Author's Note: This is gonna get weird and merge some folklore and mysticism in with the Power Rangers/Super Sentai stuff. So bare with me y'all, I promise it's gonna be good.
Chapter 2: Treasure Hunt
His mother having taken a four day weekend, Izuku decided to spend the first day of their trip at the beach with her. He knew it would mean a lot to her, because his dad worked abroad she was often quite lonely, and that's why she had gotten her part-time job, simply to get out and socialize even a little bit. It was nothing major, just minor data-entry for one of the Hero Support companies. But she occasionally made friends from work and that made Izuku happy. It also meant that when she did something special like this for the two of them that he wanted to spend at least some time with her.
New Oshima had five black sand beaches just like its namesake had before the pre-Quirk volcanic eruption. The area was a bit of a tourist trap but Izuku didn't mind, he spent the day in his baggy green swimsuit splashing around in the water, diving under the waves, and taking breaks with snacks next to his mom who was just relaxing in a modest one-piece on a beach towel. The bright summer sun guaranteed that they'd both likely go home just a little more tan than when they had left. It was a good feeling, the thirteen year old boy was excited for his exploration of the caldera tomorrow, but today? Today he'd just hang out with his mom.
The next morning he said good-bye to his mother after breakfast, promising to be very careful, and left the hotel on the bus-line with his backpack, notebooks, a water bottle, and some snacks. The bus dropped him off at the entrance to the national park the volcano was within and he took off hiking towards the strange outcropping he had picked out from the map.
Mount Mihara wasn't as heavily forested as Izuku imagined when he heard the word 'mountain'. But it was absolutely covered in wildflowers growing out of scrub and grass. Especially as he wasn't aiming to hike the steeper slopes near the cone, the young boy managed to have a very pleasant hike well into the afternoon. He had started his survey on the southern side of the jutting hill seemingly connected to the volcano and made it all the way around to the far eastern side before deciding to call it quits for that day. He needed to make it back before dark and his mother began to worry.
He hadn't found anything specific, but he had between his maps and his recent research managed to find some strange features in the area that made him think he was on the right track. For some reason the area was not as basalt heavy as the rest of Mount Mihara. Which was very odd. Breaking the topsoil layer with a small gardening trowel Izuku had found it seemed like a weird mix of sandstone and some kind of metallic soil contaminant.
He'd hike over the ridge and search the north side the next day.
Inko Midoriya was very relieved when her son walked through the door to their hotel room just before sunset finished. Her hands had been twitching to reach for the phone and call park rangers for the last hour, but she had reminded herself over and over that he wasn't late yet. It seemed as well that her little boy had done well and had a pleasant day, as he was smiling at her when he walked in.
"Hey, Mom!" He greeted cheerily, "That was a huge hike, do you think we could get something big for dinner?"
She chuckled, the appetite of a growing boy was nothing to underestimate, "Of course, Zuzu! Clean up and we'll go out!"
The next day Izuku had been walking along the top of the ridge for a solid half hour when he saw a collapsed part of the cliffside full of scree and divots that he needed to slowly make his way down to the bottom of the northside to avoid.
That is, he was heading that way until he caught a glimmer reflecting the sun off of something on the scree-fall.
Deciding to throw caution to the wind Izuku slowly made his way horizontally along a rather precarious ledge until he got near arm's reach. Grabbing a thick root of some plant growing out of the side of the clifface Izuku leaned over, stretching just a little bit further.
His fingers scraped the top of the item and it shifted, revealing itself to be some strange, small, and white metallic figurine. Just as he was about to lean out the last extra few centimeters a gold and white blur appeared in his vision and the figurine was gone.
"What?!" Izuku exclaimed, searching around, his head twisting and turning frantically. Until he saw it, at the top of the ridge, a strange gold and white cat with what appeared to be a napkin on its head had its left paw on the figurine, with the other paw raised like a pachinko machine.
"Mwar!" The cat almost seemed to wink at him before grabbing the figurine with its mouth and shooting off up the ridge towards the mountainside proper.
"Wa-wait!" Frantically Izuku shifted his balance back to the ledge and scrambled back up the ridgeside and bolted after the strange creature.
It always appeared to be just ahead of him as he ran along the crest, he would always see it just barely as it disappeared behind a new bush or boulder, and by the time he got to that one he would see it disappear behind one even further ahead.
Eventually he saw the cat dart between two large boulders that were rather close together, he had to shimmy and drop his backpack on the other side as he squeezed through.
Only to find the cat sitting just like it had before in a strange circular rock outcropping, almost as if it had drawn Izuku there.
"Uh…here kitty-kitty-kitty? Give me the artifact, I would really like to see it? I have a tuna sandwich in my bag? I'll trade?" He felt really ridiculous talking to a cat as he inched closer to it, but he figured the words didn't matter so much as his to-
"Well I do love tuna…but I think not."
Izuku froze as the cat's mouth moved and entirely intelligible Japanese came out of its mouth.
"Uh, wha?" For one of the first times in his life, Izuku was so surprised he couldn't even babble about it.
"But what we can do…is make a little wager with it."
"Wa-wager? Wait! A talking cat wants to make a bet with me?!" Izuku was really out of his wheelhouse here.
"Nyah! Indeed! See I'm going to draw a circle in the dirt here, and if you can get me to touch out of the circle before oh…the shadow hits the midway point in the circle I'll trade you this for the sandwich. And better yet, I'll tell you what to do with it. But if you lose…I get both the sandwich and the key!"
"K-key?" Now that Izuku squinted it did seem like the bottom of the figurine had a strange base with jagged edges that could make it a key.
Now Izuku would normally be pretty confident in his ability to chase a cat out of a circle. But this one was talking to him so he was a little on edge.
"Yes! This is a key! To some very interesting ruins under the mountain somewhere! And I'll show you how to get there and tell you how to use it…if you win. Though I am curious, why were you looking for this out here, nyah?"
"I-I-uh…" Izuku stuttered, "I connected this volcano to some weird pre-Quirk instances of possible people with powers and thought I'd come see if I was right!"
"O-ho! Academic curiosity? Very blue of you."
That statement made no sense to Izuku at all, "Blue?"
"Mroow…perhaps you'll find out. So…are you in, kid?"
Izuku nodded, "I mean you're a talking cat so I may as well see where this goes, right?"
Grinning the cat kicked the key swirling up into the air, then as Izuku looked up there was a burst of smoke and then as it came down a clawed hand reached out of the smoke and caught the key.
The smoke faded and Izuku's jaw dropped. The cat had taken on some weird semi-metallic hybrid form. It looked like a golden sumo wrestler with a cat head, claws, and a white napkin still somehow being worn as a hat. With a blur of movement and dust that made Izuku cover his eyes, suddenly there was a circle drawn in the dust.
"Hajime!" The cat-man called out slamming his feet into the ground inside the circle.
"Uh…oh boy…" Izuku gulped but still squared up in a traditional Judo stance. Because of how prevalent hero track aspirations were, every middle school offered a few basic martial arts classes as physical education electives. Not having powers, Izuku had opted for one of the forms about fighting people bigger and stronger. Because almost everybody was.
"Nyah! So the boy knows a few things, well then…show me!"
Izuku darted forward and ducked under a swiping claw and grabbed onto the cat's thick leg, trying to get leverage to topple the beastman.
It was like trying to pull a fully grown tree out of the ground.
"Good form, weak muscles," With a flick of one clawed finger Izuku was sent tumbling through dirt and dust to the other side of the makeshift arena.
Punches, kicked, grabs, even attempting to throw sand in the cat's eyes were all thwarted over the next few minutes. Either caught, deflected, or outright bouncing off of the creature's body.
Izuku was left huffing and puffing when something was pointed out to him.
"That shadow's getting closer, nyah! I think you've only got a few more rounds left before I win!"
Izuku froze, nothing he was doing was working. He needed to get creative. Try something new! But what?
It was just then that a small tuft of down, likely from some young bird or another that had just recently learned to fly nearby, drifted down and landed square on the catman's nose.
"Nyah!" He swatted it back up into the air, then as it drifted around swatted it again.
He's…he's still just a cat somehow! Izuku thought in shock. Quickly his hand shot down into the pocket of his cargo shorts and pulled out his compass.
Holding it up in the air, just high enough to catch the light, he angled it so the light of the fading sun was reflected right into the creature's sightline.
"Mweor?" The strange beast leapt, front hands first, straight at the shiny spot on the ground.
He hissed as Izuku moved it a bit further away and then jumped at it again.
And again.
And again.
Until finally…
"Um…Mr. Sumo Cat, sir? You're out of the circle now."
Blinking the beast glanced over to his left, where the line denoting the circle was.
He was indeed, outside the line.
"Nyah! That wasn't very nice or fair!"
But then instead of being angry the cat grinned, "Perfect for where you're going! That was very cunning, kid!"
He stood up and dusted his oddly metallic golden body off.
"I'm GaoLynx, nice ta meet ya, nya!"
Izuku shook GaoLynx's big meaty paw and decided he was just going to stop questioning things today.
"So…the key?"
Grinning the lynx-man held it out to him, "Take it! It's yours! I'll open the path into the ruins. Inside you'll find your answers. At the very end there will be a pedestal of sorts, insert the key. Then your final answer for this particular question will be provided!"
Sticking his tongue out at Izuku he transformed back into his small cat form with a burst of smoke and walked over to the back of the encircled rockface and slapped one of the jutting rocks.
Something shimmered in the air, and suddenly, where rock had previously been, Izuku saw what looked like a strange door. The design and wear on the door looked positively ancient. Yet, the metal didn't look like bronze or iron. It looked more like the more modern alloys he saw in some of the higher tech buildings, like when they'd taken a field trip to the rebuilt National Diet Building.
Turning around to ask a question, he noticed that GaoLynx had completely disappeared.
"Oh…okay…" Facing the door once more he walked forward and pushed it open slowly.
Inside was a straight, almost militarily spartan hallway. That was however, all he had time to see before the door slammed behind him and he was thrown into darkness.
Spinning around he tried to yank the door back open, but alas, it would not budge.
Just before he went into a full blown panic, a light began to flicker overhead.
Glancing up Izuku could faintly see a line of fluorescent lighting tubes along the top of the corridor. They would flicker on and off sporadically, as if they were fireflies trying to find each other through a thick fog.
It gave him just enough light to slowly make his way forward. The hallway was dusty, and a few times it became kicked up by his progress and made him sneeze.
Finally, about twenty meters in, Izuku found something. It wasn't much. Just some strange broken black glass. But it told him that there were things to find other than dust in here.
Pushing forward he came to his first intersection. Frowning he glanced to both sides and found both paths led to doors a few meters down. He thought back to some of his old puzzle books and remembered something about hugging the right wall in mazes. Assuming this was a maze at least.
He went right. And when he pushed the door open he found himself in some kind of trashed storage room. Broken versions of keys similar to his, strange technological parts crushed into scrap, and much more littered the floor of this room about the size of his and his mother's apartment.
"Huh…might as well see if there's anything not broken in here," Izuku spoke to himself as he got to digging. Some of the parts he found were more put together than others, but in the first five minutes of sorting he still hadn't found anything complete.
Worst of all, he'd just realized he left his backpack outside which meant he couldn't take more than what could fit in his pockets with him.
Not that that would be a problem because everything in this room seemed to be trashed.
Just as he was about to give up and move on he found a cord tangled up with a few electrical cables that connected to what looked like a strange metal Inro, a kind of Shinto spiritual charm.
Taking a bit to disentangle it he played with it a bit and found that it folded up to show a slot for some kind of medal or coin.
None of the buttons on the side of the item appeared to do anything.
"Well maybe it just needs a new battery? I think I'll take it home and see." Leaving that room, Izuku headed down the other path.
Eventually he came to a large, circular room, with what looked like many destroyed interface consoles of some sort. None of them looked like traditional computers. Searching around he also saw what seemed to be a decapitated little wheeled robot, with two of the three ocular sensors on its head crushed in.
"Oh wow…maybe I can fix you up if I come back, okay little guy?" He felt bad but even with his backpack he couldn't have moved the old automaton.
Towards the back of the chamber he found the odd pedestal that GaoLynx had described, along with what looked like a caved in metal Maoi-head laying on the floor nearby.
"What happened here? This doesn't look like earthquake or volcano damage…and how didn't the eruption destroy this place?"
Taking a deep breath, he steeled himself, and inserted the white key into the pedestal.
His eyes were suddenly assaulted with blinding light, his stomach with a sense of supreme vertigo, and his skin with an odd electrical sensation.