Chapter Text
He limps out into the forest surrounding his now conquered, burning hell.
It’s unfortunate that he couldn’t get any of the files stored there. But he barely had enough resources to escape and destroy the place. Oh well, desperate times called for desperate measures.
He’s smart enough to understand this body without reverse engineering its timeline, so it’s not like he needs to know which animal he was originally anyways.
Still, he had relied on chance quite a bit during his escape, and it had worked out in the end, but perhaps not as well as he would have liked.
He makes it thirty-five kilometers, curls up under partial cover provided by a rock sticking out of a hillside, and falls asleep.
He wakes up the next morning, not because of the weak dawn light, what’s that compared to the harsh lab lights, after all? No, he wakes up to the sound of boots making their way through the underbrush.
He stays still as he can. His best bet, while he’s still tired and dehydrated and hungry and injured and- he should stay unnoticed. The optimal situation is to stay unnoticed.
When the boots stop four meters away, he knows he’s out of luck.
“A… doll?” a rough voice questions as the person moves closer.
He can see past the muddy blue and green striped boots now. They belong to a person that looks mostly human, save for their scales and eyes and tail and claw and they obviously have a quirk that makes them seem like a lizard, likely something close to some sort of monitor lizard.
The apparent lack of aggressiveness decreases the odds of him being eaten.
Still, he feeds into the animal instincts, tempered with the idea of pretending to be a doll, that tell him to stay still.
The person steps closer and He tries to run.
He’s caught, held tight in claws and this is a completely different danger than he’s used to and he can’t think of any equations to disarm the bomb or open the door when the problem is brute strength and there’s no equation to help him there.
“Hold on, little fella, you’re bleedi-” He does still have a lighter body, though, so if he bites the right part of the close-enough-to-human hand, he can get enough leeway to scurry out and try to escape.
He hits the ground and starts trying to run, but he’s still so slowed down that he gets caught in a net a few seconds later.
He tries to chew through but finds a metal mesh that will take him 2 minutes and 14 seconds to chew through even once, let alone enough times that he can make a hole to escape.
“I’m a bit of an amateur vet, little fella, I swear I’m just going to try to help you get healed up,” the person says. He can’t see or hear any tells of a lie, so he stops struggling to look at the being holding him captive, appraising.
“There, that’s better, nice and calm now,” they say, turning to go back the way the human came, “Now, what should I be calling you?” they ponder.
“I do not have any name to be called,” he answers, because he will not go by Subject Alpha-Ultra. Never again.
The person carrying him startles and almost drops him.
“Y-y-you can talk? Japanese?” they yell, readjusting their grip.
“Is it so unusual for a talking person in Japan to talk in Japanese? Although I do know several other languages, if you would prefer to converse in classical Latin, Proto-Latin, English, Spanish, French, Swedish, German, Farsi, Swahili, Igbo, Urdu, Russian, Mongolian, Korean, or Maori, I can do that quite easily. There are a few other languages that I am currently learning, but I may not have quite a large enough vocabulary to engage in more technical conversation,” he says, watching the person holding him become more and more intimidated as his list goes on.
“Ah… no, I suppose Japanese would make sense. I just don’t usually find talking animals out here… What exactly are you, though?” they ask, before immediately blushing and stammering, “S-s-sorry! That w-w-was rude! You can be whatever you want to be, of course! Please f-forgive me!”
“What am I, hm?” he says, sticking his head out of the net that his new acquaintance has loosened, resting his paws on the ring, “I do not know! I do not know any animal that actually correlates to what I am. As for what I want to be, I was thinking of going into education!” he says.
“Edu… cation?” his companion asks, dumbfounded.
“Indeed! I would like to ensure the world has certain types of people in it, like you, for instance. What better way than to help craft the youth into the population of tomorrow!” he explains, brain already cranking away different routes he could take, different styles, all the benefits and drawbacks. There’s so much to do to get rid of the sort of people who he’s known before this person.
“I don’t think you want more people like me running around, actually. I- no. Nevermind. If you want to do that, you should. Somehow. But you’ll at least need a name for people to call you if you want to be a sensei,” they say. Teachers are, of course, only one small part of education, but a crucial one. He should probably spend some time as one before he gets to the point where he can actually take charge of others’ education.
“As I said, I do not have a name. I will have to figure one out,” he says, then thinks.
There’s no equation for coming up with names. Labels, yes, there are ways to figure those out. Serial numbers numbered or otherwise. But not names.
He stares unblinkingly at his companion for a few moments as, for the first time in memory, he draws a blank.
“Uhhh… Nezu?” they say, breaking him out of his non-thoughts.
“Nezu? That is not a word I know,” he says, curious about the incomprehensible non-sequitur.
“No- um… Because it kind of sounds like mouse? And you look kind of like but probably aren’t a mouse? I guess? I just think it kind of fits you, for a name…” they explain absently, “but only if you want!” they rush to add, nervous again.
He rolls it around in his head for a moment. Nezu… It will do for now, at least.
“Then it is nice to meet you, good Samaritan! I am Nezu!” he says.
“Pleasure to meet ya, Nezu! I’m Ryuukomo Hisauro! And this is my house!” Ryuukomo-san says, gesturing behind Nezu.
Nezu turns to see a run-down cabin, isolated, patchwork fixes on the roof and walls, a small garden area around it, other obvious signs of homesteading. Ryuukomo-san lives alone in the woods, with very little support or contact from others. Except for other animals. The place reeks of them.
Ryuukomo-san treats his injuries and makes a bed for him to sleep in. They apologize for the scar he’ll apparently have over his eye and insist he stay until he’s “whole and healthy again”.
Nezu isn’t sure he’s ever been that. But he’ll stay for now.
Ryuukomo-san is kind and awkward and hard working and socially hopeless. Nezu figures out fairly quickly that much of this personality comes from their quirk. 130 years of glowing babies and so forth and humans still can’t seem to treat each other without bringing in irrational, arbitrary criteria into everything. He and Ryuukomo-san are both testaments to that.
Hisauro-san was also neglected and bullied in school, leading them to drop out early. It’s no wonder they’ve ended up in their situation, as much as they’ve made of it.
Hisauro-san also says they would have done better if they were in a city, which are already used to people like them, are very accommodating. Although the tyranny seems to be taking hold there as well, or at Hisauro-san is worried about it, having heard that some people are getting bullied for not having a quirk now.
But in the areas that are only generously rural, let alone suburban or urban, people like Hisauro are still very much not welcome in what little of society there is. So Nezu’s friend lives harmoniously with animals that look less like them than the people who have driven them away for looking too much unlike them.
Nezu stays for two months, until the weather cools into an unoppressive autumn, then leaves Hisauro to make his way into the human world.
Five years later, he returns to a clearing reclaimed by nature with denser, different, more vibrant vegetation around where the cabin once was.
It takes far longer than it should for him to find any news stories on it. Even longer to piece through the euphemisms and circumstantial evidence to peel back the cover-up.
A mob beat up Hisauro, during a year of bad harvest, looking for a scapegoat, probably declaring Hisauro a monster cursing the area to let them sleep at night. After beating them up, hopefully to unconsciousness, they threw Hisauro back into the cabin and burned it down.
Nezu mentally reviews at his plans and starts expanding them. It’s not enough. He’ll need to have a hero school, with more than just heroics, and make it the best in the country, to fix Japan. Once he gets enough over Japanese heroics, and therefore society, he can start manipulating the rest of the world to follow suit.