Three days had passed since the events in The Market, and Izuku Midoriya still hadn't woken up. All Might managed to push through the limits of his quirk, getting the boy into Musutafu General Hospital with little time to spare. He reverted back to his Yagi form mere minutes after passing Izuku to the doctors and making a hasty exit - mumbling something about "crime never sleeping" before vanishing into the night.
With multiple wires attached to his head and a big fat question mark surrounding the USB drive on his finger, the only sign of movement coming from Izuku was the slow, steady breathing, and the rapid eye movement. The medical team was baffled, his brain activity was off the charts, but he was completely unresponsive to external stimuli. Musutafu General's resident quirk specialist had never come across a quirk like this before, and was equally as lost. According to Inko, he'd never kept a transformation up for this long before - and nobody could figure out how or why. There was talk floating around of using Eraserhead to cancel the quirk, but the idea was shot down for being too dangerous.
For the time being, in his hospital bed he remained, but he had rarely been alone the past couple of days.
Mei, sitting on a chair next to the bed, pulled out some papers from her bag and started chatting. "So, Power Loader had us choose our internship preferences today," she began. "You should have seen the stack of offers Miki got, it was insane! I heard she's going to join Best Jeanist's support department. Can't blame her, working with a top 5 hero... Oh, and guess what? I'm going with Snipe! He was really impressed with the ammo I created for the festival. Well, he actually said," she paused, affecting a drawl and winking one eye, "'Reckon ya could teach this old cowpoke a few tricks, lil missy. There's a saddle with your name on it down at mah ranch"
She laughed, "Genuinely, that's what he wrote on the form! You got some offers too, by the way." Mei continued, holding up the papers. "I'll leave them on the table for when you wake up. There are some good names in there, like Punchgate, Yoroi-Musha, Edgeshot, Backdraft, and someone called Nighteye? Power Loader seemed really impressed by that one." Mei scratched her cheek thoughtfully.
"I'm going to stay in Musutafu for my internship, so I really hope you get to as well. It'll be great to hang out again without all this weirdness," she said, patting Izuku's hand before letting out a sigh.
Just as Mei finished speaking, a kind looking nurse entered the room, a gentle smile on her face. "I'm sorry, but we need to run some tests on our patient, so we'll have to ask you to leave for a while."
Mei looked disappointed, but understood."O-oh, I see, alright then, I'll come back tomorrow." She said, giving Izuku's hand a squeeze. "Take care, Izuku."
The nurse nodded appreciatively and turned to leave the room, but before doing so, she added, "Thank you for keeping him company. I'm sure it means the world to him."
With that, Mei gathered her things and said goodbye. As the door closed behind her, the room fell into silence, the only sound being Izuku's steady breathing and the increasingly erratic beeping of the monitors.
"MEI! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"
Izuku cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled as loud as he could, but it was no use, nobody could hear him from wherever he was. It was as if he was trapped in a dimension comprised of nothingness, completely disconnected from the outside world. He could hear Mei's voice like a loudspeaker, but no matter how loud he shouted, the sound never reached her.
In his hospital bed, his eyes flicked back and forth erratically.
At the Musutafu precinct, a middle-aged man prepared to press the record button on the device in front of him. The room, a stark contrast to the lively city outside, was cold and barren, devoid of any decoration. A metal table and three chairs were the only furniture in the room. On one side of the table sat Tsukauchi, flanked by his partner, the cat-like Detective Sansa. Across from them, the woman at the centre of their investigation.
With a satisfying click, Tsukauchi began the recording. "The current time is 7:15pm. This is Detective Naomasa Tsukauchi conducting an interview with the prime suspect in the abduction of Izuku Midoriya and Inko Midoriya. Detective Sansa is also present. I understand you're waiving your right to have a lawyer present?" He spoke in a calm, professional tone, his eyes never leaving the woman across from him.
"That's correct." She replied, maintaining direct eye contact and unblinking. This was a woman adept at lying, and having you believe every word.
"Could you state your name for the record?"
"Diner."
"Do you wish to be referred to using a pseudonym under the Secret Identity Protection Act, or do you wish to use your legal name?" Tsukauchi asked.
She hesitated for a moment, before deciding, "My name is Yuki Haro."
Detective Sansa picked up his notepad, and asked, "Is Yuki Haro your preferred name?"
"Yes."
"Alright then," Tsukauchi said, taking a sip of his water. "The name Yuki Haro will be accepted for this interview. Miss Haro, what was the extent of your relationship with the Midoriya family?"
"I have no relationship with the Midoriya family. This was all a misunderstanding," Yuki lied, her voice smooth.
"Interesting," Detective Sansa commented, tapping his pencil on his notebook as he studied the CCTV printouts on the desk. "According to these files, it appears you had a rather close working relationship with Inko Midoriya at the general store." He gestured towards the images, his eyes flicking between them and Yuki.
Yuki cast a glance at the photos, her stoic facade straining under the weight of her secret. "...Colleagues, nothing more," she replied, her voice steady despite the internal turmoil.
Tsukauchi kept up his piercing eye contact, some said he didn't even need to use his quirk to tell when someone was lying anymore. "Miss Haro, are you aware of my quirk? It seems to work in a similar way to the one you included on your application form for Aldera General. Unfortunately, my own lie detector doesn't work on written information so I'll have to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Is your quirk Tactile Polygraph?"
"Yes." She responded simply.
The detective let out the smallest sigh of breath, and blinked his eyes slowly. "Would you be willing to tell me what your quirk actually is? Now would be a good time to remind you that lying or omitting truths is not going to help you in the long run."
"My quirk is… Tablesetter. It gives me psychokinetic control of cutlery. Forks. Spoons."
"Knives?" Sansa narrowed his eyes.
"Yes. But only tableware. Not weaponry."
Tsukauchi steered the conversation down a more ominous path, now that they had established the futility of a lie. "Why did you kidnap the Midoriyas?"
"It wasn't a kidnapping," she corrected him.
"Apologies. Why did you relocate the Midoriyas?"
"As I said, this was all a misunderstanding. The Midoriyas have nothing to do with this," she insisted, her voice wavering slightly.
"Well for their sake, I hope that's true." Sansa interjected, "The base we found you in was filled to the brim with weapons, counterfeit IDs, falsified quirk registry information. The computers in the room were all completely wiped, following whatever it was Mr Midoriya did to them. We can only assume he was part of this and will probably be taken into custody. The mother too, most likely."
"No, please… Izuku and Inko have nothing to do with that place. They're completely uninvolved."
"Izuku and Inko? On a first name basis." Tsukauchi said, taking note of her familiarity with the family. "It seems we're getting somewhere, so if you'll indulge me - What was the extent of your relationship to the family?"
Yuki paused for a moment, and relented. "We are… were, friends. I was invited to their house for a meal. I had come to work with a head injury and Ms Midoriya insisted I join them for dinner. I became closer to the family following that evening."
"A head injury?"
"I told Ms Midoriya it was from an accident at a self defence class."
"And what was the truth?"
"I… I injured myself while attempting to kill Shota Aizawa."
The room grew silent, the weight of her confession hanging heavy in the air. Tsukauchi and Sansa exchanged a glance, the tension in the room palpable.
"The forks found at UA, that was you?" Tsukauchi asked.
"Yes," she confirmed.
"Well, that's one mystery solved. Sansa, could you add that to the report? Thank you." He then circled back to their previous topic, Miss Haro seemed more willing to divulge her secrets now. "Why did you relocate the Midoriyas?"
"I was protecting them. They were being targeted by killers."
Tsukauchi's brow furrowed, his mind piecing together the puzzle. "Killers, presumably the same ones who sent you after Aizawa?"
"No, not exactly." Yuki replied, with a soft shake of the head. "I'm not sure if he was involved. I overheard a conversation, but the man who ordered me to kill Aizawa wasn't in attendance. Regardless, they never accomplished their goal."
"I take it you 'put a stop to them'?" Tsukauchi asked.
The reply was a measured and firm,"Yes."
The detective's voice turned stern. "Miss Haro, you're aware you've essentially admitted to one murder and one attempted murder so far?"
"I'm aware. I need you to understand that the Midoriyas had no part in my actions." She said sincerely and calmly, leaning forward slightly in her chair to better show her eyes.
"Very well." He sighed, "Who was involved in the conversation you overheard?"
Yuki's eyes searched the room, her words chosen carefully. "I don't know their real names, I know them as Museum and Barbershop. I killed Barbershop."
"Diner, Museum, Barbershop," Detective Sansa said, writing the names down on his notepad. "Your codenames are all businesses?"
"Yes. It's a naming convention The Market is quite fond of."
"The Market, I see," Tsukauchi mused. "And the man who sent you to attack Aizawa, what was his name?"
"...Is his name necessary for your investigation?"
"I'm afraid it is," Tsukauchi replied. "Take all the time you need, Miss Haro. If you require protection, we can provide it."
A sense of unease settled in the room as Yuki pondered her decision. "I'm not certain you can, Detective… I know him by the name High Street."
Tsukauchi's pencil snapped in his hand. "For the record, can you confirm that name?"
"High Street."
Tsukauchi sighed heavily and leaned over to turn off the recording device. "Detective Sansa, could you give us the room, please?"
Within the white void of his own mind, Izuku Midoriya sat cross-legged, and thought.
"Okay." He said to himself. "Five things I can see. Nothing. Nothing. …Oh! Myself! Nothing, and nothing. Alright, not off to a great start."
He stood up from the floor and began to walk. Or, he assumed he was walking, nothing seemed to be getting closer or further away. "Four things I can hear. My own voice, that's good. I can hear the doctors sometimes. I heard Mei earlier, and I heard my mom. That's not bad, actually."
"Three things I can smell? Hm, mint? I hope that isn't one of those things you smell when you're having an aneurysm…" he grabbed the bottom of his shirt and lifted it to his nose, "Mm, nothing. We'll skip smells."
"Two things I can feel. I can still feel my clothes, so that's good. Even with nobody here it would be awkward being nude. And I can feel a floor under me, another good sign." He lightly tapped his foot on the ground.
"And one thing I can taste. …My own mouth. Gross, when was the last time I brushed?" He said, rubbing his tongue across his teeth. "Alrighty, successfully grounded in the moment. Next order of business, WHERE THE HELL AM I?!" AM I AM I am I… The shout echoed across the empty space as he threw his arms into the air.
"You're inside your own mind, dummy." He heard a girl's voice say next to him.
"Hm I thought so, it makes sense, considering what I've observed so far." He scratched his chin in thought, then did a double take. "M-Mei?!"
"Took you long enough, dude. I've been standing here for like eight minutes."
Izuku squinted at her like an interrogator, then shook his head. "Nah. You're not Mei, are you?"
"You got me," the vision put her hands up in defeat. "Thought it might be easier to appear to you as someone you know best." 'Mei' then abruptly shifted into a ball of light, hovering a few feet off the ground.
"So, who are you then?" Izuku put a hand out near the ball of light, and felt the aura shift near where his fingers were. "Manifestation of my subconscious? A hallucination? …Gas?"
"You can figure it out." The orb said, in a voice with a slight reverb.
Izuku frowned, then widened his eyes. "What?! Nooo, there's no way! …Mechanize?! My quirk is sentient!? I mean I had my suspicions, with all those subconscious transformations, but to actually communicate like this with a sentient quirk is unprecedented! This could be a major breakthrough for every field of quirk science, they'll write papers on me! Oh, God. They're going to write papers on me."
"Woah there my boy," The orb said, morphing into another familiar form. "I'm not a sentient quirk, Young Midoriya. Or, not entirely. Uh… I think." The form of All Might scratched the back of his head and smiled.
"So not sentient, but a reasonable facsimile of sentience… Advanced artificial intelligence?"
"Now you're getting it!" 'All Might' said with a thumbs up. "When you used the programs you built on that freaky-deeky thumb drive, your quirk - me - got all tangled up with the files on that computer system!"
Blinking a few times in shock, Izuku tried to take stock of everything that had been revealed. "The programs I built? Oh… Wow, it actually worked? It was just a hypothesis and I didn't really have time to figure things out, but I really, honestly, created computer programs by THINKING ABOUT IT?!" He yelled, with an ecstatic grin on his face. "Holy SHIT! They really ARE going to write papers about me!"
"You'll have to get out of here first, kid." A new voice, Power Loader's. "But yeah, they're probably gonna write a paper on you."
"But how am I supposed to do that?"
"Beats me, I only know everything you know. But from what I figure, the issue here is that all your files are out of whack." Power Loader mused.
Izuku bit the corner of his lip and thought, "Like they're corrupted? Alright, if I'm inside my own mind there's no reason I can't access some of those files, right?" Concentrating, Izuku held out a hand and thought long and hard about what he needed, the same way he would when using his quirk in the real world. With a sudden slamming noise, a filing cabinet landed in front of him. "Woah!"
Scrambling on to his hands and knees, he pulled out the bottom drawer. And pulled. And pulled some more. By the end, the drawer was at least 30 feet long, filled to the brim with files, starting with one titled "Izuku: Age 4"
Curiosity getting the best of him, he pulled the folder out and opened it to find some black and white photographs. "It's my visit to the specialist, the day they told me my quirk was green hair… it seems so long ago…"
He snapped out of his nostalgia when he heard Power Loader's voice again. "Hey, kid, you don't have time to stroll down memory lane, you need to find the files causing the problem and fix them. Look for anything that seems out of place."
"How am I supposed to know what's out of place, though?" Izuku said, sitting on the floor and leaning up against the filing cabinet. "There must be thousands of files here, there's no possible way I could do this on my own!"
"Then don't do it on your own, I'm here, aren't I?"
"That's the thing though, you're not. Not really. If I was a computer I'd just back up the files I wanted to keep, and…" He suddenly spaced out.
"And what?"
"And reboot the computer!" Izuku said, standing.
Power Loader tilted his head and raised his eyebrows, "That's pretty risky, kid."
"I don't really think I have much choice, but I'll need some outside help. Okay, Mechanize, let's see what else I can do from in here." He wiggled his fingers, then dramatically raised his hands as though he were commanding the very earth. Rising from the ground came an array of monitors and keyboards. "First I need some visuals."
In the real world, the comatose Midoriya's eyes opened a fraction of an inch, barely noticeable outside of the rapid eye movement he'd been showcasing all this time, but enough for the Izuku in his mind to see the hospital room.
"Damn, there's nobody here yet. No matter, gives me time to experiment." He searched around the room, at least what he could see, and his eyes fixated on the monitor following his brain patterns, barely visible from this angle.
The manifestation of his quirk, now taking the form of his classmate, Kazutani, leaned over and looked at the screen with him. "What are you planning, Izuku?"
Keeping a close eye on the monitor, Izuku tried to turn a finger into a screwdriver. There was no change, but Kazutani glowed faintly, and the monitor beeped.
Izuku smiled. "I hope I still remember how to do morse code."
"Oh, hello again, young lady." The attending nurse smiled at Mei as she stepped off the elevator. "You're his first visitor for the day, bright and early I see. No school today?"
"Hi again, Nurse! Yeah I've got school, my teacher's letting me have a half day though, so figured I'd come see Izuku. Is he doing any better?" She asked hopefully.
"I'm sure he will be when he hears your voice again, dear." The nurse replied, signing the visitor's book for her as Mei headed down the hallway to Izuku.
Mei opened the door and immediately dumped her backpack on the far chair, and sat down next to the bed. "Hey Izuku! Me again, how're you holding up? I'm great Mei, thanks for asking, you're the smartest person in the world! Oh shut up, you, I know that."
The beeping sound of the monitor seemed much worse than usual.
"Huh, should I call someone over?"
("Come on, Mei! You can do it! Figure it out!")
Be-be-be-beep-beep-beep-be-be-be
Mei pulled her goggles down over her eyes out of habit, as her brain kicked into overdrive.
Be-be-be beep-beep-beep be-be-be
"Wait a minute… That's SOS…"
("Yes Mei! I knew you'd get it!")
She pulled a notebook and pen out of her inside pocket and ran over to the monitor
Be-be-be beep be-be-beep…
"S…T…U…C…K"
Be-be beep-be…
"I…N"
Beep-beep be-be….
"M…I…N…D. Stuck in mind? Stuck in- STUCK IN MIND?! Izuku?!" Mei ran over to the bedside of her best friend, and stuck her face in his. "Are you in there?!"
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP
