Pain. White hot and blinding.
It was all he could focus on, demanding his attention even as he struggled to push past it. He'd seen first hand what that villain's quirk did when used on a person, and like hell was he about to let that happen to one of his students.
Despite his wounds screaming at him, Eraserhead activated Erasure one last time before everything came crashing down. Namely his head, crashing down once more into the unforgiving ground. Then nothing but darkness.
And then...
Aizawa Shouta opened his eyes.
He's not actually sure when he did that, come to this of it, but here he is.
Eyebrows furrowed in confusion, Aizawa hesitantly pushes himself up to his knees and glances around. He's kneeling in a painfully familiar-looking crater, full of rubble and what looks like partially dried blood—his blood.
His head feels... off, in that kind of numb, floaty way that he often associates with heavy painkillers.
...That would make sense, wouldn't it? If he was drugged up on painkillers right now. Considering the fact he'd just been beaten into unconsciousness by that thing—what did the villain call it again... a 'nomu'?
What doesn't make sense was the fact that he apparently isn't injured.
Like, at all.
Aizawa's flickering gaze catches on his hands—his arms—which were, surprisingly, perfectly intact. Unbroken.
Which doesn't make any sense, because he remembers, quite vividly in fact, the feeling of his bones being shattered as though they were nothing more than toothpicks. He can still almost feel the pain of it, even if it was more in the remembered sense rather than the physical. Just the memory of it has him shuddering.
When he brings his decidedly-not-shaking hands up to his face, he finds that it has similarly healed. There's no blood dripping from his temple, no stinging cuts from sharp bits of rubble, not even so much as a bruise from what he can feel. Shouldn't there be... something?
Even his right elbow shows no sign of the villain's disintegration quirk; if he's being honest, it's more like it never happened in the first place. His previously ruined sleeve is now perfectly intact.
There's a mounting sense of confusion, along with a good bit of dread, curling uneasily in his gut.
Something is decidedly wrong with this scenario.
Maybe... maybe this was a dream? He doesn't like the thought of that, but it would certainly explain what he's experiencing.
All he knows for sure is he'll get no answers by just sitting here.
Aizawa squeezes his eyes shut with a shuddering exhale, hands clenched tightly in the fabric of his pants under he's sure the knuckles are stark white. After another steadying breath against the uncertainty prickling in the back of his mind, he takes stock of his surroundings.
The USJ's plaza is empty except for him, no sign of any villains or his students, but all the damage from the fighting is still present.
When he looks towards the water where he remembers Midoriya, Asui, and Shinsou being—right before his face was smashed that last time into the pavement—there is nothing. No one.
Where has everyone gone?
Are his students okay?
.
.
He has to know.
Even if this was all just some drug-induced hallucination, he needs to know. He's never been good at just sitting around and waiting for answers to come to him.
Bracing his hands on his knees, Aizawa pushes up to his feet with a grunt.
Only...
The pain he'd been bracing for never comes, and he doesn't just mean from the fight.
His knees tend to ache with all the running and jumping he does on a daily basis, but they feel... fine? He hadn't noticed it before now either, but the dry burn of his eyes—a constant that had faded into the background of his awareness over the years, unless it was bordering on intolerable—was also seemingly cured. Fuck, he can't even remember the last time his eyes felt so good without him first using copious amounts of his prescription eyedrops. The migraine he'd been nursing for what feels like his entire life was gone too, leaving him feeling almost lightheaded and giddy.
The dull ache of his ribs from being struck earlier in the week, the burn in his muscles from patrol, even the tightness of his joints was gone, all gone.
He doesn't even feel tired.
That last one probably freaked him out the most. He's always tired, to the point where he doesn't even remember what it feels like to be one hundred percent awake.
Does it always feel this... disconcerting?
Turning slowly on the spot, Aizawa makes his way towards the exit.
He can hear people talking from that direction, sees the reflection of flashing red and blue lights which generally means police.
Hopefully one of them could explain to him what the fuck is going on, or at the very least if his students all made it out alright. That's all that is keeping him calm and rational at this point, he needs to find out.
Beyond that it's just the muted tap-tap-tap of his footsteps, and a steady beeping in the distance that he can't quite make out. Oddly enough, it reminds him of a heart monitor, though there's nothing around here that could explain where the noise was coming from.
Aizawa decides to focus on more important things; like figuring out who the fuck thought it'd be a good idea to heal and then ditch him at the scene of a crime.
The thought of this all being something he'll forget as soon as he's woken up and come down from the likely-insane amounts of opioids or whatever the fuck they've pumped him full of isn't a thought he wants to entertain, so he'll go with this for his own sanity.
Soon, he reaches the exit—and the top of the stairs. Seriously, who designed this place to have so many goddamn stairs?
To put it nicely, it's a mess.
Countless police cars are scattered around the area, full of villains waiting to be carted off to jail. There's a few ambulances too, with plenty of paramedics rushing about.
One of the ambulances was just pulling away, mostly likely with some unlucky bastard on their way to the nearest hospital.
For the barest moment, Aizawa feels an irrational need to chase that particular ambulance down and see who was inside, as if an invisible string was pulled taught around his heart, urging him to know. He quickly stomps down the feeling before he can act on it, there's much more important things he needs to tend to.
The bus he'd arrived here on with his class was nowhere in sight.
He scowls at the scene, eventually catching sight of Tsukauchi amongst the scattered crowd and police tape. The detective's back was facing the USJ, and by extension, Aizawa.
Time to get a little revenge.
No one has noticed him yet, which is his favorite way of appearing on-scene, so Aizawa stalks forward with silent footsteps until he's only a few feet behind Tsukauchi.
A grin stretches at his lips, though he hides it behind his capture weapon.
"Anyone want to explain what's going on here?" he grinds out, a foolproof way of scaring the hell out of almost anyone; especially these idiots who haven't even noticed his presence yet.
Key word being almost, because neither Tsukauchi nor the rest of the nearby police lackeys are affected. There's not so much as a twitch from any of them, their conversation continuing on as they ignore him completely.
It's illogical, and also rather annoying.
Aizawa's grin falls into more of a pout, luckily still hidden from view.
Was this some sort of prank?
An... illogical ruse?
Either way, Aizawa doesn't like it. Not one bit
It has to be a prank, even if the thought of so many people doing this after such a serious breach in security didn't make any logical sense. He can't think of any other explanation beyond 'it's a dream', and that just didn't sit well with him.
He sighs, looking up to the heavens for patience. When he doesn't find any, Aizawa decides to keep going and at least keep his remaining pride—and sanity.
"You gonna answer, or wha—"
Tsukauchi abruptly turns around, his tan trenchcoat fanning out with a snap. It's only Aizawa's many years of training that keep him from flinching at the sudden movement.
Then he sees the other's expression.
The detective looks grim for lack of a better word, his dark gaze seeming to almost pierce straight through Aizawa's soul.
This time, he does flinch back.
Such an expression was just so uncharacteristic on the normally amicable detective's face, and the fact it seems to be aimed at Aizawa of all people is setting off all sorts of alarm bells in his mind.
"Tsukau—" Aizawa holds his hands up in surrender, eyes widening as Tsukauchi marches straight for him with a purposeful stride. He takes another half-step back, uncertainty and a healthy bit of fear warring with his other emotions. He's never seen Tsukauchi like this.
Fuck, the detective looks downright livid. He keeps walking forward—right into Aizawa.
Right.
Through.
Aizawa.
The feeling is instantaneous. Burning cold. Forcing the air from his lungs in one great wheezing gasp, his body instinctively curling into itself.
He's left trembling in utter, all-encompassing shock.
Despite knowing better, he was almost certain that he'd been set on fire somehow, the frigid heat sending pins and needles shooting out in all directions from the point of contact. Namely, the center of his chest.
It feels like he's dying.
Aizawa chokes desperately for breath on his hands and knees, though he doesn't remember at what point he fell to the ground, eyes impossibly wide and shoulders trembling. All he can hear is his heartbeat roaring in his ears, drowning out all the chaos around him.
Trying to gain control over his breathing, Aizawa grits his teeth and mentally counts to ten, before letting out a borderline hysterical "what... the fuck."
"They're not gonna hear you, y'know," a painfully familiar voice states from behind him.
Aizawa whirls around, nearly giving himself whiplash as his quirk activates on reflex, but the jitters still present from whatever the fuck just happened cause him to fall right back down almost as soon as he's gotten up.
He manages to catch sight of the person before Erasure cuts off, at least.
A moment is all his quirk needs, and the person—a boy, barely older than his first years—falls a few feet to the ground with a yelp.
Years of hero training finally kick in, allowing Aizawa to dark back up to his feet in an instant despite his brain struggling to keep up. He pushes the sensation of his body shifting—and... shrinking?—with the movement to the back of his mind, focused solely on the imposter.
Letting out an almost animalistic snarl through grit teeth, Aizawa takes a step forward. "You're dead."
The boy sputters, not even attempting to struggle as Aizawa's capture weapon darts out to bind him.
"Hey, c'mon! Is that any way to greet an old friend?" he whines from his new position on the ground, wisps of the cloud he'd just been perched on swiftly vanished into the wind.
This entire situation was making less and less sense.
It was illogical, improbable, impossible.
Because, against all reason, the person before him was none other than his dead best friend.
Shirakumo Oboro.