BEEP... BEEP... BEEP
The sterile white ceiling of UA's medical wing stretched endlessly above Ryuu, an unblemished canvas that seemed to mock the chaos churning in his mind.
Each tile was perfectly aligned, each fluorescent light casting the same glow it had for the past three days...or was it four?
Time had become meaningless in this antiseptic prison where the only sounds were the rhythmic beeping of monitors and the soft shuffle of medical staff beyond his door.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt this hollow.
The absence of his quirk was like losing a limb he'd never realized he depended on.
It's been years...since that terrifying day when he was five and accidentally amplified his mother.
Resonance had been as natural as breathing.
And then came the thoughts....even though most of it was already altered in his weakened mind...
'Complete quirk burnout', Recovery Girl had called it with that grave expression she reserved for the worst cases.
*You pushed your quirk factor beyond its absolute limits. The neural pathways that channel your ability have essentially... gone dormant. We don't know for how long.*
Ryuu flexed his fingers against the hospital sheets, feeling nothing but fabric and skin.
No emotional resonance.
No empathic feedback.
No connection to anything or anyone.
The silence in his head was deafening...a void where his quirk used to live, leaving him feeling fundamentally broken.
The field trip to the National Quirk Research Institute felt like a lifetime ago, though it had only been days.
He could still see every detail with crystalline clarity...the gleaming white corridors, Dr.Yamada's excited explanations about quirk evolution theory, the moment when everything went to hell.
The Collector's subordinates had struck, separating their class, forcing them into individual battles designed to test their limits.
And Ryuu had reached his.
God help him, he'd shattered them completely.
Two people.
He'd tried to coordinate two different quirks simultaneously while under attack, pushing his Resonance far beyond anything he'd ever attempted.
Momo's rapid-fire creation of weapons and barriers, Mina's Super-Acid Generation...and his own desperate attempts to maintain the network connecting them all.
The feedback loop had been excruciating.
The different emotional signatures blazing through his consciousness at once....fear, determination, rage, desperation....all amplified and reflected back through his quirk until he couldn't tell where his feelings ended and theirs began.
The pain in his skull had been like white-hot needles driven directly into his brain, but he'd kept going because what choice did he have? Let his friends die?
Then The Collector himself had appeared.
"Kurogane," he'd introduced himself with that metallic smile, his copied quirks rippling across his chrome-plated skin like liquid mercury. *"Though most know me simply as The Collector. I've been so looking forward to meeting you, young Kazama. Or should I say... the son of Commander Yamamoto?"*
His father.
After eight years of believing Kenji Kazama had abandoned them, of thinking they weren't enough to make him stay, The Collector had casually revealed the truth like he's discussing the weather.
Ryuu's father hadn't left because he didn't care...he'd left because of his son.
Because of what Ryuu could do.
Because of research he'd apparently conducted that made the boy a target.
The memories hit Ryuu in waves, each one accompanied by phantom echoes of emotions he could no longer properly feel.
Mina's agonized scream as she pushed her acid quirk beyond safe limits, burning herself from the inside out to protect Momo.
Momo's desperate determination as her body consumed its fat reserves at a dangerous rate, creating weapon after weapon until she collapsed from exhaustion.
Midoriya shattering his arms again, green lightning crackling around broken bones as he refused to give up.
All of them had been hurt because Ryuu wasn't strong enough.
Because even with his quirk amplifying their abilities, even with the coordination network he'd tried to maintain, they hadn't been enough to stop The Collector and his team.
They'd been outclassed, outmaneuvered, and worst of all, they'd been 'studied' like lab rats in a maze.
Shiiiick
The door to his room opened with a soft pneumatic hiss, but Ryuu didn't turn his head to look.
Without his quirk, he felt empty.
The absence of that awareness made him feel naked, vulnerable in a way he'd never experienced before.
"Kazama-kun." Recovery Girl's voice, gentle but carrying the weight of authority that came from decades of treating wounded heroes. "Your vitals are stable, but your stress levels remain elevated. Have you been sleeping?"
Sleep.
That was almost funny.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw The Collector's metallic face, heard his voice promising that this was just the beginning.
"Some," Ryuu lied, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears.
Recovery Girl's cane tapped against the polished floor as she moved closer.
Without his quirk, he had to actually listen to identify her location...a strange, almost primitive way of sensing his environment that left him feeling fundamentally disconnected from the world.
"Your classmates have been asking about you," she said, settling into the chair beside his bed with a soft grunt. "Young Ashido has been particularly... persistent. I believe she's attempted to visit seven times since yesterday evening."
Mina.
Ryuu's chest tightened at the thought of her worried face, those bright golden eyes probably red-rimmed from crying.
She'd been the first person at UA to truly understand his quirk, the first to experience the full depth of what Resonance could do when enhanced by genuine emotional connection.
Their relationship had grown from friendship to something deeper over the past months, built on trust, vulnerability, and the kind of intimacy that came from literally sharing emotions.
And now he couldn't feel anything from her.
Couldn't sense her warmth, her boundless optimism, her fierce protective instincts.
The girl who'd taught him that physical contact didn't have to be feared, who'd shown him that amplifying emotions could be beautiful rather than overwhelming... he was cut off from her completely.
"She blames herself," Recovery Girl continued, apparently taking his silence as permission to elaborate. "Young Yaoyorozu as well. They both believe they should have protected you better, that their injuries are secondary to your wellbeing. It's quite touching, really, though medically speaking, they both need more time to recover befor—"
"They were hurt because of me." The words came out sharper than Ryuu had intended, interrupting Recovery Girl's explanation .
"Everyone was hurt because I wasn't strong enough to protect them. Because I pushed too hard and burned out my quirk when they needed me most."
BEEP... BEEP... BEEP
Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant sounds of the medical wing—other patients, staff conversations, the omnipresent hum of life support equipment.
Recovery Girl studied him with those sharp eyes that had seen too many young heroes break under pressure.
"Is that what you believe?" she asked finally. "That your quirk burnout was a failure rather than a sacrifice?"
Ryuu turned to look at her for the first time since she'd entered. "What else would you call it? I had one job...coordinate our team, amplify their abilities, give us an edge against The Collector's forces. Instead, I overextended and left everyone defenseless when they needed support most."
"Ah." Recovery Girl nodded slowly, as if he'd confirmed something she'd suspected. "I see. You view your quirk as a tool rather than a part of yourself. Interesting."
"What do you mean?"
She leaned back in her chair, her expression thoughtful. "Tell me, young man...when you amplify someone's quirk, what do you experience?"
The question caught Ryuu off guard. "I... their emotions. Their physical sensations, sometimes. It depends on how deep the connection is."
"And during the battle? When you were coordinating different people simultaneously?"
The memory sent phantom pain shooting through his skull. "It was... overwhelming. Different emotional signatures, all amplified and feeding back through the network. Fear, anger, determination, desperation...I couldn't tell where my feelings ended and theirs began. The feedback loop was like having my brain set on fire."
"Yet you maintained the connection."
"Of course I did. They neede—"
"No." Recovery Girl's voice was firm, cutting off his automatic response. "Not 'of course.' Most people would have severed the connection the moment it became painful. Self-preservation is a powerful instinct. But you didn't. Even as your quirk factor pushed beyond safe limits, even as the feedback threatened to tear your mind apart, you held on. Why?"
Ryuu stared at her, not understanding where this was going. "Because they're my friends. Because I couldn't let them get hurt."
"Because you love them."
The simple statement hit him like a physical blow.
Love.
Such a small word for such a complex emotion, especially when filtered through a quirk that made him feel everything so intensely.
"Resonance isn't just about amplification," Recovery Girl continued. "It's about connection. Emotional resonance. The deeper your bond with someone, the stronger the amplification becomes. Your quirk doesn't just boost their abilities...it creates a bridge between souls."
"I know how my quirk works," Ryuu said, though even as the words left his mouth, he wondered if that was true.
"Do you? Because from where I'm sitting, it seems like you view yourself as some kind of living tool. A support quirk user whose only value lies in making others stronger." She leaned forward, her gaze intense. "But that's not what happened during the battle, is it? You didn't just amplify their quirks...you held your teammates together through sheer force of will and love even without you having your quirk active. You became the emotional anchor that kept them fighting even when everything seemed hopeless."
Ryuu's throat felt tight. "And then I failed. My quirk burned out an—"
"And you saved their lives." Recovery Girl's voice was gentle but unyielding. "The Collector's forces were designed to separate and overwhelm your class. Without your coordination network, without the amplification you provided, they would have been picked off one by one. Your quirk burnout wasn't a failure, young man...it was the price of keeping your friends alive long enough for the pro heroes to arrive."
He wanted to argue, to point out all the ways he could have done better, but the words stuck in his throat.
Because deep down, in a place he'd been afraid to examine, he knew she was right.
The battle hadn't been about winning...it had been about survival.
And somehow, impossibly, they'd all survived.
"Your mother has been contacted," Recovery Girl said, standing slowly. "She'll be here within the hour. In the meantime, I suggest you consider what kind of hero you want to be when your quirk returns."
"When?" The word came out as barely more than a whisper.
Recovery Girl paused at the door, a small smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "Did you think this was permanent? Young man, quirks are remarkably resilient things. Your neural pathways aren't destroyed...they're exhausted. Like a muscle that's been overworked, they need time to heal and rebuild. Given the nature of your quirk, I suspect it will come back stronger than before."
She left him alone with that thought, the door sliding shut behind her with another soft hiss.
Stronger than before.
The idea should have been comforting, but all Ryuu could think about was The Collector's parting words as the pro heroes had finally arrived:
Evolution. The same word Dr. Yamada had used during their tour of the research institute.
The same concept his father had apparently studied before disappearing from their lives.
And now The Collector was interested in his quirk, interested enough to orchestrate an entire attack just to observe him under stress.
What did that mean? What had his father discovered about Resonance that made him worth targeting? And why did the idea of his quirk evolving fill him with dread rather than hope?
Ryuu closed his eyes and tried to find some sense of peace in the quiet of the medical wing.
Whatever was coming, whatever the villain had planned, Ryuu had the sinking feeling that this attack had been just the beginning.
And when his quirk returned...he would need to be ready.
The ceiling remained white, unblemished, unchanging.
But Ryuu Kazama was already different, already broken in ways that went deeper than quirk burnout.
And somehow, he suspected that was exactly what The Collector had been counting on.
---
Author's Note: Yosh!!