It was the first night, and hopefully only night of Toru's kidnapped situation. Gentle Criminal and La Brava assured Toru that she would be free tomorrow after her interview.
I could probably just leave in the middle of the night, but that would risk them remaining in Kamino to look for me. And I'd prefer their string of crimes to be elsewhere to get the heroes attention.
She sat on the queen-sized bed of the bad motel feeling rather awkward at remaining their and pretending to be captured. Her bedsheet handcuffs were loose and all she wore were huge oversized and baggy gentlemanly clothes.
La Brava and Gentle Criminal stared up at Toru on the bed, expectantly, like she was a queen, and they were her servants. It wasn't the sort of situation a kidnap victim could ever imagine themselves in because it was so bizarre.
"I think for your first tea, a royal black would be a smooth and delicious taste for a young girl." Like goldfish, La Brava and Gentle Criminal were completely focused on something entirely new instead of the trauma they had inflicted on a child.
They were determined to introduce Toru to the world of tea.
"I think chamomile is a better starter tea! And we have to make sure she pairs the tea with the right cookie. Right, Gentle?" La Brava asked excitedly.
"You've learned so much from me, my sidekick…" Gentle Criminal openly wept.
This is so BIZZARE. She was being offered gifts and food by her pretend captors. Had she accidentally jumped into another dimension where villains acted like this?
La Brava got out a few other tea packs to arrange them like a colorful bouquet for Toru to choose from. She beamed. "It's almost like Gentle and I are raising a child! I'm just so excited about teaching Toru here the joys of a tea party."
Ah. So that's it. Everyone has a motive. There's no such thing as selflessness towards a stranger. Heroes just want to boost their popularity or gain riches. These 'kind' villains are no different. The sudden onslaught of kindness is because they want to use me as a doll to bolster their relationship.
Finding reason in things gave her a semblance of normalcy. And that let her mind become clear as she tried to continue thinking of a way out of this.
Her current plan of just waiting things out and giving them a faulty interview with a blank screen seemed like the best one. Her captors didn't seem too smart and that meant for now, she had to continue playing along.
"I'm sorry! I can't have your tea, because my hands are tied. Remember?" Toru reminded showing them the bedsheet handcuffs that they themselves had put on.
"Ah, well, we can't have that now can we!" Gentle Criminal pointed out, wagging his finger. "It's not gentlemanly to not allow your captive to have some tea. La Brava tie her feet instead of her hands."
Wow. Wasn't expecting that they'd literally offer to untie their own victim. She had to reassess their intelligence.
La Brava nodded. "You're so kind. Although that doesn't seem like a good idea. What if she escapes and tells everyone where we're staying? She is a hero in training, right, Gentle?"
La Brava seemed to be the one braincell of this relationship.
Gentle thought for a moment. "Good point. Invisible girl, you won't escape, will you? I trust a gentlemanly promise! So, if she says she won't flee it should be fine!"
Toru hadn't given her hero name, but she assumed they were just stating the obvious. It was about as generic of a hero name as one could come up with after all.
La Brava nodded and swooned. "Gentle's so trusting!"
"…I won't escape. I'm a hero after all! I need to make sure you leave this city alone!" Toru promised.
Gentle smiled and untied her hands. He let La Brava find her feet to tie them up. 'A gentleman doesn't touch a lady's unclothed ankles' he had insisted.
Toru picked a tea set at random, a fruity strawberry one. La Brava and Gentle Criminal then watched her eat and drink with a look of excitement on their faces as if they were experiencing the tea for the first time too. They couldn't see her facial expressions, but they watched nonetheless.
It filled Toru with a weird sense of nostalgia. Master would watch me eat sometimes too. He liked to analyze my quirk and see if the food would be noticeable when I opened my mouth. He found the extent of my invisibility interesting.
This was nothing like that though. The look on their faces was more of a Mama bird watching her chick to make sure they ate all their worms, instead of a man watching a bird eat with interest.
These villains confuse me a bit. I'm not them. So why do they look at me like that? Why do they sacrifice the bed so that I can be somewhere comfy? Why do they worry more about me being a child than anyone else I've ever encountered?
It had to be because she had a use. She had a use to add something new to their relationship and she had a use to bolster the villain's popularity in an interview. Those reasonings made the world make sense. It wasn't kindness with no strings attached, she very much was being used by these villains.
Gentle Criminal seemed to sense her confusion due to the slowness of her tea sips. "I put some honey in the tea! Children like sweets, and I thought honey would pair well with that one!" He tried to reassure her trying to not let her be so nervous.
Could it be their trying to create a very rushed sense of stolkholm syndrome? Their kindness towards their victim wasn't very villain like. They were acting more like wannabe heroes.
"Why are you villains?" Toru finally asked. No other villain she had encountered acted like this. "Most villains would tie up their victim a bit more, and you clearly don't want anyone hurt by your villainy by the way you treated His Purple Highness. You two act more like wannabe heroes but you aren't lecturing constantly about your mission to save society like someone like the hero killer might."
La Brava and Gentle Criminal frowned.
"Just cuz we're nice doesn't mean we can't be villains!" La Brava insisted, "All sorts of heroes act differently. There are jerk heroes too, meaning just like there can be bad heroes there can be nice villains!"
That's certainly true. And there are quite a bit of jerk heroes. Toru found villains nice enough, but the nice ones had always been abandoned by society. They wore their trauma and hurt on their faces and Gentle Criminal and La Brava just looked like they were having a fun time and being villains for funsies. There were certainly those types of villains too, but the two of them didn't seem to have thought through any of the consequences to being a villain and weren't mentally prepared to take the responsibility of kidnapping someone, instead they treated them like a forced friend.
"Let me rephrase that then. If you don't want people hurt, especially children, why are you villains?" Toru asked. "To villains sometimes someone else's injury is a necessary cost to the larger plan." Toru pointed out.
Gentle crossed his arms. "We're not that kind of villains! We're the gentlemanly type of thief. Nobody will be hurt under our crimes."
That didn't make a whole lot of sense.
"And it's for fame!" Gentle Criminal responded. "I want my name to go down in history."
That would be easier to do with some murders. Murderers are always remembered, but their victims rarely are. Toru thought to herself.
"You must be thinking I could do that as a hero too…But the truth is, some people can't make it past the hero tests." Gentle scratched the back of his head. "And acting heroic without a license is a crime in our society. I am one such being who couldn't make it past the strict tests and was branded as a criminal after I tried to help unlicensed. Hero society will tell you the most important thing a hero can have is the ability to move when someone else is in trouble: Heart! But, that's a lie. The truth is you need luck and the ability to pass tests!"
Oh. So, this is one such person that hero society turned into a villain because they deemed his quirk not 'useful.' Gentle was like another version of Shinso who was older and had quit instead of trying harder.
Hero society loved to preach about how all you needed was heart but that clearly wasn't what was important to them. With people like Bakugo, Mineta and Endeavor as heroes, what they really cared about was power.
It's a pity for them because it seems like Gentle's pretty strong. She had seen him beat a power-based hero with his bouncy air walls. And he had even tripped her up by making the floor very jiggly. How silly that he couldn't be a hero just because he had tried to help unlicensed and couldn't beat the stupid combat-oriented tests.
"…That is a real shame." Toru agreed.
"You must have been aware of this problem, being invisible. I bet if the tests were hard for Gentle, they were hard for an invisible girl too!" La Brava piped up.
"…Well…La Brava…The truth is, I also struggled with standardized tests. I never could quite get Pythagorean's theorem…" Gentle looked ashamed. "This invisible girl probably did fine on written portions though! And…she hasn't tried the licensing test." He shot her a look of pity, likely thinking she would fail that one with her quirk.
"I am aware. I struggled in the combat portions of the tests too. UA didn't even know how many robots I beat because they couldn't see me." Toru admitted, hoping to conjure up some sympathy.
Gentle and La Brava's eyes did tear up.
"I'm sure all sorts of people with unique quirks like ours that isn't just 'punch things hard' are aware of these problems. But the question is, what are you going to do about it? You've decided to turn to villainy to try to get the fame a hero would earn, but your heart doesn't seem fully in it." Toru pointed out.
If I get him to quit because he realizes he sucks, then he won't cause problems for the REAL villains. Toru thought to herself, knowing she was probably helping a little with this speech.
Gentle nodded. "And I see you've turned to apathy to deal with these problems." He looked saddened by that fact.
"It's not apathy! It's acceptance. Sometimes you gotta just accept a bad situation, you know? Like how I'm kidnapped now." Toru pointed out.
Gentle nodded, not mentioning anything about the kidnapping. It was an accident, so it was fine. "Once I have more subscribers and followers, I hope to expose more people to the problems of society. A video can spark many to act…I just have to get there."
"Gentle's heart is in it!" La Brava agreed. "Just because he doesn't maim and torture doesn't mean he's not a true villain! There's been gentlemanly thieves throughout history."
Toru sighed. That's true. There have been gentleman thieves before, but this guy clearly isn't going to get very far. He's a little too silly to get the internet fame he's seeking. Not that she disagreed with any of his points. "And you think a UA student saying you're cool even though she's clearly being held captive in a video is the way to get this subscriber count up?"
Gentle and La Brava both nodded and put their thumbs up.
Well…Suppose I tried my best to reason with them. They're too stupid for any logic to work though. They were clearly going to get more heroes after them for kidnapping instead of people thinking they were cool, but she wasn't planning to do their silly little interview anyway.
She would have a long night ahead of her. But not necessarily a bad one. Just a weird one.
As soon as Aizawa was told about Toru's situation, he immediately started investigating instead of giving up and doing nothing like His Purple Highness had chosen to do.
The first thing he learned about the criminal who had likely kidnapped Toru was that he wasn't native to Kamino. None of the local police had seen him before, nor did anyone really know who 'Gentle Criminal' was.
So, he's not famous. But that doesn't mean he's not a threat. That did give him a place to start though. If Gentle Criminal wasn't native to Kamino and didn't have a teleportation type quirk like the warp gate from USJ, then he had to still be in the city.
And he'd likely be staying in a warehouse, bar or hotel. A hotel was probably the most likely place. If an investigation of all the hotels in the area didn't net results, Aizawa would obtain warrants to go through all the warehouses and bars until he found Toru.
All the police in the area had already given up tracking the criminal. Most of the monetary damages to the toy store were from the fight itself and not the robbery, so they felt no need to waste resources tracking the villains. There was no proof that a girl had died there or been kidnapped, Aizawa was just searching based on a hunch and a hope that 'the human sized bag' of plushies might have been holding Toru as well.
What was truly scary though was that Toru Hagakure seemed invisible from the system as well as quite actually invisible. Since nobody knew what had happened to her, they weren't getting help for her.
If I hadn't followed my gut and come to Kamino, nobody would be looking for her. Aizawa thought in absolute horror. I would have found out she was missing when it was too late, when her parents called the school and asked where their daughter was because she hadn't returned.
He felt nauseous and cold about what could have happened.
Toru was the first invisible person Aizawa had ever encountered, even with his experience as an underground hero. He had gone undercover quite a few times and seen drug dealings and human trafficking in the worst parts of criminal society, but never an invisible person. Now he was wondering how many invisible people he had missed in his work just because he couldn't see them.
Do they have problems with human trafficking because we can't see them and thus don't realize they're missing? How many people had he let die just because he hadn't known they were in trouble?
He shook his head. That was all conjecture. Paranoia. He had no proof that there was some sort of invisible person human trafficking ring. It was just his thoughts getting to him and his fear of what could happen to Toru.
Aizawa continued focusing on what needed to be focused on. The criminal.
The criminal's quirk allows him to put up air walls and bounce on them for mobility. Eyewitness testimony had said that he had fled by bouncing on air.
Aizawa could deal with that. All he had to do was see the criminal to stop him. The problem was that there was also a girl filming him and he wasn't sure what the criminal's sidekicks quirk was.
If she has a more dangerous quirk, should I focus on capturing the short girl first, or trying to eliminate Gentle Criminal's mobility?
He'd have to take them both out at the same time, probably. That was the only thing he could do for safety.
Aizawa investigated all the hotels in the area first. He assumed that the villain liked staying in luxury based on his description. Fancy villains like that usually stayed in nice places instead of abandoned warehouses. It usually gave them away their desire for the finer things in life.
The waxed mustached criminals always give themselves away because they are determined to live life like a gentleman. A lot of them stole valuables to keep up their high standards for luxury.
There were no guests staying at any hotels or fancy motels in the area that matched the villain's description. Aizawa searched the rooms, and nobody looked like Gentle Criminal.
The trail had grown cold again.
I should follow the trail he took on the rooftops, until I stop getting eyewitness testimony of people seeing him bounce by. He needed to go off something before wildly searching every bar and warehouse. Those searches required more warrants, and he wasn't about to waste time in official channels.
Oboro—I mean Hagakure, I'll find you. I won't let what happened to Oboro happen to you. This time he wasn't imagining a voice. He just had hope to hold onto. But he wouldn't give up.
Aizawa was never going to cry over another intern dying every again.
It was the middle of the next day. Toru Hagakure hadn't slept any the following night. It wasn't because the room was terrible, and water leaked from the ceiling. She was used to living in the streets, cold, naked, in a street corner curled up like an animal so none of this really bothered her.
It was the fact that even though she knew where Gentle Criminal's and La Brava's kindness was coming from, it still unsettled her. It made her deeply uncomfortable to be treated like a normal child.
They gave me the bed and slept on the floor. They gave me food. It's obviously for me to get a good impression of them…. But it felt weird.
Why were these stupid villain adults treating her better than any other adult she had met? Is it because they saw her as a normal child and not the tool she was? It was weird to be treated as a child.
Even the food Gentle Criminal had made her for breakfast, a smiley egg and bacon thing that was supposed to be cute, unsettled her. She had never seen that. She tapped the food with her fork as if it was going to attack her.
Everyone has a motive. Toru kept reminding herself. Likely she was just thinking better of them than any other hero because they weren't heroes and had given her their sad backstory about how hero society had spurned them as well.
La Brava had long since left to purchase a new camera and it was just Gentle Criminal and Toru now. Escape was even easier if she wanted it, but she knew she needed to make sure these villains left Kamino first.
I'm 99% sure they're being overly nice to me because they're trying to obtain some weird sort of Stockholm syndrome feeling, so there's nothing to be unsettled about. She had actually skimmed the book about Stockholm syndrome for a test, but she was confident she knew the main points.
Still there was a way she could be absolutely sure that the overly kindness was because strings were attached. If Gentle Criminal dropped the desire to interview and freed her on his own, then him and La Brava were really just weirdly nice people.
She decided to test him. "I don't want to do the interview." She pouted again, pretending to lean into the 'child' angle. To see if he treated her like an actual child when she insisted, she didn't want to do something.
"Oh? Why?" Gentle criminal asked confused. Who wouldn't want to be on camera?
"I'm camera shy!" Toru lied.
"Well then I can teach you how to be great under the pressure of the camera!" Gentle offered. "I'm sure you'll make a good story. Don't worry about it."
Just as I suspected. That didn't work. Toru felt a bit reassured. She decided to try once more.
"I'm worried about being remembered for being a victim. People kidnapped by villains are mostly remembered for that instead of anything else they do." She pointed out.
This was true. Toru really didn't need anyone remembering anything about her, so this was a bad reputation that she really didn't need.
"Well, no worries then! I'm sure people will be so amazed by a villain making friends with a UA student that they won't even be thinking about the kidnapping!" Gentle laughed, too dumb for that point to work on him.
Darn. "My invisible face won't draw attention to your video!"
"We could use some of my make up to make you show up!" Gentle offered.
"Won't it be bad for you to be associated with a UA student? You'll get fame sure, but then more heroes will be coming after you." Toru pointed out.
"No heroes have been on my trail yet. They've been busy with more important things. And we're playing the video off as a friendship not a kidnapping so they shouldn't be bothered by it." It was absolutely a kidnapping though. Gentle bit his lip as he said that.
Okay, so his dumbness is stopping any of the logic of my points from working, but that confirms that all this kindness really is to just bolster his reputation. I don't need to be worried about suddenly being treated like a child. That made her relieved.
She was and always would be a tool. People who acted like she wasn't, had either fallen for her scheme or were trying to get something out of her. And most people cared more about their own desires, than a child's.
The door opened and La Brava finally entered the room, shopping bag in hand.
It must be time to destroy another camera and get out of this mess. Toru realized.
La Brava looked frantic though, and frightened. "Bad news, Gentle!"
"Oh no! Are there no camera stores in Kamino?" Gentle Criminal asked, horrified, imagining La Brava's panic could only do with their career.
La Brava frowned and shook her head. Before Gentle Criminal could dive into the bag, she dropped on the floor she raised her arms frantically protesting. "I don't think we should do filming right now! A hero is on the lookout for us!"
Toru's eyes widened. Uh oh. Did his Purple Highness actually decide to look for me? I thought with his history he'd just give up and fall into a depression at my disappearance.
Perhaps heroes were made of sturdier stuff than Toru thought.
I think I made a bad choice…. I should have broken out of this fake kidnapping as soon as possible and just left…She didn't need heroes on the lookout for Gentle Criminal. Why worst-case scenario they would decide that since Gentle Criminal wasn't native to Kamino they should investigate places he might stay like warehouses and bars. The League of villains' bar was here and the Nomu warehouses were also hidden away in Kamino.
Toru could have destroyed the entire league of villains with her mistake of deciding to focus on trying to make Gentle Criminal and La Brava leave Kamino, to ensure that they wouldn't draw hero attention.
I tried to protect the league of villains. But that's a big decision. And I'm not supposed to think! Is this why All for One says I shouldn't assign my own missions? How could I be so foolish! Toru was kicking herself.
She had to get herself out of this and ensure the heroes stopped looking.
"A hero? Well then perhaps we can film me fighting him!" Gentle was undeterred "…But how did he follow me so far from the store?"
"It's likely because of her." La Brava pointed. "Kidnapping is a big deal!" She reminded.
"It's not kidnapping. It's an accidental borrowing." Gentle insisted, even though he himself had said it was a kidnapping yesterday. He swept his hand through his hair. "Fine, it's a kidnapping. And that's huge…A hero really would go after us…." He was beginning to get nervous. "How close is he?"
"I noticed him in the market asking people if they saw anyone matching your description. He even hassled one of them when they seemed like they knew something but wanted to be 'paid' to remember! He punched them and they admitted that they'd seen us on this block. So real close!" La Brava was sweating. "He seemed real mad and worried, Gentle. I don't think we should fight a hero who's about to lose it!"
Gentle blinked and thought. "Ah just one of them? Then we can take them, La Brava!"
La Brava shook her head terrified.
Just one is good…That means there's not a large investigation. If the hero manages to beat Gentle Criminal this time and 'rescue' me hopefully we can sweep this entire thing under the rug…For once Toru was praying for hero aid. If a hero was already on their trail, she couldn't just escape on her own. That would be too competent.
Which hero was it La Brava? If we can google their name, we can figure out if they're too tough for me to take!" Gentle Criminal tried to be smart.
La Brava shook her head, terrified. "I don't know…. I didn't recognize him. He looked scruffy, had black hair, had a weird scarf and goggles on. Gentle, what should we do? It seems like he'll get to us soon enough."
That description didn't match Purple Highness at all. In fact, from that description and all the pictures of heroes Toru had seen it only matched one. Eraserhead.
…Aizawa? But…He's not even supposed to be here! And Aizawa was smart. This was a much bigger problem than His Purple Highness looking for her.
Why the heck was Aizawa even in Kamino? Was there some large-scale investigation going on unrelated to her?
Now Toru was really worried as well. But she had to keep a level head.
Okay. There's some good about Aizawa being the one here. He hates media exposure for one thing. I don't want any media exposure about being kidnapped. With Aizawa it definitely won't be reported on and he won't let the fact that there was a kidnapping and villains he took down in Kamino be in the news.
He hated the media that much. So, this was really a blessing.
If she just waited and did nothing, Aizawa would probably be able to take Gentle Criminal and La Brava out with ease, rescue her, and she'd probably get scolded, but it wouldn't impact the league of villains in an awful way.
It would all work out!
Something feels wrong though…. In my gut…It took her a moment to realize what the feeling was. She wasn't too used to feelings, but she imagined what she had inside of her was pity.
Gentle Criminal's sad backstory of being fricked over by the hero system resonated a little with her. Was it really the right thing to do to watch him be arrested due to his own stupidity?
Many real villains start out like him. Stupid. Hurt by the system. The difference between Gentle Criminal and many real villains Toru had met was that he still had his heart and wasn't willing to do more extreme things. But perhaps someday he would have his own uses and get past that.
She decided to give them the knowledge they could. "That hero is Eraserhead. He erases quirks. And is my teacher at UA. So, he likely is here because of me."
Gentle Criminals's eyes widened. "Erase quirks! That's bad."
La Brava also looked frantic. Toru neglected to mention he could only erase one quirk at a time, or how he erased quirks. She just let them panic.
"What do we do, Gentle? I don't want you to get arrested. And we can't use lover mode to escape if he can just erase quirks…" La Brava said.
"Perhaps accidentally standing against UA was too big a bite to take. Perhaps we need a bigger plan for when we go against UA…" Gentle thought to himself, giving the illusion that he was trying to come up with a plan to get them out of this, but sweating and being just as panicked as La Brava.
"He's likely only here for me, since you kidnapped me." Toru repeated again. "So why don't you tie me up, leave me here and get on your train out of here?"
That way, they leave Kamino. I can tell Aizawa they fled Kamino, and I avoid their dumb little interview thing. Toru thought.
Gentle Criminal heard what he wanted to hear. "You'd do that for us, Invisible girl? Let us use you as a distraction while we flee?" He shed a tear at her chivalry.
"Uhhh sure…" Toru responded. Sometimes it was best to just agree. And that seemed like the way for the situation to be most quickly over and done with. "You might want to tie me up a bit better though so I can't break out."
Aizawa's smart and he'll wonder why I didn't leave if I just let them leave the bed sheets like this. Toru decided.
"…. You can break out?" Gentle asked.
"I didn't because your quirk would be powerful enough to capture me back." Toru lied. "But leaving me alone it would look suspicious."
La Brava nodded, and tied Toru's arms behind her back and her feet to her wrists behind her uncomfortably. It was a bit difficult because La Brava couldn't see her feet or hands, but she was able to do it.
"Thank you…Thank you for not letting Gentle be captured. I'm sorry for kidnapping you." La Brava apologized quietly to Toru.
"I hope that you continue to drink tea and we didn't…Cause any real distress in you. Thank you very much for giving us a chance to leave! I'm sorry we accidentally kidnapped you." Gentle Criminal bid his farewell before he escaped through the window.
And with that the two criminals who had kidnapped Toru were gone. Toru briefly wondered if they'd bounce visibly on top of the buildings to get to the train station or run away discreetly without bouncing.
She hoped they escaped Kamino and wouldn't be her problem anymore.
I hope they're discreet so Aizawa finds this room. I hope he rescues me instead of going after them. I could probably still break these knots, but it would be less suspicious if he rescued me. Toru decided.
And she just waited.
It would be pretty funny if Aizawa walked into the league of villains bar looking for Toru. Or alternatively the Nomu Warehouse. I'm sure that would bring up a lot of questions.
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