The equipment bin was unattended for eleven seconds while Bakugou and Kirishima argued about the matchup assignments.
Eleven seconds was enough.
Izuku palmed the capture tape, pocketed it, and was standing two meters away with his arms crossed before anyone finished a sentence.
He checked the gauntlet charge. 87%.
'Plenty.'
Uraraka was already looking at him when he turned toward the building. She had that expression people get when they want to say something but aren't sure they've been given permission.
He looked at the structure. Six floors. Standard commercial layout. Windows boarded. One main entry, one sealed fire exit at the rear.
'Bakugou goes straight in. He always goes straight in. That kid has never flanked anything in his life.'
Iida was going through the hero brief with the energy of a man who genuinely believed in the curriculum. Bakugou was vibrating. Not with excitement. With something that had been cooking on low heat since Izuku put him face-down in the dirt on the first day of school.
'This isn't about the exercise for him. This is personal.'
'Good. Personal makes people stupid.'
Izuku walked inside.
He stopped at the main corridor and looked at Uraraka.
"Sit by the weapon. Don't move. Don't engage either of them."
She opened her mouth.
He was already walking toward the stairwell.
'Sorry. We'll have an actual conversation someday. Today isn't it.'
He did the building in ninety seconds. Top floor to bottom. Counting steps, measuring corridor widths by stride, finding the single narrow junction on floor three where the hallway bent left before opening up.
The lights went first.
He found the fixtures on floors two and three and broke them with his fist. Locate the load point, apply direct force, move on. Ten months of breaking things correctly made it fast.
Glass crunched under his shoes in the dark.
'Tells him where I've been. Doesn't tell him where I am.'
Floor one he left lit. Let the light pool at the bottom of the stairwell like a border. Come this far. No further.
He returned to the second floor corridor. Found the center. Let a single thread of mana bleed into the air around him. No Hound. No pool. Just the ambient cold settling in like weather.
He stood still.
'Iida's fast. But fast doesn't help if you can't find the stairwell in the dark.'
He waited.
***
The monitor room had fifteen students in it and had been loud until about thirty seconds ago.
Then the upper floors went dark on the infrared feed. And the green-white thermal bloom of Midoriya Izuku appeared in the center of the second floor corridor.
And stopped.
"Why isn't he moving?" someone in the back row said.
Nobody answered.
The thermal signature was wrong. The feed was reading him cooler than the ambient air around him. Like the sensors were having a disagreement with physics and physics was losing.
All Might stood at the front with his arms crossed. He'd run this exercise for two years. Watched students hide, sprint, barricade, overload.
He'd never watched a student stand in the geometric center of a dark corridor and look like he owned it.
He thought about a night he'd never been officially told about. An underpass. Black concrete. A sludge villain in pieces.
A kid walking away before the cameras arrived.
He said nothing.
In the back row, Todoroki's left side had been running warm since the green signature entered the building. He wasn't activating anything.
He noticed. Said nothing.
Yaoyorozu said quietly, mostly to herself: "He's not hiding."
She was right.
***
Bakugou's boots hit the stairwell at the forty-three second mark.
Izuku heard them two floors down. Heavy. Irregular. The rhythm of someone moving fast in a space they couldn't see, using small explosions as flashlights. Brief orange blooms that lit the walls for half a second and left the dark worse than before.
'Getting louder. Getting sloppier. He's pissed and he's blind and he's coming right at me.'
'Perfect.'
Third step past the bend. That's where he'd see the corridor.
The boots hit the second floor landing.
The hallway bent.
One short explosion. Bakugou needing to see.
The light found Izuku standing three feet away. No stance. Arms loose. Eyes flat and completely without surprise.
Bakugou's face went through about four emotions in half a second.
He fired.
The right hook came with an explosion already building at his palm. Loud. Committed. Shoulder rotating before the arm fully extended.
Izuku read the shoulder.
He was already moving.
He dropped under the arc by two inches. Felt the heat graze the top of his head. Smelled singed hair.
'That was closer than I'd like.'
He stepped inside. Past the swing, into the space Bakugou's own arm had just vacated. Drove the gauntlet into the concrete wall directly beside Bakugou's right ear.
Not into Bakugou.
Into the wall.
He chose the wall.
Triggered the discharge.
The crack was massive in the enclosed space. The wall fractured in a spiderweb from the point of contact, dust blowing outward, and the shockwave moved through the corridor in a ring that had nowhere to go but inward.
It hit Bakugou's inner ear like a closed fist.
The vestibular system shut down at once. Balance gone. Horizon gone. The body's entire relationship with the concept of "standing up" terminated without notice.
Bakugou's legs went. He hit the floor on his knees, one hand down, head dropped. Pure disorientation.
Izuku was already behind him.
The capture tape was pre-cut. He'd measured the length three hours ago using Bakugou's wrist width from a reference photo he'd found on a leaking UA applicant forum.
'Yes, I stalked his measurements online. No, I'm not going to feel weird about it.'
The tape went on in four seconds. Clean. Tight.
He stood up. Stepped over him.
Pressed the earpiece.
"Hero neutralized."
TO BE CONTINUED