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"It works like this," he replied in respoonse to Raito's question. In their heads, they'd simply hear their own internal voices as opposed to Psi-Ko's. "This is Psi-Ko, by the way. Sorry if that was confusing. I've already hooked all of our minds up together, by the way. All you need to do is focus your thoughts on who you want to speak to, and it'll transmit through."

In truth, however, that was not how Psi-Ko's quirk worked. He could link their minds, yes, but they would not be able to actually transmit their thoughts to each other. The truth was that he was capable of reading the surface-level thoughts of up to a few people of his choice and telepathically communicate with those same individuals. All he needed to do was repeat the messages over to the intended person to maintain the illusion.

"Mm!" he nodded his head while pumping his clenched fist.

Getting up in the air was a good idea to get a better view of things. As she slowly descended, she would've seen that two of the groups had already been taken out. Their unconscious bodies were sprawled out all over the street. If she was acute enough, she likely would've been able to pick up on the fact that some of them were facing the entry point, indicating that they were likely attempting to escape from whatever took them all out. Meanwhile, glimpses she caught of some of the other teams. They all appeared to still be looking for where the hostages were being held.

"What do you see?" Psi-Ko asked, his voice sounding exactly like her own inner voice.

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He appeared to be quite tense. As soon as each of them introduced themselves to him, he snapped right into a bow, his arms, hands, and back straight and stiff as a board. "Nice to meet you! My name is Ko—Erm, hero name: Psi-Ko!" he straightened out, saluting them as rigidly as he bowed.

"Mm that'll be a useful power in fighting off the villains!" he nodded, relaxing a bit. "As for me, I'm a telepath. I can link all of our minds together so that we can communicate more effectively, but...Erm...Sorry, I'm not too good in a fight. I'm more of the supporting type—just give me the orders though, and I'll do what I can!"

---

The timer on the wall finally ticked down to its last second. The doors opened, and the display flashed "BEGIN" in bright red letters. Immediately, everyone inside stampeded out of the room and down the hallway to come out on the other end: an open cityscape.

The city itself was completely quiet—eerily so. Some of the groups didn't seem to care, quickly rushing headlong down the streets, aiming to locate the objective before any other group could. Some of the more cautious groups stuck behind, close to the entrance, scanning their surroundings to find any hints or clues that could point them in the right direction. Was that the right call though? Who knew?

Scanning the surroundings, one would not see anything out of the ordinary (aside from the fact that the city was empty, of course). None of the immediate buildings gave any hints about anybody inhabiting them. None of the buildings were labeled either, so there were no clues on that front in case the students were looking for some of the classic hostage situation locations like a bank or jewelry store. There were cars parked on the side of the streets, but they were scattered about in a non-uniform manner, so they weren't really reliable indicators either. But maybe they were all missing something?

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