Author's note:
To TwinstarDragon: Isaac is not technically dating Momo or Himiko (not yet at least). The reason is because Eri claimed him as her dad and them as her moms. Instead of trying to fight her about it, they just run with the titles. The funniest part is that Eri is just calling it like she sees it. She can tell where this is going, even if they are all too dumb to notice.
Additional thanks to EliteShadow and Mr.BrownOptometrist for the positive reviews.
--
Chapter 4: Resurrections, Reunions, and Robots
Despite Eri being an incredibly patient and adorable girl, she was still a child with a short attention span. As such, she was just not built to sit in a high school classroom for long stretches of time. Sure, she could manage a couple classes or even a whole day, but she was not up to the task of sitting still like that every day.
To solve this, I am currently on Eri duty. That is when either Himiko, Momo, or I watch her during a class period. Himiko was currently running errands and I wanted to let Momo focus on her class work, so I was taking this shift.
"How are my favorite little nitwits?" Aizawa asks as she comes into the room. "The rest of the class is off in Mic's awful English class. Yeah, I know you learn the language, but Kami, at what cost?"
"That is why me and Eri are working on our coloring," I say. "Isn't that right, Eri Berry?"
"Yep!" she says before she beams at me and proudly holds up a picture she drew. I immediately begin to snicker as Aizawa looks at it in disbelief. "What do you think?"
"I think it is an awesome drawing," I tell her. "I couldn't do better myself."
"Is that a robot holding another robot's severed head up while the body bleeds oil out on the ground?" the teacher asks in contemplation.
"Uh-huh!" Eri confirms. "Papa and I watched Zeus beating up a loser bot and busting his head off! It was awesome!"
"You really watch World Robot Boxing with an eight year old?" Aizawa asks me. "Isn't that kind of violent for her age?"
"Eh," I shrug. "She likes it so I don't see a lot of issues. She watches horror movies with Himiko all the time and she ends up comforting Himiko who is the one who actually gets scared."
"Fair enough," Aizawa relents before she goes over to the monitor in the room. "Want to watch some of the hero training footage for Class 1-A? The blond buffoon is training them and I want to see how unruly Kan's brats are."
"Hey, Eri Berry, do you want to watch a bunch of idiots beat each other up?" I ask.
"Like the robots?" she asks in response.
"Yeah, but dumber and bloodier," I reply.
"Sure!" she chirps happily before jumping out of her seat and hopping into my lap so we could watch together. "Dial it up, Sleepy-Sensei."
"Cheeky little brat," Aizawa mutters affectionately as she uses a remote to display the footage. "Right now it is apparently a girl with engines in her legs and a walking explosion fetish against a Benjamin Button's weird niece and the human equivalent of a wet toaster."
"That sounds like a trainwreck," I comment. "I love it! Let the bloodgames begin!"
"Death to the loser!" Eri cheers as well.
"Yeah, death to the loser!" I cheer as well.
Aizawa just rolls her eyes with a fond sigh. Oh, we have melted the sadist's frigid tsundere heart already. My rugged charms and Eri's adorable puppy dog eyes were too much for her emotional walls to handle.
"What do you think about them?" Aizawa asks me as we watch some of the live footage of Katsumi and the running girl defending a fake bomb from a girl who seemed to switch ages at the drop of a hat and the other one with electricity powers.
"All of their abilities are way too underdeveloped," I scoff. "If this is the best UA can find, it makes me sad to think about how Japan is going to turn out."
"What do you mean?" Aizawa asks. "They might be rough around the edges since they just started, but they haven't been given counseling on advanced quirk training yet. For the most part, they do seem to fit with UA standards."
"You probably need to raise your standards," I reply. "All of their abilities are still so flawed. I mean, I read the file on that lightning girl. Her IQ plummets when she exceeds her safe voltage. She should be tired at best, temporarily powerless at worst. None of them have even tried purifying their powers."
"Purifying?" Aizawa repeats. "What does that mean?"
"Don't your eyes get dry if you use your nullification?" I ask. "That is a flaw in your ability."
"All quirks have limits and flaws," she replies. "They are physical powers at the end of the day."
"Yeah, but they are also spiritual and conceptual too," I say. "How else could they just evolve in an emotionally charged moment or through our own perception of them? We can't just become immune to poison after a flashback on the brink of death or learn to breath carbon monoxide upon realizing it is a gas like oxygen. The human body doesn't work like that."
"Spiritual?" Aizawa asks skeptically. "You make it sound like they are..."
"You know, magic," I finish after she trails off. "That's because quirks are just flawed magic forcefully activated in women."
"Magic?" Aizawa asks in disbelief before she just rolls her eyes. "Yeah right."
I pull my dagger from the sheath hidden up my wrist and dig it into the air beside me. I slash it forward and a cut in the dimensional fabric tears open in a line of green fire that allows a clawed hand to reach through. It slashes my outstretched arm off and grabs the severed limb before it falls.
Aizawa looses her shit and only looses it even more upon the stump of my arm healing with flickers of green flames as bone extends, muscles encases it, and skin covers the apendage as it is restored to a flawless state. Well, except for replacing my scars too, but those are too engrained in my soul to ever go away. I take the dagger from my old hand before the clawed hand pulls the old arm into the rift before closing.
"See, magic," I say like I was just showing off a particularly weird chip I found in a bag of Tostitos. "Nothing to it."
"Yep, nothing to it," Eri parrots as this level of violence and gore was unable to faze even an eight year old.
"How did you do that?" Aizawa manages to ask. "Men don't have quirks."
"I have magic," I say. "I don't understand what is so confusing. I mean, a man can't just open an infernal rift, have his arm cut off, and regrow it through magical healing without being accepted? Wow, I didn't know we were living in the Dark Ages. God, don't call the Inquisition on me. Midnight might be into some of their ideas of fun, but not me."
"I give up," Aizawa says. "I will try to make sense of this later. For now, I just watch a bunch of kids get beat up."
"Yay, violence!" Eri cheers like the cute little gremlin she is.
Let's see how Kacchan has grown these past three years.
As it turns out, she actually has grown from the violent temperamental girl of her youth to a slightly more controlled violent temperamental woman. Compared to my old brawls with her, she is much more focused and precise. Her explosions are calculated instead of over the top and they are detonated with clear intention rather than heated emotion.
Glasses was trying to run circles around Sparky and make her impulsively discharge. This was pretty smart since Sparky didn't seem to have much control of her electricity. She just released it in bursts that she couldn't channel or focus. To be honest, a massive discharge at the right time is one of the safer moves she could make. It is a gamble whether or not it would catch Glasses, but it would leave Katsumi to fight her opponent without any interruptions.
That is important because the girl in question is actually quite a challenge. Her quirk is unique since she seems to shift between different ages which lets her dodge attacks uniquely by changing her size and body structure. A right hook to the head would definitely miss if your opponent is suddenly a decade younger and two feet shorter.
There was some trick behind it to since the girl seemed to be able to heal minor damage between her changes as well as change into different variants of a form. When she switched to a younger form, a small cut on her cheek closed. Another instance was how her adult forms could be substantially different. One was clearly more adapted to agility with a runner's physique while another had muscles from a regimen of weight training. She could switch back and forth with a fluidity that spoke of natural talent and extensive practice.
"What's the ageing girl's name?" I ask Aizawa. "She is pretty good."
"Nezuko Kamado," Aizawa says. "Her file says her quirk is Age Range. She can alter her age along her lifespan at will. Her older forms aren't set in stone and represent possible futures that she could live."
"That's wrong," I say. "That sounds like a more versatile and personally focused version of Eri's quirk. She is different."
I think for a moment before I snap my fingers in realizations. "Stem cells!"
"What about stem cells?" Aizawa asks.
"She isn't changing her age," I say. "She is just shifting her body and tissue back to an earlier recorded state. That is also why she can have variants of future bodies. They are just theoretical projections, so she can easily follow established paths that she imagines to make a version how she could look at some point in the future."
"Where does the difference in mass come and go from?" Aizawa asks before I just give her a look. "Oh right, silly me. I forgot it was just magic."
"Now you are getting it," I say. "Now shush, the standoff is happening."
Katsumi was aiming her grenade themed gauntlet at Nezuko with her finger in the pin and threatening to fire it. Apparently she was using it as a bluff to get the girl to surrender. Most people wouldn't recognize the difference from her usual over the top anger and violence, but I am one of the few people who know her enough to tell.
It also helps that I looked at the blueprints for her support items. Those gauntlets have a safety built into them that prevents them from firing by accident or if a villain got their hands on one of them. The gauntlet in the video still has an active safety. She is just pretending to get her opponent to surrender. It is a pretty peaceful strategy. She has really grown a fair bit as a person. I would still eat popcorn and watch as she gets run over by a car, but hey, baby steps.
This was before Glasses finishes making Sparky go brain dead and ties her up with some capture tape. She rushes back and immediately overreacts at the sight of Katsumi threatening Nezuko. She must not have the best impression of her teammate since she promptly tackles Katsumi in the mistaken belief that the bomber would seriously release the blast.
The safety must have been hit in the attack and disabled because the gauntlet immediately triggers and sends a massive funneled explosion down the corridor. It obliterates the far wall and causes large portions of the building to collapse.
--
(Shota Aizawa POV)
She was about to burst out of her chair only to find a new weight on her. She looks down to see Eri now sitting in her lap. Her eyes dart over to the chair Isaac was just sitting in to find it empty and spinning.
"Papa said he needs to go do something real quick," Eri says. "We can hang out for a bit, Sleepy-sensei."
"Sure," she says as she just gives up and pats the silver haired little girl on the head. Whatever dumb thing Isaac does now is not her problem.
--
(Isaac Belmont POV)
I burst out of the side door of the building and slash a rift open on the ground. "Chita!" I shout before a massive silver form leaps out of the green flames.
It was a massive feline beast with silvery plating on its body with darker spots embedded in the organic metal. The edging of the metal encasing it was designed to allow for maximum aerodynamic movement and minimal drag from wind resistance. It had no visible eyes since there was only smooth metal were its eyes would be, but it did have a snarling mouth filled with razor sharp teeth to go along with the honed claws on each foot and the thin spikes that line its tail.
Each creation through a Forgemaster can follow one of two paths. The first is one that I try and avoid whenever possible due to the random factor that I dislike. It involves crafting a body and calling a soul to fill it. The flaw in this is that the forger is trying to control the creation too much. This means that whatever soul is summoned from Hell will likely have a weaker affinity for their new body and the resulting Night Creature will be weaker.
My method is to call up a particular soul and craft the body with them in mind. This allows for the soul to enhance the body instead of losing strength due to compatibility issues. This takes more time, but it allows for me to produce truly unique and exceptional Night Creatures. It is more about quality than quantity.
Chita was forged from the body of a villain capable of flying through the skies at Mach 5. The soul I used was a Olympic sprinter from Kenya who was disgraced after his steroid ise was discovered and fell willingly into a spiral of drug use. He even killed a guy once when he mugged him to get more money for drugs.
I try and follow the original Isaac's ideas of trying to redeem the souls in our creations as they serve under our command. That is the reason I kept the body from having eyes or ears. I wanted him to only be able to focus on the feel of the road beneath his feet and the wind blowing across his face. This meant that he would be forced to acknowledge what he loved about running in the forst place and realize what he threw away with steroids and stimulants.
Out of my different Night Creatures, Chita was easily the fastest across relatively short distances. If you had somewhere to be and only a moment to get there, he was your cheetah.
I jump onto his back and he immediately bolts forward, his massive form breaking the sound barrier with ease as his clawed feet shred the ground beneath them. I can relay simple information to my Night Creatures, so I pointed him in the right direction with a relative distance and he did the rest.
It is safe to say two things about that ride. One, it was very short. Two, I would have been a bloody streak across UA's campus if I wasn't durable as hell and could heal at a moment's notice.
When Chita finally ground to a halt in an empty stretch of the mock city, the dark spots on his body release the built up heat with a hiss. I return him back across a rift before I call out again, "Mongo!"
A massive worm bursts out and burrows into the ground before her head emerges. This Night Creature was reminiscent of a Mongolian Death Worm which traveled underground and ambushes its prey. The body I used was a geokinetic hero who sold her body to science before it was purchased from a research company by the Yaoyorozus. The soul was from the wife of a gold digger during the gold rush in the US. After the husband found a gold vein, she killed him to keep all of the money for herself. She ended up dying because the husband never got a chance to reinforce the tunnel and it collapsed on her.
Her penance is being paid since she eternally feels the suffocating weight of the earth pressing down on her like she is still being buried alive. I use her as a subterranean rescue unit for times like this when a victim is trapped beneath a shit load of dangerous debris. I climb into a protected notch in her neck before she dives beneath the surface of the street again.
She tears her way through the subterranean environment, her body blasting through concrete foundations, asphalt, and metal piping. Soon, we reached the collapsed area of the training building. Mongo winds around the area where Nezuko seemed to be buried and releases a slime from her skin that hardens and supports the rubble. She slowly expands once the debris was stabilized and begins to pump purified oxygen into the alcove made by her coiling body. I designed her to be able to filter contaminants from the air as well as fuction like a CO2 scrubber for when there isn't air to waste deep beneath the earth.
When I leave the notch I was riding in, I find Nezuko immediately lying in the center of Mongo's cleared area. It didn't take a genius to realize that she was already dead. The glassy look in her eyes, the mangled state of her body, and the unfortunate amount of blood all painted the story of how she died alone before I reached her.
"Goddamnit," I mutter. I thought I could get her in time. As I stare at the body, my vision seems to flicker and blur until a different girl is laying there. Her green hair made my stomach turn until I rubbed my eyes and everything went back to normal. However, I had made a decision in that moment.
No one was dying on my watch today.
I slash a rift in the air and pull out a leather tome. It was written by the Forgemaster Isaac during a journey he made to Japan to study the kaiju who spawn here. The pages and binding are all made from the cured skin of various daikaiju that he killed in his research. On each sheet, he inscribed knowledge on Night Creatures and forging in the hopes it would be used by a Forgemaster who would follow a path of redemption like him. I flip the pages until I land on one detailing a ritual.
Normal forging takes a body and reconstructs it into a new form to hold a soul raised from the pits of Hell. However, Isaac discovered that it was possible to revive someone through forging. It required their original body and for them to only be dead for a few minutes. This is because their soul wouldn't have time to fully cross into the afterlife. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if the soul in question was going to Hell, but I could feel that Nezuko's soul was in the process of ascending to Heaven. This means I have to rush.
I cut open my wrist and begin to use the pouring blood to draw symbols and runic arrays around Nezuko's body. This will help to heal the body and draw the soul back to the mortal plane. The ritual circle is complete soon enough as I toss the ruined tatters of her costume aside and I get to work painting the symbols along her body with my blood as well. This is because my blood has a higher affinity for the magic and would be crucial for giving it the final oomph the ritual needed.
Once I finish the preparations, I begin to chant the lines written in the book. The language was one spoken by those who had seen Hell and gazed into its depths. The infernal pit gazed back and marked our souls with some of its chaotic power. That is what allows me to use hellfire and gives me an exceptional capacity for forging and soul magic.
As I chant, the blood ignites in green fire. The flames roar across the symbols and runic circle as the magic builds in intensity.
"With these words, I claim thy soul from thy eternal rest. I bind thee into my service until I allow thy spirit to pass on once more. Heaven's grace and Hell's damnation cannot touch you under my power. Your role is for life reborn!"
With those final words, the flames are all sucked into Nezuko's body like a vacuum. They funnel into her nose and mouth as they fill her body with demonic magic and bring her back to the land of the living. Her body jerks and thrashes as the magic does its work, altering her body and purifying it to hold her soul once more. After one last spasm, she collapses to the ground.
For a moment, I worry that it didn't work and she was still dead. However, almost like a miracle, she gasps as her lungs begin to pump and her heart begins to beat. Her body slowly shrinks from that of an eighteen year old girl to more of an eight year old like Eri while the tips of her black hair turn orange. I just take off my jacket and wrap her little body in it to cover her up.
I have no idea whether or not the reversed aging has something to do with her natural magic or with the ritual. I honestly don't know since this is my first time bringing someone back from the dead.
I see this as an absolute win!
My senses scream at me to dodge and I barely move out of the way as something tore a massive hole in Mongo's side. She screeches in pain as she was sliced apart, but I just winced. My dagger was in my left hand, Nezuko was being cradled by my left arm, and my right arm was severed above the elbow.
I do an awkward roll in midair to slice the air to make a rift that grabs Mongo. My pocket dimension provides a place to store my different Night Creatures and it keeps them in stasis for times like this when they are gravely injured. I really hope I can heal her later. It would be a pain in the ass to find another body with a geokinetic quirk and summon her soul back.
My eyes dart to the person who attacked out of nowhere. He was crouched on the top of a broken concrete support column and dressed in a black suit with silver accents. His face was obscured for the most part with a respirator mask, but I would recognize that spiky purple hair anywhere. Good on Hitoshi for making it into the Kaiju Defense Force.
"So you are the guy making kaiju signatures pop up around here recently," Hitoshi says. "Kikeru owes me a thousand yen for finding you first. She really should have listened to Captain Ashiro when she said not to bet against me. Oh, you are all kinds of weird too!"
He finally noticed my arm growing back until it was fully restored. His gaze seems to sharpen when he realizes I might be more dangerous than I look.
"You wouldn't happen to be a kaiju, now would you?" Hitoshi asks, his hand resting on a blade sheathed at the small of his back.
"No, I am just a homegrown human like you," I say as I flex my hand. "I was just on my way right now. If you know what's good for you, you will let me leave."
"Everyone always said a guy could never be an officer in the Kaiju Defense Force," he says. "You could say I don't really care what's good for me. After all, that is my classmate you are trying to take."
"Shame," I say before I whistle. Several dark shapes dart out of hiding and shoot towards Hitoshi.
When I sent Mongo back, I also released several expendable Night Creatures. They looked like crows with bright red eyes and sharp metallic feathers. They all dived at Hitoshi only for him to unsheath the pair of shortswords behind him and slash through all six of the birds in an instant. He even cleaved through the cores in them like a normal Defense Force officer.
However, these aren't kaiju. Night Creatures lack the core that kaiju require to function since they possess souls which kaiju are missing. I created this model to prey on the tendency of a Defense Force officer to destroy cores on reflex.
These Night Creatures were created with the use of suicide bomber souls. They perpetually experience the agony of their explosions as long as they live in this form. The pseudo-core they have is actually an explosive stored in their body. It only activates when it is destroyed.
The crows detonate once their internal explosives were cut. Hitoshi is completely enveloped in the resulting smoke from the blasts since they had been surrounding him when they triggered. I am not particularly worried if he got hurt. I doubt that did much against him.
Instead, I just bolt out of there. The best way to win a fight is to not participate. I can't lose if I'm not there.
This plan is literally shot to shit when I am force to dodge several bullets from Hitoshi who was using his pistol. The kaiju rounds punch massive chunks out of the concrete around me as I evade the shots inteded to damage my legs and immobilize me without endangering Nezuko. Impressive marksmanship and tactical thinking. I knew I picked a good childhood best friend!
I put enough distance between us that I could use my training as a hunter to take him out quickly and quietly. No point in dragging this out and risking someone else joining the fight.
--
(Hitoshi Shinso POV)
As he tries to hunt down the target, he finds himself in an open intersection with no clue where he went. It was like the guy disappeared without a trace.
It was only the training Instructor Shinomiya put him through that allowed him to sense an impending attack and glance in time to see the guy standing behind him with a fist plummeting towards his head. He dodges out of the way and tries to counter, but his opponent had already disappeared.
Something about that move scratched at the back of his mind. He couldn't put his finger on it, but it felt familiar in a way he couldn't place.
That's when he remembered Instructor Shinomiya doing the same thing during a practice match after slipping around him with ease. It had slipped from his mind since he had been punched so hard at the time that he was sent face first into the ground. It left the memory kind of shaky until now.
But that wasn't it either. There was something even earlier that it reminded him of.
A grin that seemed to light up a pair of emerald eyes. Hands wrapped in bandages striking him in the face. The sound of laughter as he was sprawled out on a practice mat.
Oh yeah, it reminded him of Izuku.
"Come on, Hitoshi!" Izuku laughs as he bounces on his feet and circles his groaning body on the ground. "I need a good sparring partner! You are a decent enough brawler, so you should be able to handle this!"
"You are such an asshole," he mutters to his friend's increased laughter.
"Are you really going to take this lying down?" Izuku asks. "I guess I should just tell Hina how I beat your ass like a drum. Wait, I don't like how that sounds kind of sexual."
He just sighs at his friend's scatter brained thoughts as he mutters about better insults. To think this dumbass was his best friend. For some reason he couldn't understand, he wouldn't change it for the world.
He was snapped out of his own thoughts by the leg sweeping his own out from under him. As he as falling backward, the guy brought the same foot up before swinging it down in a devastating axe kick thst cratered his body into the asphalt of the road. He felt that even through his suit. How strong was this jackass?
Said jackass was still pressing him into the ground with his foot as he banters.
"Not bad, but not great either," the guy comments, his expression clearly amused even behind the facemask he was wearing. "I would give you a six point five out of ten, maybe a seven if ai am being generous."
"Are you always such a dick or am I just that special?" he groans as the guy continues to grimd his foot into his stomach.
"Don't put yourself down," the man says. "It isn't everyday that there is a man who can wear a Defense Force suit. After all, only girls have ever been compatible. So, you should hit the gym so more. You are a decent enough fighter, but you could use some polish. It would be so embarrassing for you if I beat your ass like a drum again the next time we fought. Why does that sound so weird? I should probably not say that around people until I find a way to make it sound less sexual."
The man idly walks away muttering about new insult ideas while cradling a mini Nezuko in his arm.
He only connects the dots after a moment, but he tries to bolt up only for his stomach to refuse this particular idea. He promptly throws up from the axe kick pushing up what was left of his breakfast. When he glances back towards the guy, he was already gone.
--
(Isaac Belmont POV)
I was chilling in my chair again as Eri and Nezuko ran around the room hopped up on chocolate and juice boxes and Aizawa was staring at me with unblinking eyes.
"You know, for a gal with chronic dry eye, you can sure keep those peepers open for an awful long time," I comment as I scroll through a series of fail compilations on my phone. The people in them always seem to get dumber the longer I watch and it never ceases to amaze me.
"How did you do it?" she asks.
"Look this sexy on a daily basis?" I reply. "Good genes and a good diet. Why do you ask?"
"I meant bring a student back to life after sensors said that she died," Aizawa specifies.
"A little infernal necromancy here, a little heresy there, a pinch of blasphemous fairy dust, and boom," I say as I gesture to Nezuko playfully tackling Eri. "A resurrected eight year old."
"She was eighteen," Aizawa says blandly.
"How about you resurrect someone so I can take a turn nitpicking you instead?" I ask. "At the very least, you just need to wait a decade and she should be normal. Probably. Unless she is now immortal or something."
"Really?" Aizawa replies as she raises an eyebrow.
"I bring you a miracle and you keep poking holes in my innocent sentiments," I say with an offended tone. "So this is what Jesus felt like."
"You can't compare yourself to the son of God when you literally just described it as demonic necromancy," Aizawa points out.
"Infernal necromancy, not demonic," I correct. "One has to do with Hell and the other has to do with demons. Similar, but very different."
"You are seriously going to try and debate theological grammer instead of answer my question?" Aizawa says.
"No, I am going to head out to a junkyard with my kid and leave you with the chibi student," I say as I stand up only for Eri to jump onto my back out of nowhere like a spidermonkey on a sugar high. "See ya!"
I bolt out of there immediately, only slowing down to dodge Aizawa's capture scarf until I make it out of the doors and home free. I could still make out Aizawa's groan of frustration over my cackling as I sprint down the hall while Eri hums cowboy music on my back.
--
"Here we are, Eri Berry," I tell my kid as we stand in front of a massive junkyard. "The Promised Land."
"That says Tokyo Industrial Scrapyard," she points out as she gestures to a sign.
"I've heard it both ways," I reply as I wave off the statement. "What matters is that this place is a gold mine for research."
"What kind of research do you do with a bunch of trash?" Eri asks with clear doubt in her voice. Gah, even my own daughter doesn't believe in me!
"This is scrap, not trash," I say as I cut the padlock holding the gate shut. I yank it off and push open one of the doors before gesturing for Eri to go. As I follow her inside the yard, I keep talking. "Trash is the useless debris people build up and toss away to prevent clutter and disease. Scrap is discarded technology that people have abandoned for any number of reasons from it breaking down to it becoming obsolete. This is the land of VHS tapes, I-Pod shuffles, and Tesla cars."
"What's a Tesla?" Eri asks in confusion.
"Exactly," I say. "For lack of a better word, they were shitty electric cars made by a guy who wanted to colonize Mars for some reason and they were designed with batteries that couldn't work in the winter."
"Why would anyone use those?" Eri wonders.
"To feel good about not burning liquid fossil fuels so that they could instead charge it with electricity generated by burning solid fossil fuels," I plainly tell her.
"Dumbies," Eri mutters sadly.
"I know," I admit. "People can be goofy sometimes."
We both wander through shelves of mechanical components that reach far above our heads and with alleys that are sometimes barely big enough for a person to walk through. Everything is open to the sky for the most part, so rust and corrosion cover a vast chunk of the tech that can be found here.
"Oh my god!" Eri shouts as she runs up to the remains of what was once a cybernetic rhinoceros. Its side has a gaping hole with only a few wires trailing out while it is missing a leg and one of its eyes. Its armor plating was dented in several spots, but not enough to hide what it once was. "It is so cool!"
"Nice find," I say as I idly wonder how cool a rhino-based Night Creature would be. "This is a newer generation design. It must have been used in the Coliseum Games."
"What is that?" Eri asks, her attention temporarily drawn from the robotic rhino.
"It is kind of like the World Robot Boxing competition combined with ancient blood sports," I explain. "They use robots and have big battles that are a lot more complex than the boxing matches of the WRB."
"Why don't we watch that too?" Eri wonders.
"I have a soft spot for boxing," I say as I fondly remember a time that feels like a lifetime ago. "But the Coliseum Games are a little extreme, even in my opinion. Most of the people who compete in it aren't nice guys, so I try and steer clear. As for this rhino, it looks like it was beat to shit by some kind of robot. My guess is that it was fighting against a humanoid who won. It probably got trashed afterwards."
"That's sad," Eri says with a somber tone in her voice. "It shouldn't be thrown out if it messed up."
Her downcast expression plucked at my heartstrings more than I could bear. I couldn't just ignore it! What kind of monster would I have to be?!
"How about we take it and fix it up?" I ask Eri. "It would be a pretty neat surprise for Mommy Himi and Mommy Momo, right?"
"Yeah!" she cheers before I cut a rift in space and several clawed hands dragged the mechanical beast inside.
We keep strolling through the different racks of scrap until I hear the sound of metal groaning in protest before snapping with a screech. A massive shelf of components comes tumbling down towards us as its supports give out under the weight of its burden and years of rust and neglect.
Eri backs away in terror, but I just draw my whip and send a burst of fire down the length of braided leather. I strike the falling shelf with the whip, the hellfire cutting through the heavy structure and blasting away any debris. Several pieces land around us, but nothing comes close as I watch for any threat.
However, the danger came where I wasn't watching. This area of the scrapyard sat on a plateau above the rest. The storm yesterday must have left the ground wet and soft since the earth beneath us gives out sends us sliding down a steep cliff as shelves of waste follow close behind.
"Daddy!" Eri cries out in fear, her eyes wide in panic as we careen down the muddy slope.
Mongo would have been the ideal Night Creature to call, but she was out of commission after Hitoshi did his slice and dice routine. Hoshino seems to have trained him a little too well. That midget knows just how to ruin my day, even when he thinks I am dead.
So, I send out Gama along with Spore and some spiders. Gama latches onto the muddy cliff and spits out a stream of toxic green colored bile that covers the junk behind us and hardens like quick dry cement. Spore crashes down and roots himself in place before catching the solidified mass, the tendrils of his body spreading out and holding back the wave. The small spiders spin their webs to reinforce the cracking bile as Spore keeps up his protection.
Once the worst of the danger is out of the way, I look for Eri only to find that she is gone. She was next to me a second ago, but she disappeared in the moment I took my eyes off of her.
"Eri!" I shout. "Where are you?! Eri!"
"I am here!" she calls out from above me. A robot arm had been unearthed from beneath the ground by the landslide and was holding her up by the collar of her jacket. She was waving happily as she was held in the air.
Despite the pleasant sight, I couldn't take my eyes off of the ground in front of her. A beam of metal was jutting up from the dirt, its jagged tip pointed right where Eri would have fallen. If it wasn't for the arm, she would have died.
I slam my dagger into the slope, my hellfire baking the mud into stone within an instant and stopping me dead in my tracks. I scramble back up the incline, my hands and feet hardening the wet earth into handholds as I get back to Eri and pull her into a hug. Eri just hums in satisfaction while I take a moment and panic at almost having lost her.
"It's okay, Daddy," Eri says as she snuggles into my grasp. "The nice robot saved me."
I glance down at the arm emerging from the ground where it had been buried for who knows how many years. It was like it had risen out of Hell to save her.
As I slide down to the lower level of the junkyard with Eri safely in my arms, I whistle back to Spore and Gama. They abandon the landslide of garbage and go over to the buried robot. The spiders cluster on Spore's back as he uses his tendrils to unearth the forgotten bot from his tomb. Once he is out, Gama stores the robot in his mouth before they return through a rift that I cut.
"How about we head home, Eri Berry?" I suggest. "I think we've had enough excitement for one day."
"As long as we get ice cream!" she cheers.
"Just don't tell your moms how we spent the afternoon," I say.
"We just had ice cream and watched a heartfelt movie about the power of friendship," Eri says, nodding like she was a genius.
"That's my girl," I say with a smile as we head back to the front entrance.
--
"I hear you took Eri to a junkyard and she almost died on a metal beam," Momo says as she stand behind me and I break out into a sweat. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Oh no, Momo is in Angry Momo Mode. The last time I pissed her off this much, she made a literal briefcase nuke to threaten me.
I turn around slowly and wince when I see her expression. When Momo is just annoyed, she does this pout that is so adorable that it is hard to take her seriously. However, when she is really angry, her face darkens into a scowl that I have seen trained bodyguards wither beneath.
The same one I am currently staring at.
I mean, if I am being honest, it does make her look hotter because of the added danger factor. Somehow, I doubt she wants to hear that right now.
"Have I ever told you that you look sexy as hell when you are mad?" I ask.
Her scowl seems to promise even more pain now. Yeah, she did not want to hear that.
"That wasn't an answer, Belmont," she replies
And she is calling me by my last name. I am screwed.
"In my defense, it was supposed to be a harmless trip to a junkyard," I say. "I need to mess around with tech if I can't tinker with Night Creatures. You know how many kaiju sensors there are in Musutafu thanks to UA. It has been nothing but luck that we don't have the Defense Force breathing down our necks thinking that we are experimenting with creating kaiju."
"That explains the Defense Force officers in Class 1-A," Momo says. "They usually don't bother sending them to UA."
"Fuck, which ones?" I ask. "I already met the guy. Who are the others?"
"A guy is an officer in the Kaiju Defense Force?" Momo asks. "How did he manage that?"
"Probably the same way I can heal a severed arm and create unholy monsters," I reply with a deadpan before I turn back to what I was doing before Momo showed up. "I don't know what is with women not believing magic as a rational excuse."
"What you really need an excuse for is almost getting Eri killed," Momo says. "And I swear to God, you better stop cleaning that fucking robot before I lose it."
"What do you want me to say?" I ask genuinely as I scrub at a particularly persistent speck of dirt on the robot's side with a toothbrush. "'Oh, it was a massive mistake.' 'I am such a terrible father.' 'I don't deserve to be around a child as pure as her.' I already tell myself that every morning when look in the mirror. It is beating a dead horse at this point. If you wanted someone who could raise her properly, you should have listened to me and put her up for adoption when we first met her."
"Isaac," Momo mutters tiredly, the anger in her voice fading into fatigue. "I told you to stop saying that."
"And I keep telling you to stop lying to yourself," I reply as I focus on cleaning another stubborn corner on an armor plate. "I have no place being around a child. If I had any sense, I wouldn't be around you or Himiko either, Momo. The only reason I stayed is because a friend said that I should."
"Do you really hate being around us that much?" Momo asks. I don't even need to turn around to know that she is probably close to crying.
"It isn't about like or hate or anything so simple," I say as I sigh and close up the access panel in the bot's head. I doubt I am going to be able to clean for a while. "This is about you not accepting what I am, Momo."
"You are a good person, Isaac," she tries to say before I turn and cut her off.
"No, Momo," I say. "I am a lot of things, but good is not one of them."
"I can see it, Himiko can see it, and Eri can see it!" Momo shouts. "Why can't you?!"
"Because I have seen who I am deep down," I growl as my hellfire flares up along my arms. I usually manage to keep it under control, but my anger has sent it into a frenzy. "You don't know who I really am. You don't even know my real name."
"I know everything I need to know!" Momo counters. "It doesn't matter what your name is! Why should it?!"
"Because I am a very bad person who has done very bad things," I say. "Do you even understand what I went through to get power like mine? Men have to suffer to grow beyond the limits we are bound by. Any humanity I once had is long gone. I know you see it. The madness that festers below the surface when no one is around."
"I see a good person who tries their best," Momo insists.
"My soul has been damned for years!" I roar as the flames surge and start to burn the skin on my arms. "I bought my place in Hell through my own actions. One day, I will return to the pit where monsters like me belong. You have to get this through your thick skull, Momo! I am not the saint you keep trying to see. I am a devil who dreamt of being a man. That is who I was born to be and who I have always been. Nothing you say or do can change that. My soul is stained black with sin and no forgiveness or redemption could ever wash it clean."
"I don't need you to change," she says. "I fell in love with you, not some fairy tale version I dreamed up."
"You only know the fairy tale version, Momo," I say before I turn away. The flames begin to flicker and die away as my regeneration catches up with the burns and overcomes the speed of the damage. "I am not the prince in a love story. I am the monster in a horror movie. You don't fix my broken heart. You just stay away and escape."
I hear her steps stomping up to me and I sigh. What is she going to do now? Yell at me? Try and hit me? Nothing she could say or do will convince me on this.
That is why I am so surprised when she spins me around and I feel something soft on my lips.
She is kissing me. Momo Yaoyorozu, beautiful genius and billionaire heiress, is kissing me, the damned soul who wandered into her life. Why?
I was about to push her away when my hands freeze. I don't know why. I know she would be better off if she got rid of these childish feelings.
So, why can't I stop her? Why can't I push her away?
Maybe, deep down, some part of me still wants to be human. For her, for Himiko, for Eri. Some part of me still dreams of being a man.
The thing about dreams is that they have to end. One day, I will have to wake up and accept who I am.
But not today.
For now, I can just dream as I pull Momo close and the last of my flames fade away. As I bask in her warmth, the memories of Hell seem a little further away and that makes all the difference.
--
Author's note:
Another chapter completed! Sorry about taking so long to update. I was just buried under the update cycle for my other stories. I will hopefully be more on point soon.
Anyway, a lot has happened in this chapter. Isaac revealed his magic to Aizawa, he resurrected Nezuko from Demon Slayer, Eri almost dies except for the save by an unknown robot (totally not from the movie Real Steel), and Isaac and Momo have their first kiss. I am particularly proud about the last one.
To anyone wondering, Katsumi won't be as bad as in canon. Despite everything playing out similar, it was a genuine accident that she didn't expect. I will hopefully show this off in later chapters since she will be less of a self-centered dirtbag than canon Katsuki.
If anyone was curious about the class structures and who are in them, I put my current working rosters below. If you wonder why there are so many changes, it is because I didn't want to waste a space with someone with a tail or who could just talk to animals when it is a world with powerful kaiju running around.
1-A (Vlad Queen)
Itsuka Kendo
Izumi Midoriya
Katsumi Bakugo
Shoko Todoroki
Hitoshi Shinso
Tetsutetsu
Ibara Shiozaki
Monoma
Ida
Mina Ashiro (Kaiju No. 8)
Kikeru shinomiya (Kaiju No. 8)
Bubble girl
Mai Zennin (Jujutsu Kaisen)
Kasumi Miwa (Jujutsu Kaisen)
Kaminari
Fumikage Tokoyami
Tsuyu Asui
Camie Utsushimi
Kinoko
Nezuko Kamado (Demon Slayer)
--
1-B (Eraserhead)
Isaac Belmont
Momo Yaoyorozu
Mina Ashido
Aoyama
Kirishima
Kyoka Jiro
Pony Tsunatori
Setsuna Tokage
Toru Hagakure
Minoru
Akame (Akame Ga Kill)
Tamaki (Fire Force)
Maki Zennin (Jujutsu Kaisen)
Nobara Kugisaki (Jujutsu Kaisen)
Reiko Yanagi
Yui Kodai
Ochako Uraraka
Noelle (Black Clover)
Rika Sato
Temari (Naruto)
Feel free to write me a review and let me know how I did. I am practically fueled by reviews, so don't be shy. I always make sure to take all reviews to heart and respond to any questions at the beginning of each chapter.
If you liked the story and want to keep up to date, favorite and follow to get notifications when new chapters are released.
If you are interested in my other work, you can find my stories through my profile.
A pleasure as always,
Titan900
Current Favorites: 58, Current Follows: 62, Current Reviews: 17