Freeze Frame

Chapter 109

Third person pov

Todoroki, or Eliza for the purposes of this operation, had brought a night-vision scope. The expensive kind that he'd apparently stolen from Endeavor's 'hero stash' after the old fart got his sorry ass arrested. Neito had been able to see better in the dark since his death, but even he couldn't make out the exact details of what he was looking at. Of course, he immediately recognized what was before him. Something in him just told him and made it click. That, and it wasn't exactly hard to tell at a glance, especially when Neito had his undead-organ-senses tingling and pushing his thoughts in the right direction.

This whole place sucked right alongside the general situation. It smelled suspicious, like sewage and cigarette smoke. The ground was slightly sticky. Not from any sort of rain or even soda, but something else nobody wanted to identify. The air muggy and thick, just warm enough to be uncomfortable. This warehouse was suspicious as all hell. It was the exact place you went to get knocked unconscious by a middle-aged white male with pedophilic tendencies, and then dragged off into said warehouse to get sold on the black market. It just had that oddly specific vibe that Neito didn't want to deal with.

"Well, this shit hole is trashed." Neito observed as his two sisters-in-arms held him up steadily. Kaminari seemed to be acclimating well to the whole situation. He was still sweating a bit and looked ready to bolt at a moment's notice, but at least he wasn't shaking like a leaf in the wind any longer. "In the back left there's some... hm, it's not pretty, ladies. I'll tell you that much."

And it wasn't. The entire place needed a real glo-up, in Neito's opinion. There was junk lying around all over the place. Whoever the cleaning crew was needed to step up. The window Neito was trying to look to was foggy with dust, even with the night vision. 

"What is it? What do you see?" Shoto asked in a quiet yet eager tone. Kaminari adjusted his footing slightly, glancing at his half-and-half classmate, who gave a minor nod back. It made the electric blonde feel a bit better to know at least Todoroki wasn't on the totally insane side. He was in the storm, but not at the eye. His level-headedness made this a whole lot easier to deal with. It made Denki think that, hey, maybe he could do this without having a mental breakdown in the midst of it all. Even if he was terrified, his classmates were on the line. So maybe he couldn't be the Kaminari they needed, but he could sure as hell try to be the Peggy.

"Nomu. And I think one of them is... is mine." Neito's hand flew to the left side of his chest with a grimace. The heart in there was aching, almost as though weeping for what it had lost. Neito had the heart of Jay's husband, who he was pretty certain had been turned into one of those things. On the flip side, he had to assume the same went vise-versa, and that whatever Nomu Kawashima Tori was stuck in also had Neito's heart. The man hadn't deserved to die. But with his husband gone, would he really have wanted to stick around? Neito didn't know.

A rather loud, almost mechanical noise sounded. Kaminari's gaze shot to the entrance of the alley they were in, his eyes going wide when he saw a pickup truck being lifted by what looked like a giant foot covered in what appeared to be latex. His immediate assumption was that they were about to get crushed by a giant purple villain that looked like a leg, but the fear was almost immediately dashed when he realized where he'd seen that shade of violet before.

"Oh, shit." Neito managed to say just as Mount Lady brought her automobile-covered foot down and crashing into the very building they were looking into. Shoto grunted, and Kaminari squeaked as the gust of air produced by the pro-hero's leg washed over them, throwing their little pyramid off balance and sending them crashing to the ground. Neito felt a fair amount of fear fill him. If they somehow managed to end the Nomu that had his heart in it, or at least had Jay in it, then he'd die. The connection between them would sever completely. The only thing that was really preventing that was that while Neito was undead, the Nomu was too. Though he was sure there were plenty of ways around that.

Best Jeanist, Gang Orca, Mount Lady, and several members of the police constrained the present Nomu. The happily dubbed "Schuyler Sister Squad" hadn't been noticed just yet, and Neito was carefully helped back to his feet in a quiet manner as not to alert the already on-edge heroes. Lillian pretty clearly wasn't here. It meant that the location Neito had led them to was wrong, and nothing more than someone else's heart telling him what to do. Literally.