Chapter 2 - Dog Mask

Hitoshi waits patiently with the group, Eri nervously hiding behind his pants as the elderly couple with the flower and bee mutations try to make friends with them.

While she had been startled by White pulling a daisy from his beard to give to her, Hitoshi had been a little weirded out by the occasional buzz of Green's wings - and the long, hooked stinger behind her.

No matter how old and sweet they were - Hitoshi realizes he's not a bug person.

It's when Green is discussing how she and White met, that Aizawa and Yamada return and spare him. The two heroes then relay this:

They are in the residential hall of an actual spaceship. The hall consists of a women and men's dorms, as well as community bathrooms for each. At the end of the hall is a locked room.

On the other end are some stairs leading up into the main body of the spaceship. Yamada goes on to describe what Hitoshi vaguely remembers as being the layout to the game's version of the ship.

"Don't get your hopes up." Yamada props his hands on his hips, "The ship is in terrible shape. Dust everywhere!"

"Aren't you more concerned about all the broken equipment?" Aizawa questions his priorities, "Or its general state of disrepair?"

Yamada waves him off, "Anyway, I don't even know where to begin. The most I've done is change the oil in my Mustang, how are they supposed to expect us normal folk to perform rocket surgery?"

Red, from where he had been detailing more info about the game to Blue and two college-age women in coral and cyan suits, pauses and taps at his tablet, "Fortunately, that's here too. I was going through all the details while you two were away. We should all have our assigned tasks - and they should be pretty self explanatory when you get there, but there's brief instructions if you find yourselves stuck."

"You make it sound like we are going to separate." Hitoshi raises a brow.

Red shrugs a shoulder, frown settling into place, "I just think we should be prepared for all scenarios."

…

They've been separated.

Eri squeezes his hand a little tighter as he looks at the heavy metal doors that had just slammed shut between their group. He dreads to think of what would have happened if someone had been caught between them.

Swallowing, he reassures Eri, "They'll fix it. Don't worry."

She nods, and he internally winces at how unconvincing it looked.

"For now, let's wait a bit and see if they are able to unlock it." The tablet provides his location and tasks with a dim glow, "Hopefully it'll be smooth sailing from here on."

And then the lights go out.

Eri squeaks and sucks closer to his side as he drags a hand down his face. In an already dim ship, with no lights there was no visibility. His tablet at least illuminates his and Eri's faces.

Clenching and unclenching his hand, the darkness left him feeling antsy. Like being stranded in open water and vulnerable.

They wait, in total darkness, for well over ten minutes. No sound comes from the other side of the door. Something hisses - steam being forced through a pipe - and it has him nearly jumping out of his skin. Hitoshi makes a unilateral decision.

If the others wanted to find him, then they would find him at his task.

Before setting out, they had decided to split into two groups - one following the hallway on the left side of the cafeteria led by Aizawa, and this one that had branched right towards the front of the ship led by Yamada.

They were currently on the right-hand side of the ship - by what was labeled as Shields. Having no tasks here, they creep through the room almost unbearably slowly.

Entering the next hallway, he almost misses Communications in the dark. Guiding Eri inside, he follows his tablet to his first task.

"Download?" He murmurs. A dimly glowing screen sits above a desk right by the doorway. Hitoshi leans over it, tapping away until he reaches the file indicated on his tablet.

A bar appears, showing he was successfully downloading… something.

"Hey Eri," He asks, trying unsuccessfully to find out more on what it was that he was downloading, "What are your tasks?"

Doey eyes look up at him and she quickly, if a little clumsily, pulls up her tablet, "I think I only have one."

Pulling his eyes from the download, he looks at her offered arm, "Divert power to Navigation?" Opening the map on his own tablet, he sees they will have to make a stop in Electrical first for that one. "We have to go here first-" he points to the room, "I actually have a task there too."

Eri smiles, "Ah!"

Snorting at her exclamation (and secretly glad that she was handling this whole situation so well), his attention returns to the download screen. Pulling over a pair of chairs for them, he continues to try and find out what is so important about a broken ship needing to download something. Getting no luck, he eventually backs out to the download bar.

10 hours remaining. The bar hadn't even moved a pixel.

"Forget that."

The desk rattles as Hitoshi pushes away in irritation. Eri puts away the heavy-duty headphones she had been examining to look up at him.

"This is going to take too long." He sighs, "We can just move on to our other ones while this takes its sweet time."

Eyes attempting to readjust to the darker hallway, they stumble their way further into the ship. If his phone hadn't magically died, then maybe they could've at least used the flashlight feature.

"If only we had a flame quirk here. God knows there's a handful of them at UA alone, not including Todoroki and Bakugou." He complains.

"And also Iida!"

Hitoshi wasn't normally one to argue with a child, but she was just wrong.

"Iida doesn't have a fire quirk." A deeper darkness up ahead draws his eyes. They were approaching another open room.

"Yes he does." She nearly pouts, "When he goes really fast - his legs go fwoosh!"

His grip on her hand is jostled as she makes a gesture with both arms.

Pursing his lips, he debates arguing with her sincerely. On one hand, Iida's engines did ignite - but it didn't change the fact that it was a speed quirk. In the end, he decides he doesn't have enough energy.

"Ask Midoriya." He easily pawns her curiosity off on his not-a-friend for later. She makes some vaguely happy or excited noise, and Hitoshi is surprised at how his anxiety has fallen since they first got separated from the others.

They cross where the hallway meets the room and-

It's still too dark to see.

Hitoshi pulls his map up, spotting an icon indicating his next task just to the left of their location.

"It says one of the tasks is trash disposal." Angling the tablet to illuminate her face, he quirks a wry grin down at Eri, "Sounds like somewhere I belong."

She says nothing in response, face completely flat as they stare at each other.

Lip twitching, Hitoshi clears his throat, "Anyway - we should really get moving."

They follow the wall until the outline of a lever appears. A large window sits adjacent to it - the outer wall of the ship. Stars glimmer as far as the eye can see, and he finds some irony in the fact that outer space is still not as dark as the inside of the ship.

The lever sticks when he tries it, and he actually has to use some force to get it to activate. Hoping that none of the elderly people in their group also have this task, he turns to look out the window as hunks of warped metal and various debris launch into space.

"Heh. Hope none of that was important."

He lets Eri watch a moment longer, taking the time to check his tablet. They were close enough to Electrical, might as well knock those tasks out already.

And maybe see why no one had bothered to turn the lights back on yet.

Hitoshi frowns. It'd been almost an hour at this point since Eri and he had set off on their own. Surely a couple people would have broken off to investigate the lights by now?

Hands growing sweaty through the gloves, he looks through the deep dark in the direction of Electrical. The idea of leaving Eri behind for her own safety to investigate was discarded in the same instant it crossed his mind.

But still, bringing Eri to a potential death trap was just as terrifying.

"Shinsou," Eri breathes, "You're squeezing."

Loosening his grip immediately, he apologizes with a hushed "I'm sorry."

He debates internally - he had been trained, he was stronger now. If anyone tried to attack, he could at least hold them off for Eri to run to safety.

Maybe.

If this whole ship had become so frighteningly realistic, so different from the little pixelated lights from his phone, what did that say about the imposters?

"Eri." When he speaks, his nerves show easily. "The lights needing repair could be a trap. I don't want to take you there, but I don't want to leave you behind. We can always wait for another to come along to turn them on as well."

It's worded almost like a question, and Eri hums as if it were. She tugs his hand slightly.

"How about this then! I go turn the lights on, and you can come with me as a bodyguard!"

"Uh-" He decides that that is the answer he should have expected when he delegated the problem to her. She tugs again and he resigns himself to regretting this later. A tense sigh parts his lips, "Very well then."

With the map as their guide, they creep their way to the open doors of Electrical. The hum from inside, the sucking whoosh as if the room itself were inhaling, and the oppressive void of darkness - all make this room feel like the gaping maw of a whale.

If so, would that make them the fish?

He doesn't want to call out. Not to see if there were anyone else in there. In his stomach, he already knows.

Eri doesn't speak out either - either following his lead or feeling the same stifling need to stay hidden as he. Don't make your presence known, his mind screams.

His foot crosses the threshold, Eri's just a second behind.

Nothing jumps out at them - no alarms are triggered or metal crashing down on them (no teeth lock around them to swallow them down). The smell of metal is strong here - stronger than anywhere else on this entirely metallic ship. So strong it lingers on his tongue.

Following the dim light of his tablet, he takes another step forward and -

"Shinsou! Eri!"

Hitoshi whips to the side, peering through the darkness to try to get a glance of anything. Aizawa slows to a stop just within their range of sight, and Hitoshi feels both himself and Eri breathe a deep sigh of relief.

Heart pounding slower and slower, he pulls his hand away from his chest and straightens up. A nervous chuckle escapes his lips as Aizawa speaks.

"Are you two okay? Where are the others?"

Before Hitoshi can respond, a horn blares and the lights flash on. He twitches at the sudden change as his eyes adjust. A pulsing red alert from his tablet catches his eye. The relief from finally finding another (finding Aizawa) quickly fades.

"A body has been reported."

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