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A Slow Night
It was a slow night. Unusual as it was a Saturday but nevertheless, Aizawa was thankful for it. A few weeks back, after a long conversation with Mic and two bottles of sake, Aizawa thought it might be helpful to bring along one student at a time to his own late-night patrols in order for them to gain a more hands-on experience into a hero’s life. Tonight was Bakugo’s turn and in all honesty, Aizawa is surprised at how well he’s doing.
His patrols require a certain set of skills and finesse he didn’t think Bakugo possessed, those skills being patience and, most importantly, silence. Even though he still hears the occasional sigh next to him up on the rooftop they currently overlooking, Bakugo has managed to listen to every order without question.
Bakugo sighs next to him again. “This is getting boring Eraser. When do we get to beat up some villains?”
Aizawa gives him a brief glance, readjusting the scarf around his neck. So far their presence alone above the surrounding alleys of the buzzing city streets has managed to thwart any criminal of possible illegal activity and has thus led the heroes to not take any necessary action. “A quiet night is a good night.”
“Yeah yeah, sure,” Bakugo huffs, clenching his fists. “But I haven’t even used my quirk.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
Bakugo sighs again, standing up from his crouch and kicks a stray stone across the roof. Aizawa’s focus is on the shadows, looking for anything out of place—a lost child, someone in distress, a passed out drunk, a fool trying to rob someone under a broken streetlight. Anything to make his shift go by faster. A quick glance at his watch tells him it’s just past midnight. Two more hours to go until he’s able to drop off the kid and retreat to his home and into his long awaiting bed.
His phone vibrating against his thigh breaks his trance. The screen illuminates his face on the dark roof, the name TODOROKI flashing on the display. That’s unusual. Todoroki may be one of his problem students considering what happened in Hosu but he’s one of the last he’d suspect to call him, especially at such a late hour.
“Hello?” Aizawa says into the speaker, grabbing Bakugo’s attention.
“Todoroki, are you there?” He repeats.
“Huh? What’s Icyhot want?” Bakugo asks, walking closer.
Aizawa shrugs as there’s been no answer. Small sounds of movement are barely heard on the other end of the line.
“Aizawa?” Todoroki’s voice is scratchy and strained, small gasps for air as if he’s struggling to breathe. “I—I need help.”
“What the hell?” Bakugo says, his eyes widening in confusion.
“Todoroki, talk to me. What’s going on?” Aizawa says, instantly on alert.
“I don’t know,” Todoroki responds before coughing. “I can’t move.”
“You can’t move?” Aizawa repeats. He reaches into his other pocket, pulls out his work phone and quickly dials a contact. “Are you hurt?”
“Yes,” he says, just above a whisper. Aizawa’s instincts quickly go into hyperdrive when he hears Todoroki sniff back tears.
“Can you tell me where you are?”
“I’m at home.”
The call on his work phone picks up. “This is Hawks, what can—”
“I need you to fly to the Todoroki residence,” Aizawa says, shoving his phone with Todoroki to Bakugo. “Keep him calm and keep him talking.”
Bakugo nods, “Hey Icyhot, it’s me…”
Aizawa turns his attention back to Hawks who’s speaking.
“Um, why exactly? Is everything—”
“It’s an emergency, Todoroki is hurt, don’t know how bad.”
Aizawa grabs Bakugo by the elbow and guides him to the edge of the building. “I’m at least fifteen minutes away. How fast can you get there?” Aizawa asks, jumping off the side, securing his scarf to the fire exit stair railing, and swinging down towards the street.
“Give me three minutes. I’ll stay on the phone,” Hawks says before a rush of wind takes over.
Bakugo follows close behind him, slowing his fall with a small explosion that sets off a few car alarms that line the street.
“How’s he doing?” Aizawa asks.
He shakes his head. “I don’t know. He’s not making any sense.”
Aizawa holds out his hand for the phone, “Todoroki? Talk to me, what’s going on?”
Todoroki doesn’t answer, only short quick breaths are heard, breaths that match his own as he and Bakugo run towards his car at the end of the block.
“Todoroki? C’mon stay with me kid.”
“Aizawa?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” he says. They reach his car and jump in. “We’re on our way to you, okay? Hawks should be there in just a few minutes. I need you to stay awake.”
Using the mapping system in the car, he has Bakugo punch in Todoroki’s address. It tells him seventeen minutes. He drives faster. The call switches to Bluetooth through the speakers with the car being on. The quality of his breathing becomes more clear, more wet. Bloody.
“Todoroki? Can you tell me how you’re injured?” Aizawa asks.
“My chest hurts.”
“Your chest? Anything else?”
Chest pain would make sense, it points Aizawa in the direction of some type of rib injury, probably a punctured lung. The question is how he got the injury in the first place.
“My neck. My—my neck hurts too.” A sob sounds over the speaker as Todoroki begins to cry. Bakugo removes and throws his gauntlets into the back seat to clutch at the door handle and seatbelt across his chest, taking in a deep breath.
“I don’t know what I did I—I don’t know what happened, I don’t why he—”
His voice breaks as he cries, his voice struggling to form words at all. The map reads fifteen minutes.
“Todoroki? C’mon you need to keep taking to me kid.”
The speakers stay silent save for the scratchy breathing.
“Aizawa! It’s Hawks, I’m here!”
Aizawa pulls out the second phone from his pocket. “Get inside now,” Aizawa says, his foot nudging the accelerator down lower and lower, going well over any posted speed limit.
“I am, I am. In case you didn’t know this place is a mansion,” Hawks yells out of breath. “I’m sending out feathers to help, they’ll be able to sense him.”
Aizawa takes a deep breath to calm himself. The Todoroki’s live more on the outskirts of town which he’s thankful for at this moment as they’re able to avoid any serious traffic and weave around any stray cars.
He notices from the corner of his eye, Bakugo’s leg bouncing up and down in anticipation or anxiety, maybe both. Aizawa takes the hand Bakugo has clutched to the seat belt.
“If you need to stay in the car for this, it’s okay. There’s no shame in it. There’s no real way to prepare yourself for what you might see inside. To see a classmate hurt like this—”
“I can do it,” Bakugo says sniffing his nose and rubbing the back of his hand hard against his eyes, his mask long since pulled up against his forehead. “I want to help.”
“Only if you’re sure,” he says, giving his hand one last squeeze before letting go. “If you need to leave at any moment once we’re inside, you can.”
Bakugo nods. “I’ll be okay—”
“Holy shit! Oh Shitshitshitshit Todoroki? Look at me, kid,” Hawks’ voice booms through the car speakers, through Todoroki’s phone.
“Hawks? Tell me what you see.”
“What I see? There’s a fucking—pole going through his chest!”
Aizawa and Bakugo stare at the car display in disbelief. Nine more minutes.
“A pole?” Aizawa struggles to say, struggles to think.
“Yeah, it’s pinning him through to the floor. Looks like a curling bar or something.”
“Is he still alive?” Bakugo asks.
“This is Hawks, PRO ID number 0242957. I need an emergent healing unit at the Todoroki residence, stat. Shit—yeah, he’s alive. He’s breathing but he needs help now.”
“Is there anything nearby to help stop the bleeding?’ Aizawa asks.
“Well, that’s the weird thing, it doesn’t look like he’s bleeding very much. Don’t get me wrong there’s blood all over the damn place but—around the pole, there’s ice. It’s like his quirk is protecting him.”
“Blood all over the place? How else is he injured?”
“Shit, Eraser,” Hawks takes a deep breath. “His neck looks like it was nearly torn off. There’s—there’s petechiae in both eyes, a large cut along his hairline. His whole body is damn near covered in blood and burns, and I mean seriously bad burns, man. Like, I can see his fucking ribs. I mean, the kid’s naked, even his clothes were burned off—but it’s hard to see anything else because of the blood. And where the hell is—where is…”
“Where the hell is Endeavor,” Aizawa finishes.
“His feet are burned,” Hawks says.
“What?” Bakugo says.
“His feet, the bottom of his feet. They’re burned. So, even if this pole wasn’t going through his chest he couldn’t have—he wouldn’t have been able to get away anyway so why—"
Bakugo’s leg is bouncing again. Five more minutes.
“Endeavor isn’t here, my feathers would have sensed him by now. I’ll call his agency, see if he’s still there or if he ever left.”
“Hawks?”
“Todoroki!” Both Aizawa and Hawks say.
“Hey kid I’m here. Help is on the way, okay? Try to stay awake, can you tell me what happened?” Hawks asks.
“I was on the treadmill. I couldn’t sleep.”
“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know. He came out of nowhere.”
“He?”
“I couldn’t hear what he was saying over all the fire,” Todoroki says, voice shaking.
“Okay, okay. We don’t need to talk about it right now. So, let’s just try to stay as still as possible, okay? And try to take slow even breaths,” Hawks says. “How far out are you Eraser?”
“Two minutes,” Aizawa says, taking a hard right onto Todoroki’s street.
“Look,” Bakugo says looking up and out of the car window. “There’s a helicopter.”
“Hawks, we see the med unit in the air, we should get there at the same time.”
“Yeah, okay just—you guys gotta hurry,” Hawks says.
“Where are you inside the house?” Bakugo asks, leg still bouncing.
“We’re uh, the northeast side. I see a pond outside the window. I’ll have feathers outside the front door. Follow them,” Hawks says. “Hold on, Todoroki they’re almost here.”
Soon enough, the lights from the house begin to filter through the surrounding trees, the helicopter makes its descent across the street onto an empty field. Aizawa peels through the metal gate surrounding the property and into the driveway, quickly throwing the car in park, and runs towards the kicked-in front door to an awaiting red feather with Bakugo grunting behind him.
They sprint down the halls of the house, a feather hovers in the air for them every few feet pointing them in the right direction with falling footsteps of the healing unit following behind them.
“Hawks?” Aizawa yells, hearing his voice over a loudspeaker in a room just around a corner.
“We’re in here!” Hawks yells back. “Hurry!”
They take the next left and go through a pair of double doors. Once inside, he and Bakugo skid to a quick stop, the healing unit rushing right by them to help Todoroki without hesitation.
Todoroki, who is pinned to the floor by a large pole on the left side of his chest, as Hawks described.
Todoroki, who is in fact covered in blood and nasty burns, with only Hawks’ large coat to preserve his modesty.
When one of the two members of the healing unit lifts the coat to take note of any damage that lies beneath it, Aizawa can see more of the terrible expanse of burns over the tops of his hips, the white of the bones peering through the melted skin and muscle. The same goes for his chest, witnessing his ribs expanding with each breath through black crusted skin. More blood coats the walls which are also blackened by fire that has since been put out. The scent of smoke still lays heavy in the air.
“Eraser,” Hawks says. “C’mon.”
Aizawa takes a few steps forward to Todoroki and kneels by the top of his head. His face is covered in a layer of blood coming from the large cut on his forehead and from his nose, his temples and cheeks streaked in tears, eyes bloodshot from strangulation if the purpling bruises around his neck are anything to go by. Each breath the kid takes sounds rough and wet, struggling for air and choking on blood.
“Aizawa?” Todoroki whispers.
“Hey kid, I told you I was coming,” Aizawa says, brushing off some of Todoroki’s hair from his forehead, the distinct white half now red.
One of the members of the healing unit speaks up, his name tag reads Kobayashi. “We need to get him back to the helicopter as soon as possible. I can stabilize him the best I can but he’s going to need skin grafts and his broken bones need to be set,” he says.
The other member, Miyano, follows, “First thing we need to do is remove the pole. It’s like Kobayashi said, we can stabilize him, but we still need to move him fast.”
“Yeah, okay. What can we do to help?” Aizawa asks, wiping away the stray tears along Todoroki’s cheeks with his thumbs.
“We’re going to need your help holding him down. I’d say the pole is about seven inches deep, through his body and into the flooring under him. When we remove the pole, it will hurt, there’s no way around it, I’m sorry,” Kobayashi says.
“What do you mean it’ll hurt?” Bakugo says, walking closer to Todoroki’s now shaking form. “Can’t you at least give him some painkillers or something?”
“No, I’m sorry we can’t,” Miyano says. “Because of Todoroki’s fire quirk and the burns, his body temperature is running too high, he’ll burn off the medication faster than we can give it to him, and we’ll run the risk of an accidental overdose.”
“The pain will only be for a few moments, it’ll just take a few seconds for my quirk to work,” Kobayashi says, looking down towards Todoroki. “I know you’re scared. I know you’ve already gone through unimaginable pain, but I promise you it’ll be over soon, okay?”
Todoroki clenches his teeth to hold back his tears and lets out a shaky breath, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Miyano says. “Eraser, I want you to hold down his shoulders. Hawks, I need you to hold down his hips to keep him from bucking up or kicking, but not too high, be mindful of the burns there.”
“What about me?” Bakugo asks, kneeling next to Aizawa.
“I want you to talk to him, think you can do that?” Miyano asks.
Bakugo nods, removing his glove and taking Todoroki’s hand in his.
“Hey halfie I uh—shit sorry, probably shouldn’t call you that now since...” he gestures to his all-red blood soaked hair. “Shit, I mean—”
Looking down at Todoroki, Aizawa sees a small smirk on his face.
"It’s okay,” Todoroki says.
Aizawa and Hawks take their places, applying light pressure to prevent him from moving.
“Here,” Bakugo says. “Open your mouth.”
Todoroki does, and Bakugo places his glove inside Todoroki’s mouth. “Bite down on this so you don’t break your teeth or something.”
Todoroki nods, a few more tears escape his eyes that Bakugo quickly brushes away.
“You can do this okay? You can do this, just breathe through it. Scream if you have to. You heard the Doc’s, they said the pain won’t last long. So just scream and—and here,” Bakugo gestures to their joined hands. “Squeeze as hard as need to. Just try not to burn me or some shit—shit, sorry! I mean. Damn, can you guys just start already?”
Aizawa shakes his head at his blunder and nods towards the healing unit. “Let’s go,” he says.
Miyano grasps the pole with both hands while Kobayashi places one hand on Todoroki’s forehead and one on the center of his chest, just to the right of the pole.
“I’m ready,” he says, eyes closed in concentration.
The second the pole begins to move, Todoroki’s muffled screams fill the room. Blood drips in thick streams down his chest as he thrashes, coughing the glove out of his mouth as he chokes up more blood. As soon as the pole is removed with an audible squelch, Kobayashi’s quirk goes into action, weaving together the torn muscle fibers and ripped vessels of the puncture wound.
Todoroki’s movements suddenly cease, his breathing also coming to a slow.
“Hey!” Bakugo says shaking Todoroki’s hand and grabbing the side of his face. “Wake up!”
Miyano applies two fingers to the side of Todoroki’s purpling neck. “He’s still alive. We need to hurry.”
Kobayashi takes out a large white sheet and covers Todoroki’s prone form while Miyano moves the portable gurney to be parallel with his body. They carefully lift him onto it and make their way down the hall.
“What hospital are you taking him to?” Aizawa asks.
“Musutafu General,” Miyano yells behind him
Aizawa closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “C’mon let’s go Bakugo.”
He looks back to his student to see him staring down at his bloodied and shaking hands.
“Hey,” Aizawa says, putting a finger under Bakugo’s chin to make eye contact. “You did well. Okay?”
Bakugo nods, looking back to his hands.
“Let’s get you cleaned up and back home,” Aizawa says leading Bakugo out of the room.
“Hawks, are you com—”
Hawks is on the phone, wide-eyed, mouth agape and nodding to whoever is on the phone with him.
“You’re sure?” Hawks says. “And no one has heard from him since?”
“What’s going on?” Aizawa asks.
Hawks meets his eyes. “It’s about Endeavor. His agency says he clocked out two hours ago.”
Aizawa sighs. Tonight was supposed to be a slow night.
“So, what does that mean?” Bakugo asks.
A quick look at his watch tells him it’s twenty minutes past one in the morning. “It means my night just got longer.”