Kurogiri was under strict orders not to harm me- that much was obvious as soon as he stepped into the bathroom and attempted no retaliation to my less-than-friendly aquatic greeting. Fortunately for him, I'd only reached the metal band around his neck and forced him to the ground before an explosion quaked the entire building.
"Chiyo Tsutomi, you are not safe here," He spoke from his horizontal position with the same politeness he always had, albeit with more urgency. What the League considered danger and what I did, however, were two entirely different ball parks.
I threw on my borrowed clothes and smoothed my palms against the damp tile floor.
"We must-"
"Be quiet."
The Nomu were easier to find, given their bulging muscular composition. One, two, three, four...five. They were all moving in the same direction; spiders, waiting for their web to be disturbed.
Something- someone had been caught.
It's all a trap.
"Can you take me to Shigaraki?" I had to fix this, to save him. Knowing All Might's true form, piecing together his beefier form's very few appearances, I now realized Toshinori was no longer the powerhouse the world viewed him as. He had struggled against just one Nomu at the USJ; there's no way he could take on five of them in his current state.
I hurried to Kurogiri's side, grabbed hold of his vest to help pull him up.
I can do this. I can find a way to at least give him a five minute window to escape.
"You scared me. Didn't your mom ever teach you not to enter an occupied bathroom?" Kurogiri stood and a brush of fluttery warmth graced my biceps- his hands, steadying the both of us. Breath shuddered through my weary lungs. "I'm sorry for attacking you. I'm scared, so please, please, take me to Tomura. He's the only one who can keep me safe."
The sensation of before, of evaporating limbs and organs filled with helium, took me by less of a surprise than the fact Kurogiri actually chose to transport me. Did he really buy the lie, or is he simply instructed to follow my orders?
There was no act of deja vu when I landed at Tomura Shigaraki's feet; I remembered every second of the USJ attack as clear as day, history coyly repeating itself now.
"And here you thought All Might wouldn't come for you." Tomura cackled. Already there were great, ugly rips across his neck, like smiling red lips looking for their next victim. I rose to my feet, checked the distance between him, myself, and Kurogiri. We were spread a healthy amount apart from one another, but neither male seemed particularly tense.
They still don't see me as a threat.
I could do it.
I could end this all, right now.
The Nomu were preoccupied elsewhere. Not even Kurogiri would be able to intervene in time to stop my hand from pressing into Tomura's chest, rip the seams of his heart like a hot knife through butter. It would all be so easy.
But the image of his dirty shoelaces, double-knotted as if no one had bothered to show him how to retie them should they come loose, nagged at my conscience. How he shivered when my hand had touched his without fear, as if never having experienced such a kindness.
Instead of destruction, my senses chose a different path.
"Tomura, you don't have to do this; you don't have to be defined by your past," The words rushed from my mouth as quickly as his body did, jerking away as if I'd slapped him.
He'd said we were two sides of the same coin. I had been ripped apart and reconstructed by my mother with a father who had tried to drown me before I'd ever taken my first breath.
And a person cannot carry the essence of loneliness without being easily recognized by another wielder, like a necklace of despair chained to our necks. A thick band of chains Tomura Shigaraki had recognized around my neck long before even I was aware of them, recognized their drowning weight.
My mother's transgressions.
My father's transgressions.
Nana Shimura. Gran Torino.
All Might. Toshinori Yagi.
Abandoning hope and turning to hatred seemed easier; logical, even, given the validity of such emotions in the face of what had been done to me.
But hatred was just another rope to be swung by. Hatred wouldn't give me what I wanted- what anyone wanted.
And I wanted to break those chains, every single one until they glistened like crushed pearls in my hands. Until I was permanently free of their weight.
"Come with me."
Kurogiri didn't stop my movement towards the pale-haired boy stumbling away from me. I grabbed his shirtsleeve- one identical to my own- and pleaded; "I know something horrible must have happened to you. I understand what it feels like, to drown. You don't have to be alone anymore. Let me help you-"
A sickening pain breathed across my wrist. I ripped away from his grip with a cry, staggering to keep my balance as flesh crisped like ash from where his hand had touched my bare skin.
"You think I need your help?" He asked quietly. "You? You're a lost little kid with nobody. I have my Master. I will take this world and destroy everyone in it-"
"And be left with what? Yourself, alone again?" I haphazardly tapered the blood loss through submersion, formed an impromptu clot for a momentary reprieve. It's not as severe as it could have been. I think he just grazed me. "You live in abandoned holes in the ground, taking orders from a computer screen. How do you know he's not just using you? There's- Something connects us, Tomura. You feel it; I know you do."
The shiver of his limbs, drawing away again.
He didn't deny it.
Against rationality I lunged, trapped his fingers in mine.
What was it? What led us to defy logic, act without thinking to protect someone who might not even want to be saved?
Because we see ourselves in them.
"Let go, or I'll disintegrate your hand."
And yet my skin remained intact, unharmed, his fingers cold between mine.
"Tomura, come with me. Forget heroes. Forget your master. Forget all of this. We can leave, together."
The red of his eyes bore so deeply into mine I felt my spine quake, but I didn't- couldn't- look away.
No matter my trauma, the violations done to me for decades, I had been loved.
I had Mom, and friends. My students. Shota Aizawa and his ribs, protecting me even when I had been unaware.
His outgrown pants, the childish way he spoke. His guardians, veiled by mist and screens, claiming to care.
All this time, Tomura Shigaraki had been alone.
Our hands rose with his movement, suspended between our cages. His breath caught.
And then his hand swiveled from mine, aimed for the exposed skin of my chest.
Tomura Shigaraki thrust me away from him, just as a massive Nomu cratered through the wall.
Dust caught in my throat. Stars danced in my vision and a siren wailed between my ears.
He pushed me to safety. Tomura saved me.
The room had been reduced to near rubble in a matter of moments. I coughed, stood and promptly fell, having to attempt once more just to balance out my shot equilibrium. The intrusive Nomu cawed, already stirring back to life, skin a pale grey and bristled with stone-like spikes. Shigaraki and Kurogiri were nowhere in sight. Tomura, why?
Instead, a familiar round face appeared from the newly-created hole in the wall.
"Oh!" She seemed just as surprised to see me as I her, wide-eyed behind her pink visor. "Guys! I found her! Target acquired!"
Target acquired?
The ringing in my ears faded enough to notice the explosions dominoing towards us. Ochako Uraraka's rosy face suddenly appeared before mine, pulling me to the ground as glycerin bombs at last reached their destination.
"Where d'you think you're going, ugly?"
A flash of green ripped across the room; the Nomu shot from the ground with Izuku Midoriya's kick, into the waiting hands of Katsuki Bakugo. Uraraka stood when the danger passed and gave a frantic wave of her arms.
"She's here! Guys, we found her!"
The sight before me, of a group of children in the den of wolves, shook me more than the realization I knew each and every one of their cherub faces.
"What- who-" I couldn't even articulate one of the rampaging thoughts. "Why-"
"We're here to save you, dumb ass." An ashen blonde landed three feet in front of us, irritated as ever. "How dumb are you?"
"Kacchan," A clover head tried to admonish, though the way Midoriya's attention caught on my pale face made the admonishment fall halfheartedly. "Ms. Tsuomti, you might not remember us, but we're your students. We and the others are here to take you home."
"The others?" Electricity snapped my limbs back to life. How many others? Who else was here? Who let these kids come here? "Is All Might here?"
"He's fighting another Nomu in the courtyard- one even larger than this one-"
"He's the target, not me," I couldn't help but glance at Uraraka when I reused her term. Despite the batshit situation, a little grin turned her apple cheeks. I bent over and re-rolled my dirtied sweatpants. Mobility should be easy, so long as they remained tied off. "There are five Nomu here, and maybe a handful of security thugs. The Nomu will go after All Might- we have to help him."
"But All Might told us-" Uraraka began.
The idea of Toshinori Yagi- slight, bony, terribly kind Toshi- fighting these abominations alone filled me with long-fanged spiders. I grabbed Uraraka's shoulders with a grim line of a smile.
"Listen, I know this is pretty much the exact opposite of everything I've ever said or taught you, but All Might needs us. We're not leaving here without everyone. Now please, take me to him."
Bakugo and Midoriya needed no further instruction.
"The security was taken out by Squad One. Squad Four was the extraction team, but since we found you first they'll likely regroup with everyone else-"
"What?" The building was a few good hits from collapsing around us as we ran through the abandoned halls. "Who are in these squads? Who the hell allowed you kids to be part of this?"
The question went unanswered as the courtyard came into view. A sickly green pool cut the fighting ground short, unless you wanted to either drown in slimed moss or acquire a few parasitic infections.
The only thing more terrifying than the basic septic tank were the four savage-boned Nomu roaming around, surrounding their primary-colored meal.
Shit.
"All Might, behind you!" Uraraka screamed. A scaled Nomu had found Toshinori's blindside, lunged for the exact location where his body seemed weakest. With speed I'd never witnessed before, Midoriya disappeared within half a second.
His attack, however, proved futile; help from someone else arrived first.
Or rather, an entire team.
A flash of glasses.
A quick, pink whip.
Two-toned fury, burning and freezing.
A plume of lavender and the globed hair of another.
Tight, overly-sexual spandex and the swirl of lemon ice cream hair, both leading a herd of our students against the blind-siding Nomu. It released a primal roar before snakes of white material choked the sound from its throat, toppling over into a minefield of shining purple baubles.
A slender form landed, hair defiant of gravity.
Bakugo snorted at my stupid gape, though a smirk curved his face into something almost aggressively friendly.
"We all came. To get you back."
Shit.
This was no time to cry. I shook myself, hard, and slipped into every lesson, every spar and punch and technique and joke and laugh my little team had shared, submersed myself into the memory of how to dance in a field of combat. These Nomu were big, but nothing compared to the first beast we'd encountered all those weeks ago.
"Everyone! The Nomu were put in place to eliminate All Might, but they're not as strong as the one from the USJ attack! We need to divide and conquer!" Why did they all look so surprised? I clapped my hands together, as if this was simply another sleepy afternoon class where half the students were lulling. "Now!"
"You...know who we are?" For the first time in his life, Katsuki Bakugo spoke with an inside voice.
Oh. Right.
Again, so not the time, but I couldn't stop a quick grin's appearance. "How could I forget the people most important to me? We'll discuss this and your clearly unethical mentors later. For now-" I leaned close enough to watch that irritated blush cross his pissy little face. "Give them hell."
There were things my body knew to do even with a bogged-down brain; dodge, pivot, connect with its own power and invigorate every adrenaline-pumping neuron to make me near fluid. I couldn't take a Nomu down, sure- but I could hold it still for others to do so.
"Bakugo! Midoriya!"
He was an explosive menace released upon the world, near maniacal as he shot across the air.
"Your ass is grass!"
It was incredible to watch class 1-a's biggest rivalry work in unison, pummeling the immobilized villains with devastating blows. There were clear skill sets the students utilized with prime efficiency; Mineta's baubles, gluing Nomu down long enough for Todoroki to burn them into incapacitation; Tsu and Iida discombobulating a raging beast so Yaoyorozu could drop a shower of explosives into its body. But where are the professionals?
A ground-shaking roar answered my question, ripping free of Eraser Head's capturing weapon to land a direct hit against another hero's face. All Might was their primary target, after all, and this particular Nomu seemed fiercer than the rest.
Like the one from the USJ attack.
A flash of red and black flew through the air; Momo Yaoyorozu's attack hadn't been enough to fully take down her targeted Nomu. I rushed to soften her landing.
"Tsutomi-sensei!" She gasped from both the impact and whom the impact crashed into. I couldn't bite back a grin even in the chaos, her almond eyes lighting from shocked to delighted to relieved, only to circle right back through the emotions again.
"Good to see you've bounced back from the Sports Festival, Momo."
The quartet of pros were keeping the largest Nomu occupied but gains seemed limited; another shock-absorber, like the one before. How much longer could they keep this up? Midnight's quirk seemed ineffective and with the Nomu's brute strength, Shota's erasure was futile. Without regulation to soothe my racing heart I felt near ready to explode from watching them, watching him, caught in a seemingly winless battle.
A comment Shigaraki made yesterday highlighted itself in blaring neon lights.
They only attack who I tell them to.
Tomura Shigaraki hadn't made an appearance yet, and Kurogiri's warping hadn't even so much as glimmered. Did they run away? Surely he would want to see the demise of All Might, right? Would he have reordered the Nomu to kill me already?
The collision of a car-sized fist into Toshinori's abdomen brought resolve; it was a chance I would have to take.
Memories had been pouring into my body like a pitcher of molten silver, encasing my bones and solidifying who I was.
The memory of two events entered together, filled the last empty spaces in my armor.
"Bakugo! Midoriya! Uraraka! Iida!" With the other Nomus momentarily down, this was our chance. The students- my students- answered, quick to surround me. Again I was taken aback by the way they looked at me now, eyes moon-like in size and shininess. These young, determined faces, brought together to save someone as insignificant as myself. Not now, Chiyo. Later.
"You remember the first time we met? How you got me to my interview?" I pointed across the rotted pool, where Eraser Head was pulling Midnight to safety right before a fist reverted her to powder. "We need to get there, now. The Nomu won't attack me."
"You can't know that-"
"We have no other choice."
The Nomu was absorbing their attacks and reflecting them outward. Present Mic's attempt to shatter its senses only led to the group crumbling as the Nomu reproduced the very same attack. They can't go on like this.
"Midoriya, Bakugo- go on either side. As soon as I make contact and draw its attention, obliterate it from the sides. With enough force, we'll shatter through its absorbing ability and cause enough damage to make regeneration impossible. Uraraka, Iida- I need you to get me in front of him. The fastest way is straight across the pool. You can do this. We can do this."
With me in front, even if it didn't work, I would take the brunt of the attack.
It's going to work.
"Let's kill this bastard."
Every drop of blood in my body was alive, electric.
We can do this.
Hands grasped my waist, the one on my neck depleting gravity. I flexed my fingers, focused.
"On my mark."
In, out. In, out.
My friends were bloody. Toshinori's skin emitted a steam around his edges. He staggered with the next crushing slam, fell back and revealed the broad, open breast of the Nomu.
"Go!"
Tears streamed at Iida's speed. Uraraka floated our composed weight, the contents of my very stomach.
I wasn't the only one who could run on water now.
A great, black, decimating fist drew back; I raised my own, hardened every last molecule.
Focus.
A pause, registering my face.
And then my fist made contact.
A symphony of blood, muscle tissue, and bones shot from its back in a crescendo.
Sound melted away; there was only a vibrating, tangible pulse as it screamed.
There would be no time to recover.
A shooting star of green from the west and a flight of wild, grinning teeth from the east found the Nomu's skin, burst its organs like water balloons.
My hand had broken upon impact; more alarming, a vein had clearly erupted, splaying my clothes and dripping down my arms and motionless fingers.
But the Nomu would not be rising again in this lifetime.
The loud wind of my breath knocked everything into background noise. There was movement; students, Toshinori and Yamada and Kayama moving towards me, but all I could see was him.
I took a step, fell over myself.
His arms cradled my fall, as if expecting nothing less.
"We've really got to stop meeting like this."
The weight of his scarf curled around my arm to stopper the fountain of my burst artery. My mind put on the record of us, played the vinyl memories of him and the last time one of us had come out of such a situation in bandages and scars.
"You promised not to save me," I recalled.
"I didn't save you." He replied. "You saved yourself."
When he lifted the goggles, revealed two charcoal eyes crinkling at their edges, the idea of having not recognized Shota Aizawa- this lazy, beautiful man that I loved- for even a moment of time, seemed truly unfathomable.
There were still loose stitches in the tapestry, blank spots where memory should be, but I knew, now, they were not lost forever.
That, with time, I could regain everything once lost to me.
And if I stumbled, lost my way again, the people I loved would be there.
"Guys! The pervy neighbor who mentioned a dark-haired guy going into Ms. Tsutomi's apartment! It was Mr. Aizawa!" An accusing, blubbering shrimp jabbed a stubby finger at us, face riled with offended shock.
A horrifying coo filled the air as our students surrounded us in a semi-circle, taking in the sight of me in their homeroom teacher's arms, skin suddenly darker than the crimson seeping out of my arm.
A gasp, and then; "Didn't he say he saw them kissing?"
Caught in embarrassment and joy and relief, tears and laughter, my mind was slow to pick up on the signs of movement until far too late.
A sharp, spiny vertebrae, eyeless head raising to sniff the air. The original Nomu whose destruction led Tomura Shigaraki to push and save me from annihilation, forgotten in the havoc, returning at last to feast upon our peaceful moment. Too far away for anyone else to notice- only submersion, hearing the creature's dripping circulatory system like a siren's call, waking my conscious of its presence.
The stony thorns of the Nomu's back weren't just for show, I realized now.
They were detachable.
Aimed for the back of a white-blonde head of hair; its closest target.
I couldn't even relish the reddening of Katsuki Bakugo's face when I drew close enough to taste his breath, pushing him with all the force left in my body.
A burning struck my abdomen, ripped through my skin like an arrow through silk.
They were all slow- much too slow to catch me as I fell forward, into the pool of dark water.
The embrace felt like the second before liquid shifts to ice, the attack of winter air into warm lungs.
Filling my pores, submersing all senses.
The instant I went fully under, the water offered a handful of memories: Mom with her hands on my temples, repeating her mantras of fear again and again until they became my second nature; Mom, removing the bathtub when my quirk manifested and the water seeped into my skin, brought relief to my dried, rewired neurons.
Mom holding my temple, filling me with nightmares of drowning and death, hiding the truth of her own quirk's discovered weakness- my power, the escape from her madness.
All this time- the answer, right in reach. Why Kotaru Shimura had chosen a lake to drown us in.
Submersion was the cure.
And just as I realized what the water had given me, offered me all this time, I returned back to its quiet depths.
Author's Note: I thought "between our cages" was fun word play. Originally I meant their ribs (like a birdcage), but the idea of their mental cages- of abuse and loneliness, their limitations made by masters, is a chilling interpretation, too.
In case Chiyo's fading thoughts and memories aren't clear, she's realized submersion- literal submersion into water, as well as her quirk- is the counter to desiccation.
Another action chapter! I hope this one was easier to follow.
