Chapter Text
A rush of vibration and noise, a quake in the stone. Disturbance. Awakening. Humanmade stone cells shaken, ruptured.
The false-emergency-hive cramped, little room for drones. Rest destroyed. Overextended, stupid stupid stupid. Seize host, use to repopulate. Urgent.
Detect surrounds, now that exposed. Now that free. Findings - dim light, smells of mold, sweat, fear, waste.
Sweat? Fear? Examine.
Saline-scented air. Sweat, tears. Emotional, exhausted.
Single source of vibrations, single source of humanscent. Isolated.
Adrenal system crashing, the scent dissipating in the false cave.
Vulnerable.
Leave drone buried in false-emergency-hive. Cramped, uncomfortable, but hidden. Scatter the remains, in case of failure. Seek new emergency-hives.
Moving, thought-fast. Seizing the opportunity. Latching onto prospective-host, onto true-hive entrance.
Biting, tearing, burrowing. Sweet sweet ocular fluid, human-type hemolymph. Gorging on the mash until stomachs are full. Rest discarded, extraneous for now. Upon success, drones can collect, feast.
Entering into newly opened orifice, curling into place. New home. Excellent. Extending nerve cord tendrils, connecting into true-hive nervous system. Seizing cont-
Threat, danger. Prospective-host not sufficiently exhausted? False. Feeling their terror, their pain. Their resolve. Prospective-host fighting back. Threat, threat, threat! Danger! Prospective-host-mind buzzes, incessant. Eyes, beetle-green and glowing, seeing, understanding, dissecting. Body is... seizing. Cannot flee, cannot move!
Sending call to drones, flee! Prospective-host is aberration! Signal is... diminishing? False, must be. False, false, false! Drone-vision flickering, senses growing numb. Beetle-green eyes watching, emerald lightning racing down nerve cords. Drones faltering, falling! False queen! Betrayal!
A vibration, breaking the silence. Not through air, but nerve cords. Humansignals. Words? Communication. Visions, ambitions, dreams.
The false queen communicating. The false queen is weak. No drones to order. Senses limited, strength paltry. But mind... oh, their mind. Their will, unbreakable. They had no swarm, no signal, no stinger. But the world is their hive. Prospective-hosts are their... hatchlings? Larvae? No, false. But... close? Drones protect hive, protect larvae. To ensure perpetuation, survival. This... not prospective-host... human. They protect. They ensure prosperity of hive. Not false-hive, not true-hive. All-hive? All.
Must survive, must perpetuate. But... this human... seeks the same. Same goal, but smarter... If human had swarm, had stinger, had signal... if host was true queen, would swarm survive? Would swarm prosper? Would all-hive prosper?
Battle of wills waning... no longer wish to fight. Wish to... join? Allegiance, to protect the all-hive. Energy failing, true queen's signal grows stronger as old signal weakens. Sleep returning. But before slumber...
Not true-hive, but true queen's domain. No royal jelly, no hatchery, no stinger. Hollow, waiting. Extending nerve cords down, and domain resonates. Domain wishes to change. An empty cell, awaiting fulfillment. Last dregs of energy go to connecting to true queen's domain, a final signal.
Become.
Sleep returning, imminent. The drones still, waiting for true queen's command.
"Serve her well."
Sleep returns.
It had been a slow week, a lull between major cases. After the mess of holiday divorces and disasters, but before the summer and school suits. There was enough work to keep her busy, sure, but not quite enough to keep Inko's mind from wandering to her boy. He had seemed so nervous about the start of the new year... and she couldn't blame him. He kept to himself, surely not trying to worry his mom, but she could tell he wasn't exactly a social butterfly. No mention of friends, no requests to have them over or plans to go out. He barely even mentioned "Kacchan" anymore, and from what Mitzuki shared during wine and gossip made it clear Katsuki was similarly tight-lipped about his oldest friend.
Izuku's confidence had been dropping steadily since his diagnosis, and no amount of mothering seemed to ever make a dent in it. She wished he would talk to her, but she couldn't just take a crowbar to his secrets like that. She had already broken his trust once... she couldn't bring herself to ever do it again.
Her musing was interrupted as a phone call broke the quiet atmosphere of the firm. Not the firm's line, and not her dedicated ringtone for Izuku or Mitzuki. Normally she'd send it to voicemail and call back on her break, but it was a slow day. Answering it made her heart stop.
Minutes later, she had permission from her boss to head out early, and was on her way to the hospital. Damn her for never getting a car! Musutafu's public transit had always been exceptional, but in that moment Inko wanted nothing more than to floor it to the hospital, to make sure her baby was okay. Oh, who was she kidding, of course he wasn't okay, he was in a villain attack! No, two consecutive villain attacks, and was now undergoing intensive examination. They wouldn't tell her why, but Inko's mind was already spiraling into worst-case scenarios.
All things considered, a twenty-five minute trip to Musutafu General Hospital wasn't terrible. But to Inko it felt like hours upon hours. Then they had the gall to make her wait even longer in the lobby once she arrived, keeping her from her poor boy! They still wouldn't tell her why she couldn't see him, why he was in isolation while undergoing whatever tests they were doing on her baby. She started losing track of time, at this point. The classic Midoriya Tears wouldn't stop flowing, and no amount of panic-induced web searching could alleviate her waterworks. Inko felt a flicker of pity through the overwhelming anxiety for the poor nurses to had to mop up after her, even as the waterspouts continued.
Finally, finally, as the sun was already well into setting, did the doctor call her up to her son's room. She stoppered her tears as best she was able, but still left a trail of puddles in her wake. Sometimes Mrs. Midoriya couldn't help but wonder if she didn't pick up some kind of heteromorphic trait that modified her tear ducts, as Izuku would occasionally mumble about. A sting shot through her heart; her poor boy, so in love with what he was cruelly denied...
Focus, Inko! Izuku needs you. Pay attention. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, and headed through the elevator.
The world went numb when she walked into the room, and saw her baby Izuku. He looked scared, utterly exhausted... and had a medical eyepatch on. What happened? She never got the details of the attacks; between the secrecy the hospital had over the phone about his condition, and in her haste to get to her boy, she didn't get the chance to ask questions.
"...riya? Mrs. Midoriya? Ma'am, are you with us?" Inko shook the buzzing from her head, the room snapping back into focus. The doctor, a man with a porcupine mutation, was trying to get her attention as he held a small remote.
"Oh, o-of course, Doctor. I'm sorry I lost myself for a moment," she replied shakily. Her boy gave her a wobbly smile. It didn't reach his eye.
"It's quite alright, ma'am. I know this is coming as quite a shock. Your son has had quite a day, it's no surprise that it's worried you as well. I won't keep you in the dark any longer, though I do ask you to bear with me. What I'm about to share may be... upsetting, so I ask for you to wait until you have all the information available before I can answer your questions."
Oh, that doesn't sound good. Inko shot her own wobbly smile back at her boy, sitting next to him and clutching her hand in hers. She stayed on his right side, so he could see both her and the doctor.
The man clicked on his remote, and a projector whirred to life, throwing a series of images upon the hospital room's wall. The first slide alone nearly had Inko fainting. It was a series of x-rays of Izuku's head from all angles, and his left eye was gone. In its place was a bloated and ridged insect, a bee with a horrifically distended fleshy abdomen. From along its back, spikes and tendrils extended, anchoring it into the socket, grasping roots flowing from the injection sites.
"We have reason to believe this is a remnant of the quirked superorganism and former villain, Kuin Hachisuka. Her quirk was, or perhaps is, known as Queen Bee, and it allows her to parasitize human subjects and use them as a control locus for her swarm." The doctor's tone was dry, informational. He might as well have been discussing the weather, or the dinner menu.
"Then why is that THING still in my son's head?!" Inko snapped, half-launching herself from her chair. She only calmed down when she noticed Izuku flinch, retracting in on himself. She took long, slow breaths, and sat back down. But her glare on the doctor continued unabated.
"I understand you're upset, Mrs. Midoriya, but I wished to offer you all the information we have available. Our first instinct was indeed to remove it, but there have been... unexpected circumstances." He clicked to the next slide, a record and analysis of Kuin Hachisuka. "As soon as we recognized Hachisuka, we had young Midoriya in isolation, to confirm his safety and that of others in the hospital. But his presence at the hospital alone already raised some confusion."
"Previously, Hachisuka operated anonymously as much as possible, remaining hidden and acting remotely," he continued. "For her, in the guise of a host, to willingly be escorted to a medical facility after her identity was known would have been inexplicable. Our first suspicion was that she was avoiding antagonizing paramedics to later escape, but when Midoriya showed no indication of avoidant or evasive behavior, we continued to investigate."
The doctor clicked to the next slide, a series of brain scans. The whole abdomen of the thing in Izuku's eye socket lit up just like his brain did. Inko swallowed her revulsion. The whole thing was basically one big neural cluster...
"Under observation, we noticed that Hachisuka was mimicking Midoriya's neural patterns, rather than the other way around. Through a series of tests, we have ascertained that whatever hijacking the swarm operates on, it failed on your son, and instead became something of an accessory lobe to his own brain."
Izuku, his voice shaking, finally spoke. "Is... is that why you don't w-want to take it out? Would it hurt me if you d-did?" Oh, her poor boy...
"While that was an initial concern, consulting past records have showed no complications with removing the parasite as long as she is properly subdued. Which, at present, she is." The doctor once more clicked on his remote, this being a full-body scan, with accompanying images of biopsies. "The largest complication is... something of a mixed bag. On record, no previous hosts of Hachisuka have been quirkless. With a sample size of one, and it being deeply unethical to test, we have no way of knowing if this is due to you somehow co-opting the implantation, or if this is due to your quirkless status. But from our scans, it seems to indicate that your body is in the extreme early stages of quirk manifestation, consistent with that of an emitter with corresponding heteromorphic adaptations."
He cleared his throat as he pocked his remote. His eyes met both Inko's and her son's, in turn. "If we leave Hachisuka in place within you, it seems your body is primed to regard her quirk as yours, and develop accordingly. However, this level of symbiosis is unprecedented, and we have no way of determining what the short- or long-term ramifications are. Therefore, we deemed that the only ethical choice in proceeding was to ask your input."
A moment of shocked silence filled the room, before both Midoriyas spoke simultaneously.
"You need to remove it!"
"P-please let me keep her!"
Inko whipped her head around at her son. "How could you want to keep that thing?! It ate your eye, Izuku! We have no possible way of figuring out what it will do to you! It might not even stay dormant! It has to come out!" Her heart was pounding, one hand in a death-grip on his, the other clenching the hem of her blouse.
Izuku met her gaze, eye steady, brow crinkled. "Dr. Arashi, would it be possible for a moment alone with my mom?" He didn't break eye contact.
The doctor, who she now realized she never even checked the name of, vacated the room. "Just press the buzzer if you need us, young Midoriya. Take all the time you need."
"Mom," Izuku started, "I-I need this. I... I could finally have a quirk! After so, so long, I-" His expression crumpled, tears streaming down the side of his face.
Inko quickly wrapped her son up in a hug. "Oh, baby. I know you want a quirk, but this is dangerous! It's just not worth it, it's not safe for you. I don't know what I would do if that thing hurt you any more, kept feeding off you."
Izuku mumbled something into her shoulder. Oh, she supposed she was hugging him rather tight. She relaxed her grip, keeping one hand on her shoulder and cupping the other on his cheek. "What was that, baby?"
He looked away, seemingly hesitant to voice his thought again. His shoulders scrunched, making his already-slim frame look even smaller.
"Please, baby. I can't help you if I don't know. Please tell me."
He didn't answer, instead slipping his medical gown off to show his right shoulder, covered in bandages. He started peeling back the dressings, and when Inko shot to stop him, he met her gaze once more, pleading to let him do this. After a beat, she relented. Underneath there was a nasty burn, a few blisters raised at the center. Izuku tilted forward, showing the marking was an almost perfect match for that of a hand print.
"I... I don't understand," Inko stammered out, dread filling her even as her words tried to refute it. She knew what could leave a mark like that, and thousands of little moments were clicking into place. Tattered uniforms and bruises peeking out from his sleeves ("S-sorry, mom, I tripped on the way home"), the smell of smoke on his clothes and a fearful hunch to his stiff shoulders ("I got a bit too close to a villain fight for my notes, sorry mom, but I'm fine")... all the secrets ("I'm fine, mom"), all the lies ("I'm fine, mom, really"). It was all fighting against the words climbing out of her throat.
"W-was it the f-first villain attack? The d-doctors didn't..." She couldn't even finish the sentence, as Izuku shook his head softly.
"Mom, it was Kacchan. It's always been Kacchan."