Lightning Serenade

Chapter 72: Full Throttle II

Denki watched Full Throttle from across the room, speaking in hushed whispers with a woman with brown hair and red eyes, who was very obviously not the helpless victim she seemed like she was half an hour prior. He fidgeted with the quirk-canceling cuffs encircling his wrists as the embarrassed panic burned at the back of his eyes. He blinked it away, but the guilty thoughts about how he could have walked right into their trap had lingered.

He closed his eyes and took some deep breaths, thinking about if he and Neito had switched places, what he would tell Neito.

Probably something like: "it wasn't your fault, Nei. Anyone would have fallen for it, especially in the middle of a life-or-death situation that had a time limit. You did the heroic thing. You did what any other hero would have done. You chose the only option that was available to you, and sometimes this is just how things go. Sometimes the villains are really smart. Sometimes the villains watch you closely for days and set up the perfect trap. Sometimes, whether or not you had a feeling it was a trap, you still have to walk right into it, because what if it wasn't? What if that woman really needed a hero, and she saw you walk away from her? You did the right thing—the only thing."

Denki, of course, would be harder on himself than he would be on Neito, even fully aware of the cognitive dissonance at play, but it did help. He was able to take deeper breaths and get his heartrate under control. He was able to look at the positives and realize that, because that woman was an accomplice, there wasn't anyone around to be hurt if a fight broke out, if he managed to get those cuffs off or even just to get out of the cell that they had placed him in.

Touya had drilled it into his head that he couldn't always rely on his quirk, and he was never more thankful for that than in that moment. He had back-up plans, more than one, even; all he had to do was wait them out and try to gather information to see what they wanted. He could do that.

While the two talked in hushed whispers that Denki couldn't even begin to make out, no matter how hard he strained his ears, he took the chance to take in as much detail of the room as he could. Cracked and barren concrete floors, flickering fluorescent lights, and the sturdy iron bars dividing the room were the major things. Denki noted that his own little section of the room had a walled off part and cursed when peeked around the partitioned wall to see that it was a bathroom. There was no chance that he was leaving that cell until they were good and ready for him to. There was a plain metal chair bolted to the floor next to a little shelf-like table bolted to the wall. It was like a damn prison cell, but there was no bed.

Maybe they weren't planning on keeping him alive long enough for him to need to sleep?

Denki immediately shoved that line of thinking out of his head. Instead, he thought about how it wouldn't be the first time he has ever slept on the floor, though the living room floor at the Hamabis was cushioned with thick, lush carpet, and he was cuddled up against the warm body of Hitoshi that night...

It was fine. He'd manage.

Denki used his senses to try to narrow down more information about his situation. He heard water dripping, and found an exposed, dripping pipe in the far corner of the room, outside of the reach of his cell. He smelled a faint scent of chlorine and the rich, earthy scent of soil. Another glance around, and he had to admit to himself that the place was clean for how terrifying and rundown it looked otherwise. He wondered if he was in the lower level of a building, underground, maybe.

He would have had a better idea of his general location if the villains hadn't blindfolded him and put noise-cancelling earbuds in his ears playing some, admittedly, decent music at a loud volume on the drive to the secondary location to mask any sounds that might give away where they were. They were prepared for him, and that scared him more than anything else.