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Part I | The Death of Midoriya Izuku

It began with a death.

In hindsight – ever a precarious thing – that was what had set off a chain of responses and reactions which led him to that very fate. A fate he couldn’t escape from, irreversible as the actions which had led to that final destination were.

His dream was crushed by his once best friend and idolised hero, and he could only stare blankly at the ground as Kacchan’s words echoed through his brain. “Take a swan dive off a roof, and pray for a quirk in your next life,” the words echoed in his mind, rattled about; a seed planted in his brain. A seed of an invasive plant which had taken root. It wouldn’t leave his brain alone. “Quite frankly, without a quirk, you can’t be a hero.” The words rang in the air, his shoulders sinking as he stared at the cracked concrete of the flat roof which he had been left atop.

Sometimes the thought had cropped up in his darkest moments, words whispered by classmates in the hallways cutting deep, but he had never truly considered throwing himself off the roof before. Suicide had never crossed his mind before, happy and determined as he had been to become a hero. One day, they’ll see, he had promised himself – clung to it, along with the words All Might had once spoken.

“Anyone can be a hero!”

Yet that only applied to anyone with a quirk it seemed, and the reality was settling in far too quickly for his liking. It was like there was a spark inside him which was flickering and sputtering before dying without a single sound. His eyes betrayed him, glancing at the metal railing that ran around the edge of the building, and the traitorous thought of what if rang in his brain. What if he jumped? A choked laugh escaped him as he wondered what it would be like to stand on the other side of that railing, ready to let go and fall down to the hard concrete below.

Unbidden, his legs carried him towards the edge, brain screaming the warning signals even as he stared at the ground that seemed so very far away. Why would someone throw themselves off a roof in a bid to end it all? Izuku felt as though, for the first time in his life, he might be beginning to truly understand what made someone leave their shoes on that side of the railing and leap off the other.

He wasn’t going to jump, he knew that with a certainty in his chest. He wasn’t at that point. Yet. He wasn’t about to add himself to another statistic – reduce himself to a number, a percentage. He just wanted to dangle his legs over the edge. He wanted to feel nothing but air under his feet. He didn’t understand why that felt like freedom to him, and a part of him hoped he never did.

“Anyone can be a hero,” he muttered, words which had once been a hand on his back, pushing him forth, sunk into him like chains, wrapping around him and dragging him down ever so slowly into a pit of misery and despair. “Why?” he asked the world, the word cracking on his lips sounding ever so broken as he sat on the railing looking at the ground below. A fall which would kill him. “Why do you hate me? Why can’t I achieve my dreams?” He stared at the ground, sighing deeply as he shifted his weight back, ready to hop back onto the right side of the railing.

Crack!

Izuku blinked, and time didn’t seem to slow down as he felt himself pitch forwards, a grating crack reverberating through his bones as his body found nothing but air beneath him. His lungs sucked in a breath, ready to scream for a hero to save him. Who would want to save a worthless Deku like you? A question Kacchan had never asked him echoed in the quiet which was his mind. Even All Might thinks you’re useless…

His mouth clicked shut, green hair seeming to flutter in the breeze, eyes staring up at the sky as he fell. It was quiet, almost peaceful as he fell to his death. A fitting end, some part of him thought hysterically. He had been born quirkless, someone destined to fade into the background. Wasn’t it only right that he died quietly and without sound? He didn’t hear the spinechilling crack of bone as he hit the ground. He didn’t hear the sickly thump as gravity inevitably dragged him down to earth. In fact, he didn’t hear anything much at all.

He was dead on impact.

It had been an accident.

It hadn’t been the last straw which broke the camel’s back. He hadn’t been planning to take his own life, rather it had been taken from him by an old, broken rail. Hardly a villain, unlike what he had been told he would be taken out by. There wasn't any need to worry about becoming injured as a quirkless hero. He hadn’t even been able to live long enough to try, and some, small, quiet part of him burned beneath the indignity of it all. Beneath the knowledge that his dreams and hopes had been pulled out from under his feet so swiftly. Izuku could only wonder if he was even allowed to dream. It hadn’t seemed that way.

Take a swan dive… Kacchan whispered to him, a ghost of the past he had never quite been able to forget as he waited there in an odd sense of limbo. Pray for a quirk in your next life…

Izuku wondered if there was a next life for him. He had never been particularly into the idea of religion, strange as the ideas of gods and deities was to him. He had never felt some kind of presence, as others had claimed to, preferring to root himself in truth and facts.

Yet he didn’t quite understand where he was just then and there. He had died – that much he knew with an ironclad certainty. Yet he still thought, even though he could feel the absence of a chest rising and falling. It was as if someone had taken away his need to breathe and left him somewhere warm and cosy. Izuku wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted to leave. Because wouldn’t that mean bumping into people who despised him for being quirkless? Something he had no control over.

It wasn’t fair.

Just like it wasn’t fair that a railing had to break on him when he’d barely lived for fifteen years. Wasn’t the world just too cruel – to take that away? He didn’t understand. In fact, he didn’t want to understand, because that would mean acknowledging his death and whatever the hell was surrounding him right then and there.

Stars seemed to twinkle behind his eyes, part of him clueless to whether his eyes were open or shut. That place was so strange, neither there nor anywhere as it was. Truly, the words to describe it were beyond him. Or maybe it was alike the power called magic in the old fiction books written before quirks had become the only power concentrated on in fiction?

“Magical,” he murmured to the void. “I think that’s the right word to describe this…”

The void didn’t answer.

Silence engulfed them both.

Sometimes, he wondered if he was going mad. Sometimes he wondered if he had somehow survived the fall and was comatose in hospital. Maybe that would have explained the odd sense of feeling and awareness which was slowly trickling back to him bit by bit.

It was funny what dying and existing in a void did to one’s perception of  time and feeling. Touch was ever so noticeable to him as he was.

He could feel something chaffing against his wrists and ankles. He could feel something cold against his skin. It was almost like jelly, if he thought about it. Not that he tried to think about it too often. It was a strange sensation. Something which felt wrong. Idly, he wondered about the instincts he had not for the last time. Why couldn’t they have warned him that the fence upon which he sat had been old and decrepit and about to fall down? If he’d had a face he would have scowled. He couldn’t even seem to die properly. Death was supposed to be the end.

Izuku wasn’t quite sure why it felt like the beginning instead.

There were shades of red – red like the colour of the petals of the spider lilies his classmates had once left on his desk as a joke. He wasn’t sure when they turned blue, like the bright skies he had once lived beneath, midnight to sky blue.

The colours and flowers left him.

He opened his eyes.

The gown was like paper on his skin, pale white and barely weighing a thing. He could feel the air against his body as he sat there, listening to peanut adult words passed about over his head. He wasn’t paying attention to them, despite the oddity of the situation. There was something else he was far more preoccupied with. How could he not be preoccupied with the stranger in the reflection of the nearest glass window?

A row of thick, cylindrical tanks lined one of the walls, the sole one empty of being and that greenish liquid being the one which had held him until only moments ago.

Fingers brushed against the hard glass, as if that could dispel the illusion. As if that could make the hair which fell to his shoulders grow out green once more. As if that would change the hands pawing at the glass back to those of a teenager rather than the pudgy digits of a toddler. It didn’t. Just like he couldn’t change the fact he had fallen from a rooftop.

Fine strands of white hair framed his face, no longer the untameable mop of green it had once been. Yet nestled within those white locks were a set of ears distinctly sticking up and out of his head. It was almost like he’d inherited All Might’s hairstyle somehow, except it wasn’t hair which was sticking upwards and they were spread further apart. They were actual bunny ears rather than two strands of hair he had looked up to and idolised. His eyes were a startling shade of gold, the pupils almost unnaturally elongated. More proof – if the bunny ears weren’t enough – that he had a mutation quirk. The mint green wings on his back were also something of a giveaway, an unfamiliar weight on his spine as he sat there, marvelling at the reflection he was seeing for the first time. Take a swan dive, the words echoed around in his brain, and pray for a quirk in your next life! Izuku giggled, a hopeless sound made from hysterics.

He didn’t really understand what was going on, brain racing a mile a minute, but if there was one thing some tiny, miniscule part of his subconsciousness was telling him it was that he was alive. He was alive, and he could feel every inhale of cold air into his chest. He was alive, and yet there was a complete and utter stranger staring back at him in the mirror, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

He was supposed to be Midoriya Izuku, and yet he wasn’t really green anymore. He couldn’t see his freckles splayed across his cheeks when he looked at his reflection. He didn’t have his mother’s eyes anymore. Because you’re not ‘Midoriya’ Izuku anymore, part of his brain whispered, and Izuku wasn’t prepared for the denial and the crippling sense of loss which came with that much.

“What a successful subject,” an unfamiliar voice came, and Izuku blinked at the lady who came to hover over him, heedless of the shivers that sent rolling down his spine. “He has both the ears and the wings… It seems the genetic engineering this time around worked,” she said, and Izuku blinked once more. Because wasn’t genetic engineering illegal?

"Huh?" he grunted, no words really escaping his mouth, troublesome as his tongue was seemingly being.

“Take him to the other successful subjects, you know the batch,” the lady ordered, and Izuku could only watch in confusion as two men came over to escort him someplace else, lifting him up like a ragdoll. Didn’t that mean there were unsuccessful subjects too? He pondered on that thought, eyes wide and confused as he was ferried from one room, down an almost clinical, brightly lit corridor, and into a different room. Though in there he wasn’t alone anymore.

“This is Nine,” the man on his left spoke, pushing him forwards, and Izuku stumbled into the room proper, still entirely uncertain as to what was going on. “He will be living with you from now on.”

Somehow, Izuku knew he wouldn’t be getting any answers to his situation anytime soon, even as he plonked himself down on his backside, the hissing click telling of the fact that he had been left there alone with a bunch of children who couldn’t be that much older than him. Well, the age he appeared to be on the outside, that was.

His gaze travelled down to his chubby fingers, golden eyes watching in an odd fascination as the digits curled according to his will. Proof that it was his body. He was in control. He was inexplicably alive when everything he had once known told him he ought to be dead.

It didn’t make sense.

Then again, Izuku knew there was a lot which didn’t make sense in the world he had once lived in. Other people and their actions towards the person he had used to be most of all. In a world of quirks, was anything ever impossible? That was a question he had asked himself far too many times, back when he had still been wishing for a quirk. Wishing he could be normal. Yet just as he had been coming to terms with being quirkless, with being less than human, he had found that once-wish granted.

Yet wishes had a cost, it seemed, and never before had he wished he could go back and change things. Wishing he had never ever made such a wish if the scene unfolding before him was the result of it. He looked up from his hands, staring at the golden eyes which looked back at him from a nearby mirror. Unfamiliar gold eyes. Not his eyes – at least the ones he had been looking at for the past fourteen years.

Because you died, a voice reminded him in the back of his head, and Izuku could only tear his eyes away from the alien sight.

“Nine!” a cheery voice brough him out of his reverie, and he could only blink as he found himself accosted or otherwise stared at by seven other children. The oldest of them couldn’t have been older than ten, if he was halfway good at guessing ages. “Hi! Hi! I’m Seven!”

Izuku blinked, eyes wide and confused as the little girl named Seven plonked herself down beside him. She was wearing a paper-thin white gown the same as him, her hair a shade of grey not too dissimilar to the new stark white which was his new hair colour. He could still feel and see the silky white strands which tickled at his collarbone with every unthinking motion.

“Bunny!” A boy who couldn’t be too much older than his outward age pointed at him, blue eyes glistening as he clapped, appearing altogether too cheerful for the situation Izuku was slowly starting to suspect he was in.

Genetic engineering was illegal, after all, and there were a fair number of children in that room, including him, who had a visible quirk or otherwise looked as if they might develop one. Ones which were desirable.

“That’s right, Eight,” the eldest boy said, patting the red hair which fluffed up like a duckling’s feathers. “Hello, Nine,” the same boy greeted, his hair a darker shade of grey than Seven’s, and Izuku could only stare into those yellow eyes and wonder why he seemed oddly familiar. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Mn,” Izuku mumbled, tongue not able to keep up with what his brain wanted to say. Because that tongue had never been used before, never twisted around syllables, never cried out for his mother, never pleaded with his once best friend. Really, the reminders that he had died and come back never seemed to cease, and Izuku could only ponder on the nature of it all. He didn’t understand, and there was a part of him which was beginning to think he might never.

Take a swan dive, Kacchan whispered in the back of his head. Pray for a quirk in your next life.

Izuku giggled. You were right, he almost thought to himself, knowing if his mouth would move properly he would have whispered it aloud. There was hysteria, numbness, and dread swirling in his chest as he sat there amongst strange children, with the strange knowledge that he would never be considered quirkless again.

He didn’t understand it at all.

Chapter Text

The sounds coming out of his mouth were almost unintelligible, but he kept babbling to himself, determined to be able to talk sooner rather than later. It was irritating and ultimately confusing, he found, to receive indulging looks from a probably-ten-year-old who everyone referred to as One.

“Eight,” One called, beckoning over the red-haired boy who must have been the one to arrive just before him. His name was Nine there, after all. A number for an experiment, what with how oddly exposed he felt in that room. There was an odd mirror along one wall, and it looked an awful lot like the ones he had watched with his mother on those police dramas that she had been all too fond of. The memory cut him like a knife to his chest, stopping his thoughts in their tracks, and Izuku could only blink as he felt tears welling up in his eyes at that.

“Nine!” The girl named Seven bounded over to him, poking at his cheeks with her fingers which were barely bigger than his own. “Hi! Hi! Say Hi!” she ordered, and Izuku could only blink as a finger prodded him in the mouth, not understanding the concept of personal space even as those big blue eyes looked at him pleadingly.

Hands pulled her back away from him, and Izuku could only sigh in relief and look to his rescuer. He was taller than him – not an incredible feat, what with how ridiculously short he was since he’d died – humanoid in body, yet his head and his skin was that of an orca. “Don’t stick your hands in other people’s mouths,” his rescuer informed Seven. “It’s rude,” he continued, sounding like what Izuku would assume a very tired dad to sound like.

Idly, he could only wonder why One and Three – the orca boy – seemed that much more mature. Maybe that came with being the oldest in a ragtag bunch of children seemingly left to their own devices more often than not? It wasn’t like the adult who’d walked him there had stuck around beyond throwing him to the metaphorical wolves.

“You’re not crying.”

Izuku blinked, turning back to face Three and tilting his head.

“Not that that’s a bad thing,” Three said, waving his black and white hands about, and idly, Izuku could only wonder if his skin was similar to that of an orca’s – or if it was more human-like in texture. He tilted his head, wondering then if that was rude to think. Three was a human child with an orca mutation quirk, after all, just like he was a boy with white hair, gold eyes, and a mix of bunny and bird. He swallowed thickly at the thought, tiny hands going to his head and feeling his fluffy rabbit ears. They were soft. “Do you want me to read you a story?” Three asked, and Izuku could only stare at him and wonder if he was supposed to nod. Or whether that would be unusual and odd for the people undoubtedly watching them from behind the one-way mirror.

He was supposed to be an ordinary boy – an ordinary successful experiment.

He wasn’t supposed to be alive.

Izuku pushed himself to his stubby little feet, feeling inordinately unsteady on those tiny little legs as he tried to follow after Three. He had always loved stories, and even after everything which had happened, that much certainly hadn’t changed. He grabbed a hold of Three’s hand, stumbling then on his stubby little legs.

“A story it is then,” Three said, seeming to puff up in pride as he led them over to a little corner of the room with a sterile metal bookshelf. Everything in that room seemed inordinately sterile – clinical, Izuku thought was the proper name for it. It made an inordinate amount of sense, what with how he and probably the rest of the children in that room were experiments. Experiments belonged in the lab. He wasn’t Izuku there, he reminded himself. “Come on, Nine,” Three called, unwittingly nailing his new number into his brain. Experiments had numbers, not names, in that place it seemed.

He tried to say okay, a scowl curling at his lips when all that came out was babble. Three only smiled, sharp teeth revealing themselves. The smile vanished in an instant, Three looking at him once again with something like wonder. Izuku reached out and patted the book in his hands, reminding him what they were there in that corner to do.

“You don’t scare easily, do you, Nine?” Three murmured, patting his head, and Izuku felt his ears twitch at the contact. The same ears which were no longer the round, fleshy human ones he’d once had. “I don’t know whether that’ll be a good thing or…” he trailed off, sighing and abruptly seeming that much older than what Izuku knew his age could be. Idly, he wondered if Three remembered his past life too, remembered his death, and if that had aged him. Izuku wondered what the death he didn’t want to remember had ultimately done to him. Besides leaving him with regrets and wishes. He wanted to go back. He knew he couldn’t. Surely, in a world of quirks there had to be a way? Take a swan dive, Kacchan murmured in the back of his head, and Izuku could only remember the railing and falling. He felt his heart thud in his chest, loud and painful, the world turning into white noise as he stared off into the distance vacantly.

No heroes are coming to save you, Kacchan whispered to him. Why would they bother to save a quirkless deku?

He saw himself, in the shimmery reflection the lights and the glass made, saw the bunny ears, the mint-green wings, and his slitted pupils. He wasn’t quirkless right then and there. The idea was alien to him still, part of him almost thinking it was some sort of fever dream, only there were fingers curling around his shoulders, digging into his skin. “Nine?” Three asked, gentle with worry. “Are you okay?” he questioned, squinting at him. “You look like One when he has his bad moments…”

Izuku wished he could speak and say that he was fine. He wished that thinking that didn’t feel so grossly untrue. How could anyone be fine after they died? He shook his head, wishing that got rid of those dark thoughts and the whispers of a once-friend he no longer knew would vanish. Yet they didn’t. He had to live with it, despite the wave of irony that idea had him feeling as he patted the book in Three’s hands once more, pointing to the hiragana amidst the pictures.

Three looked at him, glancing between him and the boy he knew was called Eight. The number just before him – the boy who had arrived probably only a short while ahead of him. Izuku wasn’t blind – he could see the differences between them. He wondered just how obvious it was to everyone that he wasn’t quite the ordinary little toddler he ought to have been. Because you came back, part of his mind whispered, sending shivers down his spine before he pointed at the hiragana and looked at Three pointedly.

He wasn’t trying to take his mind off everything those kinds of thoughts brought to the forefront of his mind. He wasn’t.

“You want to know the words?” Three asked, and Izuku nodded before he realised it – abruptly realising his mistake moments later when Three looked at him oddly for a few moments. “Well, okay then,” he declared, running one dark finger along the page as he read out the words. Izuku only hoped that would be enough to explain his knowledge of the Japanese language when everything was revealed.

Secrets always had a way of coming to light, and Izuku wasn’t foolish enough to think that, somehow he would be the exception to that rule. He was unlucky – the fact that he was there spoke volumes of just how unlucky he was. Unlucky enough to fall from a roof thanks to a broken railing. Unlucky enough to be reborn, as such, in a lab experiment. If he was going to somehow be reborn, then why not to a nice, loving family as a lucky person would have been? He had no qualms about just how unlucky that made him. The only thing which had changed from past him was, well, everything besides his unluckiness.

Izuku didn’t have the slightest clue about how to process that much. He didn’t think he would ever be able to process that much, no matter how people liked to claim that time healed all wounds. Nobody had ever really spoken about rebirth before with him – not in a believable way, in any case. It was at best a story trope which existed only in fiction. Quirks to do with rebirth were all fiction, and Izuku only paused at that much, the wildest part of his brain wondering then if somehow he hadn’t been quirkless before. That a potential, undiscovered quirk of his own had somehow caused the situation unfolding around him.

A snort escaped his lips, a listless sort of energy filling him at the idea. What did it even matter? He tilted his head, leaning against Three as he was, trying to look as though he was being taught something new as the older boy continued reading to him in a steady voice. Nothing good would come of anyone in that place learning that he might as well have had the brain of a teenager trapped within the body of a toddler. His shoulders sunk, part of him idly wondering what the people watching over their experiments would think if they learnt of his existence.

The lights dimmed above them with a distinct clank. Startled, Izuku looked up, aware all of a sudden then, that he would likely never see the sun again for all the time he would be trapped there. Part of the wall sunk in, sliding open like a pair of train doors, revealing a room with seven child-sized beds, and two cots. “Ah,” Three murmured. “It looks like it’s time for bed.” He smiled, no teeth showing as he climbed to his feet. “Time seems to have flown by…”

Idly, Izuku wondered whether or not the pair of them had fun. Time was said to pass by quicker when people were having fun. Izuku couldn’t remember the last time he had experienced such a thing – at least with others. He was used to being on his own. Yet he wasn’t on his own anymore – there were eight of them in total. Yet he was Nine there. Swallowing nervously, he watched as One began ushering everyone in the room towards the beds.

“Bed time,” One said, yellow eyes flickering over to where he and Three were. “Come on, Three,” he beckoned, scooping Eight up from where the red-haired toddler had been sitting, playing with some blocks.

“Boooring,” Seven drawled, stubbornly remaining where she was, drawing with some crayons which Izuku didn’t know where she had found them. The room looked too clinical and clean for crayons to be used within its bounds.

“Four,” One called, looking at the boy with long blonde hair and green eyes who gave a soft sigh at being addressed. “Get Seven to bed. We shouldn’t stay in this room for much longer…”

“Don’t wanna!” Seven declared, waving one crayon-filled fist threateningly. Not that Izuku thought it painted a menacing picture. She was seven-years-old at most. Then again, he had once lived in a wider world beyond that room in a probable lab, who knew where. It had to have been kept secret, part of him mused, heroes wouldn’t have let something like genetic engineering go on. They wouldn’t have let children be called numbers rather than names. At least that was how he liked to think.

Take a swan dive off the roof, Kacchan whispered to him again, bringing him up short as he remembered that Kacchan – the boy who had told him to kill himself – had probably ended up becoming a hero. He blinked at that, the world coming back into focus even as One set a sleepy Eight down in his cot and Four dragged Seven by her ankles to the bed next to the first cot. Three was busy ushering the other two Five and Six, he mentally noted, to their respective beds marked with a 005 and a 006 on the headboard respectively.

He should probably move, Izuku realised, pushing himself to his tiny feet and walking towards the newly revealed bedroom, casting one look back at the dimly lit room the eight of them were leaving behind. A shiver ran down his spine, something whispering at him to move, and Izuku listened to that little, niggling feeling.

“Nine,” One said, and Izuku only blinked at how close the older boy had come. It wasn’t like him to be that spaced out, besides the times when Quirk Theory came up and he devolved into mumbling that his classmates hated. He didn’t have classmates anymore. That thought was still as alien as the rest when it came to his death. “You should be tired,” One declared, and Izuku could only wonder why he felt so oddly numb instead of the sleepiness he probably should have rightfully been experiencing right then and there. “Let’s get you to bed,” he said, lifting him up with what could only be a practiced ease and depositing him inside the bars of the cot with some help from a well-positioned set of plastic steps.

He was left sitting in his cot, the numbers 009 carved into wood, reminding him of his new number and status as a successful experiment.

“Lights out!” One called, his voice distinctive enough by that point, what with him being one of the two who had spoken the most since Izuku’s untimely arrival in that space.

The lights flicked out above with a clack, plunging them into the darkness they were meant to sleep in. Sleep, surprisingly enough, was incredibly slow to come for Izuku, even as he flopped back on his new bed, soft ears twitching as he thought he caught sounds of clanking and other varying movement outside their little bedroom.

He wondered what his once-mother was doing, in a world where he no longer existed.

Tears pricked his eyes, the darkness hiding them, even as he closed his eyes and prayed for the short relief that sleep would be.

Chapter Text

Morning came with the flickering on of artificial lighting, and Izuku only squinted, the reality of his new situation flickering across his sleep-addled brain much too swiftly. Hope that the entire thing had just been a dream, that he would wake up in his bedroom covered with All Might merchandise, died a swift, brutal death.

“You get Eight, I’ll get Nine,” the familiar voice of Three came, and Izuku could only blink as the orca-boy hefted him out of his crib and back onto the ground. The door to the living space had slid back open, any mess from yesterday seemingly having vanished, leaving them with a clean room. A clean room which Seven decided to immediately mess up, if only by taking to those sterile white walls with crayon.

Izuku could only watch with mild apprehension, feeling the bemusement radiating from Three who was seemingly waiting for him to leave that room. “We need to go out of here,” Three said, ushering him forwards and towards the play room. “Unless you want to lie down for the whole day in your bed. It’s not the funnest thing to do. Usually we only do that if you’re sick,” Three declared. “You’re not sick.”

Idly, Izuku almost wished he could be ill right then and there, if only so he had an excuse to lie in his new cot listlessly and sleep away the harsh reality which had seemingly become his life. He didn’t want to be there. He wanted to be home, with his mother whose green hair he was supposed to have. He wanted to eat home-cooked katsudon in his cosy living room while talking with his mother, prattling on about his day while she listened to him with a soft, gentle, familiar smile on her indulgent face. He wanted to feel warm, loved, and safe unlike how exposed he felt in that strange lab. He wanted to be scrolling through pages and pages of hero merchandise he’d never be able to afford on his laptop in his own room already filled to the brim with all the hero merchandise which could fit in there.

Yet part of him knew, deep down, that those things would never happen.

There was no coming back from death, after all.

His shoulders sunk, feet reluctantly stepping forwards and out of his new bedroom. He walked into his new living-play room. Once upon a time he had liked new things. He didn’t think he did anymore.

“Breakfast will be soon,” Three said, and as if on cue, Izuku felt his stomach growl ravenously. He hadn’t eaten since his supposed rebirth there. Or at least the moment they had pulled him from that vat of strange green liquid. Though he thought, in hindsight, it had been more like a gel – or perhaps jelly-like in nature. “Sounds like you’re hungry,” Three said, and Izuku felt a blush creep across his cheeks at that. There was an eerie sense of normalcy in that, and he wasn’t sure whether he was supposed to like it or hate it. “Do you want to go and read again?” Three tilted his head. “Or would you rather draw with those crayons that Seven keeps waving about?”

A frown curled at his lips, part of him unable to decide between the two options. What was he supposed to draw? What was he supposed to read? What could he do without giving away his uncanny intelligence? Though Izuku supposed that ship had likely long since sailed. He was considering the choice, after all, and he probably ought to have not been able to understand Three when he had given him the choice.

Eight was older than him ever so slightly, and he was crawling on the floor right then and there, no matter how One was trying to get him to walk on two feet. He probably should have been doing something like that, and yet… Tiredness clawed at his very soul at the thought of maintaining that sort of charade. His shoulders sunk, golden eyes flitting to Three before he tentatively edged towards Seven who was already making a scribble on one of the pieces of craft paper from the sterile metal shelf. His frown deepened at that, eyes narrowing on the shelving as he mused on the fact that the paper hadn’t been there the day before. Someone had been in that room while they’d been sleeping, only a single door controlled by others or a timer switch between them and whatever stranger or strangers who had entered the room to stock them with paper and crayons. It made something inside of him twist nervously.

“Colouring then, I guess,” Three mumbled, red eyes watching him go. “I’m going to go and have a shower. One will keep an eye on you in the meantime… I hope,” he said, and Izuku frowned at the faint signs of Three’s skin drying out, clearly visible now that he had noticed it, only able to watch as the older boy went to a door with an occasional glance back at him.

A small hand closed around his even smaller one, pale grey hair tickling his skin as Seven stared at him with bright blue eyes which seemed eerily familiar. Yet he couldn’t place where he had seen them before. Unless he was imagining things. He was far used to doing that – imagining things which weren’t possible or otherwise real. Yet the reality before him was anything but the workings of his overimaginative mind.

“Nine,” Seven greeted cheerfully – far too cheerfully for that place, if you were a jaded teenager who had seemingly reincarnated in a strange body born in a lab. Was he jaded? Izuku tilted his head, peering into those blue eyes, that same tiredness coming back to gnaw at his limbs as he was tugged to a seated position. “Let’s draw!” she declared, a visible bundle of energy that he could only lament as he sat there. “I’ll give you my favourite crayon,” Seven said, holding out the bright, electric blue crayon.

Izuku stared at the blue crayon, eyes darting to the dark green crayon he could see. The same colour his hair and eyes had once been. A strand of white hair brushed against his collarbone, a glossy white ribbon, and he frowned at it, still trying to remember and remind himself that he had white hair and golden eyes. There was something about those features that had something tickling at the back of his mind, a similar feeling to what those blue eyes of Seven evoked. The distinct feeling that he was missing something, and it grated on him to not know what.

“Nuh uh.” Seven shook her head. “Blue is better. There are green plants everywhere,” she said, as if that were the worst thing possible. “Emi-chan said that the sky is blue,” Seven said, and Izuku could only pause at that. Didn’t every child know that grass was green and the sky was blue? Then he remembered that Seven, the same as him, had been born in that strange, eerie lab hidden away from the sight of the sky by thick concrete. He had only known the skies when he had been Midoriya Izuku. He was just Izuku there – or Nine, as everyone else seemed to know him by.

“Skee?” he tried to say, tilting his head and wondering whether he truly wanted for her to understand the question he was trying to ask – if she had ever seen the sky before. They shared the same fate right then and there. Only he’d once lived another life before that strange one unfolding before his very golden eyes. His shoulders sunk, fingers tightening their grip on that electric blue crayon.

Seven blinked, her own shoulders sinking. “I haven’t seen the sky before,” she mumbled. “Emi-chan said she’d take me, but she lied.” Her teeth ground together, fingers going to pick at a thin band of woven threads wrapped around her wrist – a bracelet with a single large glass bead threaded on it.

Izuku frowned at that, watching as Seven went back to her colouring, a frown set on her brow that hadn’t been there before. He glanced at her, wondering then, deep down in his heart, if there was some way in which they would both be able to see the sky in all its blue or amber glory. His musings didn’t last for too long, stomach rumbling, even as a soft chime rang through the room.

“Breakfast time,” One said matter-of-factly, and Izuku watched as a section of wall sunk in, splitting along the faint seam he had thought was just for decorative purposes and revealing yet another small room.

There was a small counter – child-sized, as it was – with a small conveyor belt in the middle of it, like the kind he’d seen in sushi-bars when his—Izuku froze mid-thought, the painful reminder that Midoriya Inko did not know him anymore resurfacing like a punch to the gut. He was dead to her, and yet somehow she wasn’t dead to him, fickle as his mind was when it came to obsessing over things. Impossible things which could never happen. He wondered how highly waking up in a child’s body with the memories of a previous life ranked on the impossible scale.

There were two highchairs, complete with their own little tables, and part of him only sighed at the realisation of who was meant to sit in them. He was a child. A toddler, really. Part of him wanted to scream like one for everything he’d lost both emotionally and in the sense of autonomy.

“Up we go, Eight,” One crooned, lifting the red-haired toddler into his own seat, and Izuku only trudged over to the highchair labelled with the number nine. “Ah, there you are, Nine,” One murmured, and Izuku only blinked placidly as he was lifted into the highchair.

The conveyor belt whirred to life, little numbered bowls and plates being carried around until they reached the correct position. Izuku blinked, staring at the grey porridge-like substance in his own bowl, stomach sinking at how very unappetizing it looked. Yet there was no chef to complain to, and Izuku didn’t think whoever made his meals in that lab probably cared much for their enjoyment of them. Food was food though, and if he wanted to live then he needed to eat, he decided.

Do you really?

He paused at that, Kacchan’s voice echoing in his head, static filling his brain as those fateful words rang out in his mind. Take a swan dive, the ghostly spectre of his once-best friend lingering in the back of his head. He wondered then, why, if he was the one who had actually died, he was being haunted right then and there.

One set his meal on the little table attached to his highchair, scooping up some of the grey mush onto a spoon which Izuku was swift to pry from his larger hands. “Oh,” One murmured, peering into his eyes then. His golden-not-green eyes. “Will you be alright with that, Nine?” he asked, frowning then, and Izuku couldn’t for the life of him figure out the older boy.

He didn’t want to think about the odd similarities he thought he could see between the kindness that was seemingly ingrained into the older boy and the kind boy Midoriya Izuku had once been .

Yet there were no adults there, and One had apparently had to step into the role, and he had seemingly done so without complaint. He was number One, the first number, if one didn’t include zero. Then there was Three, the next oldest, and the next kindest of them. He hadn’t interacted enough with any of the others, what with how they were too small to lift him and help him to wherever he needed to go.

Seven’s fingers curled around his arm, stirring him from the daze he’d found himself in, bright blue eyes staring into his golden ones curiously. When had he finished eating his breakfast? When had One undoubtedly deposited him back on his own two feet? “Focus!” she demanded, looking mightily annoyed at his lack of concentration.

“Srrr,” he slurred, tongue fumbling over syllables he couldn’t quite pronounce just yet it seemed. Though given he had only been born from that green jelly the previous day, perhaps his fumbling ability to speak could be forgiven.

Seven patted him on the arm, evidently understanding his meaning. “I forgive you,” she said as if that were the most important thing in the world. “Now we need to colour.” She grabbed his arm again, pulling him closer to the piece of craft paper she had pulled out, messy green dots already marked on the page.

Izuku only tilted his head, grabbing his own separate bit of craft paper, mulling over what he was going to draw for only a moment before he grabbed the blue and purple crayons, wondering then if he would ever be able to see the blue sky with Seven instead of the harsh artificial lighting above them right then and there.

Clumsy fingers wrapped around the crayon, drawing the distinct outline of a star – which looked nothing like they did in the real night sky, all indistinguishable, distant white blobs – yet it was something. His lips pressed together, even as he coloured the page in, intermingled electric blue and navy colours making for an odd picture. It wasn’t anything like the sky he couldn’t see, but it was something.

“You coloured your page in?” Seven asked, peering at his page, brow furrowed. “What are those?” She pointed at the white stars.

“They’re stars,” One’s voice came from behind them, Eight napping on a mat a little ways away from them, and Izuku frowned as he felt tiredness claw at his own eyelids. Ever was he reminded that his body wasn’t that of a teenager anymore. He was probably the grand age of three, and that was if he was lucky. It just depended on how long he had been in the green jelly for. Idly, he wondered whether spending at least a year longer in that green substance would have any effect on his growth as opposed to a normal baby who had come from their mother’s womb.

Yet there was no information for him to compare with, spotty as the memories of his last life were on such a subject. His shoulders sunk at that thought.

“What are stars?” Seven asked, finger tracing the shape on his bit of craft paper curiously.

“They’re in the sky, when it’s nighttime,” One said, frowning then. “I’ve never seen them, but there are books on the topic of stars. Emi-chan left them, before she… went…”

“Is this supposed to be the sky then?” she wondered, blue eyes boring into his own.

Izuku reached out, holding out the craft paper with his drawing. “Skee!” he declared, still unable to pronounce things properly. Probably a consequence of being in the green jelly. Toddlers his age could undoubtedly talk, and yet they needed to be taught how to. Somehow Izuku didn’t think that the green substance he’d once been suspended in was a conductive learning environment.

Seven stared at him then, eyes darting between him and the picture, before she grabbed him and pulled him into a hug. “Nine is smart,” she declared, releasing him from her death grip in an instant, fingers curling around his page of badly drawn night sky. “I like Nine,” she said, and Izuku only wondered why his chest felt so warm right then and there.

And why it felt so tight in the same breath…

His eyes narrowed, one tiny hand curling in the fabric of the gown he wore, his underwear being the only thing he was wearing beneath – well, that and a nappy. Not that he’d had any use for the latter, he could control his bladder and other excretory functions, thank you very much. His shoulders sunk, even as he watched Three trying to get Eight to walk on his own two feet rather than crawling everywhere as the slightly older boy was so inclined to do.

Izuku blamed the green goo – blamed the fact they had seemingly been made in a lab and only released into their small little world once they reached an appropriate age. Then again, he had a sinking suspicion that he would never be normal. Before the… fall… he had been quirkless – an outlier when the vast majority of his generation were quirked. He had been an outlier then, and he was still an outlier.

Somehow, he didn’t think it was common to remember a life before a death. He curled in on himself, feeling traitorous tears building in his eyes.

Warm arms wrapped around him, and Izuku blinked, staring, teary eyed up at One as the older boy pulled him into his lap and started trying to soothe him. He wasn’t sure how exactly he was supposed to feel about that much, embarrassment rearing its ugly head moments later, even as he buried his face in One’s clinical white shift he wore and hid his sadness from the rest of his very small world right then and there.

Chapter Text

The world he existed in was rather small – a series of interconnecting rooms being the only thing he had known since he had been walked through the harsh, unfamiliar corridors and deposited there. Idly, he tried to make a mental note of the things he knew for certain in his odd existence there. For instance, he had been born as a laboratory experiment for as of yet unknown means. Yet he could easily speculate that it meant nothing good. He had little doubts that he was being called by a number to dehumanise him. He was nothing more than an experiment in the eyes of the researchers or scientists he was in the hands of. They all were, and something like fear came to gnaw at his gut.

There weren’t many who didn’t know about the principal of UA’s background as a science experiment, and too many late night searches enacted by his fact goblin brain had made him intimately aware of the inhumanity of experiments carried out by those who cared little for the lives of others under their purview.

Yet thinking of the odd principal of UA only brought back memories of a life which had come to a short, brutal end thanks to gravity and a hard stop. He shuddered at that, even as he played with the coloured blocks that One had all but dragged him over to after his tears had thankfully subsided.

His ears twitched, a sensation he was still getting used to – what with how rabbit ears weren’t quite the same as human ears. Then there was the fact he was a combination of mutations, specifically two types: rabbit and bird, which had given rise to his undoubtedly enhanced senses. Which was why he was the first to turn as soon as he heard the telltale swish of sliding doors opening. The same doors he remembered being pulled through only once before – the day before, in fact, when he had been haplessly deposited into the care of older children.

“Four,” a calm voice called out, different to the high-pitched voices of the children he had quickly grown used to. A shiver curled down his spine at that, something within him whispering that the woman in front of him was a threat. His ears twitched, standing straight up on end, his fur bristling on his legs as something set his instincts on edge.

One stood up, hand shooting out, fingers curling around Four’s arm. Izuku frowned, heart beating almost frantically in his chest as an odd stand-off began between the eldest of them and the lady who was undoubtedly a cog in the machine Izuku had long since named the lab.

Four stood still, strange, ringed green eyes staring almost nervously at One, the older boy having frozen, not letting go of him. “One?” Four murmured, fear lining his voice them, even as his eyes darted between the lady at the door and One, a growing tension building the longer the silent battle of wills went on.

“Four, come here,” the lady stated, eyes narrowing, and Izuku could only watch with a growing sense of horror as the woman flicked her hand out.

One was catapulted backwards, landing on the floor with a loud thud which had Izuku scrambling to his feet, colourful blocks discarded around him.

“I won’t ask again,” the lady said, and Four moved ever so reluctantly forwards – towards the lady that Izuku had already labelled a threat. There was something ever so primal about his sudden, mounting dislike for her, a visceral response to that threat making his face warp into a snarl.

Brown eyes flickered onto One’s prone form, an eerie stillness settling in the air, and Izuku saw her hand twitch again. His feet moved without much input from his brain, and he skidded to a stop in front of One, arms raised and stretched out, wings on his back flaring out as he put himself between his One and the threat at the door.

It brought back memories of throwing himself between Bakugo’s Victims and Kacchan himself. Yet the lady in front of him wasn’t a cruel teenager who had once told him to take a swan dive—Izuku shook his head, pushing that thought to one side even as he stared at a much more dangerous threat to himself and the other children in the room.

A snort escaped the lady, brown eyes writing him off as weak the same way red eyes once had. It was a gaze he was intimately familiar with. A gaze which brought an aching nostalgia for things which couldn’t be anymore. “Come along, Four,” she ordered, fingers curling around Four’s shoulder and pulling him away with her.

Izuku hadn’t really interacted with the older blonde-haired boy compared to Seven, Three, and One, and yet that didn’t get rid of the sinking sense of dread and terror that he felt for the older boy.

Four was gone to the world beyond the small one he knew within those walls – a strange lab where they were the subjects of whatever experimentation went on there. He didn’t know what went on beyond those sliding doors, and part of him felt terrified at the idea. The unknown was scary when it came to people who probably didn’t measure the value of his life the same way as he did.

The doors slid shut with a soft hiss, the world beyond vanishing from sight, and Izuku only stared determinedly at those doors for a few more moments. Was the lady going to come back? Izuku frowned, turning around after a few more seconds of blissful stillness and hurrying over to where One was.

One groaned, and Izuku only peered down at him, blinking as someone passed a tissue over to him as the older boy pushed himself to his elbows. “Why did you do that, you idiot?” Three hissed, pressing the tissue to his bloody nose. “You know you can’t stop it. None of us can…”

“But if it’s… Four’s at the right age… for the last stage…” One mumbled, yellow eyes darting over to those sliding doors. “He might not come back… like Two didn’t…”

Izuku reached out, fingers curling in the fabric of One’s white shift, heart beating almost frantically in his chest at the words One had uttered. There were eight of them there – named One through Nine, and yet there was no Two. There had only been an empty, made bed in the bedroom beneath that number – a bed which looked like it hadn’t been slept in.

Because Two was dead, probably…

“I don’t want to lose anyone else,” One mumbled, teary yellow eyes finding his green ones then, and Izuku could only blink as he found himself being used as a substitute for a cuddly toy. Not that he minded all that much. His arms went up, wrapping around One’s thin frame as best he could. He liked hugs, and he was more than happy to give them to a traumatised child. What kind of hero-in-training would he have been if he were unwilling? Something thick and heavy welled up in his chest at that thought. He was dead, and he wasn’t a hero hopeful applying to UA anymore… Izuku sighed, hating the tears which welled up in his own eyes as he remembered falling. His wings shifted behind him, as if to remind him that they existed, and he could only smile somewhat bitterly, his face hidden in One’s gown, as he only wished he hadn’t fallen.

Why had he felt the need to stare at the ground longingly? Why had he chosen to sit atop a railing which, in hindsight, hadn’t seemed all that safe? His shoulders sunk, even as One clutched him all that much tighter.

“He’s just gone for testing,” a girl with blonde hair and plain green eyes said, folding her arms, even as Izuku peered at her as best he could from where he was – almost crushed into One’s bony chest. “That’s all. There’s no need to worry so much.”

“Ugh. Tests,” Seven mumbled, flopping on the floor, crayons and colouring momentarily forgotten about.

“Some tests are a bit different to the ones you’ve already been through, Five,” Three said, black and white hands fiddling with the cube in his hands, red eyes fixating on the different coloured sides. “They…” Three shook his head. “Never mind.”

“What?” Five demanded, eyes narrowing, and Izuku could only frown as he stared at her slightly elongated neck. There was something ever so familiar about it, similar to his familiarity with some of his own features—it niggled at the back of his mind, brow furrowing as he scrambled for some sort of answer to the puzzle lain before him.

“We’re just worried, Five,” One answered calmly, seemingly trying to diffuse the situation. “There’s a… difficult test which is administered when you’re upwards of eight-years-old…”

“What’s it like if you’re so worried?” Five demanded. “Four is strong. His voice can make walls tremble – I saw one of his tests when they took me to do mine,” she said, arms folded, a huff escaping her.

Izuku glanced over at her once more, spying a mulish expression plastered over her face, and knowing then that Five wouldn’t give up until she had the answers she wanted. Answers which neither One nor Three wanted to give to her, going by the set of their lips. Which would lead to an argument, unless one side relented. Izuku didn’t want them to fight – he had never liked it when anyone fought with angry words, more so when they were undoubtedly all trapped together in close proximity.

He stood up then stumbling over to Five on his little legs, glancing up and meeting those green eyes which watched him in confusion. “What are you doing?” Five stared at him, stumbling back, even as Izuku made a dive for her, wrapping his small arms around her legs as best she could.

“Five, be gentle!” One called, and Izuku only blinked as he found himself shoved back, landing harshly on his backside. “Nine’s smaller than you…”

Five only scowled, green eyes glaring down at him, and Izuku could only tilt his head and try to remember the exact shade of green his eyes had once been and whether they were similar to the colour of Five’s. “Then maybe he’s the one you should be worried about,” Five grumbled, folding her arms and huffing before she went back to the bookshelf she’d been sitting by before.

Izuku felt his shoulders sink in relief, a soft sigh escaping him, even as he realised that no argument was about to boil over and erupt around him. Crisis averted, part of him thought, even as he found his attention inevitably drawn back to the colourful blocks he’d been playing with earlier. It wasn’t as if he could write just yet, and there was no television to turn on and watch Hero Channel. Which meant playing with colourful blocks it was – at least until lunch or until Four returned. Whichever was sooner.

He smelt Four before he saw him; a foul, coppery scent wafting past his nose as his ears twitched at the sound of footsteps. They were heavier than he remembered, the sound louder and more uneven, and the reason became ever so obvious as the sliding doors slid open. A swish heralded the sight of Four in the doorway, white shift covered in red, and Izuku felt his heart beat frantically in his chest at the sight. Was Four hurt? His mind raced, even as he stumbled to his feet, golden eyes searching out those ringed green ones.

“Four,” One breathed as Four stumbled inside the room, breathing heavily, those ringed green eyes staring blankly ahead. “You’re alive…” he murmured, and Izuku only blinked as Three bustled past One, a bright green box with a plus-sign on it denoting it to be a first aid box.

“Where are you hurt?” Three demanded, grabbing a hold of Four’s hands.

Four shook his head, hand going to his throat, a raspy voice escaping his lips. “Not hurt,” he croaked. “’s not all mine…”

“You overused your quirk,” Three acknowledged, and Four nodded. “You up for a shower? We should get the blood off you before it dries…” he trailed off, slowly beginning to lead the younger boy over to the same door he had gone through earlier that very day. The same door One had led him through in a misguided attempt to change the nappy he had been wearing until he had taken it off in that very visit to the bathroom.

Worried, Izuku trailed after the pair, frowning when One grabbed a hold of him. “Three can handle it,” One said, and Izuku only tried to follow the pair that much more, instincts he didn’t know he had taking over. Wings flapped, air shifting behind him as he wrenched himself from One’s grasp, the muscles in his back contracting – including ones he undoubtedly didn’t have before that fateful fall. Yet he didn’t like to think on that all that much.

He didn’t like the way he remembered a sickly thump, heard for a split second. He didn’t like the sudden, sharp sensation of pain he could just about recall before his inevitable demise. He didn’t like the vivid clarity with which he was coming to remember those moments with – the way he was coming to recall his sickly, untimely end.

A shiver curled down his spine, eyes narrowing on the door which was closing behind Three and Four, even as his feet left the ground and he flew straight into the closed door. His head made a loud thus as it collided with the heavy door, wings flapping as he felt himself falling back, landing on the hard floor with another loud thud. Tears filled his eyes, lips pursing together as he tried to hold the cries at bay as pain throbbed through his body.

“Nine,” One called, arms pulling him away from the door, and Izuku could only blink as he found himself tucked into One’s bony chest. “You don’t need to go after them – Three will bring Four back out and you can see him then…”

Izuku frowned then, the words taking a few moments to sink into his overworked brain. Why had he been so eager to follow the pair? His arms curled around One’s neck, even as the older boy carried him over to the bookshelf undoubtedly to read to him. His impulse control was a bit skewed, Izuku decided, resting his head on One’s shoulder, listening to the eerily normal-sounding story amidst the chaos and confusion which had taken over his entire existence.

Chapter Text

Four was quiet, Izuku mused, even as he hesitantly edged towards the older boy long after their dinner had been finished and the dining room closed. It wasn’t even funny – how little control he seemed to have over his own life. He couldn’t sleep within his cot whenever he wanted to, nor could he go to the dining room for a snack whenever he liked. Everything was controlled by faceless people he had never seen or met. Yet. The life of an experiment was odd and unsettling, though that was probably because he remembered a life different to that one.

Before his untimely end.

The sound of the doors to the corridor opening made his head swivel around, heart beating almost frantically in his chest at the thought of a new threat there to take another of his warren away. Yet there was nobody in the door way, and the doorway itself was blocked off by a set of thick bars like a prison cell.

A glance over at One told him that the other boy – the eldest of them – had gone sheet white, yellow eyes distant as he stared at the dark barely-lit corridor beyond those bars. Three was quiet, almost deathly still, and Izuku could only wonder exactly he was missing.

The doors to their bedroom swished open, the motion seeming ever so slow, and One stood there, frozen for a few moments before he began ushering them towards their beds.

His ears twitched, turning as they heard sounds of footsteps coming from the corridor, eyes narrowing as he spotted a boy hurrying past, face stained with dried blood from earlier wounds. He was wearing a white shift – the same as them all, meaning he could only be another experiment, the same as the rest of them.

Izuku blinked, and then the boy was gone, and he could only frown and wonder why the boy was running, and why there were bars blocking him off from coming into their room. He had never seen that boy before though, he mused, glancing around then at the seven others who were now – his odd instincts had already decided without conscious thought – his warren. “It’s bedtime, Nine,” One spoke, having come up to him while he was transfixed by the sight of the boy in the corridor.

Arms lifted him up, his head automatically coming to rest on One’s shoulder, even as his gold eyes remained fixed on the corridor beyond the bars blocking their exit. And the other boy’s entry. A shiver curled down his spine, part of him wondering then what exactly was going on in that strange lab. “Wha?” he asked, fingers curling in One’s white gown while his other hand pointed towards the corridor.

One didn’t answer, either not understanding his silent question or otherwise choosing not to answer, and his ears only flicked up, catching the sounds of another kind of footsteps, heavy and lumbering and far too close for comfort. The doors to their bedroom started to close, the rest of his warren safely tucked into their beds already, and Izuku tried to shift the unnerving sense of danger which was mounting with every second which passed quietly even as One set him down in his bed.

A scream pierced through the air, and Izuku sat bolt upright in his cot, eyes straying nervously to the closing door, even as One placed his hands over his rabbit ears. “Don’t listen, Nine,” One told him, tears biting at the corners of his eyes. “Don’t listen.”

His hands reached up, reaching for the larger, shaking set which were blocking most of his sensitive hearing. Yet he still could hear the screams – the same screams which suddenly cut off all of a sudden. Silence was all that remained. His stomach twisted at that, nervousness at the unknown coming to bite. What was going on? Who had been screaming? Why had they suddenly stopped? He chewed on his lip, part of him whispering oh, but you know the answers to one of those questions.

One let go of his ears, the doors to their room having slid into place, muffling most of the sounds of outside, and Izuku could only frown and flump sideways on his bed. He watched as One slowly slunk back to his own bed labelled 001, heart beating frantically in his little chest as the image of that blood-covered, terrified boy flashed before his eyes.

Like prey running from a predator.

Izuku swallowed thickly, closing his eyes and curling up into a little ball as if that would make him feel that much safer in a place he probably needed to escape from. Lest he leave in a body bag. His fingers curled into the mattress, tears coming to bite at the corners of his eyes as he longed for things which had once been his.

Before he’d fallen and died .

Yet he had wings on his back, mint green ones which flapped automatically at the thought of falling, and Izuku had the strangest of feelings that he would never fall again. It was a strange idea to part of his mind, whilst the rest of his head and body simply felt incredibly numb at the thought. What did it matter that he wouldn’t fall again?

He’d already lost everything.

He bit down on his lip, muffling the sob which escaped him, even as a low-level light flicked on – he hadn’t even noticed the main lights turning off, distracted as he was. Warm arms lifted him up, and if he closed his eyes he could almost pretend it was his once-mother there hugging him and whispering that things would be okay. Yet he had fallen, his mother wasn’t there, and it was One who was hugging him and whispering comforting words in his ears.

Izuku didn’t know what he was supposed to feel about that, more tears building in his eyes, even as he buried his face in One’s clean white shift and cried as quietly as he could.

His hands fisted in the soft fabric he felt, a murmur escaping him, even as his eyes flickered open, catching sight of One whose face was lax in sleep, the faint illumination of the room just about providing enough light for him to see One’s sleeping form. He yawned then, part of him well aware he hadn’t had enough sleep the day before for a child of his probable age.

His fingers curled that much more, yellow eyes lined with sleep fluttering open and peering at him as he tried to burrow further into One’s embrace. There was an eerie sense of safety to the older boy, memories of him putting himself between Four and a threat to them flashing through the forefront of his mind. One was safe, every single part of him was saying, and Izuku could only wonder whether that was more logic, instinct, or a mixture of both which was driving him towards the older boy.

“Go bac’ to sleep,” One slurred, arms wrapping around him, and Izuku wondered then if that was what it was like to have an older brother. Not that they were probably related by blood. They had no features in common, besides, perhaps, the slit there was to their pupils. Part of him ignored the wish that the idea could be the truth. Part of him wondered if he was betraying his mother by becoming so attached to a boy he had known for but a handful of days.

His shoulders sunk, and Izuku closed his eyes once more, wings twitching at his back as he tried to forget those traitorous thoughts and tried to remain content with what he had right then and there.

Not that he had much of anything.

Breakfast brought another round of grey mush, and Izuku could only stare listlessly at that. He wanted katsudon – craved it, in fact, if not for breakfast then for lunch or dinner. He wanted takoyaki to snack on, the thought of crisp batter and deep-fried octopus making his stomach rumble, even as he forced himself to eat the tasteless mush which Izuku honestly didn’t want to try and guess the recipe of. He didn’t even want to try and guess the ingredients. He wanted fried chicken to leave grease on his fingers, pizza that’s cheese would be stringy enough to get caught in his teeth, or some other food, no matter the cuisine, that would both taste and look appetising.

Somehow he didn’t think he would get that much anytime soon, he mused, shovelling down the grey slop with a ferocity which made One and Five eye him oddly. Part of him was still waiting for the crushing weight of reality to come around and slap him in the face – expecting something to happen, if only to wake up from the strange world around him where they were numbers and something in the corridor screamed.

The world had felt ever so real only the night before with those screams and cries, and Izuku sat back in his highchair – pushing his empty bowl away from him – and musing on that sense of surrealness which had come back around to bite.

“Nine! Nine! Come colour,” Seven demanded, and Izuku took a moment to think about that before he squirmed his way out from his highchair and flapped his wings, feathers brushing against the ceiling as he rose up in the air – before gravity inevitably took hold.

Seven ran to catch him as he descended jaggedly, the impact sending both of them down to the ground in a tangle of small limbs and red marks which would undoubtedly become bruises. If his skin was anything like his old flesh which bruised and marred far too easily. Izuku tilted his head, staring at the red imprints of where Seven had grabbed him clumsily in her attempt to grant him a soft landing. Or maybe that had just been a fact of being quirkless – fragile and far too breakable for the world he had once lived in? It was still alien to think that he wasn’t quirkless anymore, to think that he didn’t have wings nor rabbit ears and that the face in the mirror would be that of a fourteen-year-old green-haired, green-eyed quirkless boy. His reflection still took a few moments for him to recognise, rabbit ears ever so eye-catching whenever they shifted to better try to listen to something or another even as he stared and stared at the familiar strange in the mirror.

Black and white hands pulled him to his feet far more gently than Seven’s awkward, fumbling hands. “I trust you won’t be trying that again anytime soon,” Three said matter-of-factly, folding his arms across his chest, evidently having entered a state Izuku was coming to think of as tired dad mode.

Sometimes Izuku liked to think it was a massive social experiment – to see what a ragtag, veritable pack of children would do when around no adult figures. Yet his dreams of that place being harmless were just that – dreams. What good place would have people screaming in the corridors in the depths of the night? His shoulders sunk.

A hand grabbed his tiny one, Seven abruptly far too close. She had no sense of personal space, Izuku was coming to learn, even as he found himself pulled over to the crayons and craft paper that Seven seemed to be obsessed with. Like how he had once been glued to Hero Channel growing up, and then to his laptop years later as he dipped his toes in the wild world web called the internet. “Draw!” Seven ordered imperiously.

Izuku relented with a shrug, fingers curling around his preferred dark green crayon when a swish of doors opening caught his ears. “Nine,” a young man called, dressed in a white lab coat with a clipboard in hand. All in all he didn’t look threatening – not like the lady who had hauled Four away – back hair slicked back with product, brown eyes scanning the room until they landed on him: his target. His experiment for the day, or however many hours he would be taken away for – if he even got to return at all. Four had come home covered in blood, after all—“Nine!”

He tensed at the sound of his number, part of him wondering if there was going to be a fight like there was the day prior – or, more accurately, a one-sided beatdown of a child by an adult.

“Isn’t it too soon?” Three murmured. “Eight’s only been called once, and that was only last week… and he’s been here for months…”

A large hand closed around his bicep, arm looking almost like a twig in that moment – so easily broken and snapped. “Nine is different to Eight,” the man said flatly, and Izuku could only muse on how very true that statement was. Not that he wanted to go anywhere with that man right there and then. He swallowed thickly, feeling eyes boring into his back as he was pulled to his feet and all but frogmarched out of the only place he had known since his awakening there.

He was in the corridors – the same corridors where those screams had likely come from the night prior. Shivers rolled down his spine, ears ever so tense as he was pulled along by the adult dressed in the lab coat.

White tiles on the floor gleamed beneath harsh, sterile lighting, air brushing over his skin slightly too cold to be comfortable. The walls were covered in an easy-wipe surface which looked something like plastic – just as grey and monochrome as the rest of the furniture and doorways they passed by on their way to wherever it was they were going. Izuku didn’t know, and that was mildly unnerving, even as his brain dreamt up far too many possibilities. Four had come back covered in blood. Was he going somewhere which would end up with him returning in that same way?

Izuku swallowed thickly, reminding himself that his imagination was just kicked into overdrive. Perhaps yet another effect of being punted into a tiny body with differences in hormones and brain development. He paused, thoughts of what the brain was overwhelming those possible ideas, his fact goblin brain reminding him of how the brain controlled almost everything. Did that mean he was a different person? Was his personality going to change from what he thought he knew it was? He frowned, remembering then that memories contributed towards what and who a person was. He wondered how exactly his rebirth had allowed for those memories to come along into that new body of his. Was his brain structure the same for another similarly quirked boy of his supposed new age?

His thoughts ticked over, eyes catching on something in front of a large metal plate taking up most of the wall on that section. There was a shoe on the floor, pale white and on its side, the number four written on its heel in a bright green strip of rubber. Yet that wasn’t what made his stomach churn and twist. Rather, the little leg still strapped into that shoe made his blood run cold.

There was no body – just a single leg; a single tiny limb. A child’s limb. One which had been torn off and left in a puddle of congealing blood, the skin a pallid white of a corpse, marred in places revealing pink muscle and the eggshell white of bone.

The man hauling him forwards clicked his tongue at the sight. “N-421… wasting its meal again,” he muttered, and Izuku felt his blood freeze at the mention of meal. Why was he saying that as if that limb was part of the meal? That limb had belonged to a child – one who undoubtedly was dead, fed to whatever exactly N-421 was.

Lives were meaningless there, part of him mused faintly, fear slowly starting to seep through him. Who wouldn’t be afraid in a place which was showing him exactly how little human life meant to them?

He remembered the boy who had been running in the corridors the night before. His ears twitched as he remembered the heavy lumbering steps he’d heard, followed by the screams. His hands shook at the picture his brain was choosing to paint. He’d fallen once before – died, even if he didn’t really want to focus on that much – so why couldn’t his life take a turn for the positive for once? Izuku mused on the existence of karma, then, and wondered if some day he would get his recompense for the terrible years he’d lived through and the terrible years undoubtedly to come.

Part of him wanted to laugh, and the other part wanted to cry, heart beating frantically in his chest as they left the limb belonging to a dead boy – a dead Four, his mind whispered – behind in the sterile corridors. Discarded and meant to be forgotten. Izuku’s eyes narrowed. Just like the quirkless were meant to be by the rest of the world.

But you’re not quirkless anymore, Kacchan’s voice whispered in his ear, and Izuku only wondered what it said about him that he missed the boy who had made some eight years of his past the most miserable. A burst of laughter escaped him, even as he was pulled through the veritable labyrinth of corridors and into a large room which reminded him of a hospital.

Where were the heroes when he needed them? Izuku could only wonder about that – wonder where exactly the heroes were when an operation like the one unfolding before him was going on. A place with such callous disregard for the lives of human children was the very definition of villainous, if not by law lest they all use their quirks. Heroes were a counter to them.

Heroes always win! Kacchan crowed in his ear, a mimicry of words the other boy had once said to him. That was what heroes had been to him: winners, the ones who always succeeded. It was why Kacchan had said he could never be a hero. He was a deku. He was quirkless. He couldn’t do anything. He was the one who had to be rescued. He couldn’t win in a fight, useless as he was. He couldn’t save anyone, unlike what heroes were meant to be capable of.

Only no hero had come when he had needed to be saved the last and final time.

Air brushed against him, green hair fluttering up towards the sky, a thought to scream for help abruptly quashed, and then—crack. Pain. Numbness. Blue spiderlilies blooming and flourishing; a mockery of the red ones which had once been left on a chipped, graffitied desk. You can’t do anything, something whispered. Izuku wondered why it sounded like All Might for a moment. Be more realistic—

“Nine!” a sharp voice cut through the haze, and Izuku could only blink placidly as the same man who had dragged him through the corridor applied another electrode to his scalp. There were already others stuck on, connected to a machine he didn’t recognise on the other side of the room. “Focus,” he ordered, and Izuku could only muse on why the man thought that a child like him would be able to understand him.

Obviously because he was being monitored – watched – and they’d seen him for the abnormality he was. He could never fit in and be normal, no matter how much he longed for that elusive normalcy. He shuddered at the thought, even as the man finished hooking him up to whatever machine they were about to use for some sort of experiment or test.

He was both curious and terrified—because he didn’t want to die again—and it was an odd mixture of emotions to feel at the same time. “Wha?” he tried to say, wishing then that he could speak properly. And that it could be a completely normal thing for him to do, unlike the unusuality he seemed to embody on the best of days.

Being quirkless had been unusual for a boy in his generation. Remembering a life before the one he was currently living was unusual. Being able to understand every word out of the adults and children around him in that place when he had been out of the green jelly for a matter of days was unusual.

“Let’s see if you can control those feathers of yours,” the man said, and Izuku frowned, something niggling at the back of his head at that – a memory his brain had seemingly buried – even as something pulsed in his head. Lights on the machine lit up, a buzzing sensation starting just behind his temples, and Izuku could only blink at the thick straps holding his limbs in place on the chair. He was stuck there: trapped.

And no one’s coming to save you, Deku, Kacchan whispered in his ear. Tears pooled in his eyes, a manic smile curling at his lips, even as the first experiment of what would likely be many began in full force.

Chapter Text

His eyes fluttered open, head pounding and pain pulsing behind his temples, even as the electrodes were pried from him skin, leaving little red marks in their wake. It hurt, he mused, feeling both numb and dumb at the same time. Had he really been expecting it not to hurt? he wondered, heart beating frantically within his too small chest. His brain felt as though someone had overloaded it with something, a sense just out of the ordinary lingering just beyond; an imaginary limb he hadn’t had before, and it was something to do with his mental abilities.

“Perhaps he’s just too young…” the low murmur caught his ears which twitched and twisted in that rabbit-like way to listen in that much better to those strange, cruel adults around him.

Not for the first time, he wished for his mother. He missed her; an ever-present ache he wasn’t sure would ever vanish. She at least, had never been purposefully cruel – she had tried to protect him from all the cruelty she had known would be directed towards him. She had raised him to recognise cruelty and show kindness instead.

He remembered that tiny little leg, even as someone crouched down in front of him, undoing the straps on his own arms and legs. He wondered if one day, that would be one of his little limbs after he was made fodder to whatever monster existed there which was fed on human flesh.

He wondered then if any modicum of kindness existed in that place.

He wondered what exactly he was supposed to do if the answer to that was no.

He blinked, feeling an odd sensation at his feet, golden eyes narrowing as large hands pulled little socks onto his feet, tiny shoes being strapped onto his feet. They were a colourless white, with little straps to keep them on his slightly elongated feet. A consequence of whatever genes had given him the rest of his rabbit-like features. He twisted his feet then, even as the adult went back to the other adults and spoke about whatever technical terms they were going on about. There, marked on the heel of his shoe was the number nine.

It was a replica of the shoe on that discarded, nameless limb which must have once belonged to a numbered child who had since been discarded. Nameless and undoubtedly something which would be forgotten. That limb had belonged to a Four. Not his Four, but a different one. Which obviously meant that there were other batches of successful subjects. He closed his eyes briefly then, only to snap them open once more as a hand clamped down on his shoulder and all but dragged him off the chair he’d been strapped to for far too long.

It was the same man who had taken him from his room earlier that day, stomach rumbling telling him he’d been away for quite a number of hours. His heart thudded in his chest, a familiar metal hatch coming into sight, no bloodied limb in sight.

The man pulling him along clicked his tongue. “They finally cleared up that mess,” he said, sounding infinitely relieved at that fact.

Izuku only felt a mounting disgust. That mess had been the discarded remains of a child, he mused, reminded then of the inhumanity of those strange labs he had woken up in. The labs where he had been made – or at least his ‘new’ body had, he thought. Not that any of the adults were seemingly aware of his reincarnation in that strange, terrifying place.

He stumbled through those corridors, guided by the tight grip on his wrist, mind feeling awfully fuzzy even as he scolded himself for not memorising the twists and turns he had been taken through.

And for what? Kacchan whispered in his ear, and Izuku could almost picture him walking besides them – a ghost of the boy he had once known, warped and ever so slightly twisted into a being which reminded him of his deepest fears and worries. A boy who he had once strove to be like, strength and confidence-wise. He could never have emulated the boy personality-wise, harsh and abrasive as he’d been in that manner. But that had been Kacchan, not Deku… Familiar doors came into sight – though it was more a sense of familiarity and the boding promise of safety and relief from the people who had probably made him – from embryo to baby.

Doors slid open with a soft swish, a hand pushing him through the entranceway, before the man left without even a goodbye, white lab coat swishing in his haste to go wherever it was he was meant to go. Not that Izuku was sad to see him go.

“Nine!” One called, frantically hurrying towards him, eyes wide, a tissue in his hand from the box on that sterile shelf.

Something warm trickled down from his nose, the scent coppery and heavy in his nostril, and he could only paw at his nose and see that sticky red liquid coating his fingers before One was pinching his nose. His nose was bleeding, he realised dimly, idly surrendering to the tender ministrations of one of his warren. And the one who was quickly coming up to take the title of ‘older brother’, if only by technicality and the way he seemed to care for them all. He blinked up at One, allowing himself to be manhandled over to the corner of the room which had a thin mat, cushions, and more than a few blankets which for some reason smelt like something his hind brain recognised as family.

“What did they do to you?” One murmured, fingers brushing over those red marks lining his head where those electrodes had been placed.

Yet there was an ache in the back of his head, and not an ache like a bruise – rather it was like the ache of leg muscles after leg day in the gym. The pain of something tearing ever so slightly like muscle fibres, only for it to grow back that much stronger. It was something like his wings, Izuku mused, something which hadn’t been there before he had woken up as not-Midoriya Izuku. He wondered then if he had a new family name – and what it would be if that was the case. Nine was a number not a name. To dehumanise them, part of his mind supplied, even as he found himself swept away in his thoughts.

He wondered then, if whoever’s DNA had been used to create him knew just what was happening to him. He wondered how callous a person would have to be to use their own flesh and blood in such a manner, and then shuddered at that very thought. He didn’t like focusing on the negatives. He was supposed to be optimism quashed beneath a multitude of opinions that he shouldn’t exist. A smile twitched at his lips at that. Because he didn’t exist anymore, not as Midoriya Izuku. All those people had got what they had wished for, and a part of him could only wonder whether they were happy with that much.

“Nine?” One asked, sounding almost hesitant as those yellow eyes bored into his own searchingly. “Are you okay?”

“’m fin’,” he mumbled, watching as the older boy startled at that. Because he probably shouldn’t have been able to speak just yet – not when Eight was barely saying full words sparingly. Izuku wondered whether that was him giving up on any pretences of secrecy in regards to just how intelligent he was. His eyes strayed over to that mirror-like glass. A one-way mirror. Part of him wanted to peel it back and peer behind it then to see the faces of the ones who were watching them like specimens under a microscope.

He was undoubtedly an interesting one. Why else would they have begun testing him that much sooner than Eight had started? “What did they make you do?” One questioned, peering down at him then, sympathy and concern ever present in his expression. Not for the first time, Izuku wondered exactly what that lab had done to One to make a young child – a preteen – have eyes like an old quirk war veteran. He swallowed at the thought, at the idea of what would inevitably come for him if he spent long enough in those labs.

If.

He blinked. “’n hea’,” he said, tapping at the smarting marks he could still feel so acutely on his head. “Wir’s,” he added, uncertain of how else he was supposed to explain things even he didn’t fully understand just yet. What had they been trying to accomplish by hooking him up to that strange machine they had? Why did something in his head hurt, and why was he certain that whatever was hurting had never existed before his ‘reincarnation’ there? He shuddered at that word, abruptly remembering his death – because how could one reincarnate without dying and losing everything they had once known? “Huwts,” he mumbled, hating the lisp he had to his voice. Yet he needed to talk more to be rid of it.

Five snorted. “They’re only going to get harder, you big baby,” she muttered, sitting close enough that she could hear their little conversation, and Izuku felt himself bristle at that. Yet that tension faded as quick as it had come, if only because he had heard similar things directed his way before. Before he had fallen, before his life had come to an end with a sickly crack…

His name was still Izuku – to him at least – and that could still be misread as Deku. He was still useless. Nothing would change that fact, even if he suddenly had wings and rabbit ears – and rabbit-like feet, with fine white hairs starting to grow prominently on those limbs.

“Five,” One called warningly, but Izuku was already clambering to his feet. He could almost imagine the unwelcoming corridors of Aldera Middle School – the harsh white light, the scuff marks on the white walls which would have otherwise looked clinical, the murmur of voices in the background, and the eyes which had followed him.

He could remember his underclassmen coming up to him and questioning him on his apparent quirklessness. “Really?” he could recall them saying, disbelief crossing their face, before the insults dripped from their lips.

Yet he had a quirk in that place, in that time… but he supposed there were other things to be insulted, besides those he couldn’t quite help. He wondered if he would ever be able to not be a ‘big baby’, when crybaby had been the next biggest insult towards him and his once tendency towards tears. His eyes felt dry then, emotions feeling ever so distant and estranged even as he plonked himself down beside Seven.

“Nine!” Seven greeted, smiling brightly at him, and Izuku let himself be grabbed and pulled into a hug, even as Four, who was sitting close by, watched them silently. “You gonna draw?” she asked, grabbing Four’s wrist, pulling his hand towards the pair of them. “Look, look! Four’s with us!”

Izuku nodded, having already seen that much, eyes darting to the craft paper the pair had been drawing on. “Pwetty,” he said, pointing to the messy crayon drawings the two had been working on, gold meeting those green ringed ones as he stared at Four and Four stared right back at him. “Goo’ jwob,” he stated, patting Seven on the back then, even as Four kept staring and staring at him as if he was a strange being which looked funny.

Though that was probably just a fact of his existence, he mused – he was a strange being, and he had a quirk that was wholly – or at least partially a mutation-type quirk. He looked different to the average human, not, Izuku supposed, that there was anything wrong with that much. He had once been quirkless. It would make no sense for him to be quirkist – not when he hated experiencing attitudes like that towards himself. Not when his mother had taught him to treat others as he would wish to be treated. Tears bit at his eyes then, the reminder that Midoriya Inko was no longer his mother coming to bite just then.

“Draw!” Seven demanded, handing him a crayon then. The bright electric blue one that was her favourite.

A smile curled at his lips, even as he sat there, listening faintly as Three read a story to Eight on the other side of the room, watching as One tried to interact with a scowling Five, and risking a glance at Six as he sat just below that one-way glass, messing about with something that he couldn’t quite see from the angle he was at.

There was a gigantic room made of varying sized blocks in front of him, walled in on all four sides, the ceiling high enough to make the place feel too large and airy, and Izuku wondered if the size of that room was why he had been led down a few flights of stairs. Not for the first time, he pondered on just how big the labs were, what with how he was fairly certain they were underground. The lack of windows, and something like an instinct in the back of his head were indicative of that much, and Izuku wasn’t sure of how he felt about that much.

Then again, he had been awake and aware for all of a matter of days. Maybe he was allowed to be ever so confused on that front? His shoulders sunk, the strap wrapped around his arm itching slightly as the uncomfortable, stiff fabric dug into his baby-soft skin.

“Nine.” A voice crackled over the coms system, echoing from the speakers his sharp eyes could just about pick out in the ceiling. “You will begin,” that voice told him – and it didn’t belong to the same man as the one who had taken him for testing a matter of days before.

That was his life there in those labs, he mused, even as he stood in that strange room, idly wondering exactly what he was supposed to be doing. Though given how his tests thus far had all been to determine his limits, it was fairly obvious to his teenaged mind. Pain rattled through him as he stood there, in that white room filled with varying sizes of blocks – an obstacle course of sorts, only, he mused, even as he fell to the ground spasming as electricity raced through his body. His eyes locked on that band locked around his wrist, understanding exactly what it was in that instant.

That was his stick and Izuku could only wonder what his carrot was, even as that voice crackled over the intercom again. “Move, Nine,” that faceless voice ordered, and Izuku stared at the nearest block, situated at a distance which would have been too much for him to cross if he had been as quirkless as he once had been.

Yet he wasn’t quirkless.

Scowling, he ran forwards, leaping as high as he could, startling ever so slightly as he jumped higher than he thought possible. Air brushed against his face, long white hair flying out behind him before gravity inevitably took over and sent him tumbling into the slippery surface. His feet slid out from under him, a yelp escaping him as he slid across the block and off the other side. He fell, landing in the pool of water situated there with a loud splash and a yelp.

His head went under, feet landing against the tiled floor of that little pool and springing him back up to break the surface. He coughed, shivering then, even as his golden eyes found a ladder, tiny hands grabbing a hold of the rungs to pull himself out of the cold water.

“Failure,” the voice over the intercom stated, and Izuku froze at that, sitting on a different block.

How was it possible to have a quirk and still be a failure? Izuku wondered, yet another yelp escaping his lips as that shock bracelet activated, robbing him of control of his faculties.

Because you’re a Deku, Kacchan whispered in his ear, ever present and ever haunting him. He wondered why that was the case, drool leaking from his lips as he lay on his side, body aching from the shocks it had been subjected to. Because he was a useless failure. Izuku didn’t want to be a useless failure.

Sighing even as the pain ebbed to an echo of its earlier sharpness, he put his hands beneath him, pushing himself back to his feet. The same way he had done in another life after being beaten down in a game gone out of hand thanks to the other kids getting far too excited. They all had terrible control over quirks when they were young. Though Izuku had never had that problem prior to waking up from that green jelly.

“Again, Nine,” the voice crackled over the intercom, and Izuku felt determination set in his face, even as part of him howled at the injustice of it.

Did you really think the world was that fair? Kacchan asked, and Izuku wondered then if his sense of realism – the same realism that All Might had told him to embrace – was simply borrowing the voice of his once best friend. Part of him wished he could go back to those days when he had a mother, and the realities of the world had yet to start pressing down on him.

Yet that wasn’t the time to be getting lost in his own thoughts, he mused to himself, wrist throbbing where that band of fabric and whatever mechanism behind those shocks were situated. He ran forwards once more, mindful of the fact that he was dripping wet and how very slippery the surface of those blocks were.

Though perhaps that was supposed to be motivation for not falling into those little pools of water he thought he could just about see, built here and there to make traversing that room full of blocks that much harder. It wasn’t an easy course, and it certainly wasn’t something someone normal his age would be able to complete. As it was, he doubted his own ability to cross that almost perilous room, with blocks which towered above him, and falls which seemed to grow larger and larger the further towards the back of the room he went.

He swallowed thickly at that, pondering then on whether his life was on the line that day, and remembering the lingering threat of becoming something’s food should he be deemed unfit for whatever purpose he was being raised for.

Chapter Text

Usagiyama Rumi could count the number of friends she had on a single hand – and by friend, she meant those she would bury a body for, or otherwise trusted implicitly. Trust wasn’t something which came all too easily to her, what with how ‘abrasive’ her personality apparently was, according to other, generally lower-ranked, heroes and the public. Though she didn’t give two shits about their opinions, nor the old opinion of her publicity team who thought she should have been trying to generate a more cute and willing-to-help-others image.

There was a reason she had fired them and taken over most of her own media appearances and respective social media accounts.

Yet those people were utterly irrelevant, and ultimately not the reason she was walking down the street to the Fukuoka Police Department wearing a baseball cap, dressed in the most unassuming outfit she could manage with her hair hastily tucked up in a messy bun.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, ears twitching and shifting at the slight sound they caught, a familiar scent catching her nose beneath the ever-present veneer of city waste and the smells of alcoholics and their unsightly vomit on the streets outside the nightclubs which were only just beginning to open their doors.

“You’re lucky I actually like you,” she said flatly, even as Shinya fell in step with her. “And the bird,” she added, spying a familiar flash of red wings entering the building which was also their destination. “Though I have absolutely no idea what’s going on.”

“I might be able to help there,” Shinya said, dressed in civies the same as her, hair an unassuming brown, the lower half of his face covered by a medical mask in place of the one which usually featured on his hero costume. Neither of them particularly wanted to be recognised, though Shinya – the bloody ninja that he was – was the master of unassuming disguises. She just threw on clothes and hoped for the best, though she supposed the birdie they had taken under their respective wings was the worst. Or rather, Hawks just didn’t care about being recognised and bothered whilst off duty. Not to mention the red wings were rather hard to conceal – dye apparently wasn’t the nicest thing to use on those feathers, so the bird didn’t tend to, unless ordered, and that was a whole other kettle of fish that Rumi had yet to crack open.

“You gonna elaborate or what?” she demanded – the damned ninja being a little bit too dramatic with his long pause, and Rumi simply could not be bothered to deal with that right then and there.

“There was the body of a child found in a river near here,” he stated, and Rumi felt her lips purse at that as she tried to think of the children who oohed and aahed over her fights and think of what it meant for someone of that age to wind up dead in a river.

“They caught the bastards who did it?” she asked, already knowing the answer that fell from Shinya’s lips.

“No,” he said. “Yet the apparent age of the child aside… there’s more than what meets the eye. I wasn’t the only one originally called to this meeting… and the fact that they gave permission for us to bring other heroes who we might be close with…” he trailed off, his thinking face on as whatever thoughts he had raced on behind his façade of calm blankness. “Though I suppose we’ll have our answers soon enough,” he added, the pair of them coming to a stop as the glass doors slid open to the precinct they had decided to call that strange meeting at.

The receptionist at the desk greeted them, asking for their ID before she told them where to go – which was up to the third floor, left from the stairs, and the fifth door on their right. Rumi felt her nose wrinkle, scents of the cheap cleaning chemicals they used wafting through her nostrils as she and Shinya opted for the stairs rather than the lift. Neither of them fancied waiting some five minutes for the next lift car to come back down from whatever floor it had gone to.

“Investigation, alert, or raid, do you reckon?” Rumi asked as they reached the third floor, the quiet which had fallen between them almost standard. Shinya preferred not to speak more than absolutely necessary – which was why she and Hawks balanced him out by being loud and generally far too chatty.

“Why not all three?” Shinya responded, footsteps near silent on the wooden floor even as they reached the door they’d been told. Opening it revealed a fairly large conference room, many of the seats already full of heroes she verily recognised.

Hawks waved at them from across the room, gesturing to the two seats side-by-side he had saved for them.

Rumi grinned toothily, making her way past the big names of Endeavour and Sir Nighteye to plonk herself down in the seat beside the birdie she had slowly brought out of his shell – never mind the fact that he had never once let his emotions get too out of hand around her. “I knew there was a reason we hung out with you, birdie,” she remarked, earning herself one raised eyebrow in response.

“So my worth is reduced to saving the pair of you seats,” Hawks drawled, flipping his yellow visor up on his head, evidently having figured out he wouldn’t need it. “Neat. I feel so valued.”

The door clicked open once more, proving then that she and Shinya had arrived fashionably late as opposed to the other heroes gathered. “Good evening,” the man in a tan overcoat and a matching fedora greeted, taking said fedora off to reveal a head full of black hair. “Thank you for joining me today, despite many of you having other pressing commitments.” He took a seat at the heat of the large table, fingers clicking the keys of the laptop which had been plugged in and already connected to the projector screen behind him.

A click of a button had the lights dimming, even as the screen displayed on the projector went from the lock screen to what could only be a presentation of slides.

“Before we begin, allow me to introduce myself,” the tan overcoat man said, removing said jacket to place it over the back of his chair. “I am Tsukauchi Naomasa, Chief Detective of Musutafu P.D. I am here assisting our Fukuoka Branch due to some developments which came to light recently regarding what we are currently referring to as the Chikugo Children Case.”

“Children?” Hakamada Tsunagu – or rather, Best Jeanist – asked, eyes narrowing on the detective in front of them. “Plural?”

Tsukauchi’s face turned grim. “Yes. Children. Plural. There have been some unsettling developments, which have led to us calling you all here for the purposes of obtaining your aid in our ongoing investigation, issuing you all an alert for what to look out for, and hopefully organising a raid in the not too distant future.” He glanced behind him, spying what could only be the first slide of his presentation, the words Chikugo Children Case written in large, bold font. “Before I begin properly, I am obliged to warn you that this presentation will contain images, descriptions, and other various content which could be extremely triggering to some. If you find yourself overwhelmed, please feel free to take a moment outside.” His lips thinned. “This is one of the worst cases we have had to deal with in the last several years, and the group behind it has, to our best knowledge, been operating for quite some time without us being any the wiser.”

“You were right, Edge,” Rumi mumbled, watching as the slide changed, revealing a picture of a young woman with pastel blue hair, green eyes, and a wide smile. She was also wearing a police uniform, complete with a cap, and Rumi could only stare at the woman who could only be in her early twenties at most.

“This is—was one of our undercover officers: Yamamoto Emiko. We have yet to find a body, so all of us at both Fukuoka and Musutafu hope otherwise, yet we lost clear contact with her roughly one year and eight months ago with no prior warning, and then nine weeks later than that she went fully silent. At this point we can only assume she is either fully immersed in deep cover, or is otherwise dead.”

Rumi eyed Shinya, watching as he grimaced – telling of what the likelihood was that the cheery young woman in that photograph was still in fact alive. She closed her eyes then, sighing softly as she stared at those green eyes which looked so bright and eager. She hated villains who hurt others for just doing their jobs, Rumi mused, focusing her attention back on Tsukauchi.

“It was supposed to be a simple operation that she was involved in,” the detective continued despite the sombre mood which had fallen. “A relatively young gang had set up shop, and we managed to bring it down, and Yamamoto-san was closing up her operation when she found herself involved in something else – what we now believe to be the organisation behind the Chikugo Children Case. She went dark, and the last missive we received from her dead drop hinted that she thought she had stumbled across something big and was beginning an investigation – and that any attempt to remove her from her cover would likely end in her death.”

A click of a button moved the presentation on, and Rumi stared at the large red square which was marked on the map of Fukuoka. “Yamamoto-san was operating upstream of this location, and highlighted are the areas she was last sighted in,” Tsukauchi explained. “Which gives us a rough area within which we can expect to find this group operating in.” Another click presented them with the next slide – a timeline of events. “Nine weeks after Yamamoto-san went dark, we found the first body in the Chikugo River. An autopsy indicated that the body could have only been in the water for a couple of hours at most before it was discovered.” The remote in his hand clicked again, and Rumi watched as some of the room startled at the picture of the corpse on a cold metal table. “Yet the time of death is indicated to be prior to the subject being placed in the river. The clear link between this case and our agent going dark was in the missive found in the subject’s mouth. Yamamoto-san is likely the one who got this body to the Chikugo River for us to discover.”

“What was the missive?” Shinya asked, one eyebrow quirking up in question.

“To compare the DNA of the subject with the Dragoon Hero: Ryukyu,” Tsukauchi said, dark eyes meeting the yellow ones of the Dragoon Hero who was looking at him in confusion right then and there. “And that there were others,” he continued. “I apologise that you are finding out now, Tatsuma-san. We did attempt to get a hold of you sooner, but your schedule has been quite busy.”

Rumi stared at one of her few other top-ranking female Pro-Heroes, glancing then at the child’s corpse in that photo. She swallowed thickly, things falling into place just a little too quickly as she stared at the long blonde hair belonging to the cadaver of a child. “Oh shit,” she muttered, sharing a grim look with Shinya as he likely came to the same conclusion as her.

“We compared a sample of your DNA with the subject’s, and it came back as a parent-child match,” Tsukauchi said, expression grim, even as the chair the hero had been sitting on went flying back into the wall as Ryukyu stood suddenly. The door clicked open, the dragon-themed hero vanishing out of the door, and the detective had the grace to look mildly ashamed. “At first we weren’t certain of what Yamamoto-san could have meant by others, yet the second – and final child’s body we found in the Chikugo River approximately a month ago all but spelt it out.”

A click changed the slide, and Rumi felt Shinya stiffen beside her as a new picture of another corpse was shown on the screen.

“We also attempted to get a hold of you as well, Kamihara-san,” Tsukauchi said, closing his eyes as he briefly met Shinya’s cold grey ones. “Upon noticing a prominent resemblance, we performed a DNA test, comparing this subject’s with your own. It was another parent-child match.”

Rumi grabbed a hold of his arm, staring at the myriad of emotions which crossed her friend’s face before an unnerving calm spread over his expression as the metaphorical shutters went down. “Shin,” she murmured. “Go outside,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically gentle. Mostly because she was incredibly worried that her darling friend was about to go on a murder spree and there were far too many witnesses in that room.

“I’m fine,” Shinya said, voice unnervingly flat.

“I call bullshit,” she stated, folding her arms across her chest and staring at him pointedly.

“Seconded,” Hawks called from her other side, sounding infinitely too cheery – which generally meant that he was either pretending to be happy while shoving his true emotions deep down, or otherwise meant that he was pissed. Exceedingly so.

“I’m staying,” Shinya declared, his stare that much more intense as he stared at the picture of the corpse on the screen.

“Your call,” Rumi declared, sighing then and focusing her attention back on the one who was sitting on all the information they needed to find and eliminate – with prejudice – the ones behind the creation of her friend’s child. And their subsequent death.

“It became clear to us at this point that someone is creating or collecting children with parents who are heroes—”

“Creating,” Shinya interrupted, undoubtedly knowing of the fact that he had never slept with anyone before nor donated any genetic material – a fact that Rumi knew, if only thanks to her sheer curiosity and lack of any shame. “I have never slept with anyone,” he declared with a distinct lack of shame that Rumi herself admired him for. Shinya was just blunt and straight to the point like that. “Nor is there any way they could have gained access to my genetic material through any normal method or means.”

Tsukauchi nodded. “We did suspect as much, but we couldn’t be certain without your confirmation, so thank you,” he remarked. “Currently we suspect there is a quirk at work, however, access to the quirk register is proving quite difficult due to certain privacy restrictions which unfortunately we need a warrant to bypass. Though we have been attempting to obtain this, progress hasn’t been easy thanks to bureaucratic matters, and we believe we may have to find this individual by ourselves – with your cooperation ideally.” He took a breath then, sipping from the water which had been provided for him by whoever had set the room up. “Our analysts gave us their best guesses as to what this quirk could be – most likely some form of cell transmutation, allowing them to convert any cells of a body into either egg cells or sperm cells.”

“And any of us could be their next victims for DNA theft,” Hawks said, and Rumi watched as Tsukauchi nodded once more.

“This is one of the main reasons we brought as many of you as we could onto the taskforce – to both make you all aware to be as careful as you can, and to gain as many eyes as possible,” he explained. “Given the age of the subjects found in the river, we can safely say that this group has been operating for a minimum of seven years without our knowledge.”

“Would you be willing to share all the information on this case with my agency?” Sir Nighteye asked, and Rumi only wondered then on how long it would take them all to crack a case some several years in the making. “I am willing to be the focal agency of this investigative taskforce, unless anyone else would prefer to be the lynchpin here?” Yellow eyes glanced around the room, closing when no one volunteered a different answer. “Very well.”

Shinya was quiet, Rumi decided, following after him as he made his way back to one of his homes. Evidently, the bird had sensed it as well, and was also trailing along in their utterly furious ninja’s wake. “We gonna talk about our new investigation?” she asked, watching as Shinya’s shoulders tensed to a level she had never seen them. “Sharing is caring and all?”

“You mean the fact that someone essentially stole my DNA, created a child with it, and then murdered them?” Shinya questioned, coming to a stop and staring at her as they lingered on the doorway to one of his many old-style houses – with all the secret panels and ceiling and underfloor passages typical of a shinobi dwelling. “I do not… I don’t understand what I’m supposed to feel when I never wished for a child nor went about ever trying to create one… yet I am angry, and I do not know what exactly I am going to do if it turns out they have created more than one of… my child… children? I don’t… There’s too much for me to process right now…”

“How about we go inside, order dinner – because I, for one, am starving – and figure things out from there?” Hawks asked, gesturing to the door which Shinya soon unlocked to let them all into his house. “Are we feeling like fried chicken? Because I am,” Hawks – master of bullshitting his feelings – said, and Rumi could only roll her eyes at him.

“Korean fried chicken from the food court up the road?” she asked, salivating at the thought. “But you need to get the good rice, a dish with carrots, and that sushi Shin likes, bird brain.”

“Sure thing,” Hawks said, glancing between the two of them for a moment. “You look after him while I run and get dinner?”

She huffed at that, rolling her eyes, even as she flopped down on the sofa opposite her friend who was going through an internal crisis of epic proportions. “What else do you think I’m gonna do?”

Chapter Text

Survival was something of an art, Izuku came to understand, even as he mused on the idea that he seemed to be good, if not adequate at that particular art. The tests were something to be survived and consequently improved on. Mistakes and the lessons learnt from them guided him towards success – like the fact that not falling into one of those pools of water made it that much easier to gain traction on that all too slippery surface of the cuboids he had to jump and leap across.

His feet ached, legs sorer than they had ever been before, even as he was all but frogmarched through the increasingly familiar corridors back to his warren. His ears perked up as they came closer and closer, something whispering to him of safety and home. Izuku wondered then if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Home was supposed to be a reasonably sized apartment on the third floor of the second block of the grey buildings in the Minami Ward of Musutafu. He frowned at that thought, abruptly reminded that no that couldn’t be his home anymore.

He wasn’t Midoriya Izuku anymore, and yet Izuku wasn’t wholly sure of how to process that just yet. Still. He’d been dead for at least three weeks – not counting his time in the green jelly. It was a thought in his head, one which was ever recurring and would never leave him alone. He still had yet to comprehend what it meant.

All he wanted was for the world to make sense again.

All he wanted was for that odd melancholy fog which had descended on his brain to clear up and never return.

All he wanted was to be able to breathe fresh air, smell the scent of the forest, and see the skies above without all the light pollution big cities were known for.

“Nine!” One called, relief seeping into his eyes as Izuku found himself deposited back into his room. His warren’s room if he really wanted to be specific. “There you are,” he said, and Izuku relaxed ever so slightly as warm arms wrapped around him. Part of him wanted to bury himself in that chest, nestle within One’s ribcage with his heart and lungs – protected from the world around them which was growing harsher with every breath. Though his sense of logic, infallible as ever, seemed to enjoy reminding him that such a thing wasn’t quite possible.

That place was somewhere he had to survive unless he wanted to go back to that cold, empty darkness. Unless he wanted to see those flowers blooming red, fading to purple before turning blue. He wondered then, what it meant for those spiderlilies to have that colouring. Weren’t they supposed to guide the dead to their next reincarnation? He almost smiled then, supposing that was what had happened, only he had remembered the memories which had once made him Midoriya Izuku.

He supposed those same memories made him Nine in that cold place.

“I’ve got you, Nine,” One murmured, and Izuku could only muse on how there was some warmth in that place. Part of him could only wonder when it would inevitably be ripped from his hands once more. He remembered that sickly thump as though it were yesterday, remembered the pain that had consumed him for the briefest of instants before the blackness had come for him and swept him away to that field of red flowers turning blue. He remembered the scream in that corridor, and a little, mauled, bloodied leg with a foot tied into a shoe which read the number four.

Happiness was a fickle thing for him, and if he mused on it, he could easily say it had always been a fickle thing. He had been quirkless once, he thought to himself, reaching out then to touch the nearest mirrored surface, pudgy digits smearing against the glass. He could still barely recognise himself – still had to pause for a moment to remember that those features belonged to him those days whenever he spotted those white ears twitching or saw those golden eyes watching him with a wary curiosity in the mirror.

“You’re pretty, Nine!” Seven declared, having dragged herself and Four over to him and One.

Izuku blinked.

“That’s why you’re always looking in the mirror!” Seven said, waggling her finger at him, an expression of delight written across her face as though she had figured out something important, even as he wondered what exactly she was going on about. Seven was odd, he had long since come to understand. Then again, he was the oddest of odd, so he supposed he had no real ground to stand on.

Perhaps that was why she was one of the warren he was closest to. One and her were the ones he interacted with the most – Three being the next major figure in his strange lab life. Four, Five, and Six tended to watch him on occasion yet hadn’t really spoken with him all that much, and Eight couldn’t really talk to begin with.

“You like admiring yourself in the mirror!” Seven declared with that uttermost certainty only she seemed to possess, and Izuku choked on his spit.

“No!” he declared, his lisp still ever so prominent, despite his weeks of practice. His speech sounded less muddled with each passing day, and he could speak his words that much more clearly. Part of him was ever so grateful for that much. The other part wasn’t nearly ready for him to start properly living in that strange lab.

You’re not supposed to be here, Kacchan whispered, a figment of his imagination still haunting him somehow. Trauma was like that, he was finding, what with the fact that he had yet to be able to forget the sight of Four covered in blood, nor the sight of that pale, gnawed-on limb which had been called a meal. He shuddered for a moment, fingers digging into One’s skin as he tried to ground himself in the present unfolding before his very eyes.

“Liar!” Seven called, sticking her tongue out, and Izuku only huffed and looked away. It wasn’t like he was admiring himself. Rather, he was still trying to wrap his head around all those changes his death had created. Air ruffled his hair, as if patting it in goodbye, the sky above him a bright blue speckled with clouds, then—the crack of bone, blood in his lungs, skull caving in, pain, so much pain in a single instant before—red spiderlilies blooming, colours darkening and shifting until they became a deep blue. His hair was supposed to curl up at the top of his head, green and fluffy. His eyes were supposed to be a bright green. Yet they weren’t anymore. He knew why. He just didn’t want to admit it – not truly.

He didn’t want to acknowledge his death .

There was something far too final about saying it aloud – not that he would do so in that strange place. He was probably far too interesting of a subject in the first place, and he wasn’t about to exacerbate that problem. It was hard enough to survive in that place; hard enough to open his eyes every morning and force himself to go through the motions whilst staring at the familiar stranger in the mirror.

You’ve always been terrible at letting go of things, Kacchan whispered in his ear, and Izuku felt his shoulders slump at that. Part of him couldn’t deny the truth when it was whispered right in his ear – even when the whisperer in question was nothing more than a memory at best.

“Seven,” One said sharply, hands wrapping around his tiny shoulders and Izuku found himself relaxing ever so slightly, focus returned to the room in front of him. “Don’t be mean to Nine. Mirrors are still new to him,” he said matter-of-factly. “You were staring at everything when you first came here,” he explained, and Izuku looked between them all, wondering where the heroes were to save them, even after the ones who had evidently come before him still languished there.

All Might will save the day, Kacchan whispered to him, and Izuku only frowned at that, words echoing in his mind. You need to think more realistically. He chewed on his lip then, shoulders sinking as he wondered what would become of him in that place.

It had to have been operating for years with the heroes none the wiser to the undoubtedly illegal operation being run there. What hope was there that their case would be unearthed and them suddenly rescued from that hellhole? His eyes narrowed. What were the guarantees that all of his warren would remain alive and well in the meantime? He swallowed thickly, something like despair and the fractions of an unspoken plan flittering about in the back of his head.

“Can I hold Nine?” Four spoke, and the silence that filled the room at the sound of his voice was very much palpable. “He looks… fluffy…”

One blinked twice, and Izuku felt himself blink in tandem, ears perking up, reminding him then of his fluffy rabbit ears. And the fact that there was a traumatised child in front of him, thanks to the cruel people in those labs.

“You always liked the teddies that Emi-chan brought…” One murmured, and Izuku only frowned – at the fact he was likely about to be used as a substitute teddy bear, the fact that he really didn’t think he minded all that much, and the fact that the room was barren of teddy bears.

“She left us,” Seven complained, and One only winced.

Izuku wondered then, if One knew for certain what had befallen the woman he had never met in those labs or if it was only mere suspicion and speculation as to what had happened to a lady who had likely been the only person to show them a sliver of kindness in that place. “Nine, do you mind giving Four a hug?” One asked, peering down at him, and Izuku felt his grasp on One slacken ever so slightly.

“Hug,” he echoed, clambering to his feet then and depositing himself on Four’s lap. It was different to One’s, what with Four being smaller than the eldest of them. The same one they undoubtedly all looked to when something happened or otherwise went wrong.

Small arms curled around him, a chin nuzzling itself into his hair and ears. “Fluffy,” Four murmured, and Izuku opted then to ignore any discomfort as he spotted the bliss and relaxation seeping into Four’s ringed green eyes which seemed to shimmer with many colours. “Soft…”

Seven reached out for him, eyes wide, even as One sighed and pulled her back. “Let Four have his time with Nine,” he remarked, sounding remarkably exasperated right then and there. Him and Three seemed to have that in common, and Izuku only smiled at the thought.

Fingers tangled ever so gently in his long hair, Four seemingly fascinated by his ears, and Izuku supposed he couldn’t blame him for that much. He himself was still somewhat fascinated by them, even if he hadn’t yet regained the spark to analyse quirks once more. He already knew the answer to why. He just didn’t want to acknowledge it, since denial was seemingly his new thing. Sighing softly, he buried his face in Four’s neck, wings twitching on his back, even as that thudding awareness in the back of his mind stirred with the motions.

There was something more to his wings, he knew, and that tiny part of him which had once oohed and aahed over many a quirks and their possibilities stirred in the back of his brain. The other, larger, part of him waited with bated breath – for what the discovery of the extent of his new quirk would bring from the people in that terrifying place.

He wondered then, how he wasn’t a trembling ball of anxiety and fear when surrounded by the more ignorant half of the population would call villains. Yet they were just criminals to him mostly, besides the lady who’d hurt One and possibly Four, if only because they had yet to use their quirks on him. Or maybe he was simply too young and small for whatever tests the older ones of his warren were subjected to… Four had come back from a test that One had recognised, which meant that Five would probably eventually also face whatever test had wound up with One being terrified and Four being hurt.

His fingers curled in Four’s white shift, something he didn’t quite understand squirming beneath his skin, twisting beneath his chest as he thought of his future and all the threats which lurked about him and his warren.

Four’s head thumped against his shoulder, breathing evening out, and Izuku blinked as he realised that Four had somehow fallen asleep on him. He felt the warmth of another body pressed against his own, eyelids drooping as the siren’s song of sleep beckoned to him in his too small body. He leant against Four, realising too late that the odd equilibrium they had found was summarily shifted. Four fell back, and Izuku could only blink sleepily as Three caught them. A black and white hand patted his head. “Go to sleep, Nine,” Three murmured, and he yawned once more, vaguely aware of One and Three shuffling them over towards the designated nap area in that sterile room.

The same sterile room he somehow called home right then and there, he mused, before the jaws of sleep closed around him and swallowed him whole.

His eyes opened slowly, as if they had been submersed in a sticky treacle, and Izuku took a moment – as he always had for the past three weeks – to remember that his strange life there wasn’t quite a dream, no matter how he wished it were at times.

You died, Kacchan crowed in his ear, and Izuku felt his mental shutters slam down. Like a useless, quirkless deku, the caricature of the boy he had once known and adored told him. His shoulders sunk, the familiar warmth of another small body lying beside his own giving him pause as he took a moment to note that both Four and Seven were snoozing beside him. Seven had evidently snuck up beside them and made herself comfortable.

Three was sat by the metal bookshelf, Eight curled up by his side as the older boy read to him in a soft voice. Three liked books, Izuku was coming to learn, even if there wasn’t too much variety in the books they had to learn from. Most seemed to be informational texts, with the odd story here and there for varying reading levels. There was no internet site with thousands of books stored on – paper and ink were the only method of reading they had there, and Izuku could only wonder at why he wasn’t more frustrated at that.

In hindsight, he had a lot before he’d fallen that was. Yet he had lost that much, and had somehow gained the very thing which the absence of had made his life that much harder. If he were to walk the halls of Aldera once more, somehow, then no one would be able to curl their lips and sneer at him for being weak. His ears twitched, hair shifting with the movement, as if reminding him of his mutant quirk. But he would never walk through the halls of Aldera as it was – he had certainly gained a quirk, yet he had lost his freedom.

It was only once he’d lost it, that he realised just how precious of a thing it was – to be able to go outside; to be able to go to the kitchen and get food whenever he wished. Part of him couldn’t help but feel ungrateful to not have realised and appreciated that much before, even as he glanced at what the other remaining three of his warren were doing.

Six, the boy with the pale blonde hair and yellow eyes who he hadn’t interacted much beyond the occasional greeting, was writing down words on a sheet of paper. Five was lying on her back and looking through the book in her hands. One was simply watching all of them, smiling at him when he noticed his gaze, before his attention returned to the painting he was working on.

The sight almost looked eerily domestic, and Izuku could only yawn as that gaping chasm in his heart seemed to open up, reminding him of everything which was no longer his. It was strange sometimes; how he daydreamed of him back in the Minami Ward, in that apartment in that grey block of flats, with seven others and his mother smiling at all of them.

Yet that was something which could never be.

The grey slop he was served for breakfast was far too familiar to him by that point, and Izuku could only try to remember the flavours of the breakfasts he had once enjoyed in a different place and time. He was growing far too used to shovelling in that tasteless food, he mused, knowing all the while there was nothing he could really do to change that very fact. Some days he wanted to throw that grey slop at the wall, the other days he was content to simply eat and exist. The differences between those days was jarring.

His ears twitched, hairs on the back of his neck rising, part of him already knowing what it meant – someone was there to take at least one of them away for testing. His instincts were ever so attuned to that much; prey instincts brought about by whoever’s genetic information had granted him those rabbit features. Unless there was something to those wings and whatever bird they came from which made them attuned to predators… He tilted his head, watching as the doors to their rooms slid open, revealing more than one person.

“One,” the woman at the front of the group of adults called, and One only slunk forwards reluctantly, placing his hand in the lady’s own and holding it as though it were a live bomb. “Come along. We won’t take too long…”

Three was the next to be taken away, red eyes glancing back at them before he was herded out through those double doors.

“Six and Seven,” the second last man called, taking the pair of them out, and unlike the eldest two of the warren, they followed less nervously. Because they had experienced less of the horrors of that place, Izuku intuitively knew. His gold eyes narrowed on the last man, heart thudding in his chest as he stared between the three other children in the room and the man who was undoubtedly about to call for one or two of their number.

“Four,” the man beckoned, and Izuku froze as he felt the shaking of the boy beside him – the same boy who hadn’t been taken away for whatever tests or experiments they wanted to run on him since the day he had come back covered in blood.

Part of him wanted to leap in front of Four and demand to be taken in his place, another part of him knew he would only be hurt and punished, like One had been the last time he had tried to stop them taking one of his warren, whilst the smallest part of him was just grateful it wasn’t him being summoned. He didn’t think he liked that tiny part of him all that much. Yet it wasn’t wrong, per say…

He didn’t want those electrodes strapped to his head again. He didn’t want to be electrocuted after he inevitably slipped up on the obstacle course they liked to set him loose upon. He didn’t want to have to run on a treadmill until he collapsed. He didn’t want to do a lot of things in that place, and yet, as he was, he had no power to change things.

His eyes narrowed, even as the pink-haired man stepped forwards towards the immobile Four, stuck frozen beside him.

A hiss rang out in the air as that hand stretched out towards Four, and it took Izuku a moment to realise that he was the one who had made that sound. Brown eyes turned to him, where he was, teeth bared and hackles raised as he stared at the one who had come to hurt Four.

“Four,” the man said, and Izuku could only blink as his little fingers curled around the sleeve of that white lab coat the pink-haired man wore.

He waited for a moment, almost expecting to find himself flying back, part of his body injured, yet nothing of the sort happened, and the pink-haired man only swallowed thickly, something like fear swirling in his eyes as they met his gold ones. Izuku had the briefest of moments to wonder exactly what the man saw in his place, before his lips were moving without much thought. “No hurwting,” he said flatly, golden eyes narrowing. “No hurwting Four,” he declared, ignoring the soft snort which rang out through the air, even as he mused on just how shoddy his impulse control had become.

His grip slackened, those ringed green eyes staring at him with something like wonder, before the older boy was pulled, shaking and scared, from the safety of the room. Izuku watched, feet itching to chase after the man and Four, yet he had enough sense within him – and enough fear for what would happen if he wound up stuck in the corridors after the lights went out – to stay put.

“Do you really think that will change anything?” Five asked, her voice breaking the soft silence which had fallen with the sudden mass exodus of most of their warren. Green eyes met his golden ones, and Izuku could only muse on just how jaded Five could be. “It’s not like his test will be changed just because you asked,” she said, condescension dripping from her lips.

Izuku felt his hands curl into fists – because he already knew that much… “Bu, at leawst Fwour knows I care,” he said, meeting those green eyes filled with irritation and fear with a resolute stare of his own.

Five scoffed. “Four’s strong,” she grumbled, folding her arms. “He doesn’t need you to worry about him.”

Izuku raised an eyebrow, freezing as he heard a clatter of wooden blocks and the thud of a little body hitting the hard ground. Eight chose that moment to wail loudly, and Five sat down with a huff. Izuku only rolled his eyes and pottered over to where Eight was, intent on comforting the red-haired boy who couldn’t have been much older than his outward age.

Yet inwardly, he was probably the oldest of them all, and that meant he had to look after them – no matter what.

Chapter Text

His head was throbbing.

It was a deep ache, wrapping around his skull and pressing in, and Izuku could only lie there in his bed and whimper. The lights had yet to come on, which meant there was still time for that ache to fade and allow him to go about his day with nothing wrong. He closed his eyes, almost imagining for a moment that he wasn’t there in that depressing place. That he was still in an apartment he could leave ever so easily whenever he wanted. His fingers closed, as if they could grab a hold of that image and somehow make it a reality.

So why don’t you? Kacchan whispered in his ear, and Izuku could only blink, the thought fading as soon as he’d thought it. Pain pierced through his temples, a soft groan leaving his lips as he lay there in his cot, praying that the day ahead of him would be one where he was left to his own devices in that room alongside Eight who was rarely ever called. Unlike him. Part of him writhed in jealousy at that, the pain in his brain wanting him to stay lying there for a while longer.

What felt like a matter of moments later, the lights clicked on, and Izuku lifted a hand to cover his face, even as he heard the telltale sounds of One and Three climbing out of bed. They were far too accustomed to life there, he mused, the routine still feeling ever so forced and draining on him right then and there.

“Nine,” One called softly, warm hands curling around him, rousing him from his intermittent napping. “Wakey, wakey,” he said matter-of-factly, and Izuku only squinted at him, the pounding in his head fierce and ever present. “Time to get up…”

“I know,” he mumbled at that, forcing himself to sit up despite the constant banging in his head. He needed to go about his day, he knew, lest he want to lie there and wallow in the misery which all too often felt as though it were chasing behind him.

Breakfast turned out to be the same grey mush as always, and that did nothing to abate the headache he had. He had the distinct feeling that nothing would help, even as something in the back of his head buzzed and fizzled – a phantom of a limb he had never had. Izuku blinked, wondering then if that pain had something to do with his quirk. The one he actually had, and only needed to look in the mirror to remind himself of its existence. He wondered then, what his quirk would be called; a quirk which gave him the wings of a bird and the ears of a rabbit. And possibly the feet of one. His feet were longer than any of the rest of his warren, a thin, fine coating of white hair on them, though they were still distinctly human-like.

“Nine,” One called for the second time that morning, startling him from his musings, and he blinked as he realised that breakfast had come to an end while he’d been lost in his head. “You ready to play?” he asked, lifting him out of the highchair with a practised ease.

Izuku tilted his head, weighing up his response to that, eyeing the rest area in the room longingly. It was strange, how little things like being unable to go into his bedroom whenever he needed to built up and weighed down upon him… He closed his eyes, a yawn escaping him even as he plodded over to the rest area.

“You’re tired?” One asked, having followed him over.

“Hwead hurts,” he mumbled, resisting the urge to sigh at the slight lisp he still had, small hands pawing at his aching head, even as he lay down on the mat, snuggling his face into the pillow there as best he could.

“Oh,” One murmured, and Izuku blinked as he felt a hand ruffle his long white hair. “I’ll keep the others as quiet as I can, okay?”

“Fanks,” he answered, feeling only grateful to the technically older boy who made something strange in his chest twist and squirm. A phantom echo of a feeling he had once felt for a young boy with ash blonde hair and crimson eyes before the explosions had started crackling from his hands and everything had fallen apart. Yet it was stronger than that – perhaps a consequence of One being the member of the warren he was closest to besides Seven. And the warren was, in essence, his family right there and then… Izuku blinked, heart seeming to stutter as that thought settled in his mind.

The only family he’d had once before was the lovely lady he had called mother. A lady he had been the spitting image of – and it felt wrong to simply describe her as a woman who had been his mother. Midoriya Inko had been the one to stay by his side, even if she hadn’t always known the right words to say.

Yet she wasn’t his family anymore – she couldn’t be.

Because he’d died.

Tears welled up in his eyes, a familiar sort of anger welling up within him, thoughts raging at the idea that the fall had been his last. He could hardly deny it anymore, no matter how he longed to bury his head in the sand and pretend everything was fine and dandy. It wasn’t. He could admit that much to himself, loathe as he was to do so.

It was almost morbidly amusing, how long it had taken him to even realise that much.

A familiar swish of doors rang out, and Izuku felt his blood run cold as a familiar number, “Nine,” was called out. He sat up then, head throbbing as he glanced towards the door where an awfully familiar man was standing. The same man who always took him to the room with the wires and electrodes which fastened to his skull and made his head ache for a far too long time afterwards.

“Nine isn’t feeling very well,” One said, stepping forwards, and Izuku could only watch as the rest of the room seemed to collectively hold their breath. “His head is hurting,” he continued, and Izuku swallowed at that, wondering then whether that man would choose to listen to One and be merciful for once.

He wondered what it meant when he wasn’t surprised in the slightest by the eager grin which spread across that man’s face. “Nine,” the man repeated, striding over to him, grabbing him by his arm and hauling him to his feet. “Come along.”

“But he’s not well!” One protested, and Izuku knew what was about to happen – even before One was thrown back by someone’s quirk, landing in a heap a few metres back.

Five snorted softly, folding her arms and looking away. “Idiot,” she muttered.

His shoulders sunk, even as he acknowledged then that Five did have a point. One should have known by that point that he couldn’t stop the adults in that place. Yet, Izuku supposed, it showed he cared – much like he’d said to Five that one time. Distantly, he heard the sounds of the others being called out, even as he was dragged out of the meagre safety of his den and into the maze of corridors he was slowly starting to understand the layout of.

There were at least seven levels below the ground that he’d seen as he’d been dragged off to various places by whatever lab technicians wanted to experiment, train, or test him for those particular days. Stairs on each floor were on the other side of the building, as if that place had been designed to be complicated to infiltrate – or otherwise escape from. His heart thudded in his chest at that, something of an idea stirring in the back of his head before he was distracted by the pain he was in.

“Are you sure about this, sir?” a younger looking technician asked the man who was happy hauling him off to that electrode room. “Wouldn’t it be better to let his quirk develop naturally into what it’s meant to be?”

Izuku felt his eyes narrow at that, teeth clenching ever so slightly. Because what did he mean by it would be better to let his quirk develop naturally? Quirks only developed naturally. They couldn’t be forced to emerge, though trauma-induced quirks had been a topic of debate to the medical society—Izuku swallowed thickly, remembering then that he was in a lab designed undoubtedly for experimentation.

“I don’t recall you being the one in charge, Kimura-kun,” the one holding him – undoubtedly the man in charge of that specific experiment room – said flatly. “Your opinions are irrelevant.”

“Oh…” Kimura said weakly.

Izuku almost felt sorry for him. Almost. Then he remembered that Kimura was involved in human experimentation, specifically on children like him, and any of slivers of sympathy vanished into thin air. Yet silently he wondered exactly what had brought Kimura into the business of immoral science. He wondered how they could work there with failed experiments – children – being murdered and eaten in the corridor. He wondered if somehow he could shift whatever morals they had. He wondered what exactly he was supposed to do to survive if he couldn’t.

He was sat on a far too familiar chair by that point, thick straps holding his limbs flush against the hard, cold surfaces of that chair. Part of him felt ever so numb to those ministrations by that point. He didn’t have a choice but to be tied down and experimented on. There was no choice for those like him in that place. He wasn’t strong enough to do anything about it – he never had been particularly strong, and never before had that feeling of explicit helplessness burnt as it did right then and there.

Familiar electrodes were stuck to his skin, his head already pulsing with pain and the usual experiment – or whatever they were undoubtedly doing to his brain – hadn’t even begun just yet. He swallowed thickly, throat feeling inordinately dry right there and then. Part of him wanted to beg them to stop. The other part of him knew it would be futile. There was no mercy in that place. What was the point of acting futility there? That would only waste his precious energy; the same kind he would undoubtedly need to survive in that place.

Rescue wasn’t about to burst through the door, and he doubted that much, what with how long that specific criminal organisation had undoubtedly been running for.

He was the only one who could rescue himself, and yet he was far, far too weak to do such a thing. Not to mention his conscience would hardly let him leave his seven warren-mates behind. If he couldn’t even protect himself, then how exactly was he supposed to protect them?

His gaze drifted to the ground, a familiar numbness creeping at the corners of his mind, even as the first jolt fizzled through those wires clipped to his skin. Pain simmered through his head, that – by that point – familiar sensation in the back of his head buzzing as if a thousand bees had taken up residence beneath his skull. Fingers spasmed against the hard surface his hands were tied down to, wrists straining against those thick leather bands holding him down. Drool trickled down from the corners of his mouth, tears streaming from his eyes as he sat there, waiting for that buzzing to subside.

“It’s working,” the man in charge said, gleeful and happy, and Izuku felt a wretched, dark well of hatred surge within him at that. He loathed that man in that instance, and wanted nothing more than for him to experience that same pain.

So make him, Kacchan whispered past the buzzing in his head, and Izuku could barely think of a rebuttal – a reason not to – as he sat there, pain wracking his body. Those people were in the wrong, after all, he mused to himself, feeling something hot dripping down from his nose, the coppery scent of blood telling him all he needed to know.

“His nose is bleeding, sir,” Kimura said, the sound grating against his eardrums even amidst all the pain those electrodes were already causing.

He wanted them all to shut up.

He wanted that experiment to stop.

He wanted all of the people besides him in that room to vanish.

Something in his head seemed to pop at that, like the way his ears had popped under the pressure of the sole flight he had been on when his name had been Midoriya Izuku. The mounting pain seemed to vanish in an instant, spasms ceasing as the flow of electricity was cut, wires coming to flop uselessly against his skin unlike the taut strings they had been only moments before.

Then the screams started, a dull noise in comparison to the way his thoughts were racing about in his head. Why were they screaming when they were the ones hurting him? He pondered on the question for a few moments, shoulders sinking as he remained strapped to that chair. What were they even trying to do? He had a mutant quirk, that much was obvious, and rare was it that they came with a mental ability – and even then, those sorts of things were supposed to be left to awaken naturally. More often than not, they were unusable until the brain had developed to a certain point for a reason.

Silence filled the air, the occasional crackle of electricity being the only thing he could hear, even as he stirred from his thoughts ever so slightly. A shiver rolled down his spine, awareness going beyond his thoughts then to something else. A phantom limb he had never had before. There were multiple parts to it, he understood, mind racing once more as he tried to understand exactly what had happened.

They were sharp, those phantom limbs he had – because there were multiple – every one sending some sort of feedback to his brain, and he struggled then in that moment to understand exactly what it was that was going on. He had been happy just having a normal mutant quirk, part of him bemoaned, a wince following soon after as he remembered the price he had paid to gain that quirk.

A burst of laughter escaped him at that, part of him wanting to be free of those restraints then, and those phantom limbs moved, sharp edges cutting through those leather straps like butter. Air brushed against his skin, bristles rubbing against his skin as those limbs freed him. There, in the wake of it all Izuku finally caught sight of his new limbs, something tickling at the corners of his brain as he spotted numerous of his own mint green feathers hovering in the air around him.

He slipped down from his chair, leather straps hanging uselessly – unable to impede him anymore as he landed on the ground.

Warm liquid surrounded his toes, copper the only thing he could smell as he risked a glance down. Blood pooled around his feet, thicker than water and infinitely too warm for comfort. Proof that someone had been injured heavily all too recently. His heart stuttered in his chest, stomach dropping to his toes as he glanced around the room which had felt like his prison until only moments ago.

Red stained some of those mint green feathers, which returned to his back with barely a second thought, the back of his head buzzing as he used something he had never had before. He felt each feather as it reconnected to his back, a whimper escaping him as those numerous feathers returned to their rightful place.

How villainous, Kacchan purred in his ear, and Izuku felt his heart stutter at that, breath coming in a sharp gasp as he spotted the body strewn on the floor nearby. Like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Pale blue hair was strewn on the floor, brown eyes staring sightlessly towards him, a white lab coat speckled with patches and spots of vivid red and he took a moment to recognise the sole technician who had spoken up against his experiment.

It was more than any of the adults he had encountered before had done. Yet there he was, dead and discarded on the ground, feather-shaped holes pierced through him. Along with the rest of the adults who had been in that room. It only took him a moment to realise that he was the one who had done as such. He could feel it vividly then; the blood rolling down and seeping into the feathers on his back.

The sharp feathers which had killed someone.

Or several someones.

Bile rose in the back of his throat, those blank brown eyes staring at him accusingly all of a sudden, the shift of blood underneath his feet as he moved making his stomach heave, even as he fell to his knees and vomited.

Murderer, came the cry of his previous childhood bullies, voices lined with a sickly sweetness which made people say that they were just kids.

Part of him could only watch morbidly as his vomit mingled with the blood, retching again as he felt that warm, sticky blood coat his hands and knees. He scrambled to his feet, footing slipping out from under him as that red, coppery liquid coated his limbs. Dimly, he thought he could hear someone screaming, even as he scrabbled to get away from the pools of blood spreading across the floor. It was like a scene from those horror movies he had always seen advertised; macabre and far too gory for his tastes.

There was a reason he had never gone to see any of those films.

A door slammed open, and Izuku turned, wide-eyed, panic surfacing as he spotted the muzzle of the gun pointed towards him. Was that it? he wondered numbly in the split second he had before he jerked back, pain and a strange numbness spreading from his shoulder where the impact had been. Gold eyes narrowed, spying the bright coloured dart embedded in his shoulder, realisation suffusing through him even as he fell back, head landing in a puddle of warm blood, white hair stained red as he collapsed there.

He wasn’t dying, part of him mused dumbly, moments before his eyes rolled back into his skull and darkness became all he knew.

His eyes opened suddenly, consciousness coming back to him in a flash, and Izuku could only blink as One stared back at him. He relaxed in an instant, knowing then that he was home safe in his warren. His nest.

“Nine,” One said, yellow eyes narrowing, his face contorting as though he were about to cry. Izuku could only wonder why such a look was directed his way. The same look which had been last directed at Four when he had come home all bloody.

Izuku froze, sitting up sharply, static seeming to crackle in the back of his head as he tried to remember exactly how he wound up there.

Blood. Glazed over brown eyes. Screaming. Pain. Broken laughter. Sorrow.

Villain, Kacchan hissed, and Izuku flinched.

He glanced down at his hands then, staring at the dried, crusted blood, heart thudding heavily in his chest as he remembered exactly what had happened. He had killed someone. His hands shook. He had killed several people.

They were hurting you, part of his brain pointed out. Yet he had been hurt by other people all the time before the fall, and he hadn’t lashed out and murdered them. That was what villains did. Izuku wanted to be a hero – the polar opposite; the ones who fought against villains.

Can you still become one? Kacchan asked, ever the personification of all his worries and doubts, and Izuku felt his mental shutters fall at that. His arms curled around his knees, pulling them into his chest, even as he pondered briefly on his future. On what he was allowed to do in that place… He swallowed thickly at that, startling as he felt a hand pat him on the head. Atop his blood-crusted hair.

“Come on,” Three murmured. “We should go and get you cleaned up now…”

Izuku flinched, golden eyes staring at the dried blood he could see staining his skin – the proof of what he had done however many hours ago. His shoulder twinged, and Izuku could already tell that he would have a bruise there from the dart which had knocked him out after his apparent rampage. Part of him almost wished he could go back in time. He wished he could have gone back and simply endured that treatment, if only so he could rid himself of the inexplicable sense of guilt he carried, and the vivid memories of blood and dead bodies.

Warm arms lifted him from the ground – from the rest corner of their usual room – and Izuku could only blink numbly as he found himself carried towards the bathroom by One, Three following close behind. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and he risked a glance over One’s shoulder, golden eyes locking with Four’s ringed green ones which stared at him with something like empathy and understanding swirling in those viridescent depths.

Four had killed someone there in those labs, he came to understand in an instant.

It probably should have been obvious by the blood that day, Izuku mused, wondering then if he had willingly blinded himself to the depths of depravity which existed in those labs. The same depravity he had undoubtedly added to.

He wanted to scream at that – wanted to go back to the simpler life he had once known where he hadn’t had a quirk and bullies were the only thing he needed to worry about. Tears crept into the corners of his eyes, hands carefully setting him down on his feet beside the nearest shower head.

“Nine,” One called, voice seeming to come from ever so far away. “Let’s get you cleaned up…”

Izuku stared down at his hands then, staring at the dried blood on them and having the distinct sensation that he’d never be able to wash that feeling away.

Chapter Text

The jets of the shower were hot on his skin, steam rising in the air all around him, and Izuku could only stare at the floor – at the spray of that shower jet, shudders coursing through him at the memory of blood seeping across the tiles, sticky and warm.

“It’s been a long day, hasn’t it, Nine?” One prattled on, talking at him as he’d been doing ever since he and Three had taken him into the bathroom to get cleaned up. Three had done the same thing when Four had come home all bloody. Now it was his turn, he mused bitterly, hands shaking as he remembered those distant screams as he had killed them all. They rang in his ears, a ceaseless echo, the sounds of phantoms who would forever haunt him until his dying day.

Was that what it meant to have a quirk? Izuku could only wonder, even as he dimly listened to One speak, his words ever so faint to his ears. And he had enhanced hearing, thanks to the part of his quirk which took after a rabbit… A soft laugh escaped him, despair clutching at his heart with its icy fingers and dragging him deep into a bottomless pit of nothingness.

The fact that he had been shot with a tranquiliser rather than a cold metal bullet was telling of the fact that he was still more useful to them alive. He wasn’t a liability to them despite having murdered some of their staff. Or perhaps that was what he was being raised to do, he mused, hands twitching at the thought – at the idea that one day there might be more blood staining them.

“But we get to take a nice hot bath now though,” One continued, and Izuku could only tilt his head and watch as the water running down the drain stopped having that distinct pink tinge mixed in it. The blood had been washed away. The memories hadn’t, and the thought of them made him want to vomit. Or maybe he was just hungry? Izuku blinked.

“’hen ‘s dinner?” he asked, tilting his head in question as he glanced at the older boy, even as Three bustled about getting the bath ready.

“I think it might be soon… yet they waited for us to finish with Four before they opened the dining room before,” Three informed him. “Take as long as you need. There’s still a little while before dinner’s due… though I suppose you missed lunch so you ought to be very hungry by now…” Three cocked his head, one white tipped black finger tapping at his chin in thought. “I’ll leave you and One to get cleaned up. Someone has to go and keep an eye on the rest of the rabble.” His eyes curved up in a smile, and Izuku could only blink at him and watch him go.

“You’re back with us, then,” One said, a soft smile curving at his lips. “You were a bit spaced out earlier.”

Izuku shrugged at that, stomach feeling as though it were shrivelling up from those pesky nerves of his. “Ye’,” he mumbled, eyes widening as he found himself lifted up and carried over to the bath. It was slightly embarrassing as naked as he currently was. Yet there wasn’t much he could do even as he was lowered into those blissfully warm waters.

One climbed in next to him, waters shifting in that overly large bathtub undoubtedly designed for all of them to use at a time. “It’s warm, isn’t it?” he spoke, those yellow eyes still staring at him curiously as he sat there in the tub, chin sinking into those warm waters even as he pulled his knees to his chest.

Izuku nodded.

“Do you want to talk about it?” One asked, earnest yellow eyes boring into his golden ones which narrowed, the feeling of that blood and the guilt all too fresh in his mind to even compartmentalise. Not that he was any good at compartmentalisation in the first place. “Three told me about what happened to him on his special test, and he said it helped…”

“Wasn’ a test,” he mumbled at that, shivering as he remembered those screams and the blood splattering across the walls and flooring as those feather had sliced through skin and bone as though it were paper. “Bu’ they all died anywah,” he said, eyes narrowing on the rippling reflection he could see of himself in the bathwater.

“I don’t think they’ll take you for tests for a while,” One said, as if that were some sort of consolation, and Izuku supposed it might as well be – there wasn’t a lot they had to themselves there in those labs. He didn’t think things would end well for him if people kept on dying at his hands.

“I… din’… I din’ mean to hurt them,” he said matter-of-factly, as if that would make the situation any better. “I jus’ wanted the pain to stop…”

One closed his eyes, an arm wrapping around his shoulders from behind. “I know,” he murmured, edging that slight bit closer, his embrace ever so comforting to him by that point. “I know…”

Tears bit at the corners of his eyes, a familiar exhaustion seeping into his very bones as he sat there in the bath, burying his face in One’s shoulder as best he could – as if that could hide his tears from the rest of the world.

He could feel the stares on him as he wandered out of the bathroom, One hot on his heels – even as familiar doors slid open the instant he emerged, revealing their little dining room. It seemed Three had been correct when he’d said they would wait for him to return before allowing them all to eat, he mused, sighing softly as he plodded over to his familiar highchair, One lifting him up into it, and staring at the same dinner he ate every single night in that place. There was no variety there, and part of him had long since begrudgingly accepted that fact. Just like there was no laughter – or at least very little of it, and Izuku wasn’t certain then of when he had last been able to truly relax and smile, unburdened by anything and everything.

“We need to go to bed,” One said not long after they had finished, even as the doors to the corridor outside swished open, bars being the only thing blocking off their room from the monsters which undoubtedly roamed the corridors when nighttime came for them.

Dinner had been finished, and undoubtedly they had eaten later than usual thanks to him. The wall had slid out to reveal their bedroom, the siren’s song of sleep beckoning to him as the weight of the day’s events finally came to fully rest upon his shoulders.

Six and Four went ahead, climbing into bed almost instantly, whilst Three had to corral Five and Seven into their own respective beds. One went ahead with Eight, lifting him into his cot, and Izuku could only stare at the faintly lit corridor, a sense of foreboding deep within his bones as his ears twitched, catching the faint, familiar sounds. Heavy footsteps lumbered towards them, the ground seeming to vibrate beneath those weighty steps. It was large – whatever monster lingered out there.

The same monster which had once eaten a child and made them make bloodcurdling screams before their inevitable end.

Part of him twisted, fear bubbling up at the idea of being hunted through those corridors by whatever form that lumbering monster took. Empathy had always been one of his greatest traits, and he could all too easily put himself in that boy’s shoes.

One of which he had seen, emblazoned with a little number four.

“Come along, Nine,” One murmured, herding him into their room – away from the corridors and the nightmare-inducing terrors which undoubtedly lingered outside. “It’s bedtime.”

Izuku grabbed One’s hand – his brother’s hand, some small, monstrously possessive part of him whispered – pulling him away from the cot labelled 009 and towards One’s own bed.

“Your bed is over—”

“Ba’ dreams,” he said in answer to that, part of him not wanting to stay in his small, cold cot alone. He wanted to nuzzle into that familiar chest, wanted the warmth of another person to remind him that he wasn’t alone in that cold place. He wanted to lie there and imagine he was a toddler who’d had a nightmare and was sleeping in his mother’s bed so that she could scare the bad dreams away and comfort him with a kiss. Only he didn’t have a mother there, and part of him thought that One was the next best thing. “Stay wit’ One,” he added pointedly, jabbing his finger at the bed with the headboard carved with the number 001.

“Oh,” One mumbled, pliant as ever to his whims. “Okay.”

A satisfied smile curled at his lips, part of him relaxing as his brother easily agreed to his demand, even as he climbed up onto the bed, making himself as comfy as he could in the small space that there was to share.

“Nine,” the sound of his number rang in his ears as he glanced towards those sliding door, finding another faceless white lab coat standing there, hand open and waiting for him to slink forwards. Otherwise One might do something silly, like try to get between them and end up getting hurt. He slunk forwards, as was expected, placing his palm in the larger, waiting one. “Come along,” the man ordered, pulling him through the maze of white corridors which were all that he knew in that place.

There was no other option for him but to dutifully follow, short little legs almost having to break into a run to keep up.

Idly, he tried to recall whether he’d been that way before – and wondered why he felt so odd, as if there was something he was forgetting. He felt that sensation too often, and he pondered on why that was the case.

“Focus, Nine,” a woman’s voice ordered, and Izuku frowned up at the lady who had paused between the two sets of stairs, her hand closed around his.

Something wet, sticky, and warm ran around his feet, and he turned around to the stairs leading upwards only to find a veritable river of red cascading down the polished stone. A coppery taste bit at the back of his mouth, a stench he knew well greeting his nose as he felt himself stumbling back away from the blood.

A flash of mint green made him bite his lip, numerous familiar feathers flitting about in the stairwell above. “Nine,” a familiar voice called, and Izuku froze as he remembered just who that voice belonged to.

Pale blue hair was matted with blood, sightless brown eyes somehow staring straight at him as bloodless fingers cupped his face.

“You killed me, remember?”

He woke with a start, hands pawing at his shoulders as he sat bolt upright, breathing heavily like he’d just finished in his hopping exercise. “Nine,” One whispered, wrapping him up in a hug. “It’s okay. It was just a bad dream,” he said, and Izuku clung to the older boy, tears biting at the corners of his eyes as he drank in the sight of their bedroom and the mundaneness it exuded by that point.

True to their predictions, no one came for him the next day. He could only eye the door warily, almost waiting for someone to dare to come in and call his number. Yet no one did, even as One and Three, his main sources of comfort and conversation in that place were taken away first. He frowned at that much, swallowing nervously when Eight and then Seven were taken away by different white lab coats, leaving him alone with Four, Five, and Six – the three others of his warren who he hadn’t had as much interaction with.

He paused then, part of him grappling with the idea of going over to make conversation for a moment.

Green eyes narrowed on him, Five staring at him pointedly, and Izuku felt his limbs freeze before curling in on himself. Mentally, he was at least fourteen-years-old, so why was a probably seven-year-old girl so terrifying to him? Part of him wanted to blame it on his smaller body – and smaller brain. The better part of him just knew he was just a bit too afraid, as he’d always been, even before his fall. That place wasn’t familiar. Not like Aldera had once been. He didn’t know Five like he had known Kacchan. He didn’t understand why Five didn’t seem to like him, much like Kacchan had started to dislike him one day – for reasons he had never found out, and probably would never find out.

He was dead to his Kacchan, after all, and all that remained was a ghostly spectre of a boy who was still alive in a world without him.

Had someone found his body? he wondered then, a smile curling at his lips as he wondered just where his newfound sense of morbid humour had come from. He wondered if it was because he had killed people there, the smile dropping from his face like lightning had struck. His fingers twitched, hands still remembering the sensation of blood coating them. His stomach twisted at just the memory of that coppery stench which had coated the insides of his mouth and nose.

A hand closed on his shoulder, and Izuku startled, blinking as he found those ringed green eyes belonging to Four infinitely too close to his own golden ones. “Nine,” Four said, as if summoning him back to face reality.

Izuku blinked at him. “’aur,” he said simply, staring at the older boy who was already stroking his ears, the motion bringing a clear comfort to him.

The hairs on the back of his neck prickled, and Izuku glanced over at Five, flinching when he spotted the glare directed his way. Swallowing, he held out his hand – an offer for her – flinching when it was rejected, a familiar thing swirling in those green eyes.

Pride.

He was familiar with such a thing by that point, what with having been friends with his Kacchan once upon a time. Only those eyes were green rather than a burning red. It was almost funny how some things changed, yet others remained the same.

He swallowed thickly, silently wishing that Four and Six hadn’t been summoned away after lunch – or that one of the others had returned – so they could break up the tense, awkward silence that had fallen between him and Five. At the crux of the matter, he just didn’t know how he was supposed to interact with her. One and Three were simple enough to get along with and in the way they treated him as someone to be looked after. Eight wasn’t in the habit of interacting too much, but was easily entertained by the few toys or books they had. Seven was content with colouring. Four liked petting his hair and ears. Six was still a mystery to him. But Five…

Izuku shifted on his feet, staring at the older girl, watching her like a mouse might eye a cat. “Um,” he mumbled, wincing then at the sharp thump of the book closing as those green eyes found their way to his own golden set.

“What do you want?” Five demanded, a scowl on her lips. “I’m not reading to you.”

The words that slipped out of his lips weren’t the ones he’d been intending to say. “’ave I done something to upset you?” he asked, a familiar knot coming to twist in the bottom of his stomach – a lead ball which made him feel as though he wanted to throw up. He should have just stayed quiet, he knew.

Nothing had ever ended well whenever he’d dared to speak back to Kacchan. He didn’t know why he’d thought it would be any different. He didn’t know why those words had escaped him rather than a simple, okay. Keeping his head down had always worked out better for him – it was better when he was beneath everyone’s notice.

Yet he couldn’t be beneath everyone’s notice there in those labs, could he? Izuku bit his lip, shoulders sinking at the thought – at the idea that he was always watched and monitored and forever marked as something odd and strange.

Five’s lip curled, the pause evident as she seemed to think on the question for a moment, and Izuku wondered whether if it was just something about him which made people hate him. “I don’t like pathetic people,” she declared.

You’re pathetic, Deku, Kacchan’s spectre whispered in his ear.

Izuku blinked, remembering how slippery the blood had been when he’d stumbled and flailed about in that prison of a room before being knocked out and dragged back. He supposed that made for a pathetic showing, he mused, shoulders sinking, and his lips closed with a soft click.

“See?” Five demanded, her green eyes flickering between her colour and the colour of a boy he had once cherished as his past and present overlapped. “You’re not even defending yourself. Pathetic.”

Izuku only smiled tightly, plodding over to the soft corner where he and Eight usually napped occasionally during the day, curling up away from those cutting green eyes which reminded him too much of some of the things he’d lost – and some of the things which really hadn’t changed.

He was hovering.

Behind him, his wings flapped, air shifting in the quiet room he’d been taken to for his latest experiment by a variety of people in white lab coats who watched him with wary eyes. They knew what he’d done to the last people who had taken him away to be experimented on, he mused, a familiar sensation of guilt coming to gnaw at his innards at the memory. It was becoming something like the memory of his fall, he was coming to understand – something which haunted him and made it hard for him to sleep at times.

He slept better with someone beside him – namely One – to hold him after he woke up in a cold sweat with the memory of blood on his hands. Or rather, blood being everywhere in that room he had slipped in, the red blood slick beneath his hands and knees. He swallowed thickly at the memory, snapping out of the spectre of his past there as he felt himself start to fall.

He wasn’t going to fall again, part of him mused, no matter how bizarrely part of his brain seemed to react to that statement. He had wings, and he could fly – he should have been an ordinary boy with an ordinary quirk.

Yet you aren’t, Kacchan’s shade whispered in his ear, and Izuku could only hover in the air, his flight a mixture of his telekinetic ability to control his wings and the flapping of his wings themselves. Those same wings which were made up of feathers which he could detach from his body and turn into numerous telekinetically controlled knives. Something in his brain itched at that idea, some idea or realisation lingering just out of reach as he focused on the latest experiment he was being forced to partake in.

“We will now begin the simulation, Nine,” a voice crackled over the comms, speakers making his ears twitch as he hung in the air, experiencing a flight which made his stomach turn and a part of him long to fly freely through the skies. “This will aid in your flight abilities.”

Izuku blinked, left ear twisting slightly as it caught the sound of something whooshing towards him. A flap of his wings took him to the right of the sound, a heavy ball around the size of a tennis ball passing through the space he had just occupied. His eyes narrowed, part of him wondering just how much it would hurt if one of those balls struck him square on, before figuring that he would prefer not to find out.

Yet if there was one thing he had learnt since waking up in that lab, it was that those experiments were designed to find his limits, and the people there were ever so keen to push him to them and subsequently beyond them.

Swallowing in apprehension, his ears perked up, straining to catch any slight sound. His skin prickled, gooseflesh bobbling up on his arms and legs as he became acutely aware of the air around him. And just how cold it was there. Everything about that place was cold, more so since he’d never met the Emi lady who had come and gone before him. Somehow, Izuku didn’t think she had met a pretty end – if she had met her end at all. He tilted his head, wings flapping as he heard another sound of a ball being ejected from its hiding place. His back ached, part of him realising that he was unlikely to be able to last for as long as his experimenters would likely want him to.

Yet there was nothing he could do about that fact.

Sometimes, Izuku mused, he hated being correct.

Three scowled – as much as the orca boy could scowl – as he applied the bruise cream which had found its way into the first aid box they had access to. One was similarly glowering at the door, as if he could still see the woman who had brought him back, covered head to toe in purpling bruises. Those looks made something in his chest writhe in satisfaction, part of him feeling oddly cared for in that place where he had no freedom. In the place where he was just the last experiment of his batch. It wasn’t like there was any other space in their bedroom to fit another bed.

Then again, perhaps they would be graced with another Two. The spot was as empty as ever, the bedsheets remaining as pristine and untouched as ever. An invisible shrine to a boy who few people probably knew existed. His shoulders sunk at the thought.

He wondered then, not for the first time, whether he would meet his end in that place for a second time. Izuku paused, wondering if his end that time around would mark the end for him – whether he would somehow lose his memories and no longer be Midoriya Izuku as such in his next incarnation. If there was a next incarnation, of course… Once could just be a coincidence, after all.

“I’m fine,” he said softly, wincing then as Three liberally applied more cream to the swollen blotch on his face. It had been a miracle he hadn’t lost any teeth. Yet those with quirks had seemed to be somewhat more resilient to damage than – well – he had been previously, back when he’d had green hair and green eyes and no quirk to speak of.

Movement caught his eye, and he turned, spying his own reflection in the mirror. Part of him almost wanted to cry at the lack of surprise there was by that point whenever he spotted mint green wings, white rabbit ears, and golden eyes in the mirror.

That was him now.

That was what Izuku looked like.

“No you’re not, Nine,” Three said flatly, inadvertently reminding him of the new name he bore there. A number. His identity there, what with how no one there knew of the name Izuku or what it meant to him.

“You can’t even act tough properly,” Five scoffed from where she sat, far too close for comfort for his liking. “Pathetic.”

Izuku flinched at that, remembering burning red eyes and pale blonde hair and the familiar popping sound of those explosions.

“Five!” One hissed, and Izuku could only hunch in on himself, even as Three sat down beside him and time kept on ticking past him there in that strange, uncertain future where Midoriya Izuku was nothing more than a memory.

Chapter Text

Izuku swallowed thickly, the air thick with a familiar tension, and he could only wonder why exactly they kept ending up left alone together.

Five glared daggers at him from across the room, undoubtedly thinking the same thing, and he could only ponder on what exactly he should do next – what with the fact that even his very breathing seemed to irritate the older girl. Just like he had once irritated Kacchan by doing nothing besides sitting there and dreaming for something, in hindsight, had been nothing more than a dream. A bitter smile curled at his lips.

“Be more realistic,” he murmured, staring down at his tiny hands and tiny nails and remembering then that he had a quirk.

He hadn’t quite taken that swan dive intentionally, he mused hopelessly, yet there he was with a quirk in his next life. All the while the ghosts of his past had yet to let him leave their clutches, even as the ghosts of his victims in that lab started haunting him there. He was collecting ghosts, he thought to himself, wondering then if his sense of humour had warped into something darker in that place. Was it wrong to think it darkly amusing?

“Be more realistic,” he repeated, an echo of the words the beloved hero who had once been his favourite. Once. Izuku blinked, thinking then about what he felt towards All Might, and pausing as he came upon a veritable wall of numbness. He wondered if the hero had learnt of his death after he’d left him there. Yet what was the point? It wasn’t like he could go back and figure out what his once idolised hero had done after he had ceased to exist as Midoriya Izuku. His smile became something of a grimace. “What’s realistic to me here?” he wondered aloud, relishing in the loss of his lisp.

Blood dripping down white walls came to the forefront of his mind. He was capable of killing people there, thanks to his quirk, he reminded himself. That was realistic. Yet he didn’t want to think himself a villain. He didn’t want to kill anyone. He didn’t want to become a murderer. Who would?

Oh, but you already are, Kacchan’s shade reminded him, and he flinched at that, remembering the screams and the visceral wet sounds of blood splattering against the floor and walls.

“Shut up already,” Five called, and he felt the weight of her glare on him then. “I can hear you muttering from over here.”

“Oh,” he mumbled. “Sorry…”

Mumbling had always been a bad habit of his. It had made his classmates hate him that much more. They were probably glad he was gone, he mused, shoulder sinking as he hunched in on himself at that very thought. It was only natural that Five would hate his mumbling too, he thought, eyes glued to the ground then, not daring to look up and see whether Five was still glaring at him. She probably was, and he was just too much of a coward to deal with that much.

“Stop apologising,” Five grumbled, her voice sharp and cutting. “Unless you’re a weakling. Only the weak have to apologise in this place,” she said matter-of-factly – as if she were doing him a grandiose favour by explaining that much to him.

Could a weakling kill several people? Kacchan’s spectre asked, hovering over his shoulder like a little devil he’d often seen depicted in stories.

Izuku blinked, knowing then why he had always thought himself as weak prior to that moment. He had been quirkless. He had lagged behind his peers whenever they had used their quirks and he had nothing to compare with them. He was weak, and he had known that in some odd way, shape, or form. Yet he wasn’t quirkless anymore.

He could be strong. The advice All Might had given to him once upon a time atop a roof no longer applied. He could be a hero. The thought no longer made his heart race as it once had, the familiar cell walls surrounding him which were the lab coming to mind. He wanted to be free of that place, he was coming to understand.

That was his biggest dream at that moment in time.

“Isn’t it polite to apologise when you upset someone?” he asked, the words falling from his lips before he could really think it through. Come to think of it, he had never been good at holding his tongue around Kacchan, Izuku mused, glancing at the person in that place who he thought resembled his once friend-turned-something-else the most. Yet Kacchan had never liked it when he talked back to him, and somehow he had the strangest feeling that Five wouldn’t like it either. The resemblance was almost uncanny, and for a moment, he wondered if Kacchan had somehow joined him there.

The thought evaporated as quickly as it had come, and then Five was speaking to him, her lip curling as she stared at him as though he were a clump of dirt on the wall. Idly he wondered whether she had ever even seen dirt, what with the standards of cleanliness in the labs they both called home.

“Are you dumb?” Five asked. “You see those lab technicians always simpering and apologising whenever they upset the ones in charge. That’s because they’re weak,” she said plainly, and Izuku was reminded then that she had been born and raised in that twisted laboratory where the children were the experiments.

They were the rats made to run through mazes and figure the answers to the puzzles and simulations lain before them. They were the rats who watched the cats play with them and learnt that cruelty from them in turn.

They didn’t know the outside. Not like he knew the world beyond those labs.

“So do your own feelings not matter to you?” he asked, knowing there was no way he could say that lab technicians weren’t the only people in the world. To them, they might as well have been the only people in that world within the lab. The only world they currently knew.

Five scoffed. “Haven’t you worked it out yet? What we want and feel doesn’t matter in this place,” she said, as if that were a fact, and Izuku could only frown at the truth in that statement. And the way Five had simply come to acknowledge and accept that fact. The statement of a girl who wasn’t hoping for some form of change – or otherwise hoping for a hero to save them, the way that most people hoped for rescue when they found themselves in a sticky situation.

He opened his mouth, wanting to promise her then that one day they’d be free of that place. Yet he remembered every word he said was probably being monitored in that place, and he didn’t know what they would do to him if they found out he dreamt of one day escaping their clutches. His lips shut with a soft click, Five looking triumphant then in her apparent victory.

Silently, he vowed then in his heart that he would escape, and he would drag his warren – his nestmates – out with him to see the sky that Seven wanted to witness with her own eyes, to stop One from having to put himself between them and the adults who were happy to hurt them, to let Three smile without anyone being afraid of his sharp teeth, and to show Five that her feelings and wants mattered.

And how are you going to do that, Deku? Kacchan’s spectre demanded, watching him with those red eyes – a phantom of the scorching hot glare the real Kacchan had once given him time and time again.

Heroics isn’t a game, the words of All Might rang out in his head. Without power you cannot become a hero. His gaze went to his hands, the wings on his back twitching at that, as if to remind him that they were there. He had a quirk that time around. He had power.

So why did he still feel like a useless deku?

Because you act like one, Kacchan whispered in his ear, the dark passenger – the remnant of his past – which wouldn’t leave him alone. Like how he had once never left Kacchan alone. Part of him almost wanted to giggle at the cracked reflection that made. Yet that didn’t change the truth which rang in those words of how he still acted like he once had. Like when he had truly been a useless deku.

Then how could he stop acting like one? he wondered, shoulders sinking when his dark passenger had no answer for him. Answers to questions like that weren’t easy to come by, he knew. The way he behaved had been ingrained into him through his past childhood, and it wasn’t as though he could shed it like a snake shed its skin. Part of him only wished he could. Nothing was simple, he was coming to understand. Not when it came to himself and his confusing, odd existence.

He wondered if somehow he could swap his personality with Kacchan – not that his Kacchan as such even existed to him. Or perhaps he existed in the same world – but either way, his Kacchan wouldn’t be able to recognise him as he was… His eye caught his reflection once more, mint green wings fluttering on his back as he stood there in that room, feeling inordinately cut off from everything and everyone.

A swish of doors heralded the arrival of One, part of him almost flopping back on the floor in relief as he spotted the older boy who always acted as something of a buffer between him and Five, his nestmate he didn’t quite get along with as well compared to the others.

“Oh good,” One murmured. “You didn’t tear each other’s hair out.”

Five clicked her tongue.

Izuku only smiled. “One!” he greeted cheerfully, relaxing as One smiled back at him, wandering over to him to give him one of the hugs he had long since fallen in love with. “You’r back!” he declared, stating the obvious, much to the visible bemusement of One.

“Yes,” One answered, smiling that much wider. “I am.”

He startled awake, a cry quashed before it could leave his lips – an art he had quickly learnt, if only to avoid some grumpy warren members. He didn’t want to annoy them any more than necessary. That was a lesson he had learnt in the life he’d had before he’d died. His feathers fluttered at the memory which always surfaced whenever he thought about the fact that he’d fallen to his death.

Wasn’t it the greatest irony to have woken up with wings which could catch him those days if he dared to fall? A snort escaped him, even as One opened bleary eyes and watched him in the faint light which kept the room from being cast into pitch darkness.

“Nine,” he murmured, and Izuku found himself crawling towards the older boy, letting those thin arms wrap around him in a hug which comforted him more than he thought it ought to. It almost made him think that everything would be okay. Yet his memories proved that everything was the furthest thing from okay. If it were okay, then he wouldn’t know what the sensation of blood on his hands felt like. If it were okay, then he wouldn’t be debating still on the carnage he had inadvertently created thanks to his quirk.

You’re naïve, his dark passenger whispered to him – a voice which only he could hear.

“One,” he whispered, nuzzling into his chest, hiding away from the world as best as he could what with how he couldn’t escape from that world within a lab he was locked away in. “Do you think we’ll ever get to see the sun on our own?” he asked, the words coming slower, his pronunciation ever so careful.

Yellow eyes sought out his gold ones. “I can’t say,” he murmured, reminding him then that it wasn’t that he wouldn’t say, rather they were undoubtedly being listened to. They were constantly monitored, not a grain of privacy as such in sight.

“I see,” he said softly, glancing up from where he was cuddling his nestmate, finding those yellow eyes which saw him – he thought – for what he truly was.

“You’re smart, Nine,” One whispered. “Too smart… Two was smart too…” A shiver wracked the older boy’s body. “But that didn’t save him…”

“Okay,” Izuku said, picking out the subtext of those words as best he could, unable to think of anything other than the fact that he was undoubtedly different to Two. Unless Two could also remember a life before he died. Yet there was no way to confirm as much. “But I’m Nine… not Two,” he reminded, flopping his head back down on the mattress. “Don’t forget that.”

A hum reverberated through One’s chest. “I won’t,” he answered, and Izuku closed his eyes once more with a smile on his face which fell quickly from his lips as he wondered just what he would do if one of his warren members, his nestmates, experienced the same ending that Two – and himself – had.

Something ugly swirled in his belly at that idea, fingers curling in One’s white shift he wore, eyes cracking open into narrow slits.

Oh, Deku, Kacchan’s spectre whispered in his ear, voice gleeful and full of mania. You know what it is, even if you never really acted on it before… it’s what made you a useless, spineless deku…

Izuku blinked, understanding what that dark feeling swirling in his belly was. He had already felt it so many times in that tiny world he lived within. He had felt it when he thought of his nestmates undergoing the same tests which had left him battered and covered in mottled blue and purple bruises. He had felt it when that man had stuck those electrodes to his head, before his feathers had started flying and killing.

Rage.

If there was one thing he had noticed since that event, Izuku mused as he sat in the quiet room with only two of his nestmates present, it was that his tests were less frequent. Why were they doing that? The answer, he thought, was simple. In the manner that no one prodded an angry grizzly bear lest they wish to be mauled. He had the dubious pleasure of being the angry grizzly bear in that lab. Yet was he really that angry? Izuku blinked, searching himself for those feelings and coming up empty every time.

Sometimes he didn’t even understand himself.

Cautiously, he eyed Five where she was sitting in the corner, reading a book quietly and looking ever so content. For a moment he played with the idea of going over to her and talking about whatever book she was reading so contently. It was one of the few fictional books they had there, of a decent reading level – more so considering their age. Idly, he wondered what Five’s quirk was, pondering then on whether or not it was intelligence-based.

“Don’t.”

Izuku startled at the soft voice which broke his train of thought, turning then to find Six there, sitting closer to him than ever. “What?” he asked, confused then as to what exactly Six was cautioning him against doing. “What are you talking about?” he questioned a few moments later when Six didn’t seem to be about to elaborate on what he meant by that single word.

“You know, Nine,” Six said, yellow eyes so similar to One’s own finding his golden ones – and Izuku felt a sliver of jealousy wrap around his tiny heart at the thought that Six might actually be related biologically to One. “You’re really smart – really smart, it’s actually kinda scary, you know – but you’re sorta dumb in some ways…”

Izuku blinked, uncertain for a moment as to whether he was supposed to be insulted or not. “What?” he repeated, feeling just as dumb as Six had proclaimed him to be. Tears bit at the corners of his eyes, frustration eating at him, and for a moment he almost felt like a Midoriya once more.

Yet he wasn’t the son of Midoriya Inko anymore, so he couldn’t be a Midoriya anymore, no matter his tendency for tears.

“Five likes her alone time,” Six stated plainly. “So don’t disturb her right now.”

Izuku frowned. “But I just want to talk to her… and understand why she hates me,” he said, wondering if there was something so wrong about that much. The same way he’d once wanted to know why Kacchan hated him so much. The same way he’d once wanted to ask Kacchan why he hadn’t wanted to be friends when the only thing which had changed was his diagnosis of quirklessness.

“But she doesn’t want to talk to you right now,” Six said matter-of-factly.

“Is that your quirk?” he asked, frowning then.

“No,” Six answered. “I just know Five better than you,” he said flatly, staring at him with a similarly flat expression. “If you go and try to talk to her now, then you’ll just make her dislike you more. Both me and Five have periods of time where we like to sit in the corner and stick to ourselves, that’s all. Just entertain yourself in the meantime.”

“But isn’t it more fun if we play together?” Izuku questioned, remembering the times he had been stuck in his room alone, unable to go anywhere and hang out with friends – mostly due to the fact that he hadn’t had any.

Six sighed. “No,” he said, gaze straying back to the blocks he was playing with. “Not everyone likes the same things as you, silly. Five will probably interact with you when she wants to,” Six said, and Izuku glanced up at the snort he heard from the other side of the room – telling of just how likely that would happen.

“And what if she never does?” he asked, pondering then on exactly what he was supposed to do if Five never wanted to speak with him. He didn’t need another Kacchan who hated him.

“Do you need her to like you for something?” Six questioned, looking confused by the idea. “One, Three, and Seven like you – isn’t that enough? Why do you need everyone to like you?”

Izuku blinked, brow furrowing as he tried to understand what Six was asking him. Why did he need everyone to like him? A shiver ran down his spine, memories of that classroom, desk scrawled with insults, and a vase of spiderlillies set almost artfully in the centre of that. He remembered the red colouring of those petals. He remembered the way blood had rolled across those once pristine white tiles. He remembered death, and he remembered the life before his current one. “I… I don’t know,” he mumbled, the question sticking with him as he pondered on just why he was so intent on being loved, or otherwise liked by everyone who lived with him there in that small set of rooms he called home.

“You’re weird,” Six said, and Izuku could only muse on how it didn’t seem like an insult anymore. The boy with pale blonde hair was just stating the obvious, because he truly was a strange existence. “But if you want to be loved by all of us, then just learn our boundaries and respect them for now,” he remarked, and Izuku frowned as he wondered just how he was supposed to learn how to act around them all to do just that.

“So don’t bother you or Five too much?” he asked, chewing on his lip.

“I guess that’s the simplest way to put it,” Six remarked, turning away from him then and concentrating on constructing a town out of small blocks.

Izuku blinked, sitting there quietly then, not daring to make another attempt at conversation with either of his quieter nestmates, all the while wondering why they were both so content to play by themselves. Certainly, he hadn’t minded – rather, he’d had to get used to being by himself – playing by himself. Though that didn’t make it seem any less boring to him. He tilted his head, side-eyeing Six then, wondering if he would ever be able to convince them of how fun it was to play in a group.

Part of him doubted that much.

Chapter Text

His feathers could pick up vibrations, he came to learn in a matter of days. It was surprising how motivating the idea of dodging hard balls launched at him at vicious speeds was. Part of him almost wanted to wryly thank the ones who had set that training up for him. Then he remembered the bruises he had – his skin a mottled pattern of purple and yellow-green – and promptly wanted to wring his hands around their necks because who treated children like that? He stopped dead in the hallway, remembering the sound of feathers slicing through flesh, knuckles turning white as he recalled that day with a perfect clarity he wished he could forget.

“Come along, Nine,” his adult minder for his corridorly walks ordered, tugging him along, and Izuku stumbled back into action, silently scolding himself for spacing out in the middle of the hallway he should have been examining from every angle he could.

Familiar doors met his gaze, and he all but sprinted into his warren’s room, sighing in relief as he felt the metaphorical safety blanket drape over him like a warm hug. “Nine,” Three greeted, eyes straying to the mottled skin covered in darkening bruises and healing bruises. Not that the latter got much time to heal before he was inevitably thrown into a more physical experiment.

It was a theme he was noticing ever since the events of that disastrous day. All his mental-based tests and experiments had ground to a halt on that very day, leaving him with only his physical experiments and tests to be done. After several days of looking like a walking bruise, Izuku wasn’t sure of what he preferred.

Then again, no physical tests had driven him to commit murder unlike those mental ones with wires strapped to his skull. He shuddered at the memory of that before he turned his gaze on the room and frantically tried to distract himself from everything going on.

“Three,” he said, watching as the older boy went and grabbed the bruise cream which was replenished near daily thanks to him and his sheer volume of bruised skin.

“Is something the matter?” Three asked, frowning at him, and all Izuku could do was shake his head and wonder when they would manage to be free. The box around him, walling him in was only feeling tighter and closer as the days went by in a monotonous fashion. It felt eerily similar to the time just before his feathers had soared and killed people, and part of him was ever so afraid then – afraid of his own quirk, and everything it meant for him.

Yet he had to use his quirk there – had to hone his ability to control it, because that was what those tests were for. The lab was there to create them and then polish their abilities for one nefarious reason or another. Part of him wanted to suspect hired mercenaries, raised from birth to be deadly little things, yet was such a thing so in demand so as to fund the entirety of what could only be a very expensive operation going on there? Izuku didn’t think so, and so all he was left with was wild speculation and random guesses, each more terrifying than the last.

“Can you read to me?” he asked, wanting to lose himself for a little while, in a book or his own imagination. He needed to escape that place with his warren, he knew, the wish an unspoken thing which made the greedy creature in his heart throb with possessiveness. Because his warren was his and nobody else’s. “Please?”

“Of course,” Three agreed, and Izuku wondered if books were an escape for his orca brother, the wings on his back flapping in contentment. “What do you want to read today?” he asked, perusing the small collection of fiction books there to aid in their development.

“Something with a happy ending,” he answered, wings flapping at the thought of the crystal blue sky above his head, clouds blotting that sky, covering the sun in places, even as the high, fast winds swept those fluffy blobs across until nightfall came and the sky turned that dusky midnight blue dotted with a myriad of stars which glimmered and sparkled in the heavens above. A soft sigh escaped him, feathers feeling ruffled as he went and sat down with Three as opposed to flying around the room like his inner child wanted to.

He wanted a happy ending like in the books too, only he was fairly certain he would have to claw that much out with his own two hands instead.

There were dark circles under his eyes whenever he looked in the mirror. Part of him almost expected to see age lines and greying hair from all the stress only he seemed to feel every minute of every waking day. He didn’t think he slept enough, if he was being truly honest with himself. Dreams all too often became nightmares, and he distinctly remembered there was one where he had drowned in blood only to wake up gasping and a horribly wet bed – much to his own embarrassment. Thankfully, for his own sanity, the bed wetting incidents were few and far between. They also generally only happened when he was sleeping in his own bed, which had meant all too recently he had become a permanent fixture in one of his nestmate’s beds.

Part of him wondered why exactly he was the only one who was like that. He wondered if he was, as always, the odd one out amongst everyone else. He wondered if it was because he knew of a life which was arguably better in quite a few ways, if one ignored how everyone had seemingly despised his existence. He wondered then, as he always did when those periods of misery clawed at him with relish, whether anyone who he was dead to actually missed him besides his mother. He wondered if his mother had it easier without him being there.

“Nine!” the familiar, sharp bark of his name being called out snapped him out of his reverie. “This way,” his assigned lab assistant snapped, large fingers closing around his thin wrist and pulling him out of the safety of his warren. His feet plodded along quietly, an uncanny amount of quietness to his steps – something which had been noted, and Izuku had few doubts he would soon have tests for stealth and such.

Yet what did they want him to be sneaky and strong for? Izuku could only wonder, even as a voice full of vitriol echoed through the air from behind a door breaking up the monotonous slab of wall. “You useless thing!” whatever lab technician in that room bellowed. “Failure is not tolerated here,” that same voice continued, the slap of flesh just about audible from where he was – already being pulled away from that corridor and into the next juncture of that maze-like floor.

Izuku wondered if he should be grateful that none of his technicians were like that. Well, not any more, part of him mused, even as a familiar nausea stirred in his gut. Memories of that day came thick and fast, and he struggled to keep his expression neutral as he was shepherded towards a room he had ventured to many times by that point. Down the nearest flight of stairs he went, past a small section of wall decorated with large black arrows pointing in varying directions, and in through the sliding doors which made up a vast majority of the doors in that giant laboratory.

They had a keypad option, hidden in the wall unless one knew where to look, but mostly it was done through the use of access passes. The lab assistant with him tapped his access card against the reader, green light flashing, and then he was inside a familiar room with all those boxes of varying heights. And the pools of hidden water he’d be electrocuted for slipping into, should he dare to mess up. He swallowed nervously at the thought, flinching at the cold press of the armband being strapped to him before he could even think of darting away.

“Nine,” a voice crackled over the intercom, and Izuku watched as the lab assistant hurried into the control and monitoring room where the other scientists were. Watching him – always watching. “Get ready to begin,” they ordered, and Izuku felt his wings flap in something like anticipation. It was all to become stronger, he reminded himself. If only so he could one day escape with the rest of his warren when the opportunity presented itself.

The corridors were noisier than usual, he found as he was walked back to his room after a day of moderate success and failure. His wings, used in tandem with his leaps, had mixed results, he found. Flying was something of an art he had yet to master. His feathers were remarkably sensitive, and he wasn’t sure his brain was able to properly cope with the amount of information it undoubtedly received. It wasn’t like that aspect of his quirk – and what a novel thought that still was – had come about naturally over times. Rather, it had been forced to awaken much earlier than it ought to have, and he had little doubt it was the cause of his minor nosebleed earlier.

Yet it was as he was passing through that hallway that a hidden set of doors swung open, a lab technician having opened them from the corridor, and Izuku had the briefest of seconds to spy two figures within that room. Two figures, one heartbeat. A man – a doctor – and a corpse floating in a vat of garishly green liquid. Bile rose in the back of his throat at the way that corpse seemed to have been harvesting for some form of samples, flesh peeled back to reveal muscle and bone within that large capsule. Then there was the fact that the strange doctor had seemed so mournful over that dead body.

“Latest trial… Failure. Subject… A0, Code 41… remains deceased,” the man said, his voice still just about audible to his rabbit ears, even as he was pulled away, the visage of that strange doctor’s shoulders slumping stuck in his mind.

Body language was a funny thing that he was surprisingly well-versed in; for adults mostly, if only because he knew that children – Five at least – seemed to be strange, contrary things which behaved curiously to his eyes. Or maybe that was the frustration at the idea of one of his warren members hating him surfacing? His chest throbbed then, the niggling, odd feeling that he was missing something shoved to the back of his mind to be dealt with later.

Stairs appeared in his peripheral, different to the set he’d taken to get down to that room, and Izuku realised, almost embarrassingly, that he’d been taken down a new route. One he really should have been memorising. He needed to know as many routes as possible, if he one day wanted to get himself out of there.

Those stairs brought them out the opposite way to the one he had left through that morning, and Izuku could only try to charge ahead as best as he could as the doors leading to safety loomed ahead of him. The hand and slow pace of the lab technician was the only thing which held him back, and ten seconds behind schedule, Izuku arrived in front of those doors, relief surging through him when he returned to his warren’s room.

Three turned from where he was in the reading corner with Four, a smile curling at his face. “Nine,” he greeted, and Izuku realised he was back home slightly earlier than usual, if the lack of most of his nestmates was any sort of indication.

“I’m not hurt this time!” he declared, a smile pulling at his own lips as he hurried inside. “Look – no bruises!” he said, showing his bare, mostly unmarred arms out to the other boys.

“Mn. Well done,” Four murmured, and Izuku bounded over to the pair of them.

“Thanks,” he said, knowing there might be a little bit of a wait until dinner – not least because it was only ever served when they were all present and hungry. “When did you get back?”

“Not long. Three was here first,” Four answered absent-mindedly, picking at the pages of the book he was reading. It was a book about stars, and Izuku wondered if Seven’s obsession with the sky was spreading. He wondered why the adults of that place had given them books about the outside world when they seemed to be the furthest thing removed from the ‘outside’. He swallowed, staring at the photo of the night sky, the stars visible as white specks. “Do you like the stars, Nine?”

Izuku blinked. “Yes,” he decided, a familiar determination bubbling up at the thought of the night sky undoubtedly visible to everyone except the ones trapped beneath concrete ceilings in a lab that no hero seemed to know existed. He’d take them all to see the sky one day. “Do you like the stars?”

It was Four’s turn to blink. “Well… never seen them before,” he murmured softly. “But the pictures are pretty. And Seven likes them too,” he said, running his fingers over the pages of information and photos.

“Yeah… she does,” Izuku acknowledged, glancing at the unused set of crayons in the room then and wondering when exactly Seven would be back to start scrawling on paper and the walls with them. His eyes lingered on that electric blue colour that she so loved. “What else do you think you’ll like about the outside world?” he asked, pondering on how much they knew about the world outside that lab.

Four shrugged at that. “Not like we’ll see it,” he muttered, looking neither bitter nor hung up about that matter – it was just fact to them.

He opened his mouth then, lips clicking shut only seconds later before he could say the words I’ll make it happen. That would be a silly thing to say in that place, Izuku mused, only able to stare at that book and its pictures in that moment.

Lights out came like clockwork by that point.

The doors to their room opened with a soft hiss, familiar bars blocking off the corridor, and he hurried into their bedroom, sticking on One’s heels without even daring to look at his own bed. “Are we sharing again then?” One asked, a smile curling at his lips as Izuku only stared at him as if to say haven’t you guessed? “Come on then,” he said, climbing into bed then and patting the mattress. “I’ll keep the bad dreams away.”

Izuku blinked, climbing into the bed and eyeing his brother curiously. “Who taught you to do that?”

One smiled sombrely. “Emi-chan did…”

“Oh,” he murmured, even as his mind decided to revisit the day. He snuggled into One’s chest, closing his eyes as he tried to forget about that strange room, with that strange doctor and that strange corpse.

“Give it up,” a voice echoed in his ears, and Izuku remembered years ago, sitting in the doctor’s office, an x-ray of his foot lit up from behind on the screen. “I’m afraid your son is quirkless, Midoriya-san.” The damning words once spoken in another life rang out in his brain, and he woke with a start. Shivers curled down his spine, fingers bunching up the fabric of One’s white shift, even as his wings and ears twitched – as if to remind him of their existence. He wasn’t quirkless anymore.

He blinked then, eyes widening as he remembered the short, slightly rotund doctor he and his once-mother had visited in his life before that lab-confined one. He remembered that strange doctor he had seen in that room that very day, swallowing thickly as he realised they looked exactly the same, if only with slightly different glasses.

But what was Dr Tsubasa doing there in that strange lab?

Izuku could only wonder.

Chapter Text

How long had it been since he had woken up in that lab?

Izuku tried to remember how many weeks he’d been there for, coming up blank every time. It wasn’t like he had a phone with a calendar, and there had been too many days with too much going on that time had seemed to blur together into one big mess. Though, he supposed, his life might as well have been one big mess by that point in time. He was still trapped in that strange, mildly terrifying place, and there was the eeriest sensation of stagnancy about it.

It was monotonous, and he had fallen into the rhythm of that place. The thought of that terrified him almost, part of him wondering if he was slipping mentally into something more like his physical age in that place.

And what are you going to do about that? Kacchan leered, his voice echoing in his ears as he wondered just what he was supposed to do from then on. If the heroes aren’t coming to rescue you, then who will? Kacchan asked, and Izuku could only frown as he curled into One’s chest that much more.

“But Kacchan…” he whispered, feeling a familiar bite of tears in his eyes. “You said the heroes always win,” he murmured, watching as One shifted in his sleep. That possessive thing in his chest stirred at that, part of him wanting to wrap his older-and-younger brother in cotton wool. He wanted to stow him away, along with the rest of his warren, far, far away from that lab and everything which went on within those walls. His hand reached out, scrunching the material of One’s shift as he clung to it for dear life.

There are no heroes here, Kacchan’s shade whispered to him, making that terrifyingly urge even stronger. You remember what All Might said to you, don’t you?

Izuku shook his head ever so slightly. “Shut up,” he murmured, screwing his eyes shut as he remembered that afternoon on the rooftop. Minutes before he had wound up falling to his death. He wrapped his arms around himself, curling in on himself, choking on a sob as he remembered the blood dripping from his feathers. He remembered the feeling of that sticky blood coating his skin as he’d slipped in it. He shivered violently at that, wishing he could somehow forget.

Villain, Kacchan murmured, an ongoing mantra – a label he couldn’t quite escape from as he was. He had killed people there. Yet, he supposed, in that dark, possessive mindset which was slowly starting to dig its claws into him, the ones he had murdered had been terrible people who experimented on little children or those they thought to be little children in his case. So maybe he wasn’t as evil as he thought? Maybe he could call himself a very violent vigilante instead of bearing the loathsome title of villain?

Izuku swallowed thickly, burying himself in One’s chest, part of him feeling ever so guilty as the older boy stirred with a soft grunt. Yellow eyes sought out his own golden ones blearily. “Nine?”

“One,” he murmured back, sighing softly as a familiar hand ruffled his hair gently, ears twitching at the comforting touch of another stuck in the same lab as him. For a moment, then, he could almost pretend that everything was alright.

Then reality sunk its claws back into him, a bubble of negative, confusing emotions raging and simmering in his stomach.

It felt like there was a pot of water in his stomach, boiling and bubbling, and Izuku wasn’t certain of just when it would boil over and consume everything within him.

There had been a time, long ago, that he had wondered just what quirk he would get – long back before the diagnosis of quirkless had come down like a sledgehammer in another life which had already long since run out. He had wondered whether he would be able to breathe fire, pull things towards himself, or something completely out of the blue. He had looked up and seen people flying through the skies in their designated zones. He had thought they had looked free and happy, with wings or other manners of flight quirks.

He had wings, and he was flying right then and there, but freedom was the farthest thing from what he felt, trapped within that concrete box an unknown depth below the surface of the earth. He had a quirk, but he wasn’t permitted to let it grow naturally as he came into his own. Rather, every day he found himself pushed to some form of extreme.

His wings flapped behind him, instinctively remembering the way he had leapt from podium to podium with his wings bound that day in an effort to make him work on his more rabbit-like abilities. Fingers curled in his white shift, part of him feeling incredibly restless as he was escorted through familiar corridors to whatever fate awaited him next. He didn’t like his wings being bound. They were already an integral part of who he was there. They were part of his quirk. And a child’s quirk wasn’t supposed to be bound.

Yet the people there didn’t have nor care for such kinds of morals. He knew that, so he wasn’t too sure why his thoughts were deciding to point out the obvious to him right then and there.

His ears twitched, picking up faint sounds as they walked past a set of doors, and Izuku knew then that Four was in that room. As his lab technicians ran whatever tests they wanted to on him. Four had a voice quirk, that much Izuku knew off the top of his head from all the time he had spent with the older boy. One and Three had mentioned him and his voice far too much for Izuku to be labouring under any delusions regarding that.

It was almost amusing to him how familiar he was with that place – that he knew where each of his warren was or thereabouts. He had yet to hear Three or One going about their tests, further afield as they seemingly went. Or at least that was his running theory as to why he’d never heard an echo of their voices until they returned to their nest. Yet he still didn’t know where the exit was, no matter how hard he looked around as they ventured through the corridors. It wasn’t as simple as a sign pointing towards a fire exit in case of emergency. Not in the section he was held in, in any case.

The faint sound of a yelp made him pause, wings flaring out as he heard the dulcet tones of Five. He ignored the way his latest handlers tugged on his wrists nervously, their eyes fixated on his wings and those feathers which could turn into sharp blades. Izuku frowned, even as he stared at that door, ignoring the traitorous whisper which told him that Five could deal with it if she was so strong.

Villain, Kacchan’s shade whispered, taunting him again, and Izuku remembered then that he still wanted to be a hero. And his once-mother had taught him that the heroes that mattered were kind, he mused. Was All Might kind when he left you on that roof alone? Kacchan asked, and he felt his stomach shift at that. He thought he felt sick. Yet he knew he’d feel that much worse if something happened and Five didn’t return.

Two’s bed was empty, and that emptiness had left something of an eerie quiet spot to their bedroom – an echo of lingering sadness which became all the more prominent when anyone ever mentioned anything to do with the Two who had come and gone before him.

Five was still a member of his precious warren. Even if she hated his guts then and forevermore. He was selfish, Izuku came to understand then, and greedy. He longed after affection that not everyone could give him.

Pathetic, don’t you think? Kacchan murmured, and for once, Izuku found himself agreeing with the ghost of a boy he no longer knew.

A familiar anger simmered beneath his skin, and he wrenched his hands free from those lab technicians. “I want to see Five,” he stated plainly, wondering exactly what those cruel adults saw to make them flinch away from him.

He was such an unnatural child.

Though that evidently came with the territory of being a dead teenager’s soul stuffed into the body of a child in a human experimentation lab. He met those green and brown eyes which stared back at him and his eerie gold ones, men much older than him seeming to cower before him. Cowards, he wanted to call them. They were hurting him – them – and yet they were scared of the very things they were making. Yet in the next breath he felt as though he could somewhat understand them. He was, after all, terrified of what he was becoming in that lab.

Sometimes, he hated being so empathetic. He hated the way his own hatred of people was tempered by rationale and the better understanding he seemed to have of what it meant to walk a thousand miles in another’s shoes. Even if those shoes belonged to those hurting him or the ones he cared about.

Yet he also hated the way that reasoning and logic was starting to mean less and less to him as the fact finally sunk its claws into him. The fact that the place surrounding him would kill him if given all the proper reasoning to do so. His life had been weighed up and measured to mean nothing in comparison to whatever those villains were trying to achieve there. The same way the lives of the technicians meant nothing, if the lack of any form of reprimand towards him for the events of that day were anything to go off of.

It terrified him.

His mother had always loved how kind he was. She had often said it was a heroic quality in itself, whilst gently reminding him that there were other ways to be a person’s hero without all the showbiz, glitz, glam, and fights which came along with the more commonly accepted description of a hero – that of a Pro-Hero. He didn’t want to lose that – didn’t want to lose a fundamental part of his character that made him Midoriya Izuku.

But he wasn’t Midoriya Izuku anymore. Instead he was a—

Villain, Kacchan reminded, bringing him back to the present.

“You can’t,” the green-eyed technician told him.

A whimper of pain graced his fluffy ears then, and he looked towards that door marked in black perspex as Testing Studio Three – Materials. His mind drifted back, feather buzzing at his back as he remembered the whimpers he’d made when strapped to that chair with all the electrodes fastened to his skull.

“She’s hurting,” he murmured, eyeing that door, part of him wanting nothing more than to break it down and ensure that Five wasn’t there, strapped to a chair with electrodes fixed to her skull. He remembered that sticky blood on his hands, and the way his stomach had emptied its contents. Even if Five hated his guts, she didn’t deserve to go through that. Nobody did.

Yet you did, Kacchan’s shade said pointedly, as if to indicate just how different he was to the rest. But he was technically older than everyone else of his nest and that meant it was fine for that to happen to him. To actual children though, that was something completely different. It wasn’t okay then.

“You need to return to your room for lunch,” the brown-eyed technician chimed in, and Izuku turned his resolute gaze on that man instead. “You’ll have more testing to complete after.”

A cry came, soft, muffled, and lined with pain, and his feather’s moved before he could really process what was going on. They punctured through solid metal as though it were butter, carving something of an entranceway for him to kick down with his all-too rabbit-like feet. Fingers brushed against the back of his white shift, feathers batting those grasps away before they could latch on and pull him away.

“You can handle more, Five,” a man pressing a button and speaking into a microphone said, even as all eyes in that spacious control room turned to him as he intruded in that specific testing room he had never set foot in before.

He didn’t care much for their gazes in that instant, his eyes fixing on a familiar figure he could see through the reinforced glass screen. There were some sort of fibre cables creaking under the weight of the numerous blocks loaded on a platform above Five.

If it were to fall, he realised in an instant, it would kill her. He blinked, staring at Five as she stood there in that lonely testing room, eyes fixed on the blood leaking from her eyes, nose, and ears – telling of the fact that she was being pushed far beyond her limits.

“Add more weight,” the man seemingly in charge of that experiment ordered, and Izuku felt his teeth bare at that, his eyes watching as that platform teetered dangerously above Five’s head.

An image of what the future could look like flickered through his brain, his vivid imagination picturing that platform crashing to the ground, blood leaking out from beneath it. That imagined image overlapped with his memories of bloody feathers and warm corpses splayed out on the ground in a macabre display. He couldn’t let something like that happen again. He couldn’t let harm come to one of his nestmates – even if it was the one who was probably on the worst terms with him.

“No.”

It took him a couple of moments to realise that he was the one who had spoken, the sheer lack of his usual cheer and kindness – as kind as one could be in that place – missing from his voice. His voice sounded strange, even to his own ears, and yet Izuku couldn’t find it in himself to be anything other than enraged as he stared at the lab assistant who might have been worse than the one who had strapped those electrodes to his head with sheer, undilute glee.

“No?” the man echoed, cyan blue eyes boring into his golden ones, a choked laugh escaping the lab technician. “What are you two doing?” he asked, peering at his two handlers who were standing by the door looking ever so shifty. “Take your subject away. It has no place here.”

His feathers buzzled, a jolt running through them as he felt a haze descend upon him for a split second. There was an urge which came just as fast as it went, and it was an urge he’d never had before – had never even thought he would be capable of entertaining. The urge to rip a man limb from limb. That was the urge of a villain though, and Izuku felt his fingers dig into the meat of his thighs, trimmed fingernails leaving shallow red marks where they dug into his skin in spite of the thin layer of clothing he wore.

“No,” he declared once more, the sound of something snapping making him move. Feathers carved into yet another door, rabbit feet slamming into the metal obstacle attempting to bar his entry, making it buckle inwards. It only took a couple of feathers to make quick work of the door, the rest fending off any and all who tried to stop him. The familiar sensation of blood covering his feathers settled into his bones, even as his small arms grabbed a hold of Five, hauling her bodily back into the control room.

Behind them, the platform crumbled to the ground, slamming into the floor with enough force that he almost lost his balance even as he stepped back into the control room and spotted the mess it had become. Five was nearly a deadweight in his arms, golden eyes trying to find those green ones which always looked at him with anger and disgust.

Hazily, those green eyes looked towards him then, and Izuku felt the strangest surge of relief as shock, horror, and a familiar disgust went through those eyes as they spotted him and his proximity.

“Let’s go to lunch,” he decided, glancing over at the technician, eyeing the feather blade stuck through his shoulder, blood dripping down that mint green feather – which truly wasn’t so mint green anymore as he lingered there, listening to the sounds of pain from everyone he had cut. He hadn’t killed anyone that time around with those too-sharp feathers of his. There wouldn’t be any corpses on the ground that time around. He had just used his quirk to inflict surface wounds whenever they had tried to stop him from reaching Five.

Violence was a surprisingly useful deterrent against those cowardly lab technicians. The thought made his stomach churn, even as he lumbered towards the door with Five in tow.

“Sir, should we stop them?” one lab technician spoke, and Izuku didn’t look back. There was a lot he could detect through his feathers he was coming to understand with each passing day in that lab.

“No,” the technician in charge declared, sounding as though he had bitten into a lemon, and Izuku recalled his feathers then, sighing softly as he felt them reattach to his wings.

“Five,” he murmured, walking down the corridor then, knowing the rough way to go in order to reach their home there. “Are you—”

“’m fine,” she hissed, clambering to her feet properly and shoving away his arm. “Get off, loser,” she muttered, staggering into the wall, breathing as though she had just run a marathon. Silence lingered between them for a split second, before Five was glaring at him with those infinitely green eyes. “Why did you barge in, you idiot?” Five demanded, even as they continued walking away from that testing room.

“Because I could hear you in pain,” Izuku said, brow furrowing as he tried to figure out just why Five was so angry. It reminded him of that ditch, that river, and Kacchan glaring at him as he offered a hand. Why? Why were they so angry about him helping? He swallowed thickly, red overlapping with green for a split second, and then he reminded himself that Five wasn’t Kacchan, and he wasn’t Midoriya Izuku anymore. “I couldn’t leave you…”

“You just made things worse,” Five spat, pushing away from the wall and walking straight, even as she started mopping the blood on her face away. “He’ll… just be angrier tomorrow,” she said, spitting blood out of her mouth, and Izuku had no qualms about just who she was referring to, even if he didn’t know what that lab assistant’s name was. “If your feathers can stab through things, then why didn’t you just stab him through the heart and be done with it?”

Izuku blinked. “But that would have killed him…”

“That’s what I’m asking, imbecile,” Five stated like he was the dumb one. “Why didn’t you kill them all? You know what they do to us, and we’re supposed to be too weak to do anything about it…”

“Killing people is… wrong, though,” he said, frowning as he wondered just how Five was supposed to understand that morality when she had been raised in that sort of environment which didn’t seem conductive to learning socially acceptable morals.

“But that’s what we’re being raised to do, isn’t it?” Five told him, folding her arms with a huff.

Izuku frowned, lines crinkling his forehead as he stared at his nestmate. “I… don’t know,” he answered – because, really, he had no clue about what he was supposed to be being raised for in that strange lab.

“Forget it. It’s pointless talking to you,” Five grumbled, storming ahead of him with faster steps, and Izuku eyed the familiar doors which came into view. They were almost back to their burrow-nest – almost back to their fragile bubble of safety.

“Did you want me to kill him – that lab technician?” he asked, feeling ever so hesitant as he wondered just what it would take for him to plunge a feather into someone’s heart again. The swirling pit of possessiveness in his belly stirred like a cat uncurling after finishing its nap.

Five stopped, turning to stare at him then. “Would you?”

He swallowed, lips feeling awfully dry. “If you asked… then maybe,” he said, heart beating frantically in his chest at the thought of his feathers slicing deeper into skin, nicking arteries and making corpses pile up once more. Villain, Kacchan whispered in his ear. Could you? he asked himself, thoughts freezing up when an immediate answer of no failed to come.

Was he seriously considering it? Izuku swallowed, throat feeling raw as he stood there, staring into those unsettling green-green eyes which were weighing, measuring, and judging him right then and there.

Five only snorted, breaking that tenuous silence before disappearing into their nest with the swish of those sliding doors.

Izuku waited a few minutes before following.

Chapter Text

There was an eerie disconnect between what he knew and what he wished he knew, and it was one he had never quite experienced before. He had never given much thought to the matter of children – had never really been interested in partaking in the act generally required to bring children into the world. Which, perhaps, was why he was so befuddled by the slim case file he was looking after in one of his family’s properties closest to the location where he would be patrolling until the Chikugo Children Case came to its conclusion.

The map showcasing the routes he would have to patrol was in another folder, carefully organised, despite the disorganised mess he felt he was inside. How did one deal with the fact that someone had gone a step too far and made his own child without his knowledge or say so? He closed his eyes, huffing a soft sigh as he sat there on the sofa, looking out into the garden.

What was the relationship supposed to be between parent and child? Was it right for him to feel so strange and irritated at the thought of this child – who he didn’t know in the slightest – having been killed? Fingers curled at the corner of the case file, flipping back its cover to reveal the pallid face of the child’s corpse. It was still in death, whatever coloured eyes beneath those ashen lids never to be revealed because those eyes would never open again. It was a corpse of a child he had never met – and he had seen too many child deaths in his line of work. He had sat with a boy trapped after a villain with an earthquake-adjacent quirk had caused several blocks of flats and commercial properties to crumble in on themselves – had held his hand and pleaded with him to stay with me, help is on the way. He had watched that boy die, the medical care needed to save him arriving hours too late amidst the rubble he’d only been able to bypass with his quirk, and yet… Those feelings he had buried in his heart with that particular death weren’t quite the same as the maelstrom of emotion surging through him right then and there.

It felt personal that time. A smile curled at his lips, part of him already hearing Rumi’s response to that if he ever dared to voice those thoughts aloud. They had taken his DNA, so of course it was personal, he mused, sighing once again as he stared at the number which was the only identifier the body had been given in accordance with the little shoe which had been strapped to one of the feet when the corpse had been pulled from the river.

Who would do such a thing and why? Part of him asked, though he already knew the possible answers. More often than not villains were creatures born of circumstance and situation. Violent homes produced violent children or those too accustomed to violence – and it was rare that those children came out as well-functioning human beings. Then again, not all villains came from situations like that. There were those who relished in breaking the rules – those who didn’t seem to empathise with anyone besides their own self-flatulence.

A swish of movement caught his eye, tiredness almost allowing him to forget that he was playing host to his two friends while they were stationed there in that particular part of Fukuoka. “Ugh,” Rumi grumbled, and Shinya wondered then if his tiredness was to blame for what happened next.

“Rumi-sa—”

“Forget the honorific – we’re friends,” Rumi muttered, red eyes darting over to where he was, and part of him only delighted in the differences between his brand of friendship and her strange, brash version.

“Rumi, then…” he trailed off, the ingrained politeness in him feeling ever so slightly off kilter. “What does it take to make these people think that making other people’s children is okay?” he asked, one of the many questions swirling in his skull making itself known.

Rumi looked at him, squinting then, even as her eyes darted to the electronic clock hidden within the shelves on the lefthand wall. “Shin. It is three am in the morning,” she stated flatly. “That is seven hours too soon for me to be dealing with philosophical bullshit – now go to bed, for fuck’s sake,” Rumi said, and Shinya could only blink dumbly at that. Rumi sighed at that, pinching her nose and muttering something under her breath before she pinned him with her stare. She lifted her arm, pointing in the general direction of the bedrooms. “Go,” she ordered, and, feeling mildly bemused whilst also seeing the logic of her argument, he climbed to his feet, rubbing at his tired eyes as he made his way towards his bed.

Perhaps everything would make that much more sense in the morning – or so he hoped.

Hairs pricked on the back of his neck as he walked, hyperaware as he was those days, to every passing glance he received whilst out on patrol. Hypervigilance from being in a rather unfamiliar area, no matter if he’d been there for an entire week by that point. Though he suppose that, in part, came from the idea that someone was stealing his genetic material somehow. They could be stealing it right then and there, and using it to create yet another child to kill when all was said and done. He didn’t know, and that fact of the matter grated on him.

Yet that was a variable he couldn’t control, one which was completely out of the sphere of what he could control. His scarf blustered in the wind, the view of the Chikugo River from where he stood an ever present reminder of why he was there.

“Edgeshot, switch to Channel Five,” the operator coordinating that very mission – Centipeder, if he wasn’t mistaken, from Sir Nighteye’s Hero Agency – spoke, addressing him for the first time since that particular patrol had begun. “Sir Nighteye would like to speak with you, out.”

He blinked, registering the command for what it was, and swiftly adjusted the com set in his ear, switching over to the requested channel – which Sir Nighteye swiftly made secure and private from anyone who might have wanted to eavesdrop from the main channel all heroes on the case were on. “Sir Nighteye,” he greeted, pressing down on the right button to transmit his message. “You wanted to speak with me, over?”

“Edgeshot,” the older hero greeted. “There is a slight deviation to your agreed patrol route that I wish for you to take – confirm deviation request received, over,” Sir Nighteye informed him – and given how Sir Nighteye and his main two sidekicks had been the ones to organise and arrange the patrol routes for each hero to ensure they covered as much ground as possible…

“Confirmed, over,” he answered, feeling a buzzing at his wrist – the navigational watch each hero unfamiliar to the area had received, buzzing as it received an update to the route he was to take. The blue line indicating his patrol route had shifted, making the entire route slightly longer than before, but that was of little consequence. His usual patrol in his home city was far longer, what with how fewer heroes there were as opposed to the gathering of them in Fukuoka.

“There are a block of disused factories that were scheduled for demolition years ago now on your route. Some activity has been seen in that area, and it bears further investigation. However, you should try to not make contact where possible. Monitor from afar and report your findings to myself or Bubble Girl in person, out.”

There was a faint click, and then the hubbub of the main channel returned to his ear as Sir Nighteye shifted him out of the private channel. He tuned the sounds of other heroes reporting in out as best he could, knowing he could easily mute it when the time came for him to put his investigative skills to use. There were only seven other heroes out on the so-called ‘Graveyard Shift’, two of which he knew were Hawks and Rumi – or rather, Miruko, when she was on duty. In Rumi’s words, they were the suckers who’d drawn the shortest straws of the week, as she had put it. Yet part of him was almost grateful that they had ended up on the same shift for that particular week. It wasn’t often he had the chance to eat out with his two friends, not least because they were usually stationed a considerable distance from one another. Not to mention the fact that he was a rather light sleeper in the grand scheme of things, and having all of them enter and leave at different times would only have disturbed him, what with how they were all staying at one of his homes.

Sighing softly at the thought, he turned off the main street, keeping a mental note of his route as he strayed into the deviation that Sir Nighteye had wanted him to take.

It never stopped unsettling him; how quiet the area became despite only having left the main street a matter of minutes ago. The loud hubbub of the city quieted to a low din, the shadows of the building cast by moonlight seeming to darken that much further, even as a mangy alley cat skittered across the road and dived into the gloom of the nearest small alleyway.

It was an area which looked rife for a crime to take place, and yet there was that eerie quiet to the air. A quietness which usually was either a prelude to a crime, or a mask for something far more insidious taking place. His footsteps were silent on the ground – a fact not nearly noticeable in more crowded places, masking his approach as he came up on four factory buildings. They were disused, and in a state of disrepair, with numerous glass windows broken, the style of the building feeling several centuries out of date with modern times, and the chain-link fences surrounding them were worn, with what looked like holes cut through it.

Yet to a quirk like his, chain-link fences were no problem at all. Silently, he folded himself through the wide diamond gaps, unfolding himself and resuming his walk towards the towering buildings which had obviously been a production facility of some description. Yet now, Shinya suspected, it had found less savoury purposes.

His nose wrinkled beneath his mask, the stench of unwashed bodies, stale urine, and blood mingling into one as he edged into the shadows of the building.

Something illegal, and quite possibly dangerous was going on in that disused factory – said every instinct in his body, honed over the years of hero school and heroics themselves. The only question was whether or not he could figure out exactly what was going on. It was a place close by the river, meaning it opened up the option for boats to come by – or at least another route for anything to be moved illegally. It was also a little distance away from the hubbub of the city; a large building left to decay, undoubtedly with many hiding nooks for both himself, the homeless, and any unsavoury characters who might have taken up residence in that place.

Though as he slipped around the building, sleuthing through the shadows until he could see the river, he finally came to understand why that particular factory was of apparent interest to Sir Nighteye; that being the large discharge pipe which led to the river.

He swallowed thickly at that, silently hoping then that he would discover something, if only so he could put the matter of whether or not another child of his had been made to rest. What would he even do if they had made another? He shook the thought from his mind, focusing back on the task at hand instead.

A soft crunch of gravel made him pause, his own footsteps inaudible to all besides those who might have had a hearing-based quirk. Someone was there with him, he noted, all but melting into the shadows of the wall.

Plenty of people called him the ninja hero, and that was what he had fashioned himself as, no matter the amount of people who had called him edgy when he had first opted to take on that theme and pay homage to his ancestors. Not that anyone was really aware of how his mother had almost religiously taken to tracing their ancestry back to the Kōga in the feudal era. Then again, the carefully preserved documents which – had his mother revealed them – would probably have been the find of the century, found within a secret room in the house they owned in the Shiga Prefecture, had probably helped her to understand that much. Their family had seemingly had an obsession with tracing their ancestry and documenting it, and that went back through many a generations prior to his.

He remembered to that very day, finding out that his ancestors had been shinobi whilst huddled next to the panelled door to his father’s study, eavesdropping on his parents’ conversation. In hindsight, it explained many of the trips that his grandfather had taken him on – long before his grandfather and his parents had passed on – in which his grandfather had made him do something along the lines of training as though he had wanted him to take up the legacy of his ancestors.

Something moved in the shadows a matter of metres away, stirring him from his reminiscing, bringing his attention back onto the present. Hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end, part of him feeling distinctly nervous all of a sudden. It was a sensation he recognised back from one of his grandfather’s many trips – when the elderly man had slipped into the shadows and tracked him through the woods they were camping in. A distinct feeling of being watched. The feeling as though he was being hunted all of a sudden.

Yet as quickly as that moment came, it left, with the distinct sound of loud, booted footsteps heading his way. They were loud, and there were five distinct sets of footsteps. Caution made him slip into his streamlined form, darting up to the metal landing of the dilapidated fire escape. People were considerably less likely to look upwards, he had long since learnt, and the location was still wreathed in shadows. The chances of anyone spotting him were slim.

He crouched there for a matter of minutes, breathing ever so softly and soundlessly as a group of five men came into view. Four of them were built for fighting, each of them carrying what could only be a tranquiliser gun, if the bandolier of darts that one of them carried was anything to go off of. They were looking for something, or someone, Shinya came to understand in an instant, putting his big ‘analytical’ brain – as Rumi had termed it – to good use.

“You know what we’re here for,” the sole seemingly unarmed – so long as one didn’t notice the distinct bulge of an underarm holster on his left-hand side – man wearing a white coat spoke, making it rather obvious just who was in charge. “Tracker says its here somewhere.”

“Who the bloody hell let N-421 escape?” Bandolier asked, even as Shinya mentally filed his names for them away, even as his brain ticked over the N-421 name.

“It couldn’t be helped,” White Coat said flatly, looking at the small, handheld device he was holding. “Garaki-sensei managed to splice X-Group’s Two’s quirk after its failure in the final testing ring, and that was an intelligence-based type of quirk.”

Shinya frowned, freezing at that, even as a part of him was ever so grateful for the body-worn, recording cameras that Sir Nighteye’s Hero Agency had doled out to every patrolling hero. There were a few too many things to break down in that single sentence alone. He didn’t doubt that Sir Nighteye would also want to view the recording of his patrol that night – if only because the white lab coat that fifth man wore was setting off some sort of alarm bell in the back of his head. White lab coats weren’t generally a fashion statement and had little purpose outside of clinical settings.

Trawling around a derelict building was the very opposite of clinical, Shinya decided, lurking there in the shadows as best as he could all the while gathering information. He was remarkably good at gathering that much, despite being a limelight hero as opposed to an underground one like Eraserhead was. Though Eraserhead was on a different shift pattern to him that week, and he’d be undoubtedly interested in the information that group of probable criminals were unknowingly providing him with.

“The tracker is moving,” White Coat remarked. “I think it might be on the roof.”

“That fire escape is fucked,” the bearded one said, and Shinya remained as still as he could, knowing any form of movement could give him away as he felt all five pairs of eyes looking at the fire escape he was hiding on. Never had he been more grateful for a fire escape not to be up to regulation standards. Though given it was disused and long since supposed to have been demolished fire escape, fire safety regulations didn’t really apply.

“Find a way up then,” White Coat ordered, giving no more doubts as to who was in charge. “The good doctor is relying on you. Don’t think he’s forgotten that it was your group’s fault that he didn’t arrive in time to save his master.”

The man with facial tattoos snarled, even as the five of them moved – likely to find another way to reach the roof and whatever exactly was up there. Though the name N-421 didn’t exactly fill Shinya with much hope. “Garaki-sensei made it clear when boss became experiment zero,” Facial Tattoos hissed, scathing and biting, and Shinya watched as they all moved out of earshot – and he debated then for a single second as to whether to follow them, stay where he was, leave the site and report to Sir Nighteye, or venture up to the roof in search of N-421 and the answers it or they might hold.

Each held their own risks and rewards, and it was down to him, and him alone to choose the best option.

Yet even as he crouched there, debating the matter, there was a sinking feeling of despair and nervousness because Shinya had the distinct feeling that there might be a phone call to another hero of sorts. The Hero Commission had been unclear as to whether or not he was still active what with his other job as the principal of one of the foremost heroics schools in Japan. Then again, Shinya was fairly certain that many of their number still had a lot of prejudice against the quirked animal who had quickly made a name for himself in the world.

Though Shinya was fairly certain that Sir Nighteye had none of that prejudice, and would probably consider bringing the most intelligent creature on the planet on board to help them crack a case which was quickly coming to look as though it might be involving the creation of genetically engineered children, human experimentation, and a sinister plot involving the good doctor. Whoever the hell this Garaki-sensei was… Shinya could only tilt his head and wonder, even as Nighteye’s voice came over the comms.

“Edgeshot, you’ve been stationary for quite some time. Report in, over,” his fellow hero requested, and he opened his mouth to respond—

The fire escape shifted, the distinct sound of claws scrapping against metal ringing out, and Shinya pressed his comm set five times, sending out the distinct pulse to the channel to tell his fellow heroes that he was alive, well, not bleeding out in a ditch, but presently unable to respond.

Something was on the fire escape with him.

He had the distinct impression that he didn’t particularly want to come face-to-face with whatever exactly it was, if the sound of metal buckling and warping was anything of an indicator. Hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end, all his years of experience and underlying instincts telling him to run. So option three, leave the site and report in it was going to be. He moved then, not waiting for whatever N-421 was to catch up with him, even as he warped his own body and returned to ground level without a sound.

A deafening thud met his ears, a shadow dropping over him, the large industrial-sized waste disposal bin shifting and creaking ominously, and Shinya realised he had been too late in moving.

He lifted his eyes up, nervously meeting the small dog-like figure, with dark blue skin which gleamed with a faint metallic sheen in the moonlight. For all that it was shaped like a dog though, there were human eyes in its partially exposed skull. Its jaw lowered, two sets of sharp teeth revealed, and part of him readied himself to fight. Yet as quickly as that sensation came, it went.

The not-quite-your-average-dog tilted its head, what could only be N-421 looking at him with something like recognition.

Footsteps sounded distantly, the sound echoing, telling him of the five criminal’s hasty return, undoubtedly tracking the creature thanks to the tracking device just about visible on the thick metal collar wrapped around its neck.

Distantly, he could hear Sir Nighteye barking instructions in his ear, undoubtedly having tapped into his camera feed and seen the abominable dog in front of him, but all he could do was stare at the creature in front of him which he thought might have been human at one point, even as its jagged teeth wrapped around a single word.

“One?” the creature in front of him almost bleated, cocking its head in confusion.

Silence reigned between them for the slightest of seconds, and then Shinya was lunging back into the shadows as a feathery dart appeared in N-421’s shoulder.

“Did you get it?” the distinct voice of White Coat sounded, and Shinya could only ponder on what exactly had just happened – all the while hoping that he hadn’t been spotted in the brief instant he had probably been in view of the five criminals who were swiftly converging on the unconscious form of N-421.

“Got it,” Bandolier replied, eyes darting to the shadows where Shinya hid before they slid over to the next patch of shade, blissfully unaware of his presence there. “Now let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

Chapter Text

Five was staring at him.

Her green eyes felt as though they were boring holes into the back of his skull, glaring at him with a single-minded focus, even as part of him remembered the times when he could look in the mirror and have those same green eyes reflected back at him. Cautiously, he poked the surface of the mirror in front of him, staring at the golden eyes and the white hair that part of him was slowly growing accustomed to.

That was him now, and the life in that cruel lab was his. All that seemed to separate him from the rest of his den mates was the fact he remembered a life beneath a bright blue sky he had yet to see in that one. He was older than all of the rest of them on the inside, and that was supposed to count for something, wasn’t it? Izuku breathed in, shoulders sinking as he stared at the tiny child in the mirror opposite him.

“Why you staring at yourself again?” Seven’s bony finger poked his cheek, even as they sat there in the bathing rooms, scrubbing off that particular day’s misadventures.

“Leave him be,” Three murmured, sweeping Seven off her feet with a squeak, if only to throw her into the large communal bathtub which was more akin to a small pool than anything else. Or maybe that was his reduced size talking? Izuku tilted his head. “One’s nearly finished cleaning your detached feathers,” Three added as he padded back over to where he sat on a small wooden stool, red eyes watching him cautiously, and that wariness was all it took for Izuku to be reminded of just how regularly he was returning home covered in blood. It probably wasn’t a good look.

Villain, Kacchan whispered in his brain, the mantra unforgiving and unforgotten as that familiar voice told him exactly what he was there and then.

“Nine?” Three called questioningly, and, slowly, Izuku pulled himself out of his stupor. “Are you okay?” he asked, concern flashing across his orca-like face, teeth flashing in what was almost a threat. “You’re a bit out of it… like the last time you came home covered in blood.”

Izuku flinched at the reminder of that day, remembering that coppery smell which had flooded his nostrils and made him gag. It was strange how that scent was becoming more and more familiar over time. What was he becoming there, for the scent of blood to be something normal to him? He swallowed thickly at that, blinking in surprise as Three waved a hand in front of his face.

“Nine?” Three questioned, his face alarmingly close all of a sudden. “Do you need me to get One? I know you like his hugs…”

He blinked, wondering then why it almost felt like everything around him was moving like treacle. Exhaustion clawed at his limbs; the hour of their bedtime growing closer and closer now that they had dinner and were cleaning themselves up from that day’s activities – some more bloody than others.

When would it be over? Izuku could only wonder, the days of daydreaming about heroes bursting into that strange facility left long behind him as he sat there, musing about the days gone by. There was something about that place which made him feel ever so helpless. Yet he wasn’t as helpless as he’d once been without a quirk, he thought, swallowing as those golden eyes glinted in the reflection the mirror across from him cast.

It wouldn’t be over until he made it end, Izuku mused, blinking languidly as his gaze lifted up from the floor, locking his own golden eyes with the green of Five who was watching him. She had been doing that a lot as of late, he thought to himself – and by that, he meant a lot in the past hour of their shared existence.

The back of his mind itched as he caught sight of his feathers, clean and bloodless thanks to One’s careful ministrations. One was always careful, especially when it came to him, and Izuku could only tilt his head and stare at the older boy. Feathers moved, pale green feathered limbs returning to him one by one and reattaching themselves to his back; each with a light jolt that no longer made him flinch.

That reaction had long since been trained out of him, or perhaps that was the fault of the shock collar they always seemed to use on him whenever they made him do the obstacle course. The sensations from that were always sharper and stronger. His fingers brushed against his blessedly bare throat, part of him wondering what exactly would happen if he threatened his experimenters with his feathers when they inevitably tried to put the shock collar back on. He had the feeling it would be nothing good. Which was probably why he had never fought against having the shock collar put on him, he mused, leaning into the gentle touch that came at his head.

His instincts were strange things those days, and part of him blamed his general weirdness, whilst the other half blamed the animal features he now had thanks to his quirk.

“Nine,” One murmured, and Izuku could only blink languidly at that. “I’m going to hug you now,” he stated, and all Izuku could do was melt ever so slightly into the arms which wrapped around him from behind.

“You should tell him the story,” Three said matter-of-factly. “That’s what Emi-chan did when I was upset after they made us kill,” he added, as though he were talking about a simple fact, and it was the blasé way he’d said something so bizarre that made it take a few moments for the meaning of his words to fully sink in.

Izuku blinked, frowning at Three from where he was sat, snuggled against the chest of his brother. The same brother he needed to protect from the lab around him. Three needed to be protected too, Izuku decided. They all did. Yet as the eldest – if only by a technicality that no one besides him knew – that was supposed to be his responsibility. That was what he had been taught to do once before, when he had dared to daydream about having siblings, though his wish for a younger brother or sister had never happened in that lifetime.

His chest ached at the reminder, tears biting at the corners of his eyes as he thought of the face his once-mother would pull at the sight of his hands covered in blood.

Villain, Kacchan’s ghost whispered.

Hands curled into fists, even as a different set smoothed his wet hair down his shoulders. “Emi-chan called it Down and Out,” One spoke, his voice level and as calming as the hand petting his hair. “It’s a story about a mouse who gets lost in the sewers,” he continued, and Izuku only blinked once more, golden eyes meeting One’s yellow ones as he watched his den mate’s lips move. The exact meaning of those words was lost on him, and all Izuku could do was slump there and listen.

It was soothing, listening to his voice without heed for the words being spoken, Izuku found. His feathers felt the vibrations – a skill he was becoming more and more in tune with the more time he spent there in those labs. Get stronger or… something else would happen, he had learnt to be the motto of life there.

Midoriya Izuku wouldn’t have survived there, that, Izuku knew with every fibre of his being as he sat there. Not least because he’d been weak, but because he had been quirkless through no fault of his own. And how odd was it that he was starting to refer to the person he’d used to be in third person? He hummed under his breath, thinking then about quirklessness and everything the state of being had ever brought to his doorstep. Yet Izuku didn’t think anything good would happen to anyone who was quirkless there. They were training quirks, after all, and he had a feeling that Midoriya Izuku would have sooner found himself on a metal table, dead or otherwise wishing he was.

Yet he wasn’t Midoriya Izuku. He was Nine, and Izuku. Wasn’t he? There was no Midoriya Inko there anymore to give him back the family name he had once carried. His only family was there, around him right then and there. His hands were covered in blood, and yet still his family there accepted him… in a way he wasn’t quite certain his once-mother would have, if she had ever learnt that Midoriya Izuku had killed someone.

Izuku closed his eyes, sinking into One’s warm embrace, fingers crinkling in his white shift and holding on for dear life as though if he let go his brother would vanish. Like Midoriya Izuku had once disappeared from the world without impact or sound.

He dreamt of the fall.

It was one of the common things his subconscious liked to bombard him with whenever he went to bed in that place. Part of him had thought that, with time, that nightmare of his past would slip away. Evidently, he mused, staring up at the dark, unlit ceiling, that wasn’t what was going to happen.

The image of the blue sky above him was seared into his retinas, the sensation of wind at his back, and the sinking, looming feeling of impending doom as gravity had curled its fingers around him and yanked him down to the ground with a sickening snap. He wondered why the sound of that snap was ever so vivid in his mind.

He wondered if he was supposed to remember the pain of his bones breaking, or whether it was a mercy to remain oblivious… or maybe he’d just died that quickly… He had been quirkless before, unable to feel vibrations through feathers he’d never had before he’d woken up, pried from his test vat in that lab. He knew the difference between having a quirk and being bereft of one, and he knew that difference intimately.

Quirkless means worthless, Kacchan whispered in his head – his fateful words running on a loop inside his brain.

He had taken a swan dive, however unintentionally, and his brain was fixated on that very fact. Just like his brain was fixated on the fact that he had a quirk, and his body would never let him forget it. His ears twitched, brushing up against his brother as his mind refused to let him rest.

You died, part of him reminded, and that crippling sense of loss came to nip at his heels again, ebbing and surging as it always did when he was left alone with his thoughts for a little while too long. Yet it wasn’t quite as numbing and aching as it had once been, and Izuku liked to think that was progress.

One shifted in his sleep, a soft groan escaping his den-mate, and Izuku only pressed his face into the warm fabric and skin he could feel lying right beside him. Unmistakably alive, Izuku knew, golden eyes snapping open as he thought he heard something clatter by outside the safety of their bedroom. Was it paranoia? Or were his senses growing sharper? Izuku could only wonder, feeling his ears twitch atop his head.

“Nine?” One’s voice made him startle, even as he noticed the more subtle signs that One was awake – heartbeat and breathing having changed in the last few seconds. “Your ears are tickling my nose.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled, shifting himself then, if only to stop his ears from bothering his older brother.

“Mn,” One grunted, and all Izuku could do was lay with his head there on One’s chest, listening to the soothing sounds of his heartbeat.

It almost chased away the sound of Kacchan’s voice echoing in his head as he lay there, desperately trying to go back to sleep – if only to prepare for another gruelling day in the lab.

There was a monotony to his days, and there were mornings when he woke up feeling as chipper as Midoriya Izuku had on a weekend with no need to go to school and see his bullies and Kacchan. Then there were the mornings when he woke up feeling grumpy, irritable, and utterly miserable like that very day he had woken up to.

He wanted to bite the technician who announced his name-number, and yet he was terrified of those memories of blood—

Izuku scowled, part of him wishing then, in the deepest, darkest, recesses of his heart, that he could do away with his empathy along with his morals and get rid of them all in that facility. He wanted to eat proper rice and fish for breakfast. He wanted more than the bland mush given to him. He wanted to walk on the pavement and visit the nearest park. He wanted to hear the humdrum of cars and people going about their daily life. He wanted to sequester himself away in the nearest library and forget his troubles for a few hours in a good storybook.

Yet he couldn’t.

His wings twitched, his corridor escorts flinching at that, and Izuku could only muse on the fact that there always seemed to be more technicians involved when it came to him.

Because you killed people like a villain, Kacchan reminded him, and he hummed under his breath in contemplation at that. Kacchan always liked to remind him of his place in the pecking order, and that hadn’t changed, even after he’d died.

Why did the echo of Kacchan haunt him when he wasn’t the one to have died? Izuku could only wonder about that matter, even as his brain liked to point out all the things which had changed.

Though he had a quirk those days, so his place wasn’t quite the same. His shoulders sunk, even as they arrived at a familiar testing room. It was the one which fired projectiles at him, he recalled, shuffling inside and scowling at those white tiles that he knew would flip back to reveal propulsion mechanisms that would lob balls at him.

It wasn’t the obstacle course though, and that meant no shock collar – the bruises those projectiles made on his skin were painful enough, or so must have been the reasoning of whatever handlers were in charge of experiments and training simulations. He wondered who exactly was the face behind it all – or was it faces? His mind went back to the image of Dr Tsubasa standing in front of a human-sized test-tube, a monitor beside it showing a flat line like those medical dramas his once-mother had watched on occasion.

“Nine,” the sound of his name pulled him from his thoughts, and Izuku grit his teeth, knowing the sound of his name being called was always a prelude to the beginning of whatever exercise he’d been tasked with for the day. “We will now begin the exercise.”

There came a soft click that indicated the shift of the wall panels, a whistle of movement behind him, and then his wings were flapping, pulling his soft, probably not-so weak body out of the way. His limbs had long since become lean little things, baby fat having been tempered ever so slightly by the exercise and the gruel he ate day after day. A never-ending slew of the same meals and the same types of simulations and exercises—

It won’t end until you make it end, Kacchan whispered, his voice silky soft, resounding in his ears as he dodged the neon green balls lobbed at him.

His ears twitched, hearing a twin click as the exercise ramped up a level. “Training,” he muttered, narrowly avoiding the ball launched at his face. Pain resonated from his shoulder as one projectile found its mark—

“Hit,” the overseeing technician declared over the speakers installed in each corner of the room.

A familiar anger stirred within him, and he reminded himself then that there were no other living bodies in that room besides his own. The technicians watching him were safely behind thick glass and solid concrete walls. There was no chance of a repeat of that terrible day he didn’t think he’d ever forget.

How was he even supposed to express those feelings of his?

Violence wasn’t a good way to express anger, rather, it only frightened people, and Izuku didn’t want to frighten—He paused at that, eyeing up the mirrored glass behind which the technicians he loathed stood. Part of him could admit then, that he wouldn’t mind frightening those people. He probably already frightened them, and likely had ever since he had killed a few of their number.

Villain, Kacchan murmured, and Izuku gritted his teeth.

He was tired of it all, and there was a thought that raced through his mind far, far too quickly. What’s wrong with that? he demanded of Kacchan’s ghost that seemed to live in his head.

Guilt was the next thing to hit, even as his wings flapped, body twisting and contorting in the air to avoid all those neon green balls that soared towards him mindlessly. Of course being a villain was bad, he mused, wincing as he was smacked in the cheek by an errant ball.

“Hit,” his technician declared again, making his anger surge and writhe behind his skin as he flew around the room; ducking, diving, and performing all sorts of aerial manoeuvres which came to him ever so naturally.

Yet wasn’t he being raised there by villains or criminals of some description? He tilted his head, cheek throbbing as feathers sharpened at his back. A prick came at the back of his mind at each feather which detached, each turning into a mint green razor blade that sliced those neon green balls in perfect halves.

Another twin clicking sound made his ears twitch, more panels on the wall sliding open as the exercise increased in difficulty by yet another level.

Pain throbbed through his lower back, another ball finding its mark, lips pulling back in a snarl, and his eyes caught on the next projectile coming towards him. His eyes were good, he had long since learnt. Far better than the ones he’d had when he’d been quirkless. His reaction times were better, and those had been trained ever since he had been dragged from his den to his very first training session. His first simulation.  How long had it been since he’d woken up there in that lab? Izuku didn’t know – all he knew was the neon green ball coming towards him, intent on hurting him, and his body, hopped up on adrenaline, anger, and a familiar cocktail of spite, reacted.

His rabbit-like foot slammed into the ball, body twisting to add a bit of spin, and the deafening crack of the projectile embedding itself in the viewing window was music to his ears.

The mood was oddly subdued by the time he returned to the den for dinner. He thought he might have felt triumphant or gleeful at the success of cracking the glass of that viewing window and frightening the people holding him there. Yet there was no joy to be found. He was just tired, and he wanted to snuggle up next to One and forget about everything for a little while whilst he slept.

“Nine,” Seven demanded his attention, and Izuku blinked at her.

Part of him wanted to snap at her to go away whilst another part of him just wanted to grab a hold of her and hug her until he felt better. Kindness won out, as it was seeming to less and less the longer he spent trapped within those numerous walls.

“Niney Nine,” Seven grumbled, even as she was tackled to the floor. “Get off. I wanna go draw,” she declared matter-of-factly.

“Nine doesn’t usually seek out hugs,” Three said, looking at Seven pointedly. “And he usually goes to One when he wants them,” he added, and Seven looked contemplative for a moment. Then his ribs were creaking as Seven reciprocated the hug and rolled around until they were almost wrestling each other on the floor.

It was oddly soothing to play with one of his den mates in that fashion, and Izuku found himself relaxed enough to sit himself down and draw to his heart’s content. Well, that and Seven’s demands for what she wanted him to draw. She liked the night sky, stars, and lakes, he had long since learnt after having drawn picture after picture for her. He was the only one of them who had even seen the stars, the sky, the grass, and numerous lakes in person, and it showed in his crude, crayon-made drawings.

The hairs on the back of his neck pricked, and Izuku turned, gold meeting green as he met Five’s gaze as she continued to stare at him intently. His brow furrowed, nervousness thrumming through him as he pictured red eyes in place of those green ones.

Five seemed to like watching him those days, green eyes curious, angry, and watchful – an increasingly familiar combination to him.

One was similarly watching him, seeming much calmer than he had been fifteen minutes ago when they had been playfighting and tussling about on the ground.

He looked around then, the hecticness of the morning seeming to fade away as he took a moment to simply stare at his family there. His den mates. His nestmates. They were his family there, even if none of them seemed to share a drop of common blood between them. Well, besides Six and One, that was, and even the thought of that being the truth made jealous squirm in the pit of his stomach.

Though Six didn’t seem to interact with One all that much, and that soothed his jealous little ego just a bit. Only a bit though. He was a jealous creature at heart, he was coming to learn, and he wasn’t sure that was a good thing.

Six seemed to prefer being on his own, much like Five; and generally Izuku could always spot him in the company of a good book. That, more often than not, put his feelings of jealousy to rest.

“Nine.” Seven tugged on his sleeve, pointing at the blank piece of paper in front of them. “Draw,” she ordered, picking out her favourite crayon then to continue with her own drawing. “Mountain,” she said imperiously, tapping at the blank page waiting to be filled with colour.

“Okay,” he mumbled, picking up his own crayon then, well accustomed to Seven’s demanding ways – she wasn’t bitter like Five, though she had yet to face the gauntlet that One, Three, and Four had gone through. And hopefully she wouldn’t have to, he mused, fantasizing not for the first time about breaking out of the lab that held them prisoner there.

Where even were they? Izuku tilted his head, wondering what prefecture they might be in – wondering what season they were in. Were the cherry blossoms blooming already? Or had that season long since come and gone? He hummed under his breath at that, blinking as the lights dimmed.

There was a low flicker, a distant crash from somewhere in the lab making his ears twist in the direction the noise had come from. A shrieking alarm went off, a distinct cry of, “Not again!” ringing out, and Izuku jumped as the bars blocking off their doorway descended far too quickly, even as the sliding doors were retracted out of the way.

Seven stopped drawing, turning to face the barred view of the corridor outside they now had.

The hallway was lit up in a flashing red colour, and Izuku swallowed, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand up on end. He’d never seen that happen before, and a flashing red light usually indicated that something was wrong.

His ears strained, faint vibrations echoing through the floor.

It almost felt like footsteps; great, loping strides of something which couldn’t be human. Or a mutant-type quirk which had warped their body, Izuku mused, attention snapping back to the room as One spoke.

“We should go to bed now,” One said, even as a hissing click revealed the entranceway to their shared bedroom.

“What’s going on?” Seven asked – as if any of them would know the answer to that question – padding across the room to peer into the corridor, small hands closing around the bars. “Why’s the corridor gone red?”

One bit his lip, glancing between Seven and Three.

“It means that something’s out there that shouldn’t be,” Four’s soft voice answered instead. “It last happened when Five was as small as Eight… well, around our rooms. It happened around my training area when I was in training three weeks ago.”

“We should go to bed now,” One declared, and Izuku felt an overwhelming sensation of danger all of a sudden.

“I wanna see what’s out there,” Seven said, turning to face them, and his eyes widened at the pale, far too large hand that reached towards the bars from outside. Grey hair tangled in those overly large digits, a yelp escaping Seven as her head was slammed back into the bars. There was a screech; a distinct calling sound which sounded far too much like the sound hyenas made when going after prey.

A beak slipped through the gap between the bars, sharp, jagged teeth visible—

Eyes which looked devoid of thought met his golden ones, and Izuku knew for a fact that, no matter if the creature was bipedal like a human, it would kill without a second thought. Something in those blank eyes made him shudder, the looming sense of threat overwhelming him as those jagged teeth dripped with saliva.

They loomed over Seven, maw wide open, unbridled hunger in its stare, the intent clear—

Seven wasn’t allowed to die, his lizard hindbrain informed him with aplomb, sounding altogether far too calm for the situation at hand. His den mate was in danger. The old Izuku would have been panicking and wondering how to help. Yet all he felt was an odd numbness as he stared at the creature poised to kill.

Would you? Five asked in his mind.

A blur of mint green whistled past his head, the faint prickle of his wings detaching barely registering as he focused on the threat. A familiar anger thrummed beneath his skin, his loathing of that lab surging to the surface, even as the perceived threat to his den made his hackles rise.

Movement caught the corner of his eye, red string looping around Seven’s waist and pulling. Yet all he could feel were the sensations of his feathers slicing through flesh once more.

He remembered it so vividly; that day however many weeks or months ago it had been. He remembered just how easy it was for his razor-like feathers to rip through flesh and bone; almost as though they’d been designed to do just that.

Blood spattered on the corridor wall, bloodstained mint green feathers swirling around ready to strike again. A terribly familiar stench filled the air, memories of the day he had killed all those technicians clawing at the back of his mind.

The sickly thump of a heavy body hitting the ground told him that wasn’t necessary, eyes narrowed and watching the body of that monster for any hint of life.

Villain, Kacchan whispered.

“I know,” Izuku murmured, calling back his feather blades, and watching with a mild fascination as his feathers sliced through the chest of that strange, pale-skinned monster just as easily as they’d severed those neon green balls in two. But if being a villain meant protecting his nestmates… Izuku tilted his head, watching as the pool of blood spread through the bars. “I don’t think I mind…”

Chapter Text

Sometimes all it took was a single crack.

A single lead, or a single sighting of a person of interest were things which could kickstart a new facet of an investigation. Then that could crack the case wide open, revealing everything to everyone.

Or at least reveal enough information for the heroes to sweep in and plan a raid or a rescue, and sometimes both…

Fukuoka had long been his territory, from when he’d been born and raised, to when he’d been found by the Commission, and then where he’d spread his wings upon finally being allowed to debut as a hero at the tender age of eighteen.

Only four years ago… how time had flown, he mused, tilting his head even as he glided through the skies high above Fukuoka, his mind ticking over all the information which had come from Sir Nighteye that very afternoon.

He knew his city; and he knew it well. Yet even he hadn’t been aware of the particular brand of darkness which had slowly been spreading its roots within the place he called home.

The sudden influx of new heroes encroaching on his territory hadn’t been all that kind on his instincts; though the assistance they had provided on the case had been welcome – at least to the logical side of his brain that wasn’t mildly stressed by all the new forces crawling through his city. New heroes meant a host of new, powerful quirks, more often than not, and more powerful quirks meant greater disasters when they had to be used.

His feathers didn’t agree with fire, even if they could withstand a small blaze for a few seconds – a minute if he was lucky, no matter if his favourite hero happened to wield that particular element. Yet he’d been trained to overcome his limitations as best as possible. A lesson which had all but been ingrained into his bones.

But he didn’t like to dwell too much on his past and the various amounts of training he’d had to endure under the Hero Commission’s thumb.

Idly he wondered what would happen if it turned out the villains they were facing had used his own DNA and had made a little mini Hawks. He wondered what would happen if those villains had made a miniature Rumi, and another miniature Shinya. The Commission, he knew, would be chomping at the bit to get their hands on a child with the same quirk as him. In fact, he was almost certain the Hero Commission would be incredibly happy to take any children they found in the facility, especially if their biological donor wasn’t interested in taking care of an entire small child.

He chewed on his lip then, part of him wondering if he was actually prepared to take care of an entire child. Shinya, he knew, would do it in a heartbeat if it came to it. Rumi, he knew, would probably function better as the wine aunt, and whatever that specifically entailed. And himself…

He swallowed then, reminding himself that – although there was a high likelihood they’d gotten a hold of his DNA what with him being Fukuoka-based – it wasn’t a certain thing that they’d used him as… a template as such.

Whatever helps you sleep at night, he could almost hear Rumi say, and he could only sigh loudly. It wasn’t like there was anyone around to hear him—

The familiar tune he’d set Rumi’s ringtone to blasted through his headset, breaking through the muffled quiet of the evening sky, and his wings flapped in mild fright at the sudden noise. He reached up, jabbing the button on the side of his headset to answer the call.

“Birdbrain,” Rumi greeted, and he nearly cracked a smile at that.

“Rumi,” he replied, casting his gaze towards Shinya’s place where he knew the pair of them were likely resting – and undoubtedly mulling over everything Sir Nighteye had told them that afternoon. “What’s up? Besides me.”

“We’re getting takeaway,” Rumi declared. “Get your feathered backside over here.”

The beep that followed made him blink, part of him taking a moment to realise that Rumi had already hung up on him. She hadn’t even given him a chance to delay… Yet ,then again, that was typical Rumi behaviour: short, sharp, and very much to the point.

Perhaps even more to the point, what with everything that had unfolded that very afternoon…

Gatherings of heroes tended to be noticed, and all that attention – all those eyes on them – weren’t particularly helpful when they were trying to investigate and then plan a raid.

Yet Shinya’s lead at the warehouse some three weeks ago had all but stuck a crowbar in the cracks of the investigation and peeled back the surface, revealing the bare bones of the case beneath; or, rather, in this case, the location of the base they were using.

CCTV came in handy, revealing a truck that had transported… the creature back to the facility, cameras piecing together the rough route it took. A detective with a scanning-type quirk, and the court-mandated permission to use it, had then revealed a large basement facility beneath a relatively disused warehouse that had once been used for some sort of water-quality testing company.

Therma, a relatively unknown rescue hero quite far down in the ranks, had then used their own quirk on the suspicious site from a decent distance dressed in civies. Their quirk was Thermal Vision, giving them an idea of the expanse of whatever operation was going on down there; revealing a number well into the three-digits. And that was only an estimate, what with how many of the heat signatures seemed to be bunched together in various places.

He sighed softly then, the sound lost to the raging winds, his brain still ticking over what Sir Nighteye had gone through with every single hero he had opted to assign to the raid. All three of them were set to participate tomorrow, ready to bust through the doors and rescue as many hostages as possible. That was one of the two possible worst-case scenarios, Sir Nighteye had informed them, face looking incredibly grim after he’d then used his quirk on another hero who’d be participating in the raid.

There was a high chance that one or some of the children could be used as hostages, Sir Nighteye had informed them with a frown set upon his face. And the other was that, upon being discovered, they would attempt to destroy any and all evidence of what they had been doing. A frown came to rest on his own face that time around, part of him wondering then if his feathers would be quick enough to save everybody.

They knew the rough layout of the underground facility – ages old blueprints stretching back to a pre-quirk era construction which had then been built on top of again and again, creating an extensive underground bunker of sorts, having been dug out and found to give them every single advantage possible.

And now they were about to go in, he mused, blinking as Rumi’s ringtone belted through his ears again.

“Birdbrain, stop overthinking things and come back,” Rumi ordered, and he smiled somewhat fondly at that.

He had a friend, and she knew him very well. They both did.

“On my way,” he answered, pushing his thoughts and worries about the upcoming raid to one side before flapping his wings and making headway towards his temporary home. Before he had to move back into his apartment when Rumi and Shinya eventually returned to their actual homes… It was almost surprising how much he was enjoying bunking with Rumi and Shinya around one of the latter’s many homes.

Being the heir of a long line of shinobi apparently came with owning plenty of land, it seemed, of which Shinya was the sole remaining inheritor. Part of him played with the idea then – of never going back to his apartment; of never having his handler knock on the door and give him assignment after assignment.

Yet that was just a fleeting dream; an ideal that would never come to pass.

Just like his wish to be a hero in a world with time to kill.

“Damn straight you better be,” Rumi declared, always, as ever, getting the last word in before she hung up instantly.

He was back home in minutes.

“What’s bothering you?” were the first words out of Shinya’s mouth after he’d finished chewing and swallowing his first chicken pop.

He blinked. “Nothing?” he tried, adopting a jovial smile.

“Fake smiles don’t work on us, bird boy,” Rumi said matter-of-factly. “Let’s try communicating. With our words, you know. For once,” she added, chewing on one of her premium carrots from the market she had found there in Fukuoka whilst occasionally stealing some deliciously crispy chicken from off his plate. “Talk. Let’s go.”

A foot slammed into his leg, Rumi staring at him pointedly as she sat there. “So,” he mumbled, trying to hide the wince. Rumi didn’t hold back with her kicks, even ‘gentle’ ones. “You planning to go into some form of interrogation work—”

Rumi lifted her foot; a threat and a promise all wrapped up neatly in a Miruko-branded slipper.

He held his hands up. “Wait! Wait! Stop,” he hissed, ignoring the soft chuckle Shinya let escape at the panicked expression undoubtedly scrawled across his face. “Fine,” he mumbled, even as Rumi let her slipper-clad foot rest back against solid ground – and the furthest away from his head it would probably be for the entire evening. “It’s probably the same thought that’s been bothering both of you…”

Shinya closed his eyes, breathing out a long sigh. “The possibility that we might each have a child made from our DNA in that facility,” he remarked. “Well, we already know they made one of mine already,” he said, something Keigo thought was bitterness seeping into his voice. “Which means there’s a high likelihood that there might be more… of mine… in that facility.”

“Have—” Rumi paused – a sight as scarce as diamond dust – visibly taking a moment to contemplate. Which was an incredibly uncharacteristic action of hers, though he knew if he pointed that fact out he would probably receive a face full of Miruko-slipper served with a side dish of pain. “Have you figured out what you’re going to do?” she questioned, frowning then. “You know – if there’s a whole ass child whose DNA is at least half yours… I’m sure as hell not ready to parent…” she mumbled, and he wondered then if the idea of raising a child was somehow her one and only weakness.

Part of him had always assumed that Rumi had no weakness; no shady parents who’d relinquished her care to the commission, and no dark secrets buried in the closet. She was the Rabbit Hero: Miruko, and every villain in her usual patrol route knew to fear her.

“The commission would probably try to take them,” he input, voicing then what he thought would be the fate of any rescued hero-offspring-creation who didn’t have at least one biological relation willing to take them in. “You know they’d try.”

“Which is why Sir Nighteye has reached out to Nedzu,” Shinya said. “You know how the Hero Commission is about UA’s Principal. Though, more to the point, he regularly works with children – slightly older than, well… the bodies pulled out of the river, but he is one of the more experienced heroes who regularly deal with children.” Shinya frowned. “Then there’s his… background, which likely makes him the most uniquely suited to assist with rescuing these children and gaining their trust.”

“So he’s confirmed his participation in the raid, then?” he questioned.

Rumi snorted. “He’s been chomping at the bit,” she declared, somehow having a greater insight than Shinya, which was a surprisingly rare occurrence. She tapped her ears. “I heard a phone call between Nighteye and our beloved rat. He’s mostly been doing remote work on this case… and all I’ll say is that I almost feel sorry for those poor sods,” she said, a vicious grin stretching her lips. “They have no idea what’s coming for them. They’ve poked the rat-shaped beehive, stirred the hornet’s nest up… however you want to put it.”

“And, as amusing as that is to contemplate, I do believe we should all be heading to bed soon,” Shinya said, taking a sip of his drink then, the food already half-devoured between the three of them. “We need to be fully rested for tomorrow,” he added, as if they both didn’t already understand the gravity of the situation due to unfold tomorrow.

He tilted his head then, part of him wondering if tomorrow’s raid would be added to his long list of successes, or whether it would join his small yet ever growing list of failures.

The day of the raid dawned with high winds and grim, grey skies that loomed almost ominously over them all as they assembled at the meeting point under the cover of stealth. There was to be no indication that they were coming – rather, the only warning they would have was when the doors were kicked in and they all descended upon them with the fervour of rabid squirrels spying an acorn.

“Hawks,” Sir Nighteye relayed to his headset. “Entry at Point C. Be ready.”

The line went dead as soon as the instruction had been given, and he could only watch as Edgeshot and Miruko received their own instructions.

“Where you boys at?” Miruko questioned, tilting her head, a signature cocky smirk on her lips as she looked between the pair of them. “I’m at Point B for entry.”

“C,” he answered, wings twitching in anticipation of their usage.

“It looks like we’ve all been separated, at least for now,” Edgeshot said, glancing between the two of them. “I’ll see you inside, most likely,” he remarked, and then he was off as quietly as he’d arrived.

“See you later, Birdbrain,” Miruko said, hopping off to her own entry point with the others assigned to Point B.

He made his own way towards Point C – on the building beside the one due to be raided – noting that only fliers amongst the heroes were gathering there, which he supposed made sense. They were evidently the group who would be ensuring aboveground was clear whilst those at Point B and A delved into the suspected maze below ground.

Who knew? Maybe there would be a handy map to use to navigate the underground section of the building that their criminals would lend to them… or, rather, Miruko would liberate from their unconscious bodies. He tilted his head, snickering softly at the mental image that painted in his head. Yet that amusement soon vanished as he glanced down at his watch, quietly waiting for the order to be given. The reminder of just what was at stake there settled in, and he swallowed thickly then, praying then that he would find no blonde-haired, red-winged child within the walls of that facility.

Chapter Text

There were fingers digging into his bony shoulders, determinedly trying to tug him away from the corpse at the doorway. “Nine,” Three called, even as One tended to Seven. “We should go to bed now,” he remarked, and Izuku felt his head turn towards their sleeping area.

Hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end, and his gaze shifted back to the flickering red corridor. There was something wrong, or so his instincts screamed, ears twitching as he thought he heard sounds from further away.

“Nine,” Three murmured much more softly, slowly pulling him towards the safety of their bedroom area.

His heels dug into the floor then, jaw clenching for a moment—

Six coughed, choking then – a sound which made Three pause and One look up from where he was cuddling Seven who was clinging to him like a limpet. Izuku felt his hackles rise, heart beating in his chest ever so loudly because his instincts were telling him that something was very, very wrong. His eyes narrowed, peering into the gloomy-looking bedroom, mouth bone dry as he tried to figure out what was behind the feeling of wrongness.

It was there when he was staring at his bedroom which was supposed to be safe. That was the routine; his bedroom was a place that nobody bar them intruded upon. Yet something deep within his bones warned him of going inside right then and there.

Six coughed again, a soft hissing sound reaching his ears, and Izuku felt his eyes widened as he finally spotted a thick white cloud of gas slowly filling their bedroom from the ground upwards. His own throat tickled, and then his feathers were moving.

Bloodied mint green feathers snuck beneath the fabric of his warrens’ clothing, pulling them away from their bedroom then.

“Nine?” One called, looking just as confused as the rest of them as they each found themselves dangling a few centimetres off the floor.

Izuku lifted his finger, pointing then at their bedroom. “Gas,” he pointed out, mind racing even as another loud crash met his ears.

Their room was no longer safe – that, Izuku knew with an uncanny certainty. Yet, he mused, staring out into that flickering red corridor, neither was the corridor… but between gas and strange creatures, he knew which one he could defeat to protect his warren. He was already a villain; his hands were already bloodstained. It didn’t matter how many monsters, whether or not they wore human skin, he needed to end. He would do so because he was the oldest and therefore the burden of responsibility fell to him.

“One!” Three hissed, eyeing up the growing cloud of gas that was slowly inching towards them like fog on the horizon. “We need to go!”

 “Where?” Six asked, looking perturbed and scared at the prospect of leaving.

“The door,” One decided, pointing a finger at the barred door to their room. “We need to get through the bars—”

“But what about the scary monsters outside?” Seven questioned, shivering then, her hair askew from where one of those scary monsters had grabbed her, her blue eyes wide and wild. “I don’t want to go outside!”

“There’s something wrong with that gas,” Three mumbled, red eyes fixing on him as he stood there. “Look—Nine will be going with us, won’t you?”

Izuku nodded, side-eyeing the spreading cloud of thick soupy white gas that was slowly rolling over the ground towards where their group was standing.

“He took care of the scary monster before!” Three declared. “And One pulled you away from it. They can do it again. We’ll all be there with you…”

“Nine”—Izuku turned at the sound, finding One glancing between him and the barred door—“can you cut the—?”

A wail pierced the air, the sound piercing his ears, and Izuku winced, hands covering his rabbit ears as best he could as Four screamed at the door and the wall next to it. Brickwork crumbled, bars dislodging from where they were held, creating a child-sized hole for them to get out of. “Done,” Four declared, a slight hoarseness to his voice as they stared at the hole in the wall for a good few moments.

His wings flapped, carrying him towards the escape, hairs on the back of his neck rising as he registered just how unsafe it was. There was danger out there, he knew deep in his bones. He cast his gaze back on his warren, knowing that it was mostly up to him to keep each of them safe. That was his duty there; the role he had taken up, despite probably being the shortest of them all.

Above them, the red lights flashed ominously, alarms blaring from further away from what had once been their home. It wasn’t going to be their home going forwards, Izuku realised with a sudden chill.

“Where do we go?” Six’s voice was quiet, part of Izuku startling at the sound of it, if only for how little he’d heard Six speak before. He was probably the quietest of them, with Four coming in close behind – or, maybe, the quietest one was probably Eight. Yet Izuku didn’t really think anyone had properly taught him how to talk.

That was part of what probably made him an oddity in the eyes of his technicians and his nestmates. He was supposed to be the youngest – yet, deep down, he was the eldest, not that any of them knew that much – and he could already talk in proper full sentences. It was probably uncanny. Freaky, he dared to think.

Yet if there was anything he was well accustomed to by that point, it was being abnormal.

There was always something about him which made him stray away from being normal. In the life before that one, it had been his quirklessness… and in his current life… well, the fact that he remembered his past life was undoubtedly incredibly odd.

Being strange was evidently something that remained constant no matter what—

Thud.

His train of thought ground to a halt, pulling into the station of battle, and just like that his feathers were raised, eyes focusing on the direction that noise had come from.

There was a pale-skinned monster there, looming ahead of them in that flashing red corridor, not unlike the one that had attached Seven in the safety of what had once been his home in that lab.

It wasn’t home anymore.

And that monster was a threat to him and his own.

Gold eyes narrowed, feathers unhitching from his wings with tiny pinpricks of awareness in the back of his head. Seven feathers flew away from the rest, tucking themselves beneath his warren’s clothes in case of emergency. The rest of his feathers sharpening, ready and waiting to deal with the monster ahead of them. He watched as yellow eyes devoid of rational thought locked on him, stood at the forefront of their little group.

Spittle flew from its mouth, predator spotting what it thought to be prey, and sharpened feathers also flew – sinking into flesh with a familiar bite. His quirk was apparently incredible for dealing with enemies like that, Izuku mused, part of him lingering on his past then as he stared at the pool of blood slowly starting to leak from the body in front of them. Oh how far he’d come from the boy who’d awakened in that lab, and the boy who’d died just before that… Izuku swallowed thickly at the thought, even as his own thoughts brought him back to the days of training he’d completed within the boundaries of that lab.

Wasn’t it only natural he could manoeuvre and use his quirk fully after all of that? After all the electric shocks if he fell off the obstacle course or didn’t finish it fast enough? After being pelted with numerous rubber balls, more so if he didn’t manage to dodge most of them before the difficulty inevitably hiked?

His ears perked up, hearing the distant sounds of walls crumbling and fighting, from the sounds of things, and Izuku wondered what exactly was going on. Why had there been gas released into their room which made his instincts howl? Why were the red lights flashing in the corridor? Why was it the noisiest he’d ever heard the lab to be? Izuku chewed on his lip, ears twitching towards the sound of a closer noise.

There was a clink as the clasps of a briefcase were closed, murmured curses being uttered. “Remove evidence,” the man mumbled to himself like a mantra, and then a door opened in the corridor ahead of them before Izuku could even think about leading his warren away from the commotion.

There was too much happening, far too quickly.

A flash of white lab coat was the first thing he saw, his brain recognising a lab technician when he saw one. He’d been taken for testing and training far too much to associate that white lab coat with anything else.

The next thing he saw were the eyes; vivid pink irises on black sclera, that widened when he saw all of them standing there, frozen mid-run.

Izuku spotted the gun next.

There was a gun in that technician’s hands—a threat—and Izuku reacted near instinctively, bloody feathers sharpening once more as they soared through the air with intent.

He remembered the sensation of piercing a human chest like it was only yesterday he’d massacred a group of lab technicians like the villain he might as well have made himself. Yet unlike before, there was no panic. There was no cold realisation that he had done something truly evil and stolen someone’s life. He was only protecting his warren from a threat, after all.

His wings flapped, feet landing back on the ground which he was soon bouncing off with large, loping strides that suited the rabbit half of his quirk.

“Nine!” One hissed, panic audible in his voice.

“Where are we going?” Seven asked, looking as confused as ever as Three pulled her along by the hand.

“Out of here, obviously,” Five declared, tilting her head and looking around the corridor as if another one of those monsters would come lumbering around the corner.

Six folded his arms. “We can’t stay here anymore,” he declared, and Izuku avoided looking at him – avoided the jealousy that always stirred when he thought of One and Six and their obvious relation. “But which way do we go?” he asked, peering at the four-way junction they’d arrived at.

“Nine?” Three tilted his head.

“Why are you asking him?” Five demanded.

“Because he’s been leading us so far,” One said, and Izuku could only watch as Five’s face contorted into something unreadable. Was it rage, anger, confusion, all three, or something else? Izuku mused, stiffening then when he noticed the way all his nest-mates turned to him as one.

He felt it then: the weight of responsibility. It was a heavy thing that lodged itself in his stomach, with the acknowledgement that he was suddenly responsible for getting all of his warren out of there alive.

“But he’s just a—”

The ground rumbled all of a sudden, the hair on the back of his neck standing up on end even as his ears perked up. His head snapped around, barely paying attention as a few red lights smashed, casting them even further into the shadows as he glanced down on of the corridors off to the side of them.

He saw them then—or, rather, he heard them first as he heard the wall crumbling beneath the sound of a very familiar smash. Izuku felt his breath catch in his throat, a very familiar visage of gold, blue, and red catching the corner of his eye as he turned to face the sight.

“Nine—” One’s voice was soft, ever distant to his fluffy little ears that were turned towards the sounds of fighting, fingers digging into his bony shoulder, grounding him as he stood there, frozen at the sight.

“You can’t be a hero.”

Izuku could remember sitting in front of the television years ago, watching the televised raids and rescues that All Might had taken part in. Much more recently, he had dreamt of heroes bursting into that lab and rescuing him and his den mates. So why was there a pit forming in his stomach at the sight? He swallowed, his throat dry as a desert as he stared at the bright light of the corridor that hadn’t been plunged into the darkness which hid them from sight.

If the heroes were there to defeat the villains—

Villain, Kacchan’s ghost hissed in his ear, and Izuku felt his legs freeze at that, his toes the only things edging into the light as the battle waged on in front of them.

He glanced down at his hands, sharp eyes picking out the bloodstains marring them. There was blood marring his hands both physically and figuratively.

“Oh,” he murmured, realising himself for what he was then.

He was a villain who killed people.

Heroes didn’t rescue villains – they defeated them – and that was what he was right then and there. He wasn’t a good person anymore. He wasn’t a hero trainee—though had he ever really been one? Izuku couldn’t help but muse as he stared at the scene unfolding before him with a Missouri Smash. Izuku swallowed, noting that there, in the gloomy darkness of the lab, All Might’s bright blue eyes didn’t look so friendly. There was a harsh glint to them that sent fear running down his spine.

The way that All Might was supposed to strike fear into the heart of villains.

He stepped back then, ignoring One’s quiet, whispered questions about who those strange people were. Feathers twitched, moving in line with his thoughts as his instincts whispered at him to leave, and leave now.

Running hopped up on adrenaline and instincts, his feet moved, feathers catching in his warren’s clothing and dragging them with him as he fled from those heroes. He was selfish like that, or so it seemed, what with, out of all of them there – he was the only villain. The only one the heroes wouldn’t want to save… Izuku sucked in a shaky breath, remembering the blue sky above, green hair flying above, and the sickly snap of his bones breaking.

People had never wanted to rescue him.

Izuku could only wonder if that said something about him. Quirk or no quirk, there was just something wrong with him.

No one had come for him in the end, either.

Otherwise Midoriya Izuku would have still been alive.

 He breathed out, the sensation of fingers digging into his shoulder dragging him out of those memories of his fall. “Nine!” One called, looking ever so worried then, and Izuku felt bad for making him worry. He was supposed to be the one leading them to safety. Izuku swallowed. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.

“Nine…” Four’s voice was soft as he hung in the air, suspended like the rest of his warren from his feathers that he’d long since tucked into their clothing. “Can you put us down now?” he asked, his voice sounding as hoarse as ever.

Izuku tilted his head, ears straining to hear the sounds of any heroes on their way to fight him.

The corridors around them were mercifully quiet, sounds coming from behind and above them. Satisfied of no imminent threat, Izuku let his feathers down, loosening his control over the ones tucked into his nest-mates clothes.

“Where do we go from here, then?” Five demanded, folding her arms and staring at him ever so intently as if waiting for him to crumple beneath her glare.

Izuku wracked his brain, panic fluttering beneath the surface as he tried to think of a plan of escape on the spot. They needed to go up, didn’t they? But—

“Look!” Seven said, speaking up for the first time since leaving their room, pointing at the pale blue line drawn on the wall, weaving across the grey block of concrete and down the next set of stairs just about visible around the corner. “Blue means escape! Like Emi-chan’s story…” she added, a familiar conflicting expression passing across her face as the ever missing Emi-chan came up in conversation again.

Izuku had a horrible feeling he knew exactly what had happened to the strange, presumably kind lady who’d shown his warren an inch of kindness in their stay within those walls.

Kindness wasn’t something that lasted in a place like that.

Instead it was broken down, shattered like broken glass beneath their feet – the lingering memory of it cutting that much deeper when that kindness was inevitably ripped away.

“Let’s follow it, then,” Izuku stated, fear stirring in his gut as he wondered about exactly what Emi-chan had left behind for them.

“Come on, then,” Seven called, and it was as if a switch had flipped for how her attitude had changed; scared one moment and then boldly walking ahead of him in the next.

Down they went, all eight of them hurrying down the stairs with a renewed urgency, following that blue line drawn on the wall. It lead them through a small maze of corridors – that blue line overlapping with red, orange, and pink lines in places – but still they followed it until its end: a large room that looked to be a plant room of some description.

There was machinery covered in red paint neatly distributed across the floor, pipework that ran above their heads and from some of those bulky red and black pieces of equipment. Yet Seven didn’t hurry towards any of that. Instead she headed towards the furthest corner of the room, ducking and weaving around the obstacles in their route.

“There’s the trap door that leads to the mice sewers,” Seven said, and Izuku had the distinct feeling she was talking about whatever tall tale Emi-chan had told them as a bedtime story. Down and Out, hadn’t it been called? He chewed on his lip, allowing himself to be beckoned onto standing on that circular ‘trap door’ that was evidently closed shut.

“Emi-chan told us that story for a reason then,” Three murmured, nudging Six and Eight to stand with the rest of them on top of their way out that was currently closed.

Izuku frowned, wondering what they needed to do to open the passage to the outside world that Emi-chan had clearly directed them to from beyond the grave.

“One of us needs to pull the lever,” One murmured the answer, evidently knowing it from the story that had been told to Izuku a grand total of one time, pointing towards a control panel with several levers on it, looking ever so worried and confused then.

Three glanced at him as if he were an idiot. “Can’t you make your string do that? Or ask Nine to use a feather?” he questioned, tilting his head and looking as confused as an orca-quirked child could.

One blinked, a sudden dawning of realisation on his face, and Izuku could only tilt his head and wonder if his older brother was being silly. It wasn’t like he’d leave any of his siblings behind there, he mused, his greedy little heart long since having latched onto every single one of them. Even Five, for all her cold, harsh words and pointed glares.

Hairs on the back of his neck stood up on end, head snapping around to stare at the lumbering figure that had silently snuck up on them. It had a dark blue skin, distinctly feminine features to it that time around, he noted in the back of his head even as the rest of it was consumed by the instinct to protect his warren.

Feathers sharpened, whizzing out from his back—

The creature turned its head, and Izuku froze, feathers freezing in place at the sight of those oddly human green eyes. They were different, he knew, compared to the other creatures he’d met in the bowls of that lab.

Those green eyes still had a distinct humanity to them, devoid of the hunger and insanity he had to protect his nest-mates from…

A blue-skinned hand closed around the same lever they had long been debating on how and who was going to pull to get them to freedom.

There was a distinct clink as the lever was pulled by that strange creature, a whisp of pastel blue hair just about visible growing from its head – a clear difference to the others of its kind that he’d seen who’d only been bald, completely devoid of any sort of hair or fur.

Yet that was all he could make out about that strange creature before the door beneath their feet opened up, and then he was plunged into icy cold water.

Water closed over his head, stomach flipping around on itself as he found himself sucked below the waterline as the rapid flow yanked him away from the spot he’d only been in moments before. Dimly, he could sense his other feathers around him, informing him that the rest of his warren was there below the water with him even as his back collided with something smooth that he slid along—a pipe, part of him noted.

He felt dizzy, water currents ebbing and flowing for a few more moments, before the water fell away from his face as the level dropped sharply—

A shriek escaped him as the ground fell away beneath his feet, and then he was falling for a few seconds before landing back in the water. He swam upwards, head breaking the surface of the water, and he risked a look backwards.

He had fallen from the pipe, he understood in a moment, and now he was in a river.

Fingers curled in the collar of his white shift, pulling him through the water, and blearily Izuku looked around to find Three there, swimming through the water like a fish. Or like an orca – like his quirk, his brain informed him after a few moments of confusion.

A familiar sensation brushed against the back of his mind, brain kicking back into gear after its sudden shower. He pulled on his feathers, dragging the few that were behind – or rather, in front of the way he was facing – along with him as Three pulled him to the grass bankside.

The night air was cold against his skin, a small shiver escaping him as he wrapped his arms around himself. He shook his head, ears feeling heavy and sodden. It wasn’t a sensation he liked. More so when it wasn’t clean water in the lab that he’d been wet with. Rather, it had been river water – or whatever else had been in that pipe.

Clearly it had been a discharge pipe of sorts, and who knew what had been discharged from that—

“We’re all here,” One said, yellow eyes roving over them all, counting their number to make sure they were all there and accounted for.

“That thing had Emi-chan’s eyes…” Seven said, her voice ever so quietly, wringing her fingers nervously as they stood there, huddling up together as the chilly night air buffeted against their sodden forms.

“Lots of people can have green eyes,” Five said matter-of-factly, her own green eyes narrowed. “How can you be so sure it was her?”

“Because they were kind eyes,” Seven murmured, lower lip wobbling as she spoke. “I’d know Emi-chan anywhere! That thing—It helped us escape the way that Emi-chan told us to, anyway. Even if it didn’t look like Emi-chan anymore…” Seven frowned, chewing on her lip then. “But why did she look that way…”

Four shuddered. “I don’t think she chose to…” he mumbled, heedless of the fresh wave of tears that brought to Seven’s eyes.

“Emi-chan left us, didn’t she?” Seven demanded almost fervently, something manic and panicked in her eyes as she stared at them all.

“Not willingly, I don’t think,” Three murmured, looking ever so sorrowful, and part of Izuku could only wish that he had known that mysterious Emi-chan who had evidently cared for his warren long before he had come along. She had evidently made a set of shoes that he would have to be filling for the foreseeable future. Yet there was a familiar jealousy squirming beneath his skin, because the others, besides Eight, perhaps, shared that experience that he was excluded from.

“Why didn’t she say anything?” Seven asked, and Izuku could only be reminded of just how young his nest-mate was. Seven was young, and oddly innocent, despite the ministrations of the lab, in some ways.

There was no answer to that, Three and One pursing their lips whilst Six shook his head. Izuku couldn’t say anything, clueless as to Emi-chan and the entire situation. He could guess what had happened though. He rather thought anyone with a decently developed brain and knowledge of just how cruel humanity could be. Emi-chan had probably been just as human-shaped as he was, and she had been kind – too kind for that lab.

Kindness wasn’t meant to last in the place they had only just escaped from.

Emi-chan had paid the price for that.

That much was obvious to him, yet evidently Seven didn’t have that understanding – yet he had his memory of his previous life to thank for that. Technically, he was supposed to be younger than her. In fact, he was technically the youngest of all of them. It was why he was Nine, after all, and not One.

“Why?” Seven demanded, fingers curling in Three’s white shift as she tried to demand answers that none of them were willing to give. Her hands unclenched, death-grip on their brother released. She looked ever so small then, shoulders slumping as she stared blankly at the ground in something that looked a bit too much like defeat. “What was… What did I even hate her for, then?” she asked, her voice the quietest he’d ever heard.

Izuku frowned, his brain unable to think of a single thing to say to alleviate Seven’s distress, no matter how much he wanted to.

“We don’t have time to worry about that,” Five said, folding her arms and looking at the eldest two of them. “Haven’t you been taught the basics of survival?”

“We need to find a new home…” Three mumbled, glancing around the grassy banks of the river they had pulled themselves out of – though those grassy banks soon turned to concrete, and further on, housing. Civilisation evidently hadn’t been far out of their reach, Izuku mused, even as he risked a glance back at the building they had evidently come from. It had been built close to the river, evidently, perched atop a large hill-like structure that Izuku would guess was the result of someone’s quirk affecting the landscape.

“We don’t have much time to waste,” Six added, folding his own arms, and Izuku could only stare at him in confusion—because that and everything he’d said earlier was probably the most he’d heard him speak in a single day. Six was the uncannily quiet one of his warren.

“But Emi-chan…” Seven mumbled quietly, eyes red with tears as she stood there looking awfully confused.

“Let’s go,” Five declared, stomping a foot impatiently, and that was what it took for One and Three to share a glance and then start moving in sync, ushering all of them away from the river flowing rapidly behind them and towards civilisation proper.

Izuku felt his ears twitch atop his head, twisting towards the incredibly faint sounds of violence he could hear coming from the building they’d long since left. There were heroes back there, he was reminded abruptly. The same heroes who probably would have helped his nest-mates happily, had he let those heroes find them… Izuku frowned. Well, everyone besides him, that was.

Villain, Kacchan’s ghost whispered to him, reminding him of the label he undoubtedly bore after killing so many people and monsters in that lab.

He really was selfish, Izuku mused, wringing his hands then, worry coming to gnaw at his gut as he stumbled after One, knowing every step was taking them further away from help. He chewed on his lip, part of him resolving to be the only protection his warren needed from then on. It was ever so selfish of him, he knew deep in his heart.

Izuku glanced up, golden eyes narrowing on each member of his warren, from One to a little Eight who Three was carrying.

Yet villains were supposed to be selfish, weren’t they?

His clothes were dry by the time he woke up, in the abandoned house that Five and Three had found between them, the rumbling of his stomach greeting him as he faced the daylight.

Izuku blinked, extricating himself from the pile of his warren members carefully as he rushed towards the broken window letting the natural daylight filter into the room. His eyes widened, part of him marvelling in the fact that he was outside. There had been some small, cynical part of him that had thought he’d never see the sunshine again.

Yet there he was.

Footsteps padded towards him, light and familiar on the creaky floorboards. Izuku turned, finding One standing in the doorway, yawning widely as he glanced at him. “Nine?” One tilted his head, staring at him. “You’re awake?” he said, but it was more of a question than anything else – and Izuku could only wonder why One hadn’t expected him to be awake.

“Of course,” he said plainly, wings flaring out behind him as he stared out the window.

There was a strange part of him that wanted to fly outside, beneath the morning light, with the breeze in his hair.

It was probably a result of his quirk, he mused, swallowing as he wondered just how much had changed.

“We need to find food,” Izuku said, the words slipping out without much thought as One glanced at him.

He nodded in agreement. “Once the others wake up… we’ll figure something out,” he mumbled.

Idly, Izuku wondered if there was a forest he could go foraging in. Or if there was a bakery nearby that had just thrown out food? His feathers rustled, as if itching for action after all the panic of the day before. Or was he going to have to steal food like the villain he was?

The world around him was far larger than he faintly remembered, but he probably had his short height to thank for that. He really had grown too accustomed to the lab, Izuku thought, part of him struck by how unfamiliar to him it felt. Around him, the world moved, people hurrying from place to place as salarymen headed towards their workplaces, heroes moving amidst the hustle and bustle completing their morning patrols.

Those were probably the biggest threat to his warren right there and then. He didn’t want them to be taken away from him, and he knew foster care was a surefire way for that to happen.

His feathers twitched at the thought, and Izuku wondered then if he would use them against anyone who tried to get between him and his nest-mates. Villain, Kacchan reminded, his ghost ever present in the back of his mind, ever eager to remind him of all his past transgressions against everything the label of hero represented.

Was it ironic that he’d once longed so fervently for the title of hero?

Probably, he mused, glancing at his clean hands and remembering the blood that had been spattered upon them until the river had washed it away. There was still evidence of it tucked beneath his fingernails, if he looked close enough.

He was a villain, he knew deep in his bones, and that meant he would be willing. He’d be willing to maim and kill anyone who tried to hurt his little family there beneath those familiar skies. That was his responsibility there, he decided, even as he glanced around the unfamiliar plaza they were wandering through.

There was an electronic screen on the building across from them, playing the news from the last week or so.

Four and Seven were transfixed by it, both of them grabbing Three by the arms and murmuring questions while One tried to shush them all – given the looks that some passersby were giving them. Yet they were still dressed in their white shifts from the lab, which, in hindsight, probably explained some of the confused and concerned glances in their direction.

Izuku blinked, watching as the banner rolled across the bottom of the screen, declaring the clips being played to be recaps from UA’s Sports Festival, declaring it to be the first glimpse of the future heroes. His brow furrowed, brain immediately understanding what time of year it was, what with how often he had watched the UA Sports Festival—

His eyes widened, his heart thudding ever so audibly as he stared at the next clip.

He recognised the boy in the video, green hair fluttering in the wind, green eyes wide as he yelled something at the boy with two-toned hair.

He didn’t recognise the way the air pulsed as he snapped his fingers, even as he stared at the subtitles that declared the scene to be from Todoroki Shouto’s match against Midoriya Izuku.

Midoriya Izuku was supposed to be dead, a tragic victim to a broken, rusted railing… yet there he was, competing in the very place Izuku had never thought a quirkless boy would be able to set foot in. Yet that particular Midoriya Izuku wasn’t quirkless, was he? Why else would ice be blown to smithereens by a single flick of a finger?

Hands curled into fists, fingernails biting the skin of his palms as he stared at that incomprehensible clip of a video.

Why?

The question rang around in his brain. Midoriya Izuku had died, falling from a height. He wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. That was his past – the past he remembered, vivid as anything. He remembered the sight of the sky, the feeling of the wind in his hair, the sound of the crunch of bone as gravity had dragged his quirkless body down to the cold concrete.

Why was there a Midoriya Izuku alive there in that place which suddenly seemed so alien and strange?

His breath caught in his throat.

Why did that alien Midoriya Izuku have a quirk?

Teeth ground together, an emotion he couldn’t name swirling beneath his skin as he stared at a sight he couldn’t for the life of him understand.

Was that why that one was alive and well?

Was a quirk really all it took?

“Nine?” One stared at him, yellow eyes wide with concern as he pulled him out of his spiralling thoughts.

There was no Midoriya Izuku there, he was reminded, catching sight of his rabbit-eared reflection in the glass of the storefront, golden eyes bright in comparison to the bone white of his hair.

There was just Izuku, in that reflection, no family name attached.

There was no green hair – no round face with wide, guileless eyes and freckles smattered across its cheeks. Yet there was familiarity in that face reflected back at him by that point. He’d been wearing it for long enough, and that was who he was by that point.

“Come on,” One said, grabbing his hand and tugging on it ever so gently – as he always seemed to whenever it came to him. “Nine?” he asked again, looking at him in confusion when he didn’t immediately start to move.

He spared a glance back at the face of teenage Midoriya Izuku scrawled across the electronic screen, something ugly stirring within him as he pulled his eyes away from the sight that turned his stomach.

He wasn’t Midoriya Izuku anymore.

That fact had just been made doubly clear.

Instead there was only Nine.