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!

163. Chapter 163

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 163:

"Just two more weeks," Mineta said, and he bounced his eyebrows at the taller teen in front of him standing behind his counter. Mineta sat on a stool across Zach's counter, and he leaned forward and cupped a hand to his mouth, "Come on. Give me a hint," Zach smiled and chuckled to himself at Mineta's look. "What's your strategy? You're going to go after Midoriya first right? Or are you going to pick us off first?" Mineta looked back with a nervous look and then back to Zach in faked fear that Zach was coming for them.

"You really want to know?" Zach wondered. He picked another chip out of the bag and dipped into the hummus next to it, and he tossed it in his mouth while Mineta stared at him in surprise. "Even though it'd give you guys the advantage? You really want to win like that-"

"I don't care," Mineta said with a bright smile.

Zach lowered his own smile for a moment. Mineta lost his too with a hesitant look replacing it. Zach glanced aside, then he shrugged a shoulder and faced back to Mineta. "Alright. Whatever. If you really want it," Zach leaned over his counter and motioned forward for Mineta to do the same. Mineta was about to say how he was just kidding, but now that Zach was leaning in, an excited look formed over his face that he was going to have all this insider information.

Sero rose his eyebrows up from the armrest of the couch closest to the kitchen counter, and then he rolled his eyes as Mineta started nodding with whatever Zach was whispering to him. "Don't listen to him, Mineta."

Mineta turned his head in surprise, and he said, "What? He's the one offering-"

"He's giving you wrong information," Ojiro mentioned, getting Mineta to turn to the end of the counter and the kitchen table where Ojiro and Koda were sitting with their homework in front of them.

Ashido started laughing as she did not get why Sero cut in there at first. "And you're dumb enough to believe it and pass it around as fact," Ashido added.

"I am offended," Mineta said in a shocked tone. "That you would think Zach would do something like that," Mineta waved a hand behind him while looking around at his own classmates who all looked over his head at Zach. Zach smirked down at the back of Mineta's head, then when Mineta spun around Zach nodded in agreement with him looking offended himself but in a genuine way with a look around at the others like they were accusing him of being way too manipulating. Mineta turned back to the others after checking Zach's face, and he continued making a fool of himself, "Zach said his plan is to go straight after Bakugo with Inasa since-"

Sero and Ashido were laughing in front of Mineta, and this time he spun around quicker and Zach let himself get caught grinning too. He laughed at Mineta's aghast look, only half-faked as he had started to believe the others there for a moment and was only holding onto his trust in Zach by a thread. Zach tilted his head to the side though, and he said, "Hey, if you want to start early by getting info on us, I can start early too."

"That was you starting early?" Sero wondered. "I think you could've been more convincing."

"Maybe, but had I gotten any more serious you guys would've told me not to give it away," Zach admitted right back. Sero looked surprised he got countered there, but he shrugged and admitted it with his expression that Zach was probably right there.

"Look here," Koda leaned over the table and pointed down near the top of the page as Ojiro was having trouble with a math problem farther down it. "The set-up is different, but you use the same formula for number 1."

"How? There is no z value-"

"You have to find the z first, by separating these two…"

Zach looked over at Koda and smiled a bit more at his voice that was louder and more confident than it used to be. His eyes shifted to Ojiro though who looked happy all of a sudden and thanked Koda while writing something on the page. "Hey Ojiro," Zach started. "No Hagakure today either?"

Ojiro finished writing and looked up towards Zach. "She had work, again."

"That's like every day this past week," Ashido mentioned with a sigh. She was sitting across the room from the kitchen on the comfiest chair reclined with the footrest popped out. She tilted her head back while already leaning back, and she put her hands behind her head and wondered, "What do you think Incognito's got her doing?"

Ojiro shrugged unknowingly. Zach watched him out the corner of his eyes though, He knows. I'm sure Incognito told her not to tell anyone, but at least the person she told is someone trustworthy.

Sero was watching Zach after Zach's last question, and he saw Zach's eyes move over him for a moment when Ashido mentioned something behind his back. "I checked to see if Sato wanted to come by today," Sero mentioned casually. Zach looked back at him in a casual way too, but a couple of the others felt more awkward talking about this. "He said he was busy."

"Oh, okay," Zach replied. He had talked to Sero about seeing if Sato wanted to come over, and though Sato did not come this time he wondered if Sero had made the extra effort with his old next-door neighbor back in the dorms. "Glad you asked though," Zach mentioned.

"I saw Midoriya when we were heading out and invited him to come too," Ashido mentioned while sitting up in her chair. "But he said the two of you hung out yesterday?"

"Yeah, we did," Zach replied, as the way Ashido said what Midoriya told her made it sound like she was asking him if that was true. His confirmation made Ashido and the others in the room smile, and Zach felt like doing the same. He's the only one I've really improved things with since returning. I think… I guess everyone here right now- why doesn't Momo come over more often? I should invite her, more. Does Sero not? The others? Or do they just not tell me- Why don't I ask about her when I'm fine with asking about the others?

Knock knock knock

Everyone in Zach's apartment looked towards the door giving it funny looks. Three knocks? Mineta wondered, spinning his stool fully around and hopping off interestedly. Who knocks three times?

What kind of person…

Three times?!

Zach glanced around with a sweatdrop for a brief moment, before looking back at the door interestedly himself. Unlikely a Japanese person. It's not impossible, but it's weirdly formal here. Guess I never thought anything of it though before all my time abroad. Knocking isn't standardized or anything. Zach's eyes were red as everyone in his apartment stared towards his door. He darted them around checking his classmates' expressions, and he stared harder at the door and then the windows to the side checking for the shadow since the sun should be casting the person's shadow in that direction based on its position in the sky. Must be some cloud cover. Still bright out, but- oh shit. That's all the shadow? Zach could see a slight change in shade of the brightness in a corner of his window that was not changing steadily like a cloud was moving to shift it.

The change in shade is still slight, so there are probably clouds blocking the sun anyway. Wasn't wrong about that. It's someone big though. Knocking unlike someone who knows me on a friendly level, at least if they were from Japan. They're still standing there so it's not a package. Would be a pretty bad coincidence if that happened twice while they were all visiting me, even if it is Ashido this time instead of Hagakure. Getting regular packages would be sketchy alone. I should answer the door myself. Stop him. Wait- would stopping him be suspicious? It would make them think I'm worried about the person attacking me. I could play it off and say "I got it," but unless I say it seriously Mineta's not going to turn back or stop. He'll just wave me off and get it himself. Not saying anything is fine. Zach started for the side of his counter, sliding a knife down his shirt sleeve with twitches of his right arm without going that extra step of wrapping his power glove over his hand since he was in view of Ojiro and Koda's seats.

It's not an assassin. It's not an assassin. It couldn't be. Without warning like this. It would have to be the most powerful monster for them to have it come straight to me. Sane enough to stand there calmly after knocking. Not fast enough to kill Mineta after he opens the door. It can't be. Who is it then? Who would come straight here? Who knows my address? Some Shiketsu friends. My U.A. classmates. Hero officials and the heroes and cops they've told. Norita and the neighbors who saw- all my neighbors. Everyone they told. It hasn't been long and the exact address hasn't been posted anywhere. No press have shown up as they would should my home address become public. Don't be a reporter. I'll have to move. Who then? They know my address too. The package came straight here. Don't know how they found out so quickly, but then again they do have Rebel, Cody, and Raylei. Those three could do anything. A thousand people then? That's a high mark, but it's probably a hundred at least in only one month. I should increase by a factor of ten to be safe. When the number is high enough the secret is no longer a secret. How long until the assassins know where? Sooner than the press I'm sure. The press not finding me yet is not an indicator that I am safe. They would make their move between their discovery and the press' first glance. A short window.

Ojiro turned to look at Zach and ask who just arrived. Mineta was about to reach the door anyway, but Ojiro asked the boy next to him whose eyes were back to normal by the instant they were in Ojiro's vision. Ashido leaned over the back of her chair and tried to peek through the crack in the blinds. She did not want to move them and draw the attention of the person outside whoever it might be, but she realized as she looked through the crack that it was a bit darker there than it was a minute or two ago when she last looked out. Her eyes rose up and she saw a blue sky with lots of white clouds filling it, and she got confused while shifting her gaze over to the inside of the door where Mineta reached forward and grabbed the knob without delay.

Zach shook his head in response to Ojiro's question. He stepped closer to his door so he was behind his couch that Sero stood up from on the other side, and Ashido got up from her chair too so that she could lean farther into the room and look towards the doorway as Mineta opened it. "You've reached-" Whatever way Mineta was planning on greeting the person standing there caught in his mouth. He stared forward into a pair of legs, and he rose his head up slowly. Everyone in Zach's place lifted their heads up, bringing their eyes over the man's belt that somehow wrapped around his whole waist far wider than any of theirs. They rose their eyes over his black suit jacket towards his collar that had the top button open and some white fur sticking out.

Koda and Ojiro both got out of their seats, and Mineta took a step back just from the size of the guy standing there. Ashido's mouth made an 'o' of surprise, and she spun to Zach to see if he knew who this person was. The problem was, the guy's head was taller than the doorway itself, and his body was nearly too wide for his shoulders to be seen through it. He bent his knees though and leaned his head down, looking into Zach's place and straight towards the teen who already recognized him based on that body shape alone.

Zach's face was covered in surprise, but he started smiling more and more while Mineta moved out of the way. It was a good thing Mineta moved too, because the guy dropped into Zach's house on his hands that were the size of Ashido's head each. The room shook when the huge guy dropped down like that, but it vibrated more as he ran across the room on all fours still almost as tall as Zach was standing straight up.

"What the-" Sero started, then he pulled back and gawked as Zach lifted up his arms and tried to stop the charging figure. The guest pulled his head up at the last second, and from close up there was no mistaking it for Sero, A polar bear?!

"Dover," Zach greeted in surprise after pushing back into the man who ran into him. He wrapped his arms around the guy's back and shoved back, but his feet skid backwards and his feet came out from under him since he was in his socks.

"Zach," Dover said as he tackled Zach to the ground and had his front paws down on Zach's forearms. It looked like he had Zach pinned under him, and he smiled in a way that showed off his mouth of very sharp teeth almost like he was baring them though somehow it still felt friendly to Zach's other friends who were all just so confused at what was happening. It only looked like Zach could not escape though, as he rose up his right arm for a moment and then dropped it down quickly and pulled out before the paw that was falling back could get all its weight back on him. As that paw was hitting the ground, it touched down farther down than the other one that started pressing harder on Zach's left arm to keep him pinned like that. Zach pushed back with his left arm though and Dover did not have the support on his own left side, so as Zach wrapped his right arm around the underside of Dover's body and yanked to his right, while pushing up with his left, he shoved Dover off of him and onto his side (and into the couch).

The whole couch skid forward over Zach's carpet, and Sero had to jump backwards as it almost knocked him over. "Hey-" he started, only to raise a hand he had used for balance to scratch the side of his head as Zach had fallen on top of the guy after pushing him over onto his side. "Um, Zach," Sero began while walking back around the side of the diagonal couch.

Mineta blinked a couple of times, then he turned to the open door and closed it as he realized he was shivering. What is happening?

Kind of forgot about them, Zach thought while lifting up his head. He was still smiling happily, and he jumped up and moved back before the strong paws could grab him again. His other friends around him were all confused, but Zach had been happy to see his old friend and rolled around wrestling with him without caring about their appearance for a few seconds. "You're in a great mood," Dover noted while rolling back onto all fours, then standing up on his legs and crouching with the top of his body hunched forward so he would not be touching the ceiling. His voice was low, excessively deep, and yet he sounded happy and his lips were up which was not hard to see even with his face looking like that of a bear's.

"It's true," Zach said to his new guest. Dover's tone sounded like he was pointing it out but also asking if this was real or an act.

"Zach, who's this?" Ashido asked, running over from where she was standing and getting next to Sero who was the next closest in front of Zach and his friend. Ashido was smiling and leaned up super-interestedly at the man who turned to her and lowered his smile at the way she was looking at him like he was cute. Ashido pulled her head back a bit and gulped, and she scolded herself for acting like that to this grown man.

Way to give a false first impression though, Sero thought at the guy who would frown at Ashido like that after acting the way he did when he entered. "Dover, right? I'm Sero."

"I know who all of you are," Dover mentioned, raising a hand to get them to stop before they all introduced themselves. The right hand he rose looked just like a paw, with a paw pad on it, fur on the back of his hand, and even sharp claws sticking out of that fur too. His claw nails looked dull though, the tips rounded at least a bit… though they were still intimidating when matched with his size and appearance. "And yes, my name is Dover. It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

He nodded his head in a respectful way at Sero who stood up more himself this time, sweatdropping but nodding and saying, "Likewise" in agreement. What's up with this guy? Are we supposed to just ignore all of that?

Mineta wanted to mention something about how Dover acted too, but he decided against it while inching himself along the wall to get past him and Zach. He got closer to the others and let out a breath, and then he turned back and asked, "Zach, who is this g-?" He stopped himself as the bear-man looked to him with an expression that made Mineta's sweat glands act up. "Uh- I mean, how did the two of you meet?"

Zach was standing on Dover's right side, with his left hand up and rubbing the back of Dover's neck in his white fur that had tints of brown in some patches. Dover bowed his head more and rubbed it to the right into Zach who wobbled back at how much weight was in that head, but he kept petting and then took off his glove from his right hand. With a hand that was actually his own, Zach started scratching Dover on top of his head with strong scratches. He dug his fingers down and pushed Dover's fur down near his eyes, and he got behind the ears, and he smiled despite his friends' surprised looks at what he was doing touching Dover with his right hand. There was no need to say anything at all to explain, as the implication was clear.

Ojiro smiled after a couple seconds of watching Zach in surprise. He really made a lot of friends out there… Ojiro caught a strange look in the corner of his eyes and turned right to see Koda staring at Dover more oddly than the rest of them. What is it, Koda?

His Quirk isn't for a specific bear, is it? Koda looked at different parts of Dover's body. There is no bear that looks like this in the wild. The different fur patterns too, and the size alone is so off. But… but at the same time…

"I just arrived in Japan," Dover said to the three right in front of him. Sero had mentioned how his Japanese was great, and Dover's response confirmed that he was not from the country as Sero suspected. "I'm originally from Russia."

"Speaking of," Zach started in Russian with a turn back to Dover. "How is the Flying Bear of Siberia? Still doing well?"

"Japanese please," Ashido said with an expectant bounce of her eyebrows at Zach for showing off and keeping secrets at the same time.

"Caterina is well," Dover replied, still in Russian with his eyes shifting over towards Ashido in a slightly darker way.

"Back to Japanese," Zach said, shaking his head and making Dover look back in an apologetic way.

Ashido wondered if he was still speaking Russian as a way to tell her that she could not tell him what to do, and she tried to stand up straighter herself. How old is this guy? I can't tell at all. I don't want to ask his age though. What if he's like 100?! The casual and annoyed way in which she told them to speak Japanese so she would be able to hear their conversation, made Ashido slink back a little even after Dover turned back and spoke Japanese again.

"I did not expect Japanese people to be so small," Dover said. "I received so many more strange looks on my walk here than I have in years."

Are all Russians like this? Sero thought. The only other person he could base his judgement on the matter was Mother Russia, and he thought it without realizing that Zach and Dover had just talked about that very same woman right in front of him. Caterina Makarov, the Flying Bear of Siberia, was the pro hero known as Mother Russia. She was pretty big too, but nothing like this! Well, even an average between the two is still crazy big.

"If you don't mind me asking," Koda began.

Zach was even more surprised than before as he looked towards Koda who was stepping closer to them. Dover also looked at Koda in mild surprise though he hid it more from his face at the voice he heard. "What is your Quirk?" Koda asked.

"It is a very powerful one," Dover replied in his deep voice. He stood farther up with his shoulders spreading out, his body looking bigger as he intimidated them with his size. "It is a combination Quirk," he began, pride in his tone that also sounded somewhat restrained though. "Between my enhanced intelligence and super strength, along with speed greater than most, it is a Quirk to be reckoned with."

"His skin under his fur is also really strong," Zach said, hyping up Dover's powers more. He rubbed Dover on the back again with his right hand, though he had put his glove back on for overall safety reasons.

"Oh, that does sound, very impressive," Ashido said. She smiled a little more after her compliment as Dover seemed to enjoy the praise. A bead of sweat was rolling down the side of her face though at the way in which he beamed at her comment.

"I have learned even more about my Quirk recently, and I have been training different combinations of my abilities," Dover said with a look back directly at Zach.

"I'm surprised you're saying so much about it," Zach said while petting his friend. "Dover used to be more humble about it," Zach said with a grin and a turn back towards his other friends. "A more shy bear," he joked, raising his hand up and catching the side of Dover's neck with a couple more scratches that made the man tilt his neck to that side and rub it around into Zach's hand.

Mineta felt another bead of sweat rolling down his face as he watched this. Ojiro scratched the back of his own neck, while Ashido told herself again not to make any expression that would have Dover thinking she thought he was cute or something. "So uh, Dover," Sero started. There were things he felt like asking like what incident caused the two of them to meet exactly, or what Dover's purpose was in Japan, but he had to ask first, "Does your, Quirk make you look like that? Or, were your parents' Quirks-"

Dover rose a paw in a stop motion, a look on his face and in his eyes that showed he totally understood the question. Sero had been asking slowly as he did not want to offend, and he was glad he got that look and that Dover was responding right away instead of making that situation awkward. He had to have heard the question a thousand times before though, so Sero had hoped it would be more like this. "Actually, my mother and father each had bear Quirks. However, my mother's was called: Polar Bear, while my father's was a smaller, brown…" Dover looked down to his side at Zach who faced him and shook his head.

"Dover," Zach started. "It's okay to tell the truth around them. I trust them," he said. He said it in a way that despite his friends all realizing in that moment that they were being lied to and had completely believed the start of what Dover was saying, they all actually felt happy anyway. "You can tell them," Zach said, and he rubbed Dover's back again in an encouraging way.

"Oh, that's great," Dover said, and he immediately started rubbing under his opposite arms with his paw pads. His expression eased up with the muscles in his face relaxing, the thicker fur around where his eyebrows would be curling up and his face looking even more bear-like than it already did. "I'm actually a bear," Dover admitted. He rubbed the areas on his body where the clothes felt the most uncomfortable, though he was careful not to scratch too hard or curl his claws in or he knew he would shred up his cheap suit.

Zach watched his friends' expressions with a calm look. Koda, he thought first, seeing Koda's eyes shoot open wide but also in realization like he knew something was off. The others were all just confused for longer, their eyes growing wider and bottom lips dropping as Dover continued, "A kodiak-polar bear hybrid, genetically engineered to be the best bear ever." Now that's just bragging, Zach thought, though he smiled more at the sound of it with a look to his side at Dover again. Dover rose his right claw to his buttons with a glance at Zach, and Zach nodded at him with a shrug showing he did not mind.

Dover took off his suit jacket and the shirt below that had buttons that slipped right out of their holes when he pulled on one side. Dover took off his pants and dropped down on all fours, and he was just a giant bear standing in Zach's living room, in the middle of Yutapu.

"Well," Sero said, finally breaking a silence that followed for ten seconds after Dover said what he really was. "I guess, I mean… Principal Nezu," he said it, and he glanced around at the others who looked back at him and nodded after a couple seconds themselves. They each relaxed and reminded themselves that this was nothing new at all. Principal Nezu even looked part bear himself!

Still, it feels a little weird, Mineta thought. Since he's naked? I mean… bears are usually naked though. The more he looked at the bear in front of him, the less he was feeling like he should be awkward in this situation at all. And as Zach started petting Dover on his back again, rubbing his hand through the thick fur covering the bear, Mineta eased up the most since he saw this intimidating figure in the doorway. Zach's weird way of interacting with the guy made a lot more sense too, and it felt less weird actually after Dover took off his clothes because it seemed like the bear was more in-tune with his animal side than their principal was.

"Yeah, totally normal," Ashido finally said herself. She shook her head around and then smiled back at the bear again, "Nice to meet you, Dover. You're so cute!" Ashido put her hands together in front of her chest and jumped up once at the bear's face when he looked up at her. He did not seem upset this time, instead glancing away for a moment almost in a shy way.

"Hagakure is going to kill you, man," Sero said with a look at Ojiro on his side.

As Sero was saying it, Ojiro was already dreading that very thing when he thought about telling Hagakure what happened here. His girlfriend who loved all things cute and cuddly, like this massive teddy bear in front of him he doubted she would be able to see now if this was just a visit. "I really thought, you were a person," Ojiro started. "I mean, I thought you were human," he corrected himself, before wondering if those two actually meant different things to animal creatures.

"Yeah, you did a great job," Zach told Dover, sliding his hand up Dover's back to his head again and petting it in a way like saying 'good job' to a dog. Although Dover was looking more like an animal now, the way Zach did that made each of his friends feel awkward once again. Especially when added along with Dover's happy reaction to the praise seen by the clear expression he made. Zach asked the bear next to him who he did not have to bend down at all to pet, "Did you fly here?"

Dover nodded his head and walked forward. The people in front of him moved to the sides, and Dover walked on all fours around the side of the couch and over to the front of it. He stood up on hind legs and sat back on it, and Zach glanced at the bottom of his couch while walking around its side. Should probably hold, he thought while heading to a different seat himself. Dover frowned for a moment, but he looked down at the couch and hummed as he understood why it was no more weight could be put on. "Well I flew in to Narita. I walked all the way here-"

"What?!" Mineta exclaimed while running around the side of the couch, beating Ashido back to her old seat. He almost jumped into it before the pink girl about to give up, but what Dover said made him stumble and spin in shock. "But that's like, hundreds of kilometers away!"

Ashido took back her own seat and Mineta looked over his shoulder in disappointment. He only looked back for a second though before refacing forward and seeing Dover shrug his large shoulders. "But didn't you say you just arrived?" Mineta wondered.

Sero, Ojiro, and Koda all came over and pulled up seats around the living room. They looked to Dover wondering how he would respond to that, wondering if there was some secret he had that he would rather just talk to Zach about. "I did," Dover replied with a frown at Mineta. "Just a few days ago. Walking here rose more eyes than I thought it would," he added, frowning a bit more but getting back in a better mood as he turned to Zach. "But the flight process was easy. I bought multiple seats, and I applied for a passport and everything so I'm pretty much considered human at this point."

Zach lowered his smile a little though he was happy to hear about most of that. "You'll always be a bear," Zach said from his chair just in front of the edge of the couch. "You shouldn't try to be more like people."

"People are amazing," Dover argued back. He leaned forward on the couch as he did and then looked around at the others who all looked surprised to hear him say that. "So much more amazing than bears with all your culture and art. I enjoy acting like a person," he said, turning back to Zach after saying it firmly that that was his opinion. Zach nodded in understanding and decided not to say anything else about it, but then Dover added with a serious look, "Though I will always be your bear too."

The way he said it sounded so sentimental and serious, that no one in the room thought for a second that he was joking about that. It was almost like he was reassuring Zach of that fact in case Zach thought he had forgotten while pretending to be more human. Ojiro looked to Zach to say something, but instead he saw an accepting look instead that made him curl his hands into his thighs. I can't just- "That's," Ojiro began. He looked at Dover, and his eyes shifted to Zach for a moment but right back again. "If you have this intelligence, the calling yourself Zach's is kind of like slavery."

Does he think he's Zach's pet or something? Mineta thought with an uneasy expression of his own as he nodded with what Ojiro was saying and glanced hesitantly to Zach and Dover during it.

Zach opened his mouth to admit Ojiro had a point, but he could not get it out quick enough. "Except I'm only five years old," Dover argued back at Ojiro, frowning at him and giving him a dark glare that had Ojiro easing back up again. "And I am an animal," he added. "And I want to be Zach's," the last point was not that great of one, but it was the one he said while looking back at Zach with a softer expression. Zach rolled his eyes at the look and then just smiled at Dover showing it was fine for him to call himself that. Dover smiled back, but then he added, "Though I'm sad Zach won't ride me into battle covering us in Death armor anymore. I wanted to-" Dover looked around while starting it, a big smile on his face showing off his sharp teeth and an excited expression that also started to appear far more intense with the words that he was speaking.

It was only when Dover looked back to Zach and saw him shaking his head back and forth fast, that Dover froze with his mouth open. "I thought you said I could trust them," Dover said accusingly, though he was pulling back into the couch and the sentence he just said sounded more like he knew he had done something wrong and was trying to make excuses in an ashamed way. "I'm sorry," he added as Zach opened his mouth to say it was no problem, and then when Zach decided to change what he was going to say, Dover added himself, "I should have known to keep everything more mysterious."

Zach frowned this time and gave Dover a look as he was compensating for what he just did by making it out like Zach only didn't want him saying anything because Zach liked to be mysterious. He figured it would probably work, but it was not what he wanted his former classmates thinking of him: that he was always being intentionally vague for the sole purpose of seeming mysterious. Zach gazed around at his five friends from U.A. in his living room who were still mind-blown and imagining the two of them riding into war together.

Ashido's jaw had dropped as soon as she saw Zach shaking his head fast at Dover to get him to stop talking. Her first thought was, He's serious?! And from there, her mind ran wild with the thought of Zach on that brownish-white bear's back. Wait! Covered in "Death armor?" Does that mean- In Ashido's head, the vision of Zach on top of Dover turned into a dark form with a skeletal outline on top of a much larger black bear whose skull showed through with flaring red eyes just like Zach's. Ashido leaned back into her chair just at the thought of it. That's scary.

THAT'S SO COOL! Mineta thought.

We did that one time, Zach thought, though he hesitated against saying that aloud as he thought it might seem like he was just trying to hide things. Everyone's too amazed by it right now to consider time tables or where we were or anything. I have ample time to adjust. This isn't the end. Don't panic or show any signs that this could be life-shattering. He came up with something he figured might be a good idea to say just as a hint as to what his bigger explanation later would be, that way when he told his friends the "full" story, they would see that he had not had all that time to think about it and was actually telling them whatever he had thought right after that truth had come out when he mentioned that detail that didn't make sense without the rest. Before he could say it though, Mineta had jumped out of his seat and asked excitedly, "Can I ride you too?"

Dover's head snapped to Mineta and his teeth bared at the boy who stepped towards him with the intention of riding him. His body hunched forward when he did it, and a snarl came out of the back of his throat which caused Mineta to stumble several steps backwards and fall on the floor. "No," he said through his snarl. "Only Zach can." His voice was lower and scratchy, and then he saw Zach's disappointed look out the corner of his eyes that made him snap back straight up in his seat with a surprised look at what he was doing. "Oh, sorry," he said, his voice much more casual again and his tone more normal than it had been so far. "Still a bear," he reminded to the short boy who was staring up at his face in nervous shock.

Mineta nodded his head quickly to show he totally understood. Then he scrambled back up to his feet and got back on his chair. Oh thank God I held it back, Mineta thought, and he decided he would wait five minutes before going to pee as it would make it look like he wet himself if he left to use the bathroom now.

Zach shook his head at the animal who pulled back sadly at Zach's look, then Dover got up and ran over to Zach who he leaned into. Dover cuddled up with Zach as his teddy bear to play around with him and not have to be super-intelligent for once. Zach sighed while petting around the sides of the huge bear that was being careful with his weight, and he thought, He acts so much like an animal when it's just us. Everyone else says he almost never shows it. I guess I do tell him it's fine for him to act bear-ish. Bears don't massacre and torture their own kind though. Not most of them, at least, Zach thought with a sadder look hidden by Dover's chest fur, and he pet Dover in a softer way afterwards.

Why when it comes to Mineta, he hates it… Sero thought confusedly, and he glanced to his side only to be surprised at the understanding look on Koda's face that Ojiro was already staring at.

Ashido was just looking straight at Zach and Dover though. She had a soft smile and her whole body felt warm as she watched the two of them. Zach's the only one who can treat him like that.

---

A Year Ago…

In a snowy forest in the middle of a frozen expanse of wilderness, two figures in heavy white costumes crawled through the snow in far below freezing temperatures. They had black masks on their faces under their thick white hoods that had fur linings on the outsides. They had goggles over the masks with anti-freeze glass that melted the snow and ice that tried sticking to them. Over their mouths were protruding cylinders with holes at the ends of them, and out of those holes of the mask came thick breaths of steam each time one of the seventeen year olds breathed out.

Zach and Darling crawled together towards a tree at the edge of a small cliff. If they went to either side a bit back, they could have crawled around the cliff that just lifted up a few meters higher than the regular ground on the other side of it. Most of the landscape was flat, but that little slope gave them a high ground to be able to look around in every direction while also blocking them from sight in the direction they were trying to do reconnaissance in.

Zach crawled a bit faster than Darling was moving. His eyes turned red as he poked his head up and looked towards the round white dome sticking out of a clearing in the forest ahead. He brought his head back down fast and thought about everything he examined in that moment. He lay flat for a moment but his face scrunched up at what he thought he just saw out there. "What'd you see?" Darling asked, crawling right up next to him on his right side.

He turned his right to look at her and she looked left, and they both stared at each other in these heavy outfits with scary masks over their faces for a second. Their steam hovered in front of their faces, and Zach could not help but smile at the girl who was next to him after so much. "Looks like two guards, bear Quirks." He scooted forward a bit more to the edge of the small snowy cliff they were on, and he looked past the tree near the top of it while Darling did the same.

"Bears, huh?" Darling asked softly. The forest was nearly silent around them. There was the sound of some snow falling off tree branches where it had packed on too thick, and the wind blowing around that made it colder also made some noise too. They looked closer and then Zach reached back and pulled a white sniper rifle off of his back that he rested on the ground in front of him. He looked through the scope on top, and Darling did the same with the one she pulled out at him doing it.

Outside of the white dome they were looking towards, there were two men standing there covered in white fur. They were heavyset, and they had thick arms that ended in claws too. They stood on their thick hind legs though and they were wearing body armor, and Zach and Darling both had strange feelings swirling in their guts as they looked at those creatures. "They really do, look like bears, don't they?" Darling asked. Zach nodded with her, and he frowned deeper while staring at the door of the dome behind the guards.

The door opened up and another bear-man stepped out of the research facility they had heard about. They looked towards this larger bear, covered in thick black body armor over its torso but leaving its arms and legs exposed just like the others so that their joints would have free range of movements. This one's fur looked brownish too, though it was still very white around it. It was bigger by over a head from the other men standing on both hind legs, and its face also looked just like a bear's. Instead of a polar bear kind of face though, this one's face was a big thicker and had a rounded jawline. "Kodiak, polar, grizzly? Polar kodiak hybrid?" Darling wondered, zooming in more towards those bear-men and especially the big one that turned to the others and started talking.

Something's weird here, Zach thought. So many with bear Quirks, could they have figured out a way to designate what kind of Quirks people get here… or, could those actually be? Like, Principal Nezu… Zach's eyes started to grow wide, his heart rate speeding up as he stared at the large creatures standing on two legs and speaking to each other. Then he heard Darling start in a slow voice on his side, "Hey Zach, what was it Michael said, about how far bears can smell? Because, I'm pretty sure they're distracting us."

Zach's eyes opened huge, his heart rate sped up, and all three of the bears snapped their heads towards him and Darling. Oh shit!

The two guard bears hit down on all fours and started sprinting forwards as the one behind them shouted something. He was too far for Zach or Darling to hear him, but at the moment that bear-man yelled, a dozen holes opened up in the snow in the forest around them. Darling fired her rifle that had a suppressor on the end of it, and a round went into the front right leg of the bear on the left of the two sprinting straight towards them. An instant later Zach fired, while getting up on his knees, but his own movement was not what made his bullet miss. The bear on the right moved like a blur when the one next to it fell down face-first into the snow and skid forward.

Other Quirks? Zach thought while getting fully up onto both feet. He spun to his right and saw the ground only ten meters from them moving. Not the ground! The movement in the corner of his vision while he was turning made it seem just like snow, but the figure charging at him from that side had a camouflage ability Zach pinpointed solely from the prints in the snow that knocked flakes up into the air. More bears! "Rebel! Full comms! Primary assault team move in," Zach ordered. He fired off a couple of times towards where the camo bear was, while Darling jumped up and put her back up against Zach's after she took out the speedy bear that had blurred when Zach fired at it.

Darling had fired off two shots in succession, getting the bear to dodge one direction and then hit it as it was dodging the first bullet. She saw the blood splash out the back of its right foreleg and paint the snow below it before it crashed down and made a trench into the snowy forest. Even though she stood up right after and put her back up to Zach's, she could not help thinking about what she saw back near the dome. "More reinforcements coming from the dome," Darling said, while her eyes shifted back that way again and focused on the thing that had her full attention. Are they really all bears? Even that one? Darling saw the largest one standing near the entry to the dome, staring directly out towards her and Zach even as he called out orders to the others who were on all fours unlike him. That bear then turned and headed inside, the dome's steel doors slamming shut behind him while over twenty others were left outside to deal with the intruders.

"What happened to a 'good amount' of recon?" Rebel questioned.

"We're on our way Death!"

"Flying in! Should be there soon-"

"Three minutes out!"

Zach and Darling turned their heads either way and looked at the two dozen bears charging at their position. Zach tossed his rifle onto the ground and pulled out a pair of swords he spun around and then held pointed back at either side of his waist. He bent his knees, his right foot sliding forward in the snow, and his eyes locked on the closest bear to him that finally slowed down like the others around it. Focus it out solely on the weapons. Darkness came out of Zach's arms and steamed into the air around them, then the black of Death stretched down from his fingers onto the hilts of his curved blades. The blackness covered the steel itself, and Zach slashed his arms in front of him back and forth before stopping with one blade pointed either way and his head just between them with one hand at his forehead level and the other just below his chin.

His red eyes glowed through his goggles, and the breath that came out of the filter in front of his mouth was black instead of white like before. His white clothing had black wisps coming out of it, darkened as Nightmare stretched around Zach's body but managed to mostly stay under his clothes. "I think these are actual bears," Darling started while darting her eyes around at all the furry creatures walking towards her. They bared their teeth and dug their claws deeper into the snow as they moved forward.

Most of them looked like polar bears, though some of them had stranger appearances with patches of brown or red fur; one had antlers like a stag's, another completely black but pitch black unlike a normal black bear would be. The pitch black one also had a similar body type to the polar bears, wearing similar black body armor to the rest. Two of the polar bears had miniguns attached to their backs, each one with two sticking out to the sides of their heads that had dark helmets on over them thickest around the earpieces. Those miniguns started to spin, the winding noise getting loud as they aimed at the two seventeen year olds who moved as soon as the attack was coming.

"Try not to kill them anyway," Zach replied back as he sprinted away from Darling. He slashed the sword in his right hand down before getting close to any of the bears, and a slash of darkness came off the blade, "Death Slash!" The darkness carved through the snow and slammed into the bear spinning its miniguns while all the others around it started charging Zach. It was his first time using his Quirk ranged during the fight, and he knew the others would all expect it now. He took out the long ranged enemy first though while showing off that power, as even with the bears knowing how far he could attack without his rifle, if they needed to get close anyway in order to fight him then he was fine.

"Understood, Commander!" Darling called out, while she skied off the side of a lifted ledge in the forest. The two bears running up the slant after her reached for the girl with their sharp claws, and they fell forward off the ledge and twelve feet down where they hit down harder than the girl landing on her skis while doing a 180 twist. She rose up both hands and fired at the bears, and darts hit them in the sides of their necks while they were in the middle of getting up. The darts fell to the snow a second later though, and Darling spun back around and stepped with the skis still as her feet to cross-country ski her way between the trees and make some distance. Their hides are too thick. And now that I think about it, the amount of tranq' in each of those wouldn't have been enough to drop them.

"Above you!" Zach called out, his red eyes darting over and spotting the movement above Darling's path and dropping down.

She stopped short and dove to her right, her feet turning back to normal in her black boots that stretched and returned to form when she needed them to. The bear that had been moving up in the trees slammed down into the snow where Darling would have been right under without the warning, and snow exploded out in all directions like a wave rising up. As that snow was lifting, Darling darted back towards that landing spot straight through the snow. She pulled out a knife from her belt and dropped to her knees that extended out upwards and downwards with her legs bent, so that short skis formed on her knees this time allowing her to slid under the swinging bear claw coming through the snow at her as the bear smelled her approaching. The claw swung over the top of Darling's head and blew away most of the flakes lingering there, and the white bear lowered its eyes to see the girl slash her knife behind its right knee so deep that she cut through hide and tendons, and the bear let out a pained roar as it dropped down. It tried twisting its body and slashing at the girl, but Darling got back up on her feet after the slide and pointed her free hand up in the air with the grappling gun she had on it.

Darling fired her hook up into the trees and it wrapped around a branch and yanked her up there. Four bears closing in on her position right past the bear she just took down all spun their heads and ran after the girl who spotted two she chose to go after. A loud whirring noise filled the forest around her though, and Darling retracted her grappling hook as fast as she could and pointed a different direction. She pulled herself off in a completely different direction in the woods, and the trees behind her started getting shredded by the miniguns on the back of the second turret bear. The hail of gunfire caused huge branches to break off trees and fall down into the forest, snow from the canopies falling too while more was knocked up in the air as the branches and chunks of trunks hit down into snow banks.

Keep moving, Zach thought, though he did not look back at Darling to check if she was alright. He just sprinted straight towards the bear that was clearly focused on her by the direction it was aiming. He sprinted between other bears, into the area that was getting so much snow knocked up from the floor and dropped from above. Zach heard the primary attack team announce how they were 'almost there' again in his ear, but there was a lot he had to do before that 'almost' was to come. If that one's still around when the jets arrive, he could take them down- Zach heard the minigun the loudest it had been, and bullet holes were still ripping in the trees above so he knew it was not aimed at him. However, the snow in the air around him had gotten to its thickest, and he didn't see the bear charging at him and leading him to meet him head-on until it was too late.

Zach spun and tried to raise the sword in his right hand, but he got tackled to the floor by a bear that weighed so much he felt the wind get knocked straight out of his lungs. His Nightmare form was more off than activated, and the sudden disorientation made the darkness leave his other blade that he returned a strong grip on after losing one of the swords. The bear that tackled him had made them skid forward in the snow, and there was still snow on all sides of them falling from the chaos around the forest. The bear that had Zach pinned beneath it snapped its head down, but Zach pulled his left arm up and shoved his sword into the bear's face. He put the flat end of the blade up into the bear's muzzle, but the bear pushed harder down on him and bared all its teeth at the figure below who had a panicked look on his face covered in sweat as this thousand pound creature crushed him with its weight.

More are coming! I need to get the one with guns! Zach's eyes flared red and his hands surrounded in darkness again. He had his right hand lifted and pressed up against the back of the flat part of the blade, but both of his arms were shaking as the bear desperately tried biting him. The bear's mouth opened and Zach thought it was going to try biting on the blade, but instead its mouth opened more and Zach heard the guttural growls and roars turn into something else. His heart rate that was already high sped up even more, his eyes huge and shaking in his goggles and losing their red glow. "K-kill… m-me…"

The bear snarled it through a voice-box that did not sound natural, like human speech coming out of that larynx was an entire struggle in itself and barely managed to escape its twisted lips. Zach's eyes turned red again and his entire body erupted in darkness this time. As heavy as the bear was, it was the pressure the beast was pushing down on him too that really made it impossible for him to get out. Once that bear was dead, Zach was able to push it off easier. He stood up with a flame of darkness around his whole body and showing off his location to everyone in the woods around him.

Huge turrets just emerged out of the ground from similar holes as the first squad of bears. They were pointed up at first but all turned and targeted the black mass that all the bears were looking at too. Darling landed on a tree branch and stared over through all the trees with worry over her face at how much attention Zach was drawing to himself. While all the bears focused though, and the turrets locked on, Zach's mind was moving faster than them all and his teeth clenched furiously behind his mask. He felt the surge from the bear he just killed using way more Death than he needed to. It just made him angrier though, and breath came out thick and black as he let out a single exhale in the moment before they were all going to attack him. Whatever experiments they did, they gave the bears intelligence. What they did- they made them smart enough to understand what's happening to them! These creatures were turned into slaves, but they aren't mindless. They're weapons. They're fucking experiments! And all they want to do is DIE?!

"Kill the bears," Zach ordered. "Put them out of their misery." His voice was scratchy and deep, and the thirty people listening to him felt themselves getting darker and more intense from his tone alone. Most of the incoming group had no idea what was going on other than the vague information they had on this place before their own reconnaissance. They heard it was a "research facility" though, and their leader had warned them what they might find inside. Even though his last order did not sound like the worst of what he said could be waiting for them, his tone had everyone as serious as they could be. His tone… along with the sounds of gunfire and loud roars coming over their headsets when his voice was patched in for them.

"Intruders." A low, mechanical voice announced over the forest. The beasts surrounding Zach did not charge in yet, and the turrets aimed at him were not firing. "Vacate the premises immediately. This is a secure government facility-"

Zach turned in a circle while the voice was announcing at him. He looked at each of the turrets and tapped on his goggles while making his three-sixty turn. Then he sprinted to his right at one of the bears awaiting orders to attack him. The mechanical voice giving him orders to leave cut off, as whoever was speaking to him could clearly see him and saw that he was ignoring them. Black flames just shot out the back of Zach's legs and propelled him faster through the snow he sprinted over at the closest bear to his right that had darker brown fur patches mixed in with the white.

"I'm marking targets," Zach called out, as he ran past the bear that never got its claws up to block in time. That bear fell behind him, but it never hit the ground as it was slammed backwards and up into the air by the high caliber bullets that shredded through its body and the bear behind it that was turning to follow Zach. Five trees had their trunks completely shredded through too, and the sound of the gun fire was much louder than when it was from the miniguns attached to bears' backs. The large metal turrets that came out of the ground had twelve holes on the front of their rectangular surfaces, and they were on round swivels that turned to drag after Zach.

The turrets stopped firing all at once, and the gunfire came out more sporadically as Zach was trying to lead the rounds to get them to fly past into more enemies or even have the turrets aim at each other. "We're almost there!" Tama's voice shouted over the comms. She was standing in the jet with her helmet on and gripping the handle hanging off the ceiling frustratedly that she was not already there. Her Quirk: Target, was needed, and here she was still late to the fight. "Thirty seconds!"

"I can't wait," Zach said, knowing Tama was going to try and get a better lock on the targets than he could while in the middle of fighting. The moment they had given him gave him an opportunity, but he had to rush his opponents during that moment or risk losing it so he had not finished. "You hear me? Fire missiles at each marked location!" Zach yelled.

The Cloak was flying in Zach's direction, but it was still far from him. The Cloak's weapon capabilities were well within range though, but Access called out as he heard Zach's shout from the bridge, "But you're right there-"

"That's an order!" Zach yelled.

"Firing!" Raylei yelled, accepting the coordinates and firing the missiles herself without anymore argument. "Missiles 1 through 4 away!"

As Death heard the response, he ran behind a tree to try and get cover as two turrets firing at him dragged from opposite directions. He only had a split second of hiding behind it before it was ripped apart, but in that moment he was able to leap up in the air so the hail of gunfire went below him. He used the falling tree trunk for cover, running along the side of it and turning the wood black in the shape of footprints that spread out along the darkening tree as it fell. He dove forward through some falling snow at a bear that had two black bat wings it used to fly up towards him. The wings were muscular and covered in popping veins, and the fur all along the back of this bear was patchy, most-so around where the wings sprouted out of the creature. There were boils and scars all around the protrusions, and as Zach pushed down on the top of the bear's head and flipped over her, his teeth bared in even more anger at the disfigurement that looked so painful.

The bear that went past him turned with a rabid snarl on its face, and then a knife stuck through its forehead and into its brain before it even saw the black weapon flying at it. The creature spun in the air with its body turning upside-down so it fell onto its wings. Blood fell out of the air after the bear, and all the other creatures down below looked up waiting for the dark figure that had used the tree to jump that high. They waited for him to start coming back down, but a pair of black wings ripped out of Zach's own back and spread ten feet in either direction. Zach spotted Darling taking precise shots from a distance, but he also spotted two jets flying towards him and called out, "Drop there! Move in on foot and get the jets away until the turrets are down!"

As Zach yelled it he swooped down to keep fire on him with his comrades so close-by. He started swerving around through the air, flapping his wings behind him and then twisting his body and flapping behind again to shoot a different direction. Bullets ripped through his wings and Zach wobbled in the air, feeling not very aerodynamic with his wings as thin as they were. The amount of Death he had to put into them to make their flaps down actually propel him up was far too much, and Death ripped off of his wings in chunks with every flap. Not good. I need all I can get for once we're inside!

"Don't forget you've got those missiles coming in hot!" Access called out as he heard the very loud gunfire over Death's comms sounding like he was right on those turrets.

"Attack squad moving in!" Tama yelled.

"We're heading towards your location," Mark added. "Death, is killing these creatures really what we should do?" He asked while sprinting at the front of the group who had just evacuated their planes together.

Rebel was leaning forward at his computer, and Cherasaw turned his head slightly to the right with a nervous look on his face. Rampart typed even faster too while seeing the four missiles shooting through the air on one radar, a projection map for the location of the others based on where they knew this base was and sent Zach to, and the blinking red notification that Cherasaw made start blinking on all their computer set-ups. Cherasaw just patched in the other two to a call he picked up shortly after the missiles were fired, and the dispatcher continued in Russian that instantly translated on all of their screens into English, "…Ivan the Bold, and Mother Russia are responding to whatever location the missiles land. Another team is heading to the source consisting of…"

"Cloak, You hearing this?" Rebel asked after just patching that call through into Access, Raylei, Mark, and Death's headsets.

"Pull away," Mark called out before Access or Raylei could respond from the bridge. "Move towards the next location and get out of Russian airspace. We'll take the jets back to you."

"What if what's in there is too much for just the primary attack team?" Access asked.

"Missiles fifteen seconds out!" Raylei reminded in case everyone was too distracted. She had herself on an open channel for the whole attack team to hear right now, and several of them spun around at the warning of how close those rockets were.

"Then the heroes will help us handle it! Just pull out!" Mark yelled. He sprinted forward faster towards the sounds of all those loud turrets. "As soon as the missiles blow," Mark said, speaking to the squad of twenty three behind him who did not question that they should follow Mark's lead here even though they were all just on the primary attack team. The most senior member of the group got louder as the missiles were heading over his head, "Push quickly into the chaos and overwhelm them!"

Whenever Zach tried getting close to the turrets, they would swivel quickly and drag around to aim at him. The closer he got to the turrets too, the harder it would be to dodge the shots as they had less distance to fly and he had less time to dodge in that shorter time they were moving the fastest they would travel. He determined that even at the start should he be able to get in close to one it would require a large burst of Death fired out behind him, and at the moment he took it down he would have to slow for a second too for enough time to get fired on by all the others or swarmed by the several bears still around him. Despite not being that close to the turrets though, when Zach saw the missiles peeking over the trees of the new treeline and dipping down, he turned and sprinted away from the closest turret to him.

He had to keep serpentining as he ran, but he spun his head to the right and yelled out, "Take cover!"

Darling jumped off the tree branch she was on and fired a grappling hook at a tree even farther from a turret she thought she was well far enough away from already. She pulled herself towards that tree and then spun herself around the trunk and grabbed it for dear life as the whole forest shook around her.

Zach jumped off the ground as he felt the initial vibration, since he knew the tremors would take him off his feet anyway at the speed he was sprinting. At the bottom of his vision he could see cracks breaking through the snow, then all the snow getting covered by snow blowing the same way he was leaping, and then all that snow that was just covered being lifted up from where it was and blown ahead too. Zach crossed his arms and curled up as he felt the heat behind him, but he focused Death on his back and made it stronger to the point he felt nothing.

Zach hit the ground and spun around to look into the explosions. He darted his eyes towards the final turret, and he called out, "Darling! Last one's aimed in the direction the others are coming from!"

That turret started firing even in all the explosions around it, straight at Mark who thought with the sudden attack they would catch everyone far more off-guard. "Hold!" Mark yelled, while swinging his arms up in front of him and raising up a ton of water from the snow just melted in the blasts. The wall of water was so thick that the high-caliber bullets shooting through smoke slowed down in the wall with visible trails left behind them until they just sank down without any more momentum behind them. Mark started pushing the wall forward, but bears came rushing from either side of the wall, and the bullets firing at him got farther through the water wall the closer it got to the turret. He had to spread some water out at the start trying to stop those bears who escaped the explosions by not being very close to the turrets in the first place, but he yelled, "Don't stop! Keep pushing forward!"

The two dozen who had hesitated when the turret started firing their way, and who had watched in awe as Mark managed to react instantly and save them all, recovered from those shocks and reminded themselves where they were. They ran at the bears and attacked as a group, and the ground shook again as the turret on the other side of Mark's water wall exploded in a ball of fire.

Darling lowered her arms that were connected in front of her chest and in the form of a grenade launcher. They split back apart and turned into normal arms again, and Darling reached down and pulled out a few nutrition bars from pouches on her sides. She pulled her mask down and shoved the bars into her mouth, then she pulled the mask right back up and ran forward while chewing as fast as she could. All the bullets she was firing from her own converted matter were catching up with her, but the grenade was what made her stomach start rumbling and her whole body to feel like she was getting drained. Need to keep to short range for now to increase efficiency. She darted forward and pulled out a knife in her right hand, while transforming her left arm completely into a sword with batteries attached to either side and sparks coming off the blade.

At the point where Darling's left arm was human again, her skin transformed into a rubbery substance with even higher electrical resistance than rubber which kept her electrified sword arm from shocking her. Unfortunately for the first bear she was running towards that was in the middle of charging at Death, the creature's armor did not have the same kind of resistance. Darling stabbed through the armor into the bear's back and penetrated into its body but not through it. The bear still fell though while all its fur stood on end, and Darling flipped the rest of her body over the bear's back while yanking her left arm out of it now covered in blood. She landed on the bear's back and swung her right hand down towards the bear's skull, jamming her blade into the bear's skull in the soft spot under its ear.

"KILL ME!" Darling spun her head to the left, and she let go of the knife instead of trying to rip it out of the other bear's skull as this grayish white one with strange glowing purple eyes sprinted at her faster than most of the others. It had the drop on me, Darling thought in confusion, with another feeling swirling inside her chest too that made her jump back again as the bear charged right over its fallen comrade to the point she landed first. If it didn't shout that… these bears all, they all want to die?! This is why Zach said it! Darling rose her right hand, transforming it into a pistol. For a moment she ignored the weakness she had already felt, and she just fired a bullet from her pistol hand in between the bear's eyes.

The bear kept charging her. Darling's eyes opened huge in shock, as she expected the bear to collapse and skid forward in the snow dying. She blinked though, and she realized that her right arm was pointed the wrong direction and she just fired off randomly. Like Cee's! Darling thought, and she took a step back in panic but the bear was already on her- The bear's gray fur slammed into Darling with a rush of blood forcefully exploding out behind it. Darling got knocked backwards by that mass of innards alone still moving at the speed the bear had been moving, even if the creature itself did just get turned inside-out in a second.

Darling stood back up, brushing her hands that turned back to normal down her body and grunting at how gross doing so was. She turned away from Mark without as much as thanks as she saw him running towards her with a hand raised. Darling looked the other way where she heard an explosion in the part of the forest where Zach had led the majority of the remaining bears he was fighting on his own. "Death! I'm coming to you!"

I heard one growl 'kill me' earlier too. I ignored it then, for some reason- but what is that one then?! The one that actually looked to be talking. In Darling's mind she imagined the bigger bear that she had seen giving out what seemed like more coherent orders. Is that one, at least, actually a person? There have to be real people here too, right?!

Zach flipped backwards and kicked up under the chin of the twenty foot tall bear that had grown rapidly during its charge at him. The beast's fur did not extend or spread out while the rest of its body did, showing the pink skin beneath rippling and pulsing with each foot the bear grew. It roared at Zach after he kicked up under its chin, and Zach ground his teeth as the amount of Death he put into the kick was not enough for a creature of its size anymore. He landed down in the snow and his red eyes darted every direction around him. His hood was down and his black hair fell over the back of his mask that still covered the bottom half of his face, and he had tossed aside his goggles that were only getting fogged up and blocking his red vision from catching everything around him.

Five enemies around me. The sixth has a long-range Quirk to be staying back there. It hasn't used it yet. When Zach landed, three of the bears were already rushing in at him. He heard Darling shout that she was on her way, but he ignored her and the rest of his comrades as he stood between a cluster of powerful enemies. They were not villains, but they were bigger than him, took more Death than usual to take down, and his blades did not pierce their skin as easily as they did most humans.' Can't try wings again or I won't be able to keep it up. I don't need to get thick enough to allow pass-throughs either. Just six left. I can do this using minimal Death. I have to.

Zach ducked his head as the faster bear on his right swung a claw at him and fired the sharp nails from its paw. He saw them removing from the claw at the last moment, but he knew they were going to do so or that something similar was going to happen when he saw the bear slashing before it would have hit him. Two of the sharp nails passed so close to the top of his head that black strands of hair fell out of the dark veil. Zach twisted to his right where that bear was bringing its claw down close to him, and he swung his left arm around that side with a 180 turn pivoting on his soles in the slushy snow. Death Wind, Zach thought, and Death swept off of his hand in a thick mass that slammed into the bear to his right while also sweeping around his back where the next two closest bears were.

The two in front who had hesitated more before charging, putting them slightly farther behind on the charge, were about to reach Zach. The Death Wind partially caught both of the other bears besides the one that collapsed down to the ground, but neither collapsed and instead just backpedaled away to keep awake after seeing what the darkness had done to their comrades. Zach knew those two would back up instead of run through the darkness, and he pulled out a knife using his right hand while still facing backwards. He twisted more around, raising his left hand and looking like he was going to make a second Death Wind. He did, but the second was much weaker and the bears were able to each avoid it by jumping up in the air over the dark wind passing close to the ground.

Zach clenched his left hand into a fist and pulled that darkness he just fired in both directions back towards him. As much had faded, there was still a good amount left to come in at him and make more of a dark sphere around his body cloaking where inside it his actual body was. The two bears falling towards him could not pull back having taken off the ground, and Zach aimed for the one that looked more likely to be able to pull back and get out of the mass. He ran forward and jumped up at the perfect moment to pass under the forelegs of the bear farther back. He reached up his right hand, and he cut his knife from between the bear's arms all the way down its stomach and then yanked down quickly to dodge the swipes with its hind legs it tried to hit him with.

Die- shit! Zach felt a pulse of energy fill him, and he ground his teeth with his lips twitching disturbingly behind his mask. The first bear that fell into the dark mass he just left behind passed out, but the one that got so much weaker while falling into it was on the verge of death already. Its cut open stomach just made it easier for the lingering Death to take its life, and Zach felt the pulse of strength along with a feeling inside him that had the corners of his lips trying hard to pull up. I don't want to enjoy this! Zach screamed in his own head, while turning and then yanking his head to the right and dodging a bullet that passed so close to the right side of his face that part of his mask ripped under the black veil.

Zach's vision focused ahead and between trees where the long-distance bear had rotated to. Out from its open snout had emerged a rifle barrel, and there were scopes extended out from its eyes that had blood running out the corners of them and down its face to drip off its snarling jaw. The sight of how pained that clenched jaw looked, with the blood coating the bear's fur just from it using its Quirk, the Quirk it was being forced to use, it helped Zach refocused all his feelings on rage again. As much as it helped him stop from feeling the natural euphoria his Quirk gave him when killing with it, it also made him so focused on that rage and the horror of what he was seeing, that he did not notice the red glow behind him until it got much brighter.

His red vision shifted to his right side, and he saw the bear farther back of the two who survived his first Death Wind had opened its mouth and was firing flames from it. Even when he was glaring at the long-distance bear, his peripheral vision had been more locked to his back-left where the closer of the other remaining two was charging towards him. The one on his back-right was more mid-range than he expected though, and Zach bent his legs while surrounding his legs in more Death than he had planned on using. MOVE! He realized it while he was flooding Death to his legs, and he tried to bend faster but wound up just extending early since the flames were on him. He dove to the side without the amount of force he needed to really get out of the way, and the fireball flying towards him caught his right side before he could get out of its range.

"AH!" He yelled out in pain and then ground his teeth as he hit the floor and rolled over muddy, slushy earth. He slammed his left hand on the floor and pushed himself up into the air, and he dodged the shot that flew right where he was finishing rolling. He ignored his right side and how burnt it felt, and he pressed his feet against the top of a broken tree trunk behind him. The force at which he pushed off the tree sent him flying back at the charging bear that changed directions to get close to him. He reached it much faster than it thought he would, and Zach cut a knife into its throat before pressing down on its back with both hands.

He flipped off into the air, dodging the next fireball that engulfed the bear with a cut throat. A pulse of Death fired out of Zach's back before the bear firing flames could even close its mouth, and Zach passed over the path of fire and smashed a hand down on the top of its jaw. Flames exploded out between the bear's teeth, its teeth blasting outwards as all the flames trying to escape got trapped inside, causing an explosion that collapsed the bear to the floor before Zach even jammed a knife into its skull.

He stood up with his blade down in the bear's brain, and he was panting as he turned his head and glared towards where he thought the final bear was. Bang! The bear he looked towards fell to the side, blood splashed all of the ground and a tree trunk to its left side. Running in from its right was a girl who spun her head and then darted towards Zach as fast as her skis would let her. Her skis shrank and shrank as the ground turned slushier and then to just regular dirt as all the snow just around Zach had melted with that explosion. "Zach!" Darling exclaimed, running right up to him and only stopping because he lifted his right palm in a way telling her he was alright. "Your side," she said, looking down to his right.

Zach glanced down finally at his own right side and stared blankly at the underside of his arm and his right side under where his arm was when he put it down. He held back the wince when his arm touched the tender skin underneath where his armor had been burnt off. "You're burned badly," Darling whispered, looking back up at the boy standing too strong to have an injury like that.

"I'm fine," Zach said. His right side covered in darkness as he spotted other soldiers running towards him, most of them in all black though some had on winterized costumes with some white coats over them. Mark frowned towards Zach as his right side coated in darkness despite the rest of his body being back to normal. Zach looked into Darling's eyes with his own still slightly red, and she looked out of her goggles back into his eyes. She was panting behind her mask, but she nodded at him strongly when he gave her that look like he was checking if she was alright. Her hood was down and her brown hair messed up below the tie of her ponytail behind her head where it had come out of her jacket. Zach's black hair fell behind his head to around the back of his neck, and it waved around messy from the hood and in the wind of the cold Siberian wilderness.

I hate every part of this, Zach thought. He turned his head and looked towards one of the tortured bears lying on the ground barely moving after his Death had knocked it out. He yanked the knife out of the skull of the last bear that he did not know if he killed with the blade or by making those flames erupt inside its own mouth. Then he walked over to the other bear and he jammed the knife down into the exposed side of its skull as it lay on its right side. Its chest stopped moving at all, and Zach pulled the bloody knife out and put it down into a sheath at his side.

"Death," Tama began softly. "Are these all, actual bears?"

"They are," Darling said. She pointed a pistol to her right and fired. It made a light pft sound since there was a silencer on the end of it, and Darling put down the last unconscious bear that she saw Zach turn to ready to kill that one as well. "Though, there's one that went back inside, I think it's the leader." She turned to Zach while saying it, and she added hesitantly, "That one might be a human. But, even still…"

"Heroes are coming," Zach said darkly. Maybe I should have replenished more Death. I really, really don't feel like smiling right now though. "Just take down everyone inside. They'll sort them out. These bears though, they can barely speak at all. The one thing I've heard them say though, is 'kill me.'" Zach turned his head from the dome he just glared over to. He looked at his comrades and said in a dark, menacing voice, "They might just be animals, but they've been given some sort of human sentience. They know what's happening to them. They understand what they are, and what they're doing, and the fact that they would rather die means it's not about escape. Some things, shouldn't exist."

He turned back towards that dome, then he looked to his right over at a smoldering mess where one of the turrets had been blown apart. Zach's eyes got redder and glared around the smoke and the ground around where the turret had risen. Their lives are pain. They're slaves to life. Their entire existences are just, so fucked up. Zach's hands clenched into tighter fists, and he ground his teeth in anger to prevent himself from feeling the sadness of this whole situation. We'll go in through there. The front doors are clearly going to have traps established by now. "Tama and Wasteland, stay up here," Zach ordered.

The two Zach ordered nodded their heads behind him. Tama knew that if anyone got out, she would be able to track them best afterwards even if they escaped from their team. Zach continued, "Jackhammer. Take point with me and Darling, we'll break through the ground around where that turret came up. Let's move."

"Death," Mark started, stepping towards Zach's back. Zach turned his head and looked back at the older man who did not hesitate to continued, "Let me take point." He could see Zach and Darling were tired, and he wanted to give them a break. The two in front of Mark just seemed to get darker looks on their faces though at the suggestion.

"Follow me," Zach ordered, turning back around and moving for the turret. His answer to Mark's suggestion was clear, and Jackhammer ran forward to get on Zach and Darling. The others behind Death moved forward too, all of them including Mark staring at their leader who was marching forward looking so intimidating. After hearing all he had to say about what kind of fucked up shit was happening in this place, they all understood the feeling though. Zach leaned forward with his fists shaking at his sides, and he growled, "I'm going to tear this place down…" No matter how deep it goes.

---

"You can't move yet- I said-"

Zach shrugged his right arm and shook off the man grabbing it after he started moving. "I'm fine Hank," Zach said.

Hank frowned at the teen's back as he walked away, ignoring the doctor's orders again. "Those burns aren't some minor wound you can just walk off." Hank ground his teeth as the boy did not slow down, and he said in a louder voice when Zach was about to leave the room they decided as their ground infirmary, "See Miraculu and Curalia once you return to base." Hank kept from mentioning The Cloak, considering there was an injured hero sitting on one of the medical beds they rolled in with another hero standing next to him.

The Russian heroes watched as Death left the room. Although the Army of Death were speaking English, which neither of those two heroes understood very well, they could tell what the doctor was saying based on the battered appearance of Death alone.

Zach stepped out of the room though and walked back down a hallway with flickering lights on the ceiling, but red flares down on the ground at the corners and in most doorways. Zach glared at a door at the end of the hall, but his eyes shifted around as he headed back towards that room he finished fighting in. It wasn't as deep as Scotland after all, Zach thought darkly. His head filled with memories of those deeper basements, and then just as quickly all those thoughts pushed farther down as the images of that place were even more twisted than what he was seeing today.

I have more control here than we did in Scotland too. I should have taken it more seriously back then from the start. Now, Zach was passing a room that he turned to the right and looked into. He had a couple of soldiers in there, standing close to the door and quickest escape route. The majority of the heroes who had arrived were in that room, as they had taken prisoners from the scientists and human guards of the facility. Another difference, Zach thought, imagining the sole surviving worker from the research lab in Scotland. Richie didn't last long either. Another mysterious suicide, and the two clean-ups Sandlot tried to charge were released with lack of evidence and went missing too. Here though, there's evidence remaining. Evidence that proves this place was being funded by the Russian government. And enough heroes have already seen it…

It's not human research, Zach turned his head back forward and continued down the hall. His expression got darker, which was visible to two of his soldiers ahead of him who looked his way from the intersecting hall Zach was about to walk into. He was heading to the door straight in front of him, but to either side near his own soldiers, there were bears dead on the floor looking more deformed and experimental than the "finished" ones that had been the base's first line of defense. Zach still had a mask on covering up the bottom half of his face, but his eyes shadowed over anyway as he headed into the doorway without looking left or right at the disfigured corpses around him.

Mother Russia stood in the room Zach walked into. She was the only hero in there with the Army of Death member Zach left behind in here when Hank dragged him away for emergency treatment. Darling needs help too, Zach thought while looking at the girl down on one knee next to the heaving creature in the middle of the messed-up room. One of the largest bears, and the most intelligent, it lay on the ground with its eyelids half opened and its jaw open enough for its wheezing breaths to get out doggedly. Its back pushed up as it took in another breath, its chest pushing out below it into the puddle of blood slowly widening around its body. "How is it?" Zach asked after a moment of standing in the doorway.

Darling turned her head from the bear's head she was leaning in close towards. "Still dying," Darling replied. "He's barely able to speak anymore."

Mother Russia looked next to her at the boy who fought this bear with her. The three of them had taken it on together, and she did not understand why they kept it alive when as she arrived she heard the dark soldiers calling out to 'kill all the bears.' She understood that order after seeing what had become of the creatures, but over the last few minutes while Zach was gone, she came to understand why the boy acted differently this time. "Sazaki," Mother Russia started. "More heroes are on their way. I have yet to announce your presence, and I would like you gone by the time they arrive." Should we have received help from the Army of Death to reveal this conspiracy, it could be used to counter how bad their own actions were in making this place. I will not give them that ammunition.

"I'm not Zach Sazaki," Zach said, though still in Japanese like the woman just spoke to him. He did not have a voice modulator, and he normally spoke in English but without really trying to mask his voice. He did reach up though and pull his mask a bit up to make sure that his scar under his right eye was still hidden completely from sight. "But I understand, and we will be," Zach added to the muscular woman on his side who had four shallow cuts going through her red costume on her right side around her chest.

Zach walked right up next to Darling and then got down on a knee more directly in front of the bear than to the side of its head. The bear had its cut chin on the floor and its body slumped and coated in blood both wet and drying. Its dark brown eyes lifted up to meet Zach's hazel ones, and its eyelids opened a bit more too so Zach could see deeper into the creature's thoughts. She said "he," Zach thought, recalling what Darling said when he came into the room. Not "it." And, in those eyes I see thought. Real thought. Conscious thought. What is he thinking?

Zach kept his gaze on the bear but spoke to the girl on his side, "Did you get anything out of him we wouldn't find in the files?"

Darling opened her mouth, but a weak voice came out from in front of Zach before she could speak, "It was, well-documented." Zach's eyes that were locked on the bear's widened, as he watched those eyes getting wetter so they seemed to glimmer. The tone of voice he just heard too, yanked at his heart and made the girl next to Zach curl her fists tighter at her sides. Mother Russia's eyes shifted from the bear who she was surprised to hear speak in that voice, to the two she had fought with who seemed around the same age.

"Why were they," Zach started, but he stopped as that was something he could get out of the files too. The bear in front of him did not have much time left, but there were questions that only he could answer and would never be able to soon. "Why did you," Zach corrected himself in a lower voice. His tone was soft, but harsh. His eyes stayed steady as he stared into the bear's sad ones so full of regret at the start of that question. "Help them? You're not like the others. You… you knew. What was happening here, you understood it and could have fought it," Zach said it in some anger, but mostly confusion at why the bear didn't when he looked so much now like he wished he had.

The creature took in more heavy breaths, and its eyelids started to close as its eyes shifted down to the floor. The bear closed its eyes and for a moment the three in the room with him thought that was it. Then his eyes parted a small amount, and staring straight ahead the creature started in a stronger voice than they thought it could manage, "The process enhanced all of us. Most, like myself, were born into the program. It was, all we knew."

"That's not an excuse," Zach said. He spoke through his mask while panting himself, and he clenched his teeth as the air on his burnt skin stung like crazy despite the numbing painkillers Hank injected around his wounds. Zach glared at the bear that had much worse wounds than him though. He glared at it and watched the expression of someone truly regretful and full of guilt that became even more intense after what Zach said.

"I… know," the polar bear/ kodiak hybrid responded. "Because I was different," its eyes looked farther past Zach, and the shaking watery look they had got even sadder but for a moment his voice became monotone. "Our senses, our power, our intelligence… We were all enhanced, to the point that each of us became smart enough to understand that we were… nothing more than test subjects to be used and killed at the will of our masters. Tools, not looked at as living beings," his voice got quieter, and his teeth bared for a moment before a pained breath had to escape through them. His eyes filled with so much regret, covering up the sadness and fury, and he spoke in a voice more human than any of the other bears could manage so it actually felt like they were listening to a person speaking English to them.

The other bears only knew Russian and only managed to say "kill me" in that language, but this bear's voice was intelligent. And in that intelligent, most regretful voice, the bear said, "We were forced to be obedient…" Tears spilled out of its half-closed eyes, "but I always knew I could have stopped." His eyes clenched shut and squeezed out more tears as the humans stared down at him. "Unlike the others, I was intelligent enough to override that feeling of blind obedience. I didn't though." He paused and his teeth clenched so hard in anger, and then he growled out, "I knew it was wrong, but I stayed and followed orders… and acted as an in-between for the masters and the bears."

His brown eyes were bloodshot as he opened them back up and stared through hazy vision at the humans staring in shock back at him. "I worked at the prison camp for my own kind," he whispered, in a low growl that cracked midway through as his face twisted in the most severe sorrow the humans never thought a bear's expression could make. Mother Russia frowned down at the bear in a darker way herself after a moment, while Darling turned her head to the side and looked at Zach's face above his mask where she tried to read his eyes.

The bear's heaving was slowing down, and the creature could feel its mind slipping. "We were, all born with Quirks, along with our enhancements," he told, as the corners of his vision got darker and everything became one messy blur. "Randomized, just like humans' Quirks are. They were- unable, to pre-determine which Quirk we would receive." His eyes that could not see anything anymore closed, as there was no point wasting energy to keep them open when they had no utility. His breath came in, and he spoke softer, "Part of my Quirk, was intelligence far superior to any other bear, more than most humans too… I had the self-awareness to know exactly what I was doing, but knowing what I was… where else was there to go?"

Even though his eyes were closed and not functioning for sight, more tears spilled out onto his furry face as his raspy voice filled with so much pain. "What else was I to do?" He whispered. In his mind flashed all the other bears from the lab. All the experiments he stood by the human researchers and watched. The roars of agony filled his mind, and guilt washed over him that he would only regret it this much in the moment he was about to die. "I stayed, because… Life was pain, for all the others… but at least they were my kind. Even with what I was doing to them, I was just, too scared to leave."

The bear's body stopped heaving. In the moment he said it, that his actions or inaction to stop sooner was all a result of his own cowardice, he died. Mother Russia bowed her head for a moment. To think, that bears could become so… She shook her head and rose it back up with a serious look covering it. Caterina Makarov turned to the side and looked back out into the hallways. She spotted the two dark soldiers just outside both looking in with shocked looks, or so she imagined behind their helmets. She let out a low grumble as she thought about how distracted she had just gotten from her overall mission goals at the moment, and she turned her head back to mention to Death that he had to go.

Zach put his other knee down in front of the bear's unmoving muzzle. He lowered his right hand in front of its nose and felt for breathing. There was none. Darling stared at the side of Zach's head in surprise, then she turned around and glared at the older woman who took a step back towards them. "What are you doing?" She questioned.

Death lifted his right hand and his fingers slid out of the fingertips of his glove. Then he put his hand down on the head of the creature laying dead before him. "Stop that," Mother Russia said. Her eyes darted to the bear past him, who despite saying he did not live in as much pain as the others, sure sounded like his life was torture by how he just died. "Let it die."

"I won't," Zach growled. He had to seethe it out through clenching teeth as the pain started. He felt pain in places that he had never felt before, places that did not even exist on his body and yet he felt them anyway. He felt his own knives and Darling's shots and the broken bones Mother Russia dealt to it, all rushing at him at once. And he felt a sudden surge of sheer anguish that made him gasp and tears to push out of his eyes. "Gah- AHHH raa, chhhh-" Zach slammed his mouth shut and pushed air through his teeth harder to stop yelling.

"Sazaki, enough," Mother Russia started, but when she took a step farther, Darling snapped up on her feet and stood between Zach and Mother Russia. Mother Russia stopped where she was. She stared back into the bright green eyes of the girl before her, and she saw the girl was willing to fight her if she tried to stop Sazaki from doing what he was doing. "You can't bring him back," Mother Russia stated. "You-"

"You don't decide that," Zach growled. He spat it out and then snarled in agony that he felt tearing through his body. The older woman behind him stared at the back of his head with her eyes opened huge. "I spent, all day! AHH!" Zach shouted it and then bared his teeth again and shook his head around to get a grip through the pain. "ALL DAY! Killing- taking innocent lives!" Zach clenched his teeth even harder. I don't know if I was right. I don't know if the decisions I made were right, but I have to stick to them. I couldn't risk my comrades' lives having them hold back against things that didn't even want to live! It's feeling his guilt, that's making me care so much about them now! Zach had the introspection to realize why it was he was questioning himself now, as it was not just the bear's anguish that he felt inside him messing with his own emotions and thoughts.

Zach panted as he felt his fingers slipping off, and he felt the pain subsiding to give him that out and show him that if he just let go a little more he'd be fine. But instead his hand gripped tighter into the bear's fur and he slammed his head down, pressing his own forehead into the creature's while he felt his stomach opening up. "Only I decide!" Zach yelled. "Who gets brought back… AAHHhaaAND I CHOOSE HIM!" Zach screamed it in pain, and he felt himself die as the final word came out of his mouth.

His right hand slid off of the bear's head and his head bowed down harder as he panted heavier than he had all day. His wounds seared in pain, both the mental ones he just received and the physical ones the strain on his body made reignite. Spit slid out of Zach's parted lips and soaked into his cold wet mask, dripping through the saturated material where the breathing mechanism had broken off. Zach's eyes were closed as he had his head bowed on top of the bear's muzzle. That's only two today. Jackhammer's wasn't as bad, Zach thought about the man who had been killed due to the bear below his head predicting his moves and catching them right when they busted inside. He opened his eyes with that dark thought in mind and looked straight ahead into the bear's open eyes that were staring at him in utter shock.

The creature did not move after opening its eyes. It stared in front of it at the boy whose face looked so much more exhausted than… whenever it was he last saw it. He stirred, his eyes shifting around looking at the room around him which seemed to be the same room he had gone from. "I- I don't-" it started, confusion in its voice as it started to lift up.

Zach pulled his head back while still down on both knees staring ahead at this beast. Darling's right hand had turned into a pistol, but she did not have it raised nor had a look like she really thought Zach might be attacked here. Zach stared at the bear's face from a foot off, right into his eyes that stared back at him in such a perplexed way. He cut off the bear trying to say that it did not understand, "You, can't die like that." Zach's voice sounded tired, but he took in a deep breath to stop from panting and so he could speak in a steadier voice. He didn't notice the small crowd gathering at the door behind him who had heard his screams and come, both of his comrades and Mother Russia's.

"Wh-what?"

"To die feeling like that," Zach muttered. His eyes were dark, and his hands curled into his sides as he sat back on his knees. "After living a life so fucking horrible, to die a death even worse, what did you even live for?" Zach asked it in a pained way himself. He asked it and the bear in front of him started getting up, his huge legs moving below him and his eyes shifting down towards them to see his wounds gone. The bear rose up, taller that Zach on his knees but still feeling smaller than the boy who he leaned back from as Zach glared up into his eyes. "Why should someone have to die feeling that much guilt? Feeling their whole life, meant nothing except pain for others." Zach pushed his left hand down on the floor, and he shoved his right hand down next and staggered up onto his feet.

Even standing at his full height, Zach was not a very tall person. He was below average height for normal men, and he was muscular but still smaller than most people around him too. The teenager standing in front of the beast he just revived took a step forward that resulted in that bear taking a step back while staring forward in shock at him. Zach walked another step though, and he got right in front of Dover and rose a hand towards the creature that stared at it in so much fear because of the complete confusion it was in that kept it from comprehending what was happening. It bared its teeth, then it clenched its eyes shut as Zach's hand moved too close to its face and its eyes.

Zach put his hand down on the bear's head and he rubbed it once over his soft fur. The creature froze. It froze, and then its eyes opened up and rose to the arm above it. Those eyes stared without any recognition, something that should have caused discomfort, and yet- It's, nice?

Zach pet the bear on top of its head, and he felt his chest tighten at the look on the creature's face. He saw a look that so closely resembled a young boy's, dying in his arms with a smile on his face because Zach had held him in a caring way. Zach clenched his eyes shut for a moment as he thought of that boy, one he did not bring back to life. He believed, at the end, that he had saved me though. It was the best way to die. Whereas, this bear, Zach opened his eyes and stared so softly into the eyes of the massive creature right in front of him who finally took his eyes off that arm petting him and looked at Zach's face.

"Maybe you shouldn't have helped them," Zach said. He stopped petting and slid his hand down the side of the bear's head a little, making him nervous. Zach started petting again though closer to its right ear, and he scratched the bear's ear too for another new sensation it had never felt before. "But if you think that in your whole life, you've only done wrong, then don't just die. That's not fair to those you hurt. Instead, be better." The bear Zach was talking to stared at him with shaky eyes. It stared at him in disbelief, and then it finally blinked a few times at the realization of what was actually happening right now.

Zach watched as the bear started shifting its eyes around, and how it looked down at its own feet, and the thoughts he saw flashing through its mind the way its expression appeared. I know, Zach thought, as he continued to pet the bear that had been their strongest enemy, who everyone behind Zach was staring at in shock at what was happening here. Because I came back too, and I had Monoma. My life really was shit before I died, and when I came back I had that new life laid out before me. I saw so many options. I knew, that there was more. But it took him telling me to even make me consider it.

"This lab is done," Zach said. "You don't have a master anymore. And all the other subjects are dead." Zach lowered his hand from the side of the bear's head. "You died just now. So take that as your punishment for what you did before." Zach paused, and then he continued stronger, "And if you can't just leave it at that, then make sure that whatever you do from here on out, you help others instead of hurt them."

"I-" the creature started. It stared at Zach, its face so confused and lost for purpose. It stared at him and said uncertainly, "I don't know how."

"You're a smart bear, right?" Zach asked. "Figure it out." Again the bear stared at him in shock. "You feel regret for what you did, because you know that it was wrong. That means you already know right from wrong, so do right this time around." Zach panted a couple of times after getting that all out in a confident and assured way. He felt his body in pain all over, and he grimaced as he thought how Hank was right and he needed to go see his healing doctors soon.

Darling watched the boy in front of her in absolute amazement. Her eyes shone brighter green and her heart pounded in her chest as Zach stood there sturdily despite seeming like he was about to collapse or pass out for so long already.

Mother Russia watched her old student in a different way too. She had decided not to pass judgement on the Army of Death due to what they were here trying to stop, but her opinion on the leader of this group itself changed as she watched him. He makes his own decisions. He chooses what he believes to be right and acts off that alone, and others believe in him because of it. She could see the dark figures behind her in her peripheral vision, watching their leader in silent admiration, not one of them arguing about what he was doing or saying. He never really fit in back in Japan. Sazaki's only place, might be here.

"I, don't think I can. I'm not- I'm not a person. I'm not a bear either. I'm the last of my kind," the bear whispered it and his expression shook in bafflement, in fear, and regret. Too many emotions were rushing at it at the same time. He didn't expect to still be alive, and he did not know anything except for that lab and the life he had known since being born in it. "How will I know what's right, when I'm not even- I'm not like you," he said it with a shaky deep voice, staring at the boy in front of him who was in his eyes in this moment the opposite of the men who he had known his entire life. In his eyes right then, Death was perfect good. The bear couldn't imagine to live up to him, to anyone in that room behind Death looking at him. His head shook and he pulled back more, his whole body trembling at the terrifying world being laid out before him. "I'm not even real. This world wouldn't… I wouldn't fit in it. I- I don't even have a name!"

The bear shouted it, then he pulled back even more as he knew that should not stop him. Seeing as the figure before him was going by 'Death' which clearly wasn't a real name either. And yet even as he regretted saying that, and trying to come up with another excuse, Zach just said after a moment, "Dover." The bear in complete confused panic tensed up. He froze, and all the emotions jolted to hard stops too.

Hell, I named Snow. I can name a bear a lot easier. She might like him- actually, she might even be older than him. I didn't even ask. Zach's skin was pale, and he was sweaty despite it being pretty cold in the lab. I really need to listen to Hank, he told himself, as he could see Darling's look getting more worried on his side, and she always believed he could keep going if he said he could.

"Dover?" Dover asked.

"Yeah," Zach replied. "That's your name. For now on," Zach added. "And there are others of your kind. You are a bear," Zach reminded, as Dover had said a minute ago that he wasn't real and wasn't a bear. "Clearly," Zach added with a nod at Dover's body. "Alright, Dover? You going to, make me regret bringing you back? Because I…" Zach blinked a couple times, and he was feeling wobbly on his feet and swayed more noticeably at his pause. "I really need a win…" Zach muttered under his breath, and his right foot slipped out from under him.

"Death!" Darling ran up to him and caught him by grabbing his sides. She also felt like she did not hold up much weight though, and she looked around him to see the bear had moved forward and rose a paw. Despite having sharp claws on that paw though, the massive bear pushed its hand gently into Zach to hold him up without harming him at all. And when Darling looked around into the creature's face, she saw it staring at Zach in a way far beyond the admiration she had stared at him with a minute ago.

Dover looked at the half-conscious boy who responded to the calls from the others behind him despite looking out of it. He ordered his comrades to start extraction, and he turned to the closest hero behind him and asked her if she could watch over Dover. "…try not to kill this one," Zach joked to the woman as two other Army of Death members held him more up and started helping him back out of that room. Dover looked to Mother Russia for a moment in hesitation, only to see her frown deeper at the man getting led past her who most people around them thought was referring to how she had handled other bears in that facility. Dover saw the difference in recognition on her face though, and how the tone in Death's voice implied what was likely an inside joke.

He saved me, Dover turned and looked back after Death. He watched as the dark figures accosted any of the heroes looking too aggressive. Each of them seemed ready to fight if one of the heroes decided to take advantage of Death's wounded state. I was his enemy. I'm, I'm a monster. A freak of nature and he- he's in more pain now because he brought me back. Like what it was like for him to bring back that other human! He did that, for me? Took all my pain even after he- he's the one who put me in it in the first place but I- Dover's lips trembled and he leaned back and got up on his hind legs, towering over everyone around him and walking out the door and after the group getting farther from him. Why would he save me? I didn't deserve to… "I really need a win." Dover's eyes grew huge and he froze and just stared down the hall after the group about to leave his sight.

Was it just for him? Or does he- he killed all the others. He killed them, but he saved me. Why? Why? "Dover." He gave me a name. I have a name. "Be better." Is that what I have to do? No, I don't have to do anything. I'm free? I'm free. Dover lifted his paws and curled them while staring at his sharp claws. His heart wrenched and he shifted his gaze back down the hall, but those soldiers were gone and he could barely hear them anymore. He could still smell them though, specifically the scent of the person who had been there right in front of him when he woke up again. He's not my master. I'm not a slave. I'm not anyone's tool, or weapon! I'm a- I'm an animal! Which means I can have a master and it's not slavery. I, I can be… Dover dropped down onto all fours and started running down the hall.

---

Present

Zach rubbed his hands up and down on Dover's sides as the bear continued to hug him in a dog-like way only so massive that it was impossible to see anything but fur for the moment. He always does this, Zach thought with a smaller smile, petting his bear slower. Maybe I should have told him he was human. Could have said it like it was obvious then that since he talked like us he really was a person. It wouldn't have changed much, probably. He still would have found an excuse to always chase after me. I didn't want to risk his life though. Not until he had a full life, not until he had his own happiness. But King's compound, and Wampajawa, there were times when I needed everyone. I'm sorry I dragged you into that though.

Zach gave Dover a tighter squeeze for a second before shoving away lightly to get Dover to move off him. As soon as Dover turned back around so he could see everyone in the room and not just Zach, his expression changed again back into a more reserved one that had a couple of Zach's former classmates sweatdropping. They wondered if the bear thought they could not see him when he was not looking at them, and Zach lowered his smile down at Dover's cautious expression. For four years all he knew were bad people. Even now, I think there are only three people he trusts. He seemed close to Mother Russia at the raid on King's compound, and he trusts Darling too. I hope she went to see him. Zach's chest hurt and he looked away from Dover and back to his other friends who all had so much they were holding back right now.

"So, Dover," Ashido started. She leaned forward after he looked at her in a serious way, and she smiled as she knew after watching him that this gruff exterior was not all there was to the big bear. "Were you in that other world Zach went to? How did you get here?"

Dover opened his mouth, but Zach said first, "No." Dover looked over at Zach himself as Zach decided to answer instead. He did not know how Dover was about to explain himself, but he figured Dover just figured out what he had been telling everyone and made up some elaborate story to make his alibi work out well. As much as Zach appreciated the effort that Dover actually did go through in that instant without showing any hesitation like he was lying, Zach didn't want that.

Dover was somewhat confused as he looked to his master, or the one who he called his master despite Zach telling him repeatedly that it was not the case. Zach had initially said that he could trust the others in the room, but he also cut him off from saying the truth earlier in order to hide it from his friends. Zach continued after shaking his head and giving that one word reply to Ashido. "Dover was like Principal Nezu, a result of some fucked up experiments."

"I thought all experiments like those were shut down a long time ago," Mineta started confusedly. He remembered Dover calling out that he was only five years old, which made the short boy start feeling very uncomfortable along with the looks both Zach and Dover gave him.

"Just because something's illegal to do, doesn't mean everyone's going to listen," Zach replied.

Mineta's eyes opened wide at the response and he nodded once as a reply back seeing Zach's intense look behind his normal smile. Zach saw the others in his room all getting ready with their questions. They wanted to know when and where it was that Zach saved Dover, and Zach asked first, "Hey, you guys wouldn't mind heading out early?" It was asked as a question, but toned as a suggestion, and worded in a way that would be difficult to say no to. He gave them apologetic looks after asking out of the blue though. "I want to catch up with Dover. It's been a while."

Sero took in a breath through his nose and let it out as a sigh. He had questions of his own, but they can wait, he thought. "Fine," Sero responded first. A couple of the others spun to him in surprise at his response that was quicker than any of them could mention it being suspicious, or how they wanted to talk to Dover too. He's Zach's friend. They have things they want to talk about without us hearing. That's fine. It's not our place to try and listen in.

I need to know what they're talking about.

"Ahh, alright," Ashido stretched her arms up over her head and then hopped out of her seat. "Should probably start studying anyway."

"You could have studied while you were here," Mineta said to her with a smirk at her laziness and bad excuse.

"I don't want to hear that from you," Ashido snapped back at the boy who was not being studious like Ojiro and Koda were before.

Ojiro finally turned away from Zach who he had made eye contact with for a few seconds there. "Okay," he said. He got up and he walked over to grab his coat, but he added with a look back towards Zach as he was going, "Tell us how you guys met, next time we come over. Yeah?"

Zach nodded his head over at Ojiro. "You got it," he replied softly, with a half-apologetic look to his friend who knew he was getting secrets withheld from him, again.

I accepted that you wouldn't tell me about that girl, Darling. Ojiro looked away and he frowned deeper once Zach could no longer see his expression. I don't want to accept it, but I do because you really do seem to care about her. I believe that. But here, you have so many secrets and I- I can't trust you as long as you act this way.

Koda grabbed his coat and he said in a soft voice, "Thanks for having us over, Zach." The bear next to Zach looked over at Koda again in a more intrigued way at the tone his voice had that was different to other humans' voices.

Zach nodded at Koda, "Anytime." Koda was the first to reach Zach's door, actually making the others getting up rush more as it seemed like he was ready to go.

Weird, figured he'd want to talk to the bear more, Mineta thought while hurrying to get his jacket back on.

Koda looked back to make sure everyone else was coming. The others behind him turned and said their goodbyes to Zach, and Koda opened up the door to go. He walked out and around the side of Zach's door, and he lifted up his right hand he pulled out of his pocket. "Please little one help me…"

"Thursday good?" Sero asked, slipping his hands back into his gloves while standing in front of Zach who got up to see his guests out.

"Yeah, I'll see you then," Zach agreed and smiled at the boy in front of him he just made plans with.

"Aww, well then you can't come," Ashido said to Mineta as the two of them were having another conversation just at the door. Mineta mentioned how he could not hang on the weekend, and Ashido grinned back to Zach, "We're still doing the carnival this weekend right?"

Zach gave her an odd look at the way she worded that. We never made these plans. "Actually, I thought you meant next weekend," Zach corrected her.

"Oh I can do that!" Mineta exclaimed, happy to join in. He looked to Mina to grin at the girl who seemed happy he couldn't come, only to get confused at Ashido's own surprised and confused look.

The way Zach responded made it seem like the two of them actually had made the plans and Zach only gave her the odd look because he thought she got the date wrong. He was so convincing with it that she did not even realize until five seconds later that he had just messed with her right back and actually got her far worse than she got him. Her bottom lip dropped, but then she laughed and rose it into a big smile instead. "Alright then, next weekend," she said in a happy voice.

I'm busy this weekend anyway, but messing with her back was an easier way to avoid having to say what I'm doing or dodge the subject, Zach thought, while giving Ashido a look like he just realized the way he had messed with her was actually beneficial for her anyway as she managed to cement those plans. He felt slightly guilty at the look on her face that showed she was thinking exactly what he predicted she would think seconds before she thought it, and he looked back to Sero with a less bright look than the one he gave Mina. "Thursday," Zach repeated, and Sero gave him a nod too before sticking out his right elbow. Zach bumped his elbow into it with a laugh and Sero laughed too while turning and heading for Zach's door.

"See you Zach!"

"Next time man."

"Bye guys."

Zach turned back to Dover as Ojiro was closing the door behind them, having just nodded goodbye back at Zach who gave him a final nod back. Zach stood at the end of the entry hall and faced Dover who stood in his living room with an equally intense look as the one covering Zach's face. The two of them stayed silent for several seconds. Then Dover turned his head towards the fly on the wall just inside of Zach's door that it had slipped inside of while the last of Zach's classmates were leaving. The bear glared at the fly, and after another second Zach turned to it too and kept a serious but not very harsh look on his face.

"Koda, I understand why you have to try," Zach walked back towards his door that he was sure his classmates were far enough away from by now. "But this is a private conversation," he finished, and he opened the door and motioned at the fly to leave. He stared at a small black fly on his wall and motioned with his head out the door. If it doesn't leave, I'll just smush it- alright. Zach watched the tiny insect lift off his wall and do a small loop in the air, before turning and heading out of Zach's apartment.

The fly headed out and flew towards Koda who was down on the street walking with the others. "…maybe he really was from that other world," Mineta said in a soft voice, cupping a hand to his mouth while suggesting it.

"Why would they lie about that?" Ojiro asked.

"Well," Ashido began, and Ojiro turned to her in a bit of surprise as she seemed to have her own doubts. "Zach did, stop him from responding himself. The story he told us makes more sense, for a backstory for who Dover is in this world."

"You think talking bears are one of the species on Terra?" Sero asked with a smirk on his face.

"I don't know!" Ashido exclaimed at his tease, pouting at the way he was grinning at her. "But Dover said Zach rode him into battle! He's gotta be talking about Terra don't you think?"

Sero lowered his grin a bit and hummed with a nod/tilt of his head to the left. "Makes sense. Could have been after he came back though too. Dover probably just considers the fights they got in as battles," Sero suggested, leaving the option that Zach wasn't lying as the more likely choice. "And if Zach told him the stories of his time in Terra, then maybe he projected their own kind of fights as those…"

Koda had slowed down in the group, and no one noticed yet but he just stopped cold where he was on the sidewalk. He had been surprised when his fly came to his ear that it was so quick, but he froze in place as the message was relayed back to him. He told the fly using his Quirk Anivoice to listen and tell him what it heard inside. The single sentence he received from that attempted surveillance, only worked in making Koda feel guilty about getting caught. Despite Zach's message of understanding why he did it, he still glanced back towards Zach's apartment, wondering, Can I come back here after that? I'm sorry, Zach. I just- I still think you're Death though. I don't know if Dover really is there just to visit or if there's a plan in place, but if the AoD are planning something in Japan I need to know… as a hero.

"Hey Koda! What are you doing?"

Koda turned forward and hurried after the others who were staring back at him oddly. They had been looking his way for a couple seconds so they saw his serious look while facing backwards, but Koda looked mostly back to normal as he jogged up to them. No one asked what he had been thinking about though, as his eyes still looked too serious for them to believe that it was nothing. Koda walked behind the group who continued forward, a couple of them darting looks back at the boy who did not focus on them.

"I know it's him. Without a doubt in my mind. No! Koda, he's a terrorist. He's a liar, and a killer… I hate him. He betrayed all of us. He betrayed you… and me."

Jirou's right, Zach. Koda's boulder-like face got more intense, which was strange for the teen who always looked far more reserved and nervous. I want to forgive you, but I can't. All his talks with Jirou about Zach, and the rants she went on, influenced strongly how he felt towards his former classmate. And yet after a few seconds, the guilt did creep back up on Koda who returned to his usual expression as he worried that he was only thinking about Jirou in order to make himself feel less guilty about what he just did.

Back at Zach's apartment, Zach finished checking the cracks of his couch cushions. Dover continued to sniff the air while standing close to the windows, and the two of them did a thorough scan around for any signs of surveillance. "They're gone," Dover assured with a look back towards Zach. He was up on his hind legs, but he dropped down again after saying that and ran around towards Zach again.

Zach gave him a more tired look of the way he was acting, looking more like he wanted to talk seriously to Dover than play with him. Dover lowered his smile a little, but he backed off and went back to the couch that Zach walked around in front of and sat across from. "How are you? Is everything alright?" Zach asked in Russian. He didn't want to get serious at all while his friends were over, but his expression got harder and his eyes focused on the animal that had become friendlier and friendlier every time Zach saw him.

Dover nodded his head back. "I'm fine," he replied. "Your Russian's a little rusty."

"Is it?" Zach asked in surprise. Thought I had it mastered back in prison. Guess I need to keep up with all of them-

"Not really," Dover said with a tilt of his head. "Maybe it's the Japanese accent. You had lost it back then."

Zach nodded, "I did." He leaned back in his chair as it seemed there was nothing imminent they needed to discuss, and he let out a heavy breath that there was not something he needed to deal with. He also noticed he felt some disappointment too, which he mentally scolded himself over at the realization. "So," Zach began again. Why is he here- "Have you heard from Darling?" Zach asked.

The question was not the first one Dover was expecting, and his eyes widened. Dover stared at Zach with a look of confusion growing on his face. "Has she contacted you at all, I mean?" Zach said, and Dover hesitated for another second before shaking his head.

"I didn't…" Dover began, still looking confused. "Gentle though…" Dover's voice got softer still even as he spoke in Russian. He was not one of the Army of Death. He never had been, but he had been with them on several occasions and knew many of the members by name or even through acquaintance or by fighting together. Zach nodded at him to continue, and Dover said quietly, "I did get asked by Gentle if I had been in contact with Darling, just like you asked me."

Zach hummed at Dover's response. A darker look formed on Zach's face for a moment, Gentle doesn't know where she is then, or what she's up to.

"Zach, do you-" Dover began.

"So why did you come here?" Zach asked.

Dover paused, and then he smiled again and leaned forward with an excited look on his face. "I decided to see the world," Dover replied. Zach rose his eyebrows up and smiled after a second of surprise. Dover sat back in his seat again after Zach smiled at him, and he lifted his paws at his sides and tilted his muzzle up as he continued. "I talked to Alexi who got in contact with your old friends, and they gave me some money to get started." Zach kept from lowering his smile even though he wondered about that decision made by his "old friends."

"Then I said goodbye to Caterina who was sad to see me go. She said so," Dover added while looking into Zach's eyes.

Is he mad because I don't say I'm sad to see him go? Guess I could when he's leaving. "I'm surprised she did," Zach said. Think about why you would be surprised. Because I was hesitant to leave Dover with Mother Russia in the first place considering the story she told the first day she started as our homeroom teacher. I was glad to leave him with someone I trusted though and who I knew would be able to protect him and teach him how to protect himself.

"She didn't give me anything to get started though," Dover said. "Told me I should have gotten a job already if I was planning something like this."

"Do you need more money?" Zach asked.

"It's fine," Dover said with a quick shake of his head. "I don't have much, but I'll work jobs overseas as I go. Stay at cheap lodgings until I get some experience and reputation to my passport name. Dover Makarov-"

"Here," Zach pulled out his wallet anyway, and he took out a ten thousand yen bill that he stood up and leaned forward with.

Dover gave a roll of his eyes but smiled more and then reached his paw out and took the bill gladly. "Thanks," he said, clearly happy to have it despite turning the gift down the first time.

Zach shook his head back that it was no problem. Then he sat back down and said with a soft smile, "I'm glad you're doing this."

"Me too," Dover replied in a serious but also excited voice. He sounded intent on doing it which made Zach happier that this was definitely what he wanted to do. Dover continued, "I need to figure out who I am and what I'm going to do with this life. It's not a question many bears ask themselves, but I have options."

Zach laughed, And humor, apparently. It has been a while. He's picked up more on human culture actually being out in it around normal people. That's great.

"I don't know what it is I want to do yet," Dover continued, his tone the same though his face looked more prideful as he got Zach to laugh. He looked at Zach a bit oddly afterwards, but it was a happy oddly because the Death he remembered was so serious most of the time, and dark. Dover continued in a carefree tone as he did not want to get thinking about that and somehow bring down this good mood. "But whatever it is, I'm going to make you proud." Dover stood up and stepped in front of Zach's seat on his back legs. Then, in traditional Japanese fashion, Dover bowed the top half of his body so deep to show the utmost level of respect and appreciation.

"Dover-"

"Thank you," Dover said while bowed with his arms down at his sides. "For bringing me back to life. You won't regret it. I will- make something good of myself. Something better." Dover dropped his arms from his sides into forelegs again, and he stepped forward and rubbed the top of his bowed head into Zach's chest. Zach's eyes opened wide at the tone Dover had just spoken in while bowed so far, as it sounded like he was crying while hiding his face like that. Zach's face distorted as Dover rubbed his head into Zach's chest. He scrunched up his forehead and pulled his head back with an agonized expression covering it, at the genuine joy he felt feeling Dover rub his head on him in that much gratitude.

Zach lifted his hands and he put them around the back of Dover's head. He bowed his own head with a sad smile on an exhausted face. Zach stared down at the bear just below him who could not see his exhausted look. "I know you will."

---

A/N Thanks for reading! If you noticed, the first few paragraphs of the flashback were taken directly from a chapter 50 chapters or so ago. It was a scene I did not want to flesh out in a whole chapter at the time despite the ideas I had for it, because I had so many ideas for AoD chapters that each could have been made into individual chapters back then but would have stalled the progression of the story for a while. Anyway, Dover comes to visit Zach in Japan and we get a flashback to another kind of research lab Zach dealt with during his tenure as Death. I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, and leave a review below telling me what you think or predictions for what's coming!

Oblivious IJ chapter 162 . Jun 15

Happy one year anniversary birthday thing... this story is a year old and over 2m words... i have three words for ya Holy fwicken Shit! You a beast tho.

Thanks! Wonder if it's the most anyone's ever written in a year for a single story? That would be pretty fwicken awesome XD Hope you liked the new chapter!

Super Power Sensei chapter 162 . Jun 15

Good chapter. The philosophy talk was interesting to say the least. Zach and Deku are way more similar than they realize. And imagine Izuku actually admitting to everyone about One For All just because that's more in tune with who he is. The way Zach can teach people things is fucking EPIC. They mentioned how China and the U.S. are getting berated for having a quirk weapon research facility but this is inevitably. Oh man. Now that I think about it, it IS AN INEVITABILITY! A new arms race with QFWs(quirk finished weapons)! Unless if you take into account the current state of the world. Becoming more peaceful by the day, global booming economic growth, the world's "safety net" in place, and icons like Lifebringer encouraging "needed good change" for the sake of everyone.

Thanks for another, very long, review! (Didn't paste it all here for length reasons). You've got a lot of cool ideas and theories on the progression of this world that Death's taking place in. I've been dropping hints/ mentioning law changes/ R&D type of stuff for a while on a greater world-building level for this story and I like that you can see how things are gradually changing and will likely change to a much bigger degree while the story's going on. Won't say if any of those QFT's are going to happen (or if they already exist), but another cool review and thanks for it! Always glad to hear from you, and I hope you enjoyed the newest chapter!

someguy1011 chapter 162 . Jun 16

Things are really ramping up huh, i appreciate zach calling out deku like he did and now all might and hawks are piecing everything together (better than lemillion could've anyway). idk if this is annoying or not but i gotta put this down, a super hype way to end this is if zach is revealed as death and literally has to fight everyone in a final stand, heroes and villains and if you are gonna dissolve the AOD you gotta give us a shot of the cloak 2 going down in flames crashing above zach as he fights raijin. Again this is your story and you know what you are doing but i just love this so much my mind runs wild with the possibilities.

Not annoying at all (the thing you mentioned thinking might be), always like to hear predictions! It sounds like a cool ending, but no spoilers as to whether or not it will happen! Glad you liked Zach and Deku's talk, and Hawks really is good at this kind of thing so he's going to be speeding up the investigation into Zach. Unfortunately for him and Lemillion, they're doing exactly what Shigaraki and Raijin want too. Everyone's coming after him and trying to prove who he is, but we see again this chapter Zach is a cautious person. He slips up a bit at the start, but he checks for surveillance and could see through what Koda was up to easily. Glad you're loving the story, and thanks for all the predictions and thoughts! Thanks for the review in general XD!

James947 chapter 162 . Jun 16

Happy one year anniversary

Thanks!

abbasshashemh37 chapter 162 . Jun 16

Whenever I see Exodus i just imagine Escanor from seven deadly sins XD

XD hahaha well he is a beast just like Escanor! Thanks for the review!

R-Dawg chapter 162 . Jun 18

Badman story bro! Binged this over the last couple days, and now I'm craving more haha. I read quite a lot and have normally had a bit of aversion to fan-fictions if I'm honest, but you've completely changed my mind. Which is harder then it sounds since I'm stubborn as hell, anyway just wanted to to give my 2 cents. Keep it up man looking forward to more!

Awesome! Love to hear reviews like these, and I'm really glad my story changed your mind on giving the whole genre a chance! I hope you enjoyed the new chapter, and thanks for the great review!