Round 2

Stain reaches the building Toshinori is in and finds a vent which he breaks open and crawls through. He reaches a room that seems similar to a staff room. There he sees two guards talking and takes the opportunity to take them down. He jumps down from the vent before throwing two knives at the guards which stabs them both and he quickly licks the blood from them, leaving them both paralyzed. He knocks both guards out before tying them up and taking one of their clothes before stuffing them in the cupboards. He then changes into the guard's outfit, grabs his access card, and leaves the room. He starts looking around finds an elevator. He enters and uses the access card to allow him to choose the floors and he decides to go for the ground floor. The door closes and the elevator starts going down but stops halfway and the door opens allowing Professor Mab to enter into the elevator with him. "Going down?" Mab asks and Stain nods his head and Mab enters with him. Stain is nervous, one wrong move could spell his end. Suddenly he was brought back to reality when he hears Mab mumble something to himself. "That idiot, after I told him to take it easy he gets himself into another fight." Mab mumbles to himself. "Umm, I don't mean to bother you but did something happen to To- I mean the boss?" Stain asks while trying to sound natural and calm. "Yes, the fool is going to get himself killed. After drinking the artificial demon's blood he isn't listening to my warnings and is overdoing himself. He lost the ability to use his quirks because of it and after getting them back he goes out to another fight. The fool might kill himself, we still don't know the side effects of the demon's blood yet but he is relying solely on the chance that it will strengthen him with limited to zero harmful side effects." Mab says before turning around. "Sorry, I ended up rambling about my struggles with Toshinori." Mab says but Stain assures him that it was okay. "It seems like this man knows a lot about whatever happened to Toshinori. Regardless I now have my first lead, if I can find this man's office I might be able to learn more about Toshinori and his potential weaknesses." Stain thinks to himself.

"I'm guessing you're on patrol in the medical center?" Mab asks and Stain nods his head in agreement while trying to play along. "Which faction will you be monitoring?" Mab asks but before Stain could think of an answer the door opens and Mab excuses himself before leaving and Stain follows further behind him. Mab eventually reaches the room Toshinori was in, not realizing that Stain was following behind him. He enters the room and Stain hides behind a nearby wall and listens in. "What did you do this time Toshinori?" Mab asks. "I feel a sharp pain in my chest, despite healing my wound the pain remains." Toshinori explains. "Hmm...Let me take a look." Mab says and after a short examination, Mab realized that there was what appeared to be a stab wound in one of his hearts. "When you fought whoever you fought, did they stab you in the heart?" Mab asks and Toshinori remembers when he was paralyzed, Stain stabbed him in the chest. "Yes, he did." Toshinori replies which angered Mab. "You fool, the only organs you cannot regenerate are your hearts!" Mab yells. "I suppose that swine didn't add some kind of poison after all." Toshinori says to himself but Mab just sighs in disappointment. "Regardless there are some things I haven't realized about your body. A typical upper-level demon has 7 hearts but it seems you had six, minus the heart you just lost that leaves you with just 5 hearts remaining." Mab says and turns to Toshinori. "Regardless, you'll be fine. I'll give you some painkillers and you get some rest." Mab finishes and Toshinori agrees before thanking Mab and laying down. Stain pulls out a notebook and writes down the information he has gathered so far before walking away.

"His hearts are his weakness. I must find out more about him but we already have enough information to give us a chance to defeat him." Stain thinks to himself while looking for any room that may contain information he needs. He looks around for about an hour before going up the elevator to a floor above the medical center and started looking around. He finds a room with a sign that reads "L.F.M". He walks in and found himself inside a laboratory. Inside the lab, he looks for anything he could find that may be useful to his investigation. He finds a stack of documents with the cover reading the title "Artificial Demon Blood." and remembers Mab talking about it in the elevator. He opens the document and finds images and the anatomy of monsters he's never seen before. They appear to have been labeled as "Demons". He looks through the documents and learns that these creatures are found in another world and he got a more in-depth look at the artificial demon's blood. He then notices two vials with the label "ADB" and looking through the details of the artificial blood he realizes that this was the label for the blood and he grabs them both before putting them in his sling bag. He continues looking through the documents and as he looks through, he finds a chapter in the documents labeled "Artificial Demons". He opens it and finds the anatomy of little girls that appear to have similar features to the demons in the previous documents and he learns of the artificial quirks given to them and them having 3 hearts and looking through he finds one demon girl labeled "A.D.E.W". He looks through her documents and this girl appears to be different than the rest. She has grey skin and hair but red eyes. It says the happier she gets the pinker she becomes and the angrier she gets the more grey she becomes. On this page, he finds a folded note which reads the following: "Greatest weapon of mass destruction but unsuccessful in erasing emotion from her being. Must find a solution or she will be useless for my needs." Stain folds back the note before removing the demon girl documents and placing them inside his sling bag.

He suddenly hears footsteps outside and hears Mab's voice coming in the direction of the lab. He quickly looks around for an escape route and notices a clock that reads "11:30 p.m." and right next to it is another ventilation shaft. He places the documents back and rushes into the vent and Mab walks in completely unaware of his presence. He goes over to a table while holding a book. He places the book on the table before starting to write something inside it but stopped when someone knocked on the door. "What do you want?" Mab asks before opening the door and seeing a guard at the other end. "Sir, One For All is getting restless and is demanding to train against the artificial demons." the guard tells Mab which infuriates him. "He wants what?!" Mab yells in anger before leaving the room with the guard and walking away allowing Stain to come out of the ventilation shaft. He then walks over to the table where the book was placed and grabbed the book before opening it.

Reading it he realizes this is Mabs journal and inside has stories of his life along with what he and Toshinori had done over the past few years. The first few pages tell the story of Mab's wife and daughter, They lived in a place named Belialuin. They lived a happy life but because of a child by the name of Merlin deceiving two powerful beings named the Demon King and Supreme Deity. Their homes were destroyed and his wife and daughter were killed in the chaos. He and Merlin were the only two survivors and he vowed to kill her but throughout his journey, when he finally came face to face with Merlin; She was dead, killed by chaos and his anger was still burning brightly and he could not stop it. He was unsatisfied with her death at the hands of Chaos and wanted to erase her from existence by his own hands. Through his research, he discovered a way to travel to other worlds and this is when he met Toshinori for the first time.

Through a mutual agreement, they decided to team up. Mab would assist Toshinori in conquering the world and Toshinori would assist him in his research to hunt down Merlin. Even if it wasn't his Merlin, it was a Merlin he would be happy to kill. Toshinori assisted in his research on Demons and how to make the artificial blood and through trial and error eventually successfully made the Artificial Demons Blood a reality and at the same time, he also managed to locate another world's Merlin. He wanted to torment her but he couldn't do so with so many powerful people in the vicinity so he went to their world before hiring a group of thieves to infiltrate the castle and use a purple orb on the demon king. Stain looks through the books further and decides to look for anything more helpful to him and finds a chapter which is labeled "Unexpected Variables". He looks through and sees to his surprise, sees the name Kurosu Tachibana in it. He pauses on that page and reads through before realizing to his surprise that Kuro was still alive. "The One-Eyed Reaper is still alive?!" Stain silently says to himself. He reads through and learns about Toshinori's encounter and verification of his existence. He looks back up to the clock and sees it nearing midnight. "11:55, I should get out of here." Stain says to himself before grabbing Mabs book and throwing some of the flammable chemicals onto the floor and lighting it up with a spark, setting the entire room on fire and burning the remaining documents and equipment inside before running. He rushes towards the elevator but suddenly runs into a few other guards. "Hey, what are you doing?!" one of the guards shouts but Stain quickly gives an answer. "The laboratory is on fire!" Stain yells which surprises the other guards. "What?!" another guard says before rushing to the lab but with their backs turned to Stain he uses the opportunity to kill them all there before running to the elevator. He clicks the button to the first floor and waits. Meanwhile, Mab walks back to the lab before smelling something burning, he quickly rushes to where the smell was coming from and opened the door only to realize the lab was on fire and his research was burning away. "Shit, Water Wave!" Mab yells which releases water from his hands but it does little to affect the flames inside. He quickly finds a fire extinguisher and uses it and was successful in putting out the flames but the damage had been done. His documents were all burned and wet so he rushes to find an explanation as to what happened but as he walks over to the elevator he sees 3 bodies in front of it which makes him realize this wasn't an accident. He quickly pulls out his phone and calls Toshinori. "What is it profes-" Toshinori says but was interrupted by Mab. "Someone infiltrated the building, they burned my documents and killed 3 guards. Don't let them escape!" Mab yells.

Stain reaches the top floor and to his surprise, the area was more crowded than earlier so he acts like one of them and slowly reaches the exit and runs into the woods. There he can see a car in the distance and sees Lady Nagant inside. "Nagant!" he yells which catches her attention. "Hurry!" she yells back but just before he reaches the car he suddenly gets stuck in something. It was some kind of mud that wouldn't release him. He then turns around to see Mab rushing toward them and Toshinori flying at them. Stain quickly throws his sling bag to Lady Nagant but the zipper was loose and it allowed one of the ADB vials to fall out of it but Stain yells at her to move regardless. She quickly drives away and Stain gets punched by Toshinori and thrown into the side of a mountain, Toshinori then grabs him and throws him onto the ground. Mab then picks up his journal and Toshinori picks up the ADB vial. "I thought heroes don't resort to stealing." Toshinori mockingly says before Lady Nagant rams into him and yells "Get in now!" before Stain grabs the vial and jumps into the car while holding his stomach from the pain. "Go!" Stain says before Nagant stepped on the gas and they started driving off. "Find anything interesting?" Lady Nagant asks. "Toshinori's weakness is his hearts, He has 5 of them but if damaged he can't restore them." Stain says which relieves Lady Nagant. "I suppose this trip wasn't as big of a waste as I had imagined. "He was also transformed into that thing because of these vials." Stain says while showing her the vial. "It's some kind of special demon blood that turned Toshinori into whatever he is now." Stain finishes. "These things?! What else did you learn?!" Lady Nagant asks but before Stain could answer a black rope barely missed them, they turn to see Toshinori following behind them. "The One-Eyed Reaper is still alive!" Stain yells. "He is?!" Nagant says in disbelief. "He's in another world but still alive. Apparently, Toshinori had a run-in with him and verified that he's alive" Stain finishes. "Well, it's good to know that the guy who knows where he is is trying to kill us right now." Nagant jokingly says. "He won't get off our tail. If we leave it like this he'll follow you back to where your meet-up is with the heroes." Stain says. "I'll find a way to get us out of this!" Lady Nagant says but Stain turns to look at Toshinori who is catching up, he thinks for a moment before standing up. "What are you doing?!" Lady Nagant yells and Toshinori sends a black whip at him but he cuts it up with his sword. "Keep the bag safe, I'll distract him so you can get away but don't stop the car for any reason!" Stain says. "Wait, what are you doi-" Lady Nagant asks but was interrupted. "Don't stop the car Nagant, that bag is more important than me so don't you dare come back for me!" Stain yells before jumping out of the car and Nagant just sheds a tear before speeding up the car. Toshinori stops and lands in front of Stain. "You've chosen death I see." Toshinori says. "At least I will die protecting what needs to be protected. It is a death I will be proud to accept." Stain says as his hair blows through the wind and Stain rips off the guard's uniform and wears his mask. "Even if it costs me my life, I won't let you go any further than this." Stain says before unsheathing his blade.