Let's see if this works this time. Sorry if you got a whole bunch of notifications from me. The site wasn't working.

"Heads up—"

I had the wherewithal to duck, Kirishima shouting a warning alongside the lurch of my quirk. A tail swung over my head, brushing my hair, and then from the other side a hardened fist punched it away.

"Thanks," I panted, leaping closer to my classmate. Kirishima's hardening certainly came in handy for defense, which I severely lacked. He made no complaint when I stuck close by. We were surrounded, three sides by villains and one side a mountain. For every bad guy we knocked down, another popped up in their place. The swing of my staff turned less and less hesitant and more 'with-my-back-in-it'. In any other situation, the broken teeth and jaws I'd inflicted over the last few minutes would have put me in jail. But it was all I could do to defend myself.

"Had enough?" A few feet away, someone hollered like an adrenaline junkie.

Bakugou, at least, seemed to be enjoying himself, his face split in a grin. He was making quick work of the villains, taking advantage of the open space by distancing himself from Kirishima and me and making large explosions. It wiped them out by the handful and created cover at the same time. If this was another simulation, Bakugou would be the MVP.

I yelped when a claw nearly swiped my head off. If these guys wanted us alive as hostages, they weren't acting like it. Off-balance, I darted into the cloud Bakugou's smokescreen. The villain kept at it, pursuing me until we were both consumed in dust, and I used my staff to block her. She was using her nose to locate me, and I was using my karmic sense. My timing won out. I dodged her claws easily but desperately, then I whacked her on the head. I heard her drop to the ground as the smoke dissipated. She didn't so much as twitch after that.

Kirishima braced his arms against a pair of throwing knives, teeth gritted, sliding into me. We pressed back to back. I was pretty sure, by the quick tug and release in my gut, that they had been aimed at me. There was so much going on around me that my premonitions were getting slow and muddy, and I was struggling to keep my head above water.

"I got your back," he said, noticing my uneasy expression. He grinned in reassurance, showing his pointed teeth.

It dawned on me then that, since I was clearly the weak link with little defense and little offense, most of the villains had resorted to targeting me. Bakugou? They were trying to get away from Bakugou. He aggressively knocked down the adults in his path, pursuing them instead of avoiding them like I was. Kirishima was easy to come upon but not so easy to hurt (don't use the k-word, don't use the k-word—)

But they had the advantage of numbers, and Bakugou couldn't get them all. I eeped and threw up my staff, blocking an incoming bat. A stretchy arm shot out from the smoke and wrapped around my middle before I could—

The villain shrieked and recoiled as Bakugou shot in from nowhere, fisted her limb, and yanked his gauntlet. Her arm lit it ablaze with one quick but unnecessarily large flash.

"Come on, freaks, let's do this!" He grinned maniacally, crouching. "Unless you're scared."

"You alright, Ryuuzaki?" Kirishima's face was grimy with dirt and sweat, which dripped off his hardened skin.

I nodded through my panting. I wasn't going to last. It was like the villains were endless. I lost count of how many we knocked out and how many were still trying to get at us. All I could do was swing my staff and kick and dodge and try to catch my ragged breath. I didn't have time to think. There were just so many of them.

And then there weren't. I landed a particularly vicious jab right at a villain's orbital bone, my hands too numb to tell if anything cracked beneath it. But they dropped to the ground, and I swung around looking for the next. There were only three left, I realized, and they turned to run as soon as they realized it, too.

"I don't think so!" Bakugou growled and shot off after them. In one flip, he managed to take all three of them down.

Kirishima broke into a grin. "Alright, man! That was awesome!"

The blood was still rushing in my ears and I more so read his lips than heard him. I lowered my staff, stunned, my arms noodles. "Did we do it?"

"Piece of cake," Bakugou huffed. He clapped his hands to knock dust from his gloves and gauntlets. "They were a bunch of weaklings."

"Midoriya and the others might still be in the USJ." Kirishima deactivated his quirk, rolling out his shoulders. He'd done just as much swinging as I had. "We've got to help them."

Bakugou scoffed. "Be my guest and try to find them in this place. I'm gonna go find that smoke creep."

Kirishima looked at me like he hadn't heard him right, then back at Bakugou. "What if they need our help?"

"If they can't handle those low-class criminals, then I say survival of the fittest."

He didn't so much as spare a glance at me, but for some reason, I felt called out. I bit my lip. "The smoke villain is probably with Sensei. Weren't you the one who said we shouldn't try to get in his way?"

He scowled, clenching his jaw. "Now that we've taken down their army, I've got a score to settle."

Bakugou didn't like to do anything against his will. The smoke villain had swooped in too quickly for any of us to react and essentially used us as hostages. I'm sure it was a sore spot for him.

I took a shaky breath and wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. I wasn't sure why I was still so out of it. This must be what shock feels like. Nothing could have prepared me for what just happened. Not one month of school. Not four years. I thought the banter would help settle me, but the dread that had built up in my gut was still there.

I froze, halfway done with retracting my staff.

During the battle, premonition had been going haywire, firing so quickly and incessantly that I had no choice but to ignore it. It was that or get hurt as I tried to figure out what it was telling me. It had been so overwhelming in the chaos of battle that it was mostly useless. But now the threats were gone.

Kirishima was facing Bakugou, his back to me. I scanned our surroundings. There was no one else there.

My stomach lurched.

I moved without really thinking. Bakugou had just enough time to register shock on his face as I dropped my staff and barreled into Kirihshima's side.

"Woah!"

Metal whistled by my cheek and then I landed on top of Kirishima.

"Ryuuzaki?" He asked in my ear, and I craned my neck to check behind us. There was nothing there.

Yet a voice chuckled. "My, how lucky." I flinched—it came from right above me.

I scrambled to the side so Kirishima could move. He had already reactivated his quirk. "What's going on?"

I didn't have time to answer, only to brace my arms up as the karmic energy swelled. My body was too dead and the villain was too quick for us, and we weren't fast enough to get off the ground.

A knife, I realized. He had a knife, and I couldn't do shit against those. Kirishima saw me throw my arms up and flung his body over mine.

"Not quite." Bakugou was before us, then, smirking and clasping onto open air. He blew it up.

The villain screamed, and then materialized, unconscious. He looked like a chameleon. Bakugou tossed him aside and he landed in a heap.

"An invisibility quirk," I managed around the heart in my throat.

"Nah," Bakugou scoffed. "His body just mimicked his surroundings. He was easy enough to see." He wiped a purple juice onto his pants.

Because Kirishima was much more knife-proof than I was, I wasn't sure how much Bakugou had actually saved us. And he didn't have to brag about seeing the villain. All I knew, in that moment, was that I was so grateful that his cockiness didn't get under my skin like it usually did.

I flinched when Kirishima grabbed me by the shoulders and gave a little shake. Clearly I was a little out of it. "Are you hurt, Ryuuzaki?"

"N—no." I shook my head.

Kirishima blinked and peered at my face. Then he lifted a finger to my cheek. It felt like a rock. "You're bleeding!"

I didn't feel a cut or any pain. But sure enough, there was blood dribbling down his knuckle.

"It doesn't hurt," I said, feeling my cheekbone tentatively. Okay, touching it kind of hurt. The villain must have nicked me on our way to the ground. "It's just a scratch, I think."

"Here," Kirishima dug into one of the packs strapped to his legs. "I've got a medkit in my supplies. Let me clean that up for you."

"Thanks," I muttered, shifting to my bottom and hugging my knees. It helped with the shaking. Kirishima touched a cloth to my cut and it stung. It smelled like antiseptic.

I glanced over and saw Bakugou walking away.

"You're not going to wait?" I frowned.

He glanced back at me, who was sitting in the dust and getting medical treatment from an inch-wide scratch. But I was actually talking more about Kirishima, and by the slide of his gaze, I knew he figured as much.

"I'm not slowing down for anyone. If you're coming, you better catch up." He turned back around.

Kirishima furrowed his brow. "Woah, man, hold up!" He slapped a bandage onto my cheek, a little too hard, and scrambled to his feet to follow him.

Mouth stiff, I took my time standing, watching them march to the top of a hill.

"You know," I called when they were a good distance away. "If you're looking for the entrance, you're heading the wrong way." I pointed behind us.

This is a shorter chapter, but I wanted to get an update out. Most of this has been sitting in my folders as I told myself to keep adding another 1500 words, and it wasn't happening.

Some explanations because I don't trust myself to portray the information clearly. The K-word is kill and she didn't want to have a mental breakdown by thinking about how she or Kirishima might die. Hotaru couldn't use her quirk because fighting with her staff absorbs most of the karmic damage, plus things were going too quickly, and there were too many of them. And that's all I can think of.

Thanks for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts.