All For Some

Chapter 10: a New Villain Is Born

Liquid dropped around Izuku, leaving his skin sticky as he was pulled up from the tank. As soon as his feet touched the floor they gave up and he collapsed on his knees. He was shaking and breathing hard in his oxygen mask.

"Doctor?" His father's voice sounded somewhere nearby.

"Minor state of shock and residual pain, unsurprising since he is still fully human and the quirk has a strong impact on his physiology, even if he can adapt to it and didn't require other changes. I could administer him sedatives to ease it, but he will properly recover faster without them."

A firm hand landed on Izuku's shoulder. It stayed there until Izuku's shaking eased and his father took away the oxygen mask and pulled him to his feet for long enough to reach a nearby hospital bed with a pile of towels already there. Izuku grabbed one to clean his face. The sticky feeling was disgusting.

"How are you feeling?" He had to wait for a moment while Izuku wiped his face.

"Like...," Izuku could barely speak, his breath still heavy, "never doing that again."

"Gaining quirks that involve physical or physiological changes can be unpleasant and implanting them artificially like this needs to be done with enough time. You will not need to endure the same while acquiring quirks with your own," the doctor assured.

"How long was I in there?"

"Just over two days. It is Sunday evening."

"Will I feel better by the morning?"

"Mostly yes," the doctor said. This time Izuku could actually see the doctor. The old man seemed really familiar, but Izuku couldn't place the face.

"You survived going to school with brain damage. You will survive this. You can pretend to be sick for a day if you need to."

"No," Izuku responded, shaking his head. "We have our history presentation tomorrow."

The doctor looked toward father. "At least she raised him to be conscientious."

"That she did. I could already see it in his training."

Izuku looked away while wiping himself. He still wasn't used to receiving much praise outside of his mother's. The doctor pulled a tray closer and turned to Izuku.

"Don't bother. It won't go away until you get a proper shower. I will take blood samples for a check-up and then you can go."

"Do you think it succeeded?" Izuku asked. The doctor looked at him for a moment through his big goggles. He put down his still unopened needle for taking blood and picked up a scalpel, which he held in front of Izuku.

"That is up to you to test," the old man said. Izuku took the scalpel and stared at it. His hand started shaking again.

"You don't need to try it now, but you should be able to endure much more pain than that," his father said. Izuku gulped. He knew that, and the scalpel would be little compared to some of his training sessions. Cutting himself just went against fundamental human nature. He held open his left hand and brought down the scalpel with the right. He winced as the blade cut skin and drew blood. He cut about a one centimetre long cut and stared at it, feeling a little ill. At least he would have stared at it, but after blinking he couldn't find the wound anymore and there was no pain.

"Wow," Izuku gasped.

"Excellent, now you can survive actual training, and with the summer vacation you will also have time for much more of it."

Izuku's hands weren't shaking anymore, but the cold shiver was almost as bad. Concern for what 'actual training would mean, made him forget any worries about the presentation. He was still feeling like he might vomit if he got up from his seat too quickly. He didn't even scowl at Uehara when he had to stand with her in the front of the class. Uehara started with the basic facts of the era. Of course, she blamed the quirkless majority of the time for everything depicting spread of quirks as the reason for things getting better. He even briefly imagined reaching to the girl and demonstrating All For One for the presentation, but restrained himself at least that much. The teacher didn't interrupt or even scowl at Uehara's bigotry.