Authors note: Hey all, I just wanted to say that the next chapter is going to be the last one, I just wanted to give a heads-up. I hope you enjoy.


It felt like a nightmarishly long time had passed in such a short span, the second they called in for help with the kidnappers and their victims. Most of them were taken straight to the hospital, Bakugou having gone overboard during his brawl with Lesk and evidently exhaustion had taken Brenna down due to overusing his quirk. Jezel had to be restrained due to her refusal to stop using her quirk, until they were able to use quirk suppressant handcuffs on her. They had been worried she might kill herself on accident with how she was tearing apart her own body to make more plant bulbs, they had no choice but to leave her like that for the moment so she could recover.

The 1-A student's injuries were not anything major, aside from Bakugou who had minor arm injuries due to being nearly crushed on several occasions by his opponent's quirk, the options were either arm crushing or being buried underground. The explosive user had opted into the option that didn't involve a slow death underground.

Mei Hatsume on the other hand, she was taken away almost immediately, straight to surgery much to Midoriya's dismay. The only way to remove the gadget attached to the pinkette's arm, was through an extensive surgical procedure. During which they'd also assess her head fractures severity and decide what they need to do from there.

Izuku had spent hours in the waiting room, it honestly felt like it was taking an eternity, the green haired teen had essentially glued himself there the second he was given a bill of 'almost' clean health. Deku's problems did not come from his injuries currently, it was primarily an exhaustion issue that was affecting his body, something he was truly feeling more than ever right now.

Ochako and Bakugou were handling explaining things to the police and such, as well as dealing with an angry All Might. The two only did it to save Midoriya from having to worry about it in the future, even if they were unaware exactly of just how close the teacher and 1-A student were really. Katsuki had a vague grasp, yet was still oblivious past a certain point with some aspects of the relationship.

Midoriya was just staring at the floor now, his hands on his knees, waiting, waiting, and waiting. If there was one thing heroes hated more in this world, it was waiting to know the results of learning if their efforts if it actually made a difference or not.

"Hey, Deku. Snap out of it." Katsuki's voice caught his attention, the green haired teen looking up and seeing the fellow top scoring 1-A student was standing before him, bag on his back containing his hero costume.

"Kacchan? I thought you would have left the second you got cleared by the doctors." Deku replied, his childhood frenemy taking a seat beside him. Suddenly there was a bottle of water shoved in front of his face.

"You haven't slept in a couple of days, have been working non-stop basically, and to top that all off, the worst of all, you've been left alone with that brain of yours." The explosive quirk user retorted, it wasn't much of a secret that Midoriya being left alone with his own thoughts in a depressive state would do far more damage to him than most villains could.

"... Thanks, Kacchan." The one for all inheritor weakly smiled, taking the water bottle and beginning to drink from it. There was no reply from Katsuki, he was sat back in the seat, All Might had been taken away to handle trying to explain the full situation to U.A., preferably in a way that conveniently left out the three 1-A students.

"Any news on Hatsume?" Bakugou queried, his childhood frenemy shook his head.

"Nothing." Izuku said. "I can't get that image of when I found her out of my head either. She looked like she was about to die down there if we hadn't found her when we did." He continued; the exhausted teenager felt his mind beginning to weight heavy on him. Midoriya did not know if he would be able to live with himself if Mei was permanently damaged or killed from the selfishness of the kidnappers.

"Yeah, I know what you mean." Bakugou began, feeling his anger rising, yet it was in an oddly even level, normally he would want to kill those kidnappers, this time, his blood was just curdling in restrained rage.

"The blood, the pain on their face that's so bad they can't even cry, the fear in their eyes that vanishes quickly when they realize someone is there to save them, only for it to come back just as fast when the situation is confirmed to be as bad as they thought it was..." The explosive quirk user exclaimed; his exasperation seemed to grow at a rather quick speed. Midorya seemed to not understand the latter half of what Bakugou was saying initially, until it clicked with him after a moment.

"You're talking about what happened in that apartment, aren't you?" Izuku took a not so blind guess, wondering if this meant that his friend was finally willing to open up about it while they were in this more or less isolated position.

"Kacchan, you can tell me anything. I owe you my secrecy for all you've done for me." The green haired teenager assured, trying to ignore their history of how they both interacted when they were younger, or their harder fought brawl from the not-so-distant past.

"Fine, as much as I hate to say it, you'll be the second person I told now..." Bakugou growled, biting his lips in frustration and wonder of having to admit any of that even. Deku quirked a brow, presuming the therapist that his explosive friend had been to was the first they had told of what had transpired on the last hero internship.

"You already know the cliff notes, I know you bugged All Might to know what happened the second you thought I might not be acting like 'myself.'" Katsuki glared towards his childhood frenemy, trying to calm himself down before proceeding to continue.

"I found her there, in the basement, the elevator had plummeted all the way through like you know... She had a piece of rebar sticking through the left side of her chest." The ash-blonde haired teen began retelling what he could remember, it was engraved enough into his memory that there was no way he would be able to forget it, not anytime soon especially.

"She wasn't hurt bad anywhere else, honestly it looked like a miracle of a disaster to me. I remember how happy she was to see me, then I..." Bakugou began to aimlessly glare, remembering noticing a disturbing amount of blood coating the many rocks around the victim of the incident, and her reaction when Bakugou cleared enough away to see what it was coming from as well.

"She said her name was Lue when I was doing the health check, she didn't care that she was literally impaled on freaking rebar and buried at the bottom of a building though, no. She was just talking about this present she had to go pick up for her husband, something for their anniversary." Kacchan laid back in the chair, looking at the ceiling in exasperation just recalling that.

"I got her to snap back to reality, she told me about the blood thinners... I knew the second I heard that, there was no hope of getting her out of there on my own, I didn't hide that though." Katsuki shook his head, his normally tough face had slipped and as result, the direness of the situation had hit Lue equally as fast. Midoriya stayed quiet, simply listening to the recounting of the event.

"That crying, that damn crying started, she begged me to do anything, to tear her off the rebar, to break it off from the concrete it was in, none of it was safe to do though." His hands clenched into fists.

"I couldn't do anything, and the paramedics were stuck dealing with the injured above ground, I wanted to go get them, but Lue begged me not to leave her alone in the dark." That was when silence seemed to fall over the recounting, Izuku was waiting for his explosive friend to continue, yet there were no words, like he hated that part the most.

"Kacchan?" Midoriya called out to him. "You don't have to keep going if you don't want to, I know you're trying to take my mind off of everything." The one for all user said, appreciative of the effort, but it was clear that it was hard for Katsuki to recall it all.

"I stayed with her, talked with her, and listened to every last one of her final words. I even told her what she would feel and that she didn't have to be scared... It was only 10 minutes, it felt like hours, she died in 10 minutes." Kacchan forced himself to continue, he felt that if he kept running away from the story, he would just be haunted by it further. After all, talking about it somewhat had helped the explosive quirk user a fair amount.

"Kacchan, it wasn't your fault. You did what you could, and made her feel at ease before she passed. Not a lot of heroes would've been able to do that given the situation." Izuku repeated the words that had probably been said a hundred-times to the explosive boy now.

"I only told you that because I don't want you to wind up like I was after that, I shut down hard for a week straight, all because I blamed myself for not being able to save them." Bakugou finished there, feeling like he had gotten a good amount of weight off of his shoulders, Deku put a hand on his shoulder, trying to be reassuring that he was there for him.

"Thank you, really, I owe you a lot for looking out for me like you have." Midoriya warmly smiled, Katsuki huffed and rolled his eyes, not even able to force the fake anger back at the moment, he was too tired physically and emotionally now.

That was when they saw Recovery Girl entering the waiting room, having been assisting in treatment during the surgery on Mei, she looked unhappy while approaching the 1-A students.

"Midoriya, I know you're exhausted, I need to talk with you and prepare you for this. The surgery is done and we've gotten most of our test results back, I have really bad news about Mei." The healing quirk user did not beat around the bush at all, aware that the top scoring 1-A student had been waiting for quite some time to hear news about Mei. Izuku swallowed hard, not sure he could handle it, yet that didn't stop him from standing up to listen.

"Tell me how bad it is, please..."