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 3

Kano Ryota walked back from his post-lunch meeting with his favorite patient, Izuku Midoriya. Pushing the cart full of empty dishes in front of him with one hand, the other arm was wrapped around the poster that he was willing to bet became the canvas for the newest decoration for his boss's office. Inside the rolled-up poster were the six smaller drawings that he had seen before Izuku squared them off and rolled them up.

Dropping off the cart in the kitchens, he made his way to the break room, a small skip in his step. Upon opening the door, he was almost relaxed to see the usual state of chaos. Funai Takao, Kuse Yoshihiro, and Ige Goro were having a heated argument over something that was most likely extremely minor, and Nagamine Kenji and Ashikaga Arata were over at the ping-pong table, making increasingly impressive recoveries for failed shots until eventually one of them had to walk across the room to pick up the ball.

Hamasaki Daichi, the final member of their team, wasn't in the room, but he was more than likely caught up with one of the other patients in the ward. He was, after all, the only one that was actually certified as a psychologist out of the seven of them. Fortunately, Musutafu was a peaceful enough city in recent years that a large staff was not necessary in the Faraday Wards. The seven of them took care of the three long-term patients, currently two medium-term patients, and four short-term patients including Izuku.

As he sat down at one of the chairs near the center table, the conversation and ping-pong quieted down as the occupants of the room looked towards the bundle in Ryota's hands.

"I'll wait a few minutes so that Hamasaki-san can show up before the grand reveal." Ryota announced, sensing the unspoken question that they all had. With some grumbling, they turned back to their conversations. Yoshihiro, however, split off from the group he was in to talk to Ryota.

"I don't know about the rest of them, but the anticipation is killing me" he said, sitting across the table from Ryota. "Though if our portraits are anything like yours, I'm sure they're worth the wait. How was the kid today?"

"More anxious, if I had to guess. I'm not a psychologist here, but if I had to guess I'd say he's feeling cooped up and is missing his mom again. It's a miracle that it hadn't happened earlier – you don't have any kids, right?"

At the shake of Yoshihiro's head, Ryota continued. "Then you probably don't know the feeling. Honestly, until they're about 10, most kids can't just stay in a room all day. We were already careful with what we left in the room – nothing with sharp corners, nothing breakable, nothing that could be disassembled without using tools. Apparently, he's pretty self-disciplined, but that's for the standard of a four-year-old."

He took a breath. "Anyways, It's almost… surprising? That he's acting like a normal kid after all the evidence to the contrary."

Any further conversation was put on hold as Daichi entered the room, causing the two who were still talking to come take their own seats shortly followed by the ping-pong players after they finished up their last "point".

Ryota stood up. "Gentlemen." He promptly floundered, having no idea how to present the drawings to the rest of the crew without seeming pretentious. Luckily for him, Yoshihiro was there to pick up the slack.

"I heard that our latest patient agreed to our requests? If he said no, you could've just told us without all the fanfare. So come on, show us the pictures already!"

Ryota sighed. He had come to expect this sort of behavior from Yoshihiro, but it was always a welcome surprise. He pulled the smaller roll of photos from inside the poster, catching a glimpse of jasmine flowers on the inside border of the rolled-up artwork. Unrolling the portraits, he flattened them out before handing them to his co-workers. Most of them expressed their appreciation quietly, but some of them were much more affected than the rest.

"You sure this kid is four?" Ige asked skeptically. "I've had children, and I know what a 4-year-old can draw. I thought you all were exaggerating the other day when you told me about this but…" he trailed off, only to pick up again in surprise. "Wait a second, how long did the kid even spend looking at my photo? I'm not sure I could draw myself this well if I was tracing a photo of myself!"

Daichi glanced at the photo and subconsciously began applying his training in child psychology. You could tell a lot about a child from the photos they drew, how they reacted to people's faces, and what they thought of other people based on what they looked like. From Izuku's drawing, he got very few of the usual tells.

The word that most readily came to mind was "genuine". The face he saw staring back at himself held no enhancement or degradation, and though the difference was small, it didn't look like how he thought he looked, but rather how he knew he looked. Everyone has a better image of themselves than they really look, tinted through their worldview and view of themselves, but Izuku's rendition of him felt like the glamour had been removed.

Had the face been in color, Daichi could easily imagine mistaking it for a mirror at times.

Unbeknownst to him, this was more an effect of Izuku's quirk than anything else. Izuku, always looking for the best in people, tended to draw people in a better version of themselves. Combined with the harsh reality of his quirk's advice, this led to an interesting effect where his subjects simultaneously looked as real as the original and somehow more than just a photograph.

As the psychologist refocused on the conversation, he noticed that most of the table was staring at him with the exception of Ryota, who had his head down on the table.

"I'm sorry, did I miss something you said?" he asked, wondering why he was suddenly the center of attention.

"Come on, man," Takao replied, "you were just staring at the photo for the past few minutes. There's got to be some deep and profound thought rattling in that head of yours, so let it out already. What's your psychoanalysis voodoo telling you now?"

Daichi sighed. At times, his co-workers knew him far too well. He supposed he had earned it, what with his past joking about having a full profile on all of them. "In a word, I'd call the person who drew this genuine. I'm no great artist, but it's clearly different from what I'd expect from a four-year-old. There's also something about it that I just can't place."

Placing the picture flat on the table, he leaned back in his chair. "It just feels like more than it looks like, though a real artist could probably express it in better words than I could."

With this statement and a chorus of agreeing hums, Ryota stood up. "Well, no use in delaying it. I should probably go give Tsuji-san her picture."

The others were unaware that he had let Riko in on the open secret of their resident artist.

"My friend," Arata stood and placed his hand on Ryota's shoulder. "What do you mean 'get this over with'? Did something bad happen between you and the boss?"

Ryota sat back down and closed his eyes. "You all know I'm not the most sociable person, right? Well, last night I figured that it would be rude to leave her out, but she wasn't in a very good mood when I got to her office last night, and I don't think she took the whole scenario too well. I just hope that Midoriya-san's work is good enough to appease her, and judging by your reactions, I don't think I have much to be worried about on that front."

As the rest of the crew voiced their approval, Arata made a suggestion. "Do you want one of us to go with you to give her the painting? Might keep her from snapping at you if one of us were there as a third party."

Ryota shook his head. "No, this one's on me. You all shouldn't have to take the fall for something I did, and after your reaction, I don't think I have much to worry about. It's just… something more like a feeling that something could go wrong, and Murphy's law will go into effect."

With his words and opinions spoken to the rest of the world, Ryota found it easier to make a decision. He stood up and walked to the door. Before he left, he made a joking comment. "If I don't come back, wait a day before you start looking for my body, okay?"

With that parting remark, he let the door shut behind him as he left the break room and made his way to the director's office.

As he left the Faraday Wards and re-entered the main hospital building, Ryota, as always, noticed the clear difference in activity. In the general building it was aways much livelier, with people rushing through the hallways and patients searching for the offices. The Faraday Wards were just too big for the seven of them who worked there to give it the same feel, with patients confined to their rooms and all.

Arriving at the director's office, Ryota took a deep breath before knocking on the door with his free hand. There was no jasmine scent this time – Riko had no need for headache relief or preventing drowsiness.

As he entered the room, he and Tsuji Riko locked eyes, both nervous for their own reasons. Neither of them was the proudest of their actions the previous night, nor did they want to start a conversation about it.

In silence, Ryota handed Riko the poster, which loosened its roll as it left his hands. As Riko looked at the outside, she noticed the difference between the outside's diagram of a nose (a joke which she thought was in poor taste) and the pencil markings on the inside that were immediately recognized as flowers. Thinking back to the last night, she remembered asking for jasmine flowers in the drawing of herself.

Curious and eager, she unrolled the poster to see the image of herself sitting in the middle of a field of jasmine flowers. Looking to the vase of wilting flowers on her desk, she confirmed that they were accurate to the real thing before turning back to the artwork in front of her. The more she looked at the drawing, the more entranced she became. Everything was drawn with such detail, the flowers shaded as if the sun was overhead to the right, a swath covered by the version of her in the painting.

The figure in the center of the painting was the most striking part of the image. Despite only having the profile shot that she allowed Ryota to take last night, the full body of the figure in the center was clearly hers, though the figure was wearing clothes that she owned nothing like. Surprisingly, the style fit the figure rather well, giving the 2-D Riko a warmer and happier appearance as opposed to the colder, clinical appearance that she presented to the rest of the world.

Looking at the version of herself in the drawing was like a window into a world where she pursued farming instead of medicine, where she was unburdened by the worries and struggles she currently faced as a director in the hospital. The smile on her face was nothing special, but she couldn't help but wonder when the last time she had smiled like this version of herself was.

She was drawn from her observation of the art by that sound of Ryota's shuffling feet. She lightly blushed, having forgotten that he was in the office in her focused state. Clearing her throat, she decided to try her hand at diplomacy.

"Kano-san, I'm sure you've had time to reflect on your actions last night. I have had time to reflect on mine. In light of our mutual bad handling of the conversation and the drawing, I think we should both forget that last night's conversation happened and move on professionally."

She put this forward, having chosen her words carefully so as to not cause any more understandings. As this was one of the better outcomes that Ryota had hoped for, he readily agreed. "Of course, Tsuji-san."

As she looked down at the paper, she noticed the artist's signature at the bottom right corner. "And give this 'Izuku Midoriya' my thanks and appreciation, if you would. This is… beyond anything I could have imagined."

"I'll be sure to pass that on, Tsuji-san. Have a good day."

With this, Ryota left the office, this time in a much better mood than the last. As he went through the familiar re-entry to the Faraday wards, the main thought running through his mind was 'Maybe today isn't such a bad day after all.'

Izuku's Room

As Izuku basked in the knowledge that he'd be able to leave the room and go home soon, he began to think ahead. His quirk had confirmed that it was both okay to tell his mom that he had a quirk and that he wasn't supposed to have a quirk so he couldn't let anyone else know.

True.

At the confirmation of these two facts, he turned to how he could convince his mom that he had a quirk. The most readily available thing he could do from his current position was to predict the future in the roundabout way he had developed, but it never hurt to make sure.

'The most efficient way to convince my mom that I have a quirk is to predict some future event and then let it happen.' True.

With this, Izuku set off on making a list of different ways to convince his mom that his quirk was real and could predict the future. Over the next hour, Izuku came up with a list of future events that would happen when he tried to convince his mom of his Quirk, from a sequence of fifty coin-flip results to a sequence of five random numbers that she would come up with at his request, to the weather in the next month and the winning lottery numbers tomorrow night.

There were other things he thought of, like the headlines of the newspaper for the past few days (and for the next week) or drawing the picture of the next person she would see after he tried to convince her of the quirk, but these were more intensive than Izuku was willing to go through with in the limited time he had to himself.

With these events recorded on the back of his "Quirk Rules" sheet, Izuku went back to thinking about how to use his quirk more efficiently. Just because it confirmed yesterday that he wouldn't make a major breakthrough before he left the hospital didn't mean that he couldn't try, because he could also change the future that his quirk saw.

After nearly an hour of attempts, Izuku had determined that the best thing to do to improve his quirk after getting out of the hospital and telling his mom about the reality of the voice in his head would be to go to the library and use his quirk to determine the books that would be the most useful to him then.

After this hour of single-minded focus, Izuku stopped worrying so much about the future. He was, after all, doing perfectly well as he was, and things would only get better. All he had to do was wait for now, and when he got out of the hospital, he could take the next step on his path to becoming a hero.

As he picked a new, sharpened pencil from the box, he made a note to ask Ryota for a pencil sharpener or more pencils later.

Dinner came and went, with Ryota bringing by a pencil sharpener after seeing the pile of pencils next to Izuku with the once-sharp tips worn to nubs. Over the course of their conversation after dinner, the topic of Izuku's departure came up.

"So, it looks like you'll be going tomorrow morning, Midoriya-san. I'm sorry you had to be here for as long as you did, but we had to be sure that you were okay. It's never fun to have a new patient here because it usually means that something bad has happened to them, but you were an exception. Just be sure to let your mom know if you start having problems again, ok?"

At Izuku's nod, he continued. "The only big thing before you leave is that one of my co-workers is going to come and ask you some questions tomorrow morning. Don't worry about them, they're just basic questions about your time here and whatever caused you to be here."

Here Ryota stood up. "It's nothing to worry about, but I figure that I should let you know in advance, so as not to surprise you tomorrow morning. Good night!"

With Izuku's reply of "Good night, Kano-san!" Ryota left the room, leaving Izuku to thing on what he had just learned. This was potentially very bad for Izuku, as the doctor definitely knew more about whatever mind-control or possession quirk had theoretically landed him in the Faraday Wards, and anything Izuku said could potentially give him away.

Izuku also knew that he was a very bad liar, but he needed to convincingly tell the doctor tomorrow that there was no voice in his head anymore. With only the few hours between now and sometime next morning, Izuku needed to be able to answer any and all questions he might be asked tomorrow so convincingly that a trained professional in both general and child psychology would believe his answers and that he was not lying when he told them.

True.

'Fortunately,' Izuku thought, 'I have the only thing I need to accomplish all of that right inside my head.' True.

And so the next two hours before Izuku went to bed were spent determining what the questions would be, what his responses should be, saying his responses out loud, and asking his quirk if the person questioning him tomorrow morning would believe him.

Inko's Bedroom, 5:50 AM

Inko Midoriya woke up ten minutes before her alarm went off. This was a combination of her anticipation of bringing Izuku home that morning and the fact that she had intentionally fallen asleep earlier last night in preparation for this.

By 6:00, Inko was fully dressed and, through a minor application of her quirk, Attraction of Small Objects, and careful home design, had prepared herself coffee and pulled leftovers from her fridge into a travel bag. Walking through her house, she shut the various doors and cupboards that had been opened due to this and got into her car.

It was a minor annoyance, she contemplated, that her quirk could only bring objects to her. She had long contemplated the limits of her quirk, which had proven to be incredibly useful when going through her everyday life. As she drove the now-familiar route to the hospital, her thoughts wandered back to her own quirk.

She had awakened it when she was four, a literal kid in a candy shop who couldn't decide what she wanted to look at and try first. Her quirk had awakened and made the decision for her – everything.

Every piece of small candy within five feet of her had been dragged off of the shelves towards her, causing no small amount of frustration for the employees who had set up the displays and stocked the shelves. Over her childhood and teenage years, she had gained control over her quirk and had strengthened it to a point that it was practical to use, but not cut out for hero work.

But this was not the real peak of her Quirk or her abilities with it. The drive to become better and stronger had emerged during her pregnancy with Izuku. After the first ultrasound was performed at the 14-week mark and it had come out that Izuku was going to be a boy and not a girl, and therefore had no chance at having a quirk, her husband, Hisashi, had left her.

Suddenly, Inko was alone in her house, with enough income to live comfortably but constantly decreasing mobility. She had briefly contemplated asking her longtime friend, Bakugou Mitsuki, and her husband for help before Mitsuki, too had gotten pregnant. In her frustration, Inko had decided to get creative with her quirk using her old friend – physics.

The first rule that she managed to work around was that objects had to come towards her. It wasn't so much of a workaround because it still followed the rule, but as long as the objects she was controlling were moving towards her in 3-D space, she could make them move in any directions she wanted. Additionally, if she placed her hands on either side of an object, she could move it in any direction she wanted by moving her hands and having the attractions cancel each other out.

A third thing, which she had discovered towards the end of her pregnancy, was that it wasn't the mass of the object that limited her quirk but its volume. During her pregnancy, she found that she had hit a hard cap of one cubic meter for volume when moving a box of baby things she had prepared earlier in her pregnancy.

When Izuku was born, it had been even more useful in bringing him to her when he cried in the middle of the night, preparing food between her hand and body while holding Izuku in her other arm, and cleaning up the kinds of messes that formed when one had an infant or a toddler.

Nowadays, she ran a moving company where she was the sole worker, as a surprising number of household objects were less than one cubic meter in volume or could be safely disassembled into pieces of less than a cubic meter.

Breaking her focus from thoughts on her quirk to the road in front of her, Inko took the turn-off for the hospital and parked in the parking lot. Entering the hospital and heading to the familiar scenery of the waiting room, Inko checked her watch. The time was 6:27, and Inko was prepared to wait all day for her only child to come back to her.

Izuku's Room

As Izuku woke up, he ran through his usual time check. In just ten quirk-aided guesses, Izuku could accurately determine the time of day without any prior knowledge. This had started with thirty-two questions, algorithmically going through every possible value that a digit on a digital clock could have until he got the correct number.

Then he had learned about conditional questions.

By asking whether the value for minutes or hours was greater than a certain number, he could split his range in half with each question, only needing to split the hour number in half four times and the minute number in half six times to get to the correct time. Of course, this number was lower when Izuku knew generally what time of day it was or had recently used this method to find the time. With five more questions, Izuku knew about how long it would take for Ryota to bring him breakfast, and five more for when the doctor would show up to ask him questions and when he would get to leave.

With just one more confirmation, Izuku was ready to begin his day.

'With the answers I have prepared for my questions, the doctors will let me go home today.' True.

One hour later…

Izuku was ready when the door opened with the enticing smell of his last meal in the hospital. Don't get him wrong, the food at the hospital wasn't bad, it just couldn't compare to homemade food, especially his mom's. As he ate his breakfast, he looked around his room. Three days ago, when he had first entered the hospital, it was barren. Only the bed he was sitting on and the supplies in the bathroom had marked any purpose.

But now, surveying the room, Izuku had clearly left his mark. The walls were adorned with medical posters, the floor with various drawings of his mom, his friends, the room itself, and so much more. As he looked on the efforts of the past few days, he wondered if he could leave his own mark on the room, something that would stay there for the next person who would stay in this room.

If he could, he would bring all the pictures he had drawn with him, giving some to Ryota, his co-workers, the nice doctor he had met on the first day, and bringing all the rest home to give to his mom and friends. As Izuku slid off of the bed, breakfast half-eaten and forgotten on his plate, Izuku pulled out one of the last hundred or so sheets of paper in the ream and picked up a pencil.

He quickly sketched the room as if he was looking from the door, showing the room with an imaginary window that led to a flowered meadow behind. Filling in the detail with a yellow pen that one of the hospital workers had given to Ryota, he drew the light of the sun pouring in through the window, focusing on the image of himself that he had drawn sitting in the center of the room. As best he could, he drew in sheets of paper surrounding his avatar with their own drawings on them. For the finishing touch, Izuku filled in his hair and eyes with the deep green pen that almost perfectly matched the shade of his own hair and eyes.

As he set the pen down, he became aware of Ryota standing in the doorway. He blushed lightly in embarrassment as Ryota spoke.

"Not hungry, Midoriya-san? Don't let the nerves get to you, you'll be out of here before lunch."

Izuku nodded at this, putting the drawing down before erupting in speech. "Good morning, Kano-san! I'm so happy that I get to see my mom again today! Do you think that I can bring all of my drawings with me to show her? Can I meet the rest of your co-workers? Can I meet the boss lady? Can you tape this to the wall and make it stay there? Can I-"

Here Izuku's questions were cut off by Ryota, who was feeling slightly overwhelmed. "One at a time, Izuku. I'm sure that you can bring your drawings with you, but we might have to get some help carrying all of them. I can take you to meet some of my co-workers, and you'll be seeing one of them, Hamasaki Daichi, later this morning for sure. I don't know about taking you to see the director, but I'm sure if you mom agrees I can take the two of you to meet her. And what do you mean by 'make it stay there'?"

Izuku tried his best to explain. "You see, the room was so empty when I got here, and I just wanted to leave something for whoever came here next. I just want to make sure that it stays here and they don't clean it out. Look!" Izuku gestured to his most recent drawing. "I drew myself in the room! That way whoever comes here next knows me, and knows that we shared something! They could even draw themselves to leave it with mine for the next patient and the ones after them."

Kano smiled. This was the Izuku he had come to know over the past three days. An odd combination of maturity and childish enthusiasm, but it wouldn't feel right if he were any different. He'd have to check with Riko about the rules regarding decorating the patient's rooms, but he was pretty sure that Izuku's request would be granted.

As he relayed this to Izuku, the young boy calmed down with the last of his questions being answered.

"Do you have any more questions, Midoriya-san? Just remember, one at a time."

Izuku shook his head. He had heard everything he needed to and couldn't wait to get out of the hospital. "No, that's everything. How soon will I meet the doctor?" he asked, mostly to alleviate the need to use his quirk while finishing his now-cold breakfast.

As Izuku ate, Ryota talked about his co-workers in detail for the first time, starting with Daichi and moving through the rest of the roster, telling him about their jobs and pointing out things that they had contributed to Izuku's artistic endeavors. When Izuku finished his meal, Ryota took the plate and left the room with a wave.

As Izuku sat there, waiting for Ryota to return with the questioner, he began to think about his plans for the rest of the day, after he went home. Sure, he had written it all down on the back of his "Quirk Rules" paper, but Izuku had nothing better to do and couldn't get anything meaningful done in the remaining four minutes before, his quirk assured him, he would be putting his recently acquired acting skills to the test.

After he got out of the hospital, his mom would probably take him home, and then he would be free to tell her about everything he had learned while in the hospital. After that, his mom would surely know what to do, and he could check everything with his power before just to make sure that nothing bad would happen.

At the same time as he reached this conclusion, there was a knock on the door followed by two men walking in. Izuku recognized Ryota immediately, and after a few seconds remembered which of his co-workers this was, matching the name to the face he had drawn just yesterday.

Daichi introduced himself to Izuku. "Good morning Midoriya-san. I am Hamasaki Daichi and I have a few quick questions for you to answer before you go home today. Are you ready? Remember, just answer honestly – that's all you need to do."

At Izuku's nod, Daichi started down the list of questions on the clipboard that he was carrying, marking down Izuku's answers as he went. After the basic identification and control questions were answered satisfactorily, they moved on the important queries.

"Did you feel any headaches before your admittance to the hospital?"

At this question, Izuku looked at him oddly. "Ad-mit-tance? What does that mean?" he asked, not following any guidance from his quirk or preparation but genuinely confused about the word itself. It was at this point that Daichi realized that some of the questions would have to be reworded for the four-year-old.

"It means when you came here, Midoriya-san."

Izuku shook his head, and the questions continued.

"Do you currently feel any headaches?"

"No."

"Before you came here, were there times that you couldn't remember?"

"I don't think so, Hamasaki-san."

"Have you ever known that someone was using a quirk on you?"

"Oh yeah, my mom does that all the time! Her quirk lets her pick me up without touching me, and she uses it to stop me from tripping and falling."

The doctor made a note of this, though he wasn't particularly worried by the answer. The quirk in question was documented and had no effects that could be construed as a mental quirk.

"Anyone else?"

Izuku thought. "My best friend, Kacchan, uses her quirk near me sometimes, but not really on me. That'd be kind of dangerous, you know? Other than her, not really. I don't… really know that many people who have quirks."

The doctor pressed the question gently, trying to make sure that this "Kacchan" wasn't influencing him mentally. "And her quirk is?" He posed the open question for Izuku to take the bait and answer.

"It's really cool, Hamasaki-san! It lets her make explosions from her hands when she wants to!"

With that response, he calmed down, marking the answer on the paper but not marking it as a risk. After all, a quirk that produced explosions, unless it was an illusion quirk simulating explosions, was highly unlikely to be mental in nature. He moved on to the next question.

"How long have you been hearing the voice in your head, Midoriya-san?"

Izuku shrugged. "Maybe two or three weeks? I don't know."

"Are you still hearing it right now?"

Here came the time for Izuku to lie with his pre-prepared answer. "No, I haven't heard it for the past three days."

The doctor nodded, marking down the reply on the paper before him.

"Two or three weeks ago, did you meet any suspicious women? You may have seen them once or they may have been near you consistently until you came to the hospital."

Izuku again replied in the negative. "Not that I know of."

With the last question, Izuku had completed the required exit survey for the Faraday Wards. After reminding Izuku to let his mom know if he ever started hearing the voice again, he moved on to a lighter topic.

"So, Midoriya-san, how was your stay here?"

This question led to a rambling response from Izuku, who told him the story of his time in the hospital in a lightly exaggerated manner, from his entrance in the boring room to the first drawing he drew to the portraits until right now, where the story caught up to Ryota and Daichi entering the room to ask him questions. Throughout the story, the psychologist turned scribe took notes of the things Izuku liked and disliked about the experience. Clearly, the main problem for him was the boredom of the first day, and having the paper and pens made his experience immediately more enjoyable. He noted down that, for the future, the Faraday wards should look into purchasing children's toys for a variety of ages, including those of Izuku's age.

With the empty space at the bottom of the form filled up and the story over, Daichi stood up to leave the room. Ryota stood up as well, letting Izuku know that they'd be out for a few minutes while they submitted the completed form into Izuku's file.

As the two men walked through the Faraday Wards to Mayeda Shigeo's office in the general hospital, they chatted about various parts of Izuku's story and their own jobs. As they reached the checkpoint, Ryota turned back, informed that Izuku had passed the exit screening and that he could bring Izuku to the doctor's office as soon as he wanted.

As Ryota returned to the Faraday Wards, he stopped by the supply closet and grabbed somewhere between five and ten file folders for Izuku to put his artwork into. Placing them on top of his cart, he pushed it towards Izuku's room. Arriving, he found all of the artwork in neat stacks around the bed, with Izuku standing on the mattress to place his taped final drawing to the wall. As Izuku turned around, he dropped to a sitting position and slid off of the bed.

"Can I see mom now?" Izuku asked earnestly, looking into the hallway behind Ryota as if his mom would be waiting there.

Ryota nodded. "Just as soon as we pack up all of the art you want to bring with you and put the rest of the supplies on the cart, okay?"

Over the next few minutes, Izuku placed his stacks of art neatly into six of the eight folders that Ryota had brought with him. The stacks were not sorted in any way, it just made it easier to place that many sheets in one folder. Ryota busied himself with collecting the art supplies, extra paper, and the toiletries from the bathroom. Once everything was packed on the cart, he handed Izuku a sticker and told him to place it on the front of his shirt.

"Just put this on, that way you can get out of here with me. I know it seems unnecessary, but we have to do it anyway."

Izuku nodded happily, peeling the sticker off of the wax paper and placing it on the front of his shirt before looking around for a place to throw away the wax paper. After a few seconds of looking, he saw a trash can off the main hallway and walked quickly to it, disposing of the paper and returning to Ryota, who had been waiting there patiently.

The two of them proceeded to walk through the hallways, encountering Nagamine Kenji on his rounds. Izuku greeted the man as they passed each other and continued to drop off the cart near the storage closet. The pair then walked through security with their arms full of artwork, before proceeding to the doctor's office where Shigeo, Daichi, and Izuku's mom were waiting.