Be Careful What You Wish For

Certainty

"Kota," Izuku pulled his hand back abruptly. "We need to leave."

Kota gave him a confused glare. "...why?"

"Call it a hero's intuition," the student forced out between clenched teeth, grabbing the younger by the nape of his shirt and pulling him bumbling into his legs. Kota let out a high pitched yelp, quick to struggle against the diamond grip. "Something bad is about to happen."

Kota drummed his small fists into his side. "Let me go, stupid!"

Izuku ignored the kid's struggles. He heard the explosion before he saw it, and didn't bother to turn his head back to look before he dove over the cliff's edge. Despite what happened last time, he still lacked a proper plan for what his next step should be, only thinking as far as 'getting the fuck away from this murderous asshole'. He hadn't a clue of how he was going to nail this landing without breaking something or worse, but he had plenty of tries to work with. Right now, his number one priority was finding out what the fuck this guy's deal was.

Mid-air, he angled his head to scowl at the very miffed-looking villain left behind in the dust. Guess the man didn't expect his victims to make such a quick escape. Izuku narrowed his eyes, cradling a now very terrified child close to his chest.

"What's happening?!" Kota cried, clawing at Izuku's arms before clamping down on them like his life depended on it, which it very well might. Izuku dismissed that thought.

"It's a villain," Izuku provided, perhaps superfluous. "I don't know how he knew we were here or what he wants, but it doesn't matter."

"It doesn't?!"

"No. Because either way, I'm gonna win."

Maybe it was the confidence in his words. Maybe it was shock. But despite the clear skepticism Kota displayed when he looked at him, his grasp lessened minutely.

"Oh... okay."

The whisper was almost lost to the wind's wail, but to Izuku, those words were more important than anything else. It was a small victory in a mountain of bullshit, and that meant everything when you had nothing else.

Ignoring the villain behind him, Izuku considered his next steps.

The forest. Trees.

Clipped phrases moved straight to the point, filtering out anything deemed inconsequential.

Use them to break your fall.

Setting his course for a thicket of leaves and branches wasn't the easiest thing when free-falling through the air with a terrified child in his arms, but Izuku had worked with worse odds. Momentarily, he shifted his arms to free up one limb while still holding Kota tight with the other. The young boy crushed his face into his protector's shoulder, bunching up the fabric of Izuku's dark green tee and pulling on it to the point of breaking to keep from screaming. The other gave him what he hoped was a comforting squeeze, before using his free hand and aimed it behind him before flicking his fingers.

With a bit of One for All, the air pressure pushed them closer to the emerald crown and he moved his feet in front of him to take on the brunt of the damage. He returned his one armed grip of Kota into two, hugging him close to give him the fullest protection he could and slammed into the vegetation with a grunt. Branches broke their decent, scratching his arms into a spiderweb of maroon, but otherwise leaving him relatively unarmed, excluding a few bumps and bruises.

Rather this than a hole through my back.

He gingerly unfurled from his protective stance, dropping his charge by his feet and taking a step back.