Chapter Text
Toshinori fought through the tears in his eyes and the blood clogging his throat. The pain tore through his chest like a thousand red-hot knives trying to cut out his lungs bit by bit. Bloody memories of his battle with All for One came to mind as he once again felt like he was holding his guts in with his hand.
He was faintly aware of the almost-mugger who was desperately trying to use his shirt to stop the bleeding, not that it helped much. The poor boy (he couldn’t be older than 15) was sobbing as he relayed the situation to a concerned emergency operator.
It wasn’t his fault. The kid had just panicked when Toshi had moved too fast and in retaliation, he reacted with a solid hit on Toshi’s chest. To a normal person, it would have knocked the wind out of them and maybe caused a bruise.
For Toshinori, it tore apart the stitches of his most recent surgery, leaving him gasping for air through the blood that filled his newly acquired transplant lung.
The poor child had immediately dropped to his knees, trying to stop the blood that was coming from the incision that had opened up from the force of Toshi’s gasping coughs. Thankfully the emergency line was his first thought instead of trying to dodge it.
But goddamn this whole day sucked. He was just trying to pick up enough groceries for the week. He had even bought a bit of honey to celebrate his last surgery going well. The new lung had made everything seem so much easier and the future so much brighter.
So much for that idea.
Between the blood loss, his clogged throat, and the pain, time eventually stopped having meaning. It was hard to concentrate on the boy, or the operator, or anything at all.
It was like being adrift in a sea of mild acid. Painful on the surface but eventually you’re lulled into a relaxed state by the slow rise and fall of your consciousness.
He was going to die years ahead of Nighteye’s prediction and One for All was going to die with him.
Not quite sure if that counts as a win for him but if he was reincarnated as an animal (a rabbit?), he could hop down to Nighteye’s agency and gloat.
Just as he felt himself starting to slip away from blood loss, another person landed from somewhere above their heads, easily repelling down with some kind of cloth.
The boy perked up and immediately started tearfully babbling about the whole situation while the newcomer walked over and gave Toshinori a once-over. All Toshi could concentrate on was a set of very tired eyes sparkling with concern as the man ran his hand around the burst stitching.
Something the kid said must have set the man off because he suddenly turned around and whipped out the silver cloth around his neck (his quirk?) effectively pinning the kid’s arms before winding it around some piping.
With the kid immobilized far enough away, the man returned to Toshi’s side.
“Let’s see what we can do about this injury.”
The man’s voice was marvelous, like molasses filled with smooth rocks as strange as that sounds. The low vibration causing Toshi to involuntarily shudder.
As the man began skillfully stopping the external bleeding with first aid equipment pulled from a belt pouch, Toshi was treated to the full image of his hero.
The last rays of the sunset backlighted his face but it was obvious he was a handsomely rugged man. Long, thick, wavy hair settled around his shoulders, held away from his eyes by a pair of goggles. Despite the exhaustion obvious in them, his eyes were intense as he quickly moved from one task to another.
Toshi didn’t have long to appreciate the imagery because he had to turn his head to begin coughing up another round of blood.
As much as he wanted to stay positive about the whole situation, it was beginning to look grim. One man could only lose so much blood and with it draining from two sources, he was starting to panic.
He tried to watch the hero to give himself something to concentrate on that wasn’t dying but his vision was starting to shake, making those goggles look more like slatted blinds than actual goggles.
Wait, they were slatted.
Was this man Eraserhead?
Even a few months ago, Toshinori would have never known who this man was. Maybe if he was in the right mind he would have recognized him as an underground hero but not by name (as most underground heroes prefer).
But thanks to Tsukauchi’s long rants about his man crush the admirable underground hero he had gotten to meet a few times, Toshinori knew those goggles by heart.
Any attempt to say the hero’s name came out sounding like “‘razer eh”. But considering the amount of blood that had escaped his mouth in the past few minutes, it was pretty damn close. He at least thought it sounded right.
Apparently, Eraserhead did too as he hesitated for a fraction of a second before quickly moving on. “Not sure how you know my name but you’d better shut up instead of wasting your energy trying to impress me by name-dropping.”
The annoyed statement went in one ear and out the other as Toshinori quickly formulated a plan.
Every second he wasted he was a second closer to death and a second closer to losing One for All forever. There was a perfectly capable hero right in front of him who was apparently one of the good ones.
Would Nana approve?
He had imagined doing this the way Nana his other predecessors had done by choosing a successor and training them to become what he could no longer be.
But instead, he’d have to settle for finding a worthy hero at the very end.
Somehow under even under Eraserhead’s careful watch, he managed to lift his hand to his head and pluck what probably was more than one hair from his bangs.
By the time the younger hero noticed the movement, Toshi was already trying to force the hair into his hands.
“Eat this. My quirk…”
He suddenly felt like he was falling through the air, no parachute, no quirk.
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit-
A tense hand startled him into coming back.
Eraserhead had grabbed his shoulder, hovering over the injured man and watching him with an intensity that made even All Might shrink back a bit.
“Don’t you dare croak on me now. I want to know why you’re trying to shove a hair into my mouth. Getting it second-hand from your file at the morgue won’t be as fun.”
Toshi couldn’t help but laugh internally, even if his lungs wouldn’t comply.
It had been a long time since someone was brave enough to talk to him like that. People were too enamored with All Might and too gentle with fragile Toshinori. Dry and dark humor was something he rarely got to enjoy anymore.
What was he supposed to be saying?
“Eat it. You...you can help. One for All…”
The poor man looked disgusted for a moment, the most unconcealed emotion Toshi had seen yet. It was a very strange request and if Toshi had been thinking more clearly, he would have been better at this whole thing.
He must have said enough because Eraserhead snatched the hair out of his hand and poked it into his mouth with two fingers before grimacing and going back to tending to Toshinori’s wounds.
“Okay, now you better live so you can tell me what the hell that was supposed to do.”
There wasn’t enough blood left in his body to even risk laughing at the notion and thus coughing up more blood.
As he watched Eraserhead continuing to try and keep the external bleeding down long enough that the hospital could stop the internal bleeding, flashing lights in his peripheral told him that emergency personnel was closing in.
A little late though.
Despite having internally claimed he was out of energy, Toshi found it in himself to lift his hand once more, this time to put it on top of Eraserhead’s which was still providing pressure on his wound.
He would have given anything to have the cohesion to say something poetic as his last words.
Something like, “It’s alright. Why? Because you are here!” would have been nice.
Instead, he just lays there and stares up as the young hero become increasingly frantic as Toshi fades.
The edges of his vision tinge dark and all he can do is smile as he thinks about how great of a hero Eraserhead will make. Even greater than what he is now without the fear of getting caught in group battles or against mutant quirks.
One for All survives within him allowing it to survive into a new future.
And that future is good.
-----
Tsukauchi should have seen this situation coming a mile away.
“So let me get this straight-”
Toshinori flinched away from his friend’s exhausted tone but said nothing.
“-You gave your super-All-Might quirk to a guy you’ve never met before, and this quirk is powerful enough to endanger his life. Yet, you didn’t think to take five seconds to explain the whole thing to him. And now we have to find this ultra-elusive underground hero within days so he doesn’t shatter every bone in his body on his next patrol.”
Toshinori didn’t bother looking up from where he buried his face in his hands, ignoring the pull of the IV and blood transfusion lines sticking out of his arm.
After a moment of silence, Tsukauchi sighed and picked up his phone to start dialing.
“What are you doing?” Toshi rasped through the pain of his throat and damaged lung.
“Calling Present Mic.”
“Wha-”
“Don’t ask.”