Pins and Needles | Todoroki Shoto | S/H

What it is to Save a Life

     Walls crashed in, surrounding them.  They were broken into smaller groups.  (Y/N) ended up with Rock Lock.  
     She spins around at a strange sound.  
     "Lock!"  He jerks.  Thankfully, he had just enough time to raise his hand and take the knife there instead of his skull.  He locks the knife the blonde had in her hand.  He moved to punch her, but she melted away at the touch and appeared yet again behind him.  
     (Y/N) reaches out and yanks the mask off her face, sending it crashing to the ground as the connected glass tubes shatter.  Unfortunately, it only meant Rock Lock wasn't stabbed as severely by her new knife.  
     "Rock!  What's wrong?"  She hears Aizawa yell through the walls.  She burrows her claws into the girl's hand until she had to let go of the weapon, and then she yanked her off.  The first thing she did was make sure the knife stayed in and quickly but gently moved him away.  
     "If you have the option to not move, don't.  There's a lot of organs right there."  She tells him before spinning on her heel and punching the blonde in her unmasked face.  He'd been stabbed right around the area she'd been shot, and they'd told her all about how she was lucky it was a small bullet and not a massive knife.  Apparently, Rock Lock didn't get to share that fortune.

     She spits, being slammed forward into the wall as the opposing one crashes.  
     "A fake appeared, I've been trying to deal with her."  She heard her own voice say, but... she hadn't spoken.  "She stabbed Rock.  Are you okay, Midoriya?"  
     "I-I'm fin-"  Midoriya starts to stutter.  (Y/N) looks back to see Aizawa kicking the head of somebody who looked exactly like her.  As he used her quirk, her muddy shell fell away to reveal the blond again.  "Toga Himiko?!"  Midoriya stutters.  
     "Toga!  Yeah, it's me, Toga!"  She says happily.  "You remember me?"  (Y/N) finally latches onto her, making sure to force her into dropping the knife she held.  Aizawa yanked her back as she was falling, but that meant (Y/N) lost her face, and the paralysis was gone.  
     Toga attempted to twist and stab him between the shoulder blades.  He had enough reaction speed to keep the injury minor and shove her off.  
     "Deku, get Rock Lock and make sure he's okay,"  Aizawa tells him.
     "Don't move the knife at all, you could kill him."  (Y/N) follows up.  Kidneys, stomach, intestines... those were all so close to the wound site, who knows what you would hit if you moved that knife around.  And if you did, there would be extra space, and the knife wouldn't work as a plug anymore.  
     The walls let up as Toga and the villain she believed was called Twice (or Double, but she was pretty sure that was his quirk) ran off.  A large wall came crashing down behind them.
     "I don't like this..."  (Y/N) murmurs.
     "What do you mean?"  Midoriya asks.
     "Something's about to happen.  It's always right when you think something has gone well for once, the worst-"  And then she was gone through a hole in the floor.  

     They hardly had the time to process.  Dirt and mud swirled around them as they barely dodged.  Midoriya looks up before jumping and kicking perfectly into a hole in the ceiling.  Just as he expected, it was where the villain had been watching from.
     Aizawa could now erase his quirk, and the broken ceiling left him falling only to be caught by Midoriya.  They were used as an attack dummy by the two League members they had seen.  
    Thankfully, after maybe a minute of getting the man locked down, they were able to continue on.  After a little ways, there was a man laying the middle of a hall.  A crude wall stood proud just behind him.  Midoriya quickly kicked through straight into the ongoing battle between Togata and Overhaul.  
     He rushed in with a punch, even though he wasn't supposed to use his arms as much.  Togata had the little girl, and that was what was important.  He looked disheveled, but they could handle that later.  
     Nighteye ran in, hugging onto both of them.  Aizawa had Overhaul's quirk locked.  His skin was prickled with hives.  
     Overhaul called on a man named Chrono.  Aizawa had just enough time to push Midoriya out of the way before the clock hand sliced his arm.  Now paralyzed, Aizawa's eyes blinked naturally and he could do nothing to stop it.  
     Midoriya jumped forward to hit him, only to be stopped by sudden stalagmites.  Overhaul threw one of his men to his own feet with the rocks.  A cloud of dust and smoke plumed and Midoriya coughed, waving it away to try to see.  Overhaul emerged from it with four arms.

     Midoriya looks around quickly.  Togata and Eri were still being held by Nighteye.  He couldn't see Aizawa or the man with the white hood.  
     When Overhaul fused with the other man, his injuries also disappeared.  
     "What a sad life you had, Lemillion."  He states.  "If you hadn't gotten involved with Eri —with me— then your quirk wouldn't be lost forever."  
     He went to attack the three, so Midoriya grabbed the top of the one of the spikes and shoved into the meaty hand that Overhaul raised to protect himself.  
     Nighteye went in to fight him head on, instructing Midoriya to get Togata and Eri out of the way.  He faintly heard them yelling back and forth.  Overhaul said something about showing Aizawa the "VIP room," whatever that meant.  
     He quickly pulls them to the hole in the wall.  Eri began to cry softly, apologizing.  Just then, Midoriya looked up.  A spike was impaled entirely through Nighteye's abdomen.  

     He rushes forward, anger and desperation fueling him.  At the sight of spikes, he slams his foot into the ground to halt their push.  Midoriya felt like old, oxidized wood.  His bones moaned and his joints creaked.  Nothing in his body wanted to move, but they were blazed by his will.  
     He knew he only had one chance to finish this.  If he was lucky, if the gods were to smile, he might get two, but that was not a future to be banked on.  
     Midoriya went for a singular kick to the head, but Overhaul still managed to dodge.  He wondered why he had moved out of the way instead of destroying his leg.  
     One large spike came at him.  Something happened, and Midoriya wasn't really sure what it was, but the ground broken into much smaller pieces.  Only two impaled, but it was better than a concrete stake to the heart.  
     "I..."  Eri's voice was trembly and weak.  Midoriya spins around, and she was wandering in on shaky legs.  "I don't want that!"  
     "No, stay with Lemillion, Eri-chan!"  Midoriya yells back at her.  That menacing voice came back, booming from an opened mouth in Overhaul's hand.  The words were entirely unintelligible to Midoriya, but she seemed to understand.  
     "No, I don't..."  She whimpers.  "...Go back..."  She answers.  She continued to wobble forward, hands clutching to her chest.  "In exchange... put everyone back the way they were!"  Eri pleads.  
     Overhaul dares the nerve to call it cruel: hope.  In a strange twist of fate, Midoriya found himself wondering if (S/N) would've agreed with that.  Was it cruel to tell her he wouldn't let her get hurt if he wasn't confident he could uphold that? It was a strange feeling to knowingly agree with a villain.  It went against everything in him.  He wondered how (S/N) felt about situations like these, she seemed to agree with villains quite a lot.  Then again, he did remember what Todoroki had said: "She doesn't want to be a hero."  

     Ryukyu bursts through the ceiling along with a massive man she was curled around.  Uraraka and Asui were with her, descending peacefully thanks to the brunette's quirk.  
     But Midoriya didn't have the time to worry about that.  Overhaul threw the girl into the air, raising on his own pillar to escape through the skylight.  All he could do was jump.  Jump and jump again, off of every stone and pebble that rained down at him; jump until he could save the girl he had lost once before.  
     She tipped over the edge of the plateau, Togata's torn red cape gripped in her shaking, pale hands.  And finally, Midoriya could catch her.  He could save this young child and never let her go.  She would be the first of many, of thousands, of millions, of billions, of every person on the planet every single time that needed him.  Midoriya would be there for them just like he was going to be there for her now.  

     Overhaul jumped after her, and it took all of his concentration to jump and avoid him.  He only had two arms again, and the young girl's horn was glowing a soft yellow.  A color of purity and grace, he thought.  
     With the last of his strength, he evaded and kicked Overhaul straight into the floor far below.  The force shot him —Eri still clutched in his arms— far above the street.  Strangely, his leg wasn't broken, though it should have been.  Not only the leg that had kicked Overhaul, the leg he had used to jump away in a flash.  It should have been shattered in a spiral break, but it was just fine.  In fact, even his other injuries were now healed.  
     He slides to a stop on the street, wobbly and unbalanced as he sets her down.  He crouches, half to get to her level, and half so he could touch the ground.
     "Is this... your power?"  But only moments later, a sucking feeling engulfed him in the harshest of pains.  Like a black hole had just opened in the center of heart for a moment long enough to steal his blood. 
     "She has no control."  A voice laughs.  It only vaguely sounded like Overhaul's, but he knew it was.  He burst through the floor as Midoriya grabbed Eri and jumped out of the way.  Even if Nighteye's Foresight told them he was going to die and Overhaul was going to win, Midoriya simply could not accept that lying down.  
     After all, he was a hero.