A Work In (No) Progress…

"Is that her?"

In the small living room stood her Uncle Kenzou, along with three men Hitomi had never seen before. One man was sharply dressed, gazing at her appraisingly over the top of his sunglasses with cold, calculating eyes. The two men with him were large and intimidating and seemed to defer to him. Their presence in the small apartment was painfully out of place and it immediately set her on edge.

Her uncle wore a nervous, appeasing grin. He wrung his hands anxiously, looking between her and the man with the sunglasses, "y-yes! That's my Hitomi! I think you'll find her very, ah- well behaved. Very obedient."

"What's going on?" Hitomi asked, all sorts of alarm bells ringing in her head. Kenzou wasn't a good man and he definitely wasn't a smart one. He often found himself getting into trouble with rough sorts, and she had a feeling he was in trouble right now.

She had a feeling she was probably in trouble, too.

Kenzou laughed tightly, trying and failing to appear composed as he made his way over to her. He gripped Hitomi's shoulders tightly and tried to move her to the center of the room, but she planted her feet, refusing to budge from where she stood at the entrance. His grip on her tightened.

"Listen-" he began in a hiss before stopping himself and glancing at the man in the sunglasses. He lowered his voice, "Hitomi. That man over there is my...my friend, Naoki. You're going to do your uncle a favor and go with him, okay? Just be a good girl and do whatever he asks of you." He spoke to her as if she were a naive child, as if she couldn’t at all see how suspicious this situation was.

"What are you talking about?" she glanced tensely between her uncle and the strange, intimidating men he was trying to foist her off on and narrowed her eyes. "What did you do?" she whispered accusingly.

"Hey, don't you dare take that tone with me, brat," he whispered back, there was the usual disdain he had for her in his gaze, but there was also a frantic desperation under it. Sweat pooled at his temple, "I just owe 'em a little more money than I can’t pay back right now,” it must have been a lot of money going by how nervous he was. Damn him, “but when I told 'em about your quirk, they were willing to-"

"No," Hitomi said, sudden and firm, feeling disgust and outrage well up in her chest in equal parts. She couldn't believe it. Kenzou was trying to- to sell her, her and her quirk, in order to pay off his own debts. She knew he was pathetic, a slimeball, a bastard, but they were flesh and blood. Maybe she was just foolish, thinking that family meant anything to him. Maybe she really was the naive kid her treated her as, thinking that he wouldn't try to use her like this one day, that he'd so easily put her in the hands of complete strangers.

"Kenzou," the sunglasses man, Naoki, spoke up, and his voice was just as chilling as his gaze. Hitomi watched her uncle shrivel where he stood and understood just how dangerous this guy really was. "I thought you said your darling niece was up for the job."

"S-She is!" Kenzou insisted, again trying to nudge Hitomi forward, "I p-promise you! She's just- j-just a little shy-"

"I'm not going with them!" Hitomi said, her heart pounding in her chest. She shoved her uncle's hands off of her, disgusted to even be in contact with him.

She wasn't leaving this apartment with these villains- because that's what they were, weren't they? Criminals his uncle had gotten mixed up in that wanted to make use of her quirk in exchange for wiping his debts. She was working so damn hard to become a hero it felt like she was fighting fate itself. Who was he to decide he could ruin that for her? She wasn't his tool and she sure as hell wasn't theirs.

"I think you're confused, little girl," Naoki spoke again, gesturing with his hand to his two associates who began to advance on her, "you don't have much of a choice in the matter. All you get to decide is if you walk out of here with us or if we drag you out."

Hitomi chose neither.

Grabbing her uncle by the arm, she harshly shoved him into the two men approaching her. They collided, letting out noises of surprise as they stumbled back. She used the moment of confusion to bolt out the front door and sprint back out the way she came.

As she ran down the corridor towards the stairwell, she heard the panicked shouts of her uncle to come back and- more alarmingly- the pounding footsteps in hot pursuit of her. Hitomi didn't dare look back, but she already knew they weren't as far behind her as she would have hoped, and she wasn't outpacing them by much. Her body was still exhausted from training, and it would soon tire out completely.

They were going to catch up.

Hitomi burst into the stairwell, her heart racing. She slammed the door behind her but it was only a momentary obstacle to her pursuers. She began her hurried descent down the stairs, her legs threatening to buckle beneath her.

Desperation took hold of her and her hand reached into the pocket of her school blazer, taking out her phone. She somehow managed to unlock it and pull up her most recent calls while still traversing the stairs.

She pressed the topmost contact and prayed.

They picked up on the first ring, "Aizawa speaking-"

"I need help!" she cried out breathlessly, rounding a landing and starting down the next set of steps, "they're going to take me-"

"Kid? What's-?"

She was slammed into from behind.

Hitomi screamed as she fell down the stairs and onto the landing below. She landed hard, her phone flying from her hand, and the pain momentarily left her stunned.

She had enough time to register two burly shadows looming over her before a foot made contact with her head and everything went black.

---

"Here's what's going to happen."

They'd taken Hitomi to their hideout, an abandoned building in an area she didn't recognize. It held even more members of this villainous crew. She was gagged, beaten, and then taken to an empty room. There, she was chained to the wall by a collar they'd secured with a padlock around her neck. She was sat on the floor up against the wall, wrists bound behind her back, as the group's leader, Naoki, crouched before her and told her how things were going to work from now on.

Naoki grabbed Hitomi by the face, his nails digging into her cheeks, and peered into her eyes with an almost bored expression. "You're going to use your quirk to help us out for a while. If you don't want to cooperate, we'll find another use for that pretty mouth of yours," those words made her nearly sick with fear. "Either way, we're gonna get some value out of you, your uncle owes us quite a lot."

He let her go, and then walked out of the room. The door was shut, and Hitomi found herself in darkness, hurting and scared.

Alone.

Hitomi closed her eyes as she fought back the black wave of despair that threatened to overwhelm her. What was she going to do? What could she do? Her body was at its limit. She didn't know where the hell she was or how many people were out there just waiting for her to try something. There were no windows in this room and she was chained to the goddamn wall.

She drew in a shaking breath through her nose. She tried to will herself not to panic, not to break down.

'Keep a level head,' Aizawa would tell her in this situation.

Aizawa… She wondered what Aizawa must have thought, getting that phone call from her. Was he even able to make sense of her few, frenzied words? Did she dare hope that he was looking for her? That he even cared that she was in trouble at all? Surely she wasn't very high up on his priority list.

Villains still came after his students all the time. He probably already had his hands full making sure they were safe at all times. Sure, he took some time out of his schedule to train her, but she couldn't expect him to waste any further time or resources on her.

She was just a third-rate Gen Ed student who hadn't made the cut. One that even her own family thought was expendable.

No one would be coming to save her.

Hitomi swallowed against the lump in her throat. It's fine. It was fine. She willed away all the dark thoughts, pushing them into a box and shoving them into the back of her head. If she could depend on no one, she'd depend on herself.

She wasn't going to be coerced into becoming a villain, and she sure as hell wasn't going to remain at the mercy of this gang.

She shifted her body, moving her bound wrists under her legs and to her front. She removed her gag.

She'd save herself or die trying.

---

"You got further than I thought you would."

Hitomi spat out a mouthful of blood, dragging herself to her feet. She'd managed to get herself out of the room she'd been put in, prying the chain free from the wall. The collar was still locked in place, however, the remainder of the chain dangling from her throat. She made use of it, wrapping the chain around her knuckles to enforce her punches as she fought off a couple of villains that tried to stop her.

She'd taken out three men, including the two who had first caught her at her uncle's apartment, but only with the aid of her quirk, and not without taking plenty of hits herself.

She hadn't made it very far, in the end.

She was truly out of energy, and the villains knew her tricks. It was a pain in the ass getting a response out of any of them. It left her confident in assuming that her bastard uncle gave them a rundown of her quirk's limitations. She was soon beaten down yet again, and now faced Naoki and the remainder of his crew, and there were too many of them. They stood between her and the building's entrance, the door to the outside practically mocking her.

It looked like ‘die trying’ would be the end result of her desperate escape attempt.

"I'll admit your resistance was cute at first, I like a girl that struggles," Naoki removed his sunglasses, his irises starting to glow. "But now, you're almost more trouble than your worth," he gestured to his men.

"Break her arms and legs. We only need her voice intact, anyways."

As soon as that horrifying order left his lips, the front door was broken down and a dark figure burst into the building like a hound from hell, gunning straight for Naoki. No one had time to react or even flinch before Naoki was slammed into from behind, his face smashed into the ground with such force that it cracked the floor beneath him.

There was a beat of silence where nobody moved. Naoki lay still, knocked unconscious in that one move by the figure still perched on his back.

It was only when the literal dust had settled and the air crept back into the room that Hitomi realized she recognized this new arrival.

"S-Sensei…"

Aizawa straightened to his full height atop Naoki's back, his hair and capture weapon whipping around him in an angry vortex. His hands were clenched into fists, his jaw tight, and behind his goggles, his eyes glowed dangerously.

Anyone else would have been scared shitless by the sight of him, but Hitomi only felt dizzying relief.

Aizawa was here.

She was going to be okay now.

The remainder of the crew finally got over their shock and sprung into action.

"Fuck- Boss!"

"Get him!"

"We still need the brainwasher girl! Someone take her!"

"You won't touch her," with that vicious declaration, Aizawa was already in motion, two more men knocked out before Hitomi could even blink. She had never seen him fight before, not against actual villains, and she wondered if he was always this magnificent, this brutally efficient.

She wondered if in her frightened, vulnerable state she just imagined the protective fury in his voice.

She didn't have time to ponder any of this, though, as the last dregs of her strength chose that moment to finally drain away. Her legs gave out beneath her, her body falling sideways.

Hitomi's last memory before her vision faded was her mentor shouting her name.

---

The next time Hitomi woke up, it was in an annoyingly bright hospital room with Aizawa sitting at her bedside. She immediately locked eyes with him because he was already staring down at her face. She watched the moment he realized she was awake, how he instantly looked so alert, and so relieved.

"Kid," he sat forward, his hand finding her wrist. The weight of his calloused palm against her skin was warm and comforting. "How are you feeling?"

"You're here…" she croaked instead of answering him, just looking at his face. He had bruising and scratches on him that weren’t there the last time she had seen him. He must have gotten them when he saved her.

His eyes softened and he gently squeezed her wrist, "yeah, I'm here."

"You came…"

"You called."

Oh.

Was it really that simple to him?

Her lower lip wobbled and her eyes welled up with tears at his answer. Such a plain, honest answer. There was so much left to process and so much left to heal, but in that moment, that's exactly what she needed to hear.

"Thank you."

Being overlooked had terrified her so much when she was younger. Even now as a teenager, Tooru still sometimes struggled with the state of being invisible. She made a conscious effort to be "seen" in her own way, projecting her voice, exaggerating her movements, anything to make sure that people knew that she was there.

The fear that one day, she would need someone and no one would look her way had never fully left her.

Which made this, right now, Tooru's worst nightmare.

It was just a day out with friends, a day of wandering around the mall and getting lunch. No schoolwork and no work studies to worry about. There wasn't supposed to be any stress, any danger, but they always liked to joke that their class seemed to get into a disproportionate amount of trouble.

It always stopped being funny as soon as the trouble came.

Tooru and her friends were about to return to campus for the day when she noticed that she'd left her purse behind in the restaurant they'd just eaten at. She dashed away from the group to go and retrieve it. It would have taken just a few minutes to go there and come back.

It only took those few minutes away from the group for things to go wrong.

She entered the restaurant to find one of the patrons experiencing some sort of medical emergency. A man was on the ground convulsing, his chest glowing an ominous red. She thought she might have heard the man's companion say something about an allergic reaction and a frantic warning to clear out of the area, when there was a sudden, blinding light.

Tooru's next memory was waking up in the dark, in pain, and with an entire building on top of her.

That was hours ago.

There she stayed, pinned under debris, bleeding and broken. She couldn't see a foot in front of her face, could barely move in her prone position because of the rubble pinning her in place. Every breath had her choking out concrete dust and wondering if the air was getting thinner or if it was just her injuries that were making her light-headed.

She hadn't heard any hint of another soul since she woke up, and when she tried to call out for help, her voice came out in a weak rasp that she knew wouldn't reach anyone.

She was alone.

She worried she might die there, alone.

The longer she stayed there in that darkness, the more her old fears began to come to the surface. She knew that there had to be rescue heroes on site by now, but what if they missed her among the debris? What if she was just too well hidden, too invisible, and she was overlooked?

She wept quietly as these thoughts drove her mad. She knew she was a hero in training, that she was supposed to be strong and brave, but she was scared. She couldn't help but be scared.

"Hello? Can you hear me? Can anyone hear me!?"

Tooru thought she had imagined the voice at first, calling out from above, but then she heard it again.

"Can anyone hear me!? Hello!!"

It was real, and it sounded familiar.

"I'm-" she coughed wetly, "I'm here…"

Her voice was so quiet and she felt her fear spike again. What if they couldn't hear her?

But then…

"Tooru!! Is that you!?"

Yes, the voice was definitely familiar. It was Kyouka.

"K-Kyouka…"

"Guys! I found her! She's alive!"

There was the sounds of shifting rubble and more voices joining in until finally a single crack allowed light to come in. Tooru stared up at it, that small sliver of salvation, as it grew and grew until it eventually gave way to the sky above.

She blinked upwards, it was nighttime now, artificial lighting had been brought in to no doubt aid in the search effort. One by one, the faces of her classmates appeared, still in the clothes they'd been wearing earlier, now dirtied from digging through rubble.

From searching for her.

"Tooru!" Ochako called, peering into the ruins below. It was like she was looking right at her.

"You…you found me…" Tooru's eyes welled up in relief, tears spilling and cutting tracks through the dust on her cheeks. "You found me…"

You see me.

"We're going to get you out of there!"

"It's okay now!"

"Yeah, hang tight, Tooru!"

She wasn't alone. She wasn't overlooked.