Author's Note: I do not own BNHA or any other elements from other fandom, just my character Keiyu and the village of Tsurukosa. There's only four more chapters to go for the first installment of Catalyst, and I plan on making each of them much longer. I might even add one more day to my publishing schedule so instead of publishing Chapter 19 on Thursday, it could be on Friday.
Ch. 18: Aryan Academy.
Her grandparents weren't there when she woke up, in fact no one was, she was by herself in yet another room with no windows with very low lighting. There were bandages around her wrists with rope wrapped around them as well as her legs. Stomach aching, she could only wonder at the small headache, having not been able to use her ab-Quirk so none of the usual tiredness was there. But she knew that the longer time went by without being able to use it, the worse it'll get. Her wrists were also aching and she worried that the proper medical care hadn't been given and the wounds would worsen with no one to constantly clean them. The first aid kit was in her right arm but even if she could take it out she needed to be able to use her hands to open it.
If only she had a knife- her eyes widened, and she moved her left arm that had a certain weight to it, suddenly recalling that she does in fact, have one.
The morning Daichi went missing she had put the knife there just in case and ended up forgetting about it. So all she needed to do was figure out how to retrieve the knife from her inventory.
Easier said than done.
Her eyes felt dry, and she gritted her teeth. She was tired of it, tired of crying because what did she expect from this island? She should've known it was only a matter of time before someone figured out her secret. She just didn't take into account that 'Quirks' were common and that other people could do things.
Should've figured that the only one to trust on the island was herself, Mikan-san left with no warning and Papa, she closed her eyes, don't think about it, he might not be with them, you need to escape.
Right, she was a twenty-six almost twenty-seven-year-old in a six-year-old almost seven-year-old body; she needed to act like it.
The knife was in her left arm and she tried to focus, bring up the same feeling that usually appeared when she was taking out an item.
Nothing happened.
'Come on' was her mutated Quirk a result of this? Surely she wasn't restricted from this aspect of her ab-Quirk because she wasn't wearing glasses?
Yeah she didn't like those implications at all. A loud horn sounded off, reverbrating through the walls and making her ears ring, what was that.
There was a loud bang as someone pounded on the door to her prison and a slot appeared,
"Food, eat it," a tray was carelessly shoved through and she stared at the blurry tray that hit her legs, sending the food tumbling onto the metal floor.
Against her better judgement, she leaned down and used her bound hands to carefully lift up and ate the food. It sort of tasted like ash and she coughed before getting what looked to be a cup and swallowed the tepid water, grimacing at the iron like taste of the liquid. The cup it was in was rough and she realized it was clay, the misshapen look of it looked like a failed pottery experiment.
Wait a minute, she stared at it for a moment, maybe.
The next moment the horn sounded she dropped and smashed the mug with the tray with as much force as possible. When she took the tray away the mug was in several pieces and she carefully felt around, grabbing the biggest piece and held it between her legs. Bringing her hands over it, she slowly went back and forth, biting her lip at the sharp pain in her wrists.
Several times the piece fell out, and she had to pick it up again, but she didn't give up.
The ropes finally fell apart, then she grabbed the piece to cut the rope around her legs. When the rope fell away, she eyed it for a moment before wrapping it around her waist, could come in handy.
Grabbing the tray and another shard, she walked to the door to see if there was a way to open the door but there was no handle on her end, or a lock to pick. Not giving up, she glanced up and spotted her once chance at escaping.
'This is not going to be easy.'
"Who would've thought that the village chief himself has to send his own grandchild for reeducation, you'd think she would've accepted the procedure right away," Captain Tanaka rolled his eyes at the sailor's gossiping and checked the time.
"We have to change the bandages around her wrists, someone send one nurse," he wasn't at all surprised that the six-year-old girl refused to do the ritual. The worst that her mom had to go through was surgery to remove those weird antennae of hers (though he always suspected the side effect was mental no matter what anyone else said.)
He was brought out of his thoughts by shouting and with a curse he ran towards it, finding some of his men and a nurse staring at the room.
"What is it?" he glanced in and this time let out a string of curses that made his men pale, "Hurry and search the other floors, the vents, anywhere she could have crawled to, and someone guard the lifeboats, do not let her slip away or we're in for it," he had received orders in no uncertain terms that if they misplaced her there would be consequences and he wanted to retire in the next five years.
He wasn't bribed enough for this dammit.
Keiyu held her breath as more men passed the spot she had gone through, some of them wielding harpoons to poke into the holes of a vent. She had spotted one of them throwing a strange ball that emitted gas and barely avoided breathing it in as she exited the vents to drop into a kitchen that appeared to be empty.
The moment she had seen the men's uniforms a deep dread built up in her, because if she was where she thought she was this will get a lot harder.
But she had to press on, even if she grabbed one of those boats and ended up lost in another part of Japan she had to keep moving forward.
"Why isn't anyone in the kitchen?! Go look," with a small gasp she ran away from the sound of running footsteps and exited through the door just as the other one opened.
"Someone just left! Hurry!" with legs aching, she ran down the hall onto an open deck where others were.
"There she is!" wishing not for the first time that she could take out her knife, she veered away from them and jumped off the deck, using the rope to slide down one of the wires that connected to the deck below.
She let go at the last moment and did a roll to avoid landing wrong, getting to her feet and heading straight towards the nearest lifeboat.
"Not so fast," there was a whoosh of air before something wrapped around her legs and she fell again to the floor of the deck. Looking down she stared with horror at the nets wrapped around her legs and took the shard, desperately trying to cut them.
Unfortunately they got to her first and tore the shard from her rope-burned hand.
Moments later she was bound again and instead of a room they locked her in a trunk with only the lock serving as an airhole.
'Dammit' how was she going to get out of this?
Captain Tanaka watched his men drop the trunk onto the back of the car and wiped his forehead,
"That was a close one," he sighed, feeling somewhat frustrated at the almost disaster, whose bright idea was it to use a clay cup?
'And how did this six year old manage to escape that far?' one thing he knew, she was not going to make it easy for the Headmistress, and it kind of pleased him that the old witch's future aneurysm.
"Let's go, we have a long trip back, and we need to avoid the heroes patrolling these waters, so it'll be another week before we get back to the island," the groans made a snarl appear on his face, "Things would've gone much faster if that brad hadn't escaped, now get moving or I'll look closely on who was to guard her!" that got them scrambling and rubbing his temples, he returned to his quarters, he had a report to give.
When she was taken out of the trunk, the first thing that happened was her clothes being stripped from her and being submerged under water. Hands held her head under while another pair wearing rubber gloves cleaned her body with a scratch towel.
She tried to grab a hold of the wrist of the person to get them to stop but the days of imprisonment and rough treatment wore on her and she could barely. Finally, they let her up and she spit out water as she gasped for air. They were in a rather small room with concrete walls and a toilet in the corner, not much room for the people that were currently in it.
"So, your the new student, heard you've been giving trouble," the woman in front of her could pass off as the priest's sister with how creepy she looked and Keiyu did not like the look in the woman's eyes.
"I would've expected someone with your heritage to not wind up here, but Keiko was never able to carry out her duties correctly. I warned Maiko that her daughter's choice in men would backfire, and that she should've been there to raise you from the start, to avoid these ridiculous notions of yours," she bit her tongue to prevent the 'how is wanting to keep my eyes a ridiculous notion' that wanted to escape.
There was a creak before ice cold water was poured over her from above, and the shriek escaped her lips before she could stop it.
The woman sniffed before snapping her fingers and the gloved hands from before grabbed and lifted her from the water.
"Put her uniform on and take her to orientation, we're behind enough as it is," that said she disappeared and Keiyu shivered as the woman gave her one last glance and a smile, it wasn't a friendly one. The light shone enough that it highlighted the same kind of necklace that the priest was wearing, a three-leaf clover with what looked like a cross in front of it.
"Welcome to Aryan Academy, Subject 1329418." she gulped.
