No matter what it looked like to the general public, saying Phantasm 'escaped' wasn't exactly correct. It was more like she was forcibly taken out of the pan and thrown into the fire, actually.
"No!" she screamed, her voice cracking with the effort. "Just leave me here! Why are you doing this to me?"
"Just go through the damn warp gate," Dabi commanded, shoving a rough hand through his hair, ignoring the staples snagging on some stray strands. "It's almost like we're doing you a favor!"
"I don't want your favors!" she insisted, breathing heavily with panic. "I just want to be left alone! I'm sorry about the whole Chargebolt thing, okay? Just please—" her voice cracked again, and she stopped to take a breath. When she continued, she was much quieter, and Dabi had to strain to hear her over the alarms blaring overhead. "Just leave me here."
"Not a chance, cupcake. Come on! Up you go!" Dabi chanted with synthetic cheer as he hoisted her to her feet.
He was forceful, sure. He had to be because she wasn't coming willingly. Not only that, but she was putting up one hell of a fight.
Phantasm didn't let herself dwell on the fact that Dabi was as gentle as possible while still succeeding in his goal of getting her through the portal. She didn't have a single scrape, bruise, or burn as she stood, surrounded by the League of Villains on their own turf. Did it matter that she was unharmed in that moment when they were sure to do much worse to her before the day was out?
Out of all of the things she imagined, though, it wasn't this.
They had directed her back the hallway and into a side room that seemed to be an entertainment room with a television, various game systems, couches, and beanbags scattered throughout.
As soon as she was led to the room, Phantasm had done an excellent job of backing herself into the corner, but Full Throttle wasn't there to protect her like he always was, so it was probably poor judgment on her part. To be fair to herself, she really didn't know what else to do.
When they all started piling in, Phantasm didn't know what to expect. She was initially wondering if they were going to interrogate her, but why would literally everyone in their base need to pile into the room to make that happen? Hell, even Hawks was there. She'd heard the surface rumors of him going AWOL from the hero scene but didn't stick around anywhere long enough to know the details. Seeing him there among the League of Villains caused more questions than provided answers.
"I'm Toga," the blonde, bubbly girl with the sharp smile had introduced, getting way too close for comfort. "This is Spinner, Mr. Compress, Shigaraki, Dabi, Hawks, and Twice. And you saw Kurogiri out in the main room, but he won't be joining us in here."
Phantasm looked around the room at the intimidating villains as Toga introduced them, but they were talking among themselves rather than focusing all of their attention on her. It was relieving to not be the center of everyone's attention in one way, but in another way, it was extremely frightening for them to be going against everything she expected from them.
They didn't even seem to want to try to frighten her, so their interrogation tactics weren't the greatest if that was what their intentions were for her. Hell, after dragging her through the warp gate, Dabi had changed out of his villainous attire and was just lounging around in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt with two weird vertical slits in the back. No one else seemed to have had to make the change because everyone else was already in loungewear when Phantasm first arrived.
"Dabi said that you said that you didn't mean to target Chargebolt—"
"We didn't," Phantasm insisted, shaking her head frantically. "We didn't know that he was under your protection."
"But he is," Toga chimed, "and you did. So, now you're going to show us what you did to him!"
Phantasm's brows furrowed as she thought about what exactly Toga was asking for her, then she really took a look around the room itself and noticed the small size of the room and the rolled towel placed at the bottom of the doorway. She paled and with every exhale, she seemed to fold in on herself a little more with the weight of her anxiety.
"I—I can't—I—" Phantasm sputtered, panicking, trying to figure out a way to explain in a way that these villains would understand and empathize and not force her to do it anyway.
"Hey," Toga soothed, her mouth twitching up into a smile as she crouched down in front of Phantasm, crowding her into her corner. "We've got you covered!"
The smile that Phantasm had interpreted as malicious and cruel suddenly seemed playfully mischievous and anticipatory instead when Toga had brought out from behind her back a gas mask and shoved it into Phantasm's hands.
"What?" Phantasm dumbly said.
"Remember when we crashed through the wall? Of course, you do! Kaminari said that you won't use your quirk if you can't leave. Kurogiri's on phone duty, and Twice is on babysitting duty for us while we're tripping," Toga explained, "so you have to stay in here with us, but there are ways to work around that!"
Phantasm furrowed her brow and looked over at Twice who was planted in a beanbag in front of the television, his gas mask already firmly affixed to his face.
"I can't control if it's a good trip or a bad trip," Phantasm said, trying to get her to call it off.
Honestly, the last thing Phantasm needed was a room full of villains blaming her for having unpleasant hallucinations.
"That's why we have Twice!" Toga said in her best reassuring voice. "He's here to help us through anything that might be too much, just in case! But we're all in a good mood and surrounded by friends, so we're not too worried about having a bad trip. Even if we did, though," Toga added, seeing that Phantasm was about to argue, "we wouldn't blame you for it! We totally asked for it and brought it on ourselves!"
"And after…" Phantasm hedged.
"You'll be free to go," Toga said. "We even have the track record to prove that! I mean… as long as you aren't going to go after Kaminari again."
"Never again," Phantasm deadpanned.
Toga laughed. "Glad we're on the same page! Okay! We're ready, now!" Toga trilled, rocking up onto her toes in excitement. "Gas the room up for us, would ya?"
And Phantasm did, after firmly affixing the gas mask to her own face, hoping that she could trust the villains to follow through. She figured that she didn't have much of a choice but to hope and trust that what they were saying was true, and even if it wasn't, she didn't have much to lose by playing along and making them happy.
The room filled with the foggy gas, and the villains' eyes lit up as they looked around at it, then over at her, with awe. Phantasm swore someone muttered something about a Midoriya having a field day or something…
When everyone had breathed in their fair share and the fog started to dissipate, it turned into a waiting game until they would start to see and hear their first hallucinations. When Phantasm took her gas mask off, Twice did, too, and Phantasm noted that they were trusting. She didn't know if they were more trusting of her or of Chargebolt's assessment of her and that she wouldn't be subjected to her own quirk, though.
"Guys?" Twice muttered softly. Then louder, "Hey guys? Someone escaped from infiltrated Tartarus."
Dabi threw a carefree laugh over his shoulder. "Twice! You're supposed to be our sitter! You're not supposed to be hallucinating, too!"
"I'm not! At least, I don't think I am," Twice said, starting to worry about if what he was seeing was real or not. "I am! Reality check!" he yelled. "Did Chargebolt escape from Tartarus?"
An echo of yelled "what" reverberated throughout the room as the group swarmed to gather around the television, Phantasm included.
"It's real," Phantasm offered helpfully to answer Twice's call for reality check.
"Damnit, Denki. What have you done?" Dabi muttered, voice thick with awe and trepidation as his eyes were glued to the screen.
Hawks swore under his breath, typing furiously on his phone. "Tartarus staff did a preliminary sweep. Denki's not the only one missing. Full Throttle is gone, too."
Suddenly, all eyes were on Phantasm, and she wondered if the door was locked and how far she'd make it if it wasn't.
-.-.-
Neito hadn't decided if he was going to try to be more subtle or make his presence known and approach from a negotiating standpoint, but that option was taken away from him when a civilian looked out from the cracked, dusty window and let out a warbled cry of relief.
The villains closest to the door whirled around to face him, and Neito put his hands up in a placating manner as he slowly continued moving forward, knowing that he had to get himself into that car to fully understand the situation.
This was not a good scenario for Neito. He had Hitoshi's quirk at the ready, sure, but that was the only thing he had to rely on, and he couldn't expect to get everyone under that quirk once they found out what he was doing. One or two, maybe even three was definitely manageable, but eight or nine? Not a chance. Especially not when he and Hitoshi had just put on the show of their lives on the news, reminding everyone about who Mindjack was and what he could do and that he was out there in the underground hero circuit, keeping everyone safe without anyone even knowing it.
When he met the eyes of a familiar villain, not because he knew him personally, but because Denki had told them about his near-miss at one of Full Throttle's disaster sites when he was interning with Thirteen, he zeroed in on him, figuring that Razor might be his go-to person when dealing with the rest of the villains. Razor similarly locked his gaze on Neito and gave just the tiniest nod of acknowledgement.
"No brainwashing," Razor demanded, the first of many demands to come, Neito figured.
"Wouldn't get me very far, anyway," Neito grumbled in easy agreement, dropping his hands and picking up his pace to get into the car.
The other villains' voices raised slightly in quick protest, but Razor harshly whispered something about cooperating if they don't want to be incinerated by the League of Villains' blue-flame quirk user, and that got everyone quick to comply with wide-eyed understanding and bated breath as they figured out how delicate of a situation they had found themselves in.
Quickly making his way past the villains and turning his attention right to the civilians, Neito quickly introduced himself as a Pro Hero and asked, "any injuries?" He crouched down in front of them, all huddled together in the corner furthest from the exit, furthest from the villains.
There were a few minor to moderate injuries, the worst being a broken leg, so Neito asked, "what are your quirks?"
"She has a healing quirk," an elderly man offered hesitantly, gesturing to the small girl beside him.
"What?!" one of the villains snapped, stepping forward behind Neito.
Neito didn't even turn around, even as he saw the civilians' eyes move from him to behind him, cowering, further pressing their backs against the plastic seats as if they could melt and blend together with the material to get away from the wrath of the villain.
Neito simply held up his finger, indicating that the villain needed to wait. He heard an indignant huff. The villain didn't retreat, but didn't step closer, either.
Neito was lucky he was the only hero on the scene, or he would be hearing it during debriefing about never turning your back on a villain, and here he was, his back to literally every villain in the damn metro car, all his attention on the young girl who couldn't be more than eleven years old.
The elderly man's grip did not loosen on the girl as his eyes flickered from Neito to the villain standing behind him. "Her quirk is influenced by her emotions. She was just involved in a major accident, and now she's a hostage to villains. She's going to cause more harm than good if she tries to heal anyone."
"Hi," Neito said softly with a smile, talking directly to the girl and ignoring everyone else in the moment. "I'm Phantom Thief, and my quirk allows me to copy others' quirks." Her eyes met his, tears still gathering in the rims of her murky gold eyes even as tear tracks dried on her face. "Can I copy your quirk so I can get everyone healed up?"
"Does it hurt?" she asked.
"Not at all," Neito said. "All we have to do is make physical contact, and then I have a copy of your quirk for the next hour. It doesn't even affect you at all because you still have your quirk, too."
Biting her lip and inhaling shakily, she nodded, and held out her hand. Neito beamed at her, doing his best Denki-smile impression, and grabbed her hand in both of his, thanking her profusely as he felt the quirk flow in and settle, already getting a feel for it and how it was tapping into his emotions, waxing and waning with the slightest changes as he thought about different things.
Very volatile quirk. Amazing. And he told her so, making her smile a watery smile up at him as he stood up to move over to the man with the broken leg.
"Woah!" the man protested, holding his arm out to keep Neito away. "If that quirk is connected to emotions, then I don't want you anywhere near me!"
A crunch and crash was heard then, and the occupants of the car turned to look in the direction, but saw nothing.
"Are you sure?" Neito drawled, trying not to put too much attitude into his voice, knowing that this civilian was scared and hurt. "Because I'm pretty sure that the station entrance just collapsed, so there won't be any ambulances or EMTs with stretchers getting in here any time soon."
The man shot a panicked glance at the villains in the other side of the car, probably imagining that he might be left there alone if he isn't able to walk out independently. He grimaced and nodded his permission for Neito to continue.
Neito sat himself down next to the man who was on the floor, trying to subtly nurse his leg to not let on to the villains how fucked he actually was, but it was fine, because Neito was there to help, and this is what Neito was made for. He took a few deep breaths, felt the quirk weave in and through his emotions, and reached out for the man. It only took a few seconds before the man, who had had his eyes screwed shut in anticipation of it going horribly wrong, had gasped in stunned relief and moved his leg easily, testing it out now that it was good as new.
Neito smiled and quietly asked, "who's next?" He moved on down the line, healing as he went, even if it was just a cut or scrape. "Better to handle it now than for it to be a problem later," he said when one woman suggested he move on to the next and pass her by.
With the civilians all taken care of, at least physically, and a little bit emotionally, now that they knew a hero was on the scene and actively working to take care of them, he turned his attention back toward the villains, noticing that while others had been shifting around, moving closer and again moving away from him as he worked on the civilians, one had remained right where he was, seated in the opposite corner to the civilians. He was also paler than when Neito had first stepped into the car.
When Neito walked with purpose to drop down in front of him, everyone was silent and tense, waiting for the fight to start. The civilians pressed further back into their seats once again, and the man with the now healed leg had made good use of his renewed mobility to crowd closer to the group and scoot further from the villains.
"Where are you injured?" Neito asked, not shying away from the villain's gaze as he looked directly into Neito's eyes, trying to find the trick.
"Don't answer," another villain warned. "His soulmate is Mindjack, and they were just together on the news."
Neito ignored her and the new side conversations that started about if Mindjack might be nearby and coming to his soulmate's side soon, one stepping just out of the metro car and onto the tracks to keep watch.
"I already told Razor I wouldn't brainwash anyone," Neito said. "If you tell me where you're hurt, I can heal you."
Even with the pallor of the villain's skin, he still had the energy to snort at Neito's suggestion. "Even if I believed that, we all heard what pops said. The girl's quirk is connected to emotions. Like hell it'll be the same for you to heal me as it was to heal them."
"Lower back," Razor chimed grimly, ignoring the weak glare that the injured villain sent his way. "It made it worse when we moved him, but we couldn't just leave him where he was. It was too dangerous."
Neito reached out for the villain but stopped short, waiting for permission. The villain's glare softened, with fatigue or relaxed will to fight, Neito wasn't sure, but it wasn't until he glanced at Razor that his resistance chipped away completely.
"I trust him," Razor said.
Neito didn't turn to look at him, keeping his eyes on the injured villain in front of him, waiting to use the girl's quirk that was raging and soaring around inside of him to its fullest potential. Even so, he still heard and felt the shift.
The side conversations stopped. All of them. The villains stopped planning what to do if Mindjack suddenly appeared, stopped recalling the few facts they actually knew about the underground hero. The civilians stopped their whispered plans on how to escape, how to shield the youngest if the fighting started and there was no way out, how to help Phantom Thief, which villain they might be able to take on their own if they could distract any away from the main fight.
Even the air seemed to still, the draft deciding to take its leave and not disturb the delicate atmosphere that Razor had created with three little words that had to be a lie. Right? A villain trusting a hero was unheard of, but there was Phantom Thief, kneeling in front of an injured villain, offering his healing hand without making compromises or demands in exchange, so maybe it wasn't as suspended of a belief as it would have been otherwise.
The elderly man knew that they were a lucky group when it was Phantom Thief that boarded the car, knowing that if a healer wasn't going to be on board, he would be their next best bet. The villains had already questioned them about their quirks, asking if any of them had any healing abilities when they had dragged their friend out from a fallen beam when he had volunteered to look for an exit before everything had settled after the initial collapse.
He wondered if UA knew what the hell they were doing when Phantom Thief had turned his back to the villains, completely ignoring their existence completely, but then he commanded the finicky healing quirk like he had years of practice, like it wasn't his first time wielding it. The man quickly apologized in his head for thinking ill of any of Phantom Thief's methods because this young man, practically still a kid, was going to be the one to get them all out unharmed.
And by all, he meant all, apparently, because he moved right on to the villains, too. Instead of jumping straight back into judgment, wondering why he didn't use the healing to negotiate, he tried to think about it from another perspective. Maybe it was the emotions? If Phantom Thief was nervous or uptight from the potential of negotiations falling through, that could affect the healing quirk. That didn't seem quite right, though.
The elderly man just knew that they were extremely lucky that it was Phantom Thief. If it was a more act-first-ask-questions-later type of hero, they might have all ended up dead, stuck under a secondary collapse if the fight happened to get large enough to cause another. And maybe Phantom Thief realized that. But the way he healed the cuts and scrapes of the villains, just as he had with them, had left the elderly man doubtful that that was the entire reason.
The injured villain had nodded at Neito, and Neito didn't hesitate to finally make contact and heal him, the villain slumping with visible relief.
Neito smiled mischievously, and the villains around him tensed, wondering what was in store for them. He turned his head and looked right at Razor as he stood up.
"Don't think I didn't notice that you're favoring your left leg," Neito sassed reaching out for Razor.
Razor huffed out a laugh under his breath, rolled his eyes, and reached out to meet him halfway. The villains watched as Neito reached for Razor's hand, not hesitating even though Razor had the ability to change the tips of his fingers into sharp blades and slice him to ribbons. They watched as Razor straightened up under Neito's quirk after being healed, not at all concerned that Neito might copy his quirk and use it against him while he had his hand on his wrist.
The civilians were smart enough to stay quiet and let Neito work, no matter the mixed feelings and racing, conflicting thoughts at war in their heads, wondering if this was going to get them out unscathed or get them all killed. Really, they continued to have these back-and-forth thoughts in their minds until they reached the surface and were free to go, rushing back to their own families to tell them that Phantom Thief had saved them, but oddly not divulging any details beyond that.
"Did I heal everyone?" Neito asked, turning his head back and forth to look at both sides of the metro car in turn.
When no one spoke up, Neito nodded and took a steading breath. "Great. Now, can anyone explain what the hell even happened?"
"They—" the man with the previously broken leg started, pointing across the car at the villains, only to be interrupted.
Absolute chaos on both sides, but no violence at least. Just hurled insults and accusations.
Neito rubbed at the area between his eyes and sighed, moving to the center of the metro car and sitting cross legged on the floor, his left ear toward the civilians, and his right toward the villains. Everyone stopped talking pretty quickly, seeing the odd display of the Pro Hero.
"Razor?" Neito asked hopefully.
Razor stepped forward, joining Neito in the center of the car, and sat himself down to be seated directly in front of Neito.
"It wasn't us," Razor said. One of the civilians scoffed, and Razor shot a glance in their direction. "Seriously. We have a meeting point in a side room off the tunnels down here, alright? But we weren't trying to demolish the place or anything. We would've made it out with everyone else, but the emergency exit point collapsed before we got to it. This car was still in one piece, so this is where we decided to go."
"We knew that they were villains when we saw them poking around," the woman of the group explained. "A few of us recognized some of them, so we stayed quiet, but they found us here anyway. We couldn't leave Tosano behind," she explained, gesturing to the man who had broken his leg. "What if he had passed out and couldn't call for help when the search teams finally came?"
"Great," Neito said in a decidedly manner, slapping his hands down on his thighs before making a move to stand up, offering a hand to Razor to help hoist him to his feet as well. "Seems like a big misunderstanding to me, then. Let's just all get to the surface, and we can go our separate ways."
"What?" Tosano asked, purely confused. "Can you even do that?"
Neito shrugged. "Who's going to stop me?"
The villains laughed and swarmed to crowd Neito as they discussed the emergency exits that they had frequently used when getting to and from their meeting. Now that everyone was healed, it would be no problem to travel a little further to get to one that was—hopefully—not caved in.
The civilians watched the villains lead Neito out of the car and draw a rudimentary map of the tunnels and emergency exits in the dust on the floor. And the civilians talked.
Neito was going over the strategy, and the back up strategy, and the back up to the back up strategy with the villains, just in case anyone got separated or had any better ideas to adjust the plan before they got started. When they heard the civilians climbing out of the metro car, helping each other not to trip over the tracks, some of the villains turned, probably to warn them not to wander off on their own, but they were all making their way over to join the group, standing around and looking down as Razor and Neito knelt over the lines drawn in the dust.
"Ready to get out of here?" Neito asked, looking around the group, relieved to see that everyone seemed healthily motivated and there was a lot less fear and uncertainty.
"Where is Mindjack?" Tosano asked in lieu of answering.
"We split up. He went south," Neito explained.
"And…" Tosano hesitated, but decided to ask anyway, even if it wasn't his place. "Chargebolt?"
Neito swallowed. "He can handle himself. We'll get to him when we get to him."
Tosano glanced around at the other civilians, and glanced around at the villains, too before nodding, like he had come to a decision. "You'll go on without us, then."
Neito blanched. "What?"
"These guys seem to know the tunnels well enough. We'll follow them out. You've done enough here," Tosano said.
Neito looked around, noting the steely, determined gazes of the civilians, their stances not wavering. He looked at the villains, none making a move to protest. He slowly nodded, but quickly gained speed and enthusiasm.
"Yeah, okay. If you're sure—"
"You're going to find Mindjack first, right?" Razor asked. "I'll come with you."
Neito only thought about protesting for a millisecond. He could be better at accepting help, and he figured, why not start now? So, he nodded his thanks and took one last look around to make sure he wasn't missing anything.
"Uh…" Tosano hesitated. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"I trust him," Neito said, echoing the returned sentiment from earlier. "And it will be nice to have someone familiar with the tunnels to help me navigate."
As the ragtag group of civilians and villains made their way through the tunnels in the opposite direction than the hero and villain duo had gone in, the civilians listened to murmured conversations and rumors about the people's hero, and how there might just be more than one. The civilians found it hard to disagree when they went from doubting they would ever see sunlight again, buried underneath the streets, to being assisted out of an emergency exit from the metro tunnels, villains of all people helping to pull them from the darkness back into the light.
When heroes and villains collide, there is normally collateral damage. Most commonly expensive property damage, but often time injuries and even casualties happen, too. These are always blamed on the villains, of course, because the heroes are the ones who are just reacting to the villains who are committing the crimes. But what would the world be like if more heroes were like Phantom Thief? What would it look like if heroes took care of people first, regardless of status? Regardless of who "won?" Regardless of who got the glory?
Because, at the end of the day, everyone survived. There were no injuries because of Phantom Thief's expertise with a quirk he had never used before. The villains were talking about Phantom Thief with stars in their eyes, and Tosano doubted that Phantom Thief would ever have an issue with any of them ever again.
Sure, it was something new, and maybe even a little uncomfortable to watch at first. It looked a little too friendly, and it caused bitter feelings at the beginning, watching a hero heal a villain without using it as collateral to negotiate their safe escape. But look at the outcome.
Tosano wondered what the outcome would have been if it had been another hero, and he was surprised to find himself grateful that he didn't have to find out.
A/N: No need to worry about remembering Tosano's name. I don't have any future plans for him, but I wanted to give him a name to make it easier to follow along with the scene. Next time will be Hitoshi's adventure in the metro tunnels. No one has correctly guessed who it was who he found, yet! I made a Spotify playlist and a Discord, but I'm not allowed to post links on here, so you might have to venture over to AO3, Wattpad, or Quotev if you want in! 3