"The very first requirement in a hospital

is that it should do the sick no harm."

-Florence Nightingale

He inhaled to the stifling smell of antiseptic and exhaled death.

And then... He awoke. Like a schoolchild to an alarm clock, he slowly but surely was brought into the outmost and awake-most portion of his consienciousness. Not by the blaring ring of an alarm clock, but by the smell. He had always hated antiseptic. He had always hated hospitals. This double agglomation of hate was enough to make him wake up far earlier than they had expected unironically enough.

At least it hadn't been during the surgery itself.

It wasn't a nice smell to wake up to, nor was the blinding white of the walls, or the clinking sound of the chains that made a sound every time his wrist twitched. It was, by far, the worst sounds and smells that he could imagine. His face furrowed into a deep, twisted grimace; he ha no information and he was chained to the hospital bed he now inhabited.

Wasn't the greatest sign.

How an ambulance even came was a sheer mystery to him. But despite the fact that it was a worrisome situation, it was probably best that it had happened because it was... uncertain whether or not he would have made it out of that predicament alive. According to his (foolish, in hindsight) plans, he was going to have to walk, while in an extreme state of bloodloss, to find someone that he didn't even know the location of. And then hope that the smell of blood on him wasn't enough to trigger her or something. In the end, this little setback was likely necessary for his future revenge (even if hospitals, and even worse, handcuffs, weren't exactly something that he would prefer to face).

His unchained hand slithered between the folds of his hospital gown and pressed it against where he remembered almost getting skewered by the Knight's longsword. Touching it sent a new, weak wave of pain throughout his nervous system, but it was nothing all that serious. The stitches that he had sewn in with his inexperienced hand had already been replaced with metallic staples. The wound was tender, but it didn't seem like a problem. In other words, there shouldn't be much of an issue with sitting up. He didn't want to sit up only to reopen the wound.

It was just common sense.

He moved into a sitting position. The world churned with a frightening focus and he felt like he would be stretched and tugged and pulled like taffy. His brain was stuffed with cotton and his nose suffocated with mercury. He felt his stitched wounds ache. But he could still do it, he could still move, and that was all that mattered. Life had never been one for easy mode, after all. This much was to be expected.

His brain let out one final screech of pain before it smoothed into the smooth, yet jerky awakeness of... adrenaline; someone was in this room as well, and he hadn't even noticed that at all. Forget taffy, his senses were reduced to burnt rubber thanks his unbelievably foggy thought process. He hadn't felt this unaware since... why, since he was quirkless. And every inch of him felt... heavy. Like every atom in his body was weighed down by an unseen weight.

'Gray..? Gray! This isn't a funny joke! ...She'd never do a joke like this in the first place. I know that. So why am I being so hopeful? So delusional? Why... Why does it hurt? I know that she'd never leave me, rationally speaking. She's my quirk, for god's sake! She literally can't be seperate for a long time or she'll dissipate. Yet... I can't help but feel sick. So, so sick more so than a mere injury or cold could ever hope to achieve.'

Izuku Midoriya was getting trapped inside of his own head. Just like a domino effect, the disappearance of the lightning spirit was more than simply a loss of combat power; she was a loss of mental stability. She was the pillar that his psyche leaned on, as well as an artificial mood supplement. She was the one who gave him regular boosts of dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin, and serotonin. She was his ecstasy.

And he was the cold turkey.

Of course, there was a very particular and complex reason behind why she had decided to disappear.

Approximately 5 hours and 26 minutes before the awakening of Izuku Midoriya:

Gray, if she had a face or eyes, would have pinched them in exasperation at that moment. Sure enough, he had collapsed as soon as he finished that stitch that he was doing on himself. She could see that he was at his very limits, but he still used the last little fumes of the energy he had left to fix what those bastards'-, no... what her own inadequacy did. She should have been alongside him and protected him, but...

No.

She couldn't dwell on it now. She had to trigger her special trump card. She had slowly been manipulating a tendril of special lighting unseen through the darkest depths of shadows and blending in with the light. Subtly, imperceptibly, she connected herself to the phone on the wall and connected to the phone of one bloodlusty individual's number. The call connected in a manner of seconds, and they got here within minutes.

(Even if her master couldn't remember her phone number like an imbecile, she could.)

Only for them to arrive with nothing to offer. For it seemed that the actual imbecile in front of her had never thought of stocking up on blood. Well, it was somewhat fair. Her quirk was really designed for a select, few people that she would disguise as, and a large assortment of them was irrelevant beyond a certain quantity. Deku, and by extension, Gray, had never really learned the true specifics in regard to her quirk because they never crossed paths; she had seemed like a firm Shigaraki follower, only to not care when he died and join Deku instead.

Well, it didn't matter now. She was getting off track.

Toga Himiko was an imbecile. Ah, there the topic was. And because of that, she was going to have to be forced to send word to an ambulance (her master was technically a villain and it was indescribable how goddamn stupid this whole idea was-) instead called an ambulance after bringing him out of that Cafe to a nearby one. She would have loved to have made those bastards suffer, but the moment that Dabi and the rest appeared, they all up and ran to another location, not even bothering with fighting. And.. Although she didn't want to admit it-...

It was good that they left without trying to fight back.

Deku was loaded into the ambulance soon after, the girl that had been in the room the whole time disappearing into seemingly thin air. She wasn't too worried about her because it wouldn't be weird if she didn't run away during that whole fiasco; she was too preoccupied with Deku to bother looking at her. And it was also because she had been extra cautious in her watch over Deku in her paranoia.

Of course, it was there that the problem came up.

...In the form of requesting for (goddammit!) help. The three of them, ever since Deku had sent them like hunting hounds out for drugs, immediately started to search for the whereabouts of 'that man'. And they had done remarkably well in their ventures because of him, only to run into a roadblock at the last step before success. They were all convinced that little trick she had just pulled was exactly what they needed to finally crack the code. Gray was stuck between the choices, but was forced to choose one in the end; she had wasted too much time, and the ambulance had pulled away before she knew it.

Gray could only curse.

{...Fuck.}

Present Time:

Izuku Midoriya would have continued to remain stuck inside his own mind, had it not been for a sudden sound that threw him from his labyrinth and into the very real, very present world (with someone in it that he hadn't fucking noticed. How long had they been there? How long had he been unguarded? Shitshitshitshitshitshithshit-) and it scared him out of his mind, obviously. Until his mood swung down to an icy, smothering indifference with a firey, daredevil core of, 'I don't care about anything at this point. Do your worst.' at its best and finest.

Of course, his face had been nothing but a ice sculpture the whole time.

"It seems that you have woken up, Allen Bowman."

She turned around, face still ripe with dirt and clothing still patched, and did an elegant, aristocratic curtsy.

The dissonance wasn't even funny at this point.

"It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Aiko, and for tonight-..."

Her counterance was grim and her eyes were seemingly endless pools of dead water, but her smile was warm and large.

"I'll be your killer, Mr. Bowman."