Eventually, Yuka managed to slip away from everyone and returned to the motel she had previously been staying at for the past few days. She needed to get her things from her room before moving into the League of Villains' hideout. As she was packing her belongings, she could hear a knock at the door which immediately put her on edge. She grabbed the hilt of her sword swiftly, approaching the door cautiously as she breathed in deeply. She wanted her lungs to be full of air in case she needed to use her quirk. As she peered into the peephole, she saw Magne standing on the other side with a shaggy-looking blond man, waiting for her to open the door. Yuka annoyingly exhaled through her nose as she unlocked the door to open it.
"Did you two follow me here?" she asked bluntly, glaring at them from behind her mask.
"Sorry about that, love," Magne answered as she stepped into the room. "The boss wanted us to keep an eye on you until you moved in."
"We figured," the blond man spoke in a recognizable voice. "Since we're here, we'd help you move the heavy stuff, but seeing as you're staying in a motel, I'm guessing you ain't got a lot of stuff to move in the first place."
He started clawing at his face nervously, muttering to himself. Yuka immediately recognized his voice to be Twice's. She stared at the scar in the middle of his forehead and wondered what could have possibly happened to him, but immediately shoved that thought away when she remembered she hadn't finished packing her things.
"You'd be right about that," she answered him simply, before turning towards her suitcase.
Her possessions mostly consisted of clothing and a few other essential items. Yuka had gotten into the habit of traveling light since she had left the Yakuza. She needed to stay on the move since she was both on the run from the law and on the run from them, but now, with the League of Villains at her back, she would finally have a stable roof over her head. One less thing to worry about.
"Oh also," Twice continued. "The boss said to meet with him tonight. He's got a mission for you./No he doesn't!"
Yuka turned her head in surprise. "Already? I thought he said he wanted me to move in tonight."
Twice wasn't listening to her anymore. Instead, he was fidgeting with something in his pocket. After fumbling around for a short moment, he pulled out the mask he had worn when she had met him at the hideout. He quickly put it on and, all of a sudden, he seemed a lot more calm. Yuka turned her attention towards Magne, motioning towards him with her head.
"Is it really a good idea for him to be wearing that in public?" she asked in a dull tone.
"Trust me sweetie, this is preferable to what would happen if he didn't wear that," Magne responded, her little nickname making Yuka's nose scrunch up.
"Yeah! I'd start splitting apart at the seams!/No you wouldn't!" Twice answered in his usual manner.
Yuka shrugged as she turned to finish packing her suitcase. Once all of her stuff had been neatly folded into her suitcase, she closed it and extended the handle so she could easily roll it out of the room. After returning the keys to the front desk, she followed Magne and Twice out into the side alley where they had a small van parked. The lizardman from the hideout was waiting for them in the driver's seat. They let her sit up front while the two of them climbed in back.
"That was fast," the lizardman said.
"I tend to travel lightly," Yuka responded.
"Well, I hope you have everything you need, because I'll be driving you straight to Shigaraki's rendez-vous point. I'm sure they've told you that he has a mission for you."
"Yes, I am aware..."
"Good..." He glanced over at her. "You know... we didn't really get a chance to get formally acquainted back at the hideout. The name's Spinner. I'm quite fond of the style you've chosen for yourself, Miss Sakurazuka..."
"Not interested, Lizard Boy," she replied harshly, rolling her eyes at his attempt at flattery. She could hear Magne and Twice laughing in the back.
"Oufff sick burn there, Lizard Boy!" Twice exclaimed.
"Don't call me that!" Spinner yelled angrily, gripping the steering wheel tighter as he drove off in a huff.
The van fell quiet after that, much to Yuka's delight. She stared out the window calmly, practicing her breathing exercises while they reached their destination. As they left the city, they pulled into a more wooded part of the outskirts where Shigaraki was waiting for them alongside a dreadful sight to behold. Dabi was standing next to him, which prompted Yuka to exhale through the nose harshly as she climbed out of the vehicle. As soon as they locked eyes with each other, Dabi started to stare daggers at her with his bright turquoise eyes.
"What is she doing here?" Dabi asked in an annoyed tone.
"You two will be working together on this mission," Shigaraki answered, holding his hands behind his back.
"You gotta be kidding me..."
Yuka approached them as Spinner drove off with Magne and Twice, probably back to the hideout. She remembered that she had left her suitcase in their custody and hoped they would put it in her room once they got back to headquarters. If they didn't, she would have someone pay for the misplacement of her things...
"You're lucky I didn't have too much stuff to move, Shigaraki," Yuka said as she stopped in front of him. She wasn't even going to acknowledge Dabi for the time being.
"That's what Magne and Twice were there for, but no matter..." Shigaraki answered with a raspy laugh. "Things worked out perfectly in the end."
"So what is it you need... us to do?" She shot a quick glance over at Dabi.
"It's quite simple really," Shigaraki started to explain, his hand reaching up to his neck to scratch it. "You two will be meeting with one of our contacts from Kanagawa prefecture penitentiary regarding the transportation of one of their inmates..."
Dabi scoffed. "Really? You're sending me on an errand with the new girl? Why don't you have Kurogiri meet with him, or better yet, why don't you go meet with the guy yourself if he's so fucking important to your plans?"
Shigaraki exhaled loudly. "You know Dabi, you've yet to prove to me that you're a reliable and dependable member of our group. Consider this your opportunity to prove to me that you're as loyal to our cause as you say you are..."
"Whatever..." Dabi shrugged as he crossed his arms over his chest.
"Do you have any objections, Miasma?" Shigaraki turned his attention over towards her, staring at her through his mask.
"... When and where are we meeting this guy?" she simply replied.
Shigaraki started cackling softly. "See Dabi? This is what I'm talking about. When I tell you to jump, I'm expecting you to ask 'How high'..." He turned his gaze back to Yuka. "The guy you're meeting is called Hiroshi. You'll be meeting him in a bar in downtown Yokohama at 11pm." He checked the time on his phone. "Which is right about now, actually."
Yuka's eyes narrowed as she saw one of Kurogiri's warp gates appear next to him. She inhaled deeply before exhaling through her nose. This was very short notice for her and she was going to be working with not only a complete stranger, but also one that she didn't get along with. The two of them stared daggers at each other as they both approached the portal together.
"Better not screw this up, newbie," Dabi said in a threatening tone.
She didn't even respond as she passed into the portal first, appearing on the other side, in a dimly lit back alley. She waited for Dabi to join her before making her way towards the street. She still had her sword attached to her waist, resting on the small of her back. Dabi nonchalantly followed her as he lit himself a cigarette using his blue flames. Yuka scowled at him as he blew smoke in her direction.
"Extinguish that," she ordered him severely.
Dabi pulled on his cigarette again. "Make me."
Her eyes shot him an angry look as she pushed him up against the wall using her forearm.
"Listen here you piece of shit," she said in a harsh tone. "Whether you want to or not, we're stuck together for this mission, and I'll be damned if I let the likes of you ruin this for me. So stop fucking around and concentrate!"
Dabi breathed in deep, pulling on his cigarette once more as he slowly blew another puff of smoke in the air. This time though, he blew it away from her face, before readjusting his posture so that he towered over her as he glared at her.
"Well, this..." he said in a calm tone, waving the cigarette in his hand. "... helps me concentrate." A crooked smile appeared on his face as he snickered slightly. "Unless you care to occupy my lips with something else..."
Yuka's eyes widened at his response. She could feel her cheeks growing hotter both out of anger but also embarrassment. She thought about hitting him in the face or knocking him out with her quirk, but ultimately decided against all that. Instead, she released him from her grasp, shoving him abruptly as she took a step back.
"In your dreams," she said curtly. "As if anyone would want to kiss those crusty-looking lips..."
Dabi merely laughed as he breathed a few more puffs from his cigarette before extinguishing it. Yuka walked over to the edge of the alleyway, looking around for any signs of life. There were a couple of pedestrians walking down the streets, but they seemed too busy chatting amongst themselves to notice them. The bar where they were supposed to meet with their contact was right across the street from where they currently were, so once the couple had passed them, she started making her way towards the front door. Dabi joined her, pulling his hood up as he emerged from the alleyway.
"Do we even know what this guy looks like?" Yuka asked him as they were let into the bar. This must have been another villain hideout since they let her keep her weapon.
Dabi looked around before pointing to someone sitting alone in a corner booth.
"My money's on the nervous-looking guy sitting all by himself," he said with a low chuckle. "What do you think, sweetheart?"
Yuka let out an annoyed huff. "You're just begging for a slap in the face..." she said through gritted teeth.
"Haha, you wouldn't dream of it, sweetheart. Wouldn't want to make a scene now, would we?"
Yuka shook her head disapprovingly, trying to stay focused on the mission. As much as she hated it, Dabi was probably right about the skittish guy sitting in the corner booth. They both made their way towards the man's table, sliding over on each side of the booth to corner him.
"Hiroshi, I presume?" Yuka spoke first.
The man jumped when he saw them suddenly close in around him. "Y-Yes... Y-You're with the League of Villains, aren't you?"
"No, we're with the League of fucking Nice Guys..." Dabi answered sarcastically. "...Of course we're with them, dumbass!"
Yuka rolled her eyes at Dabi's crude intimidation tactics. Apparently, she was going to be the one playing "good cop" for this interaction.
"Do you have what we asked for?" she asked him in a dark voice.
"I-I do..." the man stuttered, before reaching around to grab a bag he had brought with him. "If I give this to you, n-no one's gonna see the pictures you took, r-right?"
Yuka shot a quick glance over at Dabi. It became apparent to them that Shigaraki hadn't disclosed the details of their transaction with Hiroshi beforehand, but she wasn't going to let this guy find that out.
"Give us what we want and we'll make all of that disappear," Yuka said without skipping a beat. It was clear she had done this sort of thing before.
The man nodded anxiously as he pulled out a folder from his bag, shakily handing it over to her. Yuka started to look over its contents, carefully examining each piece of paper inside. Dabi noticed the man growing even more nervous as she flipped through the pages of the document. Everything seemed in order, until Yuka noticed a small black dot lodged in between two pieces of paper. She scowled at the papers, then shot an icy glare at the informant.
"You thought you could outsmart us, Hiroshi?" she spat as she pinned him down against the table. Looks like she was going to be the "bad cop" after all...
"N-No no no! It's not what it looks like!"
"Miasma, get down!" Dabi shouted urgently.
Yuka's eyes had just enough time to see all of the other customers pull out their guns and start aiming them at her. She threw Hiroshi to the side as Dabi flipped over the table they were sitting at to use it as cover. The two of them hid behind the table as they were shot at by all of the other people at the bar.
"Fuck!" Dabi cursed as he huddled next to Yuka, "This was a set up!"
Yuka tried to look around the table to see how many shooters there were, but as soon as she tried to poke her head out, a barrage of bullets started flying towards them. She leaned back against the table once again, trying to think of a way to get them out of this situation.
"Alright Dabi," she started to say. "I'm going to obscure their vision. Once the room is filled with smoke, I want you to burn everything down."
A sinister smile appeared on the young man's face. "You don't have to tell me twice..."
Yuka then took a deep breath, channeling the power of her quirk as her eyes turned from black to a stark shade of light gray. She then exhaled hard, smoke filtering through the slits in her mask as the room quickly filled up with smoke. With their vision obscured, the shooters stopped firing as they waited for their next move. A few seconds later, a bright flash of blue light attracted their attention from another corner of the room as the bar was suddenly flooded with electric blue flames. Dabi laughed as he delighted in their screams. He could feel his flames burning even brighter than before, stronger than before. It's at that moment that he realized that Yuka, who had moved with him and was standing right behind him, was using her quirk to make the air around them rich in oxygen, her eyes glowing a bright shade of blue as she did.
"Wow..." Dabi said in astonishment. "I could get used to this!"
He gleefully continued throwing flames at the men that were trying to kill them. The bar quickly caught on fire thanks to Dabi's flames and the room filled up with even more smoke. As the men were slowly being incinerated, Yuka noticed that Dabi had cut off their exit with his wanton use of his quirk. She stopped producing oxygen with her quirk, her eyes turning back to their usual dark shade, before the sounds of sirens coming from the front of the building attracted her attention.
"We have to move!" she yelled over the sound of crackling fire.
Dabi noticed the blue and red lights in front of the bar and took this as an invitation to say hi to the police officers out front. Yuka tried to stop him, but he was already too far away for her to reach. As the flames around her were starting to choke her out, she concentrated her attention on her lungs, breathing in deep even though she could feel it burning her on the inside and breathed out a huge cloud of CO2 to quell the fire around her just enough so that she could pass through without burning herself. One she was outside, she could see Dabi throwing huge swaths of blue fire towards the police cars with complete disregard for anyone's safety, including his own. A few policemen had managed to get their guns out and started shooting at him. Luckily, they hadn't noticed Yuka coming out of the burning building, so she swiftly took out her sword and zipped past Dabi's fire to reach them. Her blade came down on them with swift precision, taking them by surprise while Dabi was distracting them. She neutralized the last of them, before exhaling deeply. Unfortunately, her use of her quirk had left her lungs a bit raw and she suddenly started to cough violently.
"G...God damnit..." she cursed as she tried to get a hold over her cough.
After a few short moments, she finally had a handle over her condition. Unfortunately, she could also see more police cars heading their way. It would only be a matter of time before a hero would show up to help them, so they had to move, and fast.
"Dabi!" Yuka called out to him. "We have to go!"
He still couldn't hear her. Maybe it was all the noise that was going around them or just his bloodlust taking over. Whatever it was, it pissed her off. After a short jog, she reached Dabi, who was still firing streams of blue fire at the cop cars and the dead bodies. He had this gleefully sadistic look on his face that made her skin crawl. She tried grabbing hold of his arm to yank him back to reality, but almost burned herself on his scorching hot body.
"Dabi! Enough!" she shouted at him angrily. "More of them are coming, and it's just a matter of time before the pro heroes arrive!"
"LET THEM COME!" Dabi yelled in euphoric passion.
His body started to engulf itself even more as the flames on his body grew even hotter. Yuka glowered at him as she tried to take in a deep breath. Her breath was cut short by another fit of coughing, prompting her to fall back slightly as she clutched her chest with one hand. She needed to get this cough under control so that she could get her partner under control, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing.
Her quirk only allowed her to create gasses if she knew the exact chemical composition of them. This meant that she needed to hoard a lot of information to make the most out of her quirk. Luckily for her, chemistry had been part of her education growing up within the Shie Hassaikai. She had the most common gasses memorized by heart, while the more complicated ones, she kept in a notebook that she carried around with her in case she needed to produce something more specific. Fortunately, since she knew she was going to be working at some point alongside Dabi, she had already memorized the components for a fire suppression gas. Since he was continuously creating new flames and the generated heat from them kept climbing, old fashion CO2 wasn't going to cut it. She needed to use something more... drastic. Something called Novec 649/1230, or "waterless water". It was a fluorinated ketone that was commonly used in museums, hospitals and server rooms. Its function was twofold: first, it rapidly removes heat where there is a fire, then displaces the air around it, effectively cutting off its oxygen supply. Yuka had only used this technique once and it had really taken a toll on her lungs, but it was her best shot at suppressing Dabi. So, after taking a few deep breaths, she opened her eyes as they turned a bright shade of light gray and started blowing Novec 649/1230 all around Dabi.
The effects of her quirk were almost instantaneous. His flames started to die out almost immediately as the air around him grew harder and harder to breathe, making it even harder for him to produce any more flames. He started to choke on the gas that she produced, turning around to see her using her quirk on him.
"What are you doing..." he grunted painfully. "Stop...!"
"You stop!" Yuka said as she breathed a raspy breath. "You're going to get us killed you fucking pyromaniac! Now come on! We're getting out of here."
She released Dabi from his prison of gas as she grabbed hold of his arm, yanking him towards the alleyway they had initially come from. Dabi reluctantly followed, seeing as there were multiple police cars pulling in. They darted towards the spot where Kurogiri had left them and Yuka held out her hand towards Dabi.
"What? You expect me to hold your hand or something?" Dabi said as he glowered at her.
"Your phone, dumbass!" she shouted angrily. "I don't have the League's number yet, so I need to borrow yours."
Dabi rolled his eyes as he got his cell phone out and unlocked it for her. Yuka yanked it out of his hands, searching for the right contact. When she found it, she dialed the number as they could hear the police yelling out orders near the entrance to the alleyway.
"Yes?" Shigaraki said nonchalantly as he picked up the call.
"It was a set up!" Yuka yelled. "We need extraction NOW!"
There was a short silence before Yuka could hear Shigaraki bark out an order to Kurogiri. A few seconds later, a portal opened up exactly where they had been previously transported to earlier and Yuka pushed Dabi into it, not wanting to wait and see if he would follow her in if she went in first. Dabi tripped through the portal, falling flat on his face when his partner phased through the portal herself. They both appeared back at headquarters, where Shigaraki and Kurogiri were awaiting them.
"What happened?" Shigaraki questioned them.
"Our contact tried to set us up with a tracker," Yuka explained. "When I found out about it, his little friends started to attack us. They had guns, but we managed to take care of them..."
Her eyes followed Dabi, who was getting up from the floor. He met her gaze with eyes filled with rage as he threw himself at her, shoving her violently against the wall as he threatened her with a fist full of flames.
"Don't you EVER fucking do that to me again you fucking cunt!" he barked at her angrily.
Yuka continued staring daggers into his eyes. "If it weren't for me, we'd be fucking dead!"
"Easy now you two," Shigaraki approached them with his hands up.
Yuka turned her attention towards him, motioning Dabi with her chin. "This fucking morron was so caught up in his little massacre that he almost got himself killed! If I hadn't intervened, more cops would have shown up with the help of some heroes and we both wouldn't be here right now!"
"She tried to fucking kill me!" Dabi protested loudly as his arm pushed her even further into the wall.
"Enough! Both of you!" Shigaraki yelled. "Dabi, let her go. Don't make me ask you twice..."
Dabi shot a look of surprise towards Shigaraki, before reluctantly stepping away from Yuka as he shoved her one last time against the wall. Yuka massaged her throat once she was released from Dabi's clutches.
"Now," Shigaraki said more calmly, as he sat back down at the bar. "I'm guessing the mission was a complete failure then..."
"... Not exactly."
Dabi stared at Yuka with a surprised look on his face as she approached Shigaraki.
"While your contact did try and double-cross us, the information he offered was sound."
She stuffed her hand down her cleavage, pulling out a folded piece of paper that she had retrieved from the folder. The corner where the tracker had been placed had been torn off.
"Looks real enough," she said as she handed him the paper. "It might just be a smokescreen, but I think it's still worth checking out."
Shigaraki unfolded the paper to see that it was a schedule for the latest prisoner transports to and from Kanagawa prefecture penitentiary. His lips curled into a satisfied grin as he started to chuckle slightly.
"Nicely done," he congratulated her. "You're turning out a lot more useful than I thought..." He slipped the piece of paper into his hoodie. "I'll contact the both of you when the time comes. Try not to kill each other in the meantime, okay?"
Yuka shot a glance over at Dabi, looking at him with narrowed eyes. Dabi shot her the same look back, as they both left the common room to go upstairs to where the rooms were. Once they were upstairs, Shigaraki chuckled amusingly, before grabbing his glass with four fingers as he swirled the drink inside.
"I take it you are satisfied with your newest acquisition, Tomura Shigaraki?" Kurogiri inquired.
"More than satisfied..." Shigaraki responded as he removed his mask with his other hand. "It turns out tonight's little 'experiment' was a success in more ways than one..."