"Don't think of it as a bed," Sashimi said before dashing forward, "think of it as a coffin!"

Izuku's response was sluggish, his honed instincts going to waste with his devastated body. Without Danger Sense, his reaction time was halved. Still, he managed to brush off one heavy fist and avoid the second. What he failed to predict was the spinning ax that cut into his unguarded ribs.

Sashimi's heel caught him square, knocking his breath out and spilling him onto the ground. The slippery slope brought him down a few feet further than he expected, but it was a welcome descent. Distance bought him time to catch his breath and steady himself.

Rising to his feet, he barely managed to block a second kick before it crushed his temple. Sashimi, despite his large frame, was not a supreme fighter. He had less technique than Nighteye, and he was slower than Gran Torino. Keeping up while fresh wouldn't have been a problem. In fact, it might've been easy–especially since he seemed bent on not using his quirk.

Sashimi wailed on him with punches and kicks alone, and it was no surprise to Izuku. He'd staked a claim on his life, and he'd extract that debt with his own two hands. Using his quirk would end it all too quickly.

Izuku was not, however, fresh—and worse than that, he was hurt. Kicks he normally could've brushed off were debilitating. Punches that normally should've missed by miles came within hair breadths on multiple occasions. The time between blows, pregnant before, now passed by faster than bullet trains. Air was a rare commodity he only enjoyed on occasion—and enjoyed was a loose term.

Each precious mouthful was molten razors. What should've been ichor and nectar and honey-sweetness tasted no better than Ashido's most aggressive concoction. His muscles burned with exhaustion, and only grew more leaden as they remained deprived of their favorite drink.

"How does it feel, Nine? Does it hurt, does it feel bad? I can see the pain in your eyes, but I can't tell if it's old or fresh!" Sashimi said, flicking his wrist through several gestures before settling on an open-fingered battering ram. His palm met Izuku's unguarded ribs with thunderous force, no strength spared. He laughed. "I see your wound, Nine! Does it still hurt? Does it ache? Maybe itch?"

It did.

Izuku weathered the blow with practiced effort and used the attack to gain space. He took a full, painful breath—but there was no creak, no crack. His ribs remained whole. Thanking his luck, he used the brief respite to reach around his belt for his special tool.

When he raised his hand again, he held two black marbles between each knuckle. Letting half drop into his palm, he waited for Sashimi to close their gap. When he was just a few feet away, Izuku tossed all four straight into his chest.

They exploded into green smoke with enough force to separate them. Sashimi spluttered, but Izuku was used to this kind of warfare. He sprinted wide and low, catching sight of Sashimi's legs right before the smoke swallowed him whole. Calculating his reaction, Izuku dove through the smoke and tackled Sashimi to the ground.

He landed with both knees pressed on Sashimi's shoulders. The attack disturbed the smoke enough for him to get a good idea of Sashimi's silhouette.

With his knees pinning Sashimi's shoulders in place, he had the perfect opportunity. Rearing back, he brought his fist down using every fiber of muscle he could.

His fist stopped just short of breaking Sashimi's nose. At the last moment, the smoke faded just enough for him to glimpse Sashimi's face. Nausea bulldozed him, squeezing the strength from him in nanoseconds. Was he really going to punch this man—again?

Sashimi shoved him off a moment later, kicking his ribs in the process. A sharp flash of pain exploded through his chest. Something caved under the blow, and Izuku found himself clutching his ribs as he struggled to his feet.

Stumbling backwards, he broke away from the cloud while taking rapid, shallow breaths. Sashimi appeared moments later as a dark silhouette in the green depths. When he stepped out, green trails clung to his frame. His expression, taut and pained, had a frankensteinish mix of impassive curiosity and furious irritation.

Izuku couldn't help the way his eyes drank in Sashimi's raw, awful scars. He kicked himself for his naivete. His imagination ran wild, imagining what chain reaction must've ruined Sashimi's face. Did the sheer change in air pressure rip his face to shreds? Did wooden shrapnel carve him to pieces?

…Why didn't Nighteye and Gran Torino save him?

"Wow, Nine, thanks for the courtesy. Not ruining my perfect jawline? Real classy."

For a moment, Izuku tried to manipulate the cloud to restrain him, but of course, nothing happened. The tug in his gut was gone, its responsiveness dead. It wouldn't have worked anyways, given the smoke needed to be fresh. Those bombs were a week old—but it would've been nice.

Feeling around his hand, he frowned. He started with eight, but now he only had two. Did he drop some?

"Oh, and here!"

Rearing back, Sashimi pitched a pair of fast balls his way. One hit him in the forehead and exploded on contact—but the other hurt more. It hit right in the ribs, and the subsequent explosion felt like a real bomb going off.

Choking and blind, the leg sweep took him by total surprise. He fell hard and landed on his empty shoulder. Unbalanced and stunned, he did nothing to guard the second kick to his ribs. The precise shock of pain was like a wake-up call, however, and his flailing hand caught Sashimi's ankle before a third kick broke even more ribs.

Pushing himself away, he rolled through the mud and popped back upright. His breaths came out haggard and short, but he was still breathing, and he took that as a win.

Sashimi shoved his hands in his pockets, watching him recover from a medium distance. There was a pinch around his eyes, hinting at his attempted smile. His eyes danced with a malicious kind of joy, seeing him crouched over himself, barely holding together.

Izuku couldn't blame him.

"I get the impression you're on your last leg. What say we part ways and agree to another bout later?" Sashimi said, his voice falling into its familiar cadence. Against every fiber of instinct in his body, his shoulders relaxed an inch. A sudden swell of embarrassing feelings filled his gut. Unsaid fear gave way to hope—

Hope that Sashimi dashed with a hearty chuckle.

"Gotcha! Hell no."

Sashimi's back lit up like a fire, the air writhing with hot and angry energy for a half-second. The tension cut a moment later, and Sashimi flew forward fist-first. His knuckles met Izuku's cheek with all the force of a shotgun, snapping his chin aside and sending him flying.

Izuku's back hit the ground once, twice, and a third time before his shoulder caught on a building's exposed chimney. Something cracked as his momentum came to a near-dead stop. He tried to scream, but the only sound that came from his mouth was the audible click of his jaw setting back in place.

The pain was numbing and the sheer, unrelenting shame was burning. It was an awful, debilitating mix of sensations. A simple bait-and-switch never caught him before—let alone in a life or death situation. Nighteye would drill him until he was fifty.

As Sashimi's boots squelched the mud with his approach, it occurred to Izuku that Nighteye might never get the chance to. He pressed his palm into the mud, ignoring the awful feeling of his scrapes and open wounds blatantly touching the filth.

Izuku managed to rise all of four inches before his strength gave. He collapsed back into the ground. Sashimi's approach slowed to a stop. He didn't see his arrival so much as he smelled the ozone.

"You dead? I didn't snap your spine, did I?"

Garbled, mud-muffled words were Izuku's only response. It didn't take much imagination to notice Sashimi's dissatisfaction. With a single kick, Sashimi flipped Izuku onto his back.

Sashimi wavered in the air like a malevolent spirit, his form shifting between Izuku's blinks. Pressure built up behind Izuku's throat.

There were so many things Izuku wanted to say—needed to say—but he couldn't articulate them. The thoughts floated freely in his head like a thin soup. All his feelings were there, but they swam with no direction, no intention. He had no spoon, no fork, no knife or chopsticks.

The only way to express this stew of regret was to lift the bowl to his lips and drink.

Bits of regret and shame and confusion and pain flowed down his throat with no filter, raw and piping hot and disgusting.

He parted his lips to express his sorrow, his guilt, his own pains—but he was broken. His throat was little more than torn and dry skin. His lungs were little more than half-full airbags; the fact that his ribs hadn't punctured holes in them was a miracle.

Thus, whilst Sashimi looked down on him in an unknowable, horrible expression, Izuku could only ask one thing. With one arm, he propped himself up against the chimney. His breaths came through ragged and thin, his question barely audible between his shallow bids for oxygen.

"...H-h… H-h-how…?"

Sashimi just stared, for a second. His eyes slid off Izuku's form without so much as moving a millimeter. His pupils grayed over, his sight looking far away and through him.

He crouched, his chin working this way and that. It looked like he was rolling a billiard ball around his mouth as he searched for words. When he found them, the gleam returned to his pupils and they settled away from Izuku's face.

They were on his stump.

"There's no great secret behind it. Anyone with even a basic understanding of One for All could put two and two together. How I acquired that information in the first place… well, it wasn't a pretty process. Then again—thanks to you, nothing I do is pretty."

Izuku was sure his mind would've normally gone into hyper-overdrive, but all he could feel right now was bone-deep exhaustion. He felt like a tortoise, his mind just as fast and sleek.

He wasn't sure if it was fear or acceptance that made his spine go rigid when Sashimi grabbed him. The man's large fingers grabbed his suit by his torso's center and lifted him to his feet. His knees stayed locked, but it was only thanks to Sashimi's anchor that he remained upright.

Something alien twitched in Sashimi's expression as their faces grew closer. A dull, throbbing noise echoed somewhere off in the distance. He only spared it a second of attention before looking back to Izuku.

"So," Sashimi asked, his fist squeezing Izuku's suit a little tighter, "do you have anything to say?"

Izuku thought about the free-floating stew of negativity swirling in his gut. He felt detached, all at once, as his mind began to skim through all his regrets.

He saw himself from an outside perspective for one second. For all of that moment, he saw the entirety of himself—of his dedication, his growth, his pitfalls and fears and failures. The clarity only lasted for a moment, but the consequences rang through his body like a two-ton gong, clattering his teeth and rattling his skeleton.

The veil he kept over his innermost thoughts on One for All melted away. The haze faded, the clarity grew, and shame flushed him as thoroughly as did his blood. It had been a very, very long time since he allowed himself to genuinely feel One for All—to have a true opinion on it. With his dream-castle and Five in his head, it should've been the most intimate, loving relationship in his life. But now, he realized, that was the furthest thing from the truth.

He loathed it. On a deep, fundamental level, he truly despised it.

Yet, he also loved it. Loved it in a way a person could only love their family—it wasn't his possession, it wasn't a friend or lover. Izuku hated it more than he loved it, but that love was so deep and pure and concentrated that nothing else could compare.

It was a delicate balance by itself, but now with Sashimi before him, the scales tipped. Everything slotted into place, drawing out a silent cry from his body. Blood and helicopters filled his ears like a beeswarm, deafening with abundance and overwhelming fury. His dream-castle layered over Sashimi's scarred face like a mirage, wavering and warping into each wielder's visage.

One's serene generosity. Two and Three's standoffish introversion. Three and Four's guarded but ultimately welcoming eyes. Five's reliability and Six's composure. Seven's affection.

When he saw Eight's face—as bruised and strained as Sashimi's scars—he nearly threw up. A golden aura haloed his dying features—bright and sharp and too fierce to look straight at. Izuku saw their histories flicker through their eyes. He saw their purity, their tragedy, their rise and their falls. In a way, he felt what they felt, lived what they lived, and knew what they knew.

He wondered if it was a hallucination, but the knowledge felt real and visceral. There was pain—each wielder died a painful death to All for One. There was loss—the death of each wielder impacted the next. There was an inherited sadness—worn through the spirit of each successor.

There was tragedy in each successor—but Izuku was different. His story would not end with All for One. Eight took care of that. No other wielder's story began in such violence. Both in acquiring and in using One for All for the first time, Izuku got someone hurt. At least, he supposed, All Might had the mercy of dying from his injuries.

And now, confronted with the one not granted mercy, Izuku was experiencing his own merciless dissection.

And now, Izuku couldn't earnestly utter a peep of complaint. He deserved this, on some level. Izuku couldn't bring himself to rage against Sashimi, to resist and reject and refuse him entirely. There was a righteous justification in Sashimi's actions.

He had no right to not pay his debt. It felt right, in a sense, for One for All to be suppressed. Though Sashimi was here to take revenge on Izuku, the only reason that was necessary was because of One for All in the first place. In the end, the fault laid with the quirk, and the quirk laid within him. They were intrinsically linked and nothing without the other. When Sashimi called him Nine, the words were empty in his ears. Izuku was not Nine, now—just an ignorant brat who got someone hurt.

An ignorant brat who regretted every moment of Sashimi's pain.

…

He found the words. He articulated them.

"I-I… I'm s-sorry…"

Sashimi recoiled, releasing Izuku and waving his hand as if to fling off some sudden pain.

Izuku should've fallen. Without Sashimi's spite holding him upright, he should've collapsed, weak as a lamb. Instead, he stood, his fingers shaking as they rose to his chin. One by one, they curled into a fist. His foot slid back, and somehow he found himself back into his defensive stance.

Sashimi was justified to the point of exacting vengeance. What he'd admitted to doing in the interim, however—blowing up banks, hospitals, homes… bridges—stood firmly outside of the jurisdiction of fairness.

His mind, unwillingly, trailed back a few years—to Setsuna, fresh out of the hospital, her ankle raw and amputated. He never forgot her blood, nor the warmth of his lips on her forehead. Pink skin squaring his jaw throbbed. Perhaps Sashimi wasn't the cause of that particular catastrophe. Maybe, just maybe, it was a coincidence.

A fire surged through his chest, returning from where it disappeared in a fury. It roared within him just as the truth hit him like a sledgehammer. To Izuku, it didn't matter where it came from, nor who he hurt—Sashimi had long since crossed the line of reason.

His heart rate skyrocketed, his vision turning crisp around the edges. He could feel his pulse in his thumbs, his ankles, his temples. He felt how his blood slammed through his heart—and how irony circulated with it.

With One for All suppressed, there was nothing stopping him from coming clean with Setsuna. Instead, he was locked in mortal combat with a phantom of his past.

When Izuku spoke next, it was with the last of his throat's strength.

"...But… I've paid for my mistakes. Y-you wasted your life hurting the wrong people."

Sashimi's momentary shock faded into indignation as Izuku's words saturated the air.

"Your "mistakes?" Do you not see my fucking face?"

When Izuku didn't say anything, Sashimi's tattered eyelid twitched. His eyes flicked between Izuku's stub and his eyes.

"Did you think that arm was enough payment? You believe in that karma shit? One arm wasn't worth your sin, and I'll be damned if you walk out of here with the other! Dammit all, I'll be damned if you walk out of here at all!"

The back of his neck tingled, and that was how Izuku knew to give his weak knees a break. Heat singed his hair fringe as the air turned a vibrant, angry white where his head occupied moments prior. Pure adrenaline let him land in a roll and pop back onto his feet. Izuku saw Sashimi's furious face show a flicker of surprise as Izuku rushed forward and planted his fist in his gut.

Sashimi wheezed something, but Izuku didn't stick around to find out what. His limbs were wet noodles and paper-thin, but his ferocious heartbeat infused a sort of hysterical power into his fingers. The tall man tried to grab him, but Izuku wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

He pulled away, but didn't go far. As soon as he reached mid-range, he reversed his momentum and brought his heel whistling against Sashimi's face, snapping his chin aside.

Izuku paused, wavering a little too long. His eyes sought a target—but before he could settle on another attack, Sashimi's tattered eyes locked onto his own.

"Wow! Look at this…" Sashimi said, wiping blood from his lower lip with a knuckle. His shoulders shrunk inwards, his knees pointing together. "Some hero you are."

Izuku felt bad for three quarters of a second before Sashimi exploded. The air turned white-hot behind him, expanding faster than Izuku could react. Sashimi's elbow met Izuku's throat in a blink, bringing Izuku to earth. His shoulders hit the earth with enough force to rattle his frame, but that pain wasn't enough to keep him down. Pure hysteria fueled his next action.

Before Sashimi could press his advantage, Izuku wormed between his legs and popped up on the other side. He ducked under Sashimi's spinning haymaker and threw his last two smoke bombs between their legs. With his better leg, he planted his boot in Sashimi's stomach and pushed, forcing them apart.

Izuku heard the wet slide of mud as Sashimi saved his footing. The ozone smell faded with the smoke, but the lingering remains were more potent to his left. He began rotating right, hoping to keep the smoke between them. These last two smoke bombs were potent, and the cloud that formed was as wide and tall as a bus. From across the smoke wall, Sashimi's voice tore at Izuku's ears.

"This trick again? Is this all you're good at? Putting up walls between people? You did this earlier, you know, when your little class tried running. Didn't exactly work out."

Izuku said nothing, and only continued his counterclockwise rotation. In a flash, the leftmost flank of the smoke cloud turned an angry orange and exploded. It held more power than Sashimi's normal explosions, but Izuku was ready. The blast pushed the smoke a good fifteen feet aside. He sprinted with it, not letting his cover fall away.

"Is this what All Might would've wanted? These guerilla tactics, this running and hiding?" Sashimi said, his words almost as painful as his punches and kicks. "Would he have wanted you to ruin my life?"

Izuku didn't need to bite his tongue. Any words he could've retorted with didn't make it past his larynx. Another blast—weaker, whiter—flew past. Positioning himself deeper into the cloud, Izuku held his breath to hear better. Sashimi's footsteps grew louder.

"Do you know how much I'm sacrificing to be here? I had a good life under Overhaul! The last five years have been better than they should've been! He saved me when you ruined me, he saved me when no one else did. Without him, I would be nothing. And you know what?"

Another blast, this time closer to Izuku than he was comfortable. He dropped to his stomach, ignoring the wet mud clinging to him. His smoke was growing thin. Izuku was beginning to see the dark outline of Sashimi grow darker.

"I betrayed him anyway! As dirty as the work was and as low as I went, I could've lived the rest of my life doing what I liked. I could've… but that wouldn't be honest, would it?"

A prickle of numbness tickled Izuku's fingertips. His ears were beginning to feel hollow, his strength waning.

"Because if I just fell in line, kept my head down, that wouldn't be me. It wouldn't be truthful. It wouldn't be my honest face—and after all these years, putting on my best face has become more important than anything. Even those pitiful lives I snuffed out finding you."

Another blast, this time a little off—but Sashimi's aim no longer mattered. The force was enough to disperse the last of Izuku's cloud. He cursed himself, wishing he could just produce more—but the thought died in his skull with his sudden asphyxiation. Izuku scrambled as Sashimi grabbed his throat and lifted him a few inches off the ground.

He swatted the man's wrist, but the adrenaline wore off. His blows landed with no more power than a fly swatter. Even his kicks became harmless, nearly sliding off Sashimi unnoticed. The pain was visceral, worsened by his throat's abuse. Smells and clarity and sensation faded away to a melting pot of aches and pains.

Slowly, he stopped struggling. His hand held onto Sashimi's wrist, but he otherwise hung off the man like a deadweight.

Each bodypart felt like old wood, lifeless and brittle. A small pain burned in his chest where his overworked heart pitifully tried to rev his engine—but Izuku was cold. He felt like he was floating. One too many miraculous adrenaline rushes finally caught up to him.

His wavering vision settled on Sashimi's face. Izuku's heart beat like a drum, the sounds of war as loud as ever, but it no longer provided him strength. Each millimeter of Sashimi's skin on his own felt like an iron brand, burning him. Every moment stretched out, his mind preparing for his last.

"You haven't forgotten my power, right? Anything I touch becomes kinetic energy. Oxygen and nitrogen work to bruise and bust bones, but solids? Your skin and blood? You're dead. And yet you live. Do you want to know why?"

The scope of his vision narrowed, his peripherals pitch black and wriggling. Sharp arcs of pain shot through his heart like electricity, and he wondered what he'd die from first. Suffocation, exhaustion, Sashimi, or a heart attack?

One of those horses abandoned the race as fresh, ice-cold oxygen flooded his lungs. The pain accompanying the precious resource was far away, belonging to someone else. Izuku was on his back, staring up at Sashimi. His hearing faded in and out as a rush of blood circulated his skull, refreshing him.

Sashimi dropped him, he realized. His hand hovered out at waist-height, pointed in Izuku's general direction. A hand touched his throat, feeling where Sashimi's fingers gripped him. It took a while for him to realize it was his own hand.

"I want to hear you say it. You said you were sorry, Nine, and I'm sure you are. I'm sure the guilt is eating a good kid like you alive. I bet you'd think about me for the rest of your life. I bet you'd never forget this moment, and when you look in the mirror, you'd see my ugly mug plastered over your own. I'm positive of it. But I don't care. I never did. I don't want your forgiveness. I want one thing before I kill you. I want to hear you say it."

His voice wavered like oil and water, gliding between the world's noise with unnatural friction. Izuku did not gulp—nor did he blink or crawl away or react. He waited.

"Tell me, Nine. Was One for All worth it?"

He might as well have dropped a wrecking ball on his chest.

Sashimi asked no further questions, but his silence was as loud as any.

Was losing Izuku's arm worth it? Was Sashimi's pain worth it? Was the pain Sashimi inflicted back on him worth it?

Those questions and many like them bounced around his skull. As spent as his body was, his mind felt on fire, alive and dynamic in ways it rarely was. Did Izuku have regrets? Yes, easily, hundreds. Were there things he wished he could change? Yes, easily, thousands.

Was One for All one of them?

He regretted hurting this man.

He regretted destroying Musutafu Forest Park

He regretted losing his arm.

He regretted all those breakdowns—private and public.

He regretted not being good enough.

He regretted losing this fight.

He regretted lying to Setsuna. He regretted indulging himself, for pulling her into his inner circle without telling her the risks. He regretted not being strong enough to tell her. He regretted so many things with her and One for All that the ideas were practically synonymous.

Above all of that, of course, was his biggest regret.

He regretted getting All Might killed.

Did he regret One for All itself?

Looking up, he stared into Sashimi's scarred eyelids.

He wasn't like the other wielders. He was younger and worse and forged in different fires. He was disabled where they were abled, powerless where they were powerful. Weak where they were strong.

He wished he could hear Five's voice.

With a weak, shaking hand, he grabbed at his heart. The fabric was slick with numerous fluids—blood, mud, sweat, vomit—but he held on until his pec ached and demanded mercy.

The pain was refreshing, even welcoming—and it kept him grounded in the moment. Still, when he tried to speak, to answer Sashimi's question, he could not.

Something shifted in Sashimi's eyes. It could've been anything, really. Reading his face with any true accuracy was impossible. His features were so alien that only the big, obvious gestures were translatable. In his scarred, alien depths, however…

Izuku thought he might've seen a hint of sadness.

Sashimi made his hand into a finger gun.

A crackle of fireworks—far away, not Sashimi. A scream—far away, not his own.

"So be it, Nine."

His thumb fell, and his pointer finger exploded into light. It was radiant—blinding for a moment before the heat washed over him—but not pain. The dull whistling crescendoed into a sharp whine right as Izuku would've been hit.

"No!"

A lopsided silhouette jumped in front of Izuku. Before he could understand what happened, the silhouette slammed into him, propelled by the explosion. It was duffle-bag sized and burning hot where hit—but strangest of all, moving. Ignoring the stabbing pain of his jostled ribs, he reached up to grab the strange mass.

And felt soft scales.

"What the fu—" Sashimi said, before a terrible second explosion rocked the mud mountain. Blinking away the remnants of his blindness, Izuku just barely made out a highlight of blond.

He didn't pay that any mind, however. Not when hands and feet and elbows and knees came crashing down on the lump cradled against his chest. They melted together, filling out the gaps and giving the torso the limbs necessary to denote a person. The nauseating smell of burnt flesh overpowered the ozone, but what captivated him was the sheer relief flooding Setsuna's pained eyes.

"Oh-h… th-thank god, thank god, oh my… you're alive… I knew you could… hold out…" She whispered, cupping his cheeks with both hands. Her hero suit, something he hadn't had the pleasure of seeing until now, was a skin-tight jumpsuit of scale-mail. The deep purple color drew out her skin's quality and the depth of her irises—but his eyes didn't linger on any of that.

The top of her breast to her shoulder was a black smoldering mess of blisters and charred scales. Even looking at it hurt—but Setsuna only winced a little and pulled him into a deeper embrace.

It was all too surreal. The shock nearly paralyzed him, but even he couldn't resist the temptation of pulling her chin into his neck and holding her there. Something wet tickled his lower eyelashes, but before anything spilled, his eyes settled on the scene beyond Setsuna's ear.

His frame was wider than he remembered, though not much taller. It'd been years since he'd stood this close, but it'd only been a couple weeks since he'd last seen him. His shoulders bulged, thicker than Izuku's and bare. They heaved with silent effort, tensing and untensing as he lifted the giant gauntlets on his wrists. Katsuki did not look back, but he didn't need to.

Across from him, Sashimi was rising to his feet. Izuku didn't notice when he fell, but he can only imagine one culprit. Sweat gleamed off Katsuki's shoulders.

Knots tightened in Izuku's stomach. Setsuna's embrace softened, but she didn't pull away.

In his arms was the only person on this battlefield to not know who exactly killed All Might.

"What are you doing, Dek—" Katsuki began, before faltering.. "I fuckin'—I mean Izuku. Get out of here! Don't get in the way again—Fuck! I mean, shit—I-I didn't—"

Blood and Helicopters and a Train Car. Izuku tore his eyes from Katsuki's back and stared at Setsuna, afraid she'd question his meaning—but she didn't react. Her grip on him was loose. Her head lolled to the side, and Izuku just barely caught how her eyes rolled back into her head.

"Well? Get out of here, man!"

Heart in his throat, Izuku complied. Shoving every ounce of anxiety down, he struggled to his feet. She was a total deadweight, unconscious and limp. Careful to not agitate her shoulder more than necessary, tried to lift her—and found he couldn't. He was too tired.

"Get out of my way, kid!" Sashimi said, trying to walk past Katsuki. "Nine is mine!"

Izuku froze when his peripherals caught a blinding flash of light—but before it could hit him, Katsuki moved.

"Piss off!" Katsuki screamed, throwing both fists forward and unleashed an explosion of his own. The two blasts canceled each other out, spreading a heatwave outwards. Izuku stepped in front of Setsuna, but by that point, it was no warmer than an oven.

He wavered, watching Katsuki and Sashimi with trepidation as they exchanged a flurry of explosive attacks, each canceling the other out. Looking towards the USJ's exit, nearly a mile away, he struggled to imagine how he'd bring her downhill, let alone to safety. Izuku was hurt, bone-tired, and his mind felt strange.

On top of that, he wanted to stay and fight. Katsuki was always talented, but leaving him to fight a villain by himself felt awful.

He couldn't assist Katsuki. He couldn't save Setsuna. He was as powerless as he'd ever been—even before he'd unlocked One for All and destroyed Sashimi's face.

So, he hovered, indecisive, until something squeezed his ankle. Setsuna wasn't awake, he saw, but her uninjured arm found his leg with a fervor. It was a request, and it was enough.

Plopping on his backside, Izuku gathered her in his lap. He made her as comfortable as possible, gave Katsuki's battle of fireworks one last glance, and pushed. With Setsuna in tow, they slid down the Landslide Zone with him as a human sled. Flashes of heat hit his nape as Sashimi and Katsuki's battle raged, growing faster and angrier every moment. Instead of focusing on them, however, his attention wandered outwards.

Specs flew through the sky, each born aloft on a near-invisible wind. He watched in silent relief as 1Z descended across the USJ. Though he couldn't see their battles, he could imagine the specs saving all his friends.

Far above, two figures stood out. The first was large—broad and powerful, with a magnetic sense of authority surrounding him. At his side was a far more petite frame, but nonetheless important. Jirou, he noted, was safe. A weight lifted from him.

Then, in a burst of speed, they became purple and brown blurs. They arced across the sky, together, and in moments they arrived at the Plaza. He couldn't see what the situation was, but another weight dropped from his shoulders. Whirlwind was here.

Izuku and Setsuna's long descent came to a slow stop as they leveled out.

He spent a long moment gathering his strength. Though the weights of his friends' lives left his shoulders, a new, heavier weight replaced them. Izuku did not cry, nor did he apologize, nor did he come clean.

Despite this perfect opportunity to spill his guts to Setsuna uninhibited, he simply could not. His vocal cords were little more than tuneless instruments—whistles without whine.

This was no fatal wound, but it was too much for her. It was too much for him.

Holding her in his arm, he planted his lips on her scalp and mouthed all the things he wished he could say. One for All—his selfishness—had gotten her hurt. This never would've happened without his stupid quirk.

Did he regret One for All?

Another weight settled in his stomach.

They got lucky this time. Next time, phantoms would come for Izuku, and Setsuna wouldn't just be horribly injured—she'd be killed. Her soul was too good to stand by and let him struggle alone. Her soul was too good—for him. It was far more than he deserved.

He gave her shoulder's one last squeeze and stood. Stretching her out, he bent her knees and pulled her into a fireman's carry. Izuku nearly collapsed under her usually light weight, but he did not fail.

He would do this one last thing for her. Anything for her safety.

[x]

AN: Well, Risingflame read me like a book lol, though perhaps the happy times aren't as close as we thought...

TL;DR: arsehole beats on a cripple, spontaneous girlfriend and mysterious ex bestfriend do not let it slide.

Review!~