He knocked on the door and waited. After a few moments, he heard a "Come in!" and opened the door.
The room was small but larger than your average office space. It was well decorated in polished wood furnishings, but bearing the markings of being older pieces well preserved. Numerous surfaces displayed awards of various kinds, all attributed to the man sitting in the spacious leather chair behind the equally spacious desk.
Yonamine Toshiaki, the current governor of Nagano Prefecture peered at him over his glasses, a scowl on his face.
"Well, it's about damn time. Only took you two whole days." He said, his tone controlled but the scowl on his face was still present.
"I apologize for the delay, but as you are aware, there aren't exactly a lot of us to go around," Tokoyami said, bowing a little.
Toshiaki gave a "hmph" of annoyance but gestured for him to sit down which Tokoyami took.
"While I was briefed on the situation, it wasn't as encompassing as I would have liked. So I would appreciate it if you could tell me more about the situation." Tokoyami asked.
Toshiaki muttered under his breath for a few seconds, and Tokoyami thought he caught the word, "lazy heroes," before Toshiaki faced him directly and steepled his hands.
"Well, this all probably started a few weeks back, we just didn't make the connection until now. Some outlining towns have been having problems with the water they draw from wells, uncommon but sometimes the groundwater in an area can take on new tastes. They usually sort themselves out before long, but recently a lot of people have gotten sick suddenly. Then, recently, a few hikers went missing on Mt. Takatsuma. We sent out a team to look for them, or at least figure out their cause of death. We searched for several days without luck, on the last day, the team came back, but three of the search team had mysteriously gone missing as well. Naturally, we suspected an animal with a quirk might be responsible. We had a more combat-ready group sent out not long after. We received a report about an undocumented cave, then silence. The entire team is presumed dead. In the past day, one of my people suggested that it might be a plant with a quirk being the cause. If the cave is the origin point, and it runs deep enough, then it might be contaminating the groundwater in the region. That's why I've called for a hero like you, the circumstances and terrain seem to be best for someone like you." The governor said, handing Tokoyami a pile of papers, all transcripts of the transmissions sent by the search and rescue teams.
"If it's an animal, kill it and bring it back, simple. But if it's a plant, then I'm told it might be more complicated depending on the species of plant and the quirk it has. Kill what parts of it you find that might be interfering with the groundwater, then call us so we can get experts out there to exterminate it completely, as well as study it. Plants with quirks are exceedingly rare."
The governor suddenly grimaced and handed Tokoyami a different document, a very formal-looking one.
"You can use that to requisition whatever you might need to help. That includes people. If you have any questions, direct them to my secretary." The governor then gestured for Tokoyami to leave.
It was rather abrupt, but Tokoyami took his leave. As the door shut behind him he sighed and started to make his way to the hotel he had booked. Along the way, he made a mental list of what kind of equipment he wanted to bring. It was shaping up to be a relatively complicated mission, with precious little information. The kind of mission he hated.
The first problem would be the sheer darkness of the cave, and while he could meld with Dark Shadow to see in the darkness, if he brought anyone else with him they would need the necessary equipment. That brought up a different problem though, finding anyone in the city with specialized thermal imagining equipment was unlikely. Such equipment was not available to the police, and would instead be more readily found in the military.
This specific problem bounced around in his head for quite a while, lasting until he got to his hotel room and sat down to think. He wanted to take care of the problem as soon as possible, and if he had to requisition the military for equipment, it would take a decent amount of time while he waited. By that point, the missing people would likely be dead. With no other choice, he got out his phone to call Momo for assistance, when he scrolled past his contact "Izuku Midoriya". He stared at the name for a few seconds as new ideas popped into his head. He smiled and put his phone away. He knew exactly who needed to get in contact within the city to solve both his equipment and personnel problems. Which meant the only thing he needed now was a guide but that wouldn't be difficult.
The next morning he, a mountain guide, and a squad of QSU were riding in an M1580 Cargo Truck along a dirt path up the mountain. It was an older model by modern standards but worked well enough and was easily able to accommodate them all. The ride was uneventful for the first ten minutes or so, but eventually one of the QSU cleared his throat.
"So, uh, why'd you requisition us to help you?" Asked who looked to be the youngest of the squad.
"Can it, Kaito." Said their commander.
"No, it's all right, his curiosity is justified. Many heroes are not fond of you, and there are plenty that do not know about your organization in any detail and assume you to be part of the police." Tokoyami said.
"Well... we kinda are part of the police force." Said another QSU operative, his rank signaling he was likely the second in command.
"Maybe on paper, but we all know that you function more as Domestic Special Forces nowadays. Especially after the war brought you more into the spotlight." Tokoyami said.
"That's some keen insight." the commander said, eyeing Tokoyami with slightly narrowed eyes.
"I've worked with the QSU numerous times over the years, and I'm fully aware of how capable you are. That's why I asked for a squad to accompany me, you are well-trained and well-experienced. If we are dealing with an unknown quirk, then your specialized training in quirk analysis and countermeasure development will be of great use, even if your guns prove not to be." Tokoyami said.
The commander grinned, "You're a smart one, no wonder you rank near the top of the MDQU." he said, nodding to himself.
"MDQU?" He asked.
The commander grinned wider and Tokoyami could see a dangerous gleam in his eye.
"Most Dangerous Quirk-Users, a list drawn up by QSU command that identifies the most dangerous quirk users in the country, friend or foe." He said, causing the others to look at him startled.
"Sir, that's confidential." his second-in-command said.
"I'm aware, but he has the clearance needed for it." The commander said with a short laugh.
"But he's a hero, he only has civilian clearance levels. Only some of the top, and most veteran heroes would have that sort of clearance." Said the younger QSU member, Kaito.
At this, the commander scowled at them all.
"I thought I trained you all to thoroughly investigate anybody you may be working with. Did none of you bother to go through his file last night?" He asked looking at them sternly
When nobody answered he sighed.
"We'll be working on this during our next training regimen." He said tersely. "Regardless, our hero friend here is part of SOG, as well as being a hero. He's got the highest security clearance possible, so we don't need to walk on eggshells around him."
Everyone looked at Tokoyami, newfound respect in their eyes. Tokoyami could tell though that the QSU commander knew more than he was letting on. The way he looked at him, and the fact he had gone out of his way to look up his file when he had very little time to do so.
"He probably knows about my work as an assassin..." Tokoyami thought.
"All right, we're coming up on the end of the road, get your gear ready, we'll be going the rest of the way on foot." Came the voice of the driver from their radios.
The team started getting their gear together, and when the truck stopped a minute or two later, they vaulted over the side of the vehicle and hit the ground ready to move.
"How far to the cave in question?" Asked the QSU commander.
"About two clicks if we stick to paths to get as close as possible, just over one if we cut straight through but you'd have to worry about terrain." Said their guide.
"We'll stick to the paths, we aren't in that big a rush," Tokoyami said.
"All right, just follow me and we'll get there in good time." Said the guide, turning and making his way to one of the paths leading off from the cul-de-sac they had parked in.
The walk to the cave was uneventful. Local animals of significance kept their distance, with them branching off the main trail and cutting through the woods to get to the cave in question being the most interesting.
After about a half hour of a leisurely hike, the guide stopped in front of a hole in the mountain. It was small, maybe three meters high and five meters across. It was evident that it had only recently been revealed, with cut foliage and mounds of dirt on either side of the entrance to show that it had been widened beforehand.
"All right, so the missing hikers and search team all come through here. The entrance was much smaller and must have been revealed in the past few years or so from a landslide because this is completely new in our records. We've done preliminary exploration and left markers to guide you in the beginning. We've also left some extra gear in there for you in case you need it. Now I know the governor wants you to find and exterminate the cause, but it's also possible that they trapped themselves in by accident. The whole place is unexplored, so it's not unreasonable to assume they fell into a pit or something similar. If you find them alive, or evidence that it was just a series of accidents, don't hesitate to leave and let professionals take care of it. We don't want anyone else getting trapped or dying in here." Said their guide seriously.
"We understand the risks, we'll be as safe as possible during our exploration," Tokoyami assured the guide.
"Well... all right then. I'll be just outside the cave waiting for you." said the guide, dropping his large pack onto the ground and beginning to pull gear out of it for his camp.
With that, Tokoyami and his team entered the cave, ready to begin their search.
The path was easy enough to follow for the first few minutes of careful navigation, it wasn't quite pitch black and the path was marked. Before long though, the markers and lights gave way to blackness. The QSU squad equipped their infrared imagining gear and took a minute to adjust. Tokoyami meanwhile had Dark Shadow form around him, its head forming around his, and their sight merged.
It was always strange seeing the world through Dark Shadows' eyes. He saw a world without color, a world without hard lines, one of soft edges and grayscale. Even in a place as lightless as a deep cave, with the right gear like infrared or UV, one could still perceive the world around them, as there is always light present in some regard. Dark Shadow could see such things but drained of color and without hard detail. It was a strange thing, but after losing his eye during the campaign to apprehend Zeus, he'd learned to adapt to it.
When the QSU had adjusted, they pressed on, through winding passages, steep inclines, and frequent dead ends. Conditions were cramped at first, but Tokoyami began to notice something the deeper they went. The tunnels, apart from getting wider and more open, also grew damp. The idea that the cause of the groundwater pollution came from this cave seemed plausible if the dampness was anything to go by.
The next major change was the smell, the smell of something rotting and metallic. The dampness of the floor and walls became less damp and steadily more viscous, and after an hour of slow and careful progress, they even saw fungal growths appearing intermittently.
The most dramatic and disturbing change happened when they were another thirty minutes into their search. The fungal growths had changed, becoming more frequent but morphing into something very different from fungus. It was as if the walls had started to become cancerous, strange trailing growths creeping along the walls like some kind of tumor and leaking a foul-smelling liquid. The growth was all over the ceiling, and stretching along the walls but had not spread to the floor. It was disturbing and Tokoyami was sure now, that whatever the cause, it looked likely to be a plant of some kind.
They turned a couple of corners and then stopped. Just ahead of them, they could see light, pulsing faintly but periodically. They approached the corner slowly, and Tokoyami peered around the corner and his eyes widened in shock.
Beyond a stretch of tunnel, was some kind of large chamber where the light was faintly pulsing from. Tokoyami motioned for the others to follow him and together they crept silently down the final stretch of the tunnel until they were a couple of meters away. Tokoyami had Dark Shadow sweep forward, poke its head out of the tunnel, and look the place over.
Dark Shadow returned, and melding back into Tokoyami's head, whispered directly into his ear. "No idea what the thing creating the light is, but it's freaky."
Tokoyami didn't respond but instead crept forward the last couple of meters and poked his head into the chamber.
It was large and spacious and he could hear water dripping from the ceiling, or at least what he hoped was water. It didn't sound like drips, more like splats. There was also the faint noise of running water, making this a point where a large amount of groundwater passed through under the mountain. What drew his eye though, was the faintly pulsing light coming from something attached to the ceiling near the far end of the chamber.
Tokoyami and the QSU squad walked deeper into the room, their boots squelching on the ground which had spiderweb-like tendrils of growth crisscrossing it all over. As they got closer to the faintly pulsing light, the growth became more dense until eventually they were walking on a flat sheet of the growth. As they got within a half dozen meters of the light, Tokoyami could see that whatever it was, it was organic and it was massive. The QSU removed their goggles and looked at it with their naked eyes and one of them whistled.
"What in the hell is that?" asked one of the QSU aloud.
"It's putting off a lot of heat at least, so it's alive, whatever it is" another answered.
"It's still too dark. Light a few flares and toss them around, we need to see what we're dealing with." Said the commander.
The team each pulled out a flare and lit them, there was a pause as several hissed from the sudden and painful illumination but after everyone's eyes adjusted they tossed the flares out in a large ring around them and looked back up at the growth.
"Holy shit... is that what I think it is?" one of them said, raising his weapon.
"Load up incendiary rounds, we are burning this." Said the commander.
As the QSU loaded their weapons with appropriate ammunition, Tokoyami it more closely.
It was undoubtedly, a giant, pulsing cocoon or chrysalis. It hung down from the ceiling like the kind he had seen on trees that eventually gave birth to butterflies, but Tokoyami was pretty sure that whatever was inside was unlikely to be so benign. As he examined the area around it more closely, he saw that the growth they had observed in the tunnels in the room was spreading outward from the chrysalis. For what purpose he couldn't guess, biology was not his forte, especially not one such as this. As the QSU finished loading their weapons Tokoyami spotted something.
"WAIT!" he said, spinning around and holding his arms out.
"What?" asked the QSU commander.
"The missing people are next to whatever this thing is!" He said pointing to small pods ringing the area around the chrysalis. Each one was distinctly human-sized and a few had large bulges along one side, where a hikers backpack might be located.
"Shit, how are we going to get them out? I was issued a rifle, not wings." Said one of the QSU.
"Stay here, I'll cut them free as best I can," Tokoyami said, then using Dark Shadow flew to the ceiling.
He looked over the base of the pods, each one had thick tendrils snaking from the base to the chrysalis itself. But this close he also saw something that made him shiver. Embedded within the thick growth of the ceiling he saw the outlines of animal bones.
Forming Dark Shadow into a claw on his arms, he cut through the base of one of the pods, severing it from the ceiling and falling to the ground. He caught the pods with Dark Shadow and then split it open carefully, letting Dark Shadow guide the cut so he didn't injure whoever was inside.
As the pod split open and he looked inside he saw they were too late. The person inside was emaciated, skin pulled along the bones and pale as death, not to mention not breathing. Judging by the outfit they wore, it was the missing hero.
Suddenly there was a howl and everyone looked around. From the light of the flares, they saw something emerge from a far tunnel and sprint at them with inhuman speed. Rifles rang out as fire burst along the creature's body causing it to stumble and writhe as the QSU continued to fire upon it until it was finally unmoving.
As two of the QSU moved closer to examine it, there was a sudden crack that split the air as loud as any of the gunshots. They all looked up and saw that the chrysalis had suddenly split.
As they watched there was another massive cracking noise and several more splits formed along it. The pulsing light started to fade as the cracks multiplied. Then, along the tunnels, they heard a series of very wet noises and the growth started to retract into the chrysalis. The chrysalis rapidly expanded, bloating and bulging while the cracks split wider.
"Kill it!" barked out the QSU commander and the room was filled with the noise of gunfire as fire bloomed across the chrysalis. Yet it seemed to do next to nothing, the bullets and incendiaries packed into them useless. As the growth continued to retract into the chrysalis, the QSU stopped firing as it became obvious anything else would be a waste of ammo. The last of the growth retracted into the chrysalis, and the whole thing shook and then started to separate from the ceiling with a sickening peeling noise, along with the rest of the smaller pods.
Tokoyami flew out of the way, as the QSU ran, and the whole thing crashed into the floor. Where it exploded outward, and a huge, massive torrent of liquid rushed outward, but before it could overwhelm them it froze, as if time had stopped. After a few tense moments, the liquid started moving, then started to reverse and whirl. Like a giant mid-air whirlpool it spun faster and faster, shrinking and being absorbed by whatever had been inside the chrysalis. The torrent roared in their ears, echoing along the walls until the final swirl vanished, and silence reigned.
The only light and sound was of the flares, burning steadily in the darkness. Within the light of the flares, they saw something in the center of the room. It was small, and compact, its definite edges hard to make out in the light. Then the creature or whatever it might be, stirred and to their surprise, stood up revealing itself to be humanoid. It stood tall, head bowed, with long hair that shone red in the flare light, that touched the floor obscuring most of its body in a huge curtain. Then with a suddenness that made everyone jump it took a huge breath, before it let it out in a rush. Its stomach heaved as it sucked in giant lungs full of air; it staggered backward, almost falling over before catching itself, and steadied. The figure brought its human hands up to its head and looked them all over. Then it moved as if examining the rest of its body, from its arms to its chest to its legs and feet, as if fascinated by its form.
While all of this was happening, something was tickling the back of Tokoyami's brain, a vague feeling of deja-vue. When the figure brought its hands to its head and pushed its curtain of hair away so that it fell down its back, its full features were exposed. It wasn't just humanoid shaped, it was a human, a female at that. She looked down at herself and gasped as she put her hands to her breasts in apparent fascination and glee.
All of sudden, everything clicked in Tokoyami's mind and his sense of deja-vue exploded into full-on realization. A sense of horror and shock crashed through him, as the sheer impossibility of it raced through his mind. Tokoyami's mind snapped back to reality and with all the strength of Dark Shadow he could muster, rushed the woman engulfing her in a tide of darkness.
"RUN!" He shouted at the QSU, "You cannot face her! Leave her to me and report back!"
The commander was experienced enough to know that whatever was happening was out of their league and barked out orders, retreating up the tunnel they had come down. When they had retreated and were gone, Tokoyami released the woman and took several steps back, but Dark Shadow was ready, hovering just between them.
The woman got to her feet and looked at him, her eyes looking shocked and confused.
"Where... am I?" she asked, uncertainly.
"Under Mt. Takatsuma in Nagano." Tokoyami answered.
She seemed to struggle with that answer as if recalling the information was extremely difficult. She shook her head eventually as if to give up on the attempt.
"How... did I get here?" she asked hesitantly.
"I have no idea, I was just about to ask you the same. It's been two years since you died." Tokoyami said.
"I... don't remember. Just... just redness. Just a never-ending red. But... I feel good. Better than I have since... since..." She said, eventually trailing off as her eyes unfocused, as if looking at something in the far distance.
Tokoyami stood there for a couple of minutes not sure what was happening when she suddenly jerked and took several heaving breaths. Then she shifted her gaze downward back at her body.
"I... but my body is how I remember it when I was growing up. I don't have any scars, and my breasts are back, though I don't remember them being quite this big..." she said trailing off and idly feeling her breasts, a confused expression on her face.
"Regardless of how we should leave, our doctors and scientists can help you figure everything out," Tokoyami said.
She froze at those words, her eyes grew wide and she looked at him, fear evident on her face.
"No! You'll just cut me open, rip me apart! You want my quirk, my body, I know it!" she screamed suddenly, making him jump in surprise at the volume of her voice.
"I must insist, you shouldn't be alive and several people are dead already. We can help you. Please trust us" He said, trying to sound as earnest as possible.
"YOU LIE! JUST LIKE THEM! YOU WON'T TAKE MY HUSBAND AND CHILD FROM ME AGAIN!" she shouted, her posture lowering.
Her form started to shift, slowly transitioning into one more bestial. Blood burst from her body like an unending tide. Her hands became huge scaled claws, her hair morphed into sea-anemone-like tentacles with electricity arcing along their lengths, legs lengthened becoming bird-like with large talons. Her face was a mix of wolf and tiger with wickedly sharp fangs. Spines burst along her back like a porcupine, while her front grew large coarse fur that tangled with itself. Then a long, slender, segmented tail, comprised of silvery bone burst from her, ending with a long sharp spike. A deep rumble vibrated from within her chest as a deep bassy growl echoed around the chamber.
Tokoyami took a breath, it seemed diplomacy would be impossible. Dark Shadow suddenly burst outward, destroying the flares and plunging the room into utter darkness.
"Black Ahnk: Baldr," Tokoyami said, and Dark Shadow burst forth.