December 24 - Day 12
Chitose suddenly felt a jolt of pain, one on her chest and another one on the left side of her waist at the same time. In an automatic response, her eyes shot open - or so she thought what happened, even though nothing's really changed and everything is still pitch black. In the midst of darkness, she tried to move, but no matter how much she tried, her limbs just won't respond. And on top of all that there's not even a hint of sound to be heard, nothing but dead silence.
On a regular person, especially those with a morbid fear of sleep paralysis, panic would have already set in by now, but not Chitose, she knew what's going on. Instead of fear, all she can feel about in the moment is annoyance, pure unadulterated annoyance.
'Stupid alien biology…' she thought. If she could roll her eyes she would have rolled them ten times already at this point, yet she can't, she's just stuck in the dark unable to move anything. For the most part she knew this strange paralysis limbo-like state is still going to persist for the next two or three minutes, and there's nothing she can do about it. Nothing at all.
'Next time I'll make sure to check for ants…' she thought again, recalling numerous instances where similar jolts of pain 'woke' her up in this state, unable to sleep until she fully 'reactivates' herself again. For the longest time she had wondered about the real reason why it happens, but since once again no doctor could ever explain it, and they eventually just chalked it up to her strange anatomy.
'Great, now I've lost a few minutes of extra sleep. Now I'm going to fail the exam today… brilliant… wait a minute…' she paused her thoughts for a bit, realizing that there is no exam, nor she even goes to school at this point. She's just having another weird college memory.
'Hmmm another of those memories again…' she mused, successfully catching herself randomly remembering college memories out of nowhere. But at least this time she caught herself and successfully stopped it early, and that's a good thing.
"Look... I don't talk to people, okay? I don't interrogate. I punch them. I punch the bad guys, not talk to get more information. It's not my fault I didn't know what to do! Well maybe it's partly my fault but…"
Chitose raised an eyebrow, or so she felt she did even though her face didn't respond, at the voice she can now clearly hear from nearby (at the same time glad that her auditory systems are now beginning to re-activate, despite the rest of her still stuck in limbo). 'Is that Toshinori's voice…?' she asked herself in her thoughts, noticing the familiar voice still talking about failing to interrogate.
"Yeah I know I only got lucky. I didn't even expect her to even arrive! In fact I'm already fully expecting her to be already gone! But turns out that's not the case. Despite my numerous nonsensical failures yesterday, it is NOT the case." The voice that's clearly from Toshinori continued, before trailing off.
"Toshinori, stop talking so loud…"
Chitose wondered about the second voice that sounded like it came from an old woman just to her right.
"How is she?"
"Her vitals have stabilized… mostly… ECG still won't pick up an accurate signal but breathing's back to normal."
"Oh thank goodness!"
Confusion soon began swirling inside Chitose's mind, at the same time feeling that she can already twitch her fingers. One of the voices is clearly Toshinori. Why is he talking about interrogation? And who's supposed to have stabilized vitals? Are they talking about her? Or someone nearby her?
A bright light suddenly shone amidst the darkness at the same time she felt something pulling up her eyelids, further confusing her. And just a few moments later, she heard a rather loud sound of a door opening and closing-
'Chitose Kizuki. Codename: Curious, of the Meta Liberation Army…' the voice of All Might suddenly echoed inside her head out of nowhere, somewhat startling her, before repeating itself again, and then a third time. After a few moments of the thoughts swirling about, something unexpectedly clicked inside her mind. She remembered something…
She remembered feeling pure terror and going haywire after hearing All Might utter out who she really is, and out of desperation she blew up the table in front of her and got flung backwards, hitting the back of her head onto the marble floor with considerable force, and the last thing she saw before blacking out is All Might's fist going right to her face.
…
'Oh no… '
…
"Her pulse rate is rising." She heard the voice of the old woman again, at the same time felt multiple taps on her left shoulder.
"Is she going to be okay?"
That last voice she immediately recognized as Izuku, coming from her right. Despite his odd calming presence she herself cannot properly explain, nervousness still rapidly flooded her entire system. What happens now once she truly wakes up? Jail time? That's it? Or is she already in jail with the heroes just waiting for her to really wake up? How will she ever be rescued from All M-
Her eyes suddenly shot open, this time for real, followed closely by a loud gasp for air. Her still-blurry vision instinctively darted around for the first few moments, immediately seeing multiple hospital machines nearby that looked like they're just hastily dragged into place. But as she further looked around, she eventually realized that she's currently just in a hospital-like room, laying down, with a blanket over her, and somehow not in prison.
And right at her feet, the three people that immediately rushed there the moment she opened her eyes: Toshinori, Izuku, and UA's resident doctor, Recovery Girl – who she noticed a bit later than the first two considering her height and gray hair easily blending into the machines around her.
"Uh…I-uh… um…" she uttered out, not even being able to make coherent words due to sheer nervousness and overflowing thoughts about getting caught by All Might. "I'm-"
"I'm really sorry for the psychedelic slug accident earlier!" Toshinori suddenly said with a surprisingly raised voice, right away following it with multiple bows before muttering out even more apologies. Both Izuku and Recovery Girl immediately turned to face him, both having clearly confused expressions. Chitose herself found the entire thing even more odd, for Toshinori never acted even remotely similar to what he's acting now as far as she can remember. "I promise it will never happen again! Sorry!" the middle-aged man added, with yet another bow, and yet another apology after said bow. He would've said more if it weren't for Recovery Girl giving his right leg a good whack with her walking stick, disrupting him.
'Psychedelic… slugs…?'
"What are you-?" Chitose was about to ask about the 'slugs' when Toshinori once again suddenly talked in a very loud voice, effectively silencing her.
"Young Midoriya will tell you the whole story! For the time being, you get comfy there while me and Recovery-ow!" Toshinori was cut off after once again receiving a whack from the short older woman once again to his right leg. But he almost immediately composed himself and then gently (but very quickly) nudged her out of the room, loudly closing the door behind them after yet another apology about psychedelic slugs.
'Slugs…?' Chitose, now with her nervousness leaving her entirely for reasons unknown, raised an eyebrow as he watched how Toshinori opened the just recently-closed door just to utter yet another apology before getting cut off again by another whack, in which he finally closed the door for good.
Now it's just her and Izuku again. "Psychedelic… slugs…? SLUGS…?" she asked,swiveling her head to face Izuku, who's still staring at the door also looking confused on what just happened. "Slugs? As in shell-less snails? Those slugs? Psychedelic Slugs…?" she was about to add another confused question when she suddenly felt a sharp sting of pain on her lower lips, making her instantly remember how she bit them hard during her panic attack earlier-
"Yeah… slugs…" Izuku muttered, awkwardly scratching the back of his head as he slowly turned to face her. "Psychedelic slugs to be exact. Mr. Yagi said there's a kid with a psychedelic slug Quirk training nearby, and apparently one of his slugs got away…" his voice trailed off as he scratched the back of his neck. "Apparently they're pretty small, and whoever gets within a few meters of one will eventually fall unconscious after a few seconds and rapidly develop false memories which will ultimately lead to an interrogation session with the thing they fear the most… He also said that the transition from the real world into the fake world is so seamless that its victims would think they're real… He said some more but that's basically what it's about."
"That Meta Ability is oddly specific on so many levels…" Chitose replied, her brows furrowing as she noticed the strangely specific abilities the Metapower can do. But if apparently all that happened to her, especially the whole 'interrogation session' with All Might, is that she's affected by the psychedelic slugs and everything is just a dream, then why does she have injuries related to the so-called hallucination? "Wait… so if I just hallucinated-"
"What did you dream about?"
"I uh… I dreamed about a talking unicorn giraffe with a lab coat…"
"You're scared of giraffe scientists? Well that's an odd phobia…"
Chitose nodded as she lay on the bed, trying her best just to not suddenly burst out laughing due to the sheer absurdity and silliness of her own excuse. But noticing a massive grin rapidly threatening to creep up her face, she quickly pulled up the covers to obstruct Izuku's view of her injured lips. "By the way, if I just hallucinated the whole interrogation, then why do I have injuries on my lips? I remember being all scared during the interrogation and bit my lip down," she said, finding it a bit hard to talk with the pain on her lower lip firing up repeatedly.
"Y-yeah about that… Apparently the Psychedelic Slug Quirk works in a way that whatever you're doing within the hallucination is also happening in real-time. Mr. Yagi said he just left you for a while and then suddenly you're bleeding out from both your lips and thighs just outside the building right next to this."
"What…? Bleeding out…? Outside…? Whatever I do happens inside the…" Chitose took a deep breath, nervousness creeping back to her as she remembered something very significant she did while inside the 'hallucination'. "Uh… did something uh… did something explode…?"
"Explode-what?"
"As in a bomb exploding… Did a bomb explode near me…?"
Chitose saw Izuku glance a bit on something to her left and then back to her, his expression now slightly worried and curious at the same time. "No, why? All Mr. Yagi said is that he found you all unconscious by the base of the stairs, with bleeding lips and thighs, that's it. What's up with the explosion? Is that somehow related to something? Your Chemistry-based Quirk perhaps?"
"No-no-no it's uh…" Chitose's eyes darted around, ending up with her instinctively covering herself up with her blanket in nervousness as she lied on the bed, and hoping Izuku would say that the explosion didn't happen and she didn't accidentally destroy UA property. "I was just wondering because the Lab Coat Giraffe suddenly conjured a time bomb out of thin air during the middle part of the interrogation and then detonated it…" the young woman stammered, finding her excuse extremely nonsensical.
"Nope," Izuku shook his head. "There's no explosion. If there is, then not only I would have heard about it, but the entire school should be right here right now! Don't worry everything's fine!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes. You're out of the illusion now. You're really scared of bomb-wielding giraffe scientists, huh?"
Chitose slowly peeked out from behind the covers, fingers slightly trembling. "No explosion? Nothing really happened…?"
"Kizuki, there are no more bomb-wielding giraffe scientists…" Izuku slowly said in a gentle tone as he sat on the young woman's hospital bed. "Everything is just a dream, you're fully woken up now."
Thoughts immediately swirled around Chitose's head. So is everything just a dream? So she didn't accidentally destroy something? Did the Psycho Slugs really just warped her perception of reality and she didn't really have a one-on-one interrogation with the Number One - who somehow figured out that she's very high up on the Meta Liberation Army ladder?
So is she safe now…?
?
"Where's All Might?" she asked, noticing Izuku once again staring at something to her left. "I thought he's supposed to be here?"
"All Might didn't make it…" Izuku replied with a defeated sigh. "Mr. Yagi said he has some urgent things to do in Tokyo… bummer… so what about you, you okay now? You clawed your lap pretty bad and actually required some stitches-"
"Stitches-?!" Chitose suddenly said out in shock, inadvertently raising her legs and causing a sharp jolt of pain to rapidly course through them making her let out a loud yelp, but it did disappear rather quickly. Apparently, yes, she did claw in her lap pretty bad. "What kind of anesthetic did they use? The common ones don't do well with me!"
"I think I saw a medi-bot come in here while I go check out what Psycho slugs look like. I didn't find any but-"
"A medic… bot…?" Chitose slowly said, her face contorting into pure annoyance. "A Medic bot? Really? So the anesthetic they used is the one commonly come pre-loaded into them…? Oh come on…"
"What does it do? Is it toxic to you?"
"No, not really. The anesthetics still pretty much work as intended but as a side effect my taste buds get all wonky for quite a few hours…" Chitose shook her head. "Well actually there are quite a number of possible side-effects but the numb taste buds are a constant of medi-bot anesthetic."
"Must be hard for other mutants with numerous physical mutations to get checked up huh? I imagine them bringing up a great deal of confusion onto the doctors and medical staff on the regular."
"Yep, that's pretty much always the case with mutants, especially those with out-of-this-world illnesses." Chitose paused and nodded. "And as for me, since I look just like a regular human anyway just with silly colors, doctors prescribe human medicine to me. Yeah those don't normally work out well. At least my immune system's good enough and kept me up all this time!" she said with a smile as she pulled back the covers and slowly sat up straight, wiping her eyes and yawning afterwards. She may not like being hospitalized because of her own self-injuries due to hallucinations brought about by psychedelic slugs, but she would be lying if she said she didn't enjoy the (unusually) comfortable hospital bed. And the best part today is that the meeting with All Might is just a dream! She did NOT get found out!
"Uh Midoriya? Why did Mr. Yagi and Recovery Girl suddenly leave us alone here?" she asked.
"I don't know, really. Maybe they're going to try and get All Might? That would be neat!"
Chitose raised one eyebrow on the odd way Izuku said his sentence, and about how he's suddenly looking the other way before walking off as if her simply sitting up scared him off. Did she inadvertently pull off a nightmare face again as she was stretching her limbs as she yawned earlier? Either way, she immediately felt a bit stung. But instead of just keeping quiet, she accidentally let out a weak, "yeah I know I'm ugly, you don't need to rub it in and leave-"
"Wait wait wait wait! I didn't say anything about ugliness!" Izuku quickly turned back to face her, almost falling over due the sheer imbalance brought about by his multiple layers of clothes. "I only left because uh… because uh… you're uh…" he stammered, his face (or so what's visible of it) almost a vivid shade of red, as he gestured over and over to her.
Naturally, it got Chitose wondering. Why is Izuku-
She looked down.
"Why… the hell…" her voice trailed off as she immediately realized that she has no shirt on and is only wearing a bra for a top. Speechless and in utter confusion, she turned her attention towards her right arm, almost immediately noticing her long-sleeved dress – her most elegant and expensive dress she chose just for this trip, is now ripped apart from the neck down to the torso region and is now just dangling behind her like shed skin, alongside her jacket (which luckily did not share the same fate with her dress). Additionally, there are multiple electrodes attached on random points on her chest. But the thing that stood out most is a peculiar dark blue patch of skin directly on her sternum.
"What happened to my dress? What's with all this?" She asked, her voice stuttering in a mix of annoyance, shock, and frustration. "What happened to me?" she quickly turned towards Izuku, whom she caught staring at her exposed chest for a whole second before reacting.
"I'm not looking at anything!" the young man said out loud, seemingly overreacting at such a simple question. "I'm look- I mean I'm no- I'm loo- I'm looking respectfully! I swear! Please don't slap me."
Chitose rolled her eyes and ran a palm down her face. "Seriously, what happened? Why am I hooked up on all this? I thought I'm just affected by the Psycho slugs, so why all this?"
"Mr. Yagi said the slugs can really mess up a person, that's why you had to be hooked up on there…" came the awkward response.
The young woman raised an eyebrow in response, eyes glancing over to the various medical machines around her. "That sounds a little too far-fetched. In can understand toxin-based Meta Abilities messing people up, but Psycho Slugs? That just sounds… wrong." Chitose said, and was about to ask something about the electrodes on her chest when she noticed that the suspicious patch of dark blue skin is strangely rectangular in shape.
"Did I just get defibrillated?!" she suddenly exclaimed. Her thoughts immediately pieced together the sudden jolt of pain on her chest that woke her up in the first place and the ripped-open dress. "What the HELL?!"
"…"
Chitose stared down the patch of skin, inadvertently gritting her teeth in her rising frustration, memories of all the similar past events suddenly re-entering her mind: doctors getting confused on her strange internal anatomy and causing them to make rash decisions that ultimately resulted in more harm than good. Almost automatically, her left hand began feeling around the front-most left section of her waist, towards a spot she knew another discoloration would be located. "Hey Midoriya, is there a rectangular patch of dark skin over here?"
"Y-yes."
"What shape is it?"
"RECTANGLE!" Izuku said unusually loudly, his face still visibly red. "There's some dark bluish stuff there."
Chitose facepalmed right after, but not because of Izuku's awkward words, but because of the confirmation that she did just, in fact, get defibrillated. "Dammit! I just got defibrillated, AGAIN!"
"Defib-what…?" Izuku asked, the redness in his face quickly dissipating. "You mean the thing they use to shock hearts or something? The rectangle electrical hospital-thingies?" he added, motioning her hands as if mimicking a defibrillator and shocking someone. "So you got shocked? But why would they do that?"
"No wonder I got all these stupid electrodes on!" she said with an even more annoyed tone than earlier, before slowly ripping off the electrodes attached to her chest one by one, in which she definitely knew how considering how many times this accident happened before. "Stupid alien biology messing me up again!"
"Hey you can't just remove that!"
"Yes I can. This is just a mistake! This is all just a huge mistake!" she said as she continued to remove electrode after electrode. "So Mr. Yagi said I fell unconscious after unknowingly getting within range of a psychedelic slug, right?"
"Yes, why?"
Chitose took a deep breath and sighed. "Whenever I sleep, or anything that involves sleeping – like passing out or getting knocked out, my body enters a state of torpor, in which everything drastically slows down, breathing, brain activity, heartbeat, and all. People, doctors especially, who have no idea what's really going on, immediately panic, especially at the lack of a pulse. They think I'm dying, and then BAM! Defibrillator!"
"So you sorta hibernate everytime you sleep? No offense but that's kinda cool. First there's your strange illness cycle that involves your body temperature going down, and then the super-charged immune system that can deal with rabies, the loud two-chambered heart, the permanently glowing eyes, and now the hibernation? So how does it feel hibernating every night?" Izuku asked, amazement clear in his expression despite the only thing visible on his face amidst his numerous covers are his eyes. "Does it feel like a polar bear? How about a grizzly bear? Can you sleep for a whole month? Do you need to store fat for it? Does garlic have anything to do with that?"
"Sorry to disappoint you, Midoriya but… my 'hibernation' just feels like regular sleep, nothing special at all. Well actually I don't really know why my body even needs to shut down and hibernate everytime I fall asleep but it is what it is…" Chitose shrugged. "Maybe there's a reason for it and I just don't know yet? But yeah it pretty much just feels like regular sleep. Although if I get suddenly woken up, like through a painful ant bite or something similar like getting defibrillated, I 'wake' up in a strange state of sleep paralysis where all I can see is black, I can think and hear things, mostly, but I can't move nor see in the next two or three minutes before I finally 'wake up'.
"Woah… you're amazing…"
"Aww that's nothing!" Chitose said as she made an awkward wave of a hand and tilted her head away, already feeling mighty relieved that she managed to pick off every single electrode attached to her because now her face is heating up and her pulse rate just jumped considerably. If she was still attached to a heart monitor, it would have been very awkward.
But on the contrary, since her pulse rate did jump considerably, her heartbeat is now faintly audible – especially more so in a relatively quiet room.
And it was definitely awkward.
"You know, Kizuki, I'm normally scared of heartbeats and other similar sounds but yours getting faster after a simple compliment is really adorable. I can't explain why but I think it's really cute."
Chitose blanked out, her jaw slightly hanging.
She can't comprehend the thought that someone just used the word 'adorable' and 'cute' to describe her. It may not be about her face, and it's directed towards a random internal organ out of all things, but still… not a single person in her entire life ever used those words to describe her-
Until today…
…
"I uh…" her voice trailed off. "Uhh…"
"Hey it's just a compliment! Don't think too much about it!" Izuku said with a few chuckles, waving a mittened hand in front of the stunned young woman's face in an attempt to hopefully snap her out of her trance.
Chitose's mind eventually went back to the present after a short wihle, finding her face all heated up and her heart considerably beating faster than before. "I've never been called that before and I just uh… I uh…" she slowly said before slowly raising up the blanket to cover her chest. "I can't…"
"You're technically way older than me and that's the first time you heard that specific compliment?" Izuku shrugged, mentally asking himself how that could even be possible. "Well if that's the case, want me to call you-"
"That won't be necessary. I'd rather have my compliments organic."
"Yeah. I think organic compliments are the best kind of compliments," Izuku said with a light nod. "By the way, how do you blush red if you have blue skin? If you have red blood, wouldn't that mean you should blush purple?"
"Actually I don't really know how that works… I don't really blush that much."
"Well I made you blush! I don't know why but I'm suddenly feeling special right now!"
Chitose just responded with a smile.
"Or maybe I'm feeling special because-" Izuku suddenly did an All Might pose, but since he's packing multiple layers of winter clothing he just looked absolutely ricidulous, "I actually managed to make a girl's heart race today."
"That's not really an achievement. Point a knife at someone and it would pretty much achieve the exact same thing." Chitose joked. "Not really that medal-worthy."
"I made an alien heart race!" Izuku said again, this time with another All Might pose, and another, and then a third one – all of them looked equally ridiculous. "I made your two-chambered alien fish heart race! Now THAT'S an achievement!" he said alongside another triumphant pose.
"Midoriya you're being cringe."
"I don't care, your heart seems to like it," Izuku said before once again striking poses, and eventually muttering something about feeling like an accomplishment is what All Might must feel like all the time.
"Well I don't," Chitose said in a joking manner despite, yes, her heart is racing even faster than before. But in terms of awkwardness, for some reason she can't feel any awkwardness at all despite the rapid thumping noise now more audible in the relatively quiet clinic. Does she care? Well for the time being the answer is no.
"You know, Kizuki, achievement aside, I don't remember your heartbeat sounding like that…" The young man suddenly asked, immediately stopping his All Might impersonations. As far as he knew, the young woman's externally audible heartbeat sounds very much just like a regular person's, but this time the rhythm just seems very off. "The rhythm sounds off. It's not because of me, right?"
"It just sounds like that because I got defibrillated. It'll just fix itself over time, nothing to worry about. I've been shocked like this numerous times in the past two decades or so, complete with a long list of dresses being torn off. All in all nothing really came out of it, my pulse irregularities just re-normalizes itself over the course of an hour or so.
"Wow a self-repairing heart, well that's new!" Izuku immediately went to the now-inactive-but-still-on heart monitor beside Chitose and pointed at the screen. "Also just a little earlier I saw the lines over here are unusually erratic, does that have something to do with being shocked?"
"The erratic lines are a natural. My heart just gives out those weird lines whether shocked or not. As for the reason why? I don't know the reason why."
Izuku nodded, crossing his arms as if he has another question. "Hmmm based on my little knowledge about these machines, I think your heart has drastically different electrical impulses than a regular human's, hence the erratic lines…"
Chitose did a joking chuckle. "Are you trying to be an alien cardiologist?" she chuckled again, shaking her head. "I think you'll be better off as a human cardiologist, patient-wise."
"Nah I'm just curious about self-repairing hearts."
"I'm not even sure if it's actually self-repairing, I mean it's not been technically damaged yet."
Izuku shook his head, crossing his arms and eventually facing her. "You know, Kizuki? Considering your life history all the way till now? All the things you said back in the beach? Your insecurities and fear of abandonment due to your appearance and Quirk? I can safely say it's already been damaged before, and quite heavily at that." He said as he did a light nod. "It's gotten a thousand cuts, and probably broken off far more times. I couldn't even imagine if I could pull through something like that, and yet here you are, casually throwing jokes back at me. It's healing. Your heart's just something special, you know?" he finished his sentence with a warm smile despite his mouth being covered. "It's got the fortitude of a nuclear bomb shelter!"
Chitose just stared at him, utterly speechless, and mouth slowly hanging. Izuku suddenly going on a strange philosophical tangent about her heart's ability to heal is utterly stupid, on top of being (extremely) cringe. But still, her eyes suddenly started watering. "I… I… that's both the silliest and nicest thing someone's ever said to me! And I didn't even understand a thing you just said!" she said, quickly wiping off her tears, but with a bright smile on her face. "I… I…" she stuttered, as tears continued to flow.
"I was just re-enacting something dramatic I heard from a movie, and I didn't know if I even pulled it right but… you're welcome?" Izuku said with a light blush, raising his hands a bit. "You're one tough cookie. I promise I won't break it. I'll be veeery gentle with it, like, super gentle!" he added with a joking chuckle.
"Oh- I… uh… Yeah…" Chitose chuckled mid-cry, before suddenly lunging forward in a spur of emotion, arms encircling around Izuku's head and pulling him in with maximum force-
"WAIT!"
Chitose snapped out, mind going blank for a brief moment after being startled by the loud yell of Izuku, before noticing that both of the young man's hands are now planted onto her shoulders. It took a few seconds before she realized Izuku just stopped himself from being awkwardly smothered directly into her chest…
And she only has a bra on…
…
Both just froze in their position for a whole five seconds before slowly and awkwardly disentangling themselves.
"I'm sorry…" Chitose muttered as she wiped off her tears, feeling tremendously embarrassed by her actions. "I'm sorry," she repeated softly.
"You know what? Let me go fix that for a bit…" Izuku quickly went in and grabbed the sheets covering the young woman's lower half, pulled it up, and hooked it around her shoulders. "Okay! Now it's covering everything! We can go hug each other now."
"I… uh… you covered me up," Chitose replied, her voice still quavering, but with a smile now back to her face. "I can't move my arms forward or else the covers will fall."
"Want me to give you a hug?"
"Uh… okay…?"
"Okay here goes!" Izuku said before hopping in place for a bit, stretching his arms, stretching his neckm cracking his knuckles, doing one All Might pose, and then lunging forward, deliberately raising himself on his tip toes just to be clear off of landing directly straight onto the young woman's chest. Although in the end, the clinic bed's height, coupled with Chitose's own height, meant he still only reached the base of her neck. "Yes! Free of awkwardness at last! How do you feel now?" he asked as he wrapped his arms around her.
Chitose immediately felt her eyes tearing up again, rapidly blurring out her entire vision. "I'm… I'm crying… again…" she said with a few awkward laughs as she rested her chin onto Izuku's head, feeling a very strange and overwhelming heartwarming feeling surging through her systems. "I've… never had… a hug since… forever…" her voice slowly trailed off, closing her eyes, and following it with a few more awkward laughs upon realizing she already received a hug from Inko just some time ago. But how come she didn't feel all emotional back then? She just chalked it up to the overall mood of the scene back then compared to now, and the fact that her young self hasn't taken over massive chunks of her memory yet. With a joking voice, mid-sob, she continued, "I sure do hope no one can see us here. That would be awkward-"
"You're already the executive director of Shoowaysha, and you never had a hug before?"
"The real last hug I can remember is way back when I was five… I don't want to talk about that anymore… By the way I apologize in advance for flooding tears all over your hair…" Chitose said, accompanying it with a loud sigh of comfort, mind slowly being filled with thoughts about all the times she rejected the idea of the supposed therapeutic effects of hugging, on the thought that they're just bogus being spouted out by psychiatrists. Apparently, they're not even half as bad as she thought they were.
She was about to jokingly suggest a shampoo for Izuku when the hug tightened again, and loosened again for a few seconds. She was slightly confused as to why Izuku has done it twice now but she would be lying if she said the tightened hugs didn't feel nice.
"Hey Kizuki, what's it like being a Shoowaysha executive? Do you get to see mangas all the time? Do you get a say on them? If you say you want a particular plot, does the mangaka need to follow your word?"
"I'm an executive director, not a manga editor, Midoriya."
"Oh that's too bad. I was gonna ask if you have seen spoilers for some popular mangas right now… so what do you do as an executive director?"
Chitose opened her eyes and tilted her head towards her shoulder to wipe off her face onto the blanket that's currently there. She was about to respond when Izuku yet again tightened the hug for a short while. "So uh," she said after the hug loosened. "I just uh… I just uh… oh crap… I forgot…" she said in full disappointment as she rested her chin back onto Izuku's head. She tried to recall at least a single thing she does as a Shoowaysha executive, but no matter how hard she tried, all she can recall is that she makes it so that the company keeps publishing the Meta Liberation War book, and that's it. "I forgot what I do at work…"
"I'm sure you'll eventually remember them."
"I hope so… wait let me go remember my work again… I think uh… I think I write articles… but I don't really do that as an executive, I just write articles for fun." Chitose scoffed, quite annoyed by herself. But at the end of the day, the Revival Party is already done, that means she doesn't really have to go back to Shoowaysha anymore and she can now freely forget her job-
Izuku squeezed her again, this time a little longer than the earlier ones.
"Um… why do you keep doing that?" she immediately asked as the hug loosened.
"Your heart speeds up every time I tighten the hug and it's honestly… really… adorable…"
Chitose grit her teeth, feeling her face heat up in record time as her fingers immediately began trembling. There's that word again, that same word that sent her in a mad blushing state just a little while earlier. By all means she SHOULD know Izuku is just joking this time, which he made all the more obvious by deliberately slowing down that specific word and following it with a light chuckle, and that means she should NOT get riled up. It's just a fake compliment! It's just for laughs! Then why is she getting riled up?! Why is her face heating up? Why is she… liking it?! What is going on?!
A hand waving in front of her face snapped the young woman back into reality. Apparently, all the while she's thinking of the compliment made her blank out again and grasp onto the sides of her head looking like she's panicking.
"I uh… your pulse got a little too scarily high there… I didn't do anything wrong, did I?" came Izuku's soft comment while he's now standing beside her.
"No uh… you didn't do anything wrong it's just uh…" Chitose's voice trailed off, feeling her face still significantly heated up. "I… I actually… like it… I can't explain why," she outright said, no more excuses. "Why is that?"
"Maybe you just really like compliments! I mean everyone loves compliments! I do love me a good compliment too every now and then," Izuku said before muttering something about being glad the 'scarily high pulse rate' is nothing too serious. "Although I wish someone would compliment my sense of fashion."
"Midoriya, penguin-fashion is not fashion," she said with a light giggle.
"What if we go to the local zoo? Would the penguins approve of my fashion?"
"No, but Leopard seals will!" she replied, stifling a laugh.
"What are Leopard seals? Is that a hero I don't know about?"
"An Antarctic predator of penguins."
Izuku did a silly face in response. "Maybe you can lend me a ray gun or something? Some fancy space tech so I can fight off the seals and look awesome to my eventual penguin army?"
"No can do, Midoriya. Orion ray guns – the only guns I have on my mothership, does not work on Leopard seals. Elephant seals, maybe, but Leopard seals? Heck no. In fact if you shoot them, it'll only charge them up and fire a laser back at you!"
"Damn those Leopard seals! How can I ever ask the penguins of my fashion?!" Izuku said, followed closely by a satisfied sigh. "Look at you, you're having fun! Isn't it fun?"
"Yeah… Haven't really had a laughable conversation in years…" Chitose awkwardly answered, glancing over to the door while rubbing the right side of her head. "Although it still kinda confuses me how come I like your compliments… I've received my fair share of them, especially at my talent at writing down articles… So what's up with you? You don't really have a third Meta Ability that makes people like you, right?" she asked, genuinely curious despite fully aware her question sounded awkward.
Izuku paused a bit, a light blush coming up his face. "I think uh… I think it's because a compliment has more impact if it's said by a person you personally know… or so I think even though we only knew each other for about a week. BUT! On the other hand, maybe you're just liking my compliments because," the young man did an exaggerated gasp, putting both his mittened hands to his covered mouth, "because I'm just that special! I'm the chosen one!"
"Well maybe that's just the case," Chitose chuckled a bit.
"Or maybe I do have a hidden power to control alien hearts! And it's affecting what you think of me!" Izuku said followed by his best impersonation of a villain laugh. "But darn! I'm at UA and All Might could just be around us! Curses! I'll just have to map out my villainous plan back at the lair," he added, followed by yet another villainous laugh. "Bla bla bla galactic domination bla bla bla…"
"You look like a penguin overlord. No offense though, just a comment."
"Hmm… Penguin Overlord doesn't sound bad as a villain name huh? If he's real… What do you think he would look like?"
"A space penguin with an eyepatch perhaps? And a mustache? And a cigarette? And a trenchcoat? And a massive multi-barreled grenade launcher that shoots exploding snowballs?"
"That's pretty badass if you ask me, and plus he controls alien hearts! How cool is that? You know what I'll go draw him when we get home," Izuku said with a few nods. "Also by the way your blanket fell off minutes ago, just saying."
"My blanket fell of wha-" Chitose stopped and immediately looked down. The blanket indeed fell. It took her a few seconds before she eventually realized that it must have fell down when she got utterly confused on liking Izuku's compliment somehow-
Something clicked inside her mind. What if Izuku's words somehow just had a somewhat amplified effect because her mind is now technically half-returned to her twenties – before her article-writing days, and these are the times that she hasn't really received any compliments yet?
Or is it? Or maybe Izuku really just really has something special in him?
?
She brushed off the thoughts and her mind eventually returned to the present, in which she finally re-covered herself again. But looking down, she couldn't help but wonder, how come she didn't notice the blanket falling down and exposing herself for the second time already-?
She suddenly remembered something, especially one particular habit of her early twenties self. 'Yep… that's the one…' Sighing and rolling her eyes, she took off the blanket again, and hurriedly began tying up what remains of the upper torso region of her dress onto her waist, but not before slipping her arms off of the sleeves first.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm making sure I will not accidentally expose myself again," Chitose grumbled, one part of her wondering why didn't Izuku just straight out tell her that the blanket is already down, while the other half is irritated that her most expensive dress is now ruined simply because of her stupid alien anatomy confusing the medical staff. "Instead of just awkwardly covering myself with this blanket and failing spectacularly, I could just use my still-very-much-intact jacket instead," she added as she quickly slung the jacket up to her shoulders and-
Chitose eyes widened at the sight of the slightly singed front side of the jacket.
"I'm pretty sure it still wouldn't fit," Izuku commented, quickly glancing towards the door afterwards. "If you want I can just call them back to give you an actual-"
"Midoriya, are you sure there are no explosions? Nothing at all…?" Chitose asked, her voice slightly trembling as she looked back again towards her still open jacket. "Not even the slightest bit of a vibration or something?"
"Nope."
Chitose continued staring at the jacket, her thoughts going back to the fragments of what she could remember before blacking out. She remembered priming the entire table and blowing it up, launching herself backwards and hitting the back of her head onto the floor. Almost instinctively, she slowly reached out towards the back of her head and felt around, and there is, in fact, a sizeable swelling that's painful to the touch.
She blanked out, nervousness rising. How come Toshinori's explanation (Or so what Izuku said) only covered the bitten lip and the clawed-in lap? How come not the singed jacket and the painful swelling on the back of her head? So did the interrogation really happen or-?
'Look... I don't talk to people, okay? I don't interrogate. I punch them. I punch the bad guys...' she remembered Toshinori's words just a while ago.
'Interrogate… punch the bad guys…'
'Interrogate…'
Chitose gulped down, slowly running a palm down her face, and only now realizing that there's a faintly painful spot right in the middle of her forehead – the spot where she can clearly remember All Might's fist connected. And since it triggered Backforce, the injuries are drastically minimal.
It happened.
The 'interrogation' definitely happened.
All Might must have told Toshinori what happened hence the quotes about interrogation… And she actually primed the table to explode… and Izuku simply did not hear the explosion because of the soundproof walls…
'No wonder that stupid Psycho Slug Meta Ability sounded nonsense! It's just an excuse! Now I'm caught! NOW WHAT?! I should've known this is all a trap!' she yelled in her mind, the random memory of All Might taking a mugshot-like picture of her yesterday suddenly resurfacing.
Chitose looked around, the trembling of her fingers intensifying; trying to find any possible escape routes all while sweat began to trickle down her forehead. While yes she is somehow not in prison despite being found out, but she might soon be if she won't act now.
"What's wrong? You look-"
"Midoriya, we need to leave. Now."
Notes:
As I was proofreading this chapter… I noticed something. If Izuku is discovering more and more about Curious's alien anatomy, wouldn't that technically mean he's 'knowing about her body'?
?
Well that was weird and unintentional…
…
Just think of it as an alien researcher doing some researching!