Bit different from my other stories - But I hope everyone enjoys all the same! You've read the tags and the summary, so if it's something you're not interested in I would suggest turning back now.
Izuku couldn't remember the last place he had ever seen.
He stared down at his feet and tried his hardest to remember something. He didn't know what he was trying to remember, but there had to be anything besides the darkness he was in.
He couldn't remember the last time it had been day , or if it had ever existed in the first place. He knew there were meant to be lots of bright, scattered stars high above while the sky was light and dark blue, or even night - At least the night was littered with bright spots of lights, while this darkness was total and all-enrapturing. But the thought of it made him feel as though it reminded him of something.
He tried his hardest to remember what but as always, was left with nothing.
Izuku couldn't remember any place, but he could remember faces. The shapes of them, the colors, but the image he remembered seemed like they were looking up from a pool of water, and therefore were never perfectly clear. There were also facts, he supposed. He randomly recalled bits and pieces of odd sentences or just individual words, like Mom, Tokyo, Smash, Katsudon, and was left wondering what they even meant.
However, no matter how long he stayed in this field, he could always remember one thing perfectly clearly: Hero. He could remember how it made him feel. He could remember fire and laughter and safety. He could remember… Everything that mattered, at least. Or at least that's what he would believe. That's what he chose to believe, as the horror of not knowing what he forgot would surely crush whatever spirit he had left.
He felt like he was sitting at a bank, looking into muddy waters and waiting for his past to drift downstream, gracing him with any odd piece of history, or knowledge, or peace.
But at the same time, someone else was there. He could feel the man there, sitting at the bank as well, but with his back to Izuku's, neither speaking to each other, and staring into the foggy stream - Almost like two people stranded on an island the size of of a mat, with nothing to do but watch the water. How long had that man been here? How much did he know? What did he wonder? What did he want? Did he too like the memories of smiling and fires? Did he know Mom? Izuku never asked.
Even if Izuku never addressed him, he noticed some things about the man: He loomed over Izuku. His weight and power felt great, and as if his massive, broad back covered everything in the dark, abyss-like cacoon they were trapped in. Izuku knew what he was - 'Child', while the man was simply a 'Giant', or a beast.
Finally, after hours, or days, or months, or decades, or whatever insignificant yet infinite period of time Izuku and the man sat with him, they both shifted. Their backs twitched in unison, and their legs, curled into their chests, pushed forward and stretched just a few muscles each.
Izuku's legs pushed and pushed, ached utterly stiff while the darkness drowned them. The man did so in unison. Izuku's arms pushed down by his hips. The man did so in unison.
Izuku's fist curled. His finger stretched out and bent in every manner he could imagine, as it had been so long he forgot exactly how they moved. The man did so in unison.
Izuku didn't turn to face the man. He didn't acknowledge him, and nor the man to him. He felt himself stand. He felt gravity lightly against him, yet a murky abyss cocooned him. Izuku reached forward, pressing against a smooth barrier. The man did so in unison.
Izuku opened his eyes. The man did so in unison.
… The world isn't black, it's green - Was Izuku's first thought. There were bubbles, there was the faintest and eeriest light of sickly green all around him.
Izuku blinked. He forced his hand across the glass to the other side, but as he did, he found himself unsettled by his hand… His brain had two reactions, both were instant, both were natural, both reactions speaking on behalf of one side of his psyche.
His hand was massive and gnarly, both powerful and thin, with over-stretched skin covering flesh and bone. He was afraid of it. He was in awe of it. He hated it. He appreciated it. His hand was unnatural. His hand was perfection . The contradicting appanage cleared the window of condensation, allowing him to peer through the glass and into the world beyond his prison, womb, or whatever he was trapped inside: Dark walls, dark floors, jagged and odd shapes in the darkness that flashed and blinked like lights in the night sky Izuku barely remembered.
There were solid walls and ground, unlike this water-filled grave. He saw other prisons, round and tall like cans, filled with glowing green water and figures that were both familiar and frightening.
"I… I want out… " Izuku finally thought. Were they his first thoughts? Izuku didn't know. Izuku didn't think until now, he only remembered and replayed long-run echoes of distant memories.
"... I think… I think I do too… " The 'man' spoke. His thoughts were too… Warped, too broken and filled with raspy electric static to be considered a person's, but Izuku agreed.
Izuku and the man moved in unison. They were both independent and reliant on each other, a prisoner to their shattered mind which separated them, stopping them from being a whole, from truly being one when each felt as though they were meant to, yet being opposites. Their entire existence was a was and was not - Izuku was controlling his hand, yet he was not. The man, the shattered second half to Izuku, could blink, yet he could not. They were one, yet they were not - They were broken, yet they were not.
Izuku moved his arm back, and it didn't take long until it tapped the metal back to their prison.
"What… What do I do?" Izuku asked himself and his other self.
"... Smash ." The Discordian buzz of Other-Izuku's voice whispered. " Smash. B-Break. Spill out."
Izuku's hand curled once more, but this time, it began to shake as he clenched it. Even the water vibrated around his disgusting hand - But then, his torso shifted, and his arm shot forth and tore through the force of the water, and through the glass prison. Izuku heard the glass shatter. He heard the rain of shards pelt the ground, he heard the water spill through and splash against the floor. Not even the sound of his own thoughts or memories of laughter were so clear.
Izuku was certain he was alive. Such clear, worldly noises couldn't be made inside his own mind.
His arm slunk back through the glass, and he lowered it, punching around the level of his waist. The glass dented and formed a web-like crack, but didn't shatter. He punched again, which widened the cracks, but didn't free him.
He turned his torso the other way to punch once more, then alternated once more, which finally caused water to shoot out through odd, small bits of missing glass.
By now, so much water was missing, his shoulders were dripping instead of underwater - So he lifted his arm up, creating another vividly clear splash, before making a wild, desperate, almost animalistic swing from high to low - And instead of the glass shattering, the entire panel flew off the hinges of his prison, flying to the wall and bursting into a hail of a million shards.
Water spilled forth, past his chest, past his stomach, past his hips and thighs, until finally only the bottom of his feet were in shallow pools.
The weight of gravity finally landed against Izuku, and just like that, he remembered something… He remembered jumping. He remembered a softness entirely unlike the iron floor of this capsule squishing under his feet. He remembered leaping up, and gravity yanking his body down, only for them to do it again in a game similar to see-saw.
Izuku stepped forward, slowly and carefully; The actual ground was lower than his capsule and covered in glass, but even though he felt the shards piercing the flesh of his soles, he didn't hurt. The other foot came down, and Izuku was out… Out, but not free. The ceiling was taller than his capsule, but not that much. He felt like he was going to hit something against it, even though his head was at least significantly shorter than the ceiling.
Izuku began to step. He looked down and had the same hurricane of contradicting thoughts and emotions seeing the odd flesh of his leg muscles shift under the drawn-out skin. They forced him up, then let him down cozily against his toes and heels.
He kept walking, only looking at his legs move in an odd, fascinated way. He took smaller steps, longer ones, some he forced his leg completely straight and hefted it up, before dropping it down like a pushed-over pole. Just to see if he could, he made his leg go outwards and around in a wide circle to step forward.
Finally, he looked up. There were more capsules everywhere he looked, more prisons where mounds of unnatural flesh floated. Some the size of a heart, some as big as an adult, and some larger - So Izuku's size. He leaned forward to look in. It looked wide awake, but its eyes didn't move. Just an unfeeling, limp face with eyes that may as well have been marbles. Izuku pressed a hand in front of it and stretched his fingers out, seeing for any reaction, of which he found none.
" I… I want to look at myself…" The garbled voice requested. " I might… Look like that… Must know. "
Both hands pressed against the glass and Izuku leaned forward. He could see his shape, his monstrous and massive silhouette staring back at him, but he couldn't make out anything.
Finally, he made a decision by punching the glass, instantly breaking through it. His massive hand grabbed the inhuman creature by its thick throat and forced it through the hole Izuku made, further cracking the glass while its limp body parts got stuck before finally forcing through.
He dropped his ally, or brother, or fellow victim on the ground without a thought before looking back into the glass. His skin was as green and stretched out all over his body as was his hand, like a twisted form of leather making a disgusting hide over a mass of muscles in the shape of a very tall, very lanky, but very powerful man. He stretched his jaw just to be sure it was his - And the reflection of a bare, lipless jaw with jagged teeth mimicked him.
His tongue unnerved him as well, he felt as though it wasn't meant to be so long and dagger-shaped. His eyes were dementedly wide and aligned vertically, and when he blinked with one eye, it looked like a massive hood covering a baby's head. Along with that, two massive ears, stalkish like a rabbit's came from his head, making him almost a foot taller and flickered when he willed them too. But the sickest part of it all was the top of his skull: His brain, pink and squishy, was fully exposed to the air, with one of his eyes coming from it like a sick jewel adorning the crown of a demon.
Izuku was horrified, but recognized two things: He was never meant to be this. He knew he was small, tiny, he should have only come up to the cankles of this beast that stared back at him. And the second thing he realized - This was the man with his back to his. This was the shattered half of himself he shared his torment with. He looked over his hands and feet, and back into his reflection, staring at a monster that conveyed none of the emotions he felt swirling inside him.
He raised his fist behind him and swung it down like a hammer, forcing the top of the capsule to creak violently and bend. He did it again with the other hand, letting out a demonic and shrill cry that resembled the voice of his other self's thoughts.
He did it again, not in fury of his appearance this time, but the sound of his own voice, but it still rung clearer than the sounds of his smashing this capsule, so he did it harder, punching it down again and again to the painful sympathy of his own demented voice, screams of machines, breaking, bursting of tubes, and inflammation of wires. It became too low to hit without lowering himself, so he lifted his gargantuan foot and stomped it down, leaving a print of his toes and heel in the cap before doing so again, and again, and again, until it was finally flat against the ground.
"I hate you!" Izuku screamed inside his mind, swinging his arm around for the back of his knuckles to tear apart another capsule like he was gutting it, causing it to spill out the mangled, half-formed corpse of another and slump against the broken bottom-half. "Why are you like this?! Why did you make me into this!? Why didn't you just leave me alone!?" Izuku demanded.
" I… D-Didn't choose…" He replied, the empathy and melancholy in his voice matched by the static rupturing his voice like a disease. " I don't… Remember… Nothing… Not even my name… "
Izuku stopped, letting his fists drop to his sides while spilt water washed over his feet. "... Izuku. I-I think we're both Izuku."
" ... Am I you? Are you me…? " He asked.
"I-I don't know… I don't e-even know if this is my body, or my brain. I c-can't tell." And if he were honest with himself, he'd be too afraid to want to know anyway. The behemoth that both Izukus called their body began to lumber forward, going past several capsules until he looked to the side, seeing his reflection, so eerily familiar to theirs, going past the glass panes.
" ... We shouldn't be free. " He said, his voice contorted with a very low and grumbling buzz. " We escaped… But they're trapped. "
"Yeah…" Izuku thought back, before finally stopped before another capsule. This person was absolutely massive, being just under Izuku's height but many times his width, with jet-black skin and a deformed beak instead of a might jaw like Izuku had. "I want to help them."
" I want to, too… But look at him. " Just like all the others, this massive bird-man was a limp, dead-eyed doll who just hung in the water like Izuku did. " Can we? "
"We should try." Izuku said. There was a small machine, a small collection of buttons on a console connected to the capsule they were trapped inside.
" Yes… But how would someone rescue a gutted fish? " Their broken radio voice asked as Izuku's hand grabbed the console, then crushed it like a paper ball in their great, green paw. Izuku's hand reeled back from the sparks - And after a moment of consideration, grabbed both sides of the glass pane firmly and tore it away, allowing all the water of the prison capsule to spill out at once, leaving the bird behemoth man standing like a mannequin.
Izuku titled his head. This one was actually standing up. He tried to speak, but all that came out were the garbled shrieks of before, this time coming out as a calmer, inquisitive coo.
The man didn't even seem to be breathing. But then again, Izuku was almost sure he didn't breathe either… He raised both hands and clapped in the face of the man, creating a force so great that both Izuku and the main rocked slightly, along with shaking or outright blowing away pieces of shards or water nearby.
Izuku stared at him a little longer before taking his hand, then his foot in the other hand, and with a bit of maneuvering, had the beaked man over his shoulders. He was huge and heavy, but Izuku's body was formidable. After a few moments, Izuku realized he was breathing, but very shallow and drawn-out, like he was asleep.
" S-So he is… Is he asleep? "
"I think… Maybe if he gets outside, he can wake up too."
Izuku took a step forward, knocking over the console he hand previously crushed, and a moment later heard the sounds of great, raging electricity. His back was whipped with a fierce lash, making his entire body seize for a moment until his next step landed, getting him out of range.
He quickly spun around, with both sides of his mind alight with fear and adrenaline. The wet floor danced with electricity, bouncing across consoles and odd wires, making the room explode with the beeps and blares of technology. The electricity lashed at him, but he zeroed in on the dangerous whip and leaped backward. It followed just as quickly, sprawling after him and blocking the hall like a rabid animal, forcing him to constantly leap backward until he slammed his new buddy against the wall now that they ran out of room to run.
The corridor continued right, so he leaped - But in the last half-second, before he would leave this damned place forever, he saw capsules, the white one he left on the ground, and all the odd pieces of technology begin to burst in flames, frying or boiling his fellow monsters alive.
Izuku continued bouncing as blares followed him - With heat and danger surrounding everything. His legs were fiercely strong, digging his massive and jagged toes into the ground before launching him forth like cannons, allowing him to go off the floor, off the walls, and into safety.
Before long, he burst through a door, exploding out of darkness into a new, dark room. This room was neater, organized, clean, like the respectable version of the place he escaped from. But still, he leapt forward and through another door, using his body and his rescuee to shatter through the frames and the walls. This time, however, the corridor he was in was white and brightly lit, but there were more alarms than ever going off, before suddenly everything was engulfed in dark red.
Izuku's ears flattened against the sides of his head in fear, looking both ways down the hall, hearing the faint noises of cluttering and stomping and yelling coming closer, until he set his eyes straight towards the wall and lept forward, battering straight through it.
Two more walls and he found his feet digging into something new… Dirt, this was called. He landed on a dirt ground, and he was… He was finally outside. The darkness wasn't an oppressive, all-encompassing black. It was a very, very dark blue. He could see lights. He saw several pairs of red lights racing orderly across the sky. There was noise aside from the blaring of alarms, he was here.
He finally made it outside, and into life itself.
Izuku turned around to the series of cloudy holes. A second after there were a series of bright, protruding lights forcing their way through and going to him. These lights didn't seem friendly to Izuku. He looked up and leaped again, hunching his legs and angling his feet up like talons, gripping into the stone wall of this massive building before leaping up again, barely making a himself-sized distance over the roof before landing again.
He bent down and made his rescuee roll over him and onto the ground like a dead body. " We did it… That's great. "
"Everyone else though…" Izuku responded with a small whimper, leaning down to poke the person he just saved, who didn't move an inch. "Was that our fault?"
" I c-can't tell… Maybe it was a… A…? Wh-What am I thinking of? "
"A… Bad. A bad person. A bad guy." Izuku supplied before another word drifted down the stream of Izuku's consciousness. "A villain."
" A villain… That sounds bad. " He said, as Izuku stood up straight again. " A villain did that. A villain hurt th-them, got them all burned away… "
Izuku couldn't agree anymore. "Yeah…! I hate villains! I don't want anyone else to be like this guy! To be like us." He responded, looking down at the poor, sleeping behemoth who couldn't even stand or thank Izuku for rescuing him.
" Smash them… " His voice warbled in a malevolent, twisted buzz that would only otherwise be described as the tone of a blood-lusted demon. " Crush. Smash. Beat them all… "
Izuku wanted to agree, but the town and harsh buzz offset him, putting a rushing chill of fear through his deformed body.
"I… I want to protect people, more than I want to hurt them."
" Hmm… " The annoyed rumble resembled crackling electricity or a growling, demonic animal than anything resembling Izuku's tone. " I can agree… Th-This shouldn't happen to anyone. But we can stop them forever…"
Izuku couldn't help but feel that he had a point… On some level, he understood and agreed that these people should stop, but he couldn't imagine doing to a person what he had done to the glass panes he escaped from, or the walls he burst through. He wasn't so confident that he would deny being scared of hurting somebody the way he destroyed everything else had had come across thus far. "I don't want to think about that… Not until we have to." Izuku decided
Everything besides his ally, that was, who was still as lifeless as a doll against the ground. He didn't destroy him, he saved him. " I-It felt… Good. "
"... It did." Izuku agreed. They were finally able to move away, walking across the concrete rooftop, with cold air brustling against his unnatrual skin, with lights gently painting his vision, and air - Pure and fresh, filled his lungs. He - Or they, or whatever Izuku was, (A part of him simply considered himself an it for how horrible his condition was) walked to the edge of the building, letting his toes hand over and curl over the side, holding the edge like a pair of gargantuan talons.
"I want to do it again."
" Then let's… Who is g-going to stop me? " He asked, in reference to them both.
Izuku thought about it for a moment, and as he turned the question over in his mind, he made his legs hunch and his muscles ripple with strain - His toes cracked the bricks of the edge, before leaping off with a great THOOOOOOM! Following behind him, along with the trail of air his arms, legs, and ears left behind in the wind.
"I don't know… But I'm less afraid now."
The beast known as Izuku's chest trembled rythmatically, forming a demented chord which sounded like a demon mocking human laughter with it's deep, disturbing chuckle. " N-No fear… "
All right that was that. It's been a while since I've written anything that wasn't smut, but I'm excited for this since it just gives me a reason to try my hand at making cool drama - As well as all the fight scenes I have planned out. If this does well I'll update it more often, so if anyone wants more of this story please let your voice be heard ^^
This story was released a week ago on my |?, and just today I released a new smut fic called "Indebted" to my |? as well. You can find the link to my and those stories on my Twitter account, ( BitchBrypops) Plus, I like having easier ways to communicate with my community anyways.
Alright, that's about it. I hope everyone enjoyed this because it's kinda a new venture for me as well. Take care, everyone, and see you later!?