Chapter 110
.::A Perfect Storm of Coincidences::.
~Ten minutes earlier, Kamino.~
Miles and miles away from Nagoya, Anjou Ran suddenly felt a jolt that had her sitting up in her seat. Kirameki and the others at the cafeteria table didn't notice the change in posture, too busy groaning about the exams they'd just taken. By this point everyone expected Ran to be on her phone at lunch and barely participating in conversations, particularly when ignoring their whining, so they didn't notice her sudden movement.
Ran silently switched from the note app on her phone with notes for the next exam to the app that Kuroe had designed for her Quirk. Neural Networking had a weak ability to transmit the information she received, and Kuroe had managed to somehow program an app that could read those weak signals to display the information in detail. Ran didn't understand the full mechanics, but she didn't need to. The fact it worked was enough.
Her eyes narrowed as she pulled up a side menu, scrolling through a list of names with colored dots until she found a light blue one labeled "Yuki." A quick tap had the map radically change, shifting from her current location all the way to Nagoya. She glanced at the dot for only a moment before looking at the text displayed below the map.
One benefit of Kuroe's app: it could display certain information more clearly than she could detect with her own Quirk. This didn't just include the location, but also people's physical conditions.
And just now, Todoroki had taken a strong hit to the torso.
It was shown by a dimmed human silhouette, a red glow illuminating the torso. When Ran focused on their connection right now she could feel a distant, dull pain in her stomach, making her frown deepen. A heavy punch for sure, and what had triggered her Quirk to alert her. Bad injuries tended to alert her to some degree, and she'd been keeping their connection near the forefront of her mind after hearing about him going solo with the tracker.
She set the phone down beside her lunch, closing her eyes as she swapped their sense of hearing. Her classmates' inane chatter was replaced by a sudden near-silence, the background voices of the lunchroom gone in an instant.
"—carrying him," someone was saying. "Especially since I don't like doing that stupid princess carry. If I have to pick him up, he's riding on my shoulder."
"Right, I guess that would hurt after punching him in the gut like that. Which I still don't really approve of by the way."
"Yeah, yeah, 'don't hurt people anymore than absolutely necessary.' Save the hero platitudes for later, Birdbrain."
"I have a name, Dabi."
"Don't really care. Anyways, let's just find an office or something so we can have a nice, long chat, Shou—"
Ran broke the connection there, the din of the cafeteria returning with the scratchy tones of Kuwata whining about his pencil breaking. "Dude, if you need a pencil that bad, I've got like five spares," she piped up, cutting off his rant.
"Anjou, you know he's just trying to weasel out of a test," another classmate, Darume, snorted.
"Do you really think the teachers would buy that your pencil's broken and let you off from exams?" Ran retorted, never tearing her eyes from her phone as she snapped a screenshot before switching to the FacePage app. She'd heard all she needed from Todoroki's end. From that snippet of conversation, she was able to deduce several things:
1. Todoroki had definitely been beaten up, but was well enough to walk on his own two feet.
2. He'd been accosted by Dabi, his estranged older brother. So probably not at risk of death.
3. The other person was probably Hawks, because there were not many heroes likely to be called "Birdbrain."
In short: this was a near worst-case scenario, and she had ten minutes left in lunch to try to sort this mess out.
Luckily for them though, there happened to be two dots surprisingly close to Todoroki's location. And in a perfect bit of timing, a new message arrived from Ashido. Ran quickly tapped the pop-up notification to open it.
'Hey, can you tell us Yuki's location at all? We don't think he took enough money for the return trip, and he's not answering our messages. And we already came all the way here, so yeah.'
Ran's fingers flew across the screen as she jotted a reply, attaching the screenshot she'd just taken. 'Here. Heads up, he just got found by his brother and Hawks and they're about to start questioning him. Good luck getting him out. Gotta study for exams, later.'
It didn't take long for the other two girls to both reply with alarm and confusion, but Ran exited out of the messenger to open her notes again. Urgent as the situation was, she still had a history final after this, and that had always been her weakest subject. They could handle it fine, probably.
After all, while Ashido wasn't the best at strategizing, she was a natural at winging things on the fly.
"We got so lucky," Mina groaned, sagging tiredly. "I can't believe that actually worked."
"Less talking, more changing!" Uraraka snapped, shoving an armful of clothes at the other girl. It was a mismatched jumble that made her nose wrinkle in distaste, but Mina's complaint died on her tongue as the other girl hissed, "Hurry!" Uraraka shoved another armful of clothes at a dazed-looking Todoroki, ordering, "And you too!" Mina scowled but did as told, turning to stalk into the changing room.
Exactly five minutes had elapsed since their grand escape, and they had immediately gone to a thrift store. Uraraka had scoped it out even before An-chan texted them, apparently always on the hunt for a good place to buy cheap emergency disguise components. Which turned out to be useful since they now apparently needed entirely new outfits, because they had no idea how long it would take Hawks and Dabi to get out of the room.
Seriously, it was so lucky that Jirou had told Mina about the smoke and sticky bombs. She'd been in Kaminari's apartment, just about to pick up the key fob, when the other girl sent one last message saying to check the second drawer down to the left of the kitchen sink. That had been where Mina found several silver and pink orbs.
'The silver ones are smoke bombs, and the pink ones are sticky bombs,' Jirou texted. 'They explode into sticky pink goo. Might be useful for the escape or something else, so take a couple. Inventor says she's got new and improved ones anyway.'
Mina was so glad she'd taken some. They had been useful for an escape, but not the one any of them expected. They still had one of each type left, stashed away in Uraraka's bag. They'd left the bag outside in an alleyway so Dabi and Hawks had never seen it, so thankfully they wouldn't need to replace that.
As she put on her new clothes, Mina wrinkled her nose at her reflection. They really didn't match at all, a bright blue top and an eye-searing orange skirt with a hideous green zigzag pattern. She knew they didn't have much time though, so she pulled on the new coat that Uraraka had grabbed.
"I have a problem," Todoroki called from the neighboring changing room just as she stepped outside.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I can't remove my shirt, or put one on." Mina frowned, remembering the handcuffs. Right, those were still there. They'd covered it up by putting Uraraka's bulky unicorn coat over him and zipping it up (though they'd obviously unzipped it before sending him into the fitting room). Uraraka had disappeared, probably to find clothes for herself, which left it to Mina to resolve this.
Her face twisted into a frown before making up her mind. "Right, got it. Open the door and let me in?" The door quickly opened and she scooted inside, closing it behind herself as she surveyed his outfit with a clinical expression. He'd at least changed his pants, but he still had on the same shirt and coat as before. "Okay, I'm gonna melt through your shirt and coat."
Todoroki blinked, clearly surprised. "Okay?" he said tentatively. "Are you sure it won't hurt me though?"
"I have really good control," Mina huffed, and some deep part of her resonated with that statement. She had come to sort of recognize the touch of her counterpart's subconscious feelings, and she knew this pride swelling in her chest wasn't just her own. "I think other me trained really hard with her Quirk. Maybe even harder than me! Just hold out your arms."
Todoroki's brows furrowed even as he held up his arms. "But... we're in the hero course. Aren't you just a civilian here?"
Mina frowned, ignoring the uncomfortable flutter in her stomach as she held her hands over his sleeves. Minuscule drops of acid began to seep from her fingertips, digging into the fabric and melting it. "Yeah, but I think... my Quirk is a little, different, here?" It came out hesitant, but once she said it she felt more sure.
"Different?" he repeated, and she nodded.
"Yeah. I haven't used my Quirk much since coming here, but... Well, you know how I fought that villain before running away? When I fought him, I noticed that my acid was... stronger, I guess. And thicker, too, but also, I could produce a lot of it way more easily than I could back home."
Her mind flashed back to the fight even as she spoke, to when she instinctively used Acid Veil. The motion had been instinctual, her movements not as smooth without the muscle memory she'd been steadily training in their home world, but... The resulting sheet of acid had been a little bigger and sturdier than the ones she'd produced in training so far.
And it wasn't just the strength: her control over the acidʼs properties was much more fine-tuned than back home. Even now, the small droplets melted through Todoroki's sleeves but dissipated before they could fully penetrate to his skin. From there she was able to grab the edges of the hole and tear through the fabric, ripping the coat's sleeve all the way to the shoulder. Todoroki blinked as she repeated the process with the other arm, and then did the same for the shirt underneath.
From there, a harsh jerk on the fabric had the sleeves completely ripping off, and she added a tiny drop of acid on his shoulders to weaken the fabric and rip those apart along the seam. Within thirty seconds the coat and shirt were falling down his waist, and she gave them a pull downwards like she would when removing skirts. Todoroki awkwardly lifted his legs to step out of them, still looking surprised that it worked.
And like that, she was now alone with a shirtless Todoroki. His face turned a little red, remembering his earlier thoughts about whether she had a crush on him.
Mina didn't notice though, already turning her attention to the shirt Uraraka had grabbed and pursing her lips. "Okay, I don't think it will help me with getting you into a shirt though," she admitted. "We might need to just put a coat on you and zip it up until we can go somewhere else and I can pick the lock." Because she was absolutely determined to use her new lock-picking skills.
"I don't think you can do that with these," Todoroki said with a frown. "These are stun cuffs police use for people with dangerous Quirks. I don't think you can pick them with just a bobby pin."
"...This is going to sound crazy, but I probably totally can break them," Mina said, almost sheepishly. "All I need is a plastic bottle." Todoroki shot her a dubious look, but she just turned and grabbed the coat Uraraka had picked out. It was fortunately a long one, so when she threw it over him and zipped it up it covered his hands without bulging too much. "If anyone asks, you have no arms."
"...I still have questions about the plastic bottle thing."
"It will honestly be quicker to show you, so later." Mina picked up the remains of his shirt and coat, bundling them up so it wouldn't be quite as obvious they were ripped up. As she did she felt something bump against her arm, and she reached into the coat's pockets to pull out both of his phones and the associated chargers. She stared for a second before turning to stuff them in Todoroki's new pockets, and then grabbed the hat Uraraka had grabbed to plop over his undyed roots.
By the time they emerged Uraraka was already waiting, having also changed into her own horrendously mismatched outfit. "Let's go!" she said, already rushing to the door, and the pair followed.
"Don't we need to pay?" Todoroki asked.
"Already did before I gave them to you," Uraraka replied.
"She is super fast at shopping sometimes," Mina added. "It's actually kinda scary." Mina had visited exactly one thrift store with the other girl back in their world, and it had left a strong impression on her. Uraraka had gone into an almost zen sort of state, tearing through the store like a tornado. She had managed to attain a full cart's worth of clothing in her sizes and rush it to the cash register in less than two minutes. It had been awe-inducing and terrifying to watch.
"When there's a sale, you need to move before everything's taken!" Uraraka declared. "Even if it turns out to be bad, you can just return it later!" They passed a public trash can on the sidewalk by the store's entrance, and Mina took the opportunity to dump Todoroki's shirt and coat inside. As she did she spied an empty rectangular water bottle inside, and while that was not where that belonged, she took the chance to snag it.
"Um, Ashido?" Todoroki asked. "Did you just...?"
"I said I need a plastic bottle," she huffed, already using her Quirk to melt through the plastic. She tore off a large chunk of the side, leaving her with a decently sized chunk as she tossed the rest into the recycling bin next to it. "Uraraka, do you have scissors in that bag?"
"Yeah, sure, but I'm gonna need to dig them up," the other girl said. "Let's go somewhere that isn't the middle of a sidewalk."
That was how they ended up in an alleyway behind a dumpster, Uraraka rifling through her backpack for the scissors. In the meantime Mina carefully put on her black wig, adjusting it with a frown. "Does it look alright?"
"A bit messy, but it works," Todoroki said with a shrug. Uraraka turned around with the scissors, which Mina took and quickly cut the plastic into a more narrow shape with straight edges.
"Uraraka, unzip his coat," she instructed, and as the other girl obliged she added, "Todoroki, hold out your hands." Todoroki did as told, still looking skeptical, and Mina leaned closer to inspect the cuffs. She bit her lip, using the back of her hand to push Todoroki's wrists upwards, and then her eyes locked on a small sliver in the center where a bridge overlapped where each wrist connected.
She carefully slid the plastic into the gap, and Todoroki's face went slack with shock when she jiggled it and it disengaged. "What?" he said flatly as she removed the cuffs, and then more emphatically, "What? How?" Even Uraraka looked stunned, and Mina could only shrug.
"Remember how I said I learned from Lee and Mail?" she asked. "Well, Mail said that these handcuffs actually have a super bad design flaw. I don't remember all the jargon he used, but it was something about the lock mechanism being... right there? I mean, the gap is super thin so most regular lockpicking tools won't fit inside, but plastic like this is just thin enough to fit. And obviously you'd need help, but still. It's a thing that works. He actually had us look up photos of these cuffs so he could point it out."
"Why would he tell you that?" Uraraka whispered, eyes wide. "How does he even know that?"
"He said his siblings found out while messing around. They find it kinda funny but also really bad, and they're hoping that if word about this gets out the police or whoever's in charge of these things will change it." She shrugged as she added, "He figured that it's way less dangerous if vigilantes manage to break out instead of, you know, actual villains. And now we have a case they can use to prove their point, I guess?"
She shrugged again, not really knowing what else to say. "If villains find out, these handcuffs will lose their effectiveness," Todoroki said grimly, and she could only nod, a heavy silence falling over the group.
They really had gotten so lucky. So many little details had aligned perfectly. From the fact she and Uraraka had already arrived at Nagoya, intending to give Todoroki money for a ticket to Odawara (and wow, twelve thousand yen was a lot), and had been close to the building when An-chan told them what happened. Then there was how just the day before, Jirou had told her about the smoke and sticky bombs. And before that, Mail just happened to reveal a key weakness in the very pair of handcuffs used on Todoroki.
Even the fact they could make that plan had been pretty reliant on luck. They had been able to hear Dabiʼs voice when they went to the second floor, letting them figure out which room they were in. It just happened to have a window, so Uraraka went outside while Mina went to the neighboring room and stuck her hat in that window so the other girl could see figure out where Todoroki was. And THEN the building happened to have a decorative ledge below the windows of the second floor—specifically the second floor, there weren't any on the third or fourth floors—that Uraraka could stand on. From there, Mina only needed to stall long enough for Uraraka to get up there and help them escape.
It was a perfect storm of coincidences, the universe aligning just right for everything to fall in their favor. If she was a little more superstitious, she would say they had used up all their good luck in the past half hour.
"...So, what do we do with the handcuffs now?" Uraraka finally asked.
"I have no idea," Mina replied. "Maybe use them on Mic-sensei so we can just, let him out of the cube? For good?"
"Midoriya might be able to use them," Todoroki mused, and Uraraka perked up.
"Yes! It might!" Her eyes gleamed with excitement, but then quickly dimmed, face twisting into a grumpy scowl.
"...You stopped after saying 'it might,'" Mina told her sheepishly.
"I know," Uraraka bit out, making Mina wince. The other girl's face fell a bit as she sighed, shoulders slumping. "Sorry Ashido, I didn't mean to snap. Just..."
"That Quirk is really annoying?" Mina supplied, and Uraraka nodded with a pout.
"It's just so frustrating! It doesn't even seem to be totally consistent, you know? I can't tell what will block entire sentences, and what just blocks a couple words like!" Her face darkened as she skipped another word, throwing up her arm and shouting, "I can't even give the first example I thought of!"
"Were you thinking of League or Nabu?" Todoroki asked curiously, pulling on a shirt now that his hands were free. Somehow, her expression became even more sour.
"I can't even." Her eyes narrowed, falling silent for several long seconds.
"Uraraka?" Mina pressed hesitantly, but the other girl held up a hand, looking deep in concentration.
"Remember when you guys tried to ask me yes or no questions?" she finally asked. "Back when I tried to read the letter?"
Mina frowned, thinking back to the failed letter reading and the following questioning session. "Oh," she said softly, remembering their attempts to ask simple yes or no questions. "You couldn't even nod or shake your head to what Todoroki just said, could you?"
The strangled growl Uraraka released seemed to be confirmation enough. That, or she was responding to her cell phone suddenly ringing. She quickly rifled through her coat pocket to withdraw it, glaring at the device sourly. "I'm guessing it's not Jirou or Kami or Mido or anyone else," Mina said with a grimace.
"It's Dabi," Uraraka confirmed flatly, making her wince. "Oh look, I can say his name. Yippee." The absolute lack of enthusiasm was very pointed.
Mina meanwhile was starting to freak out. "Why is he calling? We just left! Are they looking for us? How does he have your number?"
"He gave it to me when we met," Uraraka said, still sounding just done with the world. "He probably recognized my voice or saw me through the smoke bombs. And I did pretend to not know where Todoroki was last time I texted him, so..." She trailed off and shrugged, not really seeming to care. Beside them Todoroki frowned, eying the phone as it stopped ringing. "There, it's—"
The three teens jolted as the phone rang again. Uraraka's face looked like she sucked a lemon, taking a violent red tint. Before she could explode, Todoroki suddenly swiped the phone from her hand, and the two girls could only stare in shock as he accepted the call and raised it to his ear.
"Hello Touya."
Dabi was pissed.
He was covered in pink gunk, had probably inhaled a bunch of smoke, and was currently literally steaming mad. He'd finally found Shouto, he was literally right there, and the brat still managed to escape because his friends showed up. At this point he didn't know who he was angrier at: his idiot brat of a brother, his crazy girlfriends, or himself for letting himself get distracted by that stupid story.
He knew that pink girl wasn't actually dating Shouto. His brother, as pretty as his face might be, had the social graces of a blind-deaf baboon trying to fit in with a pack of wild wolf-dogs. In other words: the kid couldn't pick up on anything remotely romantic to save his life.
Yeah, that girl was a great liar, but she was not Shouto's girlfriend. Dabi just let them go on because it was entertaining; he could see the brat visibly wondering whether Pinkie actually had a crush on him. Also, it was a good opportunity to gauge how much she knew because the fact she knew Shouto's name was a red flag on its own. Easier to let them just ramble on and slip details before properly questioning them.
And because of that decision, the brat managed to slip right through his fingers.
"Guh, I don't know if a shower will be enough to clean this off," Hawks complained, feathers rippling under the pink gunk as he gave his wings some experimental twitches. "My feathers are all stuck together. I might need to just pluck them and throw them away."
Dabi grunted as the hero whined, pulling out his phone with the hand that wasn't covered in pink goo. He scowled as he jabbed the contacts icon to bring up his meager list. At the moment he only had five numbers actually saved: the stupid soon-to-be-dead brat, Birdbrain, Aiko, Kuroe, and the newest addition, Floaty.
Floaty, whose voice he was sure he'd heard, and he was sixty percent sure saw running away.
He took a deep breath through his nose before stabbing the call button and raising his phone to his ear. Don't shout at the runaway girl. You don't know for sure it's her, even if there's probably not many teenage girls who can somehow reach a second floor window and have Shouto's number because you shared it with them—
The phone stopped ringing, and he scowled as his mind instantly flashed back to the hundreds of calls to Shouto. He stabbed the call button again with a bit more force, expecting it to ring out again. Two rings later the call picked up though, and he instantly snapped, "Floaty, I swear if you're in Nagoya right now—"
"Hello Touya."
The voice he heard on the other end made him freeze, brain briefly grinding to a halt as his vision flickered red. "You!" he growled, face twisting into the most furious snarl. "Shouto, you damn, fucking, idiot brat—"
"Touya, I'm not talking to you until you calm down. So put down the phone and scream until you're ready to talk."
It took a good degree of self control to not slam his phone to the ground but instead throw it at Hawks, the hero fumbling to catch it while Dabi screamed. He let off an impressive volley of fire as he did, the blue flames rippling around him as he stomped and cursed. Was it the sort of tantrum a toddler would throw? Sure, but he didn't give a damn, he just needed to scream.
He let himself rage for about a full minute before stopping, taking a deep breath and spinning on his heel to face Hawks. The winged hero looked very taken aback as he held the phone, extending it as Dabi stomped over to swipe it out of his hand.
"I'm calmer now," he ground out. "Talk."
"I'm still not telling you what's going on." Of course not, the brat wouldn't have fucking run if he planned to talk. "But I'll make you a deal."
"A deal," Dabi repeated briskly, the words sharp and dry as they rolled off his tongue. "A deal. How gracious."
He had no idea what kind of deal Shouto would want to make. He couldn't think of anything the brat might want, like a toy or candy, so he figured it must be connected to whatever he was caught up in. Still, he wasn't prepared for his brain to short-circuit when Shouto spoke next.
"I'll tell you everything. But first, tell Aiko to lift whatever Quirk she put on Uraraka."
I told you last time: the reunion wasn't completely over. I also said the relationship wouldn't go back to the original status quo.
The stun cuffs are actually canon and appear in Vigilantes! The weakness, however, is not canon. Credit for that goes to the Lock-picking Lawyer, who did a video about using plastic from an orange juice bottle to pick a lock like how Ashido did in this chapter. It's an unconventional method that most people wouldn't think to try, and since it's handcuffs you'd obviously need a partner to actually do it, so I think it's not the craziest idea for that weakness to exist!
(Also, Todoroki is still confused on whether Ashido has a crush on him or not. This might actually become a crackship at the end of Ignite. I don't think it'd last forever because most high school romances fizzle out, but still.)
No question for next time. I think that cliffhanger will give you plenty to speculate about~