ASHIDO:
Musha was on his knees next to her. He looked so devastated all of a sudden, in a way you'd never expect a big strong hero to look.
The girls around us were looking terrified. My mind was going blank, flashing full of images of her - my friend, co-worker, everything we'd shared...
Don't cry. Don't cry, not infront of them. Heroes don't cry...
I looked over at Aoyama and Tooru, then at the girls.
"Did anyone see which way he went?"
"Th-that way, upstairs!" gasped the nearest girl to me, pointing and sobbing. I turned and Aoyama and Tooru followed me as we headed on upstairs.
"We need some light, Invisible Girl!" I told her, getting my AcidMan ready.
"Got it - " Tooru started - but then -
The villain's knife came swooping at her. We'd stumbled into a dark passage, and I couldn't see very well.
"You're gonna pay for hurting our friend!" I shouted at him. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a blow came at me and shoved me backward, through the wall and onto my side. I heard Tooru and Aoyama yelling for me; I was dizzy and disoriented, and tried to push myself up.
THump-thump...
The villain had stomped in. I could only see an eye, from a bit of light from outside.
"Don't you get it, hero?" he hissed out at me. "It's no good. You know why? Cause in the end, evilalwayswins. No matter how hard you heroes fight to save the day, in the end, the monsters always win. You might stop it. But it's just for a little while. In the end, there will always be more of us. We'll never stop coming. Evil will never end. It doesn't matter what you do, because you'll never really stop it. There will always be more evil. And in the end, it always wins. It. Always. Wins."
My head was hurting - I felt myself starting to cry. It was all crashing down on me, everything that had happened in the last few days...I couldn't say to him 'We'll always stop you' or 'just watch us' or something heroic like I should have said. In that moment I - I couldn't tell him he was wrong.
It seemed like he was about to stab me -
Light suddenly came blasting through the place, and I had to shield my eyes.
"Warping Light Bend -"
"Combo, ce la!"
I peered through my dazed eyes.
Tooru was actually bending Aoyama's Naval laser, which he was brandishing like a sword straight at the villain!
"Try and hide from us now!" Tooru shouted. The villain was moving - I slowly did my best to sit up. Aoyama was chasing him with his naval laser sword - it looked kind of funny - Tooru was blasting the villain with warp refraction. I had to help them - I had to do something...
Before I could move - the villain had disappeared.
"Huh?" gasped Tooru.
"Find him!" I choked out.
"Pinky? Are you ok?" she asked me. Aoyama looked concerned too.
"We gotta find him, before he gets away!"
We searched, late into the night, everywhere we could. But there was no sign of him.
Three people were dead. Two girls, and -
And there was nothing we could do about it. The villain had escaped.
Musha said, as we stood watching the police take away the - the bodies...
"I'm not sure I can do this anymore."
KIRISHIMA:
"I'm so sorry, man," I told Ashido over the phone as I began to pack up to leave to return to school. "That sounds really heavy."
"You dealt with this kind of stuff before, right? How do you do it?"
Nighteye...I tried not to think too hard about that. It was pretty upsetting to think about still.
"Well...it was pretty hard to deal with, at first. I guess we just had to. I didn't know him as well as Midoriya...maybe he'd be the one to ask."
"I can't believe he - he just got away, like that."
"Sometimes even when you catch them it doesn't feel satisfying," I sighed.
"Huh? What do you mean?"
I told her about what had happened to me; she sounded pretty horrified.
"I don't know how the pros deal with this stuff, day in and day out," I admitted to him.
"I guess I don't know either."
We were quiet for a moment.
"I couldn't tell him he was wrong," she sighed.
"What do you mean?"
"When he said they'd always win. I mean, I'm a hero, right? Shouldn't I be able to just tell him 'No, you're wrong, in the end, heroes will always save the day?'"
"Fatgum tells me the key is making villains lose the will to fight as fast as you can. And it sounds like you guys did htat. You went and tackled him, and Hagakure and Aoyama scared him off. You guys did your jobs and saved the day. Maybe we can't always save everyone, but we can at least try our best to save anyone we can, you know?"
She sounded a little teary. "Thanks, Kirishima."
Fatgum gave me and Tetsutetsu pats on the shoulder as we got ready to leave. "Thanks for all your hard work."
"Can't say I feel like we did much," I admitted.
"You guys did plenty. And we got two crooks, and saved a few lives. Don't worry too much. Everything'll be ok."
There was this funny kind of tone in his voice I couldn't help but feel nervous about. And as I walked to the train station with TEtsutetsu, my brain all full of what Ashido had said, I had this funny feeling. I don't know, this weird sense of foreboding?
Like we were only getting started.