The silence in the Midoriya apartment had changed its composition.
Before, it had been a flat, oppressive blanket, a punishment administered through absence. Now, it was a held breath. A conductor's pause before the first, devastating note of a new symphony. It was aware.
Izuku moved through the next day like a ghost in his own home. Every sound was magnified, every shift in the atmosphere a potential trigger. The scrape of a chair leg on the linoleum floor was a cymbal crash. The hum of the refrigerator was a dissonant bass note. He kept his hands perpetually in his pockets, his fingers curled into tense fists, terrified that even an accidental brush against a wall could unleash the thing humming in his chest.
His mother was the conductor.
Inko watched him. Not constantly, not obviously, but with a pervasive, unnerving attention. Her eyes would track him as he passed from his room to the kitchen. She'd pause her chopping of vegetables to listen to the rhythm of his footsteps. She was studying him. Cataloging the changes. The dark circles under his eyes that no amount of fitful sleep could erase. The new, jerky quality to his movements. The way he flinched at sudden noises.
She didn't ask about the previous night again. She didn't need to. The question hung in the air between them, a specter at their silent meals.
Izuku felt like a bomb she was patiently waiting to go off.
He couldn't eat. He pushed the food around his plate, the rice and fish tasting like ash. His stomach was a tight, nervous knot. The vibration, the potential, was a constant low thrum in his bones, a second heartbeat that was slowly eclipsing the first.
"You're not hungry?" Inko's voice was light, almost conversational, but it made him jump.
"N-no. Not really."
"A growing boy needs to eat," she said, not looking at him, her focus on her own meal. "You need your strength."
The words were benign. Motherly, even. But to Izuku, they sounded like an instruction. Be strong. Be ready. For what?
He escaped the table as soon as he could, mumbling an excuse about homework. He locked himself in his room and pressed his back against the door, listening. He heard the click of her teacup. The soft sigh. The sound of the TV being turned on, the volume low, a murmur of meaningless news reports.
He was a prisoner. The walls of his room, once a sanctuary, felt like they were closing in. The smiling, muscular face of All Might on the poster across from him seemed like a grotesque parody. What would the Symbol of Peace think of a power that didn't smash villains, but shattered minds? That didn't save people, but condemned them to relive their own personal hells?
The analytical part of his brain, the part that had always been his compass, was spinning in frantic, useless circles.
Designation: Echo.
Activation: Physical contact, skin-to-skin preferred.
Effect: Targets re-experience a core trauma or intense negative emotional memory at an amplified, debilitating intensity. User experiences a feedback loop of the target's emotion during activation.
Limitations: Unknown. Cooldown? Range? Can it be controlled? Directed?
Control. That was the key. He had to control it. If he couldn't, he was a danger to everyone. A public hazard. He'd be locked away, Quirk or no Quirk. The thought of his mother's cold, curious eyes being the last thing he saw before they took him away was unbearable.
He had to test it. To understand it.
But not on a person. Never on a person again.
His eyes scanned his room, landing on a half-finished model of the Gunhead hero agency, a relic from a birthday years ago. The plastic figures were still lined up on his desk. He approached it slowly, as if it were a live explosive.
He reached out a trembling index finger towards a tiny, unpainted figurine meant to represent a civilian.
He stopped an inch away.
His heart was thundering. His breath came in short, sharp gasps. This was stupid. It was plastic. It had no mind, no memories, no pain to echo.
But what if it did? What if his Quirk didn't care? What if it reached for the concept of pain, the history of it? The plastic was molded in a factory. What if he made it feel the pressure of the machine that formed it? The absurdity of the thought was almost enough to make him laugh, but the terror choked it down.
He couldn't do it.
He pulled his hand back, clenching it into a fist. He was shaking. He was pathetic. He couldn't even experiment on a toy.
A sound from the living room broke his paralysis. The TV volume increased. A news reporter's voice, crisp and urgent, filtered through the door.
"...ongoing hostage situation downtown. The villain, identified as 'Rictus,' has a paralysis Quirk and has taken shelter in a bank after a failed robbery attempt. Heroes are on the scene, but a standoff has..."
Izuku's head snapped up. A villain. A real, actual villain. Someone who deserved it. Someone who was causing pain right now.
The thought was a dark, seductive whisper. It wasn't his own voice. It was the vibration's voice. It was hungry.
He crept to his door and pressed his ear against the wood. He could hear the news broadcast clearly now. His mother was watching, her silence a focused, intense thing.
"...demanding a vehicle and safe passage. He's already paralyzed two bank tellers. Pro Hero Backdraft has contained the area with water barriers, but..."
A paralysis Quirk. He could paralyze people. He was holding them hostage, terrifying them.
Izuku's hand went to his chest. The hum was louder now, a resonant frequency tuning itself to the fear and desperation emanating from the television. It wanted to answer. It wanted to show that man what real paralysis felt like. The paralysis of the soul.
He could stop him. He could walk right up, past the heroes, and just... touch him. He could end the standoff in a second. He could be a hero.
The image flashed in his mind: Rictus, on his knees, not from a hero' punch, but from the overwhelming echo of his own worst moment. The hostages would be saved. The heroes would stare in confusion. And his mother... his mother would see. She would finally see his power.
The fantasy was intoxicating. It was everything he'd ever wanted.
And then he saw the face of the man on the overpass, contorted in a agony so complete it was holy.
He wasn't a hero. He was a calamity.
He sank to the floor, his head in his hands, drowning out the news report with the sound of his own ragged breathing. He couldn't. He wouldn't.
The broadcast droned on. An hour passed. The standoff continued.
Izuku didn't move from his spot by the door. He was a coil of tense energy, vibrating in time with the anxiety pouring from the TV.
Then, a shift in the reporter's tone. A collective gasp from the studio audience.
"He's done it! Ladies and gentlemen, he's done it! Kamui Woods has apprehended the villain with his special technique, the Lacquered Chain Prison! What incredible speed and precision!"
Relief washed over Izuku, so potent it left him dizzy. It was over. A real hero had done it the right way. He hadn't needed to become a monster.
The apartment door opened.
Izuku scrambled back from his own door, his heart leaping into his throat. He hadn't heard his mother move.
He heard her footsteps approach his room. They stopped outside. He held his breath.
A soft, almost inaudible sound. The rustle of paper.
He waited, counting the seconds until her footsteps receded back down the hall. After a full minute, he slowly, carefully, cracked his door open.
Lying on the floor just outside was that morning's newspaper. It had been folded to a specific page. The local crime section.
His eyes scanned the headlines. A mugging. A burglary. A hit-and-run. A list of petty, cruel acts committed by small, desperate people.
And on the corner of the page, in his mother's precise, neat handwriting, was a single word circled in red ink.
Scraped from the article about the hit-and-run was a quote from a witness describing the driver who fled: "He just... drove off. Didn't even stop. It was like he didn't care at all."
Next to that sentence, his mother had written her note.
Practice.
The word seemed to bleed off the page, red and final.
Izuku stared at it, his blood running cold. She wasn't just curious. She wasn't just waiting. She was giving him assignments.
She saw his Quirk not as a curse, or a tragedy, or even a power. She saw it as a tool. A scalpel. And she was handing him a list of people she deemed worthy of being dissected.
He snatched the paper up and retreated back into his room, slamming the door shut and leaning against it, his breath coming in short, panicked gasps. He looked down at the word.
Practice.
The vibration in his chest responded to the command in that word. It rose from a hum to a steady, insistent thrum. It was no longer just a part of him. It was a separate entity, a caged animal that his mother had just pointed toward fresh meat.
He crumpled the newspaper in his fist, the newsprint staining his skin. He wanted to throw it away, to burn it, to deny her.
But he couldn't.
The image of the hit-and-run driver, callous, uncaring, was already seared into his mind. The vibration purred. It knew what to do with that.
Izuku Midoriya slid down the door to the floor, the crumpled newspaper held in his shaking hand. He was no longer just a prisoner in his home.
He was his mother's apprentice.
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A/N: Like I said before, if you DON'T want to read up to chapter 19(probably the chapter I've enjoyed writing the most so far~) then DON'T go to @ Person_Cat0 on Wattpad.
100 stones for bonus chapters but don't waste them if you're ok with waiting up to 3 days between chapters.