Chapter Text
“GIVE HER BACK!” Spears and spikes of stone surged from several directions, charging straight for him and the little girl in his arms. The man whose power caused the rocks to erupt leaped forward, his hand reaching out.
The boy couldn’t dodge well while in midair, but he wouldn’t let go. He would never let her go. He would keep her safe, and no one would ever hurt her again. He flung his limbs, charged with his own power, twirling his legs and smashed the incoming stalactites.
In the blink of an eye, he was among the clouds, still holding onto the turquoise-haired girl wrapped in bandages. The green-coloured boy stood out in the sky as he oversaw the vast city, far below his airborne iron soles.
“That kick somehow blasted me straight into the sky,” Deku revelated. “Sorta like All Might’s New Hampshire Smash… the air pressure propelled me at a high speed, did I lose control? Like when I fought Kacchan?” Memories of his fight with his old friend flashed in his mind.
“In other words,” his thoughts raced, realization after realization, piecing together what was going on. “I used One for All at 100%... No, that can’t be right!” Every other time he’s used his power to its fullest extent, his limbs broke and tore, becoming bloodied limp lengths of flesh and bone. This time was different though, his legs were perfectly intact.
Descending to the streets below, he looked at the little girl in his arms and smiled. Even if he didn’t understand what was going on, he wanted to reassure her that everything would be okay. With a subtle kick from his knees, he cushioned their impact with the ground, shattering the street below to make way for his feet to slide to a halt.
“My body’s on fire… Wait, no! It’s cold…?” his mind tried to register what he was feeling in his muscles. “I used all of my power but… I’m okay… My bones are intact, in fact, even my injuries from before are gone!”
The greenette boy stood the girl on her feet, and knelt before her, their faces meeting eye to eye. “Is this your power at work? Are you… a healer?” A throb echoed through his body, feeling as though it were being torn apart.
“She has no control over it.” Boomed a gnawing, monstrous voice from nearby. In an instant, the ground cracked right for the girl. In an instant, Deku leapt for her, saving her from the raging beast that stood before them. “She may have activated her quirk in time, but she doesn’t know how to turn it off! Isn’t that right, Eri?”
“She has the power to rewind people, that’s her secret,” the monster continued, its appearance a crimson titan of a beast with what looked like a maw, its centerpiece being Kai Chisaki, the man who Eri was to be saved by. “Use her right and you might even be able to turn someone back into a monkey!”
“You keep carrying her like that and you’ll be annihilated,” his entire body seemed to have veins popping out, even his green jacket seemed malformed. “Everyone who touches her is rewound into nothingness. Didn’t I tell you that the girl is cursed?” The monstrous man continued to talk about how she was going to essentially end his life if he did not return her to him.
The green boy pieced together that her quirk kept rewinding his body back to a state of perfect condition, even after he smashed his limbs apart again and again, using his supreme strength. “It seems to me, your quirk is a blessing, Eri.”
With that, he coursed his quirk of One for All through his veins, Full Cowling, at full strength, 100%. His hair sparked a bright cyan, levitating to the skies where he once was, and while the monster monologued about how her quirk could be used to cure humanity of the disease of quirks, he launched himself at full force back into the sky together with the beast.
Punches, kicks, flings, jolts, flicks, slaps, any form of force he could exert was necessary. He had to break himself before Eri could rewind him to nothing. This desperate emission of power opened a door of opportunity, however. With his demanded strength, Deku charged millions of fists worth of impact onto the crimson creature, blasting it to smithereens again and again as it kept reshaping itself back to completion. With a direct hit to the core, the man’s upper body himself, he knocked the man unconscious and stopped his beastly form from reshaping.
Once back on the ground, the monster’s parts scattered, and the man knocked out reverted back to his normal human form. The green boy, on the other hand, wasn’t so fortunate. His limbs had finally torn apart, even his chest had partially succumbed to the force. While before, the girl’s horn had been burning a golden glow, it was nothing but a simple stub on her forehead now.
Pain flooded his mind as his adrenalin ceased. It was too much for his head to bear, and he slipped into unconsciousness. The last glimpse of life he witnessed was a soft brunette girl in black and white clothing, running towards him as she called his name.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
“That’s weird,” he thinks. His alarm clock sounded different today, and a lot slower in frequency.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
He could swear that the alarm’s in sync with his heartbeat.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Wait… heartbeat… He opens his eyes and immediately shuts them with a wince as a bright light glares into his pupils. “Deku!” a soft, tranquilizing, and familiar voice gasps. He hears footsteps run to his side, and he tilts his head to the source, opening his eyes once more.
The emerald boy’s emerald eyes meet with the chocolate girl’s chocolate ones, and a smile blooms on both of their faces. Regardless of where he was, the boy knows everything is alright when she smiles at him like that.
“Oh, thank God, you’re awake,” the girl sighs. “I-… we all thought you were going to die, back there…”
“We…?” his brows furrow. He looks around the room, and his suspicion is confirmed. He’s in a hospital, and about five… no, six people are there to visit him. Some of them are in bandages, and after squinting, the boy recognizes every single one of them.
The tall man in black and gray attire steps forth and begins to speak. “Midoriya, your situation is rather unfortunate,” his voice is monotone, but it seems to be more melancholic than usual. “During that fight with Chisaki in the air, you broke not only the entirety of your arms and legs, but also a good portion of your shoulder and hip joints.”
This isn’t anything he hasn’t heard before, he wrecked himself fairly hard fighting a villain made of pure muscle and came out alright shortly afterward-
“According to the doctors, you will be out of commission for an indeterminate amount of time,” his black-clad teacher continues. “Somewhere in between a few weeks and a few months. You are excused from your training until your doctors confirm you can go back to physical exercises.”
Now that’s something new. He’s damaged his limbs to the point where he couldn’t even do homework, but never has it lasted longer than about one month. Had he damaged himself that badly? What happened to Eri’s rewinding?
“I’m sorry you’re badly hurt because of me,” the little girl croaks, her voice soft and delicate, yet sobbing, as she always has every time, she spoke from what he could remember. “If I could control my quirk, I wouldn’t have stopped, and you wouldn’t have…”
“Hey, hey Eri,” the blonde one with the cartoonish face and beady blue eyes coos. “It’s okay! He’ll get better in a few months, and I’ll still get to be a hero! Even though I don’t have my permeation anymore…”
“Didn’t Chisaki say that her quirk rewinds people?” ribbits the green, froggy girl. “What if she could try rewinding Midoriya and Togata back to normal?”
“She can’t control her quirk,” Mr. Aizawa answers, his black hair drooping over his face and piercing red eyes. “But she could get proper training to do so, now that she’s under the care of U.A.”
Midoriya and Eri both light up, their eyes widening and a gaping mouth enlarging on both of their faces. “She’s staying at U.A.?” he asks, followed by her asking “I can help them?” Everyone nods to the both of them, smiles on their faces.
“Yeah, you can do it!” Togata the blonde and Kirishima the redhead cheer in unison, both giving a chivalrous thumbs up and a smirk.
Sometime later, Togata and Eri both leave with Mr. Aizawa back to U.A., leaving Midoriya with his classmates that were there during the raid that ended with him in this state. As soon as the door shuts, Uraraka, the brunette, bursts into tears and hugs the lying green boy.
“So close…!” he screams internally, his face reddening. “No, she’s crying. I have to comfort her.”
“Deku…” she sobs, Kirishima and Tsuyu the frog girl simply standing by the door, watching quietly as their classmates have their moment.
“Uraraka, are you okay?” he worries. He can’t even move his fingers right now, so the best he can do is talk to her.
“Y-yeah, Yeah, I’m okay, I just-…” she sobs, sniffling as she looks him in the eyes. If only he could wipe the tears off of those soft cheeks of her. He hated seeing her like this. “I thought you… we thought you were going to die…”
“You need to hurry. You three are safe. At least for the time being,” the moss-haired man in white grunted, an enormous stalactite piercing his chest. “He is not going to target any of us. They’ll head to the surface, in pursuit of Midoriya… and Eri.”
With a pause for raspy breath, the man looked not in any of their eyes, his glasses shunning his from her sight. “Then, they’ll… Kill Midoriya… and escape.”
Horror shivered down her spine like a frostbiting wind in the winter. Thousands of thoughts flooded her brain, and in a moment of pure desperation, the brunette girl began to run. “We can’t let him-…!” She collapsed, her body still weak from the villain she faced prior, who drained her of her energy. She wanted to move, but she was so weak. “Deku…!” she cried in her mind.
She didn’t want him to die. She didn’t want to lose him. She never even considered the thought of him being gone before, and now it hit her like a train. She was going to lose him; she was going to lose Deku. Izuku Midoriya, her best friend, the one person she admired, idolized, and cared about the most, was to die in a moment’s notice.
“I foresaw it…” he groaned.
“We can’t just sit here and do nothing!” declared the dragon lady, her wings sprouted, ready to ascend.
“Given the shape you’re all in,” he continued. “You cannot stop him. I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t matter!” The brunette’s hands swept along the rubble, nullifying the pull on the rocks down to the earth below. “I have to do something and help him!”
“There’s no future,” she began to scream, as she faced the raging monster of a man before her. “Except the one you create!”
“Holy crap, he foresaw Midoriya dying?!” the redheaded Kirishima shouts in shock. It’s as if he never thought he could die. The thought makes him smile a bit; he’s honoured to be thought of like that by someone with such a cool quirk like Kirishima’s.
Midoriya takes the smile Kirishima put on his face and stretches it into the same one he showed to Eri the last time he was awake. It hurts, causing him to wince. Did the bruises stretch up his neck? “Hey,” he grabs the attention of Uraraka, and his other two classmates present. “I am here.”
That stopped her crying. Relief fills both of their chests, and she lifts herself from him, letting go of his arm. Tsuyu walks over to the brunette and comforts her with hugs and pats. The red-haired fellow grins from ear to ear, distracting the green-haired boy’s mind from the bandages he was covered in. “Bro, that was so manly…”
Before he could say thank you, a nurse walks in and ushers them out. “Go on now, Izuku Midoriya is scheduled for surgery.”