Rule #42 An attack can come from anywhere or anyone

Toru wasn't sure if her heart could take another scare like Kage's, but everyone knew that karma was a raging bitch, so when Oishii offered to walk her home after dance class out of the blue, she knew that that bitch had struck again. The five minute walk back to the dormitories seemed to drag on forever, the path growing ever long with each step closer to her safe haven. It's not that she didn't trust Oishii, it's just that the last time she had been alone with him on this route, he had tried to choke her out after being all cryptic about Yoshiwara. Not to mention he'd been acting weird all day—well, weirder than usual—as he carried around this air of unbridled anticipation that made her wary. There was just something in the air that made it feel like something momentous was about to happen, like the calm before the storm.

With shoulders hunched up around her ears and thoughts whirling within her head, Toru didn't even try to pay attention to what the pinkette was saying. He could have said he was pregnant with crocodile babies from the sewers and she wouldn't have even batted an eyelash. Not that that he would've been able to tell either way. Instead, her eyes bounced back and forth between the stretching shadows on the path and the illuminated screen of her phone in an effort to both ignore and pay attention to the elder student. As a younger sister, this was a gift she'd utilised whenever her brother went off on some long winding rant that she could never follow.

It certainly helped matters that she was able play off these actions as being too focused on the phone in her hands. Something, in hindsight, which would forever haunt her whenever she recalled it. Unlike when she was kidnapped from the training camp or the Kyoto incident from junior high, she did not know who her attacker was, she did not fall prey to her emotions nor the results of someone's quirk (to her knowledge). The only thing she did know, was that one minute she had been replying to a query from Minho in the HBI group chat and the next a sharp pain had blossomed across the back of her head, causing her to drop her phone with a pained cry.

Absently, she lamented over the likely cracked screen as tears leapt to her eyes and blurred her vision. In the same instance, her legs buckled from beneath her as she suddenly became too top heavy to handle. Motion out of her peripherals had her pitifully scrambling for her phone in an attempt to send a cry of help before her mysterious attacker struck again. But it was hard to see when everything around her flowed from vague blobby shapes of colour to black spots and back again. She struggled against the strong hands grabbing at her and hauling her upright, leaving her only lifeline to clatter to the ground again. She kicked, flailed, snapped her teeth and was just a down right nuisance to her captors in the hopes that she could wiggle free and run despite the dizziness that had her eyes clenching shut against the vertigo.

There was white noise or the rushing of her blood dancing in her ears that muffled the sound of cursing from the unknown as something was stuffed into her mouth to silence any further cries and another miscellaneous thing was shoved over her head—a hood maybe—as she was easily swept off of her feet. Something like a rope could be felt entangling itself around her wild limbs binding her tight and she felt her heart skip at beat at the implications of what was going on. She knew from her brief time in Yoshiwara, that missing children were almost a yen a dozen, and from the multitude of crime shows (however fictional) which told what happened to girls like her. None of it was good.

Toru wasn't sure what transpired next, only that one minute she had been within sight of her dormitory building with a possibly shady classmate as her companion, and the next she was being picked up and shoved into some kind of vehicle that had been waiting not to far from the path. The engine rumbled beneath her feet and the stench of petrol filtered through the hood as someone buckled her in. A pitiful whimper fell from Toru's lips as her head was shoved none-so-gently to the side and something shoved into her neck. The small prick was nothing compared to the previous bash across the back of the head, but in the end it would be what had her crumpling into the awaiting dark.

The next time that Toru awoke, her head was still pounding, the surface beneath her was moving and the scent of sweat & piss lingered in the air. The dull ache which originated from her head now echoed throughout the rest of her body and it took her a few tries to peel her bleary eyes open. When she did, she wished she hadn't. Her entire body was bound by thick ropes and a seatbelt, trussed up like a roast chicken awaiting Sunday dinner. What limited motion she did have let her know that she had a shock collar placed around her neck like she was a disobedient dog. Of course, the only reason she knew it was a shock collar was when the mysterious driver activated the remote-controlled device upon noticing her mostly conscious.

"Nngh!" Toru grunted through around the gag in her mouth as volts of electricity ran through her body, making it spasm and give off the odour of burnt meat. Tears blurred her vision once more and she silently begged whichever deity was watching for the torture to stop. Despite this, she couldn't help but wonder, Is this what Kaminari's Quirk feels like?

Mercifully, the pain let up soon enough allowing her to slump over as she tried to calm her heavy breathes. A dark chuckle sounded from behind the partition that divided the front seat from the back and Toru felt the hair on her arms stand up at the sound. Once more, she dared to peel her eyes open—when had they closed?—only this time she tried to be more subtle about it. The hood from before remained atop her head, making it hard to see or breathe properly around the hemp-like material that sat so close to her face. If she squinted her eyes hard enough though, she could make out just enough of her surroundings to let her know that she wasn't alone.

To her right sat an equally trussed up student, evident only by their rumpled nondescript school uniform. All the assassin and hero training in the world still didn't abate the fear that gripped at Toru's heart as she studied the younger student as best she could. They were so young, barely in their teens and she could only assume they had been picked up off of the street just like she had been; like they were nothing more than trash bags awaiting collection day. It was a hard thing to swallow, particularly as she could share in the sentimentally of a sudden kidnapping. She tried her best to suppress the shudder at the memory of her own ordeal(s), something that had never quite left her no matter the brave face she put on whenever it was mentioned or alluded to.

The pair were encased by thick panes of darkly-tinted glass with a large pane acting as the partition between themselves and their (clearly psychotic) kidnapper(s). She wasn't sure what she feared more: what they would do to them or the unknown identity of said captors. It left a sour taste in her mouth, not knowing, it was nothing like her ordeal with the League of Villains whose kidnapping had been more or less a bid for herself and Bakugou to join their little club. It had been scary, sure, but she'd also been far more occupied with not blowing up at the time. Now her mind was far more preoccupied with going full tilt into imagining the worst possible situations and how she had ended up there.

Her whirling thoughts spun from the League of Villains to recent cases with the HBI and back towards to the damaged All Might USB sitting innocently in her room back at the dormitory. Is this a test? Are they testing me? She wondered, How do I know the League of Villains haven't come to take me back? Why were they so interested in the first place? And what about Oishii? What happened to him? It's not like I hate the guy, so what happened to him? He'd get help, right? Right? On and on they swirled, and yet not one viable answer surfaced to calm her. Panic pricked at her heart & an exhausted darkness pulled at her lids and before she knew it, she was unconscious once more. Or was that the sizzling of the shock collar?

This feels familiar. Toru groaned as she came to in some strange sort of dimly lit basement. The hood and gag had disappeared from her head in the meantime and she found herself confronted by several pairs of animalistic eyes. Blinking rapidly so as to adjust to the sudden change in light, Toru couldn't help but wonder if those caged eyes were human or not; either way, goose bumps littered her limbs and the hair on her nape rose telling her they were bad news. "Psst! Hey! Hey, UA!" The boy next to her hissed, repeatedly kicking her leg to get her attention.

"Huh?" Toru blinked dumbly, gaze moving from her recently freed limbs (only her hands and feet were bound now) to her neighbour who appeared in a similar position, if not a bit more awake.

"Are you okay?" The bluenette whispered despite sporting a black eye that was threatening to seal it shut.

"Where…where are we?" Toru glanced about, taking note that they were alone save for the several pairs of eyes blinking from the dark cages that sat the length of the back wall.

"No idea"

"Great…"

"What're they going to do to us?" He whimpered, eyes glazing over in fear.

"I dunno" Toru replied. "They might wanna sell us—"

"—Don't say that! HELP! SOMEBODY—!"

"—Shhh!" Toru surged forward and slapped her bound hands over his mouth in fear. Bulging eyes turned towards the ceiling above and she waited with bated breath as the floorboards above them creaked with movement.

Everything within the basement seemed to still, eyes turned towards the ceiling as they waited for someone to come charging down the steps or bust in through the cellar door. When none of that happened, Toru slumped into the younger boy as a sigh of relief hissed out through her teeth.

"What was that for?!" He demanded, daring to raise his voice an octave despite her protests.

"That's not gonna work" Toru sat back on her haunches. "If we anger them, it could get us killed or worse"

"But—but you're a hero, right?" He nodded to the grey and green uniform. "You can get us out of this, right?"

"…The er, collars might be a bit of a hinderance" Toru diverted, not quite answering the question as she was far more focused on the feeling of heavy limbs that felt like she was moving through molasses. It made it hard for her to move, let alone use her Quirk and whatever it was they had given her in the car was causing her to hallucinate because she could've sworn she saw dancing mice in tutus on the windowsill. "But—but there is something we can do. What's your name, kid?"

"Miwa" He supplied even as he fought back the rising hysteria.

" 'M Prism"

"So your a real hero?"

"Yeah" She smiled briskly before slipping her hands over his trembling ones in an effort to both calm him, keep his attention on her even and ground herself as she tried to ignore the hallucinations to the best of her abilities. "Right, Miwa, we gotta make a plan"

"What kind of plan?" He grasped at her words with hope lingering in his eyes.

"If they try to hurt us, we buy time—role play, get into their heads—and when they move us, I'll distract them"

"What?"

"It's our best opportunity for you to run and get help. You run and get help, okay? And don't stop for anything"

"I don't know, Prism, I don't know"

"If we don't, we're not getting out of here alive"

"I can't leave you—!"

"—You have to!"

"Shut up!" Drawled their mysterious captor as they stepped down in the basement, stairs creaking beneath them. His appearance was odd, if only because he bore the uniform of some local grocer along with an oddly shaped bird mask that covered the lower half of his face. It looked like one of those plague doctor masks had been painted over by a five year-old or an art student, it was hard to decide which. "Time to go"

"Why're you doing this?!" Miwa demanded, jumping right into the plan even though he clearly thought it was ludicrous.

"You don't have to hurt us!" Toru tried to appeal to the masked man. She didn't have to try that hard to fake the fear she felt as he stood menancingly over them with knife in hand.

"Please! We'll be good!"

"Shut up!" He snapped again as he bent to free the ropes around their legs, before hauling Toru first, to her feet. "Let's go"

"No! Wait!"

"Prism!"

This time the car ride was much more tense as Toru tried her best to see where they were going, but it was hard to do through the material of the hood covering her face, let alone the heavy blanket placed over top of them or the pitch black darkness of the trees racing by. And that didn't even take into account how they had been stuffed into the stifling trunk of the car. The few signs she did make out pointed to a picnic area in an equally wooded and dark lay-by where she could only assume they were to meet another member of the ring or even the broker himself.

It was hard to distinguish much from their curled up positions in the trunk of the car and this time the pair of them had been loosely gagged with strips of bedsheets and dirty socks; the taste of which combined with the already sour taste in her mouth made her sick to her stomach. Unlike Toru who had all but curled up into a ball with her head resting against the head of a rusty spade, next to her, Miwa appeared much more awake. Whether this was due to the fear coursing through his veins or the hysteria climbing up his throat—whatever it was, would help keep him alive. Toru idly wondered if they had given her a bigger dose of whatever it was because she was older, because she went to UA or if they had simply miscalculated the dosage. Not that it really mattered anyway. Honestly, at this point, she wasn't sure if she could use her Quirk even if she wanted to.

Exhaustion pulled at every fibre of her being, making sleep sound oh so good; so when the trunk was popped opened and a new figure in an oversized hoodie was revealed to be standing tall over them; she felt like she should've been forgiven for not cluing into who stood over her sooner even though some part of brain itched with the familiarity in how this new person held themselves.

Was it their cockiness? The stature? Or was it the gleaming eyes? She could not, for the life of her, figure out why it bugged her so much— it was just sitting there on the tip of her tongue!

However, some part of her was able to register the terror in Miwa's expression as they were both manhandled into an upright position for this person to inspect the 'product'. "They're perfect!" He purred, leaning in to see them better. Even though this man was now much closer to the two, the darkness of night made it hard to pick out facial features aside from the modified plague doctor mask that he wore. "And barely any bruising! You're learning!"

"I know what I'm doing!" The younger of the two snarked as he reached in to move the students from one vehicle to the next. "Let's go"

"Get rid of the van. Meet us back at base in about two hours—"

Again Toru was the first one pulled to her feet—likely because the pair didn't want to risk losing the invisible girl should she try to make a run for it—leaving Miwa with feet unbound and unprotected in the trunk of the car. The next few moments felt like it was moving in slow motion as she kneed her captor in the crotch and shouted for Miwa to run. A fist smacked her across her face for her efforts, snapping her head to the side with the force of the punch and a cacophony of swears & commands flew through the air as the young teen bolted towards the forest, his blue locks flying behind him.

"LEECH!" Their captor cried in surprise as Miwa bolted.

"SHIT! GO! Don't let him escape!" The newcomer, Leech, cursed as he carelessly flung Toru into the trunk of his own car and slammed the door closed, just barely missing her fingers before taking off after the school boy as well. Now alone in the car, Toru knew this was her one and only chance to try and get free but with everything feeling tired and heavy like a part of her had been drained, it was hard to do. But not impossible.

Each second that ticked by, every inch that she inched over first the back seat and then reached through the gap between the front seats to the driver's seat. Bound hands fumbled around in the dark looking for something—anything—that could free her from this living hell, be it a knife, the car keys or even a torch as her Quirk seemed to continuously fail her for reasons unknown. Just what had they given her? The darkness in her vision bit down with a vengeance and she felt her hope plummet as her fingers bashed themselves against random knobs that brought the car to life but not in the way she wanted.

"Fuck…" Toru breathed as her body finally collapsed into a heap between the two front seats with her legs slumped uselessly over the floor in the back. In the background, the soundtrack to her demise was made up of the singing radio and the hurried footsteps of her captors returning to the vehicle. She cursed her luck, knowing that this time she was well and truly all alone in this ordeal.