The several-mile stretch of cityscape was called the Ghost Quarter, because nobody lived there. It was a remnant from one of Japan’s earliest big-threat villains, named Seismic, whose ability to control earth and ground-matter was still one of the strongest recorded Elemental Quirks to ever exist. The Ghost Quarter was the site of the final battle to take him down. It had been hard and gruesome. A shudderingly high casualty number. The damage to the city itself had been astronomical.

Class 1-A had gone there as part of a unit on minimizing collateral damage. They had been hit by a very powerful Fear Inducer Quirk.

Go in. Find your students, one at a time. Knock them out by breaking a capsule of Midnight’s Somnambulist, which could last about a half hour away from her body. Send up a single, and another teacher would carefully pick their way to the sleeping kid and bring them to the base outside the Ghost Quarter while you moved on to the next one. Simple plan. A good plan, even.

She was sitting, still and calm as a picture, on the front steps of what used to be a bank.

Asui had her chin sitting on her knees and her pinky finger in her mouth. She seemed to be chewing on it thoughtfully, eyes fixed somewhere else on the street. Her breathing was natural. She wasn’t shaking.

You walked up to her, slow and steady. Your class’s rock. Steady and easy-going and kind. Dependable, even in her fear.

Slowly, she turned her head to face you. Asui blinked a few times, as if bringing you face into focus. She stared at you for a long second. And then her eyes began to well up with tears. “I knew you would find me,” She sounded so much smaller than she usually did. “This is what you’re supposed to do when you’re lost and scared, right? You stay where you are, until an adult you can trust comes and finds you.”