Echo | BNHA Deltarune/Undertale AU

Chapter 57: Lead

Izuku sat at the table, hand still wrapped around his empty coffee cup, pain radiating from the supposedly metaphorical bullet in his head, for an excruciatingly long two minutes before resolving to get up and do something. Every step he took was punctuated by a sharp pulse, but he knew it would ultimately be better to distract himself from it by focusing on something else, rather than just sitting and wallowing in misery. His feet took him to his desk and his hands found their way to a blank page of his notebook seemingly of their own volition. It was supposed to be for hero observations, but he wasn't going to bother with digging around for a different one. Observations of his own power, quirk or not and hero or not, could fall into the same category, couldn't they?

Flooding his mind with the memory of his two encounters with his reflection, Izuku wrote down everything he could think of, even the most minute and seemingly insignificant detail. Falling asleep to the absence of the star he had become so familiar with, the initial complete, all-consuming darkness, the weight and moisture and tangibility of the air, of his body, every sensation feeling not just real but pointedly real, the solidity of the floor beneath his feet, the cold, stiff bodies, every hair and pore and bruise and scratch and thread of cloth plainly visible. The two times he had entered this space, the reality of his body and its surroundings was profound and undeniable, and yet, a space like that wasn't possible. The unknown light source that appeared after a few moments, the mirror that showed him another reality, none of that was possible, but it was right there. He didn't understand the exact nature of his connection to what he saw in that mirror, but the Izuku that stood on the other side of it had to be connected to him somehow; aside from being, well, him, the reflection seemed to have some sort of physical link to him, causing him to experience the same injuries, even if he never came into direct contact with the rope or the bullet. He had said killing him was the only way to let him out. What did that mean? If the reflection was him in the future, was that future inevitable, some branched-off possible future that he had taken a different direction from, or a possible future he still had a chance to avoid? He had felt a strong sense of understanding when the reflection spoke to him about not ending up like that, but looking back, he had no idea  what it meant to be like him. Was he trapped there? Was there something he didn't yet know about his resetting power that would make him regret using it like he had? Would the reflection have bothered "warning" him if it knew he was too far gone? Did the reflection have a more advanced understanding of the power than him? What did knowing he wasn't in control, as his reflection said, have to do with any of this, with the bodies, the strange space, the physical and mental state of the reflection?

Izuku's countless questions about what was happening had, at this point, almost entirely drowned out the pain crashing in waves from inside his skull. His pencil scribbled furiously across the notebook paper, filling it rapidly. He tried to think of what could have triggered the events, if there was anything he did immediately beforehand, especially relating to the resets, that might have been related. The first time, he had just finished up his fifth and final try at his exams, which had required him to extend his save length a bit by not sleeping for a day or two, as he hadn't yet discovered the function of the "return" option, so he could actually see his results and go back to change them. That could have been it, but he had extended the save length to almost a week and reset two or three times for the UA entrance exams, and that hadn't triggered a warning. The second time wasn't long after the USJ incident and the fifty-odd times he reset for that catastrophe, but it wasn't immediately afterwards. He knew he had saved at least once after the incident before his reflection made an appearance. And that hadn't been a long save length, just a shit ton of resets in one day, and he had probably reached similar numbers while trying to deal with the sludge monster.

He closed the notebook with a clap, collapsing back into his desk chair, headache stabbing him in retaliation for the movement. Nothing about the occurrences made any sense; aside from seeming to be some sort of warning for the consequences of the resetting power and how he chose to use it, there was nothing that helped him understand what was actually going on, with himself and with the strange meetings with his reflection.