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Hitomi ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
She’d seen the smoke all the way from the train station, and for some reason, she just knew. Upon reaching her street, her fears were confirmed.
Her foster home was up in flames, thick, acrid smoke pouring from some of the windows. Out on the sidewalk, some neighbors had gathered, having come to gawk at the blaze.
Her foster father was among them.
She did not see her foster siblings.
“Takeda!” she yelled, forcing her way through the crowd to the large man. Her backpack fell abandoned on the ground and she gripped his arm. “Where are they? Where are the kids!?”
Her ass hit the pavement as he shoved her off of him. He towered over her, his face red and ugly with a myriad of emotions as his house burned behind him. Rage was chief among them. “Don’t speak, girl!” even now, he still had the energy to hate her, “goddamn you, you probably did this, didn’t you!?”
“Where are the kids!?” Hitomi yelled again, hands turned to fists on the cracked sidewalk. She didn’t have time to deal with his bullshit right now. She had two younger foster siblings, a set of twins in elementary school. Every day without fail they got home before her. But maybe, maybe today-
But she watched how her foster father spluttered, his hand rubbing over his mouth. Watched the way he couldn’t help how his eyes flicked to the hellish inferno. And she knew.
No.
She was on her feet and rushing in through the front door before she could think. No one stopped her.
Immediately, she was overwhelmed. Fire had spread throughout the lower level of the house, the heat of it having her falter in her steps. Her eyes and lungs stung from the smoke, noxious from the various materials burning around her.
She hacked out a couple of coughs, stooping in some attempt to protect herself from what she was inhaling. She pushed forward, forcing herself to when her legs threatened to lock up, when her mind screamed at her to go back outside.
They were in a shit part of the city where heroes didn’t care enough to patrol and who knew when the fire department would get there. No approaching sirens could be heard as she ran up to the house. There was no time to wait for someone else to help.
“Girls!” her voice cracked in desperation. “Yuki! Aoi! Where are you!?”
There were no signs of the two kids on the lower level as she stumbled around, avoiding the encroaching flames and coughing through the smoke. She looked to the stairs, so far not cut off by the blaze. The bedrooms were upstairs.
She swallowed her fear. She was training to be a hero, she could do this.
She ascended the stairs.
“Girls!” she called again, throat rough from smoke. It was getting harder to breathe and she hadn’t been inside very long. She reached their door and tried the handle.
It was locked.
Damn it! Hitomi grabbed her hair in her hands and tugged in a moment of panic. Takeda had a habit of locking them in their rooms when he was pissed off. The only way to open them was with a key.
There was no time to look for the key.
‘Calm down, Hitomi. Keep a level head,’ she thought to herself, the voice in her head sounding a lot like Aizawa in that moment. She could do this. They’d gone over kicking down doors, along with other methods of entry, in her training not too long ago. She could do this. She had to keep reminding herself she could do this.
(She had to keep ignoring how terrified she was.)
It took three good kicks for the door to come open, and she nearly fell while stumbling inside. Coughing heavily, her watering eyes searched the room, finding two scared, crying faces peering up at her from under the bed the two girls shared.
Relief and renewed urgency filled Hitomi and she moved to kneel in front of the two kids. She found them, but now she had to get them out.
She held her arms out to them, “we have to go!” she said between coughs, making her voice as firm as she could. One of the sisters, Aoi, took her hands and she pulled her out from under the bed, lifting her to her feet.
When she reached for Yuki next, the girl just shook her head.
“Yuki, come on!” Hitomi urged. They needed to get out of here.
“No!” the frightened girl wailed, pushing herself further under the bed, “I can’t! I’m scared!” The fear was clearly overtaking the young girl’s mind, making it hard for her to even move.
They couldn’t waste any more time. As soon as she replied, Hitomi took a hold of Yuki’s mind. The girl’s cries immediately ceased, the terror fading from her face. Hitomi ordered her out from under the bed and lifted her up into her arms. As soon as she had a good hold of her, she released her quirk’s hold on Yuki. The girl whimpered and buried her face in Hitomi’s shoulder, shaking and crying. She turned to the other frightened girl at her side.
“Let’s go!”
Keeping a tight hold on Yuki, Hitomi ushered Aoi into the hallway and back towards the stairs.
It was a nightmarish sight, to see that the fire had crawled up the walls and to the ceiling of the level below. From the top of the stairs, her heart pounding, Hitomi felt as though she was staring into the entrance to Hell.
But even still, by some miracle, there was a path. The stairs were still clear, and just a few steps past them, was the open front door.
They were almost out.
“Down the stairs and through the front door!” Hitomi instructed Aoi, sounding much calmer than she felt.
The little girl looked up at her, and she must have found something in Hitomi’s face that reassured her because Aoi nodded and started down the staircase. Hitomi set Yuki down in front of her and urged her down the steps as well.
“I’m right behind you, it’s okay!” she reassured them like this as they went. They were almost out. Almost there.
Then it went wrong.
“Look out!”
There was screaming, the girls rushed forward, Hitomi jumped back.
A part of the burning ceiling came down right in the middle of the staircase, leaving Hitomi separated from her younger foster siblings. Thankfully, in the chaos, the twins had stumbled their way to the bottom of the stairs, but it now left Hitomi stranded on the second level.
The twins clutched each other, crying as they looked up at her. “Hitomi!!” they sobbed.
For a moment, Hitomi was frozen, looking down at what had been her means of escape as the flames spread to the upper level. Shaking herself out of it, she found her voice.
“Go! Get out while you can!” she yelled to them. When they hesitated, she yelled again, “I’ll find another way out, so go! Don’t look back!”
She stared down at them, wishing she could give them a smile or something to reassure them, to ease their fears. Her face just wouldn’t cooperate with her. Finally, the girls moved, tightly holding each other's hands, they turned and ran out of the house just before flames sealed off the entrance entirely.
Hitomi closed her eyes. There was relief, because at least the girls were out, but now there was nothing to distract from the fear. The heat and smoke were unbearable, the roar of the fire and the ominous cracks and groans of the crumbling building deafening. She was alone now. She was alone and no one was coming to save her.
‘Stay focused.’
Again, the voice in her head sounded like Aizawa’s. Her eyes shot open and she wheezed. Right. Stay focused. There was one last person she needed to save.
She backed away from the stairs, the fire ever encroaching, spreading, consuming. She turned and dashed back into the twins’s room, a plan formed in her mind.
A door wasn’t the only way to exit a building.
She went up to the window in the room, trying to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. Looking down, she saw that Takeda had at some point nailed the window shut. Of course.
Gritting her teeth, she glanced around the room and hefted up the standing lamp in the corner. Gripping it firmly, she aimed the heavy base at the window and started smashing. After a few desperate hits, the glass broke and immediately, it was like hell had erupted at her back.
The increased flow of air and the introduction of more oxygen had caused the flames behind her to rapidly grow in size and intensity. There was a sudden blast of heat behind her and Hitomi cried out as the flames ate at her back.
She sank to her knees, trembling at the pain. She whimpered, the smell of her own burning hair and even her flesh stinging her nose and bringing on a wave of nausea. At once, she felt nearly all her remaining strength leave her, her consciousness almost fading away completely.
‘Get up. You have to get out.’
Aizawa again. Her mentor may as well have been a full blown apparition for the strength of his image at the back of her mind, constantly propelling her forward.
She obeyed, sluggishly climbing out of the broken window, ignoring the way the broken glass cut and tore at her clothes, at her body. She emerged onto the small expanse of roof, dragging her battered body out into the open air, coughing and wheezing and crying all the way.
For a moment, Hitomi could only blink up at the vast sky, taking in the brightness of the sun, its visage marred slightly by the rising cloud of black smoke. She looked back over at the hell she’d just come from, then with the last of her strength, she rolled herself off the roof and down onto the yard below.
She was out.