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Kyouka knows that when she told her parents that she wanted to be a hero, she was putting herself in a position where she could die too early, too soon, not that any death was timely but that it's an occupational hazard. It happens. Heroes get killed on the field, on missions, on accidents. Some get killed in action, some don’t make it to the hospital. But few, so, so few, die on an ordinary day when they’re with friends and their homeroom teacher on a harmless trip to the mall ruined by a villain with an explosion quirk that is definitely not like Bakugou because this particular sparky boom boom man can explode things after five seconds of touching them and gods if she can just survive this, she’ll never go the mall again. Ever. Because if it’s not lame-ass Shigaraki threatening her friends, it’s some no-name villain going on a rampage in a damn mall at two in the afternoon.
But that’s not the problem - no, no because they’re over that. The man has been apprehended after going head to head with Aizawa-sensei, Midoriya, and Sero. But apparently the man just had to have planted explosives in the different areas of the mall. And who in the world does that? For what purpose? To cause chaos? Destruction? To what end?? Even Stain was a better villain than this sparky boom boom man. Even Shigaraki had something he wanted to stand up for. But this guy??? Nothing he said made sense to Kyouka. Not his raucous laughter that still rings in her ears even after the fact of his capture, not his wild heartbeat that’s as loud and active as his palpable excitement, not his mishmash of nonsense that he is made for destruction - and the question that plays on repeat in her head is why why why why why????? Why them? Why now? Why always her class? Why her? And she wants to cry. She wants to panic and curl up in a ball and play loud music and scream but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t.
Not when she’s buried under the rubble.
Not when smoke and dust and debris fill the air she breathes, and screams and cries bleed through her ears.
Not when she’s bleeding through a head wound and a light head and she just knows she has a broken foot.
Not when Kaminari is here, with her, and with a metal pole pierced right through him, and he is bleeding. There is so much blood pooling at her feet and there’s this voice in her head that they might just not make it.
And she is afraid, terrified, that no one is coming to save them, that she will have to watch Kaminari die, that she watched him die, and then she would have to die herself because that’s what happens when you get buried alive.
You run out of time.
And it’s dark, it’s dark, why is it so dark? She can feel the cold air and she feels darkness creeping in and she can’t - she can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. What happened to the oxygen? Are they out of air? Is this how she dies? She hears a groan and she knows it’s Kaminari, she knows it’s him, she knows because it has to be because he has to be alive, because it’s his heartbeat that she still hears. It’s his heartbeat that is faint yet steady, and he has to be alive, because she doesn’t know what she would do if her best friend is dead.
And she doesn’t want this.
“Jirou…”
Why does it have to be them?
“Jirou…”
Why always them?
“Jirou…”
Why can’t they have one day, just one day, without anyone trying to kill them?
“Kyouka!”
She startles.
What?
“Hey, look at me.”
She finds herself blinking, a heavy breath releasing itself from her lungs, and she unfurls from the ball she unintentionally wrapped herself in.
“Eyes on me, Kyou."
“Denks?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me.”
And she wants to cry, she wants to, because Denki, her best friend, is still alive and breathing and the panic that was just starting to settle is slowly calming down at the image of him breathing. Labored, tired, hopefully no pierced lung but he’s breathing.
She closes the inches between them, her hands reaching out to the wound that’s in his body. The metal pole is there, still there, but the bleeding has stopped. She doesn’t know if that’s a good thing but him being alive is good enough for her.
“Breathe with me,” Denki tells her, and although his breaths come out shaky, he breathes with her - and they do so together, in sync, to a beat that only they know. He breathes and she follows, he exhales and she releases, quiet and steady and gentle, until he grabs her hands and asks, “Better?”
“Better,” she says.
“Good."
Then she takes a deep breath and shakes her head.
“We need to get you out of here.”
“Yeah, I sorta figured that out. Got any plans?”
“Let me… let me listen. Triage, though. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“I think I have a concussion but I’d live. I think.” And he tries to pass off a smile, a laugh, something that she knows she’d feel at ease with but there’s a cough and some blood and she knows there’s no time.
“Just… just stay there, yeah?”
“I don’t have a choice, but sure,” he jokes.
So Kyouka does what she does best. She listens.
She listens for footsteps and heartbeats and voices.
She listens for the people she knows.
And she hears them. Ignoring all the other noise that just about threatened to drown her, she braces herself and compartmentalizes.
The police are here, and so are the paramedics. Sparky boom boom man’s voice is absent, so he’s either on the way to prison or somebody knocked him out. Uraraka is clearing rubble about approximately 15 feet of her, with Kirishima and Sero helping out. Momo is set on what she can only assume is her base camp as she tries to provide whatever she can for the people, whether shock blankets or extra bandages. And then - there! Close but not close enough, she hears Aizawa-sensei, Shouji, and Midoriya. They’re searching for people, for survivors, for people buried under just like her but they aren’t close enough. She knows because Shouji has been her hearing partner for so long and she knows his limits just as he does hers. She knows because they’re wondering where she is. She knows that he can’t hear them. She can hear everything above her but he’s too far away to hear her and isn’t that a scary thought? That no one knows they’re here because it is her job to listen for things like this, to hear through the vibrations rather than just the sound, and she feels the panic coming in again but more than that, she hears Denki’s breaths becoming more labored.
She knows she has to do something, she just isn’t sure what. Because she can scream and cry and plead but nothing will come to their rescue, not fast enough to save Denki, not fast enough to make sure he lives, because no one can hear them.
Because this is her job and she failed at it and her failure would mean Denki’s death.
But she eyes the metal pole that’s in Denki’s body and she has an idea.
And gods that idea can kill her.
But that’s what a hero is, right?
Kyouka knows that when she told her parents that she wanted to be a hero, she was putting herself in a position where she could die too early, too soon, not that any death was timely but that it happens.
It happens.
Heroes get killed on the field, on missions, on accidents. Some get killed in action, some don’t make it to the hospital. But few, so, so few, die on an ordinary day. And maybe this is Kyouka’s day. And maybe she regrets it, just a little bit, that she felt too excited to leave the house today that she didn’t get to say goodbye to mom and dad. But she doesn’t regret this, not a bit, that she wanted to be a hero. Because right here, right now, with her best friend right beside her, maybe she could be his hero.
“Hey, Denks?”
“Yeah, Kyou?”
“Can you do me a favor?” she asks, her voice quiet and steady and she wishes he’d say yes.
“That depends. I’m pretty stuck here,” he laughs, and she laughs, too, because this is what they do.
They laugh and they joke around because they’re kids.
They’re just kids.
“Aizawa-sensei and the others, they’re above us, close enough for me to hear them,” she says softly and she hates the way his eyes light up, the way there’s a spark of hope in them, and she hates how she has to break it down, “but they can’t hear us. Shouji won’t be able to hear us.” And she had to look away because she knows that she killed it, the spark of hope, so she focuses on her hands instead, on the blood drying over, and she opens and closes her fists and attempts to ground herself again. “I can’t use my quirk for us because at the state of things, we’d just bury ourselves even more and then they’d have more trouble finding us.” Somewhere in the background she can hear someone calling for her and Kaminari, she’s not sure who and she doesn’t want to know because has to focus on the here and now. She has to focus on saving rather than being saved because being a victim will save no one. “So I need you to do something for me.”
“What is it?”
“Electricity,” she says simply. She knows Kaminari is getting better at controlling his quirk. She knows that he doesn’t startle as much and he doesn’t accidentally activate it anymore. But she also knows that quirks are defensive in nature - that it will save its user first before anyone else. She eyes the metal pole again and she knows that Denki is getting it, getting an idea of what’s forming in her mind. “Electricity creates a certain sound and we just need it to travel high enough for Shouji to hear it.”
“Kyou, no -“
“And I know he knows that sound because we’ve been training ourselves to pay attention.”
“Kyou -“
“We’ve been up on nights we can’t sleep and we familiarize ourselves with the way everyone breathes, the way their hearts beat, the way their quirks hum.”
“Kyou, listen to me -“
“And I know he’d find you, he’d find us, but I need you to use electricity and make it travel through this metal and force it to go higher to reach the wires and use that to reach the others.”
“Kyou, please -“
“Chargebolt,” she calls and he stops and they stare at each other, one pleading her to stop, the other begging him to listen, and they can’t keep this up because they are running out of time. “This is what we were made to do,” she says.
“I won’t do it.”
“I know.”
“I can hurt you.”
“I know.”
“I can’t.”
“I know.” And she smiles.
And she reaches out to the metal that is sticking through his body and she grasps it tightly in her hand.
“You are the kindest person I know, Denks,” she says.
“Don’t, please,” and just like her, he’s crying. There’s not much strength left in him, but she knows there’s enough for one final shot.
“Be a good hero for me, yeah?”
And Kyouka twists.
There is grating in her ears, loud, loud, loud and angry and hurting and in pain.
And she cries even harder, I’m sorry’s rushing past her lips but she doesn’t stop, doesn’t stop herself from twisting that pole and hurting Denki and hearing him scream and she tells him, because she knows it’s coming, she can feel it in the air, that it’s going to be okay.
He’s going to be okay.
And then there was nothing but white hot pain, burning and searing itself into her skin, and a scream so loud she knew it would reach the high heavens.
And she wishes it’s enough to save Denki.