No More Plan A

After another breakfast of cereal, Kurogiri came to get them. He dropped them into a dark room and reformed behind Tomura and Izuku.

"Where's Sensei?" Tomura demanded.

"In the treatment room," Doctor Garaki indicated. "If Kurogiri drops you off in there, Gigantomachia will attack, so you have to come through here. You can go and see him but there is no change," The Doctor concluded.

Tomura nodded and quickly left. Izuku made to follow but Kurogiri placed a hand on his shoulder.

"I need to speak with you, Izuku," the Doctor said.

Izuku looked over at him. He looked tired. His face was sagging and his lab coat, which was usually white and crisp, was instead stained and crumpled. He had a bad feeling at the words but couldn't do anything but nod.

The Doctor sighed and indicated to Kurogiri. The misty man pulled back his hand and took one of the seats in the room. Izuku took another one, next to him. He swallowed hard. He wasn't going to cry. Not now. He forced himself to listen.

"You've seen the extent of your Dad's injuries yesterday, didn't you?" The Doctor asked.

The question made Izuku feel worse. His stomach felt like lead. His throat was constricted but felt slick. He felt like he was going to throw up. Izuku bit the inside of his lip and nodded. He had seen it yesterday. He didn't know what it meant but he had seen it.

The Doctor sighed again. "There is a very real chance that he won't survive."

Izuku shivered. He didn't want to hear this but he knew, there was no escape.

The Doctor had no pity as he continued. "In that case, it would be best for you to take as many quirks from your Father as you can. I'm sure he wouldn't want his skills to go to waste. He would want you to have them."

Izuku just sat there. His eyes were wide and the tears he wanted to cry burned them but did not fall. He was conscious of his breathing. The usually silent function was a roar in his ears and his heart pounded.

"Today, I want you to sense your Father's quirks," the Doctor told him but then realised that Izuku wasn't really listening. He wasn't able to.

"Izuku," the Doctor prompted.

The boy kept staring at him.

Kurogiri moved, rising from his chair to stand in front of Izuku where he knelt. He reached out, placing his hands on Izuku's shoulders. That startled the boy enough that he blinked.

"This is very difficult for us all, Izuku," Kurogiri told him.

"How?" Izuku sniffed. Tears still didn't fall but he felt like they should.

"Your father is very important to us," the misty man said earnestly. "Without your father I would probably be in some government lab," he told the boy. "Warp quirks such as mine are not just rare, Izuku, they are non-existent. There would be too much desire to know how it worked for me to be safe."

Garaki picked up on what Kurogiri was doing. He nodded solemnly. "Without your father, Izuku, I would not have been able to make the advances that I have, in the fields that I have. Human knowledge would still be at least fifty years back."

"We want your father to get better, Izuku," Kurogiri said. "But it is going to be very difficult, and if the worst was to come, we know your father would want you to have his quirks."

If Hisashi died, Izuku would be the nine year old heir to his empire. An empire which would no doubt crumble before Izuku could take control. But if he had the quirks, assuming he remained alive, then he could rebuild one day. The Emperor would rise again in his son.

"I'll sense them," Izuku promised quietly.

The two men nodded. They both knew what it would mean if Izuku couldn't sense any quirks. "If any are loose, Izuku, you should take it," Garaki told the boy.

"What do you mean?"

"If it looks like your Father is going to lose any quirks, you should take it," the Doctor elaborated.

"But," Izuku swallowed against the slick feeling in his throat. "If I take it, I will absorb it," he objected.

"I know your Father would prefer you to have the quirk than for it to be permanently lost," Kurogiri replied before the Doctor could. "Even after he wakes up," the misty man added.

Izuku thought about that for a moment before he nodded.

"Come along now," Doctor Garaki said, rising. Izuku got up and walked with him to the door Tomura had gone through earlier.

The room beyond was still dark, illuminated by the light from the tube. Gigantomachia was standing beside the tube, glaring at Tomura but Izuku didn't really notice that. He saw that the blood that had been on the control buttons was gone. That was something. It actually made him feel better.

He braced himself and then looked up. His father was still hanging in the liquid. A breathing mask was over what was left of his face and there were still lots of sensors on him. There were two straps under his arms, supporting him. Modesty was kept by a pair of pants but despite that Izuku could see that his dad was in excellent physical condition. The only major wound now was his head.

"Little Lord!" Gigantomachia greeted him but didn't move.

Izuku came forward and the instant he was in range, the giant scooped him up. There was nothing playful about the motion. It was purely protective and the huge man growled at the others. "It's okay!" Izuku said.

Gigantomachia stopped growling but didn't let him down.

"What can you sense?" Doctor Garaki asked. He sat at a desk that was against the far wall. It was close enough that he could monitor Hisashi but far enough that Gigantomachia could stand guard.

"What's he sensing?" Tomura demanded.

"Sensei's quirks," Kurogiri answered.

Izuku turned towards his dad and extended his senses. He could feel the quirks in Gigantomachia. And he could feel Tomura's grey quirk, it was near Kurogiri. The Doctor's quirk was an odd colour, almost faded but the man was old. Only after he felt them all did Izuku force himself to pay attention to the tube.

No one had said it, but they all knew that if he sensed nothing, if there were no quirks there then… He didn't want to think about it.

A smile immediately burst across his features.

Izuku didn't say anything but he could feel that there was relief in the room. "There's more than one," he reported. When Izuku looked at his Dad he could tell there was more than one quirk. He'd never bothered to count how many before. They were all tightly gathered within his father, orbiting something he couldn't see but knew had to look like his quirk.

"Can you tell if there are fewer than before?" Tomura asked.

The green haired boy shook his head. He really couldn't tell.

"Are any loose?"

Some weren't orbiting as tightly as they could have been. "Maybe," Izuku replied.

Doctor Garaki and Kurogiri shared a look. "Do you think you can remember enough to check later and know if one was gone or if anything has changed?" Kurogiri asked.

"I think so."

"Very good, Izuku," Doctor Garaki told him. "Then don't do anything now. You may check again later in the day and if something's changed, we can discuss what to do."

They sat in relative silence for a while. Tomura was looking at Hisashi, Kurogiri was standing near the wall, Izuku up on Gigantomachia and the Doctor at his station, typing softly into the computer as diagrams and other charts flashed up.

Eventually, while Tomura didn't say anything, it was obvious that the teen was losing patience in the way he fidgeted.

"I will take you back, Tomura Shigaraki," Kurogiri announced before he became a portal. The teen nodded, casting one last glance at Izuku's dad before he stepped through. "I assume you wish to stay, Izuku?" The misty man asked after the teen was gone.

"Yes," Izuku nodded. It would make him feel better to be close to his dad. He knew he couldn't do anything but he'd feel better.

"He stays!" Gigantomachia confirmed.

"Very well," Kurogiri's yellow eyes nodded for him and then he disappeared.

Gigantomachia put Izuku down beside the tube and he sat down with his back against it. There was something comforting just being here.

"Izuku, I know it doesn't look like much is happening but your father is healing," Doctor Garaki said. "We have some more quirk users coming in later, but if you look at his head wound, you can see that the flesh is trying to heal. The fluid that he's floating in is very nutritious and aids in healing."

Izuku got up and looked at his dad. He couldn't see what the Doctor meant but he could tell that the man wasn't lying.

"Plus, with his quirks," the Doctor continued.

"Does Dad have any healing quirks?" Izuku asked suddenly.

"No," Doctor Garaki said immediately. "You know how all quirks are registered?" He asked.

Izuku nodded.

"Healing quirks are what we call doubly registered. That means they are actually checked."

"What does that mean?"

"Most people can register their quirk as being anything! Yours is registered as Fire Breath, but no one has ever checked that, have they?"

"My friends have seen it," Izuku told him.

"Yes, but no one from the Government has checked it, have they? I did your quirk counselling."

Izuku nodded. That was true.

"With a healing quirk, or even the child of someone with a registered healing quirk, the Government will come to confirm what their quirk is, and they come along every few years to check the functionality of the quirk. That's what I mean by double registered. When people have quirks like that, even if they are difficult to control, they get the help they need, so they don't need your dad's assistance, so he doesn't have a healing quirk," Doctor Garaki concluded, connecting the dots for Izuku but still weaving the fiction that All For One helped people. It would be far simpler to say that Hisashi had never taken a healing quirk because it was too much hassle with the government and that there had never been a good time to take it and then kill one of the quirk holders.

Maybe they should have made the time. Maybe Hisashi should have just taken one of the underground healer's quirks… but no. That would be worse. Then everyone would have known what happened.

"Maybe Nasutto can find one to borrow then?" Izuku suggested it after a few moments of thought. If the Government only checked every now and then, he could take one, use it on his Dad and then give it back to the owner.

He had his eyes closed, so he didn't see the startled look the Doctor gave him before the man sighed. "Izuku, I am sorry to tell you this but Nasutto didn't survive," he said matter of factly. All For One hired him to extend the bounds of human knowledge and to make the prototypes for him. Not to tell his son that people had been killed in hero raids.

"What?" Izuku gasped, eyes flying open.

The Doctor sighed heavily. He pushed up the lenses he wore over his eyes and rubbed at them briefly. "When the heroes found your Father, they attacked during the day, while he was at work," he explained. "You've seen the news, yes?"

Izuku nodded stiffly.

"Not everyone made it out," Doctor Garaki confirmed the news reports. "Nasutto was one of the unlucky ones. He was killed when the building collapsed."

He wasn't looking at Izuku when he said that, so he didn't see the way the boy curled in on himself. Gigantomachia did and while the man wasn't stupid, he had no idea why Izuku reacted that way. "I didn't know that,' Izuku said, his mind reeling. How was he going to get records of quirks now? No one would give them to him and while some of the video games Tomura played said you could hack that information that was almost always done by someone you spoke to in game. The player didn't have to do it. Izuku didn't think it was as easy as the games made out.

"Are you going to stay all day?" the Doctor asked, ignoring the way he felt.

Izuku didn't know how to answer that question.

"You can have a look at some of my research, if you'd like," the Doctor offered, harkening back to the days over summer Izuku spent with him. Those had been fun, discussing quirks and what could happen with them in combination.

He nodded. It was better than feeling sick and powerless. It was better than being alone. While he wasn't, strictly speaking, alone at home, Tomura would be playing a game and it was essentially the same.

Doctor Garaki rose from his chair and picked up a tablet. "I'm just giving him this tablet," he told Gigantomachia before he walked across the room. The huge man gave him a sharp nod but watched his motion like a hawk. He retreated quickly after Izuku took the device. It was really annoying but the Doctor knew why the huge man was like this. He felt like he had failed.

They all felt that in some way. Except maybe Izuku and Tomura. They really hadn't had anything to do with the situation, except to bear witness to the damage on Hisashi's body. He went back to his monitoring station.

That was all he could do, for now.