Their Hero Academia – Chapter 46: Doctor's Orders
Kimiko Ojiro put a hand on the boy's arm and concentrated, drawing upon her Quirk. She had to keep this controlled, confined to just one area. Nobody needed a full on skeleton sitting in front of them. As she applied her power, the layers of skin, muscle, and other bodily gunk seemed to just vanish, eliciting a gasp from the boy. It was, even she'd admit, kind of gross. Especially the part where she could see all the muscles and stuff. Still, it was the perfect way to see the bones beneath.
"Okay, I've only been doing this a little while," she said, "but that is definitely broken. I'm ninety-nine percent certain you shouldn't have a gap there."
Hisashi Horikoshi, a General Studies student with a drawing-related Quirk, winced. "Any chance you can turn that off? This is super creepy." He was probably trying for eye contact, but his gaze was a little lower than it should have been. Still, it was more effort than a lot of people made.
At that, Doctor Izumi chuckled. "It is a bit strange, isn't it?" she asked. "But Ojiro here has already saved us a quite a lot on running some of our imaging machines. And it's easier on you too if there's no radiation."
And good for Kimiko too, she had to admit. Doctor Izumi had arranged for a small stipend for her for whenever she'd needed Kimiko's services as an imaging device. It wasn't a lot, but it put a few extra dollars in her pocket, and she got some additional experience.
Being Doctor Izumi's Intern wasn't too different from what she'd been doing before. Ever since the doctor had gotten her interested in becoming a Medical Hero, Kimiko had spent what time she could studying medical texts, preparing to earn a paramedic's license, and assisting Doctor Izumi with minor injuries on the U.A. campus. Between that, Hero training, her regular classes, and working on her webshow with Takuma and Kenta, she had a very full schedule.
The studying was going to be the death of her, she just knew it. She struggled with a lot of her studies, she knew, but she needed to do better. Especially if she wanted to be a Medical Hero. There were accelerated programs for Heroes who wanted medical training, that she could take after she graduated, but she had also been warned that they were very demanding. Doctor Kimiko Ojiro had a pretty nice ring to it though, so she was going to give it her best.
Plus, it made her feel like she was really doing something with her Quirk. Something more than just sneaking around. Something that meant actually putting it to use, instead of just taking advantage of the fact that she was already invisible. She was proud of the work her mom did, but she didn't want to be completely defined by her Quirk.
"It's a clean break, fortunately," Doctor Izumi told Horikoshi. "How did this happen again?"
"Gym class," he said, looking a bit ashamed. "Fell off the climbing rope and landed on it. Not real good at climbing."
"Oh, that's not so bad!" Kimiko said. She'd been doing it for years. Sure, she didn't have quite the upper body strength her dad did for it, but she was more than athletic enough to do it without even needing to get her feet involved.
"For you, maybe," he said. "Those of us not in the Hero course have to make do."
Kimiko opted not to point out that her new friend Kocho wasn't in the Hero Course (yet) but had done good enough to take Third Place in the Sport's Festival. Horikoshi had actually made it past the first round as well, she recalled, but had gotten taken out very early into Quirkball.
Doctor Izumi examined the break again, then nodded. "You'll feel a slight tingle here," she said, laying a hand on Horikoshi's arm, right above the break. "Can you keep holding on, Ojiro? It'll be easier on me if you do."
"Sure thing," Kimiko said, not even bothering to nod. It would have been a useless gesture anyway.
"Thank you," Doctor Izumi said. "Hmm. Probably about fifteen minutes…" A soft glow began to spread from her hand and it was all Kimiko could do not to grasp in shock as the glow spread to Horikoshi and the bones in his arm began knitting themselves back together, as though the damage was going in reverse. Kimiko had a pretty good eye for detail—a necessity when you couldn't see yourself—and it was so much more than that. She could see little signs of the rest of him rewinding as well. Not a lot, but the smudge on his face, the disheveled state of his hair, all these things rewound too. In mere moments, it looked as though his arm had never been broken at all. Doctor Izumi let out a breath and released him.
"Perfect," she told Kimiko. Kimiko likewise let out a breath. Doctor Izumi's Quirk was impressive, to say the least. It was little wonder that in addition to working at U.A., she kept herself on call for multiple Hero Agencies and several local hospitals. She'd even occasionally been raced across the country for special cases.
Which was not to say all her talents lived in her Quirk. Kimiko had already seen that her medical knowledge was very real. Most diseases couldn't be so easily rewound and there were limits to the damage she could repair.
"Thank goodness," Horikoshi said. "That was my drawing arm. Don't know what I would have done otherwise."
Doctor Izumi smiled. "Glad to hear it. Go get a pass from Recovery Girl, and get back to class."
"Yes, Doctor," Horikoshi said, hopping down off the bed.
Kimiko watched him go. Recovery Girl was nearby, sleeping at her desk. "You're pure evil," she said in her sleep. "Just like newspaper comics…"
Horikoshi hesitated, then gently touched her. Her hand instantly shot out, grapping his arm. "Ah ha! Thought you could sneak up on me, eh? But I've got you now, Dirty Dairu! Ha ha ha!"
"Recovery Girl," Doctor Izumi said, firmly, "he's a student. Could you let him go?"
Reality seemed to return to Recovery Girl. "Oh, of course, dearie." She patted Horikoshi's arm. "Don't worry about it, sonny, takes me a minute to remember where I am sometimes."
Once Horikoshi was gone and Recovery Girl had returned to her nap, Kimiko gave Doctor Izumi a curious look. She tried to telegraph that with her crossed arms and other body language. Sometimes, having no expression to read was a pain in the butt. "Ah," she began, "maybe this is rude of me… but should she really… be around students like that?"
Doctor Izumi closed her eyes and shook her head. "Recovery Girl outlived her family. Deku and a lot of other alumni have all offered to pay for a place in a top tier retirement home for her, but she won't have it. She's said she'll go kicking and screaming if they try. U.A. is all she has. At least here, she has people who will watch out for her. And even with her diminishing faculties, she has her lucid moments still."
Oh. Well. That was… pretty sad, actually.
Medical scissors, gauze, medical tape, pen light, mouth-to-mouth shield, rescue blanket, ballpoint pen, syringes, waterproof bandages, tunicates, stethoscope… Each of these and more had a place in the bag before her, had to be loaded in a specific order, each had to be placed in a specific spot.
And in an emergency, each was something that had to be retrieved quickly. You had to know exactly where each and every item in the EMT kit was. Time was people's lives. There were smaller ones, for lighter work or work in tighter places, but the bigger kit was common too.
And for the first time, Kimiko had been able to retrieve each item Doctor Izumi had called for without looking!
"I did it!" she squealed, clapping her hands together.
"You did," Doctor Izumi agreed. "What changed? You were really struggling with it before."
"Studying," Kimiko groaned. "And practicing. So much studying. I even made flashcards. I never make flashcards. I even smacked Takuma until he helped me study." She let out a puff of breath. "I don't know how you do it, Doc. I start doing all this studying and I feel like my brain's going to ooze out of my ears."
For all her bad grades, Kimiko generally considered herself pretty knowledgeable. It's just that her areas of knowledge were very specialized. For example, she knew just about who everybody in the first year was dating and probably at least half of the second and third years. Plus there was all the celebrity gossip she had floating around in her head. And she was great at getting that information out to the people, who deserved to know.
But ask her to remember facts and figures or solve equations? That was a lot harder.
She needed to get better, she knew. Hard to be an EMT or a doctor if you couldn't tell the difference between a tibia and a femur. Wait. Was that actual medical terminology? Maybe she was getting better at this!
Doctor Izumi gave her a reassuring smile. "You do realize I didn't learn all of this in a few weeks, right? You've been working with me off and off since the second week of school, but that's still only been a couple of months. It may have been an accelerated program, but I did go to med school."
Kimiko made a face and was instantly grateful her expressions weren't visible. "And how long did that take?"
"Three years at U.A.," Doctor Izumi said, counting off on her fingers, "the whole time of which I was interning under Recovery Girl. Then two years in a pre-med program at university, and three years of an accelerated medical school program. All the while balancing Hero work and assisting here. Which is ridiculously short. Aoyama's husband gives me hell about it all the time. Mostly teasing, but still."
Before she could continue, Doctor Izumi's cellphone rang. "A phone call is here!" the phone proudly declared, in a voice Kimiko recognized as Deku's. She looked at the caller id and let out a small gasp.
"Excuse me, I've got to take this," she said to Kimiko, putting the phone to her ear. "This is Doctor Izumi."
She listened for a moment, something Kimiko couldn't hear, then spoke again. "That's… that's wonderful! Yes, absolutely. Kota and I can be there. Next Tuesday. Thank you, thank you…"
When she turned the phone off, Kimiko realized that Doctor Izumi was crying happy tears. "Good news?" she asked.
Doctor Izumi pulled a tissue from a box on her desk and dabbed at her eyes. "The best, actually. Kota and I, we've been trying to adopt for a while now. We're both orphans, so this is our way of giving something back, now that we're both successful Heroes and teachers."
She flipped the phone around, showing Kikimo a picture of an adorable little girl with pale purple skin, darker purple hair, and pointed ears, probably no more than three or four. "Her name's Himari," Doctor Izumi said. "She lost her parents in a villain attack about a year ago. Kota and I finally got approved to adopt her. We're bringing her home next Tuesday."
Kimiko clapped her hands and let out another squeal of delight. "Omigosh! She's so adorable! I know you're going to make a great mom!" A thought popped into her head. "Wait! That means Mister Aizawa is going to be a grandpa!"
A brief mental picture of Mister Aizawa being grandfatherly, sharing hard candies while sitting in a rocking chair, popped into her mind. She quickly forced that out by mentally reciting gossip, lest it burn itself to the inside of her eyelids. She knew Mister Aizawa was Doctor Izumi's adoptive father and Shota Shinso's godfather, but the thought of him being that soft and parental just didn't add up.
The doctor smiled again. "He is. But don't tell him, or anyone else for that matter. We want it to be a surprise."
That got a gasp out of Kimiko. "Sitting on juicy gossip like that? Ooooh that's so unfair…" She flailed her arms and stomped her feet. Doctor Izumi just stared at her, so she quickly stopped. "Okay!"
One advantage to interning with Doctor Izumi was that, since she didn't have an actual Agency, Kimiko was just able to stay in her dorm room, rather than bunking in some Agency with a bunch of sidekicks or whatever. Of course, with everyone else gone, it was oddly empty and way too quiet, but Doctor Izumi kept her working long hours (helping with students during the day, quizzing her over medical knowledge, helping her with paperwork and study aides the rest of the time) so that she didn't have much time to dwell on it.
Still, she missed the others. Especially Takuma and Kenta. They really were her best friends in all the world. Takuma, at least, was uploading content about his Internship. Kenta had done one brief video at the start and then they'd just texted sporadically.
The school had also had people in doing construction on the third floor, where Kaminari, Tokoyami, Mineta, and Koda lived. As it had turned out, there were actually more than four rooms on each floor. It explained how they were so far apart, actually. The other rooms were just hidden away behind wall panels. They'd unlocked one of those and brought in furniture for Koharu Kocho. She'd actually be joining the Hero Course with the second semester! Kimiko had figured she'd get to move over, but hadn't expected it to be that soon.
Good for her! Even though Kocho'd beaten her in the Tournament Round, Kimiko still liked her a lot. Plus, it'd be pretty nice to have the girls outnumber the boys around here. Not that their boys were too bad, but more girl power was always going to be appreciated.
Logically, she knew she should get some rest. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day. But the siren song of Hero gossip was calling her. Maybe just a little look wouldn't hurt. Kimiko opened up her laptop and clicked over to one of the gossip feeds she followed. Which also reminded her she really needed to follow up on whether or not Haimawari was dating Tetsutetsu from 1-B and what was going on with Mineta and that large boy in the Shiketsu uniform, ramp up her plot to get David Togata a girlfriend, and get a new read on some of the other courses. One had to keep current in the gossip news market, after all.
Some things, she could disregard immediately as clickbait, like the rumors of Mt. Lady and Kamui Woods splitting up. The chances of that happening were almost nil. Others were potentially more accurate, like the possibility that Wing Saber and Stardust were dating. Which was actually pretty gross, since Stardust was his Sidekick and former Work Study participant. Definitely improper.
"Oh!" Kimiko let out a gasp at the next item in the feed. Sequoia Rose, the daughter of Kamui Woods and Mount Lady, was spotted with a movie starlet she'd rescued from kidnappers last month. A grin crossed her lips. "A rescue romance? Just like Tensei and Takuma!"
But what she saw next made her laugh out loud for a good five minutes before she was composed enough to even think straight.
Fighting back giggles, she looked over a picture of Suneater and Nejire-chan, along with Kenta. Suneater was looking at something off camera she couldn't see, while Nejire-chan was standing very close to Kenta, grinning wildly. Probably asking him a million questions, she guessed. Kenta was looking slightly uncomfortable at the attention.
But it was the headline that had made her laugh. Is Nejire-chan Scoping Out a Younger Model to Replace Suneater? She knew it was a total fabrication, but some nebulous feeling stirred in her gut. She pushed it down.
She took a screenshot and sent it to Kenta and Takuma's phones. Moments later, hers buzzed.
Kenta: Just kill me now.
Takuma: You lady killer you! ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
I can't believe you wouldn't tell me about this, Kenta! How rude!
You know I'm supposed to get first dibs on all gossip!
I'm making my angry face at you! ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ
Kenta: Kimi, you know that headline's nonsense!
Takuma: Just what someone trying to throw us off the scent would say!
Takuma: And shouldn't your angry face be more like ヽ ノ
Definitely got to share this with the world!
AND THAT'S NOT FUNNY, TAKUMA! DON'T MAKE ME TRACK YOU DOWN SO I CAN SMACK YOU!
Kenta: I know you're both kidding, but I am this close to just taking a bite out of my phone.
Takuma: Get someone else to film it on yours if you do! I can totally spin that as meta-commentary! People love stuff that they think is deep!
Kimiko just laughed. Those boys of hers…
It was raining and Kimiko was getting soaked and cold. All the more reason to be glad she could make her brightly colored pink and neon green costume invisible along with the rest of her, rather than having to strip like the way Mom did. The rain was plastering her short hair to her head and outlining exposed head in random blotches. Her goggles were starting to get streaked and blotchy too.
Part of being a Medical Hero was being called out to respond to Villain the aftermath of Villain attacks and disasters, such as they had been, responding to an earthquake in the coastal city of Takodana. It was almost weird to think that nature alone could do such damage, compared to the kind of damage a runaway villain could do.
She'd been making herself as useful as she could, performing field x-rays on civilians, making doors and other things invisible so that other rescue workers could see inside, and sometimes just helping people get to triage where more experienced medical workers could treat them.
"X-Ray," Doctor Izumi said, pointing to where a pile of rubble blocked the entrance to a small shop. Her Hero name felt good in her ears. "Can you give us a visual?"
Kimiko nodded, her silver goggles fulfilling their secondary purpose of marking where her head was. "On it," she said. Carefully, she placed a hot-pink glove on the on rubble and pushed her Quirk outward. Slowly, the rubble became indistinct and then completely invisible. The invisibility spread to each piece touching the one she was, then onto the outer wall of the building itself. It was a lot to make invisible at once and she felt a pressure growing in her skull, but she could hold it for a moment.
Inside, they could see two women, one pinned under a fallen metal shelf, the other holding her hand. A store clerk appeared to be trying to lift it, but to no avail.
"Good job," Doctor Izumi said. She tapped the communicator in her ear. "This is Doc Clock. We've got one confirmed wounded, possibly two additional wounded. Requesting someone with a Quirk that can shift rubble to my location."
Gritting her teeth, Kimiko released her invisibility field. Her head ached from the strain. She'd never tried to extend her invisibility around that much mass before. It had left her feeling stretched out.
"Are you all right?" Doctor Izumi asked.
"Fine," Kimiko said, quickly. No time to be showing weakness now.
"You're not," Doctor Izumi said. "You're showing signs of Quirk Exhaustion. You can only push yourself so far." She gently touched Kimiko's shoulder. "May I?"
Kimiko nodded and she felt a strange warmth flowing through her and the headache dissipated just as quickly as it had arrived. Some of the tiredness she'd been feeling was gone too.
"Only about ten minutes back," Doctor Izumi assured her. "Just to get you over the hump."
"Sorry," Kimiko said, shaking her head.
"Don't be," Doctor Izumi said. "You're doing great. But you've got limits, just like everyone else. A Hero gives their all, but if you sacrifice yourself, you're just one more body to be rescued."
Kimiko nodded. She was pretty sure she'd heard Mister Aizawa say the same thing. "Okay."
"You don't have a head," the small boy, probably no more than four, said. She'd had to remove her goggles in order to see, after the rain had gotten too intense for them. He'd been left in the triage area while medical professionals worked on his mother. With everyone else working, she'd been left to watch him.
"Do too," she said.
"Uh-uh," he insisted.
"Uh-huh," she said.
"Uh-uh."
"I do too have a head!" she said, stomping her foot. "It's just invisible!"
The boy shook his head. "Nope. No head. How come you can still talk?"
"Why you little…" Kimiko's arms were flailing, as she prepared to make her irritation loudly and violently known. She suddenly stopped herself. This wasn't Takuma. She couldn't just smack him until he agreed that she was right. Her shoulders slumped. "…That's my Quirk. No Head."
"Oh. Okay."
Back at U.A. the next day, Doctor Izumi dropped a large stack of paperwork down in front of Kimiko. "What's this?"
"After action report," Doctor Izumi said. "I know you've seen those in class before."
"This looks a lot more complicated," she said. "I definitely don't remember the ones Mister Aizawa had us fill out having this many lines on it. Or that many little boxes."
"They're different for Medical Heroes. Any time Quirks are used in medical treatment, there's more paperwork involved. Before, we were under the auspices of the school's consent to treat, but out in the field, it's different. More liabilities involved and more to be accounted for."
Kimiko's head fell on the table. Great. Just great. More paperwork. "How much more complicated are we talking about?"
"They're generally about twice as long as a regular after action report. More so if things get complicated. I've got a lot of my own to fill out, but I'll help you get started on some, since it's your first time."
She carefully put a hand on the stack of paperwork when Doctor Izumi wasn't looking and applied her Quirk to it. "Started on what?" Kimiko asked.
At that, Doctor Izumi laughed. "Nice try, kid," she said, pulling up a chair next to Kimiko. "But it's not that easy."
Kimiko let out a pitiful whine, but took her hand off the paperwork, releasing her Quirk. "Oh, all right…"
Truthfully, the paperwork wasn't that big of a nightmare. Though she was definitely beginning to understand why bigger Agencies just had people to handle this kind of thing. But at the same time, each one was a reminder of the good they'd done last night. Maybe her part hadn't been the biggest, but she actually felt like she'd done important things.
"Um, Doctor Izumi?" Kimiko asked.
"Yes?" she replied.
"I just wanted to say thank you. For giving me this chance. And for believing in me. I know I'm kind of an, ah, airhead sometimes but… Thanks." Kimiko paused. "I'm smiling, by the way. I know you can't see it."
Doctor Izumi smiled. "You're a good kid, Ojiro. And you've got a good eye and a bigger heart. You're going to do great. And trust me, I know all about the power of someone believing in you."
In her pocket, Kimiko's phone dinged with the alert notification from one of her gossip sites. She didn't bother to check it.
Right now, some things were more important.