Disclaimer: I do not own MHA nor am I earning money from writing this. As a rule of thumb, if you recognize something in this fic I probably do not own it.

"I might be going insane" – Normal speech
'It isn't normal to have voices in your head' – Thoughts, Writing
True – The voices in your head

Chapter 1

The voice in the back of Izuku Midoriya's head had been there for as long as he could remember. The voice, however, was odd even for being a voice in the head of a four-year-old boy for two reasons – firstly, it was only capable of saying two words, and secondly, that it was in the head of a boy. In the 200 years since the appearance of quirks in the world, only women had ever developed them, and despite intensive research into the origin of quirks and this anomaly, there had never been a man with a quirk. Some nations went as far as to try to genetically engineer male babies from the embryo that had a quirk in their genome, but the lack of results and international criticism shut down those experiments shortly after they began.

So, when three-year-old Izuku became aware that the voice in his head was slightly different from his own and that it only ever happened with those two words, he began to get excited and worried very quickly. Excited, because he thought this new voice could be a quirk, and worried because if it was not a quirk then he feared he would be going insane.

When he went to his mother and told her about the voice, she initially dismissed it as just being his imagination. It was normal, after all, for children to have imaginary friends. This belief was strained by the fact that Izuku did none of the things she expected him to do to an imaginary friend, like talk to him or play with him or ask for another place setting for him. He only told her when the voice in his head started talking, and when she asked him if this was his imaginary friend, his response caused her motherly instincts to go off.

"The voice in my head says that it's not an imaginary friend, Kaa-chan."

The first thing she did after hearing this was to drive him to the hospital. While he and his mother were seeing the doctor, there were many new words that he learned. From the doctor, he learned phrases like "telepathy", "mind-control", and "isolation", while his mother displayed a robust vocabulary of words that he was promptly told to never repeat. Even the doctor was surprised by some of the words, so his mom must have known even more than the doctor!

Unfortunately, the upshot of the meeting was that Izuku had to stay in a nice room at the hospital for a few days. It wasn't a bad room, don't get him wrong, but it was just so different, and his mom wasn't there with him. He was also told that he couldn't bring anything from home into the room except for the clothes he was wearing. Because his mom couldn't come with him, he was left alone in the room with nothing but the voice in his head.

Strangely, upon thinking this, the voice in his head spoke up. True. This got Izuku thinking about the voice in his head, which only led to more responses from the voice.

'The voice in my head is my quirk?' True.

'I need to tell someone about this!' False.

'What?' This question got no response from his quirk, but this only spurred Izuku to ask more questions.

'Telling other people about my quirk is a great idea! Just look at Kaachan!' False.

'Why is it a bad idea to tell people about my quirk?' Again, the voice in his head remained silent.

'Can you only answer questions with true or false answers?' Again, no response. This time, he tried rephrasing what he had just asked. 'You can only answer questions with true or false answers.' True.

'I am not going insane' True.

At this, Izuku let out a sigh of relief before the silence got to him. 'The doctors think I am going insane' False.

'The doctors think I am being mind-controlled' True.

After several more minutes of asking himself questions, Izuku began to wonder exactly how accurate his quirk was, because some of the things that it was saying were just unproveable. After rummaging around in his pocket, he found a 50 yen coin and put it on his index finger and thumb as if to flip it. Before he did so, he asked his quirk 'The coin will land on heads', which his power promptly relied False. Sure enough, the coin landed tails.

However, a single coin flip was not enough to satisfy Izuku, and he started asking about the combinations of the next few coin flips. His power eventually replied True to a sequence of heads, heads, tails, heads, tails for the next five flips and after the next five flips landed in that exact order, he gave up on trying to prove his quirk wrong and accepted that it could tell the truth about anything.

After a few more targeted questions that went unanswered about why he shouldn't tell anyone about the voice in his head being a quirk, he started guessing why he shouldn't.

'They'll hurt me if I have a quirk?' True.

'Mom won't love me if I have a quirk?' False.

'I'm not supposed to have a quirk?' True.

The next few minutes were spent guessing why he wasn't supposed to have a quirk until he eventually gave up. Unfortunately, he had only spent just over a quarter of an hour asking his quirk these questions, and the room was empty except for his bed and a wall clock. There were two doors, and fortunately Izuku was tall enough to reach the handles. Walking to the nearest door, he opened it to reveal a bathroom with a stepstool in front of the sink. Seeing as he didn't need to use the bathroom right now, he shut the door.

Turning to face the other door, which was the one he came into the room through by process of elimination, he pulled on the handle only to find that it wouldn't move. Looking next to the door, he spotted a black box with a bunch of white buttons.

'That box has something to do with the door' True.

Startled by the response after a long (2-minute) period of silence, Izuku reconsidered leaving the room.

'It is a good idea to leave this room' False.

'They have to feed me at some point!' True.

Izuku proceeded to spend the next few minutes guessing how long it would be until someone would bring him food, and through this process he found that he could ask his quirk less specific questions like 'It will be more than three hours until they bring me food'. The power eventually settled on just under four hours until someone would bring him dinner, and after a little more questioning that he would be able to leave the room and go back home with his mom in two days.

After a few more minutes of asking his quirk questions, Izuku decided to just sleep until they brough him dinner.

Three hours, 49 minutes later…

Izuku was woken up by one of the hospital staff shaking his shoulder. "Wake up, Midoriya-san. It's time to eat."

Izuku sat up, yawning. "Hello, mister. Are you eating dinner too?" He turned to see the tray that the man was holding, with only one plate of food on it. "Oh."

The man gave him a strange smile. "Sorry Midoriya-san, I would if I could. I still have to go and bring other people their dinners. I will be back to pick up your dishes in about an hour and…" he rummaged around in one of the pockets of his uniform before bringing out a set of plastic utensils and a paper napkin to go with the meal. "Here you go. If you don't like anything in the meal, let me know and I'll try to get you something you like next time."

As the man walked to the door, using the keypad to unlock it from the inside, Izuku wanted to ask him something, anything, but he couldn't think of anything to say before the door shut behind him with a click that resounded in the silence of the room.

As he ate the meal, which was nowhere near as good as what his mom would have made, he thought about what he wanted to ask the doctor when he came back to the room. This time, when his quirk replied to some of the statements he made, he was less surprised and tried to ask about the results of his questions to see what he should ask to get what he wanted. After about 15 minutes of guessing, the door opened again. Before it closed, Izuku spotted a cart that was about half-full of empty dishes.

"How was dinner, Midoriya-san?" The doctor asked as he crossed the room to where Izuku was sitting on his bed. "Anything you didn't like?"

"The food was fine, mister, but I had something else that I wanted to ask you." Izuku replied, standing up with his plate in hand.

As the doctor took the plate and picked up the empty glass from the bed, he asked "And what would that be?"

"Well, this room is really boring, and I don't want to sleep for however long I have to be here. Can you bring some toys tomorrow or ask the people here if I can have something to do?" Izuku spoke slowly, trying to remember everything that his quirk agreed would spur the man to action. He looked up at the man with wide eyes, and just barely stuck out his lower lip, even though he didn't understand why his quirk mentioned it would work.

"I'll try my best, Midoriya-san. I think we have something around here that you'd enjoy doing or playing with. I'll see you tomorrow at breakfast, have a good night." The man replied. "Any more questions?"

"Nope!" Izuku happily replied. "Thank you, mister, I'll see you tomorrow! Good night!" As he spoke, he was getting under the covers, ready to fall asleep.

The doctor chuckled as he left the room, pushing the cart away.

POV: Doctor Kano Ryota

As the man pushed the cart full of emptied dishes back to the hospital's kitchen, the request that Izuku Midoriya had made of him was still on his mind. The way that he had looked up at the end was just so similar to the way his daughter looked up at him when she wanted him to do something, and he couldn't just ignore the request in good conscience.

Knocking on the slightly ajar door of the manager for his department of the hospital, he was greeted with a sigh and a call of "Come in."

As he entered the office, the first thing that he noticed was how decorated it was. His superior, Tsuji Riko, had been recently promoted, and her predecessor had kept a very utilitarian view of what an office needed and what it should look like. He quickly shook his head and dispelled these thoughts, wanting to get to the point.

"Good evening, Tsuji-san. I have finished my rounds for the evening, and there was one patient request that I felt should be brought to your attention as I am unaware of the policy about it."

The woman looked up from the pile of paperwork in front of her, almost glad for a distraction that wasn't a medical emergency or, hopefully, that wouldn't create more paperwork for her. Unlike the doctor, she was not going home in the next hour, and had a long night shift ahead of her. "Please, if you think the request is reasonable enough to bring it to me then I'll happily hear it out. Is it really such a novel request that you feel the need to check the policy with me?"

The doctor nodded. "It's not that the request itself is unusual, but that the patient's situation may complicate the request." At thus, he handed the file over to the director and gave a brief summary of the situation. "The patient, Izuku Midoriya, is being quarantined as a suspected victim of a mental quirk, either telepathic or mind-control, and is otherwise in fine health for a boy of 4 years old. He is currently in the Faraday ward, as Faraday cages have been proven effective against mental quirks in the past."

The director had finished skimming through the file at this point and waved her hand for the doctor to stop talking. "I am well aware of the science behind Faraday quarantine, doctor. What did the patient request that made you bring this to me? Did he want his mom to visit him or something?"

The doctor shuffled his feet, looking down before gathering courage and looking his director in the eyes. "No, Tsuji-san. As you may be aware of, the Faraday wards have not held a patient so young in the past eight years, and the child was placed in an empty room. While this may not be detrimental to the older patients we normally house, a four-year-old requires more mental stimulation. He requested that we bring him something to play with or do for the duration of his stay."

At this point, the director was beginning to question the competence of her employee. "And you couldn't grant this request immediately, without going to me because..."

Counting off of his fingers, the doctor replied "First of all, I do not know where any toys or playthings in our section would be kept, and I wanted to get your knowledge or permission before I went to the pediatric wing or went to purchase anything. Second of all, I am not aware of the procedures regarding informing the parents of his request. Third, and most importantly, after the discovery of a quirk like Toymaker's, I am unsure of the wisdom of allowing any foreign objects into a quarantine."

As the doctor listed out his reasons, Tsuji Riko found her faith in her employee rapidly returning. The policy of patient requests from minors did require alerting their parents or guardians, which unfortunately sounded like another thing she was going to add to her workload tonight. The mentioning of Toymaker, however, gave her serious pause.

Toymaker was an American villain whose arrest and trial had been given great publicity a few years back, and her quirk was one of the stranger ones that had ever been reported on. It allowed her to build toys using the quirks of other people as a material, and she had used this to create toys that caused children to become infatuated with her. Though she had been promptly arrested before any physical damage was done, those children were still undergoing treatment to this very day.

Because of her distribution of toys through her civilian Identity's job, there was no way of knowing how many of her twisted creations with slightly more benign quirks were still sitting in warehouses or households, dormant and waiting for a child to play with them. Every week or so, there would be a minor or major article in the news about a toy that was made by her found in a store, house, office or even a hospital. The latter of the locations caused great panic, and many hospitals both in the US and globally had instituted a standard procedure for screening any toy that went into a hospital, and doubly so for any quarantine ward.

This regulation was wildly unpopular among pediatricians and other doctors who had to treat children, many of whom argued for only buying products that could be verified as having been made before or after Toymaker's reign of terror.

The unfortunate result of this was that any toy that the hospital purchased had to be screened by a hero or employee who had an exceedingly rare quirk that could nullify or amplify other quirks. In short, the hospital would have to contact the closest hero with that ability, Eraserhead, and have her come and personally check each toy they wanted to purchase. The likelihood of the underground heroine being available in the time before they were hopefully able to discharge Izuku was almost zero.

Still, she was conflicted. From the perspective of an administrator, she had to follow procedure and deny the man and the patient the request. From the perspective of a decent human being with even a shred of common sense, she knew that she couldn't refuse the request. If the boy was left in a blank room by himself with no human interaction other than the doctor in front of her and no idea when he would get out, he could very well worsen any potential mental issues he had or develop new ones.

Because she neither wanted to lose her job or her respect for herself, she began thinking her way around the problem. Sure, they couldn't bring him anything from outside the department in any reasonable time, but they could bring things that they already had. Something like…

"Unfortunately, we cannot grant his request. How- "

"What do you mean? Surely, we aren't going to just- "

"Let me finish!" The director raised her voice, intent on making her point. "As I was going to say, the timeframe is just too short to get any toys that we may bring him approved. However, I'm sure that we can afford to give him a ream of printer paper and something to draw with. A pencil, a pen, preferably in a variety of colors. If he wants them, I don't care if you give him surplus medical posters that aren't too graphic."

Kano stepped backwards before bowing slightly. "My apologies for assuming the worst. I'll get him some paper and… art supplies tomorrow morning. Good night, Tsuji-san."

He turned around and left the office, closing the door softly behind him. 'Another crisis averted,' thought the director as she turned to the stack of papers that she had to finish going through before she went home. 'Now for all of the other ones.'

The next morning, 7:00 AM

Izuku let out a yawn as he sat up in his bed. Briefly he wondered where he was and why his mother wasn't there to wake him up before he remembered what had happened yesterday. 'It's just the hospital', he thought in relief.

True.

The response from his quirk brought back the other part of the memories from yesterday, though he couldn't quite remember what he had asked his quirk before he went to bed. What he did remember, however, was the way his quirk worked through a bit of experimentation.

'The doctor will bring me breakfast in the next hour.' True.

'The doctor will bring me something to play with in the next hour' True.

As Izuku sat in his bed, his mother was worrying at home. She had woken up and walked to the kitchen, and immediately poured herself a cup of coffee. As she walked over to her son's room and opened the door to wake him up, she noticed the empty child-sized bed and quickly woke up faster. As she was headed back to the kitchen to grab her phone, she remembered what happened the previous day.

Quickly changing into something more appropriate to go out in, Inko rushed to her car and drove to the hospital as quickly as she could without breaking any laws. Less than half an hour later, she had arrived, parked, and found the office labelled 'Mayeda Shigeo'. Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she knocked gently on the door instead of rushing in as she would have liked to.

After a few seconds of silence, she knocked again, only to receive a similar lack of response. After a few more seconds, she knocked harder to no avail. As she was about to try the handle, she heard a voice calling from the other end of the hallway.

"Ah, Midoriya-san. Welcome back. I take it that you wish for news about your son?"

"Yes," she replied. "I know that the protocols won't allow me to visit him, but can you at least tell me how he's doing? I don't want to just leave him here for the next few days, and I was wondering if there was a way for me to stay in a waiting room during the day or for you to remotely update me on the situation, especially at night if you find something."

The doctor placed his hands in front of himself, trying to appease the worried mother. "You don't need to worry, ma'am. We have your phone number on file, unless you've changed it since your last visit. Your son so far has been a model patient and has shown no signs of mind-control. If you wish, I can ask the culinary staff to ask him any questions you have for him or deliver any other messages and have him do the same for you."

As the doctor finished his statement, Inko was already pulling a pen out of her purse and looking around for a piece of paper. The doctor, seeing this, pulled open the drawer of the printer in his office and removed a sheet of paper and handed it to her. Inko scribbled down a few questions for her son and a reminder that she loved him before folding it and handing it to the doctor. She then left the office and returned to the waiting room, nursing the travel mug of coffee that she brought from home.

Izuku's Room

Izuku had finally gotten breakfast, and with it he had finally gotten something new to play with – as many different-colored pens as the doctor could find and more paper than he thought he could ever use. After he finished his breakfast, he got to work drawing whatever came to mind.

An hour later, the floor near his bed was tiled with childish drawings of himself, his mom, All Might, his friends, his house, and even the room itself. As the drawings got closer to where Izuku was sitting, the art experienced a spike in quality. Instead of randomly drawing the pictures, Izuku had started asking his power if the line he was about to draw was going to look "good" in the final drawing, and despite the vague question the final drawings came out more like something that an average teenager would be able to draw.

The first "high-quality" artwork had been of his mom, followed by one of Kacchan, and one of All Might. The one that he was working on right now was a drawing of the nice man that brought him the paper, so that he could gift it to him as thanks. He was spending significantly more time on drawing this one than the others, mostly because he was asking his power much more specific questions regarding the details that he was adding.

The train of thought went something like:

'The point that I should start my next line is right below the tip of my pen' False.

Moving the pen around the paper, he kept thinking the same thought until he heard his quirk reply True. After he had determined the starting point, he made statements about the nature of the line that he was about to draw, such as whether it was straight or curved, how long it would be, and which direction it should go.

Most of these questions were either redundant or made much simpler by his knowledge of what the man looked like and what people in general looked like.

Either way, he continued to ask them to get used to his newfound ability and unorthodox usage – the continuous asking of a question that was dependent on some physical event until he received a positive answer, as opposed to his earlier, more guess-and-check method of determining coin flips.

He also noticed something odd about his increasing ability with art. The more questions he asked about how he should draw a face, a nose, a lock of hair, the more instinctual his motions became. The lines he drew were clearer, less hesitant, and took much less time. Towards the end of his portrait of the food delivery man, he only bothered to ask his power if the line he was thinking of was correct before invariably marking the line.

Placing the completed drawing next to him, pushing away another drawing, he reached up to the bed to grab another piece of paper. Between then and lunchtime, he drastically improved, and started drawing things that he had never seen before, images from his dreams last night, landscapes that would not be out of place in an art gallery if they were painted and not drawn with whichever pen Izuku felt like drawing with at the time.

When the door opened for the doctor to bring lunch through, the gust of wind caused by the door scattered one of the stacks of paper that Izuku had put by the door. When the man carrying lunch saw this, he first turned around and put the lunch back on the cart before kneeling to pick up the papers and reorganize them as Izuku rushed over to help.

As he squared off the set of papers closest to himself, he noticed the difference between the ones that he was holding and the ones that Izuku was cleaning up. The drawings that he was holding were the type that one could expect from a 4-year-old, with shaky lines and an unclear subject. The ones that Izuku was pushing together into a pile were drawings that were pushing the limits of what he believed he could draw, and so he decided to ask about them when he finished delivering the rest of the meals to the ward.

Handing Izuku the stack of papers, he went back out to the hall and brought Izuku his lunch: chicken with gravy and steamed broccoli. After delivering the rest of the meals, he pushed his cart back to Izuku's room and entered.

"Good afternoon, Midoriya-san. I hope that you are enjoying your lunch?"

Izuku, mouth full of chicken, nodded before quickly chewing and swallowing. "Hi, mister! Thank you so much for bringing me the paper and pens! I even have something for you!" He set his plate on the floor in front of him before rummaging through the pile of drawings next to him. Near the bottom, he found the portrait that he had drawn and handed it to the orderly.

As the older man took the piece of paper, he was taken aback. It was a portrait of himself, for sure, but it was incredibly detailed. Disturbingly so, in fact. Despite only having met for a few short minutes last night and that morning, the boy who was happily eating lunch before him had managed to accurately portray him in everything but color, down to the small details of his hairstyle.

Looking at the bottom of the artwork, He saw a small message that the boy has written for him. This also seemed odd, because he was fairly sure that the average 4-year-old was not able to write with any real proficiency, but the proof lay before him.

'Thank you for the paper mister!

From Midoriya Izuku'

In reality, Izuku didn't know what a few of the characters meant. He knew his name and "thank you" but the intermediary characters were entirely intuited by his quirk. He looked hopefully at the man while taking his next bite, waiting for a response.

After a few minutes, the man got over his surprise at the artwork.

"Thank you, Midoriya-san. Did you draw this for me?"

The young boy nodded, swallowing. "I wanted to thank you for bringing me the paper. Do you like it? I spent a reeeally long time drawing it…"

The man nodded, assuring Izuku that he liked the portrait. "It is a very good drawing, and though it was unexpected, I will definitely keep this with me. After all…" The man paused to look at some of the drawings in the pile next to the eating boy. "How many people can say that they have a great artist's first portrait?"

At this, Izuku devolved into a mixture of embarrassment and pride, and turned to finishing his lunch. When he finished, he handed his plate to the orderly and gave a big smile.

"The meal was great mister! Thank you!"

The orderly chuckled. "It was my pleasure, Midoriya-san. I do have some other business, your mother passed me this note and I can take anything that you may want to give you back, perhaps some of your artwork?" As the boy unfolded the piece of paper, he left the room to go pick up the dishes from the rest of the ward.

Izuku, now alone in his room, opened the note.

'Dear Izuku,

I'm so sorry that I have to leave you alone for a while. How are you? Are you doing well? I know you can get through this. I wish I could be there with you. I love you.

Mom'

Izuku was able to read most of the note and intuit the rest, with a quick confirmation from his power. He felt warm when his power reacted True to the words 'I love you.'

Pulling a piece of paper from the slowly emptying ream, Izuku wrote a note back to his mom, using his power to brute-force characters that he did not already know.

As he was folding the note, he considered what the doctor had said about giving his mom some of his drawings. He felt no real attachment to the ones in the stack by the door, but he also wanted to give his mom something special.

Sifting through the pile next to him, he found one of his more recent pictures – a drawing of himself hugging his mom with no background. He put this one at the bottom of the pile as a surprise for his mom when she looked at the drawings.

Upon the orderly's return, he handed the older man a stack of drawings with his note folded around them.

Hospital Waiting Room

As Inko was waiting for any word from or on Izuku, the doctor that she had spoken with earlier entered the waiting room and beckoned for Inko to follow him. She followed the path that she had taken earlier, and upon arrival at the doctor's office she noticed that there was a second man waiting for them with a bundle of paper.

As they all got seated, the other man passed the bundle of paper to Inko.

"Good afternoon, Midoriya-san." The doctor spoke up. "Our guest is Kano Ryota, the man who has been bringing your son food and otherwise interacting with him. He brought your son the note and asked for a meeting with the two of us." At this, he gestured to the orderly to speak.

"Good afternoon, Midoriya-san. I would like to assure you that your son is doing well and is a very exuberant child. I believe that it would be best for you to read the note and look at the drawings that your son asked me to pass to you before we continue the conversation."

At this, Inko was curious. She opened the note to see what her son wanted to tell her.

'Hi Mom!

Things are great! They were boring but the nice food man brought me some paper. I can't wait to see you!

Izuku'

Though the note was short, it relieved her to see proof that her son was okay. Looking up at the men in the room, she was about to ask why they felt the need to have a meeting when the orderly motioned for her to look at the drawings.

Flipping through the top few, they looked very similar to some of the ones stuck to her fridge with magnets at home. After the first few, however, the drawings quickly got better. Much better.

From a drawing of herself, to drawings of his friends, to basic landscapes, all of them showed remarkable improvement. When she reached the bottom of the pile, she froze in shock. The drawing was better than she could have ever hoped to draw by a significant margin, with a degree of realism from folds in the fabric to stray strands of hair that would have made any renaissance artist jealous.

Looking up at the doctors, she was speechless. Luckily for her, the orderly took this as his cue to continue speaking.

"As you can see, Midoriya-san has become quite the artist over the course of this morning. This is an unprecedented rate of growth, as I am sure you are aware. I can say with confidence that the drawings you hold before you, except for the final one, are sequential and were drawn by Midoriya-san himself. I can also confirm that he drew an approximately equal number of drawings after these that are still in his room."

At this point, the orderly pulled his rolled-up portrait out of the pocket of his apron and unrolled it. Though the artistic quality of the piece was by no means higher than the final drawing, the next words out of the orderly's mouth put things into perspective.

"I am also certain that your son was able to draw this portrait of myself this morning despite only having seen and talked to me this morning and last night, and only for a few minutes each time." He leaned forwards. "Simply put, ma'am, your son has a gift."

Inko slumped back in her seat. "He's never show this to me before. Is it possible that this is some…" her voice trailed off, not wanting to voice her fear that this was an effect of some mind-control or mental damage that made him a savant.

The doctor, finally looking over the drawing, gave his judgement. "While it is possible that this is related to whatever incident caused your son to us, it is also possible that the boredom got to him."

At Inko's surprised look, he explained. "Your son has likely never been in a situation where all he could do was draw or sleep, and this likely caused him to focus entirely on drawing. This cannot be the only explanation for his unnatural growth, but I believe that your son is mentally stable, just very talented."

A smile crossed the orderly's face. "I'm sure that your son will always have a future in the world of art, should he wish to continue with this."

After this uneasy conclusion to the meeting, Inko asked the orderly a few more questions about how her son was doing before she returned to the waiting room, papers in hand.

Izuku's Room

'So, my power reacts to the written word as well as my thoughts.' True.

While this was an interesting development, Izuku decided to return to his paper and pens. There were still several hundred pieces of paper in the ream, and after the lunch break his hand was no longer tired. It was time to play, he still had more than six hours until dinner according to his quirk.

Six hours to draw, six hours to explore his quirk, six hours before he would go back to sleep.

His last thought before he went back to drawing was that he hoped that his mother liked the pictures he gave her.