Chapter 11: Darker Than Before
The dust was still settling when Recovery Girl arrived.
The small, elderly heroine moved with surprising speed, handing out gummy candies and scolding students for their recklessness. She spent a long time with Midoriya, whose broken limbs were a horrific sight, and Uraraka, who was nauseous from overuse of her Quirk.
Uraraka, sitting on a piece of rubble while Recovery Girl tended to her scrapes, looked up at Kaito. "Thank you," she said, her voice shaky. "You saved him from hitting the ground. That gravity thing... it was amazing."
Kaito shook his head, staring at the unconscious Midoriya. "I didn't do anything," he muttered. "He did everything."
Uraraka looked at him, concern etching her features. "Are you okay? You look... pale."
At that moment, Kaito felt a strange, violent tremor run through his skull.
It wasn't pain, exactly. It was a sudden, intense heat behind his eyes, followed by a sensation like a heavy shutter slamming down. He winced, clapping a hand over his right eye, squeezing both shut.
"Are you okay?!" Uraraka stood up, alarmed.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Kaito gasped, waving a hand blindly. "Just a headache. I'm sorry."
He opened his eyes.
Nothing.
No violet specters. No thermal outlines. No pulsing energy signatures.
Just absolute, suffocating blackness.
Kaito froze. His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He blinked rapidly, his eyes wide, staring at the ground. To anyone watching, his eyes were pitch black, devoid of the usual violet glimmer. To Kaito, the world had simply ceased to exist.
What is happening?
He tried to force it. Focus, he commanded himself. He reached out with his mind, trying to grasp the energy of the girl standing in front of him, the heat of the wreckage, the dormant power of the robots.
Silence. A void.
He had returned to the darkness of his infancy.
Panic, cold and sharp, spiked in his chest. He took a stumbling step backward. Why now? I haven't lost control of my vision since I was six. It's always been there. Always.
He stopped, swaying slightly. Is it exhaustion? Stress? No, that doesn't make sense. My vision doesn't turn off when I sleep. It's passive.
He tried to walk, to get away from the noise, but his internal map was gone. His foot caught on something hard and unyielding—rubble? A robot part?—and he pitched forward, barely catching himself. He didn't know what he had tripped on. He didn't know where the ground ended or began.
Dark thoughts began to bloom in the void of his mind. Is this it? Is it gone forever?
A wrinkled hand touched his shoulder. He jumped.
"If you're that exhausted, sonny, don't try to walk to the changing rooms," Recovery Girl's voice was stern but kind. She turned to a robot stretcher-bearer. "Take this one to the clinic, too."
Forty-five minutes later, the clinic was quiet. Recovery Girl sat at her desk, sighing as she looked at Kaito's file.
"Blind," she muttered, shaking her head. "And you were in that arena. What were you thinking? And what were your parents thinking, letting you apply?"
Kaito sat on the edge of a bed. He wasn't injured, not physically. But he was staring into nothingness, his hands gripping the edge of the mattress until his knuckles were white.
"I used my mother's Quirk to see," he said, his voice hollow. "But this is the first time I've lost it. I don't know why it's not working."
"Your mother's Quirk... you said it's like ultraviolet sensing? Spatial mapping of organic and inorganic matter?" Recovery Girl asked.
"Yes. Though it's not hers, specifically. The doctor said it's from her ancestors. She's Quirkless."
"I see," she murmured. "Like recessive genes... eye color, hair color. You've developed this sensory ability to an incredible degree. To distinguish ink on paper... that is a level of precision that borders on the absurd."
"It was hard, but it worked," Kaito whispered. "But now... now..."
"Keep calm," she chided gently. "Quirks don't just vanish into thin air. It will return. But tell me... what did you do differently today? Think."
"Everything was new," Kaito said. "Especially using Gravity offensively on the robots."
"Gravity. Your father's Quirk?"
"Sort of. He pulls things. I can push, pull, lift, heavy... everything."
"I doubt that's the cause," Recovery Girl mused. "Using one Quirk shouldn't short-circuit the other. Think harder. Did you do something specific with your sensory Quirk?"
Kaito frowned, his unseeing eyes cast downward. He replayed the morning. The bus ride. The written exam. The speech. The gate.
His eyebrows shot up. "Yes. The gate."
"What about it?"
"Before the exam started... I tried something new," Kaito said slowly. "I forced my range to expand. I pushed my focus out... way out. I could feel robots thirty, maybe forty meters away."
"Aha," Recovery Girl said, the sound of a pen scratching on paper following. "There it is."
"What do you mean?"
"It's simple physiology, boy. You pushed a muscle that wasn't ready to stretch that far. You overexerted the neural pathways of your sensory Quirk. It's like a runner getting a cramp after sprinting a marathon without training."
Kaito clenched his fist. "So... after all that fighting with my mom... I'm going home like this?"
.
.
.