"My work station will be here. I want it well-lit. I want these cabinets and racks set up."

The room was a mess of activity as equipment and materials were hauled in by the dozen, turning the once sparse cave into a makeshift industrial workshop.

Izuku stood at the center of it all, his height boosted by a box that allowed him to see over the heads of the Nine Circles' men as they worked to set everything up. He was tall for his age but that didn't matter much when the tips of his hair only reached the waists of most of the people currently around him.

Eshmun was at his side, rapidly translating his orders into Russian and posing him questions whenever one of the rebels asked for clarification.

"Put the welding gear next to the fabrication area, acetylene and propane both. Get the soldering station away from the campfire. Move the heat treatment tanks closer together. Do we have the equipment racks up yet?" Izuku turned to Eshmun and he asked one of the men. He nodded. "Then get the helmets and goggles up on it. Welding masks too, insides towards the wall. Put the smelting cups beside the furnaces and place the precision tools away from all the heat." He spotted something out of the corner of his eye. "Hey! You!" A masked soldier carrying a case of mortar rounds stopped as Izuku pointed a finger at him. "Yes, you." The boy gestured to another part of the cave, one that had been converted into what looked like a bomb disposal unit. "Live munitions go there. That's where we'll be breaking them down." He whipped around and singled out one of the guards by the door. "And speaking of, when are those articulated manipulators going to get here? I'm not going to be holding up a three hundred pound warhead while taking it apart at the same time."

The guard briefly left the room after Eshmun translated. He returned a moment later. "He says they're going to be here in a few minutes."

Izuku nodded. "Good." He pointed to several patches of ground around him. "I need Ivankov to smooth out and level those places as much as he can." Eshmun nodded, relaying the order. A short moment later, a barrel-chested man was carefully pounding away at the floor with his bare fists, each impact of his knuckles sending concentric ripples across the stone. His quirk allowed him to somewhat shape solid materials with his hands, given sufficient kinetic force, and it was coming in handy here with all the remodeling that had to be done.

He stepped away once the designated areas were as smooth as polished marble and as level as a board. The boy nodded and the man turned to haul more munitions into the room.

Slowly, the activity around them died down as the set up neared completion. By the time the last piece of equipment was set into place, the only people left standing in the room were Izuku, Eshmun, and the man who seemed to be in charge of the Nine Circles, Iosif.

The three of them knew the routine by now. As Iosif spoke, Eshmun translated for him and did the same for Izuku when he replied.

"'I trust that was everything you need?'" The bearded man looked at him expectantly.

Izuku nodded, doing his best to not let his nervousness show. Somehow, Iosif felt ten times more intimidating than being threatened with live weaponry. "Yes. Thank you for fulfilling my requests so quickly. You must be very well connected."

The man gave a booming laugh that might have been described as jolly if not for the hard glint in his eyes. "'More than you know.'" He narrowed his eyes and any trace of levity vanished. "'Do not forget our deal. I will give you the three months you asked for to build the Orochi. I do not think you want to know what will happen if you fail.'" He smiled, teeth glinting.

The two of them nodded and the man waved goodbye. They waited until the doors slammed shut before Izuku spoke.

"Let's get started on the blueprints shall we?"

The two of them sat down at the workbench, design documents and material manifests arrayed before them. Izuku furrowed his eyebrows at the paper in what he hoped was a passable attempt at frustration. "It looks like we'll need to substitute these materials for…" He wrote as he spoke, the words from his hands not matching the words from his mouth.

"Do you still remember what we discussed last night?"

"Right, I think we might be able to make do with…" said Eshmun. "Yes."

They had determined last night that communicating in writing was the safest way to discuss things given that the security cameras they were being monitored had active microphones and very few blind spots. Though the risk that someone among the rebels might know how to read kanji remained, it was an acceptable one when compared to the alternatives. They had gone over how they would obscure their exchanges. Either by stray sparks from one of the angle grinders or another industrial byproduct inadvertently making it unreadable, or simply by erasing and rewriting over whatever document they were using to communicate under the guise of updating it.

Now that all the materials and equipment were in place, they could discuss how they would escape.

"The first thing I need you to do is to teach me Russian. If we get out of here, it will be important for me to be able to understand our surroundings as well."

Eshmun nodded then said something else in tech babble. "Are you sure you can learn it in time?"

"Yes."

"Okay, what else?"

Izuku pulled a set of tracing paper out of a drawer. He placed it down in the corner of the table, where a set of cabinets and racks obstructed the view, leaving only where he and Eshmun were sitting as the only line of sight to it. Given the way they had positioned themselves, they were body blocking that too, leaving a temporary blind spot in camera coverage.

Aligning the papers together, he pressed them flat and a suit of mechanized armor stared back at them.

"I'm guessing that's our ticket out of here?" Eshmun raised an eyebrow at him even as he mimed scribbling something on to the paper.

Izuku pretended to shake his head. "Yes. It should hold up long enough for us to get out. Do you want to pilot it or should I?"

"You can only make one?"

Izuku nodded, for real this time. "I can't risk making another without them finding out."

"Then you should be in it. I can take care of myself."

"Are you sure?"

"I've been in operating active war zones for longer than you've been alive. Besides, if you want to pull your weight when we escape, you'll need to level the playing field. This looks like the only way to do it."

"Fair point." Izuku paused. "Do you have a quirk?"

"Yes. I can eliminate any trembling in my limbs so long as I can tap it thrice with one of my fingers. It's quite useful when it comes to doing surgery, or handling a gun." He demonstrated by holding his hand out straight. The subtle tremors that Izuku observed were gone a moment later after his other hand touched it three times.

"Good. I have most of the parts I need from what they've given me, but there are some critical components I need from the industrial manipulators that I can't get to without breaking them. We'll need a cover. Here's what we'll do…"

"I'm sure they're looking for you, you know." Eshmun said, carefully prying apart the casing of a grenade. "But given that we're probably within an active war zone, it'll be difficult for the JSDF to mount any kind of meaningful search effort."

Eshmun had briefed him on the current situation going on in the Kuril Islands. While Izuku had heard very brief newsflashes about the conflict, he lacked any sort of comprehensive knowledge about it.

The territory dispute between Japan and Russia hadn't exactly been resolved, but with the burgeoning population, new land to be settled was in high demand. Creating a jointly-owned autonomous region was supposed to be a stop gap solution to allow for rapid settlement and development until such a time where a more permanent one could be found, but with the introduction of quirks, among other things, that task had been punted down the priority list.

It sat there, languishing all the way up until a series of natural disasters devastated the region, prompting responses from both countries. Relief efforts were going well right up until a terrorist attack took out both a Russian field hospital and Japanese supply ship. Both sides pointed fingers at the other until it came to a deadlock. Neither one wanted to send further aid before it could be established who was responsible for the attacks and how they could be prevented. Furthermore, troops couldn't be deployed either, for fear of annexation accusations given that the region had never been formally inducted into the territories of either country.

To make matters worse, even when the UN stepped in, the attacks had only grown in frequency and intensity, allowing for a number of insurgent groups to gain a foothold in the region. Without support from either nearby nations, there was only so much assistance the UN could provide when there were events elsewhere that demanded their attention.

On the bright side, at least he knew the name of one of those terrorist groups for all the good it did him.

"I know." Izuku replied, not pausing as he delicately twisted a slice of palladium free from the internal battery of an onboard targeting computer.

He couldn't see it, but he could feel Eshmun's eyes on him. "You know, you're handling this very well despite your age."

"I get that a lot." He placed the silvery wafer into a crucible alongside several of its brethren. "My father was very clear in his will that I would take a controlling position within the company once I graduated from university." Eshmun handed him another computer. "Not sure if he expected me to do that when I was 10 years old though."

Talking aloud like this carried its risks, but both of them figured it might be more suspicious if they remained silent most of the time. It also had the added benefit of reinforcing the notion that Izuku only knew Japanese despite his rapid progress in Russian under Eshmun's tutelage.

The surgeon shrugged. "I suppose time makes fools of us all. How have you been handling it so far?"

"Well. I think. Although it can be somewhat difficult to get someone to take you seriously when you're the same age as their grandchildren."

Eshmun chuckled. "I can imagine."

"I could say the same for you as well. Do you often get kidnapped?" Izuku raised an eyebrow.

"This isn't the first time it's happened, so I know what to expect."

"I see. So what were you doing before you got here?" The boy had already shared the main points of what he'd remembered but Eshmun had yet to do the same.

"I was working with a relief mission in the Kuril Islands, Kunashir specifically since that was the island that had been hit the hardest and I had family there too. We'd been left alone for the most part but I had to take a house call, since we'd received reports of a man who wasn't in any condition to be transported. Didn't take any escorts either since we needed every pair of hands we could get back at the main camp." He sighed. "Turned out to be a fake. One face full of chloroform later and here I am."

"I-"

A click and a whining sound drew their attention to the rocket held by one of the robotic arms nearby. A thin ring of light around its base, near the stabilizing fins, flashed brightly.

"Move. Move!"

Izuku shoved Eshmun behind him and both of them dove behind a workbench as the ordinance detonated, setting their ears ringing and filling the room with a thick cloud of smoke and dust.

Shouts could be heard from just outside the door as it was rapidly unlocked. The shuffling of cloth preceded a strong gust of wind as one of the soldiers moved his arms in a circle, using his quirk to generate a current of air that blew away the smog.

Izuku and Eshmun peeked out from behind their cover, faces darkened with soot as they checked to see if it was safe.

Iosif was there a moment later demanding explanations from the both of them. Izuku was quick to reply, elaborating on what may have been responsible for the accidental detonation and how his men had to be more careful with the ordinance they were bringing to them.

With the excitement that happened and the urgent need for replacement concerning the various pieces of equipment and machinery that had been damaged or destroyed in the blast, no one thought to check if the now ruined manipulator holding the explosive had all its components accounted for after the clean up.

And no one, save for the two of them, knew what was stuck to the underside of their workbench.

Artyom Igorshchev was a patient man. His quirk, which allowed him to keep small objects at a fixed height above ground so long he kept it in eyesight, required him to be. He often played an important role when covering the group's withdrawals, using his ability to divert attention and draw away enemy fire by making objects move in a way that mimicked movement. As a result, he was one of Iosif's most trusted men, and so enjoyed all the perks that came with it. Better accommodations, better food, longer rest periods between missions, and more.

It was also why he was one of the guards assigned to keep an eye on Izuku Midoriya.

He didn't exactly relish the idea of holding a child hostage, especially one so young, but Iosif had convinced them of the necessity of it. They would refrain from harming him whenever possible and hold them hostage only so long as he was needed to guarantee the independence of the Kuril Islands. Once that was accomplished, they would release him and their status as a new nation would prevent any large-scale retaliation that the boy's company might have visited upon them.

The assignment itself was also quite cushy. Three hot meals a day, a comfortable bed, and a safe place to rest. All he needed to do was to sit near the door and occasionally check in by radio with the man monitoring the camera feed. It sure as hell beat being out in the field where someone could drop a bomb on their heads any second. And it was quite a bit quieter too.

Or, at least, it had been for the first few days.

Then the noise started. A terrible screeching grind that made his ears ache. It didn't stop when night came either. A quick investigation revealed that the grinding and shaping of metal wasn't exactly a quiet affair, and with the amount of materials that needed to be processed, it would be going on for a while. The rare moments where the cacophony halted were only a few minutes long at best before it started up again.

And the worst part?

Iosif wouldn't intervene. On the contrary, the man was pleased. He said it showed that Izuku and Hiram were working diligently to fulfill their end of the deal.

The only response to his complaint - since he was quite certain the noise was starting to give him hearing loss - was to move away or find ear protection.

He had elected to do the former and join the soldier keeping an eye on the cameras. The noise from the workshop was actually even worse there, as the source was no longer muffled by stone walls or metal doors, so both of them had elected to mute the volume and keep only the visuals live.

Given that there wasn't much to watch, the two of them often settled into a game of cards that kept their attention away from the monitors, a habit that only persisted once the glaring flashes from all the machining and welding practically rendered the cameras blind.

And so, scarcely noticed, and entirely unwatched, Izuku began to build.

"Steady. Steady…" Izuku muttered, watching Eshmun carefully stride across the room, arms dead still despite the glowing hot crucible he held at the end of the tongs in his hands.

The boy quickly double checked the area the doctor was heading for, making sure that the heated mould was ready to receive the molten palladium.

Satisfied, he stepped away as the man gently poured it in, letting the silvery fluid settle and harden before moving closer. The heat was more tolerable now but still intense. Toughing it out, he quickly got to work on the rest of it.

Wisps of smoke rose as the boy soldered together the rest of the components that needed it before using a pair of needle-thin pliers to pick up the warm ring of palladium and set it into place. He connected the charging wires and the device began to glow with a weak blue light.

Eshmun moved a piece of paper next to it. "What is it?"

"A miniaturized arc reactor. Once it's ready. It'll have an output of three gigajoules per second."

"Will it be enough?"

"Enough for what we need. It's as much energy as I can put into it without risking having it blow up on us." Izuku carefully set it aside, hiding it out of sight from the cameras. "It'll take a few weeks to run hot. I could jumpstart it now but the energy drain would draw too much attention. It should be ready in time though." The boy subtly tapped the humming electromagnet in his chest and winced as it sent a snap of pain through his limbs in retaliation. "Once it is, we'll need to swap it out with this thing here. We can keep the magnet itself. Only the housing will need to be changed."

"How? The surgery suite is elsewhere."

"Just do it here, the night before we need it." At Eshmun's look, Izuku continued. "I know, it's not exactly a sanitary environment, but we can't risk them finding out and taking it away. I'll be fine. I promise."

The doctor sighed. "Alright. I'll see what I can do to make it safer. When the time comes, just make sure you have something to bite down on. They didn't exactly supply us with anesthetic here."

...

"How are you holding up?"

Izuku glanced at the note. "Well enough. How about you?"

"Good so far." Eshmun pretended to work on some sketches. There were no small number of technical challenges presented by building an Orochi missile in this kind of environment. In turn, this necessitated design differences that Izuku had to work through. Or supposed to work through at least. In reality, it made for a good explanation as to why the two of them were working on paper so much.

A pause. "Midoriya-kun, could you come over here for a moment? These schematics aren't making sense to me."

Izuku nodded and walked over. The doctor tapped his finger on the blueprint. "Are you prepared?"

"What do you mean?"

Eshmun was silent for a moment. "The escape. When we break out, you will need to hurt them. Maim them. Maybe even kill them. Are you prepared to do that?"

There was only a fraction of hesitation in the boy's response. "Yes. Whatever it takes."

"Okay. If you ever want to talk about this, or anything else, just let me know."

"Thank you. I will."

"Ah, that makes sense. Thank you for explaining that Midoriya-kun. Let's get started on that after dinner shall we?"

Izuku nodded.

Eshmun went up to one of the security cameras and held up a piece of paper with the Russian for 'Meal please!' written in big blocky Cyrillic letters.

Izuku counted the number of seconds it took for their food to arrive. In the beginning, it had taken around five minutes. Now, it was closer to fifteen.

Iosif had allowed them to request their meals rather than giving it to them at set intervals after Izuku argued that it would increase their productivity. It also meant that the time it took to get the meals to him indicated a combination of how little attention was being paid to the cameras and how far away the guards were now usually stationed.

1217... 1218… 1219…

The door opened - around twenty minutes then - and a man handed them their meals. Two mess trays that had been prepared with MREs.

The door closed a moment later and the two of them dug into their food. It wasn't bad by any means. A little bland, but filling nonetheless.

"So, what do you plan to do once you get out of here?" Eshmun asked. The question was as much for appearances as it was out of his own personal curiosity. They had to maintain the illusion that both of them believed that they would be set free after this.

Izuku closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was looking down at his meal and in particular, at the wallpaper paste that was supposed to be mashed potatoes. "Get a decent bowl of katsudon."

The doctor chuckled and Izuku glanced at him. "What about you?"

"Hmmm." Eshmun rubbed his chin. "I'll probably return to the main camp on Kunashir. I suspect there'll be quite the backlog for me to work through."

"Why?" The boy looked at him curiously. "Wouldn't you want to take a break after all of-" He gestured to the room around them. "-this?"

The man was silent for a spell. "I enjoy it. I like being able to make a positive impact, especially when the results are so immediate. I haven't found anything else quite so gratifying." Eshmun looked up from his meal, at him. "How about you? Do you look forward to stepping back into your father's footsteps?"

Izuku looked away. "Not exactly. I wanted to be a… well, a hero." The boy looked almost embarrassed to say it. "Not to say that I don't appreciate what I'm doing of course - I'm sure there's no small number of people that would be very happy to be in my shoes right now." He paused. "Okay, maybe not right now, right now, but normally I mean." At Eshmun's smile he continued. "But I wanted to do more than that."

"So, what stopped you?" At Izuku's curious look, he elaborated. "From being a hero I mean."

The boy looked at him like he'd spontaneously grown a second head. "Because I don't have a quirk and you need one to be a hero."

The man shrugged. "Sure, that's what they say now. But who knows how that will change down the line? If anyone can make a quirkless hero work, it'll probably be you."

Izuku stared at him, then tilted his head. "What makes you say that?"

Eshmun stared back, deadpan. "Midoriya-kun, you had the Senior Wrangler of Cambridge asking you for math tutoring when you were nine. Several national space agencies have licensed a number of your patents for use in their exploratory rovers. You had multiple Nobel laureates inviting you to collaborate with them on their research the second you left your graduation ceremony." He raised an eyebrow. "Need I say more?"

"No, but that doesn't change the fact that quirks are required to be a hero and that I don't have a quirk-"

"And a surgeon needs a scalpel but I don't have one." The doctor raised an eyebrow. "Does that make me any less a surgeon?"

Izuku sighed. "No, but that's different-"

"Is it?" Eshmun looked at him and the boy reluctantly met his gaze. "Who's your favorite hero?"

"All Might."

"Well, if All Might didn't have his quirk all of a sudden, would he stop being All Might?"

"No!" Izuku's face reddened when he realized how quickly he had responded. Quieter, he continued. "No, of course not."

"And the inverse is also false right? If his quirk suddenly went to someone else, they wouldn't just become All Might either."

The boy nodded and Eshmun looked at him. "So, if a surgeon isn't any less of a surgeon without a scalpel, is a hero any less of a hero without a quirk?"

He held it for a moment, then looked away. "But you can go out and get a scalpel. I can't just go out there and get a quirk."

"Then just make something better." said Eshmun, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Izuku laughed at that. "Sure, just do the thing that the entire world's best and brightest have been trying and failing at for the past several decades." He thought about it for a moment, then sighed. "But… I'll try. Once he lets us go, I'll give it a shot." He glanced at the doctor. "I expect you to give me a bit of a helping hand though. This better not just be lip service."

The man chuckled. "Of course, of course. I'd be happy to help. Perhaps I'll even be able to convince you to make a hefty donation to MSF?"

The boy smiled. "Maybe."

They shared a laugh, settling back into a comfortable silence before Eshmun spoke again. "Midoriya-kun."

"Hm?"

"Don't feel like you need to be or not be a hero just because of what we discussed. You'll know yourself better than I ever will. I just wanted to provide some additional perspective that you might have lacked otherwise."

Izuku nodded. "Right. I'll keep that in mind. Thank you."

"Happy to help." Eshmun smiled, then gathered their meal trays, covertly scratching a small mark on the underside with a screw before placing it near the doors, where they would be collected tomorrow morning. "Let's finish working and get cleaned up. There's a lot we'll need to get done tomorrow."

...

"Lead?" Iosif raised an eyebrow.

"Yes." Izuku said while Eshmun translated. His grasp of the language was nearing native fluency but they continued to maintain the illusion that he still needed an intermediary. "The missile is almost done. I'm getting ready to synthesize the requisite amount of antimatter that makes up the warheads. The only way I can do that is through the controlled decay of certain radioactive elements. I know you said those have been gathered but I need as much lead as you can get in order to have it decay safely, otherwise we'll all die of radiation poisoning before the missile is ready."

"How much?"

"Five hundred kilograms."

At that, Iosif raised an eyebrow. "That much? That will be a difficult order. You cannot make do with less?"

Izuku shook his head. "No. That's the lowest amount I'm willing to go with. Any lower and we risk giving everyone radiation sickness."

The man grunted. "Very well. We will let you know once we have it. I expect it will take us three days or so."

"Understood. In the meantime, we finish the last touch ups on the missile."

"Good." Iosif left and the doors slammed shut a moment later, leaving the two of them alone with their meals.

They ate, making idle conversation all the while. As Izuku got up to place his tray near the door, he tripped over an errant piece of scrap metal and the tray went tumbling. The boy tried to catch it, fumbling with it for a moment before it hit the ground. He merely sighed and put it next to the door, walking over to the sink to wash his hands and change his shirt.

He could hear the guard chuckling under his breath as he collected their meal trays. He waited until he could no longer hear footsteps before sitting down at a workbench and pressing the button of a device taped to its underside.

The small speaker in his ear crackled to life, receiving audio from the bug he had planted on the underside of his meal tray. The footsteps continued until he heard the almost inaudible sound of running water in the background, likely indicating the guard had reached the kitchen.

Please talk, please talk, please talk…

His prayers were answered a moment later.

"Have you heard what Iosif wants us to do?" said the guard.

"What?" Another voice replied.

"Go out and find as much lead as we can. Damn brat apparently asked for enough of the stuff to make a war's worth of bullets."

"Ah, for the missile eh? Well, you know how Iosif feels about it."

He could hear the frustration in the man's voice. "Yes, but he doesn't need to drag half the base out there to go scavenger hunting."

The second man laughed. "Hah! Sucks to be you eh? At least you won't be alone. When do you go out?"

"In two hours. He wants us on this as soon as possible."

"Mmmm, he's going to have you working overnight hm? Come, I'll see if I can pack something warm for you."

"Thanks-" Izuku heard the telltale splash of water as the tray was submerged beneath it and the line went dead a moment later.

Doing that had been a bet, one that evidently paid off. Even if it hadn't, he figured the risk was still worth it, especially since he learned that the meal trays were only cleaned the next day. He had confirmed it by having Eshmun mark each tray, letting them track which ones they were and weren't getting. That would've bought them a day's worth of time to prepare for the worst if the bug had been discovered, though Izuku tried to account for that as well by making it resemble a black bean, like the ones that sometimes came in their MREs.

His mind was elsewhere now, as he shared the information with Eshmun.

"They're leaving in two hours. Said they're going to be working overnight. We should prepare everything we need for tomorrow now."

The doctor nodded and the two of them settled into a flurry of activity. Ostensibly, it looked like they were hammering out the final details of the missile they proudly displayed in the middle of the workshop. In actuality, the materials and equipment they had so carefully gathered, hidden, and prepared in the last several weeks were being put into place.

The stage was set. Now, it was time for the play to begin.


A/N: Whoops, just realized I forgot to include this, and thank you guys for the kind words!

Pairing - undecided. With how things will play out, he could end up with Ochaco, Momo, Kendo, etc. He'll have a good reason to spend time with a lot of them, so there's lots of possibilities.