My Hero Academia: The Dragon's Quirk

"I guess... we made a little too much noise."

Leone's words, spoken with a feigned casualness, felt like a massive understatement. The shrill, deafening structural collapse alarm was now the only music in their industrial hell. The emergency lights overhead flickered wildly, from red to white, creating a strobe effect that made the shadows of the giant machines around them seem to dance a macabre dance. The steel floor beneath their feet trembled violently, no longer the rhythmic vibration of machinery, but the random, harsh shudder of a dying structure.

"Team, get out of there! Now!" Hawks' voice came through their earpieces, filled with static and an urgency they had never heard before. "The entire Sublevel 7 is losing structural integrity! Your fight damaged several main support pillars and cooling pipes. The temperature around the reactor core is rising out of control! I'm trying to find an evacuation route, but many corridors are already collapsing on my map!"

On Tatsumi's visor, a blinking green path appeared, marking Hawks' suggested route. But the path kept changing, sections of it suddenly disappearing as sensors detected a collapse. The door they had entered through was now blocked by a caved-in ceiling. Their way back was gone.

"This way!" Leone shouted, her animal instincts taking over. She pointed to a smaller service corridor that seemed to be still intact.

They started running. This was no longer about fighting; this was about surviving the environment itself. Behind them, they could hear the heart-wrenching groan of metal as a giant catwalk collapsed into the darkness below, sending a bone-chilling echo of destruction.

Leone, with her raw strength, became their spearhead. She crashed through jammed emergency doors, tearing them from their hinges. Akame, with her agility and sharp senses, moved behind her, her eyes constantly scanning the ceiling and floor, looking for signs of cracks or weak points. "Watch out!" she shouted as a large piece of pipe fell from above. Tatsumi, at the rear, immediately leaped forward, using his armor as a shield to protect his two comrades from the shower of metal shrapnel.

They were a unit moving on pure instinct, each member covering the others' weaknesses.

Outside, in the Storm

On the surface, the chaos had a different face. Endeavor, hovering high in the air, felt a strange vibration from the island below him. He saw an unnatural plume of thick steam gushing out from emergency vents at the base of the main tower.

"What's happening down there?!" he roared into his HPSC communicator.

"We don't know, Endeavor-san!" an operator replied frantically. "We're detecting minor seismic vibrations originating from beneath the tower. The main reactor's cooling system is showing signs of catastrophic failure!"

Inside the control tower, Slither received the same damage report with a deathly pale face. Those intruders. Somehow, they had sabotaged the very heart of his facility. He knew that staying here any longer was suicide. I-Island's reputation as an impenetrable fortress was now a joke.

He made a decision in an instant. "Ignore the heroes!" he commanded all units. "Top priority is evacuation! Move 'Asset E' to the Yozakura submarine immediately! All key personnel, to the secret submarine dock in the southern sector! We are abandoning this island!"

The order was an admission of defeat. The PLF, having just captured the world's greatest fortress, were now fleeing from it, terrified by an unseen threat from within and the monster they were trying to control.

Hawks, at his command post, managed to intercept Slither's panicked order. His eyes widened. "Team, bad news!" he reported. "The PLF is trying to evacuate Esdeath through a secret submarine dock on the south side! We have to get out of this underground hell and intercept them before they can escape!"

The time pressure was now becoming unbearable.

The Ascent from Hell

Our infiltration team finally reached a dead end. A massive vertical maintenance shaft gaped before them, leading to the upper levels. The elevator inside was completely dead. The emergency ladder on its side had been torn and destroyed by the vibrations. The only way was up.

"I can climb," Leone said, her claws already digging into the wall.

"Me too," Akame added. "But we'll be too slow."

They both looked at Tatsumi. He was their only hope. But they could also see his battered armor, some parts still smoking after taking Gatling's assault. The energy within it must be critically low.

"I can do it," Tatsumi said, his voice steady, leaving no room for debate. He looked up into the endless darkness of the shaft. "Hold on tight."

Leone and Akame exchanged a look, then nodded. They climbed onto Tatsumi's back, holding onto the protruding plates of his armor.

Tatsumi took a deep breath. He felt the remnants of energy inside Incursio. There wasn't much. He had to use it all in one big push. He channeled every last ounce of his strength, every particle of his will, into his dragon wings. The silvery spiderweb pattern under his armor glowed brightly once more, a sign that he was burning his own life force.

With a roar that was a mixture of a war cry and a pained groan, he shot upwards.

The ascent was an agony. Gravity felt like a monster trying to pull them back down to hell. Chunks of concrete and metal fell from above, striking them. Tatsumi used his wings to parry the largest pieces of debris, while his body took the smaller impacts. His visor was filled with a flashing red [CRITICAL ENERGY] warning.

They rose, passing floor after destroyed floor. They could see burning and flooded corridors. Finally, he saw it: an emergency maintenance hatch on sublevel 3, several floors above the collapse zone.

"Almost... there..." he gasped.

But that's when his energy ran out. The green light on his armor flickered one last time and then died completely. The hum from his wings stopped. For a moment, they floated in the air on residual momentum, before gravity finally claimed its victory. They began to fall.

But Akame was always ready. Even while shooting upwards at high speed, she had been observing her surroundings. As they began to fall, she threw a grappling hook with a steel wire. The hook shot out and embedded itself firmly in a support beam near the hatch.

CLANG!

They jerked to a stop, hanging in the middle of the dark shaft, a few meters below the hatch. The wire went taut, nearly snapping from holding the weight of all three of them.

"Your turn, lioness!" Akame shouted.

Leone, holding on at the very bottom, understood. With a growl, she began to climb the wire, then climbed up Tatsumi's body, her muscles straining. She reached the hatch, dug her claws in, and with one incredible pull, she hauled all of them up to safety.

They lay sprawled on the floor of the dimly lit sublevel 3 corridor, panting, covered in dust and sweat. They had escaped the collapse zone. Tatsumi retracted his now-dead armor, leaving him in his torn tactical suit.

"Nice work! You made it!" Hawks' voice sounded much clearer now. "You're on sublevel 3, the residential sector. Most of this area has been evacuated or destroyed. You need to move to the submarine dock in the southern sector immediately! The Yozakura submarine is set to depart in... less than fifteen minutes!"

There was no time to rest. Driven by a new urgency, they got up and started running down the silent, damaged residential corridors. The walls were cracked, and emergency lights flickered over puddles of water.

As they rounded a corner, they suddenly stopped.

At the end of the long corridor, amidst plumes of smoke and the glow of fire coming from a hole in the wall, stood a figure. A massive figure, wreathed in blazing fire, radiating an aura of incredible power and rage.

It was Endeavor. He had clearly fought his way deep into the tower.

His blazing blue eyes stared intently at them. He saw a black-haired girl with a sword, a blonde woman with claws, and most shockingly, a boy who was supposed to be a 'ghost,' now looking battered and exhausted. His face hardened, filled with the suspicion and anger of a warlord who had found unknown soldiers in his operational territory.

They had escaped the collapsing hell below, only to run straight into a wrathful fire god.

"WHO ARE YOU?!" he roared, his thunderous voice shaking the entire corridor.