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They say that everything in America is bigger. The cars, the houses, the restaurant portions…and the villains, too.
This particular villain was just some asshat with more money than common sense, but the giant battle robot he was piloting did tower at fifty metres or thereabout—Izuku hadn’t exactly managed to make more precise calculations between rescuing a family of four from the robot’s laser beam and, unfortunately, getting himself captured by its pincers instead. Izuku readied a punch to release himself from the hold, but at the next moment, a sharp sensation made his muscles spasm uncontrollably.
Great, this one had electrocution, too. Izuku had been at the receiving end of Kaminari’s Quirk more than enough to recognise the symptoms.
Before Izuku had time to consider this further, his body was launched to the side, the pincers letting him go. He smashed against the glass wall of a skyscraper, the panel shattering into pieces as he tumbled onto the floor of what seemed to be an office building. There was no one around, which hopefully meant that everyone had already managed to evacuate.
Izuku gasped for breath, lungs struggling to take in precious oxygen while his body screamed alarm signals at him. Unfortunately, his troubles weren’t yet done: the building shook again, and Izuku found himself shifting to the side as the floor tilted. He tried to grab at the nearest thing he could reach to keep him steady, but the office chair simply dragged along with him. He rolled out of the hole in the wall that his body had made and into a freefall.
Izuku was plummeting towards the ground very fast and he needed to do something about that, right now. He tried to summon Float, but his brain felt sluggish and he had a hard time maintaining concentration. Eventually, he had to use a combination of his floating power and Black Whip to slow down his fall enough that he landed with no grace, but without sustaining further injuries.
He was thankful to discover that he was lying on the ground, in a back alley between two buildings, which hopefully meant he wouldn’t be falling further and would have time to gather his thoughts.
He had a feeling he was supposed to do something—oh, right. His communicator.
Izuku reached a trembling hand to his right ear, but found the earpiece missing. The left one was still there, but it was crackling uselessly, probably destroyed by the electric shock.
No calling his team for backup, then. Okay. Okay.
“Shit, it’s Hero Deku!”
“Who?”
Izuku blinked and craned his head in the direction of the voices, immediately regretting it when a sharp pain radiated through his skull. Unfamiliar faces peered at him from above.
“He’s conscious!”
Izuku opened his mouth to say something. Maybe sorry to bother you, but could you perhaps call for some backup? I kind of fell from the 20th floor just now.
It was harder than he expected. He only managed to get out a few garbled words.
“Please…need help…call the…”
“What is he saying?”
“I have no clue. Is that his language?”
Ah. Yeah. He must have switched to Japanese without realising.
Before Izuku could make his brain remember how English worked, one of the civilians pulled out her phone.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“It’ll take them too long,” the other one muttered. She had knelt next to Izuku at some point. “Hey, Hero Deku! Can you hear me?”
“Hnh?” Izuku grunted, hoping that it sounded like an affirmative.
“I’m going to use my Quirk on you,” the civilian said. “It can take you to the hospital real quick. East Side Hero Alliance is the closest one from here, you know it right?”
Izuku nodded, incurring another wave of headache. He had a tendency to become familiar with local medical establishments.
“Good. Now just picture that place in your mind, as clearly as you can. You can do it!”
The civilian clasped Izuku’s right hand between hers, and squeezed her eyes closed in concentration. The other woman was still on the phone.
Izuku tried to follow the civilian’s instructions and focus on the image of the hospital hallways, but her short, blonde hair kept distracting him.
He missed Kacchan. He wished it was Kacchan holding his hand. Kacchan would make everything alright. Kacchan would—
A whole-body shudder went through Izuku and when he opened his eyes, above him was just an open, blue sky. His nose tickled with something much more pleasant than the dingy smell of smoke and trash.
“What the fuck?!”
Izuku jolted with a gasp, his struggling heart singing at the familiar voice despite the profanity. Kacchan was here.
Logically, it didn’t make any sense. Kacchan was all the way in Japan. Looking at the beautiful sky above him, Izuku wondered if he had died and gone to Heaven.
When Kacchan’s face appeared in his field of vision, Izuku frowned. If this really was Heaven, Kacchan probably wouldn’t look so worried.
“Izuku, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Was goin’ to a- a hospital,” Izuku slurred. He had no idea what had gone wrong, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be very sorry that it had.
“You bet you were,” Kacchan said and took out his phone.
While Kacchan was talking to whoever was on the other end of the call, Izuku turned his head to the side to admire the flowers that were the reason for the pleasant smell. Seeing the white, bell-shaped blossoms made Izuku realise where he was.
This was the field that he and Kacchan had visited a couple times with their families. The flowers—lilies of the valley—had a strong, intoxicating scent and Izuku remembered well how nice it felt to lie among them and look at the clouds traversing the sky.
He was tempted to ask Kacchan to join him now, but the phone call was still ongoing—he shouldn't interrupt. Feeling increasingly light-headed, Izuku figured it wouldn’t be too bad to close his eyes, just for a minute while he was waiting for Kacchan.
Just for…a minute…
When Izuku opened his eyes again, he could tell that it had been more than a minute. Instead of lying on the field, he was in what seemed to be a hospital bed, judging from the interior design and the smell of disinfectant. The golden glow pouring in from the window suggested that it was evening.
The sound of the sliding door opening alerted Izuku, and he was glad to see Kacchan enter the room carrying a bottle of green tea.
“You been awake for long?”
Izuku shook his head.
“No…just a couple minutes.” His voice came out rougher than expected, and he accepted the tea bottle that Kacchan opened for him with gratitude. After taking a few sips, he passed the bottle back and met the other’s eyes.
“Kacchan…how did I end up here?”
Izuku had largely given up the theory of him having passed on—nothing around him quite matched his idea of a likely afterlife—and he certainly wasn’t in America anymore, since the gown he was wearing was marked the property of the Shizuoka General Hospital.
To Izuku’s surprise, Kacchan laughed a bit at the question.
“That’s what I wanted to know. So while you were being patched up by the doctors, I made a few overseas calls. Heard from your team that you went MIA after engaging in combat and then found out that a couple of civvies were freaking out when you hadn’t turned up at the hospital.”
Izuku blinked as flashes of memory began to return to him.
“One of them told the authorities her Quirk was s'posed to take you to the hospital as long as you focused on wanting to get there. Since she can’t teleport herself or decide the actual destination, she had no way of knowing where you'd gone so your team was looking for you everywhere.”
A twinge of guilt made Izuku grimace.
“...I’m going to have to apologise to her. I just got a bit…distracted.”
“Don’t think she minds too much,” Kacchan shrugged and sat on Izuku’s bed after a cursory check that Izuku’s legs were out of the way. “Not after you helped prove her Quirk’s on a whole ‘nother level than she thought.”
“What does that mean?” Izuku perked up, his ‘nerd senses’ (as dubbed by Kacchan) tingling.
“Before now, she had only been able to make people jump short distances. Mostly just a few blocks away, sometimes more if the target's motivated enough but still just 50 kilometres or so. Then you show up and decide to go all Plus Ultra, ending up fucking eight thousand kilometres away.”
Kacchan shook his head bemusedly.
“You really wanted to roll in those flowers that bad, huh?”
Izuku felt his face heat up as he picked up on the true meaning of Kacchan’s words. His good hand gripped the sheets instinctively.
“...You know it wasn’t the flowers that brought me there,” he muttered.
“Yeah, I know. …Still makes you a nutcase.”
The teasing was gone from Kacchan’s voice now and it was his turn to avoid Izuku’s eyes. Even after several years of fixing the rifts between them, of learning to talk to one another frankly and building a relationship together, there were still times when they were taken aback by the sheer intensity of what they had, and couldn’t help but wonder if they truly were deserving.
Izuku decided against trying to address Kacchan’s self-doubt with words—he suspected he had overwhelmed the other enough for one day. Instead, he held out his good hand and tilted his head with a small smile.
His wordless request for a hug was granted, and he even for a soft peck on the lips for his trouble. He settled against Kacchan’s shoulder with a happy sigh, suddenly noticing something on the bedside table.
“Oh, did you bring these?”
Kacchan turned his head to see the small bouquet of lilies of the valley that Izuku was referring to, casually placed in a plastic drinking glass half full of water.
“Pfft, no way. I had the old hag drive to the field to bring my backpack that I didn’t put in the ambulance. She figured they’d make a nice gift.” He looked disgusted at the thought.
“That was very thoughtful of her,” Izuku said, admiring the white blossoms and lush green leaves. “They’re lovely.”
“Tell that to the next suckers who try to go and have a relaxing afternoon in the field. You left it looking like a freaking crime scene. I’m not gonna be able to look at these normally ever again-”
The sentence was cut off when Kacchan’s phone started to ring.
“Ha, it’s the agency insurance department,” he told Izuku. “They’ll have a great time fighting the American lawyers about who gets to pay the hospital fees for injuries that happened on a different continent.”
He stood up and almost brought the phone to his ear, but then changed his mind.
“By the way, Izuku… They asked if you wanted them to mail your stuff back here.”
The question was left hanging in the air, Kacchan looking at him with a neutral expression as if to avoid influencing him one way or the other. The phone in his hand was still ringing.
Izuku’s contract in the U.S. still had about a month to go., but the injury had changed things somewhat. He probably could get an extension to cover the missing time, but…
“Yeah, I think I’d like that,” he said after a pause. “Maybe it’s time I came back home.”
A small shift in the angle of Kacchan’s mouth betrayed his satisfaction with Izuku’s answer.
“See you in the morning.”
After Kacchan left Izuku to his own devices again, the words sunk in properly. He would be seeing Kacchan again, tomorrow and the day after that and the next one, too. The thought filled him with a bone-deep sense of contentment that far outweighed the discomfort caused by his injuries.
Izuku glanced at the flowers once more before leaning back with a small sigh.
It’s good to be home.