Chapter Text
Monoma, Bakugou, and Shinsou had literally been locked outside the infirmary as Shuzenji worked. Shinsou had ended up crying himself to sleep, sobbing into Monoma's shirt, but Bakugou and Monoma weren't much better off. They were sitting on the ground, leaning against the wall. Shinsou was pressed between Monoma's knees and his chest, as the older boy hugged the smaller boy, trying to comfort Shinsou while trying to calm his own beating heart. Bakugou had dozed off, when Aizawa ran into the hallway, having been filled in by Kayama when he was halfway to the school gates.
"WHERE IS MY KID?!" Aizawa screamed, as he almost ripped the door off its hinges as he barged into the infirmary. "Who are you!?" He glared at the red haired woman that had her hand on Midoriya's shoulder and on Shuzenji's arm, and was about to attack her when Yamada ran in, grabbed Aizawa, and tried to lug him out of the infirmary to let the two women treat Midoriya in peace, "Hold up! Shou!"
"Sorry Recovery Girl!" He yelled.
The red haired woman was an old friend of Shuzenji's , someone who used to work with her, to aid her as she tried to heal Midoriya. Her quirk allowed her to assess the physical bodies of people or objects through contact, making her perfect for reconnaissance and information gathering. She was no doctor, but if she was in contact with someone else, she could relay the information to them.
Shuzenji thought he was already in a bad condition. She was horrified when her old colleague showed her the true extent of his injuries.
His torso, chest, legs, arms, and even his neck were covered in injuries. Stab wounds, lacerations, and some parts were very badly disintegrated. His stomach lining was a mess, corroded, while his throat and mouth looked like someone had dumped acid on them. His bones were cracked. Like someone had shattered them, and super glued them back together to form a human skeleton. His heartbeat was weak, his breath shallow, and she feared that if they had gotten him any later, he would have died.
Again.
His broken arm was the least of their problems at the moment.
She couldn't use her quirk to treat him, he had already been pushed past the limit, and had no energy left to spare. She could only hope that he could make it until morning, when she could call in another friend for their healing quirk. She was working in another hospital now, and wouldn't be off his shift for an hour or two.
They were lucky that Midoriya was a fighter. His heart had given out two times during the night, and Shuzenji's other friend had managed to get to UA in time for her to heal Midoriya sufficiently enough for him to be out of the danger zone.
She still kept a close eye on him. His vitals were out of the danger zone, yes, but it was nowhere near safe. But it gave her a short amount of time to check on the other two patients to ensure they had nothing similarly devastating.
Kota had collapsed from exhaustion, mostly. Malnutrition and dehydration as well, but it was only for three days so it wasn't too severe. Shuzenji mused that he should wake up in a few hours, at the maximum, a day.
Shiretoko was mostly fine as well. She seemed mentally stunned, but given a few days, she would recover. She didn't get any injuries, surprisingly, but Chatora mentioned something about All for One saying that he took her quirk, and Shuzenji sighed.
While checking on him, Shuzenji had found a piece of paper in his pocket. She opened it up, finding a few words like "Heartburn", "Avian" and "Modify" written on it, and she tucked it into her pocket.
Shiretoko was a good hero. Her quirk, Search, was essential for the Wild Wild Pussycats, allowing them to find victims and assess their injuries so they could figure out the best way to save everyone.
But Midoriya, he was still in a horrible state.
"How is he?!" Aizawa demanded.
"Stable." She muttered wearily. "Took some time, but he's stable now. He's not on the verge of dying anymore."
Aizawa gulped, gripping his scarf in anger and frustration, guilt and regret.
His problem child had almost died. Again.
Because he was weak. Too weak to even protect his kids.
He had seen Midoriya get taken. But he had been stupid, and ended up trapped under a freaking bolder.
This could have been avoided if he had just -
Kayama smacked him on the back, shaking him out of his thoughts.
"Think later. Listen now."
"He had bruises and stab wounds all over, those are stitched up. The parts of his skin that had disintegrated are also fixed with minor skin graftings. His stomach and throat are absolutely wrecked, like someone poured acid down his throat or something! After he wakes up, if I can't heal them up, he's going to be on a liquid diet for a long time.
"Besides from his arm… his bones are surprisingly intact. But that isn't the concern now." Shuzenji huffed, and took out an x-ray, showing the x-ray to the rest of the staff. "I'm telling you, this is not a normal human skeleton."
The rest of the teachers could see Midoriya's skeleton, with faint cracks running all over his bones, but they couldn't find anything wrong with it.
"It looks normal!"
"Shouta! She's a doctor! She should be able to tell the difference."
"First, I should tell you that I have the medical records of the students. Midoriya has records a full body check up he did here because he never had one before. His medical file was literally empty when he applied here." She said, "Look at this, and this."
She took out another x-ray, and continued, "This was his skeleton before he was kidnapped. And this is his skeleton now. As you can see, some of the bones are slightly different. They're hollow. Midoriya was forty five kilograms before he left. And if I take into consideration that he suffered from anemia, dehydration and malnutrition, he should be around forty at the minimum."
She tapped the x-ray again, frustration in her voice, "He's around twenty five kilograms now. I can't measure it properly while he's still passed out and so heavily injured, but he's around that weight. He's not supposed to be so light."
"Would this affect him in any way?" Ishiyama asked.
"He would have to take some time to get used to being lighter. He may end up using too much power when he jumps and runs, and may end up injuring himself." Shuzenji nodded, "Other than that, we will just have to wait until he wakes up. Oh, yes. Nezu, I found this in Kota's pocket. It looks important, but I can't make heads or tails of it."
She procured the paper out of her pocket, and passed it to Nezu.
Nezu looked at the paper carefully, eyeing the words on it, before he nodded, "I'll try and see what I can get out of it. Aizawa, stay with Shinsou in the infirmary. I don't think he's going to be happy. The rest of you, try to deal with the media and tell the students."
With everyone's attention on the press conference, what had happened in UA was not well known to anyone. They could play it off that a villain had decided to attack UA while it was "vulnerable", but he had been apprehended and that would be the end of it. Plus, none of the other students had been hurt.
The faint beeping of machines filled the infirmary. Kota and Shiretoko lay on two different beds, with the pro hero connected to a heart rate monitor.
Kota groaned, as he opened his eyes, flipping over slowly to his side. He could see Aizawa, dozing off as he sat on a chair, one arm curled around Shinsou, who was curled up on his lap.
He sat up, and eyed his surroundings. He caught sight of something green, and he shifted his position slightly to see what it was.
To his horror, Shiretoko was lying prone on the bed next to him, and he did what came naturally.
He screeched, tumbling off the bed in a panic, waking up Aizawa and Shinsou. Shinsou shot up, looking around wildly, before Aizawa grabbed him tightly with one hand and lowered himself to the ground.
He reached out to Kota with his other hand, gripping his shoulder, "Kota? Kota!"
Kota whirled around, his eyes wild, filled with fear and anger and suspicion, but the second he laid his eyes on Aizawa and Shinsou, he calmed down, taking deep breaths as he tried to calm his racing heart.
"Shh. It's okay, Kota." Aizawa pulled Kota in for a hug.
"Where… are .. " He croaked, his throat parched from the three days in captivity.
Shinsou grabbed his water bottle and gave it to Kota, who gulped the contents down gratefully.
"Where… are we?" Kota asked.
"UA." Aizawa replied, as Kota placed the empty bottle of water on the ground.
"Where… where's… Izuku…?"
"He's fine. Recovery Girl is keeping an eye on him, but he's fine. He'll be fine. It's Izuku, after all, he's strong."
Kota didn't know if Aizawa was trying to console the kids or himself, but Kota didn't care.
Midoriya was alive.
He wasn't dead.
He was here.
They were safe now.
No more worrying about Shigaraki. No more fear, waiting for Toga and Bubaigawara to strike again. No more being scared of All for One, or anyone else.
Kota felt his eyelids droop, and Aizawa pulled him and Shinsou into his chest, wrapping his arms around them.
Yamada found all three of them asleep on the ground when he came to check on his best friend and kid.
He grabbed the blanket off Kota's bed, and draped it over the two sleeping kids and pro hero, before he carefully walked out and gently shut the door.
Aizawa hadn't slept once ever since Midoriya's kidnapping, taking short five minute naps before he startled himself awake, and resumed whatever he was doing.
Yamada was glad that he was finally sleeping properly, even if it was on the floor of the infirmary.
Nezu tapped his chin, deep in thought.
He had done his research on the few words scribbled on the paper, and the handwriting was horrible. It took him some time to decipher it, but once he did, and did his best to dig up any information he could get his paws on, he had come to the realisation that these were a bunch of quirks.
And next to each quirk name, was a word. "Give" or "Use."
He didn't think too much about it. He needed to find out more about the quirks
Heightened Pain was self explanatory. It caused the victim to feel more pain than usual, and wore off in two days at the maximum. It belongs to a villain called Kutsu, who's dead body had been found fifteen years ago in an alleyway, and he was presumed to have died of suicide at the age of twenty five.
Nezu hissed.
"It makes you more sensitive to pain. A lot more sensitive."
This quirk had been used on Midoriya. And his situation was already bad enough, and yet he was forced to feel even more pain.
At least the quirk had already worn off.
Mind Containment was also pretty self explanatory. It allowed to user to contain the victim in their own mind, allowing them to see what was going on but not letting them get control of their body. Much like Shinsou's Brainwashing, but Mind Containment gave the user general control over the victim's body. They could walk, but they couldn't speak, or control minute body functions like writing. It belonged to an elderly psychologist called Motsu Kokoro, who died of a heart attack at the age of sixty two.
The victim could fight back, and it usually resulting in sparks of red electricity.
Much like the sparks of electricity that Kayama, Snipe and Ectoplasm had reported.
It made Nezu's blood boil that Midoriya, poor Midoriya had to suffer at the hands of the villains for so long, and was even forced to attack his own friends. The principal was not a forgiving mammal, not by a long shot, but seeing what the vile humans had done to Midoriya…
If he wasn't a hero, he would have wanted to hunt them down and kill them.
Avian was a quirk that allowed the user to transform into a bird. Their arms and legs would morph into wings and talons respectively, and the quirk granted the user the gift of flight in partial or full bird transformations. The feathers were stiff, but light, and the user gained an enhanced sense of hearing, smell and sight. It belonged to a teenager called Tori Hane, who went missing twenty years ago, his deceased body found a month later.
Nezu found it weird, since there was no species of bird that possessed enhanced sight, hearing, or smell, but he just pegged it down as the quirk having picked out the best of everything.
This one was obvious in how it was related to Midoriya. Midoriya had been given this quirk. Nezu knew the boy was quirkless, that he wanted to prove that quirks weren't everything. He worked his way up, literally from the bottom, only to have fifteen years of hard work torn up and thrown away in one move by All for One.
It was despicable. All for One knew that Midoriya wanted to prove a point, and specifically did the one thing that would ruin it. Giving him a quirk was one thing, but giving him a flashy quirk, a transformation quirk at that, was just too much.
Adaptation was straight forward as well. It forces the body to adapt to suit its surroundings or new conditions. For example, if a person in a place with high altitude and the quirk was used, the person would develop more alveoli in order to get more oxygen. It also allowed a person to adapt to bodily changes, such as losing a limb or getting paralysed by healing wounds and making new nerve connections. However, the bigger the change, the more pain the entire adaptation process takes.
Nezu thought about it long and hard. Midoriya had broken bones from his fight with Muscular. Shuzenji mentioned that his bones were cracked… with a different body structure….
This quirk had been used on him. To force him to adapt to his new Avian quirk, changing his body for him to use it most efficiently, making him lighter and changing his skeletal structure.
The last one was a huge unknown.
Heartburn was a fire based quirk. It allowed the user to give off flames of a wide variety of colours based on their emotions. The flames they gave off were harmless for the most part, and only hurt people when the user wanted it to hurt someone. It was the quirk of a thirty seven year old woman called Shihiro Kanjo, who had been kidnapped thirty years ago and had not been found. She had been presumed dead.
Heightened Pain, Adaptation and Mind Containment containment were quirks used on the boy. The word "Use" next to them made sense now.
Both Heartburn and Avian had the word "Give" next to them. Going by the same logic so far, Nezu came to a conclusion.
All for One gave him two quirks. Heartburn and Avian. But Adaptation had been used on the boy after the two quirks had been forced into him, if he was taking what he heard over the tracker into account.
So what were the effects of Adaptation on Heartburn?
And more importantly, could they be reversed?
And if so, at what cost?