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An eerie silence filled the air, inflated the tense atmosphere like a balloon, popped only by weak groans and her sharp breaths. Her combat boots made barely a sound on the floor. Red footprints tracked her path.
She moved down the hallway, stalking like a panther on the hunt in the dead of night.
There were worse comparisons. She may not have been a panther, but she was definitely on the hunt.
The bodies of the arrogant men who'd tried to stop her marked her progression through the building, acid burns trailing across their skin. Blood dripped down her arms. Some of it was hers, some of it wasn't. She wasn't entirely sure of who else it belonged to; they all started to blur, after a while.
The injuries didn't matter, the burns she'd left behind didn't matter, the blood didn't matter. She might've been a Pro Hero on paper, but Ashido Mina was loyal before she was anything else in the world. Loyal to her loved ones, to herself, to the young girl who had learned to dance through violence, to smile and burn brighter when her back was to the wall and it looked like all was lost.
Loyal to her very best friends. Loyal enough to raze this building to the ground and char anyone involved on the embers if she didn't find them soon.
They had been taken, one by one, within a week. It didn't make sense. It shouldn't have been possible. Shouto had thought she would be next, and Mina had dared them to try.
Try they did. Fail they did, because they'd been expecting her to fight fair, like a respectable hero, like her friends' lives weren't on the line. Through their failure they'd led her straight to them. She didn't know how or why they'd taken her girls, but with all of them gone a part of her had disappeared too. Maybe the part that used to hold her back.
It didn't matter. All she cared about now was finding them. Not the blood on her hands or the burns in her wake.
(It wasn't like she'd killed any of them. She didn't think so, at least. And if anything had happened to her friends, they would be grateful if they were only left with a little scarring.)
There were more guards ahead of her. Clearly this operation was well-funded. Unfortunately for them, money melted the same in her acid.
"Hey you, stop!"
"Isn't that…?"
"Shit, it's her!"
She was close enough to melt the nozzles of their weapons with a spray of acid, a mere flick of her hand, like she was shaking off water after a day at the beach with her friends.
Some of the stray droplets sizzled on their exposed skin. She engaged the most foolish of the trio in combat as he ran directly at her with nothing but his fists and hulking size, believing he could overpower her with brute force alone.
He made a very satisfying sound when he hit the floor, collarbone broken and arm dislocated. A thick mist of acid sprayed over his cursing form like a gentle cloud ensured he would stay down.
The other two, slightly smarter, but still fools given that they didn't surrender immediately, rushed her together. As if close-range combat wasn't her greatest skill, nearly a special move in its own right, as if she hadn't been dancing through her entire life and didn't know how to use her body like a weapon.
And that was without the acid.
Perhaps this entire affair would've been harder if they hadn't taken her friends, hadn't given her an incentive to take the sparkly public-friendly law-abiding gloves off.
When one was either unconscious or wisely pretending to be and the other was crying on the floor in front of her, she shook the last of the acid from her hands and crouched in front of him, lifting him very near to her face by the collar of his uniform with an ease that made him whimper in fear.
"I'm going to ask you some questions. You're going to answer. If you refuse to answer or try to lie to me, I won't be happy, and you will be very unhappy. Understand?"
He nodded jerkily, then squeaked out a "Yes!" when her fingers tightened on his collar.
"Are my friends in this building?"
"Yes."
"How many more guards are there?"
"N-Not a lot, this was supposed to be temporary, then the team failed to capture you and—"
"Where are my friends?"
He didn't answer. His eyes darted around, looking anywhere but her. "Where are they?"
He yelped when she slapped him across the face, making a mark that would burn from the acid left behind. "Where are they?!"
"The holding cells are d-down this hall, past three doors and down the staircase on the left!" He rambled out, tears escaping down his cheeks.
"Last question." He relaxed minutely, relief in the eye not swelled shut. He thought he was done.
"Did you hurt them?"
He tensed up again. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. The smell of burning military-grade polymer filled the air between them.
"N-Not me! I didn't lay a hand on them! I'm not even sure they were hurt, there was only the one time they screamed—"
He was dropped back to the floor, collar melted away, squealing in pain like the disgusting coward he was.
"Y-You'll need a keycard to get past the door! You'll never make it!" He spat at her in a moment of bravery, of stupidity.
Her answering smile could've melted glass. He managed to pale further, despite the blood loss. "It's a good thing I don't need to worry about that, isn't it," she melted through the chain around his neck, plucking free his ID badge and keycard, "Kajiwara Hiroshi?"
He followed his colleague's footsteps and decided to either pass out or fake it. She didn't care, either served her purposes.
With the mess she'd left behind, she knew it wasn't long before she'd be discovered, fewer guards or not. She followed his directions, using the keycard at the door only to save the annoyance of melting a hole through metal that thick.
The sight in the room filled her with enough rage to make her wish she'd gone back and melted each and every one of those bastards down to the bone, slowly and completely.
Her friends were in cages.
Costumes torn and bodies littered with more injuries than they could have possibly received fighting back against their kidnappers.
Strong, steadfast Tsu was curled up on the ground, her exposed skin flaking away like it did when she hadn't had access to water recently, eyes barely open. She'd hardly twitched upon Mina's entry. They'd dehydrated her, of course.
Sweet, fierce Ochako was floating in the air, hands covered and bound so she couldn't release herself, tethered by a chain on her ankle to the floor. Vomit splatter and the dizziness in her unfocused eyes said she'd been like that for too long.
Cheerful, shining Tooru was limp on the floor, her features painted in blood in place of the right kind of light to force her into visibility. Her ragged, rasping inhales were the only thing telling Mina she was still alive.
Confident, brilliant Momo was slumped against the bars of the cage, gaunt and wasting away without any fat left on her bones. She looked like she'd been starved for weeks rather than days, and barely had the energy to lift her head and blink slowly when she came in.
Resilient, rebellious Kyouka was curled in a ball, hand over her head, earjacks bloodied. She didn't even look up, like she hadn't heard Mina's entrance. She and Momo each had a hand extended through the bars, almost reaching each other, tracks in the dust on the ground a testament to failed attempts.
What had these motherfuckers done to her friends?
She'd gasped in horror, but she refused the tears welling up in her eyes. The stinging as she forced them down didn't even register. There would be time for hugging and group crying later. Right now, she had to get her friends out of this horrible place before anyone else dared to try and lay a finger on them.
"Don't worry, it's Mina, it's me. I'm going to get us out of here, I promise." She said, beginning to melt through the bars of Tsu's cage.
The only problem was how? She couldn't carry all of them. She didn't even want to move Tooru without a medical professional. She could burn everyone in this building alive but she couldn't help her friends. She'd come into this with fury boiling her acid and red tunneling her vision, and now she was stuck.
An explosion rocked the building.
She whirled around, acid collecting on her palms, half-expecting to see someone in the door setting off bombs once they'd finally realized she was here, but there was no one.
More explosions. She knew those explosions.
Katsuki.
And if he was here, the rest of the class was too.
She felt a part of her relax. Even as Pro Heroes, spread across rankings and agencies, class A were there for each other without fail. They were probably pissed she'd gone ahead without them. She should've known they'd come — you fuck with one of the class, you fuck with all of the class.
The nightmare week was over. The others were here. Shouto was here, and probably going to throttle her after kissing her and getting them all to a hospital. Her friends were safe.
She'd done it.