Weeee, here's another!
CHAPTER 3: Midoriya Izuku
Midoriya Izuku is well aware of how he's perceived by those around him.
Such a sweet, polite little boy.
He's so well behaved for his age, Miss Midoriya!
He's quiet, isn't he?
Izuku, you should smile more.
Have you thought about getting him some glasses? His eyes-
Don't talk to that kid.
He's so thin.
Poor thing.
What a tragedy.
To each and every one of them Izuku had smiled politely, all while Omniscience burned at the back of his eye sockets like a angry bee. Telling him what they would say next, what they would do, what they really thought of him-
Because the real horror of Omniscience was never how he lost hours, days of his life. It was knowing so many things, having knowledge and sensations and feelings not his own be shoved into his head like searing, white hot metal being pressed into his brain.
(The truth of the matter was, terrible things splintered the timeline far deeper than choosing a different type of cereal in the morning.)
This was, unfortunately, the hand the world had dealt him, and the only thing he could do was keep moving forward and make the most of it. Like he'd told Kacchan long ago: not everyone had the perfect Quirk. The best thing those people could do was try to maximize any positive their powers brought to their lives and the lives of those around them.
And while Omniscience had a very fat, very long list of downsides, Izuku learned how to wield it. To make use of the building pressure in his skull, of the knowledge that threatened to make his eyes burst out of his sockets and make him go mad.
Through the years, he learned to channel his pain into something useful. Becoming a hero was but a fantasy given his condition -and oh, how his heart had ached when he realized how the very ability that should have helped him become the Number One hero was robbing him of his dream- but Izuku didn't just kneel over. He'd refused to spend his life alone in a hospital room as his Quirk slowly ate away at him.
(He'd seen too much just to stay in the sidelines and do nothing.)
Instead he got Naomasa on board and through the detective as a shield, he made a network to send his visions to those who needed it. Omniscience had robbed him of a fruitful life but it had saved the lives of hundreds by warning him of impending natural disasters days before they occured, and through his visions, many villains ended up behind bars.
From his tiny hospital room in the middle of nowhere, he was helping people across Japan. Saving them. It was a nice feeling.
Though despite everything he'd accomplished, no amount of training kept his Quirk from going out of control. Izuku had spent enough time during his younger years desperately trying reign it in to no avail. His power was just too wild, too erratic.
Too dangerous, for himself and the people around him.
(When he'd frozen in the middle of the road, eyes wide and staring off into the distance, it was Inko who pushed him out of the way of the speeding truck. She nearly got hit herself.
Izuku never really forgave himself for what could have happened.)
Those were the same words his mother told the teachers when he'd gone to school for the last time to bring his things home. Even at fourteen years old he could still remember the way the school director's eyes softened with sympathy as his mother explained why he would be homeschooled from then on. The pity in her gaze as she turned to look at him.
Izuku learned what shame was, then.
The day he left school, Izuku had no friends to say goodbye to. His Quirk had always creeped the other children out and combined with his known friendship with walking talking timebomb Bakugo Katsuki, he'd been isolated from the rest of the children.
It didn't bother Izuku was much as it should. It was better this way; too much of his time was taken away by his slips to have friends.
Plus, Kacchan with all of his eccentricities was more than enough.
Thinking of the blond made Izuku's lips twitch. He glances at his nightstand, where fresh daffodils lay in a glass vase, the bright yellow of their delicate petals drawing his attention. They were very pretty; hopefully this time he would be able to keep his friend's gift alive for more than a few days.
The whole flower thing started years ago on a accident. Kacchan wasn't the type of person to bring any kind of get well gift beyond a snarled reprimand and a smack over the head when Izuku's illness allowed it. Auntie Mitsuki on the other hand could pass as a reasonably well-mannered human and after his incident with the stairs, she brought Izuku a few flower arrangements during his recovery.
Kacchan had found them ridiculous. During his visits he would poke at the flowers, sneering at the plants as if they had personally offended him. His complains flew right over Izuku, who didn't think much of it beyond Kacchan being Kacchan. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for him to do it in front of his mother.
That's when disaster struck.
A passive-aggressive comment told in passing by Mitsuki was all that was needed for the equivalent of World War Three to occur between mother and son. Soon enough Izuku saw bigger and more extravagant flower arrangements be sent to his room.
It got to the point his bedroom smelled more like a greenhouse than a hospital room.
Izuku didn't mind it as much as his mother did; the flowers overpowered the smell of antiseptic, and the bright, eye-catching colors helped drown out the steady drip of information Omniscience forced on him. Not that he ever told that to Kacchan, because the taller boy would have taken it as a personal challenge and made his room look like a rainbow dropped down from the sky to grace every available inch of his bedroom.
The flower madness went on for a entire week and would have continued if an exasperated Inko hadn't pulled Mitsuki and Kacchan aside for a stern talking to that left Izuku's best friend skulking for a week.
While the war ended, Kacchan kept up buying flowers for Izuku. Just as a big fuck you to the old lady. Kacchan's own words, not his. Inko didn't like Izuku cursing. She barely tolerated Katsuki's potty mouth as it was and that was mostly due to the fact she -and everyone in the vicinity, including the doctors- thought that his foul mouth was a hereditary trait.
Izuku had to agree.
He leaned back into his chair, folding his legs tighter under the orange blanket Kacchan had gifted him during the first winter he spent in the hospital. His newest list of villain events was laid on his lap, tiny notes piling on the margin of his notebook as his chart slowly filled up.
Omniscience buzzed at the back of his eye sockets, making his eyes tingle as if there was a particularly agitated bee struggling to crawl out from behind his eyes. Izuku eyed his bottle of painkillers on the nightstand, debating getting up from his cocoon of warmth to fetch a pill or two.
He finally decided against it, turning to focus his attention on the last few names he remembered from his latest slip. He couldn't afford to be medicated, not today.
Izuku had places to be.
Which reminds me.
Closing his notebook, the young teenager languidly uncurls from his chair, once on his feet, he stretches like a disgruntled cat with a prolonged groan, grimacing internally at the way his joints creaked with the motion. Despite physical therapy and a good diet, his body had yet to meet any definition of healthy and give him the few inches in height he was sorely missing to look his age.
Setting the book on his cupboard, Izuku opens one of the drawers and pulls the pile of clothes in it back to expose two more notebooks tucked underneath. He folds the third with them and tucks the clothes back over it.
With that done, Izuku walks over to his small closet and puts on some running shoes. He glances at the door, frowning pensively at the clock.
4:05
Not much longer now.
He should get moving if he didn't want to be late.
(Omniscience made it so Izuku was aware at all times of his location in the timelines, but it was difficult to gauge the time in human terms. The universe was so much bigger than people thought it was, and time was no exception.)
Tossing a hoodie on, Izuku made a final tally of his clothes to make sure he was dressed for the weather. Getting a cold was the last thing he wanted; given his frail health, it would lead to complications.
He still remembered the last time he got a cold. Between Omniscience burning the back of his eyes, threatening to pop them out of his skull from the pressure and the nasty build up of snot clogging his nose, Izuku had been unable to even move from his bed.
He'd spent two weeks fighting for his life, his underdeveloped body struggling to keep up with both his Quirk's needs and fighting off the illness. At some point during those two hellish weeks, his doctors were certain that his body would give up under the strain. Not the nicest vote of confidence, but they were realistic.
(And Izuku had seen that in some instance, he didn't make it.)
Still, he managed to make it through the harrowing experience. Kacchan had been breathing out smoke by the end of it and his poor mother had dry eyes from all the crying.
Which meant that if he got sick now, Inko wouldn't let him see the end of it. Kacchan might even chain him to the bed and never let him outside ever again.
(The blond would probably do just that once he caught wind of what he was about to do. He might as well accept his future incarceration.)
Izuku fights back the twinge of shame as he walks out of his room. There's no need to check the hallway -he knows there was no doctors or nurses in sight. For all the security they boasted to Inko, it was ridiculously easy to leave the hospital.
His Quirk might have something to do with it, but that was a detail.
A tiny detail.
Totally insignificant.
Izuku not so gently taps on one of the doors on his floor level, fighting back a grimace as a furious screech comes from the other side. Mr. Yon hated being disturbed and with his conflict with his rowdy neighbor, Miss Agata, any interruption to his daily painting session was considered as a declaration of war from the short, portly woman.
And to think it all began because he stole her pudding. Internally, Izuku was glad he wasn't forced to interact with the other residents of the ward. Most of the patients were several times older than him.
While the 80-year old screeching up a storm, the young boy scurries away before the nurses came, attracted to the commotion like sharks to blood in the water.
There's a alcove up ahead, right before the hallway twisted and led to a common room and most importantly, a emergency exit door. Instead of going directly for the door though, he slows down as he reaches the alcove and goes for the couple of chairs and the small, worn little coffee table tucked at the back.
Izuku bends towards the catalogs, picking up the closest and laying back in one of the rigid plastic chair. Landscaping. Sweet. He'd always enjoyed reading about different kinds of flowers. This was much better than the golf magazines. Those were just boring, and made him go to sleep faster than any medication the hospital had on hand.
Footsteps rush past him, making him grin behind his catalog.
The nurse runs past his alcove without seeing him, too caught up in trying to reach the rampaging Mr. Yon's room to care about the small patient calmly sifting through magazines. It would have taken but a glance for him to notice that the boy was in fact, a runaway patient, but he was too distracted by the long, frustrating day he'd had spent tending to coma patients.
Izuku knew.
He patiently waits until the sound of the running man die off before he smiles and tosses the catalog over his shoulder. With the last stretch of the hospital cleared, he leaves the alcove behind and ambles towards the back door. There's a panel next to the locked gate, installed to keep the less stable patients from taking a stroll outside.
This one, he knows a few combinations. A few taps of his fingers, it chirps positively and the door swings open for Izuku.
Sometimes, Omniscience's knack for forcefully shoving completely useless information into his brain payed off.
Quickly but quietly, he makes his way to the bottom of the stairs and walked over to the exit door, the last thing keeping him from going outside into the cool afternoon air. There was a panel on the brick wall next to it, old and worn, displaying a number pad and a small window.
Izuku stares at the panel for a moment, squinting.
For this one, no series of numbers come immediately to mind.
Which means, Izuku was going to need to reach for the information he wanted.
Omniscience buzzes to life, making the fractal pattern in his eyes spin wildly as it revs up. Knowledge crashes into Izuku's skull like a river bursting through a small, barely controlled dam, quickly filling his head with stray bits of information. If he had been aware of the stream before, now it had painfully forced its way to the front of his mind.
Izuku can't fight back the grimace even if he tried. Stupid. He really should have bought painkillers with him.
Izuku squeezed his eyes hard and relaxed his shoulders, focusing on his breathing as to stave off the black spots in his vision. His Quirk had always been a loose cannon; in his early years he'd been able to steer it to the things around him, which he'd taken advantage of gleefully. But as time passed and his Quirk matured? This meager control slipped out of his fingers and vanished into the night, replaced by more and more slips that costed him hours if not days of his life.
Trying to make Omniscience do anything was like trying to wrangle a rabid bull with your bare hands. At least he'd only recently slipped under, giving him some room to breathe. There's no risk of him kneeling over in the middle of the street.
Over the years, Izuku had become quite knowledgeable on what asphalt tasted like.
It takes him a full ten seconds of standing there in the semi darkness to grasp a string of numbers from the river; quickly, he enters it into the panel.
It chirps gleefully. The lock clicks and he pulls the door open.
Bingo.
Air rushes past him, the cool afternoon breeze ruffling his green hair. Izuku shivers as he tucks himself deeper into his clothes like a turtle, pulling the hood over his head as he steps outside. It was chilly, but not too chilly. The dark storm from three days ago had passed and the sky was a dark sapphire blue. Cars honked in the distance.
As he walks out of the hospital, gently sliding the metal door closed behind him, Izuku catches a stray metallic glint above him. He immediately ducks his head, not wanting to attract attention in case someone was watching from the camera.
Briefly, the young teenager considered offering the camera a tiny, lopsided grin; just for added effect. It's not like he goes out often with his condition, he should make the most of it.
It's a childish idea that he dismisses quickly, though. It wouldn't do any good if they found out how he left the hospital. They'll probably change the locks and use id cards instead, knowing how zealous the director of the hospital was about safety.
(Ids wouldn't work against him either. It was only a matter of time before someone forgot their card somewhere and Izuku would ferret out that little bit of knowledge from the tangled mess in his head long before the new system was finished being installed.)
Yeah, he was going to be in so much trouble when he came back.
Hesitation trickles in. Maybe this wasn't the correct course. Maybe he wouldn't be there. There was a small percentage, as small as it was, that he would get distracted and Izuku would have wasted this outing.
Omniscience rises up again, burning at the back of his eyes as it pressed strands of knowledge into his brain. Images that Izuku saw again and again during his slips, too constant -too important for him to brush off. There was no way around this.
His hands were shaking, but Izuku straightened his spine and took a deep breath to even his nerves.
He couldn't be weak, not now.
He had someone very important to meet.