Rule #56c: The difference between the novice and the master, is that the master has failed more times than the novice has tried.
"Uh…mes amis? Are…are you seeing this?" Aoyama asked, voice hushed as they stepped into the adjoining room. A breath of cool air wafted over them as the three teenagers entered, shivering at the sudden change in temperature and shuddering at the sight before them. A button was pressed and then, all became clear in the most horrifying way possible. Now that the room was illuminated in the harsh light of fluorescence, it was so much easier to see what had captivated the French boy, so.
Where the last room held rows upon rows of empty capsules, each awaiting a subject (save for one), this one held something far worse: stacks upon stacks of gaunt children. Each of them was sedated by the tubes hooked into their flesh and a series of multicoloured fluids than were both being drained from them and injected into them, in equal measure. The only sign that they were even alive was the gentle pulsating of their exposed brains and flickering eyelids. "Ugh…!" Toru gagged, bile rising in her throat. "I think I'm gonna be sick…!"
Which honestly, considering the scene, was quite fair. Upon opening the door, the young heroes were assaulted with a cacophony of sights and smells that would've made anyone turn tail and run. From the menagerie of beeping noises, groaning snores and clicking devices that sounded in the air. To the cloying stench of a destroyed public bathroom, the clinical tang of medicine and the faintest hint of mildew. And that wasn't even counting the stadium stands of horror-film children stood before them.
Whilst the rest of the Trigger facility may have seemed pretty standard—even downright clean, in comparison—this room was none of that. Not even the laboratory, proper, next door could boast such distaste even if it tried. The cool breeze which had wafted over the teenager upon entering was clearly coming from some sort of cooling system up in the vents, but it did little to hide the monstrous odour that permeated about the room.
The invisible girl smothered her face with her hand because—even from the doorway—she could practically taste the stench that was heavy in the air. At first, she might've blamed it on the mildew that seemed to coat the walls from being buried beneath the lake, but on closer inspection, she found that it held notes that were more attuned to urine, faeces and the clinical tang of medicine. To say that the conditions were unsanitary was putting it lightly.
As for the room, itself, it was set up in these lecture hall-like stands that reached heavenwards; with each child squashed into the rows, and each row stacked atop of each other, all the way to the top. There must've been hundreds of them in there! With the youngest at the bottom (who couldn't have been any older than your average preschooler) and the eldest at the top; but even then, from the few that they could see, the older ones looked like they were barely out of school.
The children wore only a sleeveless hospital slip which might've been white once upon a time, but it was now a rather jaundice grey-colour. One created from all of the dirt and grime that covered the material. There eyes were sunken in, their skin filthy and hair so long & greasy that it was clear that it had been a very long time since any one of them had had a proper wash. If the mold around grating in the floor was anything to go by, then bathing was a very rare occurrence, indeed. Whatever these…things were (because they surely couldn't be human, not anymore), they must've been the…donors for the nomu. If they weren't, in fact, baby nomus, themselves.
"…Do I wanna know what I'm looking at?" Toru asked, feeling ill just standing there.
"Probably not" Ritsu chirped from the monitor she had jumped into. Honestly, she didn't sound any better than how her (former) classmate felt and she hadn't even opened up the files on these things.
"Does this…do they…are they…does—does this make them nomus?" Mineta hedged, not quite sure if he wanted to know the answer even as he wriggled out of his classmate's hold and shuffled closer.
"Careful, mon ami!" Aoyama worried, particularly when the grape-haired hero neared the closest row of sedated toddlers.
"They're heavily sedated, I think he'll be fine" Toru tried to reassure him, in a manner that she did not truly believe, herself. Mostly because the gentle pulsating of the exposed brains gave her pause; they were unnerving in a way that they had no right to be. "Ritsu" Instead, she turned to the AI. "Hack"
"Er, right—right" Ritsu nodded as she flitted across the lecture hall's screens, quickly doing as instructed. Really, anything that meant she didn't have to look at the children for any longer than she had to.
Mercifully, this time it was far easier to get into the files than it was previously. But that didn't mean the information was any less crude or upsetting than it was before. If anything, it was worse. "Holy crap…!" Ritsu exclaimed, "This says that they're nomu donors! Children who are either sold on the black market or kidnapped, or obtained through…other sketchy means are tested before they're brought here"
"Tested?" Mineta puzzled, turning to face them as Toru neared the monitors. "What do you mean?"
"It says here that only the ones with optimal Quirks are chosen by Doctor Garaki Kyūdai—" Ritsu informed him.
"D-Doctor Garaki?" He spluttered. "But everyone goes to see him! He's the leading practitioner in Quirk assessments!"
"I guess we can see why…" Toru muttered, dryly. "Can't be a scientist without the lab mice—"
"—Prism!" Aoyama gasped in shock.
"What? It's true" The invisible girl retorted in defence.
"Still uncalled for…" He grumbled.
"—And then those with the optimal Quirks are brought here, for harvesting" Ritsu continued, unbothered by their interruptions. "Hence the toddlers at the bottom"
"And…what about the older ones?" Mineta asked.
"Uh…says here that once they're close to their expiration date—once they've been milked of everything that they are—their bodies are then harvested again" Ritsu replied, "But this time, they're prepped for nomu-fication"
Toru quirked a brow at that. "Nomu-fication? Really?"
"I'm paraphrasing" Ritsu acquiesced, "But basically, once the life & Quirks are drained from them, and the bodies are empty of everything else, then they're shipped off to the laboratory next door and turned into nomu"
"That's horrible!" Mineta gaped.
"Actually, it's no worse than what's going on here" Ritsu shrugged.
"What do you mean?" Toru puzzled.
"Basically, as soon as they arrive here, at the facility, they're attached to these machines which keep them in a comatose state for the rest of their foreseeable lives" Said Ritsu, reading off what was in the files. "As a result, the children in these—I guess you could call them 'farms'—they don't learn anything, they don't have anything. No languages, no names, no free will and no freedom. They're basically confined to these cramped conditions for their whole lives"
"Explains the smell…" Toru muttered under her breath.
Ritsu ignored her and went on. "Each one of them has an oxygen tube attached to their mouths, which keeps them breathing, whilst the IV with the purple solution on the left, feeds them nutrients, sedatives & what-have-you. Whilst the IV with the green solution on the right, drains their blood and their Quirks. These…machines are what are keeping them alive and without them, they'll die"
"Sooooooo, that's no on unplugging them, yeah?" Toru winced, hands shoved into her pockets.
"Not unless you want a hundred dead kids on your hands" Ritsu commented.
"So what do we do?"
"Well…"
"…Please tell me you're going to say what I think you're going to say…"
"Unfortunately, I am"
Mineta raised his hand as if he were in class. "And for those of us too disgusted to put two-and-two together…?"
"Essentially, they're lambs being raised for slaughter" Ritsu explained. "Their bodies are broken down and before they're forcefully regrown into the nomu, we know and hate. The one out there…it says, it was force-regrown in…sixteen weeks?!"
"What the hell!" Mineta exclaimed in shock.
"All made from DNA acquired from at least six different people" The AI ended.
"What about the others?" Toru pursued. "What's the deal with them?"
"Looks like they're either being harvested for their Quirks or being kept on ice, to be the next nomu host" Ritsu answered, flitting through the files.
"Oh" Toru blinked. "Anyone in particular?"
"Well, they don't have names, but the next host looks to be…Section eight, Row twenty-four, Seat nine" She read out, a spotlight illuminating the chosen one in question, with the push of a button.
The illuminated child was gaunt, just like the other ones, but his bulbous face was hidden by long locks of brown floppy hair that made it hard to discern anything else. With his back bowed like it was, it was hard to distinguish any of note, save for the silhouette of his figure and the pair of bright red draconic wings that protruded from his back and wilted around him like leathery curtains. He looked no more alive than the rest of them, but there was something about him that was just…familiar.
"It says here that he donated part of his Quirk to the last Winged Nomu—y'know the one that caused a ruckus during the Hosu incident?" Said Ritsu.
"Uh huh" Toru hummed as her eyes traced the image of the draconic boy upon the screen. Even as sick as he was, he couldn't be any older than them.
"But according to this, the optics were agreeable and he's on his last legs, so they're prepping him for a full host harvest" Ritsu continued, "And there at least three other Quirks being added to this process"
Mineta licked his lips. "What…what are they? Does it say?"
Ritsu pursed her lips in thought as she went through the list. "Uh…there's super strength coming from Section six, Row forty-two, Seat twenty-one. Flight, of course, but that his own…and regeneration is coming from Section four, Row sixteen, Seat thirty-two who—oof!—looks to be the next one after Section eight, Row twenty-four, Seat nine, up on the chopping block"
"There's no way that the Commission de Sécurité Publique des Heros knows about this!" Aoyama agreed. "There's enough evidence here to send le bon docteur to jail for…forever!"
Ritsu winced. "Actually…"
"No! Please, no!" Mineta gasped, aghast.
"Yeah" Ritsu nodded, "But its listed as a "Personal Research Project" There's no way they think that this is…kosher, right?"
"I dunno…" Toru mused a little sourly, eyes darting away to the side as her lips turned downwards. "I certainly wouldn't put it past them"
"What about the ones who aren't ready to be hosts?" Mineta worried. "What happens to them?"
"…It's gross" Ritsu warned.
The grape-haired hero paused for a moment, before he hesitantly asked. "…What is it?"
Ritsu heaved a tired and world-weary sigh before she began to recite what happened to the ones not deemed good enough for the Quirk harvest or being a nomu host. "Once the specimens reach their desired state, they're tossed to the Processor; meaning that their bodies are butchered and chopped up into multiple pieces. Their body parts are then divided up and places into preservation jars. Those parts are then shipped off to one of the many body markets that deals with the hospitals, in the case of transplants and what-have-you"
"Different parts of the body vary in value on the market, with the heart and other such essential organs being the most valuable; essentially, the ones that are the most desirable and the ones that perish the quickest" Ritsu explained, "But the brain is never donated. Instead, it is jarred and preserved for later research and experimentation, according to these files"
"But…" Toru licked her lips, "We're in the middle of the Amazon! The closest hospital is, like, two hundred & forty-six kilometres away, in Manaus!"
"Well, typically speaking those children are kept in facilities that lie a little closer to the hospitals because of said donations" Ritsu acquiesced. "But ones like these were kept specifically for nomu-fication and Trigger experiments. In other words: these children are the ones that are being used to recreate the Korosensei experiment"
"…Oh, ick" As for Toru, she felt sick—well, sicker—at all that she had learned because there was the very real possibility that her donated heart could've come from some place like this. It didn't, thankfully, but it very well could have.
Ritsu was right, it was gross.