fuunu - She did. And that's why the fact that Uraraka showed up again as if nothing has happened is mysterious :v
Jpx0999 - Joke's on you, he WILL be making conspiracy theories xD
Shahryar - ... you know what, I could Todoroki doing that lmao.
Detrametal - Todoroki is being very... himself. And hey, Katsuki Bakugou needed some nerf xD And don't worry, the frog must be protected and cherished :D
(***)
Kacchan, being himself, rejoined them ten minutes later with a look of cold determination on his face.
"Fuck you, nerd," He announces, baseball bat back in his hands. Bakugou is furiously poking things in front of him with it. "Fuck you, Messy Hair. Fuck you, Library Freak." Todoroki blinks at him as if surprised by being involved in the list. "And, chief among all, FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING SPIDERS FROM HELL!"
He adds that while an uncovered crawler tries to dash to safety. Bakugou practically obliterates him with a powerful downward swing of his baseball bat.
"... mistakes were made," Toga announces, actually looking at Bakugou with a slightly worried look on her face.
"Ka… Bakugou-kun, I think you should calm down." Uraraka, despite not being included in the list of Bakugou's revenge targets, decides to speak. "You're going to break your bat if you keep swinging that way and we kind of agreed to donate the killed spiders to the frog of the lake, you're going to damage them too much!"
Bakugou freezes, looks at her, calculates something in his mind (all while Toga and Midoriya are slightly shrinking in the background), then speaks.
"Fine." He then growls. "I'll fucking do it your way."
Oh, it worked.
"Wait, it worked?" Toga looks as surprised about it as Midoriya is.
"OF COURSE IT FUCKING WORKED, MESSY HAIR!" Bakugou erupts. "SHE GAVE ME VALID FUCKING REASONS TO CALM THE FUCK DOWN SO I'M GOING TO DO IT! WHY IS EVERYONE CONSTANTLY BEING SURPRISED BY ME ACTING LIKE I HAVE A WORKING BRAIN?! I'M A FUCKING HONOR STUDENT YOU DIPSHITS!"
Midoriya says nothing, just gives Uraraka a thumbs-up gesture. That was a surprisingly skillful diffusion of the situation.
Uraraka slightly freaks out over that but eventually settles over smiling back. Yay. She does have quite a pretty smile. Midoriya is only curious exactly how honest it is, because… yeah, paranoia should be his way of life.
"Let's wipe all those spiders and go home," Midoriya says. Secretly, he is proud of Kacchan for finally deciding to face his fears.
(***)
The situation was more or less simple until the remnants of the nest decided to swarm them. A bit of a non-spider behavior, then again those were cryptid spiders that could perfectly imitate objects. Expecting normalcy was stupidity.
Midoriya had a plan for that. He sent Uraraka for something they left before the building, then the rest retreated into the corridor, waited until the mimics gathered up in front of them, then he fired up Ignition. From both hands at once.
"FUCK! IT HURTS!" Midoriya then yells. Uraraka, bless her heart, appeared with a bucket of water a moment later. Midoriya shoved his hands inside. "Ooh, much better, thank you."
"No problem!" She replies, looking at him with a slight worry on her face. "Just… Do you do that to yourself whenever you use your magic?" He nods, while Toga and Bakugou deal with the remaining mimics. "That's… horrible! You should talk with the artificers, they'll probably find a way to make it less painful to you."
"You think?" He asks back, slightly surprised. He thought that this was supposed to be a 'normal' thing, but…
"Yeah, they won't make it painless but I'm absolutely sure that they could figure out a way to make it hurt less." She replies. "It's not heavy on sanity or stability, just 'conventional' damage, so I'm sure there is a way!"
"Guess I'll give them a chan…" Midoriya replies, but that's when Bakugou cuts in.
"Yeah, right, keep flirting with girls while we're doing the heavy work." Bakugou quips. Midoriya freaks out a little. Uraraka freaks out a lot, stammering out some half-formed words. Toga, surprisingly enough, smiles wryly.
Todoroki does a dry slurp in the background, having discovered mid-way that he ran out of cola. He looks vaguely dejected at that fact. He is, naturally, ignored.
"Also, that's your magic, Deku?" Bakugou then asks, staring at him incredulously. "You point your hands in the direction of the enemy and then boom, your hands explode? That sounds absolutely fucking stupid to me."
"My hands don't explode, Kacchan!" Midoriya replies immediately. "I just fire… Uhm… fire from them, and the heat just burns me a little. Besides, you're just jealous because I have magic and you don't."
"I'm going to learn magic and I'm going to be better than you're at it, in fucking no time, shitty Deku." Bakugou snarls. "So, logistical question - how the fuck are we going to carry all those fucking spiders back to the UA?"
…
Well, crap.
(***)
Izuku ends up asking Todoroki a few questions about the details of the Censor. Then, Bakugou calls his parents for assistance, after giving him a rather fake story. Thirty minutes later (the time they spend cleaning up the last crawlers and separating those that were still 'useful'), his dad arrives in their family car.
No. They aren't transporting a mound of dead giant spiders with Bakugou's family car. It would leave a major mess inside. They just asked his parents to lend them a big wheelbarrow that his father was using for his work.
Masaru Bakugou switching from fashion industry to running a small gardening company ("Plants complain about minor stupid things way less and are arrested for doing major stupid things under influence way rarer. Trust me, son") turned out to be useful.
"And let me guess…" Kacchan, naturally, refused to be the one to load the wheelbarrow with dead cryptids. He wanted to have nothing to do with shapeshifting spiders. It didn't stop him from talking, of course. "... you want me to push this mobile pile of nightmare fuel and childhood trauma all the way to the UA, just so you can feed the Frog Face with them and get free frog gacha rolls?"
"... wow." Midoriya blinked at him. "That's truly a sentence that was never spoken before in human history and will never be spoken again. But yes, Kacchan. That's the plan."
Bakugou groans loudly. At least the wheelbarrow's handles were comfortably long.
(***)
They arrive at UA much later, with Bakugou practically running out of swear words midway. A rare achievement, all things considered.
The school is open. According to Todoroki, Candidates and Black Course students are allowed to come and go on Sundays. They push the wheelbarrow of nightmares through it until they finally appear by the lake.
"So, how do we call Tsuyu to come?" Toga asks when they start unloading the spiders right next to the lake's edge. "The lake's pretty big and…"
She stops talking when the crawler she was holding is suddenly pulled away from her hand by something long and flexible. Their eyes follow the mysterious 'attacker' - that turns out to be a very long and flexible tongue.
It's Tsuyu. She is staring at them from the water, only her head sticking out from it. When the spider vanishes in her mouth, Bakugou lets out a very anguished sound and looks away.
Yeah, that had to hurt.
"Tasty, ribbit." She announces. "More."
"... fascinating," Todoroki says, his eyes on the frog girl. "I should have brought more food."
Midoriya isn't going to comment on that.
There were thirty three crawlers in total at that building. About twelve were too damaged to be taken anywhere. They packed ten of those that were left, so everything that could fit in the wheelbarrow. Tsuyu devoured them all rather quickly while looking happy about it.
"Ribbit!" Tsuyu lets out. "Wait here." Then the head disappears into the water.
"... I only saw her eat one spider," Bakugou says, hiding on all fours behind the bench. "But I'm never going to unsee it."
"U-uhm, yeah, that was a bit…" Uraraka looks rather conflicted about it. "... I empathize with Bakugou."
"And I don't!" Toga looks proud about it. "Izuchan, did you see her tongue?"
"Err, yes?" Midoriya asks, unsure what it was about.
"So long and flexible…" She grins at him. Oh. It was about that. "Now, check this out."
Toga promptly uses her ghoul's physical capabilities to lick her own eyelid. Her tongue is… thin, but long and clearly flexible to the extreme. Midoriya kind of knows what is it supposed to do, but… he finds it really hard to NOT stare at it.
Uraraka clears her throat. That manages to wake him up from the stupor (yeah, flirting in front of people must be irritating), and he looks away. He misses Uraraka and Toga staring daggers at each other for a moment.
Tsuyu returns a few minutes later, actually leaving the lake. On all fours. Midoriya isn't 100% sure (he lacks intel to be certain about it) if she even can walk upright, it's not like she has a lot of occasions to do that in the water.
Of course, she is naked. Midoriya, for all his perversities, shows absolutely no reaction from that. Would doing anything be considered bestiality? He has absolutely no idea, the world of the initiates is super confusing. He is sure, though, that he isn't interested in it.
She has a plastic bag. Someone must have thrown it into the lake and she probably decided to put things into it for more efficient transfer. The fact that she was holding it with her teeth (and clearly struggling to pull it once she was no longer in water) was actually rather… inhuman.
She had hands, but clearly not an awful lot of experience in using them as humans did. She probably did most of the things with her tongue. Like a… well, frog.
Midoriya decides to approach her (she doesn't escape) and takes the bag from her. He hands it over to Toga (Bakugou is still way too out of it).
Relatively bad idea. She had to get close to grab it, and it was rather clear that Tsuyu was on the verge of darting back into the water. When Himiko retreated, her big eyes returned to Midoriya.
He has a feeling that he's supposed to do something. He has no idea what, but… okay, maybe this?
He extends his hand (Tsuyu's eyes drift to it, but she doesn't move). Then after a slightly tense few seconds, his hand lands on her head.
Tsuyu's reaction to head pats could be summed up as a 'face of pure bliss', or at least that's how Midoriya can describe it. He finds this activity surprisingly fun.
(***)
Todoroki shows a surprising amount of initiative and decides to offer his help in sifting through the recovered goodies.
"Really?" Midoriya asks. He is now sitting cross-legged on the ground, Tsuyu lying right next to him. Her head (very, very wet) is on his right leg, where he is (still) vigorously patting it. "Why?"
"... because you can't be sure that what you recovered isn't dangerous to people, and I have ten times more experience with things like that than you all combined?" Todoroki replies and Midoriya… well, he doesn't facepalm only because he doesn't want to freak Tsuyu out with a sudden arm motion. "Consider this a payment for the show you've given me today."
"Please, do it." Midoriya quickly replies. He hasn't stopped gently head patting Tsuyu (who ribbits regularly in response) for a second.
None of their three 'cabalmates' appeared even remotely interested in touching who-knows-what on their own. Even if Tsuyu technically did that first. Bakugou and Uraraka sit on the opposite sides of the bench (Bakugou clearly trying to not look in Tsuyu's direction). Toga appears to be… sunbathing?
With her clothes on, she is clearly lying on her back on the ground, with her eyes closed. Midoriya isn't going to ask.
Todoroki starts sifting through things.
"Most of it is junk." He announces after a few seconds. "Which makes sense, because you don't really throw a lot of valuable things into the lake and she can't tell useful things from said junk. We have a lot of things like badly degraded pens and so on."
It's as if fighting eldritch abominations somehow permits you to throw your junk into the lake. Wow.
"What about…" Bakugou replies. "The 'rest' of it that isn't junk?" Yeah, 'most of it' implied that.
"Let's see…" Todoroki starts taking things out of the bag and putting them on the side. "... we have two magic books. Before you ask - they are touched by Powers, being in water didn't damage them at all. A handful of minor magical trinkets…" He says as he puts several things to the side. Midoriya saw at least a single crucifix on a necklace and two rings. "... and, well, this."
"... are you fucking kidding me?" Bakugou speaks first. Everyone is staring at the item that Todoroki is holding in his hand over the bag. "Library Freak, that's a gun."
"Looks like a Glock 19." Todoroki deadpans while putting it to the side. "Badly degraded by water. Unusable. Also, the concealment glyphs on it were eroded by water so you should probably not parade with it around the non-Initiated."
"... wow." Midoriya replies. He really isn't sure what to say about it. "Just, wow." Todoroki ignores him.
"That's…" Todoroki continues. This time he's holding… a screw. Long and thick, it looks like something to connect fragments of a railway with each other. "... Bakugou's I think. You must have lost it and didn't remember about it because of the Censor."
"What?" Bakugou replies in surprise. "Why do you mean by…" Then he connects the dots. Screw. Lost. Screw loose. "Oh, you son of a bitch."
Midoriya actually ends up chuckling at that. Uraraka lets out a rather amusing 'pffft' that ends when Bakugou gives her a death stare. Then she immediately switches over to a look of complete peace and innocence.
"Anyways…" Todoroki ignores him entirely, while putting the screw to the side. He then freezes, while looking at the insides of the bag. After a moment he pulls out some tool with a short handle. The fact that it didn't perforate the bag during retrieval is actually a small miracle. "... call Yagi-sensei here, and tell him to bring Maijima-sensei with him. Right now."
"What? Wh…" Midoriya is about to also ask 'why', but something in the expressionless look on his face (and the intensity of the stare he gets from him) tells him to pull out his phone.
(***)
"Young Midoriya." Yagi appears ten minutes later. Midoriya is still petting Tsuyu, a fact that clearly drew the teachers' attention. "So, what exactly happened?"
He is accompanied by a scrawny man with brown hair, brown trousers, and a white shirt. Must be the 'Maijima-sensei', whatever he was teaching in school. Midoriya remembers the name from the talk with Yagi-sensei after his father's vanishing.
"Midoriya managed to tame Tsuyu with some dead mimics," Todoroki announces, to some surprised looks from the new arrivals. "Enough for her to bring him things that Candidates and Black Course students threw into the lake."
He points his finger towards a small pile of things. Books, jewelry lying upon them to be visible, even the ruined gun put on display on the grass.
"Oh?" Yagi blinks at them. "That's a surprisingly crafty move, at least until people hear that those things can be freely retrieved by someone and will stop disposing of them that way. How did you do that, Young Midoriya?"
Midoriya stops petting Tsuyu's head. Tsuyu opens her eyes and looks at him (probably wanting some more attention) while ribbiting loudly.
"Tsuyu, we have guests." He says while gesturing towards the new arrivals. Her eyes follow the gesture to them. "Say hello."
"Hello, ribbit." Tsuyu says. Midoriya then returns to petting. He gets a good look at the expression of shock on Yagi's face. Maijima is much less expressive, but it's clear that he's staring at her in surprise as well.
"Oh, wait, how did that…" He blinks at Midoriya a few times. "She can talk?!"
"Surprise." Todoroki deadpans from his position. "I couldn't believe it either."
"Her grammar is horrible and the vocabulary is rather limited…" Midoriya admits. "... but she's… friendly, I guess." No one can doubt that from the look of pure bliss on her face when he's head patting her.
"That's…" Yagi manages to get himself under control. "... surprising. But I assume that it's not the reason why we were called here?"
Todoroki, without a word, shows the weird item to them. They don't have his lack of facial expression to cover their reactions.
They are shocked.
"What, how, when?!" Yagi stammers out. Maijima opens his mouth but no words leave his mouth. "Maijima, you…"
"On it." The other teacher wakes up. He approaches Todoroki and grabs the item, before putting it in his pocket. "I'll go work on it right away. Make sure they don't tell anyone." He says to Yagi before hurrying away.
"Well, if that ain't sound fucking ominous." Bakugou comments from his bench.
Yagi sighs.
"You probably want to know what it is all about, right?" He says. He gets nods from everyone but still sunbathing (or resting) Toga and still expressionless Todoroki. "You've all heard about Shapers, right?"
"Yeah, yeah, those physics-fucking Powers," Bakugou replies in a very Kacchan way.
"Yep," Yagi replies. "Their lore can be used to produce items that are a merger of technology and magic. Being able to bend certain rules helps make things that normal technology is far from achieving, even if those things tend to be very, very costly."
"So, like what?" Bakugou replies. "Combat lasers?"
"Actually, yeah," Yagi replies, surprising them. "But those things, especially the more rule-bending things, are prohibitively expensive. What you found was most certainly such a magitek device, except, if we managed to identify it correctly at a glance… good eye, by the way, Young Todoroki…" Todoroki says nothing but nods scarcely. "... might have been a hacking device."
"Hacking?" Midoriya asks. He has no idea about that subject, and he isn't ashamed of admitting that. "Hacking what?"
"Unless someone decided to spend millions of yen on materials to hack the school's network and change their grades a little…" Yagi replies "... probably the Black Course network. Including a lot of stuff like artificer device's blueprints and so on. In short, things that are very, very secret."
Oh.
"So someone was spying on UA?" Midoriya replies with a question.
"Yes, and they clearly disposed of something very valuable when it was no longer useful," Yagi replies. "Rather than, for example, getting it out of UA and selling it or dismantling it for parts. That means that it might be someone rather… serious and professional, and with a notable backing. There is a possibility that our rivals, Shiketsu High, for example, decided to perform some espionage op on us, but in the meantime, all options are on the table."
Midoriya doesn't say it. But… his father wasn't involved in that as well, right? He clearly was a powerful magic user, and he was next to UA the whole time, so…
Yagi probably knows that this option is on the table as well, but if so, he decides to not say anything.
"Actually discovering something like that…" Yagi adds. "... even if by accident, and bringing it to our attention, will earn you a lot of contribution points. But for now, we don't know if the spy isn't still inside of UA, so…" He makes the 'zipping mouth' gesture at them.
"Oh, sure." Midoriya ends up being the one to reply. "We get it, secrecy, and so on."
"In the meantime, I don't want to interrupt your… fun." Yagi then says, eyeing Tsuyu for a moment before returning to Midoriya. "But I'd like a word with you in private."
Damn. It might be something important, but… damn.
"Uhm, Tsuyu?" Midoriya says. The frog girl opens her eyes and looks at him. "I think it's all for today. We'll drop by again with food, but…"
She raises up, practically wipes her head on his chest and chin (that was quite… cute, but also made him very, very wet), then ribbits loudly and jumps back into the water. That's… quite some jumping strength. Wow.
(***)
"Young Midoriya, I believe that what just happened helped me puzzle up a … theory, concerning your mother," Yagi announces once they are alone in the park.
"W-What?" Midoriya stares at him in shock. He really didn't expect those words. Then again, he wasn't sure what exactly he suspected.
"There is a large chance that your mother was an aberrant serving the Ancient of Desire," Yagi replies. Midoriya… doesn't like the name. "I only have two cases, of Young Toga and Tsuyu, to base the theory on, but…"
"But?" Midoriya asks when the silence grows a bit too long and awkward.
"Ancient of Desire is often culturally flanderized into a sex deity, but it's a lot more complicated than that." Yagi continues. Yeah, Midoriya doesn't like the direction of the talk. "It inspired various gods of sex and fertility throughout human history, but in general it seems to patron over the concept of desiring something. Drugs, glory, good food, completely chaste companionship, all of that qualifies just as much as sex does."
"I… still don't know why you say that it seems applicable, and…"
"I believe…" Yagi cuts in. "... that your hybrid nature makes the supernatural, at least the one more capable of thinking in a way similar to ours, feel drawn to you for as long as their 'desires' are involved and satiating them with you is a possibility. Toga practically dragged you into her safehouse on the first day, which isn't her normal behavior. She is way more subtle about her hunting. However, the second she saw you, her 'desire to eat' was immediately centered on you."
"Wait, but she didn't eat me in the end?" Midoriya replies, blinking at him in shock.
"Because at some point, probably before getting to her lair, another 'desire' took precedence," Yagi replies. "In this case, I believe, the sexual one. I do not believe that you're in danger of being eaten anymore even if it will be satiated, because unless something truly extreme happens, she'll continue to see you as someone she wants to have sex with. Then, we have Tsuyu."
"Tsuyu?" Oh, no, please let it not be THAT. "She doesn't want to…"
"No, I do not believe her desire is a sexual one," Yagi replies. "My current theory is that she was simply lonely. The second she saw you, she locked onto you with the 'desire for companionship' and felt compelled to initiate at least some contact with you. Unfortunately…" Yagi takes a deep breath. "Your nature as a magnet for the supernatural is very dangerous."
"I… I think that I can understand." Midoriya shrinks. "I'm going to die, aren't I?"
"If you are not careful about it, that's an option." Yagi decides to be brutally honest for one. "Making a ghoul be obsessed with you could go in a much worse direction. Even if only those relatively sapient supernatural entities are involved and even if it would be only about sex, the concept of consent is a purely human one. Worst of all, ehhh…" Yagi looks at him weirdly. "... I assume that you wouldn't enjoy having eggs laid in you and being subsequently devoured by the hatchlings, right?"
Midoriya stares at him in shock.
"... do I even have to answer that?" He says. The fact that it's an actual option just filled with him a completely new dose of existential dread.
"That's just the most extreme option," Yagi replies. "But! Now that we more or less know what's the situation with you, there are countermeasures that we can establish. I believe that with some work and… investments, so to speak, I should be able to obtain you some magical trinket that would suppress that part of you from influencing others. It probably won't do anything to those already influenced, though."
"I… oh." Midoriya stops shrinking for a moment. "You aren't doing that to win the bet about me graduating though? Because if so, then I don't really have anything to pay you for it and…"
"You… oh, Todoroki was the blabbermouth." Yagi sighs. "Look. From my point of view, you're clearly talented with magic, smart, and, well, not a dick. With some work, you might become a powerful Initiate. And for as much as the world is a rather shitty one and Initiates tend to be assholes towards each other, the more of them out there and the more powerful they are, the less non-Initiated get eaten. This, in turn, means that the framework of civilization that they maintain is going to fare better. Everyone, in the long term, benefits from that. If you want to pay me back for that, graduate and don't be an asshole, alright?"
That Midoriya can try.
(***)
Finally, something of a theory concerning Izuku's... ancestry. That totally covers it all, and there are no further and way more surprising secrets hidden there, yep, yep, absolutely. You can trust me. When was the last time I surprised you with a total plottwist when you didn't expect it?
Also the plot thickens ;)
