"I caution you with broken people-

You may cut yourself on the shards of their shattered lives."

-Unknown

Lightning faded from the tips of his fingertips, as he was startled out of his reverie by a high-pitched wail of hurt and disbelief. It wasn't particularly loud, and yet he couldn't help but focus his full attention on it. The sound didn't seem to resonate in his ears, but rather his soul. It was the sound of childish naivete breaking and shattering, of a heart stuttering to a stop. A hymn of betrayal.

His own heart skidded to a stop when it finally registered as to what made the sound.

Or rather, who.

Right before his eyes stood three figures he had come to know fairly well throughout his stay at the school: Aizawa-sensei, Shouto-san, and Urakaka. He threw away how they got here, why they were here, etc. He had already made the mistake of carelessness before, and he wouldn't allow himself to commit it again. He couldn't allow some half-baked feelings of attachment to influence his judgment here.

(It was only slight attachment, nothing more, nothing less. They would be better off not being around him anyway; all he brought was misfortune to those he interacted with. Sometimes as death, sometimes as a burden. But the fact was, they would be happier without him.)

He was in serious danger, especially considering Aizawa's and Todoroki's quirks. He didn't doubt that once they got over their disbelief and feelings of betrayal, they would immediately try to bring him to justice. He lightly tapped his earbud - designed to look like a civilian make- and connected with Kurogiri's end. He felt like swearing for the first time in a long time when all he could hear was the crunch and sizzle of white noise. The signal cleared a little, allowing him to hear the grunts and groans signature of a fight.

'...Another raid? Don't these people have anything better to do?'

"Kuro, I need you to extract me immediately."

He felt a tiny hint of relief when a gargled and static bogged reply came back a second later.

"Und... understood. How long... can... y-you... last?"

He lightly surveyed the area, taking into account natural barriers, viable obstruction, and the overall terrain in general. And then, he focused on the most important thing; his foes. Eraserhead could get a valid stare at him and then Shouto could leave him trapped in ice, or perhaps if they were creative enough, they could send flaming trees at him. The possibilities were as endless as their imagination, and that wasn't even taking into account the power of experience. Something he sorely lacked compared to Eraserhead.

"Five minutes tops. Possibly shorter. If you don't want to bail me out of jail instead of a forest, I suggest you hurry."

The line went dead as it crinkled and cracked, and Deku felt a shiver trace itself down the ridges and bends of his spine. The bad feeling he had could have just been from Kurogiri's situation, but he didn't want to take any chances. Almost faster than the eye could see, Deku threw his body behind a tree at the maximum power he could produce without injuring himself.

Sure enough, a split second after he ducked behind the tree he heard a faint tsk sound spill out of Eraserhead's mouth. But Deku's ordeal wasn't quite over yet, as a stream of flames that seemingly covered the night sky itself with their sheer size was aiming right for him. This time he actually did swear as he kicked the tree in front of him seconds before it went up in flames. He used the momentum he had gained to swing himself around the base of another tree, and onto the other side so he wouldn't accidentally catch Eraserhead's eyes.

He made for a rather sorry figure as he laid crumpled on the ground, but at least he had gotten out of that situation, at least slightly. He absentmindedly patted out a portion of his pants that had caught on fire (they were oddly not all that hot). There was a slight redness to a patch of his skin, but nothing serious. But the tress in front of him, on the other hand... Flames licked and cackled with glee, feeding themselves and growing all the larger on the oxygen-rich flammable wood. It was a wall of flame.

"You idiot! What if he's stuck in those flames? He'll be burned! I-I... need to talk to him, Todoroki. There must be some like of reason!"

A shaky voice answered back, filled with false bravado. Deku just sat still, knowing that Kurogiri would be here any second now. There was no real point in speaking up in the first place. (It was easier to dissociate from the voices when all he could see was the barest of outlines beyond the flickering fire's shroud.)

"What is there to talk about? He's just a traitor, Urakaka! Just... a villain."

"He's a human! Y-You can't tell me that that's okay!"

The third figure that had been aimlessly standing still at the bare end of the flame's domain stalked over to who he assumed was Todoroki.

The voice that came out was less than expected.

"Half-n'-Half, douse these flames right now. I don't care what messed-up relationship you have with him, but you're saying that it's okay for you to kill him, right? Even I know that that's damn messed up! Get a hold of yourself! Trust me, you're going to regret this-"

The figure faintly shook his head back in forth, barely discernable among the distortion of the fire.

"I'm not saying that it's okay to kill him, Bakugo. Even if he's actually in the fire, it won't kill him in the first place. Maybe give him a few minor burns, at most. My fire isn't nearly as powerful as my ice since I have no training with it. If you got closer, you would feel the lack of heat. It just looks threatening."

The duo fell into an awkward frozen silence at the misunderstanding.

"I just don't see the point in talking to him, Urakaka. No matter what excuses he has..."

His fingernails pierced down into his palms, letting a crimson trickle of blood seep down to the ground.

"It won't change that he's a villain. That he tried to kill Bakugo. What... What's the point of talking to someone like that?"

He could only repeat it over and over again.

"He's just a villain."

Deku had tuned out most of the moral debate occurring on the other side, in favor of a much more troubling line realization.

'That's not Aizawa? Damn it all-'

He immediately started a motion to roll to the side, but it wasn't fast enough. A deceptively brittle-looking rope hooked itself around his foot, and it was only because he made a spllt-second decision to dislocate his ankle that it fell harmlessly through the air. He bit down on his cheek hard to prevent his scream of pain from vocalizing itself.

It was one thing to get wounded by your opponent, but it was another to purposefully inflict said pain on yourself.

Ignoring the look of surprise on Aizawa's face, he dragged his injured body toward another tree as fast as he possibly could while toting around a damaged limb. While his body was going slow, far slower than normal, his mind was racing at the speed of light. It drew up all likes of scenarios and analyses, desperately trying to come to a conclusion on how to get out of the current situation. Suddenly, his mind was filled with clarity. He knew how to get out of this. The cloth made a screaming noise as it whipped around once more to target his other foot. He let it harmlessly wrap around it, while he secretly smiled.

Slowly, he drew his hands up without turning around so Eraserhead's quirk wouldn't work quite yet.

"Turn around."

"Surely you know what my quirk is? It wouldn't matter even if I did-"

"Turn. Around."

'Rather demanding, aren't you? Anyway, now that I've offered some token resistance, it's time to implement the plan.'

In the palm of his hand lay an incredibility compressed concentration of lightning, easily dismissed by those who couldn't see it as the light from the fire blazing away in the background. Deciphering his location from the most recent place his voice had traveled from, he turned around with his eyes closed - body language purposefully calculated as one of defeat and sorrow - and fired away an incredibly powerful lightning bolt.

"Aizawa-sensei! Be careful! He's been lying about his real quirk-!"

The blonde's voice traveled through the wall of fire that was in the process of slowly being extinguished, but it was much too late.

The raven-haired man turned his body to try and dodge the moment the lightning had been released, but it was simply too close and far to fast for the human brain to react to after being charged for the better portion of twelve seconds. The end result was a rather cooked and barbequed right arm, his right sleeve slightly on fire. Aizawa fell to the ground and started convulsing, but Deku knew better than to stick around.

The man didn't need free motion of his body to be threatening; all it took was a simple glance.

He couldn't continue to rely on luck and stumble around as he had previously been doing throughout this ridiculous cliched cat and mouse game. Why was he always the one unlucky enough for people to actually stumble upon his conversation with Kacchan? Unlucky enough for someone to actually see through him in the first place, although it was partially his fault... Regardless, he needed to retake the initiative.

He had to grab hold of the one thing that would make Aizawa hesitate, and hold fast to it.

"Sorry about this."

He pinned her hands together to prevent them from touching anything and addressed the stunned audience before him.

"I wouldn't move if I were you. While I certainly don't kill children, I have no problems injuring them."

No-one moved, no-one breathed, no-one did anything for a moment but stare. And then the disbelief and surprise cracked and let the red hot magma of anger raise to the surface. While Kacchan seemed barely capable of restraining his anger, Shouto seemed intent on frying him alive and them freezing his ashes. He had been slightly aware of this facet of Shouto, this incredible confidence that came with never really losing a fight, or rather, even when he did lose, he faced no consequences. No harm to his person, nor the people he cared about.

It was a special kind of naivete. Because for that all he had experienced, for all he had suffered, that had not been cracked just yet. If he could, he'd rather not be the one to bring down the sledgehammer down. In truth, there was nothing wrong with this naivete in a non-life-or-death situation. It got many people farther in life, gave them the ability to live on in this hellish world. It gave people the ability to dream.

It was more commonly defined as optimism, but Deku preferred to categorize it as naivete.

The world was a cruel place, after all. Believing in the apparent goodness of others and entrusting yourself to it was a quick way to die.

Or cause the death of others. Whatever came first.

He felt his quirk disappear as Aizawa frantically made eye contact with him, but it was of no consequence. He had a nice, little shiny toy chiefly called by many as a gun. (Kurogiri was indeed the greatest resource when it came to smuggling illegal weapons. He was praising his decisions to get one just in case, despite his distaste of the weapon.) The moment he saw his foot inch the slightest bit forward, he fired. It scrapped the edge of her cheek and seemed to hurt her more mentally, but that was what he was aiming for.

He couldn't let them get any rather forward ideas.

(He ignored the slight sting in his heart the moment he pulled the trigger.)

Regardless, he squared his face into a dispassionate disinterest that seemed to hold no emotions within. And he stared.

"I don't bluff. Nor do I lie, when it comes to these types of situations. As long as you hold tight for a few minutes, no harm will come to her. But... If you choose to fight against the inevitable," He smiled (he didn't feel like smiling). "I will hurt her."