The next morning came, and Izuku, Mina, and Mezou wasted little time in getting ready to leave. Izuku had half-expected Tsu to come with them; she seemed the type to refuse to let the people she loved be in danger without her. But instead, she simply pulled Mezou close, murmured something Izuku couldn't hear, and then kissed him so deeply it was a little uncomfortable to watch. Izuku and Mina shared an awkward glance, then promptly broke eye contact. Yep. Awkward.

Finally, though, Tsu released Mezou from her grip, and waved them off. Just before they left, she told them, "Don't die, ribbit."

And with that, they were off. Mina and Mezou had given Izuku a cloak, similar in looks and quality to Mina's. They claimed it would attract less attention than a large green-haired man who, according to Mina, "Looked more out of place than a clown at a funeral."

Izuku had put it on, figuring that if he didn't, Mina might subject him to more analogies. As he watched people's eyes flick to him, then promptly flick away, their bodies tensing up as they got out of his way, he wondered if this was how Mina felt whenever she tried to walk around.

"Why are they acting so scared of me?" he asked quietly as the three made their way through the rough, broken ground of the cavern floor.

From beneath her own cloak, Mina replied, "You're big and you're wearing a full-body cloak. Down here, that means two things: you're a seriously powerful mutant, and you want to be left alone really bad. If you run into the wrong one of those, they might kill you just for getting in their way, so people avoid them."

Izuku nodded to himself. As he did, he realized something: in a way, Mina had been describing herself. If the only people who regularly tried to conceal themselves were the really dangerous ones, then what did that make Mina?

Softly, he asked, "Is that why you do it, then? So people don't bother you?"

For a second, Mina hesitated, and Izuku wondered whether she would snap at him. But instead, her eyes softened, and she answered, "Yeah. Up in the Underground, it's because I don't want people to start recognizing me. Down here, I just want to be left alone."

That sounded reasonable to Izuku, even if the resigned tone of Mina's voice pulled at his heart. She sounded crushed, almost, like she'd just given up hope of things ever being different.

Beside them, Mezou let out an angry-sounding grumble. "It's stupid," he declared, voice deep and bitter. "People think that hiding their faces somehow makes them more acceptable, when all it does is hold them back."

Izuku glanced at Mezou. "You don't like the idea of mutants wearing cloaks?" he asked, confused.

Mezou nodded. "I don't," he confirmed. "I think it's cowardly to try and pretend you're something you're not. I have nothing to hide, nothing to be ashamed of. Why should I act like I do?"

Izuku felt something in his chest twist at that; maybe it was guilt. Mina, though, just shook her head. "We can't all be as confident as you, Mezou," she said wistfully. "And it's not about pride or shame or something. It's just easier, that's all."

Mezou muttered, "But it shouldn't be. Why should we suppress ourselves to make things easier?"

Neither Mina nor Izuku had an answer to that, and they didn't bother trying to come up with one. Instead, they just stayed quiet for the rest of the walk. It didn't take them long to reach the outskirts of the cavern once they left the more densely populated areas. Gradually, the ramshackle buildings and poorly-marked streets and paths gave way to craggy growths of rock, rough ground dotted by only the occasional light source marking an inhabited structure. More than once, Izuku got the impression of shadowy figures with narrow eyes, watching from cracks and crevices. It sent shivers down his spine. If the Depths felt like hostile territory, then this was worse.

At last, they rounded another enormous pillar, and came face-to-face with their target. Next to the wastelands they had just crossed, it was like a shining citadel, an oasis of electric lights and human voices. The Neo-Stainist compound resembled something between a fortress and an ant colony; it had thick, sturdy walls seemingly constructed from the rock itself, and plenty of buildings rising out of the stone ground-or the wall. The compound was constructed right at the point where one of the cavern walls came down in a nearly-vertical cliff some two hundred feet tall, pitted with cracks and ledges and other natural platforms. The Neo-Stainists had clearly taken full advantage of this, as there were nearly as many buildings built into the wall of the cliff as there were on the floor of the cavern. Oddly, though, there seemed to be few rope bridges or paths connecting the isolated structures all along the cliff.

From beside him, Mezou seemed to anticipate the question not even forming yet on Izuku's lips. "Tunnels," he said. "They've almost certainly carved out a whole labyrinth beneath and around this place. Living spaces, storehouses, arsenals, all that stuff. I guarantee you, this compound is at least twice as big as it looks on the surface."

Izuku nodded. "It looks like a right bastard of a place to attack," he observed. "Time to do some scouting, then?"

Mezou replied, "Sounds good. Go find a nice ledge somewhere up on the cliff. Mina and I will be along in a moment."

Izuku blinked in confusion, as did Mina. "Wait, why?" she asked. "I bet I could make it up there even faster."

Before Izuku could disagree, Mezou met Mina's eyes and told her, "Because, you and I need to talk. Alone."

When Mezou glared at him, Izuku got the hint. In a rush of green lightning, he bent his knees and jumped. Soon, he was almost out of sight.

Izuku disappeared in a blur, surprising both Mina and Mezou with how quickly he had vanished. Until now, they hadn't really seen just how fast he could move.

Swiftly recovering, Mina shot an annoyed look at Mezou. Crossing her arms, she demanded, "Alright, what do you want?"

Meeting Mina's eyes, Mezou replied, "I want you to tell me what your real plan is."

Mina refused to budge. "What are you talking about?" she asked, even as she scrambled to decide how to respond.

Mezou sighed. "Mina, don't play dumb here," he said. "You really expect me to believe that you took such a massive risk, went through all this trouble, and came to me just to let Atlas capture Toga and take her to an aboveground prison? If your suspicions are right-"

"I don't know if they are," Mina admitted, hoping that that wouldn't make Mezou even more annoyed.

Mezou glared at her. Then, to Mina's surprise, he shrugged. "They sounded pretty solid to me," he told her. "But let's just assume they are. If Toga really did kill him…"

Mina sighed, deciding that there was no point in trying to hide it anymore. "Then prison won't be enough," she agreed. "Not for me, at least."

Now that it was out in the open, the black, yawning hole in Mina's chest seemed to shrink a tiny bit, at least temporarily. She felt relieved when Mezou nodded, slowly and grimly, his eyes hard and flinty. Maybe she wasn't that messed up for feeling so much broken, burning rage, for struggling to keep it under control for the past two days.

"Then what are you planning to do instead?" Mezou demanded. Mina hung her head.

"I…I don't know," she admitted.

Mezou frowned. "What do you mean?" he asked.

Mina's eyes flashed as she raised her head again, shame igniting into anger. "I mean that I don't know, Mezou!" she snarled. "I keep going in circles in my head, but I can't decide what justice I want! None of it will bring him back, none of it will fix anything! I just…all I have is the anger, and I'm…I'm scared of what that anger is doing to me."

The look in Mezou's eye softened a bit. It could have been pity, or understanding, or something else entirely. He sank down onto a nearby rock, and murmured, "Even now, you're still not over it, are you?"

Mina crossed her arms defiantly. "Don't act like you are," she shot back. "Every day for six fucking years, I've wanted him back. He…he was the first person I ever trusted. Not you, not even Tsu. Him. And you expect me to…to just get over it?"

Mezou shook his head. "Of course not," he responded. "And you're right, I'm not over it either."

The admission took some of the wind out of Mina's sails. She blinked in surprise. "You act like it," she heard herself say, though without quite as much venom as she expected.

Mezou snorted. "Do I?" he countered. "Does running around beating the shit out of people and constantly risking my life strike you as the sort of thing an even-keeled man does?"

Mina shrugged. "I mean, that's what Izuku does," she joked. "And he seems pretty stable to me. More stable than either of us, at least."

Instead of laughing, even bitterly, Mezou just… stared at Mina. The look in his eye was unrecognizable, but it left Mina feeling stripped bare, down to her very core.

"What?" she demanded, forcing herself not to blush.

Mezou waited another second or two before finally saying in a flat voice, "You keep doing that. Calling him "Izuku."

Mina lost the battle against her blush, and her cheeks turned ever-so-slightly purple. "So?" she retorted.

Mezou hesitated, then finally shook his head. "Never mind," he muttered quietly. "Forget I said anything."

He went to stand up, but Mina felt something bubble up in her chest that wouldn't let Mezou escape this. She snapped, "He saved my life too, you know."

Mezou froze, his head whipping up to meet Mina's eyes. She kept her arms crossed as his eyes went wide.

"You didn't tell me that," he accused.

"Of course I didn't," she replied. "I didn't want to tell you I almost died because you'd lose your shit. Like you're doing now."

Mezou glanced down at his left hands, which were all clenched tightly into fists. With effort, he exhaled and relaxed them at the same time. Then, he looked back at Mina.

"Tell me what happened," he said, his tone making it clear that it was not a request.

Mina rolled her eyes as Mezou's overprotective streak made itself known. "I got into a fight with a hero and got super fucked up," she replied calmly. "Blood loss probably would have gotten me if I hadn't been pretty close to Izuku's hero agency at the time. I made it there, and he patched me up. Even stonewalled the hero who hurt me when he showed up unexpectedly."

Mezou blinked in surprise, and Mina wondered if he was actually going to change his attitude towards Izuku. Her hopes were sadly dashed a moment later, when Mezou's eyes narrowed again.

"Whatever," he decided. "I still don't like him."

Mina rolled her eyes yet again. "Of course you don't," she said. "He's better-looking than you, and you've always been the jealous type."

Just then, Izuku reappeared in a rush of wind and crackling electricity, startling both Mezou and Mina. "There's a good ledge not far from here," he said, apparently ignorant of the conversation he'd interrupted. "Well-hidden, but gives a good vantage point down into the compound. I can show you where it is."

Mina and Mezou exchanged a glance, then decided to just go with it. Mina turned to Izuku and told him, "Sounds perfect. We'll be right there."

Izuku smiled, setting off something in Mina's chest that she decided was probably just heartburn, and then disappeared again, trailing lightning behind him. She went to follow, but just before she could, Mezou's hand landed on her shoulder.

"What is it now?" she sighed as she turned her head.

Mezou's eyes were softer than Mina could remember seeing them. He looked worried in a way she wasn't used to seeing from him.

"Mina, listen," he said softly, with an undertone of urgency. "I trust you, but…if you come face-to-face with Toga, just…make sure you do the right thing, okay?"

Despite being genuinely touched by how much Mezou seemed to care, Mina still snorted, "Of course I will."

As she made her way up the cliff face, though, she admitted to herself, "I just wish I knew what the right thing was."

In just a few minutes of climbing, all three of them had made it to the small, curved ledge. Sure enough, it was a perfect scouting point, with great visibility of the compound and little chance of being spotted by any sentries. It even had a little lip of rock around the edge to conceal them.

As soon as they were all situated on the small ledge, Mezou began to extend an arm tipped with an eyeball along the wall and downwards, the perfect scouting tool-as long as it stayed hidden. Mina and Izuku lay down near him, to avoid getting seen.

They were close enough for regular humans to be able to make out a reasonable amount of detail, too, so Izuku busied himself studying the compound, letting his analysis skills work through everything he could see. Soon enough, though, his eyes narrowed as they took in the scene below. There were plenty of mutant quirks visible, though they were far from the only ones present. For that matter, the makeup of the small, fortified compound sure didn't look like an extremist group, either.

"This wasn't quite what I expected," Izuku murmured as they scoped out the compound. "It looks more like a village than a fortress."

Sure enough, there were children playing in the cleared spaces between the small but well-made buildings. The sound of a poorly-tuned and slightly scratchy guitar floated up from within the walls. Even outside the walls, a number of buildings had been built clustered close to the compound, as if huddling there for safety. There were plenty of scarred, brutal-looking men and women down there, yes, but there seemed to be plenty of…"civilians" was the best term Izuku could really think of, though he doubted they were entirely innocent. Men and women who were simply going about their lives, trying to live peacefully…by associating with a group whose stated aim was to destroy the heroes who kept the peace.

"Something's wrong here," Izuku thought, though he couldn't tell whether it was with him, with the situation, or with the way he was going about this. One way or another, things weren't adding up.

Mina shot him a heated look. "No shit, Izuku," she said under her breath. "What, you were expecting them to all be in an supervillain lair, cackling about how they murder heroes for fun? They have families, and loved ones-a lot of them probably joined up because the Neo-Stainists are about the most peaceful group down here."

Izuku raised an eyebrow. "They are?" he asked. He couldn't reconcile that with his memories of Stain and the fanatics and madmen who had flocked to his banner, with the memory of a glinting sword and a long tongue and a bloody alleyway where, in his mind, he would always be fifteen and inches from watching a friend die.

On Mina's other side, Mezou nodded, though he remained focused on the compound. "They are," he confirmed. "They mostly keep to themselves, don't get caught up in the gang wars, and they'll take anyone, mutant or not. Plenty of families will risk getting caught in the fallout of one of their crusades in exchange for peace and security. Down here, communities need something to bind them together-a shared belief, mutual interest, an ideology…plus plenty of muscle to back it up. The Neo-Stainists have all of those in spades. I've dealt with this particular group before. I know their leader, Kugo. A good man…better than most, at least."

Mina made a face. "Then why did you lead us here?" she asked, gesturing at Izuku. "You know how this'll end, if he's here."

Mezou turned his head, ever so slightly. He made eye contact with Mina, then grimaced. "Because," he eventually responded. "If he's working with that serial killer…and if your suspicions are right…it's just more proof that good men can do the worst things."

Izuku stared at him. Once again, he found himself having to recalibrate his image of Mezou, and consider whether this whole mission was a bad idea. Could he even trust someone who called a Neo-Stainist a "good man," and expressed regret at the thought of fighting against him? Did he want to trust them?

Izuku wasn't used to moral compromises like this. He was used to heroes that weren't squeaky clean like All Might, of course-plenty of underground heroes down here were brutal and manipulative in equal measure, and Endeavor existed (though he was retired now, thank God), but he'd never really gotten caught up in a situation quite this tangled. Eventually, he just decided to worry about it later. He had a target to catch.

Still, he did mutter, "I bet they love you, being a vigilante and all."

Mezou snorted. "It's mostly mutual respect," he muttered back. "I leave them alone, they don't cause trouble for the people I care about."

"Aww, jealous that they don't want to murder him?" Mina teased in a singsong voice.

Izuku shrugged. "I mean, only like half of the Neo-Stainists actually want to murder me," he responded. "The other half want to worship me or something. I'm not sure, I don't generally hang out with them."

Mina and Mezou both turned to stare at him, the looks on their faces suggesting that they weren't sure whether to laugh or be shocked.

"Why exactly would they want to worship you?" Mezou asked, one eyebrow raised.

Yet again, Izuku simply shrugged. "Probably because Stain saved my life that one time and called me a true hero," he replied. Mezou, strangely, didn't look very reassured by that.

Mina rolled her eyes. "Right," she said. "I forgot, you're a literally perfect golden boy to everyone."

Izuku frowned. "I am not a golden boy," he retorted.

"You definitely are," Mina shot back, her voice surprisingly light and free, "Everyone loves Atlas, after all. I wonder what they'd think of the squeaky-clean Number One hanging out with a bunch of lowlives like us."

"Wait a second," Mezou interrupted before Izuku could reply. "Something's wrong."

Mina and Izuku stopped bickering instantly. Both of them turned to Mezou at once. "What's going on?" Mina asked.

Mezou began to pull back his scouting tentacle into a slightly more hidden position. Without turning or breaking his focus, he hesitantly replied, "I'm…not sure these people are the Neo-Stainists we were looking for."

Izuku and Mina exchanged a worried look. Then, Izuku asked, "What makes you think that?"

"Yeah, did you manage to lead us to the wrong heavily fortified compound on the outskirts of the cavern?" Mina added.

Mezou still barely reacted. For the first time, his expression shifted-he looked almost worried now. "I can't see Kugo anywhere," he said. "He's usually out teaching the kids, or resolving disputes."

"Is it possible you're just missing him?" Izuku wondered. Mezou shot him a glare.

"Kugo is a seven-foot-tall walking, talking orca whale with the muscle mass of an Olympic power lifter," Mezou snapped, his voice grinding out in hurried bursts. "No, I am not missing him."

Izuku frowned, trying to imagine how strange Kugo must look from such a description.

"Maybe he's just…out running errands?" he tried.

"Kugo doesn't do that, he stands out too much. No, if he isn't in the compound, he isn't with them at all," Mezou shot back.

Izuku sat back again, thinking. Mina cut to the chase. "Could he have died somehow?" she asked.

Mezou hesitated. "I don't want to rule it out," he admitted, "but Kugo was as tough a bastard as they come, and perfectly healthy, as far as I know. If someone took him out, I'd have heard about it…fuck."

Izuku watched worriedly as Mezou continued to scout out the compound with half a dozen eyes. "I barely recognize any of them," he said after another minute or so. "But there are some of Kugo's people there. Hell, I can't really tell if anyone's even missing other than him-there's just loads more of them in there than there were."

Izuku peered over the lip of rock himself, and though he couldn't see in anywhere near as much detail as Mezou could, he didn't need to. As he scanned the busy compound, his blood suddenly ran cold.

Beside him, Mina narrowed her eyes. "What do we do now?" she wondered. "If the Neo-Stainists have somehow been replaced or something, Toga probably won't be with them."

Mezou sighed. "If she's not there, we'll need to pull back," he said. "There are other Neo-Stain groups around-or there were. Maybe she's with one of them."

"That won't be necessary," Izuku said. His voice was dull, frozen.

Mina and Mezou turned to look at him. Stray bolts of lightning began to crackle around Izuku, flowing down powerful arms, dancing between twisted, scarred fingers, shooting from the corners of his eyes.

Mina fought off the growing sense of danger from her old thief's instincts, and asked, "Why not?"

Izuku pointed down into the compound, where he'd spotted a mop of tangled blond hair he'd never be able to forget, not if he lived to a hundred years old.

"I see her," he responded. "I see Toga."

Mina let out a deep breath she hadn't known she was holding. She and Mezou exchanged a hard-eyed glance as their resolve grew steely.

She turned back to Izuku, and nodded. Behind her, Mezou did the same.

"Alright then," she said. "Let's get this bitch."

In the end, they chose the direct approach, figuring that, since there was essentially no way to sneak up to the compound, it would be better to just get in and out in a quick smash-and-grab assault. Hopefully, they would be able to move fast enough that the Neo-Stainists wouldn't have time to organize a response.

Mina, Mezou, and Izuku strode towards the front gate of the compound, doing their best to act naturally. Mina and Izuku were still wearing their cloaks, though neither of them expected they could keep them on forever.

As they approached the sturdy-looking gate, a burly man appeared atop the wall. His face was rugged and covered in scars, and his lower jaw jutted out inhumanly far, complete with long boar tusks curving up to frame his small, piglike eyes.

"That's far enough, you three!" he called. "Tell me what you want before things get ugly."

Mezou stepped forward, all six hands in clear view. "We don't want any trouble," he called back. "We just heard you were recruiting, that's all."

This was a risk, Izuku knew. The Neo-Stainists may have been known for taking more or less everyone who wanted to join, but as Mezou had discovered, these people might not be Neo-Stainists. Their whole story might fall apart right here.

It seemed they were in luck, though. The boar-man's expression softened, and he said, "Ah, new recruits, then! You're welcome here."

Izuku breathed a sigh of relief…right up until the man added, "You know, you two can take off your cloaks. There's no need to hide, here, not for anyone, even mutants."

Mina and Izuku exchanged a confused look, and as the man waited expectantly, Mina gave an obvious shrug. She threw back the hood of her cloak, and took off her mask for good measure.

The man beamed. Turning to Izuku, he said encouragingly, "I know it's intimidating, but you can be free. Take off the cloak."

Izuku's eyes went wide.

"He thinks I'm a mutant too," Izuku realized. It was a logical conclusion, from his perspective, but…still.

Mezou met Izuku's eyes, and then they both knew the truth: they couldn't get out of this one. If Izuku revealed himself, their story would crumble, and they'd be at a disadvantage against the full force of the Neo-Stainists before they could even get to Toga.

So Izuku opted to strike first.

With one hand, he moved as if to remove the cloak. With the other, he summoned Black Whip, which shot forward to wrap around the boar-man's head and neck. With a muffled yelp, he was pulled off the battlements, and deposited at Izuku's feet, swiftly immobilized and pinned to the ground. Izuku yanked off the cloak, letting it drop to the stone below in a heap, and met the man's eyes.

Izuku may not have been wearing his hero costume, but the combination of his face, the green lightning beginning to crackle off his body, and Black Whip made his identity unmistakable. The boar-man's eyes went wide.

"Y-you're not…I… Atlas?" he wheezed, clearly shocked.

Izuku couldn't help the amused grin that played over his face as he leaned close to the captive. "The one and only," he confirmed. "Now then, go to sleep. Maybe when you wake up, this will all have been a bad dream."

With that, he punched the man squarely in the face, and he dropped like a rock. Izuku let the unconscious man slump to the floor, and stood back up. He met Mina's eye; she looked unimpressed.

"Was that really necessary?" she asked. It took Izuku a second to gather his thoughts enough to reply; he was too busy staring at her exposed face, which he'd seen barely a handful of times. She still looked as regal as ever, though the short-cropped hair and angry scar on one cheek added a feral undertone to her face as well.

Finally, Izuku shook his head to clear it, then replied, "I mean, no. But it still worked."

"Except for the fact that he didn't open the gate, so we're stuck out here," Mezou pointed out, gesturing at the sturdy metal obstacle. Izuku studied it for a moment. The gate was sizable, seemed to be in good repair, and was clearly locked tight against intruders. Something like this must have been a major obstacle in the average gang war or small-scale conflict, and an intimidating show of power besides.

In other words, it didn't have a chance in hell against him.

Almost lazily, Izuku strode up to the door, cranking One For All up to more than fifty percent, the highest he'd gone since he'd been ambushed by Scorpio. He wound back, and kicked it. Hard.

With the sound of screeching metal and shattering rock, the enormous iron doors flew from their hinges, dented in the center from the force of the impact. They tumbled end-over-end into the compound, before finally coming to a stop, sending up enormous clouds of dust as they ground against the stone. Every single person within the Neo-Stainist fortress turned at the same time, staring in shock at the destroyed gate, which had fallen with enough force to completely obscure whoever had taken it down in the dust cloud.

On the other side, Mezou and Mina just stared in shock. They'd never even imagined that Izuku was capable of that. For a while, it seemed, they'd forgotten just how powerful Atlas was, and just what it meant that he was the single strongest hero in Japan. They glanced at each other as Izuku turned to grin at them.

"Did you know he could do that?" Mezou asked. Mina just gave an elaborate shrug.

"How the fuck would I know?" she countered. "I've never seen him do anything but get his ass kicked!"

"Like I said," Izuku called back. "Scorpio got a lucky shot."

Mina and Mezou swiftly looked back at their ally, who was still wearing an enormous grin on his face. He gestured at the wide-open gateway, still covered in a dust cloud that, along with the abject shock everyone inside the compound must have been experiencing, gave them a few precious seconds before all hell broke loose.

"Are you guys coming or not?" he asked.

Mina was too busy wondering what the hell was wrong with her body temperature to react, so Mezou shook himself free of his surprise first. He strode up to Izuku, and even though he towered over the hero, he still felt awfully puny next to him.

"Remember, no collateral damage," he told Izuku. "If someone isn't attacking you, don't fight them. I didn't help you just to let you hurt a bunch of innocent people."

Izuku nodded. "Got it. Also, they're all gonna be on high alert now, so we need to make sure Toga doesn't slip away. Mina?"

When she heard Izuku call her name, Mina finally snapped back to reality. "Yeah?" she asked, fighting off a slight blush as she met Izuku's eyes.

Izuku was still grinning, but his voice was all business as lightning flashed all around him. "You're the quickest of the three of us," he told her. "I need you to find Toga, and stop her from getting away. Corner her, take her down if you can, it doesn't matter. All of this is pointless if she gets away."

Mina's blood froze. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mezou staring meaningfully at her. She had every chance she needed to have her revenge…assuming that Toga was the one she needed vengeance on in the first place. And all she had to do was break Izuku's trust.

Swallowing heavily, Mina nodded back. "I'm on it," she told Izuku.

Izuku grinned, and turned back to the rapidly-fading dust cloud.

"Then let's do this," he said. Mezou and Mina didn't even need to say a word as the three of them charged through the open gate.

From the second that Mezou, Mina, and Izuku burst into the compound, it was pure chaos.

The Neo-Stainists were tough, numerous, and determined to defend their home. They roared in pure fury as they surged to meet their attackers. If anything, the fact that there were only three of them-which probably should have made them nervous about just how strong those three were-only emboldened them. Izuku soon found himself in a whirling, chaotic brawl with half a dozen opponents, some mutants, some not. That first fight ended in less than thirty seconds, as Izuku moved too fast for the eye to catch, dodging a punch here, striking with the force of a cannonball there, and rapidly leaving all six of his opponents as groaning, defeated heaps on the ground. He had less than a second to catch his breath before another tide of enemies swarmed him.

Mina moved almost as fast, but she wasn't bothering to stop and fight any of the Neo-Stainists, much to their frustration. She'd spotted that tangled mop of blond hair moving at high speed away from the fight, suggesting Toga was trying to make her getaway. Such a surprise that a serial killer had no loyalty to her cause. Mina slid between the legs of a muscular four-armed man, ran along the wall of a long, low building, and covered the few dozen yards of open ground to the tunnel entrance Toga had vanished into so fast, it seemed friction simply didn't apply to her. As a matter of fact, it didn't-she was skating along on a constant flow of acid that melted and lubricated the ground beneath her feet. Within moments, she had vanished after her quarry.

Mezou, meanwhile, simply destroyed anyone who tried to stop him. Izuku could tell that he was a grappler by nature-his favorite tactic was simply grabbing opponents and slamming them into something, whether that was the ground, a wall, or their friends. Normally, a grappler would have struggled in a massive, chaotic brawl while outnumbered so heavily, but Mezou got around that problem by simply having a truly enormous number of hands. From the very moment he burst through the smoke, Mezou had resembled some mythological beast more than a man, with countless arms bursting from the roots at the ends of his webbed limbs, a constantly-shifting hydra of fists that could each move independently and strike with all the force of Mezou's enormous, lightning-quick body. He plowed into the front line of the Neo-Stainists with all the subtlety and destructive power of a battering ram, leaving a long trail of unconscious enemies in his wake.

Izuku knew he could have ended the fight faster at a higher percent, but he was hoping to follow Mezou's advice as much as possible. The battlefield was simply too chaotic and close-quarters, and there were too many innocents caught in the crossfire. As Izuku zigzagged his way across the compound, dodging or crushing anyone in his way, he found himself relishing the fight. It wasn't often he got to stretch his wings like this; he rarely had to push himself, nowadays. One For All was just too strong for anyone to resist. And, as much as Izuku sometimes felt guilty for admitting it, going all-out in a fight was honestly fun. There was something about the rush he got while pouring One For All into every moment that was simply unparalleled by anything else in the world.

It didn't take long for most of the small fry to get weeded out. Between Mezou and Izuku, two of the Underground's most capable fighters were here, and they were ripping through the Neo-Stainists like they were made of paper. But there were a few holdouts, as the best the Neo-Stainists had refused to go down.

Just as he put down one opponent with a vicious blow to the chest, Izuku was alerted by a shout from across the battlefield. Following it to the source, he found Mezou grappling with a woman who had the body of an enormous boa constrictor. Stretched out, she must have been twenty feet long or more, not including the human torso that was seamlessly joined to the snake's body at the waist. The woman was lightning-quick, and as Izuku watched, she fought to wrap her enormously muscular tail around Mezou's chest, trying to crush him. Despite Mezou's best efforts to grab her, his hands couldn't get enough leverage to budge her. Clearly, the woman's strength was as off-the-charts ridiculous as Mezou's own. Slowly but surely, she seemed to be winning.

Batting away the bizarre mental image of an octopus fighting a snake that the scene inspired in him, Izuku raced to Mezou's aid. Unfortunately, as he raced closer, the woman saw him coming. Her slitted, reptilian eyes lit up with what could only be delight, and in a flash, she released Mezou from her grip. Before Izuku could even realize what was happening, she was heading straight at him.

However fast Izuku had thought the woman was, she turned out to be faster. In an attempt to keep her from getting close, he tried to flick his fingers to create an explosion of force, but she slipped past it before he could aim properly. Izuku's eyes went wide as she suddenly turned, and the end of her tail came whirling around, moving too fast to even see. Izuku felt something crack as the woman tail-whipped him so hard he flew straight through the solid stone wall of the nearest (thankfully empty) building. Groaning, he tried to stumble to his feet, but before he could, the woman had him pinned. Long, muscular coils wrapped tight around him, squeezing the air out of his lungs in pained gasps.

As Izuku fought for breath, hands trapped uselessly against his sides, the woman grinned, drawing him closer.

"Well, well, well, if it issssn't Atlasssss," she hissed, annoying Izuku with her stereotypical accent almost as much as Scorpio's name had. "What did thosssse traitors do to get you to come down here, eh?"

With as much force as he could muster, Izuku spat, "They are not… traitors…"

The woman's only reply was a dark chuckle as she squeezed the life out of him. Izuku thrashed helplessly, but he knew it was useless. He would need a miracle to save him, now.

Instead of a miracle, he got Mezou Shoji. A hulking form appeared in the hole Izuku had punched in the wall, and the woman cried out as the tip of her tail was yanked hard enough to distract her from her prey. Izuku gasped, taking in as much air as he could as the woman's coils loosened. He craned his neck to look as the woman was forcibly dragged off of him, the immense strength of her snake body not enough to match Mezou's as more and more hands grabbed at her, hauling her deeper into the deadliest bear hug in the Depths.

His whole body straining with the effort of wrangling the enormously powerful woman, Mezou grunted, "I…Hate…Snakes."

Mezou seized the struggling woman by the very end of her tail, and cracked her like a whip. The woman screamed, a sound that was very abruptly cut off as the sound of her head receiving several Gs worth of force was followed by her going very, very limp. Not dead-probably-but also not likely to wake up for a good long while.

Izuku groaned as he got to his feet. Yep, his ribs didn't like that one bit. Hopefully they weren't too broken.

"Thanks for that one," he said to Mezou as the larger man stepped back to let him come out of the building. Mezou didn't say a word, and his eyes didn't lose a drop of their disdain and barely-veiled dislike. After a moment, though, he nodded.

Before Izuku could refocus on the fight, though, there was a loud slamming sound, and Mezou grunted in pain. Shocked, Izuku whirled to face his ally, only to find an enormous, six-foot-long spear buried in Mezou's shoulder. The enormous mutant staggered, though his expression was more annoyed than scared or agonized.

Izuku knew that he needed to prioritize finding their attacker over all else, so his eyes began to rapidly scan the rapidly-depopulating compound, searching for the spear's origin. Before he could find it, though, he was forced to leap backwards to avoid a second jagged spear that slammed downwards with enough force to embed the tip half a foot into solid stone. Looking up as he heard the slow beating of heavy wings, Izuku spotted the culprit hanging some thirty feet in the air above and ahead of them; the man resembled nothing so much as a European gargoyle, complete with stony skin, permanently-snarling face with protruding teeth, enormous wings, and a misshapen, bizarrely-proportioned body that looked more like carved stone than flesh and blood. As Izuku watched, the mutant raised one hand, and green energy gathered into the crystallized form of yet another spear.

Izuku's body moved before he knew what was happening. He kicked into the air, activating Float without even having to think about it. Angling himself towards the man, he soared rapidly into the air, gaining height fast enough that he might just be able to get there before the man threw his next spear-

As it turned out, he couldn't get there in time. The man reared back and tossed the spear with truly enormous force, not at Izuku, but at the wounded and dazed Mezou below them.

Izuku realized where the spear was heading just in time, and acted out of complete desperation. He contorted in midair so that he was facing downwards, tendrils of Black Whip extending from his outstretched hand. Izuku felt as if he was moving in slow motion as four Black Whip tendrils shot across the empty expanse of air in a fraction of a fraction of a second, wrapping tightly around the deadly javelin. As soon as he had it, Izuku felt the tendrils go taut; the spear had been thrown with such insane force, it was entirely capable of dragging him along with it on its journey into Mezou's heart.

"Fine, then," Izuku thought, somewhere in those frozen bits of time, even though he had no chance to think, no time to do anything but act. "If I can't stop it…I'll redirect it."

Instead of trying vainly to slow the javelin down or stop it, Izuku moved with it instead. He tugged up with Black Whip, pouring every drop of his strength into the nudge.

With all of its forward momentum intact, the spear curved upwards, dragging Izuku with it as it was hauled from a straight trajectory into an arc, a semicircle of glittering death. The sheer speed behind it chafed at Izuku's control, fighting him for the right to sail straight the way it had been thrown, but Izuku refused to let it. He grit his teeth as he spun with the spear, executing a full somersault in midair from the sheer centrifugal force of the enormous projectile. In less than a heartbeat, the javelin had been completely redirected; it approached the apex of the circle, ready to swing down and complete a full loop.

It never got that far.

Just as the spear reached the apex of its flight, Izuku poured everything he had into One For All. Anger, fear, hate, love, none of it mattered. There was only the endless stream of power; indeed, for that fraction of a second, Izuku was the power, was a being writ in lightning rather than flesh, bright enough to illuminate the entire compound with a blinding green sun.

"One Hundred Percent," Izuku thought to himself, grimly satisfied.

All that power surged up the straining tendrils binding the javelin to Izuku; they were like electric cables, transmitting every drop of that force straight to the spear, stray thunderbolts erupting from tendril and spear and man alike.

The spear was glowing now, glowing like the sun itself. It dipped just past its apex, now moving with twenty times the force it had been thrown with. Izuku looked down, into the eyes of the gargoyle-man who had tried to kill Mezou, and saw that light glowing there, too. The man was terrified, and in his eyes, Izuku saw why; the man knew what was about to happen. Somehow, even though he had no chance to react, no chance to even think, he knew.

And then Izuku smiled. Haloed by the lightning, eyes glowing green with power, he knew that the image of him bringing that spear down would be burned into the man's eyes forever.

The spear curved down, pointing straight at the man, and Izuku finally let it fall. The tendrils fizzled away, dissolving into darkness that winked out of existence, and the spear flew.

There was a roar like nothing any resident of the Depths had ever heard as the spear broke the sound barrier in the still, dry air. A shockwave sent rocks falling from cliffs and made buildings shudder all around the compound…and the gargoyle-man simply vanished from view as the spear plowed into him like the fist of God.

Izuku wasn't quite aware of his own body until his shoes skidded against solid stone. He realized he had come down to earth still in the extended, unwound position he had completed the throw from, one fist pushing against the earth, the other flared out to his side, knees bent, chest heaving deeply. He looked like a Greek statue-not a bad description, since he had just completed a javelin throw that would have put any Olympian to shame. He rose to his feet, wincing as his ribs protested every breath.

Raising his head, Izuku finally saw the devastation his throw had caused. Struck by his own spear, the gargoyle-man had slammed directly into the thick, solid stone of the compound wall…and torn right through it. A gaping hole at least ten feet wide had opened up in the wall, and outside it, there was an unmistakable skid mark through a forest of small stalagmites that had been broken and torn up by the passage of the unfortunate mutant. Izuku couldn't see the man, but he had a sneaking feeling he wasn't dead-that stony skin had looked tough.

Izuku jumped a little when Mezou tapped him on the shoulder. The larger man had made his way to where Izuku had skidded to a stop in the open ground outside the building they'd been attacked in, still clutching his impaled shoulder.

Izuku waited for him to speak. People tended to react…oddly the first time they saw him use one hundred percent. Ejiro had been slack-jawed for hours. All Might, perhaps the person most able to imagine what it was like, had been teary-eyed with awe. Bakugo had just been slightly angrier than normal. Even now, looking around, Izuku could see that there were a few dozen Neo-Stainists left, but they were cowering, clearly terrified to confront the person who had just done that.

Mezou, though, was still wearing the exact same expression he had been when he'd saved Izuku's life, just…a few moments earlier, actually. His eyes betrayed nothing.

At last, he spoke. "Not bad," he admitted.

Izuku raised an eyebrow. "If this is an act," he thought, "this man deserves a fucking Oscar."

"If you say so," he replied. "Is your shoulder okay?"

Mezou looked down at the enormous spear still embedded in his shoulder. With a dismissive snort, he extended a dozen hands to grab it. He grunted as they pulled it free, much to Izuku's shock. That shock abated somewhat when he watched the deep wound start to close rapidly, all by itself. Mezou broke the spear in two with one hand around the shaft, then tossed the pieces aside with contempt.

"Give it a few minutes, and I'll be right as rain," Mezou said causally.

Izuku shook his head in disbelief. "Your quirk is awesome," he told Mezou.

Mezou snorted, and gave Izuku a strange look. "Says the man who just became the sun," his expression seemed to say.

A moment later, the Neo-Stainists seemed to finally regain their senses. A yell rose up from the other side of the compound, and Izuku and Mezou turned to see a surprisingly large number of Neo-Stainists charging towards them.

Izuku muttered, "These guys just don't quit, do they?"

Mezou made a grunting noise that probably meant he agreed. "I'll deal with them," he said.

Izuku raised an eyebrow. "You're injured," he protested.

"So are you," Mezou countered. "And besides, we didn't come here to beat up a bunch of mooks. We came here to catch that serial killer, and it's been a while since we've seen Mina."

Izuku's eyes went wide. "Shit," he breathed. "I just realized I sent her off without backup to fight Toga. I hope she's okay."

"She's fine, I guarantee you," Mezou replied, quickly shutting down Izuku's mounting worry. "It's gonna take more than a two-bit serial killer to hurt her. No, I'm more worried about what she's gonna do."

Izuku frowned. "What are you talking about?" he asked.

Mezou opened his mouth as if to speak, then hesitated. "If I take the time to explain, it might be too late to prevent it," he replied. "Just… go, dammit. Now."

Izuku started to argue, but Mezou's deadly serious glare made him rethink. He decided that if Mezou trusted him enough to send him to help Mina, it was only fair to trust Mezou to do what he said he would do.

"Okay then," he told Mezou. "See you in a bit."

Mezou nodded, and turned to face the approaching Neo-Stainists. Izuku raced for the nearest tunnel entrance he could see, determined to find both Mina and Toga.

He just hoped he wasn't too late.

Mina was getting sick and tired of these tunnels. They wound around and around like a fucking maze, they were poorly lit, and they had lots and lots of places for Toga to ambush her from. Which she had.

Repeatedly.

Mina had mostly managed to escape those attacks unhurt, though one had given her a nice nick across her outer thigh that she was definitely going to feel later. Even so, every time Toga had tried to pull a knife on her, Mina had managed to melt it away without too much trouble. Yet, the damn woman just kept pulling out more knives. Where did she even get them all?

It had taken Mina far too long to finally wear Toga down, but she had. If there were emergency escape routes out of the compound somewhere down here-and Mina was sure that there were-Toga had either not managed to find them, or Mina had managed to cut her off from them. One way or the other, this chase was about to end.

But that still left the issue of what Mina was going to do when she caught Toga. And she still didn't have the answer to that. She was scared of even asking the question of herself. One way or another, though, she would have to decide.

Suddenly, a familiar voice called out, "Mina? Are you there?"

Mina's eyes went wide, and she felt a bizarre mix of relief, frustration, and fading hope. Maybe Izuku would take the decision out of her hands. She yelled back, "Yeah, I'm right here! Quick, help me corner Toga!"

Without even needing to be prompted or have the layout of the tunnels explained, Izuku called back, "Got it!"

From somewhere between them, that silky sweet voice Mina had rapidly learned to hate joined in. "Is that Izuku I hear? Oh, I'm such a lucky girl!"

Mina was tempted to shout something insulting back, but that would have just given away her position…like Toga had just done.

At last, Mina came around a corner and found herself face-to-face with the murderer herself. She matched the description Izuku had given them eerily well; yellow-blonde hair up in two poorly done loose buns, a petite figure that might have been cute in another life, and pointed canine teeth. Worst of all, though, were her eyes. They were golden-yellow, almost like Mina's, except leached of color and kindness. Toga's eyes were cold and hungry, and no matter what emotion she was expressing, they stayed that way. It was like looking into the eyes of a predator.

Toga tried to backpedal away from Mina, but when her back hit the wall, she realized that she was in a small dead-end room, with little more than some scattered crates for cover. She had cornered herself.

"Going somewhere?" Mina asked with calm she didn't feel. Toga didn't reply as Izuku's footsteps grew louder. Out of the corner of her eye, Mina spotted him entering the hallway she'd just come down. As soon as he reached the room, Mina stepped back, hands trembling as she fought her own instincts.

"What should I do?" she wondered. "Am I really willing to give up my only chance for revenge?"

Toga's sickly yellow eyes glittered ferally in the dim light. In a voice like honeyed poison, she said, "Hello there, dear Izuku. It's been quite a while, hasn't it?"

Izuku didn't move, or even change his expression. He simply stood in the only entrance to the room, his jaw set. He looked like a different man then, half in shadow, with stray bolts of lightning dancing their way across his skin. Mina stood beside him as he agreed, "Far too long, Toga. I should have brought you in years ago. Now, come quietly, or else."

The power radiating off Izuku's skin grew even stronger, and Mina had no doubt about what that "else" would be.

All that was happening in the back of her mind, though. Her thoughts seemed distant and hazy, fading into a blood-red fog that thickened with each second she spent staring into the face of a murderer.

"I can't let her get away with it," she thought. "I can't keep mourning him forever."

Mina recalled what Izuku had told her about Toga. She was a serial killer who had been targeting mutants as easy prey. She'd been active down here for years, nearly a decade, in fact.

And all those facts lined up with the worst day of Mina's life, so perfectly that she'd come to a terrible, awful realization. It had been why she'd brought Izuku here in the first place.

Toga had killed someone she'd loved. It made too much sense-there was no other explanation that fit so well. Not that she'd ever found, at least.

The monster smiled evilly. "And what if I don't?" she asked. "Will you set your pet on me? What did you promise the poor girl, to get her to help you?"

Toga gestured at Mina, eyes twinkling with an inhuman light. The insults rolled off Mina's back like water, but she couldn't shake those eyes. How many people had died staring into them? Had they been the last thing he'd seen before…

That thought broke Mina's control entirely. Before Toga could say another word, Mina exploded past Izuku, moving so quickly he could only stand frozen in shock. Toga made a strangled gasping noise as Mina grabbed her by the wrist and throat, and slammed her violently into the stone wall of the dark room.

Clearly just as surprised, Toga choked out, "Ooh, a feisty one. I have to say, cutie, you've got quite the unique charm to you. I wonder if your blood would taste any different than a human's."

There was the unmistakable bubbling sound of acid beginning to form in Mina's hands as she pinned Toga in place. "Listen to me carefully, murderer," she said in a low, deadly voice with more hate in it than she had ever let out before. "I'm only going to say this once. Did you kill him?"

Toga could barely move her head, but her expression suggested a quizzical tilt as she answered, "You'll have to be more specific, cutie. I've killed a lot of people, you know."

Mina's grip tightened, forcing a pained hiss from Toga's mouth as her acid grew stronger, nibbling at pale skin. She didn't know where Izuku was or what he was doing, and she didn't care. All Mina wanted was to kill Toga, more than anything she'd ever wanted in her life. But she couldn't-not yet. Not until she knew for sure.

"Six years ago," she snapped, every muscle in her body straining, thirsty for blood, for vengeance. "His name was Fumikage Tokoyami. Did you kill him?"

Toga's reaction was nothing like Mina expected. She looked into Mina's eyes, golden stars meeting feral slits for half a second of frozen time, and then she laughed. A cackling, wild laugh that was more confirmation than Mina ever needed that this woman was totally, utterly insane burst from her lips, leaving Mina stunned and shattered.

In that gentle, evil voice, Toga crooned, "Oh, you want revenge, don't you? You think I killed someone you loved. Well, maybe I did. I can't say I remember all of them, though-there's just too many! How is a girl supposed to keep track of them all? But that name…well, it rings a bell."

Mina made a sound that was half choking sob, half cry of rage. She tried to tighten her grip further, her acid getting stronger with every passing second. But before she could, Toga added, "Oh, but don't take my word for it. You see, I'm fond of some keepsakes. I like holding on to bits of some people from my past, to remember them by. And I think I've got a little bit of that one left…"

Suddenly, Toga moved. One of her knees shot upwards into Mina's gut, and Mina was so distracted by the firestorm of hatred and grief raging in her heart that she didn't see it coming. She stumbled backwards for half a second, nearly doubling over as she scrambled to avoid a follow-up attack. Finally, she heard Izuku start forwards, a sound that might have been her name on his lips.

But Toga's attack never came. Instead, she grabbed for something in her sleeve, or maybe on her wrist-Mina couldn't tell. She barely caught a glimpse of it as Toga yanked it free with a victorious grin on her face.

It was a small blood vial, one that looked cracked and weathered. As Mina watched, Toga opened it and poured it straight into her mouth, sighing happily as she swallowed it down.

Mina's entire body went cold as Toga's form began to melt, turning into some sort of amorphous goo. The hum of lightning and the smell of ozone from Izuku's quirk both grew stronger-whatever was happening, it was making him instinctively pour on power, ready for a fight.

Then, a face emerged once again from the goo, and Mina's heart shattered into a thousand shards of glass, because she knew it.

A distinctly avian-shaped head, with dark black feathers and a curved yellow beak. A somber, reserved look in wide eyes, tempered by a reserve of kindness and strength she'd once relied so much on. The face of the first person Mina had ever trusted. Toga-wearing the face of Fumikage Tokoyami-smiled widely and evilly, and it was wrong, wrong like a blue sky at midnight, a twisted, impossible memory.

"I bet you missed this one, didn't you?" he- she- murmured, and Mina almost sobbed at the somber, dulcet tones of Fumikage's voice, at how they were being perverted by the serial killer, used to break her down even more.

It was like looking into a past Mina had forced herself to forget-or like meeting a ghost on a dark, lonely road, where everything was a twisted reflection of what she'd once known. The sight of his face filled Mina with disbelieving horror-horror that immediately morphed into all-consuming, murderous rage.

Mina was going to kill Toga with her bare fucking hands. She was going to melt through her throat and rip out her eyes. She was going to…to…

Mina lunged. She didn't even recall standing upright again, but she was already leaping for Toga's throat. It had to be her throat-it looked so much like Fumi, but it wasn't. Fumi was dead. For the first time in six years, Mina knew it for sure, knew she'd never see him again. It destroyed her utterly, left her as a seething ball of hate and rage and pain. All she wanted to do was destroy.

Toga shrieked in Fumikage's voice as Mina's hands burned into her flesh. For a second, the dark room grew darker, something imperceptible flashing between the bodies of the two women brawling on the dirty floor of the room.

"I'll kill you!" Mina howled as her hands found Toga's throat, burning, ripping, breaking. She could feel Toga thrashing under her, and some broken fragment of her heart felt sick glee at hurting the woman who'd murdered her first friend.

Then, out of nowhere, there was Izuku. Strong hands grabbed Mina's shoulders, pried at her clenching fists, spoke urgent but steady words she couldn't hear. But Mina was too far gone; her hands, almost her entire body in fact, was by now coated in a layer of acid strong enough to melt through solid steel. It splashed everywhere, with every movement, and Mina couldn't find it in her to care about the sounds Izuku made as he grabbed at her, sounds that could only have been suppressed screams, quashed by a will too strong to break like Mina had. At last, something in Mina cracked, just as Izuku said, "No!"

In half a second, Mina found herself yanked away, falling to the floor in a clatter of limbs and splashes of dying acid. She blinked, not sure what was going on, or why she hadn't felt Toga's death throes yet.

She realized a moment later that Izuku was still grabbing her, still had her helpless on the ground, unwilling to let her go. She thrashed desperately, determined to get her hands back around Toga's throat.

"L-let me go!" she shouted. "She needs to die, Izuku! I'm gonna kill her!"

In a voice that trembled with barely-suppressed pain, Izuku murmured, "No, Mina. I won't let you kill her. I'm sorry."

Mina hated him in that moment, more powerfully than she'd ever thought she could hate anything. She almost turned on him, almost tried to melt him into a puddle on the spot. The only reason she wasn't able to was because Toga staggered to her feet, still wearing the corpse of Fumikage like a fucking costume.

She chuckled darkly as she felt the ring of barely-there skin around her neck in the shape of Mina's hands; another second, and Mina would have probably melted down to the bone.

"Typical hero," she mocked, wheezing for breath as she fought the pain. "Can't even kill someone properly. Although…does that really still apply to you, Izuku?"

Then, something new happened. Strange energy, like shadows but darker, covered Toga's body like a second skin, forming talons over her hands. Glowing yellow eyes replaced Fumikage's, as a jagged shadow formed into a monster over him. The darkness boiled, and Toga struck.

Mina flinched instinctively, but she quickly found herself pinned by Izuku, who flung himself over her protectively. She heard him grunt as those shadow talons raked down his shoulder and back, leaving deep gouges. Then, Toga vanished, racing through the empty doorway and out into the labyrinth of tunnels.

Gone.