same time, in front of the main building.
Aizawa dodged the sudden fire attack by catching himself on the wall with his binding cloth. He looked at Dabi with his red eyes and lowered his eyelids.
Dabi's flames vanished in the same instant.
"So you really are a professional." Dabi said it with flat calm.
Aizawa didn't give him time to think. His cloth caught Dabi's arm in a single motion and his knee connected with his face hard enough to put him face-down on the ground. Aizawa's hand pressed the back of his head and held him there.
"Tell me your objective. Your numbers. Your positions."
"And why would I do that?"
Aizawa took his left arm and twisted it back. "Because your right arm comes next if you don't. Your legs after that." A pause. "Let's do this rationally."
"In a hurry, Eraser?"
A loud sound came from deep in the forest. Aizawa's attention split for a moment.
From between the trees, Iida and Mineta and Kojiro and Koji came running.
"Aizawa Sensei!"
In the moment Aizawa turned toward them, Dabi slipped from his grip. When he tried to catch him again, the body began dissolving into mud.
A constructed copy.
"Hey, hero." Dabi's voice came before he disappeared completely. "I hope you can protect all your students until the end."
"Get inside." Aizawa ordered the students without looking at them. "I'll be back immediately."
And he ran into the forest.
Aizawa was running when he saw a shape moving between the trees in the opposite direction.
"Zoro!"
Zoro stopped. He turned. When he saw Aizawa, no surprise showed on his face, but something in his steps slowed the way a person accepts an interruption they hadn't planned for.
"You're out here too." Zoro took in the teacher. "What happened?"
"A villain with blue fire attacked me. I restrained him then found out he was a constructed copy." Aizawa paused. "He said something before he disappeared. About protecting students until the end."
"So they want to keep you occupied." Zoro said it as a fact, not a question. "Because that brute at the summit told me something before he went down. Me and the explosion kid, we're the targets. They came to this camp for us."
Aizawa was quiet for two seconds, his eyes working.
"Kota?"
"With Midoriya. He's taking him somewhere safe."
"And where are you going now?"
"To do what needs to be done. Bakugo is in danger and doesn't know it."
Aizawa took his arm. "Stop." His voice wasn't only an order, something else was in it. "Do you know how many there are? What their abilities are? Where they're positioned? You want to walk into a trap with no information."
Zoro looked at the hand on his arm. He didn't shake it off. But something solid was in his eyes. "Then give me a plan. Give me instructions and I'll follow them. But don't stop me." A pause. "I won't let other people get hurt because of me."
Aizawa was quiet. Long enough for it to have weight.
Something in that sentence broke something in the teacher's calculations. Not a weakness in the argument, but because the person saying it wasn't saying it from fear or from recklessness. They were saying it from somewhere else entirely.
"Come with me. First to Mandalay."
Mandalay was retreating step by step before Spinner and his massive blade. Tiger on her left was absorbing Magne's heavy strikes despite the blood soaking his shoulder.
Midoriya arrived first. Kota on his back, his hand gripping tight. When he saw the scene he set Kota down behind a large rock.
"Don't move from here."
Kota grabbed Midoriya's sleeve with small fingers. Then released it.
Midoriya jumped with Full Cowl, pulling Spinner's attention away from Mandalay. Moments later Aizawa and Zoro arrived.
Aizawa lowered his eyelids. Magne's ability disappeared. Tiger used the opening and threw a strike with his full weight that brought Magne down.
Spinner saw what happened to his partner and turned to find Zoro in front of him. Three swords against one massive blade covered in knives.
"You..."
Zoro took one step. "Both your eyes." He said it quietly. "Focus."
The fight didn't last long.
Everyone stood breathing. Magne and Spinner on the ground, bound by Aizawa's cloth.
Aizawa raised his voice with the tone of someone who had decided. "Mandalay." He looked at her. "Broadcast three things to all students right now. First: they are permitted to fight. Second: Bakugo is specifically targeted, he does not engage in any confrontation and returns immediately at maximum speed. Third: Yaoyorozu, wherever you are in the forest, find Zoro and go to him."
Mandalay nodded and closed her eyes.
Aizawa turned to Tiger and Mandalay. "You two stay here. Help the injured and guard these two." He pointed to the fallen villains. "Don't move."
He took Kota and held him. "I'm going back to the building. There are students I left there."
Then he looked at Zoro. One look that held what couldn't be said out loud in front of everyone.
"Your role is to draw whatever villains remain away from the students. You're the primary target. Use that."
Zoro picked up all three swords in one quiet motion. He looked at Aizawa with eyes that neither asked nor hesitated.
"Understood."
He walked into the forest and disappeared in the dark.
Mandalay and Tiger and Midoriya stayed exchanging looks.
"This is dangerous." Tiger kept his voice low. "How do you send him alone when he's the primary target of this entire attack?"
"Aizawa Sensei..." Mandalay began.
"Follow exactly what I told you." Aizawa's voice came as he moved away without turning back. "What remains, leave it to me. Don't ask more."
He disappeared in the direction of the building with Kota on his arm.
Midoriya stood for a second in the silence. He tried to put together what he'd heard. The words were clear but what was behind them wasn't. Aizawa knew something he hadn't said. And Zoro had accepted a role at a speed he'd never accepted anything before.
Something had been planned.
But what remained in his head after all the analysis was Bakugo's face.
Kacchan heard the announcement, Midoriya thought, looking at the forest. But he won't come back. Impossible. Not him.
He activated Full Cowl.
"Sorry, Aizawa Sensei."
And he ran into the forest.
.
.
For Advanced Chapters:
Chapter 81 is Available now
Threads of Hope and the Pride That Burns
A tracking device!! Yes, Midoriya and the others now have a glimmer of hope after being in despair. Bakugo, however, still hasn't fully accepted what Zoro did. He seems very angry.
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