Nine Lives [Boku no Hero Academia SI]

[ragsthemimikyu]

Waking up with so much pain in his head was normal, but the hands on his body sure as hell weren't. Someone was lugging him up, holding him as though he were delicate but heavy. He caught a brief glimpse of dark green hair and serious eyes before his vision grew blurry. His nose burned, and he could taste copper in his mouth. How did that happen?

The Nomu, his addled brain supplied(there were flashes of a monster with dead eyes and an exposed brain, a monster so horrific-looking that it couldn't possibly exist in real life). There was a brief moment of reprieve, where he couldn't feel much of anything, but that was-quite literally- shattered when he realized his arm was broken. It seized after he attempted to move it out of the way so it wasn't just dangling uselessly at his side. He grit his teeth and tasted blood in his mouth, biting out a cuss, "Shit."

As good as it felt to swear, his voice was not normal. Usually, his voice was reedy and quiet, a bit shaky, but now he sounded gruff, and exhausted, even though he'd been asleep last time he checked. In fact, he felt exhausted; he wanted to go back to bed(flashes of an apartment that wasn't his, a laundry basket full of clothes shoved up against a wall, a sleeping bag lain on the floor that he remembered from somewhere but couldn't place).

He wished he knew where he was, wished he could see better, but the sharp pain in his eyes when he tried to force them open again made him stop. That was when he heard a door opening, people he couldn't understand yelling, relieved cries of what sounded like children. Hands on his back, an "it's going to be okay" from the person holding him and a gentle set of arms lifting him up so he wasn't just dangling off them anymore. Whoever this green-haired person was, they were holding him up nicely, and he felt safe with his cheek pressed against their small back.

This whole scenario felt off, so distinctly wrong that it almost made him pinch himself with his good arm in hopes this was all a nightmare. Nomu weren't real, he knew that; they were simply genetically modified humans in a manga series, just hulking things that looked scary but weren't real at all. Yet he remembered one clear as day; the very real pulsing of its brain as those dead eyes scanned the area for targets, that same gaze fixed on him as a scratchy voice cried out its name. He remembered it seizing him by the head and slamming him against the floor with such force he'd felt the cartilage his nose snap, those same powerful hands snapping his bones to pieces(it's not real, it's not real, it's not real-).

Blood was dripping down his face and he wanted to scream. He settled for a gruff sort of pained noise instead, a rumbling scream that died in the back of his throat. As darkness overtook his vision, he realized he still had no idea where the fuck he was.

 

[ragsthemimikyu]

When he woke up again, he was drenched in sweat and his breathing came in muffled gasps. People were talking in hushed tones, something about surgery and broken bones needing time to heal. Considering all he could make out were faint lights through the bandages on his face, he didn't know what was actually happening. The sweat made the wrappings on his arm itch like crazy, but he did his best to ignore it for now. There was something in his arm, between a small gap in the bandaging; an IV, most likely, since he probably had surgery to fix the broken bones in his nose.

His face felt numb, and not being able to see properly made him feel vulnerable. A chill went down his spine-brief, but enough to make him shiver-when he remembered something important; this wasn't his body. This wasn't his life. He assumed he died while he was sleeping, considering the last thing he remembered before being thrust into this train wreck of a body was his head hitting a pillow, and he was trapped inside of a broken body that was so alien to him he didn't even know what it looked like. Hell, he didn't even know this person's name; he just had vague memories of the creature that maimed this body and what it was called, but nothing more would come to him.

A name ghosted through his mind, a whisper among panicked screams and questions of whether or not he was truly dead, Eraser. Was this his name? He couldn't remember his old name, and probably never would, yet this word kept standing out in his mind. As he wracked his painkiller-addled brain, he could only continue to think, Eraser. It rang in his ears like a death knell, ominous for some reason, and he felt another foreboding chill down his spine.

The name came with a face-green eyes behind strange glasses, a loud boy with hair like the sun and the widest smile he's ever seen in this life and his old one-a face that practically screamed friend. He felt comforted for the first time since he awoke in his mess; at the very least, the original owner of this body had a friend. Someone who could-at the very least-fill him in on what he didn't know(which was everything, beyond his name and their face). His bandages were a bit more bearable now that he had something else to think about.

What if this loud person thought that something was up, that he wasn't acting like "himself"(whomever that really was)? Would he be labeled a fraud, a fake trying to impersonate whoever Eraser was? If he was in some kind of foreign land-maybe even another planet, but he couldn't be too sure-then was he speaking a language that wasn't his? He felt like he was speaking English, and he'd vaguely understood the other people who'd spoken before, so maybe he knew the words of another language because the original Eraser did as well?

All he understood at that point was that he couldn't mess up; when the bandages came off-which wouldn't be anytime soon, as far as he knew-he'd try to make himself root through this body's memories. He'd try his damnedest to play the role this person had played before he came here, to never make mistakes, to wear their face as long as he could until he found a way to get back to his original world.

 

[ragsthemimikyu]

This time, his sleep was plagued with nightmares; he saw a hand reaching for the girl who'd carried him out of that place, the fingertips brushing her cheeks. All while he watched, unable to move, head held up by the meaty hand of the creature that'd attacked him so he had no other option but to keep his eyes open. A sharp sting made his eyes burn, but he didn't look away, couldn't bring himself to. That was when the monster-the Nomu, he remembered-slammed him into the ground again, so hard he felt just about every bone shatter in his nose. The last thing he saw as he blinked was the girl's skin crumbling into dust under the freak's touch, falling into the water, turning it grey and murky.

He woke up with a scream on his bandaged lips, panting and drenched head-to-toe with sweat. If his skin were exposed, the sheets would be clinging to him, sticky and wet, but as it were, his bandages were doing that for him, stuck to this body. His hair was probably in his face, but he couldn't see a damn thing, so he couldn't tell. Lying back on the hospital bed-he assumed that was where he'd gotten patched up-he let out a muffled sigh, trying to get his bearings. He was, as of now, in someone else's body, in another world, one of quirks, superheroes, and villains. A world whose plot he'd been haphazardly plonked into, a world whose plot he could easily derail. Judging by the faint memories he'd tried to glimpse through-the smiling face of a blond-haired man with the loudest voice he'd ever heard in his life and the same green eyes as the boy he'd remembered previously(Yamada Hizashi, his mind supplied; your best friend since before you both graduated UA), the freckled face of a boy he instantly recognized as the "protagonist"(Midoriya Izuku, the problem child), all on top of the creature that'd attacked him-he was at the end of the attack on the USJ. The tournament was coming soon. He'd be healed afterwords, by a zealous Recovery Girl, and return to the-his-class to teach.

God, he wished he didn't know these things. He wished he was completely ignorant to everything that would occur, that he didn't have knowledge of the events to come. Of the one-sided fight between Bakugou and Uraraka, the devastating outcome, and the way people reacted. Of the most important battle-Todoroki versus Midoriya-wherein the protagonist of the story made Shouto more confident with his abilities, by assuring him he wasn't using his father's power but his own. Could he meddle? Could he change things, maybe warn the school before Bakugou's kidnapping and save him early? He didn't know.

All he knew was that he had to try. He needed to recover faster than the "original" Aizawa Shouta, to start honing his new quirk and his body, in order to better fight what was to come. He needed to change things, prevent disasters from occurring before they happened; why else would he be here? He felt a bit arrogant for thinking that way, but part of him no longer gave a shit. If being self-centered is what it took to save everyone, then fine; he didn't care. He'd be just as self-centered as he damn well pleased.