Requiem of the Broken

Chapter 35: Cooldown

Yumi was dusting the lobby at the heroes residence hall, the same place where some of the most respected up and coming heroes had been staying for the past few weeks. Honestly, she couldn't believe it when they all came by to pick up room keys with their temporary housing forms. She herself wasn't a hero, but she had been working in the industry for several years now. It was mostly property management for heroes and other related individuals, and it made good money. Despite how aggravating it was to deal with her tenants at times. When these new heroes had shown up she'd started getting very self-conscious about the state of the lobby, so here she was in her free time dusting the lobby, and she was just about done too.

She walked over to the desk, pulled out the box with the cleaning supplies, and was putting away her stuff when she looked up out of the lobby doors and gave a contented sigh with her work. Then she blinked, the lights shining outside the lobby doors were rippling like water. She watched with utter shock as figures in all black and holding weapons simply rippled into existence. The figures immediately started towards the door, so she hit the lockdown button under the desk out of sheer reflex.

Every emergency light started flashing, and speakers started putting out an alarm. Steel shutters started to slam down across every window across the building, they tried to shut down on the door but one of the figures ran up and put a hand on the bottom of the descending shutter. The shutter and then glass doors started to curl, like rolling up a rug, being curled upward until they stopped at the wall above them. The figures in black moved into the lobby. She hadn't managed even ten steps before they gunned her down.

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Kaminari was curled into a fetal position, leaning against the nearby wall. The sounds of the fighting from the hallway echoed around him. His eyes were open but he didn't really see the room, he just stared at something else a thousand miles away. 

He could hear the popping and hissing of electricity as he ran down the rows of smaller transformers and power lines to the main step-up transformer. The other heroes and his friends had tried to stop him but he'd ignored them. He was the only one that could stop it, the only one who could save them. If he didn't act then Shigaraki's mercenary ally Zeus would use his power to overload the power plant, the substations, and every electrical device he could reach with the combined power of the plant and his own powers. He'd cause a blackout along the entire coast, leaving cities and civilians open to sudden attack. The casualties would inevitably become catastrophic and his friends and allies would all be reduced to ashes. They were all too close, and the blast too imminent. The station would explode in a burst of electricity so massive they'd never be able to get out of the blast zone in time.

Zeus was the league's latest trump card, no one had even considered the possibility that they might hire a private mercenary army. The league's finances had been greater than they had initially estimated, and the recent addition of Chisaki's organization (or what remained) would only serve to increase their revenue stream from the underworld. Zeus was a wanted international villain, known to be hiding in some largely uninhabited zone in the middle east. Though no one was sure what nation it might be in. To see him here meant that AFO had contacts that could reach potentially anyone and anywhere. They had been lured into a trap and Shigaraki had made his grand reveal with Zeus only a couple of minutes ago.

He finally came to the point where the primary power lines going from the plant to the massive step-up transformer, the large cords well insulted. So using the crowbar he'd grabbed on the way, he popped the cover off of the side of the transformer used to reach in and perform repairs if needed. He ignored the calls of his friends and slammed his hands directly onto the live wires and conducted. He couldn't even begin to articulate the pain the electricity caused, not even a few seconds connected and he could feel his mind beginning to shut down and revert to its handicapped state as if he'd expended all his energy. But in that short time, he could FEEL Zeus's presence, his power arcing from the power plant to the first available step-up transformer connected to the network. Kaminari started blasting electricity out of his body into the sky, like a giant valve he redirected all the electricity from the station into his body and then out. He couldn't hear, couldn't see, his senses had failed him, then the massive charge from Zeus hit him and he simply exploded.