Rule #31a: When you see an injustice, speak out or it will never change
Keeping an ear open for any signs that Ritsu might need some help with her search, of the very plausible case that someone might pop in when they were least expecting it, Toru allowed herself to be pulled aside by Aoyama for yet another side bar. They tried their best to find a small alcove hidden away from the main floor—tucked behind one or two of the capsules—without alerting Mineta or whomever was currently on the other end of the comms. Afterall, it wouldn't do for them to be caught snooping through the facility's files like this. In any case, as Mineta shuffled away to find something to occupy both of his hands and his mind, Aoyama kept his voice low as he pulled his partner-in-crime aside.
"What is it, 'Yama?" Toru hissed, her brows pulled low in concern as she tried not to attract their classmate's attention.
"Just nervous, I guess…" Aoyama jolted as he rubbed at his armour-clad arm in anxiousness.
His gaze kept darting around the place like he was expecting something or someone to burst out of the shadows like Kurogiri had done at the USJ incident. Not that the invisible girl could blame him. Not only was that a completely viable option, but after reading through the few sparse files they'd managed to open, she had found herself to be of a rather similar mind. What she had read had shaken her; the dirty details in those files were…unmentionable and it only made her nerves jump even higher, even if she was an old hat at burying her feelings.
"What if…what if we manquer this mission?" Aoyama worried as he wrung his hands. "Ma chérie, what—what do you think they'll do to us if we fail?"
"Yama, don't think like that! You can't think like that!" Toru frowned at that, clearly trying to figure out a way to say what she could without solidifying his fears. "You'll turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy!"
"Pourquoi pas? The…monstres—the villains" Aoyama retorted, his voice lowering to a fearful hiss. "Certainly have their opinions on these kind of things! I—I bet they're upstairs, right now, plotting as we speak! They're gonna moucharder on us—! I mean, we—we don't even know how much time we have until the bon docteur figures out where we are!"
"…Access denied" Chirped the computerised voice in the background. Strangely enough, the tone that chimed out reminded the invisible girl of her late homeroom teacher, Yukimura-sensei. It was a gross thought, considering the doctor's relationship with the junior high teacher and she tried not to think too deeply on it.
"What are we going to do?" Aoyama worried. "What can we do? We're no better than them—!"
"—Do you protect people?" Toru interjected, catching the twinkling hero off-guard with her impromptu and, frankly, childish question.
Aoyama blinked at the interruption. "Pardon?"
"Well, do you?" She pushed. "Protect people, I mean"
"Uh, oui" Aoyama nodded slowly, almost as if he was concerned that she had forgotten such an important fact. "We would not be in the programme de héros if that was not the case"
"Do you fight anyone that harms others?" She continued.
"Oui…?" He puzzled.
"Then you are a hero" She ended with a tone of finality.
Aoyama crossed his arms with a sigh. "I think you're simplifying it, ma chérie"
"Well, I think you're over complicating it" She retorted in kind. Although there was some truth to his words because Toru was simplifying it. "People don't like losing. Whether that be games, goals or even people. We don't like to lose; that's just human nature. And people don't often appreciate what they've got until them lost them. So, the fact that you're still trying to do the good thing says a lot, 'Yama. Most can't say the same" She explained, clearly hinting to herself.
Aoyama frowned, brows furrowed. "I'm sure that's not true, ma chérie—"
"—It is" Because between the two of them, she was the one truly worthy of being named the villain. She was, of course, the anti-hero in this situation.
The blonde easily picked up on her odd attitude and returned the gesture in kind. "Do you protect people?"
"That—that's not—! That's not the same!" Toru spluttered, "A lot of people wouldn't consider me a real hero! Not after all that I've done—!"
"—Well, do you?"
"You are not turning this around on me—"
"—Do you?"
"…Yes" She finally acquiesced.
"Do you fight anyone that harms others?" He continued.
"Depends on who it is—"
"—Prism" He pressed.
"…Fine" She bit out. "Yes, okay?"
"Then you are a hero" Aoyama smiled mischeviously.
Toru shook her head. "That's not how it works—"
"—You're just over complicating it" The blonde cheekily teased her.
"Smartass" She huffed without any real heat. "It's not the same, I've killed people"
"So have I" Aoyama retorted, before quickly correcting himself. "Indirectly"
"Accidents don't count" Toru grunted as she crossed her arms and turned away.
"…The second time wasn't" He quietly admitted. It wasn't silent in the laboratory, but it may as well have been considering how well that admission ripped through the atmosphere like a dart in a balloon.
Toru's head jerked back up towards the twinkling hero, a sour taste tingling in the back of her mouth. "Second…time?"
"Ouuuuui, but Monsieur All For One was there. I had no choice" Aoyama drawled as he tried to sound upbeat about the whole thing. "He said that I had to prove myself after the whole USJ & camp incidents"
Toru hummed in thought, not quite sure what to say. Mostly because she was of much the same mind, but didn't know how to say so without other people listening in. As if to prove her point, Mineta wandered past their little hideaway with an odd sort-of look on his face as he eyed up their position; the one where Toru was practically standing inside Aoyama's personal bubble. She spared the grape-haired boy a terse smile & a short nod in his direction (even if he couldn't see it) and he returned the gesture with a suspicious gaze & pursed lips.
It was one that quickly turned to disappointment, as if he were imagining that it was him in this position. Although, which one of them he was imagining themselves as, was still up for debate. (Toru tried not to think about the hentai magazines that he'd left oh-so-innocently splayed out upon his pillow during their dorm room tours, or the endless perverse comments he had handed out over the year). In any case, the grape-haired boy moved on with the investigation, leaving the pair to their conversation.
"…Sometimes…sometimes, I want to lash at them for it" Toru quietly admitted, not quite sure as to whom she was referring. Perhaps it was her parents? Her teachers? Her peers? The Hero Public Safety Commission? She didn't know, but her feelings remained the same. "But I know—I know—that in some sick way that I still feel guilty about it; like, I did it, so it's my fault"
"Tout se passera bien…" Aoyama soothed her, placing a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"I—I think—I s'pose—it might be better if we talked about those kind of things" She shrugged, "But like, on the one hand, what are feelings? And two, I…I don't think—I don't know if I'll be able to put it into words. At least, not the right way"
"C'est une bonne idée" Aoyama nodded, "But right now, we need to search this room and find out what we can before that happens"
Toru quirked an inquisitive brow at the taller blonde, but her lips still twitched upwards at the corners, nonetheless. She was hesitant to believe her classmate as he was just as anxious about their current situation as she, but eventually she conceded. There was reason in his words and it comforted her a little to know that the albino wasn't the only one who was worried about the outcome of this mission.
"Well, if you're sure…?" She sighed, turning her gaze away.
"Oui" Aoyama nodded. The blonde relieved by this answer because he was usually the one who needed to have his blatant lies disapproved or told that things would be okay; it must've been strange being on the other end of things. With the conversation seemingly done, the two partners-in-crime moved to further explore the room.
An awkward silence blanketed the area, falling between the three students as they dispersed to investigate and each one tried to calm their nerves by focusing on the task at hand. Mindlessly moving about the room, two of the three teenagers did their utmost best to avoid looking inside of the capsules to the best of their respective abilities. Which was understandable, considering what lay inside. For the invisible girl, she didn't want to look inside and see, say, someone who she might've known or someone who she could picture herself as.
She didn't want to gaze upon the humanoid figure within the pod when her morbid curiosity got the better or her, only to find that very same creature staring back at her with eyes of longing and pleading. If she did, she doubted that she would be able to look in a mirror afterwards; at least, not without seeing those gaunt, monstrous faces staring back. But to be honest, the only one who had the balls to look inside was Mineta, who almost seemed captivated by the contents. Why that was, Toru wasn't going to ask, but she had to commend the purple-haired hero for such gumption.
"You should tell them, Flashlight" Ritsu quietly spoke up as the albino drifted back over towards the monitors, reminding the girl that she wasn't alone.
"Sonuva—!" Toru cursed to herself, flinching at the callout as she flopped down into the chair that idled by. Inwardly, she also cursed herself because the comms were still on and that meant that the villains (and the heroes) might've heard their little sidebar, earlier. She could only hope that they were deep enough underground that they hadn't been able to pick up what had been said.
"Also" Ritsu hummed, her voice forcefully upbeat. "I found out how to get into those files—"
"—The triple-encrypted ones?" Toru mused.
"Uh huh" The AI nodded, "Anyway, despite all of this new tech, it looks like the good doctor likes to do things the old fashioned way, which makes these things a little more tricky to work through, but I got it"
Toru smiled fondly. "Course, you did"
Ritsu preened under the praise, "Anyway, those triple-encrypted files look like they're talking about our…friend, over there" She nodded towards the fellow that they had first lain eyes upon, "Most of it is just medical mumbo jumbo, but I've managed to parse out that the Doc was trying to recreate his success with the experiment on Korosensei"
"So, why is it in a container full of…whatever the hell that is?" Toru asked, gesturing to the purple solution.
"Latest attempt" Ritsu hummed, flicking through a series of files too fast for the albino to fully grasp what they were. "Doesn't say if it worked or whatever, but no matter what stage of life this guy was at when he was plunged in, the resulting nomu was either unstable or dead"
"If that crap is anything like the Tentacle Serum, then why didn't the nomu come back to life?" Toru wondered aloud, fingers tapping against the desk in thought. "Why isn't it angry? Or on the hunt? At the very least, it should be conscious"
"Because—according to this—the nomu was never truly alive to begin with" Ritsu answered, "There was no consciousness for it to cling to—"
"—So, doesn't that make it dead?" Toru asked, slightly horrified that Doctor Yanagisawa had dropped to experimenting on corpses. Or, worse still, kidnapping people and then slowly killing them with his endless experiments.
Ritsu paused at that, "Flash—!"
"—No, seriously!" Toru interjected as she quickly got overwhelmed with the implications. "Is that—that Trigger stuff just—just dead man bits?! Are people just injecting—infecting—themselves with dead man juice?! Are we—are we—breathing that shit it, now that we're down here?! Are we gonna end up like that—?!"
"—This isn't the time for an existential crisis, Flashlight" Ritsu admonished, clicking away at the computer.
"Did you miss the memo about how that—" Toru gestured to the nomu in the tank, "—Could very well be out fates?!"
"That's not how any of this works, dumbass" The AI deadpanned.
"Oh yeah? And how do you know that?" The invisible girl retorted, arms crosse din defiance.
"Because that's not how genetics work!" The digital girl retorted in kind. "Or did you not pay attention in Biology—?"
"I did too pay attention!" Toru grumbled to herself.
Ritsu continued on, unbothered. "—All of that Trigger stuff is probably just the byproduct of all of those nomu experiments, okay? It's got nothing to do with us…y'know, unless you feel like taking a quick dip in that purple bath, over there"
"…I guess you're right…" Toru mumbled, rubbing at the back of her neck in embarrassment as she calmed down, a little. Neither of the teenagers knew—or had the time to find out—the whole truth of the nomu experiments at this point in time, but Ritsu was right. Now was not the time to have an existential crisis. Not when there was so much riding on this mission; and not just for them. "Didn't really think about it like that…Heh, sorry about that…"
Ritsu just shook her head. "Don't be. 'This' is fucked up" She gestured to the laboratory in general; it was, afterall, pretty normal to be freaked out by this kind of stuff. "He's cloned animals, kidnapped kids, stolen corpses and even tried the experiment on himself. All in the hopes of recreating whatever made Korosensei, what he was"
"But they all ended up with the same result, didn't they?" Toru guessed. "That's where the nomu come from"
"Looks like it" Ritsu nodded, "He was probably trying to understand just what went wrong"
"And in doing so, he made the Trigger drug"
"Talk about 'happy accidents" She scoffed derisively as she used finger quotes. "Guess that's why our…little friend has tentacles…"
"Tell me about it…" Ritsu agreed.
Toru leant forward, arms crossed over the desk. "Is it bad of me to wish that he succeeded with the Korosensei-nomu-thing?" She murmured, voice hushed. "Maybe then he wouldn't have made all of this Trigger stuff, and then we wouldn't even be here"
Ritsu paused for a moment before answering. "…I don't think it makes you a bad person…"
"Just him then" Toru nodded succinctly, as if whatever had been bothering her, had been solved with that (somewhat hesitant) answer.
Toru was quick to regain her composure after that or—more accurately—she was just too used to pushing her emotions down and stuffing them into the little box in the back of her mind, where she promised herself that she would deal with it at a later date, but never did. Logically she knew that it wasn't a good coping mechanism—like the disassociation—but it worked and for now it have to do; later, she might actually think about taking up Hound Dog-sensei's offers on councilling (that is, if Ritsu didn't book her in, behind her back).
"Anyway, is there anything else that we should know about, Ritsu?" Toru asked, sitting back upright. "Because it looks like Grape Juice just got the adjoining room open" She gestured over toward the classmate in question.
BANG!
Just as the invisible girl had said so, the grape-haired boy had convinced Aoyama to hold him aloft as he unceremoniously blew the cover off of the access panel next to the door. Apparently his Pop-Offs and Aoyama's light were just as useful as explosives as traditional C-4s were, because it didn't take much for the cover to fall away. Once the multicoloured wires were exposed, Mineta proceeded to yank out the necessary wires, all willy-nilly until something opened.
Toru was half-sure that the grape-haired hero didn't have a clue as to what he was doing, only that pure dumb luck had seen him through this far…Oh well, it's not like Aoyama was arguing with his methods and if it worked, it worked. In any case, it wasn't long until the automated doors next to the access panel swung open, allowing them entry into the next room. What they had not been expecting however, was for the intercom to blare to life as the automated doors crackled to life and beckoned them inwards.
"Access granted to the love of my life! My snookie-wookie, darling dear~!" A very familiar voice chimed out of the worn speakers, echoing about the place like a thunderclap. As one, the teenagers all cringed at the slightly distorted voice; two of them physically recoiling as if the sound revolted them, hairs standing on end.
"Ugh! Is that supposed to be Yukimura-sensei?" Toru asked, aghast. The automated voice sounded nothing like their late homeroom teacher, even if the cadence and tone were spot-on.
"Gross!" Ritsu agreed, her nose scrunched up in disgust.
But that wasn't even the worst of it.
If they didn't know they were in the facility before, they did now.