Rule #5: You don't waste good

'Of the forty students in attendance at the UA training camp, fourteen were found unconscious & in serious condition, eleven were injured, thirteen were unharmed and two were missing…Reports say that of the Pro heroes, Pixie Bob sustained a serious head injury and Ragdoll has gone missing with concerning amounts of blood left at the scene…' The television prattled on as Shigaraki flipped carelessly through the channels; not one of them was without notice about the latest League of Villains attack on UA. '…Three villains have been apprehended, but others are still at large…It would appear that the criminals behind the attack call themselves the League of Villains Vanguard Action Squad. The League was previously involved with the USJ attack and the Hosu incident…' Toru—bound and zipped into a modified hazmat suit (on account of the information relayed by the Nomu to the League upon their arrival last night)—grit her teeth so hard that she thought they were going to break. Following their harrowing capture, the two teens had spent the rest of the night inside the converted storage room—Toru curled up at one end and Bakugou at the other.

When morning had broken, the pair had been fed relatively well considering the situation—mostly just an assortment of bar snacks that had been scavenged from behind the counter. Next, the two had been separated for individual…"interrogations" Ones for which had left Toru's confused thoughts reeling, Are they trying to recruit us? I mean, I can see why you'd think so…but why? All in all, the two heroes-in-training had been treated fairly well, considering the situation. '…Youngest victim of the training camp attack was reportedly the son of Pro Heroes: Water Horse, killed by Muscular in a tragic…It's perfectly obvious to me that there's some sort of problem with UA's current management. If I had a child who wanted to become a hero, there's no way I'd enrol them in a school that'll—'

"Hehehe!' Shigaraki giggled as he muted the bar's TV and swivelled around on his bar stool to face the two teens who were bound before him. "I'm so grateful to the media for all the free publicity lately! Right? Isn't it nice, Bakugou Katsuki?" His one free eye was pinned on the blonde strapped into the chair with both his hands bound in a metal casing and shackled together for good measure. "But then again, I'd s'pose you know all about that wouldn't you, Hagakure Toru?"

It then rolled over to Toru who was similarly bound next to him and resolutely refusing to even glance at her explosive peer. Despite the situation, half her mind was more focused on the All Might novelty USB stick that Twice had shoved into her hands as she was wheeled out to the bar and what it meant for her. The other half of her mind was trying to focus on not going supernova like she had done when she was younger, even as she felt her skin bubble and bulge painfully with the power of it.

Toru had always been a late bloomer, even as a child, and until her sixth birthday everyone (including herself) thought that her invisibility would be the only faucet of her quirk. At least until she had lit up the kitchen like a firework, blinding everyone within her radius. She couldn't remember much about the incident, only that she had been arguing with her brother over something stupid & inconsequential, and then the next her world had exploded. It had been too hot, too painful, too light. So much so that she thought her heart was going to give out-and it did, but not until she was 10 years old. It would seem that her body hadn't quite adapted as well as one would have hoped over those four years and they had been extremely lucky that her new heart has held out as well as it has.

But whatever the Nomu had done to her in the forest had paused the process if only momentarily, but now it was back and with a vengeance. Y'know, I know that transplant recipients only live a certain length of time afterwards, but I'd hoped to get to graduation at least… Tears welled up in her eyes, blurring her vision behind the hazy plastic of the suit and her mother's voice flittered through her head as they told her monstrous tales of relatives going out the same way. Soon enough, the sound of the villains' monologuing became background noise in favour of the television's volume which had been switched back on at some point.

'…Let's return to a short clip from the UA high school press conference that just wrapped up…' Toru's head absentmindedly flickered back to the TV where she found Nezu, Aizawa and Vlad King all dressed in black tie suits and were bowing to the camera. Sensei? But he hates being on TV! '…We are here to apologise. A recent incident allowed harm to come to twenty-seven first year heroes and we staff were ill-prepared. We take responsibility for any trauma caused by our negligence; it's our duty to train heroes, but also to protect heroes-in-training…' Cameras flashed like torches in the night as the teachers bowed once more. Toru had only ever seen Karasuma-Sensei looking that serious before—of course, that was his default setting. '…Alright, I'll take the first question—' A well manicured hand shot up into frame, belonging to one of the reporters, '—since the beginning of the year, UA students have had four encounters with villains. This time there were students who were gravelly injured, how did you explain this to their families? What are some of the specific steps you're taking to ensure their safety in the future?' Toru's brows furrowed at that, especially when Nezu's response about increased patrols around the school earned a scoff from Dabi in the corner. Those questions…it's like they're being treated as villains… Her eyes then grew wide as her mind turned to the other half of the questions, Oh shit! I didn't even think how Mum's gonna react! She's gonna kill me! AHHHHHH! I'm sooooo dead!

"Hehe! Isn't that strange?" Shigaraki chuckled turning to face the pair once more, "The heroes are becoming the bad guys. Seems like they're not dealing with this very well at all. So much criticism, but everyone makes a mistake or two, right? Everyone gets their hands dirty at some point, right Hagakure?" Toru growled in the back of her throat at the insinuation, even as she felt multiple eyes turn to her. "But anyway, it's not like they're supposed to be perfect; modern day heroes sure have it rough. Don't cha think, Bakugou?"

"Once a hero receives payment to protect people, they aren't a real hero anymore. That's what's Stain's actions taught us" Added Spinner from where he leant against the exposed wall

"Awe…" Toru grit out through pained teeth, as she tried her best to fake the sassiness she wasn't feeling. "Are you pouting big baby boo? Did someone not get enough hugs?"

"Why you little—!" Spinner's reply was drowned out by Twice's hysterical belly laughter as he collapsed against the bartop.

"A hero in this current system only cares about money and glory—" Shigaraki lectured.

"—How is that any different from you guys?" Toru questioned, though she was pointedly ignored.

"And since society buys into those idiotic rules, anyone deemed a loser is shoved aside—"

"—Y'know you just inadvertently called yourself a loser, right? Wait, are you calling us losers too?"

"So, we want to pose some questions—" Shigaraki glared at Toru who merely grinned in response.

She was tired, hungry and on the point of—quite literally—blowing up; at this point, she didn't really give two fucks about what these villains thought of her; instead she was far more focused on how her feet burned like she had been walking on burning embers. "—What is a hero? What is justice? Is the society truly fair? Soon everyone will be asking, that's when we'll know we've won! And you like winning, don't you?"

"Well, duh" Toru rolled her eyes and ignored Bakugou's look for her to shut up, "Who doesn't like winning? But to answer your other questions: a hero is literally defined as someone who saves another, justice is moral revenge or vengeance taken upon someone—usually through the legal system. And for your final question, it's quite simple: society is and has always been chaos personified. It cannot be contained, cannot be controlled—no matter how much you want to—and doing so would be a total waste of effort. Why do you think we have religions? 'Cause more than 150 people in one group tends to make people go a little nuts, hence the omnipotent & wrathful God(s)"

"And how would you know all that?" Twice questioned, going from interrogator to best friend in a split second. "I love it!"

"I have this magical thing called a brain! Wah!"

"Will you shut up!" Bakugou hissed at her.

"Y'know the only reason your in this mess is cause of your stupid catchphrases, right?" Toru turned as much as she could in her bindings to face Bakugou. "I mean, what hero yells 'die' or 'murder' or 'kill'? It's no wonder they picked you up, I mean, c'me on!"

"Yeah, and why'd they grab you then, Sunshine?"

"What is it with you and nicknames?" Toru blatantly switched topics, bypassing the question. "Can you not remember anyone's real names? It's Toru! To-ru! T-O-R-U! Toru! Are you thick or something?"

"Me? What dumbass spells out their name in front of villains?!" Bakugou nodded towards the group who were watching the childishly squabbling teens like it was a tennis match with varying looks of amusement.

"They already know who we are, dumbass! Or did you miss that bit when you were brooding? Huh?"

"What d'ya say?!" Bakugou seemed to be trying his best to keep his temper in check, despite Toru's needless taunts. His eyes narrowed on her bound figure and his nose twitched at something only he could smell. Can he smell my burning flesh?

"Hard of hearing?"

"Fuck you!"

"I'd rather not, thanks. Why don't you ask Kiri?"

"Wha—! You—!" Bakugou spluttered and choked on his spit as he burnt crimson.

"Thought so" Toru smugly sat back in her seat, looking very much like the cat that had caught the canary.

"Dabi" Shigaraki interjected, "Let 'em go"

"Huh? Y'know we'll just end up fighting?" Dabi retorted.

"It's fine!" Shigaraki sighed. "We're recruiting them, so we should treat them as equals. Besides, they're smart enough to know we can't all be taken on at once, right? After all, UA students are so clever"

"Hey Twice" Dabi then turned to the clone villain, "You do it"

"Sure thing!" Twice cheered before crossing his arms, "No way!"

"Do it"

"Aw man!"

"I do apologise for such forceful methods" Compress began as Twice set to work unchaining the two teens. "But please understand we aren't some kind of unruly mob committing crimes without a third act in mind. We didn't kidnap you by accident"

"Even though our backgrounds are different everyone here has suffered because of people, rules and heroes who try to hold us back. I'm sure you're the same" Shigaraki stalked forth as Twice moved from her to Bakugou, quickly freeing him.

"Quick question" Toru piped up as she pulled the hood off of the suit, and unzipping it, pushed it down to her waist. "Did you practise that speech in the mirror this morning or is this all just off the cuff?"

"I've had just about enough of your little quips, girlie" Shigaraki snarled, dry lips cracking as he pulled them back to bare stark white teeth. His gaze narrowed on the infuriating girl as her quirk continued to pulsate in time with her fear, easily melting away the hazmat suit that she had been stuffed into. He wasn't totally sure as to why his master wanted this one (something about being better suited for villainy than heroism? And something to do with the Grim Reaper?), but she was here and she was quickly getting under his skin. "Perhaps, we should just kill you?"

Despite her obvious fear, Toru's eyes gleamed at the word 'kill' as it triggered a long-ingrained response to attack whenever mentioned; like an attack dog always on the prowl. It was something that all of the students in 3-E had gone through and many still had the trigger word buried deep in their subconscious even if they didn't particularly like to mention it. It was likely why a lot of her peers had decided to turn away from careers where such a word could be mentioned on the daily, but Toru had always been a bit of an outlier. Still, all their reactions were the same: muscles coiled, weapons ready, target in sight and a slight bloodlust swimming just beneath the skin. It was no different now.

Legs coiled beneath her, a wailing whistle in her ear told of Bakugou's Quirk coming to life and the fire user in the corner seemed to note their unspoken plan as he turned to bury his unimpressed mug into a tall glass. Between this breath and the next, the two teens acted; one ripping through their melted bonds like they were nothing more than soggy paper, whilst the other exploded outwards in a shower of broken wood chips and metal shards. Diving low, Toru decided to leave Shigaraki to Bakugou's discretion whilst she, herself, made her way towards the closest and most dangerous target: Kurogiri. The luminous girl grit her teeth against the aching burn that lanced throughout her entire body as she moved through the smoke like a serpent in the grass and, although she could no longer rely on her invisibility as she had always done, she continued to carve a way through the villains until she had reached the warper behind the bar.

And then, before anyone could blink, Toru had vaulted over the counter and tackled him to the floor, hands wrapped around his throat as he bucked & scrambled in an effort to get free. Tiny burning fingers wrapped themselves around the warper's throat, burning, burning, burning anything they could get a good grip on. She knew, from the USJ incident, that there was a body beneath all of those shadows, thanks to Bakugou. She wasn't totally sure if she could kill something that she couldn't entirely see, but survival and triggered training told her to keep going, to keep fighting tooth and nail until the very last breath. Even if that last breath was someone else's and not her own, though it was getting harder to breath with both of her emotions and her Quirk going haywire like this. Fear clogged at her throat, and in turn, her Quirk bubbled beneath her skin like a boiling pot. She knew she had to calm down soon, otherwise bad things were going to happen; but that was easier said than done.

"WHAT THE HELL?!" Twice cried as he became enveloped in ashen smoke, coughing in an effort to clear both his lungs and the smoke in his face.

Dabi spared an unimpressed stare at the hothead before him, jaw cracking as he nursed the singed jaw. "Was that really necessary?"

Bakugou bared his teeth at the villains, hands clenched at his sides as he stood before them. "I'm done listening to your endless babbling! Do you not get the point, or do you just like the sound of your voice?" He snarled, "Basically what you're saying is that you want to cause some trouble and you want us to join you? Well, screw you! I want to win, I want to win just like All Might—!"

From behind the bar, wild inky shadows began to spread across the floor like oil as dark struggled against light. Toru, who could still hear the conversation perfectly fine despite very nearly biting through her own lip to hold back her screams at the pain she was in, rolled her eyes at the blonde's speech. "Again with the All Might obsession!"

"—No matter what you have to offer me! That'll never change, do you understand?!" Bakugou continued on, nonplussed, "WE'LL NEVER JOIN YOU LEAGUE OF BASTARDS! WE MAY NOT BE AT CAMP, BUT WE'RE STILL ALLOWED TO FIGHT!"

"He must've figured our that they're important to us" Magne mused from across the bar, casually sipping at his own fruity-coloured drink. "What a clever little boy!"

Dabi snorted derisively into his own drink, "No, he's a fool"

"Let me stab 'em!" Toga pleaded, bouncing up & down on her toes, every bit of a teenage girl. "Please! Oh, pretty please?"

"A cleverer performer would've acted liked we were winning him over and then escaped later, but now that they've broken character, they're finished" Compress added his own two cents.

"What am I? Chopped liver?" Toru grumbled to herself as she struggled against the shadows that were slowly crawling up her legs and pulling her down towards who-knows-where.

"I only ever do what I want to and I refuse to pretend otherwise—" Bakugou continued on, ignoring the extras in the room.

"—Wow" Toru rolled her eyes, "It's a wonder you passed any of classes with that attitude—"

"—And I'm tired of being surrounded by a bunch of lame-ass wannabes!"

The room stood in tense silence for a moment as nobody dared to move nor breathe as Bakugou's words lingered in the air. It was so quiet that you could've of heard a pin drop. Well, that is, if you didn't count the crackling of the static coming out of the television, the wheezing coming out of Kurogiri or the laboured breaths that hissed out of Shigaraki's mouth. Then—as the smoke finally dissipated—a unanimous flinch wafted through the room at the sudden cry that ripped through the room as Shigaraki cried out.

"Fa~ther!" Shigaraki rasped, eyes still locked on the disembodied hand which had fallen from his face and rested on the floorboards at his feet. He wasn't exactly the picture of perfect health—mental or otherwise—and as he slowly raised his own hand to his face, Kurogiri began to panic and flail even more beneath her. Toru felt her heartbeat quicken as the villain floundered beneath her, because she reasoned, if one of his allies was worried about what was about to happen, then she should probably be too.

If Toru thought Kurogiri was fighting back before, then it was nothing in comparison to what happened when Shigaraki began to lose his sanity. "NO! Shigaraki Tomura! Be calm!" Kurogiri ordered, his Quirk flaring fully to life.

And in her sudden distraction, the pressure she'd had on his throat lessened just a smidge. But it was all the space that Kurogiri needed. In his panic—in Toru's distracted slip of control—ink black shadows began to swarm the room, blanketing the space in darkness so thick that it felt like they had all fallen in to the void. It was the kind of darkness where it was hard to see your hand in front of your face, where even if you knew you were not alone, you still felt like you were drowning in a sea all on your own. Well, they might've been, had Toru not been lit up like a roman fucking candle even as she was tossed aside, landing somewhere near where Bakugou had been only moments before. (She wasn't sure if it was the blonde that she hit when she came to a rolling stop, or the toppled barstools, but either way a pained grunt fell from her lips as they all began to slowly sink into the dark).

But instead of lashing out like they had thought he would, Shigaraki simply raised an arm out as if to stop the villains from attacking the frightened teens or to escape Kurogiri's clutches. "Don't lay a finger on them, any of you" Shigaraki calmly bent to retrieve the disembodied hand and reattach it to his face. "These heroes are still valuable pawns"

"Grr!" Bakugou ground his teeth at the name calling, as he growled low in his throat but made no further attempts to attack.

"I wish you would've listened to what I had to say" Shigaraki continued, wistfully, "I thought that we could come to an understanding"

"D'you really think that we're the same?" Bakugou growled, "Not a fucking chance!"

"Then I have no choice" Shigaraki heaved a put upon sigh, "The heroes said they'd continue to investigate our group, so we don't have time to stand here and talk. Master?" He turned to the faint glow of the television through the writhing shadows of Kurogiri. There, an 'AUDIO ONLY' label blinked languidly back at them. "We'll meet you at the back up location"

"A master, huh?" Bakugou huffed as he scrabbled to both get a hold of his classmate and fight back against the cloying shadows, trying to portray a braveness that he did not feel. "I thought you were the boss around here, but I guess you're just a sidekick"

"Kurogiri! Gate!" Shigaraki ordered, a slight growl sounding in the back of his throat as he stood from his stoop.

Bakugou, not to be outdone or forgotten, continued to yell even as the darkness began to fold in on them. If it wasn't suffocating before, it was now. "IF YOU WANT US TO LISTEN TO YOUR LIL' SPEECH, THEN GET ON YOUR KNEES AND BEG!"

"Now"

"…Was the monologue really necessary?" Toru muttered into her hands, not entirely paying attention to her classmate as she turned her focus in on herself.

By this point, sweat was now pouring from her brow in buckets and the scene that she could glimpse through splayed fingers, swayed and blurred like an unfocused camera, making her blink rapidly in an attempt to clear her vision or at least, stay upright and conscious. Shoving her palms into her eyes, she furiously rubbed at them until fuzzy stars exploded behind her lids and tears bled from the corners of her eyes, as she tried to—at the very least—calm down her jackhammering heart, so that her Quirk could, in turn, calm. It wasn't working.

Voices were static in her ears.

Sweaty hands gripped tight to her forearm.

Light bubbled beneath her skin like a furnace.

The scent of burnt caramel mixed with that of burning bacon.

Choking darkness slipped into every crevice, nook, cranny and orifice that it could find.

It was all too much.

And so, when All Might in all of his golden-haired glory, suddenly broke through the brick wall and sent debris flying everywhere, it was like someone had pulled the trigger on the bomb. "SMASH!"

Toru flinched. "SHIT!"

KA~BOOM!

And exploded.

[The last thing that she heard was the Pro Heroes scrambling frantically trying to get to the teens before the warp gate swallowed them whole. Pure darkness battled against violent light as the warp gate enveloped them all. Treacle-like tentacles moved at speed which should not have been possible and swarmed across the occupants, dragging them down into the dark, diving into places that it should not be. It was futile to struggle and a chorus of painful yelps followed them down into the dark as they disappeared. And as the bar finally vanished from view, Toru could've sworn that the last thing she saw was an image that made her blood run cold: it was Yukimura-Sensei seated at the bar with a glass in her hand, as she toasted to her late student].