Hizashi and Shouta truly had no idea what to expect when they walked into the next area. Well, aside from a new color scheme, which turned out to be brown and tan. In any case, they certainly hadn't expected to see a pair of huge, black eyes painted onto the wall. The ceiling sloped into two points above and to the side of the eyes, which gave the wall a distinctive shape.

"Is this supposed to be a cat?" Shouta asked, raising an unimpressed eyebrow. He'd certainly seen better representations of a cats, including the one in the original gallery. Plus, cats were wonderful creatures that didn't deserve to be a part of this crazy place.

There seemed to be some sort of indentation in the wall as well, right where the cat's nose should have been. After making sure that black hands weren't about to shoot out of the walls, they went over to look at it.

"This hole is fish shaped, so 'cat' is probably a good guess." Hizashi agreed.

There was a door on the left side of the room and another on the right. Hizashi suggested that, since they'd chosen left in the first area and right in the second, that now they should keep up the pattern and go left again. Shouta informed Hizashi that he was ridiculous, but went along with the suggestion anyway.

The left room was filled with multiple pillars in two rows. Each one had a small pair of red curtains with a yellow button underneath it, all except the very first one on their right. That one had a stick figure on it with yellow text underneath.

"Play hide and seek." Hizashi read.

In the blink of an eye the stick figure vanished, and the curtains ruffled simultaneously. It wasn't hard to figure out where they had to look.

The first two they tried were completely benign; pressing the button just revealed a random painting. On the third Hizashi pushed a button, and the curtain parted to reveal a painting of a naked woman. He went beet red, but before he could do anything else there was a shrill scream and a sudden stinging pain across his cheek. The curtain closed again while he was hissing in pain.

"That's what you get for being a peeping tom." Shouta said with a smirk. Hizashi stuck his tongue out at him and stomped away to try another button. His boots disturbed a single orange rose petal that had fallen to the ground. Shouta stared at it for a moment before moving onto the next button. He pressed it, and received a handful of red paint across his face. Hizashi laughed as Shouta struggled to wipe it off.

Finally, they found the pair of curtains the stick figure was hiding behind. They were rewarded with a congratulatory 'ding!' and heard a clatter near the entrance. Following the sound, they found a wooden fish head on the floor in front of the door. Hizashi picked it up and grinned at Shouta.

"How much you wanna bet we'll find a fish tail in the other room?"

"Given how obvious that conclusion is, nothing."

"You are no fun."

They exited the curtains room and walked across the cat face room to reach the remaining door. It was unlike any they had seen here so far, not because it was strange, but because it looked so normal. It was a simple rectangular room filled with random boxes and various statues and stone busts. It looked like it could have been any old storage room in the back of an art gallery.

Though, given what had been happening with the artwork so far, they weren't too eager to wade into a room full of it. Especially since the lights decided to start flickering on and off. Still, the fish tail had to be in here somewhere.

Hizashi started looking near the door while Shouta went further in. He stepped over a crack in the floor as he explored the room, keeping a wary eye on the row of stone busts he was passing. It was then that something familiar caught his eye. A flower vase set on top of a small wooden table, the same size and type as the ones that had originally held their roses. This table was missing a sign, but the vase did have water in it. Thinking this might be more than a coincidence, he called Hizashi over.

"Oh, nice find." Hizashi said when he saw the vase. "If these flowers really are important then we should let them soak up some water while we're here." While he talked he pulled the orange rose from his hair and placed it in the water. He moved to help Shouta get his out, but stopped when the vase started to glow blue. As the two watched, the glow intensified into a bright flash. The water vanished, and a single orange petal formed at the edge of the blossom.

"It...it gave me a petal?"

"It gave you back a petal." Shouta corrected. "You lost one when that painting lady slapped you. I lost one too, when that black had grabbed at me."

"Unified...the weight of your life...so you too will wilt..." Hizashi muttered, frowning and rubbing his chin. "When we got hurt our roses lost a petal, and then the water restored mine. I wonder if it works the other way around."

"Other way around?"

"I mean, if the flower lost a petal when we got hurt, then would taking petals off the flower hurt us? And if it does, then what happens if we lose all of the petals?"

A cold feeling of dread twisted in Shouta's stomach. Before he could reply, there was a crash behind him. They both jumped and turned toward the noise. A stone bust lay smashed on the ground a few feet behind Shouta. It was fairly far away from the other busts, but Shouta got over the implications of that when he saw what was laying among the shards of stone: a wooden fish tail.

"Well that's certainly convenient." He muttered.

Hizashi was the one to pick it up from among the shards. "Looks like it's the right color and size. Here's hoping the cat room likes treats as much as real ones do."

They moved back into the cat room. Shouta took both pieces of the fish, figured out how to snap them together, then pressed the 'key' into the wall's indentation.

The room shuddered, and for a moment they feared they have done something wrong. But then the black pupils on the wall turned into red slits and a discordant cacophony of 'meows' sounded off. Then the center of the wall vanished to reveal a hallway.

"Don't think I'll find our cats' meows very calming for a while." Hizashi said, not bothering to hide his shudder. Aizawa rolled his eyes.

And, once again, they pressed forward.

"At least we get to keep our color scheme for a little longer." Hizashi said, gesturing to the brown walls.

"Hooray." Shouta deadpanned. Hizashi laughed.

Once again they had two options to choose from, forward or right. Well, there was a bit of space just to the left of them, but it was only a few feet long and only held a couple pictures.

Hizashi, after a moment of thought, decided to take a look at the two painting on the left. The first picture was a childish drawing of a smiling face with the tongue sticking out, a tongue that was waggling back and forth non-stop. When Hizashi stopped in front of it the painting immediately 'spit' a glob of turquoise liquid at him. It hit him in the cheek.

"UGH! Gross- ah, OW!"

"Hizashi?" Shouta stepped forward in worry, but Hizashi waved him off as he stepped away from the painting.

"It's fine, just stings." he said, wiping the liquid away with his sleeve. "Oh great, there goes that petal I just got back."

Shouta looked down in time to see the orange petal hit the ground. Dread rippled through him at the sight, so when Hizashi stepped over to look at the other painting he snapped.

"You're seriously going to go up to another one right after that?"

Hizashi raised an eyebrow at him. "This place has art everywhere, we can hardly avoid all of it. And I get the feeling they, or this place, whatever, wouldn't make a space for them without reason. Too much of a coincidence for the kind of game we're playing."

"Hurting us could count as a reason."

Hizashi grimaced. "That's true. But I don't think this piece is dangerous, it's completely blank." He narrowed his eyes. "No, wait, looks like there's something in the very center. It's...a number."

"A number?"

"Yeah, the number 9, and its pink...or maybe red."

"...I will never understand what qualifies something as 'art'."

After that brief diversion, they were back to deciding which way to go. In the end Shouta got a coin out of his pocket, assigned a hall to each side, and flipped it. The forward hallway won. Walking down it, they soon came to another intersection, and froze.

"Maybe we should have tried left first..." Hizashi's voice was higher than normal, and Shouta couldn't blame him. Seeing a bunch of dolls hanging by their feet from the ceiling, well, even he was a little creeped out. Nevertheless, he started walking to the right, and Hizashi followed him.

"Better they're up there instead of down here to chase after us or something." Shouta pointed out.

"Oh my god, why would you say that?!"

"Well it's true."

A doll fell off its string in front of them. Hizashi screamed. Shouta's hands flew up to his ears, as his husband's quirk activated.

"Ok, so maybe it doesn't matter." Shouta said once it was quiet again.

Hizashi glared at him. Shouta rubbed his neck sheepishly.

"Sorry about freaking you out with that comment."

Hizashi sighed. "It's okay, just try not to- wait, what are you doing?"

Shouta looked up from where he was kneeling next to the doll. "You had a theory about this place and coincidences. This doll fell right in front of us, so I'm gonna test it by seeing if the doll has anything useful on it."

"Okay, okay, just, uh, be careful about it, please."

"Of course." A part of Shouta was amused by how their positions had switched from a few minutes ago.

The doll seemed to be made entirely of cloth. Black yarn made up its wild hair and black thread was used to stitch circular eyes and a crooked mouth. The body was light tan and wore a simple, solid colored shirt and pants. And attached to that outfit was a tag that lent evidence to Hizashi's theory.

"Looks like you're on to something. The tag on here has a number on it too. 18, written in green."

Hizashi nodded. "Yeah, definitely too much of a coincidence, there's gotta be something we're supposed to use these numbers for."

Sure enough, a little further down the hall there was a yellow door. In the very middle of it was a panel with the equation:

GX x RX + PX = ?

And a place to type a number just below that.

"And I thought algebra class made solving for X hard. This one doesn't even give you numbers to work with. Well, not within the equation anyway." Hizashi said.

"Makes you go hunting for them instead." Shouta sighed "Can't make anything easy can they?"

"They, or it. We still don't know what exactly we're dealing with."

And that was a big part of the problem. They had theories about what was happening and why it was happening to them, about the rules of whatever this place was, but nothing concrete. The constant unknowns, the paranoia of what might or might not become a threat, the possibility that their lives were now as delicate as a flower...even with their training and experience the stress was really starting to weigh on them. But they also knew that dwelling on all that wouldn't help them figure out what was going on, not until they got more information. So they did their best to deal with things as they came and support each other as they forged on.

When they turned around and tried the other direction they found another door, with two words written in yellow paint next to it.

"Liar's Room" Hizashi read. He raised an eyebrow at Shouta, who shrugged, and then they went in.

The room was long and rectangular. They could see another door directly across from them, and on the same wall as the door were six portrait paintings. The portraits were odd, because they were clearly of people but the people looked like they were made of shadows. Similar to the statues they had encountered, the painting people had black skin and could only be told apart by the color of their clothes.

Each painting had yellow writing under it as well. Hizashi started reading, looking over each one quickly. While he did, Shouta peaked through the door. The next room had a tiled floor, and was empty save for a white marble statue standing in the middle of the room.

"Oh! I think I get it!"

At Hizashi's shout, he closed the door. "Is it another puzzle?"

"Yeah, and I've seen ones like this before. Each one of these 'people' is making a statement, and they are all lying except for one. We solve the puzzle by figuring out which person is telling the truth based on what each person is saying."

"Sounds familiar."

"By the way, is there a statue in the next room?"

Shouta nodded.

"Good, some of the statement make more sense that way. Now, help me figure this out."

Hizashi read aloud what was written beneath each portrait.

Green said: stand in front of the statue, go west 3 steps and south 1 step. That's the answer!

Brown said: stand in front of the statue, go east 4 steps and north 2 steps. That's the answer!

Yellow said: the one in white speaks the truth!

Blue said: the only truth speaker wears green!

White said: stand in front of the statue. Go east 2 steps and south 2 steps. That's the answer!

Red said: I agree with the one in yellow!

"Seems simple enough." Shouta said, thinking aloud. "If we assume only one is telling the truth, then it has to be one of the ones giving directions, because if all of them are lying then we don't get a clue on where to look."

"Right, which means all the ones telling us to listen to specific portraits must be lying. And there's only one portrait that both gives directions and none of the others comment on."

"The one with the brown shirt."

They went into the next room and followed Brown's directions. When they were done they were left with a single tile directly in front of them. Hizashi crouched down to get a close look, and noticed it was a little off center. He pushed at it, and discovered it wasn't attached to the floor at all. When he lifted it up, it revealed a purple number 4 printed on the floor.

"Yes! We got the last number!"

The moment the words left his lips, sound exploded from the Liar's Room. Shouta immediately took hold of his capture weapon and faced the door, ready for anything that might come through. From the corner of his eye, he saw Hizashi shift his grip on the tile, ready to use it as an improvised weapon.

The sounds of crashing and tearing lasted for several seconds, then stopped as abruptly as they had started. Shouta glanced back at Hizashi, who nodded, and they cautiously approached the door.

Hizashi opened it while Shouta stood at the ready. Nothing jumped out at them, and the parts of the room they could see were empty. Shouta entered the room fully, but still he couldn't see anything amiss.

'Maybe the gallery was just making noise to try and scare us? That's a possibility. The noises were loud enough they had to have come from this room yet-'

Shouta was brought out of his thoughts by a familiar hand tapping his shoulder. Shouta turned and saw Hizashi pointing at the wall behind them. For the first time since re-entering the room, Shouta took a good look at the portrait paintings.

Every one of them was splattered with bright red...paint. It had to be paint. The one exception to this was the brown portrait, or what was left of it. The brown portrait was now nothing but a mass of ripped canvas and splintered frame, and it was leaking the same bright red paint. And there was one other change to the portraits. Beneath each of them, there was now only a single word.

LIAR!

LIAR!

LIAR!

LIAR!

LIAR!

They took each others hands and hurried out of the room.