Chapter Text
Where am I?
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Who are you?
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What are you doing to me?
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They hadn’t removed his shirt before they strapped down his arms so they had to cut his uniform down the front. It was done with expert precision but the cold metal of the scissors bit against his skin. Everything here was cold.
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Stop!
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Are you villains?
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You won’t get away with this!
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“What’s its quirk?”
“It doesn’t have one. Easiest way to guarantee no unwanted mutation during the process.”
The female scientist nodded and stuck a needle into a brown bottle. What she withdrew was clear but thicker than water. The purple scientist held up something to their mouth and when they started speaking Izuku figured it was an old fashioned tape recorder.
“Humanized Noumu test subject one. Subject is quirkless male, aged between thirteen to fourteen years. Subject currently being prepped for preliminary injections. Second physical examination will be conducted within twenty four hours.”
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Second physical?
What are you talking about?
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Wait, injections?
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His bare stomach was swabbed with something even colder than the scissors as he struggled uselessly against his bound arms and legs. He was crying freely, silently begging every hero he could think of to come save him. He was sorry, he wouldn’t do it again whatever it was. Whatever lesson it was he was supposed to get out of this he got it! He just wanted to go home.
“Shut it up already,” the female scientist said as the needle sank into his skin.
He didn’t know anatomy very well, but he knew she had punctured just below his diaphragm and the long needle sank down until it pierced something else inside him. The scientist pressed the pump down and Izuku felt the air go out of his lungs. He couldn’t breathe until she withdrew it and pressed a cotton swab to the small wound.
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Stop
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Stop
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Stop
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Something cold was inside him now, wrapped up in a ball but with every breath Izuku felt the knot come undone a little more. The cold began to sink into his bones and slide along his organs. Everywhere it touched Izuku’s relaxed, his breathing was deep and steady despite his panic and he couldn’t properly feel his limbs.
The female scientist had another needle, this one filled with something red and lighter, but Izuku only managed a weak twitching as she pressed it into the side of his neck.
“Exceptionally low tolerance-” he heard the other doctor say as his thoughts sank into a cold, lazy pool. The female scientist was getting another needle of the red stuff and Izuku blinked sleepily at her, trying to fight the overwhelming exhaustion pressing into him.
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p l
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e a
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s e
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He woke up later. How much so Izuku didn’t know, but he was naked and being fitted into a blue hospital gown. He blinked sleepily before awareness came fully to him and he kicked the purple scientist in the face. They clearly hadn’t expected that, and they staggered back.
Izuku was on a metal table, different from the last one since he wasn’t strapped down and he was able to fling himself off. He wasn’t in the operation room any more, he was in some kind of lab but Izuku didn’t have time to think about that. Blindly he ran, fighting against the burning pain in his limbs to find an exit - but he barely got more than ten yards before a monster grabbed him by his forearm and hoisted him into the air. Izuku screamed and began to kick again but the monster seemed not to notice.
It only cracked him over the head once.
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“It would seem its time in the tank was a success.”
“Certainly its body is stabilized, although further testing is required to determine if its reaction was implanted violent impulses or standard fight or flight.”
“Yes, it did attempt to run after all.”
“Is it ready to begin implantation yet?”
“I am unable to determine that, we need to run personality tests since we will not be lobotomizing this one. Further work may be required it remove its undesired traits.”
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He didn’t know if hospital room or prison cell was a more apt description. Certainly it smelled like a hospital room, too sanitary and weirdly flowery. There was a television hanging in the corner and a certain polished feel about the place. But everything was also bolted and locked I’m case Izuku got it in his head to kill himself. The toilet in the connected room had no seat and the mirror had been removed, the shower was just, in effect, a hose stuck in the top of the wall that would only turn on when Izuku was standing under it. He didn’t have any sheets (though the room was indeed at an optimal temperature) and he didn’t have any sort of window with which to guess the time.
They only let him watch news reports about himself, though edited. They thought he was dead. He was being used as a publicity stunt. No one was going to come for him.
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He only watched his mom’s video after a while. Izuku flipped the television on after he was returned to his room to recover from his daily tests and injections and he just watched her. Watched her face, her tears, her shaking lip. How much time had passed since then? He felt so much older now.
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The gown they gave him was blue and itchy. It exposed too much of his back but it also made it easier for them now that most injections went between his shoulders now, right into his spine.
He lost count of how many injections he had been given. Enough that both of his arms bore dark scars where the needles had pumped him full of strange chemicals and he could see lumps where carelessly placed intravenous catheters had blown out the veins in his hand and wrist.
But it was his last shot now.
And it would hurt the most.
The base of his neck, right into his spinal column.
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The monster . . . the Noumu as he had learned to call it –
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They called him that too. He was always Noumu or ‘it’, and Izuku hated it.
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-pinned him as the needle slowly slipped between his vertebra and into the soft cord of nerves. The noumu held him still to prevent his sudden spasm from paralyzing him but it didn’t stop him from screaming as the scientist pressed the plunger down.
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Fire ripped through his skull, devouring all of him and leaving him an empty thing, just a hollow shell. Even when the Noumu let him go he sat dead still, mouth open in a silent scream.
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That there had been steps taken to suicide proof the hospital cell suddenly made sense to Izuku. After his last examination all he could do was lie on his side, looking at the wall where a window wasn’t as his mother’s voice pleaded in the background.
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It was then that Izuku realized he had actually given up.
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Shortly after that it occurred to him that he didn’t care.