Chapter 46 - The Collision II

With the small girl, Ava, firmly in Mirio's arms, he slid on the ice, trying and failing to find his footing…

Mirio could feel something sizzling in the air, like a bomb ready to go off at any moment, and before he could save anyone, Mirio knew he had to save himself and Ava…

Temporarily finding his footing on the ice, Mirio flexed his leg muscles and pushed off the road, using all the strength he could muster to send both himself and Ava floating through the air…

In an instant, Mirio, cradling Ava in his arms, was ten feet above the ground…

Everything happened in the span of two seconds, and now, with a greater vantage point, Mirio could stare down at everything happening around him…

A new height put everything into perspective, and Mirio instantly became aware that his earlier perception of time slowing to a crawl was not an illusion…

From the outside looking in, everything seemed to be moving slower around Sue…

And this 'domain' of slowness seemed to be expanding alongside Sue's panic...

She clearly had little control over her power...

The van rammed into the Proximity Alarms and bounced back, but Mirio judged the van wasn't the main concern at this time…

The Ferrari was the main concern…

The Ferrari lifted from the ground and spun once in the air...

The vehicle would no doubt spin two or three times, smashing into everything in its path, before ramming into the mountain wall to cause an avalanche or something close...

But before any of that would happen, it would crush Sue and the others since they were in the Ferrari's path of carnage...

Mirio scoured his mind for a solution that could save everyone, but this was the current limit of his power…

After all, his quirk had no long-range techniques, and that was his greatest weakness...

But where Mirio had no solution, Sue unconsciously found one...

The world, in her perception, had always been moving somewhat slower than normal due to her unconscious expulsion of large amounts of energy, and at this moment when she was sure the Ferrari would crush her and the others, Sue tapped into her power even more deeply...

She had already been using the power to unconsciously slow her nearby environment, but now, with another pulse of energy expelled from her body, everything slowed that much more - almost to a crawl...

The Domain surrounding Sue had strengthened and expanded, even capturing Mirio and Ava within…

Now, everyone was trapped in a domain where one second seemed stretched to ten seconds, but their eyes could move and work fine…

If anything, all Sue's domain did was allow them to marvel at their own deaths for a longer period of time…

Mirio's eyes darted back and forth, memorizing every detail of this moment, trying to find a way to save everyone, but there was only one solution he could see - kicking his new quirk 'All Above One' into overdrive...

But that could very well kill Ava since Mirio had yet to test the quirk and was unsure of what to expect...

Ava's face was morphed and frozen in shock and confusion, watching as her family slowly spun in the Ferrari below, seemingly defying gravity…

Ava's voice was stuck in her throat, but Mirio knew her thoughts were screaming for him to save her family as well…

But alas, Lemillion couldn't risk saving Ava's family at the cost of her life...

Donna, Cliff, and Summer, Ava's family, were frozen inside the upside-down Ferrari, their faces frozen in absolute terror…

Cliff, the father, was attempting to hug his family, pushing his body towards the glass window of the car, in hopes that he could somehow protect his family from the incoming impact with his body...

Obviously, Cliff didn't study physics, or he would know that wasn't how collisions worked - the vibrations would ripple through all their bodies, killing them anyway if the impact didn't do the job first...

Still, Cliff, Donna, and Summer could feel the Ferrari slowly shifting in the air as it spun…

They were viewing the world from a very interesting perspective, not knowing up from down, or left from right…

For all intents and purposes, they were experiencing a zero-gravity phenomenon without the need for space or complex machinery... 

When Mirio's eyes truly examined the spinning Ferrari, that's when he first noticed the anomaly he had missed earlier…

How did he miss it?

Mirio wasn't sure, but he had missed it nonetheless…

In the driver's seat of the Ferrari, Amar, the assassin who had kidnapped Cliff's family against their will, slowly retrieved a gun from the dashboard of the car…

Everyone should have been in a semi-frozen state, but Amar clearly had a mix of superhuman nature and military training, so he was able to keep a cool head in this terrifying ordeal…

Amar was solely focused on retrieving his gun and aiming it, and though it was slower than he would have liked, Amar still succeeded…

The car was spinning, time was slowed, and it was difficult to aim, but Amar still managed to find Sue in his crosshairs…

---WHOOSH---

---WHOOSH---

---WHOOSH---

The usual pop of gunshots didn't echo, but everyone could hear the bullets cutting through Sue's domain... 

Amar managed to fire three shots at Sue before the car tilted a bit too much and he could no longer adjust his aim as fast…

Still, his three bullets were more than enough to get the job done…

Or at least, it should have been…

Sue, Ben, Reed, and Johnny watched terrified as three bullets cut through the air, intent on reaching Sue…

There was no doubt the bullets would hit…

Though they had exited the car together, Johnny and Sue had rolled away from each other, so there was nothing he could do to help without being able to move... 

Ben and Reed were a couple of meters away, too far to offer any assistance... 

And even if they could move, the bullets could move faster than their frozen bodies, so there was no way Sue could make it out of the way in time…

"SSSSSUUUUUUUUEEEEEE!" Reed yelled, his words slurring in the domain's energy…

"AAAARGH!" Sue yelled, expelling an energy field from her body once more, but this time, it was way more potent…

Richer...

More... everything... 

Mirio and everyone else completely froze in place, all movements denied…

If the previous domain felt like moving in water; this time the domain felt like moving in lava, and movement became impossible...

At least, for large bodies, but bullets were not large bodies... 

The bullets slowed significantly in the air, but they didn't stop, so Sue had only managed to buy herself a couple of seconds…

However, where everyone else could not move, even Mirio…

There was one person who noticed that he could – Ben…

As the bullets neared Sue, a couple of meters away, Ben suddenly realized he could move…

Actually, he could always move, but he didn't have the proper motivation to fight against the current of power that was Sue's domain…

Ben had Reed in his arms, so he first let go of the genius…

Then, with a silent roar, Ben dug his heel into the ground, and everyone felt a shudder run through the Earth and air…

Ben's first step had shattered the ground where he stepped…

---THUD---

---THUD---

Two more steps in quick succession took all strength Ben could muster, and he barely managed to make it to Sue in time…

But now came the hard part…

There was nothing he could use to block the bullets, but unlike his mind, Ben's body didn't allow an extra second of deliberation when Sue's life was in danger…

In his heart, Ben already knew the answer…

Ben tossed his large body between Sue and the bullets, and everyone's eyes widened…

After Ben's amazing show of strength, nobody expected him to exchange life for a life, not even Mirio…

'A true hero!' Mirio thought, overlapping Ben's figure with Mydoria's... 

Maybe as a reward for Ben's willingness to protect a friend at the cost of his life, the blessings of good fortune shined on Ben once more…

---TING---

---TING---

Ben's shoulder deflected one of the bullets with a spark, while the next bullet lodged itself into his chest, barely penetrating his hardening skin…

But the third bullet managed to miss Ben entirely, passing just under his armpit to reach Sue who was frozen behind him…

Luckily, the third bullet posed little threat to Sue, and she tilted her head a bit to the left, allowing the bullet to graze her cheek a bit…

It would probably leave a scar, but that was preferred to death…

---ZZZZZZZTTTTTT---

A tremor ran through Sue's domain, and everyone found themselves able to move a bit faster…

This notified Miro that Sue's powers were about to reach their limits, and they would once again be thrust into a very dangerous car accident…

And to add to the growing worries, a very likely superhuman assassin would be stirred into the mix as well…

The Ferrari spun another couple of inches in the air, and Amar once again had Sue in his sights, gun in his hands ready to shoot…

But Johnny would not allow that to happen…

"ARGH!" Johnny roared, trying to see if he could move his body as Ben had, but alas, he could not…

However, Johnny did realize that he could feel all the nearby heat…

It was a fuzzy feeling, like cuddling a toy bear...

And the more he focused, the more Johnny realized that a large source of the heat was in his sights…

Johnny slowly extended his hands and aimed at the Ferrari, but more specifically, he was feeling the subtle burning of the flame that had started inside the Ferrari's gas tank…

Sadly, Johnny had no control over his newfound ability and made the situation worse…

For a split second, the entire of Johnny's hand burst into flames, and those flames traveled from his arms to the Ferrari, alighting the tank of the vehicle…

"Shit!" Everyone thought simultaneously…

Sue's domain snapped back into her body like a slingshot, and time resumed at that instant…

---BBBBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM---

With Johnny's major blunder, several things happened at once…

Sue, using the last of her senses, extended a cocoon of her power around the male child, Summer, trapped inside the Ferrari, and pulled the child into her arms…

She was unable to do anything to save Cliff, the father, and Donna, the mother...

Reed, who had been useless up until now, saw that the flames of the explosion would reach Sue, and forced his body to stretch somehow…

Within a second, Reed's body was wrapped firmly around Sue and the child in her arms, taking the impact with the mountain wall with his own malleable body…

Just as Mirio was about to permeate himself and Ava, he felt the initial shockwave of the explosion brush past his body, sending Ava spiraling out of his arms and over the mountain's edges…

"NOOOOO!"