"Where the fuck have you been for the past three years?"
The question confused Ochako to no end, she had woken up mere moments ago and came down to get something to eat, when she had stumbled upon Katsuki and Izuku staring each other down.
"Why the hell do you care?" Izuku asked.
"I don't, at least not for my sake, I care for your mother's," Katsuki snapped.
"If you must know, I was about to go and take your advice, when I ran into a little girl in trouble. At first I was just gonna move on, but her eyes held so much pain in them that I couldn't ignore it. This guy in a mask walks up to me and claims to be her father, but she whispers to me that he's lying, so I pick her up and run. I eventually got to these woods and I turned around just in time to see the dude in the mask get impaled by a tentacle, and then dragged to the bottom of a lake. Another tentacle comes up to get me, but it gets hacked away by an axe," Izuku explained.
"And who was holding the axe?" Katsuki asked, his voice sounded hoarse and strained.
"An old Italian man, Julius Zeppeli. He took me in and cared for me, until one day he was killed, and I was forced to take up both his axe and the role of protector of this forest," Izuku answered.
"What the hell do you have to protect in here?" Katsuki questioned.
"I don't protect anything in the forest, I protect the rest of the world from the forest," Izuku told him.
The two of them sat in silence for a few minutes, and Ochako was about to finally go downstairs when Katsuki asked another question.
"Something's wrong, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?" Izuku asked back.
"I can always tell when something's bothering you, you get this look in your eyes. I saw it every time you tried to stand up to me," Katsuki explained.
The lumberjack sighed, "Those things out there are planning something, yesterday one of them got right up to the barrier around the house, none of them have ever done that before. They're up to something, and I need to get you, your friends, and my daughter out of this place before it happens."
"What about you?"
"I'm meant to die in this place, it's my destiny," Izuku solemnly said.
There was another long beat of silence, before Izuku spoke once again, "I should wake your friends up, I'm gonna be teaching them how to keep themselves alive today. Get some more rest, you should be ready to move in a day or two."
By the time Ochako realized that Izuku was heading up the stairs, he was already right in front of her face.
"Good you're here, I need you to watch over Eri for an hour or two," Izuku said.
"Yeah, of course," the brunette smiled.
"Thanks, she should be awake by now so you can go in and see her," Izuku told her, before he went up to the room that Tenya and Eijirou slept in, and began to bang on it. When it didn't open, Izuku simply forced his way into the room and came back out with the sleeping forms of the two boys draped over his shoulders.
Ochako cautiously went up to Eri's door and knocked on it softly, there was a few seconds of silence, before a quiet click signified the unlocking of the door. Eri's room was painted a light pink color and both her bedframe and her dresser had been painted white, Eri herself sat on the floor drawing.
"Hi!" Ochako said as she squatted down to eye level.
"Hello," Eri greeted back, not taking her eyes off of her picture.
There were a few more drawings surrounding the little girl, "You drew these, right?" For a seven year old, they were quite well done, at the very least they weren't disproportionate stick figures.
Eri nodded and held up the picture she had been working on; it was a large, grey haired man swinging down an axe on a smaller green haired man, who was blocking the axe with a bow.
"Is this?"
"That's Papa and Grandpa, they used to allow me to watch them train together before Grandpa died," Eri answered.
Ochako was about to ask another question when two feminine screams from outside met her ears, she opened up the window to see Tenya and Eijirou sitting on the ground, soaked, and Izuku standing in front of them, holding a hose and smiling.
The brunette chuckled to herself and turned her attention back to Eri, the two spent a few hours playing together before Ochako noticed a small, hand-crafted doll.
"Did you make this too, Eri?" Ochako asked.
The small unicorn child shook her head, "No, Mama did."
'Why does that provoke anger in me?' Ochako questioned herself, 'More importantly who does she mean by Mama? I'm the only other girl here, right?'
"Eri, who do you mean my Ma-" the door opened and cut her off as Izuku walked in the room.
"Papa!" The horned child barreled into the large man's legs, slightly catching him off guard.
"Hey, little girl," he greeted, "Think I could borrow her for a few seconds?" Izuku asked, pointing at Ochako.
Eri nodded before running off, Izuku made a motion to follow him and the two walked to the back of the house, before the lumberjack threw a wooden bow and a leather quiver at Ochako.
"What's this for?" She asked.
"You need to learn how to properly defend yourself against the monsters that dwell in this forest, and you're gonna use this to do it," Izuku explained.
"But I already know martial arts," Ochako argued.
"Trust me, you're gonna want to keep your distance from those things," Izuku warned her, "Now, have you ever used a bow before?"
"Sometimes during summer camp," Ochako admitted.
"Good," Izuku slammed his foot down on a hidden button and a large stone plate soared through the air and towards Ochako's face.
"WHAT THE HECK!" the brunette cried out as she ducked under it.
"You need faster reflexes," Izuku deadpanned before slamming his foot on the button again.
"Stop doing that!" Ochako said as she ducked once again.
The two spent several more hours like that, Izuku firing a seemingly unlimited supply of plates, and Ochako trying her best to hit them.
"You did good, you're a fast learner," Izuku complimented.
Ochako huffed, "Well it was either that or get my face smashed in."
"Hey, you did better than your friends," the lumberjack chuckled.
"So, is that all you had planned for us or?" Ochako trailed off waiting for the response
"Follow me," Izuku said as he walked into the woods, "The pipes haven't been bringing in much water lately, so you're gonna come with me to see if something is obstructing it."
Ochako silently followed him through the forest for a good half hour, before coming across a large crystal clear lake.
"Well, I found what's blocking the pipes," Izuku said with a grimace.
"What is i- OH MY GOD!" Ochako yelled as she saw the bloody deer carcass laying in front of the pipe. Many of its bones were exposed with small amounts of meat still on them, and what little flesh it still had was charred to bits.
"Burnt flesh?" Izuku quietly asked himself, the two of them heard heavy footsteps from behind them and the lumberjack's eyes went wide, "Get down!" He yelled he tackled Ochako out of the way of a stream of flames.
A large rotund creature stood before them, he had a single green eye, no lips, gray armour covering its body, twin cannons in the place of arms, and two tubes connected to its back emanating a soft orange glow.
Izuku removed his axe from the place on his back and raised it high to attack, only to be shot into a nearby tree by a blast from one of the creature's cannons. It was almost as if he didn't feel anything as he hopped back to his feet and drove his axe into one the creature's two toed feet.
The monster roared before grabbing Izuku in-between its cannons and lifting him towards its rows and rows of sharp teeth.
Suddenly, the creature stopped and began to spasm uncontrollably until it exploded, leaving behind a bloody corpse that was a fourth of its original height.
"What did you do?" Izuku asked.
"I-I severed one of his tubes," Ochako stuttered out.
"We need to get you all out of here," Izuku urgently said as he grabbed the brunette by the wrist and began to drag her back to the house.
"W-why, what's the matter?!" Ochako frantically questioned, Izuku sounded genuinely scared.
"That thing that you killed, it's called a mancubus, and it was sent to kill us, it used that fucking deer as bait to drag us out," Izuku answered.
"Who sent it?"
"Think of it like this; this forest is a beehive, all of the creatures you've seen are nothing but worker bees, but the thing that sent the mancubus to kill us, is the queen bee," the lumberjack explained, "And the queen bee now knows that someone who's not supposed to be in her hive is in there, so she wants them dead. Which is why I need to get you, your friends, and my daughter as far away from this hell hole as possible."
"I can't just leave you to fight all of these things on your own!" Ochako protested.
"These things want a war, and trust me, you don't want to be here when I give it to them."
Hey all, it's probably worthy for me to note that this story had about 2 or 3 chapters left before it's done, and I just wanted to say that I'm really grateful for all of the people that have read this. That's it for now, Peace.
