"Seriously? At a time like this?" Eraser Head gestured outside. It had been several hours since the school day began, and Kurogiri didn't look like he was going to stop anytime soon.

"We have to give it a try." I didn't have any other reasons that could appeal to the rational part of his mind.

"No." Eraser Head was adamant. "You all are safer here. The other villains didn't even show up the last time Kurogiri attacked. With this level of power, they might've actually been killed."

"If Kurogiri can really overpower Shigaraki and the others..." I was thinking. "The enemy of our enemy is our friend. If we can just get the other villains to work with us for awhile, that will make our a job a lot easier."

I could see him trying to find a way to stop us from going. He looked at me with a resigned expression on his face. "Okay, fine. You're not going alone. Everyone's going."

"Are you sure?" This wasn't the solution I expected. Before I knew it, he turned to the class.

"Shiraseru found the League of Villains' hideout."

Most of the conversation stopped at once, before voices began to speak again, even louder. I heard fragments of sentences, urgency in all of them.

"How did he-"

"-too dangerous-"

"We're gonna get killed!"

"Listen up, everyone. No one's getting killed." Iida swiftly put an end to the chatter. "If we know what we're doing, then this shouldn't be a problem. We've trained for this."

"Okay, look on your sleeve." I snapped. The location of the coordinates appeared. "Don't worry, it's not permanent. Still, we can't afford to lose anyone."

Eraser Head had already talked with the other staff members. "We've come to an agreement. Half of the staff is coming with us. Shiraseru, can you vanish all of us?"

"I would say yes, but 30 people is a lot to keep track of, since all of you would be moving in totally different directions. When I vanish, I don't become invisible, I just create a constant illusion of the background behind me. We'll only use that when necessary."

With that, we went out of the building, going back through multiple layers of security. Eraser Head persuaded the guards to let us go, and the number of staff that showed up after us only reinforced his point.

Kurogiri had started to slow down his attack, but what we saw was terrible. About 75 percent of the buildings had been reduced to rubble, and the only thing that remained were broken remnants of the first floor, as well as the foundations. Everything else had fallen to the ground; maybe UA was soundproof now, because I didn't hear a thing. I thought that it would have been impossible to navigate the city, but the road was mostly level. Eraser Head just told us to beware of stepping on any glass shards.

Now that the destruction had mostly stopped, everything was quieter. The insects had stopped chirping, mostly because their habitats were pretty much gone. The sound of our shoes crunching on pebbles echoed loudly in the empty streets. Taking a look inside the apartments and houses that weren't destroyed, no one dared go outside. I already picked up on several casualties, especially from residents in the higher floors.

I walked to the front of the group. "We need to go through here." I recalled the path I took to the hardware shop and how it was the gateway to the maze that housed Kurogiri's lab. That maze was also home to the League of Villains, and it was easy to understand why. Without proper tracking, it was easy to get lost. I guessed that the League relied on Kurogiri to create exit portals to get out of the maze.

The quiet that we experienced was magnified a hundred times. I noticed Midoriya subconsciously walking with lighter steps, and slowly, everyone was beginning to do the same. By then, all we could see was grey, and the staggered pattern of the brick walls were being forced into our minds. The shop's arrival gave our eyes some time to rest. I noticed a guard, and I vanished everyone. This put a bigger stress on my mind, so I wrote a message on the wall. Don't move unless you have to move. -Shiraseru

We all stood in silence as we watched the guard put his keys in his pocket. He yawned, then took a look at his phone. "My shift's over. Screw this place, I'm outta here." He grabbed his soft drink and began walking in the other direction. In his absence, we scurried inside, and I revealed everyone.

"So where's the villains?" Kaminari folded his arms.

I don't like this place. Koda signed at me, and he looked a little pale. This is as far away from nature as you can get.

"Follow me." We passed rows of half-empty aisles. Iida picked up several tools and inspected them thoroughly before admitting that they were nothing out of the ordinary. Before we knew it, we arrived at the closet.

"That's it?" Todoroki raised an eyebrow.

Midoriya stepped forward. "We need to go through one at a time. I'll volunteer." He opened up the closet and felt around until his hand pushed open the trapdoor. He opened it and went through with relative ease. We followed him one at a time. Shoji accidentally broke the door going in, but Momo created a replacement trapdoor in its place.

I heard a grimace. It was Tokoyami. "It's too dark in here. I don't want to lose control of my Shadow." We could hear Dark Shadow's squawks becoming louder, and we knew he was right. Momo created a flashlight and shined it in his face. We all flinched at the sudden change of light, but Tokoyami gave us the thumbs-up.

As much as I hated this place, I walked forward. Out of habit, I began to run my hand along the right side of the wall.

"You should stop doing that." Midoriya nudged me slightly. "There's no distinguishing features about this place at all, and you might open a door." I was about to tell him that this was the way I found Kurogiri's lab, but I dropped it and let my hand fall limp to my side.

We were all tense; there's no other way to describe it. All of us were in full costume gear, and Bakugo's hands were balled into permanent fists. "How much more time?" He fought the urge to yell.

I closed my eyes and saw the path to the room in my mind. "At this rate, give it another 20 minutes." These 20 minutes passed just like the last 20. No one spoke up, and the staff in the back had their back turned to us so they could fend off any attackers from behind. We finally stood above the room.

"We're right on top of where the villains should be." I turned around. "Honestly, I didn't think I would get this far."

"Can't we just break it?" Bakugo summoned small explosions from his hands. I tried to find an alternate way to get in, but that would require walking for another hour, and time was something that we didn't exactly have a lot of.

Ignoring the protests of the other students, I spoke up. "Bakugo's actually right. There's another way to get in, but we would need to walk for another hour. I haven't been to this part of the maze before, and being lost isn't fun."

The teachers at the back walked to the front. Cementoss said, "Well, I could try to move all this concrete around and give us a clear path in."

Eraser Head replied, "I agree. Though I don't think this would be the best plan, it's the most accessible one we have at the moment." He nodded at Cementoss, who put a hand to the wall. It immediately began to shift, the stone bending to its will. He stepped aside and gestured to the new opening he created.

"Stairs. Come on." The staff insisted on walking down there first, and I don't blame them. We walked down until we eventually found the entrance. Like everything else here, it blended in perfectly with the wall. Cementoss burst through it, with us following him.

"Shouldn't there be people here?" That was a stupid thing to ask, but my heart had nearly jumped out of my chest when the door opened. Something wasn't right. The villains would have tried to incapacitate us as soon as we had walked in.

After we spread out, Kirishima found the answer. "I found one over here!" We pushed past ourselves trying to get a good look.

It was Shigaraki. His tired eyes seemed worn out from constant struggle. He was so desperate that he even removed the hand on the front of his face. We wondered why he didn't make any attempt to attack us until we saw that he was bound by thin purple cords.

"If you want to kill me, go ahead." His raspy voice had an edge of defiance. "My followers will continue to track All Might down until he is dead."

"I don't want to kill you. All you have to do is tell me what happened." He looked pathetic, considering his Quirk's capabilities and how he usually acted.

Shigaraki kept muttering strings of words, and I could barely make use of them. "Guys, how are we getting him to speak?"

I received a bunch of suggestions, ranging from shocking him to trying to appeal to his emotions. "Physically hurting him will only make the situation worse." Uraraka stopped about half the suggestions from actually taking place.

"Emotions?" Kirishima hit his fists together. "He tried to kill All Might, and you guys remember that time in USJ? We were in his way, and he tried to kill us!"

"We can still give him a chance." Midoriya was much quieter than the others. "As much as I hate villains, he's still a person, even if he has some crazy beliefs."

This went on for awhile, and we stood around him in a circle and said something to encourage him and possibly convince him to help us. I'm not good at this stuff, sonI just watched. It took 30 minutes, but Shigaraki finally agreed to give us kniwledfe in exchange for freeing him.

"Kurogiri attacked us. I don't know what happened to him, but as soon as we all walked into the room, we were tied up and left to ourselves. He created an exit portal and well, that's when the destruction started."

Kurogiri was now acting on his own, it seemed. Bakugo touched the purple cords amd exploded them. The fog was spread out far enough for Shigaraki to get up. He then told us where the other villains were and we freed them also. They were confused, but Shigaraki explained the situation to them.

"Just so you know, I don't trust you yet." Shigaraki pointed a finger at all of us. "I don't want to lose control of my group, so here I am."


Kurogiri looked out the window, viewing the chaos he was causing. He didn't enjoy it all. This shouldn't have happened in the first place if someone hadn't found his lab. Years of research was in there. Who knows what someone would have found?

He stepped back and took a deep breath. All of his research had culminated in his power being the deadliest the world had ever known. He didn't even need to control his clouds manually anymore; a simple command from his mind was all it took.

Footsteps echoed outside the room. Kurogiri slowly exited the room and saw a man wandering the abandoned floor. The man turned around, took one look at Kurogiri, and was frozen in shock. Kurogiri calmly approached him.

"If you tell anyone I was here, you're dead." His yellow eyes narrowed slightly. The man nodded, and he managed a quick smile before running down the hallway. Kurogiri extended a hand and created an exit portal. Kurogiri saw his eyes change from an expression of relief to abject terror as the ground gave way below him. An observer by the window would see a purple cloud appear out of nowhere, with the man falling from over a hundred meters above the ground.

Kurogiri created another exit portal to get himself out of the building. He had picked this spot carefully; there were no cameras to pick up data of any kind, and it was inaccessible to most people. Once he was at the ground level, he used the fog to pick him up and fly across the city. Normally, he wouldn't dare do this, but now that his true power had been unlocked, he didn't care anymore.

The lab was clearly visible to him in the maze, and he went inside. He was ready to attempt the impossible. Kurogiri performed the starting sequence, and this time, his ears already tuned out the noises the machines made.

In the latest trials of research, Kurogiri modified a few aspects of the machine. By changing the position of his portals, the particles would travel at faster speeds, and the white portal would appear faster. He set the number of cycles to 2000 before sitting down and waiting.

At 1900 cycles, the machine had become impossibly loud, but Kurogiri didn't care. The white portal created was now about one meter in radius, the biggest one yet. He shut off the machine quickly and stared at it. Any noise the machines made were placed by the rapid stream of musical notes that came out of the portal.

There was no point in waiting anymore. Kurogiri braced himself before jumping inside.

What he saw was almost impossible to describe. He was floating in space, seeing the Earth float away from him farther and farther. Kurogiri instinctively grabbed the space in front of him, but he had no control over where he was going. Before he could come to terms with his surroundings, the landscape shifted again. It was like wearing a VR helmet and seeing a video game glitch happening in real life. He screamed, but no sound came out of his mouth. The glitches progressively became more and more violent until he was blinded by a light.

Kurogiri's feet touched the ground, and he looked around him. The signs were in English. "So this is America, I suppose." He created a cloud around him, ignoring the screams of the pedestrians as he rocketed into the sky. He was free.