It had been a couple days since the villain attack on the training camp.
Since Bakugou had been captured.
Midoriya was transferred to a nearby hospital, drifting in and out of consciousness. There were gaps in his memories with pain accompanying most of them.
He glanced to his left to find cut apples on his nightstand and a concerned note from his mother.
"Izukuuuu! Enough, already! Your old mom's heart can't take it..."
"This may be your dream, but you are her son. Her only son. You cannot keep ignoring her feelings."
He gazed absentmindedly at the ceiling, only able to move his neck and head without too much pain.
His mother was never one to reprimand him too harshly, but Ayano had no such reservations. Although, that really wasn't his biggest concern.
He was just disappointed in himself – ashamed even.
Suddenly, his classmates came into the room to greet him. All of them were relieved to see him awake, but there was this sense of unease on all of them.
Emotions ran wild as Kirishima and Todoroki revealed their intentions of going to save Bakugou.
Their conversation was interrupted by soft knocking. The room was shrouded in silence, each student hoping that law enforcement wasn't on the other side of the door and that whoever it was, didn't hear about their risky plans.
The door slid slightly open, an adult woman poking her head through. "Izu-kun! You're awake! That's great. I hope you don't mind that we came to visit." She walked in with another man, presumably her husband.
The entire class let out a collective breath, incredibly relieved that it was someone Midoriya knew. "Asuka-san! Kaito-san!" The boy greeted, equally relieved and surprised with a tinge of gratitude. "You didn't have to come all this way..."
He noticed something off about the two of them. They seemed...tired, and incredibly so. Asuka was always cheerful, or at least tried to be. Midoriya could tell that her cheerfulness now was not nearly to the degree that it always is. Something was wrong. Was it really just concern about him being admitted to the hospital?
"Nonsense! Of course we would come to visit when you're in such a condition. You're basically a son to us with how close you and Ayano are!" Asuka placed the bouquet of flowers in the empty vase on the nightstand.
The students' minds clicked with recognition upon hearing of the woman's connection to their classmate. So the gentle woman and stern-looking man were Ayano's parents. They saw that Ayano got her hair and more feminine features of her face from her mother, but that constantly stoic look and personality definitely seemed to come from her father.
"We also brought you some fruit to help nurse you back to health!" Asuka gestured to her husband who simply lifted the gift basket full of fresh produce.
She looked around the room, glancing upon each student's face. "My, you have so many visitors today, Izu-kun. You're so popular!" The woman gasped. "Might you all know of my daughter, Ayano?"
At some hesitant and shy nods, Asuka gave a small smile. "I'm glad she's been able to make so many friends!" She bowed to them. "She may be a handful sometimes, but she always means well. Please take care of her."
Many of the students grew embarrassed, not entirely accustomed to the situation. They covered it with sheepish laughter.
It was then that Midoriya realized what seemed off this entire time. Most of his classmates and even Ayano's parents visited him.
But there was no sign of Ayano.
The media was all over this case, so there was no way that she was unaware. Knowing how she is, Ayano would stop at nothing to come see him. He thought for sure that she would have been the first person he'd see when he awoke, just to reprimand him for his reckless actions. He knew that just showed how much she cared though.
Yet, she was nowhere in sight and he hadn't even received any sort of message from her the entire training camp. Even if she had come while he was still unconscious, she would have surely left a strongly worded letter.
"Um...Asuka-san, where is Aya-chan?" He addressed the woman. Her smile faded into an uncomfortable grimace, her eyes shifting downwards.
She bit her lip, nearly drawing blood, and Midoriya could see the tears glistening in her eyes, threatening to pour out. She opened and closed her mouth repeatedly, gaining the courage to speak and losing it in the very next second.
Her husband stepped up, laying a comforting hand on the small of her back. Kaito's eyes bore straight into Midoriya's. The boy was already anxious from Asuka's physical response. Kaito's piercing gaze only added to his anxiety, shivers crossing his skin.
"Ayano has gone missing."
The weight of his words were crushing. Midoriya felt as though the casts on his arms had hidden weights in them, adding to the searing pain. Was he strapped to the hospital bed? It definitely felt like it.
When his voice finally decided to work, he spoke softly. Uncertainly. "...M-Missing...? W-What do you mean...?"
Kaito sighed. "She has been gone since the Summer Break started."
Since the first day? When the training camp started? How long ago was that?
The villains had attacked on the third night of the training camp. He had been in the hospital for around two or three days.
A week? She was missing for almost a week? Where could she have gone?
His thoughts were interrupted by Kaito's deep voice. "We thought it inappropriate to burden you with such concern, seeing the condition you are in and what you have gone through...but we are growing desperate. We also believe that you have the right to know."
"Have you had any contact with our daughter since the Summer Break started?" Midoriya shook his head, the fear settling in.
Seeing this, Asuka finally cut in. She gave him a bright smile, or at least tried to with the tears flowing down her cheeks. "I'm sure it's nothing too serious! You know how that girl is, always so focused on her work. You remember that time she slept in the park because she was there all day testing out one of her inventions? How worried I was when she didn't come home! It must be something like that! You should have seen her face when she told me that she could use the U.A. facilities over the vacation. She's probably off somewhere testing out her support items like always and forgetting to call me!"
The woman spoke quickly, probably trying to convince herself more than Midoriya. She laughed, but there was no humor in it. Unable to remain composed, Asuka excused herself.
As the door shut, the sound echoed in everyone's ears. Kaito addressed Midoriya again. "We have already contacted the police on the matter. Are you certain that you have received no contact with her?"
Kaito sighed as the boy shook his head. "Of course, we hope that it is not serious but we have to be cautious...considering the timing of all this..." Obviously, he was referring to the villain attack on the training camp as well as Bakugou's kidnapping.
"Please let us know if you hear anything." Kaito bowed to all of them. "Take care, Izuku." The man walked out in search of his wife, his broad back looking lonely.
The room was once again shrouded in silence. Kaminari was the first to break it. "...H-Hey, you guys don't think that the League of Villains..." He didn't dare finish the question, but everyone was thinking the same thing.
Midoriya laughed, much like Ayano's mother had earlier. "N-No! There's no way! You heard her, right? Aya-chan probably got carried away again and forgot to call home...Ha ha ha..." He laughed again, but his fear and hysteria was becoming more and more evident.
"Why would they take her anyways? She's not part of the Hero Course! Her dad said she went missing on the first day of Summer Break. That has no involvement with the villain invasion on us! They attacked us days later!" Midoriya continued to spit out one excuse after the other, hoping to find enough to dispute what everyone was thinking.
"Midoriya! Get a hold of yourself!" Todoroki shouted as he grabbed his shoulder to shake him out of it. At the touch, Midoriya realized he had been shivering, on the verge of hyperventilating.
"Let's try to think about this calmly. She's been missing for almost a week, and the timing is too close to think that it's just a coincidence. Worst case scenario, the League of Villains also kidnapped Sasaki." The entire room tensed.
Midoriya started shaking again. "But why?" He whispered.
Tsuyu spoke up, her index finger placed against her lip in thought. "If their target was Bakugou the whole time, maybe they thought Aya-chan would be a good addition as well. We all saw her calm him down at the awards ceremony of the Sports Festival."
Tokoyami agreed, having seen the altercation firsthand since he was on the third-place podium with her. "Perhaps they thought she could placate the beast within him, or use her as a bargaining chip."
Mina chimed in. "Yeah! For someone as crazy as Bakugou, you'd think someone who could calm him down would be somebody just as scary!"
Many of the others seemed to accept this, but Todoroki and Iida seemed like they had other thoughts. "Iida-kun? Do you know something?" Uraraka asked him when she saw how furrowed his brows were.
He hesitated, afraid that if he said his thoughts aloud, they would come true. "...I hope this is not the case but...there could be a chance that they intend to use her for her skills."
Uraraka gasped. "You mean making support items for them?!"
Midoriya shouted, "Aya-chan would never do that!"
Todoroki calmly analyzed the situation again. "She wouldn't, but they might not think that. She wasn't in USJ when they first invaded, so the Sports Festival would be the first time they saw her. She was pretty ruthless in her fight with me. They might've thought she could be swayed to their side like Bakugou. Besides, they are villains. There's no guarantee that they don't have ways of forcing her to do what they want."
Midoriya just kept shaking his head in denial. He shut his eyes as tight as he could, as if to shut out all the thoughts from his mind.
"Midoriya! Think! Was there anything you saw on the villains that could've been something Sasaki made?" Todoroki shouted, but the green-haired boy was nearly growling, trying to shut everything out.
He didn't want to think about this. He knew that the more he thought about it, the more it would come true. The more likely it would be.
He tried as hard as he could to shut it out, but he was seeing flashes of the night of the attack. Of all the villains he saw and of his fights.
Midoriya's eyes shot open as his skin turned a color very similar to his clean, white hospital sheets. "D-Deku-kun...?" Uraraka probed.
"...The girl..." He whispered. Both Uraraka's and Tsuyu's eyes widened, knowing immediately who he was referring to.
"She said her name was Toga. Unless there were other female villains, she's the only one he could be talking about. She kept wanting to suck the blood out of us." Tsuyu surmised.
"...Her weapons...The needles..." Midoriya muttered. It was Kirishima's turn to grow pale.
"That's so cool! His quirk deals with his blood, right? That would explain all the needles and stuff." He said as he pointed to the design. There was an array of canisters attached with wires, presumably where the blood would flow through.
At Todoroki's questioning look, Kirishima explained. "I-I think I know what he's talking about. I once saw one of her drawings. She said she was making a support item for Vlad King and since his quirk deals with his blood, she had a bunch of designs with needles and canisters to store his blood."
"Midoriya! Is this true?" Todoroki questioned, but the boy was already long gone.
He was fully hyperventilating now, the weight of all these revelations setting in.
He had failed to save not one friend, but two.
The hospital heard a feral scream of pain and sorrow.