How long had you been floating in this state of half existence?
An hour? A day? A week? A month? Years?
You didn't know. You couldn't feel time move as you floated in an endless expanse of nothing.
You vaguely remembered what had happened before you'd died. You'd failed to drain All for One's quirks all the way and he'd crushed you because of it. You couldn't see what happened with your loss of vision, but you felt your body crushed against the rocks all the same. You wondered how the rest of the battle had gone. Had your sacrifice been enough to help? Had Toshi succeeded? Or was he floating in the afterlife like you were?
Death wasn't like you'd imagined it would be. There was a black nothingness, sure, but the sensation of blinding pain still lingered. As you floated through existence, your body felt scattered, bits and pieces floating around separately in the void. You were unable to move, completely at the mercy at the forces that moved you back and forth endlessly.
Was this what hell was like? The pain that seemingly had no source was fitting enough for the endless torment of hell, and after all of the people you'd hurt in your years in the sea you supposed you rightfully deserved the torture. You hoped Toshi was spared the same fate if he had passed during the fight. With all of the people he'd saved and all the good he'd done you couldn't imagine him deserving anything other than paradise.
Your thoughts of him helped to dull the pain slightly as eons passed by. You thought of his laugh, his smile, his eyes. You remembered your first date with him, the time you'd saved him when he'd come home bleeding. You thought about his hands on your skin, his lips on your neck and every other delicious place he'd explored. You reminisced on the promise he'd given you moments before the fight; the promise of a life together. The memories made the pain dull, the time pass quicker, until suddenly you felt something. Something real, tangible.
The tiniest piece of you, barely bigger than the tip of a needle, merged with another after having traveled what felt like miles to get there. It started with two, then three, then four until tens and hundred and thousands of them converged together as if magnetized onto a single point.
Slowly, those miniscule pieces took shape, forming metatarsals, ankles, tibias, fibulas, and femurs. The seams between each piece of you burned where it joined the rest of your body, a white-hot pain that never went away no matter how many more pieces returned to you.
Your tail was the first thing to fit itself back entirely together. The pain was like nothing you'd ever felt before as shards of bone moved and shifted back together over hours and hours. Your spine and arms were the next things to reassemble, your body straightening and snapping into its rightful position. Like a complicated puzzle, your skull and ribcage pieced themselves together around new organs. When everything was in its rightful place, layers of muscle and skin and scales grew over you in a protective coating. Finally, hair and eyelashes and other superficial things grew back as they had once been.
Eventually, the pain waned, though it never disappeared entirely. It was soon replaced by other sensations like hot and cold, hunger and emptiness, exhaustion.
As sensation returned to you, you questioned more and more if you were really in hell. The sensations you began to feel were too similar to things you remembered on earth, and the torture seemed more akin to the ache of broken and mending bones instead of the burning fires of hell.
You spent all of your energy taking stock of the things you could feel. You were in water, that was one thing you were sure of. You could feel your limp body bob in and out of the waves, could feel the heat of the sun or the coldness of rain pelt you as the weather changed. You could feel the brush of a fish or seaweed from the bottom of the ocean floor against your scales, could taste and feel the saltwater when your lungs took their first breath. When your hearing returned, you could hear the quiet rocking of the waves, the sound of a boat motor passing overhead, the bubbles of something nearby. You wanted to call out, to yell for help or to just see if anyone was there, but you couldn't even move your mouth or make a sound.
So you waited in the water, no more active than a jellyfish as you swayed back and forth at the mercy of the waves.
Your vision was one of the last things to return to you, though it was too cloudy for you to discern much. You were in the water, seemingly not dead somehow, but that was all you could discern. You couldn't move your eyes, couldn't turn your head to see, even blinking was a nearly impossible struggle.
You did the best with what information you could gather. You were somewhere deep in the ocean, a few hundred feet above the floor. Nothing seemed to be near, which was both a blessing and a curse. Your body was still in rough shape, with skin and bone fused together with nothing more than a hope and a prayer. Blood flowed from your every orifice in an endless stream and it was a miracle that you had any left and that a curious shark hadn't come to check on you.
Instead, nothing came near you save a few fish. You just floated in pain as the days passed and until the seams finally healed completely, leaving nothing but perfectly smooth skin.
You were able to count fourteen sunrises before you were finally able to move your head a bit. It took six sunrises after that for you to regain feeling in your fingers, and then a dozen more before you were able to move your tail or arms even an inch.
Your skin was still fragile, and movement was terribly painful, but you wouldn't let yourself float like kelp forever.
It took an immense amount of effort and bobbing for you to be able to breach your head above the surface and take your first breath of fresh air, but what you saw was encouraging. Your muscles and joints were impossibly tight and weak, covered in a thick, barely flexible layer of skin and scales. It took practice, one day at a time, to regain each and every bodily function you'd once been capable of. A small swish of your tail took more energy than you had available to expend, but you were able to manage to stay above the water long enough to look at the horizon.
Land was only a few miles away, a small speck off in the distance. While you couldn't swim there, you certainly could try to aim yourself in that direction in the hopes that a Good Samaritan would come along and rescue you.
Maybe even Toshi.
You hadn't had the presence of mind to think about him for the past few weeks as you healed, but now that your brain seemed slightly better it filled you with worry once again.
How did the fight end? Was he okay? Was he looking for you?
The unanswered questions only made you more anxious to regain full use of your body.
As if in an answer to your prayers, the winds, waves, and currents gently pushed you towards the shore over the course of a couple days. You were incredibly impatient as you watched the shore for days, a random patch of beach you'd never seen before. As you got closer and closer, you noticed more and more details of the beach as your vision cleared.
First and foremost; it was filthy. Trash covered most of the sand, piled high in stacks that had obviously been intentionally dumped. Junk of all sizes big and small polluted the water around it and as you got closer and closer to the shore you helplessly slammed into the trash in the water. It scraped and bruised your sensitive new skin, but it felt so good to have proof you were really alive.
After days of silently floating on the waves and smashing into trash, you felt yourself finally brush up against the sand of the beach. One night, the waves pushed you forcefully on to the beach at high tide only to leave you behind when the waters receded.
A weak smile crept up on your face when you felt the warm sun drying your skin on the warm sand that next morning. You weakly stretched and wiggled your feet once youd finally dried enough to transform back. While you had no use of them, it still felt good to move.You'd made it. You were weak, tired, bumped and bruise, but you were alive and one step closer to finding Toshinori.
The next problem that faced you, however, was the complete uselessness of your body. Your newly formed muscles were barely strong enough to help you twitch, let alone stand up and walk. On top of that, starvation gnawed away at what little you had. Without the weightless feeling of being in the water, your limbs were that much heavy and more difficult to move. You tried moving yourself more each day, but without any food to sustain you you just didn't have the energy to work out your atrophied muscles.
If only someone could come to that disgusting beach, even if it was to dump more trash. They could help you, or at least call the paramedics to come get you.
Unfortunately, luck wasn't on your side.
Days passed, the high tide pushing you farther and farther up on the beach each night. In the morning, the sun burned at your skin until it was red and blistered, only soothed by the cold water of the nightly tide. You'd get a brief respite every time you'd land within the shadow of a pile of trash, but even that only lasted a few hours.
You could feel it on the fifth day on that beach; the extra layer of weakness that piled atop your other ailments. Once again, your end was at hand as your stomach gnawed at itself.
Your throat was raw with thirst, but even so you tested your vocal chords with a weak cough. To your surprise, a small croak came out.
Again, you tested your voice.
"H-hello?" You called, barely above a pained whisper. Louder this time you called again, "Hello?"
The squawk of seagulls hungrily looking at your body was the only response.
It felt useless to spend your last few moments screaming for help, so you stopped to prevent aggravating your throat any further.
As your vision grew hazy once again, you frowned. To somehow defy death only to die again after gaining some semblance of hope seemed even crueler than if you'd just died. The loss of that hope was what stung the most. You'd allowed yourself to think- to believe, you'd see Toshi again. It had been a foolish dream, you supposed.
Disappointment strangled your heart as you imagined how he would've lit up when he saw you, the tears you would've shed together at your reunion. He would've swept you up into his arms, hugged you tight, then kissed you until you couldn't even breathe. You wished you could have seen him one last time, even if it had only been for a second.
With your last ounces of effort, you parted your dry lips and let out a mournful song, a final death rattle heard only by the seagulls as your audience.
"Upon one summer's morning, I carefully did stray
Down by the Walls of Wapping, where I met a sailor gay
Conversing with a young lass, who seemed to be in pain
Saying William, when you go, I fear you will never return again
My heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold
His hair it hangs in ringlets, his eyes as black as coal
My happiness attend him wherever he may go
From Tower Hill to Blackwall, I'll wander, weep and moan
All for my jolly sailor, until he sails home
My heart is pierced by Cupid
I disdain all glittering gold
There is nothing can console me
But my jolly sailor bold"
Your throat gave out as the last note floated off into the air. The rising tide lapped at your heels and your body used the last of it's reserves to transform you as you closed your eyes, ready to let thoughts of Toshi be your last.
"Hey, hey!" A voice called from far away. You could barely crack your eyelids open to look at whoever it was. You could discern the outline of a man in a blue spandex suit, probably a hero, but not the hero you were looking for. "Hey, you don't look so good. Are you o- Wait, I recognize you. You were dating All Might, weren't you? Shit-"
The hero slid his arm under your back and helped you sit up, but the change in position made you groan. Blood that had been pooling in your head rushed to the rest of your extremities, causing your limbs to burn with pins and needles.
"All Might-" You whimpered weakly.
"How long have you been out here? You're burnt to a crisp. Here..." The hero mercifully uncapped a water bottle and held it to your lips.
Though you'd been laying in water for the past few months, you'd never gotten a single drop of fresh water aside from the rain. Now, it was the most heavenly thing you'd ever tasted as it cooled your throat. You couldn't get enough as you chugged and chugged as best you could. The cool water dripped down your chin in cold rivulets that cooled your hot flesh wherever it touched. It was a godsend.
"All Might," You rasped again more desperately.
"Hold on," The hero muttered once he'd emptied the bottle. "I'll call for help."
He shifted you in his arms and pulled out his phone. You heard him frantically typing something and sending it, heard him open up the Commission's app Toshi always used to keep an eye on where he and other heroes were needed. You prayed hed send out a distress signal, or even directly contact Toshinori if that was even possible. Hope quickly sparked inside of you again, if you could just hold out a little longer.
"All Might," You groaned again.
"It's going to be okay, the paramedics are coming!" He shifted you again. "Here, let me cover you up."
The feeling of his top burned against your raw skin, but you ignored it. There was only one thing on your mind.
"All Might," You tried one more time.
"I don't know what heroes will come to the scene. Hang in there, okay?"
Moments later you heard the wail of sirens, a rush of people hustling on the normally deserted beach.
"What's going on?" A paramedic asked, replacing the hero. You felt their fingers check your pulse before they poked and prodded your wounds.
"I heard her singing on the beach. Nobody is ever over here, so I came to check it out."
"Did she give you her name? What's your name, sweetie?"
"She just keeps asking for All Might. I think she's that woman he dated a few months back. It's hard to tell."
"I can kinda see the resemblance. She's really sunburnt. Hang in there, honey. We'll get you to the hospital and then see if we can somehow get ahold of All Might. Save your strength, okay?"
"All-" Your voice gave out before you could even finish.
You heard more footsteps crunching on the sand towards you, felt extra hands grip your sore skin as they braced your neck and lifted you onto a board to be transferred to a gurney in the ambulance. You felt a respirator mask cover your lips, felt someone pierce a needle into the crook of your arm to give you life saving fluids. You felt yourself get hoisted over the sand, heard more and more people gather around the ambulance to see what was going on.
You didn't care about any of it. Didn't care when they covered you with a shock blanket, didn't care when they put you on the soft mattress of a gurney, didn't care when they hoisted you into the back of the ambulance as more and more people gathered.
What you did care about, however, was the commotion that erupted when more heroes arrived on the scene. You strained your blurry eyes to pick through the crowd in the hopes of seeing him, the hopes of hearing him one last time. To your dismay, nobody looked familiar. There was no spiky blonde hair, no obnoxiously colored suits, no tall and imposing figures. He hadn't come. Too exhausted to keep your eyes open a minute longer, you resigned yourself to defeat.
The paramedics piled into the ambulance behind you and strapped your bed in to keep you from moving. The cool air conditioning felt like heaven to you. Just as you were about to give in, to succumb to exhaustion and starvation as the paramedics closed the door, when all of a sudden that booming voice you longed for so much pierced the air outside.
"I am-"