Death

by tmb1112

Death is a Quirk that can only kill. A perfect Quirk for a villain, but what if the boy who manifested that power just wanted to be a hero? Enrolling in U.A. might not be enough when all your Quirk can do is kill people. Follow Zach Sazaki from his first day in Class A on a story that spans years, as he learns to be a hero, finds out more about his Quirk, and too much to summarize!

91. Chapter 91

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 91:

"RAA!" Kirishima roared at the screen and then spun towards the front door of their dorm.

"That guy…" Hagakure whispered, putting her hands up over her mouth while staring at the smirking blue-skinned man on the screen.

The projection turned off and returned the wall of the office building back to normal, and Yaoyorozu's mind was racing as fast as her heart was. It could just be a provocation. Kaminari did specify shooting Aizawa sensei in the back though. He, he didn't say he killed him!

"Aizawa sensei," Tsuyu Asui whispered. She turned towards Kirishima who spun Bakugo's way and shouted at him that they should go right then.

Bakugo nodded back in a serious way, but Iida spun around looking at everyone with his eyes going wide. "Hold on everyone!" Iida called out. "We, we-" he knew what he needed to shout at them, but he found it hard as his classmates turned to him. The tall boy not wearing any glasses took in a deep breath and then narrowed his gaze straight towards Kirishima, "We do not give in, to the demands of terrorists."

"Iida!" Ashido called out, jumping up and looking at the class rep in shock. "All those people-"

"Mina," Yaoyorozu said in a stern voice towards her friend who spun in shock as she thought Iida was the only one against this. Yaoyorozu looked into Ashido's eyes apologetically but seriously too, "We have no reason to believe that this Killmore will follow-through with his promise. Listening to the demands of terrorists, tells other villains that their demands will be met if they take hostages. It lays precedent." Yaoyorozu looked back towards the screen herself towards the end of what she was saying. She grit her teeth so hard that the people about to complain to her froze because they could see that saying all that hurt her.

"We can't just do nothing!" Kirishima shouted as he saw too many people considering what the class reps just said.

"Those people, are relying on us," Tsuyu began, and the others around her looked over towards the shortest girl in the class. She clenched her fists tightly at her sides, then she continued, "But if we go now, after he talked about Aizawa sensei. It would be, about revenge. And we can't-" she closed her eyes too with such a pained look on her face. She did not want to say anything. And when she spun to Kirishima to agree with him at first, she realized why it was she was about to ignore everything else and say that they needed to go there.

Iida balled his fists even tighter as Asui mentioned revenge. He felt the pain of what he did going after Stain to avenge his brother, and Todoroki looked to his left and up at the taller boy who ground his teeth in anger at what he was about to say. "We must wait, for the teachers to- If we are told to go out there, then we will. But we cannot make the decision only with provisional hero licenses. They are meant so that we can act if we-" Iida saw others in front of him looking past him, over towards the stairwell that someone just came out of.

The only person not down in the common room already jogged from the stairwell towards the front door. Zach had on a black hoodie and black sweatpants, and the sweatshirt was big enough that it covered up his waist and the knives tucked into his belt. The front of his sweatshirt had a big pocket with a couple of grappling guns shoved into it too making big bulges that were not hard to figure out for his classmates. "Zach!" Iida called out when he turned and saw Zach standing at the front door. "You cannot go-"

"What are you talking about?" Zach asked in annoyance. He kept his gaze away from the rest of his classmates, just looking down at his shoes as he started sliding them on. "I'm going on a run." He paused and he clenched his teeth while looking up and glaring at the door in front of him. He had needed to go back to the dorm since there was stuff he wanted to do in his room before going on a run today after class, but this had happened so close to the end of school that he was still in there when he started watching the news on his phone. Zach closed his eyes as he remembered what the villain had said, and then he said in a lower voice, "Anyone want to come with?"

Zach turned his head to the right. He looked towards his classmates, and at the tv past them where a new label had covered the screen asking about Class A. The reporter was shouting about it, asking about the students who had just been arguing with each other over what to do. "Zach," Yaoyorozu began quietly, but she stopped as she saw the look in his eyes. She looked in his eyes, and then she lifted up her right hand to her chin and looked down at the floor. "I would like to come," Yaoyorozu said, lifting her head and nodding at her ex-boyfriend. Iida spun to her with wider eyes as she had just agreed with him a moment ago, but Yaoyorozu continued loudly, "If we were on a run, and we happened upon a crime, it would be our jobs as people with provisional licenses to step in and do something."

"Th-That's right!" Kirishima shouted. He did not really get what was going on there for a minute, but this sounded like a loophole. "If running is a good reason. Let's just, run that direction-"

"We'll run my normal route," Zach said while reaching for the doorknob. "I don't know what direction you're talking about Kirishima. We're not heading towards a crime… Everyone come," he finished in a quieter voice. Zach ran outside and he started sprinting towards U.A.'s main building. This might not work. No one will believe it. It's a glitch in the rules, but people have seen me out and about the past week and a half. They've seen me just out and running. That's good. Those people will die if we don't go. "Killmore's Quirk is Bloodsucker," Zach called out in a loud voice as he ran.

Midoriya ran up behind Zach and then up onto his right side. He glanced in at his darker haired friend and said in a soft voice, "Are you really alright to do this?" Zach was starting to shout at the others, and Midoriya's eyes had shot open for a second when Zach announced what Killmore's Quirk was, but he had to ask this before they left to go fight together. Zach glanced in at him, and Midoriya said in a serious but worried tone, "Are you alright, to go out there right now?"

"I'm right in the head," Zach said to his friend who he had been trying hard to ignore for over ten days now. "Don't worry about me, worry about the people trapped in that building. Killmore will start killing them if we don't show up in time. He's one of the big shots. Been there for a long time." Zach started getting louder towards the end as a girl hopped up behind him, and Iida raced over on his left, and Bakugo sprinted up right behind Deku so he was also in Zach's view. "Bloodsucker means that he gets stronger the more blood his spikes take in. They don't look it, but they're covered in tiny pores that take in blood and fuel his Quirk. His main weapons are those spikes, but he uses two serrated knives too!"

"What about the gun?" Kirishima called up to Zach who he was trying to catch up to after putting his shoes on.

"Shouldn't we, have put our costumes on?" Mineta asked in a nervous voice while running as fast as he could after the class who had rushed out of their dorm without any more argument when Zach left. They all hoped that Zach's excuse would work, and there was no point in not testing it since it was only the rules holding them back. Mineta was scared, and he gulped after asking the question as he wished he at least had his costume to make him feel better about this.

Sato glanced over his shoulder while hopping on his right foot and trying to push his left foot down into his sneaker harder, since the back of it was pushed to his sole when he slid it on too fast. "We wouldn't be wearing costumes on a run. Since we aren't heroes going on patrol or anything, we're just happening upon… I mean, we're just going on a run."

Will saying that really make a difference? Jirou wondered while running after Zach's back that just kept getting farther from her since he was too fast and running at his top speed. It will be pretty obvious we showed up in order to stop Killmore from killing the hostages. If we say it like that though, then the villains were given what they asked for. If we just show up running there, then even if it's a lie and they don't release the hostages, we didn't give them anything. We just showed up to help because we were nearby and have provisional licenses! This, this could-

This has to work, Zach thought. The League, is still too confident. They do whatever they want. They win too often, even with their organization breaking up a bit. Shigaraki was the only real winner in Mosu Esupa. Zach clenched his fists tighter and he glared towards the upperclassmen of the hero course. Five of them were standing out on the road ahead of him, and he shouted their way, "I'm going on a run! Just a quick run around the city!"

"You can't stop us from running!" Bakugo shouted at the girl in the middle of the group of three who was known as the strongest student in U.A., and who he had interned with a few weeks ago.

"You know how much I like to run, right Nagiso?" Zach snapped, and he sprinted straight ahead with no sign of stopping. The boy a year older than him who opened his mouth to call to the younger students froze. He stared at the kid from his middle school who he had not spoken to once since he got in. They never liked each other. Nagiso never liked him, especially when the kid was a second year in middle school and became their cross country captain over him. He hated the kid getting so much attention, and he knew Zach was lying about not having a Quirk that whole time. Nagiso glared down at Zach though, and then he stood there and did nothing as the boy ran right up to his side and past him.

"Hold back," Fera Indago said, looking around at the others with her who did not realize what they were doing still standing there when they had come out to stop the brash Class A from leaving. Indago turned her head and the girl with short blonde hair down to her shoulders stared at the boys at the front of the group who had already run past. Do they have a plan? A way, to make this alright? I hope they do. The people need you. And not just the ones in that building.

"You know that guy Zach?" Kirishima asked while glancing back over his shoulder when they were past the third-years. "Never heard you mention-"

"Focus on running, Kirishima," Zach said. What could Killmore's plan be? He mentioned Raijin, so is this his plan? Why did Kaminari shoot Aizawa sensei in the first place? If you were there for it, was it to help you out? So is this to repay him? I could see Kaminari having planned this out. This could definitely, be a trap. It is. But that doesn't mean, we can ignore it.

Zach ran straight to the back door of U.A. High School. Midoriya glanced up and to the left towards the city of Musutafu, We have to hurry. He still ran in after Zach though, instead of jumping straight up in the air to try and reach that building as quickly as possible. All Might could go in there and stop all the villains, save all the hostages… I'm not All Might though. Doing that, risking it when Killmore said he'd release the citizens if all we did is show up- even if we can't believe him! We still have to go for it!

That bastard looked so confident, Bakugo sprinted into the school but did not go past Zach. He glanced down at his arms for a second that he was not putting his new stabilizers on over. Did he expect us to come up with this idea? No, he probably wants us sent to him. What is his plan? Fuck! Whether he knew we would come or not, he's still in control. He looked so fucking cocky. Why? They're surrounded, so it has to be the portal bastard. As much as they were villains who were known to do crazy and stupid shit, Zach had called Killmore one of the "big shots" and that meant a few things. One, they could assume he was not a villain who was going to be sacrificed for a plan of the others. Two, even if he were being sacrificed, it did not look like he thought that was so, so the villains believed they had an escape route already which meant even trapping them inside the building did not mean the heroes had any control.

The fact that Zach knew the villain's name, his Quirk, how it worked, a few of his classmates questioned it while they were running to U.A.'s school building. They questioned it, but they did not linger on the question. They were just glad Zach had that information for them, and most of them assumed it was info he had procured while spying on the villains during his time as Lifebringer. Yaoyorozu, Midoriya, Bakugo, and Mineta knew differently. They suspected Zach had fought by that villain's side before, and they were not wrong.

Killmore, you killed Aizawa sensei? I know, you're strong. But Aizawa sensei was… It was because of Kaminari. He must have caught Aizawa sensei off guard to help you, but you. You killed him. I believe that. Zach steadied his look as he ran around a corner and stared up ahead. Near the front of U.A., Midnight, Mother Russia, Present Mic, and Ectoplasm were all gathered and the principal was right in the middle of them. Principal Ono had on a black suit but the others were all in their hero costumes as they wore to work. They looked towards the students, and the seconds the kids saw them it was clear the teachers had been waiting there for them.

"Students-" the replacement principal began.

"Principal Ono," Zach called out before the man could say anything else. "Could I go on a run?" The principal's face covered in confusion, as did the teachers around him who stared towards the group of students that was getting bigger as the ones at the front slowed down and the rest ran around the corner behind them. "Everyone wanted to come with today," Zach added.

"You didn't… see," Present Mic slowed down as that was obviously not the case with the looks he saw on those students' faces. He frowned and he thought about what he had seen on the news just a couple minutes ago.

"See what, Present Mic sensei?" Zach asked. He asked sounding confused, yet in his question was a clear tone telling Mic not to respond. "We're just going on a run." Zach slowed down more and looked straight to the principal who was thinking fast while staring at the boys at the front of the group. Zach looked into the balding man's eyes and said, "So, can we go running?"

The right corner of Mother Russia's lips curled up as she looked down the hall and finally saw the last of the twenty students she was looking for. Good.

"Sir?" Midnight wondered, looking to her left at the principal in a questioning way. The four heroes around the principal all knew the situation, and they were as constrained by the rules in this situation as the man who could make the final decision was.

Mr. Ono stared ahead at the students wearing casual clothes and running shoes. If we send them out in their costumes, it was U.A. sending the students to fight the villains. Because the villains made the demand, we sent these children to go fight them in what is clearly a trap. It is not something I can do. I wouldn't send them there… but, if they choose to go there themselves. The principal nodded his head once. I saw all of you during your internships. It is not just the rest of the country who believes in you. Make the right decisions. I will take whatever heat may fall on me for this, because I am going to put my trust in you. "Very well. You still have to be back by nine, Sazaki. That goes for the rest of you too," Mr. Ono looked over Zach's head and around at the students who stared at their principal with wide eyes as he granted permission. "You must all be back here by nine. Understand? You must come back."

"Got it, yeah," Zach said while sprinting forward. There was no time for sentiment or epic goodbyes or anything. We have to run fast! Zach sped by the principal who turned after the boy in the front with a small frown as he rushed over what was actually him being very serious right there.

The rest of the students started running after Zach too though. Ono watched all of them running by him, and he turned his head to the left, "Mother Russia, Ectoplasm. The two of you are on break. You can go on patrol or, something."

"Yeah. I haven't been watching the news, so I hope there are some villains around," Mother Russia slammed her fists into each other and then turned. "I'll go let Geezer know." She flew off and sped past all the students who glanced up at their teacher flying out of the front doors and straight towards the gates of U.A. Mother Russia landed next to the security guard who actually did not know what was going on and was just standing around as per usual. He got a confused look on his face as she told him all of Class A had passes to go on a "run," but he nodded at the pro hero in red who flew off right after saying it.

Ectoplasm flew off after the class, zipping by the side of most of the group and then cutting to the left after leaving campus. He and Mother Russia were both fast, faster than Zach who continued to run at the front of the group even as the fastest members of the class ran up near him.

Back at the front of U.A. High School, Present Mic snapped at the temporary principal, "Why not? We don't know how many villains-"

"You're looking for revenge, Present Mic," Ono said in a dark voice while turning and looking at the taller man. The chubby principal with thinning hair over his head glared deep into Hizashi Yamada's eyes, and the blond hero pulled his head back with wider eyes at the principal's gaze. "But more than that, this could be more than a trap for Class A. The villains would know that we would never send away even our most promising class without sending some faculty as well. I am putting U.A. on full alert starting in a minute, after I see the news report."

Midnight stared at the principal with her eyes wide, then she grinned ear to ear at his statement. For the first time she saw him in a bit of a different light she would not before because of how upset she was over Principal Nezu's suspension. She grinned, and in her head she could imagine a press conference where they all pretended to be clueless. The students' parents might be upset, but they're heroes now. Getting called out by villains. It's the League vs Class A, and you all know what that means. The hostages, stopping the League's plans, everyone watching, it's all important. Prioritize the… Well, I know you all know what to do.

It's not even been ten minutes. We have thirty. Killmore could get impatient though and start killing early. Zach looked over his shoulder and he slowed down a bit.

"What are you doing?" Bakugo snapped to his left as he was almost running past Zach now.

Zach had his hood down bunched up behind his neck. He looked around at his classmates behind him while slowing into a jog to make it easier for everyone to stay together in one big group. Iida looked back when he was able to slow a bit too, and he still was not using his Quirk as much as he knew he was holding back and could get there faster. Is this really the right call? Zach thought while his eyes darted around his classmates. I haven't made any plan or anything, but everyone followed me. I told them to, because Killmore said we all had to be there. I can't be the one who comes up with the plan though. Someone else, has to do it. We still don't know what's going to happen when we get there though. We don't know, what Killmore wants with all of Class A.

"Zach," Midoriya started, and Zach looked back forward and to his right at the green-haired boy running closest to him. "Whatever happens, we'll stick together. We do this together."

"When we arrive, we will report to the senior hero in charge," Iida said loudly too, and Zach glanced to his left at the taller class rep.

Zach stared at Iida's face and specifically his lack of glasses. A surge of confidence filled him and he looked back forward, "And when we report, we all have to be really surprised that there's something going on." It sounded comical, and a few of the students behind Zach smiled for a second even as it sounded like Zach was telling a joke. He was serious though. As much as it did not matter one bit, it would matter in hindsight. He had done enough wrong and looked back on small things that got him in so much trouble that he knew how to avoid it.

Something as unimportant as permission. As the reason we're there. It does make a difference. To heroes, it's everything. Because this is all within the rules. We know what's right, and we know what the rules are. Finding a way to win while staying within the rules is what makes a hero. Zach picked up his pace a little more and he jogged like it was just a normal run off campus. If people saw heroes breaking the rules, ignoring the laws they uphold, why would they feel that they have to follow them? Our society is filling with villains, but it had been over-saturated with heroes. With the decrease in heroes, one would expect the amount of social order to decline as well, but it hasn't. The heroes who remain are better. Elite. And new heroes added to the ranks pick up the slack. This society is strong, stronger than I usually admit. It's because it's so strong that despite the major events, things haven't changed quickly. I thought they needed to change to stop the villains, but that was wrong. The problem isn't with society. It's not with, the things that constrained me. But there are problems. Huge problems. Like these villains thinking they can do whatever they want, and get away with it just because… Game face.

"What's going on over there?!" Ashido called out super-dramatically.

"Oh my God!" Hagakure also exclaimed, at the top of her lungs.

Zach spotted the reporter he was looking for. He saw her, and he watched the cameraman with her as the camera started turning. His eyes left the cameraman right before the lens would have been on him, and his eyes went up to the office building in a confused way. He looked up towards it and then down and towards Mother Russia who had landed a couple of minutes ago and started talking to the police and the number 5 ranked hero. All of them turned as a boy called out to them, "Sensei! What's going on here?"

Kamui Woods looked over towards the students and his eyes opened wide in shock at the question and the look on Sazaki's face. He looked behind the boy too as he heard similar calls out and shocked, confused looks on U.A. students' faces. There were way too many of them though, and Kirishima could not help but be smirking as he glared up towards the building full of villains who had called them out. A few of them also looked nervous, and some were not as into selling that they did not know what was going on for the cameras, instead looking more serious like Shoji, Tsuyu, and Tokoyami.

Bakugo sold it pretty well though, as he snapped at their teacher, "You're blocking the sidewalk. We're trying to run here." Mother Russia turned directly to Bakugo and looked into his eyes, and he looked back into hers with an annoyed look but also a hidden smirk as there was no way she was going to scold them right there. He was just trying to sell it for the cameras after all, and he could tell he was going to pay for it later but always wanted to talk to their homeroom teacher like that.

Smart-ass. "Good thing you're all here," Mother Russia said, and the camera spun to point towards her while the reporter in front of it started gawking at the exchange going on in front of them. "There's a hostage situation. The villains apparently made a demand that if you all come out here, they'll release the hostages."

"Well it's a good thing we happened to be running around here," Iida said. Zach nodded seriously yet thought at the same time, This must look ridiculous. Iida continued, "Since we're here, we should help too. We all have provisional hero licenses after all that allow us to take part in-"

You're overdoing it. Everyone around Iida thought at the same time, including the cops, the cameraman, the reporter, and the villains and hostages inside the building who were watching the news.

Mother Russia actually cut him off as he tried to explain how their licenses worked, "Fine. Stay there. We'll let him know you're here," she turned her head and looked at Kamui Woods who spun to the Russian woman with a look asking 'is this for real?' "And let's hope he keeps his word and releases the hostages." Mother Russia finished, and the pro hero in front of her stopped staring in as much surprise. Kamui Woods glanced to his side at all the kids, then he turned to the police captain who had a megaphone in his hand that he had been using to call up to the third floor where they had last seen Killmore, not that he was responding.

"What if they don't release the hostages?" Hagakure whispered to her right at her boyfriend.

Ojiro wore a plain white t-shirt and a pair of red shorts with his thick tail sticking out behind him. He shook his head at Hagakure's question, because he had no idea. "It depends, on what the villains are planning."

"Do you guys think," Ashido began in a soft voice. She gulped while looking at the twenty-three story building, then she asked in a steadier voice, "Kaminari might be in there?"

They had all heard Killmore say Raijin's name. It sounded like he was talking about him like he was not there, but then again that could be a part of the villains' plan. Jirou looked back and to her right, and Ashido looked back into her eyes with an apologetic gaze for a second. "Let's hope he is," Jirou said after looking back hesitantly at Ashido herself for a second. The pink girl opened her eyes wide, and Jirou finished quietly, "We'll catch him for sure if he's in there."

The others were mostly surprised by the way Jirou was talking. She had looked depressed and brooding for most of the past two weeks. She had a confidence in her eyes though now, and she looked back and up at the office building with her eyes narrowing and her lips curling into a serious frown.

"What a surprise!" The reporter spun to her camera and started after hearing a voice in her earpiece telling her to get reporting again. A smile spread over her face and she continued, "The students of U.A.'s second year Class A were, on a run when they happened upon the scene." It was not what her boss back at the news room just told her to do. In fact, the man yelling in her ear right now shouted that she had to question if those kids really wanted them to believe that they had no idea this was going on. She decided to help out with what she realized was going on though. "It's not submitting to terrorist's demands, just some new heroes coming to join the operation they just happened to be around."

No one believed it. No one cared. But the fact that they were trying at all meant something; it was a notion, an ideal that the students were upholding in front of the nation. Killmore frowned at the tv in front of him and the smiles he saw on those students' faces that matched the reporter's. Not what I was expecting, but it doesn't matter. Choosing to do it like this, you had to leave your costumes behind. You're going to regret that, brats. Killmore lifted a hand up and pressed it against a headset he was wearing in his right ear. "Let 'em go."

The front doors of the office building opened up, while Kamui Woods was in the middle of shouting into a megaphone up at the building that they had met Killmore's demands. The front doors opened, and then a door to a stairwell in the middle of the left wall of the lobby opened and people started running out into it. The lobby itself had a couple of villains inside, one near the door and the other at the back on the other side where the back doors had been blocked by a thick goopy black substance. The woman back there was not the one who made the goop herself, as that villain had to go around through the building to block off the rest of the windows. The female villain on the first floor was one who had shot up in the air when the villains did their coordinated strike inside the building though, and some of the people running out of the stairwell looked towards her and got terrified looks in their eyes at the smirk on her face. "If you're too slow," she started lowering her gun that was pointed up, and the hostages started trampling each other to get out of the building faster.

The heroes and cops outside looked into the lobby with wide eyes behind the first hostages running out. The woman who just made the threat started laughing, while the guy closer to the door roared at the hostages who fell, "GET UP!" Some of their fellow hostages had tried helping them, but his angry shout just made them want to run faster instead of helping each other. The camera pointed towards the building, and the panicked and terrified expressions of the hostages, including some bloodied ones in the mix. Everyone who was smiling lost those looks at the sight of their faces. The police started shouting at the freed hostages to come to one specific area, and they yelled asking if any of the villains were trying to sneak out with them to get all the office workers to calm down and not act too erratic.

Mother Russia floated up and looked down through the glass windows all over the wall of the first floor. She stared through the open doors and at the villain inside who was six feet tall, muscular, wore an all-black costume, and had the horns and tail of a bull. The man glared up towards her after noticing her glare, and he glared straight back into the Russian woman's eyes. Mother Russia glared harder, and he glared harder still back at her. The look in his eyes was all she needed to see as she looked him over. That's no grunt. It seemed like a small team to do something this big, when the League has brought so many villains to other attacks. They do missions like this too though. With an elite team. Coordinated enough to take over an entire building. Planning something we don't yet understand.

The light-blonde haired teacher shifted her eyes towards her students for a quick second and then back at the building in front of her. Good, block each other. Keep out of sight of both the building and the camera.

The two she was thinking at were farther on the inside of the group of Class A students. They were blocked, both Jirou's earphone jacks she had plugged into the ground right next to her feet, and Shoji's ears that he created on his lowest arms and that Sato and Sero were keeping mostly out of sight. Mother Russia turned back from her students quickly, and her eyes narrowed right before the ox-like villain started smirking more up at her and backing away from the doors. "Go," the man growled to his right at the last hostages, some of whom were helping others with bloody faces or who twisted their legs or ankles running down the stairs and through the office.

"That's not…" Mother Russia grumbled. She glared at the last hostages running out of the door, then the bull man opened his mouth and blew towards the doors which slammed them shut. Glass cracked on the front doors and gave the man on the other side a scary appearance split by cracks. Mother Russia looked around at the hostages being led to one side of the police perimeter away from the students in Class A. Some of those hostages called out yells of gratitude towards the children who had come to free them, but those students were not looking back towards them.

Kamui Woods' eyes narrowed a lot and then shifted back to the office building in front of him. He rose up the megaphone in front of his mouth and yelled into it, "Killmore!" It was a villain Kamui Woods had heard about before, though not one he had ever met himself. The fifth ranked hero in the country yelled into his megaphone, "That's not all of the hostages! I counted sixty two!"

"What is he playing at?" Bakugo snarled, glaring at the building and around at different floors. He wondered which of those windows the villains were watching them all out of, which had holes in the black that they could not see from down at the street level. They made it so going in from the first floor is the obvious choice. What is blocking the windows? Where are the hostages? They're not messing around… Bakugo's eyes started to widen as he lifted his gaze up and above the building across the street from the office the hostage crisis was going on in.

Everyone looked up at the same time, and they watched as a man covered in orange flames started dropping out of the air with flames coming out of his soles to slow his descent. He stopped making those flames come out while still a good distance from the ground, and he landed right in the middle in front of the police perimeter. He landed on Kamui Woods' left, enough feet away that the hero covered in wood did not have to pull away at all. "Endeavor," Kamui Woods began. Then he looked down at the megaphone, before nodding at the Number 1 hero who nodded back and rose his right hand to catch it when Kamui Woods tossed it to him.

"Hey Todoroki, your dad's here. Think everything will be alright?" Ashido asked while looking next to her at the boy with white and red hair.

Todoroki looked over towards his dad and just stayed quiet which made the pink girl get a bead of sweat on the right side of her face to match the one on the left. Dad, isn't All Might. There were supposed to be over two hundred hostages inside. Why only send out sixty two? Why that number specifically? Or is it not about the number, but just- is it about showing us that he stays true to his word? That he is willing to release hostages, if we do what he says? Which means there are other demands.

"Villains! This is Endeavor!" Endeavor shouted at the building with his voice thundering louder than Kamui Woods' did. "Send out the remaining hostages. You have gotten what you asked for-"

A giant projection shot up over the whole building again. Inside, a villain with the Quirk: Projector, had covered up his top right of his four eyes. Killmore appeared in the center of the projection and called out, "Thank you for coming. I don't remember inviting you though, Endeavor."

"Release the rest of the hostages!" Endeavor demanded in a booming voice.

"I said I'd release the hostages, I didn't say I'd release all of them," Killmore smirked and then he stepped to the side and the projection showed a different office space than the one he had been in last. It was a lot darker than before too without any natural light coming in. They did not know if he was still on the third floor anymore, though all the windows from the second floor up now had been covered by something that looked black from the outside looking in. So on one of the floors in that building between the second and the twenty-third story, there were a group of fifty or so hostages tied to office chairs with plastic explosions attached to their binds that were blinking with red lights.

That's still not all of them, Zach thought, while staring closely at the explosives and the people they were strapped to. He did not take the moment of hesitation and shock that everyone around him did when they saw the hostages all ready to blow with C4.

"The remaining hundred and sixty hostages have been split up around this building, guarded by members of my elite team," Killmore began. The dark blue villain with spikes all over his scalp and arms chuckled darkly and then said in a low voice, "Let's see what the famous U.A. Class A can do." The students outside of the building stared at the villain with wider eyes, and others all over the area started turning towards them as the man continued, "Send in Class A alone, or I'll start killing hostages. If any hero not a member of that class enters the building, I blow half the hostages to kingdom come with the press of a button. And trust me, any tricks will not be tolerated." Killmore grinned and asked in a twisted tone, "Do I need to prove to you how serious I am about this?" He looked over towards the hostages strapped to chairs and he reached down for the holster on his side.

There's no time!

We have to go now!

This is a trap!

It's definitely a trap…

We won't let you!

Class A sprinted towards the building. Ectoplasm took a step forward, but Mother Russia put a hand down on his shoulder. He spun to her and the darker hero said in a furious voice, "It's a trap-"

"They know," Mother Russia replied. She looked straight towards her class and continued, "But they're going in anyway." Ectoplasm's white eyes grew wider and he spun back to the building.

Not far from Ectoplasm and Mother Russia, Endeavor took a step forward and his eyes focused in on the back of a boy with white and red hair who never looked back. Shoto. Protect your classmates, and yourself. Endeavor lifted the megaphone and shouted, "There will be no need for that, villain!"

Killmore froze on the projection and he cracked a big grin, and his hand moved from the holster over to one of his blades. His other hand moved down and grabbed the other knife, and he whipped them both out and flipped them in his grasp before slashing against each other to make sparks fly. He turned around and looked at the floating eyeball that projected his appearance over the entire office building's outer front wall. "Good. Now I said the rules, and you sent in your heroes in training, but you still don't know why you're doing this. The answer is simple. Because for some reason, even though one of those kids was actually one of us this whole time, you still believe in them for some reason! In a stupid ideal, in a school that has made so many mistakes…"

"What if they just blow up the building as soon as we're all inside?" Mineta asked nervously as they ran towards the front doors. The villains who had been on the first floor went running for the door to the stairwell while Killmore was still in the middle of speaking, so the lobby of the office building was empty for them.

There's no time for caution. Killmore, villains, they're insane. At any minute one of them might just kill a hostage at random. They have enough. Zach ran inside without hesitating, though his eyes darted around every corner of the lobby as soon as he was in. No explosives. No villains. The trap is where people can't see us. Traps. Multiple. Killmore's talking about breaking the lingering faith in Class A. People hope Kaminari was a fluke, and maybe he's annoyed by that and that the news isn't constantly talking about it as much as they had been. I could see that. After so long, Kaminari's upset by the amount of time it took for other things to take over the news, so that his betrayal is a side story now. He might've even told Killmore to mention him. FUCK! Focus. Kaminari might not be here. He's probably not, or he'd be the one projecting himself on that screen. I know he's smart enough that he could have a plan where he isn't the one in charge here… but he's a sociopath. He spent too long trapped unable to do a thing, unable to show off how much he's winning. Where is he? WHERE ARE YOU?! FOCUS!

"There's no one on the floor above us," Shoji started. "But a very large group of people are gathered on the third floor. At least fifty people, though they've been split up in different rooms."

"Two more just ran onto the third floor," Jirou continued quickly, having a more exact idea of what was going on and speaking quickly and loudly to let everyone around her know. "The two we saw down here on the first floor just went in- they told the other two that we're coming and then split up to go guard the groups of hostages in teams of two. One group is on the far- north side," Jirou pointed a hand forward to the opposite side of the building as the one they ran in on. "Other is in the southeast corner. Then the next group is up on the sixth floor, but- but on the fourth floor I hear someone. He's alone," her eyes darted towards the stairwell door, "and he's close to the stairs. Sounds like he's hiding his breathing so he can jump out at- Hold on." Jirou covered her ears and listened closer, trying to separate certain conversations and noises from others as best she could.

Shoji's eyes widened too and a mouth appeared above one of his ears. "They're talking about how they're going to escape. They're planning on using Warp Gates from the roof-"

"No," Jirou countered. Shoji turned towards her, and she shook her head while saying, "They're saying that loudly, and around the hostages. I just heard two of them whispering, about the fifteenth floor extraction…"

Midoriya's eyes darted around the group of Class A students. Some of them were already panting, others had sweat on their faces. Bakugo was holding himself back from sprinting straight at the stairwell. Todoroki looked up at the ceiling, letting out a cold breath but frowning as Jirou and Shoji started explaining in closer detail the exact location of the villains in proximity to their hostages. Iida lowered his head for a second and brought a hand to his chin, and Yaoyorozu held her hands out and created more and more earpieces while calling out at her classmates to grab them. A bird flew down and into the doorway Koda was holding open, then the shy boy ran forward from the entrance and called out in a high-pitched voice to his classmates, "There's another group of hostages on the twelfth floor!"

"Let's go already," Bakugo snapped, and he sprinted for the stairwell. He lifted his right hand without looking back as Yaoyorozu called out his name, and he snagged the earpiece from midair and shoved it in his ear with a grunt. Some of them wanted to tell him not to rush ahead in a situation like this, but they did not know what the villains were going to do if they just stayed down in the lobby. Killmore had not told them many specifics, and he was just shouting about League of Villains ideology on the projection outside. The students of Class A knew villains, and they knew the most dangerous thing was leaving the hostages in these psychopaths' hands for any longer than possible.

They sprinted at the stairwell and Zach fumbled with the earpiece he was trying to get in his right ear and stay as it kept slipping out when he sprinted while putting it in. I don't know- I want to say something. Zach opened his mouth…

"Todoroki, run in front," Midoriya said while everyone ran for the stairwell clustered together. Bakugo glanced back, and he grit his teeth but slowed down for a second as Deku made a plan, like he always did. "Go straight to the fourth floor faster than the rest of us and wait until we're running past the third floor…."

Zach looked next to him at Midoriya and his eyes were wide. His friend started calling out a plan, one that sounded so amazing that Zach's breath picked up and he looked forward at the bottom of the stairs he was about to run up with a shaken expression. I, I'm not the one to make the call. When it's in the moment. I never am. I, I make plans. I can do it, when it's long term. I can plan things out far in advance and make them go in my favor. But the obstacle course… and in real situations too. USJ, I couldn't make the right call. The final exam, the training forest, Camino Ward, fighting Hunter… So many times, I've failed when I'm thrust into a situation. When things happen spontaneously, and I'm not in control of them! But you're always fast to react. Always fast to plan anyway. Zach looked next to him at his friend while they ran past the second floor together, then he looked up towards Todoroki who ran faster speeding to reach the fourth floor before they even hit the third.

In Mosu Esupa. I, I should have shot Dandy, or killed him sooner! I knew he was going to use Apocalypse but I couldn't, and because of that we were all preoccupied and let Shigaraki and Dabi get away with the Apocalypse. If Dandy was dead, and Midoriya, Wonderlass, Bikergang, and me! If we could have focused on the League of Villains, they might never have escaped that Trigger lab! I failed in making the decision because I couldn't improvise! But you Midoriya, this is where you shine. It's where you excel the most. So I won't interfere. I can't, because I'm not the guy…

Midoriya's voice filled each of their earpieces. All of Class A started running past the third floor doorway making a lot of noise and the two villains on the north side smirked looking into the hall and towards the door to the stairs. One of them was in the doorway of the office, the other was farther back towards the wall, leaning back on a desk pushed aside like all the rest. Four cubicles were turned in between that villain and the main door, the hostages were all tied up and strapped to chairs or desks around him, and he had a cigar in his mouth while lifting his hands with long steel blades extending out of each of his fingernails. The man at the door held an assault rifle in either hand, and he breathed out a breath of thick gray smoke and smirked despite a bead of sweat on the side of his face.

KA-DOOOOF The entire building shook violently, and the two villains on the north side of the third floor stumbled around while snapping their heads up in shock as the whole ceiling covered in ice.

"First, Todoroki sets off his biggest ice attack. It'll be on the fourth floor to stop the guy planning on ambushing us. He'll make it big enough to shake the building, and in that moment of distraction when the villains on the third floor look up, those four move in…"

The third floor door blasted open. The man in the doorway of the north side office started lowering his head back down, while the fastest of the group who sped through Bakugo's explosion while crossing his arms turned to his left. The red flames coming out of the back of Iida's Engines turned blue, "Reciproburst!" The villain trying to raise up his arms and the guns in them was slammed straight into by a six foot tall boy who wrapped his arms around the villain and tackled him out of the doorway, making a clear shot for the white tape that flew over his back and into the man with steel blades coming out of his fingers. The man was not ready to try and slash the tape, and Hanta Sero wrapped up his arms to his body and then yanked back towards himself at the same time.

The villain getting yanked towards the door got pulled right over Iida and the villain who the teen had tackled so hard he dropped his assault rifles. The man getting pulled to the door glanced down at his buddy, his cigar falling out of his mouth as he got ready to yell at him to get up. The man's head started lifting back up though, as he saw a tail slam into a wall in front of him and to his right, and then on the wall to his left as Mashirao Ojiro bounced onto the other wall before flipping and slamming his tail down on the villain's head. He slammed the villain as Iida rolled off of the man he tackled so hard that they slid a few feet, and Iida still had the wind knocked out of him as he did not have his armor to protect from slamming into things that hard. He had prepared himself for the impact though, so he was able to move unlike the man he tackled who was slammed into by his comrade, before both of them started getting wrapped up by more white tape.

"What's going on over there?" A muscular man with the horns of an ox snapped, and he put a hand over his right ear to shout it again louder. "What the Hell are you-"

"Bull!"

Bull spun at the sound of Drawheart's shout, and his eyes opened huge at the sight of who just came flying through one of the only two entrances to their room. It was the farther one from the stairs, and he spun towards it in shock that from the time of that explosion to now, someone had been able to reach them. He swung his thin tail behind his body and rose up his muscular arms, and he pursed his lips into a small 'o' shape to blow wind from. Drawheart lifted up her hands with pencils in them and started drawing shapes in the air so fast that her hands looked like blurs.

Bakugo came out of his spin through the air out of his own explosion, and he had a mad grin covering his face that looked furious as much as terrifying. FUCKING DEKU! He was pissed he had been sent at the very first floor, especially after hearing Deku just mention how the guys who were stronger and more important to the League were probably staying closer to the fifteenth floor in order to ensure they escaped. Bakugo's eyes focused though as he spotted a group of hostages look towards him, gags in their mouths and binds strapped with C4 wrapping around them.

The villains looking towards the sixteen year old who was one of the most famous students of Class A started opening their eyes wide as the kid's face turned solely terrifying though that fury was still on it. "Oi," Bakugo flipped over in midair as he lowered in his arc, and he roared, "DIE!"

In the stairwell, the rest of Class A continued sprinting up after the building shook from Todoroki's huge attack. The fourth floor door was open as Zach ran by it, and Todoroki nodded as he saw the villain just inside was completely immobile, then he spun and started sprinting back down the steps past the others behind Zach…

"After the ice attack, Todoroki go back to help Bakugo, Iida, Sero, and Ojiro. More important than anything is saving the hostages, and if the villains guarding them are taken out Killmore might just blow them all up. Freeze the C4 and it can't be detonated."

"Three villains total on the whole floor. Two of them close to each other on the far side of the door as the hostages. It's a single big office, but they were dragging a lot of furniture about…" Shoji called this out while running up near Midoriya, and Midoriya continued calling out to the others in their headsets after a second.

Jirou grimaced from farther down the steps that she was unable to keep scouting ahead while they were on the run. She turned her head to the right though and nodded in gratitude to the taller girl next to her who handed her a metal pipe she could fight with. Yaoyorozu had a grappling gun taser hybrid strapped to her waist, and she was going to offer one to Zach only to look ahead and see he had pulled a gun out of his sweatshirt and a knife from his waist that she had forgotten he had on him.

"Midoriya, you can't…" Zach started to argue.

"I'm the only one still fast enough to make sure-"

"There are only twenty hostages on the sixth floor," Zach said quickly as they were running past the fifth. "There were fifty on the third. That means more than half of the hostages are left on the upper floors. The twelfth alone Koda's bird said-"

"I'll be right up behind you," Midoriya said. His face was intense and Zach's eyes opened wide as Midoriya's body started to glow with little sparks coming out of it. He bent his legs as they neared halfway up between the fifth and sixth floor, and then he shot at the door to the sixth and slammed a fist straight through it and shot himself into the room.

"…I'll take the sixth floor, and everyone else keep running up to the twelfth. We can't waste any time and allow Killmore a chance to change the rules on us."

Midoriya dodged in midair as the one of the three villains on the floor who actually had been close to the door slammed his hands down on the ground and made the entire sixth floor wobble. Floor tiles rose up like waves and the floor shifted to the right and then the left, desks and furniture skidding about but not separating from each other as they had been tied together like the hostages who were all rolling around on chairs and screaming into their gags in terror of falling while strapped with C4. Knives and swords and saws and other bladed weapons slid around the floor too which Midoriya noticed as he was just falling in his arc after the doorway he busted down.

"YES! He picked me!" A loud, excited voice screamed in a mad way and Midoriya's eyes opened huge as a two foot tall man leapt up on top of the head of one of the rolling hostages farther away in the room from him. The man had knives strapped all over his body, held two scythes up in his hands, and Fez let out a cackle of glee before activating Blademind. Midoriya was landing down near three cubicles tied together, and he snapped his body backwards as a desk drawer under one of the cubicle's desks was pierced by a blade hidden inside that whipped out towards him. Midoirya pressed his palms down on the waving floor below him, and his eyes darted both ways to see two hacksaws sliding around him start waving around too before whipping out at him, curving and extending against the laws of physics.

Fez himself was dropping down over the desk-piercing blade that had just missed Midoriya's body, and the villain looked down into the kid's eyes with excitement spread over his face. This was the kid who defeated him in Mosu Esupa, but he had had time to prepare the room for him this time. Midoriya was shocked to see Fez who he had heard escaped with Shigaraki after they had captured him in Mosu Esupa. He got over his shock quickly though and pressed his palms down hard before sliding himself forward and into the bottom of the desk that the knife had pierced out of. Midoriya threw himself at those cubicles so hard that his feet smashed through them, but he angled his legs up as he collided to throw the cubicles up and towards the opposite wall, above the hostages rolling on the floor past it.

Zach tried running past the sixth floor without hesitating, but he looked inside and saw blades whipping around only two seconds after Midoriya had smashed his way inside. The floor was waving around and they could feel it in the staircase, and the students could see that the villains had not hesitated a moment to get into the fight when the door was smashed down. Yaoyorozu was running near the front of the group now, and when she looked in through the door she thought, Midoriya needs help. There could still be many villains and there are several rooms with hostages still above that we need to reach before the villains realize how quickly we are rising, if they haven't already- "Zach!" Yaoyorozu reached out and grabbed her ex-boyfriend who had opened his eyes wide and stared back at the last doorway. "Keep moving," she pushed him forward and Zach looked at her in surprise but kept running.

"Remember the plan!" Hagakure called up towards Zach as she saw the nervous look in his eyes while looking over his shoulder back at the sixth floor doorway.

"Most of the class needs to go straight to the fifteenth floor. Killmore won't blow up the building while he's still in it. If we cut off the escape route, getting a group to wait at the fifteenth floor and secure it, we take away the advantage they've had the whole time. They think they're invincible, but Kurogiri can't just appear wherever he wants…"

"Someone needs to help Midoriya," Zach called out, though he snapped his head up and kept running faster to try and keep up with Shoji who was now leading their class up the stairs ahead of him and Yaoyorozu. Ashido, Kirishima, and Tokoyami were running behind them, Hagakure farther down with Koda and Sato at her sides. Mineta was panting as he neared the sixth floor, but he gulped and slowed down, letting Asui and Aoyama run up ahead of him. They looked back and saw the boy with purple balls all over his head taking in deep breaths while looking at the door to the sixth floor.

"I don't want to run up any more stairs!" Mineta called out into his earpiece. As much as he wanted to listen to Midoriya's plan, he trusted Zach too. Zach kept running though, even after he shouted that someone needed to help Midoriya.

"…No Zach, you go with the group to the higher floors. You've seen Killmore fight, right? You need to be up there to face him."

Mineta remembered what Midoriya said and knew there were very few people who were not required for some bigger plan. He was one of the few who Midoriya did not specify in his plan while speaking fast on their run from the middle of the first floor up to the sixth floor when he finally stopped plotting. Midoriya was in the middle of a fight now though, and Mineta knew that on top of helping him out stopping the villains on the sixth, saving the hostages there too, if he could get Midoriya back into the fight their classmate could continue with his plans that sounded so perfect while he was coming up with them on the fly. Mineta reached up to the purple balls on his head, tears in his eyes and a scared look on his face as he reached the top of the steps from the fifth to the sixth floor. He heard Ojiro shout about hostages being secured over his headset, he saw Tsuyu looking down towards him with wide eyes, and he ran onto the sixth floor straight towards a villain pressing his hands down on the ground.

Mineta yelled, "Grape Rush!" He charged the guy who spun towards him and then leapt backwards faster than Mineta's first purple balls could reach him. He managed to escape Mineta's attacks, but the room stopped shaking at the same time, and the whipping blades that Fez saw sliding across the floor towards Midoriya slowed down. Midoriya saw his gap as Fez glared towards a whipping blade that was no longer sliding at him fast enough, and he shot the gap.

Izuku Midoriya flew between two blades and right at Fez who started activating the knives around his body to get them to fly out at the kid attacking him. Midoriya pulled his right leg back faster though, and Fez was not activating his Quirk fast enough. In the corner of Midoriya's eyes though, he spotted a man back behind him who made his eyes open huge and his body to start twisting to the side. Him! Midoriya recalled a man back in the Mosu Esupa Trigger lab who Hydro had gotten to fight with them despite being one of Breakneck's goons, and Needler spat a mouth full of thin black needles at the kid who had just started turning to him.

The projectiles were fast, but even in midair, so was Deku. The young hero twisted his body and pulled away, and three black needles slammed into him, two in his right leg and one through his left. The one that hit him in the left leg hit in the worst spot however, as it hit behind his left knee and yet Midoriya felt it slam into his knee bone like he had just been hit from the front. Neither of the other two needles felt like they had gone as deep, and were half sticking out of the back of his thigh. The needles pierced his hamstring and he clenched his teeth to avoid letting out a scream. Midoriya landed down on his hands and knees and rolled right away to dodge as he expected the next attack. Fez swiped a scythe at him a second after he hit the ground, but Midoriya dodged in a roll that filled his left knee with even more pain.

The teen reached up his right arm while in the middle of a roll, and Midoriya swept it in front of his body at twenty percent. The hostages were behind him which he saw in the moment he came out of his roll, but his swipe sent every loose object in the room other than those hostages flying. "Mineta!" Midoriya shouted. It was not a yell of worry for his classmate, but a yell telling his friend to act since he had already seen him when he rushed in. Mineta's eyes opened wide, and then a voice echoed in his mind, "Think constantly, Mineta." His eyes darted around while he was in the middle of making a whip of his Pop Offs that he could swing at the floor or ceiling and keep himself in one place.

Mineta stopped connecting his Pop Offs, and he started spinning around in midair and throwing in every direction around him. He landed before the villains and most of the furniture, as Midoriya had also made sure of his position before swinging his arm and tried to hit Mineta with some of the least amount of force. Mineta dove to the right to dodge a falling desk, and he came out of the roll throwing more Pop Off balls in the air while letting out a scream with tears flying off of his face.

Meanwhile on the ninth floor, Shoji lifted his top right hand clenched into a fist for everyone to stop. "Wait," Shoji started. Jirou looked up towards him, and she could see him listening close with the ears on his bottom arms for something. She plugged her earphone jacks into the wall on her right, and then both her and Shoji opened their eyes huge.

"Sensory types too?"

"They're coming!" Jirou shouted.

Shoji crossed his arms and he started sprinting up the stairs. He dove, and Zach leapt backwards as Shoji yelled back, "The wall!"

The two villains Jirou and Shoji noticed on the tenth floor cut through the wall of the ninth floor and into the stairwell. Zach was jumping back down the stairs, his left arm out to his side and his body leaning that way in front of the tall girl just behind him whose eyes opened wide while she rose her arms up to catch the boy falling back at her. Yaoyorozu caught Zach, and Sato reached up and pressed his hands on her back so she did not fall down the stairs, while Zach rose up his grappling gun in his right hand and fired into the split in the wall at a villain leaning forward with scissor-shapes for irises. His sharp grappling hook pierced the villain's right shoulder, and Zach yanked her backwards which made Koda reach up to help Sato as Zach put so much force back on them he almost pushed them all down the stairs.

"Dark Shadow!" Tokoyami shouted, and the dark creature that was already wrapped around him flew off of his body and up over the group in front of him. It flew over the villain with scissors in her eyes, and Dark Shadow flew in at the woman behind who blinked her eyes and made a bright flash of light that had Dark Shadow pull back.

The flash also let the woman see through all the walls around her, and she called out while jets erupted out the soles of her shoes, "Thirteen left! Ninth floor…" her voice got fainter as she slipped up through a slit in the ceiling of the ninth floor.

The students in the hallway ran up to the same area around the split apart wall. It had pushed aside so easily with no clear reason as to why it happened, and Hagakure jumped in front of the villain who opened her eyes for a second with those weird scissor shapes in them. The villain did not realize anyone just leapt in front of her, as Hagakure had stripped back when they ran into the first floor of the building. A bright flash made the villain clench her eyes shut, and then Shoji lifted the woman and spun her around, putting her in a choke-hold He used his strength to crush the air out of her windpipe and quickly put the woman to sleep. "Uraraka," Shoji said, tossing the woman towards the brown haired girl who reached a hand up and touched her.

The group started running up the stairs again, leaving an unconscious floating villain bouncing around aimlessly in the stairwell around the ninth floor with some blood spilling out of her shoulder. Zach dropped the grappling gun he had shot her with as the sharp hook had pierced her and it would take too much time to get it out. "They know how many of us are coming up," Zach warned.

"It doesn't matter!" Kirishima shouted.

"Twelfth floor," Jirou began. "I heard it when I plugged in my earphone jacks. The villains are getting nervous."

"They should be-" Kirishima started.

"Nervous villains means trigger-happy villains," Yaoyorozu countered in a harsh tone to stop Kirishima from sounding smug about that. "And I mean that in more ways than one," Yaoyorozu added.

Trigger? If we block off their escapes on the fifteenth, Zach grimaced and clenched his fists tightly. We don't want them. We want the hostages. They're what's most important, but saving the hostages requires that we keep the villains in here so they can't blow- but if they're too cornered there's no telling what they'll do! What should I- what would Midoriya do?!

"How many people did the bird see Koda?" Uraraka asked the boy on her left who shook his head unknowingly.

"It sounds like there are another three, four villains who the one who just got away is talking to. She just looked back down here and checked where we are. They're going to know exactly when we're on their floor- wait!" Shoji yelled at the others and he stopped in the stairwell. "They're training guns on the door. She knows I can hear her, she's watching us right now and talking to me." Shoji created a mouth on his middle right arm and spoke back to his classmates in a low, angry voice, "She says they have guns trained on the door, but if we don't run right up there, she'll have them turn the guns on the hostages with them. There are forty of them in there."

"We can't just run up," Yaoyorozu started. "That's not a plan-"

"It is for me," Kirishima started, and he started sprinting faster than everyone around him. He put it into next gear and sprinted up the stairs from the tenth floor past his classmates. He did not harden his body yet, in case the woman looking through the walls could see him turn his body hard. Then he grit his teeth and hardened anyway, as he realized it did not matter if he tried hiding what his Quirk actually was as there was no way all these villains did not know who they were and what they could do. It won't matter. All you villains. I'm taking you all down!

"Kirishima's going to draw their fire, and her attention," Yaoyorozu said quietly while running up next to Shoji. "Take Aoyama and go in on this next floor." They were nearing the eleventh, and Shoji nodded at the girl next to him with a spiky black ponytail who just made a lot of sense with what she told him. He turned his head and looked straight down at Aoyama who pointed at himself as if asking 'who me?' Shoji nodded and the dazzling boy wearing a red t-shirt and long white pants ran after Shoji into the eleventh floor doorway right as gunfire started up above as Kirishima hit the twelfth.

"YOU CAN'T HURT ME!" Kirishima shouted, slamming a fist forward through the door covered in bullet holes after only a second. He kicked his left foot forward and smashed more away, then he just charged forward and smashed the rest apart. He opened his mouth and let out a mad laugh while swinging his arms out to his sides and covering himself in Unbreakable. Bullets broke on his body and bounced away from him, and Kirishima's attackers stared at him with wide eyes as he did not even flinch from their attacks. "VILLAINS! GIVE YOURSELVES UP!"

I want to help him, but… Zach turned his head and looked down towards Asui, then he glanced to his right a bit too where he heard footsteps but did not see anyone. They were between the eleventh and twelfth floors, and he grit his teeth before saying in a low voice, "Be careful, but Tsuyu, Hagakure, help Kirishima. Save the hostages while he fights."

"Do we really want to send both?" Yaoyorozu questioned, turning back to Zach on her left from where they split the front of the group. "We might need someone invisible on the upper floors," she whispered to him.

I don't know! Is it the right move? I was confident a second ago, but you're smarter than me. "You're right, Tsuyu," Zach said quickly, spinning back just to the frog girl. "You go, okay? You have better mobility so you can dodge in case-"

"I trust you Zach," Tsuyu said, as she could see Zach looking nervous like he felt he had to defend why he wanted her to go with Kirishima. They knew why he wanted it though, and she felt the same way. Kirishima sounded too confident, and as much as that could help demoralize the villains whose attacks were having no effect on him, they did not know what the villains' Quirks were. Shoji and Aoyama were planning an attack from down below, but if they couldn't help Kirishima on their own they did not want to leave the group of three at a disadvantage.

Hearing that Tsuyu trusted him just put a deep pit in Zach's chest though. He nodded at her, and then he looked up and started sprinting up the stairs as shouts overtook gunshots as the loudest things around. Tsuyu started to camouflage, Zach started to run, and they heard on their left sides through the wall an explosion and more shouts as a hole blew up through the floor between two villains. Shoji leapt up through the ceiling, and Aoyama leapt and spun around before firing another beam out of his bellybutton to send himself flying up with Shoji between the rising debris. Tsuyu ran into the room while camouflaged and while all the villains were turning towards the exploding floor. Kirishima looked over in surprise to see his two classmates enter from there too as his classmates had spoken quietly about the plan in case of other sensory types, and because his earpiece had been blown apart by a bullet along with most of his clothes so he stood in tattered rags now.

Protect the hostages you guys. Save them all! Zach thought it but did not look back down the stairs.

The Class A students storming up the office building had no idea, but eyeballs were floating inside the third, the sixth, and the twelfth floors. The projection on the front of the building had split apart when Killmore stopped shouting about the League of Villains' goal for the world, about evil and menacing stuff that had scared everyone for the future, and terrified them for the well-being of the hostages. The projection had split to show four different floors, and three of them were in chaos within two minutes of the students running into the building.

The fourth angle that showed Killmore's floor suddenly went dark, and Killmore glared towards Slideshow with a furious expression on his face. "What are those idiots doing?! Elite team my ass. These are fucking children! Each one of them should be-"

"Should we get to the fifteenth floor?" Gahandi called over to Killmore from over near a group of ten hostages tied to each other in a chair circle. They were all strapped with C4, and most of them were really bloody while the bald man covered in wrinkles who called to Killmore also had a lot of blood dripping off his hands. "I don't like this-"

"Their numbers are dwindling!" Killmore shouted over. He glared at Gahandi, then over at Fudgepack who just lifted a chocolate bar from a plastic bag full of them and shoved it into his fat mouth. The morbidly obese man chomped down on it and his mouth was so thick with chocolate that it stuck to the walls and roof of his mouth to look like chocolate webs pulling apart each time he opened his jaw. Killmore glared back towards Slideshow and hissed, "How many of them are left?"

The fourth eyeball Slideshow covered on the bottom right of his face was moving down the steps fast, and he kept it close to the ceiling while looking down at the group of students who just slowed down and came to a stop three floors above where their last split was. Slideshow gulped and said, "Well the good news is, they're down to three. Bad news, five of them just got off on the fifteenth floor and are setting up in-"

"WHAT?!" Killmore screamed at his projector who looked back at him in fear at that furious yell. When Killmore got that angry, he was known to kill people. When he was backed into corners too. It was not just in rage, and his comrades knew that he would use their blood without hesitating to make himself stronger if it meant he could get out of a situation he felt trapped in. Killmore glared harder at Slideshow, and Slideshow's body may have been skinny and weak, but the man brought his hands towards the sidearms at his waist with a nervous expression on his face.

Keep cool. Calm. Killmore lifted up a hand to his right ear and said, "We're still good. Everyone, kill them. Kill them all. Careful of the hostages." Killmore lowered his hand from his ear and glared at Slideshow, "Keep the projection running. Get mine back on me- but before that. Who are the three coming up here?"

Endeavor clenched his fists outside of the office building, but he was watching closely the three fights going on inside the building and did not see any of the villains turn to start killing hostages yet. The villains controlled what they were seeing out there, so he was almost able to convince himself to charge into the building and assist. However the villains had yet to break their promise made with their second demand. It was more of just a threat, but Endeavor knew the villains could see him out there. They seemed like they were watching everything going on in their building, but he had a good feeling when the screen cut off in the corner that had the villain's boss in it. He doesn't like the way things are going. He needed to talk without us seeing. Shoto. Do you-

Ice broke out of the third floor of the building under the big spikes of ice already sticking out of the fourth. A couple of desks just smashed out of the sixth floor and landed on top of those ice spikes sticking out above, but below them a gentle ice slide formed that terrified hostages started running out to and sliding down on. Todoroki stood near the edge of the slide and called people to keep going down one by one and to be careful not to hit others on the way down though he set it up so they wouldn't. He and Ojiro had removed all the frozen C4 and tape from the hostages while the other three ran upstairs, and Todoroki looked up himself as he heard a loud smashing sound only a couple of floors up.

"Midoriya! Are you-" Iida called into the sixth floor where he knew Midoriya had gone to fight.

Bakugo was planning on rushing right by the sixth floor since he did not think Deku would be taken down. He stopped though and looked into the huge office on his left with his eyes huge. The three villains were stuck to each other, stuck to desks and cubicles, stuck to the floor and wall. It was a big jumbled mess of stuff, the villains could not move, and Needler had gotten stuck upside-down and faced away from the boys who had done this to them. Needler glared through the doorway though as he spotted Bakugo and Iida, and he puffed his cheeks out filling his mouth with black needles.

"Smash!" Midoriya threw himself off the floor while Mineta tried to wrap his legs with his shirt. Mineta yelled 'hey' as Midoriya ripped straight through while he was trying to stop the bleeding, but Midoriya had to slam his left fist into the back of Needler's head and knock the villain out, making black needles fall out of his mouth as he dropped unconscious like Fez already was.

"Hey hey, I give up," the guy who made the floor all wobbly before said in a scared tone, as it sounded like Midoriya just gave another of his comrades brain damage. He was unable to move his arms or legs the way he was pinned between two desks and Needler's body, and with these other students showing up he was not ready to keep going at all. "Just get these balls off me," he said in a pained voice, as struggling just made the stickiness rip at his skin more.

Bakugo looked at Midoriya who fell flat on his face after punching the other villain and yelled out in pain from his legs. He looked back at the villains all caught up in purple balls, then to Mineta who was shirtless and somehow seemed like the sole winner on the floor. "Hey! What are you guys… whoa- what?" Sero looked into the floor and got just as confused as the other two, then he shook his head around quickly and spun up the stairs. "Come on!" Midoriya looked up and agreed with Sero, telling the other three to go help the others and that they would free the hostages in there, then he shouted out for Todoroki who rose his head three floors below.

Bakugo had some burns on his upper right arm from when he punched a fist straight through some drawn flames that were starting to take form. The other two were uninjured though, but then again they had run to Bakugo's side of the third floor only in time to watch him get a double knock-out on the two villains he was fighting. Bakugo spun to look up the stairs and he started sprinting after Iida and Sero, curling his fists and uncurling them over and over to keep his hands ready. There was a pain in his wrists that he was trying to ignore. It was there despite him not using any big blasts on Bull or Drawheart, and he thought while running after the other two instead of using explosions to propel him after, The old bag's gonna go off about this.

On the fifteenth floor, Tokoyami stood ten yards away from the doorway. There was an interior glass wall behind him of several windows and a push-door. There was a reception desk behind it, and Uraraka was ushering people around the desk and towards a corner office that Sato had just smashed through the glass windows of after eating some sugar cubes. Uraraka touched a couple of people who had managed to avoid capture by the villains and slipped onto this floor that the villains had been purposely avoiding for some reason, which the students now knew was to avoid having heroes go to it at all so it would be clear for extraction. She made them weightless and told them it would be alright, and then she and Sato pushed these people out the open windows and towards the building next door that was half the size of the one they were in.

Four people floated from the fifteenth floor of the bigger office building down to the roof of an apartment next door, and Uraraka released her gravity control once they were safely right above the roof. "Any villains who escape the other floors are all going to be coming here," Uraraka said, looking back to Sato whose face was pretty blank and hyped-up after that sugar, but he still nodded and made a serious affirmative noise. Hagakure made a little noise from nearby too to remind them she was there, not that anyone on the floor could see her.

Tokoyami had Dark Shadow out of his body and closer to the door he was guarding as the front man. Behind him and on his right closer to a thin hallway splitting off three different executive offices, Koda stood holding a metal pipe that Yaoyorozu had given him right before he went into the fifteenth when they were discussing it on the stairs. Koda looked up at the ceiling as he saw Ashido doing the same across the hall and on Tokoyami's other side as him, crouched behind a stack of stairs she piled up and holding her hands ready to throw Acid in any direction. The two of them glanced up, imagining the three they let run off alone.

Even though we know they will be coming here, Tokoyami stared closely at the main door to the hallway, though he felt a deep sense of unease as he thought about the three who ran off without waiting for much argument once they had decided that the fifteenth was still the most important floor like Midoriya said. From what they heard over their earpieces, a couple of their classmates were running up, and Tokoyami had to believe that they would be able to go back up the others upstairs. We must hold this place to prevent them from escaping. And, if Kurogiri does show up in here. Tokoyami looked behind him for a second, seeing his classmates spread out around the floor and ready for an attack. We must capture him as well.

Zach, Jirou, and Yaoyorozu ran up past the sixteenth, seventeenth, and they slowed before reaching the eighteenth floor. Jirou's right earphone jack shot up while none of them were looking above, and it pierced through a floating eyeball in the air above them that Zach noticed and signaled to the girls about a few seconds ago. Zach's hand loosened on his knife he was preparing to flick up, and Jirou smirked as she plugged her other earphone jack into the wall right after piercing the eyeball that disappeared when her jack went through it. "That hurt him," Jirou said, grinning in a way that made Yaoyorozu glance at her with an eyebrow lifted. "It's a good thing," Jirou muttered quickly, losing that grin though.

She got more serious as she kept the jack in the wall and listened to Killmore snap at his subordinate asking what happened. "The guy creating the projections is there with Killmore, on the twentieth. Why they're so far from the fifteenth floor, I guess they were really trying to sell the roof exit?" She got quieter near the end with a hesitant tone in her voice.

"Or maybe, the villains who thought it was really the fifteenth floor were not told the truth-"

"That wouldn't be," Zach countered Yaoyorozu. "They wouldn't have said it was the roof louder than for the hostages. It would've just made it more likely that there are heroes watching the roof already from the hostages getting out and telling the heroes what they heard."

"But maybe Kurogiri has a route straight to the twentieth- nope," Jirou cut herself off, and she felt like grinning again but kept a serious expression this time. "Killmore's pissed about the fifteenth. They're watching the other floors with our classmates. They sound, nervous. His comrades do, and the hostages are terrified. Killmore's, sounding unhinged as 'Slideshow,' the projecting guy told him that we're coming. He sounds pretty scared, of Zach," Jirou glanced to the boy on her left who she called by his first name, despite hearing the name 'Reaper' through her earphone jacks. She remembered hearing Kaminari call him that once when she was eavesdropping, and for a second she thought that it was because they were villains together and Kaminari knew him by that name. She told herself quickly though, that Zach trusted Kaminari enough to tell him this name that apparently the villains knew him by.

"Here," Yaoyorozu reached up to her chest and pulled her shirt down a bit. Jirou darted her eyes to Zach who looked up the stairs with a serious expression thinking hard about what was happening on the twentieth. "Take these," Yaoyorozu handed up a bulletproof vest towards Jirou, while already creating a second one. Her chest glowed and Jirou grabbed the vest and slid it over her head fast, gulping as she thought about why she'd need it. It was like accepting that they were about to be shot at.

"Put yours on first," Zach said as Yaoyorozu tried to hand him the second.

"I have it on already," Momo said. Zach looked back and he stared closer at her shirt that he turned away from when she was pulling it down. She had pulled down beneath it too, but she leaned forward and less cleavage showed than usual as she had a tight and thick body armor on under her shirt that she had created around her whole torso at once. It started coming out over her arms too, and her legs, and her classmates looked at her with wider eyes as she wrapped herself in kevlar armor. "I wish it was as easy to cover you," she said softly and in an apologetic tone as making vests was as much as she could do with them pressed for time as they were. Yaoyorozu then spun and started jogging up the steps again. She put her hand down on her taser/ grappling gun, and she took in a deep breath with an intense look on her face.

Jirou started running up after her while gripping her steel pole Momo made for her. Her earphone jacks curled up under her ears, and she breathed heavier than her best friend and actually had sweat on her face unlike Yaoyorozu who was cool and collected. Zach slid into his vest and looked at the girls running with him, and his breathing picked up faster than Jirou's. Killmore's unhinged. We can't just wait and make a plan. We don't know what most of their Quirks are other than this Slideshow, and Killmore. But there are only two others.

Yaoyorozu started calling down asking where the final hostages were as Jirou told her how large the group in the room with Killmore was. Then Jirou spun and told Zach that Killmore was ready for him, and the hostages were all spread out to prevent him from using Nightmare. Over their headsets they heard Iida shout that he was going to run straight up to them, only to be cut off from a scream by Kirishima. The group of three who were running up from the tenth story almost to the eleventh felt a huge shake on the twelfth floor. The walls cracked around them, and Shoji started yelling how they needed help on the twelfth, and then Tsuyu let out a scream too.

Zach got a terrified look on his face as Iida shouted about going in to help them first before they lost control or the hostages in there. Iida, Tsuyu, Shoji, Kirishima!

"Focus Zach, we're almost there," Jirou said to her left, then her eyes opened wide as she realized what he was thinking about with that look in his eyes. "They're going to be fine," she said in a quieter voice, making Zach dart his eyes over to her and see the shorter girl nod at him. "We need you here." It was more than just her telling him they needed him for fighting, but she was telling him to get his head around solely what they were doing.

In the moment. Twentieth floor. Four villains. Fifty hostages. Killmore. C4. Forget the others. For now. No long term. Forget the plan. Only this matters. Protecting these two, and the hostages, and stopping those villains. Zach rose his right hand up to his chest and he slammed it into it while sliding his fingers out of his black glove. "He thinks I can't go Nightmare in a crowded area?" Zach asked, his voice getting scratchier and deeper midway through. Even if I do accidentally catch someone in a bit of Death, not the worst thing. Catching Killmore off guard, making him more likely to run, it's the best way I'll get a clear shot on him. Zach rose up a pair of knives and sprinted up faster than Jirou and Yaoyorozu whose eyes opened wide for a second before the boy sprinting up ahead of them pushed Death down on his feet and then sprang at the door to the twentieth and spun his body around in a spinning black spiral.

Zach's leg stuck out and he slammed it into the door, kicking it inwards in mid-spiral and then landing while the door swung open. He landed with his hands and feet down on the floor to give a smaller target for anyone aiming at him, and then with Death focused on his hands and feet he threw himself into a huge open office where the furniture had been moved to the sides. The furniture around the outside of the room meant the open space in the middle was a smaller area, and in that smaller area was the biggest group of hostages in the building. They were split up in groups of eight, or ten, or five, tied together in their chairs or on the floor with their mouths gagged. Zach flung himself into the room by pushing off all four limbs at the same time, and his red eyes darted about as he shot inside.

Killmore, Slideshow- with pistols. He's scared, the other three are nervous but in control and ready. Killmore using knives. Other two, no weapons. The blood on the wrinkled guys' hands, was he just beating those hostages for no reason? The fat guy is holding chocolate. Part of his Quirk? Killmore- shit! He's bigger than usual, he sucked in blood from those people the wrinkled villain beat up? Or did he kill someone and suck out all their blood? How strong is he? Focus on him- but the guns- No! They can handle themselves against a small fry. Killmore. Killmore! "Killmore!" Zach shouted in a deep voice, as he shot forward through the room and right over the heads of some hostages who lifted their eyes in terror at the black form flying over them with dark wisps pulling back off his body.

"Mmnffbrrnngrrr!" A hostage below Zach yelled. Even in their intense fear, the hostage recognized him and screamed out his name. It came out muffled through the gag, but the other hostages tied up and strapped with C4 tried screaming his name too.

Zach rose up his right arm while coming down. He had a knife in his grasp, and Death seeped off of it in an uncontrolled way. Killmore thinks I can't use Nightmare in here because it's too risky with the hostages. Don't let him know the level of control. Zach flicked his knife towards the main villain's face and Killmore pulled his head to the side when the blade was five feet in front of him. His eyes that had been huge started to narrow, his light blue irises glowing and focusing in on the red orbs in Zach's head. Killmore pulled away and did not slash up at Zach's knife passing by his head, then he yanked away even harder as suddenly the darkness coating the blade yanked off of it and at Killmore.

The black wisps on the blade had been piled on thick by the boy who threw it. He made it look unstable, and by the time it reached Killmore it was back to the usual amount of Death on it where at that point after leaving his hand it would be about to lose its coating altogether. With that much Death on it, Zach flicked his right wrist that he threw the blade with and it pulled the Death still connected to him off and at Killmore. The dark blue villain who had started to smirk while showing off how fast he was snarled while falling down to his hands as he had to pull too fast away. He snapped his head to the right and his eyes opened wide again as the dark form that attacked him was jumping up over hostages and arcing down right near where he was.

Killmore lifted up a knife and he gripped the floor hard with his other hand. He slid himself back and slashed the knife across the shin of a hostage who let out a scream into their gag, and made the black demon-like figure with his bones showing through his translucent aura snarl furiously at the splash of blood coming out. Killmore ran his arm along the splashing blood while at the same time kicking his legs up in the air, and he slammed his bulking right arm forward at Zach who was only a few feet away from him when his arm fully extended. Zach reached his arms out for Killmore's, but Killmore's punch had way more force in it than Zach was just expecting after the sudden bulge.

The wind pushed Zach's arms back, stopped his momentum in midair, and then Zach realized it was doing something bad. His eyes shot open huge as he heard panicked screams behind him of hostages whose chairs got pushed back and skid across the floor. It was dangerous with the C4 around them, but what everyone was screaming about was how black wisps pulled off Zach's boney body in that punch's force and flew back towards them, a couple of wisps hitting hostages who screamed and then got quieter. Zach got pushed from Killmore and skid back through an area where there just were hostages but no longer. He rose his right hand and slammed it into his chest, and a pissed-off look appeared in his normal eyes while Nightmare mode disappeared. Maybe he was right. I shouldn't be using it in here surrounded by so many people. Even if those wisps won't kill them, they'll be afraid. I'm a hero right now. They, want to be saved by a hero.

"They're fine!" Zach called out, and he whipped out another pair of knives from his waist beneath the lifted hem of his sweatshirt. When Zach lifted it up, the other people in the room could see he was strapped with nearly a dozen knives, and he rose two up and spun them around in his hands before sprinting towards Killmore with a dark look in his eyes. Killmore's eyes were pitch black already, but hearing Zach shout that made a really pissed-off look spread over his face too.

Slideshow's guns had been shaking, but they steadied. The four-eyed man with only one eye showing was afraid of the dark monster that had stormed into the room, but he pointed his pistols towards the boy's back as he charged at Killmore. TZzzzz Something stuck into Slideshow's side and he had started looking down at it, right before the sticky hook that attached to his body sparked and tazed him. Slideshow dropped his guns, and Yaoyorozu dropped her taser to instead lift up her right arm and create a shield. She created it as fast as she could, but she still got skid back into the doorway when the huge glob of chocolate slammed into her. She grimaced and pressed her feet down harder to keep forward, but then her eyes shot open wide and she had to toss her shield that she blocked the chocolate glob with as it was in the middle of melting through.

When Yaoyorozu threw her shield though, another huge glob of chocolate was in mid-flight towards her. It was a little off-target, giving her a good path to dodge to the right. In that direction she would be trapped between the furniture piled up around the walls, and a wrinkled-up bald villain with blood dripping from his hands who Fudgepack was trying to draw her towards. Yaoyorozu rose up both arms and tried creating another shield as quick as she could, bending her legs too to make her body smaller. The shield was only mid-created when it slammed into her, and despite her feet being lifted up and pushed down on the toes for more pressure, she still skid back. Gahandi had to stop though to avoid the spray of chocolate that splashed out from her shield that she tossed away before the splash had even gone down completely.

Yaoyorozu quickly wiped some excess chocolate spray off her arms, then she rose up a second grappling gun taser in her stinging right arm. She pointed it ahead and towards the wrinkled man as the goopy liquid chocolate fell between them, and she fired at him only for the man to slam his right fist forward straight into the hook that was supposed to stick to him. His fist smashed through the hook, and ripples went up through his body with his wrinkles moving like waves on his skin. Gahandi sprinted forward while Yaoyorozu's eyes opened wide, and then Fudgepack pulled his fat body back again while aiming towards the other girl who ran up on Yaoyorozu's left side and jumped with a metal pole in her hands.

Gahandi saw Fudgepack aiming at her so he kept running at the taller girl. Jirou's eyes darted to her left and farther into the room with her eyes wide, she locked eyes, then she turned back and came down slamming her pole at the villain who spun back towards her and pulled away. She slammed the end of her pole into the floor and then dragged after his legs that he stopped short and pulled back, and she wailed Gahandi in the right leg. As her metal bar hit him though, his skin pushed in a bit and ripples went up through his body looking to distribute the force.

Killmore glared towards Fudgepack for a second, grinding his teeth in anger as the fat man had spat a huge glob of spit towards him and almost hit. Fudgepack slowly opened his eyes wide too, the obese man gawking at what he had just done and the expression on their leader's face. He did not know what happened though. One second he was aiming at the short girl swinging her pole down, the next her felt his body yanked to the right so that as he snapped his head forward and spat, it was at Killmore instead. Zach clicked a button on his grappling gun while Fudgepack lowered his eyes down to his left arm that was tugged in front of his body more as he spun.

A grappling hook unwrapped from Fudgepack and flew back into Zach's weapon. He's slow. His chocolate acid stuff moves fast. Killmore's angrier now and his men are scared of him… Zach's eyes opened huge as he stared at the blue villain who he was trying to keep away from any hostages. Killmore did not have any in his immediate vicinity, but he glared at the kid who despite being shorter, weaker, and smaller than him, was outmaneuvering him at every step. Zach had shown him he was willing to go Nightmare again when Killmore came close, and he blocked one of Killmore's knives with one of his own when Killmore threw it. The blue-skinned villain covered in sharp horns longer than usual reached down and to his right to a man who had recently been electrocuted and was barely conscious.

"Hey Killmore," Zach started. "Don't do it. It's not-" he tried speaking calmly to the man instead of in a panicked way. He imagined screaming at Dandy in Mosu Esupa and how well that worked. Speaking calmly did not work any better though. Killmore lifted Slideshow and slammed his right fist through his subordinate's chest.

Fudgepack stared towards Killmore with huge, shaking eyes and took a step backwards. Time to go. Fudgepack looked down and spat at the floor below him a huge glob of chocolate bigger than the others had been. The chocolate started dissolving the ground, while Fudgepack himself sank down into it so the hostages around him gawked at the man suddenly sinking away. A few pulled away from him thinking he might try to take one of them with him, but Fudgepack's head pointed down and he was thinking only about five floors down. I know they have a team waiting there, but I'll get Kurogiri and-

A hand gripped on top of Fudgepack's head. The hostages around him did not even see him coming. Zach froze and he slowly turned his head back to the right at the man he had attacked a minute ago to use him against Killmore while saving Jirou at the same time. Gahandi backed up from the two girls he was fighting who were panting after running across a city and up twenty floors but were holding their ground against him. Yaoyorozu and Jirou wanted to take the chance to attack their wrinkly enemy, but the man who had looked composed and serious and even like he was enjoying their fight so far lost that expression to one of dread instead.

Zach still had Slideshow's body in the corners of his eyes where Killmore dropped him after impaling him. He had not been able to throw a knife at Killmore since the man was holding Slideshow's body in front of him while it happened, but it all happened in two seconds flat so there was nothing else he could do. All Zach had been able to do was stare and clench his teeth as Slideshow's body shriveled up and lost color, all the blood inside him getting sucked into Killmore's larger spikes that were even pointier and longer now. Slideshow was still in the middle of falling when Killmore shot across the room and grabbed the top of Fudgepack's head before he could sink through the floor.

Killmore lifted the man who was easily four hundred pounds back up above the hole in the floor. He lifted him by the top of his skull and the room was silent as Killmore pushed his face towards his comrade's. Killmore's scalp spikes stuck straight up now and out diagonally longer and matching the length of the ones on his arms and now sticking out of his shins and thighs too. As Killmore lifted Fudgepack, his comrade's fat belly skimmed against some of the spikes and Fudgepack pulled away with a scared look in his eyes as there was no telling what Killmore was about to do. Fudgepack had to make a decision. He almost puffed out his cheeks to spit his chocolate from point blank at Killmore, but he imagined himself puffing his cheeks out and Killmore squeezing the powerful hand gripping him through his brown hair and around his skull. The second option was saying, "I'll keep fighting, boss. Sorry."

Killmore's lips twisted up, "You better-" Fudgepack took his eyes off Killmore, and the villain with the Quirk Bloodsucker almost crushed his skull right there. He realized though how scared Fudgepack was with that tone he just had, so the fact that the fat man was looking behind him meant something. Killmore spun his head around fast, only to see something just as fast flying towards him. He pulled his head away faster and dodged the knife, and it slammed into the upper right side of Fudgepack's chest close to his shoulder, right in a chunk of fat. The knife was coated in darkness, and Killmore let go of Fudgepack while narrowing his black and blue eyes furiously at the boy in front of him. Then Killmore's eyes darted back behind him at the knife that was covered in excess Death, and that Zach did not want all going into hurting the already slow Fudgepack.

Zach pulled Death back at the back of Killmore's head and would have missed as Killmore saw it coming. However Killmore had long spikes now, and the end of a strand of Death wrapped around one of Killmore's spikeswhich made him pull forward so much faster. Fudgepack stumbled back and then let out a yelp while falling into a hole in the floor. He bounced off one side of it and then flipped around while falling through the floor down to the nineteenth that he hit flat on his face. As Killmore pulled farther forward though to escape the small wisps of darkness, he realized what he was doing and what he had seen behind the knife when he had spun the other way from Fudgepack.

Killmore planted his feet and started spinning around again, and he slammed his right fist with a huge spike on the back of his hand out at Zach. The boy charging at him dodged to the right and dropped down to his right hand as he pulled away so fast, then he brought that right hand up and swung Death up at Killmore's body as the villain tried kicking his shin spikes into the arm. Zach's hand just swept by Killmore's leg as the villain kicked it forward, but Killmore was still faster and leapt backwards fast to dodge the Death Wind. He dodged back so fast actually, that he neared the south wall of the building that Zach was trying to keep the fight towards. Killmore was the farthest he had been from the hostages, landing between some furniture because the window behind him was not completely covered in the black stuff to give Killmore a nice view outside through the cracks when he had wanted one.

The person who had created that black goop that covered all the windows of the building was on the twelfth floor. The woman had her arms raised, creating more of it though she was panting and had a bruise on the right side of her cheek. The twelfth floor was in complete madness with walls separating offices broken, holes in the floor and cracks on the ceiling, injured heroes and injured villains all tired and duking it out with each other. Tsuyu jumped away from a black wave of goop, then she bounced off of a cracked wall covered in bullet holes back near the stairwell that was hit by a huge thick iron club that extended out of one villain's right arm. The villain was covered in piercings from head to toe, including three thick steel ones going through the bridge of his nose and lots of rings all over his face.

Tsuyu snapped her tongue out towards the guy with arms that extended into iron clubs, but her tongue whipped away and towards the villain who had just pulled out a sidearm and was aiming at an exhausted Kirishima who spun and threw his arms out in front of Aoyama who was bleeding out one side of his head and a lot more out his right leg. Tsuyu's tongue was too slow. The tape wasn't. "Go up ahead Bakugo!" Iida shouted, while the heroes and villains in the room spun towards the stairwell. Iida's calves were burning bright, and the color changed to blue as he had been saving up on the sprint up the stairs. "Recipro-BURST!" Iida shot at the woman creating black sludge that hardened afterwards, and he could see windows in his peripheral vision that told him who this was.

"I got your back Kirishima!" Sero called out, while he fired more taped at the villain whose gun he had knocked away with it. Sero shot himself across the room, dodging metal clubs flying up at him and sending himself closer to the area where Kirishima had brought Aoyama, and where Shoji had just gathered the last of the hostages strapped with C4. "We'll protect you!" Sero called out with a grin on his face, and Kirishima smirked wide at the reinforcements.

"More of them?!"

"What are those idiots on the lower floors doing?!"

"Don't fuck it up!" Bakugo shouted down while sprinting faster up the stairs.

"Bakugo, don't worry about the fifteenth floor. Go straight to the twentieth," Tokoyami's voice filled the headsets, only for Bakugo to scream back, 'I KNOW!'

"Midoriya," Todoroki said into the sixth floor, and the two boys inside the room spun towards the windows to see one shattering and their classmate heading inside. He left Ojiro down below to finish getting the last of the hostages on the third floor out of the building, while he rose up the outside wall on the south side of the building in front of all the spectators, and his dad. Todoroki rose his right hand to freeze the hardened black substance on the wall next to him, only for all that black stuff to start losing form. It sank down and dropped from the windows that it had filled, as Iida's Reciproburst kick knocked-out the villain who had blocked the inside of the building.

"Todoroki," Midoriya said while limping over towards some other hostages he was trying to untie carefully. "Could you," Midoriya started, looking around at the people with C4 all over them. Todoroki nodded and started jogging into the room, looking closely at the C4 he was running towards to defuse. Mineta let out a sigh of relief as he no longer had to rely on his bomb-defusing skills.

The projections on the outside of the building had faded away a few seconds ago. No one outside the building knew what was going on inside anymore, but the cops and civilians who had gathered behind them started cheering. Hostages going down the slide or already freed and down near the police yelled cheers up at the building as the black coatings in all the windows started coming down. Many of the windows had not been shattered but covered from the inside, though most windows in the building were at least cracked which was why the police had the freed hostages moving a certain distance away for the perimeter. Todoroki's ice sticking out of the fourth floor worked as a solid roof blocking much of the falling glass, though it had been a bit more difficult for him to rise up to the sixth floor with that ice in the way.

A news helicopter reporting on the situation got its camera switched to from the one on the ground that no longer had a great angle without the projections on the front of the building. "We have just received a report that the villain's leader Killmore is on the twentieth floor right now. We're zooming- oh my G- that's him!" The reporter was shocked by her luck, but the villain was actually just inside of a window on the south side of the building. He was half-turned and had looked back at the hardened black goop losing shape with so much fury in his eyes. The camera zoomed in an caught a glimpse of that expression so different from the composed one he had had in his messages before. And Killmore lifted something in his right hand that had the reporter screaming, "GET US AWAY FROM THE BUILDING!"

Zach stared towards the villain up in front of him with his eyes bulging huge. Killmore watched the dark ooze disappear from the windows. He spotted Gahandi getting pushed back by the girls who despite not having good Quirks to fight him with, were working together and keeping him on the ropes, and away from the hostages. The hostages. Killmore lifted the detonator in his right hand, while Todoroki jogged towards some gathered hostages near Mineta and Midoriya, while Kirishima, Shoji, Sero, and Aoyama gathered around a group on the twelfth floor, and Jirou and Yaoyorozu kept the closest hostages just behind them. "Don't do it Killmore," Zach said, his voice quiet and breaking from its dark tone. He rose his right hand and touched his body, getting rid of Nightmare form so it would not sound threatening at all.

Killmore glared his dark eyes into Zach's lighter ones with a furious look on his face. He had sucked in so much blood, but he did not feel as strong as he should. It's getting touched by him. This mother fucker! The plan- everything! IT WAS YOUR FAULT! "We'll let you go," Zach said, his eyes shooting open much wider as Killmore's shook in anger. "We'll let Kurogiri come get you!" Zach called out in a more panicked voice, and his voice went through his earpiece and reached all his classmates. "Just don't do it! What would be the point? You'd die too!"

Anyone on the twentieth floor not looking towards those windows snapped their heads to the south side of the building. Gahandi's eyes bulged, and he spun away with a look of shock on his face. Jirou and Yaoyorozu charged at him in the moment he was distracted. Jirou moved faster, and Gahandi turned towards them with a shocked look that they would try to fight right now. He jumped back, but Yaoyorozu was running slower for a reason and she fired up at Gahandi and electrocuted him this time with a pair of tasers she held in each hand. Yaoyorozu's chest started to glow at the same time as she took down the wrinkled villain, and her face was sweating as she screamed at herself, FASTER!

"I'm not gonna be the one who loses here, Reaper," Killmore snarled at the kid in front of him. Zach ground his teeth but tried to keep his cool while this villain held the trigger in his hands. There were hostages all over the building, and his classmates were surrounding those hostages at that very moment. Killmore's face turned more crazed and Zach widened his eyes in despair, though he tried to keep an understanding and afraid look on his face. He wanted Killmore to hesitate, and Killmore did. "You never knew," Killmore said, and Zach stared at him with his eyes shaking more. "You never knew, the kid was betraying you?" In Killmore's eyes flashed a look on understanding that made Zach's blood run cold, and Killmore lifted the shaking corners of his lips and pulled his head back a bit. "He's one cold mother fucker," he said, his voice cracking and sweat covering his face, and then all of Killmore's muscles tensed as Zach sprinted forward as fast as he could.

Killmore pressed his thumb down on the button. Yaoyorozu spun her head towards the villain, and she screamed, "That won't work!" Killmore's eyes that he closed when he pressed the trigger stayed closed for a second as he waited for the boom. "I created a radio jammer," the tall girl tying up Gahandi with strong ropes she just made called out. She started standing up, and she yelled, her voice not reaching anyone's earpieces any longer, "You won't be- Zach!"

Killmore's eyes had opened while his face filled with shock and even a bit of relief that he did not just go up in a fiery explosion. The helicopter pulling away from the building got confused as the man who lifted the detonator started lowering it in confusion, and then their eyes opened wide as a figure slammed into Killmore at full force while the man was standing there in shock at his lack of being dead. The window behind him was cracked already, so Zach slamming into him that fast and that close meant they flew through the window with barely any resistance. The detonator fell out of Killmore's hands as Zach slammed into him in his midsection, and it bounced around on the floor before coming to a stop next to some broken glass.

"MMNFFBRRNNGRRR!" The hostages through the twentieth floor shouted into their gags.

"ZACH!" Jirou screamed at the window Zach just went through.

Yaoyorozu's heart skipped a beat, and then her eyes snapped down to the detonator on the floor next to the window but no longer in Killmore's hand, so he was no longer pressing the red button down. Zach! Yaoyorozu broke the radio jammer she was holding, and then she yelled into her earpiece, "Zach's falling from the twentieth floor out the south side!"

Bakugo was on the seventeenth floor fighting an obese man who was bloody and burnt and slow but taking most of his attacks easily. Bakugo stared past the man in shock though as he heard that, seeing a pair of figures falling out of the air surrounded by broken glass.

Killmore's face filled with rage, and the man powered-up by so much blood slammed his fist forward into Zach. Zach wished his back was to the building so he could have been slammed back inside, but it would not have mattered anyway as the punch ripped through his sweatshirt and shirt and flipped him around instead of sending him flying. As Zach flipped over though, he brought his right hand up towards his chest. His arm pushed aside some glass as he brought it up, and he felt a slash through his sleeve and on his right forearm. Zach heard shouts from the fifteenth floor and saw Uraraka reaching out and just missing him with a terrified look in her eyes.

"Tokoyami!" Uraraka shouted behind her, but the dark boy was too far across the floor when they heard Yaoyorozu's shout and he did not have Dark Shadow there in time.

Zach's body surrounded in Nightmare as he finished flipping over. He glared furiously into Killmore's eyes from up close, his red eyes boring into the man who killed Aizawa's, who just tried to blow up this building and all of his friends. Zach's right fist surrounded in Nightmare, he reached his left hand forward and grabbed a sharp spike sticking out of Killmore's left arm. Killmore slashed his right arm up, a serrated blade in it he aimed for the middle of Zach's right arm that was balling a fist. They passed another floor, and another, and Killmore slashed his knife up into Zach's arm and then right through it with his face covering in confusion. Zach's right arm flared with Death like the entire thing was enflamed, while the rest of his dark aura dimmed on the rest of his body. His bones were no longer visible in his right arm, and his fist got bigger at the moment he punched it forward and down straight into Killmore's face.

"ZACH!"

Five seconds earlier, Sero snapped his head up from the inside of the window on the twelfth floor. His elbows were ready, but his eyes opened huge as he saw Zach was not the only one falling from the sky. They also opened that wide, because Zach had activated Nightmare and he had seen what happened to Ectoplasm sensei before. Just with our Quirks, Sero thought, hesitating against wrapping Zach up only to get pulled unconscious out of the window. Two people ran up to Sero's sides though who made his eyes open huge, and he fired tape from an elbow back farther in the room before wrapping up the short girl next to him with his other arm. Tsuyu leaned out of the window as the tape wrapped her and she swung her tongue down ignoring the broken glass she was whipping it into too. Kirishima grabbed hold of Shoji's back and planted his hard feet so hard into the floor that he broke through it, and Shoji reached his arms out with more and more arms extending off of them and down.

Zach's eyes opened wide as a tongue wrapped around the front of his body, and he saw blood splash off the tongue as a piece of glass nicked it. Arms grabbed onto him a second later as he stretched the tongue and felt intense fear he was about to pull the girl wrapping it around him out of the window. Shoji wrapped his arms around Zach and even extended them a little farther so it was not a sudden jolt slamming Zach to a stop. Zach slowed down, while Killmore flew down faster from him off his punch.

As Killmore shot past the eighth floor though, a big ice slide rose up from outside of the sixth floor windows where Todoroki was planning on making one in the other direction. Zach's eyes opened huge as he dangled there inside his Nightmare form outside of the tenth floor of the building, looking down at Killmore who hit a slanted ice surface and did not smash down fatally into the floor. It was still a very violent landing, and he slid down the slide fast before plummeting down into the next ice level on the fourth, but Zach could tell it did not kill him. Todoroki, Zach thought. He started turning his head and looked up towards the windows of the twelfth floor where his friends were holding on as hard as they could to him and to the windows. Shoji, Tsuyu, the two he thought about started pulling him back up, and they called down asking if he was alright.

Zach lifted up his right arm to his chest. He winced while bringing it towards himself, and he knew it was from the glass that had slashed him when he had activated Nightmare form. But not when he slashed me, Zach thought, his eyes shifting to his right forearm as the black aura disappeared. Not even a slash in his sweatshirt sleeve could be seen where Killmore's knife passed through his arm. He lowered his hand from his chest while looking at his arm and he called up to the others bringing him to their floor, "I'm fine."

"No you're not!" Sero called down at Zach, his eyes opened huge as he looked at the center of Zach's chest where Killmore had ripped through his clothes with that first punch. Zach thought he felt some pain there when he pressed his hand into it, and he looked down at where Sero was staring to see a whole lot of blood coming out of the chest wound.

Tsuyu and Shoji lowered Zach down just on the inside of the windows on the twelfth floor. Zach was wobbly on his feet for a second, and he glanced up imagining how far he had just fallen. It was farther than he had ever free-fell before, and it brought back a painful memory. He lowered his gaze after a second as Sero told him to sit so he could wrap Zach's wounds up, and Sero was already taking his shirt off to tie on him which he'd stick there with his tape. Then Zach's eyes opened really huge, because he looked forward and saw Aoyama bleeding out one side of his head, and Iida panting and with his calves puffing smoke, facing off against a villain with thick steel bars for arms. "There's still…" Zach began, and then his eyes shifted around at his classmates on his sides.

Without hesitating, Tsuyu and Shoji knew touching my Nightmare form wouldn't hurt them, because of what I did with Kirishima. But still, what if it had? What if the villain had attacked the hostages while- and Momo! What if breaking the radio jammer had meant! How could you do that?! Why?! Damn it. Damn it damn it! His classmates around him mostly spun to the final villain, tired and panting, looking around with wide eyes as he saw his predicament.

"Surrender!" A thunderous voice shouted behind Zach. The students all over the twelfth floor, the hostages, and the villain most of all opened their eyes wide. The villain's arms shrank in size, and he slowly brought them up behind his head while dropping down on his knees, as the Number 1 hero landed down on the inside of the windows.

"Whoa," Sero leaned back as Endeavor landed in front of him. The big man's flames and his intimidating presence had Sero sweating, though he grinned too as Endeavor made it so they did not have to keep fighting, and he could focus on what he felt was most important right now. He ran up in front of Zach and told his friend to sit down so he could help, and Aoyama collapsed at the same time making some of the others run over to him.

Tsuyu stuck out her tongue and she looked down at a cut on it, then she turned her head a bit to Zach who she saw looking at her with big eyes. "Are you okay, Zach-chan?" She questioned in a worried voice.

"Man, what were you thinking?" Sero said with a shake of his head, though he laughed after a second while stopping Zach's bleeding as best he could. "You're crazy."

"I have secured the detonator. And I have deactivated it." Yaoyorozu's voice in their ears made each of the students in her class feel a huge sense of relief. Zach started panting harder as he heard that, but his fists still clenched at his sides in frustration. How could you do that? What if, there had been a second detonator? What if Kaminari was… "He's one cold mother fucker." Killmore, knew. That bastard. That look in his eyes though, he wasn't just talking about what he did to us. Kaminari. You-

"Endeavor," Tsuyu began to the large man next to her who started marching forward to speak to the hostages and the last remaining conscious villain down on his knees. The large Flame Hero glanced down at the girl who said respectfully up to him, "The explosives have been disarmed, but I think we should still hurry to remove the bombs-"

"Get to it then, Froppy," Endeavor said. The short girl next to him looked up with wide eyes, then she nodded fast before spinning and hopping towards the closest hostages. Endeavor knows my name?

Whoa! Endeavor knows Fro- Tsuyu's hero name?! Sero and Kirishima both thought together, while Zach glanced up towards Endeavor in surprise too. It had surprised him enough to derail his thoughts, and then an explosion shook the building and everyone froze what they were doing. Tsuyu's eyes opened huge and she was afraid she had just lied to the Number 1 hero, while Yaoyorozu was terrified as she looked at the detonator in her hands wondering if she had made a fatal mistake.

"Ah, haa, ah haa… Got him." Bakugo's voice over their earpieces told them what had actually caused the explosion. Zach grimaced more while looking up at the ceiling, and Todoroki did the same a few floors down with Midoriya looking similarly not far from him. Bakugo looked down at his arms that he just made a massive explosion with on the empty floor he was fighting Fudgepack on. The villain lay smoking and unconscious on the cracked floor in front of him, but Bakugo was the bloodier of the two. "Shit," Bakugo muttered quieter so his classmates wouldn't hear. This better not restart the six months, Bakugo thought, recalling how Recovery Girl had told him his arms would recover if he managed not to use big explosions for six months, right after the Sports Festival. His skin had ripped through with that single blast alone though, and he felt some of the pain he felt at the Sports Festival resurface though he stopped himself from screaming over it.

"Everyone sweep the building for villains!" Ojiro turned his head as he stood alone on the third floor, and he looked back towards the door his team had smashed through before where Kamui Woods was shouting orders out to other heroes running through the building with him. "And secure the hostages! Get their bombs off carefully, and take back the building!" Ojiro dropped down on his butt and let out a long sigh of relief, then he lifted a hand to his ear and asked if Hagakure was alright, to which she called out that they were all clear on the fifteenth.

Tokoyami sweatdropped while standing near the fifteenth floor door. He closed his eyes for a second though, It was necessary. I cannot say that our being here did nothing. Though, Tokoyami looked over his shoulder more towards the middle of the floor. I wish someone had come down, to make Kurogiri appear.

"You're amazing, Momo," Jirou said between panting breaths to her best friend she was untying hostages with. Jirou smiled at the taller girl who had a thoughtful and serious look on her face as she kept moving her hands as fast as she could. "That was really, really quick thinking."

If I had been a few seconds slower, Yaoyorozu thought while giving Jirou a nod. What was the villains' goal? If Killmore had managed to set off the C4, this building, most of our classmates… It was too close. Was it just to kill us? Destroy faith in Class A? Wipe us all out? What? No matter what the goal was, we thwarted it. We must have… And even if there was an ulterior goal in place here, we won. The hostages are safe, we will find out if any were killed later, but everyone is checking in that the hostages on their floors are alive. The villains had to keep them alive to keep out the other heroes, but maybe they kept them alive so that when they started killing them, it was Class A who allowed the hostages to be killed. Raijin, was that your plan?

Midoriya looked over towards the villains they had captured as Kamui Woods ran into the room. The Number 5 hero started capturing them in a more efficient way than clumped together and stuck to furniture with Pop Offs, and Midoriya stared specifically at the shortest of the three villains who had been so quick to attack him when he rushed into the room. Fez. One of the few villains who went with Shigaraki to Mosu Esupa. Was he a higher-up? He was powerful, but he was just used as a pawn here… Unless, they really were meant to defeat us? The way Zach was talking before comms got cut off, sounded like Killmore was going to blow us all up. What, happened here?

"It's a good thing you kids showed up when you did," Kamui Woods said towards the young man with green hair who lifted his head and stopped mumbling to himself to look at the pro hero. Kamui Woods smiled at the boy who he had seen years ago fighting the sludge villain, running in when no one else would. Midoriya could not see that smile behind Kamui Woods' wooden mask, but he heard the smile on his face as the hero said, "If you didn't happen to be running by, who knows what would have happened here?"

Mineta smiled big as Kamui Woods said that, then he fell back and landed on his back with an exhausted look on his face. "Ha, hahaha, we won!" Take that, Raijin.

Zach sat on his butt on the twelfth floor staring straight ahead as his classmates and Endeavor worked together to free all the hostages. Endeavor went and captured the villains in the room first, looking really annoyed that he could not beat up the villain who already surrendered to him, even though he had been the one who told the man to give up in the first place. Zach watched the top hero work, then looked towards his class rep who was running around taking everyone's gags out one by one and asking if they were alright. Zach turned his head a bit and glanced out the window, If I had killed Killmore right there, would it have mattered? Todoroki stopped it, and I should thank him. He probably thinks it would still hurt me so much to kill someone… but Killmore, who killed Aizawa sensei… I could've lived with that. Couldn't I? No… I could have, but I'm glad he stopped it. If I had done it, it would have all been for nothing. What matters now is, Zach stood up and Sero turned and started scolding him, but Zach ignored him and walked back towards the windows anyway.

Kirishima walked with Zach and stayed close, but Zach ignored him while walking straight up and then stopping in the sill. Kirishima leaned forward with him and they looked down towards Todoroki's ice slide, and then down below it to a huge ice spike sticking out of the fourth floor that Killmore had stopped right on the edge of, looking like he would fall off at any second now. A hero flew up to that edge though and started tying up Killmore while they watched, the villain unconscious from Zach's final punch in the face surrounded by so much Death. "That was a sick punch," Kirishima said in a soft voice while he and Zach looked down together. Kirishima had seen it out through the window, happening right as Zach passed by their floor. Zach glanced in at him for a second and saw Kirishima looking back out the corners of his eyes, and the redhead lifted the corner of his lips closer to his friend.

Zach turned back and looked down towards Killmore again. He glared out the window with a dark look, exhausted, angry. He stared down at Killmore like that which made Kirishima lower his smile a bit on his side. The helicopter circling around the front of the building again zoomed in on the floor Endeavor just flew up into, and zoomed in on the boys standing there looking down at Killmore. "You can bet, I told Shigaraki as much!" Zach's eyes got darker and his lips twisted down harder, and then he turned away and walked back into the building. "Let's help out," Zach said in a low voice, and Sero and Kirishima both looked in at him with darker looks for a second before glancing at each other and nodding. They ran off to help out the hostages around the room, and Zach forced his lips up into a half, fake smile while untying a hostage next to Shoji. "It's okay now," Zach said, his voice low and his eyes looking so far away despite being faced straight at the hostage before him. "We're here."