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(“Do they know you are here?”
“W-well, no, but…”
“Dear… you were here yesterday. It’s not healthy to come here every day, you know that. Once a week, remember?”
“But what if-”
“Then you’ll know, when you can come again. I assure you, she can take care of herself just fine.”
“...”
“What was that?”
“...Then why isn’t she here?”
“I don’t know, dear. I promise, the moment there’s anything, I’ll- I’ll tell- ugh!”
“Are you okay? What’s going on? What’s-?”)
—
Izuku is going to fucking die here.
Except, no, he isn’t. He can’t. The barrier between Kota’s life and Muscular’s terrifyingly murderous muscles is only as strong as Izuku’s bones, meaning he has to suck it up and focus. The pain in his body is nothing compared to the would-be pain of losing someone. He’s been told he can’t save everyone, but like hell won’t he try.
He decides Muscular is way too fast for a villain that size. The quirk analyst in him has already brewed ten billion questions about the quirk’s functionality, but by now Izuku has learnt how to filter out what matters and what doesn’t, and what matters is this: this villain has a seemingly infinite supply of muscles to add onto the pre-existing ones. This has no visible drawbacks, looks terrifying, and makes him too strong and too fast.
At least Kota is out of his sight. Muscular looks like the type of villain who gets rid of the harder targets first; as long as he’s still standing, Izuku is that harder target.
The problem is how long he can remain standing.
No, no time for that sort of pessimism! He has to get up, has to make his stupid god damned legs work, has to dodge that really large incoming fist, and shit, shit, shit, the earlier taunt was right. With the way he is now, Izuku is just discount Muscular, with an underdeveloped quirk and an underdeveloped body and too little experience to measure up against this sort of opponent.
It’s with an odd sort of clarity, as the world slows down to allow him to process the incoming attack, that Izuku understands: Nobody will save them. He’ll give every bit of sweat, every drop of blood, every bone in his body to keep salvation from being necessary, but the heart of the matter remains: no one can save them, because a hero has to be able to save themselves.
He braces. The realization does nothing to change reality, except strengthen his resolve. Muscular’s fist is an inch from his head, and Izuku knows there’s not time to block, but he tries to raise an arm anyway-
A blur shoots through the air. He barely even has time to register it.
April O’Neil, in that order, screams her own name as a battle cry. One of her legs connects with the side of Muscular’s head with such impossible, insane, incomprehensible force that the man stumbles. Even Izuku’s charged punch didn’t do that! What!
O’Ne- April tsks, using his head as a board to jump away and land next to Izuku.
Muscular cracks his neck, looking at the new arrival with manic disgust. “Oh? Another insect wants to play? Pity.” (He does not sound like this is a pity).
April ignores him. Half-crouched next to him, with a determination he had never had the chance to see in her, she asks, “What’s the situation?”
He wants to ask a bajillion things, such as how did you find us?? and how are you so strong?, but Izuku has fought enough battles to know this isn’t the time. They need to save Kota, and they need to defeat the villain, and they need to survive.
“Kota- the kid who was at camp with us- is behind Muscular. Muscular’s quirk allows him to control and grow his muscles at will. My attacks don’t do anything, I’m sorry, he’s too-”
“Gotcha. Save that for later.” Then, to Muscular, with a lot more bite and tease, “Oi, muscle brain! You really so weak you need to bully children?!”
Izuku thinks April is also a children. That doesn’t matter, though. What matters is that he got up, and Kota is behind Muscular- if Izuku can distract the villain long enough for April to save him, then that’s half the mission complete.
“What the hell did you just call me?”
Muscle strands begin to float off his body, tendrils in anything but composition, drawing attention like pink waving flags of condensed danger. In one move, he finishes, “I’ll teach you to respect your elders,” and charges.
Izuku miraculously follows, protective instinct overriding self-preservation, and he’s barely managed to shout “APRIL!” when he realizes there was no need. She’s got a hand on Muscular’s head, the rest of her body jumping over him leapfrog style- then she twists, delivers another kick to his head, but this time he doesn’t stumble. Before she can fall, he grabs her leg, and Izuku’s moving before Muscular even finishes throwing her at the stone wall.
5% is manageable, he notes, ignoring the way his broken arm hurts like hell. The boost lets him save April just before she hits the wall. He realizes he’s holding a girl in his arms as they land, blushing slightly and looking away, but the severity of the situation sobers him up quickly. They still need to save Kota. They still need to defeat Muscular. They still need to make it out of here.
“Ow,” she grumbles, “That saved me a rib or two. Thanks!”
Her eyes are fixed on Muscular, even as she speaks to Izuku. Suddenly, he feels like she’s a lot older than him. Like she knows a lot more than him.
Seizing the moment, he blurts, “You need to get Kota somewhere safe. I’ll distract Mus-”
“Hell nah!”
He splutters. “What?!”
“I ain’t leaving you behind, ya hear? We don’t do that. We’ll take this loser down together!”
Muscular, predictably, does not enjoy being called a loser. What happens next blurs. They fight- Izuku does his best not to break any bones while still doing some damage, which isn’t a lot, while April disorients him like, forgive the comparison, a particularly annoying fly. He figures the force of that first blow was mostly from momentum and the element of surprise. April’s cinetic vision is better than his, so there are things she avoids that he cannot. They settle into something that could not reasonably be called a rhythm, but Izuku isn’t bleeding out of every pore and half-dead on the ground gasping for air, so he’ll take this as the blessing it is and let the hope of winning build up within him.
Neither of them are expecting it. Maybe that’s why it takes April so off-guard, why it puts her off her game. The villain must have gotten fed up with trying to hit an opponent more agile than him, because he resorts to using the muscle strands not to enhance, but to ensnare. The moment the pink strands make contact with her, April stills. Izuku shouts after her, but this time, going after her would mean exposing Kota, who’s standing right behind him, so she hits the rock wall of the mountain.
The impact creates a crater. April lets out a sound between a gasp and a scream, and then-
Then she goes limp. Doesn’t fall from the April-shaped impact point, doesn’t even really move- her body just seems to decide this isn’t worth it anymore. That’s not supposed to happen, because that girl is April O’Neil, his classmate
Facing her, Muscular cackles. Something about nosy children, something about insects, something about, “Oh, right, I never asked…”
He gets close into her personal space, grabs her by the hair with no resistance, stage-whispers into an unhearing ear, “You got any idea where that Bakugou Katsuki kid is?”
Izuku sees red.
He’s moving before he even processes it, good arm charged 100% and not yet hurting from the bad idea. Izuku doesn’t even know if he’d have minded, because how dare he? How fucking dare he? Who does this villain think he is, violating his friend’s personal space, trying to kidnap (or worse) another? Who does he think-
Izuku’s punch connects. He knows, because his arm screams in blinding pain, hot and heavy enough to almost drown him. He knows because he screams, and because somewhere behind him Kota is left unprotected. He knows because Muscular goes- not flying, like he should have, but he skids back and into the ground, and that’s good. That’s good. He’s down. God, he’s down. They’ve won, they’re really won.
Behind him, Kota is shaking. Izuku is, too, but that hardly matters. He turns to Kota, gives him his best smile, even with all the dirt and blood and tears caking his face, and says, somewhat desperate,
“I told you I was going to save you.”
Kota’s eyes well up with a new batch of tears. Izuku scrambles to get him to stop, telling him it’s ok, it’s fine, they’ve won, they’ll be okay now!
And then everything inside him screams.
All the relief is gone instantly. Flight battles fight and in the stalemate they leave freeze, which is what he does. See, the noise behind him sounds an awful lot like somebody getting up, and he never did hear April (god, April-) fall in the first place, which shouldn’t be possible, because that means Muscular is getting up, and, well. Well. Well, what the fuck does he even do then?
Izuku turns. Muscular is there, rubble sliding off of muscle mass, displaying that maniac smile that sets his body on edge. Both of Izuku’s arms are busted. Sacrificing his legs is no longer an option, but a necessity. What does he even do after that, if not even his legs work?
He doesn’t know what’s scarier: the fact that Muscular sort of compliments him, or the fact that this whole time they had been playing, and now they’re getting serious. Now, with two destroyed arms and backup down. Only now.
“-You’re alone, kid,” the villain finishes, “It’s just you and me, and I’m done playing games.”
No, no, no, Izuku needs time. Time to think, time to somehow tell Kota to get out of here, time to plan or just to breathe a little longer. So he latches onto the first thing that flashes through his mind, an angry response to the absurdity of what the villain is implying.
He grits his teeth, gets out that, “No, I’m not alone. I have April, I have Kota, I have people someone like you never will!”
Muscular laughs. It’s as grating as it’s good, because it means this is working.
“Like what?” he asks, full of disdain, “friends? Really?”
Despite everything, Izuku smiles.
“Yeah… Friends.” And this part he’d feel more embarrassed about if he wasn’t facing possible death, “Family.”
A beat.
Movement, too soft to be either of theirs. Muscular looks disinterestedly in April’s direction, while Izuku does the same with an overwhelming amount of worry and hope.
She has her feet on the ground. Swaying, a little, but what’s really surprising is what comes out of her mouth. In perfect japanese, the sort a foreigner can only achieve by training out the accent, she whispers, almost like a prayer,
“Anata wa hitori ja nai.”
The world explodes in green.
The color assaults his eyes like a miniature sun was just activated in the middle of the night. It’s so bad even Muscular stumbles, so raw Kota screams, so hot he starts sweating, so contradictionally cold he wishes he had a jacket. The pain within him swells up to scream too, and it’s like everything in his body wants to go- where, he doesn’t know.
Squinting through the diminishing light, he thinks, “What on earth?!”, while simultaneously shouting, “APRIL!”
The green dies down. Blinking, Izuku sees Muscular tense, expression unreadable through the singular wrecked eye socket thing he can see from here. That doesn’t stop him from imagining it, though, especially as his eyes trail down, dragged by the remnants of that green light.
“Your… Your bat!” he gasps out, looking at April’s hands. There, a flaming baseball bat rests loosely, pure energy forming it. How does she hold it? Could she have summoned that this whole time? Obviously not… then, what triggered it?
April says something Izuku doesn’t get, but Muscular does. He’s smiling, that same way that never seems to leave, but his ridiculous amount of muscles are tense. “Oi, oi, oi, where was that back when we started?!”
April doesn’t answer. Just sways again- an act the villain doesn’t appreciate, throwing a punch at her instantly.
Izuku opens his mouth to shout, but-
The fist connects with nothing. April is behind him, effortlessly, stance a little more solid, like she’d died years ago and is only moving again now.
“Alright, you pink-brain son of a bitch,” she says, barely loud enough for him to hear. It’s all pouring out in english, which Izuku suspects he only understands thanks to all the extra effort he’s put into studying it just to understand April better. He’s glad it’s paying off.
The next part comes out a lot louder. In the intensity, April finally angles herself so he can see her face.
“You want a second round so bad, I’ll give you one! Just don’t go crying when I take that second eye!”
Muscular must have a much better education than Izuku had assumed, because he meets the declaration with an enraged battle cry. Izuku is still a little stuck on the fact that April’s quirk is supposed to be about imbuing objects with green fire, but her eyes were very much green when he looked at them.
The next part is blurry, for reasons completely different than the other time. This time, it’s because they’re both fast. Too fast. How is April moving that fast without a physical enhancement quirk?
It’s all flashes of pink and green, of light leaving afterimages and impacts resounding through the cracks in the ground. He blinks, then he’s back to himself, in this body that hurts like hell but still has a mission.
He doesn’t take his eyes from the fight, addressing Kota with a vague glance. “Kota, you need to go.”
“But I-”
“Kota!” the kid stops. Izuku smiles, risking his everything to properly look at him, hoping it looks good enough (that he’s good enough-), “We’ve got this. You need to be safe. Go!”
For a terrifying moment, he thinks Kota won’t listen. Then, thankfully, the kid nods and runs.
Good.
April crashes exactly where Kota had been a moment ago, then disappears in a flash. As he was saying: good.
His attention redoubles on the fight when Muscular screams. It’s one of the moments when they moved like normal people with normal reaction times: Muscular was waving an arm around frantically, blowing on it like a child, and April had her bat slung over her shoulder. For some reason, the word his mind supplies to describe her is awake, as though she had begun the fight asleep. She’s back to japanese, for one. Maybe that’s why.
“Here’s something interesting I’ve noticed about you, muscle man,” she begins, rocking on her heels. Izuku can hear the teasing grin on her face. “You never wrap your fists in muscle. I can’t imagine having something that should be inside take that much contact from the outside is good, am I right, or…?”
“YOU LITTLE-”
April runs, hits the arm about to hit her with a bat that he can feel burns a lot. Muscular’s muscles sizzle like barbecue steak, leaving him screaming profanities at a girl who isn’t even there anymore.
Muscular can’t see it from his angle, but Izuku does: April stumbles. Her victorious grin falters.
They have to end this now.
“April!” he shouts. Their eyes meet. She nods. They know, instinctively, what to do.
The heat in their corner-battlefield rises like it’s a furnace. In turn, April’s flames become so bright they could be exactly that. Muscular is focused solely on her, new muscle strands covering the old ones and doubling his defense, screaming to meet her telegraphed blow head on.
Using the cover of their strife, Izuku rears up a leg. It’s fine if he loses it; it’s more important that they make it out alive, and while he knows his kicks are weaker than his punches, well… there’s a sort of poetry in ending this battle the way April started it: a good old kick to the head.
100% on his left leg. With the other, he jumps, levels his left with Muscular’s face, and screams:
“SMASH!”
April winks. It’s the last thing Muscular sees before getting knocked out completely, and the last thing April does before fainting.
Before he can even fret, much less commemorate their victory (because they won, they won, they faced death and won and they lived and Kota is safe and-), April is back up. The bat has vanished again, and she’s limping like her body hadn’t been prepared to move the way it had. Maybe it really hadn’t been.
Through relieved tears, he tackles her into a hug. Or, tries to- his left leg hurts like a bitch and gives out before he can move much, but April catches him before he falls.
Izuku smiles at her. Despite everything, April smiles back, somehow victorious and bitter and pained and relieved and ecstatic at the same time.
“Come on,” she says, manhandling (womanhandling?) him into a bridal carry, “let’s make sure that kid’s okay.”
“R-right!” he stutters, blushing. “Yeah, let’s!”
—
(“Oh, thank the great pizza lord in the sky, gram-gram, you’re-”
“She’s alive!”
“I- what?!”
“I saw her, dear.
She’s alive.”)