The video had taken the internet by storm, becoming viral in just a few hours after being initially posted. The governments of the world had desperately tried to repress it, to call it fake and blame some obscure terrorist group trying to disrupt the peace of the world.

And honestly Izuku could understand them a bit. After all, a little child that glowed a yellow-gold and could change creatures with a touch was something big. Perhaps bigger than All for One considering the child seemed to be unbothered by displaying their power on camera.

Even All Might, who had recently retired from hero work, was frantic and pulling all the strings he could to be involved in the investigation.

But at the same time it was a child. Izuku had watched the video enough times to figure out that the kid was young, about four to six years old. Too young and always at a wrong angle to know if they were a boy or a girl. Perhaps it was this young age that made them act the way they did, because no sane parent would let their kid run wild like that.

Or perhaps they were...

Izuku froze the video on the best frame he knew of and looked even more closely.

About a meter tall, spindly arms, small torso, a large head that somehow created a surprisingly aesthetic body, but most notably the array of... hair that moved gently in the air as if gravity didn't exist. It was present on their back too, and if he looked closely, Izuku could notice what appeared to be a tiny tail where tails should be. Add in the triangular ears on top of their head and the lack of any kind of clothes and...

Izuku took a deep breath and held it in, because if his new conclusion was right, this was another animal with a quirk. Just like Principal Nedzu.

Only with a far more powerful quirk.

One that let them transform creatures upon touching them. One that emitted light from their body as if they were a sun. One that influenced the flora around them to the point of rapid growth and, perhaps, gigantism. Izuku was not sure of the last point as he was no expert, but he had never seen flowers that big.

Perhaps he should scour the internet for opinions from botanists. With how widespread the video had gotten, he was sure one or two had made their voice heard on the matter.

He slowly released his breath and observed the still image again. The child, for he refused to call them any less for now, was holding a bare hand out, stretched towards a stag with matted fur and a large scar on the flank. Possibly a result of escaping predators. Overall, the animal looked old and weary, close to the end of its life but still stubborn enough to do one last thing.

And Izuku knew what that thing was. If he resumed the video, the stag would bow to the child in what he felt was reverence and wait patiently despite its legs shaking with the effort. The child would smile, head tilting to the side and red eyes never straying away from the old animal despite one of the ears swiveling towards the camera. Then the hand would move forward and press delicately onto the animal's forehead and rest there while the child said something to it.

A flash of light later and the stag would be changed.

Gone would be the old body with its matted fur and scars gained through a lifetime of battles. Gone would be the weariness and weakness.

Instead, in its place, there would be a new stag. Two times bigger, with a mane of brown leaves and new antlers that looked more like tree branches with glowing veins than simple bone. The scars would be gone too, replaced by dark brown and elegant patterns through its body and the eyes... the eyes would have the most jarring of changes. From a black void to the most vibrant forest green that shone like gems under the sun.

Then the animal would rear on its back legs and let out a jubilant bleat that echoed through the woods before starting to prance around the child as if to say "look at what you made me into". The video would end shortly after that when the person recording made a wrong move and spooked everyone into leaving. The last few seconds would be of the overgrown clearing where everything had happened.

But... Izuku wasn't really interested in the dance. He had analyzed the newly quirked stag as much as a few seconds of video could let him and there wasn't much he could theorize beside a possible plant based quirk. What he really wanted to know was the child's quirk.

Powerful and multifaceted, and too similar to All for One.

A small part of him really wanted to go out there and look for the kid and bring them to safety before they fell into the wrong hands. Be either manipulative villains or heartless scientists if they truly were a quirked animal like Nedzu.

It didn't matter if the video's location was somewhere in north Germany. It didn't matter if they probably were long gone by now. Izuku wished he could help because he knew that after the video had gone viral, bad people were out looking for such power. Many humans were like that.

A knock to his door broke him out of his thoughts and he cast one last glance at the still image to commit those features to memory, then left his desk to open the door.

"Wha..? All Might?" he asked, blinking in surprise.

Last time Izuku had checked in with his mentor, the man was holed up in the police department, talking with Detective Tsukauchi on the matter. To see him here was a bit of a surprise, especially after All Might had clearly stated that he'd be gone for the rest of the day.

"My boy," the man said, shadowed eyes going from him to the computer on the desk for a brief moment. "I see that this mystery has caught you as much as it did me."

Izuku felt a blush creep up on his face and he flustered hopelessly, but did let All Might into the room before closing the door. "I..." he cleared his throat and took a deep breath. "It's just... that's a powerful quirk... and at first glance it looks similar to All for One... and who knows what's their motive..."

When he saw All Might raise an eyebrow, Izuku felt his skin burn even more. "I mean... I have so many theories about it! They look like a five year old child, but the features makes them look like a quirked animal like Nedzu, but then again, a lot of humans have animal features. But then the stag wouldn't have gone nearby if they were humans, you know? And the reverence? Is that part of the child's quirk? They emit a glow, All Might! What kind of quirk can emit light, transform animals and flora like that, and make so that wildlife isn't scared?"

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His brain was in knots because of a single video and he felt like he would not rest until he figured out what was going on.

"I thought that maybe they were a Nomu," he continued, not realizing his mentor had taken a seat on his bed and was quietly listening to his ramblings. "But... those things don't have intelligence. I mean, perhaps they do, but they are so brainwashed that they can't think past what they are ordered to do. This... they showed intelligence. They showed emotions and cared about what they did. I think they are just a kid having fun with their quirk, or... or a quirked animal like Nedzu that doesn't know about human rules. How can we enforce a human rules on someone that's not... part of humanity? Should we? All Might, they... they don't look like they're doing this out of malice."

All Might chuckled and he felt himself shrink under the man's stare. It wasn't bad. Far from it, actually, but even if his mentor was looking at him with amused fondness, Izuku still felt like he had gone too far or something.

"My boy," the retired number one hero smiled. Not a fake one. Izuku knew how those looked. No, this was one of the genuine ones that were reserved for those All Might considered close. "You truly are amazing. You only had a single video and you came to more elaborate conclusions than a bunch of highly paid expert with more resources."

Izuku frowned, tilting his head a little to the side. "What... what do you mean? There's only that video on the internet and it's been almost a week now. If there was more, they would have gone viral instantly and..."

All Might held up a hand and Izuku closed his mouth with almost a snap. He felt his back go rigid and he watched as the man took his phone out of his pocket, and suddenly realized that there might have been more out there, just... some governmen people might have been able to suppress those news before they got viral.

The phone was offered to him, and he took it with all the care in the world because not only it was All Might's phone, but it held what was clearly turning out to be more information.

"Why..." he wet his lips as he pressed the button to wake the phone up. It was already unlocked and loaded into a video he had never seen. "Why are you showing this to me? I mean, I don't mind! I want to know more, but..."

He trailed off as he started the video. It was focused on the open ocean, with the angle constantly shifting due to the waves rocking the boat the cameraman was standing on. It was day, but the sky was overcast with dark gray clouds, rendering everything dull and shrouded in a light curtain of rain.

But... as the video went on, Izuku could see a speckle of golden light in the distance. It flitted among the waves, skimming each crest to create a shower of white spray that was swept away by the wind.

"They... they can fly..?"

They kept flitting about, swerving and rising and dipping in some sort of unknown game with the waves. And then a plethora of animals broke the surface. Dolphins, orcas, whales, sharks. They all played along, drawing a circle around the glowing dot that Izuku knew was the kid from the first video.

They went on like that for several minutes, seemingly having fun and enjoying the waves and heedless of the boat trying to get closer.

And then the biggest whale he had ever seen surfaced from deep below, jumping high and spinning in place while the golden dot of light circled around it.

Izuku pressed pause and stared.

It was a whale, alright, but like the stag, this one had been changed. Now it was a colossal creature with a dark gray skin and a beautiful cyan belly, long fins that ended in crystal, or perhaps ice, and a forest of what looked like luminescent green seaweed growing from its back.

"That's..." Izuku couldn't put into words what he was feeling. If the stag had been beautiful, this looked majestic in a fantasy-kind of way. "Wow... I... All Might..?"

The man chuckled again and motioned towards his phone. "That was taken three days ago somewhere in the Pacific, but keep going. Watch till the end."

Izuku did that with a nod, turning his attention back to the video. He pressed the play icon and let the still image resume motion. He watched as the marine creatures danced and jumped and twirled around the giant beast as this one slowly sunk back down. He watched as the golden dot flew down to hover on the surface of the ocean.

And the watched as, a scant few seconds later, the golden spark flared and flew straight up at impossible speeds, punching a hole into the cloud cover to momentarily part it to show a starry sky. A flash of intense light and the hole closed, with the clouds back to their original place as if nothing had happened and the golden speckle nowhere to be seen.

When the video ended, Izuku looked up at his mentor with mouth open wide. "What..." he whispered, bewildered. "I... what... I thought this was taken during the day?"

All Might nodded, frown replacing the fond smile as he reached for his phone. Izuku dazedly returned the device back, mind too busy with deciphering what he had just seen to ask for a copy of the video. Or theorize how a mutation inducing quirk could fly and open... whatever that was.

"It was taken shortly after one in the afternoon, local time," All Might replied. He turned off the phone and pocketed it again. "It was day. Just overcast and with a light drizzle. Whoever this is," he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, "is powerful beyond our imagination. Satellite scans of the zone shows no alteration to the atmosphere."

Izuku felt the blood in his veins freeze. "You mean that... that was a portal... to... to space?"

The man cringed, but then hunched on himself. He suddenly appeared far too small for Izuku's liking, and he hated it. All Might was the best hero ever, and nothing should make him look so unsure. Even after retiring.

"No one knows," he said, voice defeated. "They analyzed the stars in the video, and it's what you would see from that location if it was night and there were no clouds. Just..." he waved a hand in the air helplessly. "Just without filters. Air included."

Izuku bit his lip and felt his hands clasp together in nervousness. He shifted from one foot to the other and then looked down.

Powerful. So, so powerful. For someone to be able to effortlessly mutate animals and then fly up to part the heavens...

"Why... why are you telling me this..?" he asked, voice tiny and unsure. Now that he knew more, he couldn't understand why All Might was relaying all this to him when, surely, the governments all over the world were hard pressed to keep things hushed.

"Because," All Might stood up and brought Izuku into a careful, but warm hug. "I am scared, my boy, and I'd rather you be prepared than be blindsided because the government is too afraid to show the truth."