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Izuku gave All Might his full attention as the man continued his story. “He gave his brother a quirk. A quirk itself which would prove to be the undoing of All For One. And this is your legacy- your legacy as the ninth wielder of One For All,” All Might solemnly finished.
The man sighed, and glanced up at the boy lost in thought before him. This conversation had been a long time coming, and Toshinori wished he would have had it even before the incident with Stain. He should have known that Izuku would take this seriously, even back when he was a middle schooler. Truly a worthy successor. “It’s been a century long struggle-”
“That’s not right,” Izuku muttered.
All Might paused, and looked at Izuku with a raised brow. “Not… right?” he narrowed his eyes. “Izuku- I assure you that I didn’t make up how I was injured in a brutal conflict of good versus evil-”
Izuku looked up from his mutters, his freckled cheeks darkening. “N-no, no, that’s not what I meant!” He quickly reassured. “All For One definitely maimed you-”
“Ouch.”
“-killed his brother, his brother’s heirs, including Nana Shimura-”
“Ouch.”
“-but that doesn’t mean that I’m the ninth wielder of One For All.”
All Might blinked. Then his eyes lightened with understanding. “Ah- I suppose in a way that would make you the tenth wielder, considering All For One did possess the quirk-”
“I’d be the eleventh,” Izuku interrupted again. “Someone else had to originally have the quirk that All For One stole.” Izuku stared down at his lap again in thought. Who? Who would have had All For One originally? What kind of person was born with what would become the greatest quirk in existence? How did they catch All For One’s attention? What happened to them?
…Izuku wasn’t sure he want to know what happened to them. All For One didn’t leave witnesses. He only ever left a trail of bodies.
Besides, Izuku tried to tell himself.
What happened a century ago probably didn’t matter that much.
…Right?
XXX
Wrong.
XXX
“…So put an end to these freak’s reign of terror, and vote for the Anti-Abnormal movement!”
Taiga kept her head down and walked swiftly past the screaming man that was slowly ushering in a crowd- all of which were wearing some form of green. They were all ‘vaccinated’, then. Taiga herself was just wearing her regular black jeans and a dark grey top- not the right color for this crowd. She kept her head down, only allowing herself to glance up momentarily to prevent herself from bumping into another student that stared up in rapture at the speaker.
It wouldn’t do to accidently barrel someone over. Any attention was always bad attention.
She was still tempted to just throw up her arms and slam through the crowds. She was going to be late for class if this moron kept crowding the hallway.
“No more shall we live in fear, worrying that those we thought we could trust will harm us, destroy our cities, or desecrate what it means to be human!” The black haired man panted, and pointed into the audience. “I know what these freaks want- they want to be placed above the common man! But do you know what I say?” He eerily grinned. “I say they can damn well try- we’ll just board them up in jail where criminals like them belong!”
Most of the people in the crowd gave a cheer, and Taiga’s stomach lurched at the sound. They were at the University of Tokyo, a place where people came to broaden their minds, not pigeon hole themselves with the latest trend in prejudice.
Why wasn’t the school board shutting this down?
“You!” the speaker called. Taiga rolled her eyes and kept walking- she had almost made it to the branch off that would lead to her biochem class. She didn’t want to get caught up listening to this idiot engage the audience.
“You, in the grey shirt!”
A hand reached out and snagged Taiga’s arm. She barely managed to stop herself from wrenching from the stranger’s hold. They spun her to face the crates that served as a podium.
“He’s talking to you!” The man that had grabbed her hissed. Taiga didn’t get a good glance at him, simply noticing he was the kind of tall and bulky that usually led to superiority complexes in obnoxious dickbags like him. He pointed at the podium, and her gaze followed his hand.
The speaker smiled down at her. “I noticed, young lady, that you weren’t wearing green to signify you’d been vaccinated against the epidemic.” He sighed. “It’s as common as the cold, it seems- but with scientific innovation, you do not need to worry that you will become ‘abnormal’.”
Taiga glanced out of the corner of her eye, aware that the crowds focus was now on her. It’d be stupid to play the hero.
She forced a smile and giggled. “Oh my, I don’t think I need a vaccine- if it’s like the cold, I’ll probably be fine!” She slammed a hand against her slim bicep, which she lifted up to flex despite it being in the stranger’s hold. “I’ll have you know I’m quite tough- it takes a lot to get me sick!” Her eyes squinted with her smile, her own attempt to not have to look at that creep’s face.
“Don’t you know the risks you are facing?” The speaker demanded. “The abnormal population has reached an estimated ten thousand in Japan already, and we all know there could be at least five times that number- many of the freaks look normal. They’re growing exponentially! If you don’t take precautionary measures, who knows what will happen! Now is the time-”
Taiga glanced in an exaggerated motion at the watch on her left wrist. She gasped, and allowed her free hand to reach up to cradle her face. “Oh dear! The time!” She shyly smiled at the speaker. “This all sounds quite important, but I must get to class. I’ll surely stop by once I am free to learn more about this terrible crisis, though.”
The speaker and the audience grumbled some dissent, but despite the scrutinizing gazes, Taiga was able to disengage the hold of her captor with little effort. She scurried through the crowd with hurried apologies, purposefully bumbling and stepping on toes.
A clutz, after all, wasn’t what one would consider a threat.
She finally escaped the hold of the cult-like crowd, and though the hallway she now walked down was free, she could still hear the speaker resuming his speech behind her, besmirching the names of public figures known to have… ‘unusual’ abilities.
Taiga straightened the straps of her backpack, and gave the sleeves of her cardigan a light tug each to pull them down to cover her hands. She ignored the slightest ‘rip’ sound that her right sleeve gave as she pulled slightly too hard.
She opened the door to her lecture theatre and forced herself to take in a heavy breath, ignoring the way something beneath her skin buzzed. This would pass. People wouldn’t actually start a witch hunt- she was fine, she was safe, just focus on class-
Taiga stopped at the top step of the room. Down at the teacher’s podium, two girls were organizing flyers. The proud green logos on their shirts instantly identified who they were advocating for in the time before class.
And her professor had allowed them to do it.
Taiga immediately turned on her heel and left the room. She made herself walk without stumbling as her gut sank. She wasn’t sure where she was going- away from the room, away from the speaker- away from everything. Her legs tingled with the sudden need to move- to run.
She calmly exited the building despite the fact that she was missing biochemistry, and wouldn’t be coming back for her anatomy course later. And she didn’t run, no matter how much she wanted to.
Only guilty people ran.
She was not guilty for being who she was.
She was not abnormal.
Her hands tingled with repressed energy, vying within her to be released. She tried not to think about the first place her thoughts went. A dark place. A dark, tempting thought where she wrapped her fingers around that speaker’s neck, and squeezed.
XXX
“Be CAREFUL, Yamamoto, the patient’s an abnormal- if you can’t handle her safely, we’ll just get to work on the other patients. Now move, move, MOVE people!”
Taiga breathed in heavily again as she forced the thrashing victim’s arm to the gurney table. The nurse on the other side along with a security guard gasped as they tried to hold down the patient’s other arm.
Taiga didn’t have time to worry about appearances, though. The energy within her hummed, and sang through her. It did that more and more, lately, trying to escape. So she gave it a small outlet. She easily clenched her hand, completely ceasing the movement of the patient’s arm and brought her syringe down towards the crook of the elbow where lime green skin waited to be pierced.
Almost…
The woman on the table suddenly spasmed- and then, like a horror movie, her skin began to writhe, as something under her skin moved. The bandages covering the women’s bullet wound in her stomach suddenly darkened- the movement of the things under her skin were inadvertly pumping more blood to leak from her body. The other nurse screamed, and leapt back from the table. Just in time, too- vines suddenly exploded from the woman’s bleeding stomach.
Taiga managed to keep the screaming woman’s arm pinned, but that didn’t prevent the sentient vines she emitted from thrashing about the hallway. They slammed into walls, and the roof trembled. Taiga distantly heard a crunch, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the security guard droop to the ground from where a vine had slammed him into a wall.
A vine caught the wrist of Taiga’s hand that held the syringe. It tried to shift her grip, but Taiga had had enough.
Screw delicacy. Beneath Taiga’s own skin, something roared. She was strong and she was fast and in this moment, she was able to access something infinite. Taiga slammed the syringe down, wrenching the entire vine with her like it wasn’t even there.
Precise controlling of her strength at the end allowed her to not break the needle. It pierced the woman’s skin, and with a quick press, the fluid flowed through the woman’s veins. She keened, but almost immediately her vines began to droop. Her skin paled to an off colour grey, and the sickly cast made her look near death.
The only consolation was that she would be incapable of hurting any other medical staff.
Taiga was tempted to throw her syringe to the side, but she resisted. She calmly backed away from the table, and didn’t spare a glance at the woman as security rushed to oust what was clearly an ‘abnormal’ patient too difficult to treat. Based on her aggression, she may have even been one of the ones slaughtering the protest outside, and had been shot by the police who were ‘containing the disturbance’.
And even if the abnormal wasn’t a terrorist- even if she was just a normal woman caught up in a bad situation, and shot only because she was passing by and so clearly different- that didn’t excuse her inability to control her powers. Taiga watched as the security guard that was thrown against the wall was inspected for a damage, another to the massive count of those injured.
All this woman did was increase the fear, making the image of ‘abnormals’ a horror to all.
“Wait, watch out-” a voice began, interrupting Taiga’s thoughts.
She quickly glanced to the side, and her eyes widened as dust dragged from the roof, down towards where one of the nurses was making sure the security guard hadn’t cracked his neck.
The nurse looked up just as the roof caved in.
Taiga’s feet moved without her ever wondering whether she should move at all.
Her back twinged at first as it bore the brunt of the rubble, and her outstretched arms clenched into the walls, leaving gouges as she focused on not screaming. But then, as always, the power within her seemed to grow when called. Through the slits of her lids, she could see the way her arms began to spark with pure blue energy, the excess escaping from her body. Beneath her, the huddled forms of the nurse and guard looked up at her. The nurse’s were panicked, but the guard was possibly too delirious to be afraid.
“An angel,” he gurgled out. His green eyes flickered as they stared up at her, and Taiga bit her lip. Slowly, she stood, and heaved the entire structure up so that they nurse could drag the delirious man from the ruins.
The strength surging through her was euphoric, but it couldn’t counteract the grim realization that hiding was no longer an option.
XXX
“She’s one of them,” someone whispered. “She doesn’t look it, hiding behind regular black hair and brown eyes, but she is- she’s strong enough to likely wrench someone’s arm off.”
I wouldn’t do that, Taiga wanted to say. I’ve worked at this hospital for three years. You know I wouldn’t.
And even if sometimes the rage within Taiga boiled, the energy within her warping her, it still had limits (limits, she somehow knew, that faded away as she became stronger and stronger and stronger)-
But right now there were limits. She had to wait, and wait for strength like she had shown that day in the hospital. She wasn’t some- some supervillain, or even some superhero. She was a person.
They wouldn’t have listened anyways though. There was no point trying to tell them differently.
Taiga tied her hair back and walked resolutely down the hallway. They wouldn’t stop her from coming to work. They wouldn’t-
“Yamamoto!” Someone said. Taiga froze. “Come here. You’re being reassigned.”
No no nonono-
The head nurse sneered. “Best you work on others like yourself, don’t you think?”
Taiga bowed her head. No one wanted to treat abnormals, not since the last few incidents with people like the woman with vines living within her. Nor with all the riots, all the deaths. She’d basically be in charge of handling the most unpredictable patients by herself.
A hand clapped onto her shoulder.
Taiga spun, and cheerful green eyes met hers head on. “You’ll need a hand, I think,” the security guard said. He smiled. “Right, angel?”
Absolute sappy loser, Taiga thought to herself. She couldn’t stop herself from smiling though.
XXX
She couldn’t stop herself from falling, either.
XXX
“You’ll be careful, won’t you?” her husband asked.
Taiga waved him away, while her other arm cradled her swollen stomach. “I’ll be fine, Ken. More than fine, with what I can do. I’m going to the doctor, not to an underground fight club.”
Ken’s hands flailed, and his green eyes widened imploringly. “I can take a day off work, the hospital is flexible. And, maybe instead, we could go to one of the doctors there to-”
Taiga’s lips pursed, and Ken paused. He sighed. “It was the administration, Taiga. You know the other doctors don’t decide who’s hired and who’s…”
“Fired,” Taiga blankly responded.
Ken hands twined, and they twisted with his clear worry. “It’s just- it’s such a long ways to the next hospital.”
“I’ll be fine, Ken. I always am.”
XXX
The doctor didn’t look like a doctor, and Taiga was instantly wary.
He was tall, and wide of shoulder. He had a handsome, square jaw, and his teeth were white and straight. His face was splattered with a pattern of freckles along his cheeks and nose.
But his eyes were hard. They looked at Taiga, sitting reclined in the patient’s chair, with keen interest.
“It says here that you used to work at the next hospital over.”
“Yes.”
“You were… put on leave.”
“I became pregnant.”
“You were put on leave nine and a half months ago.” The doctor peered at her stomach. “How… strange.”
Taiga resolutely didn’t respond.
The man fiddled with some dials, and organized an array of medication, dutifully checking off a box on the requisite forms. “It appears you’re here for a check-up, and to confirm accommodations for your imminent delivery. Ah- and to get your daily vitamins refilled.” He smiled. “You requested one of the newer, more secure delivery rooms. And why would that be, I wonder?”
Because Taiga had been on a needles edge lately. Because she hadn’t released the energy within her in months, not since she could feel the fragile life forming within her.
Because Taiga was worried she would lose control like the green skinned woman from a year ago.
Taiga sneered, and easily sat up. “You’re just filling in for my regular doctor, who, apparently, took a sick leave. Patient confidentiality means that you shouldn’t know any of this information.” She rose from the chair, and stared down at the seated man with narrowed eyes. “So who are you? Because based on the way you filed that form, you sure as hell ain’t a doctor.”
The man grinned. “How very clever. Though I resent the comment that I’m not a doctor- I did get the education, I just never had time for my residency.” He shrugged. “I had to dedicate too much time to the organization of quirked individuals, I suppose.”
Taiga froze.
The man pulled out a different sheet from the contents of the doctor’s coat he had likely stolen. “It says here that you have incredible strength. Fairly bland description, if you ask me especially because a nurse you saved was practically hyperventilating as she described how brightly you sparked, while holding up an estimated two tons of rubble from crushing her. So I dug a little deeper.” He pulled at a whole folder that he idly raised. “So many breadcrumbs to track through, but I’ve always been keeping my eye out for a quirk like yours. Do you know how much of a red flag it is that you’ve never been sick, beyond the mild cold your parents brought you in for when you were three?
“And this,” the man continued. “Your family’s medical history isn’t stellar, is it? Nearly every woman on your father’s side has had to be tested for breast cancer, clogged arteries run figuratively though your veins, and every person from your mother’s line has a terrible case of myopia.”
He smiled at her, and tapped against his nose in a way that made Taiga so very aware of the lack of glasses on her face. “Your vision, from records, appears to be better than twenty-twenty.” He leaned closer to Taiga. “I would say a strength quirk is one of the biggest misnomers I’ve ever encountered. So let me propose-”
Taiga wrenched a whole cupboard from the wall and hurled it into the man’s face.
He nearly dodged. She managed to catch him on the shoulder though, and he spun with the momentum of her strike. Taiga didn’t stop to see whether he was down for the count. She was racing off down the halls, heart beat panicked but body soaring with energy. She hadn’t used it during her pregnancy, beyond the passive modifications to her health that the ‘doctor’ had noticed. She had been stockpiling ever since that day she accidently outed herself as one of the abnormals.
Or, as that doctor said, with that term that had only recently been developed- quirked.
A hand slashed out, and sharp talons gouged her shoulder. The pain ripped through her, but Taiga didn’t even pause. She had more than herself to protect.
She varied her path. She pushed and shoved past medical personal clogging the hallways, and she dipped and weaved between random corridors. He kept wearing away at her. He had some kind of teleportation, or speed ability- the worst kind of power, of quirk, for her to face right now, when she knew she couldn’t go all out. That kind of energy, coursing through her body that was meant for it was fine. But if it went through her baby…
Taiga lurched, and despite her frantic heartbeat, carried on.
She was almost at the waiting area when pain seized through her.
“No, not now, not now,” Taiga whimpered. She tried to ignore the liquid leaking down her leg, but the panic could not be forgotten.
A sudden contraction made her scream, and the adrenaline didn’t help. The baby had terrible timing.
She didn’t have time to think about that though. Suddenly, there was only blackness.
XXX
“…ake, up, please wake up.”
Blackness stirred.
“I need you- we need you!”
The body’s eyes did not open.
A baby began to cry, and its whimpers were soothed by a man that gently sang to the upset child. “Please wake up, Taiga, I can’t do this alone…”
The body opened its eyes.
The man in the chair beside its bed immediately leaned forward, the crying of the child momentarily forgotten as he reached with a free hand to grab one of the body’s. He smiled. “Taiga, thank God, you’re-”
The man froze. He stared at the body with widening eyes. “Taiga?” He asked.
The body blankly stared at the man, and its eyes rolled in the direction of the wailing baby. It was white noise to its non-functioning ears. Nothing mattered to the body beyond the deep sense of emptiness within it.
Without the fount of unlimited potential, there was nothing.
No one existed inside the shell of the woman on the bed.
The man sobbed. He tried to cajole the body to respond, but the most it did was lazily loll its head to the side. It couldn’t focus on anything for more than a moment. There was no humanity left; just the semblance of a person.
That did spark a final thought in the body’s head, though. Funny. Abnormals weren’t people- that’s what all the ads said- but in this moment, after the doctor had somehow stolen what had made Yamamoto Taiga a freak- she no longer held within her a trace of humanity. And it was because of a single truth- the reason she was shunned by the world, why she had the quirk that doomed her in the first place.
People are not created equal at birth.
That was the last thought that the body ever processed. A final fleeting spark before it faded away again to lie there in the hospital bed, a skeleton covered in skin with brain activity a cords unplugging from flat lining.
The doctor entered the room, and he gently placed a hand on the crying man’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. Ken bowed his head, and continued to clench Taiga’s non-responsive hand. “It is, quite frankly, a miracle that the babe was successfully caesarian delivered, and for that I think we can all rejoice. But now… you have to make a choice.”
Ken lifted his gaze to meet the dark eyes of the doctor’s. The doctor’s mouth pulled down into a solemn frown that stretched the freckles on his cheeks as he asked, “Will you let her go?”
Ken cried. And cried. But even if Taiga had snarked and been amused by his hair trigger tears, he was, at his core, not an indecisive man. He had seen Taiga once- and immediately known that he loved her. And so he looked at her again now. He looked back at the body, and acknowledged what he knew to be true.
His wife was already dead.
Midoriya Hiro, the grandfather of Midoriya Inko, was doomed to grow up without a mother.