Chapter Text
Kirishima’s head is pounding, there’s a ringing in his ears and his heartbeat feels too strong for his veins. His vision is a blur of color. Pinks, yellows, oranges and blacks swim around him and, they’re making noise.
A lot of noise.
There’s a weird pressure on his chest too, pushing him down into heated concrete over and over again. Suddenly he realizes he isn’t breathing, that the tightness in his lungs isn’t from what feels like repeatedly being body slammed into the ground, his body flails up into an upright position as he wheezes and coughs. Spit is dribbling down his chin as he dry heaves and gets spread across his face at his attempts to wipe it away. There’s a crowd now and he knows he’s going to be embarrassed as hell when all this is over.
When his body finally settles, he spreads out onto the ground again, torso too tired to support his sitting position. There’s tears drying quickly down his face as the sun beams down on him.
He must’ve been beaten up pretty bad this time, he doesn’t think he’s ever had an out of body experience after a fight before though. Sure he wasn’t the strongest guy around but he knew how to take a punch.
He realizes belatedly there’s a light being flashed in his eyes, or at least it’s trying to be flashed in his eyes. There’s a gentle hand on his face, fingers trying to hold his left eye open as he stubbornly tightens it even more.
Can’t a guy just lay on the sidewalk half dead without being disturbed?
“He seems pretty conscious to me, just a bit stubborn.”
Well, his hearing was back. Baring his teeth at whoever was talking about him, he moves his arm to cover his eyes. His mom’s weren’t going to be happy if they got a call from the police or even this well-meaning lady who sounds too young to be a professional health worker.
“Uraraka! Take him to the nurse. Jirou you follow, explain to recovery girl what’s happened and make sure to tell her to send you back with a report.”
Oh god he was at school, this just make things even more embarrassing. He already had a reputation. Oddly enough though nobody sounds familiar, and he’s never heard anyone refer to the nurse as a recovery girl.
“I could take him!”
Welp, that’s familiar. Of course it’s gotta be her.
“You’re not dragging an injured person on a trail of acid, ever.”
“Relax Min, I got this!”
There’s a light caress against his shoulder and suddenly he’s weightless. In a bout of panic he kicks out and actually launches himself upwards off the ground, spinning wildly before a hand snatches him back down. Oh god he almost barfed. The crowd around him yell in concern or to tell the girl still holding him to be careful.
“Forget it! I’ll take him.” It’s the same man who told Ashido she wasn’t going to drag him on acid and he can only assume that he’s the teacher. He’s handed over with babbling apologies before the girl releases her quirk on him. his entire body feels like it’s going to drop straight to the center of the earth. “Ilda, get them back to the classroom, and grab Present Mic from the staff room to start todays lesson early.”
He relaxes into the teacher’s grip, more than thankful to be carried away from a class full of loud teens no matter how embarrassing. At least the nausea passed.
--
He wakes up on a cot with a smiling old lady leaning over him.
It’s cold and… his shirt was missing??? But he has sleeves…what the hell?!
He scrambles to sit upright, alarmed at his state of undress. Once the blankets been kicked off he relaxes, he still has on a pair of pants, even if they look like they’d slide right off his hips the moment he stands up.
“Kirishima! Glad to see you back with us, you took quite the hit today! I’ll send for your teacher while you get yourself settled.”
She pats his arm gently and hands him a glass of water before pulling the curtain back to give him some privacy.
She definitely didn’t look like the school nurse he knew, and he was well acquainted with all of them. She was probably new then. They’d be well acquainted by the end of the school year.
He takes gentle sips out of the glass he’s been handed, eyes fluttering shut as he relishes in the way it smooths over the dry spots in his throat.
His whole body feels sore and he really wants to just lay back down and fall asleep again, not at all excited about the earful his mama was going to give him when she is inevitably called in away from work. Staring down at the half empty glass he lets out a heavy sigh before leaning over with a groan to put it aside on the tiny side table covered in folded blankets. Now that he is looking around, the nurses office doesn’t look the way he remembered it either, not to mention he’s half dressed. He pulls the blanket up tighter around himself.
This is too weird
Logically he has to be at school. Ashido was here, the nurse knew his name and said she was calling for his teacher, there’s nowhere else he could be. Before he could really start thinking about it the older lady from earlier peeks her head into the closed curtain to smile sweetly.
“Your teacher is here dear.”
The curtain is pulled aside further to let in a haggard looking man dressed in all black save for the almost comically long scarf wrapped across his shoulder’s multiple times.
He looks between him and the nurse. This man was definitely not his teacher, there had to be some sort of mistake.
“Uhhh…”
The nurse looks like she is about to speak up, to attempt to relieve his confusion when the man steps forward to speak in place.
“Kirishima, you were hit with a quirk during class today by an upperclassman” well that explained why he was knocked out cold, but not anything else.
“You’re… you were sixteen years old, and you attend U.A. Highschool, you’re in class 1-A, you live on campus with your classmates due to a villain related accident earlier this school year and I’m Eraserhead your teacher.”
The man takes an exasperated breath in before continuing, “The quirk you were hit with is called reversal, in this case they reversed your age by about a year or two, it’ll wear off within about two days or so. That should be all you need to know, but if you have any questions please ask now.”
Kirishima doesn’t know what to say, there is no way any of this is real, he’s probably still knocked out on the sidewalk outside, or dreaming or, or he’s being pranked! … but then, this is all too elaborate and why the hell would an underground hero take time out of his day to be on a prank show? And now that his head is a little less foggy, he remembers someone calling the nurse recovery girl…. She… didn’t show up much in the news anymore, not since he was a literal child, but everyone who ever bothered to keep up with hero related things knew she never retired, that she just moved into a much less taxing area of healing.
“W-wait! This doesn’t make sense, I… I’m not, I can’t be… how?!?!”
“With hard work of course!” Recovery girl pipes up cheerfully.
“Great, you seem to be just fine. You have the rest of the day to recuperate but I expect you in class tomorrow and taking notes that’ll actually help you when you return to normal. I’ll send over a classmate of yours to escort you to the dorms and get you settled.”
Eraserhead gives him a final look over before turning on his heel to leave in silence.
“This must be such a shock for you,” the nurse’s voice startles him out of his thoughts. She prattles over to her desk to retrieve a bright red hard candy to hand back to him with another reassuring smile.
“Don’t worry though, you’ve got plenty of kind friends to keep you company through this confusing time. I’m sure there’s a ruckus going on as we speak as your classmates argue over who should help you get settled.”
He tries to offer a smile in return, he really, truly does but it feels weak even with the amount of effort he puts in.
“Thank you, Recovery Girl.”
She gives a happy hum and turns back to sit at her desk, typing away on her outdated computer. The wrapper of his candy crinkles obnoxiously as he unwraps it carefully slow.
Friends huh?