Chapter Text
After this interaction, Izuku was taken to a facility. One with bright lights encased in cushioned white walls.
He was then thrown into a dark room again, a concrete one.
The people from this facility must have thought he would be scared of the dark, but it was quite the opposite. He would not tell them, though.
He was left alone for a long time there. He didn’t mind it.
Honestly, Izuku was always told he was a rather special child, even before people knew he was quirkless.
He was always crying for nothing, but when a normal child should have cried, he did not. He always looked blankly at the adult trying to appease him, wondering why he should cry. Sometimes mimicking a cry to not worry the caretaker.
He was an obedient child too—too mature, too calm, never expressing discomfort, nor did he even cry for something he did not have, like a child would.
That is the reason why adults did not try to help him after his quirklessness was discovered.
He always was a monster. Being quirkless just proved them right.
After a while, the door opened, letting the light emerge into the dark room.
“Hello, Midoriya~”
The smiling man was back, wearing the owl mask again.
He entered and put his big hand on little Izuku’s arm to drag him out of the room.
Izuku followed him quietly. He wasn’t bothered by the strength the man put on his arm; it wasn’t as painful as the burns Bakugou put him through.
But what was painful—much more than he ever felt—was the experience these people put him through. They injected a cold product into his blood vessels that made him suffer as if he were being burnt from the inside. Screaming, tearing, scratching followed soon after.
Izuku begged and begged again to stop it. He cried for some sort of help. A cry nobody ever responded to.
He collapsed. From the pain, mostly.
The time he woke up, he found himself in the dark room again.
This time, he moved as far away from the door as he could, almost merging with the walls.
He cried; the pain was still deep inside his soul. He could still see the remains of his cry—his broken nail, his sore voice, and this strange mark on his body, mostly where his arteries and veins passed.
He didn’t want to leave the warmth of the darkness, but soon enough, the door opened once again, letting the deep bright light enter once more. Light was scary, more than darkness. Much more.
The experiment kept going, again and again. Day by day. Week by week. And soon enough, a month passed by.
His tears were dry, his eyes were unfocused, his voice was hoarse, his skin was red from the blood resurfacing. A broken doll was what the people in the facility played with.
He hated these white walls, he hated the softness of the cushion on the walls where he couldn’t scratch, he hated these people in white coats, he hated the blinding light, he hated these white teeth of his smiles, he hated his golden hair that seemed white by the light, he hated his owl mask, he hated the door to his comfort room, he hated this strange liquid, he hated feeling pain, he hated everything.
They drove him crazy. He was already far beyond repair. Broken into a million pieces.
But they weren’t finished with him.
“Oh, sweet Izuku~ OH, MY SWEET IZUKU!”
The crazy smile once again.
“MY MASTERPIECE! I always knew you were the right one, the last one I needed. I knew the first time I saw you!”
The crazy masked owl man took Izuku by his arm, making him stand up.
Izuku was far beyond conscious after the “successful” experiment. He wasn’t unconscious, but responding to the “joyful” occasion was an impossible task.
The man let go of Izuku, letting him fall on the cushioned ground.
Twirling and twirling, the man screamed with joy. He was far beyond reason.
Izuku didn’t know what this monster was talking about, but he hoped it would not cause him more pain.
How far wrong he was.
What the man succeeded in, was the creation of a quirk. He artificially created a quirk for little Izuku.
Honestly, Izuku couldn’t quite tell how they did it, but they did. That didn’t matter now.
What mattered was the fact that the owl-masked man was just starting with his experiment, and the pain was far from over.
First of all, was discovering what type of quirk Izuku gained.
By a stroke of luck, they discovered it quickly by burning the hand of Izuku. While screaming with teary eyes, Izuku noticed that his hand was melting and reforming, melting and reforming again and again, prolonging his pain.
While the people were thrilled by the fact that Izuku had gained a regeneration quirk, he was not.
He knew what would follow from it. And he was right.
For weeks and even months, he was tortured with various devices. He felt like dying every single time.
Even when he thought that not a single tear in his body could be left, he cried even more than before.
By now, he knew that when the light emerged in his room, it would lead to one thing: pain.
When he did not pass out from the pain—which was quite rare—he was put through the terrible pain of this liquid again. The one that led to all these experiments, the one that gave him his quirk.
He did not acquire another one to this day, but these people didn’t seem to care too much.
When he was finally left alone in peace in his dark room, he would go as far away from the door as possible.
Sometimes he would cry, sometimes just look at a random tile for hours and hours, like the soulless child he had become.
When the pain from the experiment was too intense for him, he truly felt like dying, seeing his best memories. The only problem was that with each experiment, he felt himself remembering less and less of what he once was.
He forgot his life before being quirkless, his childhood friend Kacchan, the warmth of his father’s hug, the smile of his mother, the thrill he felt every time observing a hero in action, the happiness, the bullying, the loneliness, the betrayal… everything good or even bad was slowly erasing from his memories.
The only last thing he knew of, was the pain he felt every day and this cold, comfortable, dark room.
Izuku forgot how to smile, how to speak, and everything that identified him as a human being.
He truly became an empty shell. A shell who could only show emotion through pain, only communicate through pain, only feel alive through pain.
Many days passed like this—at least, he heard of it.
Time was quite hard to understand without a clock or window.
He collapsed less and less from the pain, but when he did, people always complained about how long it would take him to wake up. At least three days, but mostly a week.
He was dragged from experiment to experiment. Burnt, drowned, crushed, cut, poisoned, shot, bled out, asphyxiated, electrocuted, choked, stabbed, frozen, dragged, drugged, gassed, exploded, stuffed. Everything you could think of, he passed through. Everytime getting out of these experiments alive. He hoped that one time he would not wake up from the pain, that his body would stop regenerating, but every single time he would survive. Again and again. Almost instantly. Meaning another experiment could follow rapidly if he did not pass out.
It felt as if he were regenerating more quickly than before.
And after a while, another miracle was done.
Izuku gained another quirk.