"You ready, Mary?"

"Yep."

"Okay, on the count of three. One, two, three!"

The kids groaned in exertion. After several seconds, they both dropped to the floor, panting.

"It still won't move." Mary whined.

Once the lights had come back on, Mary and Izuku had both looked around. Izuku had been almost certain that it had been the door that had made that noise, and he found he was right, but the door now being closed wasn't the only change to their environment. In front of the door now stood a black statue with a red dress.

Izuku had approached the statue warily, never walking to close to it. Mary flitted after him, suddenly unwilling to leave his side at all. When the statue showed no signs of moving, Izuku had gotten one of the longer pieces of art supplies and prodded at it a bit. The statue continued to stand there, a silent, immovable barrier. It took much internal, and a smaller amount of external, debate before the kids decided to try moving the statue out of the way so they could get back.

They would need to move it to get back, at least a little, if they wanted to use the door. The statue was large enough that, with it sitting flush against the door, there was no way they'd be able to squeeze past it. Izuku knew he wasn't strong enough to move such a thing on his own, but he'd hoped that with Mary's help they would be able to manage it. They'd had no such luck though, no matter how hard they tried.

"It's almost like it's bolted to the floor or something." Izuku grumbled, looking the thing up and down. "You suppose...maybe we could tip it over instead? If we climbed it and then...threw ourselves?" Finding the right English words for some of these things was getting hard.

"That sounds like it would hurt, whether it worked or not." Mary said, frowning. "But, I guess we could give it a try."

Shouta and Hizashi had stayed close to the vine barrier. They were nervous about the kids going off on their own, and hoped they'd at least be able to hear them if they stuck close. They could distantly hear their voices for a while, but they were cut off by the sound of a slamming door.

Fearing the worst, the heroes had immediately tried to call out to the pair. When they got no response their fear only increased.

Shouta's fist slammed against the stone vines. "Dammit! I knew this was a bad idea!"

"Yeah, I got that feeling too." Hizashi admitted. "But we didn't hear them scream or anything, so we have to believe that they're okay. As okay as you can be in this place anyway." Hizashi tried to sound optimistic, but the worry crept into his voice by the end. Shouta sighed, but nodded.

"You're right. We should see if there's anything we can do on this end, instead." He looked Hizashi in the eye. "You up for exploring that room again?" Hizashi let out a resigned sigh.

"I'd really rather not, but I'll do it for those kids."

Several minutes and a few bruises later, and it was becoming clear that the statue could not be toppled. Mary had insisted they stop trying when a particularly bad bruise resulted in Izuku losing a rose petal. The boy hadn't argued, but that still left them with a question.

"What are we supposed to do now?" Izuku asked the air. Mary bit the nail of her thumb, and turned to look at the opposite wall.

"There's really only one thing left to try, I think."

Izuku followed her gaze. She was looking at the door opposite the one they had entered through.

"Should we really be moving further away from Mr. Aizawa and Mr. Mic?" He asked nervously.

"Well, we can't get back to them from here, and nothing in this room had been very helpful, but something through there might be."

Izuku knew she was right. As anxious as it made him to go even further ahead without the heroes, the gallery wasn't giving them any other option. Besides, there was a chance that this route would eventually loop around right? And maybe if they left and came back then the statue would move again and they could finally get back.

"You're right. Let's go take a look."

The two got up, and walked out of the room.

Hizashi looked around the room, his face scrunched up in distaste. "I don't care what anyone says, I'll never be able to view these things as cute."

Shouta couldn't help but agree. He felt that dolls already had a low level of 'creepiness' to them, but normal dolls had nothing on the ones lined the shelves of this room. Every one of these dolls had scraggly black hair, and a twisted grin. The blue fabric of their skin made him think of someone dying of exposure, and the wide, round eyes were the color of blood. The effect was made even worse by the 'Red Eyes' portrait, a huge close up of a doll's face, showing off each unnerving detail. To top it all off, numerous dolls hung from the ceiling by their necks.

"I was going to ask about that, actually." Shouta replied. "Hizashi, are you seeing dolls in this room? Ones with blue skin and red eyes?"

Hizashi raised an eyebrow at him. "Um, yeah? What else is there to see?"

"That's what I was wondering about. Because when I talked to Midoriya earlier, he kept saying something about rabbits. But I certainly don't see any of those in here."

Hizashi frowned for a few moments; then his eyes went wide. "Oh no."

"What?"

"There was a book I was reading, just before that doll fell and tore open to give us the key. At first I thought it was just stuff to scare us again, but now...hang on."

Hizashi went over to the bookcase he'd been looking through before and pulled a book off the shelf.

"The title is 'Ruin of the Heart' and it only opens up to one passage." Hizashi announced. He let the book fall open, and read what was on the page. "If your spirit suffers too much, you will soon start to hallucinate, and in the end you will be destroyed. More worrying yet, is that you will not even be conscious of that fact."

Worry started to churn in Shouta's gut as he took in the words. "I don't like the implications of 'you will be destroyed'."

"Me neither." Hizashi said, with a shake of his head. "But it does give a possible explanation to Izuku and Mary's behavior though. If the gallery is causing them to hallucinate, then it would make sense they could call what was in here 'cute'."

"Are we sure they were the ones hallucinating?" Shouta asked.

"Well, it's certainly possible that we're all hallucinating whatever we see in this room, but if it's just them or just us I think it makes more sense for it to be them. The book mentions the 'spirit' suffering, and the gallery talked about spirits when we each got our roses. We've both gotten damage done to ours here and there, but Izuku is the only one we know for sure that has come close to losing all of his petals. Not to mention the way he passed out earlier."

Shouta nodded along as Hizashi explained. "It's possible Mary had a close run in too. She didn't seem surprised by what the flower vase did when you put your rose in, so it's possible she's had to use one before."

"Exactly. Plus, think about the difference in what we are seeing. The two of us are seeing something that puts us on edge, and is in line with other things we've seen in the gallery. But Izuku and Mary, assuming she saw rabbits too, saw something that was more comforting. The gallery could be taking advantage of whatever vulnerability they've gained and is giving them images of stuff that might make them to lower their guard."

Shouta scowled. "If that's the case, we should try and figure a way out of here as fast as we can. If they are seeing things, they might not recognize danger if they do see it."

Hizashi nodded gravely. He knelt down and put the book back, but when he stood back up he overbalanced and almost tripped. He had to steady himself on the top bookcase, but when he did he suddenly froze. Shouta looked over his shoulder.

"You alright? What's the hold up?"

"There's something back here."

"'Something'?" Shouta asked with a raised eyebrow. He stepped closer so he could get a better look, and saw that Hizashi's fumbling had pulled the bookcase away from the wall slightly. Though 'away from the wall' might not have been entirely accurate, since this revealed that there was no wall behind the book case. There was an opening in the wall, one that was the exact same shape and size as the book case.

"How did I not notice this before?" Hizashi asked in disbelief. Shouta put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"It might not have been there before. The gallery does seem to have a way of producing doors out of nowhere."

Hizashi let out a frustrated sigh, but nodded in acceptance. The two of them looked at the newly found exit. They'd have to get on their hands and knees, but it looked to be big enough for them both to get through.

When Izuku and Mary went through the door, they found that the color scheme had changed again. It was shades of brown this time, but the neutral color did nothing to comfort Izuku. From what he could tell, changing colors meant leaving previous areas behind, and he certainly didn't want to leave Mr. Mic and Mr. Aizawa behind. There was also the fact that the lights kept getting dimmer, then brighter, then dimmer again.

"I don't like it when the lights do that." Izuku said.

"Me neither." Mary said. "It keeps making me think the lights will go off, and it's scary when the lights go off!" Izuku nodded vigorously in agreement.

The hallway curved to their right, and they peered around the corner. But there was nothing there. They turned another corner, and there was a short set of stairs. The lights still flickered, but there was nothing scary around. There wasn't much of anything really, not even a painting yet.

Izuku looked at Mary, wondering if she felt as wary as he did. She looked back at him, but then just shrugged and kept going.

A part of him wished he had Mary's confidence. Another part of him wished he had the guts to tell her to be more careful. They had no idea what they might be up there, and they didn't have the heroes with them to help. They had to be extra careful now, and he had to make sure she knew that!

"M-mary, maybe we should, uh-" but Mary didn't hear his quiet voice and was already climbing the stairs. He scrambled to catch up to her, not wanting to get separated even more.

Thankfully, nothing at the top of the stairs looked to be immediately dangerous. There was a painting, which was of a clown's face. Izuku didn't mind clowns so he didn't find it scary, but steered clear of it just in case. The hallway now lead to the left, and they started going that way out of a lack of any other clues.

There was the sudden sound of paint splattering to his right. Izuku jumped and looked at the wall next to him. Words written in yellow paint had appeared, four phrases in all. Once Izuku recovered from his initial start, he actually felt kind of relieved. The lack of anything happening, the suspense, had almost been as bad as when something was chasing him, because he'd constantly been waiting for something to happen. Now that something had happened though, he could focus his mind on figuring out what to do about it.

However, this was when Izuku realized there might be another problem with him and Mary being on their own. He was a lot better at speaking English that reading it, and they didn't have Mr. Mic with them to help.

'I should ask Mary if she can...' Izuku's thought fizzled out when he caught sight of one word he recognized on the wall. He couldn't read English very well yet, but his teacher had made sure each student could at least recognize the English version of their own name.

Izuku turned his wide eyes to Mary. She was staring right back at him, her eyes more intense than she had ever seen them. His surprise made him draw back and blink, and just like that the expression was gone. She now looked at him with a worried frown and a tilted head.

"Are you okay?" She asked. Izuku shook himself and locked eyes with her again. She still looked worried.

'What just happened?' he wondered.

"Izuku?" Mary spoke again, the worry now coloring her voice. He shook his head again. He should figure out why his name was here first, and then he could think about what just happened.

"Mary, can you read English?"

"Huh?" She said, her frown deepening. "Sure, I can. Can't you?"

"No, I'm still learning English. I'm not very good with writing it yet." He admitted, a little sheepishly. At least Mary's tone hadn't sounded annoyed or anything. Just curious.

"Oh, you want me to read it for you?"

"Yes please." Izuku said with a slight bow. That made Mary giggle, then she started reading.

"I want you to have fun Izuku"

"Come to a fun world without any adults"

"We'll be together"

"You, me, and our friends"

The words made Izuku swallow anxiously. He may not have any friends back home, but he'd take no friends over the kind of friends the gallery would probably provide. It seemed like there was something missing here though.

"That's weird..."

"What's weird?" Mary asked curiously. "There have been messages like this before, right?"

"Well, yeah, there were, but they never included names before. And how come it has my name but not yours?"

Mary thought for a moment, then placed her hands on her hips and grinned.

"I bet it can tell that I'm not nearly as big a scaredy cat as you are, so it didn't even bother trying to scare me!"

"Huh?! I'm not a scaredy cat!" Izuku squawked.

"You jumped pretty high for a not scaredy cat just now."

"You jumped when the lights went out back there!"

"So did you, but I didn't jump for this which means I'm officially less of a scaredy cat than you." Mary declared with a confident nod. It was silent for a moment while Izuku stared at her, then she burst out laughing.

"What's so funny?" Izuku asked, now thoroughly confused.

"The look on your face!" Mary giggled. "Come on Izuku, I was just teasing. I know you wouldn't have gotten this far if you were a big scaredy cat."

Oh...ohhhhh, this wasn't mean teasing. It was like the teasing Kaachan did before he got his quirk, where it meant he actually liked you. With this revelation, Izuku laughed a little himself.

"There you go!" Mary said happily.

"Thanks Mary, that helped."

They started walking again soon after. They couldn't glean any clue from the words right here, and figured it was just a scare tactic or wouldn't come in handy until later. The second phrase apparently caught Mary's attention though, as she started going on about the pros and cons of getting to live without adults.

"Adults just have so many rules, you know? And they never get imagination games or want to play as long as I do, but it can be nice to talk to them sometimes and..."

As she went on, Izuku couldn't help but wonder how the adults of their own group were doing.

When Hizashi and Shouta got to the next room they had a very brief argument about whether or not the color scheme had changed. Shouta thought it looked about the same, while Hizashi insisted it had become more blue-violet compared to the straight violet of before. When they saw some bright purple words on the wall, Shouta admitted they probably wouldn't have been legible in the previous room.

'There is no exit. There is no reason.' Those were the painted words. After reading them, Hizashi glared up at the ceiling.

"Don't you lie to me."

Shouta rolled his eyes at Hizashi's dramatics and turned to get a better look at the room. There was a wall just opposite the hole they had come through that had a single purple door, which was locked, and off to the right was a an open space. The only notable features were a triangle shaped indentation in the floor and five pull cords hanging on one of the walls. Oh yeah, and there was no ceiling above the pull cords.

"Where do you suppose they go?" Hizashi asked. He'd gone over to investigate further, and was now squinting up into the darkness. The pull cords went straight up into it, the tops of them too far away to be seen.

"Dunno. I'm willing to bet one of them gives us something to put in the hole in the floor, but I have no clue which it might be."

Hizashi nodded. "Pulling on them just to see what they do sounds like a horrible idea, but there really isn't anything else in here to give us a clue. The triangle doesn't point to anything, and there's nothing else in here aside from those words we saw earlier."

"Unless 'there is no reason' means we really do have to pick one and just hope it's right..." Shouta trailed off, frowning. "Hizashi, do you hear something?"

The room Izuku and Mary entered was long and rectangular. It was a decent sized room, but felt smaller due to the gaping hole in the middle of the floor. It stretched from one wall to the other, making an effective barrier between them and the other side of the room.

"Whoa!" Mary cried. She went over to edge and peered down. "How deep do think this goes?"

Izuku came up next to her, carefully edging closer so he could look down too. "I can't see the bottom at all...so it's probably pretty deep." Not for the first time, Izuku wished he had a flashlight, or even a lighter like Mr. Aizawa. It would help with so many things in here.

"HELLO!"

Izuku jumped when Mary suddenly bellowed that word down into the hole. It was a good thing he hadn't gotten any closer to the edge.

"What are you doing?!"

"I was trying to make an echo." Mary said, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world.

"You...huh?"

"An echo." She repeated. "I figured if it was so deep then it might echo, like big rooms do. I didn't hear anything that time though..." Mary trailed off, frowning slightly. Then her face brightened suddenly. "Maybe I just gotta do it louder! You wanna try with me?"

"Really?" Izuku asked in surprise, it had been a long time since he'd been invited to do anything with someone who wasn't his mom. Mary smiled and nodded eagerly, and a slight warmth filled Izuku's chest.

'I guess it couldn't hurt.' he reasoned. "Sure, should we do it on the count of three?"

"Okay!"

"On three then, one, two, three!"

"HELLO!"

They both quickly turned their heads to listen closely. After a few seconds, Mary sighed.

"I still don't hear anything."

"Maybe the materials in here just aren't made for it. Or maybe it's because of the gallery itself, since a lot of stuff works kinda funny in here." Izuku suggested.

"Maybe." Mary's tone made it clear she was still disappointed. She turned away from the hole and started looking around, and Izuku did the same. The first thing he noticed were the pull cords up on the far wall. There were five of them, but they were all too high up for either him or Mary to reach. They might have been able to reach one of the edge ones if Mary stood on his shoulders or something, but doing that next to a deep chasm seemed like a bad idea.

There was a single painting on the wall under the pull chords. It was a pair of simple, cartoon eyes against a light green background. The eyes moved every now and then, like they were looking around, which should have been creepy but honestly wasn't. With the way they were drawn, the eyes seemed more bored then anything else.

'I guess I'd be pretty bored too if I only had this room to look at.' Izuku thought, glancing around the rest of the room. 'It's pretty empty.'

That last thought struck him suddenly. The room was empty; it was too empty in fact. All he could see on the other side of the room was a door, a cardboard box, and some unidentifiable object lying on the floor, and there was nothing on this side of the room. He looked at Mary, and saw she was biting her bottom lip.

"Um, Izuku? Do you have any idea how we're going to get across?"

"I-I don't know." Izuku felt his chest tighten with his rising anxiety. They had nothing to use on this side, and trying to reach the chords or just jump across would risk them falling down into the hole and who knew what would happen to them then? Falling in there could lead to almost anything in a place like this! And even if that statue from earlier had moved they still hadn't found anything to help Mr. Aizawa and Mr. Mic! What were they going to do?

Strangely enough, Izuku's anxious thoughts were interrupted by the very thing they were trying to achieve a few minutes ago.

"Hello?"

The word drifted up from the darkness of the chasm. Mary's mouth fell open, and Izuku's eyes went wide. They both looked at each other, and hurried to the edge. They lay down on their stomachs so they could poke their head over the edge.

"Hello? Is someone there?" Izuku called down. After a brief pause he received an answer.

"Midoriya, is that you?"

"Mr. Mic?!" Izuku gasped. "Mr. Mic is that really you? Are you and Mr. Aizawa okay?"

"Hey, hey, we should be the ones asking you that! Are you and Mary both okay? What happened with the door earlier?"

After everyone was reassured that everyone else was completely fine, they exchanged stories. Izuku left out the part about the words asking him to come and play though. He figured they didn't need to know about the gallery's scare tactics (or about Mary teasing him for being a scaredy cat).

"I'm sorry we went so far and didn't come back to help you." Izuku said sadly.

"We didn't do it on purpose." Mary added.

"All that matters is that you're safe, and that you stay that way." Mr. Aizawa's voice told them. "We may be separated now, but we'll have to bank on the idea of the paths meeting up eventually. Since that room seems safe, you should both try to stay there until we come and find you."

"Shouldn't we try to go forward until we find where the paths meet up again?" Mary asked. "How will you know which way to go to find us if the path splits?"

"Yeah, shouldn't we at least try to find it so you guys don't have to guess or split up?" Izuku didn't like the thought of either of them getting hurt because they chose the wrong way to search for them.

"You guys let us worry about that." Mr. Mic said. "We're the pros after all. We'll figure it out, it's what we're trained for."

Izuku's anxiety was making itself known again. He had heard that UA went above and beyond, but he didn't think they had haunted gallery training.

"Can you promise you'll try to stay put?" Aizawa prompted.

"We don't have much of a choice right now." Mary complained. "We can't get across the hole."

"We're stuck on how to move forward too, unless..." Mr. Mic's voice faded for a moment before coming back stronger. "You said you have nothing for crossing the hole, but what else is in your room?"

Izuku gave a report on all they could see.

"We've got a bunch of pull chords down here too, but nothing to tell us which one to pull. Are there any clues up there?"

"Um...I don't know. All the chords are the same length I think, and they all look the same. The only other thing by them is that painting I mentioned."

"Does it look at any one chord in particular?"

"No."

"Kid, you said it was under the chords, right?" Mr. Aizawa asked. "Is under any chord specifically?"

Izuku looked up at the painting, which was glancing off to the side with its bored eyes. "Uh, yeah, I guess it is. It's right under the chord that's second from the right."

There was a brief bout of silence, then Mr. Mic spoke again. "We're gonna try something down here. You let us know if anything changes up there, okay?"

"Okay." Both Mary and Izuku agreed.

They both looked around, looking to see if anything was happening. They didn't have to wait long. After just a couple seconds, the painting on the wall started moving. It drifted down the wall until it was right above the where wall would meet floor, were it not for the hole. Then it continued, sliding from a vertical position to a horizontal one. As it turned out, the painting was just long enough for it to span the gap, creating a sort of bridge. The painting continued sliding until it was right in front of Izuku and Mary.

It was almost like an invitation. So much so, that Izuku found himself asking "Are you giving us a way to cross?"

He hadn't been expecting an answer, but he got one anyway. The painting's eyes looked at him, then shifted up and down slightly, giving the impression of a nod. Then the eyes closed, like it had decided to take a nap.

"Well, thank you."

The painting did not respond this time, but Izuku hoped it had heard anyway. After a quick explanation to the waiting pros, which was followed by a warning to be careful, Izuku and Mary tentatively stepped onto the painting's edge. It didn't waver like it would fall, and the eyes stayed shut. Still, Izuku did his best not to step onto the eyes themselves. They both breathed a sigh of relief once they got across.

"Well, that takes care of us at least." Mary said.

"Yeah, but it didn't do anything for Mr. Mic or Mr. Aizawa."

"Well, since they just did something for us, maybe we need to do something for them." Mary mused, looking around. She eyed the cardboard box, but decided to go for the other object instead. Izuku hadn't been able to see what it was before, but as Mary picked it up now, he could see that is was a triangular prism made of wood.

"Do you think they might need a triangle thingy?" Mary asked.

As it turned out, the pros could make use of a triangle thingy. Upon hearing this, Mary yelled "Look out below!" and threw the prism down into the abyss, much to Izuku's dismay. His worry eased when he didn't hear any cries of pain, and a minute later the pros confirmed that they had used the prism to get their door open.

"Remember, you both stay where it's safe until we find you." Mr. Aizawa reminded. That was the last the kids heard from them.

The kids did try to listen, for a bit. It didn't take long for them both to get bored though, and Mary decided to look into the cardboard box. She immediately jerked back when she lifted part of the lid though.

"Mary? What's wrong?"

"Something in there moved!" she whispered nervously.

"Oh...um...maybe we should just...leave it alone then." Nerves crept into Izuku's own voice.

"I don't want to stay here and just stare at it like this." she whined.

The box shifted slightly, and both kids jerked around to face it.

"I don't wanna go against what Mr. Aizawa said...but maybe we could just take a peak in the next room?" Izuku suggested. "It might be safe too...maybe even safer..."

The box suddenly moved again, this time several inches toward them. The kids took one look at each other, and ran through the next door.