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Toshinori Yagi opened the door to his new cabin, then immediately doubled over coughing from all the dust. He retreated outside, leaning against the log walls until his hacking and wheezing subsided. The hot summer sun beat down on him overhead. Perhaps he should leave the door open and let the cabin air out a bit.
For decades, Toshinori had served the Musutafu kingdom as the Number One Knight All Might. But his injuries had finally forced him into retirement. He’d purchased this cottage in an auction. Apparently it had been abandoned for over a century. Toshinori thought that fixing up the cabin would be an interesting project to distract him. He’d always been so devoted to his job, he didn’t know what to do with his life now.
Circling the log cabin, Toshinori noted it seemed in unusually good shape for a century-old building. Perhaps it had an enchantment built into the wood. Toshinori drew his enchanted sword, One for All. The blade of the sword glowed in the presence of danger, but it had no reaction, so the magic was probably harmless.
Tying a bandana around his mouth, Toshinori braved the dusty cabin again. The windows were boarded up, making it hard to see. Dim light from the boarded up windows cast across furniture piled up in the corner and covered by a tarp.
The fireplace looked intact. That was good—Toshinori would need a working fireplace by winter time. Something glowed amongst the ashes. Toshinori knelt down and brushed aside dirt to reveal a shimmering green egg speckled white.
How astonishing! Toshinori did not recognize the type of egg. Could it be a naga or a cockatrice egg? But the egg was big, as large as his head, so it might be a basilisk egg. On the other hand, since the egg had been kept in a fireplace, it probably belonged to a heat-seeking creature like a phoenix. But this egg was too big for a bird, Toshinori was reasonably sure of that.
After so long left abandoned, there was little chance of the egg hatching. However, Toshinori gathered firewood and started a fire just in case there was any chance to save it.
As the tiny flames began to crackle, the egg started to glow. That was a very good sign. Could it be a very, very large phoenix after all? Toshinori was hard-pressed to think of any other creature that could survive untended for so long.
When a thin crack formed down the egg, Toshinori started to panic. He’d only hoped to keep the egg in a warm environment long enough to bring over an expert. He didn’t know how to help a baby hatch!
Toshinori ran out of the cabin, planning to go for help. Then another very large crack sounded behind him. There was no time. He ran back inside.
A scaly green snout poked out of the egg. Not a phoenix, then. Toshinori reached forward, about to grab the egg and take it out of the fire for fear of burning the baby. But for some magical creatures, fire nourished them. What should he do? He had no idea how to looked after this baby! He knelt down, his hands hovering.
The slimy baby chipped at the eggshell with its one tooth. A long, noodly body emerged with four tiny legs. The baby had a soft mane of feathers and two brown horn nubs.
As the little one tipped out of the egg, Toshinori lunged to grab it before it could touch the flames. He hissed as his hand burned.
The noodly lizard immediately crawled up Toshinori’s arm and wrapped around his neck like a boa. The baby chirped.
Aw, what a precious little thing. How unusually mobile for a baby, too. Perhaps this species was accustomed to hatching alone? Toshinori poured his water bottle over his hand, which fortunately only had mild redness. With his other hand, he petted the lizard’s back. “We’d better go visit Chiyo. She can heal my hand and tell me what you are.”
The lizard looked up with big green eyes with white pupils, and chirped.
Chiyo Shuzenji, the greatest healing mage in the kingdom, bent over and peered at the baby. She said, “I have no idea what he is.”
Toshinori petted the little lizard. “I thought he might be a basilisk.”
Chiyo gave him a withering look. “If he was a basilisk, you’d already have been turned to stone.” The baby had been confirmed to be a “he” during the medical examination, in good health despite his mysterious origins. “Look at these little feet.” She touched the claws. “This is no snake.”
The little lizard laughed, a musical sound. Glowing light surrounded him. He spat out a chunk of ice, then a puff of fire to melt the ice. Then the lizard turned into a human baby with big green eyes and a patch of green hair.
Chiyo gasped. “He’s a dragon. An elemental dragon, no less, capable of controlling multiple elements.”
“That’s not possible.” Toshinori laughed. “Dragons have been extinct for centuries!”
“Then we might be looking at the last one,” Chiyo said grimly. “Only a dragon could shapeshift so easily.”
Toshinori’s laughter faded as he realized she was quite serious. “Oh, dear. What am I going to do? I was hoping to find his people to raise him. I have no idea how to look after a dragon hatchling!”
As if in response to his distress, the baby wailed. Toshinori picked up the tiny dragon and rocked him. “There, there, little one. We’ll make it work, somehow.”
Chiyo said, “This needs to be a strict secret. One drop of dragon’s blood could buy a mansion. There are countless powerful people who would go to great lengths to get their hands on this innocent little one. They’d rip him to shreds. I’m not sure you could protect him, Toshi, not with your injury.”
Toshinori swallowed. He still didn’t know if he was the best person to look after this tiny hatchling, but he didn’t know anyone stronger who he would trust with the job. Looking down into those big green eyes, he said, “I’ll do anything in my power to protect him. I’ll name you Izuku.”
Toshinori had been planning to camp out while he repaired the cabin, but he couldn’t subject a baby to rough living conditions. Instead, he stayed at Chiyo’s house while he hired workers to clean the place out and bring in new furniture.
It was not easy to look after any baby, but especially not one that kept switching between fingers and claws. Chiyo was not certain what dragons ate, so they tried milk in his human form. Izuku guzzled it down gratefully and with no ill effects. Then, in his dragon form, he ate all the metal bits off his crib until the bed collapsed under him. It turned out he could eat just about anything, but he had a special affection for jewels and precious metals.
Izuku set fire to the house, twice. It got even harder after he learned how to fly. This led to the tragicomical scene of Toshinori chasing around a flying giggling baby, trying to lure him down from the ceiling with a sweet attached to a broomstick.
Before Toshinori moved into his home, he baby-proofed the whole house including the ceiling. Fortunately the cabin had shorter ceilings and Toshinori was a very tall man.
Little Izuku grew at about the same rate as a human child. When he turned five years old, Toshinori looked for a school. He found one that specialized in teaching children with magical abilities. Toshinori had never used magic except for One for All, so he badly needed help. Even after he’d filled his house with fireproofing charms, Izuku still set it on fire at least once every year. Toshinori also wanted Izuku to have a chance to play with other children.
For secrecy, Toshinori had kept Izuku very isolated while he kept switching between human and dragon form. But he worried that his son would lack social development. Now that Izuku had the ability to control his shapeshifting, he could go to school.
An old friend named Shouta Aizawa was teaching the children. He knew about Izuku and could be trusted to keep it secret. But even so, it would be much easier if Izuku didn’t shapeshift in front of any other children. So Toshinori sat his son down and explained, “Izuku, remember, it’s considered very rude to shift out of human form in public.”
Looking up with big eyes, Izuku removed his thumb from his mouth. “Why?”
That was Izuku’s favorite word these days. “Because you’re basically naked. If you let anyone see you, then we’ll have to flee town and you won’t be able to go to school anymore.”
Izuku gasped. “No, no, no! I want to go to school and meet other kids! I wonder what everyone else can turn into?”
“Everyone else?” Toshinori asked.
“Like how Daddy turns from small to muscly!” Izuku clapped his hands.
Toshinori changed because of the magic of One for All. “I’m not sure. Not everyone can shapeshift. Mr. Aizawa turns into a cat, I believe.”
“Kitty,” Izuku said, entranced.
Toshinori had not yet told Izuku that he was a dragon. It seemed unreasonable to expect such a young child to understand the danger and keep secrets. Even if Izuku did shapeshift, there was a good chance no one would recognize him (although Toshinori would move towns anyway just to be safe.) But if Izuku went around telling people that he was a dragon, then he would be in grave danger. Toshinori resolved to tell Izuku the truth when he was older.
The older Izuku grew, the bigger his appetite got. It was fortunate that Toshinori had so much money from his knight days, because it took a lot of gold to feed a dragon. Izuku had also taken to sleeping on a nest of gold. He would add little trinkets he found around the forest, everything from a broken robin’s egg to a shiny button. One for All kept vanishing from Toshinori’s sheathe and ending up in the nest. Eventually Toshinori accepted that his sword belonged to his son now. Izuku liked the warmth of the magic coming off the sword. He kept licking it. But Izuku had assured Toshinori that he wouldn’t eat One for All, because then it would be gone.
Toshinori custom-made a soft fluffy sheath so that Izuku could sleep with his head on the sword. As he presented the gift, he said, “I was always planning to give One for All to you someday. It belonged to my mother, Nana Shimura. As my son, you’ll be the next to inherit it.”
Izuku chirped as he picked up the scabbard. He always made that sound when he was happy. “Where do children come from?”
Toshinori hesitated. He wasn’t sure if Izuku was old enough to know that yet. He didn’t know much about children. Also, how would Toshinori explain why he had a dragon son with no other parent? He said, “Uh, Nana found me hiding in her shed during a cold winter.” This was true and allowed Toshinori to avoid the more biological answer.
“Did you find me in a shed?” Izuku asked.
“No, you were in the fireplace.”
“Children like warm places,” Izuku concluded. He tucked away the sword in his nest.
Toshinori breathed a sigh of relief that he had avoided The Talk for another day.
The next obstacle came years later. Izuku had detailed notes about all of his classmates’ magical abilities. In the evenings, Toshinori and Izuku would sit on the couch together in front of the fireplace, Toshinori reading and Izuku writing in his notebook.
Looking up from his notes, Izuku said, “The Iida brothers both have speed magic. It’s really very fascinating, how their legs transform…”
“Uh-uh.” Toshinori let the words drift over him as he took a sip of tea.
Izuku finished, “Does anyone else in our family have fire magic?”
Toshinori froze. He did realize he had to tell his son that he’d been adopted at some point. Put on the spot, he didn’t know how to explain that part without also explaining the dragon thing. Surely he ought to at least wait until his son was an adult before dropping the bomb about being the last surviving member of his species. It would need to be handled gently, perhaps with a mind doctor on hand.
“Maybe not?” Izuku asked.
Toshinori realized he’d let the silence go on a bit too long. “I was just thinking, my boy. Uh, Nana’s great-great-grandfather was a fire elemental. Sometimes magic skips a couple generations.” This was also technically true.
“Weren’t you adopted?” Izuku asked.
Toshinori coughed up blood. Shifting into dragon form, Izuku shot off supernaturally fast and returned with a handkerchief hanging from his mouth.
“Thank you, my boy.” Toshinori mopped up the blood. “Uh, you’re right. That means my family tree could have anything at all in it. All kinds of different magic! Just like you have all kinds of different magic. Funny…how it worked out like that…ha-ha.”
He’d dug himself into a hole, but fortunately Izuku only nodded and went back to writing in his notebook. This time, the draconic boy held the pen in his mouth as his tail curled up in front of the fire.
The next day, Izuku came home with a very serious expression. He said, “Dad, I have some news that may be shocking to you.”
Toshinori sat down at the dining room table and waved at the other chair. “Please, sit down. You know you can tell me anything, my boy.” He took a sip of tea.
Izuku said, “I’m adopted.”
Toshinori spat out his tea. “W-what makes you say that?”
Izuku raised an eyebrow. “You’re a human, and I’m a dragon.”
“You, uh, you uh, what?”
Izuku pulled out a textbook and pointed. “Here’s a dragon. That looks like a bigger version of me.”
Clearly Toshinori had left the adoption reveal too long. He should have known he wouldn’t get away with it as soon as Izuku could read. He couldn’t meet his adopted son’s eyes for fear of reading anger and disappointment in there. Stuttering, he looked at his hands.
Izuku sighed, a puff of smoke shooting out of his nostrils. “I knew you hadn’t realized. It’s completely understandable. Grandma Nana found you, so you thought that it was perfectly normal to acquire a baby by finding an egg. But it turns out they come from something called ‘sex.’”
Toshinori, who’d just been starting to recover enough to speak, choked again. When the coughing stopped, he demanded, “Where did you learn that word?”
“We had sex education at school today.” Izuku gave Toshinori a deeply pitying look. It contained all the contempt of a preteen who’d just had it confirmed that his old man knew nothing. “No one ever taught you, huh? That’s okay! You’re never too old to learn new stuff. I’ll give you a lesson.”
At that point, Toshinori had two choices: 1. He could admit that he’d been lying to his son his entire life, and doing it embarrassingly badly; or 2. He could let himself look like an absolute moron who hadn’t noticed his child was adopted and get a sex talk from his own son.
While Toshinori dithered, the choice was made for him. Izuku pulled out a different textbook and flipped to the page with a diagram of male and female sexual organs. “This part is called the uterus.”
Toshinori moaned in despair.
Half an excruciating hour later, Izuku said, “Next we’re going to talk about protection and STDs.”
Toshinori’s “Nooooooooooooooooooo!” drifted into the night.
OMAKE TIME!
Enji: I had to give the talk four times to four children, and they all made it awful in different ways.
Toshinori: My son gave the talk to me.
Enji: Whoa, for once I’m happy to let you win this round.