Rule #59d: Never strike when anguish is in your heart…Go on, give us a smile
Toru sighed heartily as she leant up against the trunk of a particularly large tree, her hair frazzled in the humidity of night but tamed back into a low ponytail, nonetheless. Fiddling with the tail in thought, her fingers ran through the white locks in a vain attempt to brush out the knots hidden there as her thoughts ran wild in her solitude. After that rousing game of Hero League Baseball (where half of the players were actually villains in disguise and the Carmines may have psychologically scarred a couple of the Lurkers), it was time to begin the actual mission, proper.
Hence why they were out here in dark forest in the first place, scouting the aforementioned Trigger facility. Their only mercy was that by the time their mission had started, the uncontrollable laughter from hours earlier had finally stopped. What a crazy quirk that Mr Smiley had. Toru hummed as she hopped through the dense undergrowth like a hound on the hunt. Deku must be going nuts with all of his theories. Todoroki too. God knows those two could feed off of each other's rants until the world exploded.
Whilst Edgeshot had gone towards the south, Toru had headed towards the northern direction to see what she could find. With the two best suited for information gathering running about in the forest, the others were left to gather their own informations about the facility. Kaminari was manning the computers, with some help from Ritsu because he was apparently pretty handy with that kind of thing. Sero, Mt Lady, Major Egghead and Kamui Woods had gone to chat up the local nightlife in regards to their target. Everyone else was stuck back at the inn just twiddling their thumbs or silently plotting villainy as they waited until they were given the all clear to go ahead.
Leaving Edgeshot & Toru to scout the facility itself and any surrounding areas. They had a lot of area to cover, so the mission was slated to take part over several days. Which was why she was so baffled over the importance of the impromptu HLB game earlier. If this mission was so important, why the game? Sure, she could admit to being a little less nervous than she would have of been originally, but that didn't mean they were gone entirely.
Mostly her thoughts revolved around her role in this villain-hero-spy plot that her life had turned into; it was like she was living out some over-the-top dramatic soap opera that her brother liked to watch. And then there was the wistful thoughts that turned back towards the year previous when class 3-E had participated in their fair share of infiltrations. God, those were fun, but that might've been because she trusted her companions to watch her back. Here, she was more or less alone and although Edgeshot was a highly capable hero, he was no Korosensei. Something which, admittedly, put her just a little bit on edge.
Still…Toru nibbled at her lower lip in thought as she pushed on. It would be nice to have some sort of back up…some 3-E back up. That's not to say that the invisible girl didn't trust her current companions—she did, very much so. And she & her classmates had gone through a laundry list of incidents that would trauma bond anyone in any given situation—But…but it still didn't feel the same as it had done last year. Perhaps…perhaps it was because, deep down, she preferred the close-knit community of 3-E the assassins-in-training than the open-heartedness of 1-A the heroes-in-training that was just so pure it was almost nauseating.
Yes, the hero-wannabes had been threatened, attacked and kidnapped. They had killed with their bare hands (her, mostly) and they had fought for each other—beside each other—but it still wasn't the same! There were no lighthearted jokes about the dire situation (no one really got her dark humour), people frowned upon taking the most direct and violent approach (how else were you supposed to get someone to talk other than taking out their eyeballs or ripping off their fingernails?) and they tended to shy away from the darker topics like assassinations & Korosensei, altogether.
She frowned at that thought. No one—aside from the villains—even seemed remotely interested in the moon slayer and the children who had slain him. In fact, after they'd graduated, begrudgingly been awarded their prize money and the paperwork of the contract had been buried so deep in the Hero Safety's Public Commission's archive, that no one seemed to care. Not about what had happened, not about what they did or what they were even doing right now. Sure, they'd moved on or pretended to, at least, but that kind of thing was not really something that you just walked away from. Especially, not the kind that you walk away from and still be fine.
Toru liked to boast that she had "…the bravest of faces…" (mostly because she was invisible) and she did disassociate on occasion, but that wasn't really the best coping mechanism out there. Just like carrying around the Anti-Sensei weapons used to slay your teacher wasn't exactly healthy, but they had proven to be quite useful against the nomu, so there was that. Almost an entire year had passed since she had last seen that jolly yellow face and she still expected him to come waltzing through the door, smelling of friend napkins, expired pudding & mountain air like nothing was wrong. But he was never coming through that door again. They'd made sure of that.
Toru furiously scrubbed at her eyes when she felt them begin to prickle with unshed tears. She hated that now was the time her body had decided to breakdown. Why couldn't she have done this her bedroom? Or before turning spy? Why did it have to be now that the stress of the situation finally had her heart racing? Why did it have to be in the middle of the dark, dank Amazon rainforest that she had her impending breakdown? A great shuddering breath hissed out from between her breath as she tried to reign in her emotions and shut them away under lock & key.
Shaking herself free of those intrusive thoughts, she clapped her cheeks and stood tall, sucking in a deep breath that whistled through the gap in her teeth. They needed to get this mission done—not just for the heroes, but for the villains too. One the one hand, Trigger needed to be taken off of the market and taking down this big wigs facility would be a major hit to the production of the drug. This Trigger facility was said to be one of the main distributors of the drug and it needed to be dealt with, pronto. But on the other hand, she needed to ingratiate herself with the villains as much as possible so that they would slice her throat in her sleep whilst she searched for secret plans to relay to the HPSC. Who, in turn, held her captive in legally binding contracts and hidden blackmail. Would this nightmare ever end? Or will this nightmare be the end of me?
She often found herself laying in bed at night as she warred with herself over what she wanted. On some days, she wanted so desperately to be the right person for the job; to rise up like her more powerful classmates and meet the unspoken standards without something biennial blowing up in their faces. And perhaps, for those higher ups that moved her about like a pawn on a chess board, she did. But other days, she found herself wanting for this pressure to be lifted off of her shoulders and handed to someone else. Why did she have to bare this weight? Why did she have to put her own life at risk for the sake of someone's dream of utopia. Why did everything come with a cost so high that one toe out of line would mean certain death?
The invisible girl furiously scrubbed at her face as the tears refused to disappear, instead trickling down her cheeks. It was hard to deny her anxieties when she was all alone and cowering beneath the weight of all these expectations. Yes, she had entertained the idea of running off during one of their "missions" or telling a teacher what was going on (she was sure that Aizawa would've torn the HPSC a new one if he ever found out what was going on) or just plain refusing to attend her work studies at all. But those were just fanciful ideas; ones where they were enticing but she didn't have enough guts to enact any of them.
Hard-won lessons told her that she couldn't very well plan everything—even with Korosensei's rules for everyday life—and that barely any original plan ever survived first contact with the enemy. So, even if she did have the guts to go against the grain like that, she'd have to be very good at thinking on the fly and adapting quickly. Something that, she would admit, she wasn't very good at. She liked planning things out and sticking to those plans, so when things went awry, she was not a happy lass. Hence why the past year had been such a hair-raising hellscape.
If the villains found out what she was feeding to the HPSC, they would cut her down where she stood. Immediately and without hesitation. But if the Hero Public Safety Commission even thought she was a little too invested in the villains she was spying on, they would ruin her career before it had even begun. She didn't know how Hawks did it, walking that razor-thin line everyday. And that was thing, if either party ever found out who—or what—she really was, then there would be nothing that Hawks—or Nezu, for that matter—could do, least they risk their own principles & lives.
So, Toru pretended like things were okay; she plastered on a fake smile across her lips (even though people couldn't see it) whenever she was at school and she'd pretend that her work studies wasn't terrifyingly heart-racing every single day. Like her colleagues couldn't strip her of her mortality if they so pleased, or worse. But worst of all, some days she even agreed with the villains; about their policies and their tactics. And when she looked back on her own history, she could boast a higher body count than some of the older supporters—important ones, too. Ms Take would be so disappointed in what she had become, although Bitch-sensei might've been proud.
So, she was all over the place, yes, but there was a job to be done and they had to buckle down & get it done or they were all in danger—her especially so. Toru snuffled into her gloves, wiping at her running orifices as she tried to focus on the task at hand. There was work to do, she could cry later. At the very least, her invisibility would hide any red eyes from concerned colleagues when she returned, so there was that. "Okay, Flashlight, pull yourself together! C'me on, girl, you can do it! You have to do it—no backing out now!"
"Yeah, there's no backing out now…" Her gaze then tilted upwards towards the starry sky that poked through the holes in the canopy. It was a nice night tonight—peaceful—considering what they were about to do. The inn was only a few kilometres behind her at this point and the rest of the reconnaissance team had spread out amongst the foliage as they completed their different tasks and played their various parts. She couldn't fail, not now when people were depending on her. "Right—intelligence! We need intel, stat!"
Which really only left her with the one option: shove her feelings into that box in the back of her brain, lock it up tight and move on with the investigation. Illuminated eyes blinked in the dark and followed the muddy path that widened out from the leaf-littered footpath she had been following since she'd delved into the trees. Following the beaten path already lain out for her, feet eating up the distance one step at a time, she made her way deeper into the undergrowth and mused on her rare chance of good luck. It had been a stroke of sheer dumb luck that she had even found these tracks in the firs place and she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
She would take sheer dumb luck over skill any day. Plus with her quirk, she didn't need a handheld torch (though a portable one was tucked into her utility belt) as she was able to see relatively well in the dark when it was focused in her eyes. It wasn't the greatest option and it usually left her eyes feeling tingly, but she was used to it and it was better than having to drag a torch around everywhere. Besides, there was a reason that her junior high codename had been "Flashlight" afterall.