Throughout her whole life, Mina hadn't actually experienced a defeat.
Of course she hadn't always won a fight, and hadn't always passed a test. She wasn't some kind of wunderkind who was the best at everything. She'd lost at things before, all the time. Against her brothers at video Games was one of the most frequent losses, but those didn't matter to her at all, so she didn't know if she counted them. She lost against Tokoyami at the Sports Festival. She'd lost against Nedzu in the test for the end of the first Semester. She wasn't the be-all-end-all victor of everything.
She didn't always win… But that wasn't defeat. Losing and being defeated were two very difference things, she learned. Losing was just not winning. Being defeated was…
Being crushed. Feeling devastated. Like a pit of fire was stuck in her stomach, making her want to scream and cry, but only tears came out anymore. She couldn't sob anymore. Her stomach just contacted, and her lungs wouldn't do anything to allow her the simple relieving pain that was being able to openly wail. She was ashamed. Dismayed. Crushed beyond all measure. She couldn't describe it if someone tried to.
The feeling of crushing, overwhelming, absolutely devastating dismay of complete and utter defeat. There weren't enough words in any language to describe this.
Heartbreak was probably the only one that came close.
Everything had become a blur to her, and what happened around her barely even began to make even the slightest bit of sense anymore. It was just white noise next to the sheer levels of grief that she was experiencing right now. She wasn't paying any attention to it. She couldn't even move on her own, her legs too weak, and her mind practically fragmented too much in order to even come close. She was being moved, forced to walk about by Todoroki, Uraraka and Tokoyami, gently guiding her down the correct path towards the lodge again, but she didn't remember the trip. She barely remembered anything as it was happening around her. She didn't do much of anything. She just…. Was there.
She was aware that Aoyama had joined them, from his hiding spot of wherever the hell he had been, and with him, he'd brought Torru and Jirou, whom he'd been trying to protect. Shoji was carrying the pair of them, since he had the arms and physical strength to do so. Mina would normally have looked towards her friends, concerned for their safety and well being…. But she just couldn't. Her mind was a mess, unable to focus on any one thing aside from what had just gone down.
Her mind just couldn't being to make sense of it.
Izuku had been taken… And she couldn't even begin to comprehend it.
How had things ended up this way?
What the hell had just happened?
Could it have been avoided?
Why…?
…What… Was happening to Izuku right now?
Was he… Going to be okay? Or…
Why… Why had this happened…
Why…. The more times she asked that simple question, the more her tears began to spill out.
Why….
No matter how much she loved him, the fact that he just barely ever explained anything like this, or why he did it… It hurt. It hurt her so much. She didn't know what to do… She didn't know why he had left her like this… Why… Why did he do this? Why did he go through that Warp Gate, when he didn't know what would happen to him on the other side?
Why….
Nothing made sense. Nothing in her confused and distressed mind made even the slightest bit of sense right now. She couldn't understand anything anymore. Because no matter how much she tried… There wasn't an answer. There wasn't any answer that she could find… Because Izuku just couldn't tell her why he did these things…
Even if she did have an answer… She didn't think it would do her much good anyway….
It still hurt. He'd left her on her own. That wasn't ever going to not hurt…
But she just wished she knew….
Twelve hours after everything had gone down, Mina found herself in a lonely hospital room, somewhere near where the camp had been help, along with the other twenty five or so students that had been knocked out or injured in some way or another.
Not a lot of the last half a day was even in her memory. She didn't remember the ambulances arriving, being loaded into one with the rest of the injured students, or getting her wounds treated. The only reason that she knew that the knife that had been stuck in her hand was now gone was because, when she finally returned to her senses, she just happened to be staring at her hands in front of her, which were rested on her lap. Her right palm was wrapped in bandages, and she was hooked up to a saline IV that was stuck in a vein in her wrist. Perhaps because they assumed that they were from the incident also, they had wrapped up a good portion of her wrists with the bandages as well, noticing the scars that were fresh along her skin.
She didn't particularly feel much pain, at least not physically. No throbbing pain in her hands, no stinging from solution against the sensitive wounds along her wrists, a headache, or anything that someone could normally expect when they regained their senses when they found themselves in a hospital.
All she had was still that intense, burning pain in her chest and stomach, just swirling around inside her, like it were alive and looking for escape.
With her vision slightly blurred, as in her head, the events repeated of the previous night over and over again. It wouldn't matter if she wanted to remember or not. Her head was stuck into the perpetual loop of watching Izuku fight, charge, and then him escaping her field of view, not to be seen again.
Maybe not ever again.
The more and more that she thought about that actually being a possibility, the more she wanted to cry. Bakugou being alive – That was pretty much a safe bet, since the Villains had targeted him in the first place. They had made particular efforts to abduct him and take him back to wherever the hell their base was. For whatever reason it was that they wanted him, he would be left alive, and probably unharmed.
Izuku hadn't been on that agenda though. There wasn't any way to tell what they'd do with an additional person in their clutches. Not to mention, if it was the League of Villains, then that meant that Shigaraki was going to have it out for him. Specifically for him.
What he said back at the Kiyashi Ward was haunting Mina's thoughts.
'The next time I see you, it'll be because I decided to kill you.'
It wasn't technically Shigaraki's choice to see Izuku again in this particular instance, but was he still going to follow through with that threat? Was that how it was going to end up? Even if Shigaraki did decide against killing him…. His arms were in not fit state at all. He would easily pick up an infection….
Just thinking about it…. Over and over again… It made Mina want to just curl up and cry. To bawl her eyes out and wail as loud as she could, to just expel some of the sharp, burning pain built up inside her. Tears wouldn't come though. She'd cried so much already, her body just wasn't letting her create tears any more.
Deciding what hurt the most was impossible. Fearing for Izuku's life and safety, frustration that she couldn't do anything anymore, regret that the two had been separated right after she had slapped him… That they had ended like that. That that was going to possibly be his last memory of her…
Was that how it was going to end? Was there really any hope for him anymore…
She wanted to believe that he was okay. So desperately did she want to believe that he was okay… Never before though, had everything seemed to absolutely hopeless to her. Nothing had looked so bleak and predictable. Nothing had made her completely lose hope more in her life. All she had to cling onto were the few strands that suggested that because he was with the Explosion Quirk user, he would be spared. That because of their connection, the pair would both be allowed to live, or that they'd managed to fight their way out of that predicament.
But what were those chances really looking like?...
"Hey, Ashido. You awake?"
A few light knocks on her door made her look towards the wall where the sounds originated from. She recognized Kirishima's voice coming from the other side, muffled though it was by the wall and door that stood in his way. His mere presence here alone surprised her. She knew that he hadn't been injured during the invasion, and honestly, she did expect that he would have gotten in as much trouble as she knew she was going to be in when the police finally made their way towards her room, since he had helped her escape the lodge.
"Yeah…" She said, just loud enough that he could hear her. It was the first time she'd spoken in the last twelve hours, and the sound of her own voice surprised her. It was soft, weak, and rough all at the same time. Almost like she had caught a fever. Considering she had no idea where that knife had been before Toga had stabbed her, she may well have for all she knew.
Once he heard her response, Kirishima twisted the doorknob and gently opened the door, and made his way in. He looked just about as tired and distraught as she did, though he had maybe managed to get an hour or two of actual sleep, as opposed to drugs knocking him unconscious for operations. Todoroki was with him, following him in, and shutting the door behind the two of them once they'd entered.
Both of them didn't say a word for a short while, and neither did the injured girl. Despite fighting alongside Todoroki, and owing her ability to escape to Kirishima, she didn't really have a lot that she could think to say to them right now. What could they even say to one another? What was there?
Everyone had lost yesterday, but this wasn't something that they could just pat each other on the back and offer them good luck for the next time. That wasn't how this worked.
This was a real loss, and words weren't going to make anyone feel better here.
"…How're you feeling?" The Hardening Quirk user eventually asked, managing to force himself to look towards Mina long enough to speak to her.
For about fifteen seconds, Mina didn't answer. Any positive answer that she could give would be an outright lie, because there wasn't a single part of her that really felt even vaguely positive, or anything even resembling positivity. What she felt was nothing short of dead on her feet. Shame at herself. Resentment for her failures yesterday. There was still a part of her that still wanted to reassure the two boys in front of her though, so they wouldn't worry about her. Both of them were her friends. Kirishima, she'd known for a while, despite not being too close to him in middle school, and Todoroki, she barely knew, but they were all part of the same friend group. She did trust the pair of them explicitly.
She couldn't lie though. Even pretending that she was okay was painful. "I'm…. about as well as you'd expect, Kirishima…" She managed to look up at the pair of them by moving her pupils towards them. "….Have they?..."
"There's… No news about Midoriya, or Bakugou, no." The dyed red haired boy informed her, looking like it pained him to say as much as it pained her to hear. "Sorry…"
Nothing surprising about that, Mina knew. She allowed herself to let out a long sigh, before her head turned back to looking at her hands in front of her, and away from the two visitors in her room.
"We uh, spoke to the doctors." Kirishima continued. "They said they're gonna discharge you tomorrow morning, since your injuries aren't that bad. And we asked around… Yaoyorozu woke up a couple hours ago. She had some head trauma, so she'd been staying here… Jirou and Hagakure are still unconscious, but they should be okay… So that's good news…"
"….I hit him before everything went down."
Todoroki looked away, remembering the incident clearly, as he had witnessed it. Kirishima on the other hand, hadn't, and his own eyes became wide as she spoke, shocked at what he was hearing.
Mina didn't know why she just randomly stated that fact to him. Perhaps it was because of the immense guilt that she felt, and wanted to confess her actions to someone, anyone, who would listen to her. Because she felt like she deserved to be berated, yelled at, punished and hated for what she had done.
It was selfish, but everything about the others and their injuries had just gone in one ear and out the other for her. She knew it was selfish… But she couldn't help it. Everything was just so… So wrong that she couldn't focus on anything else.
"Before Bakugou and Tokoyami got taken… First thing I said once I found them…. I yelled at him, asked if he actually cared about me, after I hit him…. I…. I didn't… Whenever he goes into a fight without thinking, he gets so hurt… I was… I was so scared that something like this would happen someday…. I was scared that he'd leave me like this… I didn't know how else to…. To get that through too him… What else could I have done?... In that fight, what could I have done?..."
"I don't think there was anything else you could have done in that moment, Ashido." The dual hair coloured boy spoke for the first time since entering the room. "Given how everything was so hectic and that we were in the middle of a fight, I don't think that anything else would have gotten his attention."
"He still ran off though… He still charged off…. To help Bakugou of all people… He ran off to help that scumbag…" Memories of everything that her boyfriend had told her ran back into her head as she spoke. They entered uncontrollably, without her permission to even do so. Her eye trailed slowly towards Kirishima once again. "You think that he's not a bad person, Kirishima… But if you even heard of the smallest of the shit he's done to Izuku…. And he…. He…"
All strength left Mina's body, leaving her limp. Her head slumped, and all of her muscles in her forearms, legs, fingers, everything else, all just went limp at once. There wasn't any strength left in the pink girl. There was barely anything else.
"And he chose him over me… For whatever reason… He went that far to save him, after everything… And I don't know if…"
She swallowed the lump that was rising in her throat. Doing so was painful, but she forced out the deepest fear that she'd had this entire time. The thing that had kept her awake all night, and broke her heart over and over again.
The thing she blamed herself for.
"…I don't know if he did it because he hated me for hurting him…"
"A-Ashido…"
"… Did I do this?... If I hadn't hit him like that…. Would he have stayed?... Would he have listened to me?... Is this…" For the first in a few hours, a tear made its way from her dehydrated body and into her sore eyes. Just speaking about her feelings, her guilt and her pain was forcing all of her built up emotions to escape her again. Speaking became more and more difficult as she continued, but now that the avalanche of words had stared, it couldn't be stopped. "…Is this all my fault?..."
Was it all her fault? Was it her treatment of him the reason he'd tried so hard to save the person that she hated? Was it because that he felt unappreciated, uncared for, and unloved by her, that he had gone that extra mile to try to save Bakugou? Was it because of her and the way that she had treated him that he was gone now?
Had he….
Had he wanted to escape from her?...
Did any of these thoughts even make sense?... She didn't know, and her mind wouldn't focus on any single thing anymore… In her mind, everything made sense about the idea of him fleeing into the Villains Warp Gate to get away from her. Why wouldn't he want to get away?
After what she'd done….
"I don't know…. If it's my fault that he's gone now…" The tear finally escaped, running down her right cheek and down towards her chin. "I didn't…. I just wanted him to be safe… I wanted him to be okay… I didn't… I…. I didn't want him to go away… He means this entire world to me…. I don't… I don't wanna be a Hero… Not if…. Not if I have to be solo again… Not if he hates me…"Her non-injured hand moved towards her face, to cover her eyes, for all the good that it did. Her gritted teeth began to show, instinctively trying to stop her from just bursting out and breaking down into tears completely. After everything, I… I love him so much… And if he's been hurt... If he's been…. Then I – "
"If you feel that way, then let's go save him."
Once her middle schoolmate's words hit her ears, she completely froze up. Tears stopped flowing, her body stopped shaking, and her throat stopped wavering back and forth. Everything just ceased and stopped, the only thing moving being her eyes, which stop wide open.
She seriously thought, for just a moment, that Kirishima was just mocking her. That he'd just lost any semblance of patience with her, and was saying something like that to try and shut her up. Did he seriously think that if saving Izuku was an option, that she'd just be sat here right now? If she had even the first inkling of where to start, did he honestly suspect that she'd just be here right now, wrapped up in nothing but self-pity and regret?
That line of thinking was very short lived though, when she remembered that Kirishima had just as much a reason as anyone else to want to go on a rescue mission. Of everyone who had been at the lodge, he had been the one that she knew would be willing to stick his neck out, to risk everything in order to try and help his friends. He was the only one who remained steadfast in the idea of going out to join the fight, even when everyone else had backed down. He was willing to risk the wrath of the Villains, and the wrath of the Heroes, to allow her the chance to escape to try and hunt down Izuku and Bakugou. He wasn't mocking her.
He was serious… But that just caused her more confusion.
"Whuh?" The noise that she wound up making when she looked up at him again was involuntarily, but it summed up everything about her thought process that needed to be conveyed well enough.
Todoroki looked towards Kirishima, and then nodded his head gently, apparently either giving permission for the Hardening Quirk user to speak, or showing that he felt that Mina deserved to know the truth about whatever the two of them apparently knew.
Giving a nod back, Kirishima turned towards the horned girl once again. "Me and Todoroki went by Yaoyorozu's room earlier, and she was peaking to some Pros. So we listened in, and she said that she was with Awase from 1B during the attack, and that they managed to put a tracker on one of the Villains. She made a tracker and gave it to All Might…"
"I've never seen him look so grateful to someone." Commented The Half-Cold-Half-Hot boy. "Or seen him look so angry at just the mention of the League of Villains…"
Ignoring the additional inputs by Todoroki, though she knew why the world's number one Hero had reacted in such a way, Mina's eyes just became wider and wider as Kirishima spoke, almost like she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "A… A tracker? Like a GPS?"
"I guess so. She said it'd lead them straight to the Villains… So my guess is that that's where Midoriya and Bakugou are at."
"They won't kill Bakugou." With folded arms, the normally passive and unemotional teenager showed a side to him that was more emotional and caring that few in his class had actually seen before. He was showing thought and care towards both his classmates, despite one of which he had no particular relationship with at all. Considering that he was something of a loner before he became friends with Izuku, it wasn't that surprising that he cared about this so much. "They targeted him specifically, and made an effort to abduct him, so they want him alive for whatever reason. As for Midoriya…"
Hanging in the air, Todoroki couldn't bring himself to finish that sentence. Bakugou was safe, that much they knew, at least when it came to him being either left alive or killed by the Villains. They needed him, wanted him, for whatever reason, but Izuku was a lot less secure.
No one could really tell what was going to happen to him. He could be okay…. Or he could already be dead. Mina had already come to these conclusions herself… But somehow hearing them from other people hurt even more. It made them become much more real than before.
"…Everyone is gonna come over tomorrow." Kirishima said, taking his rucksack off of his back and placing it by his feet. "They're coming to see Yaoyorozu, and check on Hagakure and Jirou. They're also gonna come check on you too. We talked to Yaoyorozu about it, and she said she'd let us know tomorrow… But I thought you would wanna know about that plan beforehand. We're pitching it to everyone, and we're gonna try and convince people to come with us, but me and Todoroki are going. No question. If you wanna help save Midor – "
"I'm in."
Her answer came without even the slightest bit of hesitation when she heard everything. Not a moment was wasted, and there wasn't any sort of anxiety in her voice when she agreed to go along with it.
She knew the risks. They didn't even need to be spoken. And there were lots.
The Villains could just kill them outright. It was a dangerous mission that they were considering going on.
They could be kicked straight out of Yuuei for acting on their own. Herself and Kirishima in particular were already in hot water for going against orders during the attack. This could be the final kick to their dreams as Heroes, no matter how noble or righteous their intentions had been
It could just end up being a waste of time. The plan could fail immensely, and there could be no overall gain from it.
And so many other ways that it could go horrendously for them…
But Mina didn't even slightly care.
"Without question." She said, blinking away the tears that still hung inside her eyes. With her left hand, she used the sleeve on her hospital gown to dry them as she spoke. "Just tell me when and where."
The smallest of smiles in the corner of the Hardening Quirk users lips formed. "I had a feeling you'd be up for it. It's tomorrow night. In front of the hospital. It depends on if Yaoyorozu agrees to help us… But that's the plan."
"I'm in…" The pink girl repeated, quieter this time, as she muttered to herself. Her hands turned into tight fists, clinging onto that small semblance, that small flicker of hope that Kirishima had just brought back to life for her. That small chance that they might be able to save Izuku… "Izuku…. Just hold on…"
"By the way…" As the dyed red haired teenager spoke, Mina noticed that Todoroki had made a swift exit out of the room, the door slowly closing behind him. What prompted him to do so, she didn't have even the first idea. "I uh, met your brother Micha, right?"
Mina just blinked. "What the hell was he doing here?"
"To visit you." Kirishima responded, almost amused. What else would the older Ashido be doing here? "He said that he just wanted to drop something off with you to help you out overnight… He heard about Midoriya. The news has been crazy about those two going missing, so he came down, but the police wouldn't let him in, 'cause he used his Quirk on a news reporters camera when they kept trying to interview him."
For the first time in the last twelve hours, Mina managed to let herself chuckle. Just the once, and it was soft, but it was the first time anything even close to resembling a smile was produced by her. She could see Micha doing that. He did have a particular distaste for the media after all. He'd probably do something like that in this kind of situation.
"Anyway… He saw me heading into the reception, and I supposed he just guessed that I was with Yuuei. He told me that he was your brother and that they weren't letting you in the building… So he asked me to give you this."
Kirishima reached down into the back that he had placed on the ground, and unzipped it, to rummage his hand inside and retrieve the contents that it contained. He didn't need to search for particularly long. Using his foot to hold down the bag, he pulled out a piece of clothing that Mina recognized immediately.
It was Izuku's hoodie.
Green was the primary color for the torso and chest, with two clear cut off points, which lead to black being the sole color around the arms from the shoulder down. Mina remembered him telling her that this was probably one of the few hoodies that he owned that wasn't either All Might merchandise in some way, shape or form, and was one of the only that he had personally commissioned for himself. It was only a few months old, and was one of the many gifts that his mother had gotten him when he had finally been inducted into Yuuei.
For a few seconds, though they felt like hours, she just stared at it, straight up, with wide opened eyes. How had Micha gotten his hands on that? How...
"How…. How did..."
Without saying anything, Kirishima unzipped the hoodie that he held, and made his way over to the Acidic girl. Being careful not to hit any of the surrounding equipment, he then threw the over Mina's neck, and rested it around her shoulders, styling it a bit like a cloak, or a shock blanket around his friend, trying to try to make her feel better, in whatever small way that he could.
Immediately, Mina somehow felt better.
"Your brother said that Izuku had left it behind at your house by accident. I dunno what you two were doing but…"
As tightly as her grip would allow her to, Mina clung onto the fabrics that made up the hoodie that was now wrapped around her. It was the closest thing that there was to Izuku right now…
So she clung onto it. It wasn't the same as Izuku being here right now…
But in some way, it did make her feel just a bit better. It was difficult to explain, but because she had something that belonged to him, something warm and something that made her almost feel his presence… She felt reassured in some way. She couldn't explain it.
She wouldn't ever really be able to fully explain it… But just having this here brought her some kind of comfort…. And that was enough.
"We're gonna save him, Ashido." The teenager stated. As he did so, he held his fist up, activating his Quirk all over his limb as a sign of resolution. "We're gonna save both Bakugou and Midoriya. No matter what. I swear it."
The gratitude that Mina felt in that moment... Those were the words that she had just needed to hear right now. Were she in a position to, she would have run up and hugged Kirishima, and thanked him with everything that she had. Instead, she was brought back to a weakened state, thanks to her raw, pure emotion. "Izuku…" She quietly whispered to herself, feeling tears welling up once again. "Just hold on, Izuku…"