Neo Killing Game - Danganronpa x My Hero Academia

Chapter 9 : The Beginning of the End - Part 2 - Deadly Life

"Sweet dreams, Yaomomo."

Yaomomo staggered to her feet and stumbled back from Shouto's body as the villain advanced. "No... no..!"

"It's over." Dabi hefted a handful of flames in his marred hand. "Shouto is dead. And you are still trapped." He glanced around their fiery arena. In the sapphire light of the ocean-tinted tongues, lapping hungrily at all scraps of oxygen in the room, Yaomomo found herself trapped in a world of blue, blue, blue. "Just let me make this quick. Your use in this experiment is over."

"No... I..!" As Dabi blasted a plume of cerulean flame at her, Yaomomo yelped and ran, scrambling away from Shouto and nearly colliding with a blazing podium. She jumped back, her feet numb, tears dripping down her face that she didn't bother to wipe away. Her hands were shaking, palms sweaty. "No, no, no! I don't want to-!"

"Give it up," Dabi drawled. "Shouto died because of you. Tamaki died because of you. Come and die already, like Fumikage did before you, like Ochako and Izuku and all your little friends. Don't you want to join them?"

The villain's words rang, sharp as daggers, in Yaomomo's ears as she ran, ran ran ran from him and the blasts of flame that chased her like a cat chased a mouse. She stumbled, faltering with each passing, undeserved heartbeat.

"Don't you want to join them?"

She did, she truly did, Yaomomo decided, images of Kyouka and Denki and Cynthia and Shouto, dear Shouto burning into the backs of her eyelids. She had no reason to keep fighting; she'd failed in the end, failed herself by saying yes and driving that knife into Tamaki's head, failed everyone else when they realized she had been lying this whole time.

You just want to escape, don't you?

No matter who has to die along the way.

She tripped, tumbling to the burning floor. She glanced over her shoulder to see Dabi advancing, growing closer and closer with every step he took, the flames he wielded getting closer and closer to burning her alive.

But they never did.

Why do they never strike?

"Sorry, but I can't let you do that." There was a flurry of crimson, and in a split second there was a man between her and the ravenette, shielding her in the shadow of a massive pair of wings, the feathers sharper than blades and redder than a tropic sunset. "These kids are coming with us."

"I don't see you doing much, birdbrain," Dabi scoffed as Yaomomo shakily rose to her feet behind Hawks. "Feathers burn, y'know?"

"But of course." In a flash, the hero suddenly turned around and grabbed Yaomomo before going airborne, easily sliding her into a bridal carry in his stable, secure arms. "We're getting you and your friends outta here, 'kay?" he said, this time to her. She looked up at his face through his visor; he offered her a small quirk of his lips, his chocolate eyes smiling down at her.

"..." She didn't exactly know how to respond, but he looked as confident as Mirko in his ability to rescue her, to act as the hero of the day for her. "Shouto..." she muttered, her lips forming the words as if they were ghosts upon her tongue. "He's dead... down there..."

"Ah, Enji's son?" Hawks clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He twirled in midair, sending a row of feathers down in an arc to combat a wave of flame. "We'll send someone down to get him. Dabi has no reason to burn a corpse now, does he?"

Yaomomo stayed silent while Hawks whisked her away, hooking over the top of the blaze that engulfed the trial room and diving up, up to the ground floor and outside.