Chapter Text
[Main Building Interior, Saika’s Compound]
Izuku stared ahead as he and Celty rode Shooter through an empty hallway. As the hallway turned right, the two bike riders leaned to the right and followed it down another one. He glanced to the right and left as they passed sets of double doors on either side of the hall.
He was frowning under the helmet his girlfriend made for him, searching for any sign of movement from anything in the room. His heart skipped a beat, he let out a gasp, and tightened his arms around his girlfriend when he felt the bike lean and turn to the right again before sliding to a stop.
“What is it?” he asked as he turned his head to face to the left.
A set of metal double doors similar to the ones on either side of the hallway were in their path. He looked down at Celty’s helmet a second later.
“Can’t break down the doors with Shooter?”
Shooter huffed indignantly while Celty shook her helmet and extended her left arm towards the door. Her shadowy mist burst forth at the metal obstruction and rammed into it, pooling left, right, up, and down as it didn’t make the doors budge a centimeter.
“I wouldn’t be a good host if I didn’t give you some entertainment before the main event~” Saika’s cooed, her voice echoing around the room from several speakers towards the ceiling.
Her voice made both riders look up and around, their bodies tensing up and their hands closing into fists.
“So before I let you in, why not let my children entertain you first~?”
The doors of the hallway burst open, dozens upon dozens of murmuring and moaning men and women with red eyes and knives in their hands shambled their way into the room, their gaze locked onto the only two targets in the room.
“Ohhhh, crap…” Izuku mumbled, turning his head from Saika’s zombies to Celty.
The two of them shared a look before wordlessly nodding, with Izuku wearing a slightly worried expression on his face while Celty’s movements were tense and quick. They both dismounted Shooter and got between him and the zombies shambling towards him, ignoring Saika’s laughter coming through the speakers.
“Enjoooyyyy~” the woman said before the speakers went completely quiet.
“And here I was hoping we just had to deal with Saika,” Izuku said, Celty’s smoke being drawn to his hands and forming into a bo staff-like weapon. “I guess I need to work on my planning a bit more.”
‘Probably worry about that later,” Celty thought as her scythe formed in her hands.
Izuku lowered his posture while Celty straightened herself, released her left hand from her scythe, and lowered the blade towards the ground, the length of the pole resting under her arm.
“Is it alright to leave Shooter at the entrance?”
Shooter let out an angry whinny while Celty nodded.
“Hey! You’re a bike! You can’t get stabbed!” Izuku retorted.
“Greeen Shrrooooouuudddd!” the mass of Saika zombies droned on in unison in a low, dull moan. “Black Riiiiiddddeeerrrrr~”
Izuku turned his attention back to the slowly-encroaching enemies. Sharing a quick glance and nod with his girlfriend, the two of them readied their weapons and dashed forward.
Celty brought her scythe back as more of her smoke gathered on her weapon, making the staff get longer and the blade get larger. Izuku dropped from his run, sliding along the ground as his girlfriend swung her scythe, cutting deep into the group of Saika zombies. He popped back up as her scythe shrunk and she pulled back.
Izuku instantly drove the end of his staff into the forehead of the first zombie he encountered, sending it stumbling back before he pivoted on his foot and pulled his arm back, spinning his staff and performing an upward-slanted strike into another zombie’s head, the impact sending the zombie into the air slightly before they fell over unconscious. He ducked under a slash before feeling a weight on his back.
Celty had rolled over his back, swinging her scythe and cleaving through several people, knocking them unconscious with her weapon while Izuku stood up again. He followed up with a wide strike, knocking several people with the end of his staff and making them stagger.
The cursory glance he gave the group showed that the opening gambit proved to drop a good number of Saika’s slaves, but it was barely a quarter of who was there. He let out a quiet ‘tsk’ before his staff broke in half and he flipped one of the two halves around so the two bars his staff broke into were extending out vertically in his hands.
He lowered his stance while advancing on their opponents. He jumped into the air while raising his right arm, driving it down a second later after reaching the apex of his jump, slamming it into a Saika zombie. He raised up and swung his other arm upwards, catching the chin of another zombie. Movement out of the corner of his eye made him quickly curl his right arm and tilt his wrist so the bar was resting against the side of his arm. A blade slid along the smooth and hard surface before he twisted his wrist and pushed his arm out, shoving the zombie that tried stabbing him away before he dropped to a crouch.
Celty’s scythe swiped across that zombie and three others.
“Thanks,” he said quickly before driving the end of his right bar into the forehead of another Saika zombie.
Meanwhile, Celty spun her scythe around before holding it horizontally in front of her, blocking a trio of downward slashes from three different zombies. She pushed the staff of her scythe up before twirling her weapon one rotation, gripping it, and swinging it in a wide, left arc. She let her weapon continue to swing, helping her twist her body before driving a high kick into the head of another zombie.
She brought her leg down hard as she swung her scythe over her shoulder, the staff impacting the head of another man and driving him into the floor. She jumped back as a knife swung close to her, pulling her scythe to her back right before another heavy swing took out him and two others close to her arc. With her torso twisted left, she swiftly yanked her weapon back, the other end of the pole shoving a man back with how hard it impacted his stomach, the Saika zombie letting out a pained wheeze.
Celty followed up by shoving her weapon down in front of her, bringing the pole still in the man’s stomach upward and clocking him in the jaw, sending him falling over backwards. She spun herself fully around, her scythe sliding in her loose grip as it extended. Right as she tightened her grip and caught her weapon, a body flew through the air and crashed into the group she was facing.
A black, cylindrical object attached to a pitch black chain shot into her vision, impacting the face of another Saika zombie and sending him staggering, the chain suddenly tensing and pulling the object backwards a second later.
“Sorry,” Izuku said quickly from the side, gripping the chain and swinging it in a circle where he had grabbed it.
He threw the chain forward, the momentum from the spinning allowing it to continue arcing before wrapping itself around another Saika zombie’s arm. He yanked the chain tight and kept pulling, bringing the stumbling woman towards him before meeting her face with his boot, sending her onto her back.
Izuku loosened the chain and twirled it ever so slightly, releasing the arm it was wrapped around before he tensed his muscles and spun himself around once, his teeth gritting as he pushed his arm outwards against the weight of his weapon. The weight slammed against one person’s head before the chain caught itself on another person, the remaining momentum and weight wrapping the Saika zombie up and tightening as Izuku pulled more.
“Coming your way!”
As he shouted to his girlfriend, he pulled hard and dug his feet in, gritting his teeth as he pulled and pulled and pulled. Smoke flowed underneath the Saika zombie and brought it airborne. Twisting his body, he swung the person around right where Celty was running towards. Izuku relaxed his hold on Celty’s smoke, making the person fly through the air unbound by his weapon right at Celty.
She pulled her weapon back before bringing it down, the blade connecting with the man and phasing right through him, knocking him unconscious as he sailed back down to the ground.
Celty and Izuku grouped up, putting their backs to one another and looking around at their opponents’ fighting strength. Izuku flinched as his girlfriend elbowed him.
“I know, I know, that was too much work for only one guy…” he replied sheepishly.
Celty nodded before focusing on the slowly gathering Saika zombies.
“Well, we took a good chunk out…”
“Shrooouuuuddd~”
“Rideeerrrr~”
“Let us loooveee youuuu~”
“They’re persistent, aren’t they?”
Celty nodded in agreement.
“Let’s just hope after this, we can handle Saika and be done with this for good.”
The two of them gripped their respective weapons tighter and turned their bodies, lunging forward in the same direction.
_________________________________________
[Outside]
“RAAAHHHH!!!”
CRASHHHHH!!!
A flying car plowed through a group of Saika zombies, sending multiple flying out either side from the impact. Shizuo charged through the opening the car created with a metal pole in his hand. Behind his tinted glasses, he held a wild look in his eyes, his focus darting around to the different people around him. Despite the chaos he was causing, all the Saika zombies continued smiling creepily at him.
“Shizuoooo~”
“ShIzUoOoO~”
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” the man roared, swinging the pole in a wide arc that threw even more Saika zombies away from him.
He slowed the weapon to a stop and looked around at the hoard around him, gritting his teeth. Behind them, he spotted a dumpster against one of the walls of the compound. He wound his arm back and chucked the pole into the group, storming forward right after it and using some of the zombies in the mob as a springboard to leap over them.
Sliding to a stop at the dumpster, he gripped it with both hands and lifted. The long, blue industrial dumpster rose into the air, where the brutish bartender proceeded to wind his arms back as far as he could against the wall and swing.
Dozens upon dozens of Saika zombies went flying, slamming against the wall of the building, flying clear of the wall, or crashing against the ground and tumbling a while longer. He wound the huge, improvised weapon back again, which caused the Saika zombies to actually take a few steps backwards.
With another war cry, he swung the dumpster and released his hold on it, sending it sailing through the air. As it came down and skipped across the ground, several of Saika’s minions got thrown away. Several feet later, the dumpster crashed into the building.
In the chaos of the throw, Shizuo advanced on a lone, red-eyed man and slammed a fist straight into his chest, sending the man three feet into the air as he tumbled away. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a larger group of red-eyed Saika followers shambling through the gate.
“They aren’t just here?” he asked through gritted teeth.
He tightened his gloved fists and charged straight at the new fighters, the zombies all smiling at him and brandishing knives like they were waiting to chop him to pieces when he got close.
He wound his right fist back as he got close before unleashing another roar and blowing it forward.
KABOOOM!!!
The front of the group exploded open as the momentum and impact threw several of them away.
_________________________________________
[Inside]
[3 Minutes Before]
Izuku and Celty stood in a room full of unconscious bodies, their shadowy weapons still in their hands. They were both looking down at the bodies, their postures stiff and their hands tight around their weapons.
“I’m almost expecting some or all of them to just stand up,” he commented, Celty nodding her head behind him.
A moment later, the building vibrated for several seconds, making them tense up even more and look around.
“What the heck was that?”
The two of them glanced around for a few more moments before their postures relaxed again.
“I’m worried about the cause of that rumbling…” he said, turning to face his girlfriend again.
Celty nodded once, placing a hand on her hip and glancing around a couple times.
‘Hopefully whatever cause that won’t be what we face through the door…’ she thought.
Click!
Both of their heads snapped to the locked door Shooter was parked beside. The reinforced door slowly swung open, prompting the two vigilantes to rush to Shooter’s side. Looking past the doorway, they only saw more hallway with a ninety-degree right turn.
“Come on in, my wonderful guests~” Saika voiced over the speakers. “I see you had a good time with my children.”
“This is another trap…”
Celty nodded.
“And we’re still gonna spring it…”
The girl nodded again. Shooter let out a huff.
“Well, as long as we know.” Izuku nodded. “Let’s get going.”
Celty’s scythe disappeared as she nodded one final time, moving to get onto Shooter. Izuku got on behind her and wrapped his arms around his girlfriend, resting his head against her shoulder. The black-suited biker felt her chest warm at the gentle show of affection, leaning her back against his chest for a moment.
She leaned forward afterwards and revved Shooter to life, her mount letting out a whinny as his engine revved loudly. Izuku leaned forward at the same time the bike lurched forward, the rear wheel spinning for a second before the mount took off down the hallway and immediately veering right.