The hero's persistent dismissal and shoving around began to irritate him the longer it went on. When they came into the infirmary he almost lashed out verbally in frustration--did she not understand anything he'd told her? From one corner into another. It became apparent that if he were going to survive this ordeal he'd only be able to rely on himself. As she rummaged and looked for something he got to work, too. A large, loose paperclip on the desk caught his attention, and he was quick to retrieve it, unfolding it and lifting his cuffed wrists close as he worked at picking the locks. He'd only got one when the hero grabbed him again, forcing him to palm the thin wire as he turned to follow her lead.<br/><br/>Something did seem off as they rushed past the villain, too busy trying to free her arm to stop them, but he barely noticed. He kept his hands low and together, clutching the open cuff in his hand to keep it from rattling. He knew that what she'd done had been a temporary measure. Smoke Bomb--Zayasu, he told himself, Zayasu Taji--was much too relentless and most assuredly<i>way</i>too pissed off to let something like a little ice stop her. He thought he heard a distant, muffled thump as the thought occurred, and he sped up a little bit. "Look, I know you think I'm full of nothing but hot air, but the truth of the matter is that running is a losing game with this woman," he said, trying again to convince her as he brought his hands together and got to work on the second cuff. "Please. Let's find somewhere quiet, elevated, and shadowy. I've fought her before, and I beat her. To my knowledge I'm the only one who has--"<br/><br/>Another explosion ripped through the building, this one perhaps the largest yet. It was big enough to send him sprawling, the handcuffs sliding free as he hit the ground. Dust clouded the air, and he heard distant alarms blaring. Footsteps rushed toward them, and the two officers from before came into view. One knelt next to the hero, checking to see if she were injured, he had no doubt. The other advanced toward him, pistol raised when he saw the discarded cuffs. "RASPUTIN!" roared a throaty, angry voice in the dust behind him, where there had once been a wall. Most of the side of the building was gone, and he realized on some level that she must have altered the gases in the air itself to cause some kind of blast.<br/><br/>The cop was distracted by the roar, which sounded more like an animal than a person, and Makino acted. He surged to his feet and bulled into the cop, tackling him back into his counterpart and knocking both of them down. In his dash he'd grabbed the cuffs, and he stretched their hands into an awkward angle before snapping the bracelets shut, effectively immobilizing them for a moment. "Sorry, officers, I'll surrender when it's over," he promised, and took the billy clubs from their belts. He rushed back past the hero and into the dust without hesitation, stepping carefully in his prison slippers so that they didn't make any undue noise.<br/><br/>The dust, he found shortly, didn't last for long. The explosion she'd caused had not only shaken the building and knocked down a few doors, but ripped away a chunk of the exterior as well. Wind blew through the hole, and lights flickered across the room that had held rows of files and papers. They rattled across the floor and where the cabinets had fallen, and Makino whispered another aimless prayer for anyone who had been near the blast. He almost hoped that Smoke Bomb had been consumed by her own fire, but that hope was dashed when she emerged from the dust, her right arm bloody and bare, her gauntlet mostly gone--though she still clutched the glove and the spark wheel that ignited her gas.<br/><br/>"You ANIMAL!" she shrieked raggedly, most of her mask blown away. "We were PARTNERS! And you turned on me!"<br/><br/>"You broke the rules, Taji. You got more and more reckless. I told you that you wouldn't leave me with any other choice if you kept on allowing civilians to get caught up in your schemes." His voice was measured and calm, but he'd slid into a combat stance, billy clubs tucked tight against his forearms. She scoffed and spat to the side, smoke seeping out of the thin slots along the underside of her arm.<br/><br/>"That's bullshit," she snarled, approaching as smoke and dust alike flooded the floor toward him. "You were mine, Rasputin! And I was going to be yours!"<br/><br/>"You always were a little bit on the crazy side," he said dryly, and she shrieked, igniting the gas. He threw himself clear as the blast went off--but it was weaker, he noticed, rolling across the paper-strewn ground. Whatever she'd done to break out of the ice had changed her, weakened her powers. Makino kept moving, dodging another couple of blasts before he found an opening to act, analyzing the entire time.<br/><br/>The dust was what was slowing her down, he realized. Between her injuries and the debris on the floor, her blasts were only half as potent--they barely nudged the fallen cabinets. He lured her deeper into the room, away from the dirty area, deeper into the room. Along the way he intentionally knocked a few of the cabinets over, so as not to tip her off, making it seem like his retreat was desperate and clumsy instead of planned. She laughed and mocked and grandstanded the way all her type did, but he ignored almost every word, every dire threat falling away from him like water on a duck.<br/><br/>When the time came he let the gas seep around him, pretending to be cornered and exhausted. "Taji, stop, we can discuss this." She just laughed, and as if in slow motion he saw her thumb the spark ring. At the same time he leapt up on top of a fallen cabinet and braced his feet against the end closest to her, then grabbed the far end and yanked hard, tipping it up off the ground a few inches. As the flames spread through the gas, a thick cloud of it rushed beneath the cabinet, the air flowing to replace the missing mass. The resultant explosion sent Makino up into the air, propelled toward her, forcing her eyes up to stare, wide with shock.<br/><br/><i>Now!<br/>
</i><br/>"ZAYASU TAJI!" His eyes flared orange, and she gasped with horrified realization, wheeling away from him to try and prevent his quirk--but too late. The gas had already stopped seeping from her arm, and dissipated within seconds. He landed lightly and spun the clubs he'd managed to hang on to, then let them go, turning back to face her. "There. Your quirk's done. You may as well prepare to surrender all over again, Taji, and this time I don't think--"<br/><br/>He was cut off as she charged him, screaming with pure, mindless rage. She got his middle, and the blows he rained onto her back with the clubs went largely ignored. She bore him down to the ground and sat up, straddling his legs, raining blows with her fists down on his head and shoulders. He covered himself as well as he could, curling his arms over his head, twisting and jerking to try and avoid her fists and to try and throw her off. Silently he hoped that the hero had regained her bearings, or perhaps the cops had got untangled. Either way, he didn't like the position he'd wound up in. If she got her hands on the knife in her belt he'd be very hard pressed to escape her vengeance.