Quirkless

So That Was a Bit of a Cluster

Hitoshi Shinsou raced through the back halls toward the alley. He'd finally got Bakugou into the more experienced hands of the paramedics, but it had taken several minutes. Praying to whatever deity would listen, he sprinted down the hall. With Asuka already injured from the fight earlier, the best he could hope for was that Carter was with her.

He rounded a corner and saw Izuku coming toward him. The green-eyed man looked a little worse for wear, drops of blood across his face mingling with the freckles, but he was walking fine and carrying...oh. Any relief he had felt seeing Izuku evaporated as soon as he saw Asuka crumpled in his arms.

Grime was smeared across her cheek and into her hair, standing out against her pallid skin. Her mouth was slack and open as her chest heaved. Hitoshi had never seen her like this - she looked so small and fragile, eyes squeezed shut as she whimpered in pain. Izuku's voice called his attention back to reality.

"I think she passed out from the pain, pretty sure she punctured a lung." He swallowed, eyes bright with worry. "Is Kacchan okay?"

"He should be." Hitoshi ghosted his fingers over her forehead, noting the blood congealing at the corner of her mouth. "The paramedics are with him now." Asuka coughed, more red coating her lips. "What happened?"

Izuku shifted Asuka in his arms. "I'll tell you on the way," he said, pushing past the taller man down the hall. Hitoshi thought he saw suspicion cross his emerald eyes, but it was gone in a second.

He jogged slightly to catch up, his eyes locked on the limp woman in the other man's arms. "Asuka, can you hear me?"

Her eyes fluttered slightly. "Carter," she wheezed.

"We'll find him." He looked back down the hall. If this is what Asuka looked like, he was sure that Carter looked ten times worse.

Izuku glanced over at him. There was definitely suspicion in his gaze. "Carter's the one that did this," he said finally.

Hitoshi froze for a second, then kept walking. "There's no way." Carter was far from his favorite person, but he knew that Asuka had trusted him implicitly, and he knew from experience how tough it was to earn the agent's trust. "We'll find him and figure out what happened."

"Dead." Asuka's voice was so quiet, he almost couldn't hear her. He looked over and saw her struggling to keep her eyes open - hazy green and brown searching for him. "I had to." Her pain-glazed eyes were flooding with tears. "Hitoshi, I had to." His brain shorted out as he saw the grief in her gaze, just as her eyes rolled into the bag of her head and truly passed out.

The paramedics were strapping Bakugou to a gurney when they entered the main hall. His training took over. Hitoshi watched himself shouting, calling them over. He helped Izuku lower the body to the ground. His own voice echoed in his head, flat and lifeless as he explained her injuries.

As if through water, he heard the paramedics calling dispatch for a second ambulance as Izuku jumped into the back of the current one with Bakugo. He considered calling out to the team, but the comms still weren't back up. Surely the support team was monitoring the police scanners - they would know who the 26 year old female with several contusions and a possible pneumothorax was.

A paramedic hooked her to oxygen as they waited for another ambulance to arrive. He helped them load the agent onto a gurney. It wasn't until he was inside the ambulance that his thoughts started to catch up with the situation.

Logically, he knew this was far from abnormal. Both he and Asuka had taken worse hits, separately and together in the two years they'd been working together. But he'd never been around to see the aftermath before, never had to sit and watch, helpless and unhurt, as his teammate whimpered in pain.