CH5 – Observations of a chronically injured hero.
Toshinori was feeling very conflicted.
When he first began training young Midoriya, he’d thought things would be simple. Never would he have imagined he would end up training him with the help of his newly and forcefully wedded wife. That option definitely had never even crossed his mind and never would have in any other circumstances.
Granted, that was mainly because, while the idea of that sort of relationship was very appealing, Hero work had always come first and that put a major damper on the possibility of a social life, let alone a love life. He’d never been the most social of people outside of his hero persona, so that didn’t help either. And after Nighteye had foreseen his death… he simply hadn’t cared about it, wanting only to make the most of the life he had left.
So, him having a wife was completely out of left field for him. It was just depressing that it wasn’t because of any actual romance, since it was forced on them. It would have been nice, he imagines, to have someone like that before he died… It was a selfish thought.
Honestly, it was just so weird for him how… smoothly everything was going with her. It wasn’t that they agreed on everything they talked about. They definitely had disagreements and were both stubborn to a fault whenever something came up, but they somehow solved it relatively calmly.
And now Hallie (she insisted. She felt weird being called by her last name, like she was ‘back in school or something’) was in Dagoba beach with them, inspecting what young Midoriya was doing for training, and talking to him on how to incorporate defense moves into his training.
She was very insightful on how to teach a newbie. Toshinori would definitely have to pick her brain for advice in the coming year when his teaching career would begin. That would mean letting her in on the secret, though. She was far too smart and he too bad a liar for her not to catch on. That was future Toshinori’s problem. For now, he had training to monitor.
The next hour still consisted on young Midoriya carting trash about, but instead of it being straight forward carrying, he now had to dodge Hallie’s attacks, which mainly constantly poking him with a flimsy stick in the ribs just hard enough for him to squeal, but not to actually hurt him.
She proposed the mental picture of him either carrying an unconscious civilian during a villain attack or escaping with a potential mass destruction weapon while under attack from the criminals that had it to help him focus on the exercise’s objective. The mental picture seemed to help young Midoriya become even more determined in succeeding in the exercise.
He took that moment to observe her.
For someone without the aid of a physical quirk and in her late thirties, the woman was an absolute beast in everything physical. No where near comparable to One for All or many other physically enhancing quirks, of course. But she would definitely leave most villains in the dust. And she had, if what he looked up on her was accurate. Very often, at that.
He had yet to spar with her. The past few discussions they’d had were mostly focused on his physical health, the bond and artefact (she insisted on him being up to par with her decoding the inscriptions, even going as far as asking if he wanted her to teach him so he could read for himself), and their mutual concerns and expectations of what was going to happen next with both of them.
She was very thoughtful, if a bit cagey about a lot of things. Clearly opening up about herself was taking everything she had and the fact that she managed to seem so open was a miracle in itself.
Granted, it was still very little openness than what would be ideal in this sort of situation. She somehow mastered the art of speaking openly without actually talking about herself unless it was something he needed to know. But he couldn’t exactly start pointing fingers. Not when his secret was still safely hidden during all of this.
He really had to tip a hat to her. He’d had a nightmare the very night he’d been taken hostage where his quirk was the one that had a whole community knowing about it and several people vying for his attention or trying to get a piece of him and it wasn’t pleasant. At all! The thought of having to reveal it to some strangers that didn’t know about it yet and were in a position to get one over him if they so choose made him feel ice crawling into his bones in dread.
He wasn’t sure if he wouldn’t just keep his secret anyway if it came to that, even if other people were in danger. He was pretty sure he would have if All for One were still alive.
(Tsukauchi disagreed. He insisted that Toshinori was too much of a hero at heart to withstand that sort of injustice but sometimes the hero couldn’t help but wonder if the detective was giving him too much credit.)
He’d also met up with her son once so far. It was mostly Toshinori telling him about what he knew about his own health problems in very layman terms and Teddy telling him the sort of diagnostic procedures he had up his sleeves and then preforming them to get a better perspective on the situation and on what could be done about it. His missing organs were the more complicated but easily solved part of the situation according to him, surprisingly.
Apparently, Wizards had developed ways to reconstruct organs. Something about ‘apparition’ misshaps that had gone too far and that a simple spell couldn’t solve anymore and people not realizing there was a missing organ inside them until it was too late to reverse the spell, or a kid’s accidental magic that was too complex to be easily reversed, both needing to regrow it again from scratch. Toshinori… was not going to ask.
The only problem was that, despite the fact that a method already existed to regrow missing organs, it was a highly complicated one. Each different type of tissue needed specific things to grow, and they had to be regrown outside of his body in heavily rune protected containers before being transferred inside him, all while needing a large amount of his blood to base the organ from to decrease organ rejection and to also keep it irrigated.
The blood would have to be slowly withdrawn out of him by parts to avoid him becoming too anemic, especially since he was constantly coughing up blood. They had some sort of concoction that could replenish blood cells, but no one should take more than four every two weeks unless in immediate emergencies that Teddy would explain more about later and it needed an iron rich diet to help the potion along with some other potion. It would cut time in waiting for the blood cells to replenish (normal, nonmagical whole blood donations needed at least 8 weeks for the blood to return to normal levels), but his limited diet still put a major damper on the speed.
Wizards had ways to preserve the blood for far longer that the non-magical means allowed, which was a good thing in this case since it would be necessary a lot of blood.
Only after the blood was all gathered would they begin on the first organ, which would be his stomach. Proper nutrition would help him for the other procedures.
Teddy didn’t explain much of the process after that part, since it was a whole lot of magical jargon.
No, the really big problem that they didn’t have a solution for yet was the scar tissue. Scars behaved very differently from normal flesh. They were tougher, for one. And his were years old, something that Wizards usually didn’t have to deal with, unless they were caused by dark spells (and in that case there really wasn’t much to be done in the first place, if it was gone, it was gone and there would have to be some sort of inconvenient and clunky replacement made in the case of missing limbs or eyes, but nothing much when it came to a complex organ).
This meant that Teddy would need to mix up Wizard techniques with non-magical ones since those needed to be removed before he could attach the organ in its place and work his magic to make it seamless.
Toshinori was very surprised just how easy the whole thing seemed. Sure, it was going to take time, and he would need to have multiple surgeries just to get a single organ each time, along with taking some bonemaking concoction to replace his missing ribs in his affected side.
Once again, the scars were going to be a problem for him regrowing the bones, since they would be in the way of the new bone, so, another intervention would be needed just to keep the path clear for it. Fortunately, the titanium rods that had been placed inside him to keep the ribs in place had carved a path for the bone to take, even if it was far too narrow for the actual bone and they would still need to be removed anyway.
Toshinori really didn’t want to think about it too much. Recovery meant less time he could spend saving people, but at least it was still way off. At best he could only expect to be ready for one surgery before the entrance exam, that was seven months away from now. But it would still be time he missed out on getting young Midoriya ready. Fortunately, Hallie was looking very competent, so there was that.
Still, despite the positive prognosis regarding his own health, Toshinori refused to be hopeful about it until he was fully recovered. He’d been on the organ donation list for over five years now and he’d barely rose two spots since then. It wasn’t even as if he had a particularly specific blood type or something of that sort. There should have been plenty of compatible people so, for him to still be that far behind, it meant that there weren’t enough donners to cover it all. Which in a way it was good. It meant that he and his fellow heroes were doing a good job making sure people stayed alive. But it had taught him that he shouldn’t expect positive outcomes any time soon and that was a way of thinking he wasn’t in a rush to counter just because of some good news.
So no, he wasn’t going to think positively about his health just yet.
Teddy did clear him for some light sparring, though. He hadn’t talked about it right away, but he was thinking about doing so now that he saw how Hallie taught young Midoriya and got a good read on her potential fighting style. He needed to somehow assure her that he didn’t need her protection, though he wasn’t completely opposed to some occasional sparring with her. It would lessen the supervision she would have over him so that he could keep his identity a secret for a while longer.
He was going to have some trouble sparring her without One for All, though.
He was so used to using his quirk to fight that he suspected it would be just a tad too easy for him to accidentally reveal that he was All Might mid spar. That and he hadn’t sparred without his quirk for a really long time so he might be a bit rusty, too used to only using moves that were only as effective as they were because of One for All.
As time passed, Toshinori switched around the exercises young Midoriya was doing. Since it was summer, it was the perfect opportunity for him to get some laps along the beach in before the weather got colder again, along with some aquatic exercises for muscle strengthening.
Hallie withdrew form that one, admitting she didn’t exactly knew how to swim without magical aid, considering she came from a cold country and never experienced a vacation to the beach when younger and was more than happy to simply supervise afterwards.
“If you want, I can teach you. You never know when you might need it and you’ve already done so much for us that it is but a small retribution.” He suggested.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to take any more of your time than necessary. My presence is the very reason why you’re in danger in the first place.” She said and Toshinori could tell she wasn’t trying to play hospitality game that the Japanese were so fond of. She genuinely believed what she was saying, as if her trying to make sure they were safe was a major imposition already in itself and her spending any more time with them than that would just be a burden they wouldn’t want.
“Not at all. Because of my condition I’ve been limited to 3 hours of work per day, so training young Midoriya has been my highlight in the past few months. I certainly wouldn’t mind adding you to my day as well.” And to further convince her to take his offer: “I think it would be fun.”
Of course, he hadn’t offered because he thought it might be fun. Not that it couldn’t be. She was kind and had a brand of dark humor that he could appreciate. Her no nonsense attitude was also another positive in her favor and, admittedly, she was the opposite of hard on the eyes. But that wasn’t all there was to the request, really. It was mostly because she could need this skill.
Toshinori had once been naïve enough to believe he didn’t need to further is skills in areas he didn’t use, like that one time he’d thought he wouldn’t need indepth knowledge of the English language, just enough to speak fluently. He’d had to eat his words not long after, when a message from a potential bomber about the location of a bomb was written in riddle and Toshinori had to waste time asking someone else about it.
There was no telling if she would ever face someone with a strong enough water quirk to create literal pools too deep for her to wade in, or if she somehow got cornered over the ocean or something of the sort. Especially since she was now quite literally in an island. Sure, a massive island, but still one.
But he’d gotten a bit of a measure on her and him telling it was solely for her benefit would send her packing for some reason, so he had to add a selfish reason to his offer. His having more company and a fun time seemed to be just the sort of selfish she would gladly go along with.
“Ok.” She reluctantly agreed. “Perhaps in the beginning of next week? I’ll have some friends coming over under the guise of being summoned by my curse-breaker nom the plume. Sure, they do have knowledge on some aspects of the welled glass and I’m going to want to consult with them too, but it’s mostly to drop off my birthday presents before the actual day, since they can’t be with me then. They could join in on the fun.” She suggested.
This made him feel a bit nervous. How would her loved ones react to actually seeing his skinny self? He knew he was constantly dismissed outright by the people around when he wasn’t beefed up. They took one look at his skinniness and overly large clothes and immediately gave him a wide breadth. He didn’t think he looked particularly bad. Sure, some drug addictions cause people to lose a lot of weight, but he didn’t have any telltale signs of suffering from that sort of thing. He was clean and had nice clothes, even if overly large for his skinny frame, and sure, his hair was wild, but it was clearly well taken care of.
Despite knowing all of that, the reactions still made him self-conscious, so he was a bit nervous about the new people.
On the other hand, it would be interesting seeing Hallie interact with people she was bound not to be so reserved with.
“I don’t have a problem with it.” He replied.
“Neat.” She nodded before looking at him again, clearly wanting to ask him something but not daring to so he went ahead and politely gave her a cue to ask which she took. “I just wanted to know how it went with Teddy.”
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Healer-patient confidentiality. Unless it endangers someone else, Teddy has to keep quiet about his patients issues just like normal doctors.”
“Oh, I assumed wizards did it differently.”
“In England they did. They were more open to gossiping about their patients before the blood war unless specifically paid not to. There have been a few reforms since then, but they are still very gossipy, just more cautious about it. Each country had their own spoken and unspoken rules about it and because I’m not sure where my job with take us, Teddy is following the universally accepted rules for international healer exchanges, which the more cautious version of them all so as to comply to the most countries possible. There are enough countries anal about privacy that it has become an international rule. Japan just happens to be one of them, curiously enough, but even if it weren’t, Teddy would still follow that rule.” Hallie explained.
“Oh, that’s a relief. He did mention the possibility of having to consult someone else for some of my issues. Several someones, actually. I just assumed wizards would be more informal about it.”
“So, it’ll be a complicated problem, then?” Hallie asked.
“Yes, but not what I’d initially assumed would be a problem. Apparently there already ways to reconstruct organs and a potion that re-makes whole bones. It’s the scar tissues that is the issue.” The way Hallie winced to him mentioning the bonemaking mixture made him a bit wary.
“I can’t say I’m surprised about scars being an issue. I’ve tried getting rid of this one on my forehead since it was such a give-away, but I’ve mostly been told by the magical community at large that it’s such a small and inconsequential thing, it would be really stupid to waste time coming up with a way to take it away so here it stays.” Hallie commented.
“You frowned when I mentioned the bone potion.” Toshinori said leadingly, unwilling to let go of a subject that made her make such an ugly face.
“It tastes awful. Absolutely disgusting. Most potions do, but that one is one of the most foul I’ve had to taste so far. And unless they give you something to sleep through the whole procedure, it’s going to suck big time. Once I had to regrow all the bones in one of my arms. I woke up during the night and had to stay absolutely still because just the slightest movement made it feel like my arm was full of glass shards.”
“A… A WHOLE ARM!?” Toshinori was very, very alarmed.
Apparently, she didn’t understand his concerns because she barely reacted to his concern.
“Yup, worst stay at the school infirmary I’ve ever had.”
And here was her habit of being very open about things while still not revealing anything. What happened for her to lose every single bone in her arm. And did she say school infirmary!?!? It happened at school!?!?
Toshinori had some very serious concerns.
Unfortunately, she was bound to somehow still change the subject if he tried to pry so he didn’t bother with it. Perhaps her friends would be more willing to talk? Because he was beginning to feel the need to intervene the more he learned about her life.
He seriously hoped things weren’t as dangerous now as they were when she’d been younger.
“Ok… Well, young Teddy told me I could go ahead and spar with you. So, if you’re free, we could do it today after young Midoriya is done with his training.”
“Sure, I have no problem with it.” She nodded, still completely unfazed by the sentence that had slipped through her own lips moments before.
They stayed quiet the remaining time young Midoriya took to finish his laps, Toshinori quietly worrying while Hallie seemed to only enjoy sunning herself while looking at the sea, completely unconcerned.
Usually this would be followed by some jogging and then some walking to cool down before ending training for the day, but Hallie wanted to start him on some of the simpler self-defense moves she had and getting him started on muscle memory. She specifically chose some of the maneuvers that could work on his cardio as well as a compensation.
Finally, the training ended and they took a break as Toshinori handed them their respective water bottles. As soon as young Midoriya recovered his breath he went on a diatribe about the new moves he was taught and how they could possibly be applied in a battle situation and Hallie patiently went along with the conversation.
Soon young Midoriya was done with his questions (probably because he was feeling like he was imposing too much, because Toshinori doubted he was done with the questions he had in mind) and Hallie stood up from the sand, stretching some and turning towards him, a clear cue for their spar.
To sum it up, claiming that he was rusty in quirkless fighting would have been a kindness.
The only things that he had going for him was that he was fast on his feet (Nothing compared to when he used his quirk, but he wasn’t taught by Gran Torino for nothing. Of course, he knew how to move fast) and he was very good at punching things, even without the additional strength of his quirk.
He’d known going in that Hallie was agile, speedy and was good at thinking on her feet after seeing her with Young Midoriya. Clearly, she had been holding back by a lot because she was now on par with his former sidekick Nighteye in terms of speed and Gran Torino in terms of agility. She lost to him in terms of strength, even without him using One for All, but she had adapted to redirecting her opponents’ movements and using their inertia against them. She also wasn’t as flexible as he’d initially assumed, but his lack of training in quirkless fighting didn’t turn that into a disadvantage for her.
“You move like someone who has a strength enhancement quirk.” She stated once they were done. “Not that you don’t have a mean punch, my ribs are going to be feeling it for days, that’s for sure, but… You don’t fight efficiently for someone quirkless. Where you taught by someone with that sort of quirk, perhaps?”
She really was too observant for his sake.
“Sort of? It’s complicated.” Toshinori said, trying to remain as calm as possible, while also exuding the energy of someone who was not going to talk about it.
She hummed with an unimpressed expression, but let it go rather that question him further.
“If that was the case, it would make sense why your fighting style is so specific. Usually, fighters with enhanced physical attributes make awful teachers for those who are more baseline. They get so used to using the advantage of their quirks that they can’t relate to someone who isn’t like them, which is a downright shame. If they had more discipline in learning the baseline fighting styles properly, they could be so much more efficient. One of the people who taught me martial arts was one of the few to actually learn it and use it to enhance their quirk. It was a very minor enhancement of their thighs but they could be deadly with it if they felt like it when they combined martial arts.” She commented and Young Midoriya had somehow pulled a notebook out of nowhere and was writing it all down. “Anyway, the way you fight, you would be fine against a big portion of the wixen. Most aren’t really very physically fit beyond positioning themselves while casting for better aim. You are fast, so you could probably dodge most of the spells coming your way and they are never ready for a physical confrontation so, if you manage to get close enough, you have victory guaranteed. I would still advise you to learn a more standard fighting style that isn’t tailored for an arm strength quirk, but unless you are faced with muggleborn or no-maj raised wixen who invested in martial arts, I’m pretty sure you don’t need further training to survive them, so it’s really up to you if you do.”
Toshinori nodded and listened in on her giving Young Midoriya some last minute advice before they called it a day.
She was right, of course. His fighting style was tailored to using his arms with One for All alone. And that’s all he usually needed. Even then he didn’t use his full strength. The first time he’d stopped a villain he’d almost killed them because he’d misjudged his strength (not counting the time when All for One found them and killed Nana, he’d only sparred up until then. He knew that he couldn’t spar with villains, that he would have to actually try and beat them, and he should have known it was unfair of him to hold them to the same metric as All for One.)
He'd wanted to make sure to be as least dangerous as possible. He was a hero, not an assassin. So, he ignored most of his quirkless sparring lessons and eventually stopped using them altogether.
Now he couldn’t really afford that. Not when doing so meant he couldn’t even save himself or someone else in a hostage situation when in his skinny form.
He also couldn’t help but think on his decision of becoming a teacher at UA. If what Hallie had said was true, then he wouldn’t be able to help his students much in sparring. He hadn’t even considered incorporating fighting in his training sessions with young Midoriya, only concerned with getting him where he needed to be to use One for All.
He’d assumed Midoriya would come to naturally use the same moves as him, since he’d too fallen out of using several fighting techniques.
But that wasn’t really a fair assessment, was it?
So, just as they were leaving, supposedly each for their own house, Toshinori approached Hallie for some more sparring sessions to ‘shake off the rust’, to which she’d agreed.
The following days were spent much the same, with him getting his daily amount of hero work done before joining up for training. Toshinori still had the cheat day when he and his student ate some snacks together, but now Hallie was there as well. It felt wrong not to invite her.
He met once more with Teddy, the day before Hallie’s friends came over, to start the drawing of blood and get it over with. Because he was consistently losing about 14% of his total amount of blood in the same time it took for it to replenish it, Teddy would have to be careful with how much he would withdraw.
The young man, who had taken to copying young Midoriya’s hair that day as a way to help him relax by giving him something familiar, uttered a spell over his arm, wand firmly pressed where a needle would usually be inserted. A hermetically sealed vat to the side with a capacity for 20 liters and a narrow vertical window to show blood level started slowly filling up.
“Tell me when you start feeling like passing out. I need to give you a blood replenishing potion before you faint.” Teddy demanded gently, and Toshinori agreed easily
“How much blood will you take?” He asked with some curiosity.
“It depends. My anemia detection spell could only tell me the percentage of blood you have compared to what would be ideal for your body. It doesn’t give out exact measures of how much blood you actually have. Blood replenishing potions are some heavy stuff and unless it’s a dire situation, they aren’t consistently given out to a patient. I can give you at best three of them right now because of your health and then take a break for two to three weeks and I can’t withdraw the same amount of blood after the last one since I’m taking more than what one would take for a normal blood donation before letting you drink it.” Teddy explained and then added. “Grandpa Arthur was once bit by a very poisonous snake that didn’t let his blood clot and, even then, he could only take one an hour until they found a working antidote, and he still wasn’t quite right health-wise for a few more months due the amount of it he had to take to stay alive. Due to the amount of iron in the potion, it can be a lot hard on the liver and kidneys to filter.”
“But he did get better, right?”
“Oh, yeah. Still alive today. He might be a bit goofy when it comes to things that you think of as normal and he may seem completely unassuming, but he is one tough old man. Still refuses to retire, since he loves his job so much.”
“What does he do for work?” Toshinori asked, wondering what sort of thing could compel an old man to keep working.
“He is part of the ministry’s Misuse of Muggle Artefacts Office. Basically, he makes sure there aren’t any wixen enchanting normal items with all sorts of things and then abandoning them where unsuspecting no-majs might come across them, though the laws have become a bit laxer in the recent times as crazier and crazier quirks come into being that do similar things to some of those enchantments. Now a days it’s mostly making sure that the artefacts aren’t actually dangerous and helping people with permanent side-effects. He loves his job because he loves tinkering with things that are actually pretty normal for most people outside the communities. He is completely fascinated with electricity and machinery and likes poking at anything he can with his wand to see how it works and then make some improvements where he can. Some of mom’s support equipment had his contribution added to them too.”
Teddy kept talking to keep him from getting too bored through the process even while keeping his eyes focused on the wand where it was touching the arm.
As soon as Toshinori started feeling a bit too woozy, he warned Teddy like he’d asked and was handed a vial with dark red liquid inside along with the advice of trying to down as much of it in as least gulps as possible.
It… wasn’t much of a problem for him. It had a very iron-y taste that did remind a bit of blood, heavily mixed with some sort of herbal taste and then something else that was a bit slimy feeling on his tongue, but all in all it wasn’t too bad. Not for someone who had the constant taste of blood in his mouth. In fact, it even washed it out a bit.
The effect was instantaneous and the wooziness disappeared. A quick glance at the vat told him that he’s barely reached the 1-liter and a half mark. He didn’t feel disappointed that only so little had been taken from him because he was ready to deal with disappointment.
Teddy, who was currently talking about something a prankster cousin of his had done, seemed to notice his non-disappointment and tried to distract him by asking him questions.
Hallie had raised a good young man.
By the end, only around 4 and a half liters had been taken and Teddy was shoving some concoction to help clear up the kidneys and liver from the result of the use of so many blood replenishing potions in so little a time and that he was supposed to taken in about an hour.
Now to hoping that tomorrow went ok.