Puppet Master

Taking Hold Of One's Own Strings

In horror, Hizashi witnessed as Izuku's glowing skin began to clear to look like porcelain and his scars, oh please no... they looked like cracks on a glass doll.

Recovery Girl on her stool had a hand over her mouth.

Izuku's head fell to the side like a doll's head waiting to be moved and positioned.

Hizashi wanted to throw up. Shouta... needed to see this, he realized. Hizashi, with shaking hands, took a picture.

Shouta needed to see how... inhumane this was.

_______________________________

*Ding Ding*

Shouta huffed. Hitoshi, laying flat on his back panting, glanced up at him. Shouta sighed. "Take a breather."

He sat down and drew his phone from his pocket. Hizashi? Isn't he supposed to overseeing Izuku? Shouta opened the message. It was a picture.

The raven-haired man paled.

"Dad?"

Shouta ignored his son and immediately dialed Hizashi who immediately picked up.

"Hizashi," he said sternly. "Stop him. Stop him now!"

A strangled sound came from the other side.

"I can't Shouta..."

Shouta's eye twitched. "Why the hell can't you?"

"Because it's working... If I stop him, it'll be basically telling him that he isn't allowed to have hold of his life."

Shouta hung his head. Hizashi was right but...

"Dang it!" he growled. "This was such a bad idea!"

"Shouta..."

Shouta took a deep breath. "What?"

"H- he's twitching."

"... What?"

"Shouta," Hizashi sounded so pained, "he- this is so... he looks like..."

"Don't say it, Hizashi."

"Shouta, you don't understand. He doesn't even know what he is doing..."

"Send a video."

It took a minute to come in but Shouta immediately regretted it.

Izuku had all of the ceramic joins of a puppet with strings glowing from his body, cracks marking out his scars, and he... was twitching. His eyes were wide open but so, so blank. His head kept twitching to the side, fingers and legs twitching in time with it.

Shouta heard Hitoshi gasp behind him, leaning over his shoulder and watching the video.

"D- Da-" *!!!CRASH!!!*

"IZUKU!!!"

Both heads snapped up to the fourth floor of the UA building where Recovery Girl's office was located. The window was shattered and-

Oh. My- "KID!"

Izuku had been seemingly flung out of the window with such force to shatter the bulletproof windows and still be multiple feet away from it and he was falling.

Hizashi appeared at the edge. "Shouta!" he screamed but Shouta was already making a mad dash for the boy falling like a streak of lightning.

Halfway to the ground, Izuku suddenly jolted mid-air. His arms shot up. Shouta could visibly see the stings shoot from the greenette's hands upward. Hizashi noticed it too and reached out but... they didn't reach. They were too short. Izuku twisted, almost mechanically and shot them out from his back and hands again. They wrapped around the frames of a second-floor classroom window. Izuku's body bounced with the sudden stop of acceleration toward the ground and swung. Izuku planted his feet against the window of the first-floor classroom below the one his strings were connected to, grasping the strings with his hands to keep him up straight.