Hi there,
this is a long chapter! oh wow.
I hope you'll like it. I've been looking forward to writing this since forever!
Currently I'm still with my parents and access ffn over my phone. I can't figure figure out how to answer reviews on the phone... so I'll still be very happy for each review I get! but i will only answer after New Year :( the same goes for the reviews for last chapter. so don't be surprised that you didn't get a response later.
Twenty-Four Hours
Something hard smashed into Enji's side. Heavy weight pressed him down to the floor, but he fought against it— afraid he would crush the kids otherwise. The table he had half-jumped under to reach the kids had collapsed, its edge digging painfully into his shoulder. Then, the floor gave in. The beast was roaring next to him, possibly not comprehending the situation, as the world collapsed around it.
He fell, then his feet crashed hard against the floor below. The ground gave under him.
It was loud. The building's material was screeching, cracking, and whining all around him; Maki was screaming, Izumo gasping. Something dug painfully into his arms, where he was protectively holding the children. He wasn't falling anymore— instead, he was crumbling with the building, going down both too fast and agonizingly slow. His body was thrown this way and that. At some point, a heavy hit against the back almost made him uncurl and let go of the children. He renewed his grip around them, pulling in his knees, trying…
Something hard hit his head.
When Enji came to, it was to pitch-black darkness. At first, he couldn't make out anything past the droning headache. Then, he slowly managed to assess his situation.
His entire body was aching. His pulse was racing in his ears. Where were…?
He couldn't have been unconscious for long; he could still hear the rumbling sounds of the debris settling all around him.
His left leg and his right arm were… stuck. He was in a kneeling position, a heavy weight against his back and shoulders even against his head, pushing him down. It hurt… His body was in agony…
Where were the children? He remembered he was supposed to protect them. Had he failed?
Frantically, he tried to blink against the haze in his head, but the darkness was absolute. Even with a clearer head, there was nothing to see. With his free arm, the one that wasn't stuck and crushed between two, hard masses, he felt a body underneath him. He could only hope…
Enji was honestly afraid, as he activated his quirk, to get just a bit of light. A single flame shot along his jawline, flickering next to his temple— just enough for him to see.
There… they were both lying below him. His body had created a small shelter that left just barely enough space for the kids to lie on the rubble. The hole was maybe just over a cubic meter in size. Just a small place surrounded and walled off on all sides by debris. Neither of the kids were moving, which terrified him. He didn't see any lethal injuries, but if they hit their heads…?
With a trembling hand, he put his fingers against Maki's neck first. As he moved them, he realized that his hand was slick with blood – he hoped it was his own – and his arm was moving with a sort of lethargy that was comparable to a massive overheating. His hand was shaking so hard, he couldn't make out a pulse. Enji took a single, calming breath before trying again, readjusting his fingers and… found it. In the dim light now, Enji could also see her chest rise and fall. She was only unconscious. He checked Izumo next.
They were both alive.
Thank the gods.
His shoulders slumped in relief.
At that tiny movement, the sheer mass on Enji's shoulders groaned threateningly. Metal screeched, plastic snapped, wood moaned. He froze, pushing his shoulders back up, cringing and baring his teeth at the pain this little bit of movement caused in his crushed arm and back. It seemed he was part of a precarious balance that ensured the rubble wouldn't crush him and the children completely. Something was digging deep into the flesh of his lower back, just slightly to the left. Confused, he moved his free hand to his torso, patting down his stomach.
There.
Just to the left of his spine, something was sticking out of his belly; a metal rod that had impaled him all the way through. In the semi darkness, he slid his hand along the metal, unable to shift his head without offsetting the balance of the weight above him again. The steel, just over a centimeter in diameter, was warm with his blood. A piece of reinforcing steel used in ferroconcrete. His hand followed the length of it, hoping, but he didn't find the end. Below him, it had apparently smashed through another piece of concrete and vanished into the rubble out of reach and out of sight.
As he followed down the path of the steel, Enji realized it had also ripped through Maki's shirt. He shuddered. But to his relief, he saw she had only received a bad scratch when lifting up her shirt. It was bleeding, but not much.
He tried checking her for other injuries in the dim light, increasing the power of his quirk just a little bit to have a better view. He found three twisted and likely broken fingers, and severe bruising down that same arm. Her other arm was bruised too, but— he realized with some shame— they came from where his hand had pressed into her upper arm.
Enji 1moved over to check Izumo, and immediately realized he should have started with him. The boy's leg was twisted at the knee, and his foot was stuck under the same rock Enji's leg was under. He patted the boy's torso down, pulled up the sweater, and the blue and yellow All Might shirt underneath, but he didn't find any injuries.
Neither of them had any bleeding head injuries. Maybe something had hit them in the head, but not broken through the skin. Had they lost consciousness from shock? He'd have to at least try waking them up, he thought, though he knew they wouldn't thank him for it. He even contemplated leaving them as they were, ignorant of the dire situation they were in.
Maki was the one easier to reach as she was closer to his free hand, so again, he started with her. He grabbed her around the shoulder and shook her lightly, then patted her cheek. He was about to give up and move on to the boy when her face twisted, brows furrowed, and her eyes squeezed shut in a grimace of pain.
She mumbled something he couldn't understand before groaning, suddenly opening her eyes with a breathless scream as she surged upright— almost hitting her head against Enji's elbow. The initial disoriented surprise and blinking into the darkness was fast overtaken by pitiful, pain-filled sobbing.
"Aaah, ow!" She wailed, gripping at her forearm. Her body was still trying not to aggravate the injury with her erratic movement. "My arm!" Her voice was wet with tears. "It hurts."
"I know, I know," Enji told her while he continued shaking Izumo's shoulder. He stopped, cursing under his breath when the boy's head banged against a metal beam.
"It hurts!" she repeated louder. It was too dim to see her expression very well, and he didn't want to use any more of his quirk, afraid to set the pile of debris on fire.
"We need to wake Izumo," he said, trying to distract her. He had switched to patting the boy against the cheek as he had done with Maki.
Maki peered at him, blinking intensely against the light. "You're bleeding, do you have a nosebleed?" she asked with a furrowed brow.
"I don't know, maybe," he told her distractedly.
The weight on his back and shoulders was pulling him down. He wanted to give in for just a moment, but again the balance shifted dangerously above him. He straightened up again.
"Where are we?" She looked around— but just like him, she wouldn't be able to see much. "Where did that monster go?"
At that moment, they heard a silent groan. The blond boy rolled his head this way and that, an expression of pain on his face. He moaned and turned his head again, as if he could escape the pain of his twisted, broken foot like that. Then, his eyes blinked open, filled with equal parts hurting and confusion.
"Izumo! Izumo!" Maki screeched, turning half to him forgetting her own pain, before whining in agony. "Izumo, my arm is hurt! I think it's broken."
Good, they were both awake, but that was only the easiest part done.
"Izumo," Enji said, trying to sound authoritative and not as if he was about to faint – he felt like he was about to faint. "Hey kid, I know it hurts, but I need you to wake up."
Maki's brows furrowed in worry. "Where are you hurt?" she asked, but before Enji could tell her, her eyes travelled down to Izumo's leg. "Oh. Izumo, you're hurt. Wake up!" She rattled the boy with her uninjured hand around the shoulder. She was more forceful than Enji had been earlier.
The boy groaned, trying to twist away from her, and yelped in pain. "I am awake!" He sounded a little aggressive, making Maki pull back her hand with an apologetic frown.
"Izumo," Enji tried getting the boy's attention again, "listen to me. Your leg is stuck under a boulder. I will lift it just a bit and I need you to pull it out."
The boy twisted carefully until he could see his leg, where it vanished under the mass of stone. Enji's own leg was stuck under the same boulder, taking most of its weight. If not for that, Izumo might've already lost the limb. Enji saw his tiny flame reflected in the boy's tears and shiny eyes. The fire made the grey irises glow in a dark orange. Izumo gave him a small nod, trying to brace the weight of his torso against his elbows but wincing and whining at every small movement.
"Say when you're ready. And Maki, you help him pull his leg out," Enji instructed as he strained his free arm until he reached the edge of the cement block. Expectantly, he waited for the boy to give the signal. When another nod came, Enji lifted the mass just a bit. He also twisted his foot under the cement just a bit to take on more of the weight. Fresh pain was flaring through his leg, which had already started going numb. He couldn't move the cement too much, afraid to offset the balance of the debris. "Now!"
Izumo was trying to scoot back on his arms, but apparently Maki had different ideas— she grabbed Izumo just above where the knee twisted, and pulled with all the strength she had in that one, healthy arm. Izumo screamed in pain, slapping her hand away in agony.
Maki let go immediately. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said, cradling her injured arm again, tears in her eyes. At least it had served its purpose. Izumo's leg was free— bloody and twisted, but free.
Both children cried now together, as if they had somehow infected each other. Enji just let it pass, patting down his own pockets. He found his phone with a cracked display, but when he pressed the stand-by button, it still flared back to life. He also found Izumo's inhaler. The plastic bits were damaged, but the tiny metal container and the important parts were still intact. Relieved, he put it back in his pocket and focused on his phone.
He tried calling emergency services. His hand was slick with blood— and he had just the one. When he almost dropped the phone, he stopped trying. If it slipped out of his fingers, it would vanish among the debris below them.
"Izumo," he tried to get the boy's attention, but failed. "Izumo, listen! Izumo!" As his voice increased in volume taking on a snapping tone, Izumo and Maki both clenched their jaws shut. They looked at him in shock and fear before confusion started to show on their faces. "I need your help." He held the phone for the boy to take. "Your hands are both fine, so call emergency services for us."
The confusion didn't leave Izumo's face, but he took the phone. His eyes didn't leave Enji, though. "Can't you…?" he asked, but then, apparently, both he and Maki, for the first time, took in his appearance: arm and foot stuck, a steel rod through his back, and blood all over his body. Maki hiccupped and sobbed again. Izumo only swallowed visibly— and then, with shaking hands, started dialing the standard emergency numbers.
"Calm down, kid," Enji tried, his own voice tired from the strain to keep himself upright. "That's good," he commented as the boy finished typing the last digit and was about to press the green call button.
Suddenly there was a powerful shove, a massive crash that shifted the entire balance of debris they were lying under.
Enji heard Maki's scream over the terrible sound of the shifting building material. He saw her slipping into a growing gap of the debris where she was lying on. But with the chaotic movement, there was no telling when it would stop growing and instead snap shut again. Hastily, he grabbed her at her belt and pulled her up against his chest, his entire body straining in pain against the movement. He put her down for just a second, then he slung his arm behind both their backs to lift the children up and close to him. Izumo screamed in pain.
Meanwhile, the masses that kept his arm stuck between them shifted violently. The concrete block below his arm twisted away, while the iron beam above it slipped in the other direction until only his wrist was stuck between the two. Enji groaned and screwed his eyes shut, only barely suppressing a scream when the strain and weight finally snapped the bones in his forearm.
"Fuck!" He grounded through his teeth.
Something about his curse made Maki giggle a little. "You said the f-word," she snickered. Her voice had an edge of hysteria.
The humor was entirely lost to him as the shifting and resetting debris forced the metal rod in his guts to shift around and bend. Earlier, he had decided against snapping it, thinking maybe the metal rod held some of the weight for him and not willing to risk it. Now, he wished he'd had a hand free to sear through it with his quirk and separate it from the force of the shifting debris. Then suddenly, his stuck hand was free— and he fell, despite all his efforts to keep himself up to protect the shelter below him. He plummeted on his elbows and knees, sliding down the metal he was impaled on. The wreckage fell with him. The children were now stuck between his knees and elbows, crying feverishly from the pain of their broken arm and leg falling hard against the rubble.
The fight must've still been ongoing above them to explain the sudden violent shifting.
"Sorry," he grunted when the shifting and crumbling around them stopped again. He pushed himself a bit higher, fighting against the sheer mass on his shoulders and back to create more breathing space for himself and the two others.
If he were alone now, he knew, he could burn himself out of this place quite easily. However, with heat hot enough to melt stone and metal, the danger of setting the entire ruin on fire… The two children wouldn't survive that, so that wasn't an option.
Izumo was crying close to his ear.
"Is your leg—" Enji started asking but was soon interrupted.
"The phone… I let go of your phone."
Enji's eyes scanned the rubble below him, but he couldn't find the phone. "It's gone." No point crying about it.
"Will we die here?" Maki asked. "Todoroki-san, we'll die, right?"
Enji shook his head. "No." He would make sure of that. "No, we won't. We'll just have to find another way to get help. The fight is still ongoing. That right there must have been another attack crashing into the ruins." He should expect more of those, he thought, dreading it already. "Maki, what about your phone?"
As if she had forgotten about it until now, she started frantically searching her jacket. When she pulled it out, it was in even worse condition than Enji's had been. Still, somehow, when she pressed the power button, the display came to life. Her screen had a fanart of Hawks and Mirko, though the massive cracks made it difficult to make out the details.
She stared at it, then tears started glistening in her eyes again. "I don't have connection," she cried.
"Okay," Enji said as calmly as possible, "you don't have connection because the channels are overloaded, and they are prioritizing emergency services. It should be back in an hour or so. Send Fuyumi… Todoroki-sensei a message, then turn everything off that isn't necessary and uses up battery."
Maki nodded. In the tiny space Enji had created for the kids, she had a lot of trouble typing with just one hand. Sometimes she had to press on the same symbol repeatedly for the phone to register it. Enji dictated the message for her. From what he could see, Maki made several spelling errors, partly because of the phone's malfunctioning keyboard and partly because she might not have known better— but ultimately, he was certain Fuyumi would understand the message. Halfway through, Izumo demanded that he write because he had two healthy hands, but Maki wouldn't give the phone away. Izumo gave up.
As Maki finished up typing the last few letters, Enji instructed her to copy and paste the same message to Shoto. He dictated the number and she did as she was told.
Thankfully, she knew how to put her phone into power-saving mode herself. He would've probably fumbled around helplessly trying to instruct her.
The silence that followed was never quite silent. Izumo and Maki were taking turns sobbing and crying. Time passed slowly. Every now and then, he could hear rumbling and growling from a far away battlefield, muffled by layers upon layers of debris and ruins. A few more times in that first hour after they were buried, the balance was upset again— probably by something or someone smashing against it from the outside. This time, however, he was better prepared, scooped the children up, tried to preserve their space, and maybe even increase it.
He hadn't felt pain this thoroughly in a while, but it kept him awake even as he was long exhausted, his body tired of having to constantly fight against the weight and strain of the ruined building on his back.
The children were afraid. Even in the dim darkness he could see the white in their eyes, and the twisting pain of their lips.
He should have found them sooner, he admonished himself. If he hadn't wasted so much time searching the tenth floor, if he had found them earlier, he would have already saved them before the thrice-damned Noumu attacked. They would've been safe— and not injured and stuck under the rubble, afraid for their lives. Despite how much he tried to reassure them, he knew he had failed at that, too. They didn't think they would survive.
They collectively reached the height of their desperation when – his watch said they had been stuck under the rubble for just over 90 minutes – his phone suddenly started to ring further down, just outside of reach. Izumo – Enji suspected the boy still felt guilty for letting the phone fall earlier – twisted around with a pained whine, trying to reach the phone. No use.
"Stop it!" Enji commanded, his tongue heavy from exhaustion.
"But—" The boy wanted to protest, reaching even further between two precariously balanced metal beams.
"Pull your hand out of there! It's too dangerous," Enji instructed. Just one slight movement and the two beams would snap together and then his twisted knee wouldn't be Izumo's only problem. The boy finally listened, looking up at Enji guiltily.
"I'm sorry," he muttered.
"Stop crying over it," Enji replied, maybe a bit too harshly. "Tell me about your quirk," he added in a tired voice. He should keep them distracted, but he couldn't keep talking much more. Exhaustion was weighing him down almost as much as the burden on his back.
"Why? It's useless here," Izumo replied, not understanding the purpose of the exercise.
"Mine's Hyperawareness," Maki said with a small smile, bravely trying to ignore her suffering. "I didn't show it earlier, cause there's not much to show. I can… well, I'm able to find things easily when I want to." She furrowed her brows as if trying to find a better explanation. "I'm really good at hide and seek and other games like that."
"Because you cheat," Izumo muttered. "Hayate was right. You were cheating earlier."
"I was not!" Maki replied heatedly. "I'm just good at it."
"Because you're using your quirk," Izumo insisted. "It's not fair if you keep using your quirk. The rest of us can't do that!"
They started fighting over that, and Enji was grateful they were keeping themselves busy. He tried to listen to the other noises surrounding them. There hadn't been another major crash for a while now, and the only shifts of the debris were very minor, like when a piece of wood gave, or metal bent under the strain. That was good. That meant the rescue effort had likely already started. He wondered if they were the only people left in the building.
"Maki, check your phone," he interrupted the children.
Maki looked at him as if she had for a moment forgotten about their dire situation. In the flickering light of his single flame, he could see her lips tremble. Then, she pulled out her phone— shifting uncomfortably until she could properly look at it in the small space. They weren't quite trapped between his elbows and knees anymore as he had managed to get himself more upright again, heavily leaning with both elbows against a sturdy bit of metal at just about the height of his chest.
A happy exclamation gave him a sudden rush of relief. "My message to this other number got through." Then her smile fell a little. "But no reply and I don't know if they read it."
"That's my son's number," Enji explained. "Shoto!"
"Shoto?" Maki asked, looking at him with surprised eyes. "From the sports festival?" She giggled. "He's so handsome. Now I have Shoto's number!"
She turned her phone for Izumo to see, but the boy only groaned from either hurt or annoyance. "You're supposed to preserve the battery. You can send him your love letters when we're out of here," he mumbled, for the first time expressing any hope that they might make it out. Enji was quite relieved to hear it. It was easier keeping hopeful children alive than those who had already given up.
"Your quirk is hyperawareness?" Enji asked Maki then. "Can you find out if the fight is over?" It had been over 90 minutes and everything was getting very quiet.
She gave a rather uncertain half-shrug. "I don't know." But she closed her eyes tightly, concentrating anyway.
"Do you hear anything?" Izumo asked impatiently after a few minutes.
"Pshh," she shushed him, putting her hands over her ears to form small funnels and thus increasing her hearing ability. "I think there are people, but I don't hear fighting." She sounded confused at that.
"It's the emergency services and heroes looking for survivors," Enji explained.
"Really?" Maki asked, surprised. And then both she and Izumo started screaming simultaneously. Enji let them. They were surely yelling for over ten minutes with only short breaks to take in deep gulps of air, before they gave up, disappointed. Izumo was wheezing a little.
"They probably can't hear us. We seem to be deep down, or we would be able to see light," Enji said, explaining the lack of response. "But if the fight is over, it means the phone channels will soon be open again. We just need to wait a little more."
"I'm cold," Izumo suddenly remarked.
Without commenting about it, Enji heated up his body just a little more. He still didn't dare make a big fire with all the wood and who knew what other material around him, but he could provide some heat.
Izumo – without a comment as well – scooted a little closer to him, leaning with his back against Enji's thigh. He had taken his coat off – probably the reason why he was feeling so cold – and bedded his leg on it.
"The leg looks really bad," Maki said as Izumo stretched it out before her. "Shouldn't we do something about it? I've seen that in a movie." She lifted her own hand a little bit. "My fingers too, they are all weird."
"No," Enji said. He felt his eyes drooping a little. Shaking his head violently to get rid of the exhaustion, he added, "I'm not good with setting bones. If I had two healthy hands, I might have tried resetting it. Though, as bad as it is, I would just leave it to be honest. In any case, I can't do anything now, and you would rather destroy each other's bodies than help each other." The mere idea of these brats trying to set each other's bones was both amusing and a little disturbing.
They shouldn't be in this situation.
Maki seemed to accept that explanation with a small frown. After a while, she started poking at her injured arm, each time wincing a little, but continuing to poke. Enji suspected the limb might have gone a little numb by now.
"Fog," Izumo said after a moment. "I can create fog. That's my quirk."
Neither Maki nor Enji said anything.
"I wish I had a different quirk. If I had a superpower like All Might, then I could just lift us out of here." He shook his head. "I'm useless here. Even Maki's quirk was helpful."
"What do you mean 'even my quirk'?" Maki asked. "My quirk is great."
Izumo didn't try to refute her. He simply hung his head.
"You're an All Might fan?" Enji asked, trying to keep the conversation going. If it meant keeping these kids occupied, he'd bear even their fawning over All Might.
"Yeah!" Izumo exclaimed, his prior sadness not quite forgotten yet, but tone already much more cheerful. "He's amazing. I even met him once! He saved my dog!"
Enji snorted quietly. That sounded like a ridiculous story.
"No, he did not!" Maki retorted. "Don't lie! Why would All Might save a dog!"
"I know," Izumo admitted. "It's stupid, but he did. He was just passing by and I was so stunned to see him, I didn't realize that Ronin pulled out of my grip… And he was almost crushed by a truck, but All Might somehow saved him. It was so fast."
"That' stupid," Maki commented. "I thought you liked him because of Kamino."
Izumo smiled sheepishly at that.
"Anyway, I like Mirko, she's super cool and super strong and…" Maki started but was promptly interrupted.
"But she has bunny ears!" Izumo exclaimed in a scandalous tone as if anybody with bunny ears couldn't possibly be cool.
"Bunnies are cool!" Maki insisted. "And cute."
Enji tabbed out of their conversation then. His headache was getting worse. He was just glad that they had again found a topic to distract themselves with. Meanwhile, they had passed the two-hour mark and his muscles started cramping. The last time the debris had shifted was now over an hour ago, and that was also the last time Enji had allowed himself to move. He averted his face from the children, not wanting them to see his agonized grimace. He knew his eyes were tearing a little.
That wouldn't do. He needed them in a relatively good and hopeful mood, which they could only be in if they believed that he would hold. And how would they be able to do that if he showed such weakness?
"Endeavor is also cool," Maki suddenly said, giggling. "Much cooler than I thought." He felt her looking at him. "I thought you were mean. And unfriendly. And old!" She said that last bit as if it was the worst offense of all.
"Maki!" Izumo whined. "You're being unfair."
"Why?" Maki said loudly. "You said it too!" She pointed at Izumo. "That Endeavor could never be as cool as All Might cause he's a pooper!"
"I didn't say pooper!" Izumo yelled back at her. Then he turned to Enji much quieter. "I didn't, I swear!"
"I don't care," Enji muttered through gritted teeth.
"Anyway," Maki continued, "you're actually alright. Right?" As Enji turned his head back to them, she had just nudged Izumo in the side who grimaced in pain at being jolted like that. "Right, Izumo?"
"Yes," Izumo muttered looking at Enji. "You're cool."
"Thanks," Enji muttered, "but I'm not actually Endeavor right now. Lost my license, remember? I'm not a hero anymore."
Maki's brows furrowed in confusion. "You're a hero right now, aren't you? You're saving us."
He was about to tell them to thank him if and when they did survive. – Calling him a hero now seemed quite premature. Then, he realized that that wouldn't exactly help their situation if he now planted doubts in them that he had previously tried to disperse.
"Check your phone again," he told Maki, changing the topic.
Her brows furrowed a little, clearly detecting his change of tune, but then she did as commanded. "I have a connection!" she yelled out. "And replies! They replied! I didn't hear it ping."
Enji hadn't heard it either. Maybe Maki had forgotten to turn the volume on, or the speakers were damaged. Maybe they had just talked over it.
"Shoto asks where we are and about our injuries. And Sensei's happy we're alive and she's trying to find somebody to rescue us. And my mom tried to call… She spoke on voicemail." She was about to listen to the voicemail when Enji cut her off.
"Call Shoto first," he instructed.
"But my mom!" Maki insisted. "She'll be worried! She's always worried when something happens."
"Let her stay worried," Enji retorted. "Calling Shoto is more important." Shoto could actually do something about their situation and he didn't know if the connection would fail again later. The channels were surely still unstable.
"You're mean!" Maki exclaimed, completely forgetting how she had told Enji that he wasn't as mean as she'd thought just moments earlier. "If mom asks why I didn't call, I'll tell her it's your fault."
Enji nodded tiredly, not having the energy to argue. "Call Shoto!" he insisted.
Complaining and unhappy glares aside, at least she did that without further hesitation.
At first, he thought Shoto wouldn't pick up after all. He had never been so relieved to hear his son's voice.
"Hello?" Shoto's voice came contorted through the speakers. "Hello, you're the person who messaged me, right? The one trapped under the rubble. How did you get this number?" Enji only now realized that they'd sent Shoto the same information they had sent Fuyumi, which meant the boy was probably very confused why some unknown number messaged him about them being buried and injured under the ruins of the history museum. Shoto sounded winded and out of breath. "Ah, never mind that," he quickly continued, "how's the situation?"
Maki looked at Enji uncertainly, obviously overwhelmed with the barrage of questions.
"Shoto," Enji said, only now realizing how low his voice had gotten from the exhaustion of the last hours. "Shoto, do you hear me?"
There was a short pause. "Father?!" The surprise was obvious in his tone. "What are you doing there! Are you alright?"
"Yes, it's me. It's a long story, and I think 'alright' is relative." He could hear Maki's skeptical snort.
"We're buried under the museum," she yelled loudly into the phone, aggravating Enji's already bad enough headache. "I've got my arm broken and Izumo's leg looks really bad and Todoroki's got a metal bar through his belly!" She revealed in a single breath of air, rapidly listing the injuries she could think of and speaking as if she thought Shoto would know who she and Izumo were.
"Who's with you?" Shoto replied, his voice betraying little emotion, though Enji thought he could hear shock there.
Enji thought the question was meant for him, but Maki already answered anyway. "Izumo and Todoroki-san, as I just said! Endeavor-Todoroki, I mean." She shook her head a2s if thinking the question was stupid.
"Okay," Shoto replied, now sounding confused but also taking it in stride. "You said he's been impaled by a piece of metal?"
"Yeah, it's going right through his stomach! And Izumo's knee is all twisted. What should we do? Should I try and twist it right?"
"No!" Shoto's reply came quickly. "What did my fathers what did Todoroki say about it?"
Maki furrowed her brow. "He said to leave it. But what if it grows together all weird?"
"If he says leave it, leave it. What about your position, where are you?"
"Let me talk," Enji demanded of Maki in a harsh tone, not letting her speak again. She looked at him with a pout but then moved the phone closer to him.
"Shoto? It's me again. Listen, I'm with two of Fuyumi's third graders. Fuyumi and the other children got out, but I'm stuck with these two." At the way he phrased it, Maki scowled a little. "We're in the history museum, buried under it. However, I can't give an accurate location. Can you try and track this phone's position?"
"I'll ask to get a search going," Shoto said. "But we're currently trying to find dozens of missing people. I don't know how long it will take until I can get results. We thought the museum building was completely evacuated just before the crash. The search hasn't even started there yet. We've been focused entirely on the Yaku Insurance next to it. How bad are your injuries?"
Shoto wasn't saying it directly, maybe to spare the kids, but Enji could read between the lines. If the rescue work hadn't even started yet, with all forces focusing on a bigger number of civilians missing in the ruins of other bigger buildings like the Yaku Insurance, their building would not be a priority – even with three people, two of them children – trapped under the rubble. Plus. Even if they were able to find out their exact position, cleaning up the scene enough to reach and rescue them could take hours.
"The injuries aren't the worst," he replied. "Where we are, the ruins are very unstable. They might crush us at any minute. I'm trying to keep it at bay, but I'm running out of steam."
"Damn… Okay, I understand. I…" something in his voice betrayed an insecurity that went beyond the severity of Enji's and the children's situation. Something was weighing Shoto down. "I'll try to find somebody to help track you down."
"Silent Tracker," he suggested. "If you find her, she knows my scent and can find it anywhere."
"Okay. And you can't burn your way out?"
"Not without inadvertently killing the kids," he said much quieter, hoping they wouldn't hear, but he had little hope in that. At least neither Maki nor Izumo reacted much. Maki's eyes widened and Izumo looked guiltily down at his own hands as if he thought his weakness would be at fault for somebody dying. "There's too much burnable material around me, never mind unknown materials that could form toxic smoke. Plus, the space is too tight. By heating up, I run at a serious risk of cooking them alive."
Maki stretched her tongue out at that, as if it was a thoroughly disgusting thing to imagine but also somehow a joke.
"I understand," Shoto said. "I'll get back to you as soon as I know more."
He ended the call, handing the phone back to Maki and allowing her to finally listen to her mom's voicemail. When she tried calling her mother, however, the line was occupied.
"Listen," he started after a while, his eyes drooping more and more every minute now. "Shoto will try to get us out of here." They both turned to him. "However, it can still take a long time. In the meantime, you have to make sure that I don't fall asleep."
Maki looked at him with huge eyes. She seemed uncertain as to what he wanted from them.
"You mean, because if you collapse, we're all dead?" Izumo asked, deadpan.
Enji couldn't help the tired smile. "Something like that, yeah. Just… do whatever you have to do, you hear me? Whatever it is, you have to keep me awake. Do you understand?"
Maki swallowed visibly in the dim lighting of the small shelter. Then she nodded. Izumo nodded too. They both were lacking enthusiasm.
"I need you to promise me," Enji insisted, not happy with the deficit of verbal confirmation. "You'll do everything!"
Instead of telling him what he wanted to hear, Izumo frowned a little. "Why don't you just leave?"
Enji stared at him, confused by the question. "I just told Shoto why I can't leave."
Izumo shook his head. "No, you told him that you could leave, just not with us… But we'll die here anyway, right? So at least you could save yourself."
Enji frowned. "Did you pick that martyrdom up from All Might? No, you'll get out of here, and Maki will get out of here. Just keep me up and running, and I'll make sure of that!"
Izumo seemed doubtful, but Maki was grinning up at him. "I'll keep you awake," she promised.
An hour later, they received word from Shoto again, that he had found Silent Tracker and that she would come to try and find them as soon as she was done with the person she was currently searching for. Enji knew that Silent Tracker couldn't just let everything go and run to his rescue at his beck and call. Still, he was getting impatient.
When another hour later, a mouse came squeaking into their deadly little hole, Enji was sure it had to have been his former sidekick. Maki screamed of shock as she saw the animal and Izumo too seemed unhappy – though not afraid of it. Shortly after she arrived, Silent Tracker left again.
Almost five hours after being buried under the falling debris of the history museum, he got the message that they had found them— but that sudden black ice all over the battlefield was making rescue attempts a lot harder than expected. It was also going to be dark soon. A small group of emergency services surrounding Shoto had started pushing debris away, but according to him, they did not expect to reach them until the next morning.
Enji wasn't surprised. Only a handful of people working in increasing darkness while having to dig their way through the ruins of a twenty-four-story skyscraper. Ruins that were only precariously balanced, with every misstep threatening to bring the entire system down on the people trapped below, never mind also endangering the emergency services who might get hurt slipping through cracks…
A sharp pain in his gut made him yelp, tearing his eyes wide open with pain. He was gagging. For a moment, the entire structure shivered and shook above him, before he found his balance again, breathing heavily.
"Oh no! I'm so sorry!" Maki exclaimed. Her hand was on the end of the metal bar that she'd twisted in his gut the moment his head dropped. He had severed that part of the rod earlier, and now she was twisting and poking it to keep him awake. Quickly, she retracted her hand, his blood sticking to her fingers. She looked at it wide-eyed, and tried to wipe it on her jacket. "I'm so sorry, I didn't want to…"
"No," he told her. "Well done. That was exactly what I meant. Keep me awake." His voice was lilting, he realized. His muscles were burning. His eyes had started glazing over again the moment the pain let off a little. "That was exactly…" he repeated. Then, he opened his eyes wide and shook his head, trying to get rid of the exhaustion. It was sticking to him persistently. The only thing this did was worsen his headache.
He glanced at his watch. It was past 8 pm. Eight hours… Where had the last three hours gone? Izumo was sleeping, he realized. He didn't remember him having fallen asleep. It was odd. Enji couldn't have fallen asleep or lost consciousness, at least not for more than a few seconds. Maki had obviously kept watch. Had he found some sort of half-awake trance?
By the time they approached the nine-hour mark, his flame flickered out as he forgot to keep it alive. He wasn't asleep or unconscious, but Maki slapped him in the face, thinking he had fallen asleep. He didn't comment about it. Better she did it one time too many than being discouraged from doing it again when needed.
Izumo woke up sometime later. He started whining and crying from pain. Then he asked after his parents, before realizing where he was and starting to cry all the harder for it.
Enji felt guilty. He should have made sure they were safe. He should have protected them better. The boy was right, with what he had said earlier. If he were All Might, he would have already carried them to safety… But he didn't have superstrength. His quirk could burn himself to freedom and them to death.
If he were All Might… But he wasn't! He knew that better than anybody!
His was a quirk that couldn't be used anywhere to full capacity with people nearby. A hero who couldn't save people. What a joke! No wonder they took his license!
Izumo and Maki were talking quietly. He registered that they were asking him something, but he didn't hear them right, didn't understand the question. Blood was rushing in his ears; he could hear his own heartbeat. In many ways, he was blind to the world. A mixture of pain, perseverance, and Maki's insistence kept him upright.
Then Maki needed to sleep as well, leaving the job to keep him awake with Izumo.
The next time he was aware enough to register the world around them, he could not see his watch past a dense fog in their shelter. Izumo, he assumed, didn't use his quirk on purpose. Enji could smell the cool mist in the air.
"I can't see, Izumo," he said, his tongue barely able to form the words. "You need to stop." If they were unlucky, this mist would spread through the ruins and freeze to form another layer of black ice, making the rescue even harder.
"I'm sorry," Izumo mumbled, but it took a while until the fog lifted.
When Enji checked his watch the next time, fourteen hours had passed. He should stop watching the time. Twelve hours, he'd expected twelve hours. Now they were long past that mark. It would be long past midnight now. He knew the rescue work would continue into the night, but it would be inevitably slowed down by the dark. And he didn't know if Shoto himself would work the entire night. There was a horrible possibility that whoever took over his shift did not consider Enji and the children their priority, as long as there were other ruins with more people trapped inside.
He didn't know how it happened. Maybe he had slipped, maybe his arms had finally given up, maybe the balance of the rubble had shifted without him noticing… maybe he had lost consciousness, but suddenly he was plummeting to the ground, pushed low by tonnes of stone, metal, wood and plastic. A shard of glass digging into his thighs and Izumo's screaming was what made him aware of the danger so he could barely catch himself before crushing the two kids. The agony of his broken arm smashing against hard concrete blinded him for a split-second. When Enji saw clear again Izumo stared at him. Then he screamed.
Shocked, Enji realized he had fallen with one elbow over the sickeningly twisted leg of the boy. Immediately he moved his arm, pushing up with all the strength he had left in his hurt and broken limbs. Everything shifted above and below him, but then he managed to get back on all fours. His elbows were trembling with the effort to keep himself upright. One hand was almost useless.
He wouldn't hold out like this, he realized. He had to find a different way. Desperate, he pushed up as high as he could, and lit up his flames a little more to see better.
"You didn't wake him! Why didn't you wake him?" Maki yelled at a pale and heavily breathing Izumo.
"I didn't… I didn't realize," the boy gasped. Enji heard his breath whistle.
"You were supposed to watch!" Maki had just woken up when Enji almost landed on her. She was still pale from shock.
"Maki, leave it! Izumo," Enji called out, "in my left pocket."
Izumo looked at him, wheezing and visibly confused. Panic was creeping into his eyes. But as Maki was about to reach with her healthy arm over Izumo to pat down Enji's left side, the boy finally moved. With trembling hands, he fingered the inhaler out of Enji's pocket. He wiped some of the splintered bits of plastic away from the casing, and took a deep breath with the help of the tiny device. He coughed once, then used the inhaler a second time.
"Maki, tell me what material you see," Enji asked the girl.
She looked as if she hadn't understood. Then, she followed his gaze to where his hand pressed against what felt like cool metal and concrete.
"It's— it's a steel beam and some stone," she said her voice shaking.
"Good…" He gritted his teeth, heating his broken hand just enough to melt a small tunnel for his arm to fit through. He pushed all the way in up to his elbow, gritting his teeth at the heat of molten stone and iron as it was dripping down and molding around his arm. That would leave scars, he thought. Enji didn't care much about it, though, because he already carried enough of those anyway. He repeated the same with his other hand.
"What are you doing?" Maki asked, staring at where his hands and arms were now effectively welded into the debris past his elbows. "You can't move like this."
Izumo coughed several times at the bit of smoke and fumes Enji created before he used the inhaler a again, finally able to calm his breathing down.
"Making sure I don't slip again," Enji told Maki, shutting his eyes against the pain, trying to ride it out until the metal and stone cooled enough to not burn him anymore. "Don't worry."
He couldn't see his watch anymore; surely it had been destroyed by his earlier actions. He felt the seconds and minutes tick by endlessly. At some point, he was sure he lost consciousness again, but this time his body was forced upright. When he woke up, his shoulders and arms hurt from the strain. And then…
There was daylight. Voices.
Maki immediately screamed back at them, calling for help. Izumi tried to keep up with her, but his voice was wheezing and weak. Then, some of the weight lifted off Enji's shoulders.
And finally.
"We have them! Over here!" A voice he didn't know called out. "Are you alright? We'll be with you in a second!"
It took a little longer than a second for one of the rescuers to dig themselves toward them. He came from the side, removing the last chunk of concrete separating them. Enji was blinded shortly by the bright morning light. Maki and Izumo also blinked against it. Then, a face appeared in the hole they had dug, blocking off the light and making seeing much easier. The man wore a firefighter uniform. Maki immediately leaped, wincing at the pain the movement brought to her arm, and hugged the stranger regardless.
The man seemed slightly overwhelmed by the affection. After a moment of stunned silence, he patted the girl's back carefully, and lifted her out of the hole. Enji could hear him speak to somebody outside.
"I don't know what happened there." Enji heard faintly. "I don't think I've ever seen Todoroki look like that. And tell Shoto to come here, I think we need him. And we need stretchers for the other two."
"The ambulances are ready," a woman replied.
Another firefighter came down to them now.
"Oh sh…" he muttered, his eyes roaming over Enji and then turning to the other child. He carefully tried touching the boy and carried him towards himself, trying not to aggravate the injury further. He needed the help of a second person to get Izumo on a small stretcher and pull him out of the tunnel they had dug. While the other rescuer went with Izumo, the first stayed with Enji, trying to crawl closer.
"Holy shit. What did you do, Todoroki?" he asked, stunned surprise on his face. "You're mad. Did you weld yourself into the debris? How do you think we'll get you out of there?"
"I don't care," he muttered. "It was the only thing I could think of." His head hung low. The only reason he hadn't given into fatigue and unconsciousness yet was because he didn't want to look weak. And there was still considerable weight on his shoulders.
"When…" he wet his lips, "when you get me out, you have to be careful so that…the tunnel doesn't collapse."
"I see," the man said with a frown. Another person arriving made him back away and switch positions.
"Shoto," Enji muttered.
"What the…?" Shoto retorted. "What is this?" The boy was trying to take in the scene and obviously struggling to grasp what he was seeing.
"Didn't think you'd find your old man like this, huh?" Enji coughed.
"You shouldn't speak more than necessary," Shoto mumbled. Enji could feel the small room cool down significantly. "Preserve your strength." With that, he made two solid ice pillars to lift the debris over him.
Enji didn't think there was a point to preserving his strength. He had none of it left. The moment the weight lifted off his shoulders, his body slumped.
"I'll have to melt down the concrete to get your hands out," Shoto said in a careful and somewhat small voice. Enji didn't care. He was already losing consciousness.
a bit about this chapter.
1. Somebody asked me about the class of Noumu that attacked this chapter. Since I forgot to mention it here and also won't go in depth about it later, since most civilian aren't able to distinguish between them anyway: the first one to attack was a High-End comparable to Hood (the one Enji fought in the pro-hero arc) the other two who came later were both near-high ends. That includes the one Enji faced for a short time. If that fight hadn't been cramped into such a tight space and if Enji didn't have to focus on protecting those civilians, he could've made quick work of it (if he were still a hero and would have actually fought).
2. As mentioned, I've really been looting forward to this scene! i've pretty much planned from the start to have Enji stuck under rubble trying to protect civilians. How exactly that scene would play out I didn't know yet. First I thoughts he'd just safe a random stranger and then soon decided that he'd safe a child instead. At a time I wanted it to be a child that first either insulted Enji just before the attack or whose parents insulted Enji beforehand. but i couldn't fit that in. I also thought about giving him a much nigher role in evecuating the building (like catching a falling elevator or holding up a crumbling ceiling over the emergency exit.) but none of that fit in, and the chapter got really bloated. i even thoight about him saving Fuyumi, but then preferred to include Fuyumi but ultimately having him safe strangers - which is how I thought about including Fuyumi's class.
i think this works quite ok, though I kind of regret not having Enji catch any elevators.
3. this situation is very difficult for him. I wanted him to be unable to just solve it with his quirk so I decided his lack of knowledge aboit the material surrounding him and maki's and Izumo's proximity would make ut difficult for him to fully access his quirk without risking their health. We already know from canon that the heat of his fire can accidentally cause a lot of damage to the surroundings. so in this case, Enji would be easily able to burn hinself to freedom with his quirk. however, not without risking to seriously injure or even kill the kids. I hope that is believable. ps: i also gave him quite impressive strength and durability feets being able to more or less carry a big chunk of that building's weight as well as surviving the crash at all. in canon we saw him smashed through multiple buildings so... I didn't think it would be too crazy to assume he could survive a crashing building. It's not the biggest building anyway.
4. the last chapter title 'the essence' was supposed to be a callback to All Might's "meddling where you don't need to is the essence of being a hero" as well as early on when he told deku that "all great heroes... their bodies moved before they had a chance to think". So this is in a way, Endeavor's new origin story. just weeks ago I had him ground so low that he didn't even think to help at a car crash. it's what I still call Enji's lowest moment. now, intead although he's a civilian and really nobody can expect him to go that far, he goes above and beyond trying to safe two kids he barely knows. He's not doing this because he's a hero or because it's his job. Nor because he wants to fight - He didn't fight ar all apart from using himself as a meat shield - or because he has to proof himself. he just wants to safe these two kids. I think that's something special for him. At several points before that in the story I mentioned how he doesn't normally focus on the people he saves. he barely remembers their faces, never mind their names. He never did a house call to any of the family of the people he didn't safe. I think Enji was (like early bakugou) very much focused on the battle part of being a hero. sure he also did rescuing, but i doubt he saw these people as more than a number and statistic, trying to keep cassualties on his job low, cause he's a professional. Now, I wanted him to finally get up close and personal to the people he saves.
well, I've rampled enoug. I just hope you like it.
