The walk back to Serena's home was slow due to how they were walking so close together, and more than a bit awkward as they realized how difficult it was to keep their walking in sync with their differing heights and walking paces. And so it was well after dark by the time they reached Serena's street and were about to round the corner and have her home come into view.

Ayane smiled as she recognized how close they were and turned to look up at Serena's blushing face as they rounded the bend. But the moment they turned the corner something changed. Serena stiffened, and her blushing face went from bright red to deathly pale in an instant. Ayane turned her head to see what had caused this reaction and her blood ran cold.

The door to Serena's home had been smashed in, and there were sounds of a struggle and objects breaking coming from the open doorway.

Serena broke away from Ayane and began sprinting for the door "MOM!" she screamed as she bolted inside. Ayane was moments behind her, trying her best to keep up with Serena as she pulled out her phone and used an app on it to send out a distress message to the local authorities, her classmates, and staff at the school.

Serena sprinted through the house, following the sounds of struggling and path of destroyed furniture as she quickly made it to the backyard, Ayane moments behind her. There was a group of men in the backyard, one of whom had just slammed Leona to the ground and was holding her by the throat, putting his knee on her chest to hold her down.

"You get your filthy hands off of her!" Serena shouted as she burst through the glass door to the backyard and charged the man holding her mother. Ayane was only a step behind her, but wasn't quick enough to warn Serena that the other men in the backyard had noticed their arrival and were responding.

One man pulled out a large, cannon-like weapon and pulled the trigger, firing a net that fell over Ayane and Serena and brought them to the ground. Normally a mere net shouldn't have been enough to even slow Serena down, but before Ayane could question how it had stoped her, she felt the electrical current passing through her and had her question answered for her. The current hurt, but soon the pain faded as she felt her body go numb and fell limp.

"It must have to do with his quirk, using an electric current to paralyze people, the net is just a tool to channel it." Ayane thought as she tried to force her body to move, but she couldn't even budge

"Got em boss, they won't be interfering" the man said, nodding to the man holding Leona down

"Seren…ack!" Leona cried out, getting cut off by a punch to the face, she was already bloody, having already taken a bit of a beating

"Shut up you piece of trash" the man growled "it's thanks to your damn investigation that we lost our hideout and most of our crew. I might've even forgiven that, but what really irks me is that you don't even have a good quirk!"

Ayane glanced to Serena, who was struggling desperately to escape the net by discharging stored energy from her body, but without the ability to move she couldn't direct it well enough to get anywhere. Still they couldn't sit and do nothing, the distress signal had gone out only a minute or two ago, if they could just buy time… "What's her quirk got to do with it!" Ayane shouted "she's not even a hero! Why would you care?"

"Because weak quirks drag humanity down!" The man said, successfully distracted as he turned his head to face Ayane.

Ayane kept herself from smiling, she knew from class that groups of villains tended to have some sort of cult-like beliefs that they couldn't help but monologue about when prompted. It was a perfect distraction.

"Quirks are the next step in our evolution! But so many people have weak, useless quirks!" The man raved "they pollute the gene pool with inferior quirks and slow down our evolution! We seek to purge the world of such pollution, but then this waste of genes dared harm our operations! It's unforgivable!"

"But if she outsmarted you without her quirk, then clearly she has genes worthy of passing on to newer generations." Ayane argued, the man's rant had not lasted quite as long as she'd hoped before cycling around to Leona again, so now she'd need to try and debate him.

"There's plenty of intelligence quirks out there to handle that part of human evolution. Her normal intelligence is unnecessary" the man countered.

"Who gives a damn!" Serena snapped "just get your hands off my mother you bastard!"

Ayane internally cursed, Serena was too distressed to approach this situation calmly, and had brought the attention back to the man's attacking Leona. She couldn't exactly blame Serena for being distraught in this situation, but it didn't change the fact that she had made the situation worse.

"Sorry missy, but your mom needs to die for the betterment of society," the man said as he turned to Leona again and began to squeeze her throat and suffocate her "I recognize you from the festival though, you're strong, I'll let you live if you just sit tight and stay out of our way."

Tears streamed down Serena's face as she managed to push herself up off the ground a few inches, then collapsed again. Nobody else noticed Serena's movement, but Ayane did. Her eyes widened as she realized what was happening.

Leona's face was changing color as she weakly clawed at the man's hand around her throat, eyes rolling back in her head as she lost consciousness.

Ayane felt the electric current immobilizing her fade away and eventually disappear as Serena moved again, this time getting to her feet and throwing the net off of them. Sparks of electricity danced across her body as she clenched her fists and wiped the tears from her eyes to clear her vision. The ground beneath her feet began to crack from the force of her legs pushing down on them, her muscles enhanced by Serena's new source of energy.

"I said…" Serena growled, hatred dripping from her voice "Get… your fucking hands…"

The man seemed to sense the danger he was in intuitively and turned his head to face Serena again just as her fist was about to crash into it. Serena had sprung forward at speeds far beyond anything she'd displayed before, taking everyone by surprise as she closed the short distance between them almost instantaneously.

"OFF OF HER!" Serena screamed as she drove her fist into the man's face. The force of the blow knocked him off Leona instantly, sending him crashing to the ground several yards away.

Ayane rolled to her feet moments later, the paralysis wearing off now that Serena had absorbed the electricity. There was no time to dwell on Serena mastering the skill now, not when there were villains to deal with. There were 5 other villains in the yard, and she was pretty sure Serena wasn't going to be able to handle them all on her own, at least not in her current emotional state. Unfortunately, in her current attire she hadn't brought her shock batons or most of her other gadgets, she hadn't prepared for a fight beyond basic self-defense. That didn't mean she was unarmed though, she pulled on part of the embroidery on her dress sleeve, and the sleeve unraveled easily, giving her access to a band of small, needle-like knives on her upper arm.

One of the men tried to charge at Serena, but Ayane was having none of it, she yanked a knife from its slot and flicked her wrist, the knife hurtling through the air as she threw it, striking the man in the side. He dropped to the ground only a few steps later, courtesy of a powerful toxin coating the blade causing near instant paralysis. Ayane drew two more knives and moved between Leona and the rest of the villains. "Serena, take your mom and go now," she said "she's in bad shape, she needs medical attention immediately. I'll take care of these guys."

Serena was almost too distraught for Ayane's instructions to register, but not quite. She knelt down to pick up her mother, then stood back up and braced herself as the leader of the villains threw a punch at blinding speed, striking her across the face and knocking her back a step. She knew immediately how his blow had managed to damage her, and it was a problem. His blow was simply too fast, she couldn't absorb the entire strike in time to prevent it from affecting her, meaning her quirk wouldn't be able to properly defend her, only soften the blows.

"That was a good punch missy" the man snarled, wiping blood from his mouth "but you should've just stayed down. Nobody messes with me and gets away with it."

Ayane threw another knife and dropped the man with the electric net, dodging a punch from another and grabbing his arm, twisting it behind his back into an armlock to immobilize him, then paralyzing him with a quick cut from her remaining knife. She was thankful it seemed all these villains were just lowly thugs, they were easy to deal with, but their boss would be another story.

Serena snarled and threw another punch at the leader, her speed still being enhanced by the electricity in her body, but her strike was deflected and countered with a punch to her gut. She grit her teeth as she used her quirk to soften the strike, and sheer willpower to endure the rest as she stepped forward and slammed her head into the leader's, sending him reeling, then using the opening to land a solid kick and knock him away again.

"New plan, I'm going to keep this bastard busy, get my mom help Ayane" Serena said, her voice was deceptively calm, barely containing the bloodthirsty rage she was feeling at the moment in order to handle her number one priority.

Ayane nodded, she wasn't sure how much she could do, but it would be easier for her to immobilize two street thugs than it would be to keep their leader at bay.

"Damn brat!" The leader snarled, dashing back to Serena and throwing a punch, she caught it and gripped his wrist tightly.

"You should've run when you had the chance" Serena growled as she began to crush the man's arm "because right now I really want to kill you. And you're assaulting us in my home, so I'm allowed to try."

The man grimaced in pain, then sucker punched Serena in the jaw to make her let go, pulling his arm back and backing away. He seemed about ready to charge in again when the sound of police sirens closing in interrupted him, and moments later an explosion of dust erupted between him and Serena as Cor dropped from the sky and crashed to the ground.

"Tsk, pro heroes, we're leaving boys! Back to the backup HQ!" The leader said, throwing down a smoke bomb and vanishing with his speed before it cleared. The thugs weren't so lucky, as they quickly found themselves unable to move. Shin walked out into the backyard, his face dark. The very air around him seemed to dim as he towered over the thugs, having seemed to grow in size as he approached them.

"Surrender" Shin commanded, his voice filled with anger as he unleashed his psychic powers on the minds of the thugs and compelled them to obey his command. They fell to their knees and held out their hands awaiting their handcuffs.

"Professor Core, Headmaster Shin" Ayane exclaimed, there was no time for surprise, the battle was over thanks to their arrival and there were things in need of doing "Serena's mother, she needs immediate medical attention!"

Shin looked to Ayane, then to Leona's unconscious form and nodded "Core, inform the paramedics, I will provide first aid until they can get here."

Cor nodded and ran through the house to meet with the police out front, and Shin knelt by Leona and began using his telekinesis to force air in and out of her lungs, forcing her heart to beat, and forcing her blood to recede back into her veins.

Serena knelt beside her mother and looked at her, then to Shin. "Is… is Mom going to be ok?" She asked. Her voice was weak and wavering, with the source of her anger gone, she was overcome by the panic she felt about her mother's condition and was barely holding it together.

Shin shook his head "I won't lie to you, she's in bad shape, we can keep her alive… but whether or not she wakes up again… that will be up to her…"

Ayane watched Serena's face, and felt her heart break as she watched Serena's do the same. Serena shut down, her face blank as she went into a state of shell-shock, unable to process her surroundings anymore. She sat there motionless, tears streaming down her face unabated as her mother was put on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital. Police apprehended the disabled thugs and carted them away for questioning, and Ayane gave a full account of what happened in Serena's place.

Eventually the hectic action around them died down, with police stationed outside the house in case the villains returned. They were leaving Serena and Ayane alone to recover for a night before questioning them further, but Serena was showing no signs of recovering at all. Ayane sat next to Serena and put her hand gently on the girl's shoulder, but it prompted no response. She looked around, looking for any sort of way she could jolt Serena back into a state of coherence, then she saw the glint of gold in the grass and picked up Serena's necklace. It had fallen off at some point during the fight, but was undamaged.

Ayane gently placed the necklace into Serena's hands, finally prompting a response from her. Serena looked at the necklace in silence for a moment, then began to tremble. She clutched the necklace to her chest and doubled over as a cry of anguish ripped itself from her. Her body shook as the sobs began coming, and she couldn't stop herself.

Ayane wrapped her arms around Serena, and the girl let herself be pulled into an embrace as she sobbed uncontrollably into Ayane's chest. Ayane began to cry as well, unable to do anything to console the one she loved. She'd never seen Serena this fragile, she couldn't have even imagined her in this state, broken and overcome by sadness like this. Yet here she was, and there was nothing she could do to help.

All she could do was sit there, watching Serena's broken heart crumble to pieces.