Fuhai loved books.
They were filled with wonderful adventures that let him experience lots of things without actually having to endanger himself by actually going out and experiencing them.
A perfectly safe way to enjoy himself, that couldn't hurt him the slightest.
"Ow!" Fuhai hissed, as he got a paper cut while turning a page.
He immediately dropped the book and looked at his thumb, which was now bleeding from the cut.
"Oh no, oh no oh no, oh no! What if I lose too much blood and die! Or a bug crawls inside it and eats all my insides!" Fuhai started to spiral, as he usually did before he reminded himself that it was all in his head. "R-Right I can heal. It's gonna heal…any second now…any second…"
But much to his dread, the wound stayed open. Showing no signs of healing.
"It's not healing! It's not healing!" Fuhai started hyperventilating, he felt his heart begin to pound out of his chest as his body became filled with manic energy. "I'm gonna die! AHHHHHHHHHH!"
His door flung open, and immediately Fu ran in. "What's wrong?!"
"I-I-I-I-It's not healing!" Fuhai stuttered in fright as he tried to talk through his labored breathing and tear-filled groans.
Fu ran up and looked at his thumb, and was shocked to find it was, in fact, not healing.
Uh oh. Fu looked up at Fuhai and put his hands on his shoulders. "Hey, buddy, you gotta breathe, remember? Do what the nice men told you to do whenever you feel like you're gonna die.
"B-B-B-B-Breathe." Fuhai reminded himself, as he tried his best to follow Fu's instructions and calm his breathing. Slowly taking a big breath, and then letting it out at a steady pace. And while he was at it, he clenched and unclenched his hands and toes.
"That's right buddy, just calm down. It's just a paper cut. Even if it doesn't heal right away, it's not gonna kill you." Fu told him, he saw Fuhai open his mouth to talk, but Fu put up a finger, signaling him to stay quiet, and calm down. "Do you feel pain anywhere but your finger?"
"N-No." Fuhai sniffled, slowly starting to calm down a bit, at least to the point where he could breathe again.
"Can you move all your limbs?" Fu asked, getting a nod in response. "Then you're probably fine. Quirk mishaps happen all the time. They're mysterious after all. But just in case, let's get you to Dad, and let's see if he can figure out what's going on."
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"Okay, what's going on?" Izuku asked.
He'd immediately taken them to Vera, to get him checked up. And after a couple hours of testing, the doctor was finally ready to give her a report.
"Well, his body is fine. No abnormalities, quirk factor undamage. Which leaves only one option." Vera said. "P.Q.F. Or rather, Psychosomatic Quirk Failure."
"What is that!? Is that a disease!? Is that gonna kill me!?" Fuhai asked.
"No, no, no. It's not disease, well it is but not of body. It is disease of the mind." Vera explained. "You see child, have you ever heard of hallucinations? Seeing and hearing things that aren't real?"
Fuhai nodded. "I saw it in a movie once, I think."
"Well sometimes, your body makes you feel things that are not real as well. Like Physical hallucination." Vera explained as simply as she could. "This is what we call, Psychosomatic illness. Sometimes it makes us believe we are sick, or that your arms or legs do not work, or that you are dying. But in fact, it is all in your mind. You think something, and your body makes you feel it."
"My mind can do that?" Fuhai asked in a mixture of fear and awe.
"Yes. And much more. The mind can have very powerful effect on the body. So much stronger than you think it is." Vera told him. "Psychosomatic Quirk Failure is when person thinks that, for some reason, their quirk will not work. And so your body makes it so it doesn't.
"But-But I thought it was gonna work?" Fuhai argued.
"Maybe that's what you told yourself, but not what you believe." Vera continued. "Were you afraid that you wouldn't heal? That quirk wouldn't work? That you were going to die?"
"Y-Yes." Fuhai admitted. Logically, he knew his quirk would work. Should work. That he was actually a lot harder to kill than most.
But no matter how many times anyone told him that, or how many times he told himself that, there was always this little voice in his head that would tell him that he was weak, that he could die at any moment. That his quirk would fail him, just like it did on that day.
And now that voice had talked those nightmarish delusions into reality.
"So what can we do?" Izuku asked immediately. "If his quirk factor is fine, then there should be someone to…force it to activate."
"Oh, yes. Very simple solution. He just need to go to sleep, and quirk factor turn back on until he wake back up." Vera told him, before walking over to Fuhai. "And so now I put him to sleep, so he can heal a little boo boo."
"Um, how are you gonna put me to sleep?" Fuhai asked, trembling as the large Russian woman loomed over him menacingly.
"The Russian way," Vera answered, before cocking her arm back and then punching the child right in the face, sending a few teeth flying, blood splattering all over his face, and rendering him immediately unconscious. "Now watch."
Vera flipped Fuhai onto his back, and everyone watched as all the damage from the paper cut, and that punch, healed in no time, returning Fuhai to how he was prior.
"Couldn't you have just told him to fall asleep?" Fu asked.
"This much faster," Vera said. "Now, as I was saying, when he goes unconscious, quirk has no obstacles, and can activate just fine. Heal all injuries. When he wake back up, quirk no work again."
"That…makes things difficult." Izuku sighed.
Since this was a mental issue, that means there wouldn't be any easy solutions.
What's worse, is that since Fuhai's quirk would reactivate every time he slept, that meant they couldn't use any sort of anti-anxiety or antidepressants on him either.
Healing quirks tended to not mix well with any sort of medicine or drug. As the quirk would label that as a foreign substance akin to a disease, and thus remove it.
And since effective antidepressant and antianxiety medicines had to stay in your system for a long time to work, that meant Fuhai was pretty screwed.
"Alright, I'll talk to Ren and see what we can do," Izuku said.
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"Yeah, the kid is pretty screwed," Ren said after Izuku explained the situation to him.
"Ughhhhhh." Izuku groaned as he let himself deflate into his couch.
"Sorry, but a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to mental health nowadays is done with medications," Ren explained. "You can provide the best therapy possible, but it won't matter if the patient is not in a, at least somewhat, rational state of mind. Now Fuhai Isn't a lost cause or anything, it's just going to be extremely hard to work with him if he's stuck in a constant state of paranoia. Now, I'm not suggesting you remove his quirk permanently, not at all, but don't you have some super secret technology that lets you turn off quirks temporarily?"
Izuku shook his head. "No, we've been experimenting with that for a while. Using Aizawa's quirk factor to create Fractals with his power, and trying to create a device that can neutralize quirks. Unfortunately, the Fractal keeps neutralizing itself as well, making it completely unusable. At the moment, our science team has little to show for their efforts."
"Well, then our only option is to try and work with him as he is," Ren said. "Try to keep him as calm as possible, while not keeping him in a bubble. If he gets used to living like that he may not be able to cope with living normally. And do keep in mind, that the main goal is to get him to a point where the psychosomatic-related issues subside. Thanatophobia is a fear pretty much everyone has to deal with at all times, and Health Anxiety is typically a lifelong issue. It's more a matter of managing it than getting rid of it."
Izuku sighed and took a sip of his coffee, looking frustratedly into the cup. "Is there anything else I can do? Even if I can't fix the problem can I at least make it easier for him? The poor boy is suffering."
"And he'll have to suffer a while longer," Ren replied casually, although Izuku could faintly see a bit of frustration in his expression as well. "Healing comes with time, and until then, he'll have to learn how to deal with the pain, and move on with his life. It's harsh, and it's awful to experience. But so long as you provide the right support, he WILL get through this, Izuku. He will become stronger. I promise you."
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Ken was in the game room, playing Sumo Slammers with Tenko when Alice and Nara walked in.
"Hey Ken, do you mind if Alice runs an experiment on you?" Nara asked.
Both Ken and Tenko stopped and gave the girls a befuddled look.
"Ok, who starts a conversion like that!? Also, what the heck do you mean experiment?" Ken asked.
"Just a quirk experiment, it should be fine," Nara explained.
"You're not gonna tell me what it is?" Ken asked.
"You know how Alice's quirk works, if I tell you what's gonna happen, it won't happen." Nara groaned. "Just say yes doofus, do you think I'd suggest it to you if I thought you'd get hurt?"
"Yes." Ken deadpanned.
"Badly hurt?" Nara rephrased.
"...Fair enough, go ahead. But you owe me a favor later." Ken said before he and Tenko went back to gaming.
"Alright, you can go ahead," Nara told Alice in English.
"Just like that?" Alice asked, raising an eyebrow at how easy it was to get that permission.
"Yeah Ken's a massive idiot whose brain fell out of his head a long time ago, and wouldn't know self-preservation if it smacked him in the face and crawled down his throat," Nara said in English with a massive shit-eating grin on her face.
"Just because I don't know what you're saying, doesn't mean I don't know what you're saying." Ken huffed, knowing his sister was making fun of him in another language.
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It was training time, and Ken and Sansan had decided to have a quick spar.
Ok, Eyeguy should make quick work of her. Ken thought. …But. Maybe I can finally blow her away with Four Arms.
And in that moment of impulsiveness, Ken slammed his hand down on the Omnitrix and turned into Four Arms.
Wait a minute this was a terrible idea! Why did I do this!? Ken wondered, regretting his decision the second he couldn't take it back.
Sansan also looked confused, but just shrugged, before charging at him.
Ken punched down at her, but naturally, his fist did nothing, and she wrapped herself around his body, leaving him no leverage whatsoever, before wrapping around his throat, and started choking him.
"Agh! Bad idea! This was a bad idea!" Ken gasped as he struggled for air, trying to move his arms to pull Sansan off him, but Sansan had him wound up tight. I should have turned into an Eyeguy! Maybe…Maybe it's not too late. I know we can swap forms. I saw Nara do it! Come on! Swap! Swap! Swap! Swap!
Then in a flash of green, Ken turned from Fourarms to Eyeguy.
Yes! Ken immediately started moving the eyes on his body, and blasted Sansan with freezing lasers, turning her to ice.
"Grrrrrrrr! HA!" After much effort, Eyeguy broke free of Sansan's hold, causing the frozen girl to shatter off of him and fall to the ground. "Ha ha! Yes!"
Then, in a flash of red, Ken turned back to his base form.
"Huh?" Ken looked down at himself, confused as to why he transformed back so quickly.
"It worked!?"
"Wha?" Ken looked over at the entrance and saw Nara standing there, having been watching the whole time, alongside Alice. "What worked?"
"Do you remember what we asked you yesterday? About that experiment?" Nara asked him.
"Oh yeah. Wait, does that have to do with me swapping transformations?" Ken asked.
"Yeah, you know what happened to Fuhai and his quirk right?" Nara said, getting a nod from her brother. "Well, since the mind can make quirks act differently, and Alice can affect the mind. She thought that maybe she could make quirks act differently than how they normally do. And her first idea was making your swap transformations. We know it's possible, we just weren't able to do it on command. But with Alice's quirk, she was able to make you believe you could do it, so hard that you were actually able to do it!"
"...Huh?" Ken was completely lost.
"Ugh! She made you think you could do something, so you were able to do it." Nara simplified.
"Oh." Ken finally got it. "But I didn't think about turning back to normal."
"That might just be what happens if we swap forms. It happened to me too remember." Nara recalled.
"Well, that's lame. That means that swapping forms is a complete bust!" Ken groaned.
Nara rolled her eyes. "Or maybe we just need to get used to doing it. We can't come to any conclusions yet. But this is huge! It means we can make Fuhai's quirk activate anytime we need it to! So long as he doesn't know what we're doing. Or we can change how other people's quirks work when we need to! Although we still don't fully understand how it works."
"And I doubt Izuku would be happy if you kept experimenting on people without them knowing, which is the only way her quirk works." Ken pointed out.
"Yeah, it's gonna be a bit tricky," Nara said. "But it could come in handy in an emergency. Also, it's REALLY interesting, I need to tell Ji and Fu about this, she's gonna flip!"
"Try not to have a heart attack dweeb. I'm gonna go and thaw out Sansan." Ken said.
It is interesting to think how quirks mix in with mental illnesses. The thought that the mind can affect the body so severely that it can bring about physical changes or illness, has interesting implications when superpowers get involved.
Anyway, please review and have a nice day.