The elevator's emergency breaks kicked in right about when it seemed like they never would. There was no bounce back up, just a halting stop that sent everyone inside crashing downwards like test dummies. Izuku landed flat on the ground, having dived to the floor as soon as he realized what was happening, arms protecting his face, and he flinched at the feeling of broken glass spraying down on him. His captors hadn't been as quick to react and one of them had clearly smashed his head against one of the mirrors on the walls, curses and screams telling Izuku all he needed to know. The other guard landed hard next to Izuku, a small cracking noise and a hiss following the impact. The first instinct he had was to wait—for the elevator to fall further because the building was still shaking slightly, for the lights to turn back on, for someone else to move first. He was tired, beaten, hungry, he just wanted a fucking break to be quite honest. But then–
Distributing body weight to make the impact lessen, that's thinking smart. But you can't settle. What's next?
Lord, he felt his lungs fill with air at the voice. It was so real that he could have sworn that Stain was actually right there with him, crouching by his side with narrowed eyes. Izuku's eyes stung and, even though his whole body tensed at the authoritative tone, he'd be lying if he said he didn't want to just stay down and listen to Stain for a little while.
Move, you brat.
Fine. Fine, okay.
He raised his head to take a peek over his aching arms. There was dust still settling all around him, one of the roof panels cracked into three pieces by his side, and debris all around. The inner set of doors was still open all the way and he could see that they'd stopped right in between two floors. If he got the outer doors of the floor below open he would definitely be able to squeeze through. But what if the elevator moved and crushed him?
Deal with the first problem before that.
His guards were stunned, to say the least. He'd been right about the first one, the man clutching his face with trembling hands. Maybe tiny glass shards had gotten in his eyes? That would be a lucky break, but there'd be no way of knowing until the man made a move.
No time.
The other man was on his knees and hands—no, wait. Just a hand. The other one was pressed against his chest. Had that been the crack he'd heard? A broken wrist wasn't much of a problem, so he definitely was the bigger threat. But how to take them out? He had the element of surprise, maybe, if he acted first, but was that enough?
Focus, kid. Use your surroundings.
The elevator counted as close quarters. It was terrible for long-ranged weapons and stuff like kicks, but the two men would probably try and avoid one another in combat. If he got them both on one single side rather than flanking him then he wouldn't have to fight two people at the same time. Use the blind one as a shield, put him in the middle. What if he isn't blinded though? And what would he even use? A large mirror shard could do, but was it worth hurting his own hand? And the shield would work both ways, protecting the guy that wasn't in immediate range. It was too risky.
The guy with the injured hand patted the ground in a searching motion and Izuku held his breath. Before the elevator fell, right when the ruckus outside started, what–
What was their advantage before?
The guns. They both had handguns, one of them had been pointing it right at him not thirty seconds earlier. Both hands on their face to his left, one injured hand and one searching hand to his right, all of them empty.
Don't be impulsive.
If he started rummaging through the debris like a madman, then the guy to his right would figure him out. He had to find it without panicking, without giving himself away. But the man was already searching and if he found it then Izuku might not have time to get another weapon. But he wouldn't just blindly fire in such a small space, would he? The searching hand ran along the ground right in front of Izuku's face, moving a jagged piece of metal out of the way.
You can't wait to have a perfect plan, just use th–
"The advantage." It wasn't even a whisper on Izuku's part, much more just a silent movement of the lips. He moved with a speed only granted to him through months of training and very high adrenaline. He grabbed the jagged piece of metal that had broken off from the ceiling and stabbed down hard on the wandering hand. In the same movement, Izuku threw himself at the same guard, putting all of his weight into it to be able to kick the other man in the face without losing his balance. The man to his right attempted to scream something coherent while the other cried out in pain, but Izuku buttheaded him right in the temple, pushing him back. Jagged metal left the wounded hand just to get lodged in the space between jaw and throat with a wet sound. He twisted his body and kicked the other man in the face again to get more momentum, noticing that he was still not uncovering his face; he almost felt bad for the guy because the poor fucker couldn't even open his eyes, but the feeling of guilt left him by the fourth kick. With every kick to the blind one, the shiv dug itself deeper and deeper in the other's neck. He allowed himself the fleeting thought of victory. Then a hand grabbed his face, the man bleeding from the neck flipping him over and trying to choke him out and take his weapon.
Of course.
Izuku kicked one last time, his left hand landing on the broken glass on the floor. The guy had him in a headlock, his stabbing hand also captured in the hold, and Izuku's free hand searched desperately along the floor for something—anything—to use. There was glass and metal and pieces of the roof but nothing solid and the edge of his vision started to fill with neon spots. Then his hand curled around something much heavier, something half trapped under his thigh that took him a second to really understand and get a proper hold of.
He pressed the gun right next to his cheek, aimed just past his head, and fired.
The Hero Killer wasn't one to use guns and so Izuku had never had the privilege of using one under any type of circumstance. The ricochet sent his entire arm flying away and the explosion going off next to his right ear was almost enough to knock him out cold. His left ear was throbbing violently and the other one was too hurt to even do that, but both were ringing loud and dissonant. He felt nauseous and unbalanced, all signs that he had most definitely ruptured his right eardrum–perhaps even for good. Thankfully, adrenaline was still pumping through his veins and so he pushed himself into a sitting position in one swift motion. One guard was unconscious and the other one was very dead, and Izuku smiled a tiny bit. The elevator had yet to move, so Izuku pushed the set of outer doors on the bottom open with bloody hands and crawled out like a demon escaping hell. He rolled onto his back and sighed, then coughed violently and cursed in his head. He tried to curse aloud but realized that he hadn't cursed in his mind at all to begin with; he just couldn't hear a thing.
"Lucky me." It was really bizarre, talking but hearing absolutely nothing.
Two people ran just past him, paying him no mind, and Izuku noted their panicked expressions. The building was barely shaking anymore but a building wasn't supposed to do this at all so that was something to take into account.
Get up, kid.
"Yup," He huffed out a breath, getting up with aching joints. He looked out the window briefly as he placed the gun in the back of his pants, noting that the glass was cracked but not shattered. There was smoke coming from multiple structures outside and there were people running in every direction in hoards; well, no, not quite in every direction. The most amount of the figures were running away from the building he was in, the others running towards it. Most people would just run past each other without incident, but a few small groups seemed to either be fighting or organizing.
Had there been an earthquake? Was the MLA getting attacked? By who? Another fanatic group maybe, or perhaps a more legal organization? Did it matter?
No.
Yeah, he thought as much. His curiosity was definitely not a priority at the time.
The one and only blessing of this place was that it was a very big, professional building and thus it had all emergency exits marked. He slammed open the door, knowing only from the view outside that he was at least ten levels above the ground and that he was probably running out of time to get away with everything he wanted to do. He barely avoided hitting someone in his haste, the stairs filled with people trying to make their way down to ground level. A passing glance at the wall verified where he was—level 16—and he took off running downstairs two steps at a time. There were a few cracks on the walls here and there but nothing to tell him that the building was coming down on top of him just yet.
He tried to avoid pushing people if only to keep himself from tripping and falling—his newfound deafness left him feeling unbalanced—but it was getting more difficult with every step. He was sure that at least two people had cursed him out but he had no way of knowing. He did feel someone make a grab for his shirt at some point, but he shoved himself away with enough force to not get caught.
When I see you, you bet your ass you're training again.
Izuku let out a wheeze of amusement, almost missing a step and eating concrete. He was on the seventh floor and he already felt like his lungs were on fire. He was fully aware that he was only moving on adrenaline and, while he wasn't complaining, he knew that he'd lost some edge in that tiny cell. He wasn't as meek as when he'd first started training but damn, his thighs were going numb.
He let out another laugh that he could actually kinda hear at the realization that after days of torture, the one thing he wanted to do was push himself even further. Two years prior he wouldn't have had the drive to do anything other than crawl in bed and look at videos of heroes; you know, a normal reaction for a boy his age. But no. Now he wanted to get back to a group of killers and outcasts, travel to the middle of nowhere, and train until his entire body gave way. The memory of laying under the stars made him think of the cell block waiting further down and he jumped the last four steps before landing on the platform that led to the next set of stairs. He wasn't leaving this place by himself, he thought as he pointedly turned the corner down another set of stairs, past the ground-level door that everyone was running out of.
He had no concrete idea of where the cellblock was located, only knew that it was at least four or five levels underground. He looked at the wall as he rounded the corner, trying to get a look at the sign next to the door before he kept going down and–
He collided with someone head-on, both sent flying by the force of impact. He somehow managed to find his footing right before he was sent careening down the stairs and he turned to look at the person he'd crashed into as a reflex. Not one, but three sets of eyes met his own and a horrible shiver ran up his spine.
Dr. Gurin looked at him with a mix of surprise and confusion, probably not understanding why Izuku would be going back down towards the place that had seen him get broken in so many different ways. The other person—the girl that had given him the fear hallucinations that first, horrible day—looked at Izuku with a wide array of emotions. First shock, then recognition, distaste, and then…
Then cruelty, a flashing smile forming on that once angry face.
He stepped on air and fell ungraciously. He managed to stop himself halfway down the steps and he looked up with an animalistic terror clawing at his chest but both women were gone.
For a moment, both brief and unending, Izuku found himself frozen in terror, only registering the fact that he could now hear some sort of alarm going off. The emotion was primal and intense to the point where it was almost surreal and he felt the sudden urge to throw up. He looked around, eyes wide and unfocused until they landed on the lightbulb on the level below him. Like a dam breaking, all of his fear migrated into a different part of his brain and he was running before he could even register that he was moving. Fear that had been for himself, his own trauma, was suddenly ten times worse because those two were coming from the basement and he might be too late already to save anyone.
He was breathing hard enough to make himself pass out and he basically slammed into every wall possible on his way down until the last level, down where the walls were different and the stairs changed color and a black door loomed at the end of the hall like the mouth of an endless cave. He slammed into that as well for good measure to open it, gun in both hands and raised with the full intent of killing whoever he saw. But there was only the familiar darkness of the cell block. Firearm still at the ready, Izuku blindly searched the wall behind him until he found and flicked the light switch. There was no blood, no bodies on the ground, no guards to shoot. No nothing, really. He looked left and blinked, a pair of very scared eyes belonging to a fellow prisoner looking at him. The person blinked back and then, recognizing Izuku as something positive, threw themselves at the door of their cell.
"H-hey! Let me out! Please, I beg you!"
Not a second later, a cacophony of pleas came from every cell.
"Who's there?!"
"Let us go, please!"
"They left us down here! Please!"
Izuku felt overwhelmed, but he pushed forward until he was at the two cells he really cared about—Lord did that sound selfish, but he didn't care at the moment. There was a figure huddled on the floor, one brown eye blinking up at him in fear and then absolute shock.
"Midoriya!?" Hara's voice was very different when it was spoken at a normal volume and Izuku felt so much relief that he slumped against the bars of his friend's cell. He saw the curtain inside Morse's cell move and a tapping began and he laughed.
"Oh, thank God…" He sighed, realizing that the hearing on his left side was back to normal.
Hara practically slammed against the door of his cell, his smile almost as dumbfounded as Izuku felt.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Gee, I'm happy to see you too," Izuku half-joked. Hara frowned a little.
"No, I mean… Why would you come back?"
"I wasn't gonna leave you guys down here," Izuku was just about to add that it was an obvious thing, but he bit his lip at Hara's guilty expression. Oh. Guess I'm the only one stupid enough to do this, huh?
He shook his head to get rid of that train of thought, focusing on the problem at hand.
"I don't know where the keys are,"
"Just shoot the lock."
"Oh, yeah…" Izuku blinked and Hara rolled his eye.
Izuku was most definitely not a fan of firearms. They were loud, could get jammed and they all eventually ran out of ammo. Not to mention his right ear was still completely out of commission. But he had to admit that they served a purpose every now and then. Hara stepped away and Izuku shot the lock point-blank, hating the sound. The door swung open with an eerie creak, everyone else letting out cries of panic at the sudden explosion. Hara stumbled out into the light, smile trembling in a bizarre fashion, and Izuku finally got a good look at the other man.
Hara was covered in bruises and cuts as far as the eye could see, all of his clothes covered in blood and dirt. He wasn't wearing any shoes and Izuku counted four missing toes; his hands fidgeted too much to get a proper look, but some fingers were gone too. Half his head was covered in dirty bandages, a dark stain where Hara's eye should be, and that was about all Izuku could really take in without outright staring. Well, that and he didn't think he could take any more realizations about his friend's pitiful condition.
"You don't exactly look like a model yourself, you know?" Hara chuckled and Izuku felt his face heat up.
"Sorry…"
"The bloodthirsty, inhuman Disciple getting flustered? That's a sight." Hara held out his hand and Izuku handed over the gun. For a moment, right when the weapon left his hand, an intrusive thought flashed in the teen's mind. What if Hara just shot him in the face? They knew things about one another, but he had a feeling that Hara had shared some things that he didn't want others to know. What if killing Izuku or Morse was the only way of keeping those things secret?
Hara, wounded hands and all, handled the gun like a professional. The magazine was in his hand in a second, where he examined it briefly before it was slammed back into the gun with precision.
"Did you use it before?"
"Huh? Oh, I… I fired it once before breaking the lock. So two times," Thankfully that was enough to snap Izuku out of his fatalistic thoughts. Hara nodded.
"That explains the missing rounds. But we should be fine." He limped the three steps towards Morse's own cell with as much determination as he could show. Izuku respected him for it.
"Morse? I need you to step away from your door, okay?" Hara said loudly to get over the alarm that was finally starting to make sense in Izuku's mind. It was saying something about a 'protocol' happening in 5 minutes and Izuku felt a new wave of anxiety wash over him. Whatever was gonna happen, he did not want to be down when it did.
The curtain in the girl's cell rustled and Hara checked the gun one last time before pointing at the lock. But then he stopped, a groan of frustration escaping his lips. Right behind the lock, where the bullet was sure to pass, where a pair of pale hands pressed against the metal.
"Morse, please move."
"..."
Hara squinted, glancing at Izuku.
"Uh, um, Morse it'll be quick okay? You don't have to worry about it being loud or anything," The teen tried, guessing that maybe that was the problem. But the hands just pressed harder against the wire mesh.
"Morse–"
"No."
Izuku blinked. Her voice was so tiny that the authoritative tone sounded outright ridiculous.
"Come on, this isn't time for you to start conversing," Hara pleaded. A pink eye peeked from behind the curtain.
"Alive. Everyone alive."
"...What?" Hara sounded absolutely done.
"Leaving no one," Morse said with a frown, her hands not moving.
"Morse,"
Nothing.
"Move,"
Silence. The alarm went down to four minutes.
"Hara…" Izuku urged gently, sweat forming on his brow.
"Move!"
"NO!"
Hara cursed like a sailor, looking ready to kill someone. The intrusive thought stirred in Izuku's mind and he moved to block the path to the door a little better. Hara glared at the door and leaned in closer.
"I'm leaving you with them if you don't let me open the door,"
He sounded serious, but Morse didn't budge. After another moment, Hara yelled. He pushed the gun towards Izuku roughly, murmuring something about them 'wasting their fucking AMMO on something so fucking stupid, fuck's sake, Morse', and Izuku blinked. A new intrusive thought flooded his mind, and he tilted his head to the side like a confused puppy.
Was…
Was this what his arguments with Stain looked like?
Focus, kid.
Right. Right. He rushed towards the closest cell, the person inside begging him to let them out. Izuku pointed the gun at the lock, only waiting enough to make sure he would kill the person inside, and fired with his eyes closed, his ears pounding as if his heart had switched places with his brain. He was almost glad that one of his ears was out of commission with how loud the gun sounded in the small space. The door creaked open, rusty hinges squeaking like mice, and the prisoner was out of the cell and out the door before Izuku even reached the next one.
"You're fucking welcome!" Hara spat behind him.
One by one, Izuku destroyed every lock in the room, people flooding out at whatever speed they were able to. Some managed to run out while a few others miserably hobbled with the help of others that were just as wounded; it wasn't as much helping one another as it was the realization that they would be slower on their own. One person just stared at Izuku with hollow eyes as they stayed laying on the floor, the unfocused gaze making Izuku tremble as if he'd seen a ghost. He made sure that all doors were open and then rushed towards Hara's side, the alarm blaring just outside.
'Attention! The security of the main building has been compromised. Please evacuate by the nearest exit. Protocol B.D.C. will begin in: three minutes."
The last two words were said in a different voice, and the noises in the background made Izuku think of a nuclear apocalypse. It was a nightmare straight out of a movie.
"Ok, they're all done." Izuku handed the gun back to the person that actually knew how to use it, his hands trembling. He didn't want to overthink, he really didn't, but his mind was already starting to buzz with horror. Three minutes was nothing—180 seconds, to be exact—and Hara was wounded, probably too badly to run.
"Move," Hara ordered and Morse's hands disappeared. There was a final bang as the lock was shot open, pieces of it falling to the ground at their feet. But one piece hung to the door by a wire of some sort and Izuku frowned. Was the lock electric? He realized suddenly that he'd never seen the guards unlock Morse's door. Hell, he'd never seen anyone even approach it. Hara had said at the very beginning that Morse had been there much longer than anyone else and yet, no one paid her any mind.
"Let's go, right–" Hara pushed the curtain aside and both young men kinda froze for a second.
Nails bitten down as far as they would go, long dark hair matted and greasy and once olive-toned skin left horribly pale from the lack of sunlight, Morse stood towards the corner of her cell with her hands shielding her eyes from the light now filtering in from the hallway. Her appearance was mortifying, the length of her hair a testament to how long she'd been locked down here, but that wasn't what made them freeze.
Attached to the torso were quirk suppressing devices. There was a thick metal collar around her neck and it shackled her to the wall with a sturdy-looking chain, a thick wire braided along with the links as to not get pulled. One end came out of the wall, two little lights above it, one red and one green.
The other end of the cable? Connected to the apparatus keeping her bound to her cell, two little lights looking at them like mismatched eyes. On the ceiling, far out of reach, there was a very expensive-looking microphone.
"What is that?" Hara asked, fear cracking his voice.
"I don't… I don't know."
Morse just shook her head, eyes still closed.
"Protocol B.D.C. will begin in: two minutes." The alarm reminded them casually.