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Shouto had faced a plethora of unpleasant experiences in his short lifetime, largely more than he should have, really. Regardless, he'd long ago accepted this list would steadily lengthen, as was par for the course for one making his career choices.
None the less, his upbringing had taught him many lessons, and taught them well. Seared them into his very flesh and bone, into the back of his brain, gnawing like a cancer, reminding him of all these terrible things he'd felt, seen, done.
He'd existed as no child should have to, and he knew what hurt was.
An acquaintance, always lingering uncomfortably in the doorframe, not quite here but not quite gone all the same, waiting for anyone other than Shouto to invite him back in.
He knew the unexpectedness of fear, and the icy fingertips brushing his nape, playing his heart like an instrument and wringing his lungs like a towel.
However unwelcome they were, they were familiar even still, a twisted comfort at the worst of times.
A consistency.
Serving as a reminder of the pounding in his chest, the blood in his veins, and occasionally the autonomy he retained.
Surprisingly enough, Shouto hadn't lived anything quite like this before.
There'd been instances he might describe as falling- the weightlessness of the room blurring and the floorboards vanishing beneath his feet as he was tossed about like a ragdoll, or his trembling knees sending him tumbling down, the wind rushing past his ears as the ground came up to meet him.
This was something entirely different.
For he was plummeting into the open arms of death, waiting patiently miles below him, the distance between them lessening with every moment.
There was a reverberating yell of his name before he was sent crashing through the window back first, barely audible over the shattering glass and the sudden torrent of air rushing past him.
Over eight thousand metres, he recalled from the briefing they'd received.
Whatever you do, don't fall. We'll have flight type heroes on standby, but we can't guarantee they'll get to you in time.
Lifting an entire town seemed a little overkill for just sending a message, if Shouto were truthful. Then again, it didn't seem like this villain had their head straight anyway- sending a message probably had nothing to do with it.
Most cases like this were just for, you know, genocide.
Someone finally snapping under the pressures of their unspeakably flawed hero society and deciding to let their instinct run wild until heroes either captured or killed them. Suicide attacks were becoming worryingly common as of late.
What that would entail for the future, Shouto couldn't tell you, but it likely wouldn't matter for him soon enough.
What the villain was even planning once they'd got the town in the air, Shouto didn't know.
Probably to drop it.
Unless they were completely gone in the head, they will have been expecting some kind of adversarial intervention, so not one of the heroes were particularly certain how this would play out.
It was an uneasy plane ride up, made only slightly more bearable by Sero's explanation of the Villain's name of choice- "Death Drop". A dance move apparently.
Shouto didn't quite understand it's humour, but Sero certainly did, giggling the whole way up.
According to one of the pro's tracking quirks, Death Drop positioned themselves in an abandoned school directly on the edge of the gargantuan floating rock, quite literally teetering over the side, the very ground beneath them trembling.
It was an interesting tactic, perhaps an effective one, had the Pro's been any less prepared, likely an attempt at warding off potential assailants.
The Villain was alone.
None of them had thought to question that fact, foolishly enough. Given that Shouto was tumbling to the earth below at a rate of knots to his imminent demise, this little titbit was unsurprisingly untrue.
The woman appeared out of no where, mid battle, catching Shouto entirely off guard and knocking him straight through a window, disappearing off the edge in a matter of seconds.
He futilely made to clamber for any purchase on the cliff-side, much too far away to even touch it, let alone grip it, and the pure shock prevented him from using his quirk until too late.
And now he was going to die.
And it was terrifying. Viscerally terrifying.
There was nothing but Shouto and the ground, staring blankly up at him. Flames did nothing to slow his decent, extinguishing immediately against the air pressure. It might've been worth a try to make some kind of ice slope, but he didn't think he'd be able to aim in these conditions, and without something to latch it onto, the makeshift slope would be falling just as much as him.
It was futile, Shouto reasoned, and he resigned himself to the inevitable.
He did not scream, he did not struggle. He just continued to fall, the earth becoming clearer by the millisecond.
He'd die at the bottom of a crater, his body crushed by g-force, smashed into a bloody pulp, and anything remaining would be buried beneath a town when it eventually touched down again.
Shouto left a half full mug of tea on the coffee table that morning. He wondered who might end up cleaning it up. It was supposed to his turn on dishwashing duty that night, the rota aligning with him again after nineteen days.
Would he be skipped over, and it would become Hagakure's turn by default? Or would they skip over the duties for a night, and instead wash them in the morning?
There were many things of his that his friends, family and teachers might have to clean up.
His clothes were still in his locker, back in the changing rooms, exactly where he'd left them earlier. There were also clothes in his wash basket, and he'd forgotten to empty his bin a few nights ago.
Fuyumi's birthday present was wrapped, hidden in his bedside drawers, ready to take to their arranged birthday meet up in a few days time. It was going to be one of the first times he, Fuyumi and Natsu would spend time together in years.
The manga he'd borrowed from Sero were still sat on his desk, only half read. It dawned that those were stories he'd never get to see completed. Funny, considering his current situation.
It was near now, the ground. Probably only half a minute away, maybe less.
Shouto hoped it would be quick.
Shifting, he tried to position himself vertically, feet to the sky. Landing on his head would be fastest. No matter how he fell, he was going to die, Shouto knew this, but it was better to have a shattered skull than to bleed out, or suffocate on his own blood, or anything really.
He glanced below one last time before closing his eyes.
Only seconds.
It was almost ironic, that the blood and vomit stains on the training room floor would last longer than him. Shouto used his last breath to huff, chuckling to himself and the wind.
He braced.
And a pair of arms wrapped around his middle.