Shoot Your Shot - MHA College AU

Scene 28: Holding My Breath

{ Scene 28: Holding My Breath }

Carried by stuttering footsteps, your shoes chuffed along the walkway. The scrapes on your skin ached in the cold of the coming dawn, your tongue tacky against your teeth. Both were reminders of the lengthy night of passive partying and tiresome rescue. 

Chills rippled over the bleeding warmth of your body in the drizzling rain. Alert and on the edge of your adrenaline fix, with careful steps, you edged closer to Ava and Kirishima, eyes never leaving the woman in the field.

"Ava dear, don't keep me waiting any longer," she sung, her shallow tone like fake sweetener. "Or I'm afraid I'll have to negotiate with your friends here."

Ava sputtered back more lines of protest, moving further away from the creeping tentacles of water. Kirishima held his arm across her glowing, pink shoulders, a wall between the witch and the beaming treasure.

His eyes were harsh with an unusual iciness. It was a look you could barely recognize in the boy, a look he held only for those who crossed a line of no return.

The distance of the yard between you muffled his words, but you could read the part in his lips. "Don't worry. I won't let her touch you," he said to the girl, his eyes never straying from the monster ahead. Despite the windy rain that flapped the edges of his jacket, the mane of his hair, and the bareness of his chest, he stood his ground like an unyielding mountain against the pelting hail of a storm.

History would repeat itself in odds ways. Red always glowed in the presence of pink. And Kirishima seemed to have a weakness for always throwing away too much of himself for girls of rosy color.

You believed his words. But you wouldn't let him be the sacrifice for that cause. Not if you could help it.

And with Bakugo's heated palms radiating through the cold air, reaching the back of your hands, you assumed he felt the same.

Caught in a standstill between friends, willing to give up everything for the other two, you played a waiting game of self-sacrifice. Everything was in the hands of the glowing girl and the sopping sea witch. With the snap of that fateful thread, it would all come undone.

Suddenly, you swore the girl's pink hue grew brighter, more fluorescent even. Her choppy hair waved in the breeze.

"Enough Aunty! I've had enough!" she cried. Her voice was raspy and final as she shuddered in the cold.

The woman chuckled, deep and condescending.

Ava grit her teeth. "I don't care if you're unhappy with the way things have turned out for you. That's your problem. Not mine! I have my own problems to deal with!"

The witch fluttered her eyes in amusement. "What's been troubling you dear?"

"I don't know? Just, tough things, okay! I make a lot of stuff, all day, all night, every day and no matter how hard I try, it always fails one way or another – but I made something that works. Something amazing. And it's all for nothing 'cause it's stuck to her over there!"

Suddenly their eyes were all on you as if you were the problem. An offended gasp slipped from your lips, not that they would hear it.

"Being an engineer here is hard Aunty. You wouldn't understand. I'm staying up all night studying and crying over my failed midterms, and trying to be a good friend to my one–and–only friend. I can't have friends thanks to you! Mari knows the risks and yet she still stays. She shouldn't – I shouldn't have to be running from this curse, trying not go insane with all this stupid, recurring family bullshit!"