Chapter 1: Power and Pledge
The quirk apprehension centre was rather empty, Inko noted disquietingly, though the small ball of energy that was her four-year-old son Izuku Midoriya paid little attention to this. White walls and fluorescent lights cast the mostly barren room they had been situated in with harsh shadows and stark edges. A warm and well polished wooden floor reminiscent of a basketball court stuck gently against her boy's bare feet as he hopped up and down, barely able to contain his excitement. One wall of the room was given over to a panel of dark glass, behind which a portly older gentleman dressed in a doctor's coat and sporting an unusually styled pair of glasses sat, stroking his bushy moustache. He had quite painstakingly assured the duo that he would determine the young man's quirk come hell or high water, but it was proving to be a difficult venture, all things considered.
The three had been at it for two hours by that point, and though Izuku didn't show any outward signs of frustration, Inko was certainly starting to feel a bit annoyed. It wasn't her boy's fault, of course, but she was beginning to wonder about the competency of the doctor. Tsubasa had been recommended to her by the day care staff where Izuku was enrolled alongside the man's own grandson, as well as her best friend Mitsuki's son Katsuki. She had been told the man had a quiet, courteous demeanour and a quick efficiency about him. Watching him wheel himself about on his swivel chair, painfully running test after test and complaining under his breath about his 'old bones' had her beginning to question her friends' sanity.
"It can sometimes be a bit of an issue if the parent is present, Midoriya-san," came Dr. Tsubasa's voice over the intercom. Inko snapped her head up to the dark glass, locking eyes with the silhouette of the man, the only thing really discernible from behind the partition being the light reflected in two round orbs off his glasses. "I'm sure you understand. Occasionally, a child will focus so much on trying to activate a quirk similar to their parents, that they'll forget to try anything else," he continued, now sounding much more like the affable gentleman Mitsuki and the staff had described to her.
"Are you saying you'd like me to leave the two of you alone for the time being, Tsubasa-sensei?" She questioned, arching an eyebrow as she looked back towards the silhouette.
"Not at all, Midoriya-san. I was simply hoping you might join me in the booth where your presence would be a bit less, er, conspicuous, for your little tyke there." An outline of a door in the glass partition became visible as the doctor spoke, and Inko nodded firmly after considering it for a few seconds.
"Izuku," she called, grabbing her boy's attention. With gentle movements, she knelt down to the still vibrating child and pulled him into a hug. Her little man had apparently not been listening to the adults' conversation, judging by the inquisitive look in his wide and bright eyes, too invested in trying to make fire come from his hands to notice the back and forth. Still, he was more than happy to hug her back; as her son wrapped his tiny arms around her and smiled, Inko couldn't help but feel so grateful for all the good things that had come into her life. "I'm going to go into the room with the doctor so you have some more space to play around and find your quirk, okay sweetie?" He mumbled an affirmative into her shirt and she giggled while kissing the top of his head, getting a giggle from him too. After a moment where the two let the contact linger just a bit longer, they broke apart. The doctor, not unkindly, gestured for Inko to step through into the reinforced glass booth.
"I've never heard of a diagnosis taking this long, sensei," she said as the door closed behind her. Tsubasa was seated at the controls of what almost looked like it could have been an audio mixing board, were it not for the array of strange symbols and labels that took up the centre of the console. His moustache twitched as his gnarled hands danced over the knobs and keys.
"Well, it's not so common these days, Midoriya-san, but you'll find that occasionally we'll still sporadically get a puzzler. Typically, we go for up to four hours of various stimuli to suss out the usual suspects, your emitters and such with the usual activation conditions. It's a bit like swimming, you see, where some kids just kind of know how to float and others need to learn through teaching. But one way or the other, most of them can figure it out. Of course, we are a little more limited in the ways that we conduct tests here. Both in terms of classification and in terms of the actual tests we can run. The national labs at places like Tokyo University can run full genetic panels and genome mapping, but here we stick to the more normal diagnostic tests."
"I remember I had my foot X-rayed when I was younger, back at the state house once I had turned four. Me and all the other kids around that age, they had us line up in the gymnasium and there was a tech with an X-ray machine on a cart, and she had us prop up one of our feet and stick it into this metal box like it was a completely normal thing to do," she laughed quietly behind her hand. "That's fallen out of favour since then?" Tsubasa chuckled as he adjusted a dial.
"The X-ray test is usually our first step in situations like these, actually. Typically, what we do is, if after 4 hours we haven't been able to find an activation condition or otherwise been able to manifest some altered property from human baseline, we go on to conduct the X-ray test. I'm sure you remember them telling you about the pinky toe joint; if it's absent, then we know that there is most definitely some quirk factor shenanigans going on in an individual's DNA. If it's present, well the knowledge used to be that that was that, that person would be quirkless, but we've since found that the base observation resulted in quite a few false negatives."
"Huh, I had no idea...you don't think Izuku might be quirkless, do you?" While she hadn't heard of a quirkless child being born to any of her friends or colleagues, Inko knew that it was still possible for someone to be born without a 'superpower,' even if that term was quite generous for a vast majority of the population. It hardly mattered in the day to day of course, but she remembered stories her grandfather had told her about the early days of quirks, and how some of the anger and hate from the first quirked individuals still lingered against the baselines. It was a common refrain to label the quirkless as unevolved or as nulls, a moniker which could weigh down on someone for life. This was especially true as fewer and fewer quirkless individuals were born each year. Dr. Tsubasa replied as if he had been reading her mind.
"Bah, hardly anything wrong with him if that were to be the case, though I doubt it's our culprit here. As I was saying, typically we'll run the X-ray test and depending on the results we'll run some follow-up tests to check for the plus-alpha factor's presence in the bloodstream and for any secondary mutations or adaptations. Of course, even that's a bit of a crapshoot these days, since quirked and quirkless individuals alike have experienced the same baseline physical changes over the past two hundred years. That's partly why the folks in old media seem so much more fragile, because they were, ahaha. Today's average quirkless person is significantly more durable and quite a bit stronger than our ancestors of even four generations ago." He abruptly turned his attention to Izuku, sliding a switch on his control board up and causing part of the gymnasium floor to open up onto a glossy black square, while a bulky off-white machine fitted with tubes and a singular apparatus that resembled a camera lens descended from the ceiling. The doctor clicked on the intercom and addressed Izuku once more. "Now son, if you could just put your foot down on the square and lean back, ah, perfect," a few faint clicks were heard, "thank you. You can go back to doing what you were."
"An X-ray?" Inko asked. Tsubasa nodded while gripping his chin, fiddling with the dials on the sides of his glasses after a moment's silence.
"Yes, I have a feeling it'll help us rule out quirklessness and anything requiring an adaptation in his legs, if nothing else. And even if we were to find the second joint, we'd still be looking at…well, let's say you have a room of a hundred people. Eighty have quirks, twenty don't. Now, twenty-five of those people in that room have the double toe joint. Twenty of them are quirkless. Seventy five lack the double joint, meaning of the twenty-five that do have the double joint, five have quirks, at least, statistically. So if someone has a double joint they're close to about, oh we'll say 25% of the global population. Of that group, twenty percent will end up manifesting a quirk, meaning if one were to be born with the double joint, there'd still be on average a one in five chance of manifesting a quirk. But in your boy's case," he pointed to the X-ray sheet that was sliding out from a dispenser onto a light box in the console, "with only a single joint in his toe, we can rule out quirklessness completely."
Inko breathed out a quiet sigh of relief. Izuku having a quirk or not would have never mattered to her, she liked to think, but with the way the quirkless population was referred to on the news and all the studies on lifetime outcomes that kept coming out…now as she watched her boy bounce around the gymnasium floor, eyes searching all over the room for any hidden panels or special equipment, she couldn't help but breathe easier.
The simple joys of shepherding the young, and the sheer exuberant energy so many of his patients brought into his office, it all made Tsubasa's work so easy to enjoy. His own youth was now long, long past, memories of summer nights at his grandparents' cottage chasing cicadas fading into the mists of time, but he reminisced fondly that he was quite similar to the boy before him, once upon a time. His own grandson, well, one of his more recent grandsons, was at the same daycare as the Midoriya boy, along with the Bakugo child he had seen a few months prior. Those two and the others from the same centre had all brought their own kind of energy to their meetings with him, but none had been quite so pleasant to be around as the Midoriyas had been so far. For goodness' sake, the boy had seemed just as excited to meet the elderly doctor as he would have been to meet one of the costumed soldiers on the news.
It had been a delightful change of pace from the children who only tended to focus on themselves, though he would hardly begrudge a child for being self-obsessed. Most at the age of four would likely be barely past the stage of participation mystique, egos only so developed as they bobbed in the waters between the islands of the collective unconscious. A Jungian approach often provided answers which traditional diagnostics couldn't when it came to quirks, and it was no mere coincidence that the development of the quirk coincided with the development of the self and the reflection of the parents. Perhaps he should inquire about the woman's recent dreams, see if there was any-
"Uhm, excuse me?" Izuku asked, clearly unsure if he was allowed to speak up. "Can I ask a question?" The boy's gaze, sparkling with youthful shine, searched for him behind the glass and somehow locked onto his own. Perhaps the boy had a minor empathy quirk, something that made him naturally able to seek out a way to make friends with others? He recalled that his grandson was something of an abrasive personality in truth, and had always been a bit round. It was a trait that ran through their family, and the poor boy had been harassed for it lately by the others in his year. Nonetheless, if memory served him correctly, where the lad had complained about practically every other child at the centre, he had never had a word against the Midoriya boy…
Tsubasa shook himself. Yes, the empathy quirk was seeming quite likely, given how quickly his thoughts had turned towards ones which would ingratiate the child to him further. A passive amplification of positive energy, or perhaps that was simply a side effect of a much more powerful active component which had yet to be triggered? He'd have to check for any unusual distortions in the electromagnetic spectrum around the boy, as well as in the upper range frequencies. Pheromones too, anything olfactory, one never could be too sure these days when it came to quirks, a fact that weighed heavily upon him. Time was running out. Also, he needed to respond. The boy's mother was looking at him curiously.
"Ahem, what can I do for you, son? I've got a few more tests I'm thinking of running, but the equipment takes a moment to boot up, and it's hardly a problem to chit-chat while we run them anyway." Already alert, the child perked up at his response, glancing around the room for the speakers where the doctor's reply had originated from. As he did, he began to talk, steady at first, but then picking up more and more speed as he went along until his stream of words dissolved into a river of half-formed syllables.
"So I was wondering how you become a quirk counsellor! Is it like, uh, a part of doctor school? Or is it more like being a therapist? Wait, don't those both go to the same school? And how much of it is quirk analysis? Doctor school, I mean...you probably knew what I meant already, uhm, sorry. Oh, I keep notebooks on all the quirks and heroes I see so I can be a hero too someday, but I know they could be better, and I was hoping you could tell me how to be better at learning quirk things since that seems to be what you do! Not that I'm sure you don't do other stuff too! Being a doctor is really, really important, and mom says doctors are more heroic than even heroes! But I don't think I could be a doctor, since everyone says I talk too much, and they tell me to stop because it's annoying. I'm sorry if I'm annoying, I don't mean to be, it's just so cool that you're," the boy gulped a hasty breath before continuing, "so smart, and you know all about quirks and…"
Behind the glass, Tsubasa's eyes widened and he snorted into his moustache. He'd have to check for some kind of speech quirk, or perhaps something to with information parsing, if what the lad said about his hobbies was true. An intelligence enhancer, perhaps? His speaking patterns seemed somewhat advanced for a four-year-old, certainly. He wasn't even sure how many kids the boy's age knew the word 'analysis' though he would be the first to admit his perspective was a biased one. If it were an intelligence quirk, it would have to have been a minor one. He wheeled his chair over to a computer and glanced through the boy's records, noting that the test scores on display, while handily the best in his grade, were not anything on the level of a genius. Definitely potential for a minor intelligence quirk then, unless, of course, said potential quirk was only in the beginning stage of manifesting. Shrugging, he leaned forward and pressed the intercom button to respond.
"It's no problem son, and I'll be happy to answer those questions as we work, but for now I've got all the instruments set up that I need so we can start to figure out your quirk. Are you ready to start some new tests now?"
Ms. Midoriya chuckled to his right as the boy started nodding so furiously he was afraid his head might topple from his shoulders. He recalled another young woman, green hair and a razor smile, whose head, and a great deal of the rest of her, had come apart at the seams only to begin to fly around the room and start crashing into things. With control, she could achieve great feats with such a quirk. He wondered if the boy before him would prove to have similar potential. Things were certainly looking good, and if nothing else, he might find a capable future researcher before him.
"Alright then, young Midoriya, let's begin."
It had been forty-five minutes of continued testing and polite conversation with the boy's mother when Dr. Tsubasa felt the horrible lurch in the air, and the smell of ozone that indicated his Master's arrival. Midoriya covered her nose and coughed into a handkerchief, muttering something about a gas leak. Tsubasa didn't pay her much attention, instead bracing himself for the inevitable. The already dim lights overhead flickered, and every screen on his console blinked down to a black background with only the phrase 'Audio Only' displayed in red text.
The world fell away as he was sucked into the monitor for a moment, searching its depths and in turn being searched by the thing behind the screen. He knew how his master used the surveillance quirks, their ability to map an interior and its occupants an invaluable tool for arranging passage into closed locations; he simply wished it didn't have to be so, so invasive every time he used them. When one was forcibly examined by the abyss, one couldn't help but to examine it in turn, compelled by its overwhelming power. Fragments of knowledge and alien thoughts invaded Tsubasa's mind as he stared into the screen, and if his throat could have been less restricted, his own screams would have joined the chorus of agony that wailed in his ears.
Dark tendrils of curling mists lapped at the corner of his vision, and the already dim room darkened considerably more as the telltale rip of normality silently wailed against the proper functioning of the world behind him. He had come to hate warp quirks, but he hadn't always. Not until he had found him, forced the quirks down his throat, and made him his ally. No, not ally, never an ally. Tsubasa was a servant, just as all the others were. He couldn't afford to forget that. Even the head of household in the staff of a king was still a slave to his master. His Master who was here now.
"It is an honour, and a pleasure, to see you, my lord," he said, not turning around for fear of appearing to falter in his work. That was only part of the reason, though. Ever since the last adjustment, he had despised looking at the man, the horrid mask so out of place on the powerful frame and delicate lines of his suits. His master liked the Italian ones, because of course he did. Always the best, for the best, never content with the work and luxuries of his own people. His ambition was too great to ever be content. Tsubasa pushed the treacherous thoughts down, steeling himself. If the Master was here, then he must have seen something he liked. Tsubasa's heart sank as he kept his eyes forward, gaze never leaving the still energetic child who had been trying to manifest some kind of quirk for nearly five hours. Currently, he was doing his best to dodge soft rubber balls which were being launched at him from all directions. Every time he got hit, the boy simply laughed and kept trying. He heard a weak word of surprise from behind him, and then the impact of Ms. Midoriya falling over onto the couch.
"She will remember nothing when she wakes, doctor." The rumble of his voice made Tsubasa want to vomit. "Have you ascertained the nature of the child's quirk?" The man's wretched voice was distorted, though only slightly. He was too much of a narcissist to hide his true self completely, especially behind something so unpleasant. For a man who loved to appear as magnanimous and grandiose as possible, it made little sense that he would choose such an intimidating visage, especially when he had Machia about.
"No, not yet, my lord," replied the doctor. He recalled the last time Master had visited, he had been observing a child with the ability to manipulate time to a minor degree, though the exact mechanism had been unclear. Master had shown decided interest in that one, but had ultimately left it alone. The time before that had been...Tsubasa couldn't recall exactly, but he remembered forging the resulting X-Rays. One of Master's blasted gifts, he reflected bitterly. The ability to change pictures by touching them, a biological photo-shop that could rearrange the chemicals on paper to produce an imperceptibly doctored result. Not even the best graphic designers came close, as far as he was aware. And oh, how he hated it. "As far as I can tell the quirk is either latent, a rarity, or unnoticeable, which is the most likely possibility." He glanced at the boy again, who at the moment was staring intensely at his fingers, holding them stiffly apart as if he were trying to will them to do something abnormal. He coughed, and pressed the intercom button.
"Young Midoriya, do you feel something in your fingers?" The boy looked up in surprise at the sudden noise. The doctor had been quiet for some time now, after all.
"Oh, no, sorry Tsubasa-sensei," he said, giving a sheepish grin to where he thought the doctor might be behind the mirror. "I just thought, well, maybe my quirk is really subtle, like, one of the kids in my class can make his fingers grow longer, and I thought, maybe I can do something like that too, like maybe my fingernails can extend, or maybe they can change colour, or maybe they can..." he descended into a continuous stream of mumbling, all the while concentrating hard on his stubbornly unchanging fingers. Dr. Tsubasa felt his heart drop when the man behind him spoke again.
"No vocal quirk, though his muttering habit and quicker than average thinking indicate the presence of something affecting his mind. Perhaps something to do with the neurons? A reflex enhancer, doctor?" A hand was on his shoulder, his Master leaning into his space to read the notes the doctor had been writing out on a clipboard. Tsubasa shook his head.
"If the boy had something like that, it would have been apparent during any of the reflex tests. No, for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is. I had thought perhaps a general enhancement at one point, but we ruled that out. General intelligence just beginning to manifest is a possibility, but nothing extraordinary. No, there's something, but it's like it's in hiding or some...you know, don't you?" His Master remained silent behind him. "It's not like you to show up before I've made a diagnosis, especially with someone that shows such little potential. But you saw something, didn't you, Master?" A chuckle, throaty, warm, and entirely wrong from the monster holding his shoulder, echoed around the room.
"You know I enjoy watching all your tests doctor, even if I rarely visit. Indeed, there is something in this one, but it wasn't the quirk I saw. Something else...a passing resemblance to an old acquaintance. Of course, there's no way to be positive without a genetic test, but perhaps I can solve your little quirk problem while I am here." Tsubasa felt movement behind him, and then something passed through him, and then he was staring at Master's retreating back as he walked casually through the panels of instruments and the glass pane that separated them from the gymnasium floor. His breath caught in his throat.
"Hello, young man," came Master's voice. Young Midoriya, for all his concentration, sputtered and fell backwards in surprise, before sitting back up and giving the figure in front of him his full attention. His eyes went wide and a slight grin stretched his cheeks.
"Whoa! You just walked through the wall! That's so cool, are you another doctor? Are you friends with Tsubasa-sensei? He's really nice, he's being really patient with me, even though I can't seem to figure out what my quirk is." The boy looked down frustratedly at his hands and flexed them again before brightening and looking back up at the newcomer. "Did he ask you to help? I like your suit, by the way, it looks really pretty. It reminds me of something, but I don't know what..." Izuku sprang back up, then seemed to be embarrassed by the motion and shuffled his feet awkwardly, looking down at them as he spoke. For a moment, Tsubasa saw the Master pause, as if considering something. Then, not unkindly, he answered the boy.
"I suppose you could say I'm a colleague of the good doctor, yes," and all the wrong warmth and kindness was there, every aspect of the creature before the boy contorted into something worthy of his trust and confidence. "I'm very good at helping to figure out peoples' quirks, especially the troublesome ones that don't show up at first. Will you let me help you?" Master reached out a hand to the boy, who hesitated for a moment before shakily reaching out to grasp it.
Tsubasa wanted to scream, he wanted Master to stop, to choose someone else, someone not so full of life and hope, and that boundless optimism. He wanted the kid to be safe, to be okay, to be a friend to his grandson, to grow up happy and healthy like most of the others that came through his doors. This one had been nice, been good, damn it all! No one deserved what he did to them, but this one least of all!
He moved to press the intercom button, to tell the kid to run, but he knew it wouldn't do any good. He could only watch as the telltale shimmer of Master's Silence descended over the two, the boy and the monster.
Izuku screamed as the agony began, but no sound came from his mouth. The man had moved his hand up his arm and was holding him tightly as dark lances traced in red lightning arced from his fingers into Izuku's head, chest, and abdomen. He felt them pierce into him, but didn't see any blood, even as his eyes flickered frantically over the barbed hooks. They began to move around underneath his skin, snaking up and through him, pushing aside obstacles and shoving through partitions of muscle fibres and cartilage, nerves, veins, tendons, ligaments. One passed his right eye, and he felt it roll back into his head as the horrible thing continued on, further and further. The skin on his body felt too tight, stretching as the hateful quirk worked its way into his brain.
It was wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, it was burning, it hurt so badly, it shouldn't have been there, shouldn't have been there, but there was something more to it yet. It hurt him, yes, hurt his body, but it was hurting him too, Izuku. It was like every movement took something more from him , and with every bit taken, he felt the emptiness growing in his heart. It was grasping, forcing an iron grip around a part of himself that he hadn't even known he had, but now he knew that whatever it was, it was about to be taken from him. He didn't know how he knew, didn't even question it, all he could process was what was about to happen, and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt, it hurt!
Suddenly, there was no more pain, no more foreign presence under his skin, wrapped around his mind, clenching his heart. Just emptiness, a terrible, yawning emptiness so vast it threatened to swallow him completely. He felt his stomach lurch, and he was vomiting onto the wooden floor, pure bile because he had been too excited to remember to eat that morning. Hot tears were flowing down his face, mixing in with the vomit and something else. Blood, his blood, on the floor, streaming from his nose and when he realized it, he curled into himself, not caring that he was falling into the puddle of his own sickness.
The man had turned away from him, and from the way his shoulders shook, all Izuku could think was that the man in the nice suit was laughing. Laughing at what he had done, at what he had taken. Izuku was sure, then. The man who knew Dr. Tsubasa had taken his quirk. A quirk he had never even got to know, never once used. It had been a part of him, and now it was gone. He cried out, again, silently. There was a shimmer in the air around the two of them, and he wondered, almost idly, if he would be able to write about the silencing quirk in one of his notebooks later. He wondered if there would even be a later. Then, another horrible thought struck him. Where was his mom? Where was Dr Tsubasa? At the thought that they too might have fallen to the man, he screamed as loudly as he could, a soul-rending wail that made exactly no noise.
His wordless keen had drawn the man's attention again. The massive figure in his immaculate attire moved over to Izuku, careful to avoid the mess the child had made on the floor. Izuku couldn't raise his head, couldn't look past the gleaming black shoes and pressed pant legs. There was movement above him, but he didn't react, didn't move as once again the dark giant placed his hand over Izuku's head. At the sudden contact, the world began to fade, Izuku's memories growing fuzzy, until he almost didn't recognize the thing in front of him any more. It leaned down, its dark mask poised above Izuku's ear, and it spoke one last time before he lost consciousness altogether.
"You won't remember, but for what it's worth, thank you. I think I will have great use for this power. Truly a shame you will never get the chance to hone it. But, ah well. Perhaps some day, when boredom takes me, I shall find you and introduce you to my young ward. I have a feeling that you and he will have much in common by then. Or perhaps…hmm, time may yet tell a different tale for you than it did for him. We shall just have to wait and see, won't we, child of..." whatever else was said, Izuku never heard, as finally, mercifully, the hazy darkness took him.
His master laughed again, a mirthless bark this time, and in the booth, Tsubasa felt his temper begin to rage. He had always been subservient to Master, and this was hardly the first time he had been an accomplice to this particular kind of violation, but there was something different about this theft. Something malicious, that belied the usual clinical way in which his Master took quirks. He had taunted the boy, he realized, though he had been unable to hear the particulars from his position. That, a last act of cruelty before he erased the boy's memories of the whole affair, had been the pettiest thing he had ever witnessed from the demon before him.
For all his hatred of Master's moods and methods, Tsubasa had at least respected his goal, if only grudgingly so. It was not a kind philosophy, but compared to some of the villains he had seen, Master truly believed in his ideals. But this, this was not right. He grit his teeth and felt his fists clench, years of frustration at being able to do nothing weighing heavily against his own instincts for self-preservation. Perhaps if he could reconfigure some of the X-ray machines in the room subtly, remove safeties, flood the entire area with a lethal dose of radiation, then perhaps he could end it all the next time the demon returned. Perhaps he could-
"You will alter the X-Rays, and then ensure the mother does not suspect anything, doctor." His Master had walked back through the wall without him noticing at all, and was regarding Tsubasa impassively. The black chitinous dome of his Master's helm tipped forward slightly, and a hand was brought to where his chin would be. He seemed pensive for a moment, and Tsubasa thought he saw a kind of glee in the monster's stance as he continued his musings aloud. "Perhaps in time, I might give the boy something to replace it, provided he would be willing. A few years in this world of Toshinori's ought to prepare him anyway, and the look on my dear old enemy's face if I were to face him with children at my side brought to me willingly, by a system he created and upheld no less! Hmm, yes, that would be truly sublime. Ah, but," he clapped his hands together, punctuating his words, "all in good time." He looked up, and the appearance of Kurogiri's mist was nearly immediate. Tsubasa felt a chill run down his spine as Master walked towards the portal, pausing halfway through to turn and regard him behind his mask. The vision of the ghost of a skull, swallowed by shadows, bore into his soul, and he was firmly reminded of why his Master donned the mask. At that look, his resolve fled him, and Tsubasa bowed his head.
"Of course, Master, as you will it," he said, keeping the ice from his voice. The Demon King nodded to him once more.
"Continue then, doctor, and I shall ensure your family continues to enjoy my protection. Do pass on how your grandson is doing soon, won't you? From what I understand, he might need some extra supervision." Tsubasa's stomach fell to the floor, but he kept his tone even.
"As you will, Master. I will keep you abreast of the situation at his school."
"Do that, doctor." The giant walked through the portal, and the lights in the observation booth returned to normal. Dr. Tsubasa let out a shaky breath, his hands going to his knees as he steadied himself. After a moment, he quietly made his way to where the boy's X-Ray sat on the console kit up against the light box, and reached out. The image danced, almost imperceptibly, and where before there was none, the little toe on the boy's imaged foot now sported an extra joint. Behind him, Ms Midoriya began to stir. He glanced into the room, noting that his Master must have used a quirk to clean up both the boy and the mess, leaving him snoring gently on the floor, looking for all the world like a toddler who had tuckered himself out.
"Hmm, doctor?" Asked Ms. Midoriya, stretching. "Oh, I'm so sorry, I must have dozed off on you," she said, flushing a bit as she looked around. "What were we talking about?" Tsubasa steadied himself on the console and turned back to look at her, hating himself the whole time.
"Ah, your son seems to have tired himself out running all these tests as well, I'm afraid. But I think we can retire to the adjacent room to discuss the results, if you would."
"Oh, of course," she saidt, rising from her seat and walking to the doorway in the partition, looking perfectly at ease and slightly amused as she collected her sleeping child. It was, Tsubasa reflected, probably the last time for a while that she would be able to feel so carefree.
"So, after we ran through every test I could think of, we decided to re-examine the X-rays and managed to catch our mistake. For making such an error in the first place, you have my sincere apology," Dr. Tsubasa inclined his head as he spoke to the pair before him. Izuku was sitting next to her, his energy from earlier visibly fleeing him as the boy processed what he was hearing. His Master had made sure to block off the memories of what had happened, but watching the child suffer the realization a second time was breaking the old doctor's heart. Tsubasa cleared his throat before continuing. "Excuse me, but you're fourth generation, right ma'am? May I ask about your quirk?" He had practised this before, he knew the script, though he hated reciting it. As Inko described her quirk and that of her husband, Tsubasa's gaze never left the boy, whose face was falling faster and faster.
"What we see here is that with the extra joint, it's possible to conclude that young Izuku here does not currently have, and will not develop, a quirk. While uncommon, it's not the first such case to come through my office, and realistically it shouldn't impact his quality of life at all." He had returned his gaze to Inko, whose eyes seemed full of sadness but also something else...relief? Both were startled by the small sniffle that came from the boy, head bent over as his tiny hands clutched desperately at the fabric of his shorts.
"Without a...without a quirk...how can I be a hero? How can I be like All Might?" The boy looked up, his eyes almost completely lost under the tears which were rapidly pooling there. Tsubasa knew what he had to say, that he should give it up, that it would be safer. That's what his mother seemed to want, both from him and for the boy, after all. But something stopped him, something pulled at him, making him hesitate. If he couldn't stop the hurt at the source, then he could do his level best to limit the damage.
"Young man," he began, a touch uncertain. "I meant what I said to your mother when I mentioned that not having a quirk won't affect your quality of life. It's true that being like All Might isn't necessarily as attainable any more, but you shouldn't discount any of your dreams just because of this scrap of paper." He tapped the X-ray and Izuku's eyes bored into him, pleading, begging him for something. For him to give it back, reflected Tsubasa sadly. The guilt clawed at him fully now. Where before Master's thefts had been utilitarian, this had been personal. It had been cruel. And all for a quirk that he couldn't even find. He took a breath.
"Tell me, my boy, have you ever heard of the pro hero Eraserhead?" The child shook his head, eyes doubtful. "While I never personally met the man, I know about him through some associates who request his aid for quirk testing and training now and then. And that's because his quirk erases other quirks." Izuku simply looked at him, confused, so he continued.
"The reason I'm telling you this is that, besides levelling the playing field, which he can't even do in every case, Eraserhead is a pro with no offensive or defensive abilities attached to a quirk whatsoever. He can turn any fight into a battle between two people who are essentially quirkless, and it doesn't even work on mutation types." The realization hit the boy then, his eyes suddenly burning again, though lacking something of the lustre they had shone with on his way in. Dr. Tsubasa smiled at him, and nodded his head. "There's more too. Sir Nighteye has some kind of precognition, but it's limited, and he can't use it to fight. Gunhead is essentially a man with a firearm built into his forearm, if you'll forgive the wordplay. Lady Nagant, another hero with a firearm in the forearm. Lunch Rush, a literal chef with a quirk that helps with efficiency! Mr Brave can shape his hair into tools. There are literally hundreds of heroes whose quirks only give them a slight advantage, and even then, it's one that can be matched with the right tools, or a bit of preparation. It'll be hard, there's no denying that, but if you really want something, and you work at it with all your power, you can achieve anything. Just because you don't have a quirk doesn't mean you can't become a hero." There it was, the smile, strained, and still watery, but the smile was back on the boy's face, and for a moment, he felt the icy fingers in his chest relax as some of his guilt was assuaged. For a moment, Tsubasa felt like he could live with himself again. A pointed cough from the boy's mother drew his attention back to her, but where he had expected irritation, he instead saw gratitude. He cleared his own throat.
"Now then, I have some pamphlets in here somewhere," muttered the doctor, turning his back on the mother and son, who, when he turned around again, were hugging tightly to each other. Izuku was still crying, but his tears didn't seem so morose any more. Almost like they were happy, or at least bittersweet. Midoriya shifted her boy onto one arm, and reached out with the other for the pamphlets. Smiling himself now, Dr. Tsubasa handed them to her, and produced a lollipop from within the confines of his coat. As he escorted the pair to the front of the building, giving the boy a last glance over before he left them to head home, Inko pulled him close and whispered to him.
"Thank you, doctor, for not crushing his dream. I may not approve of him doing something as dangerous as heroics, especially now, but...I couldn't bear to see him hurting like that. Not with his Father so far away from us, and this being such a delicate time for him. So...thank you, again. You're a credit to your field, and a hero to him and me both," she said, giggling a little. The words stung, cutting too deep, and if the boy echoed them, he knew he wouldn't be able to hold himself back from losing everything. Izuku hadn't heard them though, his head lolling against his mother's shoulder as he sleepily enjoyed the candy, only looking at Dr. Tsubasa through half awake eyes and managing a small thank you before the pair left for their car. The doctor exhaled slowly, still wracked with guilt and hating himself for his weakness.
"Nurse," he called, watching the retreating form of the mother and the boy he had almost let be destroyed completely. "I'll be cancelling my appointments for the rest of the day. If you could, send the results of the second FMRI and CT scans for Midoriya, Izuku, to my office please." The young man he had flagged over nodded to him, and made for the front desk. Lazily, almost dreamlike, he made his way to his office, closed the door, fell into his chair, and reached for the bottom drawer of his desk.
He had finished off his good sake, an old, pleasant friend that had remained nearly untouched for three years prior. Tsubasa previously had been a teetotaller, then began to drink as a ritual after each one of his Master's visits, but only enough to calm his nerves. This time, he had gone through the cheap liquor and moved onto the good stuff he had been saving, and had almost gone through that entire bottle as well, save for the bit he had drunk years prior at his granddaughter's christening. Yet for all the alcohol in his system, he still felt stone-cold sober. Glaring down at the test results from the Midoriya boy, he moved the first CT scan against the second and pondered the discrepancy. The area of his brain associated with a quirk factor was darker in the second, but that was to be expected. The boy had had a piece of himself ripped out after all, and in a metaphorical sense, had lost something of his soul. Tsubasa was not a particularly religious man, but whenever he stared at the pictures of Master's victims, he felt the unclean tendrils of his sins wrapping themselves around his throat.
What was unexpected, and indeed, quite troubling, were the results of the FMRI, which showed an incredible increase in blood flow, and thereby, neural activity. This heightened activity might at first appear as something of a healing mechanism, the body's desperate attempt to scar over the fresh wound of the boy's lost quirk, but in fact, it was present everywhere except in the affected area. Over the years he had met many desperate people, newly deprived of one sense or the other, hoping that the persistent myth of sensory compensation might be true. He had always been gentle when breaking that news, telling them that no, their hearing wouldn't suddenly drastically improve after losing their vision, but that the changes they would find would simply be the result of having to rely on their other senses more. Still, here, in front of him, was irrefutable proof that the boy's neural activity was drastically increasing, only an hour after the damage had been done. If his suspicions were to prove correct, then the blood tests he had ordered would confirm the presence of the hormonal changes he thought might also be occurring.
When a nervous looking attendant brought Dr. Tsubasa the paperwork he had requested ten minutes later, he took it grimly and thanked her, before sending the young woman home. His staff hated seeing him upset, and would probably look to brighten his spirits if he didn't make it clear that he needed solitude at the moment. Going over the results, his worst fear was realized. The boy's body was compensating for the loss of his quirk. It shouldn't have been possible, and had never presented as an effect of quirk loss in any of Master's other victims.
"What is happening to you, young Midoriya?" He reached for his phone, readying himself for the conversation with Master about this new development, but hesitated. Knowing Master, if he were to discover this change, the kind woman with worried eyes would suddenly expire, and the boy would disappear into the foster system, only to end up in Master's clutches, and then into one of the fluid filled tanks. He couldn't, no, he wouldn't allow him to harm the boy any more. He had already raised one hand against the demon king that day, what was one more, after all? Shaking, he brought his hand back to the bottle, and brought it up, tipping what last drops of sake he could into his mouth. He hadn't realized it, but he was trembling all over, something he hadn't done in years. He, Tsubasa, a man who had stared earth in the face on a nearly daily basis for years, was terrified of not telling his Master something. How far had he fallen? Putting down the bottle, he steeled himself. Consequences be damned , he thought. Alone in his office, he spoke to himself with alcohol colouring his breath.
"Izuku Midoriya. I failed you today, and you thanked me for it. Even if it costs me my life, I won't let him touch you ever again. Not ever." With a finality he thought himself incapable of after so many years under the boot of the demon king, he dropped the scan into his shredder, feeling for the first time in a long while that he might still have a chance to bring some good back into the world.