He stepped forward, and put his hand on the suit, feeling the touch of the fabric beneath. This suit... It represented a way forward, an alternative to the accursed flames that had defined his life with hate and suffering.
...
"And it will work? It will allow me to compensate for a lack of flames?"
"Sure will! Though there are some complications… a couple of bugs to work out, but that's fine. No invention has ever not needed a few kinks worked out."
A pang of anger flared up, but he forced it down.
"Like what?"
"Well, for one thing, the way I've set it up, you cannot under any circumstances be submerged in saltwater. Like, just so you know, as it is now, it WILL kill you. But that's not too big an issue. I'll just make the thing waterproof for aquatic missions with the next version. More troubling is that I'm not entirely sure how your powers work in relation to your body. Do you need open skin to get full use of your ice? If so, I'll have to completely redesign the entire thing."
"So you want us to run tests."
"Yep."
"Alright. I'm ready."
---
Izuku woke at exactly 10.12 the next day, the dullness of everything having completely given way as he awoke. Instead, he now felt a ravenous hunger, like death itself clawing at his stomach, that dwarfed any other feeling or thought.
As he got up and walked out, he discovered through a note that his mom had prepared some food for him. GOOD! he quickly made his way over to it and DEVOURED everything she had left him.
But it wasn't enough! Not nearly enough! He had to have more! His hunger had to be sated!
He went over to the fridge and quickly began rummaging through it. He had emptied almost the entire thing for food and was crunching his 9th raw egg(Shell and all) Before reason finally returned to his brain.
He immediately felt his cheeks go completely red as he saw the aftermath of his sack of the cold cabinet.
Then, he quickly began to clean up, desperately trying to ignore Venom's snide comments as he did so.
As he did so, thought and reason began to seep back into his brain, along with memories.
It began to sink in.
As he finished up cleaning and went back to his room, he was still weak, still sore, his teeth felt… Strange, and he was still not entirely there, but as he picked up the piece of metal he'd dropped on his desk, he felt a smile come to his lips, as a sense of pride began to blossom in his heart.
There was still so much room to grow, so much of his powers, he hadn't mastered yet, and so much he didn't know about the villains who had attacked Yuri.
But for now, he didn't care about any of that. Right then, at that moment, he felt a sense of real, genuine pride in himself, pride in what he could do.
He closed his eyes and clutched the number one medal to his chest as he grinned.
Then, as he opened his eyes, the morning sun had vanished, and he was in a room of complete darkness.
He froze, the medal still firmly against his chest.
Slowly, he looked around.
Then, a red, low-key light appeared, around where the window should have been.
He turned his head slowly, as red, glowing crystals began to firm out of thin, black air, without a sound.
The crystals, as Izuku suspected they would, began to form words in the English language.
As the words appeared, he couldn't help but notice how uneven they were. Some letters were a perfect, crystalline copy of the letter they were forming, while others barely looked like them, and began to crack as they finished.
Still, he understood what the message was saying.
A child shall be blooded, from her doom shall spring.
He who lays with the jester, the man with red eyes, a bullet thrown, a bursting eye, a severed leg, a crippled man, a destiny you must not deny.
Let him fall, leave him to fate, else wings so large they block the sun, the demon king a paltry speck, in shadow large as this.
Flee the field, leave the battle, don't go there that day.
March 17th, 2218, the year of Gods, the day the seers failed.
Please… Don't go.
The world turned to normal, the light returned, the red crystals winked out of existence.
"Well… At least it's more specific this time.
...
The rest of the day was a pretty normal one, as Izuku went out to buy groceries(Not to mention replacing everything else he'd taken from the fridge), finally bottoming out every Yen he had for his allowance this month. After that, he went home and read some news on his phone, checked out some articles about hero work, while Venom was on the couch watching TV as he usually did.
He was checking out some news about a murderous vigilante named Stain, when he got a message. For a moment he froze until he read the name of the sender.
Ashido Mina.
He quickly opened it, to find the words:
-You there?
-Yes.
-How's the teeth?
-Pretty good. Venom fixed them up nice and fine. Way easier than bones he said.
-Awesome😁
-What about you?
-Eh, doing way better. I don't heal nearly as fast as you, but my body finished taking care of the poison sometime while I slept. Really damned hungry, but otherwise I'm fine.
-I know the feeling. Wait, you have a healing factor?
-Not like yours🙁 I heal quicker, but I can't regrow my teeth or anything amazing like that. Anyway, so you're feeling just fine then?
Izuku's fingers halted, the memory of the strange psychic visions that had hit him, coming to mind. He felt a strong urge, a wish to talk about it, with someone, anyway who wasn't likely to just blow it off like Venom did.
-Yes.
He said instead of saying anything about the vision.
-So, you're up for the movie night then😊?
Izuku froze.
-Movie night?
-Yeah, we agreed to have a great old marathon of the good Alien movies after the tournament was over, remember?
Izuku wrecked his Brian trying to remember what she was talking about, before remembering that yeah, Mina had said something about that.
He couldn't remember if he had agreed to it or not though.
"Venom, did we say yes to Mina's offer of an Aliens movie night?"
"Yes." The alien replied without even bothering to turn around from the star wars movie he was watching.
Izuku wasn't sure if he was just bulls hitting him cause he wanted to go, telling the truth, or he just didn't care.
Instead, he just sighed.
-What about you, you sure you're feeling up for it?
-Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. No need to mother me😑 I got enough of that at home thank you very much. Anyway, you free tomorrow? When's your curfew?
-22.00 or so. But, I'll have to get home by that time, so I'll have to go way earlier. Where do you live exactly? I need to know how long it'll take to get back home.
-Eh, it's fine. I'll get you a taxi, that way, you won't have to worry about it getting here or back home just mail me the address, and I'll have a taxi at your place at…
Izuku was about to protest about her hiring a freaking expensive taxi, just to come pick him up when Mina interrupted him with the next message.
-Let's see, every Alien movie worth watching is 2 hours long, and with 23 movies to watch… if you get here 15.00, we'll get through 3 of them in one go.
-... There are 23 Alien movies?
-LOL😅 No, there's 94 different Alien movies. But only 23 that's actually good.
Izuku nodded to himself. Yeah, that made sense. He didn't know much about the Alien franchise, but he did know the franchise predated quirks. And like all such products, that meant everything the original creators had ever made, was long, long since in the public domain.
Which meant that there were bound to be filmmakers out there who had just decided to make their own version.
...
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