hero's shadow // mha

58) i saw life

"What happened at Hosu?"

Well, that's blunt. Izuku wishes he had some water to make his throat not as dry. "I'm not sure what you're asking."

"I've been monitoring your blood and your healing progress. Everything was going relatively fine until just recently. Why is that?"

Izuku's nails dig into his palms. "I'm not really good at science, so I don't think I can—"

"I'll make this easier for you then." Recovery Girl tilts her head, fingers drumming along her skin. "Have there been any recent developments with One for All?"

"Not really," he says, thinking of the voices bickering at the back of his mind every now and then.

"What does that mean?"

He shrugs. "It means no."

"That's not reassuring."

"I'm sorry, but I don't know what you want me to say."

"You could try the truth."

Izuku takes a long, deep breath in. When he lets it out, his chest quivers a little. He figures that's bad, but he doesn't pay any mind to it. So what if his throat has been itchy and his nose has been a little runny? And so what if he's had this horrible migraine for three days now? He can't be getting sick. There's no way.

So this is probably just a fluke.

"I'm not lying," he says.

"So if I call the detective in here and he asks you the same thing, you'll tell him the same thing?"

At the mention of Tsukauchi, Izuku falters a little. He pauses, biting the inside of his bottom lip. "He's kinda busy these days, so I don't think that would be plausible."

"I don't appreciate you avoiding my question, young man." Her words, though no-nonsense, aren't exactly mean. Izuku knows that Recovery Girl is being a lot nicer than she could be right now.

Izuku looks down at his lap, mulling over what she's asking. He knows how this looks to outsiders; he's not stupid.

A week ago, his recovery after the fire incident was going relatively smoothly. He was eating more, gaining more weight, having more regular moods, and becoming overall healthier than he's ever been. And now, after everything that's happened during Hosu... all of that seems to be in the trash.

But not just physically, on the outermost parts of himself. No, now it's all showing inside.

Recovery Girl did another routine blood test, and what she's most likely seeing is the result of more quirks being added to Izuku's body and nervous system. She's seeing everything his blood is doing to take it all in and replicate the DNA from those quirks. Without the DNA, Izuku can't have the functions.

But how can he tell her that? How is he supposed to explain that to her?

'Your blood has changed again.'

Yeah, because now Izuku has around ten more parts of himself to take in and grow around. He is constantly changing, and so his blood. Taking those quirks just made everything worse, really.

Because now someone has noticed it, and it's the worst case scenario that he could have ever imagined. This has always been one of his biggest fears: someone knowing.

It's only a matter of time before she puts the pieces together and is forced to tell.

"One for All has been growing stronger," Izuku settles on eventually, wishing the storm outside was somehow strong enough to drown out his entire being. "I feel I can do more things with it now. I can control it a little easier. But there's..." His tongue is sandpaper. He swallows back nothing but air and shakes his head, frustrated with himself. "There's nothing else that's new. Nothing important."