"Will you please tell her that we don't have any voice-activated quirks? She won't talk to us," the silver-haired man had asked after he had greeted the pair who had teleported in behind me.

"Of course, she wouldn't. I told you she wouldn't, Fog. She's smart," Kaminari had replied.

I heard him stepping closer to me. His hands were on my shoulders then, and a current running through, disabling my quirk. My heart jumped into my throat.

What had he done? And what was he up to? Did he deliberately give me the silver-haired man's name? No, on second thought, Yang had already given up his and his twin's names… well, code names, I guess. They must not have cared if I learned their code names, but I wonder if they felt the same about me finding out their real names.

"There's no voice activated quirks here," Kaminari had directed toward me, per the silver-haired man's request.

"Take me back" was my first demand. "Right now."

Not that I thought that would work or anything, but I wanted my stance known. I wasn't going to be a willing participant in whatever plan they had devised that involves me.

A few things happened, and different emotions spread across the faces of the group that surrounded me.

Most were initially taken aback that I wanted to go back to the League of Villains, especially when I had come to them covered in bruises, burns, and abrasions. Their thought processes were obvious: This was going to be harder than they initially expected. Now that I wasn't kissing the ground they walked on for saving me and offering my services to repay their kindness, they were planning on how to go about getting me to do what they wanted.

The silver-haired man, 'Fog,' though, was more focused on the relationship I had with Kaminari. His eyes flickered between us, and he seemed pleased that I trusted Kaminari's word enough to speak even as all odds were against me. He was thinking that that was something he could use, that Kaminari would be able to get me to the right place regardless of the reason why I still trusted him in this situation.

Now, I had no idea what Kaminari was doing. I didn't know if he was making the biggest mistake of his life that would end up killing both of us. But I trusted Kaminari, wholeheartedly. I always would. He was one of my closest friends, and I knew that he wouldn't deliberately put me into a situation that I could not handle. I just wondered where the League was in all of this. Were they aware that Kaminari had access to me? Were they aware that Kaminari was… a triple agent?

"Let's get on equal footing here, yeah?" Fog had said, taking a step forward to be the center of attention of the group. "Yang, can you get the injection ready?"

Yang, the white-haired twin, jogged off out of sight. The brown-haired woman was eyeing where Kaminari grasped my shoulders as she took out her ponytail and readjusted it into a bun. With her normal hairstyle of a bun, there was no doubt in my mind that this was the woman that Bakugou had hired whose first day aligned with my being traded for the hostages at the bank. Did she know that Kaminari was currently using his quirk on me? Were they not supposed to know this? Just to be safe, I made no indication of anything out of the ordinary. My best chance was trusting Kaminari, so I would do everything in my power to not give anything away that might be useful.

"Careful, Zap. The flame-quirk user singed her clothing before we got away. Be careful not to make skin contact," the brown-haired woman said.

Kaminari snorted and squeezed my shoulders in a sign of solidarity, not moving away. "I've told you guys, she wouldn't hurt me. Isn't that right, Kei?" he asked, leaning down so that he was visible from the corner of my eye.

I slid my eyes over to meet his own in a silent glare, not giving an answer, not giving anything away. My current goal, until I knew what was going on, was to not let these people be sure about anything.

"Even so—" the brunette started, but Kaminari cut her off.

"The literal worst thing that could happen, if her quirk even works under paralysis, is that I'd be down for ten minutes. You'd just wait it out until I was able to disable her quirk, and then we'd go on as planned. But I'm telling you guys, she's a literal saint. She won't hurt me, even if it were a surefire way to escape," Kaminari explained.

I learned a few things from the interaction. First, they didn't know that Kaminari was already using his quirk on me and essentially nullifying my quirk. If they didn't know that and Kaminari didn't tell them, what was his reasoning for doing so?

"Let's get some questions out of the way, then!" Fog chirped cheerily, stepping forward and kneeling down so that he was eye-level with me.

"Baseline!" he exclaimed, darting his eyes toward Yin, who nodded in response to the command that was unknown to me.

He turned back toward me and asked, "what's your name?"

When I made no indication of answering, he scowled and glanced up at Kaminari. He was easy to upset when things didn't go his way the second he commanded it. Noted.

Kaminari then leaned down next to my ear and said quietly, "Kei, you should answer now."

"Seijin Kei," I answered. "Or Succubus if you prefer. My friends call me Kei."

I wanted to kick the smug smile off of Fog's face, but alas, I was still paralyzed. Fog was assuming that I answered because Kaminari asked me to and that all he had to do was get Kaminari to ask me to do the desired task and I would. Problem solved, in his mind, though it probably would grate on his nerves that I would take commands only from Kaminari, but some things just couldn't be helped.

He was so, so wrong. If Kaminari said I should answer now, and he meant now rather than later, then something about this moment versus any other would be advantageous for us. At least, that was the way I was taking it. I was putting my blind trust into Kaminari, and I was 100% committed already. Kaminari would do his best by me. He always had before, and I knew he always would going forward as well.

"Very good, Kei. Now—"

"My friends call me Kei. You can call me Seijin. Or Succubus if you prefer," I cut him off, using my most bored, monotone voice I could conjure.

I swear he almost popped a blood vessel with how instantly angry he became, and it didn't help that Yin had snorted, hurrying to cough to cover it up. His glare flipped quickly to her, making her quickly compose herself, before resting back on me again. He took a deep breath and tried again.

"Seijin, then. Do quirk-cancelling drugs work on you?" he asked.

The slightest squeeze from Kaminari's hands on my shoulders and the fact that Yang was sent away to prepare an injection was all I needed to lie my ass off, so I nodded.

"I need a verbal answer," Fog demanded.

When I hesitated, Kaminari encouraged, "verbal answers only, Kei."

I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Yes. Quirk-cancelling drugs work on me."

Fog then looked sideways, back to Yin, who shook her head. Seemingly satisfied, Fog looked back to me.

"How did the League of Villains treat you?" he asked, furrowing his brow in frustration when I didn't answer right away.

With a shake to my shoulders, Kaminari simply commanded, "answer his questions."

There was a shake for show, but no subtle squeeze, so the truth it was.

"They treated me really well. I'd like to go back now, please," I responded, keeping my bored monotone voice, not allowing for them to pick up anything from my tone or inflection.

Fog sneered at me before glancing over at Yin, who again shook her head. Instead of looking back at me again, though, Fog kept his gaze on Yin.

"Seriously?" he asked her, and she just shook her head in response again.

"Well, it's all subjective anyway, I guess. We'll talk about this later," he said, addressing the whole room while settling his gaze back on me.

The brunette woman took out her phone from her back pocket, typed on it quickly, and put it back, returning her attention to me. Looking around the room, everyone's attention was on me. Sometimes it felt great to be considered a threat, and I very much enjoyed it, especially right then when I was paralyzed and essentially quirkless thanks to Kaminari's quirk traveling from one of his hands to another through my shoulders and disrupting my own flow of energy.

"How often do you use your quirk?" was his next question.

"Constantly," I answered, and it was the truth.

In some capacity or another, I was always using my quirk unless I overdid it and used all of it. With the League, I also seemed to always be letting off a small but steady stream of healing energy so when one of them touched me, I'd automatically start healing any ailments they might have. Spinner had told me that even with all of the stress surrounding their plans for me, no one had gotten sick, and he thought it was because of me.

That was new for me. I'd never done that before and at first it freaked me out. At first, it was just another facet of my quirk that I didn't have control over. But, when I thought about it, it kind of made sense. I had never felt so accepted and connected to a whole group before. I was never allowed to use my quirk around my parents, so even when the quirk-cancelling drugs started to lose their effect, I guess I was subconsciously hesitant to just keep my healing energy on low all the time. During school, I was always wary of who might find out about my quirk after my parents had drilled it into me that I wasn't safe if people found out what I could do. Even moving into high school, there were others who still thought I was a liar from when I had tried to show them I had a quirk and I was never able to relax. Underground hero training was much better from an accepting standpoint, but that brought its own stresses that limited me. At Bakugou's agency, despite Bakugou's complete trust and acceptance of me, some of his underlings were still wary, and I could never blame them for giving me a wide berth.

Until being around the League of Villains, I had never been so wholly accepted by the whole group before. I had to adjust my thinking, then. It was a new situation, so it wasn't surprising that my quirk had some unknown responses up until that point. Like Shigaraki had said, unlike the majority of quirk-users, I never fully explored my quirk and who knows what else I could do? How far I could take it?

I was thinking, maybe my time spent here with these unsavory people might be a good time to test some things out.

"So, if one of us got stabbed or something, you'd be able to heal us with no warmup or recovery time?" Fog asked, intrigued.

Okay, yeah. Healing I could do. Until they were fighting the League who I knew would come for me. It wouldn't feel very heroic of me, even in this situation, to refuse. Though… I hadn't been feeling very heroic anyway. Healing villains, especially without being explicitly asked to do so, even, had a way of making you feel like you were doing some shady shit. And I would do it again in a heartbeat, heroics be damned.

"Yes, I can do that," I answered, and he perked up at the ideas flowing through his head at the confirmation.

"And you can take energy, too, can't you? Like if we had any… allies we needed to interrogate and they wouldn't cooperate?" he continued, getting more excited as the ideas flew through his mind of different ways I'd be useful to him.

"No."

He paused at that, once again glancing at Yin who shook her head once again. He seemed confused. "What do you mean, no?" Kaminari subtly squeezed my shoulders once again, but I couldn't figure out what he wanted me to say.

"Morally and ethically speaking, I can't do that for you. I would never do that for you," I sneered.

He sneered right back at me, his lip lifting in disgust at my insubordination, and I could tell the thought process going through his mind without even having a mindreading quirk like my mother: We'll just see about that.

Before he could ask me another question or maybe threaten me into submission, Yang had come back, medical gloves on and syringe in hand.

"Do it," commanded Fog, stepping away from me and out of the room, seemingly done with the little interrogation for now.

"Pardon the intrusion," Yang had said as Kaminari carefully removed the tattered hoodie from me as I sat there paralyzed.

I was thankful that he was being careful not to rip the hoodie. If nothing else was going my way, I was grateful that I at least had that. I knew that Kaminari would know that and wouldn't dispose of the hoodie while I incapacitated, so I was able to focus on what was happening around me rather than worrying about the only physical connection I had to Shigaraki except for the seashell necklace that still adorned my neck. I was still feeling the loss of the friendship bracelets from everyone as the melted plastic flaked against the skin on my wrists.

Yang had pushed the sleeve of my T-shirt up over my shoulder and wiped my shoulder off thoroughly with an alcohol wipe.

With no warning, Kaminari's hands were on either side of my head and a jolt of stronger electricity was sent through me, enough to make me jerk even through the paralysis quirk. Within seconds, my hair had started lifting from my head, and when Yang injected me with what I assumed to be a quirk-cancelling drug, I had started to understand.

They didn't know that I had already been under Kaminari's quirk the whole time. Maybe they thought he needed to make physical contact instead of just having his hands on the outside of what remained of the hoodie I had been wearing. Maybe they looked specifically for the physical evidence of Kaminari's quirk. Maybe they even requested he use enough to be physically visible that he was doing so.

No matter what, though, they didn't know that he had been using his quirk on me before. Based on the way he was directing me to answer Fog's questions, the way that Kaminari told me to answer the questions now, and the way Fog kept looking at Yin after each of my answers told me that Kaminari was helping me get around someone's quirk. Yin's quirk? Fog's quirk? Someone else's in the room?

Either way, it seemed Kaminari was still firmly on my side, but what did that mean for me? Was he on my side in a sense that he was doing what he thought was best for me? Like he was on 'my' side, but going against the League of Villains while thinking he was doing what was best for me? I didn't think so. He had always respected my autonomy and never treated me like a little kid who needed protected.

Then, was the League of Villains involved in this somehow? Who was Kaminari most loyal to? The Hero Commission? The League of Villains? This group? I wanted to know, but I wasn't about to ask him until I was sure our conversation wouldn't be overheard. And even though Kaminari himself showed me to my new room after the brunette woman undid her paralyzing quirk, I started in on a different line of questioning once we were alone.

"Why the fuck do they call you Zap?"