The hospital was cold. It smelt strongly of antiseptic and disinfectants, of rubbing alcohol and medicine. The faint, echoing sounds of whispering voices and a quiet unease clung to the air, filtered and cold enough to spread goosebumps across the skin beneath her jacket.
Emma hated hospitals.
She hated the way voices echoed when people spoke, creating a blurred world of phantom voices and the uneasy sensation of prying eyes.
Hospital reminded her of the infirmary at Grace Field, where she had spent far too many weeks of her life nursing a broken leg and bearing the knowledge that Norman had been shipped out.
He'd lived, of course. But the heartbreak had been there all the same, tormenting her late into the nights and forcing her into a numb state of shock that lasted the majority of the months leading up to their escape..
The hospital held the same scent as the infirmary.
It set her body on edge, forcing her into a stiff, uncomfortable position as she stared blankly at the wall across from her. She'd tried scrolling through her phone, replying to texts and passing the time mindlessly. It hadn't worked, only wasting battery life as the open screen drifted to her lap and her vision blurred, with her mind being too fuzzy and exhausted to force anything back into focus.
She'd read online once that certain places had an aura of death, plagued forevermore by the loss of life that'd occured in that location.
The gate at the farm had held the strange, heavy feeling that the hospital halls clung to.
The fact that two vastly different locations could be so similar should've been concerning to her, but Emma had grown used to the thought of death. Besides, hospitals were different from the gate. The gate only brought death and pain, the hospital's purpose was to extend and create life.
The small waiting room she sat in was quiet, situated in a portion of the hospital that was separated from the rest. This area was for out-patients, those who had injuries and illnesses that still needed occasional treatment, but allowed the affected individual to live a relatively stable life outside of the sterile, white walls.
Every now and then a nurse would walk by, sending Emma a small greeting as they passed. She'd return their greeting, smiling cheerily as they exited the room before switching her attention to the clock that hung off of the wall opposite to her.
She'd been waiting for close to an hour at this point. Norman should be done soon.
Her arm stung from where she'd been given multiple vaccines earlier, successfully fulfilling the requirements for attending in-person schooling.
They'd never been given any type of vaccines back at Grace Field. None of them were ever even meant to leave, let alone be exposed to any foreign illness.
(The doctors were extremely worried about immunity upon their arrival.)
Emma had become all too familiar with this waiting room. Sometimes Ray joined her in waiting for Norman to finish, but lately he'd been stuck with quirk counseling being set at the same time as Norman's weekly visits.
They'd been getting better-both Ray and Norman-although for completely separate reasons. Ray would be done with the counseling by the start of the school year, and Norman's hospital visits would be decreased as new medications were developed and prescribed to the Lambda kids.
In any case, she couldn't exactly say that sitting in a hospital waiting room was an ideal way to spend a Saturday morning.
The door to the waiting room opened, a tall, thin man stepping in from outside.
His eyes caught onto her, and she briefly thought that she could see the faint glimmer of recognition cross his face. The look was gone almost instantaneously as he sent her a small greeting before approaching the front desk.
The voices of both him and the nurse spoke quietly, their words blurred beyond Emma's capability to process.
She looked back down to her shoes, scanning over the worn-out rubber and dirt stains that littered the aging material.
The soft voices diminished, and Emma could hear the echoing footsteps of the man heading in through one of the doors that led to the back.
As soon as that door clicked shut, another opened, and Emma looked up to find Norman. He smiled at her as she stood, making a show of dramatically stretching out her arms and yawning.
"It took you forever!" she complained, latching her hands behind her back and looking over him.
There was a small wrinkle in the fabric around his elbow-giving away the presence of bandages from where he'd had his blood drawn for tests.
"Yeah, they wanted to talk about the medical care provided by UA," he confessed, gesturing a small farewell to the nurse manning the front desk before heading towards the exit, "apparently Recovery Girl works there as the school nurse. They would like me to check in with her at least once a week for healing after the term starts."
"We haven't even gotten our acceptance letters yet!" Emma protested, "How do they know for certain that you got in?"
Norman laughed, pushing open the double glass doors to the clinic and holding one open for Emma, "My quirk is just a heightened IQ. They'd be genuinely concerned if I couldn't even pass the written portion of the exam."
Emma let out a huff, following Norman out into the bright sunlight.
Norman towered over her, casting human-shaped shadow across her body as they stepped into the sun. It was still strange, seeing him the way he was. It was as though he'd been flung several years into the future, his body resembling that of a third-year instead of a fifteen-year-old who's just barely grown old enough to attend high school.
The two walked in silence for a while, crossing over the hospital parking lot and out onto the sidewalks of the residential neighborhoods surrounding it. The sound of shouting could be heard from a nearby park, alive and bustling with children even at the early hour.
"They should be arriving today, right?" Emma asked, her voice suddenly dimming down into a low murmur, "The acceptance letters, I mean."
Norman nodded, humming in agreement as they passed by the park entrance, "Yeah. Why?"
"I don't know if I got enough villain points," she confessed, "I know I did better than some of the others in my testing center, but I'm not sure if it'd be enough."
"Whatever you got, it was definitely better than me," Norman mentioned, "I only got six points."
"Yeah, but that doesn't count," she complained, "you don't even want to be in the hero course."
Wait… six points… one plus two plus three…
Emma's eyes widened as she thought of the point system, "You did that on purpose!" she accused, "You went out of your way to defeat each type, then did nothing!"
Norman smirked at the expression on her face, "Well, yeah. I guess."
She groaned, her gaze drifting down the street to where the greenery that bordered the park and neighborhood housing ended and the business of commercial streets began. The quirk counseling center that Norman and Ray had been attending was only a short walk from the hospital, located between a small cafe and a thrift store that Emma had spent far too long loitering around within, searching for potential gifts for the younger kids.
"The doctor told me to ask you about your hearing," Norman mentioned, his shoes scraping against the sidewalk, remnants of chewed gum and weathered edges of concrete forming a pattern beneath their feet, "she wanted to know if you'd be interested in getting a prosthetic. They're kind of expensive, but the Ratri clan can definitely afford it."
Emma spent several seconds mulling over the thought.
"You don't have to decide right away," he continued, filling her silence.
The whole "tearing-off-her-ear" situation had just been done in the heat of the moment, after quietly slipping away from Mama and the burning remnants of "Ray". She hadn't wanted Mama to track her into the forest where the others were waiting, so her solution had been to just sorta… rip it off…
…and proceed to gain an infection and pass out at the worst possible moment.
Thinking back on it, it was probably a miracle that she could still hear as well as she did.
"Maybe," Emma finally replied, "if I get into UA, I'll probably have to worry about how the lack of an ear affects my hearing."
"She also wanted you to call to set up an appointment the next time you're available," Norman prodded, "The injuries you got at Goldy Pond were really bad, the fact that they were never professionally treated worries her. Not to mention scars that large usually have several follow-up treatments and physical therapy that we never had the time or materials for."
Emma bit her lip, her hands unconsciously creeping up to her stomach, digging her nails into the marred, bumpy flesh beneath her shirt. She knew that they looked ugly to any outsiders, especially to medical professionals. The cauterized skin was a gross mix of scabbed over burns and deeply penetrated puncture wounds, the stitching job had been messy and frantic, years of unprofessional experience being the cattle children's only teacher.
"This is the first time they've expressed concern about them," Emma shrugged, the clotted layers of scarred skin seeming to burn with phantom pain under her touch, "I would've thought they'd want to treat the scars immediately if they were that serious."
"Yeah, well," Norman sighed, running a hand through his hair as Emma was hit once again by just how old he seemed to look now, "the medical field seems to be pretty corrupt and discriminatory from what I've seen."
That was something all of the cattle children could agree on, just by how much better the few quirked children among them were treated.
They walked the rest of the way to the counseling center in silence, the only noise being the meaningless chatter of pedestrians and the bubbly pop-music that flowed out onto the street from the open doors of nearby shops.
Ray was standing outside of the cafe, leaning against the coffee shop's glass wall with a disposable coffee cup clutched in his hands.
"You're addicted to caffeine," Emma accused, as soon as he spotted them approaching.
Ray took a long sip from the cup, as if to spite her, "And? It's good."
Emma frowned, but dropped the topic.
The walk to the train station and back to their apartments was tense, a heavy silence fitting over them as they grew closer and closer to their building.
Perhaps they'd known that the letters would be there upon their arrival.
The three of them stopped by the mail room, unlocking their own apartments' boxes and pulling out the thin envelopes that resided within them. Thick, expensive paper was heavy in her hand as she looked over the letter, her breath catching in her throat as she scanned over the familiar UA insignia.
Emma darted out of the mailroom, ignoring the confused shouts of Norman and Ray as she quickly made her way to the stairwell and upwards. She could hear several voices upon exiting onto her floor, carefree and childish shouts and conversations that bled through the walls and open doors into the hall.
Normally she'd stop by the apartments with open doors, greeting the children who resided inside and asking about their days or giving them small presents she'd found. (Cookies and pre-packaged brownies were some of the more popular gifts.)
Today, she shot straight across the hall and to her own apartment, bypassing the living area and headed straight to her small, cramped room.
The envelope hit her desk, sliding across the faux wood and staring back at her menacingly.
Even if she didn't get into the hero course, it would be okay, she had to remind herself. She at least had to get into the general education department, though.
Emma bit her lip, pulling out her desk chair and sitting slowly. The UA insignia stared tauntingly back at her.
Well, here goes nothing.
She carefully lifted the expensive envelope, suddenly noticing how incredibly heavy it was, and slipped a finger under the seal. The sticky adhesive gave way easily, and she was met with the presence of a thin, metal disk.
Light sprang forth, filling her bedroom with the holographic image of All Might (a pro hero!) and realization dawned upon her.
"Congratulations on being the first ever quirkless person to enter the UA hero course!"
Emma's mind seemed to slow as she processed the hero's words. She set the metal disk onto her desk, pulling out the folded papers that had been placed alongside the disk.
The recording continued to play as she scanned over the contents. It seemed to be a typical acceptance letter, the papers attached to the first one detailing how to properly register, where to retrieve uniforms, what day classes began…
Oh god, she'd gotten in.
It occurred to her that the hologram was still playing, droning on in a continuous welcome speech as she read over the contents of her acceptance letter.
The recording clicked, and the video footage flickered and dissipated back into the small disk. That was fine, she could always go back and re-watch the video to see if it included any important information.
Her gaze caught on the final paper within the envelope. It was a list, carefully laid out in neat formation.
Her test scores.
Emma discarded the other papers in favor of that one, her fingers gently brushing across the expensive paper as she looked over the grades.
100% in math, 99% in Japanese, 89% in quirk theory, 97% in history…
Placed 5th overall.
She cringed at the low grades, her time in Grace Field tugging at the back of her mind and questioning how exactly she'd managed to miss so many questions.
An 89% in quirk theory? A 97% in history? It made her want to cry.
She desperately forced the festering disappointment away, instead focusing on the scores listed at the bottom of the page.
21 villain points. 25 rescue points.
46 points all together. 28th out of 40.
Emma let her head fall to her desk, inhaling sharply in disbelief as tears threatened to slip from the corners of her eyes.
She'd gotten in.
Aizawa wanted a nap.
That was his first thought after receiving the files for students within his 1st-year class.
He groaned, leaning his chin on his right hand as he took a large sip from his coffee, which had long grown cold. Out of any of the students he could've gotten, two of them had "problem child" practically stamped across their foreheads from their files alone. Then, if you took a look at the other kids in the entrance exam footage…
His head hurt.
Ray and Emma Ratri. Two students that Principal Nedzu had taken time out of his busy schedule to speak with him about.
Looking at Ray's age, it was obvious from the start that-under normal circumstances-he'd already be entering his second year of high school, albeit he'd be a bit on the young side. Nothing about these kids were normal though, from the numbers printed neatly on the sides of their necks to the way they easily took down robot after robot in the entrance exams, fighting in ways that were concerning for kids so young, without proper combat training.
Heck, one of them-Emma-was quirkless. She'd managed to pass an exam that even several quirked individuals couldn't complete. She hadn't even hesitated when rushing in to fight, just grabbing a piece of scrap metal and going after the robots as though it was as natural as breathing.
They're from the demon world, Nedzu had told him, the information we have on their origins is classified, since the government didn't want to cause mass panic at their sudden appearance.
Aizawa already knew he'd be losing sleep because of this.
He wasn't a stranger to knowledge about the demon world. It had been a core part of middle school and high school history class since well before the age of quirks, and even though society had advanced greatly over the years it was still common knowledge that the other world existed.
Aizawa could distinctly remember his 8th grade debate class, where one of the topics they had been forced to discuss were the ethics behind the human farms. Not once had he ever thought he'd be teaching children who had been raised within the said farms.
Aizawa still had nightmares from the early days of his hero work. He didn't even want to imagine how these children must have been affected by living there.
He took another swig of coffee, the caffeinated beverage doing little to help ease the headache that was slowly blooming behind his temples.
The files of the two students were set aside on his desk, separate from the rest of his students'. Normally he'd barely skim over these, content with letting their actions within class paint his view of them, without letting outside perspectives taint his opinion. But this was a special case-if the bold "classified" print across the envelopes were anything to go by.
He carefully opened the files, pitifully thin compared to the records of other students, and began to read.
The first pages were simple enough, although the papers seemed to be haphazardly made copies of files that'd never been intended for outside viewing.
There were no names on these files, just simple printed numbers at the top of each page.
63194 for Emma, and 81194 for Ray.
Identification numbers. They'd been quite literally branded in the same way someone would brand cows, the identifying numbers eerily similar to those used on cattle raised for slaughter.
They aren't just similar, they're the same.
The thought was honestly sickening.
Beneath the printed numbers were lists, slightly blurred from a bad copying job, but legible nonetheless. Spanning across the entire page were results from the daily Grace Field tests, spanning across a single month. The dates seemed to coincide with the month prior to the boy-Ray's-12th birthday.
From the information he'd been given, this was the last month the two kids had been at the farm.
All of the scores were perfect. 300 points out of the possible 300.
He felt sick looking at these neat, organized graphs. These numbers had been used to determine which kids lived longer and which kids were sent off to be killed.
If these scores had been any lower, there was no way of knowing if they'd even still be alive.
He quietly moved the Grace Field scores to the bottom of the stack, happy to see that the data was replaced with actual report cards from the online schooling system they'd been placed in.
Then, there were the results from the entrance exam.
God, these kids hadn't had proper schooling for the majority of their lives and yet they both still managed to make the top ten written test takers. Then there was the fact that the 1st place on the written exam was another cattle child who'd entered the management department instead…
He flipped over to the pages that listed their quirks, unsurprised by the "n/a" listed on Emma's files.
Ray, however, was already a concern. Aizawa was vaguely convinced that he'd been placed within his class solely due to his own quirk-Erasure. The quirk name that had been placed was simple-Fire. Pretty self-explanatory, albeit a bit uncreative. What concerned Aizawa was the fact that, under his medical records, it listed that he'd been fed concerningly high doses of quirk suppressants from the moment his quirk developed until the age of 12, something that'd been outright banned not long after the initial development of quirk-suppressing drugs.
He'd been prescribed mild suppressants shortly after arriving in Musutafu, his quirk consistently flaring out and damaging things around him. A side-effect from the consistent drug use back in the demon world.
There were reasons those drugs were banned for long-term use, and with this child having to bear the aftermath of those medications…
Aizawa sighed, the lukewarm coffee within his mug looking more and more appetizing as exhaustion tugged at his body.
He had a lot of work cut out for him this semester, didn't he.