Chapter 19: New power
…..
The lightning easily pierced the roof of the USJ training facility and struck Denki.
And after receiving bolt after bolt, there was suddenly a great flash emanating from Denki's body, and for the first time, he felt a jolt of countless and immeasurable volts of nothing but pure energy just for him.
It was incredible and simply unnatural, such a situation.
And obviously, all this also came accompanied by a pain that could not be explained in words.
His body seemed to be pierced by infinite needles that quickly and continuously penetrated every part of him, from his muscles, tendons, bones, etc.
Without Denki knowing, his Quirk was remaking his body at the molecular level to allow a new power to coexist within him.
And this was literally what prevented the young aspiring hero from dying in this situation, something with which the poor villain next to him was not so lucky. Despite being able to withstand a large amount of electricity like Kaminari, he couldn't endure this, causing visible burns to form on his body, with charred tissue and scorched skin along with significant internal damage, the destruction of underlying tissues, muscles, and blood vessels until little by little his entire body began to carbonize, turning black and crispy.
Denki's Quirk had reacted so strongly to his desperation, fear, and desires that it started to evolve automatically, producing and absorbing electricity at a disturbing and astonishing speed.
It was this evolution that caused and allowed the lightning to integrate and strengthen Denki from head to toe.
And if all this wasn't already too much, in the midst of the chaos of lightning enveloping Denki and the villain, while the aspiring hero's Quirk was experiencing a sudden and disconcerting evolution...
There was another unexpected twist when his Quirk somehow instinctively and automatically began to absorb the villain's carbonized Quirk next to him due to the utility and benefits it would bring to his current evolution.
This absorption was not the result of a conscious effort on Denki's Quirk but rather a reflection of his deepest feelings and needs in that unique moment he was going through. Oh and naturally, to the fact that this villain's Quirk had similarities to Kaminari's.
It was at that instant that Tesla, the villain, who was already experiencing the worst pain from feeling his body completely carbonize to the point of feeling he was on the brink of death, began to feel another completely new and even more unpleasant pain, as if something forming his very being was being torn away.
But against the brute force of Denki's Quirk's absorption at the height of its evolution process, a dying Tesla and his Quirk could do nothing.
Without any willpower from the villain, his Quirk was an easy target that couldn't even resist the invasive force, allowing Denki's Quirk to absorb a Quirk that perfectly matched his current needs.
This may all sound great, but Denki's reality was another as this whole process was indeed an infernal pain for the young man, but luckily he didn't suffer this hell for long because just as suddenly as the immense pain came, it also left.
What actually seemed like countless hours were only seconds.
And when everything finally ended, Denki Kaminari felt it.
A wave of energy so powerful that his body and mind felt like they were going to be split in half...
Oh yes, the damn pain came back again for the poor young man with golden hair and eyes who surely would now seriously reconsider if dying was so bad compared to all this unbearable pain.
And with the pain also came the surprise because this time Denki froze in his tracks...
Why?
Let's just say because when he opened his damn eyes and focused all his willpower on his surroundings, he noticed he was in a damn small crater and everything around him was silent, but not just silent, nothing was moving...
And then, Denki started to see colors...
It was strange for him because this time it was even weirder than having smoked or consumed something.
Yep, he knew very well the difference because to his shame…, before entering UA, in his great interest to be popular and follow current trends, he had consumed on a few occasions some less than recommended substances, all to fit into different groups… he was a social person, and for some reason, he had the damn need to always fit in.
Hmmm… well, that and the fact that doing that was the only way he managed to date one of the most popular girls in his school, too bad it was only for a few days.
Anyway, just a few seconds later, Denki noticed that all these colors were in the form of lightning and that everything he saw was happening inside him...
It was extremely crazy to see everything double for him, it was like having two fields of vision, something like an internal one and an external one...
One that was reality and one that was something like a black space inside him full of colors, although he could more feel the latter to the point where it formed a vision of it.
Weird...
Naturally, Denki couldn't comprehend how he could feel and see for some reason this whole strange process inside him, but he did know that all this colored lightning was filling him with power, but all that power was also tearing him apart.
It was chaos.
But then Denki saw how a great golden flash began to envelop all this lightning within a sphere with a light golden layer that managed to force all the colored lightning to remain in a controlled chaos within the sphere.
Thanks to that, the pain that was assaulting Denki began to drastically decrease.
Until finally, when the golden sphere finished enveloping all the lightning, all that pain, all that power shut down, and finally, he felt at peace.
Oh, but now there was another slight problem...
Everything around him seemed to be frozen in time. All the things and people around him were frozen and silent.
Upon closely observing his surroundings, Denki realized that everything that had been happening, which felt like many hours to him, actually happened in a matter of a few minutes maybe...
This is because he could see a few meters away from the small crater he was in, his two friends covering their eyes probably due to the lightning that had stopped falling just moments ago.
Denki also quickly saw the hole above him in the ceiling where the lightning had pierced through and noticed that there were still some dark clouds from which the lightning had obviously fallen just moments ago...
He noticed that the ground where he was standing was fractured and had a burnt black tone, while the nearby rocks also had a similar color, although most of them seemed to have fragmented.
Next he glanced to his side only to find the villain who had previously held him totally carbonized. In other words... dead.
Although he certainly preferred to think that maybe he was still alive, he quickly looked away and decided not to think too much about it. Yes, he would let others worry about that for him.
Without wasting time and perfectly ignoring the carbonized villain, Denki quickly, almost fleeing, left the small crater he was in and headed towards his two companions while his mind focused on the current situation that really worried him.
He did his best not to panic when he saw everything frozen around him, from the villains to his two companions who were completely immobile.
"Maybe my brain just got fried, or I went crazy, and all of this is just an illusion created by my mind…" Denki thought out loud, believing it was possible, after all, he had just received a dose of who knows how many countless volts.
So yes, at first, he had thought that it was simply his eyes playing tricks on him. Or perhaps, his mind.
But a part of him was completely sure that all of this was very real, and that same part of him was also eager to use all the new power he felt contained in his body.
But for some reason, he couldn't seem to use his Quirk or tap into this newfound power. It was as if something was already in motion inside him, preventing him from doing anything else at the same time.
If before he had almost no control over his electricity, now something within him was outright stopping him from even attempting to use it.
Denki had no clue what the hell was happening, but what he did know was that he was now completely defenseless since he couldn't rely on his electricity. That's right—he was now down to just his physical abilities.
Shoving all those incomprehensible thoughts aside for now, Denki turned his gaze to Momo and Jiro, who were standing in front of him, frozen in a state of shock.
His attention was directed towards the open field of the USJ training facility that surrounded them. And for good reason, considering the breeze, the dust, the villains, and, most importantly, the two of them, everything was still...
At the same time, the rest of the USJ was enveloped in an eerie silence.
Denki could do nothing but gape at the strangeness of it all.
Yes, it was strange, so strange that Denki's instincts screamed at him that none of this should be possible. However, all he could do was stand there, mouth open, as he tried to understand again what was happening without getting distracted as before. It had always been a big problem for him to focus on just one thing, even in a very important situation his thoughts tended to scatter into several things.
"Err… Yaoyorozu? Jiro?" Denki tried to see if either of them would react, but his only response was silence.
Neither of them made any movement or sign to show they were anything more than statues, which gave him several chills.
Looking at the rest of the people present, the villains, Denki found them all lying still on the ground and well… the one who had threatened to kill him was now in the small crater in a condition where he doubted he could speak again, or move, or well… you get the idea.
Increasingly confused, he couldn't help but feel a slight fear at the strange situation. He really hoped his companions would react, move, or something; this whole situation had him on edge.
But no, they just stood there in front of him, covering their faces with one of their hands while all their movements stopped abruptly.
They had been frozen a few seconds after the lightning stopped falling on Denki.
Yaoyorozu, with her long dark hair tied in a spiky ponytail with a large lock hanging on the right side of her face and large but sharp dark-colored eyes combined with short eyebrows, had a frozen expression of astonishment on her face. Her eyes were squinted, while her right hand was raised covering her eyes. Her mouth was slightly open in a grimace of surprise, showing the tension in her jaw and the paleness of her skin.
Jiro, with chin-length dark purple hair with an asymmetrical fringe that has two sound wave-shaped highlights on each side and onyx triangular eyes with notably long lower lashes and small eyebrows along with her most prominent feature, the flexible, plug-like earphone jacks hanging from each of her earlobes, was also completely frozen with her face turned towards the sky, eyes tightly closed, and hands clenched against her chest in a gesture of instinctive protection. Her hair slightly waved around her face, as if being caressed by an invisible breeze, while her mouth was slightly pursed in an expression of concentration and confusion. Denki could almost feel the tension in the air around her, as if she was about to react to an imminent situation.
Denki inspected each of them, hoping to learn something about this anomaly, but it was in vain.
And realizing this, his anxious thoughts started to spill out.
"It's like everything really stopped," he observed, astonished. And something told him that his suspicions were near the truth.
Reaching out, he cautiously touched Jiro's face with a finger. The warm skin gave way to his touch. But when his finger withdrew, the slight dimple in her cheek remained. And she made no sound, just like the rest of the world.
"I... I think I need to find help quickly..." Denki suddenly paled.
Whatever was happening was too much for him to handle by himself. There was a real possibility that whatever this was could be very dangerous.
"Could it be a Quirk?" He had heard about all kinds of Quirks around the world, but never one that stopped time. It seemed quite impossible for him to believe that something so powerful could exist.
'Hmmm, maybe some kind of new technology caused this,' he thought for a second but quickly dismissed it as it was just as hard to believe as his previous guess. Besides, if it were technology or a Quirk, why wasn't he affected?
He may never have been the top student, but he wasn't stupid enough to believe that time just stopped out of nowhere with him being the only one able to move.
There had to be a damn reason and logical explanation!
"What the hell was happening?!"
It was at that moment, with frustration and fear gnawing at his mind, that Denki noticed the bright golden light shining around his chest.