When Izuku got home from his wanderings the next day, he found Melissa sitting at the kitchen table, carving up her skin. She was dressed in the same sweatpants and shirt she had borrowed from Izuku the night before.
Izuku was now several degrees closer to sober and with the beginnings of a plan. He grabbed a candy bar and hung his bag on the back of a wooden kitchen chair before sinking into it. He peeled the wrapper and ignored the way his appetite fizzled as he watched Melissa.
"No one is looking for you?" He eventually asked.
"It's not even a conscious process,". She murmured reverently as she drew the blade up her arm, the wound healing in the knife's wake, a blossom of appearing and disappearing red, like a magic trick. "I can't stop the tissue from repairing."
"Poor you," Izuku teased. "Now if you wouldn't mind," he asked, holding the candy bar.
She paused mid cut. "Screamish ? Cute."
He shrugged. "Just bad at multitasking. You look awful. Have you slept? Eaten?"
Melissa blinked, and set the knife aside. "I've been thinking."
"The body doesn't survive on thoughts,"
"I've been thinking about my quirk. Regeneration." Her eyes glittered as she spoke. "Why of all the potential quirks, I ended up with this one. Maybe it's not random? Maybe there's a correlation between one's character and their abilities. Maybe a reflection of our psyches. I'm trying to understand how this" She held up a blood-stained, but uninjured hand- "Is a reflection of me. Why would he give me-"
"He?" Izuku asked incredulously. He wasn't in the mood for this. "According to the First Son's research," He told her. "An influx of adrenaline and desire to survive gave you that quirk. Not God. This is science and chance Melissa."
"Maybe to a point, but when I climbed into that water I put myself in His hands-"
"No," Izuku snapped. "You put yourself in mine."
Melissa fell silent, but began to rap her fingers on the table. After a few moments, she said. "What I need is a gun."
Izuku had taken a bite of his chocolate and nearly choked on it. "And why's that?" He gasped out.
"To test the speed of regeneration. Duh."
"Duh indeed." Izuku repeated, finishing his snack as Melissa got up from the table to pour herself some water. "Look, I've been thinking too."
"About where your dad is? He practically abandoned us."
"About my turn."
Her brow crinkled. "Didn't you just get out of the hospital?"
"That's not important."
Melissa considered Izuku, her head cocked. "Are you sure you're up for it? We should at least wait until you're feeling better."
"I'm feeling fine. Better than. I feel wonderful. Roses, sunshine and glitter."
Izuku Midoriya did not feel like glitter. His muscles ached, his veins still felt strangely starved of air, and he couldn't shake he headache that had trailed him since he'd woken up in the hospital bed.
"Give yourself some time to recover," Melissa informed him. "And then I'll follow your plan to the letter."
There was nothing overtly wrong with the words, but Izuku didn't like the way she said them. The same calm, cautious tone people use when they want to let someone down slowly, smoothing a 'no' into a 'not right now.'
Something was wrong. And Melissa's attention was already drifting back towards her knives. Away from Izuku.
He clenched his teeth against the curse on his tongue. And then he shrugged carefully.
"Okay," he said, swinging his bag onto his shoulder. "Maybe you're right. I still have to think on it anyway," He added with a yawn and a lazy smile. Melissa smiled back and Izuku turned towards the hall and his room.
He swiped an epinephrine pen on the way and closed the door behind him.
Izuku hated loud music almost as much as he hated crowds. This party had both and was made all the more insufferable by the fact that Izuku was sober. He was starting to pick up a taste for being drunk.
It made things easier. Not this time though.
He wanted-needed everything to be sharp, especially if he was going to do this alone. Melissa had, presumably, left for her own abode, carving up her skin while she assumed that Izuku was resting for his next attempt.
What Izuku had actually been doing was climbing out of his window. Izuku moved through the party unnoticed, but not unwelcome. This was one of the First Sons mixers, so he was known to most of the people here by this point. He earned a few second glances, but those were mostly because he'd never made an appearance before.
Especially without Hisashi being here.
But here he was, winding his way through bodies and music and sticky floors, the pen tucked into the inside copy of his coat, a small sticky note affixed to it that read Use Me. Now as found himself surrounded by lights and noise and bodies, Izuku felt as if he'd wandered into another world.
Is this what normal people did? Adults? Drank and danced with bodies interlocking like puzzle pieces to music loud enough to drown out thoughts? No wonder they hadn't made any headway into giving people quirks before Izuku came along.
Sweat coated his palms as he took a plastic cup and dumped the contents into a withering plant. Holding something helped him focus.
At one point he found himself on the balcony, looking down at the frozen lake that ran behind the building. The sight made him shiver. He knew for optimum results he mimic Melissa, recreate the successful scenario, but Izuku couldn't-wouldn't-do that.
He had to find his own method.
He pushed off the banister, and retreated back into the house. As he continued on a circuit through the rooms, his eyes flicked about, appraising. He was amazed at all the options for a suicide that existed here, and yet how limited the options for one with any chance of survival.
But Izuku was certain of one thing. He wasn't leaving here without a quirk. He wouldn't go back and watch Melissa joyfully saw at her skin, marvel at her strange new immortality that she hadn't even tried that hard to find. Izuku wouldn't stand there and take notes for her.
Izuku Midoriya was done being a sidekick.
By his third lap around the house, he'd swiped what he considered to be enough drugs to induce cardiac arrest. He wasn't sure though, because he had never done any in the first place.
He'd had to steal it from three separate people, since each only had a few on their person.
The First Sons were not good people, Izuku was finding out.
On his fourth lap around the house, while working up the nerve to use the drugs, he heard it. The front door opened. He couldn't hear that over the music, but from his place on the stairs, he felt the sudden burst of cold and then someone hollered and said, "Hisashi! You made it!"
Izuku swore softly and retreated up the stairs. He heard his own name as he wound through the bodies. He broke through and reached the second floor landing, then found an unoccupied bedroom with its own bathroom at the back. Halfway through the room, he stopped.
A bookcase lined one wall, and there in the center, his own last name leapt out at him in capital letters.
He pulled the massive binder from the wall, and opened the window. The study of emotional action and reaction hit the thin coat of snow below with a satisfying thud. Izuku shut the window and continued into the bathroom.
That was one question answered.
On the sink he set his things in order.
First, his phone. He punched in a text to Melissa, but didn't hit send. And set the device to the side. Second, the adrenaline shot. He'd be up to temperature, so hopefully a single direct injection would suffice.
It would be hell on the body, but so would everything else he was about to do. He set the needle beside the phone. Third, the coke. He made a neat pile, and began to separate it into lines with a credit card he had been given for emergencies.
Once Izuku had everything lined up the way that he thought it should be done, thanks to a healthy diet of crime shows, he pulled a dollar from his wallet and rolled it into a narrow straw. As seen on TV.
He looked into the mirror.
"You want to live," He told his reflection.
Mirror Izuku looked unconvinced.
"You need to live through this," He tried again. "You need to."
And then he took a breath and bent over the first line.
The arm came out of nowhere, wrapped around his throat, and slammed him back into the wall opposite the vanity. Izuku caught his balance and straightened in time to see Hisashi run his hand through the coke, brushing it all into the sink.
"What the hell?" Izuku hissed, lunging for it. He wasn't fast enough. Hisashi's coke-dusted palm shoved him back again, pinning him to the wall, leaving a white print on his shirt.
"What the hell?" Parroted his dad with shocking calm. "What the hell?"
"You weren't supposed to be here."
"You, my child, come to a party at the place where I work, and expect people not to notice? I was notified the minute you showed up. And then I hear you're skulking around and taking drugs? What were you thinking?" His free hand grabbed the cell on the sink. He read the text. He made a sound that sounded like a laugh, but his fingers tightened around Izuku's collar as his other hand pitched the phone into the shower, where it broke into several pieces.
"What if Melissa hadn't had her phone...or knew where to go?" He said as he let Izuku go. "What then?"
"Then I'd be dead." Izuku spoke with forced calm. His eyes drifted to the EpiPen. Hisashi's attention followed. Before Izuku could move, Hisashi grabbed the pen and lit it on fire, using his own quirk.
"I'm only trying to protect you," Hisashi said, casting the burnt cartridge aside.
"My hero." Izuku growled, trying to stalk past.
"I'm serious Izuku. You don't understand the things that are coming into play here," He considered him. "I probably shouldn't leave you here alone."
Izuku stared past him to the sink, the edge still dusted with coke. "I'll meet you downstairs," He said, gesturing to his shirt, the sink, the phone. "I have to clean up."
Hisashi didn't move.
Izuku's green eyes tracked up to meet his, "I've got nothing else on me." And then a small smile. "Frisk me if you're not sure."
Hisashi gave a cough of a laugh, but then his face sobered. "This isn't right Izuku. It's not the way."
"How would you know? You weren't there for any of the tests-"
"I don't mean the method. I mean all of it." He brought his other hand to rest on Izuku's shoulder. "The experiment is over. It was a bust. There's a better way that you can become a hero. Promise me you won't try this again."
Izuku held his gaze. "I won't."
Hisashi walked past him, into the bedroom, and paused. "I have a friend, well he's more like an associate of ours, who does work with quirks. I'll try to see if I can set up a meeting. He can help you. Melissa too." He then left the bedroom.
"Five minutes," He called as he left.
Izuku listened to the party flood in as Hisashi opened the door, then cut out again when he slammed it behind him. Izuku stepped up to the sink and ran his hands along the surface. It came away white. His fingers curled into a fist, and then hit the mirror. It cracked-
One long perfect line down the middle, but didn't shatter. Izuku's knuckles throbbed, and he ran them under the sink, reaching blindly for a towel as he wiped at the lingering poder. His fingers came across something, and a sudden shock of pain went up his hand. He recoiled, and turned to see a socket on the wall, a sticky note taped beside it that read Bad outlet do not touch.
Izuku frowned, his fingers tingling from the small jolt.
And then he moment froze. The air in his lungs, the water in the sink, the flurries just beyond the window in the other room. All of it froze, the way it had in the street last night with Melissa, only it wasn't Melissa's hand this time, but Izuku's, burning faintly from the shock.
He had an idea. Retrieving the three pieces of his cell from the shower floor and fitting them back together, he typed in the message. Izuku promised he wouldn't do it alone. And he wouldn't.
But he didn't need Hisashi either.
Are you ready? He texted, along with the address of the building.
And then he hit send.
Melissa rubber her eyes, resting her forehead for a moment against the glass, and let out a groan.
"I need you, Melissa. If you can't help me-"
"Don't you dare spin it that way-"
"I'll just end up trying by myself again-"
"Again?"
"And doing something stupid I won't recover from."
"This would be torture...this isn't an ice bath we're talking about here. Why can't we do...something peaceful?" She mumbled.
"The pain's important," Izuku explained, inwardly wincing, feeling his pocket buzz. Hisashi. He ignored it, knowing Hisashi had no way to track him.
Not yet anyway. "Pain and fear. They're both factors. It didn't work the first time when my dad tried it with me."
"What?"
A grim, triumphant smile played on his lips as he played that card. He had assumed that Hisashi hadn't told Melissa that he had tried the experiment on Izuku first. He was counting on it. The anger and panic showed in her eyes. She picked up the pace, and Izuku followed, drawing tracks in the snow as he went.
"When did he try this on you?" She asked.
"Four days ago."
She looked at the film of snow on the concrete between them.
"But you seem fine. Injuries aside."
"It wasn't enough. He got scared."
She groaned. "This is crazy. You're crazy."
"Melissa."
She looked up, eyes blazing. "There's not enough margin for error here! What if it goes wrong?"
"It won't."
"What if it does?"
His phone buzzed angrily in his pocket.
"It can't,". He explained as calmly as he could. "I took a pill."
Her brows knitted.
"My dad," he began, "isolated some of the adrenal compounds that kick in during life or death situations. He fabricated them. Essentially the pill acts like a trigger. A jump start."
It was all lies, but he could see that the existence impacted Melissa. Science, even fictional science held sway. Melissa swore, and tucked her hands into her jacket pocket.
"It's freezing out here."
"Where's your dad now?" She asked as Izuku swipes Hisashi's access card. "Why isn't he here?"
"He's busy with whatever he was doing when we conducted your experiment." Izuku said bitterly, scanning the ceiling for the red light of recording equipment.
"Look, all you have to do is use the electricity to turn me off. Then back on. The pill will do the rest."
"I've studied currents and the effect it has on devices, Izuku, not people."
"A body is a machine," he said quietly. He led the way into one of the electrical engineering labs and flicked a switch. Half the lights turned on. Equipment was stacked along one wall, a variety of machines, some that looked medical, others technical. The room was full of tables, long and thin but large enough to rest a body on. He could feel Melissa waver beside him.
"We should plan this out." She said. "Give me a couple of weeks. I can modify the equipment-"
"No." Izuku said, crossing to the machines. "It has to be tonight."
She looked shocked, but before she could protest, he interrupted. "My dad is actively trying to sabotage this. What do you think he'll do when he realizes that we've succeeded? That you have a quirk? They'll come after you. Me. Us."
She paled.
His phone vibrated again.
"How long?" She said at last.
"I'm not sure, but the faster the better. Time is most definitely a factor."
"This is mad," Melissa whispered over and over as she helped bind Izuku's legs to the table. He worried that even now, with the machines around them humming to life and her busy winding the rubber strap around his ankles, that she might back out.
"Hurry, my dad could come by at any moment. The cameras."
She picked up the pace, rushing to finish the knots, and showed him the rubber coated bars on the table where he could put his hands. Her blonde hair had always looked electrified, but tonight, it rose around her cheeks. Izuku thought that it made her look haunting.
Beautiful.
"Izuku." Her voice saying his name brought him back to the cold table in the lab.
"I want you to know." She said as she began to fix sensors to his chest. "That you are not allowed to die. Not here."
He shivered under her touch. "I know."
His coat and shirt were cast off on a chair, the contents of his pockets set on top. Amid the keys and a wallet and a intern badge, sat his phone, the ringer turned off. It blinked angrily at him, flashing first blue and then red and then blue again.
Izuku smiled grimly.
Too late dad.
Melissa was standing by a machine, idly biting the nails off one of her hands. The other rested on a set of dials. The machine itself was whirring and whining and blinking. A language that Izuku didn't know or understand.
Her eyes caught on something and she took hold hold of it, crossing back to him. It was a strip of rubber.
Everything beneath his skin was trembling. "Open your mouth." She said softly.
Izuku took one last deep breath and forced his mouth to open. The strap was between his teeth, his fingers testing their grip on the small table bar. He could do this. Melissa held herself under. Izuku could as well.
"I'm starting at the lowest setting, and going up." She made a motion with her hand. "Turn off, turn on."
Melissa was back at the machine. Their eyes met, and for an instant everything else vanished. The lab and the humming machines and the existence of quirks and his dad-and he was just happy to have her looking at him. Seeing him
And then she closed her eyes, and turned the dial a single click, and the only thing Izuku could think of was the pain.
Izuku fell back against the table in a cold sweat.
He couldn't breathe.
He gasped, expecting a pause, a moment to recover. Expecting Melissa to change her mind, to stop, to give up.
But Melissa turned the dial up.
The need to be sick was overcome by the need to scream and he bit into the rubber strap until he thought his teeth would crack but a moan still escaped, and he though Melissa must have heard, and she'd turn the machine off now, but the dial went up again.
And again.
And again.
Izuku thought he would black out but before he could, the dial turned up and the spasm of pain brought him back to his body and the table and the room and he couldn't escape.
The pain kept him there.
The pain tied him down as it shot through every nerve in every limb.
He tried to spit out the strap, but he couldn't open his mouth. His jaw was locked.
The dial went up.
Every time Izuku thought the dial couldn't go any further, the pain couldn't get any worse, and then it did and it did and it did and Izuku could hear himself screaming even though the strap was still between his teeth and he could feel every nerve in his body breaking and he wanted it to stop. He wanted it to stop.
He begged Melissa but the words were cut short by the strap and the dial turning up again and the sound in the air like cracking ice and shredding paper and static.
The darkness blinked around him and he wanted it because it meant the pain would stop but he didn't want to die and he was afraid that the darkness was death and so he pulled violently back from it.
He felt himself crying.
The dial went up.
His hands ached where they gripped the table bars, cramped in place.
The dial went up.
He felt his heart skip a beat, felt it grind and then double.
The dial went up.
He heard a machine warn, then alarm.
The dial went up.
And everything stopped.
The pain had followed him up again, and Izuku came to, screaming.
Melissa was fumbling with her hands, trying to coax them free of the bars. He shot forward, clutching his head. Why was the electricity still running? The pain was a wave, a wall, wracking his muscles, his heart. His skin was tearing with it, and Melissa was talking but Izuku couldn't hear anything through the agony. He curled in on himself and stifled another scream.
Why wouldn't the pain stop? WHY WOULDN'T IT STOP?
And then, sudden as a flipped switch, the pain was gone and Izuku was left feeling...numb. The machines were off, the lights sprinkled across all dead. Melissa was still talking, her hands running over skin, unbuckling the ankle straps, but Izuku didn't hear her as he stared down at his hands and wondered at the sudden hollowness, as if the electricity had gutted his nerves and left only shells.
Empty.
Where did it go? Will it come back?
In the sudden absence of pain, he found himself trying to remember how to drum up the sensation, a shadow of it, and as he did the switch clicked again, and the energy was there, crackling like static across his arms. He heard the crinkle of the air, and then he heard a scream. He wondered for an instant if it was coming from him, but the pain was beyond Izuku now, the electricity humming over his skin without really touching it.
He felt slow, dazed as he tried to process the situation. Nothing hurt so who was screaming? And then the body crumpled to the lab floor beside his table and the space between his thoughts collapsed and he snapped back to his senses.
Melissa! No! He jumped down from the table to find her writhing on the the floor, purple streaks of lighting writhing over her body, still screaming in pain. He thought stop! but the electricity from Izuku's body continued to grow around him.
Stop! She clutched her chest.
Izuku tried to help her up, but he was still sparking electricity like crazy so she cried out even louder when he touched her and he stumbled back, confusion and panic pouring through him.
The buzzing.
He had to turn it down. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it as a dial, tried to imagine turning some invisible device. He tried to feel calm. He was surprised at how easy it came to him in the midst of the chaos. The calm. The humming in the air had faded to a tingle, and then to nothing and then Izuku opened his eyes.
Melissa groaned as Izuku once again tried to hoist her up. This time he succeeded.
"Interesting note." He said, as Melissa caught her breath, her burns and wounds healing even as Izuku watched her. "You thought that our quirks were a reflection of our nature. God playing with mirrors, but you're wrong. It's not about Him. It's about us. The way we think. The thought that's strong enough to keep us alive. To bring us back. You want to know how I know?"
He turned his attention to the room, looking for something new to spark. "Because all I could think about was the lightning, the pain, and how I wanted it to stop hurting me. And now it can't."
He cranked the dial up in his mind and let the lightning shoot out of his arm, scorching the wall.
He felt powerful.
Melissa stood up on her own. At this point, all of her wounds had healed, and color had returned to her face. She smiled at him. It was a cold smile, a slightly foreign one, bordering on arrogant, but Izuku didn't mind. He rather liked that smile. It was almost as if the mask she'd worn had finally fallen off and she was giving Izuku a glimpse of what lurked behind it.
"Well, I guess I don't need to get that gun to test my regeneration speeds, now do I?"