The dark purple fog had gotten thicker in the last few minutes, and Kendo didn't like what that meant.
She'd found Tetsutetsu near a cluster of rocks not far from where she'd left Setsuna and the others, both of them pulling on gas masks that Yaoyorozu had been handing out.
"You good?" Tetsutetsu asked, voice muffled through the mask, though nothing about his posture suggested he was actually asking permission to keep going. He was already moving, scanning the tree line to see if it was clear.
"I'm fine." Kendo pulled her own mask tight, checked the seal twice out of habit. "Mandalay hasn't mentioned this gas at all. Though she did mention that the area has been compromised."
"So?"
"So if it was spreading everywhere, she'd know. She'd have told everyone to avoid the whole west side." Kendo turned slowly, watching how the fog moved, thicker in some directions than others, curling back on itself instead of just drifting with the wind. "It's not spreading. It's staying contained. Like something's holding it in one place."
Tetsutetsu went still for a second, actually processing that instead of just charging. "Somebody's in the middle of it."
"That's my guess."
"Then, let's go find them."
He was already moving before she'd finished nodding and she fell into step beside him, both of them cutting straight into the thickest part of the fog instead of around it.
The masks helped, but she could feel her lungs working harder anyway, throat tightening slightly no matter how good the seal was supposed to be.
"You know," Tetsutetsu said, voice tight with something that wasn't quite fear, "whoever's doing this. They're gonna regret picking tonight."
Kendo glanced at him sideways. There was something almost endearing about how straightforward his anger was.
No overthinking, no spiraling.
Just a clean, simple resolve to make somebody pay for scaring his classmates.
"Careful," she said. "Confidence gets people shot."
"Confidence gets people to victory!" He responded with a bright grin.
She didn't have a response to that, mostly because some small, tired part of her almost envied it.
They eventually found the culprit in a small clearing at the fog's dead center, a lean figure in a gas mask of his own, watching them approach with unnerving calm.
"Two of you managed to get to me," the villain said, voice distorted through the mask, almost amused. "Guess U.A. actually trains you to think a little."
Tetsutetsu didn't bother with a response.
He just ran straight at him, fist already shifting to solid steel, and Kendo's stomach dropped half a second before the villain's arm came up holding a small pistol she hadn't clocked in time to shout a warning.
The shot cracked out and caught Tetsutetsu square in the mask, shattering the front of it clean off.
"Tetsu!" Kendo lunged forward without thinking, but he was already stumbling back, one hand clamped over his face, gas pouring in through the broken seal.
"I'm fine," he choked out, though he clearly wasn't. "Get behind me."
"That's the opposite of what I'm going to do."
The villain laughed, low and pleased. "Cute. You U.A. kids really do think you can just punch your way through everything."
He turned the gun toward her next, and Kendo's whole body locked up for half a second, calculating angles, distance, whether she could close the gap before he fired.
Tetsutetsu didn't give her the chance to find out. He threw himself sideways, right into the shot meant for her, grunting hard as the bullet caught him somewhere along the ribs, steel skin barely holding but holding.
"Idiot!" Kendo snapped, though her voice cracked doing it.
"You're welcome," he wheezed.
She didn't have time to argue further.
The villain was talking now, that particular kind of talking people did when they thought they already had a fight won… going on about how sloppy their strategy was, how a real U.A. student should know better than to charge in blind.
Kendo used every second of it.
She traced the fog's movement while he monologued, watching how it curled and thickened directly around him, feeding outward from some point close to his chest.
Gas quirk, probably tied to his breath or his skin. If she could just move enough air fast enough.
She enlarged both hands to their fullest, planted her feet, and swept them through the air in one broad, powerful arc.
The fog around him thinned instantly, ripped apart by the sheer force of displaced air, and his sentence died half-formed as visibility around him cleared just enough.
"Now!" Kendo shouted.
Tetsutetsu didn't need telling twice. He surged forward through the thinning gas, steel fist already cocked back, and drove it clean into the villain's mask hard enough to crack it entirely down the middle.
The man dropped instantly, unconscious before he even hit the ground and the gas around them began dissipating almost immediately once its source stopped feeding it.
For a second, neither of them moved.
"Hey." Kendo dropped to her knees beside him, hands hovering uselessly over the ragged tear along his ribs where steel had barely held against the bullet. "You're bleeding."
"Barely." He waved her off, wincing as he pushed himself upright anyway. "Told you I'm fine."
"You took a bullet for me."
"Yeah, well." He grinned, a little lopsided, blood still trickling from where the first shot had grazed his temple. "Dante probably would've killed me himself if I didn't..."
Kendo stared at him for a second, something warm and unfamiliar sitting oddly in her chest despite the adrenaline and the fear and the mask fogging up with her own breath.
"Okay, fine. It was still reckless," she said finally.
"…Fair." He laughed, then immediately regretted it, hand pressing back against his ribs with a hiss.
Around them, the last of the purple fog thinned into nothing, and somewhere off through the trees Kendo could hear Mandalay's voice again, clearer now that the interference had cleared, calling for status updates from every direction.
"Come on," Kendo said, hauling him up by the arm despite his protests. "Let's get you back, beforr you die."
"Bossy," Tetsutetsu muttered, though he didn't actually pull away.
They started walking, half-supporting each other through the thinning trees.
Somewhere behind them, deeper in the woods, the real fighting hadn't stopped at all.
And somewhere closer than she knew, the League's actual purpose for tonight was only just getting started.