MHA Fanfiction: Inbound

Remembering

Ida's POV

She's gone.

Iylla.

She's-

Iylla gave herself over to the League of Villains in an effort to protect everybody on the mountain.

And it was my fault. I should have held her tighter than I did. I should have ran faster. I shouldn't have let her overpower me like that. I should have kept her safe, and yet, she was anything but safe. If I had done everything differently, maybe she'd still be here.

Nearly as soon as the villains retreated, Mr. Aizawa was able to call for backup. All Might arrived on the mountainside within minutes, but it was too late. There were already multiple severe student injuries, including Jiro, Hagakure, Yaoyorozu, and Midoriya. Injured students were sent to the hospital and were not present with us at the moment. I, and other minimally injured students, were put on buses headed back to UA.

As far as the staff, Mr. Aizawa and Vlad King were fine. Although he was physically unharmed, Mr. Aizawa hadn't spoken since we left the camp. Usually, I'd say that was normal, but nothing about watching your daughter get kidnapped by villains was normal. All Might tried talking to him, but the number nine hero was dead to the world. Two of the Pussycats, Mandalay and Tiger, were okay, but Pixie-Bob had a nasty head wound, and Ragdoll was missing altogether.

And of course, Iylla and Bakugo...

I sat in my seat, staring blankly at the spot where Iylla had been sitting a week ago. She rested her head on the window as she slept, using her hands as a pillow. I watched her snoring lightly, wondering just how long I would have to wait before I could tell her I loved her. I didn't want to spook her, but I also didn't want to wait too much longer. How could I possibly hide the way she made me feel? Little did I know that she would tell me the same thing just a few days later. I never foresaw her saying it first, and I especially didn't expect her to skip the I like you phase entirely.

In an attempt to preserve at least some of my mental health, I decided it was probably best if I didn't think about last night. Instead, I opted to think of a few rather cherished memories I shared with her.

///

During her suspension, I ran through some flashcards with her. There was music playing in the background, Taylor Swift, of course. We'd been studying for a few hours already, and her focus was starting to wane, but before it disappeared completely, I pulled one last card.

"What do you do if a villain takes a child hostage?" I read the card, sitting criss-cross on the bed across from her. When we started the flashcards, I tried convincing her to stay at the desk, but as I said, her attention was waning, and she refused.

"I yank the brat with my binding cloth and then bop the villain-fool with a barrier."

"Umm, yes, but I think you mean remove the child from danger, then attack, right?" I asked in amusement?

"Isn't that what I said?"

"Well," I set the cards down, searching my brain for a way to explain. "When you say yank the brat, it sounds like you don't really care about it-"

"I don't care about the brat! It's not my brat!"

I fought to suppress the laughter building up inside of me. "Okay, but the brat- I mean the child, is likely frightened, you wouldn't want to yank it; you would probably end up scaring it more."

"It's a fictional brat, Ida." She still called me by my last name then. "We're just studying; it's not that serious."

"I take studying very seriously," I told her, but she was not impressed by my dedication to schoolwork. "What if this was a real child? What would you do to protect it? You would care about it if it was real, right?"