Hey sorry for the late post, my bad i got caught up in playing Wardogs lol. Hope yall enjoy
Chapter 65: Calls to Make
The next morning, Cid sat with the phone in his lap, Nighteye's contact already open on the screen. He hadn't pressed it yet. Yui's hand moved slow circles between his shoulders, then she leaned in and kissed his cheek.
"You can do it."
Cid sighed, thumbed the call button, and lifted the phone to his ear.
It rang twice before it was picked up.
"Kageno?" Nighteye sounded surprised, but not unkind. "I wasn't expecting to hear from you."
Cid stared at the far wall for a second before he answered. "Yeah. After what happened, I was going to wait longer before contacting you again. I'm still a little mad at you, I'm not going to pretend I'm not. But I need your help, and this is a lot more important to me than that."
The line went quiet. When Nighteye spoke again, the politeness was gone, replaced by a far more serious tone.
"What's wrong? How can I help."
"Loop Nezu into this first," Cid said. "Make sure the line is secure. I don't want to explain this more than once and I don't need certain groups hearing this."
"Alright. Give me a moment." There was a short wait filled by the hold tone, then a click.
"Well," Nezu said, bright and already curious. "This is a surprise. What can I do for you gentlemen?"
Cid didn't waste time he got straight to the point. "Something came to my attention recently. The situation around my parents' deaths isn't as clean as it looked. When I was fighting All For One, he was trying to get in my head. He hinted that my memories of that night were different or messed with in some way. I don't have proof of that, but I talked to All Might afterward. He said something that made me think All for One wasn't lying. He said he went through every file from his fight with All For One that day, over every family that was affected, memorizing all of them. He specifically mentioned my family had four people in it."
Yui stayed quiet beside him, her hand slid into his gently holding it.
"I'd already had something related to that that was nagging me from the dream I was trapped in," Cid went on. "Someone in it stood out too much. Her name was Claire. There was a picture of her with my parents, and she looked a little older than I did in it. It was that detail that made everything unravel and let me realize what I was in wasn't real. Yui and I think she might have been my sister, or something close to that. We went through everything we could get our hands on and found nothing. So now I need your help. We think the HSPC messed with my memories somehow and altered only those relating to her for some reason."
Nezu was the first to answer, and there was none of his normal cheer left in his voice.
"That would be why you requested those files the other day wasn't it? Also I agree, there are far too many coincidences stacked on top of each other for this to be nothing."
"Agreed," Nighteye said. "I'll look into it covertly. I can't promise results, but I have connections that should be able to get further than I can."
"I'll bring Aizawa in, and a few others I trust, to do some of the groundwork," Nezu added. "I'll also probe All Might myself and see if I get the same story, just to confirm he remembers it accurately. We keep him in the dark beyond that. We all know subtlety is not his strong suit."
Cid actually huffed a short laugh at that. "Yeah. Thank you. Both of you. This means a lot to me."
They didn't drag the conversation on long after that. Nezu told him to rest. Nighteye said he would be in touch. Then the call ended.
Cid let the phone drop onto the blanket and leaned back against the elevated bed. Yui wrapped her arms around him as carefully as she could and pulled him in.
"You did great," she murmured. "I know that it was hard to tell them all of that. But we need their help."
He sighed and let himself lean into her. "Honestly? Yeah. It was. But it wasn't as awkward with Nighteye as I thought it would be at least."
A short while later a nurse came in with a tray and that polite hospital smile that never quite reached her eyes. She asked Cid to sit forward so she could change the bandages, and Yui moved out of the way without being asked.
The bandages took a few minutes to fully remove due to the amount of them. Once the last of them peeled away from his chest and the covered side of his face, Yui gasped and her hand went over her mouth.
The scarring was worse than they thought it would be. It ran across his ribs, over his shoulder, up the side of his neck and into the right half of his face, with a very prominent one across his right eye. They looked like burn wounds that branched slightly and crisscrossed each other. There was a more noticeable one on his left side that was different from the others looking like a puncture wound.
Cid glanced down at himself once and his expression didn't change much. He cared more about his arm than some superficial skin damage.
The nurse continued carefully with his right eye. She peeled the last pad and gauze free, revealing his eye that looked slightly milky white. She didn't look pleased by that outcome, then held a small light up and watched the pupil drag itself into a reaction.
Cid frowned. "My vision's worse, it's a little blurry and the colors aren't as sharp as before."
The nurse nodded, grimly. "We expected that, I'm sorry. The eye was badly damaged, we were able to save most of it, but it isn't going to be what it was. Can you try using the enhanced perception listed on your chart? Only try to do so lightly, If it hurts, stop immediately." she finished seriously making sure that he understood.
Cid nodded and turned it on and was immediately met with an itching sensation, sharp and wrong, but it didn't hurt so he left it.
"Turn it off, right now!!" the nurse said in a panic. It was hurried enough that he did it on instinct.
"Cid?!" Yui said in a worried tone.
The nurse reached for a cloth and started wiping the side of his face. When she pulled the cloth back, it was completely soaked through red blood.
Cid stared at it. "Oh. I didn't even feel that. Or you touching that side of my face."
The nurse's mouth tightened as she wiped at the right side of his face with a clean cloth. "That's not good. If the nerves there are damaged, that would explain why you didn't feel it."
Yui looked at him. "Did it hurt at all?"
"No," Cid said, still calm. "It just itched a little."
The nurse wrapped him back up tighter than before and told him not to use his Quirk again until someone signed off on it. She would let the doctor know what happened. She injected some medicine into the IV and said the medication would take the edge off any inflammation or pain, but it would also make him drowsy, and probably irritable so he should get some rest. Cid thanked her as she left.
Yui climbed back onto the bed once the door shut. Cid tipped his head toward her, the corner of his mouth pulling up.
"So was it ugly?"
She flicked his forehead. "Yeah. It was pretty bad. It won't change anything." Then, lighter, "Other girls might not like it though."
He laughed under his breath. "Who needs them? I've got the best one right here in my arms." He kissed her forehead and got a quiet giggle out of her for it.
That was when a knock sounded from the door, interrupting the moment.
The door opened before anyone answered it. Kirishima stepped in already grinning, then stopped dead when he saw the two of them close enough that it was obvious he'd walked into something.
Mina smacked him on the back of the head as she came in behind him, Jirou, Kaminari, Momo, and Tokoyami filing in after her.
"I told you to wait for them to let you in. You ruined their moment together or something" she whispered, scolding him for just rushing in.
"He he. My bad guys" he apologized, rubbing the back of his head while grinning.
Yui slid off his chest and sat on the edge of the bed instead. Cid pushed himself up against the pillows.
"It's fine, so what's up?" Cid asked casually
"They wouldn't let anyone see you until this afternoon," Momo said. "Besides Yui and the teachers. We were worried."
Her eyes, like everyone else's, had already locked on the empty sleeve.
"I'm fine," Cid said. "The arm's going to take getting used to. But I'll be okay."
Momo's eyes shone with tears despite his reassurances and Jirou's mouth tightened into a frown. Kaminari looked at the floor like looking at Cid any longer would make it worse. The guilt sat on all of them the same way: if they'd been stronger, maybe they could have been there.
Cid sighed. "Come here."
Momo hesitated, then stepped closer. He reached up with his remaining hand and chopped her lightly on the top of the head. It didn't hurt. It just surprised her enough that she blinked at him.
"None of you had a choice in leaving," he said. "I made one for you without asking. That's on me. Aizawa already chewed me out for it, so don't start with all the self-blame nonsense."
They said okay. None of them looked fully convinced, but some of the tension faded.
"I've been out of the loop for a while," Cid said. "What's happened the past few days?"
They told him everything that occurred. A few from 1-A and 1-B were still in the hospital from the gas or smoke inhalation. Izuku was the worst of them, both arms shattered fighting a villain called Muscular. The media had gotten hold of the attack and would not give U.A. a break. There were already people at the gates, demanding to know how U.A. had let another group of students get attacked this badly. Someone had leaked a rumor that a student had lost an arm and eye. They hadn't wanted to believe it until they saw Cid.
Cid asked fewer questions as they talked. The medication was taking effect, making him drowsy and his eye started slowly closing. Yui noticed before the others did. She glanced at him, at the way his eye had gone half-lidded, and then looked back at the group.
"You should probably come back later." she suggested.
They followed her look, agreed without much argument, and filed out quieter than they'd come in.
Yui turned the light down, climbed back in beside him, and pulled him into her hold.
"Sweet dreams, Cid." she said as he drifted off to sleep.