Irusu (A BNHA x IT AU)

by Seroyonin

It started in the winter of 2004, after the death of Midoriya Izuku's little sister Eri, and it would end almost 16 years later, after Kaminari Denki made his six phone calls. After all, they had all promised that they'd come back. (An "IT" AU with *that* part removed) (Cross posted from Ao3) (Every trigger warning imaginable applies- seriously, proceed with caution)

34. The Ritual of Chüd

—1—

AUGUST 14TH, 2005 / IN THE LAIR OF IT / ? P.M

It was Deku who held them together as that great black Spider raced down Its web, creating a noxious breeze that tousled their hair. Iida cried out, his blue eyes bulging from their sockets. Sero backed slowly away until his spine struck hard against the wall to the left of the door. He felt cold fire burn through his sweater/T-shirt and stepped away again, but dreamily. Surely none of this could be happening; it was simply the world's worst nightmare. He found he could not lift his hands. They seemed to have big weights tied to them.

Bakugo found his eyes drawn to that web. Hanging here and there, partially wrapped in silken strands that seemed to move as if alive, were a number of rotted half-eaten bodies. He thought he recognized Jirou Kyoka near the ceiling, although both of Jirou's legs and one of her arms were gone.

Todoroki and Kaminari clung to each other- Todoroki holding Kaminari's head flush against his chest, Kaminari wrapping his arms tightly around Todoroki's waist- at any other time, Kaminari would be absolutely losing his mind at the intimacy and closeness- but, as of now, he was to busy- watching, paralyzed, as the Spider reached the floor and scrabbled toward them, Its distorted shadow racing along beside It on the wall.

Deku looked around at them, a small, freckled boy, in a mud-and-sewage-splattered layered shirt, cargo shorts with cuffs, and mud-caked keds. His curly hair lay across his forehead, and his eyes were blazing. He surveyed them, seemed to dismiss them, and turned back toward the Spider. And, incredibly, he began to cross the room toward It, not running but walking fast, his elbows cocked, his forearms corded, his hands fisted.

"Yuh-Yuh-You k-k-killed my suh-suh-sister!"

"No, Deku!" Todoroki yelled, struggling free of Kaminari's embrace and running toward Deku, his multi-colored hair bouncing behind him. "Leave him alone!" Todoroki called to the Spider. "don't hurt him!"

'Shit! Shouto!' Sero thought, 'You can't do that- you're not Deku!' and then he was running too, bones aching, legs pumping. He was vaguely aware that Kirishima Ejirou was running on his left, holding his aspirator in his good hand like a pistol. He could hear another set of footfalls behind him, and figured that must of been Kaminari.

And then It was rearing up over Deku, who was unarmed; It buried Deku in Its shadow, Its legs pawing at the air. Sero grabbed for Todoroki's shoulder. He hooked his index and middle finger into one of the folds of Todoroki's over-sized letterman jacket, but they slipped off harmlessly. A moment later, another hand, this one belonging to Kaminari, shot out in front of Sero and managed to get a fistful of thick fabric. He yanked Todoroki backwards, causing all three of them to tangle and crash to the ground.

Todoroki's head shot up. His eyes were as wild as they had been on Neibolt street- possibly even worst- he drew his lips back from his teeth in a snarl, and glared at both of them fiercely. Sero and Kaminari both shrunk back.

"I was trying to help him!-" Todoroki yelled at them. "Which is what we all should be trying to do!"

"How?!" Kaminari screamed back, practically jumping to his feet. For the first and only time on his life, he appeared to tower over Todoroki- who was laying on his belly, propping himself up with his forearms. "All you were about to do is get yourself killed!- even someone as stupid as me knows not to charge at a freaking hellbeast without a plan!"

Todoroki's face flamed, but Sero couldn't tell wether or not it was from anger or embarrassment.

After a cold, tense, stare down, Todoroki turned away from Kaminari, and got to his feet, preparing to run again- Kaminari opened his mouth to protest, but Todoroki cut him off:

"You aren't stupid." He said softly. Kaminari's cheeks began to heat up, his mouth working in shock.

Todoroki charged forward.

Kaminari, still flushed, reached a hand out after him, but didn't try to grab him this time. Todoroki barreled toward's Deku, and Kaminari felt a surge of- something, he wasn't quite sure- shoot through him. He let out a loud, needed, scream of frustration, and ran after Todoroki. He had no idea if he was frustrated with himself, Deku, Todoroki, or It... but Roki... Roki was running right at that thing- ...and Kaminari loved him.

Kaminari pushed himself harder.

Sero, back on his feet, wheeled toward the Spider, preparing to run again too. He heard Its eager mewling, looked into Its timeless, evil eyes, and saw something behind the shape; something much worse than a spider. Something that was all insane light. He saw it towering over Deku, and hitched in a breath, forcing himself to move:

"Goddammit, leave Deku alone!" he screamed.

A moment later a hand swatted his back so hard he almost fell over. It was Bakugo, and although there were pain-filled tears in his eyes, Bakugo was grinning madly- an almost insane, murderous, grin. The corners of his mouth seemed to reach almost to the lobes of his ear. "Let's smoke the bitch, Skelly! Let's use Chüd to send her back to whatever demonic shit hole she crawled out of!"

'She?... Her?...' Sero thought as he ran. 'Did he call It a 'her'?...'

Aloud: "Okay, but what is it? What's Chüd?"

"Fuck if I know!" Bakugo yelled, then ran toward Deku and into the shadow of It.

It had somehow squatted on Its rear legs. Its front legs pawed the air just over Deku's head. And Iida Tenya, forced to approach, compelled to approach in spite of every instinct in his mind and body, saw that Deku had fallen to his knees. He seemed to be doing a really warped back-bend. Blood tricked from his nose and into his right eye- which, just like his left- was not blinking. His eyes were glassy, and if Iida couldn't make out Deku's fingers twitching every so often, he'd presume him dead.

Deku's eye's abruptly shifted so they were meeting It's orange ones, eyes from which that awful corpse-light spilled. Iida stopped, understanding that the Ritual of Chüd-whatever that was- had begun.

—2—

DEKU IN THE VOID / EARLY

'who are you and why do you come to Me?'

'I'm Midoriya Izuku. You know who I am and why I'm here. You killed my sister. You made a mistake going after Eri.'

'I am eternal. I am the Eater of Worlds.'

'You've had your last meal.'

'You have no power; here is the power; feel the power, brat, and then speak again of how you have come to kill the Eternal. You think you see Me? You see only what your mind will allow. Would you see Me? Come, then! Come, brat! Come!'

Thrown-

(he).

No, not thrown, fired, fired like a living bullet, like the Human Cannonball at the traveling circus that came to Irusu each May. He was picked up and heaved across the Spider's chamber. 'It's only in my mind' he screamed at himself. 'My body's still sitting right there, eye to eye with It, be brave, it's only a mind-trick, be brave, be true, stand, stand-'

(thrusts)

Roaring forward, slamming into a black and dripping tunnel lined with decaying, crumbling tiles that were fifty years old, a hundred, a thousand, a million-billion, who knew, rushing in deadly silence past intersections, some lit by that twisting green-yellow fire, some by glowing balloons full of a ghastly white skull-light, others dead black; he was thrown at a speed of a thousand miles an hour past piles of bones, some human, some not, speeding like a rocket-powered dart in a wind-tunnel, now angling upward, but not toward light but toward dark, some dark-

(his fists)

-and exploding outward into utter blackness, the blackness was everything, the blackness was the cosmos and the universe, and the floor of the blackness was hard, hard, it was like polished ebonite and he was drifting along on the heels of his feet. He'd reached the floor of eternity, and eternity was black.

(against the posts)

'Stop that- Why do you say that? that won't help you, stupid boy-'

(And still insists he sees the ghosts!)

'-stop it.'

'he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts!'

'-stop it! stop it! I demand, I command, that you stop it!'

'Don't like that, do you?'

And thinking: 'If I could only say it out loud, say it without stuttering, I could break this illusion-'

'-this is no illusion, you foolish little boy-this is eternity, My eternity, and you are lost in it, lost forever, never to find your way back; you are eternal now, and condemned to wander in the black... after you meet Me face to face, that is.'

...But there was something else here. Deku sensed it, felt it, and in a crazy way, even smelled it: some large presence ahead in the dark. A Shape. He felt not fear but a sense of overwhelming awe; here was a power which dwarfed Its power, and Deku had only time to think incoherently: 'Please, please, whatever You are, remember that I am very small-'

He rushed- floated, skid, flew? He didn't really know- toward it and saw it was a giant Turtle. It's shell was plated with many blazing and illuminating colors. Its ancient, scaly, wrinkly. reptilian head slowly poked out of its shell. Deku thought he felt a vague scornful surprise from the thing that had cast him out here. The eyes of the Turtle were kind. Deku thought it must be the oldest thing anyone could imagine, older by far than It, which had claimed to be eternal.

'What are you?'

'I'm the Turtle, child. I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; I had an upset stomach.'

'Help me! Please help me!'

'I take no stand in these matters. My brother has his own place in the macroverse; energy is eternal, as even a child such as yourself must understand.'

He was (floating, skidding, flying) past the Turtle now, and even at his tremendous speed, the Turtle's plated side seemed to go on and on to his right. He thought dimly of riding in a train and passing one going in the other direction, a train that was so long it seemed eventually to stand still or even move backward. He could still hear It, yammering and buzzing, Its voice high and angry, not human, full of mad hate. But when the Turtle spoke, Its voice was blanked out utterly. The Turtle spoke in Deku's head, and Deku understood somehow that there was yet Another, and that Final Other dwelt in a void beyond this one. This Final Other was, perhaps, the creator of the Turtle, which only watched, and It, which only ate. This Other was a force beyond the universe, a power beyond all other power, the author of all there was.

Suddenly Deku thought he understood: It meant to thrust him through some wall at the end of the universe and into some other place-

('what that weird Turtle called the macroverse')

-where It really lived; where It existed as a titanic, glowing core which might be no more than the smallest mote in that Other's mind; he would see It naked, a thing of unshaped destroying light, and there he would either be mercifully dispatched into a burst of cosmic space junk or live forever, insane and yet conscious inside Its homicidal endless formless hungry being.

'Please help me! For the others-'

'-you must help yourself, son.'

'But how? Please tell me! How? How? HOW?'

Deku had reached the Turtle's heavily scaled back legs now; there was time enough to observe its titanic yet ancient flesh, time to be struck with the wonder of its heavy toenails-they were an odd bluish-yellow color, and he could see clusters of stars and galaxies swimming in each one.

'Please, Turtle! you are good, I sense and believe that you are good, and I am begging you... won't you please help me?'

'You already know how to help yourself, child. There is only Chüd. and your friends.'

'-please-'

'Kid, you've got to thrust your fists against the posts and still insist you see the ghosts...' the turtle seemed to yawn, loud, and screaming, in Deku's mind. It made his brain tingle uncomfortably, 'that's all I can tell you. once you get into cosmological shit like this, you've got to throw away the instruction manual.'

Deku realized the voice of the Turtle was fading. He was beyond it now, bulleting into a darkness that was deeper than deep. The Turtle's voice was being overcome, overmastered, by the gleeful, gibbering voice of the Thing that had thrust him out and into this black void- the voice of the Spider, the voice of It.

'-how do you like it out here, Little Friend? do you like it? do you love it? do you give it one-hundred and ten percent because it has a good beat and you can dance to it? can you catch it on your tonsils and heave it left and right? did you enjoy meeting my friend the Turtle? I thought that stupid old fuck died years ago, and for all the good he could do you, he might as well have, did you think he could help you?'

'no no no no- he thrusts- no- he thuh-thuh-huh-huh-rusts- no-'

'-stop babbling! the time is short; let us talk while we still can. tell me about yourself, Little Friend... tell me, do you love all the cold dark nothingness out here? are you enjoying your grand tour of the nothingness that encases your reality? wait until you break through, Little Friend! wait until you break through to where I am! wait for that! wait for the deadlights! you'll look and your brain will sizzle... but you'll live... instead of being reborn when the cosmo's implode on themselves and reset that universe, you'll be stuck in limbo with me... and live... and live... inside them... inside Me...'

It wailed insalubrious laughter, and Deku became aware that Its voice was beginning both to fade and to swell, as if he was simultaneously moving out of Its range... and hurtling into it. ...And wasn't that just what was happening? Yes. He thought it was. Because while the voices were in perfect sync, the one he was now rushing toward was totally alien, speaking syllables no human tongue or throat could reproduce. 'That's the voice of the deadlights...' he thought, his entire body beginning to come apart- every cell beginning to tingle and separate into trillions of individual building blocks of matter.

'Time is short; let us talk while we still can.'

Its human voice fading the way the Ashikawa radio stations faded when you were in the car and travelling North. Bright, flaring terror filled Deku as his body continued to unravel. He would shortly be beyond sane communication with It... and some part of him understood that, for all Its laughter, for all Its alien glee, that was what It wanted. Not just to send him out to whatever It really was, but to break their mental communication. If that ceased, he would be utterly destroyed. To pass beyond communication was to pass beyond salvation; he understood that much.

Leaving It... and approaching It. But the leaving was somehow more important. If It wanted to eat little kids out here, or suck them in, or whatever It did, why hadn't It sent them all out here? Why just him?

...Because It had to rid Its Spider-self of him, that was why. Somehow the Spider-It and the It which It called the deadlights were one. Whatever lived out here in the black might be invulnerable when It was here and nowhere else... but It was also on earth, under Irusu, in a form that was physical. However repulsive It might be, in Irusu it was physical... and what was physical could be killed.

Deku (floated, skidded, flew...) through the dark, his speed still increasing. 'Why do I feel like so much of Its talk is nothing but a bluff?'

He understood how, maybe... just maybe.

"There is only Chüd," the Turtle had said. ...And suppose this was it? Suppose they had bitten deep into each other's tongues, not physically but mentally- maybe even spiritually? And suppose that if It could throw Deku far enough into the void, far enough toward Its eternal incorporeal
self, the ritual would end? It would have ripped him free, killed him, and won everything all at the same-

'-you're doing good, son, but very shortly it's going to be too late. It's scared! Scared of me! Scared of all of us!'

-skidding, he was sure of that now- not floating or flying- he was skidding, and there was a wall up ahead, he sensed it, sensed it in the dark, the wall at the edge of the continuum, and beyond it the other shape, the deadlights-

'-don't talk to me, kid, and don't talk to yourself- it's tearing you loose, bite in if you care, if you dare, if you can be brave, if you can stand... bite in, child!'

Deku bit in- not with his teeth, but with teeth in his mind.

Dropping his voice, making it not his own (making it, in fact, a pretty decent imitation of Toshinori Yagi's voice, although Midoriya Izuku would go to his grave not realizing this; some secrets are never, known, and it's probably better so), drawing in a great breath, he cried: "HE THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS AND STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS! NOW LET ME GO!"

He felt It scream in his mind, a scream of frustrated, putrid, rage... but it was also a scream of fear and pain. It was not used to not having Its own way; such a thing had never happened to It, and until the most recent moments of Its existence It had not suspected such a thing could.

Deku felt It writhing at him, not pulling but pushing- trying to get him away.

"THRUSTS HIS FISTS AGAINST THE POSTS, I SAID!"

"STOP IT!"

"BRING ME BACK! YOU MUST! I COMMAND IT! I DEMAND IT!"

It screamed again, Its pain more intense now- perhaps partly because, while It had spent Its long, long existence inflicting pain, feeding on it, It had never experienced it as a part of Itself.

Still It tried to push him, to get rid of him, blindly and stubbornly insisting on winning, as It had always won before. It pushed... but Deku sensed that his outward speed had slowed, and a grotesque image shot into his mind: Its tongue, covered with that toxic, living, spittle, extended like a thick rubber band, cracking, bleeding. He saw himself clinging to the tip of that tongue by his teeth, ripping through it a little at a time, his face bathed in the thick, sparkling, timelines and universes that was Its blood, drowning in Its dead stench, yet still holding on, holding on somehow, while It struggled in Its blind pain and towering rage not to let Its tongue snap back-

('Chüd, this is Chüd, stand, be brave, be true, stand for your sister, your friends; believe, believe in all the things you have believed in, believe that if you're lost your parents will come and find you, that there is a Tooth Fairy who lives in a huge enamel castle, and Santa Claus below the North Pole, making toys with his trove of elves, and that Superhero's could be real, yes, they could be despite Morikawa Naegi and Shiori saying that was all a lot of baby stuff, believe that your mother and step-father don't blame you for your sister's death, believe in the friends that followed you out of the blue and into the black, that courage is possible and words will come smoothly every time; no more Loser's, no more cowering in a hole in the ground and calling it a clubhouse, no more crying in Eri's room because you couldn't save her and didn't know, believe in yourself, believe in the heat of that desire')

Deku suddenly began to giggle in the darkness, not in hysteria but in utter delighted amazement.

"OH YES, I BELIEVE IN ALL OF THOSE THINGS!" he shouted, and it was true: even at eleven he had observed that things turned out right a ridiculous amount of the time. Light flared around him- six giant explosive bursts that streaked across the darkness like fireworks-

Red: who seemed to navigated the way forward.

Blue: who's knowing intuition told him what he needed to do.

Yellow: Filling him with an almost humorous heat, warming him in that cold void of nothingness.

Orange: Who encompassed not only his own rage, nor just the the rage of his friends, but the rage of all those that had died to It.

White: Who was so bright, it managed to turn his vicinity of the inky-black void into an almost angelic, glowing, haven.

Purplish-Grey: a color that reminded him of dusk, which seemed to rebuild his scattering cells from the ground up- merging the Deku from before the turtle and the Deku from after into one- making him feel whole again.

Deku raised his arms out and above his head. He turned his face up, and suddenly he felt the powerful colors rush through him- and then a green light was shooting out of his eyes as if they were headlights on a car- for that one moment, all seven of their souls merged as one.

He heard It scream again... and suddenly he was being drawn back the way he had come, still holding that image of his teeth planted deep in the strange meat of Its tongue, his teeth locked together like grim old death. He skidded through the dark, only the heels of his muddy keds touching the midnight black ground, the wind of this empty place blowing in his ears.

He was pulled past the Turtle and saw that its head had withdrawn into its shell; its voice emerged hollow and distorted, as if even the shell it lived in were a well eternities deep:

'not bad, kid, but I'd finish it now; don't let It get away, energy has a way of dissipating, you know; what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.'

The voice of the Turtle faded, faded, faded. There was only the rushing dark... and then the mouth of a tunnel... smells of age and decay... cobwebs brushing at his face like rotted skeins of silk in a haunted house... moldering tiles blurring by... intersections, all dark now, the moon-balloons all gone, and It was screaming, screaming:

'-let me go let me go I'll leave never come back let me GO IT HURTS IT HURTS IT HURRRRRRRRRR-'

"Thrusts his fists!" Deku screamed, nearly delirious now. He could see light ahead but it was fading, guttering like great candles which had at last burned low... and for a moment he saw himself and the others holding hands in a line, Kirishima on one side of him and Bakugo on the other. He saw his own body, on his knees, his head rolled back on his neck, blood dripping into his right eye, staring up at the Spider, which twisted and whirled like a dervish, Its coarse, spiny legs beating at the floor, poison dripping from Its stinger.

It was screaming in Its death-agony.

Or so Midoriya Izuku so honestly believed.

-Then he was slamming back into his body with all the impact of a line drive slamming into a baseball glove, the force of it tearing his hands loose from Bakugo's and Kirishima's, causing his legs to flip out from under him, and send him skidding on his back across the floor to the edge of the web. He reached out for one of the strands without thinking, and his hand immediately went numb, as if it had been injected with a hypo full of novocaine. The strand itself was as thick as a telephone-pole guy-wire.

"Don't touch that, Deku!" Sero yelled, and Deku yanked his hand away in one quick jerk, leaving a raw place across his palm just below the fingers. It filled with blood and he staggered to his feet, eyes on the Spider.

It was scrabbling away from them, making Its way into the growing dimness at the back of the chamber as the light failed. It left puddles and pools of black alternate timelines and realities behind as It went; somehow their confrontation had ruptured Its insides in a dozen, maybe a hundred places.

"Deku, the web!" Kaminari screamed, he looked pale, weak- as if all the life had been sucked out of him- in fact, all six of them did. "Look out!"

Deku stepped backward, craning his neck up, as strands of Its web came floating down, striking the stone-flagged floor on either side of him like the bodies of meaty white snakes. They immediately began to lose shape, to flow into the cracks between the stones. The web was falling apart, coming loose from its many moorings. One of the bodies, wrapped up like a fly, came plunging down to strike the floor with a sickening rotted-gourd sound.

"The Spider!" Deku yelled. "Where is It?"

Deku could still hear It in his head, mewling and crying out in Its pain, and understood dimly that It had gone into the same tunnel It had thrown him into... but had It gone in there to flee back to the place where It had meant to send him... or to hide until they were gone? To die? Or escape?

"Shit, the lights!" Bakugo shouted. "The lights're going out! What happened, Deku? Where did you go? We thought you were dead!"

In some confused part of his mind Deku knew that wasn't true: if they had really thought him dead, they would have run, scattered, and It would have picked them off easily, one by one. Or perhaps it would be truer to say that they had thought him dead, but believed him alive.

'We have to make sure! If It's dying or gone back to where It came from, where the rest of It is, that's fine. But what if Its just hurt? What if It can get better? What-'

Iida's hoarse scream cut across his thoughts like broken glass. In the fading light Deku saw that one of the strands of webbing had come down on Iida's shoulder. Before Deku could reach him, Sero had thrown himself at the taller boy in a flying tackle. He drove Iida away and the piece of webbing snapped back, stealing a piece of Iida's polo shirt, a burning, bleeding, slash taking it's place.

"Get back!" Sero yelled at them. "Get away from it, it's all coming down!"

Kaminari seized Todoroki's hand and pulled him back toward the child-sized door while Sero helped Iida struggled to his feet, looked dazedly around. After a moment of stumbling, Iida grabbed Kirishima. The three of them started toward Kaminari and Todoroki, helping each other, looking like phantoms in the fading light.

Overhead, the spiderweb was drooping, collapsing on itself, losing its fearful symmetry. Bodies twirled lazily in the air like nightmarish plumb-bobs. Cross-strands fell in like the rotted rungs of some strange complex of ladders. Severed strands hit the stone flagging, hissed like cats, lost their shape, began to run.

Kaminari Denki wove his and Todoroki's way through the web, head down, ducking and dodging. Bakugo joined him and noticed, Incredibly but also not really, that Kaminari was laughing. The light grew dimmer, the phosphorescence that had coiled on the walls now dying away.

"Deku!" Kaminari shouted over his shoulder. "Come on! Let's get the hell out of here!"

"What if It's not dead?" Deku screamed back. "We've got to go after It, Denki! We've got to make sure!"

A snarl of webbing sagged outward like a parachute and then fell with a nasty ripping sound that was like skin being pulled apart. Kaminari doubled back, still dragging Todoroki behind him, and grabbed Deku's arm- pulled him, stumbling, out of the way.

"It's dead!" Kirishima cried, joining them. His eyes were febrile lamps, his breathing a chilly winter-whistle in his throat. Fallen strands of webbing had sizzled complex scars into the plaster of his cast. "I heard It, It was dying, you don't sound like that if you're on your way to the bar, It was dying, I'm sure of it!"

Bakugo's hands groped out of the darkness, seized Deku, and pulled him roughly forward. "I heard It, too- It was dying, Deku! It was fucking dying... and- holy shit- you're not stuttering! Not at all! How the hell-?"

Deku's brain was whirling. Exhaustion tugged at him with thick and clumsy hands. He could not remember ever feeling this tired... but in his mind he heard the drawling, almost weary voice of the Turtle: '...I'd finish it now; don't let It get away... what can be done when you're eleven can often never be done again.'

"But we have to be sure-"

Before the light failed utterly, he thought he saw the same hellish doubt on Iida's face... and in Todoroki's eyes... and Sero had that expression again... the one he always had when he-

(Stapled the past and future together)

-said something strange. Sero wiped his face with the back of his hand. He mumbled something about bleeding eyes, but Deku couldn't quite make it all out.

As the last of the light gave way, they could hear the tenebrous whisper-shudder-thump of Its unspeakable web falling to pieces.

"If it's not dead, we'll just have to kill It another time!" Kaminari yelled, and with the combined force of himself and Bakugo, yanked Deku towards the door, "I promise you! I'll make sure of it myself!"

—3—

DEKU IN THE VOID / LATE

'-well here you are again, Little Buddy! but what's happened to your hair? There's so much product in it you could start a grease fire! sad! what sad, short lives humans live! each life a short pamphlet written by an idiot! tut-tut, and all that.'

'I'm still Midoriya Izuku. You killed my sister and you killed Tenya and you tried to kill Denki. And I'm going to tell you something: this time I'm not going to stop until the job's done.'

'The Turtle was stupid, too stupid to lie. he told you the truth, Little Buddy... the time only comes around once, you hurt me... you surprised me. never again. I am the one who called you back. I.'

'You called, alright, but You weren't the only one.'

'Your friend the Turtle... he died a few years ago. the old idiot puked inside his shell and choked to death on a galaxy or two. very sad, don't you think? but also quite bizarre, deserves a place in Ripley's Believe It or Not, that's what I think, happened right around the same time you had that writer's block... remember? You had to go on a two month hiatus... you must have felt him go, Little Buddy.'

'I don't believe that, either.'

'oh you'll believe... you'll see. this time, Little Buddy, I intend you to see everything, including the deadlights.'

Deku sensed Its voice rising, buzzing and racketing- at last he sensed the full extent of Its fury and was utterly horrified. He reached for the tongue of Its mind, concentrating, trying desperately to recapture the full extent of that childish belief, understanding at the same time that there was a deadly truth in what It had said: last time It had been unprepared. This time... well, even if It had not been the only one to call them, It sure had been waiting.

But still-

He felt his own fury, clean and singing, as his eyes fixed on Its eyes. He sensed Its old scars, sensed that It had truly been hurt, and that It was still hurt.

And as It threw him, as he felt his mind swatted out of his body, as he felt himself beginning to unravel, he concentrated all of his being on seizing Its tongue... and missed his grip.

—4—

BAKUGO KATSUKI

The other four watched, paralyzed. It was an exact replay of what had happened before-well, at first, anyway. The Spider, which seemed about to seize Deku and gobble him up, grew suddenly still. Deku's body folded over grotesquely, blood coming out of his nose. His finger's would twitch every so often, and finally, his glassy eyes locked with Its ruby ones. There was a sense of contact... a contact just beyond their ability to define. But they felt the struggle, the clash of two opposing wills in a bloody battle of dominance.

...But then Bakugo glanced up into the new web, and saw the first difference.

There were bodies there, some half-eaten and half-rotted, and that was the same... but high up, in one corner, was another body, and Bakugo was sure this one was still fresh, possibly even still alive. None of the other's had looked up yet- too focused on Deku and the spider- most of their eyes still bleeding and burning- but Bakugo did, almost as if something else was guiding him towards it.

Her hair was a medium-brown color, and just seemed to reach her shoulder blades. Her chocolate brown eyes were open but glassy and unmoving- as if she were in a trance. She had naturally rose-pink cheeks, and was wearing a pair of grey pajama shorts and an oversized T-shirt that Bakugo figured must of belonged to Deku- judging by the ink-stains. A grey jacket hung from her arms, and looked as if it were going to fall at any moment. She had been attached to one of the web's main cables by a gossamer harness that went around her waist and under both arms so that she lolled forward in a half-bow, arms and legs dangling limply. Her feet were bare.

Bakugo's eyes were guided to another body crumpled at the foot of her web, a man he had never seen before... and yet his mind registered an almost subconscious resemblance to the late unlamented Shigaraki Tomura- though a much more bloated version. Blood had run from both of the stranger's eyes and caked in a foam around his mouth and on his chin, getting into and staining his light-blue hair. He-

Then Todoroki was gasping. "Something's wrong-"

Bakugo's gaze, finally back under his control, snapped back to Deku and the Spider... and he sensed / heard monstrous laughter. Deku's face was stretching in some subtle way. His skin had gone parchment-sallow, as shiny as the skin of a very old person. His eyes were rolled up to the whites.

'Deku, where the hell are you?'

As Bakugo watched, the blood flowing from Deku's nose suddenly began to burst out in a sort of foam. His body began to seize and convulse, that same, sickly-bloody foam, starting to bubble and pop out of his mouth. His mouth was writhing, trying to scream... and now the Spider was advancing on him again. It was turning, presenting Its stinger.

'It means to fucking kill him... kill his body, anyway... while his mind is somewhere else. Shit. It means to shut him out forever. It's winning... Deku, where the hell are you? For fuck's sake, where are you?-'

...And then, somewhere, faintly, from some unimaginable distance, he heard Deku scream... and the words, although meaningless, were crystal-clear and full of sickening-

('-the Turtle is dead!- oh- the Turtle really is dead!-')

-despair.

Todoroki shrieked again- that horrifying, wretched shriek, that seemed to signal utter hopelessness- and put his hands to his ears as if to shut out that fading voice. Blood began to pour out of all their eyes like faucets again. The Spider's stinger rose and Bakugo bolted at It, an unbridled sense of fury blazing through him, and yelled:

"I can't believe I have to save your stupid-fucking-ass again, Deku! When the fuck are you going to realize that this isn't all about you!?"

The Spider stopped laughing, and Bakugo felt a rising howl of anger and pain inside Its head. 'Hurt It!' he thought triumphantly. 'I hurt It- I hurt It!- damn right I did! And guess what? I'VE GOT ITS TONGUE! I THINK DEKU'S DUMBASS MISSED IT SOMEHOW BUT WHILE IT WAS DISTRACTED I GOT-'

Then, screaming at him, Its cries a hive of furious bees in his head, Bakugo was whacked out of himself and into darkness, dimly aware that It was trying to shake him loose. It was doing a pretty good job, too. He felt his body beginning to unravel, saw five bursts of light flare like fireworks behind him- Red, purplish-grey, white- from a distance, fairly far off, came yellow- and finally, blue, coming from even farther away- and felt them explode inside what was left of his chest. His eye's glowed a bright orange, and he sank his teeth in deeper, almost as if one instinct- but it wasn't enough- something was missing.

Terror washed through him, and then was replaced by a sense of cosmic absurdity. He remembered Todoroki with his Duncan yo-yo, showing him how to make it sleep, walk the dog, go around the world. And now here he was, Bakugo Katsuki, the Human Yo-Yo, and Its tongue was the string. Here he was, and this wasn't called walking the dog but maybe walking the Spider, and if Kaminari Denki wouldn't laugh wildly at that one- well-

-Bakugo laughed- and it was quite a rude sound. It wasn't polite to laugh with your mouth full, of course, but he doubted if anybody out here read Miss Manners.

Bakugo bit down harder, just to piss the bitch off more.

The Spider screamed and shook him furiously, howling Its anger at being surprised again- It had believed only the writer would challenge It, and now the loud-mouth nuisance- the one who had hurt It on Neibolt street all those years ago- had surprised It when It was least prepared.

Bakugo felt himself slipping.

'Here I fucking am, saving your ass again, Deku... I never even liked you that much... our mom's just happened to be childhood friends that actually did the stupid thing girl's say they're gonna do- grow up together, have a double wedding, move next door to one another, get pregnant at the same time and force their kids to be friends... your mom had a bit of a hiccup in the choosing a husband department- but other than that, the two of them actually went and did it- and I spent eleven years of my life stuck with the likes of you... and now I'm (floating, skidding, flying) through eternity on the end of a goddamn cosmic spider's tongue... fuck you, Deku- seriously- Fuck. You.'

He felt his teeth catch again, more firmly this time. And there was a fainting sort of pain as It drove Its fangs into his own tongue. Shit, it was annoying. Even in the dark, being hurled after Deku with only the tongue of this unspeakable monster left to connect him to his own world, even with the pain of Its poisonous fangs bathing his mind in a red mist, all Bakugo felt was annoyance- he didn't have the capacity to feel anything else- not in the darkness of eternity.

Bakugo was in greater darkness than he had ever known, than he had ever suspected might exist, travelling at what felt like the speed of light, and being shaken as a terrier shakes a rat. He sensed that there was something up ahead, some titanic corpse. The stupid-ass Turtle he had heard Deku lamenting in his fading voice? Must be. It was only a shell, a dead husk. Then he was past, rushing on into the darkness.

'Really steaming now,' he thought, and felt that annoyance consume him further.

'Oi, Deku- where the hell are you?'

'He's gone, he's in the deadlights, let me go! LET ME GO!'

('...Ka...cchan?...')

Incredibly distant; incredibly far out in the black.

'There the hell you are! Grab on, now!'

'He's dead, you're all dead, you're too old, don't you understand that? now let me GO!'

'Hey bitch, shut the hell up, I'm trying to talk to my idiotic ex-neighbor.'

'LET ME GO!'

'-take me to him and maybe I will.'

('Kacchan?')

'-closer, he was closer then, thank fuck-'

'Here I come, Idiot. Gonna save your ass! But only because I can't deal with half and half losing it- there's just some people in this world that aren't supposed to show emotion, and he's one of them.'

'Let me GOOOO!'

It was hurting badly now, and Bakugo understood how completely he had caught It off guard- It had believed It had only Deku to deal with. Bakugo, though he wouldn't admit it even if you held a loaded shot gun to his head, was all talk: he didn't care about killing It right now; he was no longer sure It could be killed. But Deku could be killed, and Bakugo sensed that Deku's time was now very, very short. Deku was closing in on some large nasty surprise out here, something best not thought about- and, well- to put it quite simply: The only one allowed to murder Deku was the person who gave him that nickname in the first place.

'Kacchan, no! Go back! It's the edge of everything up here! The deadlights!'

'Yeah yeah, the dumb bitch has already mentioned that-'

-And suddenly Deku was there- skidding- yes, Bakugo was very sure of that now- along on-

(the left? right? there was no direction here)

-one side or the other. And beyond him, coming up fast, Bakugo could see / sense something that finally dried up his well of annoyance. It was a barrier, something of a strange, non-geometrical shape that his mind could not grasp. Instead his mind translated it as best it could, as it had translated the shape of It into a Spider, allowing Bakugo to think of it as a colossal gray wall made of fossilized wooden stakes. These stakes went forever up and forever down, like the bars of a cage. And from between them shone a great blind light- a color that was almost orange, but also somehow the color of decay- It glared and moved, smiled and snarled. The light was alive.

(deadlights)

More than alive: it was full of a force- magnetism, gravity, perhaps something else. Bakugo felt himself lifted and dropped, swirled and pulled, as if he were shooting a fast throat of rapids in an innertube. He could feel the light moving eagerly over his face... and the light was thinking.

'This is It, this is It, the rest of It.'

'Let me go, you promised to let me GO!'

'I lied.'

He sensed Deku tumbling and flailing toward one of the gaps in the wall, sensed evil fingers of light reaching for him, and with a final despairing effort, he reached for his friend.

'Deku! Your hand! Give me your hand! YOUR HAND, GODDAMMIT! YOUR HAND!'

Deku's hand shot out, the fingers opening and closing, that living fire crawling and twisting over his and Ochako's wedding rings in runic, Moorish patterns- wheels, crescents, stars, swastikas, linked circles that grew into rolling chains. Deku's face was overlaid with the same light, making him look tattooed. Bakugo stretched out as far as he could, hearing It scream and yammer.

('I missed him, fucking hell I missed he's going to shoot through-')

Then Deku's fingers closed over Bakugo's, and Bakugo clenched his hand into a fist. Deku's legs flew through one of the gaps in the frozen wood, and for one mad moment Bakugo realized he could see all the bones and veins and capillaries inside them, as if Deku had shot halfway into the maw of the world's strongest X-ray machine. Bakugo felt the muscles in his arm stretch like taffy, felt the ball-and-socket joint in his shoulder creak and groan in protest as the footpounds of pressure built up.

He summoned all of his force and shouted: "Pull us back! Pull us back or I'll kill you! I... I'll threaten-Deku you to death!"

The Spider screeched again, and Bakugo suddenly felt a great, snapping whiplash curl through his body. His arm was a white-hot bar of agony. His grip on Deku's hand began to slip.

"Hold on, Deku!"

"I am Kacchan, believe me!- I am!"

'You better,' Bakugo thought grimly, 'because I think you could walk ten billion miles out here and never find your way out of this shit.'

They whistled back, that crazy light fading, becoming a series of brilliant pinpoints that finally winked out. They drove through the darkness like torpedoes, Bakugo gripping Its tongue with his teeth and Deku's wrist with one aching hand. There was the Turtle; there and gone in a single eyeblink.

Bakugo sensed them drawing closer to whatever passed for the real world ('although he believed he would never think of it as exactly "real" again; he would see it as a clever canvas scene underlaid with a crisscrossing of support-cables... cables like the strands of a spiderweb'). 'But we're going to be alright,' he thought. 'We're going to get back. We-'

The buffeting began then- the whipping, slamming, side-to-side flailing as It tried one final time to shake them off and leave them Outside. And Bakugo felt his grip slipping. He heard Its guttural roar of triumph and concentrated his being on holding... but he continued to slip. He bit down frantically, but Its tongue seemed to be losing substance and reality; it seemed to be becoming gossamer.

"Fuck!" Bakugo screamed. "I'm losing it! Help! Somebody fucking help us!"

—5—

KIRISHIMA EJIROU

Kirishima was only half-aware of what was happening; he felt it somehow, saw it somehow, but as if through a semi-opaque curtain. Somewhere, Deku and Bakugo were struggling to get back. Their bodies were here, but the rest of them- the essential them- was far away.

He had seen the Spider turn to impale Deku with Its stinger, and then Bakugo had run forward, yelling obscenities...The Spider had turned toward Bakugo, and Kirishima had seen Its unspeakable red eyes bulge in their sockets. Bakugo yelled again, and Kirishima had felt the Spider scream in pain. Sero yelled hoarsely as a split appeared in Its hide along the line of one of Its scars from the last time. A stream of ichor, containing alternate realities and timelines, sprayed out and drenched Bakugo. Bakugo had started to say something else... and his voice had begun to diminish, like the fade at the end of a pop song. His head had rolled back on his neck, his eyes fixed on Its eyes. He dropped to his knees, and blood had begun to trickle out of his nose. The Spider grew quiet again.

Time passed- Kirishima had no idea just how much. At some point there was a feeling of all the life draining out of him- a feeling he had only felt once before, when Deku had started the ritual the first time fifteen years earlier. There was a blinding flash of red in his vision, and he blinked rapidly. He sensed Sero and Todoroki- and- though he wasn't sure how, Kaminari Denki- doing the same.

Bakugo and the Spider stared at each other; Kirishima sensed the connection between them, felt a swirl of talk and emotion somewhere far away. He could make out nothing exactly, but sensed the tones of things in colors and hues. He was scared.

Deku lay slumped on the floor, nose, ears, eyes, and mouth bleeding, fingers twitching slightly, his freckled face pale, his eyes closed. Every once and a while he'd begin to seize and convulse once more, and Kirishima would feel Todoroki's grip on his hand become vice like.

The Spider was now bleeding in four or five places, badly hurt again, badly hurt but still dangerously vital, and Kirishima thought: 'Why are we just standing around here holding hands? We could hurt It while It's occupied with Katsuki! Why doesn't somebody move, for fuck's sake!?'

He sensed a wild triumph- and that feeling was deeper, sharper. Closer. 'They're coming back!' he wanted to shout, but his mouth was too dry, his throat too tight. 'They're coming back!'

Then Bakugo's head began to turn slowly from side to side. His body seemed to ripple inside his clothes. His nose and eyes began to gush blood- not that foamy consistency coming from Deku- but seemingly pints and pints of the stuff- pooling around his knees and staining his pants and jacket.

The Spider stirred, its spiny legs making a dry clittering on the floor. Kirishima heard It cry out in terrible triumph, and a moment later, Bakugo's voice burst clearly into his head:

('Fuck! I'm losing it! somebody fucking help us!')

Kirishima, thinking only of the fact that Bakugo, the love of his life, and Deku, the person he had spent a giant chunk of a his youth idolizing, were in danger, ran forward then, yanking his aspirator from his pocket with his good hand, his lips drawn back from his razor-sharp teeth in a grimace, his breath whistling painfully in and out of a throat that now felt the size of a pinhole. Crazily, his mother's face danced before him and she was crying: 'Don't go near that Thing, Ejirou! Don't go near It! Things like that give you cancer!'

"Shut up!" Kirishima screamed, that barbarian voice from fifteen years ago returning once again. The Spider's head turned toward the sound, Its eyes momentarily leaving Bakugo's.

"Here!" Kirishima howled. "Here, have some of this!"

He leaped at It, triggering the aspirator at the same time, and for an instant all his childhood belief in the medicine came back to him, the childhood medicine that could solve everything, that could make him feel better when the bigger boys roughed him up or when he was knocked over in the rush to get through the doors when school let out or when he had to sit on the edge of the Tetsutestu's vacant lot, out of the game because his mother wouldn't allow him to play baseball. It was good medicine, strong medicine, and as he leaped into the Spider's face, smelling Its foul yellow stench, feeling himself overwhelmed by Its single-minded fury and determination to wipe them all out, he triggered the aspirator into one of Its ruby eyes.

He felt- heard- Its scream- no rage this time, only pain, a horrid screaming agony. He saw the mist of droplets settle on that blood-red bulge, saw the droplets turn white where they landed, saw them sink in as a splash of carbolic acid would sink in; he saw Its huge eye begin to flatten out like a bloody egg-yolk and run in a ghastly stream of living blood and universes and maggoty pus.

"Come home now, Suki!" he screamed with the last of his voice, and then he struck It, he felt Its noisome heat baking into him "Come on, Deku! Come on!"

He triggered the aspirator again, shooting the stuff right down Its throat this time, right down Its rotten evil stinking gullet, and there was sudden, flashing pain, as clean as the drop of a heavy knife-

'Oh...' he thought absently, stumbling a little, falling to one knee. '...My arm's gone...'

Kirishima fell to the floor, the ragged stump of his arm spraying blood, faintly aware that Deku was getting shakily to his feet, that Bakugo was weaving and stumbling toward him like a drunk at the end of a long hard night.

"-shitty hair!-"

Far away. Unimportant. He could feel everything running out of him along with his life's blood... all the rage, all the pain, all the fear, all the confusion and hurt. He supposed he was dying but he felt... ah, he felt so lucid, so clear, like a window-pane which has been washed clean and now lets in all the gloriously frightening light of some unsuspected dawning; the light- that perfect rational light that clears the horizon somewhere in the world every second.

"- Ejirou! shit- Deku, Hanta- someone- he's lost his arm, his-"

He looked up at Todoroki and saw he was crying, the tears coursing down his dirty cheeks. There was blood in the white half of his hair, staining it a grotesque shade of red- 'My blood' Kirishima thought wildly- Todoroki got an arm under him; he became aware that Todoroki had taken off his long coat and was trying to staunch the flow of blood, and that he was screaming for help. Sero joined him a moment later, his eye's wide, his head shaking back and forth, as if he couldn't process what was happening- but he helped Todoroki hold the jacket in place. Deku, his own face grotesquely stained with thick, slimy, snail-trails of blood, stumbled into Kirishima's view a moment later. He was crying- and Kirishima was almost certain that he was saying 'I'm sorry' over and over again-

'Don't apologize, Izuku... I always said I would die for you... it's alright... it's better this way... braver... manly, even...'

He looked at Bakugo then. Fading, fading back. Becoming clearer and clearer, emptying out, all of the impurities flowing out of him so he could become clear, so that the light could flow through, and if he had had time enough he could have preached on this, he could have sermonized: 'Not bad,' he would begin. 'This is not bad at all.' But there was something else he had to say first.

"Suki," he whispered.

"What?" Bakugo was down on his hands and knees, staring at him desperately- he and been yelling, looking around desperately before- but now his attention was on him. "What is it- what do you-"

"-shut up..." Kirishima said, and smiled. He raised his left hand slowly and touched Bakugo's cheek. Bakugo was crying, it made Kirishima feel bad. He wiped away one of his tears with his thumb, taking some of the stained blood from earlier with it. "Just... shut up... and let me... look at you..." Kirishima wiped more of the blood on Bakugo's face away, getting a clear impression, thinking about how he should tell him how he much loved him- and shit- he really should have kissed him earlier- but as he opened his mouth to say all that, he died.

—6—

IRUSU / 7:00-9:00 A.M.

By 7:00 A.M... the wind-speed in Irusu had picked up to about thirty-seven miles an hour, with gusts up to forty-five. Yoarashi Inasa, a National Weather Service forecaster based at Hakodate Airport, made an alarmed call to HBN headquarters in Sapporo. The winds, he said, were coming out of the west and blowing in a bizarre semicircular pattern he had never seen before... but it looked to him more and more like some weird species of pocket hurricane, one that was limited almost exclusively to Irusu.

At 7:10, the major Ashikawa radio stations broadcast the first severe-weather warnings. The explosion of the power-transformer at the former Tetsutestu depot had killed the power all over Irusu on the Taiko Street side of the Barrens.

At 7:17, a gangly old Japanese maple on the train yard side of the Barrens fell with a terrific rending crash, flattening a Lawson chain location on the corner of Kamicho and Oppama. An elderly patron named Sone Kenji was killed by a toppling beer cooler. This was the same Sone Kenji who, as the priest of the Shinto shrine in Ukiyo park, chanted the Sutra at Toshinori Eri's funeral in December of 2004. The maple also pulled down enough power lines to knock out the power in both the Omagari portion of the barrens and the somewhat more fashionable Cherry-blossom circle development beyond it, where Jirou Kyoka's step-sister Mai had been brutally murdered by her own father.

The clock in the tower of the Irusu community home had chimed neither six nor seven. At 7:20, three minutes after the maple fell in the train yard areas of the barrens and about an hour and fifteen minutes after every toilet and domestic drain on Shinrinyoku had suddenly reversed itself, the clock in the tower chimed thirteen times. A minute later, a blue-white stroke of lightning struck the tower. Nishioka Cho, the current head of the community house, happened to be looking out the window of the window of her kitchen at the time, and she said that the tower "exploded like someone loaded it up with dynamite." Grey-washed boards, chunks of beams, and clockwork from Switzerland showered down on the street. The ragged remains of the steeple burned briefly and then guttered out in the rain, which was now a tropical downpour. The streets leading downhill into the downtown shopping area foamed and ran. The progress of the Canal under Main Street had become a steady shaking thunder that made people look at each other uneasily.

At 7:25, with the titanic crash of the Community home's clock tower still reverberating all over Irusu, the janitor who went into The House of Blue Leaves every morning to bleach the place out saw something which sent him screaming into the street. This fellow was paid a pittance for his services- his real pay, it was understood, was his absolute freedom to finish up anything left in the beer kegs under the bar from the night before. Bakugo Katsuki, Midoriya Izuku, and Sero Hanta might or might not have remembered him; he was Mineta Minoru, best known as the pervert from Bakugo and Midoriya's grade five class- or, as Sero had known him as, the one who had found the face of Hagakure Toru. As he was mopping up on that apocalyptic morning in Irusu, working his way gradually closer and closer to the serving area, he saw all seven of the beer taps- three Asahi Super, two Sapporo Premium, one Kirin Heartland, and one Hitachino White, burst forward, as if pulled by seven invisible hands. Beer ran from them in streams of gold-white foam. Mineta started forward, thinking not of ghosts or phantoms but of his morning's dividend going down the drain. Then he skidded to a stop, eyes widening, and a wailing, horrified scream rose in the empty, beer-smelling cave that was The House of Blue Leaves. Beer had given way to arterial streams of blood. It swirled in the chromium drains, overflowed, and ran down the side of the bar in little streamlets. Now hair and chunks of flesh began to splurt out of the beer-taps. Mineta watched this, transfixed, not even able to summon enough strength to scream again. Then there was a thudding, toneless blast as one of the beer kegs under the counter exploded. All of the cupboard doors under the bar swung wide. Greenish smoke, like the aftermath of a magician's trick, began to drift out of them. Mineta had seen enough. Screaming, he fled into the street, which was now a shallow canal. He fell on his ass, got up, and threw a terrified glance back over his shoulder. One of the bar windows blew out with a loud shooting-gallery sound. Whickers of broken glass whistled all around Mineta's head. A moment later the other window exploded. Once again he was miraculously untouched... but he decided on the spur of the moment that the time had come to get the hell out of dodge. He started off at once, and his journey to the Irusu town limits and beyond would make a saga in itself... but suffice it to say that he did eventually get out of town.

Others were not so lucky. Seki Yoko, who had spent her first year teaching fretting over a skinny little boy named Sero Hanta, was sitting with her husband in the parlor of their home on Omagari street, watching the storm pound Irusu, completely without power. At 7:32, she suffered a fatal stroke. Her husband told his brother a week later that Seki dropped her coffee cup on the rug, sat bolt-upright, her eyes wide and staring, and screamed: "My eye's- my eye's are bleeding!-" and tried to wipe away blood that wasn't there.

...Then she fell out of her chair, smashing her coffee cup under her.

Similarly, across town, the same thing happened to Kishi Ai, who, with the exception of Kaminari and Todoroki, taught the other loser's that fateful year: however, her dying words had been a series of obscenities directed at some person called 'Deku'- who, like all of the loser's that had left town, none of them could remember- "I can't believe I have to save your stupid-fucking-ass again, Deku! When the fuck are you going to realize that this isn't all about you!?"

At 7:49 a series of explosions shook the Irusu Mall, which stood on the site of the defunct Kanazaki Ironworks. No one was killed; the mall didn't open until 10:00, and the five-man janitorial squad hadn't been due to arrive until 8:00 (and on such a morning as this, very few of them would have shown up anyway). A team of investigators later dismissed the idea of sabotage. They suggested- rather vaguely- that the explosions had probably been caused by water which had seeped into the mall's electrical system. Whatever the reason, no one was going to go shopping at the Irusu Mall for a long time.

One explosion totally wiped out a Mikimoto Jewlery store. Diamond rings, bracelets, strings of pearls, trays of wedding rings, and Seiko digital watches flew everywhere in a hail of bright, sparkly trinkets. A music-box flew the length of the east corridor and landed in the fountain outside of the Toho Cinema, where it briefly played a bubbly rendition of the theme from Love Story before shutting down.

The same blast tore a hole through the Cremia next door, turning the fatty-milky-soft serve into ice-cream soup that ran away along the floor in cloudy runnels. The second blast, which tore through , lifted off a chunk of the roof and the rising wind sailed it away like a kite; it came down a thousand yards away, slicing cleanly through the detached garage of a man named Amijaki Tamaki. Amijaki's nine year old son rushed out with his mother's cellphone and took a picture. The Tokyo Journal bought it for 6000¥, which the boy used to buy two new tires for his bike.

A third explosion ripped through UNIQLO, sending flaming sportswear, baby and kids clothing, and office wear into the flooded parking-lot.

A final explosion tore open the mall branch of the Shinsie Financial Center like a rotted box of crackers. A chunk of the bank's roof was also torn off. Burglar alarms went off with a bray that would not be silenced until the security system's independent wiring hookup was shorted out four hours later. Loan contracts, banking instruments, deposit slips, cash-drawer chits, and Money-Manager forms were lifted into the sky and blown away by the rising wind. And yen: 5,000¥ and 10,000¥ notes, with a generous helping of 1,000¥. Better than 76.9 million yen blew away, according to the bank's officers... Later, after a mass shakeup in the bank's executive structure (and a government bail-out), some would admit- strictly off the record, of course- that it had been more like 20 billion. A woman in Shinri named Niwa Chiasa found a 5,000¥ bill fluttering down on her back-porch, two 1,000¥ notes in her bird-house, and a 10,000¥ note plastered against a birch tree in her back yard. She and her husband used the money to make an extra payment on their car.

Dr. Sunada, the doctor that had written Kirishima Ejirou's placebo prescription, who had also gotten an eighteen year old girl pregnant when he was thirty-eight year's old, and just so happened to be Sero Hanta's biological father, was killed at 8:00 A.M. Dr. Sunada, now 64 years of age, liked to boast that he had taken the same two-mile walk from his West Broadway home and around Ukiyo Park for the last twenty-five of those 64 years. Nothing stopped him; not rain, sleet, hail, or subzero cold. He set out on the morning of May 31st in spite of his housekeeper's worried fussings. His exit-line from the world, spoken back over his shoulder as he went through the front door, pulling his hat firmly down to his ears, was: "Don't be so silly, Amaya. This is nothing but a capful of rain. You should have seen it in '04! That was a storm!" As Dr. Sunada turned off of west Broadway and onto Kusugo Drive, a man hole right in front of the Iida's old place suddenly lifted off like the tail end of a rocket. It decapitated the doctor so quickly and neatly that he walked on another three steps before collapsing, dead, on the sidewalk. And the wind continued to rise.

—7—

AUGUST 14TH, 2005 / UNDER THE CITY / 4:15 P.M.

Kirishima led them through the darkened tunnels for an hour, perhaps an hour and a half, before admitting, in a tone that was more bewildered than frightened, that for the first time in his life he was lost.

They could still hear the dim thunder of water in the drains, but the acoustics of all of these tunnels was so crazed that it was impossible to tell if the water-sounds were coming from ahead or behind, left or right, above or below. Their matches were gone. They were lost in the dark.

Deku was scared... plenty scared. The conversation he'd had with his step-father in his shop kept coming back to him. "There's nine pounds of blueprints that just disappeared somewhere along the line... My point is that nobody knows where all the sewers and drains go, or why. When they work, nobody cares. When they don't, there's three or four guys from Irusu Water who have to try and find out which pump went flooey or where the plug-up is... It's dark and smelly and there are rats. Those are all good reasons to stay out, but the best reason is that you could get lost. It's happened before."

'Happened before. Happened before. It's happened-'

-Sure it had. There was that bundle of bones and polished cotton they had passed on the way to Its lair, for instance.

Deku felt panic trying to rise and pushed it back. It went, but not easily. He could feel it back there, a live thing, struggling and twisting, trying to get out. Adding to it was the nagging unanswerable question of whether they had even killed It or not. Bakugo said yes, Kaminari said yes, so did Kirishima. But he hadn't liked the frightened doubtful look on Iida's face, or in Todoroki's eyes, or the weird mumblings of Sero Hanta as the light died and they crawled back through the small door, away from the collapsing web.

"So what do we do now?" Iida asked after a long, crippling, silence. Deku heard the frightened, little-kid tremble in Iida's voice and knew the question was aimed directly at him.

"Yeah," Sero whispered from somewhere unknown. "What? Damn, I wish we had a flashlight... or even a c-candle." Deku thought he heard a stifled, anxious, sob after Sero's brief pause and that frightened him more than anything else. Sero would have been stunned to know it, but Deku thought the skinny boy a tough and resourceful leader, less unpredictable than Bakugo and less likely to cave in suddenly than Iida- he'd seen it before, but it had shown through best on the days where they had made the silver slugs, built the dam, and built the clubhouse. If Sero, the guy who- as Kirishima Ejirou had so elegantly put it- had (literally) fallen into the barrens, covered in blood, after a harrowing fight with Shigaraki Tomura- just to get up and smoke a cigarette like it was a regular Tuesday, if the guy who had tackled Shigaraki Tomura on the day of the rock fight, if they guy who nearly got his guts ripped out by a werewolf in order to save his best friend-was getting ready to crack, they were on the edge of something very, very, bad.

Something else was troubling him, but the concept was too large and too vague for his tired boy's mind to grasp. Perhaps it was the very simplicity of the idea that made it elusive: they were falling away from each other. The bond that had held them all this long summer was dissolving. It had been faced and vanquished. It might be dead, as Bakugo and Kirishima thought, or It might be wounded so badly It would sleep for a hundred years, or a thousand, or ten thousand. They had faced It, seen It with Its final mask laid aside, and It had been horrible enough-oh, for sure!-but once seen, Its physical form was not so bad and Its most potent weapon was taken away from It. They all had, after all, seen spiders before. They were alien and somehow crawlingly dreadful, and he supposed that none of them would ever be able to see another one-

(if we ever get out of this)

-without feeling a shudder of revulsion- not even if they were "reborn" like It had once suggested they would be- (though, of course, Deku didn't quite grasp that concept either)- But at the end of the day, a spider was, after all, only a spider. Perhaps at the end, when the masks of horror were laid aside, there was nothing with which the human mind could not cope. That was a heartening thought. Anything except-

(the deadlights)

-whatever had been out there, but perhaps even that unspeakable living light- which was almost orange, but also somehow the color of decay- crouched at the doorway to the macroverse was dead or dying. The deadlights, and the trip into the black to the place where they had been, was already growing hazy and hard to recall in his mind. And that wasn't really the point. The point, felt but not grasped, was simply that the fellowship was ending... it was ending and they were still in the dark. That- That Other- that had brought them together was beginning to detach from them. The normal parameters, the normal barriers, that would of kept a hodgepodge melting-pot of personalities such as this from becoming as close as the seven of them had, were beginning to build up- They were becoming children again. Deku felt it as much as the others.

"What now, Deku?" Iida asked again, finally saying it right out. "What do we do now?"

"I d-d-don't nuh-nuh-know," Deku said. His stutter was back, alive and well. He heard it, they heard it, and he stood in the dark, smelling the sodden aroma of their growing panic, wondering how long it would be before somebody- Bakugo, most likely it would be Bakugo- tore things wide open by saying: "Well, why the fuck don't you know? You got us into this shit!"

"What about Tomura?" Kaminari asked uneasily. "Is he still out there, or what?"

"Oh, shit," Kirishima said... almost moaned. "I forgot about him. Sure he is, sure he is, he's probably as lost as we are and we could run into him any time... Deku, don't you have any ideas? Your dad works down here! Don't you have any ideas at all?"

Deku listened to the distant mocking thunder of the water and tried to have the idea that Kirishima -all of them- had a right to demand. Because yes, correct, he had gotten them into this and it was his responsibility to get them back out again. Nothing came. Nothing. All of his observation and leadership skills had seemed to disappear with the Other. He was nothing but an eleven year old boy lost in the sewer's now.

There was a long, terrible, silence. Deku could feel Bakugo's glare on the back of his neck, and he found himself wondering how the two of them had ever managed to get along at all- eventually, there was the feeling of water pooling around their ankles. There seemed to be a leak in a system far above them. He didn't know how long the seven of them stood there in silence, just that by the end of it, the water was up to his knees.

Todoroki had his face in his hands. He was trying to take himself back to his safe, staticky, space he created for himself when he was around six or seven. He was scared- scared they were all going to die down there- and the safe place wasn't working.

Suddenly, an image cut threw his mind- And he was thinking of birds; in particular of sparrowheads- about how at one point the summer before, when he had snuck out of the house after a particularly bad "training session" with his father- he had seen them. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of them- covering every square inch of the roofs, cars, and power lines. He had found the site to be utterly breath taking. He grasped onto it. Slowly, as the memory became clearer in his mind, his heart began to calm.

Birds, at first, made him think of Iida Tenya and his bird book- but then he was thinking of Kaminari Denki, and what It was for him- and that lead to him thinking about that little half-poem he'd found in his mailbox the day after school had let out. He'd gotten notes like that in the past from girls, asking him to check yes or no if he liked them or something silly like that. He had he never really understood such notes- (why did it matter if he disliked them? It wasn't like he spoke to them anyway) but this one- this one had been different... not only had it not been a stupid question that didn't matter, but it had been written in the unmistakable, messy, nearly-unreadable scrawl of a boy... and oh, had his heart fluttered and his face flushed-

('Your hair is like winter-fire, January embers')

Finally, unaware he was going to say it at all (and certainly not because it had any discernible bearing on this situation), Todoroki said: "Thank you for the half-poem, Denki."

Kaminari's head shot up at once, and whipped towards the direction of Todoroki's voice. His eye's had a adjusted ever-so-slightly to the dark, and he could just make out the white half of Todoroki's gunk-streaked hair. Kaminari stared at him gravely, cautiously- up to his mid-thigh in water for the second time that day. "Haha... half-poem?..."

"I don't really know what else to call it." Todoroki said bluntly, but not unkindly, "The one that described my hair as winter fire, January embers?...That was you, wasn't it?"

The other's were paying attention now- partially because other than the freezing water, their voices were the only thing distracting them from their doomsday thoughts, and partially because the more the two of them talked, the faster all of their eyes seemed to adjust to the darkness.

"No," Kaminari said, flushing, and shaking his head furiously. "I didn't send you anything like that- If a kid like me- a short, annoying, dumb, kid like me-did something like that, even you would probably laugh at him!-"

"I didn't laugh. I thought it was beautiful."

"I could never write anything beautiful. Deku, maybe-" Kaminari turned to the side, and pointed at Deku in a very animated fashion, his face beet red, he was laughing again- but it was a nervous, and very embarrassed sound "but not me- I'm not- I'm not smart enough to write something anyone would ever find beautiful- especially not someone as awesome as you-"

"-Didn't I already tell you that you weren't stupid?"

Kaminari blinked: "Well- yes, but-"

Todoroki had moved closer to Kaminari, standing nearly a foot taller than the small boy, hands crossed over his chest, shoulders squared, body soaked through with sewage water and all manner of other under-the-city-grime. And, to everyone astonishment, (but also at the same time, to no ones)- He also appeared to be glowing- like, actually glowing- a white, angelic, light seemed to shimmer and dance around him, lighting up the entire tunnel. And all six of the other losers thought he looked simply magnificent.

It seemed the Other hadn't left them all- at least not yet.

"-But nothing, Kaminari Denki. You wrote the poem and you aren't stupid- if anything I'm the idiot- I'm the one who charged towards a... what did you call it?... a hell... beast?... without a plan."

"You're not-" Kaminari looked up at him- almost helplessly- "-How did you know it was me?"

"Because of that day in December," Todoroki said simply, "...under the bleachers. Do you remember?"

Kaminari's throat worked convulsively. 'Remember?!' Kaminari thought incredulously, 'of course I remember! I've been trying to get you to recreate that smile since! My cheek hasn't stopped burning since your lips touched it!'

Kaminari let out a loud bark of anguished laughter, and clamped his hands over his mouth, hating how his body responded to stress. "I-I didn't mean anything by it- not really-"

Todoroki looked at him gravely. "You better not mean that," he said. "If you do, it's really going to ruin my day, and I'll tell you, it's going downhill already."

Kaminari stifled his laughter and looked down at his hands and spoke at last in a voice they all could barely hear. "...Well... I mean... I do... I do... love you, Roki, but I don't want that to ruin anything... I just... I just wanna make you smile- and stuff like that!- haha..."

"It won't," Todoroki said, and hugged him to his chest, causing Kaminari's face to darken to an almost comical shade of red, and for his giggles to rage forward in awkward, love-struck, bursts. "I need all the love and smiles I can get right now."

"But- haha... you specially like Deku-" he looked in Deku's direction instinctually, almost expecting him to look angry- or jealous- but instead he had a small smile on his face- watching the scene happily.

"Maybe I do," Todoroki said, and the light around him seemed to grow brighter "but that doesn't matter. If we were grown-ups, maybe it would, a little. But I like you all specially. You're the only friends I have. So... maybe I do love Deku... but maybe I love you too, Denki- in fact I know I do. I love all of you. Always and forever."

The light was bright enough now so that Kirishima could see down the path, almost blinding in it's intensity.

"I..." Kaminari tried, trying his hardest to get the words out, surrounded by that shimmering white light, Todoroki Shouto looked like an angel. Kaminari paused, swallowed, and brought it out- He was even able to look at Todoroki as he said it. "I did... I wrote the... I wrote the half-poem... and rode my bike out to your place to put it in the mailbox... I wrote it for you because I wanted to make you smile... even if I didn't get to see it..."

Todoroki looked down at him, his cheeks flaring red, and- Kaminari was sure he was going to pass out, holy- he was smiling- a smile that was much warmer than the one that day under the bleachers- a smile that- literally- lit up the room.

"Marry me."

"What?" Todoroki asked, furrowing his eyebrows a little- but he was still smiling.

"Nothing." Kaminari was still so awestruck he didn't even have the capability of being embarrassed at his impromptu proposal. Instead, a new goal clicked into place: He had to make Todoroki Shouto laugh- just once- before he died.

"Guys!" Kirishima called, breaking Kaminari out of his trance. "I think-"

—8—

MAY 31ST, 2020 / IN THE LAIR OF IT

-he's dying," Todoroki wept. "His arm, It ate his arm-" He reached for Deku, clung to him, but Deku shook him off.

"It's getting away again!" Deku roared. Blood caked his face like war pain. "Cuh-Cuh-Come on! Kacchan! Huh-Huh-Hanta! This tuh-time we're g-g-going to fuh-hinish her!"

Bakugo turned Deku toward him. Bakugo's entire body was drenched in a horrifying mixture of his own blood, Its, and Kirishima's, his blonde hair stained with even more colors than Todoroki's- his eyes were puffy, but filled with a spaced out look that chilled them all to their core- it was nearly as bad as Todoroki's shrieks. "...Deku... we have to take care of Ejirou... We have to get a tourniquet on him... get him out of here..."

...But Todoroki was now sitting with Kirishima's head in his lap, cradling him. He had closed his dulling ruby eyes. "Katsuki- he's gone. Go with Deku," he said softly, but bluntly. "...If you all let him die for nothing... if It comes back in another fifteen years, or fifty, or even two thousand, I swear I'll... I'll haunt your ghosts- especially yours, Trashmouth- now go."

Bakugo looked at him for a moment, indecisive, spacey, pissed... Then he became aware that Todoroki's face was losing definition, becoming not a face but a colorful shape in the growing shadows. The light was fading. It decided for him. "...fuck-" he whispered, feeling himself start to tear up again. He dug the palm of his hands into his sticky-with-blood eyes harshly, thinking briefly of the dream of the needle "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!"

"Kacchan-" Deku started

"FINE!" He yelled, keeping his hands over his eyes as he turned away from Kirishima's lifeless body, he kicked a light-grey jacket across the floor in rage. "FUCKING!- WE'LL CHASE THE GODDAMN BITCH!- let's just- let's just fucking go already!-"

Sero was standing at the back of the spiderweb, he was worried about Bakugo- but- his attention had been stolen away by the web which had begun to decay again. He had also seen the shape swaying high up in it, and he prayed that Deku would continue to focus on Bakugo and would not look up.

...But as the web began to fall in drifts and strands and skeins, Deku did.

He saw Ochako, sagging as if in a very old and creaky elevator. She dropped ten feet, stopped, swaying from side to side, and then abruptly dropped another fifteen. Her face never changed. Her eyes, chocolate-brown, were wide open. Her bare feet swung back and forth like pendulums. Her hair hung lankly over her shoulders. Her mouth was ajar.

"OCHAKO!" he screamed, eyes widening to the size of saucers- feeling all the fight drain out of him at once.

"Deku, Katsuki, come on!" Sero shouted. "We have to go after It!"

The web was falling all around them now, thudding to the floor and beginning to run. Bakugo suddenly grabbed Deku around the waist, and propelled him forward, shooting for a ten-foot-high gap between the floor and the bottommost cross-strand of the sagging web. "Fucking!- If I'm not even allowed to have one breakdown over Shark-teeth, you aren't allowed to have two about your wife! Let's go!"

"That's... Ochako!..." Deku shouted desperately. "Thuh-That's- OCHAKO!"

"I don't give a shit if it's the goddamn Pope!" Bakugo growled. "Kiri's dead and we're going to kill It, if It's still alive. We're going to finish the goddamn job this time, Deku! Either she's alive or she's not. Now come on!"

Deku stared at Ochako for a moment longer, twisted her ring on his finger, and then snapshots of the children, all the dead children, seemed to flutter through his mind like lost photographs from Eri's album. SCHOOL FRIENDS. He, quickly- yet excruciatingly- made up his mind.

"...A-Alruh-right. Let's g-go."

He and Bakugo ran under the strand of cross-webbing seconds before it collapsed, and joined Sero on the other side. They ran after It as Ochako swung and dangled fifty feet above the stone floor, wrapped in a numbing cocoon that was attached to the decaying web.

—9—

SERO HANTA

They followed the trail of Its blood pools full of alternate timelines and universes that ran and dripped into the cracks between the flagstones. But as the floor began to rise toward a semicircular black opening at the far side of the chamber, Sero saw something sickly, something terrifying, something new: a trail of eggs. Each was black and rough-shelled, perhaps as big as an ostrich-egg. A waxy light shone from within them. Sero realized they were semi-transparent; he could see black shapes moving inside.

'Its children,' he thought, and felt bile rise in the back of his throat. 'Its miscarried children! Shit- shit!'

Bakugo and Deku had stopped and were staring at the eggs with stupid, dazed wonder.

"Go on! Go on!" Sero shouted at the two frantically, shoving them both forward. "I'll take care of them! Get It!"

"How!?" Bakugo yelled back at him.

"I don't know!" Sero called, "but I will! I promise!"

Deku and Bakugo's eyes both widened, but they nodded- moving on. Sero watched them in the rapidly dimming light for a moment. They ran into the darkness of Its escape-passage and were lost from sight. Then he looked down at the first of the thin-shelled eggs, at the black, mantalike shadow inside, and felt his determination waver. 'This... hey guys, this is too much. This is simply too awful...' And surely they would die without his help; they had not been so much laid as they had been dropped.

'...But Its time was close... and if one of them is capable of surviving... even one...'

Summoning all of his courage, summoning up Kirishima's pale, dying face- summoning up an image of Iida Tenya reading his bird book down in the barrens- summoning up an image of Kaminari Denki, the two of them sitting in his living room, helping his mother make mooseblowers- Sero brought one steel-toed engineer boot down on the first egg. It broke with a sodden squelch as some stinking placenta ran out around his boot. Then a spider the size of a rat was scrabbling weakly across the floor, trying to get away, and Sero could hear it in his head, its high mewling cries like the sound of a handsaw being bent rapidly back and forth so that it makes ghost-music.

Sero lurched after it on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else and brought his foot down again. He felt the spider's body crunch and splatter under the heel of his boot. His stomach clenched and this time there was no way he could hold back. He vomited, then twisted his heel, grinding the thing into the stones, listening to the cries in his head fade to nothing.

'How many?... How many eggs?... Didn't I read somewhere that spiders can lay thousands... or millions? I can't keep doing this, I'll fucking lose it-'

'-You have to. You have to. Come on, Hanta... get it together!'

He went to the next egg and repeated the process in the last of the dying light. Everything was repeated: the brittle snap, the squelch of liquid, the final coup de grace. The next. The next. The next. Making his way slowly toward the black arch into which his friends had gone. The darkness was complete now- Todoroki and the decaying web somewhere behind him. He could still hear the whisper of its collapse. The eggs were pallid stones in the dark. As he reached each one he flicked on his zippo. In each case he was able to follow the course of the dazed spiderling and crush it before the light flickered out. He had no idea how he was going to proceed if his lighter ran out of fluid before he had crushed the last of the eggs and killed each one's unspeakable cargo.

—10—

MAY 31ST, 2020 / IT

Still coming.

It sensed them still coming, gaining, and Its fear grew. Perhaps It was not eternal after all- the unthinkable must finally be thought. Worse, It sensed the death of Its young. A third of these hated hateful men-boys- the bulimic, It was almost certain- was walking steadily up Its trail of birth, almost insane with revulsion but continuing nonetheless, methodically stamping the life from each of Its eggs.

'No!' It wailed, lurching from side to side, feeling Its life-force running from a hundred wounds, none of them mortal in itself, but each a song of pain, each slowing It. One of Its legs hung by a single living twist of meat. One of Its eyes was blind. It sensed a terrible rupture inside, the result of whatever poison one of the hated men-boys had managed to shoot down Its throat.

...And still they came on, closing the distance, and how could this happen? It whined and mewled, and when It sensed them almost directly behind, It did the only thing It could do now: It turned to fight.

—11—

TODOROKI SHOUTO

Before the last of the light faded and utter dark closed around him, Todoroki saw Deku's wife plunge another twenty feet and then fetch up again. She had begun to spin, her medium-brown hair fanning out. She eventually landed only a couple of inches, from Todoroki's feet. Her body crumpling sickly against the floor with a gross 'thud'

Todoroki reached out into the dimness, wishing that that light from all those years ago would shimmer around him once again- but it did not. Finally, his hand landed on her stomach, and he clutched the fabric of the T-shirt she was wearing and dragged her closer, safely out of the way of the collapsing web.

Then Todoroki was in darkness, alone with the sound of the falling web and Kirishima and Ochako's simple moveless weight. Todoroki didn't want to let Kirishima go, didn't want to let his face lie on the foul floor of this place. So he held his head in the crook of an arm that had gone mostly numb and brushed his long, ebony, hair away from his damp forehead. Todoroki thought of the birds... and he found himself thinking of Iida- poor, poor Iida... who had seemingly remembered the worst of all of this before any of them, even Kaminari, had... he sighed softly. He was thinking of Kaminari now- wondering if he was alright- knowing that, at the very least, he wasn't dead (he had felt a sort of- of jolt- when Kirishima died- as if a piece of himself had been ripped out. He had felt the same thing while stumbling, jet-lagged and exhausted, into his and Koji's bedroom on the night of May 28th... presumably when all the life had drained out of Iida Tenya and into his bath water... he assumed the other's had felt the jolt both time's as well...) Todoroki had not felt this peculiar jolt at all during the time frame of Shigaraki's attack on Kaminari, nor had he felt it at any time before or after he felt Kirishima's specific jolt- but not knowing his current condition bothered him... almost hurt him, in a way.

'Denki and Deku... I was both of their first loves' the thought blazed through his mind, almost at random... but he held onto it- it was comforting- familiar.

He glanced in the direction of Ochako's body in the darkness. He couldn't see her, but he knew where she was. He sighed, feeling guilty... if only he hadn't of told Koji the name of the town...

Somewhere, deep down, he hoped Ochako would forgive him- even if she didn't know what she was forgiving him for.

He hugged Kirishima's corpse closer to himself, sighing miserably, feeling like a light snuffed out in the dark.

—12—

AUGUST 14TH, 2005 / UNDER THE CITY

"I think when we went right two turns back, we shoulda gone left- I knew that, but I was so sweaty and messed up-" Kirishima started, brushing his hair out of his eyes, sounding almost sheepish.

"You've been messed up your whole life, shitty hair," Bakugo said. He threw an arm over Kirishima's shoulder.

"-We went wrong some other places too," Kirishima said, ignoring him, "but that's the worst one. If we can find our way back there, we just might be okay."

They formed up in a clumsy line, Kirishima first, Todoroki, still glowing angelically, second now, his hand on Kirishima's shoulder as Kaminari's was on the small of his back. They began to move again, faster this time. Kirishima displayed none of his former nervousness.

'We're going home,' Todoroki thought, and nearly shivered with relief and joy. 'Home, yes. And that will be good. We've done our job, what we came for, now we can go back to just being kids again. And that will be good, too.'

As they move through the dark, Todoroki realized the smell of sewage was getting stronger- and was appalled at how happy it made him.

They were nearly there.