Hitoshi froze in place on the concrete step. He grabbed onto Denki and Neito, and it hopefully looked like he was panicked, but he really just wanted to give Neito the chance to copy his quirk to use if Toga didn't end up falling for it from him, first. Denki did say they had a huge binder of information on all of UA's students, after all, and that he and Neito were considered as targets before Denki was able to redirect their efforts.
What if they changed their mind and Toga was there to collect them all?
What if she was there to just take Denki again? Like hell he would let that happen! And he knew for sure that Neito would go all out as a form of redemption for his perceived failure the first time Denki was taken captive by the League of Villains.
As Neito kept his eyes strictly on Toga, Hitoshi glanced around them and used their position on the tall staircase as a vantage point to check out the lower areas as well, looking for any more League members that might indicate an ambush or planned mission.
"What are you doing here?" Hitoshi whispered harshly, determining that if there were any other villains around, they were disguised or out of sight and turning his attention back to Toga.
"Just here to have fun!" Toga answered automatically, hands up in a placating manner. "Oh!" she chirped as she realized she had answered a question, bringing her hands to her cheeks as a smile grew. "Are you going to brainwash me now?!"
As soon as Hitoshi enveloped her mind with his quirk, he turned to Denki incredulously, gesturing vaguely at Toga, and at a complete loss for words.
All three boys looked at Toga, then, helpless under Hitoshi's control. Neito understood why he didn't recognize her at first; she looked totally different than when he saw her at the training camp. Then, she was decked out in a bulky schoolgirl uniform with huge storage tanks on her back. He didn't really get a chance to commit her features to memory because he was too busy trying to avoid the big ass needles coming toward his face. The Toga that stood in front of him then had on a pink and navy blue bikini, and her hair was loose, reaching down to her midback, instead of in her signature twin buns.
As Neito looked into her blank eyes, he realized that even the way she carried herself and the way her eyes looked was different. There was a lack of intensity, he noticed. Maybe she really was there to have fun and wasn't on a mission after all.
"Game plan?" Neito asked lowly, looking back and forth between Hitoshi and Denki, trying to keep casual as to not let any civilians know that Hitoshi had just used his quirk on someone and that someone was a notorious villain.
The last thing they needed was a panicked crowd on a staircase. That would be a recipe for disaster, and the hope of keeping collateral damage to a minimum would go out the window as people clawed their way over one another until a rioting stampede threatened to smother those unfortunate enough to stumble.
"She's telling the truth," Denki reassured. "She's just here to have fun!"
"They aren't trying to take you back?" Hitoshi asked, just to be sure.
"No!" Denki chirped. "They wouldn't have to!" he added vaguely.
The soulmates decided that it was too risky to discuss that right then, among all of those people, so they tucked that away in the back of their minds to discuss later.
"You trust her?" Hitoshi asked. When Denki nodded without hesitation, Hitoshi looked over at Neito to gauge his response.
"If Denki trusts her," Neito sighed, "then I'm all in, too."
With a shrug, Hitoshi released Toga from his quirk, automatically reaching out a hand to her as she swayed on her feet upon regaining control of her body.
"Woah!" she squealed, a delirious laugh bubbling from her throat as she reoriented herself. "That would have been a useful quirk to have in our ranks!" And, after a worried look, she snorted. "Oh, calm down. Even if we had realized how flippin' amazing you are and went after you instead, it would have had the same result!"
"What does any of this mean?" Neito whined, hands going to grip his hair in frustration at not being able to follow all of the details that made the conversation absolutely confusing.
"Sorry!" Denki offered, a sheepish smile on his face.
"You didn't tell us everything, did you?" Hitoshi asked, but he wasn't upset.
"Not everything is mine to tell," Denki answered vaguely, but that was enough for the soulmates.
If Denki said that he couldn't tell them, then he couldn't. It was as simple as that. Denki didn't lie, not to the soulmates.
Taking a deep breath, Hitoshi regathered his thoughts and forced himself to calm down as if he wasn't standing directly next to a villain, one of the villains who played a hand in Denki's capture to be exact.
"Why did you answer me?" Hitoshi asked, turning his attention back to Toga, forcing himself to calm down in her presence.
Fake it 'til you make it.
"I wanted to see what it felt like! It's all floaty! Very cool!" she complimented, bouncing on her toes at the edge of the step she stood on.
There she went, intentionally answering him again when she knew what his quirk could do.
"I could have had you captured! You must be crazy!" Hitoshi spat, still tense and tightly wound despite his best efforts to relax.
"I'm among good company," she chirped in response, not phased in the slightest at the insult, bumping her shoulder against Denki's with a small, knowing smile.
Hitoshi shared a glance with Neito and sighed. "I guess we have no room to talk, do we?"
"Not about being crazy," Neito agreed. "But we do have room to talk about how Denki and I totally kicked your ass!" Neito finished, pointing at Toga and laughing manically.
Denki and Hitoshi reached out their hands to settle Neito firmly back onto the step as he swayed with his laughter.
"Of course, you would use this opportunity to brag!" Toga sneered. "I just think it's hilarious that you copied my quirk, but you can't even use it! Not here! Can you?!"
"I wouldn't want to!" Neito retorted. Maybe Denki's intense observation skills have rubbed off on Neito, because he could have sworn he saw the smallest hint of hurt on Toga's face. When he added "I'd have to lick some kid's bleeding knee or something to use it now. No thanks!" the hurt look on her face disappeared, morphing into genuine amusement and pleasant surprise.
Did she think that he didn't like her quirk? Her quirk was amazing. Kind of gross, but also one of the most fun and effortless ones he had ever had the pleasure of copying. Impressive, too. What her quirk lacked in finesse, it made up for in pure rareness and potential alone. Plus, he was sure that she might be just as observant and socially aware as Denki to be able to use it properly to be able to trick others into thinking she was someone else.
"Your clone sucked," Toga sneered.
"You guys are the ones who fell for it," Neito bit back, "so that says more about you than about me, don't you think?"
"Just because the real Bakugou isn't anything to look at either, or we would have been able to tell the difference," she retorted, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand.
"Are you kidding?! Bakugou is hot!" Neito snapped back quickly, lost in the intensity and speed of their hostile banter before he realized what he just said. "Oh, I mean, uh—"
"Yeah, no. You have a point," Hitoshi agreed with a nonchalant shrug. "The way he uses your name when he calls everyone else a dumb nickname…"
"Oh, and the way he pretends like he doesn't care, but he totally notices when something is off!" Denki added thoughtfully with a nod.
"The way he looks all tied up in a tree…" Neito swooned dramatically.
After a heavy pause, the boys burst out laughing and quickly filled Toga in on what had happened with the real Bakugou the night of Denki's capture. All of them were laughing as they continued to climb up the stairs in intervals as the line progressed, receiving odd looks from those nearby when the laughing went on for longer than expected.
Toga's a little messed up, but even she knows when she's overstayed her welcome. She tried sneaking away after the group had gone down the Slippery Serpent, but the boys had pulled her right back, demanding that they go on the Gushing Geiser next, just like they had planned. That didn't really surprise her, though. What did surprise her was that it was Hitoshi that called her back when she tried to sneak away.
"Where do you think you're going?" Hitoshi demanded, making Toga tense her shoulders, like if she stayed still enough, he would suddenly be unable to see her.
"I'll only answer you if you brainwash me!" Toga chirped as she turned around, hopeful that even though she couldn't sneak away, she might still come out with another experience to add to the ever growing list.
"I already did!" Hitoshi argued, but there was no force behind it.
Honestly, adding Toga to the group was easy. She was like a nice mixture of Denki and Neito in a way: Excitable, happy-go-lucky, and a little manic, too.
"You never made me do anything, though!" Toga argued back, stomping her foot against the concrete floor to really drive her point home.
Hitoshi didn't know what happened that landed him in that position again and again. Before meeting Denki and letting Neito in after finding out they were soulmates, people avoided speaking to him like he'd brainwash them and command them to jump off a cliff. Now, though, people seem to flock to him, everyone wanting to experience it themselves, and just as eager to help Hitoshi improve his quirk as they were to try to break free, just to prove to themselves that they could (they couldn't).
"Why would you want me to?!" Hitoshi spat, allowing his voice to pick up the cadence and get a little heated.
So, when Toga started to answer, she wasn't expecting Hitoshi's quirk to form a haze over her mind once again. She would have laughed aloud if her body would have let her! That cheeky, smug bastard! Toga really liked him. Even more so when he commanded her to start walking up the stairs, not giving her another chance to slip away. He even waited until there were others that came up in line behind them before actually releasing her mind and body to her own control once again. Sneaky and calculating… yes, Toga approved of Hitoshi.
"I think if you had been there that night, we wouldn't have been able to grab anyone," Toga pondered aloud, then, as an afterthought, asked, "why weren't you there?"
"I didn't get into the hero course until recently. I was still in general studies when the training camp took place," Hitoshi offered with a shrug.
"You've wanted to be a hero since forever, so I'm guessing being in general studies wasn't your first choice," Toga guessed.
"How did you know that I wanted to be—you know what? Don't answer that. I don't know if I even want to know, and it might be something you can't tell me anyway," Hitoshi sighed, running his hand through his damp hair that would be soaked again in a matter of minutes once it was their turn to go down the slide.
"Couldn't you just use your quirk to get me to tell you anything you wanted?" Toga asked.
There was no fear in her voice and no hesitation on her face. She was just truly curious, and no matter what the answer was, Hitoshi knew that she wouldn't use it against him. It was refreshing to have this kind of openness come from someone who was not in the hero course, someone new who he had never interacted with before. It gave him a warm feeling, almost as warm as when he had first met Denki who had exceeded all of his expectations in only the first day, and never ceased to amaze him every day after that.
"I'm working on that," Hitoshi admitted with a small smile, proud of how far he had come. "Sometimes I can get Neito to answer yes or no questions, but it's hard. It's a work in progress."
"You're going to be unstoppable someday!" Toga chirped, bouncing on her toes in excitement. "I'm just glad we're all on the same side, here!"
"Speaking of the same side," Denki interjected, "villains have been acting strangely toward us during our internship."
"Oh… really?" Toga asked, completely unconvincingly feigning ignorance.
"You gonna tell us, blondie, or are we going to have to force it from you?" Neito asked.
"I'd like to see you try! And anyway, you're blonde, too, so—"
"To be fair, Mr. Compress isn't here to intervene," Denki offered with a shrug.
"Whose side are you on?!" Toga screeched. She looked to either side of her to see the soulmates that Denki was absolutely in love with, and conceded, "oh. Their side."
"You know, you could have told us who you were interning with!" Toga started. "We had to find out the hard way!"
"So, the villain known as Razor…" Denki prompted.
"He said he helped you escape. We've been meaning to ask if that's true," Toga informed nonchalantly. "Dabi threatened to kill him if he was telling lies about you to get on the League's good side."
"No, yeah, he totally saved my ass," Denki assured, before switching to his own question, "get on the League's good side?"
"Well, yeah! Why do you think we broke Porky out of his holding cell?! Not just for giggles!"
"Porky?" Neito asked, trying to think about who Toga could be talking about.
"Uh…" Hitoshi started, hoping he was wrong, "do you mean the guy with the porcupine quirk that surrendered to me?"
"The very one!" Toga confirmed with a nod.
"His alias is Quill, and I doubt his legal name is Porky…" Hitoshi countered. "And I didn't know he was released."
"Not released!" Toga corrected. "Broken out! He did you a favor, so we did him a favor."
Hitoshi stared at her with wide eyes. When he was able to dart his eyes in his soulmate's direction, he wasn't surprised to find that Neito looked the same.
"Denki…" Neito started, taking a few breaths before continuing. "When you said that the League is supporting us…"
"Yep!" Denki chirped, taking amusement in the realization that the soulmates were going through. "We have the full power of the League behind us! I actually didn't realize how intense they were going to be until Razor helped get Tetsutetsu and me out of a collapsing building!"
"He's how we found out that you were interning with Thirteen!" Toga practically wailed. "You should have told us! What if Razor decided not to risk saving your ass? Huh?!"
"But how would he even let you guys know?" Neito asked, not following Toga's consistent insistence that Denki should have shared information with them.
"Oh, don't you know? Denki here is Shigaraki's favorite online gaming teammate, much to Dabi's displeasure," Toga shared with a shrug, like she didn't just drop a bomb on the soulmates.