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63. Mist-Ridden Clouds

Rule 47: Just breathe

The howl piercing the air would never leave the minds of the heroes there that day. They all knew it would be a sound they heard at night, in every moment of quiet. This was a sound that would have them waking in a cold sweat for years to come.

The nomu screamed. It was pain and it was anguish and it was hurting and it was let-me-out and it was I-don't-want-to-be-here-anymore and Otsuka screamed with them. Cracks of crimson clawed up her neck and burned around glowing red eyes.

The energy was a swarm and she was at the centre. It wasn't her energy. It should've been her energy. She was only ever meant to have her own energy. It wasn't her energy.

She could hear it and see it and taste it and smell it and feel it and know it in senses she had no names for. Their signatures were in every spark. The energy wasn't hers; it was theirs. Their energy thick in her blood, blazing through her skin. It wasn't meant to be her energy.

They were screaming. Or, not them, her senses of them, everything that was left of them. Everything she'd left of them. Everything that was left of them screamed. Otsuka screamed too.

The nomu collapsed; puppets with their strings cut.

In each of them, only one signature remained. In each of them, the energy was fading.

She stumbled back from Bakugou, letting the thin mist dissipate into nothing until all she felt was the cold air and the ground under her feet and all the usual things a person was meant to feel. Physically, she only had the senses she was always meant to.

Emotionally? She was going to be sick. But it was also like she'd just woken up after a night of sleep so good it only existed in books, a night that left her rested and ready to take on the world. She felt good. And she felt so beyond awful.

The energy— it didn't belong to her, it wasn't meant to be hers, she wasn't meant to have this— was more than she could safely hold with her quirk still muffled by the inhibitors. So she did the only thing she could think of. She released it. Most of it went to the sky. Some she sent at the villains who were still standing, enough to spike them with an electrical jolt and toss them all back, enough to give her and Bakugou a chance to run.

He reached out to grab her but she yanked her arm back from him. She wasn't safe. She wasn't safe. He couldn't touch her. She wasn't safe. Did she release enough? Was her quirk generating more after that sudden overflow? She stumbled back further and tripped.

She tripped over an actual human being.

The actual human being jolted up at being disturbed and Otsuka's brain had to be tricking her because there was no way she was seeing this. He was wearing Kurogiri's suit and the weird metal collar went up so high it dug into his cheekbones, the boy now sat up in front of her— between her and Bakugou.

Pale blue hair, colour so faint it was barely there, drifted in a wind that tossed up dirt and ash into a whirlwind. All Might and the villain, their fight had begun, it was bound to be a showdown for the ages, the kind of thing everyone would want to watch. Otsuka wasn't watching. "Holy shit," she muttered.

She knew this kid. She'd seen this boy's face before. She knew this kid.

"Holy shit."

Bakugou, probably figuring this guy in front of them was still Kurogiri— this was a mess, it was always going to be a mess, but this was more of a mess than she'd expected— launched himself in the kid's direction, but Otsuka threw herself between them, only managing to get onto one knee. "Robin, what-"

"Aizawa Shouta." The kid's eyes snapped up to hers. "Yamada Hizashi."

The boy's eyes narrowed, suspicious and wary of two strangers. "What about them?"