Shinsou's had it. There's been way too much going on lately, and he's hadn't had time to process anything. It's absolutely insane how many things happened in such a short amount of time. It started with him fighting a villain, suddenly appearing in a quirkless (?) world and then escalating to an organization kidnapping him.

This clearly wasn't Shinsou's month.

Not to add the fact that he doesn't even know what alices are. Are they quirks? Are they other supernatural abilities? Are they the thing that quirks mutated from? He doesn't know, and it somewhat stresses him out.

But he knows somewhere that probably knows.

The library.

~~~

Shinsou couldn't explain the immense relief he had when Gakuen Alice did, indeed, have a library.

He didn't know what to expect from this school anymore, and half of him doesn't want to find out. Curiousity killed the cat, will satisfaction bring me back? Hitoshi noticed that there was no current librarian, meaning, he had no clue how the library was organized.

Which made his search a good ten times harder. Nonetheless, Hitoshi sighed at his unfortunate predicament before getting on with searching. Hopefully, some of them will have some indicator of the system here...

Searching proved to be a rather boring thing to do, thus why his mind flew off to do other things while his eyes were skimming for a specific word.

The events from this month were on replay in Shinsou's mind, his mind making up worse-case scenarios that made him realize that he did actually get the best-case scenarios.

Alice.

He paused and looked at the book cover once again. All it said was "Alice," and Hitoshi didn't even know if it was referring to alices. Alice... Maybe it could be referring to alices. Like quirks... It probably all started with one person, right?

Opening the book, he quickly read the words, 'Experiment #1'. Shinsou's stomach dropped quickly, Hopefully, these experiments aren't anything violent...

December 1st, XXXX

Test Subject: Alice Harrison
Superpower: Some weird way of summoning weapons
Goals:
-Find out how Alice got this power
-Extract it
-Pass on the power
Restraints: Alice needs to be especially restrained with multiple sedatives. In an MRI scan, it showed how many parts of her brain was working while using this... Power. It's estimated that the sedatives will slow the process of her power, we must keep her heavily under.
- Dr. Jale Kenpt.

Shinsou kept reading, his mind absorbing the information like a sponge. The longer he read, the grimmer the book seemed to get.

December 12th, XXXX

Experiment #22:
Hypothesis: Alice can pass on the power to her twin, Alex, without any difficulties. This is due to the fact that it's been proven before possible to pass on the power for a limited amount of time whilst using a specific mixture of Alice's saliva and spit, sure enough, the power might last longer on Alex due to being blood-related.
Goals:
-Pass on power for more than 20 minutes
-Awaken Alex's possible power

"The experiment was a failure..." Shinsou hummed as he read the rest, "Oh, these keep getting worse..."

February, 4th, XXXX

Experiment #45: Alice can use her power while tortured/under extreme pain.
...

March 5th, XXXX

Experiment #56: Alice has multiple powers.
...

Experiment #67: Alice's powers cause her extreme suffering.
...
Experiment #78: Alice can use her power for 3 hours straight before being put in critical condition.
...
Experiment #82: Alex has awakened a power. We successfully found the mutated gene giving them the powers.
...
Experiment #94: Alice's powers have mysteriously vanished. Unable to be awakened again.
...
Experiment #101: Alex made a stone capable of transferring his power.
...
Experiment #145-
It's been five days since I escaped the lab. The scientists did horrible things to my sister...

Shinsou blinked at the abrupt switch of narration. Is this, Alex?

My sister, Alice, didn't survive. Once her... Power -no, Alice- was gone, they put her to sleep as fast as possible. She was deemed useless. I certainly wasn't. The scientists themselves were unprepared for my breakout, and I find that good. However, I can't be caught now. I took the notebook to possibly find out a date when the scientist did those things to my sister, and I found a few dates. Whoever is reading this in the future, do you have an Alice?

Shinsou's immediate reply was that No, he doesn't an Alice. But, he wasn't exactly sure. What if quirks are just a mutation of alices? Quirks don't have the weird stones Alex made... Hitoshi wondered, Were alices quirks?

~~~

Shinsou can say with finality that he is addicted to the notebook. Alex, even after his escape from the lab, had never stopped researching his own Alice. And later in the notebook, Alex had met other people with alices, and discovered most of the inner workings of them.

Hitoshi found one main difference between alices and quirks. That difference was, the way they worked. People with quirks naturally had a quirk factor in place, that quirk factor was located in the brain. Like a muscle, a quirk can be strengthened from constant use, or weakened by neglect. However, Alice didn't work this way. Like a quirk's strength, an Alice's strength generally depends on the health of the user. Unlike a quirk, an Alice is unable to get stronger nor weaker.

Quirks also only come in one. Shinsou made a theory that this was possibly because of the fact that their brains spend much time strengthening and refining their quirk, especially the mental quirks. But alices can come in as many as they want. This is most likely because of the fact that the brain's energy isn't focused on one sole factor. Or that's what Hitoshi thought.

Of course, he was still greatly confused. So he asked Mikan, "Hey Mikan, how does your Alice feel like?"

Mikan said, "My Alice feels like I'm opening a gift box every day. Whenever I use it, I have to open the gift box first. What about you, Hitoshi?"

"Mine feels like an extra muscle," Hitoshi replied. I mean, people at home literally get extra muscles. Now that I think of it... I don't think that's happened here yet... None of the library books had anything related to mutant quirks. Sure, Sumire's Alice is technically one, although it isn't permanent. But Shinsou was to find something permanent, he wants to see if alices really are that different.

Hitoshi also noticed the abundance of mental quirks. Quirks like Kokoroyomi's mindreading, or Mochiage's (a random dude in the class that Shinsou magically learned the name of) flying Alice. Of course, there are outliers like Natsume's fire or Andō-senpai's shadows, but the other alices usually have something to do with their mentality. Basically, quirks are more science-anatomy based, while alices defy all of that, throw it out the window, and makes its own rules.

It was quite interesting but more frustrating.

Hitoshi didn't mind. He actually liked small brain teasers, but this was a huge one and that made all the difference.

He just couldn't understand it. Are quirks an actual mutation of alices? If so, then what caused the alices to mutate in the first place?

Shinsou had so many questions.

~~~

The park was mostly empty and devoid of people, as expected. Of course, there were still those little kids that were playing, and a specific pair of kids caught his eyes.

Shinsou recognized one of the kids from the time Mikan and he went to Central Town, it was Natsume's kid. Youchi? Jichi? I think it was Yoichi? Hitoshi couldn't not recognize the other kid. It was Eri in all her blue-haired, red-eyed glory.

A small smile tugged on Hitoshi's lips, It looks like Eri's making friends. I hope she continues to.

Eri glanced at Shinsou from where she was playing. He was familiar to her, but she didn't know why. Have I met him before?

"Eri-chan, let's go," Yoichi said.

"Okay, Yoi-kun," Eri answered.

Hitoshi decided to stay at the park even after the kids left. There was something comforting about being around nature, it was grounding to him.

It made him realize that some things just never change.