Hailstorm Vol 2

by Masked Spider

The second semester at U.A. has begun for Clay Cero and Slade Mason as they gear up to take on new assignments, new villains, the more advanced internships known as work studies and, the most evil of all, school work! So come along as these two friends continue their journey to become pro heroes! (note: read My Hero Academia Hailstorm first).

40. Mustard Factory Tour

Mustard Factory Tour

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest chapter of Hailstorm Vol. 2! This week we're checking out what's happening on Slade's end as they continue to look for Midoriya. And speaking of looking, why not take a look at my Pat reon and see what I got going on! But naturally you probably want to read this first, so with no review questions to answer this week, let's dive on in!

Outer Musufatu: An Hour Before Clay Encounters Lady Nagant

"You sure this is a good idea," Momo asked, adjusting the hood on her cloak. They were currently standing in an open alley with a light rain falling on their heads. The surrounding buildings were deserted with a few even showing damage from villains and/or looters. There wasn't much to left see here since it had been one of the places hit early on, making it an ideal meeting place. Or a good ambush point.

"About as good of an idea as it was the last time we dealt with the guy," Slade admitted, "we got some of the information we were looking for but not without a bit of trouble first."

"Which was kind of our fault," Jirou recalled in slight embarrassment while pulling the hood of her jacket further over her head.

"Good news is there's no bar full of villains to deal with this time," the density shifter pointed out, hoping it would assuage their nerves a bit.

"Nope, now we've got a whole city to deal with," the rocker girl unfortunately reminded, "so let's hope this goes quick."

"How much time do we have before he's supposed to arrive," Momo inquired, "and how long should we wait if he doesn't show up?"

"Five minutes," Slade looked at the digital clock built into his grappling gauntlet, "as for how long we'll wait, guess that depends on how anxious we're all feeling."

"We won't be waiting long then," Jirou commented while putting one of her earphone jacks into the ground, "I'm ready to get out of here now and keep looking for Midoriya. If this guy doesn't…..we've got company." The trio immediately moved back-to-back with Slade and Jirou looking down either side of the alley while Momo kept her eyes looking up towards the top of the alley.

"Where are they, and how many," the creation quirk user asked while generating an extendable staff and a couple of flash grenades.

"I'm counting about four," she began, "one coming from either side of the alley and one scurrying around on the left side above us. They'll be here in the next ten seconds." It would turn out to be a very quick ten seconds. They'd hardly counted to five when three of the four villains came charging in from the designated directions.

"Shield your eyes," Momo warned before throwing one of the flash grenades into the air. Her classmates did as instructed, shutting their eyes for the brief instant it took for the bomb to go off. The villains yelped in slight pain, spots dancing before their eyes from the light. The trio moved then with Momo extending her staff and jabbing it into the back of the villain who'd fallen from above, eliciting a cry of pain as his own weight added to the force of the blow.

Jirou attached her jack to the speaker on her right hand and slammed her fist into the second criminal's abdomen, the sonic attack reverberating through his body before sending him flying back onto the ground. On Slade's end of things, he quickly shifted to low density and made a very fast long jump before shifting back to heavy density to clothesline his own opponent. The angle of the blow knocked him to the ground with a notable 'thud', signaling the end of the fight when he didn't get back up again. "Mine's down, everyone else good?" he asked, receiving an affirmative from his two classmates.

"What about the fourth one," Momo inquired, "are they still around?"

"Just outside the alley," Jirou announced after plugging her jack into the ground, "he's just been waiting there the whole…...WE NEED TO MOVE!" No sooner did she say this than one of the walls of the alley busted open. A large shape moved within the debris but none of the U.A. students stopped to look back at their pursuer until they were out of the alley and on the street.

"Jeez, good help is so hard to find," a distorted voice echoed, "those three said they could handle some kids and now look at 'em." The villain took a few waddling steps out of the remains of the alley, revealing himself to be a pufferfish-like man who easily stood ten feet tall, "but that's the old saying, I guess. If you want something done right, DO IT YOURSELF!" His body inflated then, almost like a balloon about to pop.

"Get down!" Slade yelled, realizing what was about to happen as he threw his body at high density in front of his friends. He managed to encircle both of them in his arms right as the spikes from the blowfish villain shot out everywhere, breaking windows, impaling the ground, abandoned cars and even a couple buildings. They proved too dull to pierce Slade's currently dense body, but the impacts still hurt a good bit.

"Are you alright Slade," Momo asked quickly while producing a riot shield of high-quality material meant for combating super villains.

"I've taken worse hits," he replied, turning around with the others and taking a fighting stance.

"Huh, tougher than I thought," Their opponent chortled, "but let's see how you handle-SLAM!" His sentence was very abruptly cut off due to a large shape dropping down from above, slamming both fists onto the villain's head. Whether it was from his strange physiology, the force of the blow or both, the pufferfish man actually flattened in the middle, again much like a balloon, before retaking his shape and falling over once the new arrival jumped off of him.

"Pretty sure I gave you some advice a while back about shooting all of your spikes at once, Blowfield," the large, grey-skinned man commented, "I hate it when people don't listen."

"Eightball Knuckles," Slade spoke up, getting the large man's attention, "been a minute."

"It has," he agreed while turning around to face them all completely. Instead of the bartender outfit he'd worn the first time they'd met him the man now wore a large blue vest with a giant eight ball on the back of it, along with his signature gloves. "Truth be told I hadn't expected to be hearing from you kids again. At least not this soon."

"A lot of things have happened that we didn't expect," Jirou lamented, "it goes to show how bad things are considering this isn't the craziest thing we're doing right now."

"Speaking of happenings," Eightball noticed something off, "where's that fourth friend of yours?"

"Clay's out patrolling his own section of the city," the density shifter explained, "he's looking for a kid in a green outfit with a yellow cape, a metallic mouthpiece, and a mask with pointed ears. That's also the reason we're here."

"You're looking for that vigilante kid," the former villain tried to recall while scratching his chin, "yeah, I've heard of him. Always seems to pop up whenever an especially dangerous villain starts rampaging around. I could probably take him except the number one hero and a couple others never seem to be too far behind. Even if he doesn't know I'm an ex-villain I figured it best to keep away from any hotspots those escaped convicts like to frequent."

"Do you happen to know any close by?" Momo inquired, "we've found a couple of places but with so many villains on the loose right now it's hard to pinpoint a good location."

"There might be one or two places," Eightball mused, "even with everything going on I've tried to keep my bar running, I'm stubborn like that. A couple of old customers have come by, including one you probably know: Mustard."

"The guy with the gas mask from the forest training camp," Slade recalled, "Yeah Kendo mentioned having to deal with him. You saying he's around here somewhere?"

"There's a factory of sorts further out towards the edge of the city," the bar owner explained, "he let it slip he was heading that way to retrieve some gear. That guy's quirk is dangerous but he's gotta protect himself from it, and he likes having a sidearm in case he runs into more trouble than he expected."

"Guess we know why he's a C rank villain," Jirou commented, "but if he's about to go around and start gassing everything then that's basically a signal for our classmate."

"This guy's obviously pretty important to all of you," Eightball Knuckles observed, "I won't pretend to know what's going on but if you kids are out here voluntarily trying to find him then all I can say is he's lucky to have friends like you. I hope you'll have just as much luck finding him."

"We'd ask you to come along," Slade admitted, "but he'd probably misunderstand if we had a villain, even a former villain, backing us up."

"Don't worry about it," the bar owner assured, "I got to get back to my watering hole anyway. It might be a hole in the wall but that doesn't mean some of my former patrons aren't gonna try and rob it. I'll call you if I happen to hear anything else."

"Thank you again for your help," Momo bowed, "now I guess we'd better turn these other criminals over to the police."

A Couple Hours Later: Currently Abandoned Factory

"That big guy called this place a factory of sorts, right," Jirou questioned as they arrived at the gates of a large 'U'-shaped building, "what exactly do you think they make here?"

"Apparently different types of chemicals," Momo answered while reading what information she could find off her phone, "supposedly they even carry the main ingredient used in high level sleeping gases. Specifically, the type used in prisons for dealing with especially rowdy criminals."

"Might explain why Mustard's here," Slade mused aloud as the group hopped the fence and moved into the factory, "probably intends to either blow the plant and sweep poisonous gas through the city or take some of the more noxious stuff with him."

"But didn't Eightball say he just came here to retrieve some gear," the earphone girl recalled.

"Factories like these would have an abundance of safety equipment in the case of a gas leak," Yaoyorozu pointed out, "he might be planning to do both, we can't rule anything out." Her other two classmates nodded in agreement before continuing. It turned out most of the power to the plant had been shut down, leaving only enough to run the electronic locks on the doors and the emergency lights inside. A quick jab of Jirou's jack was enough to short out one of the locks and get them inside where they discovered the facility's interior was much bigger than one would initially assume from the front.

As one might expect, an entire network of pipes ran throughout the factory with more than a couple leading to tanks of varying sizes. Stairs and catwalks ran up and down the length of the building with more than a couple going several feet into the air. It was up one of these higher catwalks that the U.A. students climbed to begin their reconnaissance. Momo quickly passed out some gas masks as they walked, remembering all too well what had happened to some of the students who hadn't received one in time back at the forest training camp.

"Jirou," Slade spoke up once he'd felt like they'd made it a good ways in, "see if you can hear anyone." His classmate nodded before taking a half kneeling position and extending her jack down to the nearest object connected to the floor. She thanked their luck that the factory itself wasn't operational or the amount of noise would've likely made pinpointing their quarry a lot more difficult. As it was, she still needed to concentrate a little because of how sound could echo in a place like this.

"I've got something," she announced, "about fifty meters ahead and down on our right. It looks like there's about nine of them."

"Guess he made some friends in the slammer or on the way out," the density shifter mused, "either way we need to take them down."

"Should we wait a bit first," Momo questioned, "naturally the plan is to take him down but we're also hoping Midoriya will show up. If the hero network got the same information as we did he could be on his way right now."

"That'd be some incredible luck," Slade turned their options over in his head, "how about this then: we'll move in and do some recon. If there's no immediate danger of him hurting the innocent or us getting spotted, then we can spare a moment. But we can't wait too long."

"Right," the two girls agreed before the trio moved out, slowly and methodically making their way down the catwalk so as not to cause too much noise. Soon enough, the voices of the gathered villains reached their ears and Jirou held up her hand as a signal to stop. Slade decreased his density and dropped onto some of the pipework then, testing how solid it was before signaling to his classmates to drop down one at a time after him. Their quarry finally came into view then as they stuck to the shadows and looked at the villains who were all currently gathered around a bright electronic lantern.

Thanks to the minimal amount of electricity running through the factory there were many dark places. A fact Slade was more than thankful for as the group listened in on what was happening. "Okay, Boss, what exactly did we come all the way down here for," one of the criminals asked, the round steel cylinders on his fingertips indicating he had some kind of gun quirk. He and the rest of the villains were wearing or at least possessed basic gas masks on their persons, no doubt due to their leader's indiscriminate quirk.

"So very glad you asked," the gas-spewing villain replied with what was likely a smirk under his own mask. His old school uniform costume had apparently not been recovered and he was currently wearing a brown jumpsuit that looked like it had been nicked from this very factory. "Ya see, we came down here looking for tanks and other storage units capable of holding large volumes of gas." He pulled up one of said tanks that resembled a scuba diving tank. "We're going to fill them with my quirk and then mix it with some of the chemical agents from this factory."

"But I thought you could produce as much of that gas as you wanted, Boss," another one of the criminals pointed out, his lower body resembling that of a large snake's, "and why are we mixing it with other stuff?"

"You're not wrong, I can produce plenty of this wonderful substance with my quirk," he affirmed, demonstrating by holding out his hand and generating some of his trademark gas. However, it was gone very shortly after it was produced, "but as you can see it disperses pretty quickly and even after years of practice, I haven't been able to produce a heavier variant that can hang around longer. Because of that, I must continuously produce this gas to keep an area covered."

"So, what," a third one of the villains spoke up, a woman with holes in the palms of her hands, "you want to mix your quirk in those tanks with a chemical agent that'll keep them from drifting off immediately?"

"Right you are," Mustard praised, "thank you for showing us why a basic background in science is a must even among criminals."

"I still don't get it," a cyclops villain interrupted, "so we have a bunch of tanks filled with gas that can stick around longer. How's that help us?"

"Think about it for a second," the former League of Villains member began, "my power lets me clear out a whole area of anyone who doesn't have a way to counter my quirk. Now imagine if you were able to use my quirk at any time whether I was there or not. Just carry one of these tanks with you, open it, and gas a place with a lot of people. While everyone's running around in a panic trying to escape, you can grab whatever you want and run. Even better, it only takes one person to carry a small tank, so if we divide ourselves into five teams of two, we can hit five separate locations all at once and there'd be no way the heroes would be able to get the gas cleared in time before you grabbed something and escaped!"

"Could they do that," Jirou asked, "just make gas bombs and raid places?"

"It's not impossible," Momo answered grimly, "if one knows the right chemical makeup they could design and alter a gas to do all kinds of things. I could actually produce tanks filled with exactly what he's talking about as long as I knew what was in it."

"What's worse, the current lack of heroes and the diminished ability to acquire equipment actually makes this harder to counter," Slade added, "but what's really bothering me is he said five teams of two. That can't be right unless-."

"ABOVE US!" Jirou warned, her quirk picking up movement at the last second. The trio jumped out of the way as a shape dropped down and dented the pipework slightly where they'd been hardly two seconds ago. 'Damn, should've figured they'd have a lookout,' the density shifter berated himself before landing in a crouch position in front of the other villains. The attacker jumped down into the light with the other villains, his hands and feet resembling that of a large monkey's.

"Gibbon," A surprised Mustard was the first to speak up, "what's all the noise about?"

"Trespassers," the monkey villain rumbled while pointing at the intruders, "but they seem a bit young to be pro heroes."

"They seem young," Mustard repeated before stepping forward to get a better look at them, "oh, I know these guys! You're all from U.A., I've seen you on TV!"

"And you saw Kendo and Tetsutetsu's fists up close if I recall," Slade quipped, "apparently they didn't hit you hard enough."

"Actually, they hit me plenty hard," the villain corrected, "that big-handed girl was right, my quirk has more drawbacks than I'd like. So, while I was in Tartarus, I took some time to think on how best I could augment it. Did you happen to hear my brilliant solution?"

"That bit about catching your own farts and making them heavier, yeah," Jirou held up her jacks, "heard the whole thing."

"Good, I don't have to repeat myself," the villain smiled under his mask, "because while your arrival here is inconvenient it does solve a problem for me. You see, I need some test subjects to make sure this new concoction works properly and what better way to start than by using it on some of the U.A. brats that put me in prison!"

"And you think we're just going to surrender," Slade quirked an eyebrow, "'cause last I checked, you were one of the least dangerous members of the League of Villains."

"You only say that because you never actually fought me," Mustard shot back, "so let's see what you think of me now!" A large amount of purple gas expelled from his body then, quickly filling up the area where the villains were before making its way towards them.

"Tactical retreat!" The three students exclaimed before turning, donning their masks, and running. It's not that they had no confidence in the masks Momo had made, the group just knew fighting ten villains at once in a cramped, low visibility area wasn't the greatest idea. They'd need to thin the herd a little first. Fortunately, and unfortunately, the criminals were well aware that letting them escape was not ideal and quickly gave chase.

"Jirou, we need to go up!" Slade called out. She replied with an affirmative as the two of them split off from Momo and bounded up the nearest flight of stairs. The sound of gunfire came from the spreading gas as the henchman with finger guns fired several bullets at them. Slade upped his density and moved in front of Jirou, his large frame shielding her from the worst of the barrage.

"You good back there Slade," she dared to ask once they reached the top of the stairs.

"It's like getting pelted with small rocks, but I'm okay," he assured her before putting his left arm around her waist and aiming his gauntlet. "But we'll need to be quick about this next part." He fired his cable, catching it on some of the pipework higher up, only lowering his density once he was sure it was secure. The pair quickly ascended up towards the ceiling then, their target being a large skylight that stretched several feet across the ceiling.

The moment they arrived at the end of the cable Jirou plugged her jacks into her wrist speakers and detached them. The U.A. student extended the cords running from her ears as high as she could towards the windows and blasted out high frequency sound waves. The glass from the overhead skylight shattered, pelting the villains below while Slade jumped clear with Jirou and landed on another section of the catwalk. "Cut them off on both sides," the voice of Mustard ordered, "they won't be able to fight you once the gas overtakes them!"

He wasn't entirely wrong. The villains appeared to want to keep hiding in the gas that was slowly filling up the factory. Blasting open the skylight would help clear it out, but the duo could now see it wouldn't be fast enough. Good thing they'd made a stage two when going over plans for taking the villain down. The sound of a switch flipping, and the sudden electrical hum of a motor starting was the signal as a sudden and very powerful wind blew in their direction.

"What the," the surprised cyclops man spoke for the other villains as the gas concealing them was dispersed by the seemingly random gale.

"Couldn't have timed that better!" Slade exclaimed, leaping forward and slamming a high-density fist into the cyclops man's face, sending him flying back further down the catwalk. He bounded down the stairs next and barreled into the man with machine gun fingers, gritting his teeth against the pain of the villain's bullets before delivering a powerful uppercut that sent him falling further down the stairs.

"Out of the way," the criminal named Gibbon ordered as he whacked the gun villain over the railing and loped up towards Slade. 'Real tightknit group here,' the U.A. student thought sarcastically while lowering the density in his body to jump and backflip up the stairs. On Jirou's end of things, she wasted no time taking advantage of their enemy's surprise to rush over to the other flight of stairs and blast them with high-powered soundwaves from the speakers on her boots. It succeeded in striking two of the villains, knocking them both down the stairs with their ears ringing.

The third villain, however, managed to see what was about to happen and hopped over the railing, hanging on the side with her feet braced against it while her comrades went sailing by. It was the woman with holes in her hands, one of which she held up and unleashed a blast of flame from her palm. Jirou rolled to the side, deftly dodging the hot substance before moving to the railing and firing another sonic blast. But the villainess demonstrated why Mustard favored her, using fire from her palm to flip back over the railing and onto the stairs before following up with a stream of flames from both palms, forcing Jirou even further back.

"Mustard warned us you U.A. brats were hard to kill," the flamethrower remarked, blasting herself up to the top of the stairs with both palms, "let's see if he was right." As for Momo, she was watching the battle from afar, producing more items while guarding the thing which was currently taking away the villain's advantage: a giant industrial fan, like the ones used on movie sets to imitate hurricane force winds. 'I want to help them, but I have to stay here,' she reminded herself, 'even with our masks protecting us from the gas, Mustard will know exactly where we are if we get engulfed by it.' Kendo had recounted that particular detail to her after the villain had been captured.

The sound of feet bounding up the stairs brought her focus back to the fan she was guarding, quickly noting the two thugs who were approaching from her right. "Better shut that thing off, girlie," the lead criminal smirked, "Mustard doesn't like it when people blow away his quirk. But if you're good he might be willing to go easy on you and your friends."

"You say that as if he really has a chance," Momo replied with a serious expression on her face, "but we've dealt with far scarier things since the training camp. We only hunted down Mustard and the rest of you because we hoped you'd lead us somewhere. Other than that, you're all just distractions."

"I'm gonna enjoy teaching you some respect brat!" The other villain sprouted ax blades from his elbows and knees before charging at her, followed by his compatriot whose hand turned into a buzzsaw. Momo reacted by pulling out multiple small orbs she'd produced and threw them at her opponents. They shattered on impact against the villains, covering them in sticky paint which also got on their gas masks.

"Gah, the fuck is this?!" The lead one yelled, forced to change his hand back to normal in order to fumble with his mask. The other one wasn't faring much better, giving the U.A. student all the time she needed to run forward while whipping out an extendable staff. Two pained grunts sounded one after the other as Momo slammed the weapon into her attacker's heads hard enough to knock them unconscious. 'That's two out of ten down,' the creation quirk user counted, 'I'll have to worry about restraining them in a bit. Right now, the fan is-.'

Her thoughts were interrupted by something wrapping around her left ankle and yanking her off her feet. Momo let out a small yelp when her back hit the ground and she was dragged towards the fan. "It's embarrassing that a few kids are making us work this hard," the villain with the lower body of a snake hissed. The hero in training went to strike the tail around her ankle but was yanked into the air for a brief moment, the sudden movement causing her to drop her weapon before she landed on her front.

"But it's been a minute since I've been able to take my time," he continued, encircling the girl with his tail and tightening it around her body, "squeezing the life out of-GAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Two sudden and very powerful electric shocks jolted through his body, courtesy of some anti-villain grade stun batons Momo had produced from her hands.

"You'll find I've got plenty of life," she quipped before flipping the electrical weapons off. Her foe's muscles relaxed once there was no more current running through them and he collapsed to the floor. "Which is more than I can say for you." The U.A. student quickly untangled herself from the snake man, happy that she'd had the foresight to make all her outfits and capes insulated. It was a practice she'd adopted after the attack on the USJ, which felt like a lifetime ago now.

Momo took a calming breath and looked at their situation. Three were down on her end and four were down over where Jirou and Slade were. It seemed she would have a moment to restrain their adversaries and wasted no time doing just that. Back with the other two, Slade was lowering his density to slide underneath a piece of loose piping Gibbon had wrenched free from some of the others and tossed at him.

He felt the rush of air as it passed over him before leaping back to his feet just as the ape man was dropping down on him. Slade waited until the absolute last second to raise his density to extra high before slamming his elbow into the villain's midsection. Gibbon let out a gasp of pain before rolling off of his arm and onto the ground. Slade dropped another elbow down on him for good measure before returning his density closer to normal and looking around for Jirou.

His classmate had been forced to flee down another flight of stairs and was running through the maze of machines that characterized the factory floor. She jumped to the side, narrowly missing a jet of flame that melted and dropped an overhanging ladder in her path. "Don't think you can outrun me," the flame girl mocked, "I can reach some pretty good speeds when I get serious."

"Funny," Jirou leaned up against one of the machines with her back turned, wanting to laugh but finding it difficult due to her labored breathing, "you make it sound like I need to get serious to beat you."

"That's the problem with brats these days," her opponent scoffed while heating up another blast in her hand, "you think being snarky makes you sound smart-GAAAAAHHHH!" The woman's scream was drowned out by the sonic blast that came at her from a crevice on the other side of the machine Jirou was leaning on.

"Unlike most kids these days," the U.A. student remarked while reeling her jack back in from the spot she'd positioned it, "I actually learned how to be smart while I was in school." She quickly blasted the downed villain with an attack from the speakers on her boots before she could get up again, putting the henchwoman out cold this time. "Hey Slade, you okay over there? I just wrapped things up here."

"I'm set over here," the density shifter replied from her earpiece, "what about you, Momo, everything alright?"

"I took out the three who went after the fan," she informed, "all that's left should be Mustard himself."

"Where's he at right now," Slade inquired while proceeding towards the gas.

"He's still in the center of the cloud," Jirou announced, "but I don't know how much longer he'll stay once he figures out his cronies are down."

"Then we'd best move fast," the U.A. student instructed, "I got a plan." He quickly laid out what it was he wanted the two girls to do before entering the gas cloud itself. Naturally he secured and doublechecked his gas mask along the way, making sure he could still hear his classmates while he was at it. "Yo Mustard, it looks like your goons are all gone. I really hope that wasn't the crew you were planning on using for the raids."

"A minor setback," Mustard's voice rang back with a metallic quality, courtesy of his own mask, "you kids are a lot stronger now than you were at that camp, but it hardly makes a difference. If I take all three of you out here our plan can still succeed."

"Please, I heard all about you from Kendo and Tetsutetsu after they kicked your ass," Slade scoffed, "you've got no guts, no confidence in your quirk. You're just a loser the League hired because they thought you might actually be able to kill a few people with this gas. Boy were they wrong." He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye then before a flash and a loud bang greeted him. A bullet impacted into the side of his head and caused him to topple over.

"You think I've got nothing on you brats from a prestigious school," Mustard stood over him with a revolver pointed at his head, "but I've got one thing, a .357 carrying a bullet with your name on it!" Slade responded by putting his hands over his ears and curling into a ball as the villain began to pull the trigger. 'Wow, look at them squirm at the sight of death,' he grinned maniacally under his mask. But before he could fire, a massive vibration erupted throughout his gas cloud, the force of a powerful soundwave moving too fast to dodge.

Mustard yelled as the wall of sound slammed into him, forcing him to cover his ears as he tried to regain his disoriented footing. Slade leapt into action then, launching himself from his position on the floor with a triumphant smile as he slammed a fist into the villain's face, shattering the glass eye pieces on his mask and destroying the rest of it. In his last moments of consciousness, Mustard instinctively shut off production of his gas so it wouldn't affect him and fell to the floor. "Ow, that really hurts," Slade groaned while rubbing his ears, "even with my ears covered it felt like my head was gonna split open for a moment."

"You could've gotten out of the way when I gave you the signal over your earpiece," Jirou pointed out as she and Momo approached. The gas was clearing away quickly now that it wasn't being produced anymore. "The plan was dangerous enough already with you letting yourself get shot in the head."

"I probably could've, but I didn't want to accidentally tip him off to what we were up too," Slade admitted, taking off his gas mask so that Momo could examine his head.

"The good news is we managed to take him down," she reminded, "and what about the gas going out of the skylight? Do you think there's a chance Midoriya saw it?"

"I'm not hearing any movement nearby," Jirou announced with a disappointed sigh after plugging her jacks into the wall and ground, "looks like wherever he is right now it isn't near here."

"He might still show up if we wait," Slade tried to sound optimistic, "we still need to round these guys up anyway and-." He put his finger to his ear as the sound of another transmission came up on their earpiece's frequency.

"Guys, it's Ojiro, can you hear me?" He asked.

"We hear you, Ojiro, what is it?" Momo answered for all three of them.

"Got some news," the tailed student began, "Clay made contact with one of the escapees from Tartarus. It looks like All For One's sending out hired goons to find Midoriya."

"As if we didn't have enough problems already," Jirou commented with her hands on her hips.

"But there is some good news," Ojiro revealed, "Clay also ran into Endeavor. They've agreed that this bait thing isn't working out like everyone hoped it would."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Slade dared to hope.

"It's time to come on back guys, we know where Midoriya is," their friend confirmed. And as they suspected, he needed help. But it wasn't until they saw him that they realized just how badly he needed help.

One plan may have failed but success has not eluded our heroes. The question now is, will success be all they hope it is? Naturally we'll have to wait to find out next time, so until then feel free to leave a comment or review about what you liked/disliked or if you've got any neat ideas for future chapters. And don't forget to check out my Pat reon if you're thinking about becoming a patron. Last thing, stop in next time as our heroes discover just how far their classmate and friend has spiraled. 'Til then.