Shadow Monarch Hero: Viridian (SMH: Deku rewrite)

Izuku's Journal: Page 17

This is another extra chapter, it's not critical to the main story but it does set some stuff up! Also I wanted to get it out real quick before the next big chapter! And as you can see this is a really short entry, so it's not taking time away from the mainline chapters. I decided to jump between journal pages depending on what I needed at the time! Enjoy!

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I'm writing this just after being saved by Quorra and Merix. Yaoyorozu is still unconscious, so I thought I'd write this down real quick before I forget.

I've been having a recurring dream ever since becoming the Shadow Monarch. At least I think it's a dream. It feels so real, so similar to memories that I'm having trouble distinguishing the two.

It always starts with me covered in blood. Not my own blood, but the woman laying beneath me. Her camouflage ghillie is drenched in crimson, ruining it forever. My hands work furiously to stem the bleeding, but there's so many holes in her, like a grenade went off right next to her.

I can never make out her face. Her hair is wavy and colorless, as if the dream is in black and white, but I feel like I've seen it before. Her figure suggests she's older than I am, maybe late 20s? I know she's not Kei, or Yaoyorozu, which is stranger to me than if it had been them. Dreams are just the way of the brain organizing memories and rebooting for the next day. I obviously care for them both, so it would make sense if my fears of losing them manifested in my dreams, but that's not the case. Everytime I get close to remembering some detail about her, it slips away, like water overflowing from my hands.

Sometimes the dream ends with me carrying her lifeless corpse back to whatever military base I'm stationed at. Sometimes I see my hands take the pistol from her blood-soaked belt and press it to my temple. And ever so rarely, I see her in a hospital bed, tubes running in and out of her as she makes her recovery, tears of relief running down my face.

Is it my mother? Is it symbolic of her state between life and death? But then, why do I shoot myself in some of the dreams? I'd never leave Kei, or Yaoyorozu, even if mom didn't make it.

I haven't told anyone about it yet, because I'm not sure what it even means. Does it have to do with the Shadow Monarch powers? Is Momo having similar dreams as the Shadow Empress? Should I tell her?

Why am I in the military in my dreams? I never even thought about enlisting. I'm a field medic in the dreams, so maybe it's just a more normal way to manifest my desire to save people.

I get the feeling that none of this is that simple. I should probably ask Takashi about it. After all, he knows the most about the Shadow Monarch outside of myself and Yaoyorozu.

But it's not just that. On the battlefield, as I desperately try to patch the woman up, I see strange figures. A man with no nose; a humanoid shape made entirely of metal, cradling a dead child in his hands, also made of metal; a horse with six legs made of Shadows, a blurry form sat atop it; and a silver chalice that empties itself onto the ground, causing the barren battlefield to sprout greenery, as if reversing the damage of the war.

I'm not sure what to do about these dreams, if I even need to do anything at all. At the very least, I'm going to wait until we get out of this Dungeon, we've got enough to worry about for now. But my instincts have been the only thing that have kept me alive all these years, and they're telling me that I need to take this seriously, whatever these dreams may mean.