HINT #15- The time Class 1-A was ambushed

Kaminari really didn't know what to feel anymore.

It had been almost a month since Hawks had left UA, which meant it had been a month since he'd been told the hero commission may be on to him, and a month since whatever sense of safety and security he'd established ever since arriving at the school was washed away completely.

He was no stranger to betrayal. Hell, one of the first rules his parents had drilled into his head was to never trust anyone, no matter how friendly they seemed. Over countless missions and even more assassinations, he couldn't even remember the number of times a partner or colleagues turned on him because they wanted to collect the bounty on his head or wanted to have the accomplishment of taking down the greatest assassin in the world.

Long story short, Kaminari had been, quite literally in some cases, stabbed in the back more times than he could count.

But none of them had ever been as painful as this one.

None of them had ever been from someone he'd considered a well and true friend.

Kaminari wasn't sure if he'd grown complacent during his time at UA or if his principal was simply a master at deception, but he couldn't even fathom the idea of Nezu of all people betraying anyone, let alone someone he'd poured his heart out to and solemnly sworn he'd protect. Despite everything Toga, Touya, and Hawks had spilled to him the night of their meeting, Kaminari still couldn't bring himself to believe that all of the sentiments Nezu had shared with him the night he'd found him nearly passed out on the track were all just cheap tricks weaved together to gain his trust.

It just didn't seem possible. And on top of that, Kaminari didn't see how a fellow survivor of the trials and tribulations of the assassination ring could ever even consider sharing the details of another ex-assassin's trauma with another, let alone the higher-ups in the hero commission. Even if Nezu had been clear about his ill intent since the beginning, going around talking about the horrors of the black market just wasn't something people did. Even in Kaminari's own little group that had long since escaped and dealt with their trauma in whichever ways they were able, life back then wasn't some topic they reflected on very often.

Sure, he, Toga, Dabi, and Hawks made jokes about it and casually talked about their respective experiences with torture and abuse amongst each other, but actually getting down to the serious nitty-gritty of everything that happened down there? No. Although they whined about all the scars that littered their bodies and casually compared physical trauma like it was nothing, they still were victims who had lived in a murderous society for years on end. Although the jokes and everyday chatter about their experiences was expected because it was, quite literally, just a recap of their daily lives, how serious the entire ordeal actually was just kind of hung, unspoken, in between everyone who'd survived and managed to get out safely.

It was just a weird topic for everyone, one Kaminari had only ever fully and officially voiced out loud to Shinsou when he'd been forced to reveal his identity.

Even if there was someone who was well and truly out for Kaminari's blood who knew what he'd experienced down there, it wasn't something they would describe in explicit detail to the Hero Commission of all the crazy motherfuckers they could choose from. Assassins, both reformed and active ones, shared a mutual hatred for that organization for reasons varying from the simple fact that many of the people residing in the assassination ring were just evil people who wanted heroes dead to the fact that the entire hero system was arguably just as corrupt as the underground.

Whether they were part of the former or the latter, Kaminari knew for a fact that anyone who had lived in the black market for an extended period wouldn't team up with them for anything.

So why the hell would Nezu tell them that?

Needless to say, Kaminari had been puzzling over the situation for at least a month now, and he still wasn't any closer to finding a decisive answer. Between Nezu's background and affiliations, one of them had to be a lie, and according to Hawks, Nezu's past as an assassin was as good as one-hundred percent confirmed.

No ex-assassin would ever help the Hero Commission to the extent of revealing another ex-assassin's identity when they knew damn well how fucking evil that organization was, even if Nezu worked very closely with members of said organization in his job.

And that was why Kamianri was so confused. Because while Nezu had always been a sneaky, borderline homicidal bastard whose facial expressions he could never read, the circumstances just didn't make sense.

And yet...

Kaminari just didn't know.

Maybe he was in denial. Maybe he just wasn't willing to believe it until it was one-hundred percent confirmed that Nezu had betrayed his trust. Maybe he was just in shock that the sanctuary he'd grown to feel so safe and accepted in was all of a sudden disappearing right before his eyes.

But life moved on. Everyone else, oblivious to Kamianri's internal struggles, went to classes, talked, ate together, and joked around as usual. To them, ever since the pro heroes had left the campus about a month ago, life was normal. Even Nezu, who also seemed utterly unaware of Kaminari's internal conflicts despite everything, planned out lessons and school trips like every good principal does.

And with those school trips, unfortunately, meant training exercises.

To put it simply, Kaminari was fed the fuck up with his life right about now. And he had no doubt that whatever Aizawa had planned was either going to offer a nice distraction from this confusing paradox of logic and morality or piss him off to the point where he was going to explode from the pure frustration of it.

Unfortunately, knowing his group of friends, the latter seemed much more likely.

"Three days' worth of supplies should be in each of your backpacks." Aizawa scanned each of his students carefully. They were all sprawled out across the lawn, each one with a massive bag they'd been given a few moments before beside them. "That's three days' worth of food, water, and other basic necessities, not including the emergency rations on hand if needed. If you all really try, you could probably stretch your supplies out to last over a week, but doing that would require both excellent teamwork and strategic planning. But, since Midoriya is the only one in this class who can demonstrate both aspects, that possibility seems very unlikely. Of course, this exercise would be much easier if you do so, but the other teachers and I have planned accordingly not to expect such an outcome."

"Damn, harping on us already?" Kirishima slung his arm around Kaminari's shoulder. "He hasn't even told us what we're doing yet."

Kaminari shrugged and toed the edge of his backpack. "I don't know. With all this stuff, I'd guess more wilderness survival training."

"Basically, they don't want to deal with us for a week, so they're sending us out into the woods and calling it teaching."

"Yeah, basically."

"Anyway," Aizawa interjected. He scratched his cheek. "The objective of this training exercise is to survive in the woods for two weeks. The rations each of you have in your backpack are enough to get you settled if you eat them as they're meant to, but they're also enough to last you half of the assignment if you all pool your supplies and work strategically as a singular unit. Other than that, it's up to all of you to forage your own food and water for the rest of the time."

Immediately, a ripple went through the crowd.

"However." Aizawa continued monotonously. "We understand that you are all teenagers that have little to no survival training. Therefore, instead of throwing you all off into the forest in the middle of nowhere, we have set up a controlled boundary for you all to reside in for the next two weeks. It's about one square mile, and we've taken special care to hide unperishable food packets and bottles of water all along the area for you all to find to sustain yourselves. However, these things are very well hidden, so while it would be in your best interests to start finding food on your own, they are always a backup option."

"This actually doesn't sound too bad," Mina murmured from behind Kaminari. "Much better than our last wilderness training, that's for sure. Y'know, the one where we met your little blond girlfriend?"

"Actually, shut your mouth, Mina." Kaminari groaned back, but to be fair to her, she actually did have a decent point. It was nice to see these teachers be competent and actually treat them as kids for once instead of indestructible heroes. During the last woodland survival exercise, All Might had simply dropped the entire class off in the middle of nowhere with only three days worth of food and a walkie talkie for each student before giving them the task of making a functioning camp by the end of the week and bounding away, to which, yes, of course, Kaminari's old childhood friend had had to drop in.

This exercise, as much as Kaminari was sure Bakugou screaming at everyone to get their shit together for an entire two weeks would be a pain in the ass, actually seemed...relatively safe for a group of average, superpowered, immature teenagers considering most of the things this school regarded as 'training exercises.'

Then again, this training exercise was probably organized by Nezu, who probably only took those extra precautions to lure him into a false sense of security...

Kaminari made a face. No. He was not going to think about that right now. The only thing he could do was wait for either a government agent to bust down his dorm door or for Nezu to make his move. And since neither of those had happened yet, Kaminari wasn't going to risk letting his very own principal know that he knew about his double-crossing when said principal could very well return him to the hellish life he'd despised so much with a snap of his fingers.

No. He was going to lie in wait until the perfect time to attack. Until he could get Nezu alone and confront him about everything. Only then would they sort all of this out, even if they had to shed some blood to do it.

"Yo." Bakugou elbowed Kaminari in the side, sending him stumbling. "You good over there, Dunce Face? Are you afraid of the woods or something? You went all quiet."

"Am I afraid of the woods?" Instantaneously, Kaminari's smile slid back in place. He laughed, clear and loud, and poked Bakugou in the cheek. "Please. The woods are, like, a go-to spot for parties. I've stayed overnight in the woods more times than I can count. But what about you, Mr. I'm-scared-of-bugs-but-am-too-afraid-to-tell-anyone? You sure you'll be able to handle fourteen whole nights sleeping on the ground with spiders crawling all over your skin?"

Sero absolutely howled with laughter.

Bakuogu just scoffed and muttered something under his breath.

"What was that, dude?" Kaminari asked. His grin widened. "I couldn't hear you."

"I fucking hate you."

"I love you too, man."

"Fuck off." Bakugou began trudging towards the forest along with the rest of their class. "If you get attacked by a bear or something during this training exercise, don't expect me to come and save your pathetic, scrawny ass."

Kaminari just laughed gleefully, dancing away from Bakugou's glare and backpedaling towards the rest of their class. "Noted." He spun around on his heel and cocked his head to the side. "It's probably just as well. Midoriya would probably be better against wild animals with that quirk of his-"

"WHAT THE FUCK DOES DEKU HAVE TO DO WITH THIS, YOU PIECE OF SHIT, STOP BRINGING HIM UP ALL THE DAMN TIME-"

Bakugou's voice faded into the background as Kaminari simply laughed and dove into the hoard of his classmates that had gathered on the outskirts of the forest.

xxx

"You know what? For UA, this is actually pretty nice."

"Yeah, for once." Sero elbowed Kirishima aside to toss the last of the class' waterbottles in the pile that had been slowly accumulating on the ground. After being dropped off by their teachers at their designated campsite, Midoriya had been delighted to find a small, foldable tarp tucked away in the folds of his backpack. Hurridly, the others had immediately zipped open their own respective compartments in hopes of being greeted with extra supplies too, but to no avail.

It had taken no less than five minutes for everyone to conclude that All Might was the source of the extra provisions. It was between either him or Aizawa, and as much as Midoriya participated in class, it was a generally accepted fact that their beloved long-haired teacher would rather die than make their training sessions any easier than they absolutely had to be.

That tarp was now spread between four separate trees, making for a shelter wide enough for all twenty students to sit under as well as enough space for most of their nonperishable, which Sero was currently collecting from everyone's backpacks.

It hadn't taken long for Iida to make the executive decision that they would all pool their resources together during this activity rather than go off on their own, which Kaminari had to admit was a good move. Of course, it was the most logical explanation for stretching the little food they were given across two weeks, so if someone hadn't suggested it, then Kaminari probably would've mentioned it in passing and planted the idea in his classmates' heads anyway.

Still, that hadn't been the hard part. The real challenge was going to be how effectively they executed working as a fluid, cohesive unit, and Kaminari couldn't wait to see the chaos unfold from the sidelines.

"Okay." Yaoyorozu clapped her hands, demanding attention. "I feel like it's best if we get this out of the way now, so Iida and I want to establish a few things." She glanced over at the class president. He simply nodded, motioning for her to go on. "First of all, Sero is in charge of food storage. He can use his tape to store our things up high and keep them away from any animals that might come by when we're not here for whatever reason. And speaking of food, we are sharing, so no one is allowed to be selfish and have any more than anyone else, okay?"

There was a poignant silence.

Mina knocked her head with Kaminari's. "Awkward~" she whispered, slowly slinking away.

Kaminari rolled his eyes. She was a notorious snacker, and everyone knew it.

"Anyway." Momo smiled brightly, and the accusative fog lifted. "Iida did a few calculations, and if we plan our meals right, we can last for about a week if we all share the provisions between the twenty of us. After that, we need to establish scavenging teams with survival experience to look for berries and nuts while other teams look for the provisions the teachers stashed around camp. If completely necessary, we can dip into our emergency rations, but that would lower our grade on this assignment significantly, so I'd rather not resort to that unless we've done all we can to sustain ourselves and have still come up with nothing."

Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Kaminari wasn't among them, simply staring off into space as the rest of his classmates exchanged sideways glances. This was all pretty much standard protocol, and as captivating as Yaoyorozu was while giving speeches (she was a fucking beast at class presentations), Kaminari couldn't help but let his mind wander.

Hell, this whole predicament with Nezu was really screwing with his head. Not even a full hour into their training exercise, and Kaminari had already broken his promise to himself to not think about that damn principal.

He was going to drive himself mad if he kept this up. Waiting in suspense for Nezu to attack him for a month was one thing, but being away from Nezu and powerless to stop him from going through his room, belongings, records, or...or anything else a psychotic rat traitor might do was another thing altogether.

Goddamnit, if only he could-

"Kaminari." Kaminari blinked, startled by the fingers snapping in his face. Bakugou peeked over at him, looking equally constipated and intrigued. "You good over here, Dunce Face? Ponytail's gonna kick your ass if you zone out during her speech."

Kaminari blinked. He hadn't even realized Momo had finished her lecture about rationing and gone off on a whole other schpiel.

He turned back to Bakugou and smiled brightly. "Sorry. Just thinking. Thanks, man." Kaminari punched him lightly in the shoulder. Bakugou brushed him off with a snort and a scowl, but he didn't say anything beyond that.

"We also have another option." Yaoyorozu continued. Her eyes flitted through the crowd, examining her classmates. "If we can't find any of our own food, the provisions hidden around the camp, and aren't willing to risk our grade to use the emergency rations, there's always a possibility I can make us some food using my quirk. However, it would taste terrible, and most of you would probably hate it. Just a fair warning."

There was a slight pause as she turned to look at Iida. He nodded stiffly, and she faced her peers once again with a smile. "I think that's it! Is everyone good?" She didn't wait for an answer. "Perfect! Iida and I will be organizing the food under the tarp if you need either of our excellent leadership skills. Sero, you're helping."

"Wha- hey!" Sero immediately tried to scurry away, but Yaoyorozu hopped down from her makeshift podium (it was just a random tree stump) and dragged him by the elbow. "Kami, help me, bro! You're just standing there! That's, like, in complete violation of our bro-code!"

Kaminari shrugged and motioned with his head towards Kirishima. "Sorry, bro. Kiri said he needs my help for multiple very, very important things that are very necessary for our survival. No can do."

"Dude!"

Kaminari laughed and darted away before any more complaints could be heard, slipping expertly under Kirishima's arm and bumping his hip with his. "So? Whatcha think of this place? Not bad, right?"

"I don't like it."

"What?" For all his analytical skills, that was the last thing Kaminari expected to hear out of Kirishima's mouth. "Why? This is probably the most kid-friendly training exercise we've ever had. Most of our activities involve a high risk of, like, death. This one only has like a five-percent chance at most."

"I know." Kirishima looked over to smile at him, but it didn't seem genuine. "I should be excited. I mean, I'm camping with all my best friends, there are no teachers, and the only guidelines for this training exercise are 'stay alive.' Like, we can basically do whatever we want."

"So?" Kaminari blinked up at him curiously. "What's the problem? I would've thought that you'd love camping. It's like the manliest thing someone can do. People, like, punch down trees with their bare fists out here to make shelters and stuff. That sounds right up your alley."

At this, Kirishima huffed out a laugh, but his uneasiness didn't falter. "I know, right? It should be. But..." He paused, seemingly contemplating for a few moments before pulling Kaminari to the side and away from the rest of their peers. The redhead motioned for him to come close, twisting his fingers together in an unusual display of anxiousness. "Something doesn't feel right. This entire thing is wrong."

Kaminari's smile immediately dropped. Ah. So Kirishima had noticed it too.

Fuck.

"You probably think I'm crazy, don't you." Kirishima's downtrodden voice snapped Kaminari out of his daze. "Don't lie to me. Just give it to me straight."

"What do you mean by 'wrong?'" Kaminari ignored his best friend's question in favor of asking his own, staring intently up at him. He wasn't going to confirm or deny anything. Not yet, anyway, until Kirishima told him what exactly he thought was going on.

"That's the thing. I don't even know." Kirishima ran a hand through his hair, tugging on the loose strands hanging free in his face. "This entire thing just seems...I don't know. Out of character, I guess? To the school board's credit, I guess the sudden increase in safety precautions during training exercises could be because they're finally getting their shit together and realizing they're a school and not some kind of military training facility, but everything just feels weird. Like, there's something about this place that I just don't like. I feel like there have been eyes on us ever since we got here. Like, not the friendly eyes of you or Mina or one of our other friends. Just...you know..."

He trailed off, unsure of how to continue, but Kaminari had already heard enough.

Underneath all of his smiles and charisma, Kirishima had always been a rather observant person. Kaminari had accepted that as pretty much a given from the first time he'd met him.

He was right. Someone was watching them, and that someone did not have friendly intentions.

It was just that Kaminari hadn't expected anyone else to notice it.

"No, I hear you, bro." Kaminari nodded enthusiastically. His smile was back in place before Kirishima even noticed it was gone, and before the redhead could react, he was being pushed towards their makeshift tarp campsite by a surprisingly strong Kaminari. "It's probably just nerves. I mean, two weeks out here all alone is tough. There's probably about a billion birds right now watching us scramble to get our shit together so we don't die."

He laughed, and it was apparently convincing enough to make Kirishima crack a smile for the first time during their whole interaction. "I guess so. I'm probably just overthinking things."

"Maybe, bro. You never know." Kaminari shrugged and gave Kirishima one final shove, sending him stumbling nearly five feet forward. The ex-assassin winced, momentarily berating himself for his callousness because damn he hadn't meant to push him that hard. Still, it seemed his best friend hadn't sensed his urgency because he took the hint, threw a slight grin over his shoulder, and began walking the rest of the way to join their classmates around Yaoyorozu and Iida. "I'll check for you. If there actually is something out there, they'll undoubtedly be scared away by my amazing stature and godly bod."

Kirishima laughed from afar and turned to wave, all previous anxieties apparently eased by Kaminari's infectious attitude.

But as soon as his best friend turned away, Kaminari's face fell flat.

He'd messed up.

When he'd sensed the eyes on his class for the first time, he's done a quick patrol of the area and come up short. After doing so, he'd concluded that whatever was spying on them was too far away to pose a threat at this current time, or that they'd already left.

Both of those had been rookie mistakes on his part because if whatever entity was out there was now so incredibly close to their campsite that one of his friends could tell something was off, then that was bad.

Really, really bad.

So, with one more glance behind him to make sure no one was looking, he leaped away from the safety of his friends and into the underbrush.

xxx

In all honesty, Kaminari wasn't really sure what he'd been expecting. Nezu, maybe, poking his nose into his business again, or Himiko stopping by to terrorize his classmates for her own twisted version of entertainment while Dabi sat back and watched.

What he hadn't been expecting, however, was to come across a clearing a good few hundred meters away from the campsite with a single piece of fabric laying floppy and sad in the middle.

Kaminari pursed his lips. He didn't like this. He didn't like this at all.

He crept closer, slipping from shadow to shadow and delicately fingering the knife he'd managed to stash in his waistline before they'd left the dorms. It was small, could hardly be used as a proper kitchen knife, but it was sharp, and it would do just fine if the opportunity arose.

He reached down to touch the piece of cloth, painfully aware of how exposed his back was to the perils of the forest. He could no longer feel the eyes on him, nor could he detect any traces of poisonous substances or tripwires. Despite the creepy atmosphere and eery surroundings, the fabric seemed to be a regular shirt tear.

Or...would be normal had it not been for the sheer bloodlust radiating off its threads.

Kaminari's head snapped up. No-

The fabric had barely even left his hand when the sound of screams, terrible, painful screams, reached his ears.

No.

All semblance of secrecy was lost. He darted back the way he came, heart pounding out of his chest as the piece of cloth fell, forgotten, back down to the ground where it'd come from. His blade was drawn now, clutched tightly in his fist as he sprinted through shrubs and low hanging branches, torching any obstacle that got in his way with carefully concentrated bolts of electricity.

Shit, shit, shit. In his brief onset of paranoia, he'd unintentionally left his classmates alone and vulnerable. It wasn't that he thought they couldn't hold their own in a fight, because they could, but Kaminari knew these guys. That bloodlust was all too familiar for him not to. And the worst part was, they didn't know him.

Well, not him him. They sure knew Golden well enough. They just didn't know Denki Kaminari.

That stupid piece of fabric and the tingle on the back of his spine that told him he was being watched hadn't even been a ploy to get him away from his classmates so the villains could attack. It had been carelessness on their part to rip one of their shirts in what had probably been a warm-up exercise for them. Kaminari had fallen into a trap that the villains hadn't even intentionally laid. It had been pure coincidence that whoever the shirt piece belonged to had decided to attack while he'd been away investigating.

Another scream pierced the air.

Shit. Mina.

Kaminari ran faster, a thousand thoughts swirling around in his head. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Light peeked through the thick covering of branches and leaves. The shouts got louder, as did the sounds of punches being thrown and blows being blocked.

Kaminari pursed his lips. He leaped out of the underbrush, leg stretched in perfect form and toes pointed in a perfect flying sidekick...

...right into the face of his old classmate.

Fuck. I knew it.

As soon as Kaminari landed, he was back up again, delivering a flurry of attacks on one of the three assailants he'd spotted around camp, not particularly caring who was watching. His opponent- Ankoku, based on scare running across his face that peeked out of his black face mask, God, he'd hoped it never would've come to this- had seemingly come to his senses enough to catch Kaminari's fist in his palm, to which the blond simply gritted his teeth and send upwards of two hundred bolts coursing through his former classmate's veins.

Ankoku stumbled back, tripping over his own two feet at the force of the blow. Kaminari took this opportunity to center himself, quickly scanning the field for any significant signs of injury or battles that needed his interference right away.

Thankfully, Ankoku seemed to have been the last of the group to try and launch an attack, which meant he had been pretty far away from the rest of the group when Kaminari had kicked him in the jaw, to which Kaminari could probably deduce that none of his classmates had seen him go all karate-kid on his former peer, which was good.

It also seemed that Ankoku had been the owner of the missing t-shirt piece because as he fell to the ground, still spasming with electricity, his collarbone peeked through a small rip in the cloth.

Of course, it'd be him. He'd always been clumsy, even back in the day.

However, it also meant that from this far away, the other two assailants currently attacking his classmates were near unrecognizable through their identical black attire, equipment, and facial covering that hid everything but their hair and their eyes.

Kaminari should know well enough. He'd worn those very same clothes enough times to know that they were second to none. Kaminari wasn't going to be able to figure out who was who unless he got close enough, and he had no intention of doing so and compromising his secret identity unless one of his classmates was in real trouble.

On one side, it looked like Midoriya, Bakugou, and Aoyama had reluctantly teamed up against one of the masked people. There were no major external injuries that Kaminari could see other than a few cuts and bruises decorating all of their faces (not to mention the slight discomfort coloring Aoyama's cheeks, but Kaminari figured that was probably from him using his quirk so much, not anything worrisome), but they hadn't done much damage to their attacker either.

All three of his classmates were delivering some pretty harsh blows. Still, other than Midoriya, who managed to get a good sucker punch in, nearly all of their attacks were being dodged. They were running out of steam, that much was clear, and Kaminari knew that the second any one of them let their guard down, someone was going to get their neck slashed.

Or worse.

The rest of his classmates weren't fairing much better, not that Kaminari could blame them. None of them had been ready for an ambush of this magnitude, especially against people this skilled. The entire left side of Iida's face was coated in blood, and Uraraka was clutching a shoulder that was clearly dislocated. Kirishima looked about as fine as could be, but it was clear his stamina was wavering under the unrelenting blows of his opponent. There were injuries almost all around, none of them life-threatening, but it still made Kaminari's blood boil.

A hand blew by his right ear.

Kaminari dodged it with ease, hooked his leg under Ankoku's knee, and flipped him to the ground with virtually no effort at all before grabbing his shoulders and pinning his former peer down to the ground.

"What the fuck do you want." Kaminari hissed. His words were bordering on venomous.

"I don't see why it's any of your business." Ankoku spat back, looking equally as displeased.

"Of course it's my business, dipshit." Kaminari roughly pulled down his shirt collar to reveal his tattoo. It was sweaty and covered by scars, but still undeniably recognizable to anyone familiar with the black market's happenings. Kaminari wished he could smirk at the way Ankoku's eyes widened. "Yeah, asshole, it's me. Now, why don't you tell me what the fuck you're playing at."

"Golden." Ankoku breathed. He locked eyes with Kaminari. Kaminari just scoffed. "I can't believe it. I never thought I'd ever run into you again. You know, I thought all the bullshit about the bounty on your head was just some ploy your parents set up for fun, but God, it's really you, isn't it. You look so different, man, I mean-"

"Cut the shit." Kaminari stabbed his blade into the ground, a mere two inches from Ankoku's head. He twisted it, a silent warning, working it expertly as he sliced the ground around him. "I'm not in the mood to reunite, so let me ask you again. What. The fuck. Do you want?"

Ankoku's gaze hardened, his teasing smile falling away to reveal stone-cold eyes and a nasty, nasty frown. "Well, I'd say it's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it, Goldie? We're attacking the famed Class 1-A of UA highschool. We had no idea you were here, though. What a plot twist that is."

"Bullshit." Kaminari gritted his teeth. "If you were really trying to attack us, you guys would've slaughtered everyone here in ten seconds flat." Kaminari leaned in closer. Ankoku was silent. "We all trained together in that hellhole of an 'academy' or whatever you want to call it. I know how good you all are. If you guys were really trying to kill my classmates, they'd already be dead by now. So why. Are you going. Easy."

"I could say the same about you, huh?" Ankoku spat back. He reached over with his free hand and unhooked his mask, unveiling a sadistic, blood-filled smile and a swelling cheek from all of the blows they'd delivered. Kaminari let him, making no move to restrict his mobility further. "You talk about us going easy. Look at yourself! You could've killed me the second you jumped out of that forest and then moved on to slaughter the rest of my team without breaking a sweat." Ankoku laughed a little. Kaminari just glared. "You talk about how good we are? That's high praise from someone who changed the assassination industry forever. Someone who could wipe the floor with all of us combined. Someone who has killed as much as you have."

"Shut up," Kaminari muttered. His grip tightened on the blade still wedged in the ground. "What're you getting at?"

"You haven't gone soft." Ankoku cocked his head as best he could while pinned to the ground. "No, I don't think that's it. I think it's that you like these people. Your new classmates." He smiled bitterly. "You don't wanna do anything to mess up what you have with them, do you? Which means you won't kill me."

"You're not answering my question."

"I don't think I have to. You don't pose a threat to me."

Kaminari sighed. He hung his head for a moment before standing up, releasing Ankoku from his hold. Ankoku just stared at him, unmovingly, surprise coloring his cheeks. Clearly, he hadn't been expecting to be released so soon, if at all.

"Do you know what I think?" Kaminari pursed his lips, toeing Ankoku's discarded mask towards him. "I think you're relieved to see me. I think you're in trouble." He leaned in close, eyes flitting from his old classmates' wary gaze to his attacker's own assassin's mark branded on his collarbone, just barely visible under splattered blood and colorful bruises. "I think you want out."

Ankoku's breath caught in his throat.

"But." Kaminari continued. He glanced over his shoulder. If his calculations were correct, the pro heroes should be getting here sometime soon, which meant he had to wrap up this conversation as quickly as possible. "I'm not going to lift a single finger in your favor if you don't tell me what the fuck you want with my class."

"Goldie-"

"I swear." And that was the final nail in the coffin.

"There's more." And suddenly, words were tumbling out of Ankoku's mouth like a waterfall, a steady stream of panic infused consciousness. The mood switch was sudden, but not necessarily unexpected. The kid was desperate. Kaminari had seen it in his eyes the second he'd pinned him down. Plus, Ankoku had never been the type for villainous taunting. It just didn't suit him.

"There's more, so much more. It's not just us. We have back up in the forest, bad ones, too. They're strong, Golden. Really, really strong. You need to get out of here. You and your class need to leave before the cavalry shows up. You may be able to get away, sure, or even survive them if it comes down to a battle, but everyone else will die. They'll all die, Kaminari. These guys have powerful quirks, so, so powerful, and if one of them gets their hands on you and figures out who you are, you're done for, and I-"

His eyes widened. Kaminari didn't even have to ask. He'd felt it too.

An overwhelming, exceedingly ominous presence invaded his senses. They had to move, and fast.

"They're coming. Golden." Ankoku warned, just in case the overwhelming evil both of them had felt wasn't enough. "They're coming. Run. Run. Take your friends and RUN."

"WE GOTTA GO!" Kaminari was up and sprinting before Ankoku could utter another word. He frantically waved his hands in the air, demanding everyone's attention. "SOMETHING'S COMING. WE NEED TO MOVE. NOW."

"Kaminari-" Yaoyorozu and Tsuyu were the closest, both looking at him with equally confused eyes. "What-"

"NOW." Kaminari shoved them, probably rougher than he meant to. Both went stumbling forward a good few steps, but he couldn't find it in himself to care. "GRAB ANYONE YOU CAN. HEAD FOR THE STREAM. WE'LL FOLLOW YOU."

Kaminari didn't wait for a response. Instead, he darted over to the closest battle, which happened to be the one between Bakugou, Midoriya, Aoyama, and the hooded assassin he now recognized to be... Morana? It had to be. He'd recognize those blue eyes and scarred eyebrows anywhere. But, God, he hadn't even known she was still alive. He'd thought she'd been murdered one way or another a few years before he'd escaped.

He supposed that didn't really matter now.

"Midoriya! Bakugou! Aoyama!" Kaminari screamed. Instinctively, they all looked at him. He jerked his head towards the retreated forms of Yaoyorozu, Tsuyu, Satou, and what looked like to be a few others running away in the distance. "We need to go! They have back up!"

"Hey-" At the distraction, Morana unsheathed her knife and dove straight for Bakugou's neck-

-only to be sucker-punched in the face by a lighting speed Kaminari.

With a few quick moves, he had her pinned down in the same way he'd had Ankoku minutes before, earning a yelp from an onlooking Midoriya. Fuck, of course, they were still here because God forbid anyone listen to him when he's trying to save their goddamn lives.

"RUN," Kaminari screamed. He didn't check to see if they listened or not before turning back to Morana, who seemed equally shocked and displeased that she could not overpower this supposedly average high schooler. "Hey. Morana. Chill out. It's me."

He flashed his tattoo at her, not particularly caring at this point if Bakugou, Midoriya, or Aoyama had stuck around to see. He couldn't sense their presence behind him anymore, which probably meant they'd taken his god-given advice and started running the hell away, but that could also be because his senses were overwhelmed with the upwards of twenty malicious entities he could feel stalking towards them.

"Golden?" The fight drained out of Morana all at once, but she didn't relax. She looked confused more than anything, but it was clear she had no intention of letting her guard down anytime soon. That was fine. It was all fine. "What? You're-"

"Alive, I know. I could say the same to you." Kaminari pursed his lips. "Listen to me. I'm going to help you. Ankoku told me that you guys have backup, and I need to get all of my classmates out of here, but I promise I'll come back to help you. I'm going to assume the last assassin over there is Shio." Morana's silence spoke volumes. "Okay. Okay. I need you to get over there and tell him to call off his attack on my classmates. Tell him I told him so. My classmates and I are getting out of here, but I will get you out. I will leave you guys a trail to our meeting place that only you can follow. Make sure no one else sees you. You can explain everything there."

Morana blinked. "Golden, what-"

"I'm going to help you!" And just like that, Kaminari was off and running again, gathering up the few stragglers left being and snatching a battered Kirishima from a very confused Shio, who immediately tried to go after his target but was stopped after seeing a subtle head shake from Morana, still sprawled out on the ground. "I SWEAR."

xxx

Kaminari's heart pounded in his throat as he sprinted through shrubbery and underbrush, purposely staying near the back of his class as all twenty of them ran as far away as they could from their assailants. Of course, if anyone asked, Kaminari would just laugh and make some claim or another about being unathletic and unable to run, but in reality, he was on high alert, ready to separate from the group at the slightest notice that something was wrong and fight whoever threatened his friends himself.

But despite his ridiculous levels of concentration, Kaminari's heart was lodged in his throat.

Fuck. His old classmates? He'd...Kaminari had thought they were dead. To find out they were alive, while on a class trip no less, and that they wanted to escape the assassination ring just like he did...? That had been something he couldn't have prepared himself for in a million years.

Ankoku. Morana. Shio. Him. All unwilling victims of a cruel society and an even more brutal underworld.

Kaminari's parents didn't do much in terms of fieldwork. They were much too high up in the hierarchy to get their hands dirty too often. Thus, they usually assigned whatever task they wanted to be taken care of to either Kaminari himself or one of their other subordinates.

Still, every once in a while. The infamous Scarlet Killer and Livewire liked to make a reappearance, going on a rampage and slaughtering every pro hero in sight before disappearing back into the depths of the underworld.

During these little expeditions, both of his parents were usually much too busy to batter and bruise their son in a way they deemed sufficient, so they would send him away to the only school ever constructed on black market territory, the very foundation of the assassination ring itself: The Establishment, run by the feared and famed Headmistress.

The birthplace of all assassins.

To be honest, calling that hell hole a 'school' was a generous term. Whereas UA was filled with learning, fun, and friends, The Establishment was essentially a poorly-named excuse for various villains to come in, beat-up defenseless kids, and then call it 'training.'

Years ago, when Kaminari was seven, his parents had gone away on a mission in Serbia, leaving him at the academy's mercy for the first time for almost a year. At that time, his class was comprised of about twenty students ranging from 5-18, some excited at the prospect of being an assassin, and others like Kaminari himself far too familiar with the lifestyle to find it in themselves to hope a wretched 'assassination school' like this would be any better than life back home.

Spoiler alert, it hadn't been.

By the time Kaminari's parents had come back from Serbia, their clothes stained with blood neither of them had bothered to wash off, his class was down to four: Ankoku, Shio, Morana, and Kaminari himself.

Luckily, they were all around his age group. That made things somewhat bearable, at least.

And it stayed that way. Every single time The Scarlet Killer and Livewire decided they wanted to make another public appearance and leave the shadows of the assassination ring for a bit, Kaminari was forced to return to The Establishment. And every time Kaminari was forced to return to the establishment, without fail, he was met with the same three familiar faces.

They weren't really even great friends, at least, not in the way he, Toga, Dabi, and Hawks were. The circumstances he'd met the two groups in had been entirely different. Kaminari had met Himiko, Touya, and Keigo on the streets of the assassination ring and had bonded with them over shared trauma and experiences. It was like their little oasis, a group where they could talk about each other's encounters with blades and guns and torture and vent all of their frustrations after the fact.

However, his relationships with Ankoku, Morana, and Shio were drastically different. Whereas he, Himiko, Touya, and Keigo often chatted about their experiences with past torture, with his former classmates, they all underwent it at the same time he did. He and his classmates endured months worth of needless suffering, bloodshed, and careless murders with each other. In conditions such as those, in situations where expulsion from The Establishment meant death, there wasn't any time for friendships to be forged.

They were desensitized to it all. One might think that going through so much with other people would strengthen their bonds tenfold, but for Kaminari and his classmates, that simply wasn't the case. None of the stuff they encountered at the academy was new to them. In terms of talking to each other between torture sessions and endurance training, there simply wasn't time. Back then, Ankoku, Morana, Shio, and Kaminari shared the same goal: just survive.

Of course, when the four of them had started doing actual missions and assassinations together, they'd gotten to know each other a little better. Still, their bond was nowhere near that of his, Dabi, Toga, and Hawks'. Kaminari would call his former classmates friends, sure, but even after he'd surpassed all of them in skill and finally broken out of the assassination ring, he'd never expected he'd ever see them again.

To be fair, that was mostly because he kind of thought all of them had died. But still.

This...this was crazy.

"THIS WAY!" Yaoyorozu's panicked voice snapped him out of his thoughts. She made a hard right, trusting everyone else to follow. Everyone did, running for a good few more meters before reaching a clearing similar to the one they had set up camp in in the first place.

The reaction was instantaneous. At the sight of an open area among the plethora of trees, vines, and bushes they'd all been tripped over for the last thirty minutes or so, everyone immediately collapsed to the ground. Their stamina was spent, and Kaminari had to remind himself to fall to the dirt with them to not look suspicious, which...

...Which probably wouldn't matter anyway because at least half of his classmates had seen him sprinting like a maniac and shouting for everyone to run away, not to mention Bakugou, Midoriya, and Aoyama had seen him absolutely sucker punch Morana in the face, which he should absolutely not have been able to do for how weak he portrayed himself as.

Ugh. Who gave a damn anymore. He'd figure this out later. First, they needed to get things sorted.

Kaminari cleared his throat, more than ready to raise his hand and demand attention, but-

"Is everyone alright?"

Midoriya, ever the golden boy, beat him to the chase. His face was etched with concern as he scanned his classmates, blood dripping down his cheek from the cut Morana had given him during their fight.

"I'm okay." Kirishima piped up. He was sprawled out on the ground like the rest of them, hair unusually matted and skin pale. "I just need to chill for a minute. I think..." He coughed. Kaminari winced. "I think I overestimated my quirk a little."

"Same here." Iida raised his hand. Kaminari blinked, but his expression remained neutral. "The guy I was fighting-" Shio, it had to be Shio, no one else alive could land a hit on Iida at his top speed, "- managed to knick me with his blade and somehow clog my engines. I don't know how, as I was running at top speed, but..." He trailed off, receiving multiple worried looks from his classmates. "I'll be fine. All I have to do is rip out my engines. It's just...not pretty. I've also got this cut over my eyebrow, as you all can probably see, but it's not bad, trust me."

By 'as you all can probably see,' Iida meant the fact that the entire left side of his face was soaked in blood. Which...wasn't a pretty sight.

Despite himself, Kaminari felt his anger spike. Ankoku had a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

"Okay." Midoriya nodded solemnly. "Anyone else?"

"I think I have a dislocated shoulder and a broken finger." Uraraka.

"I have acid burns from overusing my quirk, but I'll be good as new in a few hours! Just thought I'd, y'know, let you all know so you don't freak out at the smell of burning." Mina. Brutal.

"I've got a gash up my leg." Jiro.

"I've got a few cuts on my tail, but it's nothing serious." Ojiro.

"Same here. I've got a few gashes, but I'll live." Sero.

"I am free of all injuries. I'm excellent." Geez, Todoroki, read the room.

Midoriya, bless his heart, didn't even crack a smile at Todoroki's remark. Instead, he simply nodded before, much to Kaminari's chagrin, turning to face the electricity user himself. "Speaking of being completely fine...are you okay, Kaminari?"

"What?" Kaminari blinked, suddenly acutely aware that he was the only one who didn't have a single scratch on him. "Me?"

"Yeah. You." Midoriya smiled, eyes filled with misplaced concern that made Kaminari's chest ache, but along with that, there was also an unmistakable hint of confusion. Kaminari smiled to himself. Well, he supposed he couldn't really blame Midoriya. The way he'd acted back at the campsite had been glaringly out of character, even for such a perilous situation. "I mean, you look the best out of all of us, but something back at the clearing had you pretty shaken up."

"Yeah." Bakugou chimed in. His voice wasn't nearly as gentle as Midoriya's, but his tone held no actual malice. "You were screaming bloody murder over there, Dunce Face. Kept yelling about backup or some shit."

"Yeah." Midoriya's voice was quiet. "What did you mean by that, exactly?"

"Uh." Kaminari blinked. "I meant that they had backup. I feel like that's kind of implied..."

"But how did you know?" Midoriya cocked his head innocently, looking genuinely curious as he waited for his friend's answer. Kaminari just blinked. "I mean, obviously, you were right since Kacchan, Aoyama, and I saw a few of them emerge from the forest right after we started running away, but as far as I know, that was their first attack."

Kaminari was silent for a moment before huffing a laugh. "Midoriya, I love you, man, but I have no idea what you're asking here."

"Did your quirk fry your brain or something?" Bakugou chimed in, but the insult carried no weight. "He means how'd you know that those freakish guys who attacked us had such powerful backup before even seeing them?"

"Oh." Kaminari smiled lightly. "You could've just said so, bro. I snuck up on one of those villains and gave him a big enough dose of electricity to knock him out. Pretty cool. I'm awesome, I know. My stealth is literally unmatched." Kirishima snorted from where he was sprawled out on the ground. Kaminari continued on. "I guess my electricity was enough to fry whatever communicator or earpiece he was talking on because as soon as I knocked him out, I could hear other people's voices on the other end saying they gonna ambush us while the three already fighting kept us distracted."

"And that's when you went batshit." Sero finished for him. His back was resting against a tree, listening attentively to his friend's recounting of the events prior while Yaoyorozu stood beside him, using her quirk to make some gauze for his wounds. Admittedly, Yaoyorozu using her quirk at this time wasn't ideal since she needed nutrition to sustain it and they had no reliable source of food that they knew of so far out here, but it was all they could do right now to keep the injured from bleeding out. "Crazy, man. Did you really manage to knock one of those guys unconscious?"

"Yup." Kaminari popped the p. "He didn't even see me coming. I crept up behind him and BLAM! Down he went."

Banter. The banter was good. Banter meant that things were normal.

"And that assassin you tackled into the fucking dirt...?"

But of course, Bakugou wasn't satisfied because of course he wasn't.

"Adrenaline," Kaminari said immediately, sparing him a small smile. "I just flung myself at her, told you guys to run like the superheroic hero I am, then took advantage of my awesome surprise attack to administer a shock and knock her unconscious."

"Sparky-"

Kaminari rose an eyebrow in challenge. "That's all."

"You threw a fucking punch-"

"My, Kaminari!" Iida (thank God for the class president) walked over to him and clamped his hand down on his shoulder, smiling brightly. Bakugou fumed but stopped mid-sentence, supposedly deciding he had better things to do than argue with an injured classmate clearly deserving of rest. The blond returned the smile with just as much vigor, eyes flitting down to his friend's busted-up calf engines and up to his joyful, blood-soaked face. I'm sorry. "I don't know what training you've been doing, but you've been getting so much more powerful over these last couple of months! I remember when you couldn't even participate in swimming exercises because you had such little control that you were afraid you'd electrocute all of us with one sneeze!"

Kaminari laughed and bumped his head against his standing classmate's leg. "Yeah. I was so freakin' paranoid about killing all of you."

"Mmhm." And then, in a more somber voice, Iida said, "We all would've been killed if you hadn't alerted us about that ambush. So thank you. Really."

"What?" Kaminari blinked, startled at both the sudden mood change and the fact that his class president was thanking him for saving his friends. "C'mon, man. I don't deserve any praise for that. You guys are like family to me. I wasn't just gonna run away and leave you all to die."

"Yeah." Iida didn't make eye contact. "I know. But still. We all know how it is. Sometimes it's easy to lose all sense of rationale on the battlefield. Your body goes into fight-or-flight mode. Kids our age usually choose flight, even if their subconscious doesn't want to." He shrugged. "All I'm saying is, you'll make a good hero, Kaminari. A fantastic one. Today proves that."

"Hey." Yaoyorozu came up behind them. Both of them turned to face her. She silently held out a small piece of gauze, ripped off from what little roll of bandages she could produce without passing out from lack of energy. "You should put this on." She said, gesturing to Iida. "You've got to stop the bleeding from that cut on your head soon or else you might pass out."

Iida nodded stiffly, per his usual manner. "Thank you, Yaoyorozu. I appreciate it."

"'course."

There was a small bout of silence between the two as they watched Momo turn on her heel and walk over to assist the other injured who needed her attention.

"Iida," Kaminari said slowly after a few seconds. "You know I'm not suicidal, right?"

Based on the way Iida suddenly began focusing very intently on placing the bandage just perfectly on his wound, Kaminari could tell he'd hit the nail on the head.

Well, shit.

It'd been a long while since Uraraka had inadvertently caught Kaminari's pain tolerance training and mistaken it for a deliberate suicide or self-harm attempt. In fact, it had been months since he'd thought about it at all. The conversation he'd had with his classmates in the hospital while he recovered had been refreshing, almost therapeutic for him, and he'd assumed that he'd given his friends a good enough amount of closure since not much had changed in their behavior towards him since.

But it seemed he'd been wrong on that last speculation because clearly, the events of that day were still fresh in Iida's mind.

"Iida. When I said it, I meant it." Kaminari delicately touched Iida's leg, careful not to disturb his torn-up motors, in an invitation for the class president to sit down beside him. Bakugou and Midoriya had since moved on to other, more pressing tasks, such as relocating Uraraka's shoulder, leaving the two of them alone to talk as they pleased. "Despite how unfortunate and circumstantial the events of that day were, I've never wanted to kill myself."

That part was genuine, at least. Over his last fifteen years of living, he'd worked far too hard to survive to throw all of that away by his own hand. He'd be damned if he went through all of that suffering for nothing, especially while his so-called parents were still alive and breathing.

He'd told a lot of lies that day, most of them simply for his friends' peace of mind, but that hadn't been one of them.

"I know." Iida sighed. He hung his head. "But it's just...today wasn't like you. You said you snuck up behind a clearly trained and very skilled fighter and tackled another one who was actively fighting Midoriya and Bakugou to the ground. You may have been able to come out unscathed from both encounters, but...it really seems like you just leaped in there with no regard for your own safety."

"We're heroes," Kaminari said simply, but Iida's words made his insides twist painfully. "In training, at least. It's what we do. We save people."

"I know," Iida replied again. He sounded far too quiet for Kaminari's liking, but he supposed it wasn't like he could just stand up and shout his concerns either. So the blond didn't comment, heart constricting tighter and tighter because Iida was so, so good, and Kaminari didn't deserve this, he didn't deserve his friend's worry. "It's just...I know you've had a hard life. I also know it's unfair to bring up this topic with you when I probably wouldn't have if Midoriya or Kirishima had leaped headlong into battle like that, but the way you were describing it just sounded like you had such little regard for your own safety, and I thought-"

He stopped.

And truth be told, Kaminari understood.

Many of his classmates were the 'self-sacrificial' type. Kaminari was sure that all of them had demonstrated such capabilities at one point or another, but that was usually only in life or death battles where almost all of them were running on pure adrenaline and desire to keep each other safe. However, the ones who did it regularly were those with power or strength-based quirks, such as Midoriya or Kirishima, as Iida mentioned. That meant that their fighting style was generally self-sacrificial because their quirk could sustain it.

Kaminari, however...on his end, he knew that the story about him knocking Ankoku unconscious was wholly untrue, and he'd jumped on Morana because A) he needed to give Bakugou, Aoyama, and Midoriya an opening to get away, and B) he knew that once Morana saw his tattoo, she wouldn't try to harm him.

But from Iida's point of view, all he'd heard were stories of a classmate that, to the class president's knowledge, had average combat skills and a minimal understanding of how to use his quirk, which, mind you, was not a strength quirk, had attacked a clearly very dangerous 'villain' that could've killed the blond on the spot without any real reason. All Kaminari had had to do was yell at his classmates that backup was coming and then start to run away himself, but he'd decided to tackle Bakugou, Midoriya, and Aoyama's attacker for, in Iida's perspective, seemingly no reason.

Iida had thought that Kaminari was deliberately trying to put himself in harm's way, and it made Kaminari's heart ache because he didn't deserve this concern at all, not after everything. Iida would inevitably have to rip his motors out of his calves to grow new ones, and yet here he was, checking in on Kamianri to make sure he was okay.

"I love you, man," Kaminari muttered after a moment. "Really. I mean that. I am unbelievably grateful to have someone like you in my life. Today was nothing like that, but I appreciate you checking up on me. It's a nice feeling."

It appeared that had been precisely what Iida had been hoping to hear because he immediately dropped his head in relief. "Yes. Yes, of course. Truly. I just want you to be safe, Kaminari. We all do. We know what you've been through, and you didn't deserve that. You deserve to be happy and safe." Iida sighed and rubbed his temples. "I'm sorry about this whole conversation. I just...I needed to check up."

"Nah, man, don't worry about it." Kaminari shrugged, slowly sinking back into his usual carefree persona. "It's okay. Really.

And with that, accompanied by a sheepish, slightly awkward but equally relieved nod, Iida slowly rose from his position next to Kaminari, effectively ending the heart-wrenching conversation as he walked over to where the rest of the class was gathered and leaving Kaminari with one final thought as the smile plastered on his face fell away.

God, I suck.

xxx

All in all, it seemed like everyone was taking their predicament well.

Despite the cheerful atmosphere and chatter, it didn't change the fact that they all knew they were well outside the boundaries the teachers had set up for them, which meant they had no reliable food source since they'd left all of their provisions back at camp in the chaos.

On top of that, they had no shelter, no idea how to get out of this forest, and no way to contact their teachers and let them know something had gone awry. Though, admittedly, that last one wasn't that big of a concern considering UA had most likely been keeping at least some sort of surveillance on them. Kaminari could only hope that whatever backup Ankoku had been speaking of had retreated before the pro-heroes could arrive on the scene. If a full-on battle sparked between the two parties, that could result in many unnecessary injuries, especially since it was kind of a given that the class would simply have to wait out in the forest until someone found them as opposed to trying to navigate their way through the thick underbrush and branches and run the risk of running into one of those villains again.

Yaoyorozu, bless her heart, had managed to make enough medical gauze and bandages to patch up everyone she could, and she was now passed out on Tsuyu's lap. Midoriya had scouted out a stream soon after, prompting Bakugou and Todoroki to scoop the water up with their hands and boiling it with their quirks in their best attempt to disinfect and wash away any grime from everyone's wounds, but that was pretty much all that twenty teenagers lost in the woods could do under their circumstances.

It sucked. But everyone was alive, and Kaminari really couldn't ask for more than that.

"Hey."

Kaminari glanced upwards to see Kirishima standing over him, smiling. "Hey yourself. You feeling okay?"

"Yeah." Kirishima didn't wait for an invitation, simply plopping down on the ground next to his friend and joining him in staring up at the night sky. Their little makeshift campfire, courtesy of a few sticks lying around and Todoroki's quirk, illuminated their faces. The atmosphere was peaceful, despite the situation. It was nice. "I'm fine. I get over quirk fatigue pretty fast, you know? I'm just cool like that."

"Hm. Yeah." Kaminari glanced over, studying his friend's face before turning his head back forwards. "What do you think?"

"About what?"

"The economy, obviously."

Kirishima snorted. Kaminari peeked over at him again, gauging the redhead's reaction as his friend stayed fixated on the stars littering the sky. "I dunno. I mean, obviously, those three weirdos attacking us were pretty surprising. I almost thought they were some kind of weird training exercise sent by UA until the person I was fighting almost stabbed me in the gut. Like, I overused my quirk a little, sure, and we had to run a gazillion miles to get away from whatever backup they had, and some of us are hurt, which I'd prefer not to happen ever, but...I don't feel like I'm in any imminent danger."

"Yeah?" Kaminari smiled at him and bumped his head against his shoulder. "That's good." It really was. "I guess that little spider-sense you had before was right, huh."

"Oh yeah!" Kirishima visibly brightened. "I completely forgot about that! I totally saw this coming!" Then, in a quieter voice. "That's so manly of me, fuck yeah."

Now it was Kaminari's turn to snort. "Sure, man. How long do you think we'll have to camp out here in the forest before one of our teachers find us?"

"Dunno." Kirishima shrugged. "Before we're found by any of those creeps who attacked us, I hope. But we should probably be cautious until then. We still have to, y'know, actually survive out here long enough to enable them to find us without any food packets or nonperishables."

"True," Kaminari muttered. He was about to say something else when the slight, barely audible sound of a gun firing reached his ears.

Shit.

Quickly, he glanced at Kirishima to see if he had noticed anything out of the ordinary. Based on how he hadn't even flinched from his spot next to him, Kaminari could decide that he hadn't, and neither had anyone else. A good number of his classmates were already asleep on the soft grass and decorated the clearing, thoroughly exhausted from the day's events. Among the sleeping faces littered around that camp was Jirou, which Kaminari thanked his lucky stars for because other than him, she was probably the only one who could've heard that gunshot.

However, that didn't pose any less of a problem.

Kaminari pursed his lips. Fuck, he knew it'd be a mistake to underestimate any of his former classmates' skills, but that had definitely been Shio's gun. He'd expected them to find him fast, but this was ridiculous, especially considering how far out he and his friends had run.

"I think we should get some sleep," Kaminari muttered after a moment. May as well be blunt about it. No reason to tip-toe around such a casual subject. "We don't want to stay up forever and be useless to everyone else tomorrow when we actually have to, you know, find food and build shelters and shit."

Kirishima gave him a quizzical look (probably because Kaminari was a notorious night owl. After all, each of his classmates had heard him and Todoroki crying over their midnight telenovelas at least once), but didn't protest. Instead, he nodded, shooting his best friend a smile that was barely visible against the dying flames.

"Look at you, man. Thinkin' all strategic and stuff. It's impressive."

"Yeah, I know. I'm amazing and the best." Kaminari lightly pushed away a giggling Kirishima, sporting his own stupid version of a stupid smile. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah." Kirishima snorted. He scooted a little ways away from Kaminari, probably to soak up some of the last heat from the fire before it went out completely, and lay down with his arms folded under his head. "Goodnight. Don't let the mosquitos bite."

"Ha. You're hilarious."

"I know. That's why I said it."

"With that kind of wordplay, no one would be able to guess you're failing English."

"Shut the hell up, man. You have a D."

And then silence fell over the campsite.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

Then twenty.

Then thirty.

Then forty.

Then, at around the one-hour mark, when the last of the talking had ceased around fifteen minutes before and the sound of snoring and crickets tangled together in one smooth harmony, Kaminari arose, looked around one last time, and darted into the waiting shadows.

xxx

"Took you long enough."

Kaminari glared. "Shut the hell up, Morana. If I'd known you guys were gonna get here so fast, I would've encouraged everyone to go to bed earlier."

Morana giggled, lightly tapping her boot against Kaminari's temple from where she was perched in one of the many trees surrounding the area. Luckily, Kaminari's former classmates had the presence of mind to hold their little 'meeting' a good few hundred meters away from his campsite, so they could talk relatively freely without the threat of anyone hearing them.

"You guys weren't exactly subtle," Shio mumbled. he was leaning against the trunk of the same tree Morana was sitting on. "All we had to do was follow the path of crushed up leaves and broken branches and do a little guess and check. At least we took the liberty of firing a gun to let you know we were here instead of just waltzing out in the open and introducing ourselves."

Kaminari scoffed, but he couldn't help the small smile that took over his face. "How kind of you. And yeah, doofus, of course the leaves were easy to follow. That was the trail I left so you guys could find me." A beat. "It's good to see you, Shio. Really. Been a while."

"Same to you, Goldie." Shio nodded back, but anyone with half a brain could see he was relieved. "So, you're Denki Kaminari? Who would've guessed? Never in a million years did I think that that man behind Golden would enroll in UA of all places."

"Yeah, well." Kaminari shrugged hopelessly, the tension slowly leaking from his shoulders at the familiar conversation. "I'm sorry I was never able to tell you guys my real name. If I had...it probably would've been more trouble than it's worth. I'm honestly more surprised you didn't recognize me during the sports festival or something."

"You kidding?" Ankoku spoke up for the first time, eyes fixated on Kaminari, his face illuminated by the full moon that hung overhead. A fitting atmosphere for a situation such as this one. "You were always wearing that damn facemask and creepy-ass hood whenever you came to The Establishment. I only knew your hair was blond because I caught a glimpse of it when we were gearing up for that mission in Canada when we were eleven."

Kaminari snorted. "Oh, yeah. My parents would go bonkers if anyone figured out who I was. They would go on and on about how it would 'jeopardize my mission and shit like that."

"Yeah. But, to be honest..." Morana's voice fell. She carefully swung down from the branch she'd been sitting on, barely visible in her black assassin's gear that was most definitely courtesy of Kaminari's former academy. For all its lack of actual education, that place was legit when it came to anything to do with spilling blood. "We all kind of thought you died during your escape attempt. That's what we were told, anyway."

"I could say that same about you." Kaminari took a step forward, eyes flitting from person to person. "You went missing, like, a year before my escape, Morana. I thought you were dead. Still did, to be honest, before today."

"Oh." Morana blinked like she hadn't been expecting Kaminari to bring up something so...trivial. "That. I got sent out on a solo mission by the Headmistress. She wanted me to take down a terrorist organization that had stolen from her a few years ago in America. So I went, got kidnapped, and apparently my absence was enough for her to declare me dead." She laughed despite herself. "You should've seen her face when I showed up on her doorstep to tell her I'd slaughtered those bastards one by one. It just took a couple of extra months to do, that's all."

"Her face? You should've seen Ankoku's face." Shio chimed in. He looked positively giddy. "That man was a mess. He nearly cried, I swear. First, we'd lost Morana, and then a month before she'd escaped and come back to the assassination ring, you'd disappeared..."

They all fell silent.

"The black market was in shambles," Ankoku commented quietly. "No one knew whether you lived or died. There were so many conflicting stories floating around, and your parents were going berserk. But Headmistress had sat us all down and carefully reiterated that fact that you'd tried to escape and died in the process. Then, when Morana showed up out of the blue again, she told her the same thing." He shrugged. "She told us that the bounty on your head was just your parents toying with other villains desperate at the prospect to become rich and credited to capturing the famous Golden." There was a pause. Shio shifted uneasily from where he stood. "I guess she just didn't want us to get the same ideas."

"But now you have those same ideas, don't you."

There was a pause. "Yeah."

Silence.

Kaminari bit his lip. "Why were you guys attacking my class?"

Shio took the liberty of answering this one. "It was a mission. We don't know exactly who sent it in. All we know is that their operation was supposed to be huge. We were supposed to swoop him, distract you guys, and then our backup would arrive and try and take as many of Class 1-A as they could without too many casualties."

"Take..." Kaminari faltered. As in...kidnap? Out of all the things he'd been expecting to hear, that hadn't been one of them. Sure, it could've been a possibility that whoever set this mission up knew of Kaminari's real identity and didn't tell his former classmates or the other operatives that had been ambushing them in hopes of keeping the bounty all for themselves, but if that was the case, why the hell would they attack all of them? On the other hand, if whoever set up this mission really did want to capture Kaminari and cash in on his parents' money, then they must've heard of his reputation, meaning they would know full well that it would take all of the firepower this person had had to take him down.

So why would whoever orchestrated this thing go through the trouble of kidnapping all of his classmates...? Collateral, maybe? Just to take a few hostages to make Kaminari behave? But if that was the case, they probably could've just brought in some random kid off the street with much less trouble. So there was no need for the instigator of this thing to go through the trouble of taking all of Class 1-A, which would, in turn, invoke the wrath of nearly every pro hero in the country.

It just didn't make sense. If Ankoku, Morana, and Shio's employer set up this whole thing to kidnap Kaminari, capturing his classmates along with him was much more of a hassle than it was worth.

But then there was also the possibility that whatever this was wasn't about him at all. And that...Kaminari didn't know which prospect was more terrifying.

"They wanted...to kidnap us?"

"Yeah." Shio nodded quietly. Ankoku and Morana didn't say anything. "And whoever employed us was dead set on keeping all of you alive. They specifically told us to not go hard on any of you and that once reinforcements swooped in, we could fall back and let them restrain you all without trouble."

"Yeah." Morana chimed in. "But, obviously, you appealed to Ankoku's emotions and tackled me to the ground, so we pretty much failed our part of the job." There was a pause as she studied Kaminari's face. "Dude, calm down. I don't know what you're thinking, but we weren't followed here, I swear. We covered our tracks well, unlike you losers. Besides, even if the guys from the mission regrouped and managed to find you and your class' campsite by some miracle, you could either beat their asses or escape easily. It's no big de-"

"Shut the fuck up." Kaminari hissed. It was probably harsher than intended, but he was too overwhelmed to really care right now. Morana blinked, visibly taken aback by the sudden change in attitude.

The air around the four grew colder.

"Excuse me?"

"It's not that simple." Kaminari reiterated. He rubbed his temples. "Sorry. I'm sorry for the outburst. But this whole situation is fucking with my head, and I don't like it. I mean, why the hell would someone employ upwards of twenty clearly powerful villains to kidnap and subdue my class? It makes zero fucking sense. The only one who has ties to the black market is me, and, according to your info, whoever orchestrated this entire thing doesn't even know me."

"Yeah, but..." Ankoku trailed off. "It's not as if you can't take whoever comes after you."

"That's the thing!" Kaminari ran his hands down his face. His brain was moving at light speed, desperately trying to concoct an explanation. "I care about these guys, man! They're some of the best people I've ever met! And they...they actually..." His conversation from earlier with Iida flashed forward in his mind. "And they care about me. Like, can you...believe that? It's fucking...I've had a happier year and a half at this school with them than I had my entire life in the assassination ring. It's...I mean, sure, I could escape, but I can't just leave them..."

There was a pause.

"Usually, whenever villains attack my class, it's to get to me. And it's scary, obviously, because I despise that my mere presence can put my friends in harm's way, but it's also kind of comforting. Because I know what most villains want. And if worst comes to worst, I know I can always offer myself up and get whoever comes after me to leave the rest of my friends alone."

"But you can't do that here." Shio finished for him. Then, in a quieter voice, after a brief moment of hesitation, "We always cared for you, too, you know. It's not just a 'them' thing."

Kaminari spared him a small smile. They all pretended it wasn't watery. "I know. Me too. But the difference between creating a bond with someone because it's life or death and creating a bond with someone just because you enjoy their presence is...I can't even explain."

There was another bout of silence, and Kaminari couldn't help but think that these brief pauses in their conversation were happening far too often for his liking.

"So. What about you guys?" He managed to huff a laugh when his old friends all turned to face him, equally bewildered expressions decorating their faces. "What, you didn't think I'd forget, did I? Ankoku dropped his tough-guy act the second I mentioned anything about helping you guys escape." Kaminari crossed his arms. "So, what's the deal? You guys are the first people I've met that underwent the assassination ring and actually want to get out of it instead of becoming cold-blooded killers for the rest of your lives."

"Yeah, well." Morana shrugged, undeterred by the implications. "I dunno. I mean, we knew you, I suppose. We heard you bitching and moaning enough times to know your thoughts on our whole living situation."

"Ain't that the truth." Ankoku snorted. Gone was the somber attitude from before. It was amazing, really, watching four people who knew how to mask their emotions perfectly go from near tears and having a casual conversation about their fucked up childhoods like it was nothing. "You were such an asshole to the Headmistress, god. You were always sprouting bullshit left and right about anything and everything." He grinned. "You have no idea how annoyed she'd get when you'd refuse to scream for any of her torture methods. She was obsessed with trying, but none of them ever actually worked."

"Please." Kaminari rolled his eyes, grateful to fall back into the familiar rhythm of cursing and banter that had always been present with these three. "She was nothing. My parents beat me up more on a regular Tuesday than she ever did during one of her psychotic fits or whatever."

"Oh yeah, that's right." Shio scratched his head. "Being at The Establishment was like a break for you, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't like you were there year-round like us, but when you did come in whenever your parents were off on missions, that place was like a cakewalk for you." A beat. "I kinda hated you for it for a little while."

Kaminari grimaced. "Sorry. I don't blame you."

"It's cool. You were chill."

"Glad to hear it. By the way, quick question."

Ankoku nodded. "Shoot."

"I mean...like, feel free to roundhouse kick me if I'm wrong or something because I feel like I'm about to say something stupid, but you guys...seem relatively free right now, right? So why don't you just disappear off the map like I did for those two years before UA? Like, you were able to sneak all the way out here without anyone following you. That's more than I was able to do until I finally got out for good."

"Yeah, well." Ankoku shrugged. "It's the same reason you didn't go AWOL during all of your assassination missions and try to run away then. The assassination ring has agents all over Japan. The second anyone of importance hears we haven't checked back in, we're dead. The only reason it's possible for us to be out here right now is because Headmistress thinks we volunteered to stay behind and scout the woods to look for you guys."

Kaminari narrowed his eyes. "Did you?"

"Well, technically, yeah," Morana smirked at the blond's glare. "But don't get all cranky on us, Goldie. None of us are gonna tell her you're here. All we needed was a cover story."

Kaminari was silent for a moment. Then, "You guys don't have trackers, right?"

Ankoku blinked. "What?"

"Trackers. Like, things that pinpoint your location." He pointed to the ugly, discolored patch of skin right by his wrist where he'd sloppily dug his out with a pocket knife all those years ago. "Mine was in my wrist. I had to dig it out to escape so no one could catch me as soon as I left the premises."

"Oh." Morana sucked in a breath and leaned over to get a closer look. "Shit, man. No, we don't have anything like that. We're good. I promise we didn't lead anyone to you."

"Okay." Kaminari nodded, the anxiety that had been rising in his throat slowly dropping back down to normal. "Good. Okay- ugh, that's good. I trust you." A beat. "So, how do you guys want me to help? Assuming the layout hasn't changed, I can probably give you the instructions I took to escape the black market and evade all of the people who went after me if you want, but-"

"Golden." Shio's voice was quiet, contributing yet again to the variety of mood swings that had been present all throughout this conversation.

Kaminari's voice faltered. "Yeah? What?"

"You-" He grimaced a little, looking indescribably guilty for pretty much no reason at all. "You know we're not good people, right?"

Kaminari blinked. Out of everything he'd been expecting to hear out of Shio's mouth, that wasn't one of them.

"I know," The blond said after a moment of contemplation. It wasn't like he was gonna lie to them or anything. It would've been laughable if he'd tried to deny it. But... "I know. I'm not either. That's not going to stop me from trying to help you guys. That place is hell."

"Thank you." Relief flooded Shio's face. "We just...we've been thinking about this for a while, and we wanna just disappear. None of us are striving to be heroes or model citizens or anything; we just want...out."

"I get it, man." Kaminari nodded. He really did. More than any of them knew. "Don't worry. You don't have to explain. You just want to get on with your lives and do whatever you want without taking orders from some fucked up philanthropist who helps run The Establishment or whatever on who and who not to kill."

Out of the corner of his eyes, Kaminari saw Ankoku blink, and his confidence faltered. Shit, had he said something wrong? Was the read he'd gotten on the situation totally different than what his friends were asking? I mean, he'd assumed that they shared the same thoughts for wanting to escape the assassination ring. It wasn't like he expected them to live a clean life or anything, and he certainly didn't expect them to stop killing (as long as it wasn't innocent people, then he'd have to hunt them down) but-

"I mean...sure." Ankoku's bemused voice snapped Kaminari out of his sudden spiral. "But the guy who sent us on this mission wasn't some villain that heard of our talents and contacted the Headmistress to hire us to do a job."

"I-" Kaminari's mind went blank. "...what? But the uniforms, I distinctly remember wearing those whenever we went on missions for The Establishment, I-"

Morana laughed, a nice change from the angsty aura that had taken over the four. "That's because we still live there, dipshit. We're teenagers. We have nowhere else to go, and even if she did, the Headmistress wouldn't let us leave even if we begged to."

"Oh." Fuck. That...actually made a lot of sense. He'd just assumed his former classmates were wearing Establishment uniforms because some villain who regularly donated his 'services' (i.e. beating kids up and calling it training, much to the delight of the Headmistress, who affectionately called these kinds of people 'volunteers') to the academy had been the one to employ them for this job in the first place. How could Kaminari have overlooked something so simple? "Then who hired you guys?"

"Did we not already tell you?" Ankoku cocked his head, looking genuinely confused as he scanned Kaminari up and down. "It was a call from the Hero Commission."

Kaminari's blood ran cold.

What.

"It was weird, honestly." If Ankoku noticed Kaminari's petrified expression, he didn't show it. Morana and Shio just nodded along with him, only further confirming Ankoku's claim. "Everyone hates the Hero Commission down there. Whoever wanted to kidnap your classmates must've had a shit ton of money for Headmistress to accept."

No. It couldn't be-

And then Kaminari felt it.

And he could tell Ankoku, Morana, and Shio did too.

All three of their heads shot up, hands reflexively grasping the handle of the blades they still had in the belt of their uniforms-

But no amount of instinct could stop the three perfectly placed bullets that embedded themselves in their skulls before they could even manage the strength to pull the knives out of their sheaths.

Fuck. Snipers. An assassin's worst enemy. If far away and good enough, not even Kaminari, the greatest who ever lived, could sense their presence until the bullet was already flying through the air.

And based on the fact that he was now surrounded by three dead and bleeding (DEAD, THEY WERE FUCKING DEAD, KAMINARI WAS GOING TO KILL THE BASTARD THAT DID THIS), bodies, whoever these snipers were...

They were the best.

Kaminari didn't waste a second. The cry he let out was feral and no doubt would be able to carry to the ears of his sleeping classmates, but he didn't care. Immediately, he ripped his own knife out of its cover, wasting no time in throwing his hand back in preparation to let the blade soar through the air in the direction the bullets had come from, when-

A massive hand clamped down on his shoulder.

Kaminari reacted instantly, immediately abandoning his plan in favor of ducking under the grip and spinning around, twirling the knife between his fingers and getting fully prepared to pounce when he came face to face with-

"All Might?"

The words were no more than a surprised, defeated whisper.

"Denki Kaminari!" All Might was either the most socially inept person on the planet or mistook the blond's distress for something else entirely because his stupid trademark smile only grew wider. Kaminari stood, stunned, gripping the knife so hard that the blade was shaking along with his own sweaty, shell-shocked fingers. "No need to fear, my boy! The other teachers and I have been looking for you kids all night after hearing what happened. I'm just relieved that we found you before those three could do you any harm."

"Do me...any harm?" Kaminari repeated quietly. His thoughts were static. He could barely process what was going on as it was. So many things had happened in the past ten seconds, and he couldn't...what the fuck? "What do you-"

"Ah, you must be rather shellshocked!" All Might's voice was loud, loud enough that it drowned out the blood rushing to Kaminari's ears and forced him to pay attention. He was in his hero form, which was rare these days. Kaminari knew that with All Might's powers diminishing, the former number one hero could barely afford to keep that form for long. "I don't blame you. I don't know how those three villains managed to lure you out here all by yourself, but the second we saw you out here with three killers wearing assassin's uniforms, we set up snipers all around the premises."

"Snipers-" Things were moving too fast. Kaminari didn't know whether to cry or thank All Might in order to keep up his charade or...or what, just...he and his friends had been discussing ways to get them out of this hellhole they called life. Then- then they'd been killed right in front of him. That just...it wasn't fair, it wasn't fair, they may have been assassins, but they didn't deserve t-

But- but All Might wasn't precisely in the wrong-

But here Kaminari was, standing in a clearing in the middle of a forest, supposedly surrounded by snipers, the bodies of his three former classmates (former friends that deserved nothing that had happened to them) at his feet with blood pooling from three respective perfect shots to the head and All Might towering over him, going on endlessly about how thankful he was to have saved Kaminari's life from three villains. Yet, at the same time, Kaminari could barely see through the shock-filled tears gathering in his eyes and the white-hot anger clouding his better judgment.

And then something clicked.

The pieces of the puzzle he'd been desperately trying to solve ever since Hawks had warned him about the Hero Commission's double-cross slotted into place like they were nothing.

His eyes widened the slightest margin.

Holy fu-

And then, as if his body couldn't take it anymore, at the weight of the sudden revelation and the effect of everything that had happened to him over the past month all hitting him at full force...

...Kaminari threw up.

xxx

"Hey. Himiko." Dabi peeked up from his phone screen, pausing for a second to shoot a tiny pinprick of a flame right past the former's head and into the wall behind her. "C'mere."

"The singed my ends, asshole." Toga grumbled, put she hoped over the mound of crates and barrels full of illegal weapons and questionable substances to sit across from the man. She cocked her head, voice brightening considerably. "Whatcha need, Toy-Toy?"

"Ankoku, Shio, and Morana died." Dabi replied, going back to staring at his phone screen. He typed something out, hesitating for a moment before pressing send, then glancing up to gauge Toga's reaction.

"Aw, for real?" Himiko's face twisted into one of displeasure, pulling at one of her many flyaways absentmindedly. It was clear she wasn't very interested in the contents of the conversation. "Those were Denkaroo's friends from The Establishment, right? I liked Morana. She was such a cutie pie." There was a pause. "Also, didn't she already die? Like, a while ago?"

"I dunno. I thought she kicked the bucket ages ago too, but who knows. I'm just going off of what Denki texted me."

"Denki texted you!" And immediately, Toga's attention was recaptured again. She was over Dabi's shoulder in a flash, batting his face away so she could get a better look at his phone screen. "Ohhh, tell him I say hi! And that I miss him! And that he'd be much more entertaining company. All you do is sit around and mope and angst and mutter angry things at the tv whenever Endeavor's on the screen."

Dabi rolled his eyes. "Shut the fuck up, I'm not done. He said they were shot down by some kind of professional fuckin' sniper team."

"For real?" Toga sat back on her heels. "I mean, there's a lot of ways to go out, but that-"

"Holy shit, can you shut your mouth for one goddamn second so I can finish reading this?"

"Oh, feisty." Himiko flicked Dabi's ear, earning herself a string of fire that she easily dodged, dancing her way back to her previous seat in front of him. "Fine, Toy-Toy. Have it your way. Whatcha got?"

"God, you're insufferable. Anyway, what I was trying to say was-" Dabi stopped, the unmistakable ping of another text messaging coming through interrupting whatever he'd been about to say next. His eyes darted over the message, eyebrows shooting up as much as they could with all of the staples and burn marks littering his face. "Oh. Holy shit."

"What?" Toga blinked. "Was that Denki? What'd he say?"

"He said that he knows who leaked his identity to the Hero Commission."

There was a pause as Toga waited for the punchline. "And...? I thought we went over this. You and Keigo made a big show of cautioning him and ominously warning him and this and that and- "

"And it's not Nezu."

"It's-" Toga faltered, eyebrows furrowing as the words were stolen from her lips. "What? But Kami said that the principal guy was the only one he told his secret identity to. Keigo pretty much confirmed it."

Dabi's face twisted. "I dunno. I'm just as confused as you. It's-" Another text came through, accompanied by a sharp inhale. "Holy shit."

"What. What?" Toga immediately leaped up, the picture of Dabi's stunned face more than enough to pique her interests. "Show me."

Wordlessly, Dabi held the phone out towards her. Toga snatched it up hungrily.

"Took you long enough." She began scrolling through the messages. "Let's see. So if it's not Nezu, it's-"

There was a deafening silence as Toga's eyes fell on the very last line of Kaminari's very last text.

"What the fuck?"