Death Paradox 💥BAKUDEKU💥

Chapter 9

Strength

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Chapter 9

Izuku had never liked hospitals. Though he'd been in them often enough to be considered a regular.

Even before all this—even before quirk-swapping and the parallels, before Fatebreaker stitched his life into a cosmic card game—he hadn't liked the sterile lights or the smell of chemicals trying too hard to erase blood and fear.

Now, lying in a bed tucked inside one of the top floors of the Jaku Medical Research & Innovation Campus, he liked them even less. Especially knowing what was lurking in the shadows of these white halls.

His first full day there passed in a haze of blinking monitors, politely invasive nurses, and a rotating cast of lab coats who tried very hard not to call him "volatile."

They called it acclimation. He called it surveillance.

Still, his body was functional, at least for now. Pain was minimal, all things considered, and the Neurocalmine kept the pressure in his head from boiling over. He was permitted "short-range mobility exercises," which meant as long as he didn't collapse, they'd let him shuffle down the hallway like a ghost dragging an IV pole.

And of course, he took that window and ran with it. Figuratively. Literally, he could barely stand without swaying, but whatever gathering intel and creating a sense of awareness about his envious was more important.

The staff were kind, for the most part. Too kind. Smiles a little too clean in an almost rehearsed kind of way like they'd practiced bedside warmth in front of a mirror. He logged names, faces, quirks. Not suspicious... yet. But none of them gave him the vibe he was looking for until the fourth rotation that afternoon, when a nurse named Sumiya entered his room carrying a clipboard and a voice pitched just slightly lower than the others.

"Bakugo," she greeted, her tone clipped but not unfriendly. Her badge said Level 4 Access. Most nurses didn't rate that. And when she leaned in to check his vitals, her voice dropped just a notch further. "If you ever feel unsafe, ask for a hot cup of fennel tea. Repeat that phrase exactly. Understood?"

Oh. Right.

Technically—technically—for anyone out there still keeping score, he was Katsuki. Katsuki Bakugo, trapped in this body. In "Izuku's" body.

God, this was so confusing.

Izuku looked up to the meet the nurses eyes, his mouth moved on instinct. "Understood."

She smiled like nothing had happened. "Good," she said and went back to scribbling something mundane on his chart.

Hero contact. Quiet plant. Had to be. The wording was deliberate. It meant they suspected internal corruption, or at least that not all staff could be trusted. Which... yeah. Considering who ran this place, that tracked.

The rest of the shift passed without incident. No threats. No secret corridors. Just quiet conversation and painfully slow attempts to walk a full circuit around the patient ward without nearly passing out. He made it three-fourths of the way before his knees buckled and Sumiya caught him with practiced ease.

She offered him fennel tea on the way back. Just once. As a test, which he politely declined.

But all of that, the ache, the buzz of IVs, the too-cold floor tiles, faded the second he met Dr. Garaki.

He arrived just after noon, no warning. Just a knock, a hiss of the sliding door, and then there he was. Behind that clean-cut coat and carefully rehearsed smile, Izuku knew the face. The eyes. The profile that had been passed around in more than a dozen hero briefings under labels like HIGH PRIORITY TARGET and POSSIBLE AFFILIATE: LEAGUE OF VILLAINS. His hair was trimmed short, and he looked like an older gentleman full of wisdom, but the grin—that subtle twitch of superiority hiding behind courtesy—was exactly the person the heroes had been describing.