Chapter Text
Call me if you need anything, Little Bird.
The words float around his head as Eijirou slowly fights his way to consciousness. There’s an ache in his back that tells him his quirk wasn’t active when he landed after his fall.
Carefully, Eijirou opens his eyes.
He can’t make much our from the position he’s in. Jagged metal not far above his head, followed by several person shaped holes in the floors above. He glances to the left and finds a steering wheel, the emblem on in the centre shining despite the darkness of the car he seems to have landed in.
At least villain insurance is mandatory. He doesn’t have to feel bad about destroying somebodies car.
Eijirou slides his eyes shut and takes a deep breath to help him focus through the deep pounding in his head.
He’s probably got a concussion.
The pain in his back is bad enough that he probably didn’t have his quirk activated when he landed, but not so bad that he didn’t have it activated while he fell through several stories and into an underground parking lot. His quirk must have turned off somewhere between breaking through the roof of the car and landing sideways in the front seats.
There’s an ache in his limbs that speaks of an excess use of his quirk, but the gap in his memory doesn’t exactly explain what he did to use his powers so much.
Was there a villain fight? Is that how Eijirou ended up thrown through several stories? But he’s not in his hero gear, or even his school uniform. He’s in his regular street clothes, which means it’s probably the weekend, and he was probably at the mall with his friends.
Speaking of, where are they? Are they still fighting the villain that took Eijirou down? Or are they down here too, worse for wear because their quirks don’t exactly protect them from damage like this?
Eijirou reaches above his head to try the door handle, groaning when the movement stretches a cut on his side. He can feel fresh blood pool, warm and wet against his side, but it doesn’t feel like enough to be too concerned.
Yet.
The door doesn’t budge. The car must be jammed up against something out there.
Eijirou activates his quirk and kicks against the passenger door, grinning when it is launched off the frame and far away.
He sits up a bit awkwardly before sliding his way out of the car. He lands on the concrete on his butt, head spinning from all the movement.
Eijirou takes a moment for his vision to stop swimming and takes in his surroundings. The cars around his landing zone are destroyed, all covered in rubble from the floors above. He can’t see much past them, but everywhere else is probably in a similar boat.
He pulls out his phone only to find it smashed to pieces.
He’ll have to beg Aizawa-sensei to get him a new one, mere weeks after his last one was destroyed on his work study.
Aizawa-sensei had been here, hadn’t he? Most of his classmates had been at the dorms this weekend, so their teacher had elected to escort them to the mall.
Mostly because Midoriya was with them.
Eijirou tries to remember who else was with them, but his mind is coming up blank. He’s sure it was only a few of them, because he can remember climbing into the back of Mic-sensei’s car to get here. He’d been squished in the middle.
The person on his left had been cold.
Eijirou had been grateful he’d worn his favourite sweater for the excursion, the fuzziness on the inside enough to protect him from the chill of Todoroki’s quirk.
Midoriya had been in the front seat, where Aizawa-sensei could keep a close eye on him. If Todoroki was on his left, who was on his right? It had to be someone he trusted enough to sit on his blind side, though Eijirou is on friendly terms with pretty much all of 1-A.
It wasn’t Katsuki. That he would remember.
Eijirou is a little less grateful now of his choice in sweaters. It’s tattered beyond repair and stained red from the cut he needs to look at.
He lifts the side of his sweater and grimaces at what he finds. There’s a jagged cut along his right side, from his hip to about halfway up his side. It can’t be too deep considering the slow rate that it’s bleeding, but the edges are all torn up in a way that will make healing difficult.
He must’ve gotten caught on the car on his way through the roof.
Eijirou mourns the loss of his sweater as he slides it over his head and folds it up. He presses it to his side and nearly cries out at the flash of pain.
He doesn’t let the pain settle before he reaches up with his right arm and uses the frame of the door to hoist himself up. He only takes a moment to breathe before stepping away from the car. Eijirou knows that if he waits too long for the pain to subside that he won’t want to get moving again.
He’s not quite sure where in the parkade he is. Doesn’t even know what level he’s on. But he leaves anyways. Eijirou is going to be a hero; he can’t just sit around and wait for rescue.
**********************************
Eijirou has no concept of time.
He doesn’t know how long he walks before he finds the stairwell.
It looks like he’s on the third level of parking, and the stairs are thankfully free of damage.
It takes a lot of effort to make his way up to the second level. His side is screaming in protest, and his head isn’t doing much better.
He pauses at the top of the staircase, debating whether to keep climbing or to check out the level 2 parkade.
Eijirou ducks through the door on his left and nearly falls back down to the third level.
A lot of the ground here is destroyed, collapsed onto the cars below.
What could have caused this damage?
Eijirou turns his head to the right and finds what he had been searching for.
Miraculously, the public phone looks undamaged. The only problem is the hole in the floor. He can squish to the wall and make it part of the way, but Eijirou would have to jump to get to the phone.
He doesn’t even think about it.
Eijirou edges his way along the wall until there’s no more footholds. He takes a deep breath before jumping as far as he can, making it with room to spare. He hurries over to the phone and picks it up, breathing a sigh of relief when he can hear the dial tone.
He dials Aizawa-sensei’s number, glad the man had made them all memorize it at the beginning of the year. He’d tested them on it, over and over again until everybody in the class could recite it.
It goes straight to voicemail.
Eijirou hesitates before dialling the next number. He only has 3 memorized, and he doesn’t particularly want to worry Katsuki right now, so he really hopes that Hawks picks up.
“Hello?” The voice is weary, probably confused at the random number calling him, but it is unmistakenly the hero he was hoping for.
“Hi Hawks-san” is all he can think to say.
“Little Bird?” Hawks is suddenly alert, and Eijirou can hear the scrape of a chair as the man stands. “What’s going on? Where are you calling from?”
“The mall? I think there’s a villain attack, and I can’t get ahold of Aizawa-sensei, and my phone got destroyed when I fell through the floor-“
“You what?!? Are you okay?” Hawks cuts him off.
“I’m okay. Just worried about the others.”
“I’m on my way. Can you get to safety?”
“I can still fight, Hawks.” Eijirou is not the type of person to sit on the sidelines. He needs to be a part of the action. To feel like he’s actually doing something to help.
“Kirishima. There’s a reason you called for backup.” It’s the first time the hero has ever used his name.
And he’s right.
Eijirou would push through. Hell, he still might push through. But he also needs to know that there’s a hero up there, fighting for his friends and for the civilians while he can’t.
“I can try.”
“That’s all I ask. Be safe, Little Bird.” Hawks hangs up before he can reply.
Eijirou debates trying Aizawa-sensei one more time, but decides against it. He needs to get out of here and find his friends.
He drops the phone and turns back the way he came.
Shit.
While the way to the phone was doable, the way back is less so. It had been easy to land over here, lots of room for error. But now, Eijirou has to jump from this big ledge to a tiny one against a wall, and he’s a bit doubtful that he can make it.
He tries anyways, activating his quirk as he goes. If he can get close enough, he should be able to jam a few fingers into the wall for stability.
Eijirou barely makes it. And he can’t hold on when the thin foothold crumbles. He loses his concentration when his arm smacks against a piece of rebar that’s jutting out from the wall. He drops his quirk before he hits the ground, head bouncing off of the concrete as he passes out.