[Villain Team C versus Hero Team G.]
[This will be the final match of the day.]
A small charge runs through the air — the particular kind that comes with finality.
[Give it everything you have!]
[Go beyond!]
[Plus Ultra!]
[Begin!]
Kaminari goes still for just a moment.
Jiro nudges his shoulder.
"Hey."
He looks at her.
"You'll be fine," she says simply.
He holds her gaze for a second, then exhales — long and steady — and nods.
"Yeah." He turns back toward the building. "Let's do this."
***
The moment they step inside Building C, Jiro stops.
She presses one of her earphone jacks into the concrete wall, the tip breaking through the surface and anchoring itself into the solid material. Her eyes half-close.
The way her quirk works, sound isn't just heard — it's felt. The jack amplifies the faintest vibrations moving through solid material, translating the physical world into a layered map of pulses and rhythms she can read almost instinctively. Heartbeats. Shifting weight. The drag of an object across a floor. Each one arrives as a distinct wave with its own shape and signature.
She holds still and listens.
Several seconds pass.
Then she opens her eyes.
"Same room. Both of them."
Kaminari turns to her immediately. "Really?"
"They're preparing something," Jiro says, brow furrowed slightly. "I can hear objects being placed — along the windows."
"Barricades?"
"Maybe. Or something else entirely." She pulls the jack back from the wall. "Fifth floor, near as I can tell."
"Alright." Kaminari rolls his shoulders. "We move up floor by floor. Stay sharp."
"I'll check at each landing," Jiro says. "If anything shifts, I'll catch it."
They start up the stairs.
On the next floor, Jiro presses her jack into the wall again. A few seconds. Nothing new.
They keep climbing.
Floor by floor, the rhythm settles — move, stop, listen, continue. Each time, the vibrations from above remain steady. Whatever Yaoyorozu and Adachi are doing, they seem to be finished with it.
But just as they reach the landing before the next staircase, Jiro stops.
Her brow creases.
Kaminari notices instantly. "What?"
She doesn't answer immediately. She presses the jack harder into the surface, head tilting slightly.
"…Movement," she says slowly.
"Where?"
"Below us."
Kaminari goes quiet.
"Footsteps?" he asks.
"Something like footsteps." Jiro's frown deepens. "But not quite right. The pattern's off." She pulls back from the wall. "I can't pin it down."
Kaminari stands there thinking for a moment, arms crossed.
Then — slowly — something works its way across his expression.
"…You think they're faking it?"
Jiro looks at him.
"Like —" he straightens, growing more animated as the idea takes shape, "— Yaoyorozu creates something that mimics footstep vibrations on the lower floors, and Ayaka uses her quirk to place it while they stay put upstairs. Make us think they're moving when they're not."
Jiro stares at him.
Just stares.
Kaminari begins to wilt under it.
"…What?"
Nothing.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
"…I didn't know you could think," she says flatly.
Kaminari chokes. "H — HEY!"
His face goes red almost immediately.
"What's THAT supposed to mean?!"
Jiro snorts — genuinely amused — and pushes off the railing.
"Relax, Sparky. I'm kidding." She starts toward the stairwell. "Mostly."
Kaminari sputters as he falls into step behind her. "Mostly — I come up with one solid idea, and this is the appreciation I get. One idea! That's all it takes, and suddenly it's a whole thing —"
Jiro laughs quietly, already moving up the stairs.
"Keep your voice down," she says. "Or the idea won't matter."
Kaminari snaps his mouth shut.
He grumbles under his breath — but quietly, this time.
***
The stairwell door creaks softly as they step onto the next floor.
They both feel it immediately.
The air is different here. Still, in a way, the lower floors weren't — not quiet exactly, but settled, like something has been pressed flat and left that way. The light barely exists, reduced to faint grey shapes and the dim outline of a corridor stretching ahead.
Heavy.
As if the building itself is holding its breath.
Jiro moves close to the wall without a word. Kaminari stops behind her.
She places one hand flat against the concrete, presses her jack into it, and closes her eyes.
For a few seconds, the world disappears.
The building hums quietly beneath her senses — its bones carrying the low language of a structure that has stood a long time. Pipes vibrating faintly in the walls. Electrical wiring pulsing in slow, distant rhythms like veins carrying blood to somewhere far away.
But nothing else.
No weight shifting across a floor.
No friction of movement.
No breathwork. No presence.
Her eyes open slowly.
A small crease forms between her brows.
Kaminari notices immediately. "…What?"
Jiro pulls the jack free.
"…That's weird."
He glances down the empty hallway. "What do you hear?"
She hesitates.
"…Nothing."
He blinks. "…Nothing?"
"No footsteps." She shakes her head slowly. "No movement. No equipment settling." She looks at the corridor again. "The only thing I can pick up through the entire building is the electrical current running through the walls."
Kaminari lets out a short, nervous laugh. "Maybe they're just… holding really still?"
Jiro doesn't laugh.
She winds one of her cords slowly around her finger — the earphone jack spinning once, twice.
"…It's too quiet."
Her eyes stay on the corridor ahead.
"It feels like the building's empty."
A faint chill runs down Kaminari's spine. "…Don't say that."
"Yeah…" She rubs the back of her neck. "…It's giving me the creeps too."
She presses the jack back into the wall.
Wires.
Air ducts.
The low structural vibration of a building doing nothing.
Then —
A heartbeat.
Slow.
Heavy.
Right behind the wall.
Jiro freezes.
Her eyes snap open.
"…There's someone inside the wall."
Kaminari stumbles back. "INSIDE THE WALL?!"
She connects the jack again.
The heartbeat is louder now.
Too loud.
As if whoever it is has moved closer — is standing directly on the other side, barely a few centimetres of concrete between them.
Then a voice comes through the wall.
Calm. Clear. Right beside her ear — as if the concrete isn't there at all.
"Found me."
Jiro recoils so hard she nearly loses her footing.
Kaminari catches her shoulder. "WHAT?! WHAT HAPPENED?!"
She points at the wall. "There was someone —"
They both stare.
Blank concrete.
No door. No seam. No trace of anything.
Just a wall.
Kaminari's eyes dart sideways. A few steps down the corridor — a door. He moves to it fast, electricity crackling to life across his skin as he reaches for the handle, the yellow current intensifying as he braces himself —
He throws the door open, ready to attack.
An empty room stares back at him.
Bare walls. Dust. Darkness. Nothing else. Not even the suggestion of recent presence — just a room that has been undisturbed for a long time and intends to stay that way.
The electricity fades slowly from his hands.
"…I hate this," he mutters.
He exhales and rubs the back of his neck.
"There's no one here."
***
Monitoring Room.
The class has gone quiet; eyes fixed on the screens.
Not the focused quiet of people watching a tense match — the confused quiet of people trying to figure out what they are even looking at.
On the central screen, the building's map flickers. The layout glitches — distorting briefly into something that doesn't match the floor plan before snapping back to normal, then distorting again, then returning. Like a signal struggling to resolve.
On one monitor, Momo stands calmly in the room on the fifth floor, eyes on a small handheld device in her palm.
On another, Ayaka leans against a wall in an unfamiliar corridor somewhere in the building. Arms folded. Completely relaxed, in the way that suggests she is not thinking about the match at all and possibly thinking about lunch.
On a third screen, Kaminari is still staring into the empty room.
The students in the monitoring room exchange confused looks.
"…What are they looking at?" Sero asks, tilting his head. "There's literally no one there."
"They look terrified," Uraraka murmurs.
"I mean —" Tsuyu presses a finger to her lips thoughtfully — "if I heard someone's voice coming through a solid wall and then found nothing on the other side, I would be terrified too. Ribbit."
A beat of silence passes through the room as everyone quietly agrees that yes, that is fair.
Then Iida's head snaps toward the building map.
"Wait." He adjusts his glasses sharply. "Look at the map."
Several heads turn.
Ayaka's location marker has moved.
She is no longer in the corridor.
She is directly above the hero team.
***
Fifth Floor. Building C.
"…Okay."
Kaminari steps back out of the empty room and walks back to Jiro, rubbing the back of his head with the particular energy of someone who has just decided to stop thinking about something because thinking about it isn't helping.
"…That was weird."
"Yes," Jiro says.
"Extremely weird."
"Yes."
Suddenly —
BANG.
The door behind them slams shut — the same one he'd just opened, now driving itself closed with a crack that splits through the silence of the floor like a gunshot.
They both whip around instantly.
The corridor behind them is empty. Still. The door at the far end sits motionless — closed, as if it has always been that way.
Kaminari nearly jumps out of his skin.
"WHAT WAS THAT?!"
Jiro scans the corridor, eyes narrowed.
"…A door."
"Yeah, thanks," Kaminari mutters nervously. "That didn't make it less creepy."
Jiro stares at the door for a moment longer, jaw tight. Then she exhales slowly.
"Let's keep moving," she says.
"Yeah." He falls into step beside her immediately. "Let's absolutely do that."
They move further into the floor without speaking, the silence pressing in around them in a way that feels deliberate. Neither of them says anything. Neither of them particularly wants to be the one to break the quiet and draw attention to the fact that the quiet is wrong.
Their footsteps echo softly against the concrete.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Then Jiro stops.
Abruptly — mid-step — like she's walked into something invisible.
Kaminari, caught off guard, stumbles, catches himself, and grabs the wall. "What — what happened, what's wrong —"
She turns and looks at him with an expression he can't immediately read.
"…Don't you hear it?"
"Hear what —" He looks around the empty corridor. "I don't hear anything, Jiro, please stop doing this to me, I am barely holding it together as it is —"
Jiro shakes her head.
"I'm serious." Her voice is flat and certain. "Footsteps."
"Footsteps." He stares at her. "What footsteps?"
"Listen," she says. "While you walk."
She reaches out and takes hold of his arm, pulling him forward with her as she starts moving again down the corridor.
He goes, because the alternative is staying alone in the hallway, which is worse.
For several seconds, he focuses. He hears his own footsteps. Jiro's footsteps beside him. The faint sound of the building doing nothing in particular.
Then —
Kaminari's brow furrows.
"…Wait"
They keep walking.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Another sound follows.
Step.
One beat too many. A third landing a fraction behind theirs, shadowing their rhythm like an echo that doesn't quite line up.
Kaminari's head snaps sideways to Jiro.
"I hear them." His voice drops to a whisper. "There's an extra set — every time we step, there's —"
"Yes." The relief in her voice is immediate. "I knew I wasn't imagining it."
He looks around the corridor, electricity sparking to life across his palm — a reflex rather than a decision, the current brightening the hallway in short, flickering flashes that push the darkness back along the walls.
Nothing. No one.
They look at each other.
Take a few more slow steps forward.
Step.
Step.
Step.
Step.
The extra footsteps follow perfectly.
They both stop.
The hallway goes silent again.
Something makes them both realise it at the same time — a shift in instinct, the particular feeling of a presence that isn't in front of them or behind them or to either side.
Slowly, as if by the same thought, they tilt their heads upward.
And freeze.