The following hours were a blur to Izuku. He was quickly quarantined in an empty room while medical personnel quickly moved Ochako to another room where she was isolated. None of the medical personnel had seen or heard of anything like it or if it was contagious. He also had no doubts that efforts would be made to identify and contact everyone she may have been in contact with since her transport to the hospital. At least, that's what he expected to happen. Disease and illness were not a subject he knew much about, nor had he ever heard of a quirk that could produce one.
He was at a loss for what to do. It wasn't a situation he found himself in often, and he hated it. Unable to do anything except sit in the empty room, waiting for something to happen while utterly powerless, he felt like a child. With nothing else to do, he replayed last night's events in his mind; to think of anything that might help the hospital.
He hadn't been sure of most of what had happened last night, he had been pretty high in the air for most of the conflict. There had been moments though when the fighting eased up, that if he focused he thought he might recall seeing Ochako coughing. He couldn't be sure though, his vantage point had been poor and there had been so much dust in the air that even with his night vision contacts everything had been blurry at best.
He shook his head, he couldn't think of anything that would be of help, and thinking about last night just brought back images of Ochakos tortured body that he would just as soon forget.
His musings were cut short when his phone rang. Tsu was calling, and if she was calling, the rest wouldn't be far behind her. His stomach turning itself into knots he picked up the phone and answered.
"Hey, Tsu." He said bracing himself.
"What the hell is happening?!" Tsu asked, with a hint of frustration in her voice. Mostly though, Izuku could hear the undercurrent of worry in her voice.
"The hospital has isolated Ochako, she's... sick or something, I'm not entirely sure. I came to visit her this morning and while we were talking she was constantly coughing. I didn't think much of it at first, her voice is shot. Eventually, though she had a horrible coughing fit, and she started... vomiting... her blood. Except that it's... black, and thicker than normal blood. The staff isolated us after that, they were pretty sure it was a new kind of disease. I've... been sitting in my current room here for the past few hours. They come by once in a while to give me an update, but it's a mess right now." Izuku said, Tsu, being patient and waiting for him to finish without interrupting.
There was a long pause and eventually, he heard Tsu sigh.
"Okay... okay... thanks for telling me Izuku." There was another pause, much shorter this time while Tsu got her thoughts together.
"I know you are probably worried, scared, and beating yourself up over this, but none of this is your fault," Tsu said firmly.
Izuku merely bit his lip, Tsu was right on all three counts.
"Whatever is happening, Ochako will be okay. She isn't like other people, she's tough, you know that. Tougher than most. She'll pull through whatever it is, so don't obsess over this. I'll see if I can get in to see you, okay?" Tsu said, trying to assuage his fears.
Izuku could only grimace to himself but... her words did help somewhat. She was right, Ochako was tough, and after the QUESS her body was never quite the same. She just shrugged off basic poisons and anesthetics, he had to trust that she would be able to withstand a disease, even if it were a new one.
"... thanks tsu..." He whispered.
"It'll be all right Izuku," she said back softly. "I'll talk to the others for you, don't worry," she added, before hanging up.
The last sentence eased some of the knots in his stomach. He didn't want to talk to everyone right now, Tsu had been hard enough, but she knew how to handle stuff like this very well.
Izuku sat there for another ten minutes brooding before he finally sighed and lay down on the bed. Brooding and being glum wouldn't get him anywhere, but neither could he do anything else. With another sigh, he decided he'd try to take a nap; if only to pass the time. It would be to his mild surprise a couple of hours later to discover he had fallen asleep.
The sun beat down on Tokoyami as he stared down Aria Lin. After the chaotic fight between Ochako, Aria, and the rest, he pursued Aria Lin after she ran. Now, twelve hours later, he had finally cornered her in the middle of a forest.
Aria's back was to a rock wall behind her, with a large rocky outcropping above her. She was no longer out of control, or in a more bestial form, having reverted to her human form sometime in the early morning. She was tired though, Tokoyami could see it in the way she stood, moved, and even looked at him. Of course, he wasn't much better. After the fight, the pursuit over several hours without sleep, and the heat, he was ready to collapse. To make matters worse, Aria had managed to break his phone and radio in a short tussle during the night.
He was lucky he had managed to corral her into this trap. The only escape was through him. He was clad in Dark Shadow, the noonday sun making anything more impossible. Frankly, he knew that if she pushed him, he couldn't stop her. Without Dark Shadow at full power, he stood no chance of subduing her. Still, he had to at least try, so he resorted to the only thing he could.
"Please, just come with me. I don't want to hurt you, I never did. None of us do, we just want to understand and to help you." He urged her.
She stared at him for several minutes before she slowly shook her head.
"I know... I'm sorry for everything. I never wanted to hurt anybody." She said quietly, looking at the ground, her shoulders slumping. "But... I can't go with you. I won't."
Tokoyami didn't say anything, sensing she was going to say more.
"My husband... my son... they're dead. They've been dead since the day I was abducted more than likely. All I have left... are these..." she said, and a necklace with two gold rings and a blood-stained cashmere scarf emerged from her body. She held them in her hands, staring at them.
"Our wedding rings... and the present my son gave me on my birthday..." She said, so quietly Tokoyaki almost missed it.
She sniffled, then put the necklace around her neck, followed by the scarf. The only things she wore now.
"I want to be left alone. I know you, and your friends won't hurt me, but... I will never be left alone. Someone will always want me for something. I'm done being a pawn or some science experiment." She said, looking up to stare him in the eye. He could sense the determination in her gaze and voice
"But... I can't be trusted to be left alone either. I've... gotten worse. I need to consume the blood of someone or something with a quirk. Took me a bit to figure it out, but back on the mountain, before I was captured again I was constantly flitting in and out of consciousness. Only when I ate an animal with a quirk did my sanity return, but only briefly. I can subsist off of any kind of blood, but if there isn't a quirk in it, it's a slow descent into madness. So I'm going to go somewhere where no one will find me. A place so far away, so remote, that I'll never be found. I'll... probably lose myself eventually, but better I waste away in madness than continue to live amongst people." She said, not blinking once as she spoke.
They stared at each other for a long moment, neither side moving a muscle. Then Tokoyami sighed.
"I understand; I can't let you go through. Not without a fight, I have my orders. I'm sorry." He said apologetically and shifted into a combat stance.
"Hey, Tokoyami, you sure about this? You know you can't beat her at this time of day." Dark Shadow said, worriedly.
"I know. Trust me." Tokoyami said.
Aria closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them again they were those of a snake. She rushed him, far slower than at any point before now, but he was tired too. He went to block the blow, his eyes never leaving Arias.
In the moment, before Arias's huge clawed fist smashed into him, her eyes widened. At the last moment, she pulled her punch as best she could, but she couldn't stop all her momentum. The fist slammed into his block and he was sent flying backward through a small tree, where he didn't get up just groaned.
Aria walked up to him, staring down at him.
"You let yourself take that hit..." She said surprised.
"I... don't know what you're talking about..." He bit out, holding his left arm, which she might have broken.
There was another short pause as they stared at each other once more. Then Aria gave him a small nod and took several steps backward. She didn't break his gaze until she sprouted a pair of large leathery wings and flew off into the sky.
Tokoyami just lay on the ground, watching her leave. When he could no longer see her, he started to sit up, wincing.
"If she hadn't guessed what your plan was, she probably would have pulverized your arm." Dark Shadow said with a huff, coiling around his arm and acting as a brace.
"True... I shouldn't have taken such a chance." Tokoyami muttered, flexing his left arm. He grimaced, but with Dark Shadow limiting his arm movements and supporting it, it twinged when he moved it.
"Still, you sure this was for the best?" Dark Shadow asked as they started to walk toward the nearest town.
"Yes." Tokoyami said assuredly. "She was right. Even if we have the best of intentions, at some point someone will try to take advantage of her again. I hate seeing her go knowing what she will suffer, but... at least she will have the peace she deserves." Tokoyami said, gazing up at the clouds.
"The same kind of peace you want?" Dark Shadow asked him.
There was a pause as Tokoyami looked at the palm of his right hand. A dozen different events flicked through his mind, a dozen different screams, a dozen different bloodstains.
"I don't deserve peace." He said, continuing towards the town.
The door to the isolation room opened, and for the first time in a week, the nurse wasn't wearing protective gear. Izuku sat up, as the nurse made a final note on her PDA and smiled at him.
"Good afternoon Mr. Midoriya. I have some good news for you!" She said brightly.
"I take it the disease isn't contagious?" Izuku asked, feeling part of the weight in his chest ease.
"That's correct. Ms. Uraraka's condition is a bloodborne pathogen, so unless directly imbibed it can't spread. Everyone exposed to her has been checked out, and have come up clean." She said smiling.
Izuku let out a sigh of relief.
"Thank the gods for that at least." He said.
"You'll be permitted to leave in a few hours when the paperwork is taken care of, but you no longer need to stay in this room. You can wait in the lobby or stay here if you prefer." The nurse said.
"I'll take the lobby," Izuku said, getting off the bed and gathering his things before following the nurse. Being stuck in that room for a week had been a nightmare, limited to only his phone, medical staff had been the only ones allowed to see him in person.
"Do you happen to know what Ochako's condition is?" He asked the nurse as they walked.
"I'm afraid I don't, but I believe someone will be talking to you about that before you leave." The nurse said.
Izuku merely nodded as his thoughts returned to dwelling on Ochako, as they had constantly for the past week. Eventually, they got to the lobby, where he sat down to wait. It was another hour, before Mei, the only nurse he knew by name appeared.
"Mr. Midoriya?" she asked.
"Yes?" He said, standing up.
"Dr. Okimi is ready to see you if you could follow me please," Mei said, her poker face not giving anything away.
Izuku followed her, and with every step he took, became increasingly nervous. He'd dreamt up a dozen different horrible scenarios, each one more frightening than the last in the past week he'd been locked up. He desperately hoped none of them would turn out to be true.
To his surprise, Mei didn't escort him to Okimi's office, but instead to the far end of the hospital closer to where the loading docks were. At least until they came to an elevator. They got inside and went down into the basement, baffling Izuku. When the doors opened it was to a brightly lit very spacious hallway, reminiscent of the research lab underneath U.A. A sign read "Short-Term Storage and Loading Docks" with an arrow pointing left, and another pointing right reading "Long-Term Storage".
Mei guided him right, down the hallway to a door with an electronic lock. Mei scanned her keycard and opened the door to a large storage room where huge boxes and crates were lined up in several rows. Everything was neatly labeled and organized except for the right-hand corner where there was a mess of crates and boxes. They went right through the room though, to another door with an electronic lock. Mei scanned her card, then pressed her thumb to the scanner for several seconds. Izuku heard the locks disengage, then she opened the door.
As Izuku walked in, he was slammed by a wave of deja vu. It was as if he had gone back in time to the raid on Zeus's research facility, where they had encountered the Nightmare Child, the mad scientist with a technomancy quirk, and Eri, contained within a pod.
The room he was in now was the spitting image of that room, with the same, or similar pod embedded into one wall. The room was a mess of wires, small boxes, and a dozen or so technicians working on it. Izuku stared at the scene, open-mouthed in shock, until Dr. Okimi spotted them.
Mei excused herself and left, just as Dr. Okimi came up to him.
"What... what is this...?" Izuku asked before she could say anything.
"Ms. Uraraka's only chance," Okimi said flatly.
Izuku broke free of his deja vu and shock and looked at Okimi.
"I'll cut to the chase Midoriya. There are two, very important issues regarding Uraraka. Firstly, we can't treat Uraraka's disease, it's unlike anything we've ever seen before. We think it functions like a flesh-eating bacteria in virus form, except it consumes blood, modifies it, and then spits it back into the bloodstream. Basic treatments and my quirk don't work on it, and at the rate it's going, Uraraka will be dead in another week. Long before we can even hope to develop a specialized treatment." She said holding his gaze.
Time seemed to freeze and it felt like everything fell out from under him. His knees gave out entirely, and Okimi had to catch him and lower him to the floor.
"It's not hopeless though," Okimi says, putting a hand on his shoulder and maintaining eye contact.
His heart lurched and he managed to focus on Okimi as a glimmer of hope formed inside him.
"In the time since you all secured Zeus's research facility, we've managed to get some of that tech to work. No idea how it works, but it works. That pod was transported here because it puts people into a pseudo-stasis. The facility had a half dozen, and upon news of Uraraka's condition reaching Nezu whose research department was in charge of reverse engineering them, he suggested we use one on Uraraka." Okimi said.
"We can put her in, turn it on, and she'll be put into stasis. The entire thing even functions autonomously, without an external power supply. It will buy us the time we need to research and work on finding out a way to save her life. However, due to the nature of the device it falls under life-support technology. Uraraka has no family who qualifies to give consent for its use, except for you. I don't know how long she'll be in it, I don't know if we will even be able to save her." Okimi said seriously.
Then Okimi sighed, hanging her head and he felt her grip on his shoulder tighten. Then she looked back up at him, but she couldn't keep her serious poker face from cracking, a haunted look on her face.
"Then... there is the second problem..." She said.
Later that night, Izuku was sleeping in the guest room in Tsuyu's apartment. Tsu had been forced to use her quirk to induce sleep in him, or she doubted he would sleep for the next few days at all.
She sat on her small balcony, head in her hands, tears falling from her face onto the ground. It had taken everything she had to not break. Seeing Izuku's thousand-yard stare, as he told her everything. His face, his expression would haunt her for years to come, she could feel it.
As her silent tears fell to the ground, the world seemed to become a much darker place.