Chapter Text
The first time it happened, Katsuki should have been afraid. He should have screamed, ran, tore at his eyes until they bled. He should have fallen on his ass and soiled himself in fear. He should’ve, he should’ve, he should’ve.
But, he didn’t. He froze, not in fear but in awe. His eyes lit up in adoration. An astounded smile, soft and small but steadily growing, chased away the frown lines between his brows. He leaned closer to the storm of destruction in desperation to close the distance.
Black, miasmic clouds wisped around Izuku. Bones and rot surrounded him and the harsh light of the summer sun seemed to transform to palid, muted tones when it landed on his deathly skin. His eyes glowed toxic green.
Katsuki stumbled through the swirling shadows, choking on the stench of graveyard dirt and stagnant water. It should have threw him off, made him puke. It drew him closer.
When he stood mere inches from Izuku, he reached out with a shaking hand. The ever-present pastel flowers that ringed Izuku’s head constantly had been replaced with a crown of twisted thorns and black roses. Smooth bone peaked out through the gaps in the briars.
When Katsuki’s palm cupped Izuku’s freckled cheek (so pale and sallow) the shorter boy’s eyes snapped from their vacant stare to meet his with violent intensity. The ground around the blond’s feet was upturned by reaching arms, flesh substituted by royal blue flowers and covering the off-white of bone. Just before the hands wrapped around Katsuki’s ankles, they froze. Vines shot from the earth and wrapped around the skeletons like angry pythons, dragging them back beneath the surface.
“Kacchan,” Izuku said. His voice was eerie. It wasn’t upbeat or shy, outgoing or flustered. It rang with an ancient note and demanded attention, respect . Katsuki didn’t fight the shudder that wracked his body. The sheer power that Izuku was swathed in made it hard to stand without his knees shaking.
“ Izu ,” Katsuki whispered, breathless. He reached up with his other hand, framing Izuku’s face between his palms. The smaller boy’s rigid posture melted, his regal facial expression falling into the soft, open one so often gracing his features. Katsuki didn’t notice the cold, damp atmosphere melting away to the blanketing heat of summer. He didn’t notice when the smell of ancient crypts was replaced with freshly watered gardens and river stones. Didn’t notice the fresh iris and lily plants curling around both their feet.
When the backyard had been returned to normal, Katsuki pulled Izuku’s forehead against his own. The two boys stood there for a long moment, catching their breaths.
“I think you might be magic or somethin’, Izu,” Katsuki laughed.
“Kacchan~” Izuku whined, lifting onto his tiptoes before slamming his heels back into the ground in indignation. “Stop it~”
“Don’t whine, I’m bein’ honest.” Katsuki didn’t usually smile this much, even around Izuku. His jaw was developing a cramp.
“Yeah, whatever. Do you know… what that was?” Izuku said the last part softly, like he was afraid Katsuki would run away. Like his survival instincts would finally kick in and he’d be screaming for the hills.
“Nah, but it was fucking cool ,” Katsuki declared. He took Izuku’s wrist in his hand and led the greenette back into the house. “Let’s do some research.”
The four year olds toddled through the house, sneaking around Inko and into the study upstairs. Izuku waited for Katsuki to struggle onto high office chair, giggling softly when it spun around and Katsuki cursed. Once he had clamored onto the seat, he helped Izuku up and they pulled the chair closer to the desk while trying their best to balance on the rolling wheels.
“Okay,” Katsuki said, pudgy hand grabbing the mouse as best he could and sliding it across its pad. The monitor lit up silently and Katsuki found the search icon after a moment of intense staring at the screen. When the bar popped up, he looked at Izuku.
“What?” Izuku asked. His cheeks started to heat under Katsuki’s scrutinizing glare. The blond huffed and turned back to the computer, poking the keys with his pointer finger slowly.
flowr nd desth quirk
Katsuki hit enter.
Did you mean: flower and death quirk?
Katsuki clicked on it and the page reloaded, the entry into the search bar spelled correctly this time. The first few options were all news columns from different websites regarding a woman with a quirk that killed plants who had been banned from all the city parks in her ward. Useless. When Katsuki scrolled down—he went all the way to the bottom on accident because he spun the wheel too fast on the mouse—the other results were just as unimportant.
Katsuki clicked on the search bar and tried again.
bone com ot f grund quirk
He searched it.
Did you mean: bone com of gerund ?
“What’s… ger-runned?” Izuku sounded out. Katsuki shrugged.
“How’m I suppos’ to know?” he growled. Despite his surly response, he dutifully retyped the word in the search bar, waiting for the result. A dictionary entry popped up and Katsuki read it out loud to Izuku.
“A form that is de-der, um, der-ih-v’d from a v… verb? But that fun-ck-tee-ions assa no-un.”
Izuku clapped his hands together. “Wow, that was so many big words, Kacchan! I barely knew any of them!”
“Yeah, but we still don’ know what the word means,” Katsuki grumbled. Izuku shrugged and gave him a dazzling smile. Katsuki raised his hand to cover his eyes and mimed going blind, making Izuku giggle enough to snort.
Both of them froze, staring at each other for a long second like a pair of deer caught in each other’s headlights. Katsuki’s hand twitched on the mouse, causing him to accidently click on the speaker icon next to the word.
“J-air-und,” the computer read in a flat, robotic woman’s voice. It broke the spell on the kids with an almost audible snap. They dissolved into heaving laughter, doubling over and holding onto each other for support. Katsuki accidently hit the edge of the desk and it sent the chair spinning, causing Izuku to snort again which made Katsuki wheeze on his breath so he was silently losing it .
Inko found them like that, stuttering on inhales with tears streaking down their faces, when she heard the sound of rolling wheels on hardwood from downstairs.
“Are you guys okay?” she asked. Katsuki nodded from where his face was buried in Izuku’s shoulder. The smaller boy was clutching onto Katsuki’s shirt like a life line as they tried to come down from the endorphin high. “What were you doing on the computer?”
The boys looked up at her, matching expressions of panic on their faces. She waved her hands in front of her, “You’re not in trouble, I promise. I’m just curious, okay?”
After a brief moment of hesitation, and a silent conversation, Katsuki nodded.
“Izu kinda, um, he made a arm.”
Inko blinked once.
“Outta, bone I think?”
She blinked again.
“It came out of the ground.”
Another blink.
“It tried to grab me but then these vines kinda strangled it an’ buried it again.”
She started making a high-pitched noise out of the back of her throat without realizing. She scooped the boys up in her arms and power-walked out of the house.
“Mitsuki!” she yelled, kicking the door belonging to Bakugou’s house on her way to the car. “I’m taking your kid!”
“Whatever!” a voice yelled from inside.
Inko set the boys into the backseat, Katsuki buckling himself into a black and orange car seat and Izuku into a floral patterned one.
“Momma, where are we going?” Izuku asked, swinging his feet. He was wearing yellow slip-ons decorated with cutesy bees and little dotted lines trailing after them. White socks with a lace hem were pulled up then folded in half so the lace fanned out over the top part of the slip ons.
“The quirk office, sweetheart.”
Katsuki slammed his palms into the slightly-singed armrests of his seat, kicking his orange, black polka-dot pattern rubber boots into the seat in front of him. “I want ice cream after!”
Inko smiled tiredly into the rearview mirror. Izuku was beaming at her, playing with the soft material of his sweater paws while Katsuki was still violently demanding frozen treats.
“Izuku, do you know who Persephone is?” Inko asked. Izuku cocked his head to the side and made a soft humming sound. Inko almost drove off the road when she saw him pressing a finger to his chin with a concentrated pout on his face in the mirror.
She clutched the fabric of her blouse above her heart while returning her gaze to the road. Holy shit, they were trying to kill her.
“No, momma, I don’t thin—” Izuku cut himself off and aggressive whispering filled the backseat. Inko waited patiently.
“She’s… a goddess? She’s the queen of the underworld,” Izuku declared. Inko’s heart didn’t just seize, her whole torso tried for a size reduction. Sure, she was trying to lose weight but this was not how you did it . Katsuki had just fed him the answer, not because he had been asked to but because he wanted Izuku to look good and that did things to Inko’s chest.
“Yes, yes she is. Very good, Izuku.” Inko met Katsuki’s eyes in the rearview and winked while Izuku beamed. Katsuki puffed out his chest with a grin but didn’t confirm nor deny her suspicions. Inko’s pretty sure her heart stopped .
“Why, momma?” Izuku tilted his head to the side, big doe eyes glittering. Katsuki didn’t give her a chance to answer.
“Because you’re like her!” he shouted proudly. “Badass spring lady who has bone powers!”
“Exactly!” Inko agreed. “You—wait, Bakugou Katsuki, what did you just say?”
“I, um—” Bakugou’s face flushed and his eyes were suddenly more interested in anything that wasn’t the mirror . Inko opened her mouth to launch into her motherly tirade but Izuku, the angel , swooped in to save him.
“Momma, I think that was the quirk office!” he squeaked, pointing to the left. Inko’s snapped to the side and she swore because they had indeed passed the office. Damn Bakugou and his potty mouth. Actually, it wasn’t his fault. Inko blamed Mitsuki’s horrible influence.
Inko scanned the road for police officers before muttering “fuck it” under her breath. “Hold on tight!” she said, at an audible level, to the boys. Katsuki’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when Izuku immediately reached for his hand. He linked their fingers together and held tight.
It was probably a good thing Inko missed their exchange. If she had tried to pull the U-turn she just did while distracted by the kids cuteness, they all would have died in a car accident.
Focused this time, Inko pulled into the facilities parking lot, picking a vacant spot near the entrance. A quirk office wasn’t exactly a hubbub of activity so getting a good spot wasn’t difficult.
“Alright, out you go,” Inko herded them. Katsuki unbuckled himself with deft fingers, crawling over the middle seat to help Izuku when he struggled with his. Inko opened the door on Izuku’s side and helped them both out. They immediately took each others’ hands and Inko guided them toward the entrance.
Inko left the boys to play in a closed-off waiting area with carpeting and toys. She went up to the front desk, careful to keep the corner of her eye on the kids. She knew Katsuki would be gentle with Izuku’s slighter disposition and that he would actually die if he let Izuku hurt himself but that didn’t mean accidents didn’t happen.
“Can I help you?” the young woman seated behind the reception desk asked genially.
“Um, yes. I came in a few weeks ago with my son, Midoriya Izuku? We came to have his quirk registered but this morning, um, something happened.” Inko leaned on the counter separating them and wrung her fingers together. “I’d like to have him retested?”
The woman’s face didn’t change from the politely disinterested smile but her eyes flickered with… something. Inko pretended not to notice it when she clacked away on the computer in front of her, flipping through a clipboards briefly.
“The first test is free, but any others after that are ¥4500,” the woman explained. “Please swipe your card.”
Inko was an autopilot as the receptionist walked her through the steps. A clipboard was thrust into her hands and she ambled back to the play area to complete the questionnaire.
“Momma!” Izuku cheered, patting Katsuki’s shoulder so the blond set him down. Izuku has stuck his hands in the dirt of the empty flower box surrounding the jungle-themed area, filling it with colourful blooms. He had to stand on Katsuki’s shoulders to reach but the blond looked more than happy to oblige.
“Hey, sunflower,” Inko smiled. “I need your help answering some questions, kay?”
“M’kay!” Izuku beamed. He made grabby hands at Inko and she dutifully lifted him and Katsuki from the enclosed space.
“Let’s sit there!” Katsuki demanded, rocking back and forth in Inko’s arms like he was trying to push himself on a swing while pointing at a low bench along the wall.
“Alright, alright,” Inko laughed, “Katsuki, calm down. I might drop you.” When that failed to get a response, Inko resigned herself to pulling the big guns. “And Izuku.”
Immediately, Katsuki stopped moving and pasted himself to her side. His eyes went big and watery and he reached across Inko’s chest to grab the soft fabric of Izuku’s fluffy skirt. Izuku patted Katsuki’s hand before nodding sagely, an air of childish wisdom falling over him.
“Don’t worry, Kacchan. Momma would never drop me!” Katsuki’s eyes were still watery but Izuku wasn’t done yet. He unwound Katsuki’s death grip and linked their finger together, leaning over Inko’s chest to get his face right next to Katsuki’s. Their noses were just brushing against each other and Izuku held the blond’s gaze intently. “Don’t be scared, Kacchan. It doesn’t matter what happens, you’ll save me no matter what!”
Inko was glad they had reached the bench because she was weak .
With the boys’ enthusiastic help, she filled out the questionnaire easily. They had only been waiting about 15 minutes when a short, bald man with rounded goggles exited a door to the left of the receptionist desk.
“Midoriya?” he called, scanning the otherwise-empty waiting room. Inko stood, hoisting the kids in her arms.
“That would be us,” Inko said sweetly. The doctor nodded and motioned for her to follow him.
“So, Izuku discovered a new aspect of his quirk, did he?” Doctor Teru asked.
Izuku closed his eyes and nodded his head enthusiastically. It made him look like a bobblehead. The doctor smiled genially. He led them to a heavily padded room with reinforced glass and a heavy door.
“Alright, Izuku,” Dr. Teru squatted down to where Izuku was standing on his own. “You’re gonna go in there and show me the new thing you found, okay?”
“Okay!” Izuku giggled. He ambled through the propped open door and made his way to the center of the room. Dr. Teru bolted the reinforced steel behind him and then returned to the console in front of the thick glass.
“Go ahead and start,” he said into a mic, his voice sounding tinny through hidden speakers in the testing room. Izuku nodded and focused, holding his arms straight down and splaying his fingers parallel to the floor. His face twisted in an adorable expression of concentration.
Slowly, a rumbling shook the foundation of the building. It wasn’t that unusual to have small tremors where they lived, but this one slowly built in size until Katsuki had to clutch to Inko’s pant leg to stay on his feet at all. A loud crack snapped through the air and a massive fissure spread in front of Izuku.
The greenette hadn’t moved, but his features had relaxed. Only a mild furrow remained between his brows. His pastel flowers were replaced with bone and thorns and the lighting of the room turned sickly and dark.
“Izuku?” Dr. Teru said into the mic, jamming down on the button with more force than was really necessary. Inko was too caught up in the dark dirt pushing up from the massive break in the floor to notice how the doctor’s voice didn’t shake in fear—but in excitement.
Izuku didn’t seem to hear him, to caught up in what he was doing. The black dirt sprouted, long stems with flowers budding like leaves down their side.
“A chasm, flowers,” the doctor whispered. His fingers shook and slid off the button for the mic. “Oh my god, after all this time.”
Inko zeroed in on the old man, watching as his fingers dipped underneath the console and pushed against something. She realized something was wrong when he slid a dial that made the metal door click with even more locks. He flicked a switch and the door they had entered through—the one that led back to the lobby—was covered by a heavy metal grate.
Inko wasn’t usually one for cursing, but she figured the situation warranted it.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she growled, picking Katsuki up and shielding him with her body.
The doctor turned to face her, a wicked grin ripping his face. “I’m afraid you’ll have to say goodbye to your son for a while,” he said, returning to the glass. Inko shouted and was about to rush the damn man when a door she hadn’t noticed burst open.
Katsuki turned his gaze to the glass. Izuku’s hands had lifted so they were straight out from his chest, hovering over the fissure like a puppeteer. Skeletal bodies were hauling themselves out of the divide, black shadows whirling around them. Black roses and crocus flowers substituted their flesh, violets and lilies dripping from their eyes.
“Grab him!” Dr. Teru shouted. The men who had busted the door nodded and made ready to storm the room.
“What are you doing?” Katsuki yelled. He was scared. Big boys don’t cry, his mom always told him. But Izuku was a big boy, right? And Izuku cried all the time. Auntie Inko always told him it was good to cry. So would it be wrong if tears sprung to the corners of his eyes and rolled down his cheeks? Katsuki would never admit to it anyway.
The doctor focused on him for the first time. Katsuki felt his blood freeze. The harsh ridges of his dark green goggles looked like they dug uncomfortably into his skin, if the pink of irritated skin rimming them was any indication. “You,” he said, twirling the dial that locked the door all the way open, making the heavy metal swing upon and the smell of graveyard dirt flooded the anteroom. “You’re the one with the explosion quirk.”
Inko didn’t let him answer, backing them up into the wall and keeping Katsuki behind her the best she could. “Don’t you fucking touch him you monster!”
“Now, how do you know I’m a monster?” Dr. Teru said. He pointed to the testing room. “ That though, that’s a monster.”
Inko and Katsuki’s gazes were drawn to the glass and opened door. Inko choked on air. Katsuki’s breath hitched.
Shadows danced at Izuku’s fingertips, clouding around the men that were trying to capture him and leaving them screaming at nothing, falling to the ground while clawing red lines into their faces. The skeletons moved with a grace and speed that should have been impossible in the absence of flesh and speared the men with sharpened bones. In a matter of moments, the men were dead or dying on the floor, no more of a threat than a rat high on LSD.
Izuku moved so fast, Inko swore he teleported. The footprints of dark earth left behind him proved otherwise.
Izuku raised his hand, cupping it to mime strangulation. Dr. Teru froze and, really, who wouldn’t? Intense, deathly green eyes focused on his face with a blank stare, as if he was a bug that had dropped on the table and was more of an inconvenience to kill than a challenge.
Thorns erupted from the ground, upturning tiles and wrapping around his throat. Dr. Teru gasped and clawed at them in vain.
Inko’s voice broke. “Izu—”
Katsuki squirmed out of her hold, lax with shock, and scurried through her legs. He approached Izuku quickly, without fear, ignoring Inko’s panicked yelling behind him. Katsuki wrapped his arms around Izuku’s waist, burying his face in the fluff of his curls. The points and jagged edges of his crown melted into soft blossoms under his cheek.
Izuku didn’t snap out of it, but that wasn’t Katsuki’s goal anyways. He just wanted to be close to Izuku. It didn’t matter what the greenette did. Izuku closed his fingers slowly, watching the life leech off the doctor’s face. He didn’t stop, keeping his pace until the pad of his thumb met the tip of his middle finger. He held it there for moment, the noose of thorns making the skin cave and blood spill across it, glistening in the altered light.
With an abrupt motion—one that choked a sob out of Inko—Izuku closed his hand into a fist. The thorns cinched shut like a belt pulled tight as a tourniquet. With a snap and a squelch, the doctor’s head rolled to the ground. His body fell with a thump.
The skeleton soldiers ambled into the room, movements graceful and surreal, like swirling mist over a still lake. One with more vines than blooms—the strands wrapped around bone like exposed muscle and sinew—hefted the body by its armpits and dragged it to the fissure. The other, violets blooming like a short bob of hair, dug the sharpened points of its finger bones into the skull. They jumped in with their parts of the severed carass.
The other bodies had already been cleared. The blood was replaced with budding beds of flowers—their roots sucking at the crimson pools. The blood was vacuumed into the stems, the flowers wilting when their nutrients ran dry and decayed with unnatural speed. The fissure snapped shut with a rumble.
The rooms were left spotless. Not a drop of blood or a grain of dirt remained.
“Izu?” Katsuki mumbled. He was still buried in the shorter boy’s back.
“Ka-chan~” Izuku sobbed, tears streaming down his face. “Wha-what did I do~”
Katsuki spun him around, pushing Izuku’s head into the crook of the blond’s neck. He rubbed slow circles into Izuku’s back while he clutched at Katsuki’s shirt.
Inko shut her gaping mouth with a snap and shakily got to her feet from where she had collapsed in shock. “Izuku, what was that, sweetheart?”
Izuku kept sobbing. The most he could do was shake his head side-to-side in Katsuki’s shirt. Inko lost track of time, no clocks in the room to help her. They could have been standing there for seconds or for hours.
Eventually, Izuku lifted his face from Katsuki’s soaked shirt. His face was blotchy and streaked with tear tracks. Katsuki cupped the greenette’s cheeks and held him still, their noses brushing. Katsuki leaned to press his lips softly against both of Izuku’s eyelids and rubbed his thumbs through the residual salt slowly.
Inko’s heart swelled. Izuku may be more powerful than any four-year-old had any right to be but at least Katsuki wasn’t running for the hills. She didn’t know if Izuku could bounce back from that. She didn’t even know if he could bounce back from this .
“Auntie,” Katsuki said. He kept his voice low—a rarity—like he was trying not to disturb something. Inko took a moment to process what he said, staring dazedly, before snapping back to reality.
“Yes?” she asked. Her tone mimicked the blond’s. Izuku was stuttering on his inhales occasionally, but his breathing had evened out and deepened, eyes shut and leaning his head against Katsuki’s palm.
“Why did they want Izu?” he asked. That was a good question. One Inko didn’t have the answer to. This was a run-of-the-mill quirk office, wasn’t it? Why were there secret doors and men that tried to attack a four-year-old?
“I don’t know, firecracker,” Inko said, standing. “Let’s go find out.”
She pushed open the door the men in military suits had burst through earlier, motioning for the kids to follow. Past it was a long hallway, lit almost harshly with fluorescents. Izuku put his arm over his eyes and linked elbows with Katsuki. Harsh fake lighting made the greenette nauseous.
Inko didn’t have to tell Katsuki to mind his stomps as the trio softly padded to the end of the hallway. The blank white walls slowly filled with wisps and whorls of black paint, inky black shadows dancing around them. It wasn’t until off-white skeletons crawled from the seam of the wall and floor that Inko decided something was wrong . Why was this in a quirk office?
“Hey,” Katsuki whispered behind her. The soft word made her jump in the dead silence. Speaking of, why was it so utterly quiet? They were in the middle of a city, there was no way traffic just disappeared. Besides that, where’s the white noise of the building? Didn’t they have generators, air conditioning, something ? “The lights are dim, you can see now.”
Inko blinked. How had she not noticed it getting darker? The lighting was indeed dimmer, like moonlight in the middle of night. She looked up. The hanging fixtures had morphed into glowing lines running along the top of the walls where they met the ceiling.
“Wow, these are pretty,” Izuku oohed and awed. He traced the lines of one of the skeleton paintings, this one with flowers bursting from the eye sockets and spilling over like colorful tears.
As soon as Izuku touched the paint, a whirring sound came from the end of the hall. There had been no doors so far, not even a vent or fan. It seemed the only porthole was where the whirring was.
“Okay then,” Inko sighed. “I guess we’re going there.”
Upon reaching the end, there was indeed an exit. A trap door was opened, a section of the floor tiles moved up and to the side.
“Nowhere to go but down,” Inko mumbled. She peered over the edge but couldn’t see anything except swirling blackness. Sighing, she fished a pen out of her purse and dropped it through the opening. It hit something solid almost immediately so the drop wasn’t far.
Katsuki sat on the lip and pushed off, ignoring Inko’s strangled scream. It wasn’t a far drop but it was far for Katsuki!
“Woah, so dark!” Katsuki stage whispered from the shadows. “I can’t see anything!”
“Get out of the way, Katsuki,” Inko ordered, swinging herself down to sit. When the blond gave the affirmative, she hopped down. The drop was probably no more than 10 feet and she landed on the balls of her feet.
“Katsuki, never do that again!” she scolded him. “You can’t just jump into holes!”
“I had to make sure it was safe for you and Izu!” Katsuki complained, probably crossing his arms, not that Inko could see him. She fought off a sigh. Of course. She knew the blond had a hero complex but it had a horrible habit of hyping up at the worst times .
“I’m coming down, Momma!”
Inko whirled around, ready to save Izuku from splattering into a pancake on the concrete floor. Izuku was much, much more breakable than Katsuki. To her surprise, his landing didn’t make a sound.
“Izu—holy hell,” Inko cut herself off. The hallway lit up with fluorescent plants, their blooms unfurling and hanging like lanterns. Izuku giggled and jumped off the… bed… of… flowers? When had that gotten there?
“Auntie,” Katsuki tugged at her pant leg. “You’re staring.”
Inko could only nod dumbly.
“It’s okay, Izu’s just magic,” he said matter-of-factly. Inko rubbed her palms into her eyes. Her kid was magic. That was actually a wonderful explanation.
She needed a nap.
Izuku skipped ahead of them, grabbing Katsuki’s hand as he passed and tugging the blond along behind him. Glowing moss lit up in the wake of his steps, leaving a trail of footprints behind him. More glowing plants bloomed as he pressed forward.
At the end of the admittedly shorter hall, there was a heavy black door. Inko puzzled over how to get any further. Should they call the police? Oh, they should have done that to begin with. But Izuku had killed all those men! What if they wanted to take her baby to prison? She couldn’t let that—
Izuku pressed his hand to the door and the massive thing disintegrated into dark dirt. It collapsed like a mudslide, carrying Izuku—and by extension, Katsuki—backwards gently like a wave.
“You’re magic!” Katsuki declared.
“I’m magic!” Izuku agreed. The boys giggled and entered the dark room. Inko felt a migraine pushing at her temples. What was happening ?
Predictably, the room came to life once Izuku crossed the threshold. Luminescent plants served as lights but a massive screen whirred to life on the wall opposite the door. When Izuku spread his hand on the table, it opened to a plethora of files.
“Okay, Izu, let me past,” Inko said. She took Izuku’s place. The table was actually a keyboard but it was like a glass touchscreen. Inko dragged her finger over the blank box next to the keyboard display, noting with satisfaction that it served as a mouse.
Using the glowing keyboard to navigate, she skimmed the various file names.
Prophecy
Phase One
Operation Pomegranate
Phase Two
Speculation
Failsafes
Inko clicked on Prophecy . Several windows opened at once; video clips, soundbytes, sticky notes, hardcopy scans. The last pop-up centered over the top of the rest. It was a typed document.
A child wreathed in power
Green like the grass
Sharp like a crow
Juxtaposition
Opposites contained in one
Soft and harsh
Kind and cruel
Life and death intertwined
Bones wreathed in flowers
Pomegranate juice stains their lips
Luscious seeds pierced by sharpened teeth
Potential yet unearthed
Vibrant blooms in graveyard dirt
“What’s it say, Auntie?” Katsuki asked. He had been squinting at the screen but was unable to make out most of the complicated words.
“Um, it’s a poem? I think, at least. It’s about a kid with a lot of power. They have a lot of opposites. There’s stuff about flowers and bones.”
“Like me,” Izuku said.
“Yeah,” Inko said. Her eyes flew over the screen furiously. She clicked on a soundbyte to the side of the document and it overtook the screen.
A recording of a woman read the poem out loud before it cut off. Katsuki’s brow furrowed. He understood a lot more of the words once the woman had said them. It sounded a lot like Izuku.
Inko clicked on a video, immediately closing it when a gruesome picture fullscreened. She clicked the folder icon in the corner and the pop ups closed down again.
She choose Speculation next.
Same sequence of pop ups, this time heavily weighted by documents. Inko selected a large pdf file, scrolling quickly to skim. A paragraph on the fourth page caught her eye.
Necromancy may be an applicable skill. Quite possibly, the child will be able to reanimate the dead. If trained, they could perform missions typically saved for massive squads solo.
Inko clicked off. She didn’t need to see this right now. Not after she had watched her son command skeleton warriors to take out heavily armed hitmen with barely a glance. Not when he had beheaded—
Nope. Focus. She closed the file and opened Phase One . Blueprints and licenses lit up on the screen.
“What in the—”
A sticky note tacked to a set of blueprints marked the purpose of the building.
Monitor for child. Best way is to have them come to us .
“Oh my,” she mumbled. Her knees buckled and the floor rushed up to meet her.
“Momma!”
“Auntie!”
Inko suddenly had an armful of two very concerned toddlers. And that’s what they were, weren’t they? Toddlers. Izuku had killed someone and he wasn’t even five yet. Inko felt tears well up in her eyes.
“Momma, are you okay?” Izuku asked sweetly. His big doe eyes sparkled in the dim glow of the monitor and the plants. Katsuki fussed over her tears, wiping them away with a tenderness that was different from the intense care he had shown Izuku earlier but touched her heart nonetheless.
Having the kids in her lap, looking after her well being after the immense amount of trauma they had just been through made her heart bar and expression steel. She stood after gently removing the kids from her lap. She was the adult; she was the one who needed to figure shit out. And she needed to do it fast.
Fishing through her purse, the pulled out that USB drive that had been collecting dust underneath tissue packets and chapsticks. She had opened the two pack in the car—a work emergency that had demanded the purchase in the first place—and the extra found its home in the depths of the bag.
She downloaded all of the files onto it, thanking whatever gods were up there that the massive amount of data fit. As soon as she was done, she deleted everything. Since she didn’t have a tech degree, she resorted to dumping water from a bottle in her purse on the hard drive under the glowing keyboard, frying it thoroughly.
“Okay, we’re leaving,” Inko grabbed a hand each and power-walked out of the room. When Izuku started lagging, she swung him into her arms. Katsuki struggled a bit but did manage to keep pace.
“Up you go,” Inko said, hoisting Izuku out of the—thankfully still open—trap door. Katsuki followed soon after before Inko jumped to the ledge and pulled herself up. When she managed to finally lift herself out, she granted herself a moment to catch her breath. Pulling an entire body against gravity was a lot of work with just arms.
The trap door slid shut as they walked away and Inko wondered how the crazy people had manage to get the whole building to respond so thoroughly to Izuku.
They passed back through the observation room and Inko took a quick moment to send an email to the front desk on the doctor’s still-logged in monitor at the small desk in the corner of the room before continuing to the lobby. Inko stopped in front of the receptionist’s desk. It was a good thing that Izuku’s test had failed so early on since the time they had spent exploring was easily explained away as a longer than average test-time.
“Hello, I needed to talk to you before I left?” Inko said softly, sweetly. It wasn’t hard, she was gentle by nature. Right now though, she wasn’t the doting mother that worried a bit too much and slept a bit too little.
“Yes?” the young woman asked. Now that she was looking for it, Inko caught the flickering expression just underneath the surface. Whatever it was before, now it was resigned—irritable. If she had been in on the scheme, which she most likely was, then the fact Izuku was walking out of here at all would have meant that he wasn’t the one. It would mean she would be stuck here, pretending, for longer.
“The feeds from the testing room, they need to be deleted? Doctor Teru sent you an email but I wanted to make sure you remembered,” Inko explained. Her smile was sweet and unassuming. Innocent.
The receptionist eyed her suspiciously before clacking on her mouse. After a moment of flitted reading, she turned back to Inko.
“Yeah, I did get an email. I’ll delete them now.” A few clicks later and the feeds were gone. “If I may ask,” she called when Inko started to walk away, “Why were those deleted?”
Why did you know those needed to be deleted?
Inko gave the receptionist a bland smile. “Mostly because Izuku, the smart little bean, has a really good memory and started spouting off his social security number because he was nervous.”
“Mostly?” the woman asked. Inko felt her smile strain but it didn’t show on her face.
“Mostly. He also recited a few credit card numbers and pins before we calmed him down and I would rather neither of those things be recorded.”
The receptionist, apparently appeased if still irritated, turned back to her computer.
When Doctor Teru was reported missing later that evening, Inko smiled at the T.V.