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Scouting missions can be interspersed with all sorts of issues.
If Shouta’s lucky, ‘issues’ usually only describes his perspective on it, and not the actual happenings; paperwork, after all, has always sought the untimely death of his free will and want of doing anything else.
If he’s unlucky, which holds truer and truer each and every day his human lucky charm is away for his overseas mission, it might be that they have an issue with a suspect. A villain. A civilian. Or worse, dealing with the waterworks. Emotional dealings aren’t his thing. Clause 84 of Pro Heroes in Peril may think the civilian comes first when it comes to that, but-- don’t think twice on that, actually. This may be one of the few times he agrees with the sentiment. He’s just not as good as it as someone like their No.1 hero would be.
Civilians always come first. Do what you can to keep the public safe. Don’t strike fear into their hearts if it’s nonsensical, provides no purpose other than to fear-monger, to make their doubt and second guessing linger. Cause more trouble than it’s worth for everyone else trying to rescue them.
Which might be why he finds himself here in this position; legs pinned beneath a… what he assumes to be a now fallen-over support beam, the one he’d been leaning against before this all started, capture scarf extenuating the situation by holding up what’s left of the ceiling, and, hm.
The other underlying problem shining their phone’s flash-feature in his eye.
“Would you stop that,” he snaps.
The intimidating factor he usually has on his side is likely lessened by the sharp intake of breath taken immediately afterwards, when his foot lodges the pillar a single inch. Still, the scintillation falters, and his eyes no longer want to die.
Shouta offers out a begrudging 'thanks' with a grunt and a barely-there smile. _____ for the cameras, people, Hizashi would say. Connect the dots yourself.
A wince. “Hey, man, um, your pupils aren’t dilated,” Troublemaker #1 reports, prompting Shouta’s brows to raise amidst all the nerves in his face lighting a silent vigil. “So, no concussion. That's probably good. Right?"
Shouta barely manages a snort.
“A concussion would be the least of my problems,” he replies truthfully.
Blinks when they trail closer, kneels on one scraped knee, flourishing the open scratches with grit.
“I know,” they admit. “Uh, can I just say..." Here they go. "I'm real fucken sorry for earlier. Kinda thought you were a narc, and, ah-- reacted. My friends say 'm trigger-happy."
“I bet you get that a lot."
"I bet you do too," they shoot back.
Shouta can't fathom what they're talking about until they mouth 'n-a-r-c' again. Which, admittedly, is a rational assumption, considering he’s been tailing them for four, five days now. Not that he cares much for titles. Or specifics.
A hand goes behind their head, rubs at the back of their neck. Sweat pools down the exposed skin behind what can be seen behind their polo collar. "Actually, dude, is there any way I can…"
Gesturing, they point to all of him, trailing off into a higher pitch.
Questioning. Curious. Investigative, but not too much.
“You wanna help me?” he asks.
Troublemaker #1 nod.
“Then don’t think about this." Astonishment travels faster than sound on Troublemaker #1's face. "You can help me by staying calm. Don’t act out irrationally, don't compromise this by even trying to dig your way out, and don't do anything you usually wouldn’t think twice on. Stay put until I figure this out.”
Troublemaker #1 points below Shouta's waist, uncrouches. Frees themselves from the squat. Flicks a finger, gestures at the pillar.
Glaring, Shouta shakes his head.
“Absolutely not. Don't even try to move that. We'll.." His tongue clicks in his mouth, sways from side to side, wets his bleeding gums, as he looks for a phrase Hizashi would use. "Burn that bridge when we get there."
“Don’t you mean you’ll let the doctors deal with it?" Troublemaker #1 baulks.
“Shut it,” he says instantly. They do. “Just answer this. Will you--" Shouta swallows his cough. "do as I've instructed? Stay put?"
Though clearly reluctant, the nod Shouta receives is all he needs for confirmation.
With that sorted, Shouta wriggles his toes. Once, twice. Three for one. Hizashi would flip his shit. Pulling at his binding cloth would be like pulling on a noose; better leave it alone for now, let the mix of carbon fibers and steel alloy do its thing.
Whether it gives out first or he does doesn’t hold much merit-- a ceiling collapse, roof-cave in, whatever you call it, would be marginally worse than one singular death. Whatever happens next, if it has a choice to choose between, is simple.
In the corner of Shouta’s eye, he can see a broken pair of goggles. Glasses. Goggles, brown, blue.
Breathily, a whisper of ‘You can do it, Shouta!’ clouds into his ear-drums, a hot wisp against his cut but otherwise-fine ear, and there’s no mistaking the shudder that runs through him. He just doesn’t know if it’s the pain, or…
Don’t even think about death. Last resorts, after all, are last.
Think about who comes first.
“Hey,” he breathes. Troublemaker #1’s makeshift flashlight greets his face first, and a frown spreads across his face like wildfire.
They get the message, take it away.
“Do you have any…” Shouta hacks into his arm, eyes widening. Is this how Yagi feels, spitting blood into a napkin, pretending nothing’s amiss? Like Shouta so often does, wallowing away? “Do you have any cell service on that thing?”
Unsurprisingly, despite the supposed camaraderie they might’ve shared at the beginning of this, all semblance of care vanishes when they roll their eyes.
Teenagers, Shouta thinks.
Even when panicked, they’re decadently brilliant at mouthing off silently.
“D’ya think if I did, I wouldn’t--” Fingers tip tapping away at the screen, itching frenetically, they choke out a laugh. “I got one bar.”
With more gusto, their knuckle grazes the screen with much less care. “Two bars.”
Huh. Shouta squints. Troublemaker #1 might be Troublemaker #2. “Call emergency services,” he insists. “Have you heard from anyone…”
Zeroing in on the goggles again, his mouth goes dry, saliva dribbling in the back of his throat. Swallowing, throat bobbing, he pushes himself up on an elbow, tests out the waters with a small, teeny shift of his frame.
Aghast, Troublemaker #1 looks at him. The ceiling doesn’t cave in. Nor are they spontaneously sent to a place Shouta doesn’t believe in.
Fingers snap into his personal space, making his head tilt.“Oy!” Expectantly, he looks at them, rolls back his shoulder. They sigh. “Have I heard from anyone, what? Anyone here? Anyone--”
“The most rational option,” he says petulantly. Angling his leg, curling his toes in, he uses his other foot to toe off his boot. Does the same to the other one. Best to streamline the area in case whatever happens, happens.
Hizashi might have to ban him from being around knives for a while.
No, don't think about that either.
“Have you," he begins, tongue flicking out to lick at his lower lip, grimacing at the iron and dirt that floods his tastebuds. Shouta shakes it off. "Called them yet?"
Troublemaker #1 looks as if he’d just shaken them by the shoulders and told them their dog was dead. “No. Can I--”
“Then call them.”
Kids.
“Right.”
They call 119.
119 answers, Shouta interrupts with his own hero ID, ignores the look of surprise from the civilian, and the civilian beats back into the conversation with more information on where they are, conspiring a confused look from Shouta. 119 tells them to wait up, they’ll be sending some teams over to assess the situation, get them help.
It’s a lot of waiting. A lot.
Patience comes easier to Shouta than it does for Hizashi-- but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t have limits, as well.
For whatever reason, Troublemaker #1 seems pissed off, almost as if he’s got somewhere to be. Sucks, but Shouta doesn’t care much about whatever appointment he may have. Better here than an unmarked grave. Or a hair salon. Booking an appointment is pointless.
A lot more waiting ensues.
Creak.
Watching Troublemaker #1 pace back and forth is something he can’t even argue against. Shouta would’ve been, and has been, the exact same way. Were his two feet available to be abused more than they already have, he’d have burned off all the adrenaline and excess energy by remaining in motion. Pendulum swing. Back and forth and all over again. Reroute to the corner of the room, like the DVD loop Hizashi was so insistent he stay to watch hit the corner of the television.
For some reason, during this time, the waiting, refraining from pulling any further at the binding cloth keeping the roof together, the goggles cross his mind, again. He looks over at the glasses. Blue-rimmed, thin. Not at all like Hizashi’s, or, His…
Shouta unfocuses his vision, lets it blur, the image in front of him going obscure.Hidden talents, Nemuri says, and wildly uninteresting as date material, not that he would ever want to breach that riveting topic, but it makes zoning out ever the more easier. There’s nothing to do but wait. Wait, wait, wait.
So he does.
Don’t move your hand. Don’t think of death. Don’t move. A lot of donts, and a lot of dos he can’t think about.
So, he thinks of the goggles. Speeding car in the highway maintaining all rational thought, going past the dead neon sign with the speed limit of 145km/h. Races past debris, rubble, times that were worse. Clouds. Petrichor. Overwhelming, overtaxing flares of pollen, winding up his allergies. Hizashi doesn’t have those.
Why does Shouta?
His head lulls against the ground, the side of his temple and long, unkempt hair, surely even more unkempt from all the action of today, kissing the concrete. Think rationally. Logic seeps in like a lighthouse, barrels into his skull.
“Hey, earth to pro hero-- uh, Eraserdude.”
Shouta doesn’t move. His legs don’t move. They don’t even budge. His eyes do, though, and he nearly uses his quirk before the face crouching down to his level blurs back into something sensical.
Ah. #Troublemaker 1. Better known as Uchimura Hideki, aged 19, average looks, cropped black hair and hazel eyes. Scar on left wrist. Usually seen traversing the newly renovated mall beside the foodcourt in Musutafu in a red polo, denim jeans with an iron guitar patch.
Hizashi would’ve really liked the patch.
At least he remembers all that, memory jogged by them thrusting their face into his space.
“Eraserhead,” he corrects. Another frown enters Shouta’s stratosphere. Face? God, blood loss is inconvenient. “What d’you need.”
“You’re just, ah, whiter than the damn moon right now, y'know."
Ugh, teenagers. It feels like forever since he’s been one; was he ever this confusing? His Class 1-A may be along the same veins, but most of them barely even breach 16, and so long as they're not Kaminari or Aoyama, what they generally say is clear enough to parse.
What Troublemaker #1 is trying to say comes to him only after they point to his skin.
Ah. He gets it now.
“That’s what happens when y’lose some blood.” His left leg had checked out a while ago. Static has long since colonized his senses, lulled it into a false sense of security once the 119 call was over and done with.
Shouta can’t exactly report on the entirety of what’s going on below the waist at the moment without pushing himself up, and who knows what that might lead to?
“This is nothing,” he attempts to reassure. “I’m always pale.”
He and Hideki don’t speak for a time. A time meaning a few minutes, or an hour, or multiple. Shouta estimates five minutes.
Groan. Creak. Psshaw.
What he can tell is, though, is that the efforts of his capture weapon and his own strength might not hold up the place for much longer with this… climate.
Keeping his hand on it makes the most sense.
Little, pulsing vibrations simmer under his fingertips like blisters, signalling the thrum of the rooftop, the broken carbon gritting at his skin. Gritting just like it used to when he was still just a teenager with three friends, still learning his way around the weapon, his future.
The blue glasses are still on the sidelines.
Creak. Realization number one: life is short. Inevitably, his fingers tremble with the strain of effort, and before he can even correct his mistake-- Shouta watches the frames get crushed by a piece of debris that creeps down from above them.
It makes the other person with him jumpstart, and him shudder internally.
That’s one question answered, at least, Shouta thinks.
Realization number two crawls in when his eyes zoom in on the new guest.
An opening. A light that irritates Shouta’s eyes, but an opening nonetheless. It bridges the gap between useless and useful with its size; meagre enough for a scrawny brat to upstart their escape through. 119 may have told them to hang on and wait, but he’s never exactly been one to listen to the wise words of the paramedics without some intervention.
Shouta looks back to Tr-- Hideki, and realizes yet again that while life may be short, it doesn’t have to be.
“Kid.”
Hideki doesn’t look.
When Shouta repeats it, twice, only then does Hideki look. Staring at Shouta apprehensively, roused from an idle slumber spent staring at the patch of ground cleared by the falling debris, just to stray into offended territory.
Then concern.
“Yeah, Eraserhead?"
In lieu of a response, he wriggles his left foot already exposed to the elements. Air kisses Shouta’s sole, a new hole in between the toes of his sock the precursor to whatever comes next.
Well, he does know a bit about what comes next.
“You see that?” he grunts out eventually, gesturing with a tilt of his head to the opening he’d seen earlier. Twisting their head around, they peer back to survey the sights. Confirm what he’s seen. Perforating disbelief, Hideki only looks back at him to thumbs up. This kid. "From what I can... see, you could crawl out of here. There's enough space."
"Good eye, " they say, awed. Shouta could fill a cup full of irony with that statement. 20/20 vision has never felt so bittersweet. "I could run out and get help here quicker, man. Real good eye."
He shakes his head. "Help is already coming, so there's no need for that."
"So..." Hideki frowns. "You think I should just go?"
Shouta doesn't dare think about the itchiness on his fingers, how his nerves urge him to let go, be proactive. Let go. Let go. Hideki should go.
Straining his head, he forces his bottom lip beneath his teeth, bites hard, ignores the blood that's drawn. Good thing Himiko Toga isn't here. Or maybe she could be. Hideki could be anyone -- he's a criminal, after all, a small-time villain he's reluctantly allying up with for the bigger fish, and the very reason he's here at all -- and yet, Shouta knows he was always bound to try and help him. Regardless of whether or not his criminal status started with U or H, or ended in T.
All that matters is that Shouta is 30, has lived a long enough life, seen a lot of things; Hideki is 19, and while he might not be on the right side of the law-- who is, really? No better time than on your death bed to start questioning morality, Shouta thinks. Least it's not over a drink; now that could get Hizashi's gears rolling, he...
Shit.
Flushed, he crunches, grinds his teeth together.
"Where would you rather die?"
Hideki pinches the bridge of his nose, dissecting him, as if he's joking.
Gawking, jaw rigid when he realizes Shouta isn't.
"Tell me."
"I hadn't really thought about it."
"Good," Shouta answers. Not a lie, because teenagers nowadays really shouldn't be thinking about their mortality. It's bad enough that students like Midoriya give too much of themselves; as if they have a quota to fulfill, to...
He coughs. Doesn't blink when something wet claws out of his mouth with a rasp. Shouta doesn't bother explaining. "Because I have, and you know what I," he pauses, "-think?"
Eyes drooping, Erasure, doesn't flare to life. Elusive, it is; not that it would help anyway. He does have his eyedrops here. Still, there's no point in soothing chronic dry eye; especially not when he won't even activate its maker in the first place. Hideki's quirk may have started all this trouble, but from the information he'd gathered, its activation is a one-time deal every few days. Goes inactive after one use.
Sort of like Shirakumo, huh?
Shut up.
Hideki waits.
(He'll likely run, won't he? He won't come back. If you tell him to go. He's a criminal with a warrant out for his arrest, and he's also a relatively dumb kid. Even if he has somewhat of a good heart, even if he looked out for you from the start and apologized; he looks like he's made up his mind.
Oh, so you're really itching for a Shirakumo.
Shut. up.)
Beginning again, he forces all his remaining energy into speaking. Maybe the adrenaline is wearing off.
"Would you rather die here, in some dirty ditch with a pro you barely even know, bleeding out," Say that three times fast, Hizashi chimes out cheerfully in his head, a pitchy whistle to his tone. Real or fake, he doesn't know. "Or 70, maybe even 80, blissful, ah, years from now, in some care home they stick you in, with... whatever dishes you like... from something not as easily preventable as--" This.
This.
His throat is dry.
This.
His leg hurts.
Why can't he...?
Shouta freezes, head empty as he trails off. Vision blurring, obscuring, an ombre filling into his vision.
Watching Hideki look at him, expectant, even if he is a criminal... it reminds him of his students. Of a younger Hizashi, of better times. Shouta stares at the iron patch on the teenager's hip, the guitar yellow.Then, Shouta thinks of teal eyes, light cerulean curls. A smile that shone brighter than even the sun could glare into his retinas, burn the image permanently into his vision. Ah. There they go. Another don't on his track record; don't forget.
Forget? He's forgotten a lot over the years, hasn't he?
A cold breath is sucked in. Blood runs below his skin, every drop racing to free themselves from his cut off circulation; how uncomfortable.
Shouta's donated plasma at a rate easier than this. When he was at his lowest, in what seemed like an even darker hour, scrambling for cold, hard cash. Needles are better than having the blood suckled out of you slowly, he supposes, but the comparison still remains.
(Where are those goggles, again? Right, glasses. Gone, gone. Just like Him. You'll be joining him soon, won't you?
How's the leg?
How's the head, he shoots back, cold, and wishes he hadn't said it at all.)
Whatever. Whatever he says next, if it leads to his keys -- Shouta grunts, eats dust -- returned and his dental records ID-ed, the present Hizashi would be positively infuriated. Psshaw. Even if he's thousands of kilometres away, he would find out, he would know. Creak.
Hizashi would be on the next flight back in an instant.
And rightfully so, he would see red. Freak out.
Shouta should be ever grateful his partner practically already wears rose-coloured lenses in the first place; certainly makes a whole lot of things easier.
And Shirakumo. Shirakumo would be...
Ah-huh.
Wiggling his other leg, feeling just barely there, he barely makes a dent in breaking free. Creak. Blueprint #1 to survival is, apparently, to accept his fate. Emergency services have grown wildly inefficient over the years. He coughs, lets the landmine of moroseness explode on impact in his chest, and lets everything sink in. Anchors himself further to the floor, embracing the concrete, doesn't move his fingers holding the strip of his capture weapon an inch.
It hurts. Everything hurts. Shouta will admit that much.
"So," he doesn't splutter, tilting his head back up, "It's likely best that you--"
When he looks up, Shouta realizes far too late that Hideki had already made the choice for him.
Howls of wind pierce the air through the crack decorating the open debris.
Far too early, much too late, he can at least recognise when he's been left truly and utterly alone.