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!

218. Chapter 218

Disclaimer: I don't own Boku no Hero Academia

Chapter 218:

On Friday morning three days after Zach Sazaki's return to U.A., the first period of the day was starting and Zach was nowhere to be seen. All Might walked in for homeroom and saw five of his students' hands shoot right up as they were hoping Zach would make it before their teacher, and now that they had lost hope they all had the same thought. All Might rose his own hand for them to lower theirs though and sighed out a breath of air before taking in a long one. The teacher with grayish-yellow hair had sunken eyes and a weary expression that seemed stuck on his face because of his sucked-in cheeks with protruding cheekbones. His students were energetic though, and trying to match their energies all the time was tough on Toshinori Yagi.

"Recovery Girl just called me," All Might began to the class who did not need to ask for him to know what all of them wanted to know. "Sazaki called in sick today."

"He called in sick?" Todoroki questioned. His eyes shifted towards the windows in both a skeptical and suspicious way.

"She is going over to your dorms now to check on him. He says he is there in his room but is too sick to come to class," All Might assured the students. They knew from that assurance that should Recovery Girl come upon an empty room, they would all know about it very soon. The fact that Zach had told them he would be there even knowing that Recovery Girl was coming to check on him though also eased some of their immediate suspicions that he had flown off somewhere.

After she leaves though, Midoriya wondered to himself. What is he doing? Did you find a lead on the League? If you did, would you really still be here just to pretend… No. You would have flown off immediately. Or maybe you wouldn't- but if you wouldn't, then you would have told me and we could have started preparing already. Unless you don't want to tip them off? Do you know something?!

Shit, Sero leaned back in his chair with his hands back down at his sides now. He put them on his lap and tapped on his thighs while darting looks at the windows and wishing he could go back to the dorm to check for himself. What did he want to tell me last night? He looked, he looked fine! I was busy though- shit! I wasn't that busy. Ape Man wanted me to start watching you though and I- I have a job lined up with him after graduation already, and I messed that up for you. Of course I did though! What kind of friend would have just been okay with that? It's not me doing you a favor, it's just obvious I wouldn't investigate you for them! Damn it. I shouldn't have said so much shit to my boss though.

But I really shouldn't have been annoyed at you that I did. That's not on you. What are you doing right now? Sero shifted his gaze back towards Yaoyorozu in the back row of the room. You said he really did get sick that time a few weeks ago. Mina and Recovery Girl both confirmed it too.

Did using too much make you sick? Yaoyorozu frowned while twirling her pen between her fingers and trying to keep her eyes focused on her books that she had pulled out to study some notes for the two tests they had today. You had to make up even more tests. I know you were supposed to take them all today, even if you didn't ask me to help you study- Yaoyorozu lifted the back of her pen and bit it anxiously. You got mad at me last night. I thought it was just annoyance- but when have you ever?! When has he ever been upset with me? He told me we didn't make it feel like he was back. That leaving us wouldn't have even been like leaving!

And you're so strong. Watching you fight yourself yesterday, even just for a few seconds… The version of Zach she saw flying up in the air and slicing himself in half traded with the one who had been standing right in front of her. As serious as they had been a moment later, for some reason she found herself remembering the two black arms sticking out of his back that flexed and started juggling spheres of Death. The right corner of her lips rose up and barely lifted her mouth from a frown to just over a flat lip, but only for a second. Her frown returned and her expression became more distant, as she thought, Gods? I can believe that there is much in this world I don't understand or know about. I believe that you know many things that most people would call make-believe. Gods though? And you killed one? Her eyes lowered sadly and she closed them, What's going on with you? I try to pry but, but you make it so hard Zach.

The day went by slowly for most of the Class A students as it had been for the past few days. Most of them felt a strong anxiety about after school, considering a large portion of them were going off on their internships with about half spending their entire weekends until Sunday night out with their pro heroes. They did not have much time to spend at U.A. after school, with some of them already planning to leave straight from the school building with their things they had brought with them as there would be cars waiting outside to take them to airports or straight to their agencies. They knew the cars would be arriving before their school days were even over, and so a few like Ashido, Koda, Iida, and Bakugo and Midoriya too had not been planning on going back to the dorms first.

Jirou and Todoroki both had to leave right after school too, but despite being curious as to Zach's absence from school, neither were getting too distracted from their schoolwork because of it. Jirou felt better than she had the past two days actually and let out a sigh in the second half of the day after the penultimate class where they had their second and final test. She felt she did well on that test which was great because she needed the boost in her grades. Her hands went behind her head and she closed her eyes while letting out that relaxed sigh. Then she turned to the right and glanced around the room where most people were looking her direction, or rather towards the windows and in the direction of the dorms that were too hard to see from here.

Give it a break, Jirou thought with a roll of her eyes. Not having him breathing down my neck is a relief. Recovery Girl didn't raise any alarms so he must still be in his room. I've heard the others asking the teachers too multiple times, but they wouldn't be lying to everyone knowing that they'll be checking his room after school anyway. He must really be there. Sick. Momo said he really does still get sick. He's fine though. He always bounces back. He got shot and there was no need to worry when you all freaked out over that. I knew he'd be fine though. He's always… fine. Jirou's eyes shifted to her left too while her arms dropped from behind her head. Or maybe he's always fine, physically.

What was up with him the past two days? Jirou cut back on her relaxed thoughts to her own chagrin. Wait wait, that was really weird wasn't it? We've only been seeing him for two days now like this, but it's not like we haven't interacted with him before this. Why didn't anyone else pick up on it? Because of Mina? Jirou examined her pink friend who could not hide her own anxiety even as she was texting Zach and staying in contact with her friend who told her again that he was just sick and in his room to recover and get rest as Recovery Girl told him to do. She told everyone that we had no idea what he's really been thinking, and so no one wants to assume that he's actually acting strangely because maybe we were just wrong about before! But- why am I thinking about him so much?

But what if he really was acting weird? Jirou thought it despite her own annoyed thought telling her to shift her focus away from the topic. Something wasn't right with him. The Pit didn't make any sense, with the person I was seeing these past two days. Did he lose it? Is he fucking mad?! Is that why he stayed in his room then? Does he realize he's losing his mind? If I had to go through that- No! Just, finish class and get to the Cluemobile. Arufuredo is picking me up-

The teacher for their final class of the day was walking into the room, but Jirou still pulled out her phone to check the notification she just got buzzed for. She sweatdropped as the sidekick to Ms. Clue who had come to pick her up let her know that he was waiting out on the curb outside U.A. for her already. There's a limit to punctuality, she thought in annoyance, pocketing her phone without sending a response as the class was starting.

In a room down the hall and around the corner, a thin five foot two girl with long black hair tied into a ponytail anxiously stared towards the clock and then back to Ectoplasm as she was worried he would notice her looking away. The scary-looking advanced trigonometry teacher for Class 2-B did not seem to catch her checking the time again though, and Azure thought maybe she could get away with a little more then. Her right hand slid back down to her pocket, then it pulled off of her phone as it had several times already.

Turei Ioui glanced to his left side at the jittery girl who had clearly had something on her mind all day ever since she got to their class late that morning. She wouldn't tell anyone what she was doing, the class rep of 2-B wondered to himself. Must be work-related then. Doubly secretive in your case.

No I can't. Azure moved her right hand from her pocket. I want to tell him though. Sero needs to know. He might be gone all weekend if I don't- but the Hippocratic Oath! But, I never took that oath- It's assumed.

Azure pouted and pursed her lips. I'd never get Recovery Girl's trust back. The pro hero she worked with kept her on campus more often than most of her classmates. And that morning, she had been called to assist Recovery Girl and see a patient who had called in sick to school. The anxious girl tapped on her left thigh with her right hand she kept away from her phone in her right pocket, only for her tapping finger to move closer and closer back to her phone as she tried and failed to focus on trig.

Something was seriously off. I don't even know the guy, but you were seeing him even while we were still dating. You said he was doing fine. Fine! But, but you also said that other world was tough for him. I didn't think you were being serious. I didn't think you believed it until that book came out and, Azure slid her phone out of her pocket, but her heart clenched up and her stomach turned over at the idea of what she was planning on doing. I can't do this. It's not right. Medical information has to be… then I won't say anything specific!

In Class 3-A, Sero felt his phone buzz and he checked to see if Zach had sent him something more specific than the brief responses his friend had hit him back with all just staying vague about some "cold" he had come down with. Sero's eyebrows rose up for a moment at the sight of his ex-girlfriend's name appearing on his phone screen. He rose his gaze back up then glanced below his desk as he slid open his messages and checked what she had sent to him.

The two had ended on pretty good terms, as Sero hoped and which seemed about right considering the message she had just sent him. He had just felt they had kind of drawn apart, and neither left with hard feelings… Which was becoming the normal for him now as he thought back on his other girlfriends at U.A. he was still friends with too. Koko saw him! I should have known! The realization that his ex had gone to see Zach when Recovery Girl checked on him faded from thought. Sero read the message and his heart rate sped up as fast as it had earlier when Zach did not make it to class before All Might.

'Check on Zach after school. Make sure he's doing alright.'

What does that mean?! 'Why? What's wrong with him?'

Azure felt frustrated at the message she saw on her phone that was not just an accepting confirmation of what she told him to do. 'Because I said so-' Azure backspaced the message. 'I can't say. Doctor-patient confidentiality. Shouldn't even be telling you this. Just check on him.'

She sent the message and then looked up and to the side as if in a thoughtful way while moving her hands below her desk. She knew for sure that Ectoplasm-sensei was looking towards her that time, but the teacher acted again like he did not notice as he knew something had been up with her since she came in late, (as he was their homeroom teacher and had gotten a message from Recovery Girl as well that morning).

Azure refocused on class as Sero only sent her a message of 'Thanks' in response that she was not even going to see until the end of the period as she was not risking taking her phone out again. Her thoughts wandered quickly back to the morning as they had been for hours now which had led to her sending that message to someone she knew was Zach Sazaki's close friend. In her head she imagined how Recovery Girl had opened the door on the fifth floor of the famous Class 3A's dorm building. She had looked inside and then followed slowly behind her mentor towards the teenager sitting in a comfortable pair of clothes: black sweatpants, white socks, and a white long-sleeved shirt.

He had looked almost fine, other than the light cough he had as they entered the room that had sounded believable to her. She only questioned it after they had left if that cough was actually real, because of what Recovery Girl had asked him about the three swirling spheres of condensed Death that had been hovering up near the ceiling of his room during their checkup. "Figure if I'm stuck inside all day, might as well train with my Quirk." Why couldn't it have been that simple? Azure recalled how convinced she had been by his reasoning there. It made sense to her, and she had been amazed that despite being sick he was still training as hard as he could to be even stronger, and she had come to understand why it was he was so strong if he trained even then…

"Then stop that for a moment while I give you an examination," Recovery Girl's voice echoed in Azure's mind. She watched the two of them right in front of each other. The short woman standing in front of Zach's desk chair he had continued to sit on while controlling those spheres of darkness up above his head. His eyes had shifted up towards them for a second, and then three black lines came out of his upper back and connected to them. Ever so slowly, the three black spheres had started sucking back into his body. They got smaller, and smaller, and then Lifebringer had darted his eyes down to his hands that he curled into fists to pull back the Death forming on them. As he did that though, the spheres got back to their previous sizes, though still with lines connecting them to him and with his upper back covered in it now.

"Alright. Truthfully, I'm having some issues with my Quirk. I just don't want to freak anyone out, so I'm dealing with it on my own."

"Can you?"

"Yes."

He sounded convincing enough, Azure was unable to convince herself as easily. All day I've been thinking about it. He lied so convincingly at the start! But, but was he just being that calm because he didn't want me freaking out? His Quirk is Death! If he can't control it… She shook her head and let out a breath while telling herself to relax. You all know him better. I'll leave it to you, Hanta.

When school ended it took all Sero had to keep at a steady pace back to the dorm. He was already in contact with his friend who told him nothing much was wrong, but Azure's message had his pocket feeling real heavy with every step he took just ahead of a few of his classmates. Sato, Shoji, Hagakure, Uraraka, and Mineta were all moving pretty quickly back towards the dorms too. It was all just walking pace, but Shoji did notice that the five in front of him all seemed to be in a rush.

He's going to be in his room, Sero reminded himself. What the hell is going on then? What's got me so, so-

Was something wrong last night? Uraraka thought about the boy she had walked into Deku's room to talk about. He didn't even care that I was- or did he?! Was he actually upset about what we were talking about? Did he know what I had come to ask Deku-kun?! Uraraka thought back on the night before after Zach had left to go train by himself. The three of them remaining had continued talking about the news and what they thought about Zach's assumptions and the danger of Shigaraki. She had waited five minutes until she was pretty sure that he would not still be waiting outside the room, before she brought back up the question that had been so urgent that she started asking it before Midoriya had finished opening his door, which had led to that awkwardness.

I didn't think they'd both disagree with me so much. Uraraka sped up a little more as she saw Sero glance sideways as if to check if he was getting too far ahead of the rest of them. Iida and Deku both, they both think he's Death too don't they? Why aren't they concerned then? Zach's been acting weird since he came back. He was acting weird at that convenience store too. Totally different to just a week before that when we went to see him. Her eyes shifted to her right and Sato whose frustrated look made one form back on her face too. I have to be suspicious of him. Coming back that night with all those strange occurrences coinciding at the same time. Couldn't he have planned that? Zach's smart like that. Everything was part of the plan to get back here first so that he'd have an alibi for all those mysterious coincidences!

Even getting Mina to think… Just the thought was one of the most painful things Uraraka had ever considered. She thought about her friend who had broken down that night and sounded so devastated, and to imagine that Zach had done that to her on purpose just to be able to get back to U.A.? He wouldn't, Uraraka thought. I'm certain of it. He may lie about a lot. He wouldn't do that though. Not to her. If he would, then he's a villain. And I don't think he's… I mean, but I do think he's Death?

"What do you think he's sick with?" Mineta asked.

Shoji looked down to his right at the shorter boy walking next to him. Mineta's head was up to his chest now unlike their freshman year, but the boy was still shortest in the class and he tilted his head back to look in Shoji's eyes after asking the question. Shoji stared back from one eye not covered by his silver bangs, and he responded from behind his mask to the question that had come out very sarcastically, "I hope nothing serious."

Mineta's eyebrows lowered down and he turned back towards the dorm himself. The skepticism in his question faded from his face and his expression got a little worried instead. Why'd I say it like that? Just because I know he's lying about whatever that language stuff he was working on was… And probably what he knows about the news- If he's actually sick, then it has to be something serious if it kept him from school. Right? Or, am I just trying to feel guilty because Shoji called me out on that? Mineta sweatdropped and stopped worrying so much pretty easily. He's fine. I'll see him in a second.

Hagakure slowed down a little as they were nearing the sidewalk back to their dorm. She sped back up though as Mineta and Shoji were gaining behind her, and she headed for the building while letting out a cool breath that hung in the chilly afternoon air on a day colder than it had been for a week or two now. If something's wrong maybe I can help him. He scared me that night but, but I know it's still him in there. He proved that to me. Zach's a scary person but he became that guy because he was worried about us! If he can do something so horrible because of that, because of how much he cares about us! Hagakure sped up more and started right up the stairs after Sero and Uraraka who had to jog to keep up with their classmate who did not slow down after entering the building.

"You going to check-" Uraraka tried starting up to Sero who was a few stairs above her, forcing her to run to keep up with the boy taking the stairs two steps at a time.

"Yep," Sero replied before she could finish.

Uraraka picked up her feet faster and sped to keep up with him. "Did he tell you what he's-"

"Just a cold," Sero replied.

And you don't believe him, Uraraka thought as she chased after him to the fourth floor now. You don't believe it, but you're still this worried about him? You think he's lying… But like Mina said. He lies because he doesn't want us to worry. So if he says it's nothing, Uraraka gulped and she sped up more so she was running at Sero's side instead of behind him now. The doubt came to her when they were heading down the fifth floor and slowing so they would not be heard running towards the door at the end of the hall. Or it really is nothing. We wouldn't be able to tell on the times it actually isn't anything big- though if it was something small, he wouldn't have let us know anything at all, would he? Just the fact that we know, Uraraka steadied her expression and gave a nod to her side at Sero who just glanced her way in a hesitant way wondering along similar lines if he was going into this expecting something too bad.

Sero nodded back then walked up to Zach's door and knocked twice. "Hey Zach, you doing alright?" Sero started opening the door without waiting to hear a response. He was turning the knob and pushing the door open as he finished his question. He pushed the door inward and stepped into the doorway, then his eyes shifted up from the shadowy figure in the lit-up room to the seven spheres of blackness swirling in the air above. Uraraka stared from outside the doorway with her eyes locking on those hovering black spheres all around the size of a bowling ball.

Each of the seven Death globes were attached to Zach by a squiggly black line that vibrated and snaked around but mainly kept its position between Zach and the stationary black orbs above. Zach was in his room though. He sat at his desk chair facing the door where he had heard his classmates approaching from, not that he did not know they were coming as classes had just ended. Out from his shoulders and the top of his back stretched those black lines, and from the position he was sitting in the others in his doorway could not see the fading black around the top of his back making the only parts of him with Death on them the connecting points of his Death lines.

"Hey guys," Zach said. His lips were flat when they entered the room, but Zach gave the two of them a reassuring smile, small as it was. "How was class?"

"What're you doing, Zach?" Uraraka wondered to her classmate, stepping forward into the doorway too which made Sero move farther inside and then freeze.

Zach held up his right palm and made Sero stop in place. His eyes shifted past them to Hagakure, then Sato, and he lowered his smile back down but kept from grimacing as he looked back to Sero. His expression showed he was holding back from grimacing as Sero could pick up on though, and he wondered what Zach was hiding by not actually grimacing in front of them. "Stay, right there," Zach said, lowering his hand back down and putting it on his right thigh. He took in a deep breath and made a few of the still-squiggling lines above him steady out into just straight ones. Then, at the end of one of those thin lines connecting to a bowling-ball-sized Death sphere near the ceiling, the ball started to shrink.

The thin line got a little thicker as the ball started to suck back into Zach's body. He took in another huge breath, then he exhaled it slowly while steadily pulling the sphere of Death back into his body. Calm. Show complete control. Zach closed his eyes while letting out the last of his breath, and while pulling in the last of the Death in that seventh sphere.

Shoji and Mineta looked into the room too from the doorway, giving the four of them just outside who had gone straight to Zach's room after school barely any room to see past their classmates and to Zach. They leaned into good positions though and all caught the gist of what just happened at least. Mineta was leaning his head to the side to look past Uraraka who was just too tall for him to see Zach past easily, and his eyes opened wide as he watched what Zach did. He stared into Zach's hazel eyes though that had a faint red tint in them that was illuminated by the light fixture on his ceiling. Those eyes opened and stared back in a hesitant and uneasy way back at Mineta's nervous ones, making the shorter boy open his eyes wider at the sight of them.

"What was-" Sero started.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Sero," Zach began. "I don't have a cold. I'm struggling to control Death at the moment."

"You're-" Hagakure began. He had so much control that night-

I've never seen this before-

No control over Death would-

"It's not the first time this has happened," Zach continued on in a steady tone, though there was a seriousness in his voice that he got through to the others in front of him very clearly. The six of their trains of thoughts cut off to instead listen as Zach's tone implied he wanted them to just listen for a moment. "I've had limiters on my Quirk for a while now."

"Limiters?" Shoji wondered inside.

"Yes. I had placed constraints on my Quirk to keep it weaker at all times. The first and only time I released them in public since returning to Japan was against the Subspace Devils," Zach explained. He went on in a calm voice, "Whether I need to use Death sporadically in order to keep it low, place more limiters on it, not use it much at all, or constantly use it, are all methods I have spent countless hours trying in order to make sure I never lose control of my Quirk. If Death was out of control, I know more than anyone how dangerous that would be. However, I do have control over my Quirk. To say otherwise or to even make people question whether I do or not by showing them this," Zach nodded upwards at the spheres still hovering above him. The others all nodded to show they were following along, and Zach continued, "It would do nothing more than scare them all. Make everyone afraid of me, far more than they already are. It's why I meant to keep this from ever being seen, and why none of you knew that I've been doing things like this in order to keep my power down for a long time now."

"So I'm asking you," Zach continued steadily. He looked into the eyes of his individual classmates and asked them collectively, "Don't make this a bigger deal than it needs to be. I have this under control."

"I get it," Sero said. He responded quickly and nodded his head back at his friend. I get why Azure would be worried if she saw this. "Totally. Do what you need to do," Sero said with a nod and a lift of the right corner of his lips.

Zach smiled back and looked relieved to hear Sero say that. Uraraka nodded too, and she glanced behind her to see if the others felt the same way.

"Do you…" Mineta started. "Want notes from-"

"I'll get them later. I need to focus," Zach said.

His tone was dismissive. It made Mineta nod quickly, as he realized that notes were not what Zach needed to concentrate on at a time like this. "Yeah, yeah got it. Well uh… good luck with, you know."

Zach shifted his gaze onto Sato who stared back for another second before frowning and glancing away. "Yeah, luck." Sato started off, and Mineta followed.

"Let us know if you need anything," Hagakure mentioned. "Text me," she added.

"Yeah. I'm heading off for my internship in a bit, but hit me up too if-"

"Got it guys. I'm fine," Zach reiterated, nodding at Sero in appreciation but motioning for him to go too.

The group left Zach's room and closed the door behind them. Zach released a heavy breath only once he heard them far enough from his door. Then he looked up at the black spheres above him, and he focused on the sixth one that he had been attempting to make somewhat smaller there near the end to show off some more. Come on, Zach glared at the sixth sphere he had created, but getting frustrated at it was having the opposite effect even as the black line connecting it to him was growing thicker. It was not getting thicker from Death pouring back into him though, but from Death in him moving out to the growing bowling ball. Zach's eyes darted around to the other five, and his eyes widened for a moment as each of them started growing more too.

Back to seven? Zach questioned himself as he took the strain off and stunted the growth of all six by starting back up a new one. I only made the sixth and seventh in order to demonstrate my control!

It's speeding up. Or maybe I just can't keep up with it any longer. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Down the hallway from Zach's room, Sero let out a sigh and rolled his neck around with a more relaxed look on his face than he had had all day. "Not at all," Sero started while looking to his left where Mineta was speaking to Sato and Hagakure about what they just saw. "I had no idea about the limiters. Makes sense though. He's got to hold back Death so that he doesn't kill anyone."

"Do you," Uraraka started but stopped herself. "Do you think there's any reason it's acting up now?" She specified the current incident and they all thought about the events going on in the world around them.

"Unless everything's connected, I doubt it," Mineta admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. The others mostly looked to him, and Mineta continued with a thoughtful look, "Before, I thought it was weird that there were so many things happening at once. But like, unless you come up with a way to connect a dozen coincidences it's a lot more likely everything's just isolated events. Even those heroes disappearing. It, makes more sense that someone like The Spear is off on some mission tracking villains in secret, and Rhino Chick may have unfortunately been in Gondorhan. I mean, everyone thought that was just one thing but now…"

Shoji had turned around and stared down the hall back towards Zach's door. Something did not sit right with him after what they had just seen and all Zach had said. Mineta's voice fell in volume in the back of his mind, and he wondered, He kept us from talking about it to anyone else. We all know to keep it to ourselves now. What if that's not what's going on? Is there a reason he would show us something like that though? Make that excuse? No. Zach could have come up with a dozen different plans. Even if that one would be something realistic he could trick us with, something's been going on with him for a few days now. The way he's been acting. This loss of Quirk control. And most of all…

He had the fake skin on his left hand when he arrived the other night. The next morning it was gone. His arm was broken. Midoriya had a mark on his face that is gone now. Zach's injuries recovered as well. Evidence that something had happened was sparse and has disappeared quickly. Shoji continued to the stairwell as Sero looked back from his door closest to the stairs and asked what his classmate was doing. Sato had gone into his room to get changed out of his school uniform, but Shoji's room was on the floor below.

Sero kept on his uniform as he was supposed to wear it while traveling to and from U.A. He was not staying on campus for much longer, and he watched as the taller and more quiet member of Class A walked past him before heading into his room. Man, I got worked up over nothing, Sero thought while grabbing his carry-on bag to pack a couple days' worth of clothing. He's fine. As fine as he can be, at least. Better actually!

Those first weeks he was back, nobody knew how hard it was for you. Losing Mark, none of us knew how close you were. But it wasn't until Fight Day at your apartment, when I saw you looking in your mirror, Sero frowned just thinking back on it. Then again, he added to himself while packing slower. How about how you looked in that convenience store on Tuesday? Or when Norita was killed, or the talk show, Sero rubbed his forehead thinking about all the moments Zach did not look as good as he just did. Will he really be alright? No, of course he will be.

If he was actually having a hard time controlling his Quirk he wouldn't be here. He wouldn't put us in danger. I know how much he cares about us, Sero thought about the night of the joint training and grinned to himself again. And I know just being at U.A. is going to help him…

At dinner, not many of Class A were still around at U.A. to eat together.

Hawks and Gang Orca had to go to Geneva as Japanese envoys to an international meeting about the Gondorhan Incident, showing international solidarity and the desire to investigate more about the tragedy's origin. It was a show of good faith and friendship to America, but also a show to the people of Japan who were worried about something of a town-destroying nature suddenly happening in Japan with no explanation. Endeavor could not take the time out of the country though, which Tokoyami tried to explain to Kirishima at dinner when the redhead complained again about being left behind and how Endeavor should have gone for something like this so they could have continued investigating Mt. Yamagucha.

Aoyama sat across from Ojiro and the two of them were talking, and Shoji sat down the bench a bit from Ojiro with a thoughtful look behind his mask while his upper right arm ate his dinner. Sato was sitting across from Shoji and gave his classmate a risen eyebrow and confused look in reference to Shoji's demeanor over the past couple hours. Even down in the common room where a few of them had gathered that afternoon to go over tests and review, Shoji had seemed even quieter than usual.

Shoji glanced up at Sato who he noticed staring. "Zach hasn't come to eat anything all day," Shoji said. Sato started to frown as Shoji began his sentence by talking about Zach again, but at the end of it his eyes opened wider at the realization.

"Should we bring him some food?" Sato wondered. I didn't see him eat dinner yesterday either, Sato thought to himself. "He might not want to come to the cafeteria if he can't keep all that Death inside."

Shoji frowned and his eyebrows narrowed down at his classmate who said that aloud and without hiding his voice at all. Sato just spoke in a normal tone, but he glanced to his left still looking surprised when both Aoyama and Ojiro turned and looked over towards him. Then he turned to the right and looked at Kirishima and Tokoyami who looked his way as well. "What do you mean by that?" Tokoyami asked, having started listening in to the two of them once he heard Zach's name mentioned.

Shoji's eyes shifted towards Class B's table where nine of that class were still there on Friday evening. "It's nothing. He's dealing with it," Shoji said in a low, deadpan voice. He got back to eating and Sato did the same, frowning but keeping his mouth shut other than to eat his food.

Aoyama gulped but then shook his head around and turned back to Ojiro with a smile to continue their conversation in a carefree way. There's no way.

So that's what Toru didn't want to talk about. She said he wasn't sick, Ojiro nodded along with his longer-haired friend who was going on about some dazzling story. But she didn't want to say what it really was.

Far across the country, Sero tapped his fingers on his right thigh during an important meeting with some heroes including Ape Man and his other sidekicks. What if I've got it backwards? The nagging doubt in the back of Sero's mind wormed its way to the surface of his thoughts and overshadowed his focus on talks about the League. Every time I think it's one thing, it's the other. If I felt that way right after leaving his room, then that was how he wanted me to feel, right? That doesn't mean it was a lie. Of course he would want me to feel reassured. And if Mina had thought this way instead of checking up afterwards the other night when she had this feeling, after initially being relieved, Sero's heart fell. We'd never have seen him again. If he can't keep a lid on it…

Shoji looked towards the doors to the cafeteria again as he ate his food faster. He pulled back in one of the seven protruding spheres hours ago. It shouldn't have taken him this long to get the rest under control. He shouldn't have missed a day of school for it at all! Shoji finished up and he went to dump his tray. He headed out of the cafeteria without grabbing any more food. I was wrong again.

Shoji felt a buzz in his pocket and pulled out his phone with one of his six arms. He glanced at the groupchat for Class A where Sero had sent a message to them, 'Can someone check on Zach and post how he's doing in here?'

All across Japan, different members of Class A glanced down at their phones. No one else sent a message back to Sero. They all just pocketed their phones again, and a feeling of dread hanging over their heads relieved a bit with not many of them noticing it. Yaoyorozu lowered her phone down slowly though and she let out a breath of audible relief. Thank you, Sero. She checked back onto her messages with Zach and what he had been telling her about his methods of keeping his Quirk under control that he has started explaining earlier when she asked what the symptoms of his sickness were.

These past couple days I thought maybe Ashido had been off, Shoji thought as he headed back to the dorms in a quicker-paced walk than he had left school right after classes that afternoon. His attitude. The gleeful way he was acting, except it wasn't acting. There was no reason to act so happy. It was putting everyone off around him. We were all serious and focused on the horrible events going on, and he was having a great time all the time. That isn't him. I thought he was either lying or, or that I just had no idea who I was dealing with anymore.

But he's just been in his room trying to get control of his power? All day? Shoji thought it again in his head in a more skeptical and concerned way than the way Zach made them feel earlier. He had treated it like no big deal but something that most people would overreact to. By treating it in such a way, all of them under-reacted to it which Shoji was realizing as he rushed up the stairs for the fifth floor again. He stared down the hallway from the platform at the top of the stairs, frozen in place as he stared towards the black tendrils coming out from below the crack of the door and dragging over the floor outside it.

The door itself was turning black as wisps stretched in from the cracks all around the frame. Shoji walked down the hallway and glanced towards the ceiling at the end where some wisps had gotten in the way of, or at least they must have since he felt it looked darker down at the end of the hall. As he was nearing the door, all of those tendrils and wisps shot back through the cracks and left the hallway empty again. He could see only pitch blackness below the crack of Zach's door as he stepped slowly towards it. "…rrrRR Gah- SShhhhiii… rrrr…" Crreee-eek

The building in front of Shoji seemed like it was under pressure. The walls were not shaking but they were under an enormous strain on the other side of this door. At the end of the hall back behind Shoji, four others got to the top of the stairs and started down towards him. Shoji reached forward and he grabbed the doorknob, and he turned it and pushed Zach's door open. Shoji opened the door inwards, while Ojiro, Sato, Tokoyami, and Kirishima were coming up behind him.

The door scraped open into a world of black. Whether the lights were on or off, the room in front of them should not have been this dark just from the light that should have poured in from the hallway alone. Instead, the hallway itself seemed to get darker as the door opened. The shadow fell over their faces as they looked into the room and at the figure standing in the middle of it.

Zach's chair was discarded into the darker shadows in a corner of his room. The top half of it had broken off from the bottom half while he was sitting there, and now he stood in the center of his room with his elbows pulled in at his sides and his hands shaking while curled down in front of him. He had no shirt on nor pants did it seem, though there were shreds of cloth on the floor at his feet and scattered around the room mostly covered in bubbling pools of Death.

His arms from his elbows down to his hands were completely engulfed in Death. The Death was thinner up near his elbows and peeled off into regular but tanner skin up that high. Down near his hands though it was thick. It was so thick with black Death that it went down his fingers and then sharpened off of each of them. There were clouds of black smoke thinner than the core Death claws inside that they were wisping off of, yet while staying around those hands and not fading or disappearing into the air. Zach's hair was waving around over his head, though most of it was moppy around his skull and could not be differentiated between the black strands of Death everywhere around him and floating all over the room.

Zach's body was hunched and his back started to bend with his head snapping back, a wing coming out of the left side of his back stretching longer and then curling in with an even more condensed and familiar form that was easy to create and hold together. Zach pulled more of the darkness off from near the walls on his left and behind him, as well as up from the floor onto his legs that were already engulfed with it but became thicker all the way up to his completely shrouded waist, and his stomach and chest that got even more covered as he groaned out. That groan turned darker though as his head turned to the side, and his flaring bright red eyes glared out his doorway at the group standing there. "GGRrrr- Gettt-" Zach's head shook around.

He shook his head more, his head spasming and blurring as it snapped back and forth. He opened his mouth so huge his jaw looked to unhinge with nothing but pitch blackness inside, then he clenched his jaw shut and yanked even more darkness off his face just as he pulled as much as he could down through his throat and away from his vocal cords. His arms got more covered in Death and his head leaned forward, his neck bowing and his face clearing up more with Death pulling away from around his eyes and mouth. His skin got lighter but was still dark tan on his cheeks with black spiderwebs retreating to the sides of his face. They pulled back near his hairline and his ears, and darkness flew back behind Zach's head towards the window that it pulled away from before hitting. It looked like a constant wind pushing into Zach's face though from the direction of his open door, with wind streaks of Death pulling off the back of his head while he leaned forward in the most strained and agonized way just to give them a human look with his own face and eyes that were not completely glowing red.

"Get…" Zach started again. He bit down and then pursed his lips before continuing to bare his teeth at the others in almost as scary a way as he had just looked with all that Death on him, then his eyebrows narrowed in more and his eyes got darker as he growled, "Out."

Zach's ears pointed up and some of the black wind coming off the back of his head pulled into them and condensed to give them a solid form. His hair spiked over his head, and another black wing formed on his back with more Death pulling off the floor, only for a wave of it to come out of his calves and splash into the dark ocean behind him that scraped his desk along the floor a couple inches when it hit. Wisps pushed out in all directions and then yanked back into his body with a twitch of Zach's facial expression, and then Zach forced his expression as calm as he could make it under these circumstances, which was still incredibly strained and intense.

I can't leave. The second I leave it's over. I'll have to accept that I can't live without using Death, and I can't accept that! Once I do, once I leave here! A place where I need to hold it in. Where the people I care about are around me and I can't let it touch them! Zach darted his furious eyes to Ojiro for a moment, then he started to all five of the others in front of him, as well as the sixth who was down the hall a bit but stopped when he saw the expressions on his shadowed-over friends' faces. "Everything's under control," Zach began.

He said it even as darkness crawled up his arms over his biceps and triceps. His claws curled and dripped with liquid Death, and Zach's voice was nervous but he spoke in a calmer voice, "I haven't felt it get, any stronger in the past thirty minutes." He paused and grit his teeth again, then he continued to the group in front of him, "This, is better than it was a half hour ago, and I'll get it all inside- soon-" Zach's voice struck with pain and his eyes clenched shut, then opened glowing red again which made him grind his teeth in frustration as he could see the others through only a red-tinted veil.

Inside the swirling sky of Death above Zach, a black sphere spinning in the mix pulled down and slammed on top of his head. It pushed back off but then turned into a funnel-shape that sucked back into his skull and made Zach lean his head back with a low guttural growl coming out of his throat. "RRRaahh-rraagah- gah, ah," he gasped and groaned through a raspy throat after making the strained noise.

"I'll go get Recovery Girl," Ojiro started.

"Just close the door," Zach countered at Ojiro, moving the darkness away from his vocal cords again, though his voice still came out scratchy and almost as deep as a moment ago. Ojiro pursed his own lips and got ready to deny him as he could see Zach was in agony here. Zach's lips curled up though in that darkness, his skull showing through for a second with his face making a horrifying smile. Is he, really in pain? Ojiro wondered in shock for a second. Zach snapped him out of it though as his strained voice spoke through the darkness, "Recovery Girl can't help me with this- I have to do it on my own."

Zach's eyes shifted to Tokoyami who he glared at in a knowing way. Tokoyami's eyes opened wider for a couple seconds, then he returned them back to normal and nodded in a serious way back at his classmate who he had never felt more connected to than in that moment. Without telling anyone how serious it is. Keeping it quiet, like I did. And-

"Just get out," Zach repeated, shaking his head and then turning to Kirishima who had stared at him with huge eyes after he opened the door. The redhead was still staring at him in disbelief at what he was seeing. And he only blinked as Zach's voice rasped to him, "Go, away."

Shoji backed up and he closed the door. He stopped after closing it, and he let out a heavy breath and closed his eyes.

"What are we-" Aoyama started whispering towards the others who looked his way upon hearing his voice.

"Zach knows what he's doing," Shoji started. He said it knowing that Zach could probably hear him on the other side of the door, but he continued anyway, "He's having trouble controlling his Quirk, but Sato's room is next door to Zach's. Mine is directly below his. And the only other room in direct contact is Kirishima's which only connects at the corners." Kirishima and Sato both stared at Shoji with their eyes opening huge at what Shoji was suggesting while glancing back towards Zach's door. "Nothing can happen to the three of us. We'll be able to tell if things are getting out of hand."

Ojiro nodded in understanding as to Shoji's reasoning. He looked to Zach's room again and thought, You didn't tell anyone, because you wanted to keep it from even getting into their rooms. If it got that far it was already too far. Now you won't be able to tell though. Ojiro lifted his tail around the side of his body and rubbed his forehead with the bushy part at the end of it. How long have you been struggling with this? And Mysti- not getting into those schools and being expelled, hunted, shot and- damn it. I thought by coming here you'd get some relief.

Kirishima turned and his glare forced Aoyama to the side of the hall before the spiky-haired teen even started stomping his way. FUCK! Kirishima's fists balled at his sides, but he kept his cool as best he could while Aoyama was looking at him with such wide eyes that it sure felt like he was not hiding it at all how pissed off he just got. Was that it?! The past two days I couldn't fucking stand him- was he trying to hold this back all that- Fucking- FUCK! This must be what it's like to be Bakugo, Kirishima thought and tried to cool his head as he stormed down the stairs for his own floor. What the hell was that?

He stopped on his floor and just stared up at the ceiling ahead of him in the direction of Zach's room. I've never seen him like that. He was losing it. He let us see him losing it. He never- "God damn," Kirishima whispered it and balled his fists tighter at his sides. Why didn't I know? Why didn't I have any idea that he was struggling like that? It's because… It's because we aren't- we aren't even-

Mezo Shoji stood outside his own door for over a minute after he and the others had broken off to go their separate ways. He looked back down a door to Kirishima's room he had heard the redhead inside. Then he glanced back down at the floor, Neither would. They both know there's nothing anyone can do about this. And once it's out there, once it's been said once, it can never be retracted. If he gets it under control it won't matter.

"If?" Shoji lifted his eyes back to the ceiling. He was struggling. It doesn't look easy. Can he do it? He's done it before, hasn't he? It feels like he has. He explained it like he had, but he also showed us earlier that he was getting a grip on it only to lose control. He hasn't lost control. He's holding it back. He is, and yet I assumed it would seep through his floor and through my ceiling, that's how strong I think it's going to get? If he was showing us how much a hold he had on it earlier though, then what if what he just said about it reaching its max was also a lie?

He doesn't want anyone to freak out. If we alert anyone, he can't stay here. He knows that by losing control he's putting our classmates in danger. And he's doing it anyway. Shoji's gaze narrowed, and all six of his fists clenched down at his sides. Why would Zach do that? It's because he can't leave here. If he leaves, he can't come back. Does he want to be here with us that badly? That doesn't make sense. He was doing so much good out there.

Every time I saw him on the news, he'd say something amazing. About everyone being better. Being capable of being heroes. He was showing off how much of a hero he was. And, he was reviving people. And stopping villains. More than I thought he could while still going to school at the same time. I heard Midoriya and Bakugo talking though, the large teen whose Quirk could work as a sensory type imagined a few months back when he saw the two of them murmuring amongst themselves after a day at their internship with Lemillion. What he was doing before facing the Subspace Devils is part of the reason those villains got desperate enough to attempt such a high-risk maneuver even with Potaru as a failsafe. At the time I thought he was being reckless and going to get himself expelled, but I really think he knew what he was doing would drag some bigger villains into the light from the shadows they were in.

And now he's here. Shoji stared frustratedly up at the ceiling still from the hallway outside his room. His right foot inched towards his door but he stopped himself again for some reason. Is it that I think the Death is already coming through my ceiling? His floor was so covered in it, and if it is… I don't want to have to tell- that's not it. Shoji's thoughts were not sounding familiar, and the reasoning he made for why he was being hesitant did not make any sense to him. Even if it was there I wouldn't say anything.

He's my friend. He brought me back to life- that's not the reason! Shoji frowned deeply behind his gray mask. His eyes darkened and he wondered to himself, That was what I was doing at the cafeteria, sitting with Zach. I did it out of obligation. I thought about, how I owed it to him. That's not friendship. Yet he's still here. He's here when- because of Sero, or Ashido, and Midoriya. And me. All of us. I can't think he doesn't- I was just hanging around Zach, to make him feel like we're friends, but doesn't that really make us friends? If that's the reason for our friendship though then it's fake. If it's just to help him, rather than to be friends. The thought process was confusing but the situation was one Shoji had never found himself in before too.

Shoji turned and he started back for the stairs. He walked slowly at first, but his feet picked up and he moved faster still in a walk but with urgency in his step now. I spent days so focused on the problems we were all facing that it felt like he was ignoring. Because our problems seemed like the most important things. How could he not care about them? But that mentality was wrong. Shoji started down the fifth floor towards the door that had Death spilling out from below it and around the cracks again.

He was alone this time. He marched towards Zach's room, It's not that he doesn't have problems of his own. He just does whatever he can to keep us from realizing that he does, which is why he's suffering alone in his room as his power fights him. His terrifying power that he's losing control of, which has to be the most horrifying thing for someone like Zach! Zach, who already thinks of that as a Nightmare, thought himself a monster, tried to kill himself… To see himself losing control like this?! Shoji grabbed Zach's doorknob and opened it without knocking. Whatever he was going to see on the other side of the door did not matter to him anymore.

He opened it up and all the darkness around the entrance yanked back towards the solid dark shadow hovering in the middle of a swirling vortex of black gaseous Death. "Shoji," Zach's voice hissed from ahead of him, quiet as Zach had been muffling his voice and all sound in there to keep the others in the dorm from hearing him. He stared through the swirling black mist that was thinner in front of his face between him and Shoji, and he watched the taller teen with six arms step inside and close the door behind him. Shoji was tinted red in his vision, but once the door was closed he was nearly impossible to see, though for Shoji it was even harder in a room full of real darkness.

Zach floated off the ground in the direct center of his room. He lowered down to the floor though as Shoji stood in front of him, and he no longer needed to keep his center off the ground so as to prevent any Death from slipping into his classmate's room. Koda's not here below him. Mineta neither below that. No one's raised any alarms or let me know that it's getting in yet. Aoyama didn't tell… who would he tell? No one's qualified to handle this. I'm exploding. IT'S TOO MUCH! Zach's body was hardly physical. It was the most condensed collection of Death in the room, but his arms and legs were wobbly and unsteady in their material form. He lowered to the ground but his feet merged with the pool of Death covering the first five inches of ground rather than stepping on top of it or even into a shallow liquid.

The loss of his feet only became noticeable to him as he turned towards Shoji who was tracing his hand along the wall to the left side of his door. "I told you, to get out." Zach steadied his voice as much as he could while speaking towards a classmate who looked towards him and could see Zach's face from the bright glowing red orbs in the middle of the room. Zach seethed through his teeth that he barely felt existent in the black cloud of his face, "What are you doing?" His voice got even deeper and lost the last of its normal tone overlapping before, "I need- I need Focus!" Zach rose his voice, then he glowered at Shoji harder and attempted to pull more Death from his ceiling light that should still be on so he could see his classmate better.

Cchhhh! Zach heard the glass above him shatter and felt it falling through the cloud of his body. Parts slid through him slower like he was a viscous form, while others dropped straight through him like he was intangible. He could feel the glass sliding through him in parts slower, and he tried to solidify them more to see if pieces could bounce off him. "GGRrr- OWw-" Zach turned his body more into Death again, but he accidentally turned the glass that had lodged into his body into Death as well like he usually did with his clothing and weapons. FOCUS! Just on my body around- ah- "Ah- AH AH AHHhhh-" Zach clenched his teeth again and his jaw collapsed as he was not focused enough on making it solid, when too much of his focus was on his lower torso and right leg that the glass shard was sliding through slowly.

He kept turning his body farther and farther down into more of the same viscosity as it had before, as that was a tested method of sliding the shard all the way down him. "I'm here because I want to help you," Shoji said after walking over towards Zach's bed where he knew it to be in the room. He pushed the back of his legs against it and sat down while Zach looked back towards the teen he nearly forgot had come into his room over the past few seconds that had felt so much longer to him. "Because-"

"There's nothing you can do to help me," Zach snarled back at Shoji. "All you're doing is distracting me. Keeping me from getting control!"

Shoji hesitated while sitting at the edge of Zach's bed. No matter how convincing he is. I won't let you do this alone. If the reason I sat there in the cafeteria was only to make you feel like we're friends, then I would leave. If it was just to help you… And even this, he admitted to himself. Might just be because I want to help you. Or to convince myself more that we're friends, but I want to help you, Zach. Rather than I feel I need to as I did when Ashido called me out on my behavior lately. "You don't have to do this alone," Shoji finally responded after a few painstakingly quiet seconds to Zach who had his fists clenching and his power pulling back into him as much as possible so he could better see his red-tinted friend's face.

"RA!" Death shot out of Zach's mouth into the boy who responded like that. He slammed it into Shoji and it pushed to either side of the object that got in the way of that wind. Shoji's mask and his bangs did well at keeping the Death out of his eyes, but he still squinted as the wind pushed into them like that. He squinted and stared through the gas at Zach's head that snapped back with his mouth opening over a foot wide without a jaw bone to prevent it from unhinging like that. "DAaaamnn itttt," Zach's voice growled up at the ceiling from his wide open mouth that had black teeth stretching in from either unhinged jaw.

All of the Death that just pushed out from him started dragging back, and Shoji snapped his head to the left and then right as streams of it sped by his face. Zach's body hunched forward but grew two feet in size. His chest pulsed as if with a heart beat going twice a second, pulsing and pulsing then stopping, and double-pulsating again. Zach's jaw unhinged farther but breath just hissed out his jaw only to suck back in as that breath was full of too much Death that came spilling out from inside him. His entire body was already made of Death, and he filled it more and more as the room actually got a lighter shade of black. Shoji realized his eyes must have adjusted to a much darker black that even in the darkness he was able to make Zach out better now, which just meant he was able to see the full terrifying silhouette of the creature before him stretching nearly up to the ceiling as Death yanked more and more into his body.

Five swirling spheres of Death spun around and around Zach's head that had almost touched the ceiling now. His back was hunched forward, his arms bulging with black muscles that pulsed with every bit of Death that flooded into his body. It moved so quickly into him that Shoji could not track the movements of any individual strand of Death. It's like water. Raging, Shoji felt a wisp slide past his calf and he darted his eyes down to the right, only to see a black strand of air spiral out of control and slam into the door then bounce up into the ceiling. Another piece slammed into it and they broke apart into four winds that got swept over by a wave and then it all collided with one big black sphere that sucked it all in while at the same time leaving a trail of black dust behind it.

This big, I can stand to lose it a bit, Zach focused back on Shoji now that he stood twelve feet tall and hunched forward in his room four times the size of his classmate. Zach leaned forward and growled at his friend sitting at the edge of his bed, "Leave."

"No." Shoji answered the beast of a dark being that snarled that at him through dripping black teeth. "You're in pain, and I'm not going to let you go through this alone." Shoji stood up in front of Zach but the larger black form did not ease back at all. Zach continued to lean forward with his three-foot-tall head glaring straight at Shoji inches away from his face. Zach's bigger flaring red eyes with black swirls in them glared daggers into Shoji's small black pupils, and then the silver-haired teen finished, "Not this time."

Zach's big head twitched. When it twitched, some darkness pulled off of it and Zach leaned back up so he bumped the top of his head into the ceiling. That drag against the ceiling shredded Death off his skull and left a streak of black across the ceiling like a blood stain. It dripped down like one too and made it rain black between the boys staring in each other's eyes. Zach ground his teeth and curled all four of his hands into shaking fists, and then the fifth and sixth too as he created them to keep more of that spinning wind condensed together and fully attached to his body. "I didn't ask for you to stay here. It's not going to help, and it can only make this harder."

"I doubt that," Shoji responded, sitting back down on the edge of Zach's bed again. "Maybe there isn't any utility to my staying here. Maybe I will distract you, but maybe a distraction can help out, somehow. I don't know," Shoji admitted it and stared up into Zach's eyes with his sharp bangs narrowing his gaze up at the larger more unstable teen. "But just looking at you it's clear you're hurting. So it doesn't matter if you didn't ask me."

"That's the essence of being a hero, isn't it?" Shoji wondered after a moment. He paused and shook his head at Zach who was treating this like his problem alone. Shoji rose his tone up and finished, "Getting involved even when it's not asked of you makes a hero in my mind."

Zach clenched his red eyes shut. That doesn't make a hero. That- that's not- Nobody ever asked me, to do what I did. I'm not a hero though! I wasn't.

Shoji could feel the frustration in the air somehow. The Death shards and wisps that floated around him started to make him feel that frustration, and yet he understood that it was not his own emotions he was feeling. His eyes widened as he stared ahead at his friend who rose four hands up to the sides, front, and back of his head to grip it as tightly as possible. Zach groaned as he gripped his huge head that he pushed inwards on all sides and started shrinking, which looked odd when the rest of his body was still proportional to that bigger head. I could feel his emotions. It's almost as if, all of this is a part of Zach. I'm inside- That's not a way to look at this, Shoji tried to stay serious despite the weird thought he just had. It's just his Quirk.

But with Zach's Quirk, what does "just" mean? His Quirk is amazing. More amazing than anyone's. And you're a hero Zach, and what I just said was meant to remind you of that. I didn't think it would anger you so much to hear something that resonates with you also being associated with heroes.

"It's…" Zach lowered his hands from his head and looked back at Shoji angrily as he was about to start speaking, only to remember that he did not want Shoji there in the first place or to talk to him at all. Does he know something I don't? "It-" I need to focus- what if he's right? Does Shoji know that I wanted to have someone here? I don't know. I don't know anything. "Death might not be able to hurt you, Shoji," Zach's voice was louder but it was in a deep and ominous voice. Shoji could hear that despite that tone, Zach was speaking normally and this was not meant to come out menacing at all. "But you being here isn't safe. It's not- not a, smart idea."

"I think it's one of my better ideas," Shoji countered softly back at his friend. "If you get out of control I'll be here to see it up close." Zach's eyes shook and his teeth clenched up on his smaller head that was subtly growing back to the size Zach just crunched it in from. "If you start to lose yourself without realizing it, I'll be here to help you get back," Shoji continued. His first sentence made Zach think it had to do with stopping him afterwards, but the second one had him opening up his squinted eyes and staring back down at his six-armed friend who shook his head up at the feeling in Zach's Death of those doubts and fears. "And if you even think of leaving here, because you're too afraid of hurting us, I'm going to stop you."

"Ha!" The laughter was involuntary, but Zach thought it was funny. He laughed and stopped himself after the single one. He smiled though inside that darkness, before wincing and losing two of his arms as a wave of Death ripped out of his body. He slammed it all into the opposite wall as Sato's though, as some Death seeping out into the night sky outside the dorm was not a big problem to him. He still hoped while looking Sato's way and wondering about how much Death he could see in the room, Did any get out? It's a solid wall, but there are gaps in particles. Solids' particles are close together but unmoving which makes it more controllable. I could morph right through walls even without cracks, couldn't I? I'm that powerful, and Shoji's actually offended, Zach looked back towards his classmate who had frowned behind his mask when Zach laughed at what he was saying in a serious tone.

"I'm glad you'll stop me, Shoji," Zach's voice relaxed a bit as his body started to lose size again. Pieces of his big form ripped apart and went back to being swirling globes of Death up in the air that he tried to hold in place and keep connected by squiggling Death lines. "But come on. How many times now have I beaten you without even using my Quirk?"

Shoji thought of the last time and it made him grimace but also sweatdrop and nod admittedly. He imagined Zach rushing out of the smoke, getting behind him, kicking out his legs and kneeing him in the face, and the last thing he remembered was the vice grip around his neck before passing out. Then he thought back farther though, and he frowned deeper but in a more upset way of his own while looking ahead and watching his friend struggle again to control the Death that was whipping out and around him.

"SO- strong," Zach whispered, gasping out afterwards and grinning madly in the black smoke around his face. "Hahaha, I'm so fucking amazing. Ha- haha, I'm the strongest there is," his smile lifted up higher but his face distorted in the darkness and his face just looked afraid. "So why am I- nnnn, why? Why won't it stop, increasing?" Zach bowed his chin down to his chest and rose his hands to his face again, just two hands though in a funnel of swirling Death that went from his feet and rose up his legs. It rose around him while spinning violently; such a thin veil of liquid or gas, a mist of black like sand that grew thicker and thinner in milliseconds. It spun around him but did not prevent the core form inside that was so much thicker from being seen on the outside.

Out of Zach's head while he had his black claws over his face, another head pulled out with arms reaching out of Zach's body and pushing back on it as if to drag it out of itself. This new body had sharper red eyes and a malevolent expression on its black face, its teeth stuck in that sharp way baring at Shoji who it smirked at in such a crazy way that it had the six-armed teen leaning back on Zach's bed. "RAaa- FUck-" Another Zach pulled out of his body in the other direction, yanking him that way and pulling him apart at the upper torso so a chunk of him was ripped into the spinning vortex that now touched the ceiling.

"Just go away," the new version gasped as half a body emerged. It pulled away and looked back in fear at the head with bared teeth getting dragged into Zach's main body that reached even sharper claws at it, the afraid version pulling away as Zach's thoughts were too jumbled and overlapping with his mind scattering across the Death.

NO! Zach screamed internally, as his panic rushed for the window. The clump of Death that shot at the window exploded out on it and shards ripped apart in all directions. Shoji swore he could still see a shadow of a hysterical expression imprinted on the glass for for a few seconds. "No no no," Zach swung his fists in and created a solid central form to punch against inside his funnel. He rose his hands up and started beating on his own temples, "Stop stop- STOP- s-s-sto-stop. Please?"

"It feels good," Zach snapped while spinning his head and glaring through the vortex towards Shoji. "I'm not in pain. You fucking imbecile. I feel goooood," Zach breathed the word out and lifted his chin, his eyes closing and the euphoria flooding through him. "Why do you think I feel so good these days, Shoji? What makes me feel like this? What makes me so much stronger?" Zach lowered his gaze back to the teen sitting outside his funnel but still getting slammed by all the Death that poured out of him now.

"Why are you getting more powerful?" Shoji asked.

Zach's mouth slammed shut and his head pulled back. He snapped his head down to the right, murmuring under his breath and then growling out in agony before two huge wings ripped out of his back. The tips of the wings curled around the walls, and the wings got more solid and condensed which made them too thin to the point that they looked like bat wings. On Zach's body, huge back wings looked as demonic as it could get. "I tried," Zach growled, his hands raising to the sides of his head and gripping in with his sharp claws through his temples.

"I, tried to stay here." Zach's red vision shook and he gripped his head harder as everything felt like it was breaking apart. The room vibrated, and all he could imagine was Ares flying twenty meters ahead of him. And the two of them were grinning at each other.

A smirk shot across Zach's face and he growled in a deep and menacing tone, "But I couldn't leave Terra behind. I thought I could," he turned his head. He cocked it to the side and looked towards Shoji with the swirling red orbs on his head. His room was full of Death and he growled angrier now, "But they wouldn't let me. I thought, that I had left some of my worst enemies to be dealt with by the friends I left behind. Instead, they chased me back to this world." Zach lowered his hands from his head and started laughing, "They came after me!" His voice cracked and rose higher, and he laughed harder and madly as he bellowed, "They wouldn't let me REST!"

Shoji's heart pounded but his mouth was closed as he stared down his classmate. Zach was yelling in a mad voice, but Shoji was frozen still at the look on that demonic face. Zach started panting, his heavy black breaths going in and out of the dark clouds already filling the room around him. "So I went back to that world," Zach whispered. His voice lowered and his gaze hit the floor as he confessed to it. "I returned to a world I swore to myself never to go back to."

"And now I'm back here?" Zach asked it incredulously but his voice cracked again. His scratchy voice got higher pitched and confused, and he shook it around frustratedly before shaking it even faster as his head was vibrating out of itself as there was far too much Death condensed on his mind at once. "No no no- NO no no noooo-" Zach clenched up. Everything froze at once, an ocean of Death in the room coming to a standstill all at once. Then it continued moving slowly, some of it sucking back into Zach's body, but the rest just spinning around and slamming out into the walls again. "I can't do this," Zach whispered, his voice hoarse and shaking as he said it. "But I can't stop- try…ing, either," his lower body pulled to the left leaving just a torso in the air that dropped down and started falling apart. Death pulled up from the floor and hit into Zach's unstable upper body while Shoji shot up to his feet and reached forward, grabbing him by the arms as Zach was about to sink down and collapse into a black puddle.

"It needs to be me alone," Zach pulled out of Shoji's grip and smacked his hands back towards the other teen in his room. The mass of Death below his chest started to take back shape of a human body, but in doing so his Death pushed out even more out of him and smashed into the walls. Waves of it went up the walls and it felt more like they were underwater as the Death completely engulfed them in a thicker mass than it was earlier. "I can do this," Zach hissed. It was the opposite of what he just said in the pain of losing his balance and control, but he had to say it aloud to remind himself that it was true.

"You're right," Shoji said. "You can do it," he nodded at his friend who looked back his way and met his gaze once more in the dark sea covering them. Shoji's voice passed through the Death just fine though. "And you're right when you say I couldn't stop you from leaving. Not if it came down to a fight. You've made that clear many times now."

Zach lost focus on Shoji as he felt his Death seeping through the cracks around his window and sliding down the halls outside his door. He pulled it back into his room, but that made the Death pushing against his walls just too thick. Sato got up off his desk chair in the next room over and walked over right to the wall that Death wisps were seeping through. He stared at the black tendrils shaking so hard, then he rose his gaze as he heard the voices on the other side of the wall. Sato hesitated before turning his back, and the big-lipped boy put his back against the wall and slid down to his butt.

"I know how strong you are Zach," Shoji started. "Not strong like this," he continued, speaking on the kind of power Zach was displaying at that very moment. "I was your teammate in that Sports Festival too, and when we fought together I saw up close how great you were but never thought I'd lose myself. Even after you and Kaminari got first place together. Even after you went and took on the War Boys by yourself. Even after your report, so beyond anything I was thinking about at the time."

"What, are you-" Zach winced and clenched his jaw shut as speaking made it harder to keep himself together.

"But when you fought me I regretted it." Shoji paused and his eyes got darker, his voice full of regret for a moment before his expression steadied again. "After I was defeated, immediately after actually, I regretted it. Pulling out of the Sports Festival that year to get you back in." Zach stared back at Shoji unmoving for a moment as the six-armed boy confessed that to him, and Shoji grit his teeth as he could actually feel the surprise and even shock of his classmate to hear it. "I told myself in the moment that you deserved it and tried to let you have the moment, but I was frustrated. And of course I was, but it was still selfish. That for a moment I had wished I hadn't tried to pull out for you…"

"It was why I died." Shoji said it and Zach could hear in the voice an admission of guilt. He wanted to speak, but he kept his mouth closed and let Shoji continue, "I've believed that for a long time."

"I had regretted something that was likely the most heroic thing I had done until that moment. Among the most heroic things at least," Shoji said softer. He shook his head though once and admitted, "But to have pulled out for you just to be defeated by you, by someone not even using a Quirk…" Shoji rose his gaze and finished while looking into Zach's eyes, "And then you saved me. Right before that invasion started, I was thinking about how I wished I hadn't done it. That's what I felt, and then I saw what happened on those screens-"

"You were the one who brought me back from the brink-" Zach started to counter.

Shoji continued without letting Zach interrupt him here, "Seeing those videos snapped me to my senses." He made Zach close his mouth in that darkness, and Shoji finished to his friend standing just ahead of him, "But there was still a moment where I regretted it. And that regret, I've believed for a long time… a part of me, at least, believes that wishing you hadn't been allowed in the Sports Festival was the reason I was killed on that stage."

"Heh- haha," Zach chuckled and shook his head at how serious a tone Shoji was admitting this to him. "Sorry, Shoji. But we were just kids," Zach shrugged his shoulders and stepped forward in the darkness towards his classmate staring at him in shock and darting his eyes around the room at all the darkness still out of control, but apparently not enough to keep Zach from doing this. Zach smiled at his classmate and added, "We were kids and I had just beaten you in a fight, there's no reason to regret it so much."

"I know that," Shoji started again. That confused Zach as he thought Shoji brought all this up just to mention his guilt for this. Shoji nodded and added, "Thank you, for saying that though. But I really said it to you to show that I'm superstitious at times as well. I don't just believe in logic and reasoning, but I look deeper on it…"

Is he talking about how I'm turning into a demon here? Zach wondered. Even though I didn't say anything aloud, "Shoji, do you think I'm a demon? The devil-"

"I just understand," Shoji countered Zach's questions coming out in too steady and flat a tone in that scary deep voice. "I know that you have thought those things about yourself, and I don't think you're crazy for doing so." Zach tilted his head up and stared even more hesitantly at Shoji now, wondering if his nonsense about Terra before had actually stuck with him too. He stared at him nervously, and Shoji finished, "I'm not going to talk down to you or call those fears ridiculous. Because I thought karma got me killed. I know it's stupid, but I can't help but think it." Zach's heart rate sped up in his dark chest where he created his heart to feel how much this actually resonated with him.

"Just as I know it's hard for you not to come to these kinds of conclusions on your own," Shoji added. "When you have to spend so much time thinking on it, of course they would cross your mind. The fact that you call it Nightmare form is the proof of that," Shoji continued but then hesitated for a moment. "And what you shouted in the Enudora Forest that night." Shoji paused again and lowered his gaze to the floor but only for a moment before raising it back up. "I know you must believe in some supernatural stuff."

Zach could not help it. The acceptance and understanding towards him believing in the "supernatural" made him think about Ares, Gods, the God Book, and a hundreds different things that the world would consider "supernatural." He cracked the biggest knowing smirk of all, and he had to look away when Shoji saw it. "Haha, HAHAHA- haha, HEe- I'm- haha," Zach lifted his right hand to his chest and grabbed it while trying to hold back more laughter. "I'm sorry, haha, but- oh but you have no idea, how right you are."

Stop laughing. Zach stopped laughing immediately. He stared down Shoji with his expression flat while two other heads ripped out his neck and bulged before popping and spiking out into different walls. His legs got thinner but much more muscular and his knees tensed which cracked the floor below his claws. He just revealed something deep. Because he's your friend. Is he just doing it to make sure he believes in our friendship though? Or that I believe it? Even if that's what he thinks, the same thing happens to me all the time. I overthink it.

He's here right now. Reasons be damned. Shoji stared into Zach's red eyes that still looked as menacing as ever, though for some reason he could not feel any ominous vibe coming from them despite Zach's maniacal laughter and scary statement a moment ago. Zach stared back into Shoji's one eye he could see over the mask and under his bangs, He's my friend, Zach thought. And since I've come back, I haven't said one truthful thing to him. He has no idea. He's completely lost as to what's going on. No clue as to why I'm losing it. I can't even explain myself. Zach's face twisted up, the darkness distorting around his head and shaking at the thought. I can't even be truthful.

I want to tell him- tell him what? I can't! I knew I would have to lie if I came back here! I KNEW IT! Just- just lie and- I can't. Zach rose his hands up to the sides of his head and gasped out but sucked the breath back in hard as if that hanging dark air would make out words that would condemn him. "You saved me too," Zach started. "That day," he stared at Shoji and kept to the truth even as he grabbed the sides of his head that felt like they were ripping apart (which they really were). "Don't you remember?" Zach wondered back to his friend who had sounded too guilty while talking about the SFI before.

Zach shook his head back when Shoji started to shake his own, and Zach whispered his way through the darkness, "Seeing those videos, that I couldn't even rem-ember-" Zach's voice cracked and his lips trembled as he thought about not remembering certain things. His hands gripped into his head harder and he laughed, It's still happening. I can't stop it! How long have I been- "And I, I thought maybe even I- that I was a mole. That he had planted me, to- to kill? My friends?" Zach's voice trembled in the darkness, and all the Death around him started shaking too. "But you grabbed me and, and you told me that you didn't believe it. You didn't believe any of it."

Zach said that firmer and shook his head once more with his teeth clenching hard. "Nothing about what I said. You knew it was just to escape, when even I didn't. And you were still telling me when- when you!" Zach's lips shook again and he stared at Shoji harder, wondering if the other boy had really forgotten because of how he had died seconds later. We both have horrible memories of that day, Zach realized while watching Shoji think back on that himself while staring at him with wider eyes, apparently having no idea how much that had actually meant until now. You remember me saving your life, but I remember you telling me how much you believed in me. I came to believe in myself too, to be able to fight that day! And if you hadn't, Uraraka, and- Momo…

"Shoji you," Zach started. Zach's heart clenched up and his mouth felt dry. He's not here because he's my only friend. I told the others to go. I tricked them all, because I'm a manipulative monster. A MONSTER! Zach's hands turned into claws again so much sharper than before and he slammed down at his sides, his hair flaring up and spiking around. Black spheres spinning in the air shot into his body and bulged him twice his size, but he shot three of them right back out as he realized what he was doing. "NO! I can't- Don't accept, pull slowly- Fuck," Zach's breath caught coming out so he just gasped the curse with his eyes slamming shut in the pain.

"Are you-" Shoji started, trying to ask his classmate if he was alright.

"Yes! I'm fine," Zach hissed the answer after shouting 'yes' at first. He bowed his head and pressed his chin into a chest he had to make harder solid so he would not just push his head into a front-flip through his own body. The fact that he could feel the possibility of doing that made the corners of his lips pull up his cheeks to the sides of his eyes, and he laughed again with a terrified expression in the black.

"I'm not fine," Zach said with his mouth huge, smiling, and wide open. "You don't understand. It's not your fault though. Haha, I have no one to blame. It's mine. Everything happening now. This moment, so horrible." Zach's eyes got watery and he saw the red-tinted cracked floor getting blurry from the tears. I chose to kill Ares. I chose to lie to them. I isolated myself and pushed everyone else away. I'm alone here without anyone who knows, with more power than I can handle- AND IT'S ALL BECAUSE OF MY OWN DAMN CHOICES! "Hahaha- HAHAHA-"

"Every time," Zach gasped with a mad smile across his face. He rose his head and shook it while looking at Shoji who stared with his own shaking eyes at the tear sliding down the left side of Zach's black face right over the Death. "I just make the choices that bring me to, to this. And I can't- I don't know how to explain to you that-" Zach gasped again and tilted his head back. He sucked in so much air, then he whispered, "I had this friend in that world…"

Zach lowered his head and started shaking it before even reading Shoji's reaction to what he trailed off on. "And I mean that. You don't know- you don't! I did. I really- when I say world- ah ha ah hah," Zach breathed heavily with his breaths coming in staggered as he tried to explain and at the same time not lie and not tell anything damning. I can't. I want to though. Does it even matter? I just- "He went missing one day-"

Zach pursed his lips and his eyes filled with more water. He clenched them shut and bowed his head hard, "I should have searched harder for him." A version of Zach pulled out of his back and reared up in the air, opening its mouth and letting out a soundless roar as its head ripped open from its jaw that's how hard it shouted, without actually making noise. The unhinged jaw ripped the rest of the head apart and the body got slammed into by spheres of faster-spinning Death that were also rotating on their own while revolving around Zach's head. Zach continued as this happened, "He was my friend, and my comrade. I recruited him," Zach whispered in agony.

Tears spilled down his face. "He looked like a kid but, but that was his ability. He hadn't aged for decades. He couldn't die," Zach whispered that part with his lips curling up again. He let out a dark gasped-laugh and then kept laughing with his chest full of pain. "He thought he couldn't, at least. Zombieman, he called himself." Zach whispered it and did not laugh this time. "We called him," he corrected himself as it was the name he called his friend too. "And I was supposed to protect him. Even if he was nearly immortal, there were things that could kill him. And he still felt pain," Zach breathed that out and his hands rose and covered his face as he felt like screaming into something. And then he did, "AHhhnnnnnnnNNN!"

"But something could kill him," Zach whispered through his hands. "And when he was poisoned and dying, he was surrounded by his comrades. His friends, who cared about him so much that he-" Zach cut himself off and couldn't speak for a second. He lowered his hands and looked at Shoji to explain, but he paused for a second, then he went on anyway despite Shoji's expression of hesitation, doubt, but also showing he was listening despite his confusion. "When I recruited him, he told me not to revive him if he died. I- when he was dying though I- I convinced him to let me bring him back. He was happy! Around friends, and he wanted to be brought back. I should have let that be it. He had lived a full life! He, he died just about the best way anyone could."

More tears fell from his eyes and down to his chin where they gathered and dripped off. One of the tears hit the floor, and Zach whispered in horror, "I should have let him stay dead." He pursed his lips, and he shook his head around while turning it to the right so he would not have to look at Shoji. "And days after he was brought back, he was captured by the enemy. I'm sure they figured out his Quirk from the torture, whether from him telling them or just them seeing it for themselves. But I know they tortured him to the point that he told them how I had brought him back. A man who couldn't die, and who I couldn't kill, and-" Zach's eyes clenched shut and he bowed his chin into his chest again as hard as he could. "And I don't want to think about him, but I left him behind in that mission. We couldn't look for him. There was no time. I had to believe that he had just ran off, or- or something- anything but…"

Shoji's breath caught in his throat as Zach wheezed out the most pained breath he had ever heard from his classmate. "But I left him in their clutches. And no matter what kind of torture, what kind of experimentation they must have done to him- Things! That would have killed ANYONE else. The things they did to him must have been the most painful- excruciating things that anyone had ever felt. The worst things ever done to another human being. Torture that would have killed EVERYONE except for him, which means that they could have used all kinds of tortures that just aren't applicable to anyone else. Things that would kill people too quickly because our pain threshold just isn't high enough- enough to-" Zach gasped and he brought both hands to his chest which he clenched with all his might so his hands were ripping into his Death body. "And when I saw him, the Champion of the largest of the five armies that came against me…"

Shoji's heart pounded harder and his breath started coming out more, and he could see it as the Death in front of his face pushed forward and pulled back with his breathing. "It didn't matter how strong I had become," Zach hissed. In his mind he saw it when they released that beast in front of him. As different as he looked, Zach had recognized him. "One look and I knew," Zach said.

"I could separate all the horrible things from my mind. I had to, in order to keep leading. To command and lead my forces without fear and without hesitation. But one look and-" Zach's breath got shakier. "In the middle of that huge battle! Thousands and thousands of enemies on all sides and all I-" His head bowed again and he shook his chin hard against his own breaking chest.

The entire wall separating Zach's room from Sato's was black. The boy leaning against the dark wall did not move away from it though. He sat there with his back up against it, the back of his head pushed on the wall and tilted up with his eyes shaking in sadness. I thought he said it was a lie? Sato wondered, right as a tear fell out of his own right eye and slid down his chubby cheek.

"And I knew that it was my own doing," Zach admitted. "I couldn't think about it at the time, but I know. I know because I made the choice to leave him behind. We could have expended the resources to search. I could have called Fillian in from across the world to, to search the area-" Zach's breath gasped in sharply. "He was probably hidden by someone else's Quirk, right there! Right next to us, a hand over his mouth keeping him from screaming our names. And we left him. I left him. Because it was my decision. It was always my decision. An army with no supervision. No oversight. I made sure the world knew that the- Allied Forces were, they weren't involved with me. I had full control. I had all the decisions in my hands. And every decision I made, every choice led to that moment. To facing my greatest and strongest enemy… my own friend."

"My friend who I couldn't kill because I had already revived him. My friend whose body had been experimented on so badly that he was the strongest thing in the world! A punch from him sent me flying MILES away! I slammed into a building in a city I WASN'T EVEN IN!" Zach screamed it and he tore part of his chest out with a claw and yelled to his side at the wall. "And I- I felt the surge from killing people, because some of my Death had hit them when I smashed through that wall that I didn't even know, I was in." He whispered the end and laughed with tears falling from his eyes, "The middle of a skyscraper, and people screaming- and Zombieman was flying towards us at full speed! And no matter what I shouted at him, no matter what I tried, I couldn't stop him."

"I had made it so I couldn't stop him. I had made it, so that he was able to occupy my time for so much of the Battle of the 6 Armies- ahh-" Zach wheezed out in pain and shook his head violently. "While I was supposed to be distracting those armies. Allowing my forces to slip inside and make their moves. Relieving the other decoys who I left behind and-" Zach gasped again, barely able to breathe yet keeping his lungs at minimal capacity which was all he could get to with them still filled with overflowing Death. "And by the time I got back to the fight, how much of my army was-" his red eyes got glossy at the started question he could not finish. The Death all around him shook, then he had to refocus on it as he distracted himself too much and he knew it. I need to control it. I need- "Stop doing that," Zach hissed at himself. "Stop, focusing on what's important when it gets hard."

"I hated command," Zach whispered. He said it softly and looked back towards Shoji with sad and teary red eyes. "It was horrible. And I was a, a horrible leader. I was," Zach said it again, but he closed his eyes as saying it again did nothing to convince him. "The others didn't think so and I believed them. I felt like a good leader- I was, because they thought I was. So were my decisions right? Ones that led me to, to there? That was the endgame but, but without Zombieman how much different would it have been? If I was able to focus on the rest of those armies from the start? If I had never been separated from my forces, and those civilians were never killed. I was horrified when I killed them because I knew I couldn't bring them back, but I couldn't bring back any of the civilians that day. I just didn't have the power at the end of it. I was drained. The odds were…"

Zach looked down and rose his eyes back to Shoji as he continued on steadily, "They were 10 to 1 and it was just- haha," Zach stopped laughing and he paused as continuing on what just too hard. "Ten to one," he repeated the numbers he had told Classes A and 1 before, before shaking his head and chuckling. "My men were worth a hundred of our enemies. Easily," Zach said. He said it in a proud way, smiling and laughing at the suggestion of 10-1 odds which had a very bad feeling welling inside Shoji, and inside Sato listening from the other side of the wall.

"A hundred of our enemies," Zach repeated hoarsely, his voice shakier though as he said it. Dark wisps slipping through his wall vibrated, twisting and snaking around Sato's sides which made his eyes dart to them before opening huge as he heard Zach's voice through a very immaterial-feeling wall at his back. "If only the odds were 100-1 then," Zach gasped out inside of laughter. "Oh my God, haha, ha- how many of them were around us? It was- it was insane. And yet even right after the fight, even when I try to look back with a clear mind," Zach gasped it while looking up, then he turned back to Shoji and whispered in shock, "I don't think I can remember correctly. As hard as I try and- and I try- I don't try very hard," Zach admitted with a cock of his head to the right side. He laughed again as he admitted that to himself and to the six-armed boy sitting on the edge of his bed.

"I don't try to remember because I can't do it," Zach said. "I just can't. I can't do a lot of things anymore. Just like," Zach glanced towards the windows of his room, then back to Shoji who he smiled at through a tear-streaked blackened face. "You don't need to keep me here Shoji, because I won't leave again. I can't do it."

"I've lost everyone too many times," Zach whispered. "And I can see them all now. Every family I ever lost or left behind. My parents. The Akers. The villains. The anti-heroes. You-" Zach pursed his lips but then pushed past hard. "And Darling? I- I don't know how I could do that to…" Zach's heart pulled down into his Death chest, his brain hurt, and he wheezed out without any breath to give in his lungs. "She loved me more than, than anyone's ever loved me. And I abandoned her. I pushed her away and…" Zach gripped at his chest to keep his heart inside, and he sucked back more Death towards his body as he felt even more leaking out again.

As Shoji listened, he felt his own heart nearly ripping out of his chest. I heard how much you cared about her that first day at the hospital, but I didn't fully understand until now. I don't know anything about her. I judged you for it, but whatever it was is something beyond my comprehension. All of this is…

"I already couldn't do it again," Zach whispered as he went on. "After what Kaminari did to me, I couldn't do it. I knew that Webb and Ganji, Tsura and Maye, I knew they were all dead before they had even died. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it. All I could do was hope or, pray," Zach's voice became so soft as he was out of air, and then he just kept speaking anyway even as all his insides became fully Death once again as he pulled too much of it back inside. "I knew I couldn't think about the Lifebringer Incident though," Zach admitted. "Leaving that day? Leaving all of you, voluntarily?" Zach wondered it in disbelief at his own decision.

"I had- I had everything I had always wanted. The chance to be a hero. A Quirk I could use to actually stop villains without killing them, and to revive people?" He shook his head and his teeth clenched hard for a moment, before he added onto the pile, "A girl I was in love with. Friends who cared about me like family. I- I've seen the world. Many worlds. I have seen people who have nothing. I didn't have nothing! I-" Zach stopped and felt the guilt flood into him. I had everything.

"I had to move forward but couldn't knowing what I had done. So I didn't know anymore. And when I came back there were things I needed to do in the present and events in the future that I needed to plan for. No time to relax. No time, to actually reflect," he admitted introspectively. "As my past reflections were all part of the present efforts to help everyone else get through what I did. It had nothing to do with me. And I always regretted it, solely because of how you all had to feel afterwards, and that killed me but- but actually thinking of how it affected me? Selfish. Considering what I did, what I left behind, just so I could go and- AND-" Zach's body hunched forward and he sucked as much Death in as possible to focus on it, but he could not distract the mind from it anymore.

The crack Midoriya made, Zach grabbed the sides of his head. I could reach through and grab things, and things sometimes seeped through too fast on their own without me wanting them to, coming in like this but- but never because I wanted them to. Never because I wanted to look back like this and accept it! "I can't even consider how it felt to me," Zach whispered, trying to explain it aloud as he looked back at Shoji confusedly again but slowly realizing what it was he was coming to say. "And I can't think about how I couldn't consider it or I might start considering, just what I had- Because I need all my thoughts at once to be able to really explain what I- but I've never had my whole mind."

Zach tried to explain but the look on Shoji's face told him all he needed to know. He can see I've lost it too. "Everyone knows, when they see me like this," Zach admitted in response to what Shoji was thinking. "But Himazuri knew," he added softly. "She knew and she," Zach shook his head, confused and frustrated. Scared, grateful, and in a sudden sharp pain as he had not seen her in a while. She's worried about me. I should call her. She doesn't know what's been happening. Could she read my mind and learn about it all through the phone? Would that change things?

I hope she knows I'm alright here. I'll call her tomorrow. Zach's Death calmed down a bit around him as he came to a calmer decision, releasing some of the Death he had pulled in again, but leaving more of it attached inside this time to slowly absorb. That worked didn't it? He wondered, as out of all of his methods of controlling this overpowering ability, the last effort had done best to let him control and pull more back into him than he let out in the same allotted time span.

I had wondered about the mind reader at Shiketsu before. I don't know what she knows, that keeps her from… Maybe it's because she knows. I've heard the others talking about you Zach as if they know for sure that you're Death. Like you've told them. That didn't make much sense to me. If you're Death, they would have to arrest you. And yet these stories are not lies. I don't understand that at all, Shoji wanted to understand but it frustrated him how little he did.

And so Zach explained to the boy who his Death surrounded so much that he could feel Shoji's feelings emanating off of him just as Shoji had been able to feel Zach's emotions earlier. "I wish I could make you understand," Zach began. "I wish it was that easy. That I could just, tell you," Zach said. His voice was soft and he spoke knowingly of the situation but Shoji still shook his head at the sound of that.

"You can," Shoji countered.

"I am," Zach replied back, his eyes shaking as the answer had to make no sense at all. "That's what, it is. That I can't- That is the…" Zach closed his mouth and just stopped. There's no point in trying. They think I'm crazy. I am. They think I'm just lying. Lying to them for no reason! Making up nonsense! "I'm not trying to-" Zach started raising his voice but cut it off. "It's not your fault but, but there's nothing I can do. Nothing I could say-"

"Just tell me the truth-" Shoji began, and immediately regretted.

"The truth?!" Zach roared.

Kirishima glanced up towards the corner of his room. His eyes widened for a moment and then narrowed angrily at the dark wisps coming through the corner. That's a solid. How is he doing that? Why is he- It's because he can't control it, right? It's not on purpose. Not, just to fuck with me?

Sato stared across his room that just became dark for a moment as his ceiling light was engulfed by the Death filling it. He stared up towards the shards of light that pushed through the raging darkness around him, but he listened silently to the growling coming from right behind him and echoing through the darkness so it was in his ears too.

Shoji held his breath but kept from letting any fear show on his face as Zach's entire body distorted and transformed in that shout of rage. Then the darkness that just exploded outwards pulled far back and Zach sucked in a huge breath of air at the same time. "The truth," he repeated. "Is that I- I'm not lying. I'm not," Zach said it nervously but in a depressed voice too at the admission. "I never was. Those worlds are," Zach started but he clenched his eyes shut when he began like that. "They were, they weren't like- but, I don't know. I really did go to different worlds, Shoji. Entirely different dimensions where the laws of nature and physics, they didn't matter. Matter didn't matter, because it didn't exist!"

"And I was in that world and adapted to it and became… blue," Zach grit his teeth again while looking at his classmate who he knew couldn't believe him. "And when we went in, our minds became one. Our bodies were linked and were no longer physical. I could feel them and they, they could feel me." Zach said it in a choked-off voice, and he whispered with disbelief in his tone, "And when we came out of there, I- I had to talk them down. I was afraid they would kill themselves, because they had to feel like what it was to be me- Just for a few minutes or- or whatever time was inside that realm. But they felt my mind and were in my head, and just like Himazuri they couldn't take it. They broke down they-" Every second I spent, they couldn't take just a few? To see that and know what must have been going on in my head. To know how I really felt when I wouldn't dare think it.

"And in a different world without time-" Zach began again. He stopped and then asked with his head leaning forward towards the boy sitting in front of him, "Can you imagine that, Shoji? No time?" Zach wondered it while his lips curled up into a smile but tears bursting in his eyes once again just from the question alone. All of Shoji's thoughts stopped. He froze where he sat and just stared in silence and shock at his friend's face and the tone in that crazed voice. "No time," Zach whispered, his voice cracking. "A world where our reality meant nothing. Where there was nothing. No space, no time, no hunger or exhaustion or thirst. Just nothing. Forever." Zach's glossed-over red eyes trembled and his body shook with the overwhelming power that made him larger again, larger than life to the boy sitting on his bed and listening to this.

"A world where the only time that existed were the seconds I counted." Zach's eyes squinted and his hands shook down at his sides, his index fingers trembling more near his thighs as they urged to tap on them. "Every minute and every hour," Zach paused and he bit down on his bottom lip that was shaking too much as he tried to say this. More of his face became visible through the veil as he pulled it aside while staring into Shoji's eyes. His irises were red rather than the whole eyeballs glowing the color, and Zach's face became tan instead of shrouded in black mist. There was still mist between them but that pulled aside as well and made a tunnel in the dark power as Zach continued in a shaky voice, "The days, the weeks- the years."

"Years and years," Zach's mouth curled into a smile but his laughter was as horrifying as what he was saying. "And in that nothingness I had no choice but to remember it all. And yet I still couldn't. I was forced to remember but I wouldn't allow myself, and so I remembered wrong. And I was convinced it was for a reason. That, I could come back here and have memories to share but- but I overwrote my memories. I created a fiction. A fiction that has grown out of control. One that was always out of my control, as much as I convinced myself otherwise- because the insane don't realize that they are!" Zach laughed again but his laughs came out choked and more tears splashed out of his eyes that became fully red again.

"And I create this lie, and when I returned to this world I knew that my memories were shot." Zach admitted it with a single shake of his head and a dark look towards his door. He imagined through it and down that hall to the girl's side and a closed door with no one behind it. "Given enough time I thought I could recover. After all that had happened. After everything I had been through, that world finally broke me. And I threw myself into the deepest pit I could find so that no one would have to see my madness. And she hates me, because she came to visit and I couldn't go see her. I was too busy, telling my stories to the guards. My fantasy- my reality," Zach closed his eyes but the tears had run dry and none were squeezed out this time.

"You all let me out," Zach whispered with his eyes closed while Shoji stared at him in utter shock and disbelief. "Out into the world, mad as a fucking hatter. And I had to revive people. I had to continue with the lie, in order to stay to- no but it wasn't for any purpose. The lie was all there was," Zach whispered. "Fiction was truth. Norasaki could tell I was telling the truth, at Shiketsu. I knew I had abandoned my reality. But at the same time," Zach grit his teeth again in frustration. "You all poked so many holes in it. Holes I completely ignored. Things that I had subconsciously made contingencies for when creating my memories. And yet what was I supposed to say? How was I supposed to respond, when the truth is- the truth is madness. The world was- the worlds were-"

"Haha, how could any of you understand, if I can't even understand what happened? If I don't even believe in it enough to consider it my own truth?" Zach whispered these things in disbelief of his own actions and mindset over the past months. The power he was trying to hold in was far too much to focus any effort on reigning in his mind. Nothing could hold back the waves of realization and memories that he had spent years blocking up and keeping himself from looking back on. "But, but I did know it wasn't true," Zach continued on, his voice shaken again and sadder as he looked at one of the friends he had been lying to. "When you call me out on it, I know I'm caught. I know, that it wasn't real. But the holes in the story were there intentionally. I wanted you to know- I wanted someone to, figure it out. I didn't want to be able to convince- it was only supposed to convince me. But I can see through so much, that any lie to convince myself was sure to…"

Sato rose his right hand and put it over his forehead. He leaned back on the wall and let out a heavy breath as weight piled up on his shoulders thinking back a week ago. The anger he felt at Zach for lying to him and Uraraka, for so cheerfully admitting the plot hole they had called him out on, it dissipated instantly. He convinced me. It hurt, I guess, that I believed him and it was a lie. Another lie. Everything's a lie though? How… how do you live like that? Sato slid his hand down fro his forehead over his eyes. You actually lost your mind? You were so strong- you are so- Damn it. Why am I doing this?

At that very moment, Sato's pocket vibrated and his whole body flinched at the feeling. He looked down and lowered his right hand he brushed across his shirt first before pulling his phone out of his pocket. The message sent to him was in Class A's group chat. 'Anyone check on Zach and see how he's doing?' Sato tilted his head back and rubbed the back of his skull on his soft wall completely black and seeping that dark aura all over his room. Darkness seeped around the sides of his face and brushed against his cheeks and past his eyes, as Sato thought with a grimace on his face, Sero still thinks he's just… What am I supposed to say in response?

Shoji did not check his phone. What he was doing now mattered more than what anyone could have to text him about. Sato sat there with his back up against the wall and his grimace slowly raising over the seconds that passed. No one else responded in the groupchat. No one got annoyed at Sero for asking about it, but no one else chimed in either agreeing with him and telling one of their classmates to go to him. Sato frowned but his eyes that got darker lost that angered look in them as he flipped his phone over. Enough of this. What's the point of being so petty? All I'm doing, is making more grief for him. He doesn't need it. Not from, not from us.

Sato tapped on the top of the messages for their groupchat and saw the list of people in the conversation. His thumb moved over to the plus symbol and tapped right on it, and he wrote the contact name in and clicked when Zach's number popped up. It was the newest contact in his phone, and the thought of how he had yet to use it despite being so angry at himself for not having it the day of his revival made the decision easy. He confirmed what he did and then put his phone back down in his pocket. He's in Class A again. Sato Rikido crossed his arms and pushed away any thoughts of how his classmates might be reacting to a decision he made completely on his own and without consulting any of them first.

All across Japan though, and in a few cases abroad, Class A students looked at their phones when finally a new text was sent through. 'He's doing fine.' Shoji's response was brief and did not reference the notification right above his message and below Sero's. Everyone else stared at it though with their eyes opening wide at what Sato had done, then Sero chuckled once and slid his phone away with a relieved and happier look on his face at his friend's decision. Uraraka felt confused by what Sato had done as she thought back only a few days, and Iida tilted his head back on the bed he was already trying to sleep on when these messages came through. The class rep had a disparaged look on his face and he squinted shut his eyes he could look through with perfect vision, It should have been my decision as class representative. I avoided the decision rather than discuss it with the class however, and now the choice has been taken from my hands. I should have done it, already.

Iida, I'm sure there will be other opportunities to show you care, Yaoyorozu sat in the back of a black van in her hero costume, her phone back away in a pouch of it as she prepared herself for the signal. Shoji, Sato, Sero, thank you. I wish I could be two places at once. The others in the van shot up to their feet but Creati was quickest when the bright green light shone through the back windows of the van. She pushed open the doors and leapt out of the vehicle being carried high in the sky by red feathers. The number 2 hero supposedly in Geneva, which was pretty well-known because of his and Gang Orca's public arrival there that afternoon, sent his feathers flying down with the two vans full of heroes ready to raid a base of opportunistic villains who had risen in Osaka over the past month.

Hawks' thoughts strayed from his hopes on how these villains were in some way related to the Radians, Jazz, or League of Villains, which he was anxious to believe were all the same due to his recent investigations with Endeavor and Gran Torino. Instead he watched the young heroine in surprise as she flew down using the jetpack that emerged out of her back and the rockets shooting flames out of mechanical boots appearing over her usual ones. Instead of arriving with the rest of the heroes to back up the infil-team already down there who just sent up the flare, he shot down far faster and landed at the same time as the girl in the dark red costume split down the middle of her chest. His wings broke apart and feathers shot everywhere, while Creati sped on roller-blades towards the building and then raced straight up the walls as she jumped and fired twice as much fuel out the jets that came out contraptions on her back and from her calves. Her right hand was finishing covering in a thick black glove with tiny sharp protrusions on all the knuckles, right as she reached the window shattered by someone who ran to it and smashed the butt of their rifle through.

Creati leaned her body forward and slammed her fist through the shattered window, and her enemy's hair all stood on end as she electrocuted him with the glove she created. Her jetpack pulsed flames and shot her forward through the broken window into the middle of the room, still with her fist indented into the face of the first villain. She dragged him out of the way while dodging the four water spikes that flew towards the window she entered, and the bullets that came out of the other villain's eyes and were a little closer to the ends of her feet than those spikes were. Seeing the collisions of the bullets off to her left closer behind her than the spikes, Yaoyorozu released some of the power from the thruster gripped in her black glove which turned off the jets on her right side. Her body spiraled in midair as more power rushed to the left thrusters, and she released the villain she had carried across the room in the direction of the gun-eyed villain still turning after the girl too fast to follow.

While Creati's thrusters turned her in a way to let her punch one enemy at the other, it also sent her flying the other direction towards the even slower villain to react who was still creating three more spikes of water out of a bucket attached to the front of his shoddily-made costume. Even as Yaoyorozu spun in midair and rolled her roller-blades across the side of his head with more speed from a jet blasting out of two new thrusters she created on a panel strapped around her calf, the student from Class A could not help but frown in a way with deeper meaning than just being upset with the villains she was fighting. Their mediocre skills and lack of advanced equipment showed a high percentage chance that they were not associated with their main targets, but she kept her focus straight as she landed with her three enemies falling around the room. She spun the direction of the one who was only hit by a comrade and would not be knocked out yet, and she rushed him before he could recover. In the back of her mind though, she held onto some hope, It could be Raijin doesn't want them being suspected as his comrades. Most may not even know they're working for him. They wouldn't. But someone here might. And that's who we need to find tonight!

---

Early on Saturday morning, Zach and Shoji sat a couple feet away from each other on the floor in the middle of Zach's room. It was still dark outside, not that either of them could see out the window through the thick fog of Death hovering around them. The Death was barely moving anymore. It was steady and seemingly under control, yet that was in the very core closest to Zach's central body inside sitting cross-legged in front of his friend.

"How far has it spread now?" Shoji wondered, after the past hour of silence.

Zach knew his face twitched to make his classmate question, and his eyes opened up bright and glowing red. "This time, truthfully, I don't feel myself getting any stronger." Zach hesitated, then he continued, "Your room is filled. Sato's has a lot in it as well, though I'm trying to keep it less there."

"Do you know that it's not spreading through my walls downstairs?" Shoji questioned.

"I can feel the rooms' layouts. I know where I've-" Zach cut himself off. He took in a deep breath and released it slowly. The Death swirling at the outsides of his aura in the adjacent room to his right and below him got rapidly spinning out of control for a moment. "Moving it to the right and down, up above me, to the back and left at shorter distances too. It's a lot to do at once."

"Seems like a strangely shaped set-up you put yourself in," Shoji mentioned. Zach hummed and nodded his head. There was no single point that there was Death in equal lengths in all directions from there, and Shoji knew it was not impossible to do that. If it slips into Koda's room that's bad. Koda is not around, but you create more difficulty for yourself for no reason. Or, there is a reason but, Shoji frowned more under his mask and Zach gave him an inquisitive look through the thick veil of Death over his face. "Why don't-"

"I'm maintaining the current distances away from me," Zach started. "Any adjustment will only agitate the progress I've started making." Remain calm. Quiet. Unmoving. All focus off my body and only on the outlying Deaths. Subconsciously I'll keep myself together. Too much focus on my physical form and all the possibilities I had with it led to the chaos that was yesterday. Control first, then experiment with new powers. I was too excited. "I can still tell where the walls are," Zach continued. "As well as the floor below us. However there's so much of it that solids are feeling like open gaps, to Death."

"Too much power," Zach whispered. "I never imagined it would be this strong. The density of some of these Death pockets… It's," he fell short of describing it. "Words can't- these pockets are the densest things in existence. It's an ungodly power. Far too dangerous-"

"I know you can do it though," Shoji encouraged. I believe in your ability, Zach. "You can reign it in and not hurt any of us."

"It already won't hurt you," Zach said. His voice was low and his eyes narrowed, and he added in a deeper voice, "And you're staying here to make sure I don't hurt everyone else-"

"I'm here to make sure you don't hurt yourself," Shoji corrected with a raise of his pitch.

Zach's face lost the darker look but all the Death on it swirled as his expression scrunched up in pain that the Death facial could not maintain. As it scrunched up, the skin of his blackened face just pulled apart and turned his head into a swirl. His mouth opened and he gasped out in agony, because all this Death just pushed at his shattering face. Shoji could see all over Zach his body pushing outwards and then stopping like it was mid-explosion. All that power welling inside him was pushing at his skin, but he forced it back inside and steadied a body with black flares sporadically ripping from it.

I know you can do this. Shoji lowered his gaze down to the floor as Zach groaned and closed his own eyes. One of my biggest mistakes since coming to U.A. was how I dealt with Tokoyami. I saw what his power could do early on, and how out of control he got. How much pain it put him in, to not be the one in control. Before Dark Shadow's rampage that got Tsukuyomi's provisional license suspended, before Tokoyami had to go through all he did, I could have done this. I had seen it before. I knew he struggled with it, but like Zach he was one to train his dark power on his own.

"Zach," Shoji began in a very low voice. With Dark Shadow the risk was much higher, but Death is the more terrifying of these powers. And when I see how strong this has suddenly become, I need to know. "Why are you getting more powerful?"

The question was not in reference to Zach's reasons for getting stronger. It had nothing to do with his own intentions or desires. Zach opened his eyes slowly but shook his head to either side, refusing to answer rather than give another strange response. "Hey Shoji," Zach began. His tone showed he was not responding to the question but completely starting a new topic. "Where do you think Quirks come from?"

Shoji frowned for a second but then considered the question he was asked. Based on what I read you told the prison guards in Tartaros, Shoji thought about Oda's book he had gotten a copy of as soon as it came out. "Arcasia- or that whole world of Terra, right?" Shoji wondered. "If the Doorway girl was not the first person with her kind of Quirk, people could have traveled from that world to ours a long time ago." Zach cracked a smile through the veil of darkness, as Shoji added, "Even many of our stories about creatures you recognized in that world like orcs and elves-"

"Alright alright," Zach said, as Shoji sounded like he was reading off a passage now. "Do you believe any of that?" He wondered, his eyes closing again and his focus retaining on the darkness to his right and down below. He grit his teeth as it tried to pull towards each other. Zach maintained a vertical line down of Death with a cloud coming off, and a shorter horizontal line with less fog into Sato's room. All of that Death wanted to pull towards each other in the shortest route though instead of curving into his room and then down through the floor. It wanted to use the unused hypotenuse that Zach avoided more with the more precision he acquired.

Is he- Shoji had things he wanted to talk about too, something in particular that was bugging him for a while now, but he could see Zach struggling and stopped hesitating after the question. Distract him from it- but not too much. "I… I've never really thought about it."

Zach raised his head and grinned at his classmate. He panted a couple times and his skin flashed through the veil only for his skull to appear completely for a moment. His head flared with Death again, but his body rippled in the center of all the Death for a second as Zach tried to absorb more Death into him without overloading his insides that he did not have entirely made out of Death. "I have some theories that I'm pretty confident in…"

Zach shifted his mind from the various things attempting to push into his head and create mental instability at a time he needed full relaxation and focus. He could feel and see it eating away at Shoji though, which made it worse considering he already knew it himself as it was something he was actively avoiding thinking about. The troubling nature of the thoughts he was trying to avoid only made them more difficult not to think about though. And the more he focused on not even thinking about not thinking it, the harder it became to only keep Death in Sato and Shoji's rooms outside of his own.

Really, he should be asleep if anything. I'll have it under control enough by dawn that I can get it back out of there before he wakes up.

"Nnnn GRR- rrrr…" Zach growled and leaned away from the right side of his room, tilting his head back as he brought a wave of thicker Death slamming back towards him. It rushed from that wall up into him and Shoji and surrounded them in a wave of gaseous Death that swirled around the boys sitting on Zach's floor.

"It would be easier for you if you used Kirishima's room too," Shoji brought up. Zach frowned and gave the other teen a glare for saying it aloud. "Instead of the strange shape you're trying to maintain now."

"I don't," Zach started. Want to bother him? I don't, want him saying anything- I'm not actually worried about that. What is it then? "I don't need to-"

"But why not?" Shoji questioned. "You're making it harder for yourself when you don't need to." Shoji paused, then wondered as Zach was too slow to respond with anything, "What's up with the two of you?"

The corners of Zach's lips curled down, There are more important things right now.

Like what?

Wasn't this, the reason I stayed? Zach shifted his gaze down still with no answer for Shoji. I could have left and done everything else. Being here has one purpose above all else.

"I thought you would patch things up with him as quickly as you did with many of the others," Shoji began. Like you probably would have with me if I had gone out to see you more often. "He went to your apartment. Didn't he?" Zach's head motioned in a small nod, and Shoji wondered, "So what happened? Why are the two of you so…" Shoji thought back into the classroom on Thursday and the last interaction he saw between the two of them. The looks alone without any dialogue between them, which was not hard for anyone around them to understand as Kirishima's expressions were far from subtle.

"I don't know," Zach replied. He said it quietly and just looked back into Shoji's eyes again, no answer to his friend's question available to him.

Shoji could see that absence of a reason in Zach's glowing red eyes. "The two of you were closer than most anyone here," Shoji started.

Zach muttered back, "It seems that has had an adverse effect on my current relationships."

Shoji hesitated, then he wondered, "Doesn't that make sense?" Zach frowned deeper but with guilt in those glowing red eyes at the question. "As those were the people who stood to be betrayed the most by you."

"Hm," Zach's thoughtful hum came in response immediately upon Shoji's finish. "Notice how you didn't say 'feel betrayed.' As I really did betray you all." Rather than those people standing to 'feel' betrayed by his actions the most, the way Shoji worded it reflected his own view of what happened. He looked into Shoji's eyes knowing that his classmate knew where he was coming from by that wording alone, and he continued, "It's not just a feeling of betrayal I left you with. I betrayed all of you that night. Put you in the crosshairs of villains. Leaked your location. Tortured the Hunter's mind, and killed half a dozen villains- people. And those lies I shouted while laughing, Shoji I know. I know the people who trusted me most would lose the most that night."

Zach paused for a second, then he continued on in an even softer voice, "But, even though I know, I didn't think Kirishima would be…" He trailed off.

"I don't understand it either," Shoji admitted. "Not many of us went to that fight day at your apartment, but Kirishima did for some reason."

"He wanted to talk to me," Zach said. "But, he wanted the 'real' me. He wanted something to explain myself. Why I had done it. Where I had gone. What I was doing back here. And, I didn't have the answers- I couldn't answer-" Zach stopped himself again. "I could have," he admitted after a quiet moment. "But he wouldn't understand. No one could. Because when I saw him looking at me like that, out the corner of my eye. Constantly through that day. I knew how anything I wanted to tell him would be a lie, in some way. He's a straightforward guy. It's right or wrong. Truth or lies. I just couldn't, imagine having a serious conversation, knowing that I was just pretending to be me."

"And you think it's different for you now?" Shoji asked.

"Partially- mostly- somewhat," Zach started unenthusiastically, got more upbeat, but finished under his breath in a knowing tone. "I wish I could do it all," he whispered. "But that day, seeing him watch me like that brought up lies that I didn't want to think about. Stories that I had created, mixed with my memories, into horrible trauma just a little better than reality. Seeing him look at me in that way sent me right back to the day I- the day I went through the portal-" Zach ground his teeth with his head leaning forward, his eyes bulging wide for a second and his hands gripping onto his knees as hard as he could. "To the start of the war," he hissed, feeling walls shattering in his mind that was already shredding apart as his head pulled two different directions at once. "Against the Queen, and the villains," his voice came out of either side of his head, while there were mouths creating on different sides of his faces.

And then it stopped. Zach's face returned to its initial spot and his focus scattered across the Death he had to gain control of. "I couldn't take it," Zach whispered back under his breath again after his volume had just been rising for a few seconds. He stared at Shoji and admitted in a quiet voice to his friend staying with him through all this, "I still don't think I can."

"I know, what kind of talk I need to have with him. I have to be straight with him. And… that's something, I forgot how to do," Zach cracked a smile at the end, but his eyes were different. As brightly glowing red as they were, Shoji saw a sadness in them at that admission from deep inside. "Every conversation," Zach said, then pursed his black lips and lifted his eyes up towards his ceiling shrouded in dark clouds. "Every word out of my mouth, even now. I just don't know."

---

"How were things back here this weekend?" Ectoplasm wondered while walking into the teacher's lounge and seeing Present Mic and Midnight talking to each other. He and TyreFire just returned to campus, and the pair of math teachers looked at their coworkers confusedly at the way the two of them looked back their way. "Eventful?" Ectoplasm asked.

"Not, particularly," Present Mic responded. He lifted his coffee and glanced back to his side at Midnight who he had only been talking rumors with.

Midnight hummed and rubbed the back of her head over her long hair. "I haven't seen Zach all weekend. Most of the students haven't either," Midnight added.

"You call him Zach?" Tyrefire wondered, as he had no idea how to treat his newest student who had given him the absolute deepest sense of dread the first two days he was in class.

Midnight sighed and rolled her eyes. "It's how everyone refers to him."

Who's everyone? The newer teacher wondered, though he figured at least the students of Class A seemed to always refer to him like that.

"The lack of Lifebringer sightings has led to some pretty, upsetting rumors," Present Mic added while lowering his coffee for a moment, lifting it back quickly and taking a nonchalant sip as if the rumors were just that. Like that he left a clone in his room, and is out there searching for the League right now. Mic stared at Ectoplasm for a second too long and then shook his head and got back to sipping his hot coffee quickly.

In Training Ground Beta, Zeira leapt backwards and then ducked as a huge arm swept towards her. She spun and fired her grappling gun at Oribia's thinner legs now that all the muscles had bulged in her right arm alone. The wind pushed Zeira's light brown fur backwards, but she pushed against it and knocked down her friend by yanking hard backwards with the hand on her grappling gun. She pulled back hard enough to hit Hono in the face with the back of her hand as he was diving towards her for a tackle. He knew that he was in a bad angle to fire his Quirk from his hands, as a dodge from Zeira would make him hit his partner he was fighting with against her.

Zeira nailed him in the face and then spun as Hono lifted his left hand out in front of her while grabbing at his nose with his right. The ends of his fingertips stuck together and opened up, but before any black sticky tape shot from them, his eyes rolled back into his head. Zeira's did the same, but this time they rolled back quicker than her opponent's. She panted, but she had him and rushed forward before Hono's eyes could roll back themselves. Faster! Zeira jumped up and kicked around at her friend's side before her could raise his arms to block or counterattack.

Oribia and Hono were both down, and Oribia asked up towards her classmate while panting herself and trying to pull the wires off of her legs, "Why not just take him down from in his head?"

"And leave myself open for when you get up?" Zeira asked. Mental Infiltration leaves me too open in group fights. And, if anyone else can block me like Lifebringer could… Zeira turned her head from the rooftop of a skyscraper in Ground Beta. She looked towards the dorms, People have been saying he's acting weird. I saw him smiling and walking around, not much different from how he acted at the licensing exam. So much has happened between then and now… but he can keep a smile on his face.

That's it. He just wants everyone to know that he's fine. And to show the world his smile. "I'm okay." "It's okay." Heroes should always smile. No matter what's going on in their lives, someone will appreciate that smile. Zeira smiled herself at the idea of it and then looked competitively back down at her two classmates. They each looked at each other, then the two started getting back up with challenging looks of their own.

"Did you guys hear?" Uraraka asked when Midoriya and Iida were walking down the road with her after seeing their friend shortly after returning to campus, even before they returned to the dorms. Uraraka hesitated when they gave her strange looks, and she specified softly, "Why, Zach really wasn't in class Friday?"

"No. Was he not sick?" Iida wondered. I thought with Recovery Girl's assurance-

"Is he alright?" Midoriya asked. Iida's sterner look he gave down the road shifted as he darted his gaze next to him at Midoriya, then he looked to Uraraka too with a concerned look as he realized that question came first.

"I… I hope so," Uraraka responded. "I just saw him after school that day, but Sero knew and Shoji said he was alright so…"

Inside Zach's dorm room, he got up from his floor and lifted the repair tools in one hand while picking up his newly-fixed chair in his other. He put the chair down and slid it under his desk carefully, but the back part stayed attached to the seat despite how he had broken it in half earlier that weekend. Zach took in a deep breath then turned to Shoji who was still hanging out in his room, "I'm sure some rumors are floating about the school right now. I'll go make sure to relieve them."

He's kept all his Death inside him for 6 hours now. Shoji nodded his head, his eyes half-closed as he did and no audible response coming from him.

Over the last two hours too, Shoji, I've gotten it so there aren't even pockets of it inside me like there always were with my Limiters set. Zach gave his classmate a small and grateful smile. Now, it's all just my Quirk. My power. Under my control. And I believe you helped me out a lot with that. Zach smiled a little more, and his face was cleared of many emotions except the gratitude and a feeling of clarity. For some reason I still don't feel guilty. Even though through this whole weekend I never gave proof or confirmation that I was Death.

You never asked though. And I'm thankful for that. And yet I also know that it's because of that, that it's so hard to leave U.A.

Shoji, you just made that impossible. Even more impossible. Which means I have to lie harder so that it never comes to that… but for now, Zach nodded at his classmate with that smile that showed off that everything was good and under control once more. "Thank you, Shoji. I owe you one-"

"No you don't," Shoji replied. He then yawned and Zach could see the mask in front of Shoji's face push out and move back in a bit with the wind from his breath. When he was done yawning he looked back at Zach with his squinted eyes opening back up, and he wondered, "Are you not tired? After all of that, it had to be exhausting." He gave Zach a strange look as Zach just lowered his smile back down to a partial one before shaking his head in a steady and relaxed way.

No need to lie. I don't want to. "I don't really sleep much," Zach replied. Shoji's expression turned darker at the answer, and Zach continued on, "I rarely slept anyway, but yeah, with the new power burst I'll sleep even less. I know, it's weird."

Shoji hesitated for a second, then he just nodded in agreement with his friend who laughed at the response. "Get some rest though," Zach continued to the friend who had not slept for more than a couple hours through the whole weekend. He had tried to keep absolutely quiet during the couple hours Shoji's eyes had gone from relaxed and closed to way too relaxed and closed. It was his own groaning during an especially painful part of the regaining control process that had woken up his friend, and Zach still felt bad about it as Shoji had scolded himself for falling asleep in the first place and had not allowed himself to do so again the rest of the time there.

As for food, Zach still had a few plates of untouched lunch and dinner sitting next to his door. Shoji had eaten his own but refused to eat Zach's when his classmate offered it to him. As if to prove that everything was alright now, Zach walked over and reached down to pick up the roll that Sato had brought him last night with his dinner tray. He didn't say anything, Zach wondered while chewing into the tasteless bread. It's just stale. Sato. Focus on Sato and not the food. He helped in his own way. Why was I okay with putting Death in his room and not Kirishima's? Sato's been more blatantly against me. He's called me out. I just ruined things worse with him last week. So why him, and not Kirishima?

Zach lowered the bread with a bite in it and placed it back on the tray. "I'm going out," Zach said with a look over his shoulder at his friend still hesitant about leaving Zach alone now. "I'll go show the school everything's fine. Try to find Sero's ex, make sure she's not freaking everybody out." That Azure girl totally told him something. She looked like she was going to when Recovery Girl promised how she wasn't going to say a thing. The old bag just didn't see that look in her eyes like I did.

Zach left the room and headed down the hall, just smiling towards the three who were halfway down it and froze when they saw him step out. Zach gave Uraraka a knowing look and a grateful nod as he was walking by, immediately guilt-tripping the girl who just told Midoriya and Iida about his losing control over Death. So they do know. At least she only saw the first time. Aoyama never saw the second but I'm sure he's terrified of me.

Was he really having trouble controlling his Quirk? That look, Iida glanced next to him at Uraraka who seemed uncertain herself about what she had told the boys now.

Did I need to say anything at all? He got it all back inside, like he said he would. He probably had it back Friday night. I shouldn't have said anything to Deku, Uraraka thought it because unlike Iida who seemed as uncertain as her now, Midoriya's expression was different as he stared after their classmate's back.

Midoriya turned quickly as he heard Zach's door close, as Zach had left it open when he left a few seconds ago. Midoriya looked towards Shoji and examined the taller boy's face closely. Shoji's been killed before. He could have been in Zach's room without worrying about anything. Death could have made it through the ceiling and alerted him to the problem. Sato and Kirishima's rooms are close too, and they were here for the weekend. Zach told me his power was going to be too much. He told me to kill him because of how powerful he was going to get. I didn't realize it would be so much that he couldn't even keep it all inside…

Except he can, Midoriya turned back away from Shoji while Iida and Uraraka were still looking curiously over towards him now. Midoriya stared towards the stairwell and breathed out heavy breaths with his heart speeding up. All weekend I tried to focus on our work out there. Back here, you gained control over Ares' power, didn't you? All of the strength you obtained by killing him… And the surge is finished now. It's just your base power. Refilled from all you used. With the new addition on top of it. So much more powerful than even that night.

"We have to accept the possibility, that Mount Yamagucha's disappearance was solely the act of Shigaraki Tomura." Midoriya recalled Lemillion saying that to the group of them around him as if it was a shocking and incredibly serious revelation. And he remembered Bakugo's eyes shifting his way as if to check his reaction, only to see the knowing and dreading look already on Deku's face. Kacchan saw it though, Midoriya thought regrettably as he recalled the way his spiky-haired classmate looked at him the night before. A mountain is nothing. That's what I was thinking. In the hands of Shigaraki it's the worst possible scenario, and yet, I can't imagine Zach actually losing to him. Not now. That kind of power- more than Ares could accumulate in thousands of years. All those wars! But, Zach also…

"…back when I could still count, how many I had killed." "…what kind of person forgets the people he killed? What kind of person can't count how many people he's killed?"

There's no limit to your power. You tell me the only other person you're going to kill is Kaminari. If All For One shows up though, you'd kill him, wouldn't you? I'd have to stop you- And let AFO get your Quirk? Just risking that alone- it's worth it.

If it means stopping you from killing anyone else. I'll do whatever it takes.

I failed once Zach. I will not let it happen again.

Zach walked out into the campus of U.A. with no skip in his step. His hands were down in the pockets of his sweatpants, and he wore a hoodie with the hood down and his hair messy around his head. He did not frown, but he looked different than people had seen him since returning. That's better, Zach thought as people looked his way and avoided his gaze. They were creeped out by my smiling, but at least they kept looking at me. Staring my way. Confused and nervous, but unafraid. It's better this way?

I guess at least it's more normal. They should fear me. I'm a terrifying person- creature. I'm human. I have friends. I couldn't taste that bread. I don't sleep. I didn't need to taste that bread, did I? I didn't need to eat it at least. Strange. I somehow knew that was coming. I suppose food tasted bland and stale right after the Tusukan Desert. I knew in those few days before this weekend though, that I was savoring some things for the very last time.

Zach looked to his right and nodded towards Vlad King who had stopped on the street and was watching him go by. The teacher with short and spiky white hair did not know how to respond to the nod from that student whose expression was unreadable and mysterious. His thoughts could have been about anything, and Vlad King had not even the slightest idea as to what they could be. His mood was as much a mystery. His lips were only slightly risen up at the corners to prevent anyone from thinking he was in any way upset, but it was also hard to tell if he was actually smiling and happy.

He looked like Lifebringer. How everyone expected him to look when he returned. His classmates who saw him come back that other night no longer saw the silent depression barely hidden below the surface, nor did they see the strangely excitable and cheerful behavior of his first two days in class. Inside me, Zach thought as he spotted three second years in the hero course staring his way with harsh looks. They stared daggers into his sides and he avoided looking back at them as he knew the fear he would see replacing that determination if he were to even give them a glance. Is the power to wipe out cities. I shouldn't have thought that. I never have- I forced myself not to. Because I didn't trust myself.

You can think it and just know it's true. That's not bad. Like Midoriya hasn't considered it? Yeah, but he considers it so as to better control his power. Isn't that why I thought it? It's not like I'd ever do it. I just know it's true. I could kill everyone in Musutafu right now, and with all the power from killing them I could wipe out Japan. The world. I wouldn't even need Apocalypse. Which means All For One wouldn't. I was right. Years ago, I knew it was true.

He's going to take my Quirk- he didn't though. He had chances. Many now. Were the rumors false? Ares didn't seem to think so. He had heard them as well, though he wasn't worried. Then again, he didn't care about anything else other than me. He waited forever for me. For someone like me. To be a new companion. Or to kill him. Zach lifted his gaze to the blue sky above and followed a white cloud for a second with his eyes. Then he looked down and wondered, I wonder if there are any training gyms open right now? My head is cooled. Last time I trained uncontrolled and without a purpose. It set off the weekend.

I need to understand my current ability. Train it alone. Practical training in class should never include abilities I'm testing for the first time. Only what I've trained. Safety is vital, when I hold so many lives in my hands. And control is most important. If I come to sleep again, which I hope I will, I must have Death fully under subconscious control. Live without any focus on it at all, so that any expulsion of Death would itself have to be forceful.

On the fourth floor of Class 3-A's dorm, Shoji stood a door down from his own. He stared at it before reaching his own room. His right arms started to lift at his side, but they hesitated and after a moment he lowered them back down. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something. Maybe, I don't know what keeps this so hard for you two. But, Shoji's eyes rose straight up from Kirishima's door to the ceiling above it.

Shoji returned to the fifth floor and walked back down it. He rose his top right hand in front of the door second to the end as he had just done on the floor below, but this time he reached forward and knocked too. Sato opened up his door and looked out in surprise to see Shoji standing there. "Shoji," Sato started to a boy he had seen multiple times over the weekend, including over the past two days when he had been the only other one to enter Zach's room. "Is Zach," Sato started, having been napping up until a few minutes ago due to an excessive lack of sleep over the two nights before.

"He's alright now. It's been hours since he's had any trouble holding it in," Shoji said. He nodded behind Sato, and his big-lipped classmate looked surprised but nodded after a second and moved out of the way to let Shoji in. "Because Zach already brought us back, it didn't matter that he was having a hard time controlling his Quirk. He was in the right place to deal with it."

"Yeah," Sato agreed with a nod. He had closed the door behind him but still stood close to it and stared at Shoji who did not walk far into his own room. "What, are you-" Sato began again, confused as to what Shoji wanted to talk about.

"Zach and I talked for a long time. Although he's changed a lot, he's the same person we knew back then," Shoji told his classmate. You didn't stay. You were willing to come in and bring food without either of us asking you to. I don't know why.

Sato looked to his left and down at the floor. He argued back in a low mutter, "We never knew him back then."

"That's not true," Shoji denied. Sato looked back up and into Shoji's eyes partially uncovered by his silver bangs. "Zach lied when he made it out like we didn't know him, more than he had ever lied to us before." Sato stared back confusedly and then with bigger eyes as Shoji continued, "I think, that it was all during the Lifebringer Incident. He wanted us to think we didn't recognize him-"

"When we went to see Zach in Tartaros though," Sato started, though his voice was low and he trailed off at the thought of it. The lies. He continued them out here. What was he talking about? Was he lying about lying, about… uh? I still don't get it. "He could have explained himself. He had no explanation though… He still has no explanation."

"I, don't know," Shoji admitted. Zach's lying about everything. He knows he's doing it but can't stop. He was Death. Being Death, would drive him insane. Doing the things that I know Death did. I can't imagine Zach doing them and keeping his sanity. Not, with the type of person he was. "I don't know why," Shoji started but paused again. "Why Zach was so distant, yet still trying to make things right, from the distance. It's who he is though. That's how he is now, and it might frustrate us but Sato," Shoji's eyes narrowed at his classmate who stared back at him in more surprise at the harsh tone he was taking.

"Accommodate to the kind of person Zach is. Don't expect anything from him going into it," Shoji instructed. Sato stared back with wide eyes mostly confused at what Shoji was suggesting. Shoji started back forward though and back for Sato's door. "Zach wants to talk to us. Just remember that." I can't tell you anything more, Sato. Whatever you heard the last few days should be enough though, with just a little push.

He turned himself in, Shoji reminded himself. We forgot that, because he got out so quickly that it felt like part of his plan. Like he knew he'd be getting out that quickly. He could have been convicted for decades though. Shoji left the room and he walked back for the stairs so he could finally go back to his own room. He could have been in that prison for the rest of his life. He didn't know anything. We think he's so smart that he can figure it all out beforehand, but he had no idea. He threw himself in the deepest hole he could get to, and didn't accept any visitors, because he didn't want the rest of us to see that. To see what I just saw. Zach, trying to explain the truth. Trying to explain things that don't make sense to anyone else, because they're insane to the rest of us.

I tried to show him as understanding a look as I could through all of it. Most of what he said though, Shoji rose a hand and rubbed under his bangs across his forehead for a few seconds as he neared his own door. He lowered that hand and opened his door, while dark lines of exhaustion and pity covered his face. I didn't understand it Zach. You can't just throw bits and pieces out there and expect it to stick. Talking about Terra and wars and losing it about them, about the things that happened in that world, while at the same time explaining how the world is a lie. How everything you say, is a lie. How am I supposed to even respond? I want to. I wanted to, and somehow what I did helped. I could see that. And I knew that you needed it. But the things you say when you lower your guard, they're absurd.

Ten minutes after Shoji left Sato's room, the large tan-skinned teen stood up fast from his desk chair. He stormed out of his room with purpose and sped-walked outside. Confusion hit him once he was out, as he had no idea where he was going on a campus of this size. Luckily, Sato happened to bump into the one person who was on his way back to Class A's dorm after just running into Zach himself and talking to him for a while.

Sero was the only one who Zach actually told where he was going. So when Sato arrived at the training gym Sero was glad to tell him Zach had just reserved for an hour, he was the only one around. The teen with brown spiky hair stared at the doors in front of him and listened inside for any sound of his classmate. What am I doing? He's just going to lie. Make stuff up. And-

Sato took in a deep breath. His eyes closed as he breathed in that heavily, and in his mind eye he saw an image getting clearer. He thought about waking up and the black-haired boy looking down at him. Sato opened his eyes and released his breath. He reached forward and opened the doors to the gym, stepping inside and looking towards the middle of it. There was a figure there just shorter than him who paused what he was doing and curled his hands into fists, making the spheres of darkness above his palms slip back into his fingers instantly and vanish. Zach turned his head to the side and then turned more, and Sato closed the doors and entered the gym.

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A/N Thanks for reading! Sorry for the long update time guys, been a little busy... Also I started binging Friends. Got through 5 and 1/2 seasons already! (I know, that was time I could have spent on this). XD Anyway, I also had some stuff to finalize with escaping from NY before the quarantine hits. I'm moving to Alaska, and I'm a Door Dash delivery guy now so I can go anywhere and still have work. ;) Good luck protecting yourselves guys. Hope nobody catches it. I'm going to try to get another chapter or two out before I move out from here, but ski season is effectively over. I don't want to return to my job at the mountain where too many foreigners and people from the city show up every weekend, so I'm just not going to. Schools and works are all about to get shut down, (if yours isn't already), and not to make you panic but hospitals are going to be overcrowded and overrun... BUT THAT'S NOT IMPORTANT, because reading this (writing it for me) is a fun way to escape the sudden pandemic everywhere in the world. I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter. Leave a review telling me what you think and predictions for what's to come now. It's going to be a crazy ride these next couple of months, but as long as we all keep our wifi going through the chaos I hope to keep getting you guys some Death to enjoy through it! No review responses this chapter, since I'm really in the mood to write today and just wanted to finish editing and post this chapter quick as I could before getting on to the next one! So again guys, thanks for reading and for all the reviews, and I'll get out the next chapter as soon as I can!