Ice

(warning: this part earns its rating in violence)

By the time the bus passed the school gates, Izuku couldn't feel his hands. Full cowling was only doing so much against the ice and sleet hitting his back—his uniform was already soaked through and the cold stole his breath. As the bus picked up speed, he dug his fingertips into the roof so he didn't slide off. Thunder masked the sound of the steel groaning under his grip.

They were leaving the city. They could have taken the students to the police or the local government offices, but instead they were heading out toward the mountain. The road was dangerous—they passed a police barricade keeping drivers from going up in the storm, the squad car headlights sweeping over the children as they drove by.

Izuku clung tight, hoping the storm covered him. The government had Tokoyami, but if the agents had visited the other classes, then these students came from every part of U.A.—marketing and business and costume and tech. This wasn't just about heroes. This was about quirks and people with power, people who didn't need to get a license to have that power. This was about people who were weapons, and at least part of their society was afraid of people like that. Even if they were children.

Up the road, the bus tilted at an angle that left Izuku struggling to hold on. How did they not hear him as he scraped his feet on the roof? The storm couldn't have been that loud. What was going on in the bus? He tried to crawl forward and lost his grip with one hand, dangling by his fingertips.

They're being taken to the capital, Izuku thought. That's the only place the road goes, and—

The bus turned sharply down a dirt path and drove into the forest. A minute later, it came to a clearing with a single car, its headlights showing the ice coming down. As the bus came to a halt, the car opened.

Izuku looked up and recognized the men who'd come to take Tokoyami, and he frowned, confused. Why were they here waiting? The bus driver tried to open the door and found that it wouldn't budge, and he started to yell and pound on the door.

Then the men withdrew the firearms from under their coats and opened fire on the bus.

For one terrible moment, Izuku froze. The world seemed to float, and all of the rain coming down hovered in the air—a single second of clarity as the flash of gunfire made haloes around the men, lit the clearing like lightning and brought the smell of blood—the bullets as numerous as rain drops.

A scream came from the bus, like one person that had forty voices all shrieking at once. The bus rocked form the sheer amount of bullets hitting it, and as Izuku drew back for his attack—slowly, too slowly, why couldn't he move?—the door, the windshield and the windows at the front all sheared off in an explosion of glass and metal and a dark shadow howling madness and murder.

Tokoyami's shadow picked up one of the agents in its beak and threw him into the sky so that he vanished, forgotten. Two more sprawled backward into the mud as Izuku kicked, sending a long wave of pressure that scattered their guns. Izuku jumped off the bus and was running toward the last three when the shadow made another pass, biting one's head off.

The last two gunman aimed at Tokoyami, already leaning against the torn doorframe, and fired. As Tokoyami fell backwards with a yell, the shadow wavered and grew larger than the bus, larger than the mountain, its own pressure driving away the rain as it roared and lashed out.

Izuku kept his feet only by planting himself firmly with his own strength, taking deliberate steps to the men on the ground. They were pushed flat into the mud, stretching their fingertips out for their weapons, and Izuku fell to his knees, grabbing one's hand and crushing it to a pulp. Bracing himself against a large stone in the mud, he squeezed until blood and bone oozed out from between his fingers, and he was pushing the man's head face first into the mud until he stopped struggling, half buried in the ground. When he looked at the other one, he found that he hadn't been holding onto a rock as he'd thought. He'd been holding the man's face, and it now lay half separated from his skull, his fingertips dug into the bone as if it had been the steel roof of a bus.

Something screamed and landed just out of the car headlights—another government man hitting the ground. Just one left—Izuku stood and found him firing at the shadow overhead, long since out of bullets but still shooting as if he had anything left, his eyes wide in mindless panic

Izuku's fist went through the man's chest. He felt the spine shattering against his knuckles. As the man dropped, too shocked to scream, Izuku's foot crushed down on his skull.

Coughing, barely breathing, Izuku went back to the bus, painfully aware that the shadow had fallen silent, either spending all of its rage or...

He sat down on the steps beside Tokoyami, the beak parted slightly, eyes focused on nothing. But he didn't have to check for a pulse. Tokoyami was still alive, dragging in ragged breaths, sheltered by a shadow laying over him like a blanket.

"...who?" Tokoyami shuddered as he dragged in a breath. "Who are...?"

"It's me," Izuku said, smoothing the feathers of his forehead. "It's me. Don't move."

"Are they...dead?" Tokoyami rasped.

"Yeah...," Izuku said. He pulled off Tokoyami's torn sleeve, using it as a quick tourniquet for his leg, for his other arm, to staunch the flow from his shoulder. "I killed the last one."

"No..." Tokoyami coughed. "...students."

Izuku looked up at Shadow, who obligingly left Tokoyami's side and swept through the bus. A moment later it settled back over him without comment.

That left him with another problem. If Tokoyami went back to the school to Recovery Girl, the government would know. If they went to a hospital, the government would know. If Shadow flew, it would be spotted. If they walked back, Tokoyami might not make it. If—

Izuku's gaze settled on the car. The top was bent in, the paint had curled in places, the windshield was cracked in the corners, but the engine was still running and the lights were on.

"Shadow," he said, "take him to the car. I'll just be a minute. We'll get him help."

Deku the hero had stolen away on the bus to save his friend. It was someone else who stood up and set fire to the bus to hide Tokoyami's escape, who stomped the government's child-killers into the earth to hide the bodies, who turned the heater up so he could begin to feel his fingers again.

The shaking wouldn't stop. Neither did his mumbling.

"—government facilities are off limits, maybe private heroes—can't, they'll be under surveillance. On our own until we get word out, need supplies though...gotta keep him alive...whatever it takes..."