Chapter Text
The first thing remotely accessable to his awareness was pain. A hot, stinging pain. Every nerve in Hisashi's body felt raw.
He groaned. Loud beeping machines beside him sent pulsing aches through his head. His torso seemed to be angled slightly upwards, his head propped up on a firm pillow. The smell of anesthetic wafted through the air. Cold metal encased his wrists to the sides of his cot, bringing slight relief to the burnt sensation on his skin.
A hospital. Hisashi was in a hospital.
Red eyes fluttered open.
His assessment was correct. He was definitely in a hospital ward of sorts. The sheets on his cot were white, futuristic looking machines beeped near his head. Surrounding him were drawn curtains, barring him from viewing the rest of the room. He shifted slightly to try and glimpse the cuffs on his wrists and suddenly became huper aware of the fucking tube up his urethra. A catheter.
Hisashi groaned. the noise garnered an immediate reaction from whichever staff happened to be in the area; he heard a gasp and some frantic rustling from somewhere on his left, giving him only a moment's warning before the long curtain was drawn beside him, greeting him with the sight of a short, old woman in a nursing outfit, a cane in her hand.
"Oh, you're awake!" She told him, obviously to make sure that he knew so as well. "How do you feel?"
Hisashi swallowed around a ball of sandpaper. "Thirsty..." he croaked, blinking rapidly at the florescent lights above him.
The woman hummed, writing something down on a clipboard. "I'll get you a glass of water." She told him, and bustled away.
The room, now visible behind the curtains, looked to be some sort of clinic. The layout struck Hisashi as strange. This was a relatively warmly decorated room, especially in comparison to the health center in the facility.
This wasn't the facility, it couldn't have been. The thought sent an unpleasant shiver down Hisashi's spine. Now that he was left with a moment to himself, the last events he could remember came back to him, and Hisashi felt himself starting to panic.
It must be... a time travel quirk? What was it in actuality, how did it work? What were the chances?
And slowly it dawned on Hisashi, Yoichi was surely dead. Two hundred years had past, according to that giant blond man. Hisashi would never see his brother again. He felt numb.
The nurse returned then, frosted bottle of water in hand.
"And how am I supposed to drink that?" Hisashi rasped, holding back a sneer of malice. Anger bubbled up in his gut, hot and dangerous. Anger at the world.
Calm down. Assess your situation.
The nurse looked unimpressed, but nonetheless uncapped the fresh bottle of water and brought it up to Hisashi's lips. Hisashi found himself thankful of the angle of the bed; he would surely be choking otherwise. He paced himself, drinking slowly. After only a few gulps, the nurse pulled the bottle away. Now getting used to the noise of the machines, the world felt too quiet...
The realization that Hisashi could not sense her quirk induced a panic that hit him like a truck. His singularity, his upper hand, was inactive.
Calm. Down.
He took a deep breath and asked: "How long was I out?"
Maybe he didn't have control of his singularity for now, but he hadn't lost the restraint that developed along with it.
Concentrating for a moment, he knew it was still there. The singularity was still there, caged. He could feel it, inactive, trapped in his chest. This was technology, Hisashi realized, it must be. And it must be reversible.
The nurse placed the bottle on a table just out of Hisashi's line of vision, and began talking while monitoring his vitals.
"You, young man, were out cold for nearly a week." She scrutinized one of the monitors for a moment, decidedly unclipping the thing hooked onto his left pointer finger.
Hisashi mulled over her words, allowed himself another question as she ripped a few stickers off his bare chest in a way that stung painfully.
"Why am I in pain?" He wondered aloud. Surely after a week in the hospital he would be feeling better, not worse, then at the atrium.
It was likely due to his new quirk, he decided. But why was the girl at the facility unaffected? Maybe... It was probable her singularity had fractured during extraction. After all, it effected strangely fast, quicker than it could've given his body time to settle. Yes, that was likely it. It broke on contact, fractured and fused with another power of his. But which power was it?
"Well..." the woman hesitated, which suggested nothing good, "we don't really know."
The heart monitor screamed when she detached it; the pounding in his head grew heavier, louder.
"We didn't give you morphine because we had no idea what it would do to you."
"I can ignore pain," Hisashi stated, "but what is it that you didn't you understand?"
The nurse paused for a moment, looking at Hisashi with a strange expression. She's unsure how much she should tell me, Hisashi decided.
"You're cells kept... vanishing." She said finally. "You're skin kept burning off in patches." She looked disturbed at her lack of understanding.
"I wonder if it's to do with my new singularity." He mused, carefully observing her reaction.
"...I don't think I'm allowed to share anymore than I have," she replied stiffly, going around his bed to the opposite side.
Hisashi jolted at the sensation of having the catheter pulled out of him. The nurse kept her fussing quiet for a while. Her next words, as she finished up and walked out of the veiled perimeter were: "Principle Nezu should be down to see you soon." She pulled the curtains shut and walked away without a word.
The singularity was indeed responsible, then. Cells disappearing or burning off? Hisashi bit his lip and stared into nothing, wrangling and organizing his erratic thoughts.
Regeneration: Passive Involuntarily. Missing cells regrow rapidly. Cells damaged are killed and regrown rapidly. Won't apply to calcified matter. Won't apply to fat lipids. Burns lipids as its source of energy. Can induce a state of starvation with overuse.
Seemed a likely culprit, but if the singularity shattered, it was unlikely for this to be the only one affected. As well, it didn't explain the burning or why the regeneration was so aggressive, and Hisashi didn't seem to have lost any weight.
Telekinesis:
Active voluntarily. Touch and vision activated. Touch something and send it to the point being viewed. View something and call it to the point being touched. The object is only able to move if not attached to something. Strains muscles in the same way they would be used if picking the object up. Muscles and ligaments will tear under too much force.
Probably irrelevant...
Nature:
Passive voluntarily. Rapidly grow/accelerate growth of flowers; moss; vines, on any organic organic surface touched with fingers or toes. Slows user's own cell growth, of which could start rotting with overuse.
Skin cells disappearing... possibly relevant.
Fire Breath:
Active involuntarily. Upon the inhalation of smoke, the particles contained in the smoke combust when in contact with both lung lining and saliva. Biological effects: fire resistant lining in sinuses and lungs; high elasticity in lung tissue. Excessive use can wear through the protective lining and cause miscellaneous breathing issues; can cause lungs to combust.
Hisashi hummed to himself thoughtfully.
Tracker:
Passive voluntarily. Activated by direct contact to a SCG's skin. Upon contact, X person will adopt an aura-like glow, visible through any surface with an estimated range of 500 meters. X person's singularity-aura becomes amplified and sensible in range of 500 meters. No technical limit to persons tracked; however, prolonged use can induce migraines; overuse leads to eventual loss of consciousness.
That was the first singularity to exhibit to Hisashi the phenomenon of his singularity actively merging with another. It proved to Hisashi that All For One was not as simple as cataloging other powers, but that the powers fused and mixed and settled into a singularity, each becoming it's own branch in a growing tree.
A powerful realization. Track was between the earliest singularities he stole; since then, he became rather selective of the toys he would take.
Balance:
Simple coordination enhancer. Involuntarily passive. Mildly enhanced hearing.
Photographic Memory:
Involuntarily passive. Catalogue of near-every detail percieved. Psychological effects: racing, rapid, disorganized thoughts; tendency to enter dissociative states that leave gaping holes in memories or cover them with heavy fog.
Secretion:
Involuntarily active. When encountering miscellaneous X with a temperature of ten degrees c° or lower, the skin in contact will begin to secret (sweat) blood to warm itself up. Excessive exposure can quickly lead to blood loss. Biological effects: high iron quantity in the makeup of the blood.
Hisashi had stolen Fire Breath the second he caught wind of its existence, his desperation for finding a fire singularity born after he found out that exposed skin included the sinuses and lungs.
All in all, Hisashi concluded, there were many health complications from Secretion that could contribute in some way to his predicament.
Primal Fear:
The ability to release a pheromone from exposed skin that induces a range of reaction when sensed (inhaled, smelled, touched); from restless anxiety to cold dread to full blown panic. Voluntarily active. Overuse can lead to severe dehydration and lethargy.
Possibly irrelevant. Others that he hadn't even bothered naming were the ability to turn inanimate objects blue at will (voluntarily active), the ability to create a light breeze in confined spaces (voluntarily passive), and the ability to convert specifically wooden objects into toothpaste (voluntarily active), amongs other useless powers.
All For One:
Voluntarily active. The ability to sense X persons singularity while in close vicinity, and to suck it out of them from two small holes located in the palms of each hand. Doesn't apply to mutations. The new singularities incorporate themselves into All For One, sometimes breaking apart and/or merging. Excessive use can cause severe migraines. Overuse leads to seizures.
Now, what the fuck was this new power? 'Time travel' didn't satisfy Hisashi. That wouldn't cut it. There was more... every singularity had a system and a pattern. It had caused a strange reaction with Regeneration, that was the only thing he knew. And he stayed in the exact same place, just appeared in the future. He wasn't told enough to conclude anything and it was driving him mad. It was as if this new power created a wormhole through time.
The sound of a door opening brought Hisashi out of his state of dissociated thought. The nurse greeted someone, who answered with a high pitched voice.
Hisashi strained to face the sliver of open curtain, moving only his head successfully.
The curtains were drawn quickly, creating a whooshing noise. The nurse and a... thing, a mole? A mole of above average side greeted Hisashi's curiosity.
"Thank you, Recovery Girl." The white mole -Principle Nezu, likely- spoke in a high pitched voice. "If you don't mind, I'd like to speak with him alone."