Guest: Deku doesn't have OFA in this story.

Day 343, 10:00 AM

UA Dorms

"Oh no," Kimiko gasps as she notices the rash spreading up her fingers and to the back of her hand. Turning her palm over, she notices her fingertips starting to turn a very light shade of purple. Clenching her hands, she looks over to her bedroom door and quickly locks it. "Oh no, this can't be happening." She steps back, hitting the dresser. She knocks over a screwdriver and bends over to pick it up. Placing it back on the dresser, she quickly retreats into the corner of her room and sits down on the ground, curling into a fetal position as she comprehends what is happening to her.

"I caught it," she whispers, "I'm sick. I'm fucking sick. I'm going to lose my arms. I'm going to lose my fucking arms." She bows her head and sobs silently into her forearms.

With Monoma

"Can you feel your fingers now?"

Kamkairi closes his eyes and looks up at the unoriginal quirk user. Looking at his charred-like hands, he uses every ounce of fiber in his beinmove his fingers. When he feels like things will be impossible, the impossible does happen.

His pinky moves.

Wincing hard, he moves his pinky again, convulsing in pain with each motion before silently screaming. "It hurts!"

Monoma jumps to his feet. "You can still move your hands. That's good. But, how is that possible? Your flesh is dead yet you can still move your hands."

"Screw you for looking at me like some guinea pig." Kamakiri sinks his head deeper into his pillow. "Why won't you do something?"

"Like what? You told me to stay here, I'm staying here. I'm giving you a sip of water when you're thirsty and I'm giving you some food when you're hungry; I'm doing everything I can."

"Then kill me." The bug boy stares hard at the unoriginal quirk user. "Go on, kill me."

Monoma shakes his head. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Absolutely, now kill me. Please, you have to kill me. Kill me, right now!" The bug boy sits up, screaming suddenly as the pain in his arms shoots through his body like a canon. With the area just under his forearms now covered in dead black flesh, Kamakiri barely moves at all since any motion sends him into a pained frenzy. "What is this, what did I catch from that old guy?"

Monoma shrugs. "I have no idea. But I'm sure we'll figure it out. We have medicine, that guy didn't."

"And it's still spreading." Kamakiri whimpers as he buries his head in his pillow. "Please, I don't want to end up like that guy. Rotting alive, rotting away while I can feel it, rotting away until there's nothing. Please, please, kill me!"

Monoma jumps to his feet, gripping his hair like he was trying to pull off a wig. "NO! I won't do it. We'll figure something out. I promise. We'll figure it out. No one else is dying. Just, I'm going to stay here and take care of you but I'm not going to kill you."

"What if you're infected? What if I coughed and you caught whatever I had?"

"Then we'll suffer together but I am not going to fucking leave you."

"Please, you have to! Please, I'm begging you! Kill me! KILL ME!"

"NO! Just, wait. Wait and we'll figure it out. I'm going to give you some more painkillers. Just... wait." Monoma turns his back to the rotting bug boy, feeling his breath leave him as he closes his eyes. Sweating up a storm, Monoma looks at himself in Kamakiri's full-body mirror on the side and sees his facial hair covered in blood. Wiping the blood off, he sees more splotches of blood on his fingertips and realizes somewhere along the lines that he scratched himself in the heat of the moment.

With Shimamura

Setting up a camera on a stand, Shimamura checks to see how many hours of footage he has left. With only thirty minutes left and only one battery cell remaining, he sets up the camera before sitting on the bed, looking at the camera straight through the lens.

"To anyone who is watching this, whether you're my classmate or someone else, I hope this message helps you. I'm hoping that I'm alive by the time I finish recording this and hope that a cure has been discovered. If not, well, at least I can prepare you for what you're about to experience if you contract this ugly disease." He scoots forward. "My name is Shimamura and... well, you don't need to know what I did before the apocalypse as that is not relevant. Therefore, I'm going to focus only on the symptoms of the disease." He clears his throat. "Last night, at approximately midnight, I made contact with a man who had a disease that caused his flesh to rot off. Well, to be specific, it caused his limbs to rot and then eventually detach from his body. I was infected roughly at midnight. I got the disease when some of the man's infected blood got into my eye. Eight hours later, at eight o'clock, I started experiencing feelings of arthritis in my hands. One hour later, I began developing rashes on the tips of my fingers. I can't explain it but the rashes appear to be spreading. It is currently ten o'clock and right now, the rashes are slowly spreading up my fingertips."

He stands up and strips himself until he's left in nothing but a dirty pair of boxers.

"I also experience symptoms of this spreading rash-like symptom in my toes, though those do not appear to spread as fast. I am unsure what the next symptoms are but for right now, I'm expecting things to go from bad to worse in a matter of hours." He sits down, resting his elbows on his knees. "There was a friend of mind, he also contracted the disease but he seems to be experiencing symptoms much earlier than me. I can't explain but he was the one who put the infected man down last night. He stabbed him and then retracted his stained blade back into his body through the hand. Given that this disease seems to target the limbs first, I believe that he is experiencing symptoms at a much faster rate because he got infected through the hands rather than a part of the body away from the limbs and extremities such as myself."

He looks into the camera again. "I don't know what kind of disease I have. I don't know if it's a virus, a parasite, or a bacteria of some kind, I don't know because I have never heard of something like this before. But after I end this session and resume the tapes in a few hours, I expect my skin to be turning slightly purple and then black if my classmate's illness is anything to go by." His breathing trembles as he turns away, looking at his hands. "God, I'm so scared." He looks at the camera, crying. "I'm so scared. I don't want to die and... god, please, I don't want to die." He squeezes his eyes shut before he ends the recording and turns off the camera. Without wasting another second, he puts the camera away before heading to the door and locks himself in.

With Monoma

"I'm so cold," Kamakiri whispers, "please, please help me."

"What do I do?" Monoma whispers. "What should I do."

"Blanket. Please, cover me with the blanket. Please, I'm so cold and I can't feel my arms. Please, please, my blanket."

Stepping forward hesitantly, Monoma grabs Kamkairi's blanket that was bunched up at his waist and pulls it upward, covering the boy from neck to toe in a bug-design green blanket and leaving only his head above the surface.

Kamakiri settles into his pillow and closes his eyes. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"I'm here for you." Momoma reaches out to stroke Kamakiri before pausing and pulls his hand back, feeling his heart skip a beat. "I want to pat you on the head, tell you it's alright but..."

"No," Kamkairi moans, "I understand. This infection ends with me."

"Thank you. Is there anything else you need? Do you need any more painkillers?"

"No, just tried. Just a few minutes of sleep."

"I'll be standing right here in case you wake up."

"Thank you."

"Anytime."

With Kendo

Pacing the hallway anxiously, looking at her wristwatch, she smacks the side of her head. "Damn, this waiting is killing me."

Kuroiro and Komori step out. Kuroiro stands before Kendo with Komori behind him. "We've done a double check of everyone in our class; no one has rashes."

"And what about the support course students?"

"Haven't had a chance to check them."

Just as Kendo was about to bark orders, Mogami came sprinting down the hallway, panting up a storm originating from terror rather than exhaustion. "Kendo, we..."

Kendo looks at him. "What's wrong?"

"Shimamura, Kimiko, they're... they're fucking infected."

Kendo flinches, replaying his sentence in her head to make sure she isn't going insane again. "What? But, they looked fine this morning. Kamkairi was..."

"I don't know but they're both saying rashes are starting to spread up their fingers. Didn't you say something about Kamkiri having discolored skin spread up his arms?"

"Yeah, but... it could be nothing."

"And they said they both had arthritis and just an hour or two later... they started... rashes formed on their fingertips and toes. They both made contact with that infected guy yesterday."

"Oh my god." Kendo put her hands on her forehead, hoping that somehow the cold hands against her warm head would wake her from this nightmare but no, this was a nightmare she couldn't wake up from. "We gotta do something fast. How did they sound? How did they feel?"

"Kimiko's too scared to come out of her room and Shimamura is recording himself. He's saying that it could help us in the future in case we catch it or something."

"God. We need to act fast, now. If there's a cure or some kind of treatment, we gotta find it. If we get really lucky and win the lottery by finding some survivor with some kind of healing quirk, then that'll make our day but I doubt that will happen."

"We'll figure it out."

Kendo turns to Kurorio and Komori. "I want you two to go get Kodai and Kaibara; we're sending them out on a scouting mission immediately."

"Permission to go with?" Kuroiro asks. "We're used to working with a group of four."

"You and Komori, maybe, but Kodai and Kaibara aren't."

"We should still head out, just in case."

Kendo nods. "Okay, yeah, four sets of eyes are better than two. Besides, you're the most experienced scouts in 1-B but I was afraid of your performance after we kicked out your friend."

"We have these friends to worry about. We're going with." Kuroiro turns to the mushroom girl. "Go tell Kodai and Kaibara that Kendo is sending them on a mission, now."

Komori nods. "Sure thing, shroom." She waved to him before rushing off.

Kendo looks at Mogami again. "How are you holding up with your friends?"

Mogami shakes his head. "I just can't believe they caught that... ugly disease."

"I'm sorry." She puts a hand on his shoulder.

He smacks it away. "Don't touch me!"

Kendo retracts her hand. "Sorry, I forgot."

"My quirk makes physical touch extremely painful so I would appreciate it if you made a mental note of that."

"I will."

Damn, why do I gotta keep reminding people?

Kendo turns away, tapping her finger against her head in an inquisitive fashion. "Okay, I just need to sort everything out and then we can get to work on this library scouting mission."

A few minutes later, when Kendo settles downstairs with everyone, she finally decides to speak up.

"Students, classmates, I'm going to be honest with you." She hesitates but forces herself to talk nevertheless. "Some of us caught whatever that guy has from last night." She pauses for a beat, taking in their faces as they implode with shock. Kendo looks at the ground, twitching her fingers. "Kamakiri, Kimiko, and Shimamura have been infected." She closes her eyes, hoping that what she is saying is a hallucination and not the real thing. "So far, their symptoms aren't as severe as Kamakiri's but Kimiko and Shimamura have barricaded themselves and quarantined themselves from us. I'm going to be honest with you; I don't know what the hell to do so the plan we came up with was that we send a small team of supply runners out through the gates and to a nearby library. That was the plan we came up with and we're sticking with it. If this disease is written in any medical book, then getting to the library is the top priority."

She looks to her right, spotting Kuroiro, Komori, Kodai, and Kaibara already. "Shihai, Kinoko, Sen, and Yui are going to the library to find what medical books they can." She pauses. "In the meantime, I think we might need Hatsume and Mogami to get to work on something."

The two support course students perk up.

"I don't know what this disease is but assuming it acts the same way as flesh-eating bacteria-"

"Necrotizing fasciitis," Mogami corrects and turns to the students. "And contrary to popular belief, flesh-eating bacteria doesn't actually eat your flesh; what it does is release some kind of toxin that causes your skin cells and tissue to break down."

Kendo looks at him. "Do you know what this disease is that our friends are suffering from?"

He shakes his head. "Never seen anything like it."

"I sincerely hope someone did and they recorded it in a medical book." She turns her attention back to the students. "By the way, as I was saying, we may need the support course students to get their tools ready because if we have to amputate, then we amputate. We're going to need rubbing alcohol, a tourniquet of some kind, and some kind of hazmat suit. Depending on how this infection spreads, we may need to get a hazmat suit of some kind or at the very least, a facemask and goggles. We can use a belt and one of our masks to protect us but we're running a little low on rubbing alcohol. Maybe there is a cure that doesn't involve amputation but we need to make sure. This four-man team will head to the library, retrieve whatever medical books they can, and get back. In the meantime, Hatsume and Mogami, I want you guys to clean your weapons however you can in case we have to amputate." She pauses. "I sincerely hope we don't have to amputate."

"How is Kamakiri doing?" Shoda asks.

Kendo gulps. "Not so good. His arms are discolored and the black patches of flesh are starting to spread up his arms."

"What about Monoma?" Pony asks. "彼が病気ではないことをどうやって知ることができるでしょうか?" She shakes her head. "How do we know he is not sick?"

"We're keeping a close eye on him," Kendo assures. "So far, he's been in contact with Kamakiri all morning but we don't the incubation period of this disease. Kamakiri, Kimiko, and Shimamura were all infected at the same time yet, Kamakiri started experiencing symptoms first while the other two didn't start showing symptoms until eight or nine hours later. The incubation process of the disease varies so that's why we need to act fast. Eventually, we'll quarantine Monoma and watch him for about twelve hours. If he hasn't shown any symptoms by then... he should be fine."

"Then let's go," Kuroiro urges. "Come on, we gotta get to the library and fast."

"Right," Kaibara nods. "We're leaving right now."

Kendo nods. "Good. Even if we can't s-save Kamakiri, we can at least save Kimiko and Shimamura. And... if anyone else catches this disease, we can still save ourselves if we knew what it was."

Kuroiro turns to his squad. "Come on everyone, gather your weapons and keys and we'll jump into a jeep. Come on, hurry up!"

Without wasting any more time, the four students scatter and run around the dorms, retrieving their weapons before racing for the front door. They climb into a jeep with Kuroiro hopping into eh driver's seat and drive off once Awase, Yanagi, Tsuuraba, and Manga open and close the gates for them like sentries.

Once the four sentries head back inside, Kendo turns to the support course students. "You guys know what to do."

Mogami salutes. "yes."

Hatsume smiles. "Don't worry; we'll make absolutely beautiful surgical babies that can cut through bone." Her smile cracked for a second before it aligned once more.

Kendo spots this but decides to say nothing. I guess even Hatsume's cheerful mask is cracking. After all, two of her friends are infected.

"Everyone else, get back to your room. If you want to stay out here, practice social distancing for the time being. If you cough, for whatever reason, we are going to quarantine you."

Awase mockingly coughs.

Kendo looks at him. "Don't test me, weld boy. Don't."

Kendo turns to the wall beside her and steadies herself as she feels bile rising. I regret banishing Deku and Kaminari and having Bakugou and the others not be here... but it's a good thing because it means they're not infected. They're safe.

"I'm going to turn into my room for the time being. I'm also going to check on Kamakiri and the others when I get a chance."

"Is Kamakiri going to die?" the sweet Pony asks. "Is he, Kendo? Is he going to die?"

Kendo looks away. "I hope not." But at the same time, he was in agony and if that guy from last night is any indication, Kamakiri is going to be in pain. Good luck out there, Kuroiro, be VERY careful and come home safe.

11:00 AM

With Hatsume

Looking through her tool chest for any cutting instruments, she manages to find a rusty hacksaw. Taking out a rag and using the last of the rubbing alcohol she managed to scrape up, she cleans the hacksaw and nearly cuts herself when her finger slipped. She studies the hacksaw with a careful eye, making sure she doesn't miss any spots.

"This blade looks dull," Hatsume comments. "We've used it one too many times on our equipment."

Mogami steps beside her. "Yeah." He finds a blowtorch and lays it on the table. "There's not much fuel left in that blowtorch. Maybe one or two squeezes of the trigger left. If we have to amputate, then we gotta cauterize the wound, and what better way to do it than with a torch."

Hatsume looks at him. "This is going to be extremely painful." She gestures to the knife. "If the saw is too dull to cut, we might have to use a kitchen knife or something else. But... most of the knives we've been using have been for zombies and we don't have enough alcohol to disinfect every knife. And as for the knives we use for cooking, I don't think anyone would want to use a knife if they knew it was used on someone with some kind of limb infection."

"They're going to die." Mogami silently gasps. "Our friends are going to die."

Hatsume looks at him. "Hey, don't be like that; we'll figure something out. The worst case scenario is we cut off all their limbs and leave them without arms and legs for the rest of their life."

"They'll become a liability. You know what that means? It means they'll be useless if they can't walk or kill zombies on their own. Carrying them will only slow us down. After Deku and Kaminari, if this group feels like they're a liability, they'll want to put them out of their miseries."

"Maybe that would be mercy." Hatsume clutches the hacksaw's grip. "Their flesh is going to turn black - black as in dead and decomposing - while they're still fucking alive. I think it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we put them out of their misery. But... we should at least talk to them and ask them what they want to do."

Mogami nods. "As soon as we're done cleaning up here, I'm going to talk to them through the door."

"I'll be there with you. Just in case."

12:00 PM

With Kuroiro

"Okay, I think I remember a library being here." Kuroiro looks in the rearview mirror. "I used to come here a few times with the Kamisquad and we scavenged the place. Books didn't seem like a top priority so we didn't bother taking any. Well, if someone requested books, then we would try and find them."

Kaibara nods in the passenger seat. "That explains where Mineta got all his pervy magazines."

"Hey, don't forget; you and Kaibara are loud with your sex noises. If you're going to be fucking each other, keep it down. You don't get to complain about Mineta being a pervert if you're barely making any attempt to not announce aloud you're sex freaks."

Kaibara smiles. He looks over his shoulder to see Kodai's reaction. Just as always, no expression on her face but he can see Komori blushing like a red mushroom. "I guess you have a point."

"Course I have a point; Kuroiro is nothing if he doesn't have a point. A side-effect of being a friend of the darkness pal."

Kaibara looks around, trying to memorize the route they took through the forest. He checks his watch. "Any chance we can pick this up?"

Kuroiro keeps his eyes on the road. "You know, if you asked politely, I would've taken the main road to get to the library. Hell, I would've ignored the fact that hordes of zombies were flooding the streets like a goddamn tsunami. You're right, I should've asked before I took the scenic route."

"Sorry, sorry, my bad."

"The scenic route takes time but it's safe. As opposed to the main road, which is faster but it'll lead us into a horde of zombies-"

"I get it!"

The shadow merger smiles. "That's what I thought."

Komori laughs. "This is fun to watch, shrooms."

"I hope so." Kuroiro smiles at her, showing his not-so-pearly yellow teeth. "Kuroiro is nothing if not a jokester. A terrible side-effect of being of being a friend of the darkness, gal."

A few minutes later, they take a trail leading out of the forest and into the city. They park the car and hide the car with whatever bushes and shrubs they can scavenge. After making sure the vehicle was hard to see (unless one was close enough), they scavenged their weapons out of their backpacks before moving out.

"Come on. Remember, we're on the clock so we gotta be fast."

"Kaibara is nothing if not fast," Komori whispers to her shadow merger friend. "A side effect of being a boy who can turn any part of his body into a drill."

Kuroiro laughs again. "Yes, and I'm sure Kodai appreciates it very much."

With their three backs to her, Kodai simply nods.

They cross through the alleyway where they hug their backs to the brick wall of a tall building before peering through.

The streets of Musutafu - at least in this area - look clear enough for the four of them to shuffle across the street in a crouching position.

"Come on." Though Kuroiro whispers, his voice still carries an authority that the other three silently submit to. The four of them take cover behind a car and quickly look around.

"Okay, the library should be about five blocks north of here," Kaibara whispers. "To the north of us if I remember."

"Good." Kuroiro peeks over the car before settling down. "Remember, the zombies are starting to leave the city because the food in the center is running out. Whatever they're eating, whether it be dogs, cats, rats-"

"Humans," Kodai finally says.

Kuroiro looks at her. "Right, thank you. Man, how could I forget; zombies eat humans. Man, my mind totally blanked on me." He chuckles before looking at his teammates. "Either way, we need to be careful because if the zombies are leaving the city, chances are we'll be running into a few of them on the edge of town." Kuroiro peeks over the car to make sure the coast is clear before nodding. "Okay, let's go."

A/N: I just want to let you know that the Dying Love stories are also cross-posted to AO3. Also, because I didn't come up with a name for the disease, you readers will have a chance to get to name this disease. Whoever comes up with the best name will get to see the name featured in the story. This disease-naming thing is also happening on AO3.