Star and Stripes looked glorious, a god floating in the sky, her blond hair like a golden crown, her cape billowing like the prideful flag of the country she hailed from.

There was a light to her that made it seem as though she were glowing from the inside, her powerful muscles brimming with energy.

A true All Might knock-off.

"Let him go", she repeated, teeth gritted

Shoto was cool, this new development's surprise already worn out, his gaze on the fighter squadron he could feel hovering in the sky, hidden between clouds.

"Should I take it as America making its move against me ?"

"Let.him.go.", she repeated, her eyes growing darker.

Shoto's gaze lowered to meet hers.

"As you wish"

He dismissively let go of Midoriya, the boy's eyes widening as he plunged straight to nothing, clawing helplessly at the air.

Start and Stripes cursed and flew after the falling boy.

Shoto watched them dispassionately, bending down to grab Midoriya's cheap mask and, with a flick of his wrist, sending it after him.

He leaned over the edge, hands clasped behind his back, watching the spectacle unfold.

Star and Stripes caught up to Midoriya nearly half of the tower down ; as soon as her skin brushed his, ink burst like snakes from Midoriya's.

It ran up from her nails to the base of her fingers, wrapped around her wrists, uncoiled, and bolted up like a cork popping off a champagne bottle, covering her whole body in less than a second.

"New order: stop this ink from progressing !"

It wrapped tight around her neck, the veins there popping neatly as though they would burst.

Her squad was screaming in her earpiece.

She choked, clawed at her throat to get it off, making red scratches on her skin, trying to fight off her panic because she couldn't feel her Quirk anymore.

In the building's fast-moving windows, she caught her reflection, seeing as much as she felt her shadow unfolding from her back like bat wings, a hand made of darkness grabbing her hair.

She saw Midoriya impact the ground, his hand reaching for her even at the last second, his head bursting like a water balloon, blood and brain splattering everywhere, blinked, and suddenly she was on Endeavor's Tower rooftop.

Someone was holding her by her hair, forcing her into a kneeling position, and she knew it wasn't Todoroki for he was standing at the building's very edge, hands both raised towards the sky.

There was a whirring, a sound akin to metal blending, and suddenly one of the plane's wings burst from the clouds, leaving a trail of fire behind, and ricocheted on the ground, crushing a couple of headless bodies, before stopping at a tank's foot and catching fire.

Soon the plane from which the wing had come from fell like a shot bird, bursting in a cloud of fire as soon as it touched the ground.

Star and Stripes leaned forward even though her muscles were heavy and rigid, the black ink tightening its grip on her like a snake breaking its prey's body to ingest it.

Shoto's wrists slowly moved down.

Star and Stripes held her breath as the other sixty-five planes were brought down from the sky as though pulled by an invisible force.

She screamed her throat raw, visualizing what was coming, and right as the second plane burst in a fire mushroom ink spread from outside to inside, filling her throat and running down until it was in her stomach.

She was fully covered in ink, not even a strand of hair spared : her skin glowed momentarily red as she was fully sealed.

Shoto's right hand dropped down at regular intervals, like a conductor signaling the start of a concert, left hand staying in place to keep the others firmly suspended above ground.

They exploded like bombs on Tokyo, a spectacle of red and yellow that looked like lethal paint bombs dropped on the unsuspecting city.

Soon came the last one.

Shoto twirled it around, the jet making a full circle, as though he wasn't sure what to do with it, then he motioned it forward.

The plane moved slowly, its nose barely a meter from Shoto's face, suspended as though physics had no influence over it.

Shoto looked the pilot in the eye, red eyes twirling.

The engine burst in a puff of acrid smoke.

The pilot's eyes turned glassy.

He typed on his dashboard.

"Can you hear me ?", he asked.

On another continent a man with a blue, fish-like face bent towards the mic.

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He pressed a button.

"Yes"

Their command room was silent.

They were all tasked with monitoring Star and Stripes' fighter squadron and assisting them with satellite imagery.

They'd just seen their colleagues die, whisked away from the sky like one would push away a fly.

The terrorist's face was splattered on the huge screen towering over them, his face a death omen.

He raised a lazy hand, and suddenly Star and Stripes flew from her kneeling position to him : his hand wrapped around her neck.

He held her with a casualness that bordered on sacrilegious.

"I believe she's yours, isn't she ?"

Commandant Agpar leaned forward once more, cool and collected.

"Indeed"

He let go of the button.

"You would like to get her back, wouldn't you ?"

She was mummified, coated in ink itself clad with swirling shadows.

The boy's eyes were one-second red, the next fully black, shadows covering the white of his balls before receding like waves hugging the shore.

"That would be most appreciated"

He hummed.

"Put me on live TV and I'll give her back"

Agpar paused.

"Her life monitors show she's still alive, sir", breathed out a soldier.

"The clock's ticking", said Shoto

"I do not have the clearance for-"

Shoto held his sword to her neck.

It was revolting to see their strongest Hero held like a ruthless child by the collar of her shirt.

"Five minutes", Agpar said. "Give me five minutes"

"You have two. And do remember that I'll know if you do not comply"

Agpar, without looking away from the boy's face gigantic face, fished his phone from his pocket.

"President, there's an urgency"

He did not lose time considering whether or not complying with a terrorist was the wisest thing to do in such situation : Star and Stripes was Quirk too useful, and there had not been yet anybody in her family who'd shown an ability resembling hers.

Even though it pained him greatly to consider it that way, he knew they needed to at least retrieve her body if they couldn't get her whole.

A minute and a half later all electronic devices with a screen or a way of communicating sound ever sold on America's soil and by American companies were turned off before a red message labeled 'urgent communication from the white house' showed.

Ten seconds later Shoto Todoroki's face was showing on half of the world's TVs, computers, tablets, phones, and smart watches.

"Some may know me", he said in English. "Though most do not"

People were bending over their screens, showing it to their friends, and wondering in over sixty languages what the hell was going on.

"There's no need to present myself as you'll all know my name soon enough"

Children and teens doing exercises or passing exams online groaned in frustration as their screens turned black before a red and white-haired man's face appeared.

Across airports, train and subway stations, amusement parks, colleges, and middle schools, billions of people paused their lives to listen to this special announcement.

In a matter of seconds, X was ablaze with people trying to gauge the scale of this disruption, wondering if it was the beginning of the sixth world war.

Meanwhile, Agpar was on the phone with the Japanese Prime Minister.

Shoto raised his hand, shoving the mummified body in front of the plane's camera.

The dark coating receded, Star and Stripe's signature hairstyle and wide-known face appearing on screen even though she looked fast asleep – or as though she had fainted.

"Though I'm sure you all know her"

There were gasps, people refusing to admit it was Star and Stripes.

In Italy Teka, sitting in her living room, rose from her couch, transfixed when she saw her grandson's face suddenly appearing on the screen.

"I have been attacked twice, first by my home country and second by this American Hero even though I'd stated my unwillingness to fight and my desire to leave Japan"

Black shadows encased Star and Stripes face once more.

"As it is, I wish to pass a message to those watching me : if you, or any of your government-

Shoto interrupted himself.

They watched him as his head snapped towards the sky.

There was smoke in the background, a destroyed landscape that made it look as though he were on a battlefield.

The plane moved around and thus the camera did so, tilting slightly up towards the rainy sky, moving left and right before settling on an inconspicuous cloud.

For a moment, nobody was able to spot anything.

Then the tip of a metal shell appeared to burst through a white cloud, so very small yet growing increasingly larger.

"A nuke", Shoto said, bored, though there was a slight tinge of surprise in his voice. "I am being nuked"

The world held its breath.

What the hell was going on ?

Shoto flew right in front of the camera, back to them, fire blasting continuously from his feet.

From this angle it looked as if the nuke was coming from above, falling from the sky and vertically towards his head. Star and Stripes was still dangling precariously from his careless grip.

He looked over his shoulder at them.

"This wasn't part of our agreement"

Star and Stripes' neck snapped, her bones crushed as easily as though he'd been squeezing an orange, her head lolling back limply, the top of her head flat against her shoulder blades, her eyes rolling.

Commander Agpar crushed his phone.

People screamed, threw their devices away from them, and tried to turn them off to no avail.

Star and Stripes was discarded as though a dirty sock, swallowed to oblivion at the edge of the screen.

The boy raised his hands high as though holding the sky, one covered in blood and the other as pure and clean as an innocent's.

Under the world's bemused gaze, Shoto Todoroki turned the nuke around, making it do a U-turn until it faced the direction it had come from.

His wrists slightly bent forward before he stopped.

People held their breath.

"Though sending it back exactly from where it had come from would be a waste, wouldn't it ?"

He turned towards the camera, his eyes piercing straight through their screens as though he could see them.

The nuke turned west.

"Yokohama it is, then"

He launched it with far more speed and strength than it had come.

The Japanese Prime Minister's glasses fell from his hand.

He fell on his chair, his hand gripping the fabric over his painful heart.

The world did not see the nuke reach its goal, though they saw the sky lit up red, a gigantic mushroom of fire and smoke rising instantly.

They saw the blast's impact, powerful wind gusts sweeping away everything, heard the tremors in the ground.

"Nuclear", said Shoto breathlessly

He turned towards them, the clouds now a blood red, making him look like the god of war reincarnated.

"Listen closely, for I will only say this once : I do not wish to fight"

The camera tilted down slightly, and they noticed the ground littered with bodies.

"Though I am aware that after today, many will come for me. And to them, I will say one thing : I will be merciless"

His hair fluttered in the light breeze of death, his red eyes shining malevolently, a biblical painting coming to life.

Suddenly all across the world capital cities, gas pipelines, oil wells, nuclear power plants, warships, submarines, military bases, control centers, electric power plants, hospitals, schools, strategic water supplies, farms, and fertile lands started to glow white, the ground lighting up, dark symbols appearing on cement and running through hundreds of thousands of buildings, disfiguring cities as though esoteric graffiti.

"As a preventing measure, the United States will taste first of what I have to offer"

He snapped his fingers.

Washington DC blew up.

They felt the resulting tremors until New York.

People tried contacting family and friends there to no avail.

In half a second a teenage boy at the other end of the world had blown up the United States capital and nobody had been able to do anything to stop him.

"Should anybody stand in my path", Shoto said. "Be it a supposedly independent organization or an individual on his own, I will integrally blow up his home country regardless of their involvement"

Shoto smiled, a slightly deranged glint in his eye.

"I am taking the world hostage"