Rule #11b: No one is ever truly alone
Their pitstop had, thankfully, only a taken a handful of minutes, but the trio of heroes still needed to get out of there before they were discovered again, or worse. Perhaps, if they were lucky enough, they could even catch up with the others on one of the floors closer to the surface. Still, the journey back to the surface had taken them far longer than first intended; especially since they had all but fallen down through the levels on the first go through.
Toru wasn't sure how much time had passed since they'd started climbing back up the floors, but she did know that they were far closer to the surface than before. Aoyama wore a rather juicy layer of sweat upon his skin from the exertion (although that could've been, in part, due to his Quirk overuse) and Mineta was more so stumbling along the path, than walking. Toru's mobility & awareness was, of course, shot to hell, so she wasn't even going to compare hers to theirs.
The next time she blinked back into focus, they were passing by the signage for sub-level five, so she knew it wasn't long now. "…We can't just leave them—!" Toru whined for the umpteenth time as they scurried back the way they had come.
"Out of the question!" Mineta put his foot down again. "You can't even stay upright, let alone walk! Twinkles is running out of steam and I look like a burnt chicken nugget!"
"But I feel bad—" Toru tried.
"—Yes, that'll be the copious amounts of Trigger in your system" Mineta interjected drily as Aoyama readjusted his hold on the invisible girl once more.
"…Don't have to be so mean about it…" Toru mumbled into Aoyama's shoulder, her pout prominently lain upon her lips.
"Then quit being so stupid about it—!" Mineta retorted in kind as he stomped ahead. There wasn't any real or intentional heat in his voice, but the exhaustion within them all had made things a little more strained than was entirely necessary.
Aoyama rolled his eyes, "Will you two please—"
But before he could continued with his admonishment, their communicators crackled back to life. "—Hey guys…how's it…going on your end?" Kaminari's voice crackled over the comms, all distorted and staticky. All three teenagers shared a collective flinch.
"Uh, I think we lost our tail" Mineta promptly replied as Aoyama slid Toru from his back for a moment, taking advantage of the brief moment for a break and set her up against a nearby stack of crates.
The invisible girl slid sideways as she came to rest upon the floor, her own limbs unable or too tired to hold herself upright. She hated how right the grape-haired hero was in that regard. Above her, Aoyama stood, stretching out his limbs and checking over his own wounds; something that pulled a wince across his expression when he twisted his arm a certain way. Fingers crossed they would be able to get proper medical attention soon or who knows what kind of scars they would be taking home as souvenirs.
Across the room, Mineta had walked a pace or two away from the photokinetics so that he could talk without baring the heat that unwittingly emanated from the two. He didn't go too far though, because he wanted to keep the other two within his eye line just in case their luck was tested again. And knowing them, that was very likely to happen. Just look at how well this so-called "stealth mission" had gone.
"…I think we're on the fifth sub-floor" Mineta continued, keeping his voice low and his eyes searching around them. With their luck, they'd be dragged back down before they even made it to the surface. "How's the ambush going?"
"Fine…!" Kaminari yelped as the sound of gunfire and grandstanding could be heard in the background. "…Could be…better…Didn't think…anyone could've been…bloodthirstier…than Bakugou…"
"Lemme guess" Mineta huffed in amusement, "You were wrong?"
"So…wrong" Kaminari chuckled in reply.
"Hehe…" Toru chuckled quietly in the background.
"…Besides that…I…had a…terrible…thought…" Kaminari sounded apprehensive.
"Terrible things could mean a lot of things, Bolt" Mineta pointed out.
"I mean, terrible…as in I…think I know…what the villains…are planning…"
"Wait—!" Mineta perked up at that. "Really?"
"Yeah…we're gonna…need to…find an exit…as soon as possible…or we're gonna…be dead meat…" Kaminari ended, ominously.
Next to her, Aoyama had finished his stretches and had moved to inspect the room they had stopped in for a moment. His gaze appeared to be tinted by his Quirk, turning them from their normal shining blues to blazing gold-on-gold. It gave him a rather dangerous & almost predatory look; one that seemed so out of place on the blonde's visage. Toru could only assume that hers were of much the same calibre, thanks to the current nature of their photokinetic Quirks.
The invisible girl watched the twinkling hero from the awkward angle at which she sat, as the grape-haired hero's chatter faded into the background. After not finding anything of any real interest in the rest of the room, the blonde had returned to her side and, consequently the crates that she leant up against. He appeared to be trying to see what he could find inside; perhaps, if they were lucky, he might be able to find a weapon or medicinal supplies that they could use. Toru didn't have high hopes, however.
Thankfully the crates were easy enough for the blonde to open up (whether that was because they were already open or because his Quirk was so out of control that the locking mechanisms were no match for it, was still up for debate) and he quickly began to paw through them and find out what was inside. Blinded by his own vision—the light damn-near whiting everything out—Aoyama could only make out vague and strange shapes of what was in the crates, so he reached out to touch them instead, hoping that he could discern what it was by touch alone.
At first, the blonde's hand recoiled almost immediately after they touched down; not because it was uncomfortable to his touch (far from it, in fact) but more so because it was disconcerting to be able to feel something without seeing it in its entirety. Like swimming at the beach, only for your foot to dance over the ridge of seaweed-bound rocks or pulling some sort of miscellaneous junk out from under your bed. It was scary only because you didn't know what it was and then when you did, the fear went away.
Reaching back down into the crates, Aoyama felt something soft curl in between his fingers. It was both soft & coarse to the touch, so…furs, perhaps? But as he carded his fingers through the layers, he found that they were far too cool to be alive nor did they startle at his touch, so that cancelled the prospect of animals or nomus hidden in there (something, for which he was immensely grateful). So…pelts then? Or blankets? Or even bolts of fabric? Although that last one might've been a bit of a stretch; afterall, who would transport bolts of fabric in crates like this?
In any case, before he could continue any further, the invisible girl at his feet spoke up. "Twinkles?" Toru asked, her tone curious if a little slurred. "What'd you find?"
"Mon dieu!—! Don't do that!" The blonde teen jolted as if he had been caught with his hand in the proverbial cookie jar and quickly spun around with his hand coming to grip at his wildly beating heart. Suffice to say, he had not been expecting that.
Crossing his arms over his chest as his heart finally began to calm down, Aoyama adamantly ignored the fact that his eyes were burning just as much as his freshly flushed cheeks, mostly because it made him look like a cat caught in the middle of the night. Toru raised a questioning brow up at the blonde, but she didn't (more accurately, couldn't) move any closer which was why Aoyama skirted around a floor-bound crate so that he could show her what he'd found.
It wasn't exactly out of necessity that he'd done this, but if the twinkling hero had learnt anything from this mission, it was that they all needed to be kept within arm's reach of each other. Well, that and the so-called "Good Doctor" was watching them at all times through the cameras that were in the walls. Or the floors, or the ceiling, or even in the pods. It was enough to make your hair stand on end and Aoyama quickly turned to search the room again; his eyes darting everywhere, all at once.
It was a precaution that was well founded, in the end because no sooner had he turned to look, did a strange staticky feeling fill the air. Like the calm before a storm, the particles in the air felt fully charged, ready to ignite and ignite they did. With an almighty boom! the room exploded into shards of pink light; one so bright that even the photokinetics found themselves shrinking at the blaze.
Thinking fast, Aoyama yanked the pelt he had been showing to his comrade, up over them in the hopes to both block the charge's trajectory and to minimise the damage done from the blast. The move was more instinct than any real thought and as the blonde curled up around the invisible girl, he spared a passing worried thought towards his other comrade who was not so durable against such things. But Mineta had been further across the room, in some opposing corner when they'd been attacked, so perhaps he'd gotten free or at the very least avoided the attack altogether.
As the blast made contact with the pelt, the highly combustable furs burst into flames and quickly filled the room with smoke & fire. Toru fumbled a little at Aoyama's sudden movement, but she quickly stuck her arm out of the side and tried to fire back at their attacker. Although the invisible girl didn't really know where it was that she was shooting, the very angry roar of a nomu answered any lingering questions that she had.
The nomu sprung out of the shadows, pouncing on the sidekicks with an enraged roar as the twinkling hero turned to aid in the counterattack. He fired on the nomu with the kind of relentless that told the invisible girl why he had been chosen to be the traitor; he could be rather brutal when the need arose, it seemed.
And then without warning, the unknown nomu crumbled down in on itself; tumbling down into miniature versions of itself and really personifying the question of "Would you rather fight a horse-sized beetle or a bunch of beetle-sized horses?" As one, the mini nomus scuttled towards the sidekicks like a horde of nightmares; all of them just chomping, snarling and squabbling as they went.
First, the miniature nomus went for the twinkling sidekick and swamped him with ease. Even as he fought tooth & nail to get free, they dragged him back across the floor and separating the teenagers. And just before the blonde was swallowed up by the mini nomus, Toru found herself quickly overwhelmed by her own horde of hangry nomus. Weak as she was from her earlier ordeals ad despite the several attempts to flash over the room with her Quirk, it didn't take long after that for the invisible girl to be subdued & dragged from the room like a limp noodle that was doing its best to fight back.
"Prism—! Grape—!" Aoyama cried out as he was dragged backwards, kicking & screaming in the nomu's grip.
"Aaah—!" Toru yelped high & loud as she was dragged out of the room, her nails scraping against the linoleum like a horror movie victim.
Aoyama's Quirk heated up under his skin in tune with his emotions, eyes glowing with anger as he tried to get rid of the horror trope rejects off of him. "Hold on—!" He called, silently promising that as soon as he was free, he was going to go Scorched Earth on the Good Doctor. Salaud sournois was in for it when he got his hands on him.
ZZZT!
An agonising blast struck the blonde across the back, knocking any further thought from his brain as the shock raced through his system and dragged him down into darkness. The last thing he saw before unconsciousness claimed him once more, was the sight of his classmates in great peril; one being dragged out of the room struggling all the while and the other was strangely, deathly still. Worry pricked his heart and with another blast to the back of the head, he knew no more.