"You plan to do this on the hottest day of the year?"

"It'll be the best chance we have for this."

"Oh?"

"Kai Chisaki… He's brilliant in some senses, but he's held back significantly by his phobia of contaminants. His mask has filtration systems built into it as a result. When we hit the compound with the r18, we're going to have to make sure that it's at a time where that mask isn't on his face."

"So judging from what I've seen, that'll be either when he's eating or bathing."

"Pretty much. I was thinking about launching the attack when he was bathing because that would have been a bigger window of opportunity, but bathrooms don't have temperature regulation. So we'll be stuck with the shorter duration."

"And the higher temperature will mean that the cooling system will be working harder than it would otherwise."

"Like I said, it'll be the chance we have. And this is all assuming that the gas doesn't activate too slowly and he'll be able to manually flush his system out with his Quirk."

"This plan sounds very dangerous."

"The two of you can back out if you want. I'll come up with something else if I have to. But I don't think I can help that little girl on my own."

"We're still in. We just hope you know what you're doing."

"Not even slightly. But that's not the part you'll need to worry about. When you get to Eri, make sure you're ready to drop her if her horn starts glowing…"


The air was still pink when Twice kicked down the door leading into the compound.

For a moment, I was somewhat astounded by the man's strength. He wasn't at all unassuming with his build, but I hadn't been expecting him to get through what looked like a deadbolt with one strike. Then he turned around to look at me, and with a jolt I remembered that I was supposed to be taking point for this.

The layout of the compound was obnoxious. There really wasn't any other way to put it. The corridors were long, the doors numerous, and every turn in the road led to another hallway that had nothing to differentiate it from the rest. Early on in the planning for this I'd given up on looking for landmarks, opting instead to focus on counting the doors as they passed.

The best advantage I had here was, ironically, Chisaki himself. Less than half a week of surveillance had been enough to get his schedule down to the minute. He worked, ate, bathed, and slept so uniformly in his day to day life that I could have comfortably diagnosed him with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder myself. There was very little in his life that could force him to deviate from that schedule, and the last yakuza member that had tried ended up as a red stain on the wall.

It was extremely worrying how quickly watching Chisaki had desensitised me to the body horror he so casually would indulge in with his Quirk. The anticipation was the worst part; after a while it would become a guessing game for whoever or whatever would set him off enough to disassemble someone else.

Sometimes he would reassemble them. Sometimes he wouldn't. I didn't know if my plan would work, but I could already tell that even if this ended up being useless, Overhaul not even existing as a Quirk would be much better than leaving it in Chisaki's hands.

The journey through the corridors wasn't quiet, even though the mist in the air had still yet to dissipate. Twice had been a step behind me the entire time, jabbering about something mostly to himself. I would have time later to feel bad about ignoring him completely, but for now all of my focus was going towards the maze we were in.

The fourth turn, a right directly after the fifteenth pot plant that looked halfway between living and dead, passed us by. From here it would be a straight shot to the study that Chisaki always took his meals in, outfit custom with air purifiers and an emergency decontamination shower in case shit went horribly awry. Those purifiers were currently pumping that office full of more knockout gas than any other room in the structure. All we would need to do was get past the man guarding the entrance and- wait, what?

The man, who had been nervously glancing to his side, straightened immediately as I turned the corner. There was only three doors worth of hallway between us; I probably figured out that his Quirk had to do with the strange growth over the bottom of his face at the same time he'd realised that the mask I was wearing wasn't the same kind as Chisaki's group.

The moment before fight or flight kicked in ended with a curse from me and an inarticulate shout from him. I was turning around, ready to hurl my stumpy ass out of the way, when his hand came up. Whatever he was holding caught a glare from the fluorescent light in the ceiling, a metallic cylinder aimed directly at me. He was moving much faster than me, a natural consequence of the size difference, and I couldn't even call out a warning to Twice before a loud bang shook the walls.

I'd been punched in the side before, accidentally and on purpose. This felt like those times, except instead of someone's fist, it felt more like a wrecking ball. I hit the ground with a pained gasp, clutching at the massive bruise it felt like my ribs had become.

The jovial saunter that Twice had been using throughout the corridors vanished in an instant. Speaking was still out of my grasp, but I think the choking noises I made conveyed my confusion perfectly well as he jumped over my body and directly into the firing line. His arm whipped around, moving quicker than my eyes could keep up with, and something left his hand, nothing but a vaguely yellow blur in the overwhelmingly grey corridor.

With confidence I couldn't help but admire, he'd turned away from the guard before whatever he'd launched even closed the distance. The object hit the man directly between the eyes, and he let out a strange squeak as he collapsed. Or maybe that was what Twice had thrown, which I could now make out as a rubber chicken.

The fuck.

"You alright, Vitaceae? You're probably gonna die." The second sentence came out of Twice's mouth much more gruffly than the first, yet paradoxically sing-songy in pitch. Much like I'd been doing the entire time I'd been here, I ignored him, taking another deep, shuddering breath before raising my hand away from the new hole in my coat.

It came away purple. And slightly sticky.

Hold up.

Expanding my lungs was getting slightly easier as I sat up, supporting my weight with one hand behind me while the other delved into the pocket over where I'd been shot. It was the same pocket where I'd stored the glob of hair that had come off with the phone earlier. Turning the sphere over, I stared down at the small hole in the middle of it, and the relatively tiny bullet that had made that hole, still stuck inside the Quirked keratin.

A crackling in my ears knocked me from the mental loop the sight had stuck me in, of hysterical laughter and a voice that sounded suspiciously like Mineta's gloating. "Vitaceae, I heard a gunshot. Are you both alright?"

Relief coalesced in my body, escaping my lips as a bark of laughter. I pushed myself to my feet, accepting the hand that Twice offered in help.

"We're good, Gentle." I led the charge down the hallway, most of the caution I'd felt earlier being hit with a bullet. Trying to be quiet had been pointless earlier with Twice babbling, but after the echoing crack of a gun? "We had a live one, got a shot off on me. Keep an eye out on your end."

"I've secured Eri. Stay safe."

"Already?" That was muttered to myself as the earpiece dropped the connection. Here I was assuming we'd be waiting on Gentle to catch up to us. At this point I think I was just severely overestimating the length of my legs.

Still, that just meant we'd have to pick up the pace. Jumping over the guard's laid out body, I took a second to appreciate the chicken-shaped mark going down his face, before turning back to the door. Because Chisaki was a self-absorbed piece of shit that kept all the good stuff to himself, it was made of metal while every other door up to this point had been wooden. A keypad was embedded in the wall beside it, thankfully only asking for a string of numbers instead of something ridiculous like an eye scan.

Standing on my toes, I punched in the numbers, working from the many memories of watching Chisaki perform this exact action. Thirteen digits with very little rhyme or reason flashed across the screen before the heavy bolt keeping the door latched shut clicked out of place. Planting a foot on the door, I heaved it open, doing my best to keep my balance and prepare for literally anything.

With Chisaki's Quirk, anything was a possibility. La Brava would have warned us if he was awake, but if at any point he did wake up, flushing any incapacitation agents from his system was a single touch away. Call me a coward, but I really didn't want to be stuck in a cage match against a pissed off Overhaul.

Attacking him while he was passed out on the ground was much more my style. And that's exactly the scene that greeted us.

From what I could tell, Chisaki had fallen backwards. A bowl of rice decorated the front of his shirt and the floorboards around him. Probably the choice that was easiest to clean? I didn't really know and I also didn't really care. I wasn't going to be around long enough to deal with the custodian staff.

Twice swept past me, the bag slung over his shoulder almost taking me out on the way. This part had originally been mine to perform, but that idea very quickly proved itself to be inefficient. There was only so much force you could put into a body this small. Hopefully soon that wouldn't be a problem.

Uncaring of the mess, Twice dropped his bag, using one foot to flip Chisaki's sleeping body over. We must have gotten our hands on some of the good stuff, because even with the floor squashing his nose into his face, Chisaki didn't even breathe differently.

"You just needed his Quirk, right?"

"Dead or alive." I gave Twice a grim nod, not really putting much thought into vocalising what had been my mantra going into this. Now more than ever it felt fitting; there was no telling if one of the yakuza members had gotten a small enough dosage of the gas to wake up, or if there was another Quirk present that could resist or counteract it.

This was the lion's den, and I had no idea what the timer was set on. And I really, really didn't feel like getting shot a second time.

"Gotcha." Rather than going for the shovel that he'd holstered over his back, Twice instead went for the bag he'd set down beside Chisaki's unconscious body, using one hand to dig within it while the other rubbed inquisitively at his chin. From my place guarding the door, I watched as he pulled out his costume's mask, a wrapped up sandwich, and the rubber chicken that had saved my life before finally, a tape measure found its way into his hand.

Paranoia kicking into full force, I turned to keep an eye on the hallway and the entrance. Twice was humming to himself, and soon enough the noise was joined by the tape measure rasping against itself, and the occasional scuffle as Chisaki's body was rolled around on the floor. I'm sure his germaphobic ass was going to love that.

It couldn't have been more than two minutes later before I heard the tape measure snap shut. Twice was climbing to his feet as I turned back to him, dusting his hands over Chisaki's now prone form. "Alright, done."

I raised an eyebrow at him, flicking my gaze between his proud grin and the still very much connected hands on Chisaki's body.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

Even through the gas mask obscuring his face, Twice's confusion was palpable. Sighing to myself as he tilted his head like a puppy, I mimed grabbing something from over my shoulder, hanging my hands low and kicking the pretend object I was holding towards the ground.

For good measure, I then took the load of invisible dirt and dumped it off to the side.

"Oh!" Thankfully for my blood pressure, still at a steady incline though it might have been. Twice seemed to get the picture. A bit more jovially than I had expected, he slung the shovel over his shoulder, twirling it around to hold above Chisaki's form like a stake about to be shoved through a vampire's heart. "So that's what you wanted. Why didn't you just say so?"

I didn't have time to look away, but even if I did I don't think I would have. It was going to be bloody, and definitely gruesome, and it was going to be a situation completely of my own making. For better or for worse, I was going to have to live with it, and Chisaki wasn't worth any sort of preservation of dignity.

So I watched the culmination of my own actions. I watched as Twice held the shovel high before plunging it down towards Chisaki's wrist.

I watched as he missed completely, and buried the sharpened head of the shovel so deep into his spine that the metal scraped across the floorboards on the other side.

For a moment, there was silence, except for the gasping chokes coming from Chisaki. Apparently even knockout gas modelled after a pro hero's Quirk wasn't quite strong enough to drown out the pain of having your back perforated by a gardening tool. It probably didn't get much better for the man when Twice stomped down on his tailbone for leverage, yanked the shovel out in one movement, and then brought it down on the base of his skull.

Lightheaded couldn't even begin to describe the sensation that hit me as I watched Twice relinquish the shovel, which remained standing upright. I think my body had skipped all the visceral reactions and settled directly into shock. Twice, in all his goofy gas mask glory, turned back to me. I tried really hard to not think about how that gas mask was probably the last thing Overhaul ever saw.

It didn't really work.

"I meant… hands… Quirk…" My own hands flopped uselessly, even though I'd been trying for emphasis. Twice looked down at them: I could almost see the gears working in his brain. He then turned back to Chisaki, and after a few seconds he perked up so much that it was almost impossible to not imagine a lightbulb appearing above his head.

"Oh yeah, you did mention that earlier, didn't you?" His hand curled around the shaft of the shovel once more, giving it a firm tug. Chisaki's spinal cord, the greedy little bastard, refused to hand it over. A sharper tug had Chisaki's body lurching up, the shovel still lodged firmly between his vertebrae. The movement sent Twice stumbling back, his arms windmilling desperately before his foot splashed down in a red puddle that hadn't been in the office before we got here.

He went down,landing on his bag and rolling with it. Most of the random crap he'd brought along spilled everywhere. With his sandwich over one eye and the rubber chicken stuck to his mask over the other, Twice stumbled to his feet, shaking a fist at Chisaki's body menacingly.

"Hey! That's my shovel! Give it back!"

Chisaki didn't respond, not that I was expecting him to. Fairly rude, but we had put him into a bit of a predicament, so I would let it slide this time. Much like Twice was now sliding along the ground, still trying to wrestle the shovel away from Chisaki.

"...I'll be outside if you need me."

The door closed on what was definitely one of the most disturbing scenes of my life. The guard at my feet groaned softly, shifting side to side as his eyes fluttered. Without moving my gaze from the far wall, I kicked at him until he stopped making noises.

Going into this, I'd known Chisaki likely wouldn't survive. Leaving open wounds as serious as missing limbs would make someone bleed out in minutes. Compared to that sort of pain, a quick death was almost a mercy. Certainly more than he would have deserved.

Even so, shouldn't this have affected me a bit more? I probably should have been feeling something a little beyond the current thought of, "oopsies."

Maybe it was shock. Yeah, that's probably what it was.

Naturally, it was about to get worse

"Vitaceae, I have a situation."

"Don't we all…" I sighed quietly to myself, before reaching for the earpiece. "What's up, Gentle?"

"Eri's Quirk activated-"

"WHAT!?" All of a sudden I was much more attentive. Gentle hadn't sounded any younger than before this began, and there wasn't any pain in his voice either, but that was still up there for bad situations to be in here. Second only to Chisaki's Quirk activating, now that I thought of it.

"At peace, I am uninjured." The steam I'd built up escaped in one explosive breath. "I made the air under her elastic and allowed her to rest on it when her horn started sparking, just as you warned me. However, when it stopped, she woke up, and… well…"

"She won't let him go," La Brava's voice supplied. She sounded amused, a far cry from the embarrassment I was picking up from Gentle. "She's refusing to approach the heroes when they arrive because 'one already saved her'."

I could hear Gentle heave a sigh over the connection. I mimicked him, for a very different reason.

The law had gotten very twisted after Quirks were introduced. Domestic situations were such a headache at this point that nobody could even agree on how they should be handled on a day to day basis. The info that I'd given Nighteye was good, and it was enough to get him on the scene, but it was also info from only one source.

A raid on the scale that he would be planning required more than that. Like the testimony of a witness, or an inciting incident from the villains in question.

In my mind, Eri would have been that witness. She would have been the police's ticket into the compound to use that lovely search warrant that was hopefully on its way. The plan had been to drop her off before she ever woke up; if she had slept through the entire ordeal then she wouldn't have been able to hand over any evidence on the people involved, namely us, even auspiciously.

At the same time, the heroes would have to move quickly. The longer they were forced to remain on the outside, the longer the yakuza had to wake up and realise that they were surrounded by law enforcement. And with their leader dead and their stocks full of Trigger?

Best case scenario, they would be detained quickly and without much bloodshed. The most realistic scenario? Yeah, no. I was fine with Chisaki dying today, I didn't plan on taking any heroes or police officers down with him.

It really was just one thing after another today. When I woke up yesterday and decided to burn my house down, I wasn't expecting that getting shot would be the least worrying thing to happen.

Think, damn it. I'd gotten us this far, I could clear the final hurdle. We just needed someone who would say the right thing at the right time, or some way to get the cops on the inside-

The door behind me slammed open. Jumping at least my entire height into the air, I swung around to watch as Twice swaggered out, his bag much more crimson than it had been going in. A second Twice followed him out, dragging Chisaki behind him.

I stared at Twice. Or, more specifically, I stared at the second Twice. Or, perhaps it was more accurate to call him the third Twice.

Slowly, I reached for the earpiece. Both Twices stopped what they were doing when they noticed where I was looking. Chisaki's body thumped to the ground when the clone let go of it, stepping away and whistling in feigned innocence. I think the look on my face was starting to scare him.

"Gentle, get to the car."

A breathless laugh slipped through my lips. Hopefully we would get some footage of what I was planning.

"I have an idea."