harder.

Hayato parks the car about a block away because he doesn't want it to get damaged. They all pile out and walk to the set up.

He looks around and admits that it isn't bad. It's a one way road so it's pretty small to keep most of the zombie flow at a trickle. There's a semi pressed up against the side of a building and a smattering of cars along the entire block.

Hayato takes up position on the semi because his talent lies in long distance. Kyouya waits at the very edge of the battle grounds as a first line, with Ryohei and Takeshi next while Mukuro and Lambo hang back.

As it gets closer to the time, there's a nervous anticipation in the air from the recruits. It only grows as the sound of a chopper fills the air. The pilot hovers over them for a bit and then takes off at a faster pace.

Hayato first sees one turn the corner, then three, then ten, then seventy, and they keep coming.

He finds himself breathing in short gasps as the infected pour around the building and charge. He knows, intellectually, that Kyouya has taken insane amounts and that Hayato can stand on his own too, but the hoard feels like thousands.

He's never seen this many. He was already in Namimori when the outbreak hit, and while he is a Patroller, the most they get is fifty spread out along the kilometres they drive. He can see the others tense or take steps back, so at least he's not the only one.

He has a death grip on his dynamite and is honestly wondering if it's too late to back out, when the first wave hits Kyouya.

And then gets decimated.

The Chairman moves constantly, with one strike flowing into the next, and hits hard. His attacks are calculated for maximum damage with minimal effort. Kyouya whirls from one end of the street to the other, completely blocking the gap. It might only be one small lane but the Chairman is still keeping back an entire army.

Hayato blinks in shock when the DC leader actually throws a split second glance over his shoulder as if to check on the recruits.

"Let them through, Skylark!" Mukuro calls out with a vicious grin, twirling his trident because he's a dramatic bastard.

Hayato grits his teeth. "Move it already!" he calls out.

The cry is followed by Takeshi's laughter and Ryohei's patented shout of 'extreme'. No one hears Lambo's muttered 'tolerate' but they see his swords rise and arc with lightning.

Kyouya is facing away from them but they see his shoulder's shake in laughter even as he deliberately focuses on one part of the crowd and lets the rest through.

Hayato growls low and lights up fire bracelets with a snap of his wrists. The Chairman is laughing at them because they had an entirely logical response to facing possible death, that bastard.

He flings the first stick close to Kyouya but far enough that the teen is just out of the blast range. The bomb incinerates the infected closest and disables the others badly. Hayato gets a raised eyebrow for all his troubles.

After that, Hayato has to focus more on the infected near him than the Chairman. It turns into a blur, with one minute leaking into the next.

He doesn't notice the infected sneaking up on him until a flash of silver rushes past his head. He whips around to follow the trajectory and finds it buried handle deep in a zombie's eye. He wrenches it out and tosses it back.

Kyouya doesn't even look over to catch it.

Hayato tosses another dynamite in the Chairman's direction.

...

Ryohei is doubled over with hands on his knees, breathing heavily like the rest of them. Takeshi is sitting cross-legged on a car's hood and leaning back on his hands. Hayato is splayed out on another car's hood with Lambo on the roof.

It takes a moment but of course the peace is broken. Mukuro emerges from a pile of dead and stumbles over the mound of tricky terrain to reach the others.

"Hey, look who I found," he chuckles with a kufufufu. On one of his trident spikes is a decapitated head.

"My name is bob," Mukuro says with a low voice as he jolts the trident up and down so the head flops back and forth in a poor mimicry of talking.

"That's just sick," Hayato snaps.

Mukuro turns to him and raises and eyebrow. "Says the one cuddling up to a torso."

Hayato lifts his head and peers back at thing he's resting his head on. It actually is a torso, with the head, arms and legs cut off.

There are no lighting marks so it must have been Takeshi's kill. The teen's been playing with his zombies. Hayato turns a disapproving eye on the tall Japanese even as he rest his head back against the corpse.

"Hey, Hibari was playing too," Takeshi proclaims, pointing an accusing figure at a body off to the left.

It had a hole the diameter of Kyouya's tonfa straight through the heart, despite only head damage killing them. Another Takeshi points at had eyes rather carefully gouged out so the sockets were very clean.

"Actually, that last one's mine," Mukuro speaks up. "That one, however, is the Skylark's."

Hayato follows the finger, as does everyone else, but just finds a thick mush with shards of off white inside. It takes a moment to link it to anything resembling a body.

He turns to Kyouya, who's standing on an overturned taxi and staring off in the direction of faint car sounds.

Another jeep pulls up to where Hayato left the first, and a group of teenagers mostly around the same age pile out. They're in Patroller uniform, all with four black stripes on lilac arm bands.