Tsu's footsteps were lighter than Tokoyami's, but her boots still squelched in the damp, moldy corridor. Despite his full-face mask, Tokoyami's voice echoed. "Oh, how the darkness beckons to the lonely soul."
You wouldn't be lonely if you hadn't been so stubborn! Tsu bit back that thought and went for a more diplomatic approach. "It wouldn't hurt to be more cooperative. Ribbit."
"But this is the path of righteousness. I know it."
"Ribbit." Tsu knew for sure she and Tokoyami had been travelling in a straight line – she had excellent spatial awareness, a necessary skill for living in a bog – and Bakugo would have avoided heading in a direction that would lead back to the others if he could help it. Yet when the corridor ended, there he was, prowling a silver-white room decorated with skull lanterns and curtains woven from bones. On a grim carpet of a skinned and stuffed corpse sat a beautiful girl with a menacing horn that glowed. Bakugo didn't seem to see her, or Tsu or Tokoyami, or anything else in the room.
Tsu looked at Tokoyami, who managed to look surprised even with his face concealed. "Ribbit. Then the 'path of righteousness' must lead to the same place as at least one of the other paths."
Bakugo looked up at the sound of Tsu's voice, but not at her—at the horned girl. He lunged at her. Tsu flinched at the violent outburst, but the other girl was unfazed. She grabbed him, her long fingers curling around his arm, and wrenched it behind him. Tsu heard the wet break of bone and flinched again.
When the silver-haired girl spoke, her voice was as brittle as glass. "You dare try to hurt me in my own fortress?"
Bakugo hissed and tried to free himself, but the girl had a strong grip, and moved her hand to break his wrist next. Tsu and Tokoyami were already running toward them, Tsu uncoiling her whip as she charged for an attack.
Tokoyami reached the room first, and bounced off with a sharp thunk. Tsu halted abruptly. Slowly, carefully, she leaned forward. Her nose squished against cold glass, and her breath formed a cloud on the barrier.
Tokoyami groaned. "Why can we not enter and aid the one who chose the path of corpses? Is it because darkness and death are actually meant to be separate?"
Tsu knocked against the glass. Bakugo looked around – even directly at her – but didn't seem to see her. "It's a one-way mirror," she realized aloud.
Then Bakugo yelled, "Shoot her horn, Kirishima! It's the source of her power!"
Tsu and Tokoyami pressed their faces against the glass to see what was happening. Shoto and Ida were with Kirishima; Midoriya's group must have gotten split up. The three boys were tense and shaken, their eyes wide. Ida was frozen, while Shoto took an agonizingly long time to reach for his sword. Kirishima's hand shook as he loaded his gun. Tsu noticed he wasn't wearing his bright orange-and-black-striped scarf anymore.
"Hurry up, shitty hair!"
Kirishima paused. "We saw what happened with Midoriya on top of the cathedral. You're messed up."
"I'm not the villain here." Bakugo's last word broke off when Eri snapped his finger.
Tokoyami pounded on the glass. Tsu felt around the edges, trying to find a weak place to pry at. Kirishima winced. "Maybe, but you're not the hero, either. I thought I knew you, Bakugo."
"You don't know a damn—"
"You know," interrupted a calm voice behind Tsu and Tokoyami as Kirishima began shooting, "eavesdropping is rude."
Tsu tamped down her racing heart when she came face to face with the rogue in the grey cloak. "You know – ribbit – so is attacking people with razor feathers. What was that all about?"
"Midoriya's blood holds great value. In the moons to come, many will covet it for their own gains. My fellow Cardinals and I are different. We don't do things for our own gain. We serve the people."
"By stealing the sun?"
Tokoyami added, "By plunging the world into an everlasting darkness and cold?"
Amajiki back-handed him into the moldy stone wall. Tsu lashed out at him with her whip, but he grabbed it with his bare hands – somehow, it didn't cut his skin – and ripped it away from her. "You don't know what the sun is capable of. Few can accurately remember what it was like to live on scorching lands, an orange giant emanating radiation that either burned us or left another kind of mark." He nodded at the horned girl beyond the mirror. She evaded Shoto's and Ida's swords through some kind of teleportation. Kirishima crouched next to Bakugo, who was unconscious, while fumbling to load his gun; used bullets joined the grim decorations. "Eri, the Cardinal of Death, can rewind people. Her sun mark keeps us from becoming old and senile. It causes us to relive our memories as vividly as though we were travelling back in time. But she's also a healer, and she won't let permanent harm come to your friends."
"Ribbit. What about you?"
Amajiki tore a piece of Tsu's whip and crunched down on it. "I am the Cardinal of Famine. I manifest what I eat."
Tsu rapidly uncoiled her rope as a replacement weapon, but Amajiki's bladed fingers ripped it apart just as fast. His eyes glowed a poisonous green that she could identify. "Luciferin-containing cucumber."
Tokoyami mashed the hilts of two scimitars together, forming a giant glaive. "I hate cucumbers."
The glaive sang when it flew. Amajiki manifested powerful black wings that created a gale to divert its course, and Tokoyami had to lean to catch his weapon.
"Black stallion pegasus. Ribbit. Midoriya said you dealt with horse exports."
"Exported right to the vast land of my stomach."
Tokoyami grumbled as he pulled apart the glaive back into scimitars. "I hate horse meat, too..."
Amajiki unclipped his cloak. As it fell to his bare feet, his skin and clothes became a blinding white, more radiant than the crystals in the fortress hall. Tsu looked away. Her tongue and stomach felt heavier.
Tokoyami's mask broke and fell in pieces on the stones. The shock knocked the poetry out of him. "Fuck!"
Tsu wouldn't have thought it possible, but the darkness around them seemed to grow and take on a life of its own. Amajiki tried to fly away, but Tsu's tongue curled around him like her rope or whip. A shadow passed through his body before retreating into Tokoyami's. Amajiki fell limp, and Tokoyami loomed over him. "I have become the monster I feared."
