Be Careful What You Wish For

Untitled Part 40

AN: Uuh... apparently I missed publishing 2 previous chapters? Chapter 28 and 29, "Someone Familiar" and "Gamble and Guidance". They were just saved as drafts. Now they've been published.

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Dark. As far as the eye could see, the blackness stretched on, just as deep and endless as space. Izuku counted the seconds, not just to stay sane, but also to gauge how long he spent in here.

346... 347... three hundred and—wait, was it seven or eight?

Despite knowing how useless it was, he tried to bite down on the capsule in his mouth. He'd been doing so well, until that mask wearing asshole showed up and did God knows what. It was frustrating, being so close and then having it all go to hell.

His chest felt strangely constricted. He couldn't contract or expand his lungs, but no matter how much time passed, he didn't pass out of oxygen deprivation or feel any of its effects. His head was clear, and his eyes didn't sting despite staying open for so long.

A pocket dimension. Infinite space that immobilizes whatever is caught in it? Does it only work on people or can it be used on objects as well? What about something less tangible, like air or heat?

...how long is he going to keep me here? How long can he keep me here?

It was a terrifying thought, to think he could be left in this emptiness forever. If its user died, would he be set free? Or would it make escape impossible and doom him to an eternal existence of nothing?

Something whispered in the back of his ear. Soft like a buzzing mosquito, hardly there but impossible to ignore. It caressed his eardrums like silk, tantalizing and demanding attention. If he concentrated, he thought he could make out words, but he didn't understand any of them. They blended into one another, a warbled mix of vowels and consonants. Was he finally losing his mind?

Or, he thought, even worse. What if this was the darkness around him, coming to life, here to swallow him whole. A living creature made of nothing, eating him alive like Dark Shadow consumed Tokoyami. Except Tokoyami was still there, under all those layers of darkness. Izuku would be ground to dust, and then that dust would be ground to nothing. Izuku would cease to exist entirely, and he wasn't sure his quirk could save him from that.

Just as the fear was so overwhelming Izuku was sure its cold grasp would never let him go, black bled into color. It was still dark, but instead of the ink deep void from his stagnant prison, these were shades of gray and dirt brown. The contrast was so strong, he might as well be looking at a rainbow. In front of him was a wooden floor stained with suspicious spots of unknown origins, brick walls, and a long slab of wood with stools clad in faded red bolted to the floor in a row next to it.

One for All fizzled out as he took stock of the new situation he'd been thrown into, not wanting to cause untold destruction until he knew for sure what was happening.

"Motherfuckers!" someone screamed. Izuku spun on his heel, searching for the voice.

"Kacch—"

He choked, unable to finish his sentence as a thick smog invaded his lungs. The room turned blurry as a mysterious fog engulfed it, and Izuku squinted in an attempt to fight against his lowered vision, groping blindly for the dark outline of Bakugou's shadow.

"Kacchan!"

Bakugou turned in his direction. He extended a hand, reaching for Izuku's. Their fingers hovered just centimeters apart when, for the second time that day, everything went dark.