The Cards Will Tell

Chapter 3

2 Days Ago

Izuku ran home as quickly as possible. He was absolutely terrified. He knew the voice had something to do with Kacchan getting hurt. He just knew it. Izuku could almost hear the grin embedded in the voice's words.

Izuku shoved the front door open and bolted to his room, uttering a quick greeting to his startled and confused mother as he ran past her. Before she had time to respond, he slammed the door the moment he entered his bedroom. He moved to the middle of the room and stood there for a moment, glancing around and listening for his mother's footsteps in the hallways. When no footsteps came, Izuku closed his eyes and took a silent breath. When he opened his eyes, his face grew determined as he opened his mouth to speak.

"Why did you do that?" he spoke to the room, to the voice. "Why did you hurt Kacchan?"

For a few moments, the room was completely silent. Then, he heard it, the voice. Not in his head, but echoing around the room, like multiple voices speaking at once.

Loud and clear, he heard the voice say,"Because that little urchin deserved it. He got what was coming to him. He bullies you, calls you names, he hurts you, he hurts us. Call it karma for his cruelty."

Izuku's brows furrowed. " That doesn't mean you can hurt someone. That's not a what hero does!"

The voice laughed, "I'm no hero, little one."

"What are you then?" Izuku asked.

"Look at you're shadow."

Izuku whipped around immediately, nearly tripping over his bright red sneakers in his rush. His head turned down sharply to stare at his shadow. After a few seconds of nothing happening, he moved his arm above his head and watched his shadow copy his movements. Izuku squinted curiously, didn't it say to look at my shadow in order to learn what it is? he thought.

As soon as that thought came to the forefront of Izuku's mind, his shadow began to move out of sync. It waved at him, arm then falling limply at it's side. The shadow grew upwards, moving slowly across the floor and up the wall Izuku was facing. It's head tilted to the side, parts of shadow dissipating to reveal three shapes that resembled a grinning mouth and wide eyes. Izuku stood there, frozen with shock. The shadow's form still looked like him, but it was just...off somehow. It was just little things that were different. The arms were a little longer, the torso a little thinner, the hair just a little more wild. It was the kind of thing you would see in a nightmare, a warped, nearly cartoonish version of yourself staring back at you from the other side of the room.

"Like I told you before, little friend, I'm your quirk." It purred, the 'mouth' shifting slightly in time with it's voice.

"But what is my quirk, really? How does it work? Are you the only aspect of it? How did you hurt Kacchan if your just a shadow? I didn't see you move when I was talking to Kacchan. But maybe you did move? I wasn't paying attention to my shado-you so its possible... would that mean you can touch other shadows? You can't really touch things so that would be the only way you could do something like that. But Kacchan told me I said something that I didn't. Was he hearing you? But you don't sound like me... can you mimic voices-"

"You're mumbling again, little friend."

"Oh.. sorry."

"No worries." It's grin grew slightly, "As for your questions, your quirk is many things at once, I am not the entirety of it. All I am is an assistant, a... 'helper' per say. I will help you hone your quirk, a young boy such as yourself cannot learn to control such power on his own."

Izuku listened to his shadow as it spoke, eyes narrowed in concentration. He stared at the floor of his room blankly, too lost in thought to realized he had looked away.

"I didn't physically attack the little prat, although I could have if I wanted to. Your quirk has a 'self-defense' mechanism to protect you from possible danger that you aren't responding to yourself," The shadow's head shifted to the side, the visible corner of its seemingly ever-present grin pitching downwards slightly "I used a curse to make him trip down the hill, one that causes-"

"Wait did you just say a curse? As in a magic curse?" Izuku's eyes regained clarity and focus as he shifted to look back up at the shadow's dark form.

"-bad luck." It finished as if he had never spoken.

"Bad luck... you-I can give people... bad luck..?"

"Yes."

"...What else can I do?"

His shadow's grin widened, if that was even possible.