Irusu (A BNHA x IT AU)

by Seroyonin

It started in the winter of 2004, after the death of Midoriya Izuku's little sister Eri, and it would end almost 16 years later, after Kaminari Denki made his six phone calls. After all, they had all promised that they'd come back. (An "IT" AU with *that* part removed) (Cross posted from Ao3) (Every trigger warning imaginable applies- seriously, proceed with caution)

29. The Curious Case of Toga Himiko

—1—

MAY 30TH, 2020 / IRUSU, JAPAN

When he was finished, Kirishima poured himself another drink with a hand that rattled about as subtly as a train barreled through a building. He looked at up at Todoroki Shouto and said, "...You saw It, didn't you?... You saw It take Himiko the day after you all signed my cast..."

The others leaned forward, drinks in hand, curious.

Todoroki brushed his multicolored locks out of his eyes. Beneath them his face looked extraordinarily pale, though, as usual, that was their one and only indication that he was feeling anything other than indifference. He fumbled a fresh cigarette out of his pack- the last one- and flicked his zippo lighter. He couldn't seem to guide the flame to the tip of his cigarette. After a few moments of this, Deku grabbed his wrist, holding it gently, yet firmly, so the flame caught on the end of Todoroki's cigarette. Todoroki gave him a grateful look and exhaled a cloud of bluish-gray smoke. All six members watched it swirl and mix into the air like a hypnotic ballet dance.

"Yeah," Todoroki said after a long pause, bouncing his knee up and down anxiously. "I saw that happen. Sort of." Todoroki shut his eyes for a moment, a wave, equal parts nausea and horror, crashing over him. "It was gross."

"She was cruh-cruh-crazy," Deku said, and thought: '...The fact that Tomura let someone like Toga Himiko hang around as that summer wore on... that says something, doesn't it? Either that Tomura was losing some of his charm, some of his attraction, or that Tomura's own craziness had progressed far enough so that the Toga girl seemed okay to him.' Both thought processes came to the same thing- 'Tomura's increasing... what?... Rot?... degeneration?... is that the word?... Yes, in light of what happened to him, where he ended up, I think it is.'

'There's something else to support the idea, too,' Deku thought, but at the moment, he only remembered it vaguely... He and Bakugo and Todoroki had been down at Tetsutetsu's depot- early August by then, and the summer-school that had kept Shigaraki out of their hair for most of the summer was just about to end- ...and hadn't Kurogiri approached them?... A very frightened Kurogiri?... Yes, that had happened. Things had been rapidly approaching the end by then, and Deku thought now that every kid in Irusu had sensed it- the Losers and Shigaraki's group most of all...

But that had been later.

"You've got that right," Todoroki said flatly, wringing his gloved hands together, the phantom blood long gone by now. The cigarette bounced between his lips with each word spoken and smoke swirled out of his nose. "Toga Himiko was crazy. None of the kid's in Hanta and I's class would sit in front of her in school- do you remember that?..." he smiled fondly at Sero, who nodded. "Yeah... You'd be sitting there, doing your arithmetic or writing a story or a composition, and all at once you'd feel this- I don't even know how to describe it- you'd just- you'd feel her eyes boring into the back of your head..." Todoroki swallowed, and there was a small click in his throat. The others watched him solemnly while Sero nodded once more, confirming Todoroki's claim. "...You'd feel that look... and this horrible sense of unease would overtake all your thoughts... as if, instinctually, your brain just- just knew something was... off about her..."

"...If you were stupid enough to turn around, Himiko would just- sit there, grinning." Sero said, eyes shiny with reminiscence. "Grinning... and blushing, sometimes twirling her hair around a pen... her eyes would be wide and swimming with chaos... She had a pencil-box-"

"-Full of flies," Bakugo said suddenly. "Fuck- the damn she-Devil would kill them with this purple ruler she had and then put them in her pencil-box... I even remember what it looked like- opaque plum-colored lid, with a wavy white plastic bottom that slid open and closed."

Kirishima nodded, also starting to remember. "Right..."

"Kids would jerk away and she'd grin and then she'd open her pencil-box so you could see the dead flies inside," Todoroki said. "And the worst thing- the most horrible thing- was the way she'd giggle and blush and never say anything. Mrs. Seki knew. Monoma Neito told on her, and I think Sato Rikido said something once, too. But... I think Mrs. Seki was scared of her... I think all the adults were."

Sero, still perched on the couch's arm, now sitting with his right leg tucked underneath him and with his left leg dangling, quirked up his eyebrows, looking quite handsome in the yellow glow of Kaminari's garage- Todoroki still couldn't quite believe that this had once been the skinny little kid Shigaraki and his gang used to call 'Ana'. "I'm pretty sure you're right, Sho." He said.

"What happened to her, Roki?" Kaminari asked, cocking his head a little- reminding Todoroki so much of a golden retriever pup that he actually had to make a conscious effort to continue speaking and not lose himself in Kaminari's familiar, sunshine-warm, eyes...

...Todoroki swallowed again, trying to fight off the nightmarish power of what he saw that day in the Barrens, walking along his black and white BMX bike, his elbows and knee stinging from hitting a pothole on Omagari Drive- another of the long tree-lined streets that dead-ended where the land fell (and still fell) into the Barrens. He remembered (oh these memories, when they came, were so clear and so powerful) that he had been wearing a pair of double layered dusky grey and black compression shorts- Natsuo had been right back then, they really were too short. The actual, snug, black, compression part of his athletic shorts had only come to his mid-thigh. The loose, grey, top layer had been even shorter... even the hem of his brother varsity jacket came down farther than those shorts...

He had become more conscious of his body over the last year- over the last six months, actually, as it began to develop, and his hips and thighs began to curve a little more than most guys he knew- not quite femininely, but also not quite in a masculine way either... it was somewhere in the middle, and he liked it quite a bit.

The mirror had been one reason for the newfound fixation, but his father was the main one. During those six months, his father had begun to make comments: comments about how people were gonna start getting the wrong idea about him if his proportions didn't even out... how they'd start thinking he was "funny" if he kept dressing the way he did, especially if they found out he had altered most of his clothing himself... He had started beating him more since then, as well. Before, his father had only done it during sports training, but now it was just about any time Todoroki Enji had a bad day, or Todoroki Shouto had a good one...

...The vision of the Sparrowheads, hundreds and thousands of them, descending on the roofpeaks of houses, on telephone wires, on top of satellite's, intervened again.

"...And poison ivy," Todoroki said aloud.

"Wuh-W-What?" Deku asked.

"...Something... about poison ivy," Todoroki said slowly, looking at him. "...But it wasn't. It just felt like poison ivy... Denki-?"

"-Never mind," Kaminari said, shaking his head. "It'll come back. Tell us what you do remember, Roki."

"...I remember the compression shorts," he told them, running gloves fingers through his hair. "...and how faded they were getting; how tight they were around my hips and legs. I had half a box of matcha mousse pocky in one jacket pocket and the Bullseye in the other-"

"...Do you remember the Bullseye?" Todoroki asked, Bakugo specifically, so suddenly it took a moment to register in his own ears, but they all nodded.

"Deku gave it to me," Todoroki said, taking another long draw from his cigarette. "...I didn't want it, but it... he... " He smiled at Deku, a soft, wane, little thing. "...We... I... couldn't say no to Deku, that was all... So I had it and that's why I was out by myself that day. To practice. I still didn't think I'd be able to do it when the time came. Except... I used it that day. I had to. I killed one of them... one of the parts of It. It was-" he sighed then, and shook his head. "...Even now it's- it was gross. And one of them got me."

He raised his arm and pulled down his coat sleeve so that they could all see a puckered scar on the roundest part of his upper forearm. It looked as if a hot circular object about the size of a cigar had been pressed against his skin. It was slightly sunken, and looking at it gave Kaminari Denki a chill. That was one of the parts of the story which, like Kirishima's unwilling heart-to-heart with Aizawa Shouta, he had suspected but never actually heard.

"You were right about one thing, Trashmouth," Todoroki said lightly. "That Bullseye was a killer. I was scared of it, but I sort of loved it, too."

Bakugo rolled his eyes, but the edge of his mouth quirked up the tiniest bit. "Yeah, no shit. I knew that back then. We all did."

"You did? Really? All of you?" Todoroki asked, his cheeks coloring a little with embarrassment.

"Yeah, really," Bakugo said. "Your eyes betray your true feelings a lot more than you realize, Sho."

"I see..." Todoroki muttered, "...I mean, it looked like a toy, but it was real... You could blow holes in things... if my father knew I had one of those-"

("I BEAT YOU BECAUSE I WANTED TO KILL YOU!")

Todoroki smiled bitterly, "Well, he probably would have killed me."

"You blew a hole in something with it that day," Sero said, pulling Todoroki out of his memories.

Todoroki nodded.

"...Was it Himiko you-?"

"-What? No, Hanta- I wouldn't have-" Todoroki started. "It was the other... wait." He crushed out the cigarette, sipped his gin and tonic, and got himself under control again. Finally, Todoroki was. Well... no. But he had a feeling it was the closest he was going to get that night, and pushed on despite his racing heart. "...I was riding my bike, you see, and I fell down and scraped my knee and elbows while trying to catch myself. Then... I decided I'd go down to the Barrens and practice. I went by the clubhouse first to see if you guys were there. You weren't. Just that smoky smell... Remember how long that place went on smelling like smoke?..."

They all nodded, smiling.

"We never really did get the smell out, did we?" Sero asked softly, downing his whiskey as if it were nothing more than a cola.

"No." Kaminari shook his head, smiling fondly. "From the smoke-hole onward it always smelt like burning down there... it was sort of nice... like a bonfire... we'd actually planned to roast marshmallows down there at some point but... we never got the chance..."

"We should- not- not down there, obviously... but we should roast some marshmallows sometime soon... maybe once this is all over?..." Kirishima muttered, but Kaminari shook his head.

"Why not?" Sero asked.

"It was Tenya's idea." Kaminari said simply, a sad smile on his face.

Everyone nodded absently, understanding.

"...I headed down to the dump," Todoroki continued after a long while, "...because that's where we had the... the tryouts, I guess you'd call them, and I knew there'd be lots of things to shoot at. Like rats." He paused. "That's what I really wanted to shoot at," he said finally. "...something that was alive. Not a bird- I knew I couldn't shoot a bird- but a rat... I wanted to see if I could."

"...I'm glad I came from the Kanazaki side instead of the train yard side, though, because there wasn't much cover over there by the railroad embankment. They would have seen me and who knows what would have happened then..."

"Who would have suh-suh-seen y-you?"

"Them," Todoroki said simply. "Tomura, Kurogiri, Twice, and Himiko. They were down in the dump and-"

Suddenly, amazingly, Todoroki smiled- his eyebrows furrowed in confused amusement, cheeks pinking, and he had to bite his lip to keep noise from escaping. It was the closest any of them had ever come to seeing him laugh.

"What the hell, Sho," Bakugo said, utterly astonished. "Let us in on the joke."

"Oh it was a joke, alright," he said. "It was a joke, but I think they might have killed me if they knew I'd seen."

"-Holy shit, that's right!" Kaminari suddenly cried, and he began to howl laughter. "I remember you telling us! How could I have forgot-"

His smile widening, and then Todoroki said, "They were... well... they were chugging beer and soda and lighting their burps on fire."

There was a sudden, booming, silence- and then, one by one, Sero, Deku, Bakugo, and Kirishima began to laugh along with Kaminari- the sound echoed through the garage. It was wild, outrageous, and exactly what they had needed.

While thinking of exactly how to tell them of Toga Himiko's death, the thing Todoroki had ended up fixed on first was how approaching the town dump from the Kanazaki Drive side was like entering some weird asteroid belt. There was a rutted din track (a town road, actually; it even had a name, Old Kenta Street) that ran from Kanazaki Drive to the dump, the only actual road into the Barrens- the city's dump trucks used it. Todoroki walked near Old Kenta Street but didn't take it- he had grown more cautious- he supposed all of them had- since Kirishima's arm had been broken. Especially when he was alone.

He had weaved his way through the heavy undergrowth, skirting a patch of poison ivy with its reddish oily leaves, smelling the dump's smoky rot, hearing the seagulls. On his left, through occasional breaks in the foliage, he could see Old Kenta Street.

The others were looking at him, waiting. He checked his cigarette pack and found it empty. Wordlessly, Sero tossed Todoroki one of his.

He lit it up, wincing a little as the fruity taste mixed with the mint and Tobacco flavor his usual pack had, looked around at them, and said: "Heading toward the dump from the Kanazaki Drive side was a little like-

—2—

JULY 23RD, 2005 / IRUSU, JAPAN

-entering some weird asteroid belt. The dumpoid belt, Deku had called it once. At first there was nothing but the underbrush growing from the spongy ground underfoot, and then you would see your first dumpoid: a dirt caked, dented, soda bottle that once contained golden grape flavored Fanta, or the discarded wrapping of a three pack of natto. Then there would be a bright wink of sun kicking off a scrap of tinfoil caught in a tree. You might see a bedspring (or trip over it, if you weren't watching where you were going) or some fish bone a dog had carried away, gnawed, and dropped once the flavors and smell wore away.

The dump itself wasn't so bad- it was actually sort of interesting, Todoroki thought. What was gross about it was how it was beginning to spread- how it was creating this dumpoid belt.

He was getting closer now; the trees were thinner, mostly birches, and the bushes were thickening out. The gulls cheeped and cried in their shrill querulous voices, and the air was smudgy with the smell of burning.

Now, on Todoroki's right, leaning at an angle against the base of a spindly birchwood tree, was a rusty, peeling, mint green, Amana refrigerator. Todoroki glanced at it, thinking vaguely of the Irusu policeman who had visited his class when he had been in grade three. He had told them that such things as discarded refrigerators were dangerous- a kid could climb into one while playing hide-and-go-seek, for instance, and smother to death inside. Although why anyone would want to get inside of a dirty old-

-He heard a shout, so close it made him jump, followed by laughter. Todoroki smiled, excitement beginning to build. So they were here. They had left the clubhouse because of the smoky smell and had come down here. They were probably breaking bottles with rocks, or maybe racing on their bike's over the trash mounds in a sort of makeshift obstacle course type of thing...

Todoroki began to walk a little faster, the nasty scrape he had gotten on his knee earlier now forgotten in his eagerness to see them... to see him, with his curly hair and face full of freckles. To see if he would smile at him in that oddly endearing, knowing, way of his. To see if he would rub his back in that comforting, gentle, kind, sort of way... Todoroki knew he was too young to to be in love, too young to have anything but "crushes," but he loved Deku just the same. And he walked a little faster, which was easier now that he'd stashed his bike near the abandoned refrigerator, the sling of Deku's Bullseye beating soft time against his left leg.

He almost walked right into them before realizing it wasn't his fellows at all, but Shigaraki's.

He walked out of the screening bushes and the dumps steepest side lay about seventy yards ahead, a twinkling avalanche of junk lying along the high angle of the gravel-pit. Oye Kazuo's bulldozer was off to the left. Much closer in front of Todoroki was a wilderness of junked cars. At the end of each month these were crushed and hauled off to Ashikawa for scrap, but now there were a dozen or more, some sitting on bare wheel-rims, some on their sides, one or two lying on their roofs like dead dogs. They were arranged in two rows and Todoroki walked down the rough trash-littered aisle between them like some punk bride of the future, wondering idly if he could break a windshield with the Bullseye. One of the homemade pockets of his shorts bulged with the small ball-bearings that were his practice ammo.

The voices and laughter were coming from beyond the junked-out cars and to the left, at the edge of the dump proper. Todoroki rounded the last one, a 1998 Toyota Camry with its entire front end missing. His greeting died on his lips instantly. The hand he had put up to wave did not exactly fall back to his side; it seemed to wilt.

His first furiously embarrassed thought was: 'What the hell are they doing?'

This was followed by the scary realization of who they were. Todoroki froze there in front of the half-Camry with his shadow stapled to the heels of his low-topped sneakers. For that one moment he was totally visible to them; if any of the four had looked up from the circle they were squatting in, they could not have missed him, a boy of slightly more than medium height, extremely unique hair, a burn scar on the left side of his face, the knee of one long coltish leg still oozing blood, his lip's parted in shock, his cheeks burning with second-hand embarrassment.

Before darting back behind the silver Toyota Camry he had the sudden, insane, thought that Kaminari Denki in particular would get a real kick out of the scene playing out in front of him.

Once out of sight again, he knew the best thing was to get away- and get away fast. His heart was pumping hard, his muscles heavy with adrenaline. He looked around, seeing what he hadn't bothered to notice walking up here, when he had thought the voices he heard belonged to his fellow losers. The row of junked cars on his left was really pretty thin- they were by no means packed in door to door as they would be in the week or so before the crusher came to turn them into rough blocks of twinkling metal. He had been exposed to the group of their summer tormenters several times walking up to where he was now; if he retreated, he would be exposed again, and this time he might be seen.

Also, he felt a certain shameful curiosity: '...what in the world could they be doing?...'

Carefully, he peeked around the Camry.

Shigaraki and Kurogiri were more or less facing in his direction. Toga Himiko was on Shigaraki's left. Twice had his back to him. He observed the fact that Twice was chugging a can of White Strawberry Fanta- the can's label was only just visible as Twice leaned father and farther back as he emptied the product's contents- Toga was cheering him on gleefully.

'You've got to get out of here, Shouto. If they catch you-' a voice, an adult voice not quite his own, whispered in his head- and he nodded in agreement almost absentmindedly.

He looked back down between the junked cars, clasping his hands on his thighs as he squatted out of sight. The aisle was maybe ten feet wide, littered with cans, twinkling with pieces of clear plastic and crystal-like glass, scruffy with weeds. If he so much as made a sound, they might hear him... particularly if their absorption in whatever the hell they were doing was flagged. When he thought of how casually he had walked up here, his blood ran cold. Also...

'What in the fuck can they be doing?'

He peeked again, seeing more of the details this time. There was a careless scatter of books and papers nearby-schoolbooks. They had just come from their summer classes, then, what most of the kids in Irusu called Dummy School or Make-up School. And, because Shigaraki and Kurogiri, looking a strange cross between annoyed and amused, were practically facing him Todoroki had to be extra careful... one wrong move and his fluorescent features would give him away in an instant...

He looked behind him once more. Now the pathway between the cars leading to the shelter of the Barrens seemed much longer. He was to smart to move. If they knew he had seen what they were doing with that soda when he first broke out into the clearing, they'd hurt him. And not just a little, they would hurt him badly.

Twice bellowed suddenly, making Todoroki jump, and Toga yelled: "Three feet! No way, Twice! It was three feet! Wasn't it, Giri?"

'Giri, sounding somewhat amused, agreed it was. Twice and Toga roared with high, shrill, cackles.

Todoroki tried another look around the junked Toyota.

Twice, thumping on his chest, was kneeling down so he was on the same level as Toga Himiko. In Toga's hand was something, chrome-colored and glittering in the sun, that Todoroki Shouto recognized instantly: A lighter.

"I thought you said you felt one coming on?" Toga asked.

"I do," Twice said, sounding quite strained, beating on his chest once more. "-I'll tell you- I'll tell- oh! Get ready!... Get ready, it's coming! Get... now!"

Toga flicked the lighter. At the same moment there was the unmistakable ripping sound of a really good belch. There was no mistaking that sound; Todoroki, growing up with two older brother's, had heard it quite a lot in his own house, usually after Fuyumi made Garlic onion chicken. As Twice blew off and Toga flicked the lighter, Todoroki saw something that made his eyes bulge right out of his eleven-year old skull. A bright blue jet of flame appeared to roar directly out of Twice's mouth as if he were a dragon. To Todoroki it looked like the pilot-light on a gasburner.

The group laughed (Twice and Toga) or rolled their eyes in silent amusement (Shigaraki and Kurogiri) and Todoroki withdrew behind the sheltering car, not knowing what to think. It wasn't long before he realized he was nearly laughing, but not because he was amused. In some very weird way it was funny, yes, but mostly he was near hysterics because he felt a deep revulsion accompanied by a sort of horror. Todoroki was having to stifle laughter because he knew of no other way to cope with what he had seen- something, he recognized vaguely, he currently had in common with Kaminari Denki... who never seemed to scream in terror, but instead laugh crazily with tears pinpricking at the corner of his eyes... until now, Todoroki had never understood such a response... but- well, what they were doing seemed so strange, so ludicrous and yet at the same time so deadly-primitive that he found himself, in spite of the near giggling fit, groping for the core of himself with some desperation- hating what he had just witnessed with every fiber of his being, though not quite knowing why it so deeply, as Iida Tenya would say, offended him.

'Stop,' Todoroki thought, once again in that deep adult voice that wasn't quite his own, 'stop, they'll hear you, stop it Shouto.'

...But that was impossible. The best he could do was to laugh without engaging his vocal cords, so that the sounds came out of him in a series of almost inaudible chuffs, his hands pasted over his mouth, his cheeks as red as apples, the corners of his mismatched eyes pinpricking with tears.

"Holy shit, that hurt!" Twice suddenly roared after expelling yet another titanic bolk through the junk yard clearing.

"Twelve feet!" Toga shrieked, and Todoroki could hear her bouncing up and down. "Wowie! Giri, it was twelve freakin' feet, wasn't it!?"

"I don't care if it was twenty fuckin feet, you burned my mouth off!" Twice howled, and there was more cackling from Toga, and even a little from Shigaraki and Kurogiri this time; still trying to giggle silently from behind the sheltering car, Todoroki thought of a movie he had seen on TV. It was about this jungle tribe, they had a secret ritual, and if you saw it, you got sacrificed to their god, which was this big stone idol. This did not stop his giggles, but infused them with a nearly frantic quality. They were becoming more and more like silent screams. His stomach ached. Tears fell down his scarred face in twin streams.

—3—

Shigaraki, Kurogiri, Twice, and Toga Himiko ended up in the dump lighting belches on that hot July afternoon because of Wada Yusa.

Wada Yusa and his adoptive father had been courting for nearly eight years. She was short, frumpy, in her late forties, and usually filthy. Shigaraki supposed that Wada and his father sometimes fucked, although he could not imagine anyone squashing his body down on Wada Yusa's.

Wada owned the small shopping mart on Main Street, it was her pride and joy. She kept her prices low enough to compete with the AEON on the border of Irusu and Shinri, and bought all her produce exclusively from Shigaraki farms despite the blonde hussy's prices being lower. Shigaraki Tomura saw this as a win, not knowing that Kaminari farms had produce, jam's, jelly's, and pie fillings in almost every AEON in Hokkaido.

At the end of each week, Wada would gather the expired items left on the dusty wooden shelves and carry them over to Shigaraki farms, buckled up in her passenger seat. Shigaraki supposed the arrangement was okay- there was always something to shovel into his mouth and chew up, anyway- but after eight years the same products over and over again lost their charm.

Wada Yusa was not content with bringing over just one or two items: no sir, she made sure to bring over enough to fill up half of the Shigaraki's kitchen storage space- be that cabinets, fridge, or pantry. When she turned up Sunday evening in her old, rust orange, fairlady (a naked rubber babydoll hung from the rearview mirror, looking like the world's youngest lynch-mob victim), the three of them would eat a meal made from the expired good's that night (Wada raving about her own mini mart all the while, crazy Shigaraki senior grunting and shoveling whatever it was in his nearly toothless mouth or simply telling her to shut up if there was a ballgame on TV, Shigaraki Tomura just eating, staring out the window, thinking his own thoughts. it was over a plate of expiring Sunday-night soy beans that he had conceived the idea of poisoning Kaminari Denki's dog Mr. Chips), and Mr. Shigaraki would reheat a mess of old food the next night. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays Shigaraki would take a Tupperware box full of what was left to school. By Thursday or Friday, neither Shigaraki or his adoptive father could eat any more. The house's kitchen would smell of expired food in spite of the open windows. His father would take the remains and mix them into the other slops and feed them to Bip and Bop, the Shigaraki's two pigs. Wada would show up the following Sunday with another crate, and the cycle would start all over again.

That morning Shigaraki had put up an enormous quantity of leftover soda and beer, and the four of them had drank through three and a half six packs of Sapporo premium, sitting out on the playground in memorial park in the shade of giant beech tree. They had drank until they were all buzzed and nearly bursting.

It had been Toga who suggested they go down to the dump, which would be fairly quiet in the middle of a working-day summer afternoon. By the time they arrived, the beers were doing their work quite nicely.

—4—

Little by little, Todoroki got himself under control again. He knew he had to get out; making a retreat was ultimately less dangerous than hanging around. They were absorbed in what they were doing, and even if worse came to worst, he could get a head-start (and in the back of his mind Todoroki had also decided that, if worst came to terrible, a few shots from the Bullseye might discourage them).

He was about to begin creeping away when Twice said, "I gotta go, Tomura. My dad wants me to help him clean out the garage this afternoon."

"Stay," Shigaraki said. "He'll live."

"No, he's mad at me. Because of what happened the other day."

"Fuck him if he can't take a joke."

Todoroki listened more closely now, suspecting it might be the scuffle which had ended with Kirishima's broken arm that they were talking about.

"No, I gotta go."

"I think the princess's mouth hurts," Toga said.

"Watch your mouth, Himiko," Twice warned, taking on a tone so similar to Todoroki Natsuo, Todoroki Shouto felt his head swim.

"Yeah... I've got to go too," Kurogiri said, yawning a bit.

"Your father wants you to clean out the garage?" Shigaraki asked angrily. This was what might have passed for a jest in Shigaraki's mind; Kurogiri's father was dead.

"No. But I have a job delivering for Irusu Weekly. I've got to do that tonight." There was a flick of a lighter then, but no burp- suggesting that Kurogiri had lit a cigarette.

"What's this Irusu Weekly crap?" Shigaraki asked, now sounding upset as well as angry. "And don't blow that smoke in my face, it's like choking down someone else's snot."

"It's a job," Kurogiri drawled with ponderous patience. "I make money."

Shigaraki made a disgusted sound, and Todoroki risked another peek around the car. Kurogiri and Twice were standing, Kurogiri's thumbs hooked in his belt loops, puffing on a cigarette. Shigaraki and Toga were leaning against a broken chest of drawer's. Toga was flicking her multi-chrome lighter: On, off. On, off. On, off.

"You're not chickening out, are you?" Shigaraki asked Toga.

"Nope," Toga said, letting the flame burn for longer this time, before extinguishing it for good.

"You don't have to clean your garage or go do some shit job?"

"Nope," Toga said again, shaking her head for emphasis.

"Well," Twice said uncertainly, raising his hand a little, before dropping it to his side again awkwardly "...see you around, Tomura."

"Sure," Shigaraki said, and kicked a clod of dirt in Twice's direction, glaring.

Kurogiri and Twice started off together toward the two rows of wrecked cars... toward the Toyota Camry where Todoroki was crouching. At first he could only cringe, frozen with fear like a rabbit. Then he slid stealthily around the left side of the Camry and backed down the gap between it and the battered, doorless Honda next to it. For a moment he paused, looking from side to side, hearing them approach. Todoroki hesitated, his mouth cottony-dry, his back itchy with sweat; a part of his mind was numbly wondering how he'd look-in a cast like Kirishima's, with the Losers names signed on it. Then he dived into the Honda on the passenger side. He curled up on the filthy floormat, making himself as small as possible. It was boiling hot inside the junked-out Ford, and it smelled so thickly of dust, rotting upholstery, and elderly rat-crap that he had to struggle grimly to keep from sneezing or coughing. He heard Twice and Kurogiri pass close by, talking in low voices. Then they were gone.

Todoroki sneezed three times, quickly and quietly, into his cupped hands.

Todoroki supposed he could go now, if he was careful. The best way to do it would be to shift over to the driver's side of the Honda, sneak back to the aisle, and then just do a fade. He believed he could manage it, but the shock of almost being discovered had robbed him of his courage, at least for the time being. He felt safer here in the Honda. And maybe, now that Kurogiri and Twice had gone, the other two would also go soon. Then he could go back to the clubhouse. He had lost all interest in target-shooting.

Also, his knee had gone from lightly stinging, to searing.

'Come on,' he thought. 'Come on, hurry up and go, hurry up and go, please!'

A moment later he heard Toga roar with mixed laughter and pain.

"Six feet!" She bellowed. "Just like a blowtorch! Swear to God!"

Silence then for awhile. Sweat trickling down Todoroki's back. The sun beating through the Honda's cracked windshield on the nape of his neck. He quickly and quietly slipped off his jacket. His knee screamed in pain.

Toga squealed so loud that Todoroki, who had been close to dozing in spite of his discomfort, almost cried out himself. "Damn it, Tomura! You burned my lip! What are you doing with that lighter?"

"Ten feet," Shigaraki said, amused, (just the sound of it made Todoroki feel cold and revolted, as if he had seen a worm squirm its way out of his salad). "Bright blue. Ten feet. Honest- hey! it's my turn, Himiko- let go of the lighter-!"

'Come on, come on, just leave already.'

When Toga spoke again her voice was so low Todoroki could barely hear it. If there had been the slightest breath of wind on the air that baking afternoon, he wouldn't have at all.

"Let me show you something," Toga said.

"What?" Shigaraki asked.

"Just something." Toga paused. "It's pretty neat."

"What?" Shigaraki asked again.

Then there was silence.

'I don't want to look, I don't want to see what they're doing now, and besides, they might see me, in fact they probably will because you've used up all your luck-'

...But Todoroki's curiosity had got the best of him. There was something strange in that silence, something a little bit scary. He raised his head inch by inch until he could look through the Honda's cracked cloudy windshield. He didn't have to worry about being seen; both Toga and Shigaraki were concentrating on what the younger girl was doing. Todoroki didn't understand what he was seeing- his brain refused to process it fully- but he knew it was bad... not that he would have expected anything else from Toga Himiko, who was just so... off.

She had the lighter in her grip again, seemingly having wrestled it out of Shigaraki's hands after all. She was kneeling down, her cuffed blue jean shorts riding slightly up her legs. Shigaraki was stood over her, peeking over her shoulder. She shot out a hand toward a weed, and grabbed something- when she opened her palm, Todoroki was able to just see the fluttering, pale yellow wings of a butterfly.

'What is she doing?' Todoroki wondered, dismayed.

He didn't know, not for sure, but it scared him. Todoroki didn't think he had been this scared since the blood had vomited out of the bathroom drain and splattered all over everything. Some deep part of him cried out that if they discovered he had seen this, whatever it was, they might do more than hurt him; they might actually kill him. Still, Todoroki couldn't look away.

He saw Toga gently adjust her hand so she was holding the butterfly by one of it's wings. The small creature thrashed heavily and harshly in her hand, trying desperately to get away.

Todoroki's heart lurched, his eyes almost shaking in their sockets. Something was horribly wrong with the scenery before him.

Toga flicked on the lighter, and Todoroki felt a cold spike shoot through his heart as she touched the flame to the butterfly's free wing.

She and Shigaraki watched as the creature's thrashing become so intense that it ripped the wing clasped inbetween Toga's finger's clean off. It flopped on the ground, trying to fly, getting a few centimeters off the ground, turning in a pathetic semi circle, before crashing back down again. It struggled for another thirty seconds before the flame reached it's body and it shriveled into a charred, withered, crisp.

"...See?... I told you it was neat..." Toga breathed, blushing, grinning up at her older friend.

"Huh." Shigaraki said simply, his eyes wide, looking like he was in some sort of trance.

"...Wanna see what happens to a bird?"

"What?"

"Wanna see what happen's when I light a bird's wing on fire?"

Shigaraki seemed to jump, as if lifted from the trance, and looked at her incredulously. "What?- why the hell would I want to see that?"

Todoroki dived down again, his heart crashing in his chest, his teeth knocked against one another and he let out a little whimpering moan. After turning Toga down, Shigaraki had turned and for a moment, just before Todoroki dropped back into his little huddled ball on the passenger side of the driveshaft hump, it seemed that his eyes and Shigaraki's had locked.

'Please tell me the sun was in his eyes,' he begged. 'Please, I'm sorry I peeked. I'm sorry.'

There was an agonizing pause then. Todoroki's white T-shirt was plastered to his body with sweat. Droplets like sea pearls gleamed on his tanned arms. His knee throbbed painfully. He felt that very soon that his shaky leg would give out underneath him. Todoroki waited for Shigaraki's furious crazy face to appear in the opening where the Honda's passenger door had been, sure it was going to happen- how could he have missed seeing him? Shigaraki would drag him out and hurt him. Shigaraki would-

-A new and even more terrible thought now occurred to him, and once again he had to engage in a painful, crampy, struggle to keep his leg from giving out. Suppose Shigaraki did something even worst to him- something worst than a beating or murder... what that worst thing might be, he didn't know- but the fear knocked around in his mind anyway, so harshly he thought he might just go crazy.

'Please no, please don't let him have seen me, please, okay?'

Then Shigaraki spoke, and to Todoroki's growing horror his voice was coming from someplace much closer. "I don't- no."

From farther off, Toga's voice: "You killed that queer's dog."

"That was different!" Shigaraki shouted. "And if you tell anyone I did, I'll kill you, you bitch!"

"Hehe... How was it different?" Toga asked. She sounded like she was smiling. As much as Todoroki feared Toga Himiko, the smile would not have surprised him. Toga was crazy, crazier than Shigaraki, maybe, and people that crazy weren't afraid of anything. "Explain."

Footsteps crunched over the gravel-closer and closer. Todoroki looked up, his eyes bulging. Through the Honda's old windshield he could now see the back of Shigaraki's head. He was looking toward Toga now, but if he turned around -

"Because the stupid queer's hussy mother is the reason my life is so shit," Shigaraki said. "I killed that faggotdog for revenge. You burned the butterfly and got some weird pleasure out of it. You're a freak."

"You don't scare me, Tomura," Toga said, and giggled. "...But I might not tell everyone that you killed the sod's dog if you give me a couple hundred yen."

Shigaraki shifted restlessly. He turned slightly; Todoroki could now see one-quarter of his profile instead of just the back of his head. 'Please no please no,' he begged incoherently, and his knee throbbed more strongly.

"If you tell," Shigaraki said, his voice low and deliberate, "I'll tell what you've been doing with the cats. With the dogs, too. I'll tell them about your refrigerator. You know what'll happen, Himiko? They'll come and take you away and throw you in the loonybin."

Silence from Toga.

Shigaraki drummed his fingers on the hood of the Honda Todoroki was hiding in, the dull thud echo'd in the younger boy's ears. "do you hear me?"

"...I hear you." Toga sounded sullen now. Sullen and a little scared. She burst out: "You killed the invert's dog! You killed an animal just like I did!"

"Yeah, but I didn't get off to it, you freaky bitch. You just remember what I said about the refrigerator. Your refrigerator. And if I see you around again, I'll kick your teeth in. I don't care that you're a girl."

More silence from Toga.

Shigaraki moved away. Todoroki turned his head and saw him pass by the driver's side of the Honda. If he had looked to his left even a little bit, he would have seen Todoroki. But Shigaraki didn't look. A moment later he heard the older boy heading off the way Kurogiri and Twice had gone.

Now there was just Toga.

Todoroki waited, but nothing happened. Five minutes dragged by. His need to get off his leg was now desperate. He might be able to hold out for another two or three minutes, but no more. And it made him uneasy not to know for sure where Toga was.

He peeked through the windshield again and saw her just sitting there. Toga had put her schoolbooks back into a small canvas carrier sack and had slung it around her neck like a newsboy. She was playing with the lighter again. She would spin the wheel, produce a flame that was almost invisible in the bright day, snap the lighter closed, and then start all over again. She seemed hypnotized. Once again Todoroki felt a squirmy sort of revulsion. Toga was crazy, alright; he had never in his life wanted so badly to get away from someone.

Moving very carefully, Todoroki crawled backward over the Honda's driveshaft hump and squeezed under the steering wheel. He put his feet out on the ground and crept to the back of the Honda. Then he ran quickly back the way he had come. When he had entered the birch tree's beyond the junked cars; he looked back over his shoulder. No one was there. The dump dozed in the sun. He felt the bands of tension around his chest and stomach loosen with relief, and all that was left was his aching leg.

He hurried down the path a short way and then ducked off to the right, stumbling as his leg finally gave under his weight, sliding down into a sitting position against a thin tree trunk.

He was pulling himself up again when he heard approaching footsteps from the dump. All he could see through the bushes were flashes of blue denim and a white tank top. It was Toga. Todoroki ducked down, waiting for her to pass by toward Kanazaki drive. He was more sanguine about his position here. The cover was good, his leg no longer cramped and screamed, and Toga was off in her own cuckoo world. When she was gone Todoroki would double back and head for the clubhouse.

But Toga didn't pass by. She stopped on the path almost directly opposite him and stood looking at the rusting Amana refrigerator.

Todoroki could observe Toga along a natural sight-line in the bushes without too much chance of being seen. Now that his leg was relieved, he found that he was curious again- and if Toga did happen to see him, he felt certain he could outrun her. She wasn't as small around as Sero, but she was thin. Todoroki pulled the Bullseye out of his back pocket, however, and put half a dozen steel pellets in the pocket of his brother's jacket (which he had only just remembered to grab while escaping the Honda). Crazy or not, a good one to the knee might discourage the likes of Toga Himiko in a hurry.

He remembered the refrigerator well enough now. There were lots of discarded fridges at the dump, but it suddenly occurred to him that this was the only one he'd seen which Mr. Oye hadn't disarmed by either tearing out the latching mechanism with pliers or simply removing the door altogether.

Toga began to hum and sway back and forth in front of the rusty mint green refrigerator, and Todoroki felt a fresh chill course through him. She was like the cult leader in a horror movie trying to summon a dead body out of a crypt.

'What's she up to?'

But if Todoroki had known that, or what was going to happen when Toga Himiko finished her private ritual and opened the dead Amana's rusty door, he would have run away as fast as he could.

—5—

No one- not even Kaminari Denki- had the slightest idea of how crazy Toga Himiko really was. She was eleven, the daughter of a paint salesman. Her mother was a teller at the only bank in Irusu and would die of breast cancer in 2009, four years after Toga was consumed by the dark entity which existed in and below Irusu. Although her IQ tested above average, Toga had made pretty bad grades in school. She was taking summer classes this year so she would not have to repeat grade five. Her teachers found her an apathetic student (this several of them noted on the bare six lines of the Irusu Elementary School's report cards reserved for TEACHER'S COMMENTS) and a rather disturbing one as well (which none noted- their feelings were too vague, too diffuse, to be expressed in sixty lines, let alone six). If she had been born in another town, a guidance counsellor might have steered her toward a child psychologist who might (or might not; Toga was just as clever as her high IQ would lead you to believe) have realized the frightening depths behind that grinning and blushing round face.

Toga Himiko was a sociopath, and perhaps, by that hot July in 2005, she had become a full-fledged psychopath. She could not remember a time when she had believed that other people- any other living creatures, for that matter- were "real." She believed herself to be an actual creature, probably the only one in the universe, but was by no means convinced that her actuality made her "real." She had no sense of hurting, exactly, and no real sense of being hurt (her indifference to Shigaraki's threats of violence against her being a case and point). But while she found reality a totally meaningless concept, she understood the concept of "rules" perfectly. And while all of her teachers had found her odd (both Mrs. Seki, her grade five teacher, and Mrs. Shoko, who had had Toga in grade three, knew about the pencil-box full of flies, and while neither of them totally ignored the implications, each had between twenty and twenty-eight other students, each with problems of his or her own), none of them had serious disciplinary problems with her.

She might turn in test papers that were utterly blank- or blank except for a large, decorative question-mark- and Mrs. Seki had discovered it was best to keep her away from the other children, but she was quiet, so quiet that there were times when she might have been taken for a big lump of clay that had been crudely fashioned to look like a little girl. It was easy to ignore a Toga Himiko, who failed quietly, when you had to cope with boys like Shigaraki Tomura who was actively disruptive and insolent, a boy who would steal milk-money or happily deface school property if given a chance, and girls like Komatsu Hotaru, who was epileptic and who had to be discouraged from pulling her dresses up in the playyard to show off a new pair of panties. In other words, Irusu Elementary School was the typical confused educational carnival, a circus with so many rings that Pennywise himself might have gone unnoticed. Certainly none of Toga's teachers (or her parents, for that matter) suspected that, when she was five, Toga had murdered her baby brother Makoto.

Toga had not liked it when her mother brought Makoto home from the hospital. She didn't care (or so she at first told herself) if her parents had two kids, five kids, or five dozen kids, as long as the kid or kids didn't alter her own schedule. But she found that Makoto did. Meals came late. The baby cried in the night and woke her up. It seemed that her parents were always hanging over its crib, and often when she tried to get their attention she found that she could not. For one of the few times in her life, Toga became frightened. It occurred to her that if her parents had brought her, Himiko, home from the hospital, and if she was "real," then Makoto might be "real," too. It might even be that, when Makoto got big enough to walk and talk, to bring in her father's copy of the Irusu Weekly News from the front step and to hand her mother the bowls when she baked bread, they might decide to get rid of Toga altogether. It was not that she feared they loved Makoto more (although it was obvious to Toga that they did love him more, and in this case her judgment was probably correct). What she cared about was (1) the rules that were being broken or had changed since Makoto's arrival, (2) Makoto's possible reality, and (3) the possibility that they might throw her out in favor of Makoto.

Toga went into Makoto's room one afternoon around two-thirty, shortly after the school-bus had dropped her off from her afternoon pre-k session. It was January. Outside, snow was beginning to fall. A powerful wind boomed across Ukiyo Park and rattled the frosty upstairs storm windows. Her mother was napping in her bedroom; Makoto had been fussy all the previous night. Her father was at work. Makoto was sleeping on his stomach, his head turned to one side.

Toga, her round face expressionless, turned Makoto's head so his face was pressed directly into the pillow. Makoto made a snuffling noise and turned his head back to the side. Toga observed this, and stood thinking about it while the snow melted off her yellow boots and puddled on the floor. Perhaps five minutes passed, and then she turned Makoto's face into the pillow again and held it there for a moment. Makoto stirred under her hand, struggling. But his struggles were weak. Toga let go. Makoto turned his head to the side again, made one snorting little cry, and then went on sleeping. The wind gusted, rattling the windows. Toga waited to see if the one little cry would awaken her mother. It didn't.

Now she felt swept by a great excitement. The world seemed to stand out in front of her clearly for the first time. Her emotional equipment was severely defective, and in those few moments she felt as a totally color-blind person might feel if given a shot which enabled them to perceive colors for a short time... or as a junkie who has just fixed feels as the smack rockets their brain into orbit. This was a new thing. She had not suspected it existed.

Very gently, she turned Makoto's face into the pillow again. This time when Makoto struggled, Toga did not let go. She pressed the baby's face more firmly into the pillow. The baby was making steady muffled cries now, and Toga knew it was awake. She had a vague idea that it might tell on her to her mother if she stopped. She held it down. The baby struggled. Toga held it down. The baby burped. Its struggles weakened. Toga still held it down. It eventually became totally still. Toga held it down for another five minutes, feeling that excitement crest and then begin to ebb: the shot wearing off, turning the world gray again, the fix mellowing into an accustomed low doze.

Toga went downstairs and got herself a plate of cookies and poured herself a glass of milk. Her mother came down half an hour later and said she hadn't even heard her come in, she had been that tired ('you won't be anymore, Mom,' Toga thought happily 'don't worry, I fixed it.') She sat down with her, ate one of her cookies, and asked her how school had been. Toga said it was alright and showed her the drawing of a house and a tree she had done. Her paper was covered with looping meaningless scribbles made with black and brown crayon. Her mother said it was very nice. Toga brought home the same looping scrawls of black and brown every day. Sometimes she said it was a turkey, sometimes a Christmas tree, sometimes a girl. Her mother always told her it was very nice... although sometimes, in a part of her so deep she hardly knew it was there, she worried. There was something a little disquieting about the dark sameness of those big scribbled loops of black and brown.

Toga's mother didn't discover Makoto's death until nearly five o'clock; until then her mother had simply assumed he was taking a very long nap. By then Himiko was watching a show on their fifteen-inch TV, and she went on watching TV through all the uproar that followed. Something else was on when Mrs. Sumiko arrived from next door (her screaming mother had been holding the baby's corpse in the open kitchen door, believing in some blind way that the cold air might revive it; Toga was cold and got a sweater out of the downstairs closet). Seibu Keisatsu, One of Sero Hanta's favorites, was on when her father arrived home from work. By the time the doctor arrived, a showing of Howl's moving castle was just coming on. The beautiful score ravaged on while Toga's mother shrieked and struggled in her husband's arms in the kitchen. The doctor observed Toga's deep calm and unquestioning stare and assumed the girl was in shock. He wanted Toga to take a pill. Toga didn't mind.

It was diagnosed as crib-death. In any other town there might have been questions about such a fatality, deviations from the usual infant-death syndrome observed. But since it happened in Irusu, the death was simply noted and the baby buried in an itty bitty coffin Toga found to be quite doll-like. Toga was gratified that once things finally settled down her meals began to come on time again.

In the madness of that afternoon and evening- people banging in and out of the house, the red lights of the Home Hospital ambulance pulsing on the walls, Toga's mother screaming and wailing and refusing to be comforted- only Toga's father came within brushing distance of the truth. He was standing numbly by Makoto's empty crib some twenty minutes after the body had been removed, simply standing there, unable to believe any of this had happened. He looked down and saw a pair of tracks on the hardwood floor. They had been made by the snow melting off Toga's yellow rubber boots. He looked at them, and a dreadful thought rose briefly in his mind like bad gas from a deep mineshaft. His hand went slowly to his mouth and his eyes widened. A picture began to form in his mind. Before it could come clear he left the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that the top of the frame splintered.

He never asked Toga any questions.

Toga had never done anything like that again, although she might have done so if the chance had presented itself. She felt no guilt, had no bad dreams. As time passed, however, she became more aware of what would have happened to her if she had been caught. There were rules. Unpleasant things happened to you if you didn't follow them... or if you were caught breaking them. You could be locked up or stuck in the electrocution chair.

But that remembered feeling of excitement- that feeling of color and sensation- was simply too powerful and too wonderful to give up entirely- so Toga killed flies. At first she only smacked them with her mother's flyswatter; later she discovered she could kill them quite efficiently with a plastic ruler. She also discovered the joys of flypaper. A long sticky runner of it could be purchased for two cents at the Ori Road Trade and Toga sometimes stood for as long as two hours in the garage, watching the flies land and then struggle to get free, her mouth ajar, her cat-like eyes alight with that rare excitement, sweat running down her round face and her thin body. So Toga killed beetles, but if possible she captured them first. Sometimes she would steal a long needle from her mother's pincushion, impale a beetle on it, and sit cross-legged in the garden watching it die. Her expression at these times was the expression of a girl who was reading a very good book. Once she had discovered a run-over cat that was dying in the gutter on Lower Main Street and sat watching it until an old woman saw her pushing the squashed and mewing thing around with the toe of her shoe. She whacked Toga with the broom she had been using to sweep her walk. "Go on home!" she had shouted at Toga. "What are you, crazy?" Toga had gone on home. She wasn't mad at the old woman. She had been caught breaking the rules, that was all.

Then, last year (it would not have surprised Kaminari Denki or any of the others at that point to have known that it was, in fact, on the same day that Toshinori Eri had been murdered), Toga had discovered the rusty Amana refrigerator- one of the larger dumpoids in the belt surrounding the dump itself.

Like Todoroki, she had heard the cautionary warnings about such abandoned appliances, about how thirty-squirty million kids got their stupid selves killed in them each year. Toga had stood looking at the refrigerator for a long time, idly swaying back and forth. That excitement was back, stronger than it had ever been, except for the time she had fixed Makoto. The excitement was back because, in the chilly yet fuming wastes that passed for her mind, Toga Himiko had had an idea.

The Tokoyami's, who lived three houses down from the Toga's, missed their cat, Ramjiru, a week later. The Tokoyami boy, who couldn't remember a time when Ramjiru hadn't been there, spent hours combing the neighborhood for him. He even saved his money and put an ad in the Irusu News Lost and Found column. Nothing came of it. And if either the kid himself or his parents had seen Toga that day in her blue mothball-smelling winter parka (after the floodwaters receded in that winter of '04, it had come off bitterly cold almost at once), carrying a cardboard carton, they would have thought nothing of it.

The Koda's, a block over and almost directly behind the Toga's home, lost their Akita pup about ten days after Christmas. Other families lost dogs and cats over the next six or so months, and Toga of course had taken them all, not to mention a dozen unremarked strays from the Hell's Half-Acre area of Irusu.

She put them into the rusty Amana near the dump, one by one. Each time she brought another animal down, her heart thundering in her chest, her eyes got hot and watery with excitement, she would expect to find that Mr. Oye had pulled the Amana's latch or popped the hinges with his sledgehammer. But Mr. Oye never touched that particular refrigerator. Perhaps he didn't realize it was there, perhaps the force of Toga's will kept him away... or perhaps some other force did that.

The Koda's Akita lasted the longest. In spite of the single-number cold, it was still alive when Toga came back for the third time, although it had lost all of its original friskiness (it had been wagging its tail and gumming her hands frantically when she originally hauled it out of the box and stuffed it into the refrigerator). When she came back a day after putting it in, the puppy had damn near gotten away. Toga had to chase it almost all the way to the dump before she was able to jump it and get hold of one rear leg. The puppy had nipped Toga with its sharp little teeth for real that time. Toga didn't mind. In spite of the nips, she had taken the Akita back to the refrigerator and bundled it back in. She had a red hot feeling in her belly that she didn't really understand and a flush across her cheeks when she did. That was not uncommon.

On the second day the puppy had tried to get out again, but it moved much too slowly. Toga shoved it back in, slammed the Amana's rusty door, and leaned against it. She could hear the puppy scratching against the door. She could hear its muffled whines. "Good dog," said Toga Himiko. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing fast. "That's a good dog." On the third day the puppy could only roll its eyes toward Toga's face when the door opened. Its sides were heaving rapidly and shallowly. When Toga returned the next day, the Akita was dead with a cake of foam frozen around its mouth and muzzle. This made Toga think of coconut Popsicles, and she laughed quite hard as she hauled the frozen corpse from her killing-bottle and threw it in the bushes.

The supply of victims (which Toga thought of, when she thought of them at all, as "test animals") had been thin this summer. Questions of reality aside, her sense of self-preservation was well developed, her intuition exquisite, nearly on par with Iida Tenya's. She suspected she was suspected. By whom she was not sure: Mr. Oye?... Perhaps. Mr. Oye had turned around and given Toga a long speculative look one day that spring. Mr. Oye had been buying cigarettes and Toga had been sent for bread. Ms. Wada? Maybe. She sat in her parlor window with a telescope sometimes and was, according to Toga's mother, a "nosy bitch." Mr. Aizawa who supplied her parent's happy pills? Mr. Torino? Someone else? Toga didn't know for sure, but her intuition told her she was suspected, and she never argued with her intuition. She had taken a few wandering animals from among the rotted tenements in the Half-Acre, picking only those that looked thin or diseased, but that was all.

She discovered, however, that the refrigerator near the dump had gotten an oddly powerful hold over her. She began to draw pictures of it in school when she was bored. She sometimes dreamed of it at night, and in her dreams the Amana was perhaps seventy feet tall, a whited sepulchre, a ponderous crypt iced in chilly moonlight. In these dreams the giant door would swing open and she would see huge eyes staring out at her. She would awake in a cold sweat, but she found she could not give up the joys of the refrigerator entirely.

Today she had finally found out who had suspected. Shigaraki. Knowing that Shigaraki Tomura held the secret of her killing-bottle in his hands left Toga as close to panic as she was ever apt to get. This was not very close at all, in truth, but she still found this- not fear exactly, but mental unrest- oppressive and unpleasant. Shigaraki knew. Knew that Toga sometimes broke the rules.

Her latest victim had been a pigeon she discovered on Taiko Street two days ago. The pigeon had been struck by a car and couldn't fly. Toga went home, got her box out of the garage, and put the pigeon inside. The pigeon pecked the back of Toga's hand several times, leaving shallow, bloody digs. Toga didn't mind. When she checked the refrigerator the next day, the pigeon had been quite dead, but Toga hadn't removed the corpse then. Now, following Shigaraki's threat to tell, Toga decided she better get rid of the pigeon's body right away. Perhaps she would even get a bucket of water and some rags and scrub out the interior of the refrigerator. It didn't smell very good. If Shigaraki told and Mr. Torino came down to check, he might be able to tell that something- several somethings, in fact- had died in there.

'If he tells,' Toga thought, standing in the grove of birchwood trees and looking at the rusty Amana, 'I'll tell that he broke Kirishima Ejirou's arm.' Of course they probably knew that already, but they couldn't prove anything because all of them said they had been playing out at Shigaraki's house that day and Shigaraki's crazy father had backed them up. 'But if he tells, I'll tell. And I'll tell about the Kaminari kid's dog, too. Tit for tat.'

Never mind that now. What she had to do now was get rid of the bird. She would leave the refrigerator door open and then come back with the rags and the water and clean it up. Good.

Toga Himiko opened the refrigerator door on her own death.

At first she was simply puzzled, unable to cope in any way with what she was seeing. It meant nothing to her at all. It had no context. Toga merely stared, her head cocked to one side, her eyes wide.

The pigeon was nothing but a skeleton surrounded by a ragged fall of feathers. There was no flesh left on its body at all. And around it, stuck on the refrigerator's inner walls, hanging from the underside of the freezer compartment, dangling from the wire shelves, were dozens of flesh-colored objects that looked like big macaroni shells. Toga saw that they were moving slightly, fluttering, as if in a breeze. Except there was no breeze. She frowned.

Suddenly one of the shell-like things unfurled insectile wings. Before Toga could do more than register the fact, it had flown across the space between the refrigerator to Toga's left arm. It struck with a smacking sound. There was an instant of heat. It faded and Toga's arm felt just like always again... but the shell-like creature's pale flesh turned first pink, and then, with shocking suddenness, rose-red.

Although Toga was afraid of almost nothing in the commonly understood sense of the word (it's hard to be afraid of things that aren't "real'), there was at least one thing that filled her with wretched loathing. She had come out of the little pond under the wooden bridge on Kanazaki one warm August day when she was seven to discover four or five leeches clinging to her stomach and legs. She had screamed himself hoarse until her father had pulled them off.

Now, in a deadly burst of inspiration, she realized that this was some weird kind of flying leech. They had infested her refrigerator.

Toga began to scream and beat at the thing on her arm. It had swelled to nearly the size of a tennis ball. At the third blow it broke open with a sickening 'squtt' sound. Blood- her blood- sprayed her arm from elbow to wrist, but the thing's jellylike eyeless head held on. In a way, it was like a bird's narrow head, ending in a beaklike structure, but this beak was not flat or pointed; it was tubular and blunt, like the proboscis of a mosquito. This proboscis was buried in Toga's arm.

Still screaming, she pinched the splattered creature between her fingers and pulled it off. The proboscis came out cleanly, followed by a watery flow of blood mixed with some yellowish-white liquid like pus. It had made a painless dime-sized hole in her arm.

And the creature, although exploded, was still twisting and moving and seeking in her fingers.

Toga threw it away, turned... and more of them flew out of the refrigerator, lighting on her even as she groped for the Amana's handle. They landed on her hands, her arms, her neck. One touched down on her forehead. When Toga raised her hand to pick it off, she saw four others on her hand, trembling minutely, turning first pink and then red.

There was no pain... but there was a hideous draining sensation. Screaming, whirling, beating at her head and neck with her leech-encrusted hands, Toga Himiko's mind yammered: 'It isn't real, it's just a bad dream, don't worry, it's not real, nothing is real-'

-But the blood pouring from the smashed leeches seemed real enough, the sound of their buzzing wings seemed real enough... and her own terror seemed real enough.

One of them fell down inside her tank-top and settled on her abdomen. While she was beating frantically at it and watching the bloodstain spread above the place where it had taken its hold, another settled on her right eye. Toga closed it, but that did no good; she felt a brief, hot, flare as the thing's sucker poked through her eyelid and began to suck the fluid out of her eyeball. Toga felt her eye collapse in its socket and she screamed again. A leech flew into her mouth when she did and roosted on her tongue.

It was all almost painless.

Toga went staggering and flapping up the path toward the junked cars. Parasites hung all over her. Some of them drank to capacity and then burst like balloons; when this happened to the bigger ones, they drenched Toga with almost half a pint of her own hot blood. She could feel the leech inside her mouth swelling up and she opened her jaws because the only coherent thought she had left was that it must not burst in there; it must not, must not-

-But it did. Toga ejected a huge spray of blood and parasite-flesh like vomit. She fell down in the gravelly dirt and began to roll over and over, still screaming. Little by little the sound of her own screams began to seem faint, faraway.

Just before she passed out, she saw a figure step from behind the last of the junked cars. At first Toga thought he was a guy, Mr. Oye perhaps, and she would be saved. But as the figure drew closer, she saw its face was running like wax. Sometimes it began to harden and look like something- or someone- and then it would start to run again, as if it couldn't make up its mind who or what it wanted to be.

"Hello and goodbye," a bubbling voice said from inside the running tallow of its features, and Toga tried to scream again. She didn't want to die; as the only "real" person, she wasn't supposed to die. If she did, everyone else in the world would die with her.

The manshape laid hold of her leech-encrusted arms and began to drag her away toward the Barrens. Her bloodstained book-carrier bumped and thumped along beside her, its strap still twisted about her neck. Toga, still trying to scream, lost consciousness.

She awoke only once: when, in some dark, smelly, drippy hell where no light shone, no light at all, It began to feed.

—6—

At first Todoroki was not entirely sure what he was seeing or what was happening... only that Toga Himiko had begun to thrash and dance and scream. He got up warily, holding the slingshot in one hand and two of the ball-bearings in the other. He could hear Toga blundering off down the path, still screeching her head off. In that moment, Todoroki looked every inch the attractive man he was going to become, and if Kaminari Denki had been around to see him just then, his fellow losers might not have been able to restart his heart.

Todoroki was standing fully upright, his head cocked to the left, his eyes wide, his hair, freshly shampoo'd and conditioned, fluttered prettily in the calm wind. His posture was one of total attention and concentration; it was feline, lynxlike. He had shifted forward on his left foot, his body half-turned as if to go after Toga, and the legs of his faded shorts had pulled up enough to show the edging on his light-blue, cotton, boxers. Below them, his legs were already smoothly muscled, beautiful in spite of the scabs, bruises, and smutches of dirt.

'It's a trick. She saw you and she knows she probably can't catch you in a fair chase, so she's trying to get you to come out. Don't go.'

...But another part of him thought there was too much pain and fear in those screams. He wished he had seen whatever had happened to Toga -if anything had- more clearly. He wished more than anything else that he had come into the Barrens a different way and missed the whole thing.

Toga's screams stopped. A moment later Todoroki heard someone speak- but he knew that had to be his imagination. He heard his father say, "Hello and goodbye." Todoroki Enji wasn't even in Irusu right now: he was in Shinri, working as a guard up at Juniper Hill, and wouldn't be home for another six hours, (Todoroki knew this because he checked every hour by the hour). Todoroki shook his head as if to clear it. The voice didn't speak again. It had been his imagination, obviously.

He walked out of the bushes to the path, ready to run the instant he saw Toga charging at him, his reactions on triggers as delicate as a cat's whiskers. He looked down at the path and his eyes widened. There was blood here. Quite a lot of it.

'Fake blood,' his mind, this time in his own voice, insisted. 'You can buy a bottle of it at The Trade for 40¥- three liters worth.'

He knelt and quickly touched the blood with his fingers. He looked at them closely. It wasn't fake blood.

There was a flash of heat in his left arm, just below the elbow. He looked down and saw something that he first thought was some kind of burr. No- not a burr. Burrs didn't twitch and flutter. This thing was alive. A moment after that Todoroki realized it was biting him. He struck it hard with the back of his right hand and it spattered, spraying blood. He backed up a step, getting ready to run now that it was over... and then he saw that it wasn't over at all. The thing's featureless head was still on his arm, its snout buried in his flesh.

With a loud gasp of disgust and fear, he picked it off and saw its proboscis come out of his arm like a small dagger, dripping with blood. He understood the blood on the path now, oh yes, and his eyes went to the refrigerator.

The door had swung closed and latched again, but a number of the parasites had been left outside and were crawling sluggishly over the mint green casing. As Todoroki looked, one of them unfurled its membranous fly-like wings and buzzed toward him.

He acted without thinking, loading one of the steel ball-bearings into the cup of the Bullseye and pulling the sling back. As the muscles of his left arm flexed smoothly, he saw loose blood squirt from the hole the thing had made in his arm. Todoroki let it fly anyway, unconsciously leading the flying thing.

'Shit! Missed!' He thought as the Bullseye snapped and the ball-bearing flew, a glittering chunk of light in the hazy sun. And he would later tell the other Losers that he knew he had missed it, the same way a bowler knows he has missed the strike as soon as a bad ball leaves his hand. But then he saw the ball-bearing curve. It happened in a split-second, but the impression was very clear: it had curved. It struck the flying thing and splattered it to mush. There was a shower of yellowish droplets which pattered on the path.

Todoroki backed up slowly at first, his eyes huge, his lips parted, his face a shocked grayish-white. His gaze was pinned to the front of the discarded refrigerator, waiting to see if any of the other things would smell or sense him. But the parasites only crawled slowly back and forth, like autumn flies drugged with the cold.

At last he turned and ran.

Panic beat darkly against his thoughts, but he would not give in to it entirely. Todoroki held the Bullseye in his left hand and looked back over his shoulder from time to time. There was still blood dappled brightly on the path and on the leaves of some of the bushes bordering it, as if Toga had woven from side to side as she ran.

Todoroki burst out into the area of the junked cars again. Ahead of him there was an even larger splatter of blood, just beginning to soak into the gravelly earth. The ground looked disturbed, darker streaks of earth lined into the powdery-white surface. As if there had been a struggle there. Two grooves, about two and a half feet apart, led away from this spot.

Todoroki halted, panting. He looked at his arm and was relieved to see that the flow of blood was finally slowing, although his lower forearm and the palm of his hand were streaked and tacky with it. The pain had begun now, a low steady throb. It felt the way his mouth felt about an hour after the dentist's, when the novocaine began to wear off.

Todoroki looked behind again, saw nothing, then looked back at those grooves leading away from the junked cars, away from the dump, and into the Barrens.

'Those things were in the refrigerator. They got all over her- sure they did, look at all the blood. She got this far, and then-'

("hello and goodbye")

'-something else happened. What?'

Todoroki was terribly afraid he knew. The leeches were a part of It, and they had driven Toga into another part of It much as a panic-maddened steer is driven down the chute and into the slaughtering-pen.

'Get out of here! Get out, Shouto!' The foreign adult voice screamed in his ears.

...Instead he followed the grooves in the earth, holding the Bullseye tightly in his sweating hand.

'At least get the others!'

"I will... in a little while." He responded back.

He walked on, following the grooves as the ground sloped down and became softer. He followed them into heavy foliage again. Somewhere a cicada burred loudly and then unwound into silence. Mosquitoes landed on his blood-streaked arm. He waved them away. His teeth were clenched on his lower lip.

...There was something lying on the ground ahead. Todoroki picked it up and looked at it. It was a handmade wallet, the sort of thing a kid might make as a crafts project at the Community House. Except it was obvious to Todoroki that the kid who made this hadn't been much of a craftsman; the wide plastic stitching was already coming unravelled and the bill compartment flapped like a loose mouth. He found 5¥ in the change compartment. The only other thing in the wallet was a library card, made out in the name of Toga Himiko. He tossed the wallet aside, library card and all. He wiped his fingers on his shorts.

Fifty feet farther on he found a sneaker. The underbrush was now too dense for him to be able to follow the grooves in the earth, but you didn't have to be the Pathfinder to follow the splashes and drips of blood on the bushes.

The trail wound down through a steep brake. Todoroki lost his footing once, slid, and was raked by thorns. Fresh lines of blood appeared on his upper thigh. He was breathing fast now, his peppermint hair sweaty and matted to his skull. The spots of blood led out onto one of the faint paths through the Barrens. The Shibui was nearby.

Toga's other sneaker, its laces bloody, lay marooned on the path.

He approached the river with the Bullseye's sling half-drawn. The grooves in the earth had reappeared. They were shallower now- 'that's because she lost her sneakers,' Todoroki thought.

He came around a final bend and faced the river. The grooves went down the bank and led ultimately to one of those concrete cylinders- one of the pumping-stations. There they stopped. The iron cover capping the top of this cylinder was a little ajar.

As Todoroki stood above it, looking down, a thick and monstrous chuckle suddenly issued from beneath.

It was too much. The panic which had threatened now descended. Todoroki turned and fled toward the clearing and clubhouse, his bloody left arm up to shield his face from the branches which whipped and slapped him.

"I worry about you sometimes, Shouto." His father's voice echo'd from the drain, chasing him. "Sometimes I worry a LOT."

—7—

Four hours later all of the Losers except Kirishima crouched in the bushes near the spot where Todoroki had hidden and watched Toga Himiko go to the refrigerator and open it. The sky overhead had darkened with thunder-heads, and the smell of rain was in the air again. Deku was holding the end of a long length of clothesline in his hands. The six of them had pooled their available cash and bought the line and a first-aid kit for Todoroki. Kaminari had carefully affixed a gauze pad over the bloody hole in his arm.

"T-Tell Nah-Nah-N- your Bruh-brother- you g-got a scruh-hape when you were buh-buh-biking," Deku said, wiping the blood from Todoroki's palm.

"My bike-" Todoroki gasped, dismayed. He had forgotten all about his bike.

"There," Sero said, and pointed. It was lying in a heap not far away, and Todoroki went to retrieve the BMX racer before Deku or Kaminari or any of the others could offer. He didn't want them going to the trouble after they'd spent so much time patching him up.

Deku himself had tied one end of the clothesline to the handle of the Amana refrigerator, although they had all cautiously approached it together, ready to bolt at the first sign of movement. Todoroki had offered to give the Bullseye back to Deku; he had insisted Todoroki keep it. As it turned out, nothing had moved.

Although the area on the path in front of the refrigerator was splattered with blood, the parasites were gone. Perhaps they had flown away.

"You could bring Chief Okumura and Mr. Torino and a hundred other cops down here and it still wouldn't matter," Iida Tenya said bitterly, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"Nope. They wouldn't see a goddamn thing," Bakugo said, shaking his head.

"How's your arm, Roki?" Kaminari asked, he hadn't made much eye contact with Todoroki that afternoon, spending to much mental capacity trying not to stare at his bare legs.

"Hurts." Todoroki paused, looking from Deku to Kaminari and back to Deku again. "Would my brother and dad see the hole that thing made in my arm?"

"I d-d-don't th-think s-s-so," Deku said, almost absently, really cementing in for the first time that this truly was their new normal. "Get reh-ready to ruh-ruh-run. I'm gonna t-t-t-tie it uh-uh-on."

He looped the cod of the clothesline around the refrigerator's rust-flecked chrome handle, working with the care of a man defusing a live bomb. He tied a granny-knot and then stepped back, paying out the clothesline.

He grinned a small shaky grin at the others when they had made some distance. "Wow," he said. "G-Glad that's oh-over."

Now, a safe (they hoped) distance from the refrigerator, Deku told them again to get ready to run. Thunder boomed directly overhead and they all jumped. The first scattered drops began to fall.

Deku jerked the clothesline as hard as he could. His granny-knot popped off the handle, but not before it had pulled the refrigerator door open again. An avalanche of orange pompoms fell out, and Iida uttered a painful groan. The others only stared, open-mouthed.

The rain began to come harder. Thunder whipcracked above them, making them cringe, and purplish-blue lightning flared as the refrigerator door swung all the way open. Bakugo saw it first and cursed under his breath. Deku uttered some sort of angry, frightened cry. The others were silent.

Written on the inside of the door, written in drying blood, were these words:

STOP NOW BEFORE I KILL YOU ALL. A WORD TO THE WISE FROM YOUR FRIEND, PENNYWISE

Hail mixed with the driving rain. The refrigerator door shuddered back and forth in the rising wind, the letters painted there beginning to drip and run now, taking on the draggling ominous look of a horror-movie poster.

Todoroki was not aware that Deku had gotten up until he saw the freckled boy advancing across the path toward the refrigerator. He was shaking. Water streamed down his face and plastered his shirt to his back.

"W-We're going to k-k-kill you!" Deku screamed. Thunder whacked and cracked. Lightning flashed so brightly that Todoroki could smell it, and not far away there was a splintering, rending sound as a tree fell.

"Hey asshole, come back here!" Bakugo was yelling, cupping his hand around his mouth. "Come back, you fucking idiot!" He started to get up but Sero hauled him back down again, shaking his head solemnly.

"You killed my sister, Eri! You son of a bitch! You piece of fucking shit! You fucking bastard! So come out! What are you waiting for!? We're almost alright here! Come on out!"

Hail came in a spate, stinging them even through the screening bushes. Todoroki held his arm up to protect his face. He could see red welts forming on the back of Kaminari's neck.

"Izuku, come back!" Todoroki screamed despairingly, and another thundercrack drowned him out; it rolled across the Barrens below the low black clouds.

"Let's see you come out now, you fucker!"

Deku kicked wildly at the rusty refrigerator door, knocking it off it's bottom hinges. The loosened door began to rattle and clang wickedly in the wind. He turned away and began to walk back toward them, his head down. He seemed not to feel the hail, although it now covered the ground like snow.

He blundered into the bushes, and Iida had to grab his arm to keep him from going into the prickerbushes. He was crying.

"It's okay, Izuku," Sero said, putting a clumsy arm around him.

"Yeah," Kaminari said, nodding. "don't worry, Izuku. We're gonna do this. It's gonna be okay."

"Yeah, no one here's gonna puss out." Bakugo said. He stared around at them, his eyes looking wildly out of his wet face, blazing with an angry fire. "Is there anyone here who's gonna puss out?"

They shook their heads.

Deku looked up, wiping his eyes. They were all soaked to the skin and looked like a litter of pups that had just been discarded in a river. "Ih-It's scuh-scuh-hared of u-u-us, you know," he said. "I can fuh-feel th-that. I swear to eh-everything I c-c-can."

Todoroki nodded soberly. "I think you're right."

"H-H-Help m-m-me," Deku said. "P-P-Pl-Please. H-H-Help m-m-me."

"We will," Todoroki breathed. He pulled Deku into a hug. He had not realized how easily his arms would go around the shorter boy, how thin he was. Todoroki could feel Deku's heart racing under his shirt; could feel it next to his own. He thought that no touch had ever seemed so sweet and strong.

Iida put his arms around both of them and laid his head on Todoroki's shoulder. Sero did the same from the other side. Bakugo, though he would deny it if anyone ever asked him, put his arms around Sero and Deku. Kaminari hesitated for a moment, looked at each of them, and then slipped one arm around Todoroki's waist and the other over Sero's shivering shoulders- having to stand on his tiptoes to do so. They stayed that way, hugging, on their knees, and the sleet turned back to driving pouring rain, rain so heavy it seemed almost like a new atmosphere. The lightning walked and the thunder talked. No one spoke. Todoroki's eyes were tightly shut. They sat on their knees in the rain in a huddled group, hugging each other, listening to it hiss down on the bushes. That was what he remembered best: the sound of the rain and their own shared silence and a vague sorrow that Kirishima was not there with them. He remembered those things.

He remembered feeling very young and very strong.