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A girl walked along the edge of the platform, balancing on her toes. There was nothing really remarkable about her, just an ordinary girl waiting for the train. Except she didn’t step away as a train pulled into the station. The girl stopped, perched on the edge of the platform. She stepped forward, even though there was nothing but empty air in front of her. His body moved on it’s own, reacting before he’d had a chance to process what was happening. But he still wasn’t fast enough.
She left one shoe behind on the platform.
The next few days passed in a blur. He couldn’t stop thinking about that girl. How he had failed to save her. All that time spent training, and he wasn’t fast enough . What good was his training, what good was any of it if he couldn’t save a girl who was right in front of him?
Not even a week later, and he was standing on that same platform. No sign of the girl remained, no one in the crowd seemed to even know or care that a girl had died here. Her life was over and theirs just went on, as monotonous and mundane as waiting for a train. It wasn’t fair, how could the world just forget she had existed?
Shinso’s eyes followed the edge of the platform, tracing the path she had taken in the moments before her death. A man stood in her place. Just an ordinary man, standing too close to the edge. His heart squeezed into his throat. His feet moved, not on their own this time, but still too slowly. He shook his head, he couldn’t hesitate, not now . He shook his head, grabbing the man's sleeve and almost losing his nerve when the man looked him dead in the eye. He looked like everything he’d ever loved had been taken from him. Shinso swallowed, a question catching in his throat for the first time since his quirk had developed. “Is this- is this the wrong train?”
He’d meant to ask if this was the right train for a neighborhood across town(knowing it wasn’t), but the words had gotten mixed up on his tongue. The man gave him a strange look. “Excuse me?”
The man’s eyes glazed over as his quirk took effect. Shinso sighed in relief. “Step back from the edge.”
The man stepped back. Shinso dug into his pocket for his phone and opened the web browser, searching for a number to a suicide hotline. He scrounged in his bag for a pen and scrawled the number on the man’s hand. “Go home. Call this number, they can- they’ll help.”
The tension that had been building in his neck and shoulders since he’d witnessed the girl's death fell away as he watched the man turn and walk away, climbing the stairs back up to the street. Shinso turned back to the platform, scanning the crowd. Ordinary people, but any one of them could be hiding some secret grief, some feeling of failure. Which one of them would be pushed to the edge next?
He couldn’t- wouldn’t - let that happen again.
He got better at preventing suicides as time went on. He graduated from scribbling hotlines on peoples hands to handing out business cards of therapists and counselors. He’d worked out a deal with some of the ones who offered crisis counseling at discounted(or even free) rates so the would-be victims could get the help they needed.
~
Bakugo scowled as yet another civilian walked past him, clearly dazed and disoriented. They’d walked into the train station ten minutes ago just to walk back out. It had been happening for weeks, moving from station to station, all around the city. He’d tried talking to some of them, but they all acted as if he didn’t exist.
Something wasn’t right.
Bakugo stomped into the station, determined to finally get to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on. He scanned his pass, pushing through the barricade to survey the crowd. Nothing unusual stood out to him- until he saw a man in a dark hoodie speak briefly to a guy on the platform. The guy turned away from the tracks, breezing past Bakugo on his way out of the station. Bakugo had just seen him walk into the station, why was he suddenly in such a hurry to leave?
Bakugo stripped off the jacket that concealed his hero suit, pulling his mask from his pocket and clipping it into place. He inhaled deeply and shouted in the direction the hooded man had gone. “Oi! Why don’t you come out and fight a real pro huh? Quit messing with people and fight me!”
He spun around, trying to figure out where the villain(because it had to be a villain) had gone, but only saw blank faces staring back at him. He scowled, searching the crowd.
“Hey moron!”
Bakugo spun toward the source of the shout. Eyebags barreled toward him, wearing the same hoodie the villain had been. Shinso snarled at him. “Why don’t you shut the fuck up?”
Bakugo growled. “Who do you think-”
“Shut up and follow me.” Eyebag’s quirk pierced his brain, forcing his body to follow the purple haired jerk into a more secluded area of the station. The second he was released, Bakugo grabbed Shinso by the front of his hoodie, shoving him into the nearest wall. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Eyebags? Did you finally give up and become a villain since you still haven’t managed to crawl your way out of general studies?”
Shinso scoffed, rolling his eyes as his lip curled into his typical pretentious smirk. “Of course you would think that-”
Bakugo yanked Shinso away from the wall just to slam him back into it. “What are you doing to these people?”
Shinso grunted as the back of his head cracked against the wall. He didn’t answer. Bakugo tightened his grip. “Oi-”
“I’m saving them.”
Bakugo blinked. “What?”
Shinsou scoffed. “Finally blow out your hearing? I’m saving them, jackass.”
“Saving them from what?”
Shinso looked away, refusing to answer yet again. Bakugo tugged Shinso’s hoodie again. “Either tell me what the fuck is going on or I’m arresting you.”
Shinso rolled his eyes, sighing. “They’re suicide victims. Or would have been.”
Neither of them moved until Bakugo released Shinso’s hoodie. “You’ve been using your quirk to stop people from killing themselves? Why ?”
Shinso didn’t answer. Bakugo didn’t push for one, picking a different question. “Where do you send them?”
“Home. Cafe’s. Hospitals. Anywhere but here.”
“Why hasn’t anybody heard of you doing this?”
Shinso clicked his tongue. “Are you actually stupid? If people find out someone is preventing people from committing suicide here, they’ll just find somewhere else to do it.”
Bakugo said nothing. What was there to say?
Shinso shoved past him. “If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”