My Hero Academia: The Dragon's Quirk

The steel door slid shut behind them with a final CLICK, locking them inside the most dangerous room on the planet. Outside, the sound of dozens of running combat boots and the shouts of PLF guards echoed in the corridor. Inside, the only sounds were the low, menacing hum of Esdeath's containment tube and their own heartbeats.

The room was cold, not just from the industrial air conditioning, but from the aura of incredible, suppressed power within. The flashing emergency lights from the corridor cast dancing red light on the silent Nomu tubes, creating monstrous shadows that seemed to be alive.

"They'll breach that door in minutes," Akame hissed, her body in a ready stance, Murasame held tight. Her eyes weren't on the door, but on the containment tube in the center of the room. She knew the real threat was there.

"Hawks, is there another way out?" Tatsumi whispered into his comms, standing with his back to Akame, guarding the entrance.

At the command post, the atmosphere was far from calm. Hawks slammed his console in frustration. "Negative! That door is designed to withstand an explosion from the inside! Once they manually lock it from the outside, I can't open it from here! Dammit, Skeptic must have isolated the sublevel network!"

Leone swore softly as she watched a monitor showing the movement of PLF troops inside the tower. "Good news and bad news, kids," she said through the team comms channel. "The good news is, Endeavor's and Mirko's fight outside is getting bigger, they're pulling most of the PLF forces away from the tower. The bad news is, a squad of PLF special forces just entered the tower from the ground floor. They're heading straight for you. Like ants to a sugar spill."

Their situation had gone from infiltration to a death trap.

Inside the lab, a loud banging sound began to echo from the steel door as the PLF guards tried to break it down.

"There's no other way out of that room... unless..." Hawks' voice came through again, a note of desperation yet a crazy idea in it. "Underneath Esdeath's containment tube... Kageyama's layout shows a main cryogenic cooling shaft. It'll be freezing, probably below zero, but it's your only vertical escape route. That shaft leads directly to the heat exhaust system at the base of the island, near the sea. If you can open the floor panel..."

It was an insane gamble. A one-way trip into a cooling system designed to contain the power of an ice goddess. But as the steel door in front of them began to dent inward from the impacts, they realized they had no other choice.

"We'll do it," Akame said without hesitation.

Tatsumi nodded. He ran towards the base of Esdeath's containment tube. On the floor, there was a thick metal panel marked with various hazard warnings. He inserted his energy claws into a crevice and pulled with all his might.

With a protesting groan of metal, the panel lifted. A blast of intensely cold cryogenic gas immediately spread throughout the room, causing the temperature to drop drastically in an instant. A thin layer of ice instantly formed on the floor and on Tatsumi's armor.

The sudden disruption to the cooling system triggered a reaction. Internal alarms inside the laboratory began to blare. The lights above Esdeath's containment tube flickered wildly.

And then, something terrifying happened.

Inside the tube, Esdeath's previously calm figure moved. Just a small twitch. Her closed eyes trembled, and for a time-freezing split second, her eyelids opened. Those cold, empty ice-blue eyes stared straight ahead, seeing nothing, but the power radiating from them was so immense it made the air around the tube seem to freeze.

CRACK!

A thick layer of ice suddenly formed on the outside of the tube's glass, spreading like a spiderweb.

The sudden pressure of her power hit Tatsumi like an invisible wall. The primal fear he had felt on the volcanic island returned with full force, threatening to paralyze him. He froze, transfixed by the empty gaze of the sleeping monster.

"Tatsumi, now!" Akame shouted, snapping him out of his trance. She pulled Tatsumi's arm, dragging him towards the gaping hole in the floor.

At that exact moment, the steel door was finally breached. Dozens of PLF soldiers stormed in, their weapons ready to fire. They stopped for a moment, surprised to see an empty room, except for an unconscious scientist, a containment tube now covered in ice, and a hole in the floor.

Tatsumi and Akame had already jumped into that freezing darkness.

The journey down the cooling shaft was an icy hell. They slid and fell inside the slick, intensely cold metal tunnel, buffeted by blasts of cryogenic gas. Tatsumi wrapped his arms around Akame, using his body and armor as a shield, feeling his armor groan under the extreme temperature. He used his wings to slow and steer their descent, preventing them from slamming into the walls at full speed.

After a journey that felt like an eternity, they finally saw a light at the end of the tunnel. With one last push, they were thrown out of the shaft and fell into a massive cavern at the base of I-Island. Here, super-cooled seawater that had been used to cool the reactors was pumped back into the ocean.

They landed in the churning water. Without stopping, they swam with the current, through a giant exhaust tunnel.

Finally, they emerged into the open ocean. They broke the surface, gasping for the humid night air. In the distance, the entire I-Island looked like an erupting volcano, filled with the fires of battle and flashes of explosions.

They were alive. They had made it out. But they were now stranded in a turbulent sea, in the middle of enemy territory, with their strength nearly depleted.

Tatsumi looked at the burning island, feeling the chill of the water and the heat of the distant battle. "We made it out..." he said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. "...now what?"