Author's Note: Hey. Just like with A Point of Singularity, I'm going to be continuing Decimation on FFN after all. I'm really proud of where the story has gone, and would like to share with you. If you still care about this fic, then please enjoy.
It was Sunday when Izuku woke up in his bed for the first time in what felt like a year. It had really only been Friday and Saturday that he'd been absent from his home, since he'd been in the hospital after the USJ Incident. Izuku awoke to a sense of bone-aching fatigue, with the after-effects of Recovery Girl's healing still weighing heavy over him even after a full day having passed since the last application of her Quirk. Izuku got up and showered, following the instructions about tending to his right hand, and quickly dressed himself in casual clothes that leaned more towards the presentable side of things, since he and Inko had things to do that day.
Recovery Girl had explained the plan to him before he'd left her infirmary the day prior. Izuku and his mother were to attend an appointment with Recovery Girl in the morning to get him fitted for a prosthetic finger, and if they have time, get that prosthetic attached and ready to use. Izuku wasn't sure they would have time, due to his second appointment of the day, but he was open to being pleasantly surprised. Speaking of, his second appointment was with Hound Dog, UA's lifestyle counsellor. During this appointment, Izuku was to attend a psychological evaluation to determine if he was stable enough to continue with class the next day. Of course, Recovery Girl said it in a much nicer way, and technically everyone that was there was supposed to attend a session, but since Izuku had been injured at the USJ, he was the only one out of his class who hadn;t had his session yet, and it felt more than a little pointed now. There wasn't anything Izuku could do to avoid this, so he was just going to get it over with and prove that he was totally fine to go back to class, just as soon as he got his new finger.
When he was clean and dressed, Izuku emerged into the living room of his and Inko's small apartment while looking at his phone, checking the notifications that had racked up while he'd slept. When he did, he saw that he had a number of texts from Kirishima, Iida, Ashido and Uraraka. The first texts, from Kirishima, were saying that he was badass and that he was so jealous that he couldn't see much action. Iida came next, with his sole text informing him of the fact that school was let out for the last day of the school week and that Izuku would be expected to attend an evaluation, which Izuku dismissed easily enough. Ashido's texts were a series of question marks and exclamation points that he could somehow hear. When Izuku read Uraraka's text, he stopped walking along the carpet of the living room and just looked at the screen for a second to allow his brain to reboot. It was a simple text.
Ochako Uraraka
I heard you were out of the infirmary. I hope you're okay! Are you comfortable with meeting up to talk?
Izuku couldn't explain the way his heart leapt when he read that Uraraka wanted to meet with him. Well, he could, but he didn't want to. At that realisation, his heart suddenly sank to the bottom of his stomach when he remembered when he'd last seen Uraraka, when he'd taken advantage of her to disobey their teacher. Which, if he recalled correctly, and he unfortunately did, was just minutes after he'd asked if she had a boyfriend. He was lucky that she hadn't heard him in the moment, but what if she did and Uraraka was nice enough not to bring it up in the moment, because she knew that it was stupid to ask that in the middle of a large-scale villain attack that could've killed them both. Or what if she had heard him back then and just took pity on him by not immediately rejecting him, like she probably wanted to during this 'talk'. Of course that was it, what else was he expecting? He shouldn't have even asked, he shouldn't have even assumed anything in the first place, which was what had gotten him into this situation in the first place. A part of him wanted to blame Kaminari for this, for putting it into his head to ask about her relationship status, but Izuku knew that wasn't fair. However much his conversation with Kaminari had influenced his decisions, they were still just that - his decisions. Nobody had forced him to ask her what he had, and so he only had himself to blame for the consequences of that question. The only question left now, however, was what Uraraka wanted to 'talk' about. Was she going to ask that he stop talking to her? Was she going to outright reject his feelings? How would she even know what he felt? Did she know? What did he even feel? Izuku had too many thoughts rattling around in his head, and so pushed them all to the side in favour of a single goal for the day; get to UA and attend his appointments.
About an hour after Izuku set himself on that path, after eating and preparing himself for the day to come, he and his mother set out for the train to UA, where their appointments were waiting for them. They arrived at around ten o'clock. Izuku showed Inko to Recovery Girl's office, where the first appointment of the day was scheduled to take place. As soon as they arrived, Izuku knocked on the closed door, which soon opened to reveal the short stature of Recovery Girl herself, who ushered the two of them inside and quickly closed the door behind them without a word.
"Good morning. How's the hand, boy?" the older woman chirped as Izuku and Inko sat in the office's chairs.
"I'm not feeling a lot of pain. It's a little chillier today, and I'm feeling it a lot more than I usually would, especially in my right hand, but I followed your instructions this morning and took care of it the best I could," Izuku explained. He realised as he spoke that there was a second person in the room, sitting in a chair across the room from him. The person was tall, and seemingly a man, dressed in similar clothing to Recovery Girl, so probably a doctor. Beside him was a case of some sort, and Izuku could take a guess at what was inside it.
"That's good. This is Dr. Sidan, he's an expert in prosthetics, and he'll be the one helping to assure that your new finger is the right one for you," Recovery Girl said, sitting up on her desk chair and motioning to the other man, who waved to the two Midoriyas at the mention of his name.
"Hi," he said. "If you'll allow me some time to explain, my Quirk is called 'Sculpture'. It allows me to create a replica of anything that I can envision. The only catch is that I can't make something out of nothing, so I need to have materials nearby to sculpt into what I imagine. I've made the production of prosthetics all but obsolete in the area, as one consultation gives me what I need to create a whole new limb or digit for a person, and it can be fitted right then and there if they want."
"That's so cool!" Izuku said, leaning forward at the man with a clenched hand.
"Yeah, I would say so. It lets me help a lot of people, and now I get to help you, so I think it's the coolest," Dr. Sidan said with a smile on his face.
"Wait, are you related to the Yaoyorozus?" Izuku asked, suddenly putting it together that this man's Quirk worked a lot like his classmate's.
"Ah, I think it was my father who said I was something like a second-cousin to the ones you'd probably hear about on the news. How'd you know?" Dr. Sidan asked, his eyebrows coming together in clear confusion.
"Their daughter's a student here. If we can get this done as quickly as possible, that'd be splendid," Recovery Girl said, her tone stuck in that same place between sweetness and agitation that it normally was.
"Of course," Dr. Sidan said, chuckling at himself. He turned to Izuku and said, "If you'll allow me to study your hands for a moment, we can get started on the process."
"Yeah, sure," Izuku said.
He shot a look at Recovery Girl, silently asking if he should be doing anything to his hands to make them presentable, or something, and she simply motioned with her hands for him to move to sit on the bed instead. Izuku did so, and puts his hands down on his knees as Dr. Sidan stood up and walked around to his side of the room. He set the case down on the bed beside Izuku as he put on clear gloves. Instead of studying his mangled hand, Dr. Sidan curiously examined Izuku's left hand, the one that had come out of the USJ uninjured, gently taking it in his own and lifting it up to get a look at all angles. This carried on for a few minutes, with the doctor calmly and silently looking at Izuku's left hand with perfect focus. Izuku looked over at his mother and gave her a smile, though he didn't feel like it put any of her worries about this whole situation at ease, as she continued to look at him with the same uneasy eyes that she'd had since the night before. When those moments of silent, studious examination were over, Dr. Sidan took Izuku's other hand and repeated a similar process, combing over each and every visible part of his hands.
It took around five minutes for him to completely analyse Izuku's hands, but when those minutes passed, Dr. Sidan quickly let go of them and began opening up his case. Izuku had thought that there was a variety of prosthetic fingers in that case, but as it turned out, he'd been wrong about that. Instead of a number of false fingers, there were large blocks of solid materials. Things like plastic, metal and wire, and other materials and objects were all neatly laid out in the case. Izuku looked at it curiously, but once he remembered what SIdan had said about his Quirk, it all made sense. These must have been the materials he needed to create his sculptures, or at least this one. This suspicion was quickly confirmed when the doctor began to lift the pieces out of their places and fit them together, the parts converging and seemingly welding together with no more help than the force Sidan used to squeeze them into each other. As he worked, Izuku watched in awe as the parts all blended together and merged, until a few seconds later when the good doctor was holding a fully-formed finger in his hand, holding it out for Izuku to see.
The finger looked real, realer than Izuku had thought any prosthetic could seem. When prompted, he took it in his own hands, being extraordinarily careful to obey the new rule surrounding the activation of his Quirk. He touched the soft surface material that felt so much like skin that it sent a little shiver up Izuku's spine. It honestly felt a little surreal looking at and feeling this finger's textures and shape, because it matched his own skin tone exactly, and when he compared them side by side, this fake finger and his real one on the left hand looked identical. It was edging into the territory of the uncanny valley, since it looked and felt just like a real finger, and he was holding it like it wasn't. The only thing that kept his mind from going on high-alert about him holding a disembodied finger was the small divot at one end, where it would attach to him. Izuku ran a finger along the inside of the divot, feeling the smooth plastic or clay-like substance it was made of. He looked back up at the doctor and saw that he was waiting patiently with his hand out, which told Izuku that the man wanted his creation back.
Izuku quickly and carefully deposited the finger back in Dr. Sidan's hands. Once he did, the doctor then began the attachment process.
"Now, what we're going to do is just push the prosthetic onto the socket. The prosthetic attaches using suction, and so all you need to do is press it where it needs to go, and it sticks. Ready?" Sidan asked, giving Izuku an important look.
"Ready."
Dr. Sidan nodded and gently brought Izuku's right hand up and told him to hold it where it was. Recovery Girl then left her seat and pulled up beside Izuku, taking the dressings from his hand and exposing it to the world for all to see, and the sight wasn't pretty. Izuku's flesh was scarred from the USJ Incident, so much so that it didn't even look like skin anymore, but the stained wood panels of floorboards, with the same warped pattern present on his skin. The scar was jagged, reaching from where his finger once began and ripping up the back of his hand and extending to about his elbow, which was where the bandages had gone up to. Izuku had avoided looking at the scars that morning in the shower, even if he'd taken a little peak, and he still grimaced when he was forced to look at the mangled remains of his hand. As well, the scar wrapped around to warp the skin on the palm of his hand, taking up about half the space there in a big slash across it. Izuku couldn't help but feel an ache as he looked across his scarred arm, accompanied by the heartbroken expression on his mother's face. The strange thing was that it did hurt, but not actively. It wasn't a harsh pain, or even a dull throb, it was akin to the memory of pain, something that Izuku knew had once been present, but was no longer there. Maybe it was just his mind expecting something so gnarly-looking to hurt, but he didn't think about it too long before Dr. Sidan approached once again with the prosthetic.
Sidan took the prosthetic and carefully pressed it up against the space where his finger once sprouted from. The pressing felt strange, foreign, like it wasn't really Izuku's skin that was lighting up with this new sensation, but he kept his mouth closed and didn't complain since it didn't really hurt, just felt different. It was a few moments before Dr. Sidan was satisfied with the job he'd done, but he eventually was, and took his hands away from the prosthetic. Izuku watched as the doctor's fingers stopped pressing the prosthetic onto his hand, and he felt a small smile slip onto his face as it stayed there, kept on his hand through suction. It felt, again, strange, but not bad. He didn't even dare try and move any of his fingers yet, since he didn't know if doing that would set the process back at all. Instead, he waited to be given the okay.
"Alright, now you can go ahead and give your fingers a wiggle. Don't try to do too much right off the bat, though, please don't push yourself for the sake of it. Just take it nice and easy, with a simple twitch of your fingers," Sidan said.
Izuku took a deep breath in, preparing himself for the next step. He looked back down at his fingers, and then made the smallest motion in the very tips of all his fingers. Before the USJ, Izuku hadn't noticed just how many muscles were in his arm, but now, it felt like he could feel all of them pushing and pulling on each other to get just the tips of his fingers to twitch. Yet, despite the seeming effort that it took, those fingers did move, even the prosthetic, with all five of the digits being pulled toward the palm of Izuku's hand as if they were one. Izuku let out the breath he'd taken, huffing it out as a short laugh that escaped him unintentionally. He looked up at Inko, who had her hands over her mouth and was quietly feeling her feelings, and Izuku had to stamp that same instinct down in himself so that he could keep it together. He looked over at Recovery Girl and Sidan and smiled, before a question came to his mind.
"So, how does this prosthetic work, anyway? Do you really just stick it on and it's good to go? And how does it know how to move when I want it to?" Izuku asked.
"Right, I was warned you'd have questions!" Sidan huffed. "It really is quite as simple as putting it on there. Modern medical technologies have seen a marked increase in efficiency and basic ability in the decades since Quirks emerged, and so it's become as easy as that to treat limb removal. I have access to the next-generation research they don't show civilians because of my Quirk's ability to replicate and manufacture it exactly. And as for how it moves, that's all because of things that were discovered before Quirks were even a thing! See, the prosthetic can accept the electrical signals from your brain which would normally be sent to the finger that it's replacing, and so it, similar to your other fingers, interprets those electrical signals as movement, and the little gears and gyros inside of it make it move accordingly. It should be able to function just as well as your real fingers, though it won't be as durable, and you do risk its destruction during your studies, but I've been told that UA will cover this prosthetic and any future creations, though those will be carried out by a third party and not strictly myself."
"Oh, alright. Thanks a lot, sir! I really don't know what to say," Izuku said.
"Why say anything at all? Just use your finger well, and become a great hero with it. That's all the thanks I want!" Dr. Sidan said, giving Izuku a brilliant grin, a smile that Izuku returned, even though it felt hollow.
Izuku looked back down at his right hand and felt a small fraction of the feeling that the good doctor had just sent his way. Some of that smile now felt a little more genuine. Izuku clenched his hand, very slowly, until the tip of that artificial finger pressed against his scarred palm. He felt the cold material of the prosthetic against his warped and twisted skin, evidence of his actions on Thursday sticking to him and reminding him about his encounter with All for One and the Villain Alliance. It was an unsettling reminder, but maybe that was what he needed right now. He needed to be looking forward at the future after the hectic first week he'd had, and this was just the thing to push him forward. It felt kind of like running away from that day, but he could deal with that later. After all, he had another appointment that day to attend, and that was going to be all about that day, and so he should save his thoughts about it all for that later time, even though he was unsure about how Hound Dog, a hero famous for his inability to speak English when he got too emotional, was going to handle a heart to heart talk about a villain attack. Izuku felt his hand twitch at the thought, but supposed he may as well get it over with.'
With that, Izuku and his mother said goodbye to Recovery Girl and Dr. Sidan, thanking them both before they left the nurse's office and stepped back out into the halls of UA. Izuku sucked in a steadying breath as he prepared himself for his evaluation.
It was time to finally talk about the USJ Incident.
