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.

You saw Dark Shadow before seeing Tokoyami. Rising over the crumbling wall of a ruined building, thrashing back back and forth like a particularly well-coordinated swarm of bees. Larger than he usually was, but it was expected.

You knew what Dark Shadow did when his human panicked, but you wondered why they were staying so stationary; you vaulted the wall, and the answer made your stomach drop.

Tokoyami must have used some kind of electrical wire to lash his right hand, from wrist to elbow, to a piece of rebar. Whenever Dark Shadow reached the limit of his range, Tokoyami lurched forward, but did not move. The wire was biting into his skin. Right beneath the notch of his wrist, a cut was bleeding sluggishly.

You took another hesitant step forward. At the sound of your footfall, Dark Shadow screeched and swooped in closer, and Tokoyami cringed away from you, curling closer to the crumbling wall. “Don’t come any closer!” he cried out, voice breaking like a dropped glass.