Rule #54a: Beware of stress/triggers

In the days following the conference, the Pro heroes that had teamed up for the operation, were doing their best to pinpoint the location of Chisaki, the Hassaikai's young head and in turn, his daughter, Eri. Until they could, all the heroes involved (apprentices and the like) were on standby, with a gag order that prevented any of them from whispering so much as a peep about their work studies to anyone. Toru had kept strange and heavy secrets before, but somehow this one was shaping up to be the hardest to hold on to; especially as their peers persisted with the concerned enquiries.

It was decided—after much back and forth—that Kirishima, Midoriya, Ochako, Tsu, and Toru would be participating in the mission alongside the Big Three and the other Pro heroes who had been present at the conference. For the most part, Midoriya and Toru's involvements were necessary given their various levels of (questionable) involvement with the villain group, but the same could not be said for the other three first years. Or at least, so Aizawa had told them. He'd warned them that if they did join in the operation then they would have minimal involvement. This wasn't going to be like the USJ attack, nor Stain or even the camp kidnapping. This wasn't a game.

Aizawa had told them that there were no visible connections between the League and the Yakuza, but given their track record, Toru wasn't going to hold her breath. They had been explicitly warned that if the League of Villains so much as looked in their direction then they were out. No exceptions. They'd agreed of course, a little reluctantly for some parties (read: Deku). As it was, neither Shindo nor Minho were to a part of the operation as it was risky enough having the five of them involved to begin with. They hadn't been exactly pleased when they'd gotten the news.

Everyone was pumped and rearing to go, all filled with a cocktail of emotions that followed them around like a bad smell for days after the conference. The waiting was almost worse than the knowledge that the freaks who had kidnapped Toru were holding a little girl hostage, which was sick enough, by itself. But to weaponise her Quirk and sell it to the masses? That was a whole other level of icky. It certainly didn't help matters that some, like Midoriya, had completely changed over the last few days. Yes, they were awaiting the go-ahead to start, but the whole point of a gag order was to not raise suspicion beforehand. Somehow, he didn't get the memo.

For Toru however, there was an extra level of added stress with the after effects of her kidnapping. The nightmares had gotten worse, melting from Oishii's grinning mask to Dr Shiro's eldritch experiments that had her gasping for air when she woke in pools of sweat, gripping tight to her bed like a mad woman. Deep purple bags had appeared beneath her eyes (not that anyone could tell) and she found herself more often than not thinking of her junior high teachers. Of course, that may have had something to do with Yukimura-sensei's rapidly approaching anniversary. One year gone, one year missed.

"…What about you, Toru?" Lani mused, pulling Toru from her thoughts as the girls sat gathered out on the patio outside of their dance studio that evening.

"Hm?" Toru hummed, turning away from the hypnotic pitter-patter of the rain pelting against the roof above them.

"Ogawa was asking if there was someone from your class you thought would make a good villain?"

"Um…" Toru flinched at the question, mind instantly jumping to a certain pink-haired mouth-infested senior. She physically shook off the thought before she answered the odd question. How had they even gotten to this topic? "I—I guess if I had to choose one…maybe…Midoriya?"

"The broccoli kid?" Kojima perked up from where she had wedged herself in the doorway in an effort to keep warm. "Really? But he's like, a cinnamon roll!"

"You kidding me?" Toru replied incredulously as she pushed herself to sit up properly against one of the wooden pillars. "His intelligence alone is terrifying—you should see all those data books he writes! It's insane! But add in the his Quirk? No thanks!"

"Seriously?" Matsui laughed in disbelief. "I would've picked the angry bomb kid, not the green cinnamon roll!"

"Bakugou?" Toru mused, titling her head back to stare at the rain once more. "I can see why you'd say that, but he's mostly bark and no bite"

"Really?"

"Yeah, well, unless you mention Deku, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms"

There was a beat of silence as the girls just drifted back into the individual thoughts. That day after dance class, they had each been handed a slip of paper displaying the stereotypical self-evaluation questions. The boys had all but fucked off the moment class had ended, scribbling out some half-assed replies to the questions or shoved the papers into their pockets before disappearing off into the room with weak promises of completing it. The idea was that Midnight-sensei and Principal Nezu would be able to get a baseline for where everyone was in their "…rehabilitation for becoming good young heroes!" or something to that degree.

"C'me on!" Ito pitifully whined into the silence, flapping her paper about with each wild hand gesture "There must be something we all like! I don't wanna sit out in this rain forever! Let's just fill out Sensei's evaluation and go home!"

"Chocolate?" Ando threw out hopefully.

"Yes!" Everyone but Lani chorused. "Ugh!"

"Let's just tell sensei that we resent being grouped together and forced to bond on the basis of our gender!" Ogawa suggested.

"Yeah?" Lani sassed, "Or I could just pretend that I like chocolate"

"Isn't that really bad for dogs?" Nashiro murmured.

"I know your comfortable with being dishonest" Matsui steamrolled over Nashiro. "But I'm not"

"Oh yeah?" Kojima perked up at the challenge, ready to defend her friend. "What's that s'posed to mean?"

"You pretend to be all radical and feminist, when really you're just a girl who goes around stabbing other girls in the back!"

"Oooh!" Ito, Arai and Ando chorused. Off to the side, Toru was growing increasingly uncomfortable. She didn't have many girl friends in her life aside from the girls in her homeroom and the tentative friendships she had formed in class with some of the older girls. Sometimes she got the sense that the just more or less tolerated her, or outright forgot she was there. But that wasn't why she was upset, not today at least.

As the petty bickering over some boy grew between the gaggle of girls and the volume picked up, Toru found herself staring listlessly at Kojima's pink tights as she slipped deeper and deeper into the thoughts and fears revolving around Oishii. He had been so nice in the beginning, so sweet, so normal that his change in personality had been confusing and downright odd. The subsequent kidnapping certainly hadn't helped these feelings and she found herself questioning if she had done something wrong, or if she had said something that ticked him off. Was it my fault? Was a guilty thought that frequented her brain.

And then there was that colour, that—that pink. A colour that she used to love so fervently that it was even included into her hero costume. But now she couldn't look at it without feeling sick. She couldn't look at herself in the mirror, couldn't stare Mina in the eye or even glance at a forgotten crayon or blooming sakuras without feeling like something was wrong. It hurt. He took a lot of things from her that night (although Kage had pressed time and time again, how lucky she had been; how it could've been more) and yet this was the thing she was most upset about. It seemed like such a silly thing to be upset over, a colour, but maybe that was why she was. Why couldn't he leave something as silly as a colour alone?

Toru wanted answers, that much was for certain, no matter what she felt now, and participating in this operation? She hoped that she could find the ones she was looking for. Even if I have to beat them out of Oishii myself! She thought viciously as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. It was a selfish reason, she knew that but it didn't matter, as far as she was concerned Oishii owed her answers about why he did what he did. It was the least he could do.

"…That's not true!" Kojima weakly defended as Lani began to slowly turn red.

"So you didn't try to steal my boyfriend, then?" Matsuri retorted slyly, knowing full well what the answer likely was.

"Can we not fight?" Ogawa tiredly sighed, rolling her eyes towards the heavens.

"Shut up!" Nashiro hissed as she gave the winged girl a weak whack to the shoulder. "It just got interesting!"

"I didn't try and steal your boyfriend, Matsuri" Lani replied with forced calmness. "I had to tell him how I felt"

"You didn't have to" Matsuri snarked. "Lani, you wanted to"

"Did you even like Akibara?" Lani leant forward with bared teeth. "Or did you just want to win?"

"You're a bitch!"

"Yeah? Least I don't pretend to be so sweet and nice all the time!"

"You don't know anything about me!"

"You don't know anything about me—!"

"—Stop fighting over a stupid boy!" Toru finally snapped, angry tears spilt down over her cheeks.

"Toru…?" Arai leant forward, suddenly interested in the invisible girl who wiped furiously at her weeping eyes. "Why're you crying?"

"Be—because I—I can't—-I can't look at pink things!" Toru hiccuped into her hands, far too ashamed to look up at her peers. A small part of her did feel better about blurting it out though.

"Oh my girl!" Lani cooed, coming forward to scoop the invisible first year up into a hug; her argument now forgotten. "It's okay, it's okay"

Toru wept unabashedly into the canine's sweater, drowning the multicoloured wool in snot and tears as she finally let go, telling the girls what was wrong through hiccuping breaths. The last time she had done something like this had only been a few weeks ago after she had returned from the HBI mere hours following her return and mountains of paperwork. Aizawa and her early-rising classmates had been…awkward to say the least. They could deal with overpowered muscular men that sought revenge for some instance or another, but weeping women? She may as well have handed the teacher a live bomb. An impromptu cat pile had been order that morning.

"Y-you can all stop look—looking at me n-now" Toru hiccuped, wiping her nose with her sleeve much to Nashiro's disgust.

"So…you can't look at anything pink because you think Oishii—sorry—that jerk's gonna pop up and take you, or something?" Ando softly asked now that everyone had calmed down some. Toru leant back against Lani's chest where she now sat nestled between her legs like a child. It was comforting in a way.

"No. It's more like…he had this really kind face at first. I remember because he smiled at me and he didn't look like some creepy psycho killer—he didn't look like someone who'd keep trying to control me. So it's like, if he can do it, then anyone can" She sniffled, shrinking in on herself as much as possible to avoid questioning and concerned eyes. "I—I always felt safe at school, y'know? And now I don't…Probably sounds stupid…"

"It doesn't sound stupid" Nashiro shook her head. "…I was groped at the train station last year. We were going to a gig in the city and this group of guys walked passed, and one of them grabbed my boob & it really, really hurt. So I sometimes feel funny in crowds too. It was like they thought my body was theirs or something"

"Yeah, like we're public property" Matsui nodded in agreement. Toru felt more than heard Lani speak next, as it rumbled her chest beneath the sniffling first year's ears.

"A few years ago, some boys were catcalling woman told me it was my fault because my shorts were too revealing" Lani admitted a little indignantly. "So I went home and cut them even shorter because fuck them!"

"Good! Why should you have to change your behaviour because of what they did?" Nashiro fist-bumped the canine above Toru's head.

"…I—I used to go to the local swimming pool all the time when I was younger" Ando spoke next. "One day this old guy flashed me his penis in the pool and it looked all dangly & funny under the water. I told me ma about it and she wouldn't let me go back anymore. It sucks because I love going to the pool"

"That's so unfair!" Ito complained.

"I guess. But statistically? Two thirds of girls experience unwanted sexual attention or contact in public spaces before the age of 21. So it's not unusual"

"Th—that's sad" Toru sniffled.

"Yeah…"

"…Why are guys so obsessed with getting their dicks out?" Ogawa mused aloud.

"Sometimes I go on ChatRoulette and there are so many flaccid penni on there" Arai replied airily as if she were talking about the weather and not receiving such strange looks from her peers. "There's long ones, short ones, fat ones, circumcised, uncircumcised—one even looked like it had a tiny little face! I think if I had an extra arm growing in between my legs, I might wanna show it to everyone too"

"Ah…yeah"

"Maybe it's a power thing?" Ito suggested, tilting her head back to stare up at the flickering porch light above them.

"Yeah" Toru nodded. "I—I think Oishii liked that I was afraid"

"…A man followed me home from work about a year ago" Matsui finally blurted out, clearly wanting to tell her story. You could see it sitting there on the outer most edge of her tongue. "Every time I sped up, so did he. It was terrifying! He eventually ran off when he saw my dad on the doorstep, which made me really angry. 'Coz I don't want to be dependent on another man to protect me. We're s'posed to be badass heroes who can protect themselves, y'know?"

"I'm sorry that happened to you" Lani murmured.

"You too"

"Thanks"

"Whelp" Ito sighed, popping the 'p' as she smoothed out her slip of paper and bent to write on the dotted line just what bound her together with her peers. "I guess we can go home now"

"Hm?" Ogawa hummed, turning to the electric blonde with an unspoken question in her eyes.

"Dicks"

"Ah"

"Are you gonna be okay, Toru?" Kojima asked as she spared a glance up towards the invisible girl who was bust filling out her own crumpled slip of paper.

"I—I think so" Toru nodded. "I don't feel sad, mostly just angry"

"I've got something that can help with that" Matsui smiled knowingly as she waited for the others to finish up before they packed their things and head off towards one of the school's training grounds.


It was odd walking through the training grounds at night, for one the ruined cityscapes that lined the horizons seemed far more imposing than they did in the daytime. Every creak of a loose pipe or groan of an unstable building set the hair on Toru's neck shooting upwards, but still she trailed after Kojima like a good little kohai. Although her hand remained stubbornly clasped inside Lani's furry one—she was not going to risk the chance of a second abduction from school grounds, if she had anything to say about it.

"Kojima!" Ito whined from the middle of the pack. "Where're we going?"

"We're nearly there!" Kojima called back over her shoulder as she led the little troupe through a series of abandoned and wrecked cars. Eventually, they came across a relatively well-kept car that appeared to have most of its bits still intact. It was here that Toru was handed a pair of ski goggles that the fire breather had in her bag for some reason, and a baseball bat was placed into her awaiting hands.

"What do I do?" Toru asked, hands wringing around the handle of the baseball bat as nerves jolted through her like volts of electricity. Is this what Kaminari's Quirk feels like?

"Think about something that makes you really, really angry" Kojima stood atop the car's roof whilst the others had scattered themselves about the dusty intersection. "And then smash the car as hard as you can"

"Um…" Toru hefted the bat as she tried to think of something that didn't make her sound like a baby or an idiot. "I'm angry that I'm always overlooked in a crowd"

SMASH!

"Yes!"

"Woohoo!"

"Go Toru!"

"Hit it!"

"Harder!"

"Smash it!"

"Wooooo!"

"Break it!"

"Kill it!" The girls chorused as Toru took the bat to the headlights and suddenly it didn't matter anymore how stupid she sounded. It felt good. This was the kind of therapy she had been needing!

"I'm angry that Bakugou keeps trying to poke his nose into my business!"

SMASH!

"I'm angry that a horrible man ruined my favourite colour and NOW I CAN'T LOOK AT PINK SHIT!"

SMASH!

"THIS IS AMAZING!" Toru raised the bat above her head in victory to the cheers of the others. "LET'S KEEP SMASHING SHIT!"

"YEAH!" It didn't take the rest of the DFD girls to join in, each of them wielding their own weapons of choice (a busted pipe, an old fence post, a piece of wire etc) against whatever they could get their hands on. Plastic crumpled beneath their hands, glass shattered beneath their rage and war cries echoed into the air like birdsong. It was almost bittersweet when Aizawa came to break up their fun an hour or two after curfew with a stern look upon his face and capture weapon in hand, but it was worth it because Toru felt so much lighter now that she had revealed what had been bugging her so much. And she felt better.