At the base, Araya, Fujio, Hawks, and Shiguraki all sat in the monitor room. They were analyzing the building schematics Toga, Dabi and Kurogiri were feeding them from Shimizu's base.
"It's huge, bigger than the vibration pings made us believe" Araya commented. That was a bit worrying, the base was seemingly much larger than either he or Fujio had estimated meaning that the calculation time for the mission was likely off. Before they'd estimated the scan take about seven hours max, a time frame that was unlikely for Mariko to be killed in. With the way things were going now though, whether Mariko would last long enough was debatable. The ravenette glanced at Hawks, if he voiced his concerns out in his presence it would surely lead to his cover being blown and that was the last thing he needed to go wrong now.
"The walls are unusually thick as well," Fujio noted.
While everyone was staring at the building scan as the hologram slowly materialized in front of them. The blonde hero had his eyes trained on the screen displaying Mariko's current blood pressure, brain waves, and x-rays. Up until that point, everything had been normal aside from a sprained wrist- likely from a fall. Unfortunately, it only updated every five hours, so there was no way to know if those were still the only injuries she had. His eyes flicked to the blueprints as another sublevel was completed.
"They're too slow," Fujio stated, crossing his arms. Several hours had passed and the building was only 30%.
Hawks turned to him, "Think something happened?"
Araya rubbed the back of his neck. "Knowing Mineko, she probably locked them up somewhere until she's got a chance to deal with them properly. She doesn't like multi-tasking or having distractions."
"That's good then, she took the bait," Shigaraki mused.
A knot formed in Keigo's stomach as he thought about what that implied.
Suddenly, the screen began to violently flash red. In an instant, Mariko had several broken bones, stab wounds, and lacerations, the most concerning being a punctured lung.
"Shit," Araya cursed as he looked at the screen. His eyes flickered back to the building plans; they were 45% done now. He grit his teeth slightly. This was a no-contact mission. Kurogiri and his team had orders to carry out the plan as originally stated. Their priority was to get the building plans, nothing could be done until then. Unfortunately, it was going much slower than they anticipated. He turned to the white-haired man next to him, "What does she have?"
Fujio closed his eyes and activated his quirk which allowed him to know the effects a person's quirk has on others if he's touched them at some point. "Osteoporosis and Hemophilia," he stated.
Araya's hands gripped the arms of his chair tightly. "They're gonna run out of time," he grit out.
Keigo's throat began to close with panic. Mariko was the time limit... would she really not make it back alive? He wouldn't be able to accept it if that happened. She had to come back.
After what seemed like an eternity of the screen flashing notifications of Mariko receiving more wounds, everything calmed down.
"She stopped getting beat up. Shimizu probably tired herself out for now," Fujio commented. His eyes drifted back to the building plans. They had 67% of them now. They were over halfway done.
The relief was short-lived as the screen flashed red, this time it indicated burns in the same areas as her stab wounds.
"No way she's doin' that," Araya said, staring at the screen with wide eyes. His face had been completely drained of color as he watched the pain hormone levels begin to rise once more.
"She's a strong woman for sure. This was why she was the captain," Fujio stated as though he had a newfound respect for the brunette.
"What's she doing?" Shigaraki asked.
Araya felt like he'd just swallowed sand. "She's cauterizing her own wounds, and she's not under any anesthesia.
"Will that make her live longer?"
Fujio nodded, "She's stopping the bleeding because her wounds won't clot until the effect of Shimizu's quirk wears off. She knows they're not done yet so she's trying to buy all the time she can. I wonder how she got access to fire like that though."
Keigo balled his hands into fists. His nails dug into his palms harshly, cutting into them. His stung with tears as he drilled imagine holes into the ground to prevent himself from crying. He silently willed her to come back alive. Taking a deep breath, he looked back up at the screen, struggling to keep a neutral expression as it flashed red with the notification of more burns. He watched helplessly as her blood pressure continued to drop and her lungs started to slowly fill with blood