From Zero to Hero

From this day forward I spend my time fully alone in my cell, mostly rethinking my life, staring at the dark ceiling. I had thrown them out of my life, I never wanted to hear from them again. I didn’t care if they were forced to see me or not, I would always protest and even block the door from the side so they couldn’t get in.

This solidary containment soon had his effects on me, like on every human being. I slowly started to lose it, my inner demons became louder and louder until they had fully drowned out the voice of reason inside my mind. Soon I had fallen into a hole, a hole that I wouldn’t be able to get out alone. My situation didn’t allow anyone to help me as well, it seemed like I would be stuck in there forever.

These voices became my friends, they were all I heard for more than a year. They started to make sense out of my life, telling me that this was my fault, for showing Kotaro what I could do, that I wasn’t worth it and just a waste of resources and space.

I was nothing but a bastard child, with a whore as a mother and a wannabe villain as a father. I had no idea what happened to my brother. What or if they even told him anything. Did he already break under the pressure they put him under? Was he even still alive? All because of this power-hungry lunatic who has whatever kind of relationship with my mother.

I started to feel like I wasn’t meant to be here, that no one would even notice when I was gone from this world, that my family would be better off without me. This was the darkest of my times, where I started to harm myself to pay for my mistakes. I wrote down everything I did to myself, rating the pain level and why I felt like I deserved this. To have something that remains in this world from me when I would no longer be here.

​

I had this all planned out, exactly seven years after my imprisonment I had finished my last letter which ended with the words: “And so I will leave this world, for the sake of everyone. See you on the other side. ~Kozuke...” I put it down in a safe place where I can be sure it will be unharmed and will be found later on. I finally saw a light at the end of this dark and lonely tunnel and I was willing to go towards this light into freedom.

​

I gathered all my things and piled them up in a corner of my room, one last time I looked over to them before tossing one of the little candles I had gotten on top of them, I wanted to get rid of all my things, so they had nothing more to worry about when I was gone. They could simply sweep up my ashes with my things and toss them out, then move on with their life.

I got into the bathroom and climbed into the bathtub; I didn’t want to make more of a mess then this already was. I had sharpened a piece of plastic that came off from one of my toys, I had rubbed it against the concrete walls until it was sharp enough to cut me. I wanted this to be as fast and painless as possible, that’s why I didn’t slit my wrists but rather chose the main arteries on my throat.

I held the weapon against my throat and with all my strength cut from one side to the other. My arm went weak, and I dropped the thing next to me, my body getting heavier. I still remember how relieved, and at ease, I felt as my blood trickled down my body. My head fell back against the tub, my eyes closed shut and I felt a warmth wash over my body that I hadn’t felt for years. I didn’t feel any pain, it was rather comfortable, slowly getting sleepy from the amount of blood loss, my head getting dizzy. I drifted off into a slumber I never intended to wake up from, running towards freedom and peace in my mind.

 

To my disappointment I did wake back up again, waves of pain throbbing through my body. Something must have gone wrong; I should have long bled out. I coughed and gasped my lugs filled with fluids barely letting me breathe.  From the corner of my eyes, I could see a bright light coming from the other room. The fire was burning with full force, most of the wood had turned into cinders and the plastic was already melting, soon there will be nothing left of what was mine. The letter was still set on top of the bathroom counter protected by the wet sink so fire couldn’t destroy it.

I failed at everything in life, and then I would also fail at dying. I only wanted to end this, I wanted my salvation, but my own body was betraying me. I couldn’t move anymore, too much blood had been lost, I was helplessly on the edge of death.

As my last resort I wanted to rely on the one thing that brought me here, my quirk. While I was all alone with my thoughts, I was somewhat experimenting with all the diverse ways on how to use my quirk.

​

I wrapped the smoke around the plastic piece that was swimming in my pool of blood. I was able to focus enough to bring the weapon back up to my neck, this time with the tip pointed right at my throat to stab right through me. Before I could launch it into my throat a hand grabbed through the smoke. The distraction was enough for my focus to drift off, resulting in me dropping my weapon.

The same pair of hands grabbed me and turned my head to the side. These hands where no one else’s than Touya’s, who was kneeling next to the tub. His bandages had gotten lose and some of them had even burned off, exposing his skin to the environment.

His hands were shaking and his eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, even though his lips were moving I only had a vague concept of the words coming out of them. It seemed like he was screaming at me, or simply screaming in general. He quickly turned his head away for a moment. His hands pressed down on my throat hoping he could stop the bleeding like this.

I activated my quirk and tried to fight him on this, slapping his hands away. “Please. Toto. Let me go.” I rasped in a whisper but no matter what I did he would resist and kept trying until my powers gave out.

​

The flames I had seen just a second ago had died out and another figure entered the room. Kurogiri stared at the situation before him, me hanging on to dear life wanting to die while Touya cried his heart out, shouting at me about something I still couldn’t comprehend.

Even if my father lost the ability to touch me his smoke and mine where remarkably similar. He could use his powers to interact with me, control my powers for me to a certain degree. He made me pinch down on the arteries to reduce the bleeding and covered the hole in my airway allowing me to breathe.

Touya still held my head towards him, his forehead pressing against mine. His skin was burning up for partly his quirk and the heat he was facing just a moment ago in the other room. He kept talking to me, he must have had no idea I couldn’t hear him, as he got interrupted by Kurogiri and they had somewhat of a discussion before he pressed a kiss on my forehead and handed me over to him who held my head up and sat next to me for the time being.

 

I ended up in the intensive care unit of the nearest hospital, with a tube in my throat and soft restrains around my wrists, fully drugged on all kinds of medications to make this existence durable. Everyone stood around the bed, for the first time in years I saw everyone together again. And just as I remember them, my parents had to start another fight with Kurogiri while Tenko and Touya sat by my side, one dozed off on the side of my bed, the other holding my hand. The chatter died down as I started to move, and my eyes opened slowly. Someone had already accommodated me by covering up all the windows, only letting in the bare minimum of light.

I slowly turned my head to Touya who squeezed my hand a little tighter. “Thank God, you’re awake!” he cheered and pressed my hand against his cheek, he felt quite warm, or was this just my body being colder than usual.

​

I still was hurt by the betrayal and the constant lies for so many years, but I had seen how much pain it caused him to find me like that. I remembered how gentle he was with me during these few minutes and how he kissed my head before he was forced away from me. Moreover, even after all the time he would still run through a burning room to safe me. That just showed me how much he actually cared for me. It did not completely make up for what he had done but I was certain we would be able to get past this, together.

I looked over at Tenko, who looked just as bad maybe even worse than Touya. His skin was pale, his eyes bloodshot and red, he had deep bags under his eyes. His lips where chipped and bitten, he also had been chewing on his nails for a while. He was thin as a twig; I could see every bone from his body. I saw many scars from his neck down, cuts, bruises, even stitches from disintegrated skin.

 Either he himself accidently touched his skin a few times too often, or Kotaro not only put his hands on me. This made me resent the man even more, it was one thing if he punished me for my wrongdoing, but abusing others that I still cared about, was too much. I knew I could take it; I have gotten used to this, but my brother was already such a breakable boy, the things he must have been through, I didn’t even want to imagine.

 

Touya got ordered to take care of me once I got released back home, since he was the only one I truly trusted, I would let him come close enough to change the bandages. He had his fair share of experience with changing bandages, he was skilled at it, I barely felt a thing when he would remove it, and he would be careful and gentle when putting the new one on. Sometimes he would draw little hearts on the bandage so I wouldn’t feel too bad about having them, in return I could cover all his bandages with drawings as well.

I was expecting more yelling and fighting once I got home, I was scared for my life the moment I set foot inside this building but somehow my mother and my father managed to convince Kotaro to let me live outside the basement and refurnished the place. It still seemed rather peaceful, for the first couple of weeks.

 

This is how I spend the next few years of my life, working endlessly to please my parents and therefore stay out of this horrible basement. My wounds slowly began to heal until there was nothing left then a wide white scar that went from one side of my throat to the other. The skin there was quite tender and stung at the slightest bit of heat, cold or even touch, that’s why I was used to wearing turtleneck shirts or a soft scarf Touya gifted me to protect me from any outside forces.

 

Everything seemed to be slowly normalizing itself, that was until one night, while I was fast asleep, yet again locked inside my room, the sounds of loud fighting woke me up. The door was supposed to be triple locked, to make sure I wouldn’t even try to get outside during the night.

A loud bang made me jump up and shoot my smoke into the vague direction of the door. Only after my smoke hit the target, I saw it was Touya standing in front of me. I immediately ended my attack and leaned back against the headboard of my bed; I had nothing to fear from him.

The young man seemed to be in distress, his body surrounded by small blue flames, as if he had been fighting a short while ago. His bandages were partially burned off exposing his true, nearly black burned skin. He rushed over to me and grabbed my hand and yanked me out of the bed. I could smell the stench of burned flesh coming off him.

I quickly got on my feet and grabbed his hands gently blowing on them to cool them. I wanted to pull him into the bathroom and pour some cool water on it, but he resisted.

“No, there is no time for this. We need to go, now!”, he growled out and grabbed me, pulling me towards him.

I was taken aback from the entire situation; adrenalin hasn’t yet set in so all I saw was panic all around me while I was standing rather calm. After these years together, I had to trust him, he wouldn’t do this as a joke, he wouldn’t test my trust with something useless, if he really meant we had to leave now then something horrible must have happened.

Slowly and step by step we snuck through the hallways towards the door, I always wanted to look around, scan the area, find out what was wrong, but he wouldn’t let me, he always made me look at him reassuring me that it was okay and that he would get me out of there.

​

​

We just passed the kitchen as I heard a glass shatter. I turned my head and tried to look what had happened. I realized only later that I should have simply trusted Touya and not looked at anything else but him. The usually white kitchen tiles where stained with bloody foot-and handprints, behind the counter was a full puddle of blood that seem to be spreading, fast.

I froze in the middle of my step, contemplating if I should peruse my own freedom and keep walking or make a turn to help whoever was injured there. I chose to stay and help the person, after all I raised myself to be a good person. I wanted to turn but Touya grabbed me and kept pushing me further down the hall, I tried to hold on to every doorframe and corner really fighting him on it.

We tried to do all of this with little to no noise, but the glance he threw over to me said everything. “You can’t be serious right now...” But oh contraire, I was dead serious with this one.

His hands grabbed me tighter to keep me from slipping out of his grip. I had to do what was necessary and kicked him right between the legs. I could hear him let out a grunt as he fell on the ground, this gave me a little window of opportunity to push him away from me.

 

I returned to the kitchen; the door had been partially closed. I pushed it open and spied through. In the middle was our cooking island, I couldn’t really see over it, but I was close enough to see a pair of feet lay on the floor behind it, covered in blood all around. The rest of the floor was covered in bits of smoke, it wasn’t mine, it had to be Kurogiri’s, but he was nowhere to be seen. These could not possibly be parts of himself. Broken apart like that?

I got in some steps further and saw All for One kneeling behind the counter, holding something in his hands. Kotaro sitting next to him on the bloody floor. There must have been a terrible fight before I arrived.

Next to them was my father’s helmet, the thing he uses to communicate with us in his form, it keeps the last bit of his humanity. If this thing broke, he would die.

All for One was holding my mother in his arms, her body stiff as a rock and a face filled with horror. She was severely wounded, blood trickling out of her. I felt my body temperature drop, my face went pale as a ghost. I had seen so much death over the last decade, but this was on a completely new level, never had things been so personal.

Nobody noticed me yet, and I wished it would have stayed that way, but I just had to step closer and speak up. “What happened to mommy?” I whispered and stepped into a puddle of blood. These madmen whipped their heads around towards me, All for Ones mask reflecting my image. The villain handed my mother’s body over to Kotaro before he got off the floor. I wanted to take a step back but there was my brother who also came downstairs to see what this yelling was about.

​

I tripped over his feet and landed on the blood covered floor. I crawled back on all four as my legs kept slipping from the tiles.

Touya had finally recovered from my previous attack and pulled me off the floor back onto my feet. He pressed my back against his chest as he softly shushed me. My hands clinging to him as he wrapped his arms around me to keep me by his side. He wanted to pull me away, but my body refused. In this fight, flight or freeze situation my body decided the latter and froze on the spot.

“What did you do.,” Tenko whispered as he came to the realization of what he was seeing, was a murder.

The gore of this crime made him sick, and he tumbled back against the kitchen counter. Even if his body seemed so broken and his soul crushed, the look of pure horror and shock in his eyes showed me that deep down in his core he still was the same loving and caring man I knew from all these years ago.

Tenko tore his glance away from our mothers corpse to stare directly into Kotaro’s cold-hearted eyes. “What did you do!” he shouted at him.

​

​

We stood there, glued to the floor as All for One and Kotaro both stood in front of us, we should be running away from them, like right now, but we couldn’t. “This woman was a traitor. She and her good for nothing mother. These two have been plotting to kill me ever since I met them. All they wanted was my spot as the number 1 villain.” Kotaro huffed then let out a self-confident chuckle, with this psychotic look in his eyes.

He slowly came closer to his son, carefully putting his hand on Tenko’s shoulder. “But don’t worry about it my boy, I took care of it. For you.,” he sounded so compassionate, as if he just did a good deed. “Now the only person standing between you, and your rightful place as my heir, is her.,” he spun Tenko around to face me, who was fully wrapped up in Touya’s arms.

​

He rested his chin on my head, squeezing me tightly to help me contain what little was left of my focus not to break and let my quirk lose. All these emotions that were bottled up over the years were about to boil over, and I would not know what I would be capable of if he didn’t restrain me.

My eyes had turned black from the tears dwelling in my eyes, my hands were leaking the black vapor, my mouth even tasted hot. My body temperature skyrocketed to create this much smoke, but I still felt like I was freezing. Inside the room a terrible storm had started, windows being opened and slammed shut as the wind swirled through the room.

Kotaro pushed Tenko towards me, step by step. Touya who presumed this as a threat  backed off, to keep a safe distance between the three of us.

His father was glued behind him, leaving our mother to rot .“Look at those two, cuddled together, your best friend and your sister. Are you just going to let her do that? Take your friend away?” he angered him, riling him up.

​

This poor boy was white in the face, his body shaking from whatever feelings he might have had. Nobody would ever be able to make a logical decision in that situation. That’s what Kotaro used to his advantage, manipulating him with his words to do the unspeakable.

“Tenko, it’s …it’s not like that.,” I tried to excuse myself. I had to stand up against Kotaro, Tenko and All for One now, otherwise I might lose the only family I had left to these lunatics.

We were pushed against the door and closed it by accident. we were trapped, with them closing in. I tried to respond again, but my brother intervened “Shut up!” he hissed, slightly leaning against Kotaro’s hands who still pushed him forward.

​

“Really, Tenko. I’m still your friend, we’re always going to be friends. All three of us.” Touya spoke up, trying to convince him to stand aside. They nearly were in arms reach, we had to do something.

I looked up at Toto, but he also seemed to be just standing, maybe he had a plan, I just had to trust him. I was sure he would get me out of there unharmed. I started to tear up, digging my nails into Touya’s burned skin to keep me from screaming everything out towards Tenko.

​

“Please, Brother, please don’t hurt me. Don’t be like him.,” I begged while keeping eye contact with them, except for the part where I said him that is where I quickly looked over to Kotaro.

Suddenly Tenko stopped in his tracks, showing obvious resistance to his father’s pushing. “Don’t be a fool now boy! After all these years of training, to be just like me, even better maybe, you let your feelings for this pathetic girl get in the way of your success?” Kotaro whispered into his ear while bowed down to look over his shoulder right to me.

I kept looking at Tenko, staring down into his soul as he stood not even two steps away from us. I could see him clenching his fist, his father smirking at us with the most devilish grin. He gave Tenko one good push that should trip him over and send his hands straight at us.

​

However, he didn’t trip, he made a bigger step forward and could catch himself before stumbling. “Shut up! You murderer!” he screamed before turning around and reaching his hand forwards.

 

The room went silent as my brother launched his hands behind him. Kotaro could only choke out a few more groans as Tenko’s hand had wrapped around his neck, before his body fell into itself, turning into dust, falling right in front of Tenko’s feet.

Touya quickly covered my eyes, but he was sloppy with his fingers, letting me peak through. I saw how Kotaro’s  body fell apart, limb by limb, until even these turned into nothing but piles of dust. All I could hear was Toto’s heavy breathing, my own heartbeat that nearly beat out of my chest, and Tenko’s gasp that he let out once he tossed the rest of Kotaro’s ashes that caught between his fingers on the existing pile.

​

All for One only stared at the boy before he backhanded him hard enough to send him flying across the room. He landed right next to us against the door, this soon turned into a three Vs one.

“How dare you!”, he bellowed through the room. “I was so good to you Tenko. And this is how you want to repay me. You’re not better than this bitch of a mother.,” he insulted her again which made our blood boil.

However, we could not move, we were trapped between a door and a more than two-and-a-half-meter tall mutant man. We were nothing but children, some with only minimum understanding or control of our quirks. Against a fully trained clan leader with hundreds maybe even thousand quirks that he mastered. We would stand no chance in a fight and standing there frozen and pressed against a wall would only get us killed. We had to run, as far and fast as we could.

I looked over at Tenko who only stared in disbelieve at his own hands and at what he had done. I wasn’t as close with either of them, but the whole situation was a mess so I understood how he must feel.

I saw how fixated he was on my brother; a sixth sense was tingling, and I broke free from Touya’s grip just in time to push Tenko out of the way as All for One launched a punch at him.

I quickly pulled him back up and looked at him, he was half crying half scared to death. Just as All for One was about to strike again, we saw a black figure absorbed the force.

I could not see if it were made out of smoke or not, but the question resolved itself as we heard another voice speak.: “Run kids.”

It clearly wasn’t Touya’s voice, and Tenko was in a too deep state of shock to even get a word out of him.

It surely wasn’t me; I might have smoke running out of my body like sweat but I would need to focus to control it and in a time like this my mind was blank as a sheet of paper. There was no one else in the room that could talk to us unless… Kurogiri’s helmet was still okay, he could very well still be alive, fighting for us.

 

Time ran out quickly, if it really were my father, he would barely stand a chance in the weak state he was in. I used the brief time window he gave us to press Tenko’s hand against the door which turned into dust not even a second later.

Touya grabbed me, while I held on tightly to Tenko’s wrist to pull him out of the room with us. At first, he was nothing but a puppet, but the moment we were in the hallway and saw all the guards and house cleaners rush to grab us he freed himself. I tried to reach for Tenko, but he distanced himself more.

 “Get out. I’ll make sure nobody follows you.,” he ordered.

The people came rushing towards us; Touya didn’t hesitate to nod and pick me up. I shouted at him in protest, not wanting to leave Tenko to All for Ones anger alone, but the boy had set his mind to it.

​

“Go, now!” he shouted as he reached his hands out ready to do whatever is necessary to protect us.

I gave up, holding on to Touya as he brought me to the doors. The entrance door was heavily locked and reinforced with a quirk that could turn anything into pure stainless steel. The LOV did everything to protect their home from people coming in or leaving without permission. We had no keys or codes to unlock the complicated system and steel has one of the highest melting points of all metals.

I was starting to lose hope, we would never get out of here alive, the best we could do was turn back and spare Tenko the despair of killing more innocent people. Suddenly Touya decided to put me down on the floor next to him, whilst his eyes scanned over the door.

​

 “You should step back.”, he warned me before he got into position.

He removed the bandages from his red burned hands aiming for the door. I knew his fire was strong, stronger than any other fire-based quirk, but he would never melt down a thick metal door like this. Nonetheless, he tried and lit up his palms before shooting with all his fire power at the door.

The flames went wild, setting the entire area around the door in a blaze. The concrete walls didn’t budge and neither did the door, but he kept the heat up in hopes of somehow melting something.

I could see the flesh peel off his hand as the fire consumed him. I couldn’t just sit here and watch as he would burn himself to cinders. I had to do something; I had a quirk as well. I might not know how to use it correctly but if All for One and my family was this powerful, I might as well be even stronger if I only tried.

I jumped up and grabbed Touya’s arm, trying to pull him away from the fire as much as possible. I activated my quirk to cover my own arm in a protective layer of smoke which then also wrapped itself around Touya’s loose bandages. I managed to take his hand; stopping him from using his powers more and killing himself in the process. I wanted to convince him to give up as well, sparing everyone the fighting and rather take the consequences.

 

Even with his fired turned off and the smoke retracted, I still felt my hand burning, with a heat only his quirk could emit. I looked down at our intertwined hands, both of them being on fire. Except this time the fire did not hurt us, it only warmed our hands like a chimney fire on a cold winter night. I looked back into his deep blue eyes, silently asking him if he really had his powers turned off.

 “Don’t look at me like that. It’s not mine.,” he huffed out exhausted and in pain. I noticed that my quirk was still partially active, with a glove of smoke hovered around my hand.

During this intense moment, our quirks had merged allowing him to use my smoke as a protective layer whilst I had the power to channel his fire. I didn’t know that this was even possible or how it worked, however this could have been a one in a lifetime event as well.

We both stared in awe at the flame between us purely generated by my burning smoke. Only now I realized we were still holding hands, something we used to do all the time while we were younger, but this time was different. Maybe it’s the shock that we have been through, maybe it’s the realization that our quirks were meant for each other, or maybe it’s just the fact that something in my brain had finally accepted that these feelings were more than just platinic friendship.

My focus soon shifted to Touya, how his eyes lit up in the dim light of our flame, how his burned rough skin was still glowing from the aftereffects of his quirk. I had never seen him without his bandages, his skin was a really dark purple which only was still attached to him by a few stitches. I could see every fold of his shriveled skin, every tiny part of string coming out of its body and going back into it. He would look horrifying for someone who didn’t know what had happened to him.

He lifted his head to catch me staring, for the first time I could see the corners of his mouth turn into a small smile. My quirk lit up some more as our eyes met, the fire became weaker as the heat to smoke ratio tanked.

​

 “What are you looking at little mouse.,” he teased and slowly let his thumb stroke over the back of my hand.

While my father was fighting for his life and my brother going on a rampage, all to safe us, this slick bastard had nothing more in mind than to tease me. I thought nothing about it, until I caught myself smiling at him the way only an idiot would smile at someone.

A loud thud and a grunt that followed let us snap out of our moment and back to the dilemma that we were in. Giving up was still a valid plan, but with the newly created combination it could be possible for Touya to turn his quirk up to a hundred percent without any pain.

All for One had already beaten my father, there was no doubt in that. He had just thrown a completely exhausted and beaten up Tenko against the hallways wall. Which caused the sound we heard. The boy was too injured to get back up, but All for One kept him alive, which was a good sign. He wouldn’t kill his own successor no matter how deep his betrayal cut.

He stormed towards us, with what we thought the pure intention to kill us on sight. Someone had to decide our next move and since Touya seemed to be unable to find a plan I took his other hand in mine. I pointed one arm at All for One, the other on the door. I gave his hands a tight squeeze and focused on us before opening my eyes again. Glaring at the door I shouted “Fire!” at him, while I rested my head against his chest.

​

He took one last deep breath before enflaming himself once more. This time, his uncontrollable fire didn’t go off anywhere as usual, it followed the path of my smoke. The heat of his fire interacted with my quirk and lit the smoke on fire. I could fully control where his fire would go and could keep it far away from our bodies.

It only cost us a fraction of our energy to create a fire cone bigger than the one he just threw at the door. With barely any pain to distract us he could turn up the temperature even more while I could focus on the feelings inside my chest and use them to control my quirk. Together we aimed for the gates and tried one last time to burn it to the ground, if this attempt wouldn’t work, we both knew that we had to give up.

On the other hand, there still was an enraged All for One ready to tear us to shreds. We had to stop him, or at least hold him back to see if our emergency plan would work out in the end.

I tried my best to overpower Touya’s quirk and only use my mother’s quirk to create somewhat of a wind tunnel in the hallway, pushing All for One away and causing resistance to slow down his progress on getting to us. I never knew I could create this kind of air resistance to hold up a man of his size, but it did work, his feet slipped on the carpeted floor. He had to cover his mask with his arm to keep it from getting shattered by all the other pieces of flooring or wallpaper that flew with it.

We stood like this not even thirty seconds, with both of our quirks on full blast, before our bodies gave up. But our efforts were not in vain, the door had a hole of molten metal burned right through it, the security system was melted with it. I could no longer stop All for One from moving forward, he had been fighting against my blast since the beginning and he was still a whole lot stronger than me.

​

Even though I had it turned off some smoke came oozing out of my hands. My body kept producing the smoke, getting a bit out of control. A small wind started to pick up but that was all my mind could manage as I got weak. My limbs were freezing my lips turning blue, but my inner core became hotter and hotter. I could feel the blood rush to my head and run out of my nose as the pressure reached its peak.

My knees began to shake and soon gave up under the weight of my own body. I could feel my arms twitch and my neck jerking randomly, every muscle in my body felt like it was on fire.

My head was spinning while my lungs were burning as if someone would rub sandpaper on the insides. Tears came running down my face as the smoke slowly sunk back into my body heating my temperature to a life-threatening level. I could feel the fever sweat breaking out before a black curtain fell before my eyes and my mind turned off