Mystery from Another World

Part 82: Silk Screen (unfinished)

The elevator door opened, and no one was in there.

Shoto pressed his communicator wire. "Is anyone there? We lost Yaoyurozu... We're going in an elevator."

"Wait just a minute." Dabi grabbed him by his collar and yanked him back. "This is just a little too convenient, isn't it? We're trying to get underground, an elevator just happens to be here? And someone already disappeared? It sounds like a trap to me."

"It's an elevator." Shoto pulled away haughtily. "And if she's not anywhere else, then she must have gone in."

"Are you really this stupid? That's just what they want us to think," Dabi said.

"They?" Shoto said.

"Yeah, I bet there's some b-----ds spying on us right now." Dabi eyed the hall hostilely. "So I'm thinking, we give this a little test first. Why don't you drop a chunk of ice in there or something and see what happens?"

"And what would happen other than it would melt all over the floor?" Shoto said.

"Oh, for the love of--- just do it," Dabi said.

Well, since it didn't seem that dangerous, Shoto complied, though resentfully.

He froze a person sized piece of ice into the elevator.

The doors shut.

At first it didn't seem anything was going to happen. But then the elevator shuddered in a weird way and evaporated into the wall. Leaving the ice.

Shoto blinked. "What the---?"

Dabi blew off his knuckles. "Boom," he muttered.

"But then where is...?" Shoto sputtered.

"Duh, she walked in or something, and it swallowed her into the wall, I bet," Dabi said, "So she's dead, likely as not...or else captured. Well, we should get out of here."

"Are you crazy? We have to help her," Shoto said.

"Oh, please, and what would you do, set it on fire?" Dabi walked away. "If she's still alive, she's got a better chance of busting out herself than we do of helping her get out. We should just try not to get captured." He eyed the door at the end of this hall.

"Well, that's also convenient...almost like we were supposed to pick this hallway."

Shoto would never have thought of any of this, but Dabi was the type to sleep with a knife under his pillow-- everything made him suspicious. 

Shoto had no intention of leaving Momo in danger though, but he couldn't make the elevator reappear...or even explain the kind of quirk that would allow for it. He followed Dabi.

"Come back. We have to do something. Even if you don't care, I do, and I'm not leaving her behind."

"Knock yourself out, then," Dabi said.

He walked up to the door and eyed it. "Well, in for a penny." He shot blue flames at the door.

Shoto caught up. "What was that for? You're just going to melt out the only exit!---" He stopped.

The door shimmered and vanished into the wall like frayed fabric under a candle, and then something appeared was barely as an outline against it, but it was clearly a person. They were recoiling from the burst of heat.

Dabi leered. "Gotcha."

The person yelped and ran for it past Shoto, shoving him aside with surprising force.

Dabi looked up. "I bet this whole hallway's like that. D--- it! Walked right into it." He shot some fire at the ceiling, and it seemed to peel away like fabric.