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When Izuku was pushed out of the airplane, thousands of miles in the air with no parachute after being shot with one of the 24-hour quirk-erasing bullets that were still in circulation, his heart had been racing, stomach performing somersaults, and he’d tried to figure a way out of the situation. As he fell, he spread his arms and legs out and pointed himself facedown, eyes scanning the ground for some way - any way - for him to survive the fall. The problem was, the closer he got to what he thought was the ground, the less he was able to see. Visibility was bad enough when the night sky was obscured by dark clouds, but Izuku could barely see the end of his nose, let alone the ground.
With no idea of where the ground was or how fast it was coming, Izuku closed his eyes and tried to prepare for the moment when his body would crash into something unseen, pain shooting through his entire being as he came to a sudden deadly stop, followed closely by the end of his rather short life. Without knowing why (maybe it was because he wanted some form of control in his final moments) Izuku started counting the seconds.
1 . . .
2 . . .
3 . . .
He counted the minutes.
1:04 . . .
2:19 . . .
3:11 . . .
He gave up sometime after minute 7. He wasn’t exactly a professional math person (their exact title eluded him at the moment), but he couldn’t believe that he hadn’t felt or heard anything besides the wind as he fell through the air. Every logical cell in his brain told him he should be writhing in pain right now. Or dead. But . . . no. He was still falling.
He knew that he was still in danger, but he couldn’t help the feeling of security that settled over him. Falling was becoming normal to him. After a bit of hesitation, Izuku opened his eyes one at a time. He couldn’t see anything. Just a black void that stretched out farther than Izuku could imagine. To be honest, it was getting kind of boring. And while he was totally opposed to dying, he didn’t exactly feel like falling for eternity either.
As time wore on (Izuku estimated it had been approximately fifteen minutes since he began his descent), he noted that it didn’t feel like he was falling so fast anymore. Instead, it felt more like he was sinking, like when you expel all the air from your lungs when you're swimming so you could sit on the bottom of the pool and impress all the little kids.
Izuku had never done that, of course, but he had been one of the kids, watching in awe as his father and uncle pretended to play a card game while underwater. Whenever Izuku'd tried it, he'd always ended up hacking water up after nearly drowning. His mom put a stop to it, though, banning him from all swimming pools until he learned not to drown.
Izuku shook his head to dispel the memory. Now was not the time to reminisce on his previous near-death experiences.
With nothing better to do, and in an attempt to stay in the present, Izuku tried once more to find anything in the darkness. Straight ahead, he saw nothing. To his right, more nothing. Left, nothing. Back towards the plane? Nope. Down past his feet? Nada. Above his head? Just more of the same bla-
Wait.
Izuku blinked. He’d been in the dark so long that when he saw a faint glimmer of light flickering above his head, he thought he must be imagining things. It was so faint, so far away, that even if he focused on it, he couldn’t be completely sure if it was there or not. He squinted his eyes at it, frowning in confusion. Was it really there? Were his eyes playing tricks on him? Was it the ‘light’ people were always jokingly telling each other not to go towards?
It took a while, but eventually, Izuku decided that he wasn’t seeing things. There was a light and he needed to get closer to it. Almost as soon as that thought crossed his mind, Izuku felt himself shifting directions, slowly changing course from the neverending darkness that had been before him to the only thing he could see. Izuku’s heartrate picked up once more, pumping the blood through his body in a familiar thrum as he fell towards the light.
Izuku saw it shift as it grew closer, changing color and shape. One moment it looked pink, the next it was metallic silver. Then a sparkly line shot across the center followed by a bright orange glow suddenly taking over the entire area. Izuku was close enough now to see that the light was getting bigger. It was hexagonal in shape and the more he looked at it, the more it began to seem like a hole into another place. Like a portal of some sort. Getting closer, Izuku could make out figures through it. Familiar figures. His friends. Unconsciously, Izuku’s right hand reached forward as if it was trying to reach them.
Then a light glinted off the surface of the portal. Like something was blocking it from the vast darkness Izuku had been trapped in. It was clear, like glass, but he couldn’t know how strong it was. All he could be sure of was that it was a physical barrier keeping him separated from his friends. From his family.
Izuku scowled at the obstruction. He knew what he had to do. He’d had to overcome barriers before. Hundreds of them, in fact. Ever since he was a kid, one thing or another kept getting in his way, trying to stop him from becoming a hero. But he’d always persevered. And in the end, through no small amount of luck, he managed to bust through it.
So, gritting his teeth and balling his scarred right hand into a fist, Izuku met the portal with his knuckles as he bashed the barrier, breaking it into a billion tiny pieces, and stepped back onto the plane.