There was something strange about Mary.

Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he had a strange feeling about Mary. Aizawa's gut instincts were fairly well honed at this point, and they were telling him that there was something strange going on here. He couldn't pin point what it was though. As far as he could see, Mary was just a kid. A foreign one sure, and one that had a hard time listening, but the latter was pretty common.

Yet, when they met her, something had niggled at the back of his mind. He'd looked her up and down, half expecting to see red paint coating the bottom of her shoes, but they were clean. Her choice of clothes was a bit odd, but for all he knew it could be common to dress that way in her country. She had seemed to dodge around Hizashi's question about whether or not she was from the gallery, but it's possible that was just a misunderstanding. They already had a bit of a language barrier with Japanese and English, and with the way she talked about her father being from Germany it was possible that English wasn't her first language either. So everything could be explained away by her not being from Japan.

Still, that nagging sensation hadn't stopped. Even as they walked down the hall, he found himself glancing back at her, trying to figure out what was setting it off. Maybe he was just being paranoid; it wouldn't surprise him after all the stuff they'd seen here.

He had to put those thoughts on hold when they came to an intersection.

"Another choice to make." Mr. Mic said aloud, looking back and forth between their two options. There was a door in plain sight a little ways down the hall directly in front of them, and there was a side hall leading off to the left. He looked at Izuku. "You wanna make the choice again, little listener? Or should we just flip for it?"

"You know which way to go?" Mary asked, frowning a little in confusion. Izuku shook his head.

"Not really."

"We've just been alternating how we choose where to explore first. It helps cut down on decision making time." Mr. Mic explained.

"Do you want to take a turn, Mary?" Izuku asked, wanting to be fair to their new companion. Mary smiled brightly at him.

"Okay!" She quickly looked back and forth between the two options, then nodded to herself. "I wanna go to the left."

"Left it is then." Present Mic agreed.

The left hallway turned right after a short distance, so they were essentially going 'forward' again. There was a purple door at the end, just like in the other hallway. Mary immediately went for the door, but stopped when Izuku put a hand on her shoulder. She looked at him in confusion, until she saw Mr. Aizawa and Mr. Mic take up their usual stances for opening new doors. Then she just nodded to herself again.

Mr. Mic threw open the door. The two pros peered inside, and Mr. Mic shuddered.

"Okay, definitely creepy, but no immediate signs of danger."

Aizawa nodded in agreement, then turned to Mary. "Don't know how much of this place you've been through, but we'll be looking for either a key or something that's just different enough to be a clue about how to go forward. If nothing turns up then we'll try the other way. Remember not to touch or get to close to any of the artwork."

For a moment, Izuku could have sworn Mary's eyes narrowed, but it vanished so fast he couldn't be sure.

"Okay, I'll try to remember." She said with a smile.

Aizawa nodded and the group trooped inside.

Izuku looked around at the room. It honestly wasn't as bad as some of the places they'd been. Ceramic bunnies in pastel colors lined the left and right walls, and there was a giant painting of one of them in the back of the room. The fact that each of the bunnies had red eyes was kind of odd, but other than that they seemed normal. There was a small bookshelf on each side of the large painting, and a couple of wooden tables at the center of the room.

The group fanned out to search. Izuku tried not to touch the bunnies as he looked, because he was pretty sure they counted as artwork. He bet even rabbits could be scary if a bunch of them with red eyes were chasing you, especially if the really big one came to life. As Izuku walked in front of said painting, he got close enough to read the title of it. Thankfully, they were both words he knew.

"Red Eyes." He read aloud.

"Ugh, hope we find what we need soon and don't have to come back." Mr. Mic muttered, then shook his head. "Sorry, I guess that doesn't help right now. Stuff like this just gets under my skin, you know?"

Mary tilted her head and looked around the room. "Not really, I think they're pretty cute."

"Cute?" Mr. Mic spluttered. "I get that everyone has different tastes, but I have a hard time seeing how anyone could think these things are 'cute'."

Izuku frowned at him. "I don't think it's that weird. I bet a lot of kids would like them."

Mr. Mic looked back and forth between them, then walked away, shaking his head in disbelief. Izuku heard him mutter something about feeling watched in Japanese. As Mr. Mic crouched in front of the left bookshelf, Izuku wandered over to where Aizawa was searching.

"Has Mr. Mic always been weird about bunnies?" Izuku asked once they were close enough. He took the opportunity to switch back to Japanese briefly; it was hard thinking up so many English words all at once.

"I would assert that Hizashi has always been weird." Aizawa declared, looking over the ceramic at the end of the row. "Though I'm not sure where the bunnies thing came from."

"He just said how creepy he finds all the bunnies in here. Well, I guess he said creepy earlier, but what he said just now was close. I just never expected a hero like him to have such a problem with them. They don't look that much different than albino bunnies, and I always thought those were as cute as any other bunny."

It was at this point that Izuku became aware of the strange look that Aizawa was giving him. His eyebrows were down like he was confused, and the firm line of his mouth made him look wary. Or maybe concerned.

"Izuku," Aizawa began slowly "where in this room are you seeing bunnies?"

Izuku's confusion tripled. There were bunnies everywhere in here. What kind of question was that? But before Izuku could voice any of that, there was a loud crash right behind him, followed by a thump.

Izuku jumped and turned around. His eyes first landed on one of the bunnies. It was one from the middle of the row, and it now lay on the ground in pieces. He looked around the room, and saw that Mary and Mr. Mic were both on the other side of the room. Mr. Mic was picking a book up off of the floor.

"Did anyone touch that one?" Aizawa asked in English.

"Nope." Mary replied. Mr. Mic shook his head, as did Izuku.

Aizawa walked past Izuku to get a look at the bunny, and was soon joined by the rest of the group. He carefully nudged the larger shards to the side, and metal glinted off the rooms dim light.

"Found it!" Mary cried, eagerly grabbing the object out of the pile. She held it up, showing off a purple key.

"Heh, I guess even the room thought we'd been in here too long." Mr. Mic joked. He held out his hand for the key, and Mary's face fell.

"But I found it. Can't I keep it?"

"We'll probably need it to open the next door." Mr. Mic explained, but as he started longer at Mary's sad face, his arm fell back down. "But I guess you can hold onto it until we get there."

Mary immediately brightened right back up. "Thanks!"

They all left the room, Mary and Izuku walking in front of the pros this time around. Mary started chatting at him again, wondering what might be in the next room. Izuku replied with an absentminded "Hopefully nothing bad." His mind was still stuck on what Mr. Aizawa had said. Had he been joking about not seeing the bunnies? It hadn't sounded like a joke, and Izuku didn't think he'd make a joke like that either.

Once again, a sound interrupted Izuku's thoughts. His mind came back into focus, and he realized that he and the rest of the group had stopped right at the intersection from earlier.

"Everyone else hear that too?" Mr. Aizawa asked. They all nodded, Izuku and Mary nervously and Mr. Mic as he warily looked around for the source.

The sound made Izuku think of a hero doll he once had, one that stretched far like the hero herself did. Bakugo had stolen it from him and stretched it so far that it broke. The sound he was hearing now was like that, the sound of stretching rubber on the verge of breaking.

"I think it's getting closer." Mary said, clutching her fists to her chest.

The noise was getting louder, but at least that meant he could finally pin point a direction. He whipped his head to the side, and saw a painting. It looked like it was blank, but when he looked harder he saw bits of color in the very center, and they were getting bigger. And bigger, and...was that the ground trembling or just his legs?

"Get away from the painting!" Mr. Mic yelled.

Things happened very quickly after that. The ground shook violently. Izuku stumbled back and something latched onto his arm. Something else erupted from the ground, and Izuku stumbled back further. He would have fallen over if it not for the thing on his arm. That thing turned out to be Mary, who was holding onto his arm like her life depended on it. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open, and when Izuku looked the direction that she was he understood why.

Where they had been standing was now filled with thick green vines. The vines filled the hallway, going all the way from the floor to the ceiling and stretching from one wall to the other. Izuku felt his own jaw go slack at the sight.

"Midoriya, Mary, are you okay?" Mr. Mic yelled.

Izuku looked around, and his heart began to sink. He couldn't see the pro heroes anywhere, yet he had heard Mr. Mic close by.

"Kids, say something!"

That was Mr. Aizawa, and his voice was coming from the same place as Mr. Mic. It was coming from the other side of he vine wall.

"I'm okay." Mary called back. "What about you Izuku?"

"Y-yeah, I'm not hurt. What about you guys?" Izuku walked up closer to the vines. Mary followed him, only now letting go of his arm. There were a few gaps between the vines, but nothing big enough to fit through, just enough for him to see the two pro heroes on the other side.

"We're both fine over here. You two hang tight, we'll find a way to get to you." Mr. Mic called.

"Getting through this might be harder than it looks Hizashi." Aizawa's muttered. "Feel the vines."

"Huh?" Izuku saw Mr. Mic's form shift a bit. "What the...these things are made of stone?!"

"No way!"

"Seriously?!"

Mary and Izuku cried out in unison. Izuku grabbed the nearest vine and pulled on it. Aizawa was right; it felt like cool stone to the touch and it didn't budge. He kicked it, but all that accomplished was stubbing his toe.

"Be careful Izuku." Mary warned, hands fluttering anxiously around him while he nursed his hurting foot. She offered him a hand back up, and he thanked her as he took it.

"Mr. Mic, Mr. Aizawa, what are you gonna do?" Izuku called through the wall. There was a few moments of silence before Aizawa replied.

"There has to be some way past this. This place has yet to give us an obstacle we can't find a way around."

"We've just got to figure out what that way is." Mr. Mic agreed. "There could be a weak point somewhere in this wall."

"Maybe we missed something in that last room." Izuku suggested.

"That could be." Aizawa admitted. "We could go back and check that."

"What about the room on our side?" Mary asked.

"You mean the one that the key probably opens?" Izuku asked. Mary nodded quickly.

"Yeah, if this happened after we got the key, it would make sense that the solution is somewhere in the next place we can go, right?"

"I guess it would..."

"So we should go look there." Mary moved like she was going to grab his hand, but Izuku stepped away from her.

"You want to go alone?" He asked incredulously. Mary tilted her head in confusion.

"We wouldn't be alone, we'd be together."

"Well, yeah, but what if there's something bad in the next room? And, and I don't want to leave Mr. Mic and Mr. Aizawa stuck here."

"I don't exactly like the idea of the two of you going off on your own either, kid." Mr. Aizawa spoke up from beyond the barrier.

"We could do it really quick, and come right back if there's anything scary. That wouldn't be so bad would it?" Mary pressed. Izuku put his hand to his chin and looked down thoughtfully.

Mary did have a point. The two of them couldn't do anything to help right now, and they might find something they need further ahead. The thought of going on without the heroes was scary, but they were trapped right now. They were trapped and might be forever if he and Mary didn't find whatever the gallery wanted them to find. The two of them could watch each others backs, and help each other escape from anything bad. So it might work...

"Izuku? Izuku I don't understand what you're saying." Mary whined. Izuku stopped, suddenly realizing that he'd started muttering without meaning to, and that he'd been doing it in Japanese.

"Sorry Mary, it just helps me think. I think that we could give it a try."

Izuku was worried that Mary might make fun of his habit like the kids at school. They called his muttering creepy, but Mary just nodded in acceptance. Maybe being in this place had given her a different idea of what counted as 'creepy'.

"I agree with Shouta, I don't like the thought of you two going ahead alone." Mr. Mic said. "But there is a good chance that looking around more might be the only way to get this barrier to go away. Just...just be careful alright? Remember what we said about the artwork." Izuku looked through the gaps and saw Aizawa nod.

"And don't close the door after you go through it. Keep it open so you can get out quickly if you need to run."

Izuku nodded. "Okay, we will."

"Let's go Izuku!"

Mary grabbed his hand again, and this time he let her. He walked with her toward the door, internally cursing their bad luck. He wished he'd been paying more attention when the vines went up, so he would have known to jump in the same direction as the pro-heroes did. But maybe it was a good thing, in a round about way. If he'd gone to the same side as the heroes, then Mary might have been left on the other side all alone. Of course she had grabbed onto him, so maybe she would have been pulled along, but that might have meant all of them being trapped with no way out. Though, in the end it might not have mattered, since it all happened so fast that he didn't recall making a decision on where to go. He just know that he'd moved.

"Izuku, you're doing the thing again." Mary said.

Izuku shook himself and found that they were standing outside the door. Mary had the key in hand, and was looking at him as though asking if he was ready. He apologized again, and nodded at her to open the door.

In the back of his mind, he readied himself. He'd protect Mary from anything bad, and he would get back and save the others. He would show he could be a hero.

Mary opened the door. Izuku was relieved when nothing jumped out at them, and he felt even more relief when he got his first glimpse of the room. The color scheme had changed again, now going to an unassuming light brown. Most of what he saw was just boxes, giving the look of a large storage room. His guard went back up when he saw that there were a couple of those black statues in the room, but none of them were moving. He tapped Mary on the shoulder and pointed at the closest one.

"You know about those, right?"

"I know that some of them move, yeah. We'll have to keep an eye them, huh?"

Izuku nodded. A part of him said they should go back and report to the heroes, but another part of him didn't want to seem like a scaredy cat, jumping at things that weren't even dangerous. When Mary started to move further in, the latter part won out. He reminded himself that the heroes were counting on them and followed Mary in.

"I'll keep an eye on the statues while you search the boxes, okay?" He suggested. Mary smiled at him.

"That a good idea, let's do it!"

For a while the only sounds were the moving of cardboard and Mary's voice. His eyes darted between the three statues in the room while she opened boxes and listed out what was inside, which didn't take as long as he thought it might. There were a lot of boxes, but most of them only had one thing in them. One held paper, another canvases, others had paints or modeling clay. It was probably a good thing there wasn't as much variety. Staring at the statues and just waiting for them to move was making Izuku anxious.

"Oh, here's something."

Mary was suddenly standing in front of him.

"I think it's called a palette knife. You think we could use it?" She asked, holding it out to him. He took it from her.

"Can you watch the statues for a minute?"

"Sure."

Izuku looked down at the tool in his hands. His first thought was that it was like a smaller, narrower version of the triangle spatula his mom used to serve cake. It had a smooth, wooden handle, and the metal part was a bit thicker at the base than at the rounded point. He carefully put his thumb to the edge of the metal, and found that it wasn't sharp.

"We can't really cut the vines, since they are made of stone and all, but we might be able to chip away at it with something like this. Or maybe Mr. Mic and Mr. Aizawa could use it in the bunny room. Are you sure there wasn't anything else we could use?"

"Nope, the rest was just the art stuff I told you about."

"Okay then, let's go back and see what they think."

"Okay." Mary turned and held her hand out for the tool. Remembering her insistence about the key earlier, Izuku didn't hesitate to hand it over. Mary's hand closed around the handle, and the lights flickered out.

Izuku gasped, and he felt Mary jump. There was a moment of complete silence, and then a WHAM echoed through the darkness. Izuku's heart raced; he recognized that sound.

It was the sound of a door slamming shut.

A.N.

In which the group inadvertently breaks one of the tropes of tabletop gaming: Never split the party.