Chapter Text
After Izuku returned from his impromptu hike, he was met with hugs and apologies from his parents. He...honestly couldn't blame them for keeping this a secret. But with the way the subject was brought up, he couldn't help but wonder how long they would have kept quiet if he hadn't developed his steel-like skin. After they were done talking, he bowed his head slightly, pushing those thoughts away into his subconscious. He took a deep breath, looking at them, and murmured, "I'm sorry for running off. I was just overwhelmed."
And with that, he sighed and trailed off into silence. Neither Mom nor Dad said anything; the three of them just hugging each other on the porch. Nothing more really needed to be said at that moment. Izuku realized that, out of everyone on Earth that could have taken him in, he was glad that it was Midoriya Hisashi and Inko that did it. Unable to properly express his feelings, he simply squeezed them tighter. They returned the hug, and he pulled away after a few minutes with a familiar light in his eyes and an excited smile on his lips. "So...can we try to figure out what else I can do?"
Dangisho Noburu snuffed out his cigarette on the side of the ashtray that sat in the cupholder. He had been trying to quit for the past month, but he was sure he would need the nicotine. He sighed, and exited his cruiser to head into the National Police Agency Building. It was the building where the top brass of the police force got together to discuss national threats and share information on prominent cases. That's not mentioning the correspondence they had with the Hero Public Safety Commission. He entered the building, nodding to the receptionist and the officer standing next to a metal detector. He moved past them to a door with a keycard reader, and slid his into the slot. He then swiftly moved through the door, suddenly hit by a blast of noise from his fellow officers and heroes.
He paid no attention to the costumed heroes talking with other officers, or to the criminals locked up in detention who were awaiting a trial or transport to a larger facility, since he was on a mission. All he wanted was to get this meeting over with as soon as he possibly could. As he walked through the building, he couldn't help but notice the familiar smell of coffee and stale donuts lingering in the air. The sound of ringing phones and hurried footsteps filled the hallway, reminding him of the constant chaos that surrounded his line of work.
Despite the distractions, Noburu remained focused on his objective, determined to make a speedy exit once the meeting ended. After hurrying to the elevators at the back of the large open room, he impatiently pressed the call button repeatedly. He knew that it wouldn't make them come any faster, but he wanted nothing more than to be done for the day already.
It took a minute or two for the elevator to reach him, and in that time he reflected on whether or not he could get away with skipping the meeting. He knew he couldn't. But it was nice to imagine himself going home and relaxing in his massive recliner as he entered the elevator. Hoping nobody else would get on, he suffered through the elevator music in silence. He managed to get his wish, since he was left alone. With that assurance, the older man pressed his face against the cool metal of the elevator, groaning at the sensation. However, the bliss could not last forever, and he soon arrived at his floor. With a sigh, the older man stood up taller before straightening his suit jacket. He had to make himself at least a little bit presentable, enough to represent his position of Commissioner.
Noburu proceeded to walk down the familiar path, one that had become mundane since his appointment some twenty years ago. He was still alone, which was odd at this point. There should at least be a few people walking with him. A frown made itself home on his face, as it was wont to do, as he glanced down at his watch. He wasn't that late; it was only ten minutes before the meeting time. He began to move his bushy mustache around with his bottom lip, a nervous habit he had started when he had gotten facial hair long enough to call a beard. He continued that until he got to the fairly nondescript door that they were meeting in. Taking a deep breath, he ignored the growing uneasiness and opened it.
His eyes swept over the attendees while he walked towards his seat. There were a few more people here than there normally were at these annual meetings. He saw the prefectural Commissioners sitting in one section, only a few missing. He then swept his gaze further forward, noticing all of the Senior Commissioners there as well, including his superior, Niijima Hikaru.
Usually, the Senior Commissioners had monthly meetings with the rest of the top brass here in this room, and then they met up with all of the prefectural Commissioners they were in charge of after to tell them of policy changes and the like. Only once a year did they have everyone meet up like this. However, he could also see a few people from Public Security, and the Hero Public Safety Commission. That was odd. They only came when it was time to implement a large-scale policy change, or to inform them of a widespread danger, as far as he had seen.
Noburu let out a huff as he took his seat, the ancient chair protesting under his weight, as it had done every time he had sat here. There was a quiet murmuring as everyone waited for the meeting to start, but he kept quiet. A sense of unease began rising in his chest, wondering exactly what the contents of this meeting were that warranted the attendance of so many higher-ups.
Izuku exited the makeshift doctor's office they had for Auntie Ko. She worked as a pediatrician, so whenever the Midoriya-Akatani kids had something wrong with them, they were brought to her. It was a nice way of keeping expenses low, and now that Izuku knew the truth of his heritage, keeping secrets that needed to be kept. She was able to run a lot of tests on him that she wasn't able to before, because he would have asked questions that she wouldn't have been able to answer.
At the end of the testing, she had tried to take his blood, but the needle had shattered upon putting pressure on it against his skin. The same thing had happened when they tried other methods. Scraping skin off his arm? The weird scalpel thing broke. Trying to cut his hair? The scissors fell apart and bent. So they were forced to abandon that path.
It was a conclusive 'maybe', since his body seemed to have a number of underdeveloped mechanisms that humans didn't have. So they didn't know if it was more powers, or just some unknown alien puberty thing.
For example, his eyes seemed to have a variety of other cells mixed within his cones and rods but they weren't able to tell what they would do. As he remembered all the tests that had been done on him, his fingers moved, writing with a phantom pen. He realized that he could never actually write this information down, but old habits were hard to break.
Izuku hummed, frustrated at the lack of information. He continued to walk down the hallway, passing the living room where Auntie Mika was chatting with Mom and Dad. He then proceeded to go into his room and flop down on his bed.
Well, it wasn't really his room, but it was the room that he had slept in, often sharing with his cousin, ever since he was big enough to sleep on his own. He sighed, looking up at the ceiling. He had so many questions but no real way to answer them. The teen then held his hand up at the ceiling, wondering if he would ever get the answers he was looking for. With a dramatic sigh, he let his hand fall against his chest and let his mind wander.
Noburu's unease slowly grew as time seemed to drag along. The air crackled with tension as hushed conversations filled the room as more people took their seats. Usually he wasn’t this tense during one of these meetings, but most meetings like this were announced beforehand. They usually weren’t just sprung on them like this. While he was surveying the room, he noticed some sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. When the mustached man turned to look, he saw the Commissioner General, also known as the chief of police, Tsuragamae Kenji, stand up and walk over to a few people from the Hero Public Safety Commission and Public Security.
Noburu couldn't help but shift to the edge of his seat, like he would be able to hear their conversation from all the way across the room. The idea of eavesdropping on them occurred to him, and he considered it for half a second before realizing how bad of an idea that was. He was a Commissioner, and the meeting would be starting soon. All he had to do was wait. The thought allowed him to relax his tense posture, taking a deep breath to try and settle his nerves.
However, he couldn’t help but take another glance over at Chief Tsuragamae. The dog-headed man seemed to be finished with his conversation, as he was walking onto the stage towards the podium. It seemed as if the meeting was about to start.
Chief Tsuragamae cleared his throat once he had adjusted the microphone. It took a minute or two before all the sound within the room had stopped, and once it was silent enough to hear a pin drop, the dog-headed man began to speak. “Officers, thank you for coming. I’m glad to see that everyone is here. As you may be able to tell, this was supposed to be an ordinary meeting until recently.” The Chief usually wasn’t so lax about formalities, so he took a moment to let that sink in before continuing, “However, as you can see, this is no longer a regular meeting, woof. We’ve had some new information come in recently that has been verified by independent scientists and those within the government. I’m sure that everyone here either remembers or has been affected in some way by the meteor shower that rained over Japan ten years ago.”
That was met with quiet affirmations, while Noburu thought back to that day. He only had a moment to reflect on the chaos and disaster before the Chief began to speak again. “As you know, many of the top heroes have had their quirks mutated since then, ruff. As well as a number of other people, as well. Now, we have information linking the quirk mutations and the meteor shower. Now, this affects all of Japan, so here to explain more about the subject is Doctor Kazuma Moriko, from the HPSC.”
It felt like the entire room was holding its breath as Chief Tsuragamae walked off the stage, before pressing a button by the stairs, which made the wall behind the podium slide open a bit to reveal a hologram projector. At the same time, a large woman whose skin looked like bark began walking up onto the stage. After only a few moments, the silence was filled with her deep voice, “Hello all. I am Doctor Kazuma Moriko, head of the Quirk Research division of the Hero Public Safety Commission. As Chief Tsuragamae has said, we have discovered a correlation between the meteor shower and the quirk mutations.”
“As said before, many of the top ten have had quirk mutations,” she took a breath and began to fiddle with a tablet before the hologram projector turned on, showing a picture of All Might’s grinning face above her head. It then showed a side by side comparison of the Number One Hero, before and after the meteor shower. In the more recent picture, not much had changed, except for the fact that he looked like he had lost a bit of muscle mass, and he had four arms. Doctor Kazuma then spoke again. “This probably isn’t news to many of you, but we need to cover all of our bases to help everyone understand the gravity of the situation before us.”
Next was Endeavor, who had changed far more drastically. He didn’t even look human anymore. His body seemed to be made out of chunks of obsidian on a bed of magma, the cracks between the rocks glowing with liquid heat. His facial features seemed all the same, except for the fact that his head was made up of a variety of lava rocks. His facial hair was just magma that looked like it dripped out of the various cracks in the rocks, whereas his hair was now just a small burst of flames.
After Noburu was done studying the image, he tuned back into the meeting. He heard several gasps, and assumed that that came from those who didn’t know how drastic of a mutation Endeavor had gone through. But Doctor Kazuma didn't let them ruminate on Endeavor for long, showing off a variety of other mutated heroes, all from the Top 100, over the next few minutes. He didn't know if they just cataloged the Top 100 heroes, or if this was just a small sample to show off how widespread this quirk mutation issue was. Once the slideshow was over, she cleared her throat and began to speak again, with a graph on the holographic screen.
"As you all see, a number of heroes and civilians have reported their quirks mutating, many of them happening after the meteor shower. After extensive research, we have pinpointed the cause of these mutations." With a click of a button, the graph changed into a picture of a green rock, one that had become more and more commonplace after the meteor shower. "This is a meteor rock from that meteor shower, and we've decided to name it Xenite, after where it came from, and due to the unknown composition of the crystalline structure-"
Doctor Kazuma cut herself off, and took a deep breath before starting again. The solemn silence that had penetrated the room had broken, with several quiet conversations occurring amongst his colleagues. "Anyway, we have discovered a correlation between exposure to Xenite, and quirk mutations. It seems finicky, with how it decides to act. As in there's no exact way to predict when or how someone's quirk will mutate due to exposure. Not to mention the fact that the mutation could take place over minutes or weeks. But that's not what we're here to tell you about."
"We have also learned that traumatic exposure to the mineral will cause psychosis. The person undergoing the quirk mutation will undergo some sort of mental shift as their quirk mutates. And there's no way to tell if the mutation is simply a mutation or if it's psychosis-inducing until after the process is done." With that information, her audience exploded with noise. Noburu didn't join in, instead stunned into silence. Everyone knew what she was saying. Normally the traumatic mutation wouldn't be a problem, since they could just remove the Xenite from the environment so nobody could be hurt. However, the Xennite had become embedded within the life of the everyday Japanese citizen.
Due to the last Prime Minister's policies, companies had scrambled to find uses for the green mineral, intending on 'making some good from the bad', as one of his speeches had declared. He had offered tax breaks and grants for those who were able to find new uses for it, and there had been a lot. Not only that, but jewelers had begun to substitute it for emerald, as it was a cheaper alternative. Noburu's mind swirled as he tried to figure out just how ingrained Xenite was into Japanese society, but he couldn't come up with an answer. And that was worrying.
After a few minutes of chaos, Chief Tsuragamae managed to catch everyone's attention and calm everyone down long enough for him to speak. Noburu was so deep in thought that he hadn't even noticed the Chief move. "Now, I understand your concern, everyone. Due to our previous 'well-intentioned' Prime Minister, we have yet another concern to add to our plates, woof. This meeting was mainly to make everyone aware of the connection between quirk mutations and Xenite. And to make you all aware of trauma-induced quirk mutations."
The meeting continued after that, but Noburu didn't pay much attention to anything said after that. This could turn out to be a disaster, and he couldn't help worrying over what would come next. He was so lost in his worry that he didn't even notice when the meeting ended and everyone began to leave. He jolted up as someone placed their hand on his shoulder.
He turned to look at whoever grabbed him, only to be pleasantly surprised. All the fear that had been smothering him a second ago seemed to lift off his shoulders as he stood up and hugged the man in front of him. "Naomasa! I have to admit, I didn't expect to see you here!"
The plain faced man hugged Noburu back, gripping him tightly as he replied. "Well, I wasn't allowed to stay back at the precinct. Commissioner Wantanabe insisted I accompany him."
"Ah, so he's finally training you to take his place? The old fart's been saying he was going to do that for years. But, enough of work talk; how are you? How's Makoto?" Noburu pulled back, but kept his hand grasped around Naomasa's.
"Ah. She's fine. Captain Celebrity's still around, isn't he?" Naomasa cracked a small grin, after he let Noburu's hand go.
Noburu let out a guffaw at that, "He is indeed! But, I'm glad to hear you're doing good. It wouldn't do for an uncle to not check up on his relatives, even if one's a Commissioner-in-training!"
Naomasa's cheeks flushed red, and he began to lead the two of them out of the meeting room. It seemed like they weren't the last to leave, as Chief Tsuragamae and the people from Public Security and the HPSC remained. While the two of them exited the building, Noburu's anxiety about the Xenite was momentarily forgotten as he immersed himself in the moment with his nephew. Everything was going to be just fine.
Especially since All Might was around. He would make sure that they would be able to handle anything thrown at them.