Chapter Text
“Kacchan,” Izuku said. “Kacchan, look! Look what I can do! I’ve been practicing all week!”
Izuku squinted his eyes at the sandbox nearby, and concentrated as hard as he could on the sand in it. After a second, the sand rose up from the middle, like a snake rising up into the sky. It twisted in the air and sped towards where Izuku and Kacchan were standing a little ways away, and then looped around the two several times before circling up, high above them, at the direction of Izuku’s hand. The sandbox was empty.
Izuku twirled his hand in the air slightly, prompting the sand to do loop-de-loops in the sky, before he pointed sharply at the sandbox. He felt the wind ruffle his hair as the sand came back speeding down past him and crashing back where it came from. Behind him, he could hear little crackles from Kacchan activating his quirk. The sound didn’t frighten him, though. He turned around to face his friend, beaming and waiting for a reaction.
“Yeah, that was pretty cool, Deku,” Kacchan grinned. “My quirk is still way cooler than yours, though!” At that, he let more small explosions crackle from his palms. “I could explode that sand trick any time I wanted to!”
“Thanks!” To anyone else, Izuku’s response might have been odd, but in the language of Kacchan, he was just given a compliment of the highest order.
Kacchan’s grin widened a fraction, as if he had just thought of something great. “Hey, do that thing where you pick me up, Deku!”
“But then you wouldn’t be able to make noise!”
“Does it look like I care, stupid? C’mon, do it do it do—“
Kacchan’s chanting got cut off as he began to levitate into the air. When he was level with the top of the playground, he lifted his palms up and detonated several explosions towards the sky. Even if Izuku couldn’t hear him anymore, he knew Kacchan was laughing maniacally and relishing the way he was literally above everyone else, this way.
“Katsuki!” Came a shout from a bench off to the side. “You stop flaunting your quirk right now or I’ll go over there and make your ass stop before the police can!” Oh, that was Auntie Mitsuki.
“Izuku, please put Katsuki down! You don’t want to get in trouble!” His mother called from beside her friend. When Izuku looked up at Katsuki to comply, he caught the tail end of him flashing a rude gesture at Auntie. Izuku winced. Auntie Mitsuki would not take that well.
“Kacchan, I’m going to bring you back down, okay?” He called up. Kacchan responded with a couple grumpy, but still silent, explosions—if they could be called grumpy. Feeling a little bold, Izuku didn’t use his hand like he did with the sand to bring Kacchan down from the sky. He concentrated extra hard to make up for it, though. Kacchan slowly levitated closer to the ground, and when he was a foot above it, Izuku smirked and dropped him. Kacchan, not expecting it, fell on his butt with a little ‘oof.’ And with the power of speech and noise once again granted to him, He promptly let explosions crackle from his hands while Izuku stifled giggles behind his hands.
“I’ll kill you!” He shouted. Izuku, knowing he didn’t actually mean it, only laughed harder. Eventually, after Kacchan had stood up and stopped grumbling, Izuku managed to get his laughter under control.
“What should we do next?” Izuku asked. “Should we play Heroes vs. Villains? Can I be the hero this time?”
“No, I’m the hero, obviously.”
“But you’re always the hero!”
“Yeah, ‘cuz I’m gonna be the number one Hero one day, so—”
Something suddenly caught Izuku’s attention over Kacchan’s shoulder. “Hey, what’s that?”
As Kacchan shouted indignantly at being interrupted, Izuku cautiously stepped around him and approached an odd purple gas that seemed to be swirling in midair, which had appeared at a small distance away from the playground. Izuku’s mind immediately went into overdrive.
What is this stuff? I’m not levitating anything right now, and certainly not any weird purple gas. Could it be someone else’s quirk? Then what is it? Some kind of gas manipulation, or maybe… It looks a bit like a portal! Can someone open portals to other dimensions? Is it like a teleportation quirk? Would it be short-range or could it open to a different country, even? Who’s the one making this happen, I would love to ask them ques—
“Shut up, nerd,” Kacchan growled, suddenly at Izuku’s side and glaring at the swirling purple gas. Izuku flushed red and stammered through several apologies when he realized he had been mumbling again.
“Izuku, what is that?” Izuku turned around to see both his mom and Auntie standing from the bench on the opposite side of the playground and beginning to walk over, the portal-thing evidently having caught their attention, too. “Don’t go any closer to it, okay?”
“Okay,” Izuku said. He was about to go meet her halfway when Kacchan started shouting again. But this was different. He saw his mother’s and Auntie Mitsuki’s faces twist from caution to something much, much worse.
And then a shadow crossed over him, and the man it belonged to landed in between the women and the children, facing the former.
Before any of them could even react, the man reached into a pouch at his side, and threw a handful of sand into the air. The sand spread unnaturally in midair, to the point where you almost couldn’t tell it was there. Izuku was bizarrely reminded of his own sand trick as he watched. A translucent purple barrier seemed to appear from the grains, connecting to form one giant sand barrier. A barrier that was preventing his mom and Auntie from getting any closer.
“Let us go to our sons, you weird sand bitch,” Auntie growled threateningly. His mom pressed her hand against the barrier experimentally, to no avail, and raised her head to stare at him in dawning realization.
They all knew this couldn’t be anything other than a villain.
His mother’s eyes widened at something behind him. “Izuku, look out!” She yelled. Izuku turned.
He didn’t jump out of the way fast enough.
Faster than a snake, ropes wound all around his body, pinning him in place. He couldn’t move. The ropes led to a woman wearing a blank, light brown mask, and who had her hair (which was also made of ropes, although they seemed to behave like regular hair, he noted) up in a messy bun. The ropes that bound Izuku and were also now lifting him into the air seemed to be sprouting from all along the woman’s right arm. Distantly, he thought he could hear his mom and Auntie yelling behind him.
Before Izuku’s mind could begin to hysterically analyze her quirk, Kacchan lunged at the ropes, screaming obscenities and hands detonating wildly. Izuku was touched that he wanted to set him free, but in that moment he wanted nothing more than for Kacchan to get away, to run where he wouldn’t be in potential danger.
Kacchan managed to sever one rope before the woman threw her other arm forward, aimed at him. More ropes erupted from it and wrapped around Kacchan faster than Izuku could inhale to shout a warning. The screaming from Auntie grew considerably louder.
Izuku reached inside his mind for his quirk, and after a few seconds of battling his mounting panic, he managed to mentally grab a hold of the rope that Kacchan had severed, which was still attached to the woman’s arm. He smacked her in the face (in the mask?) with it. The woman made a frustrated noise—he was suddenly glad he couldn’t actually see her face—and the rope retreated into her arm again, only to shoot back out and wrap tightly around his neck, making it harder to breathe. He heard mom scream his name from somewhere behind him, and the traitorous tears he had miraculously held back until then leaked out.
After a while like this, the woman seemed to be growing even more agitated. Kacchan kept trying to explode through the ropes binding him, and he almost succeeded a few times before he was lifted into the air too, and the ropes retracted and came back at him with a vengeance. Izuku used the remaining part of his mind that wasn’t clouded with fear to recreate his sandbox trick, but he aimed it at the woman’s face, despite the mask firmly placed there. It seemed to just annoy her further more than anything else. Izuku managed to turn his head enough to see his mom and Auntie still trying to get through the barrier man. There were now two more sand barriers placed on either side of the first, which meant one or both of them had probably tried to go around.
He locked eyes with his mother. She sobbed his name.
Izuku’s panic seemed to melt away, just for a moment.
He needed to escape. His mom had done so much for him, and she loved him and knew him more than anyone. She didn’t deserve to be in tears.
Izuku tapped into his quirk once more, and grabbed.
The woman stiffened when the ropes around Izuku suddenly loosened. (Izuku was especially relieved when the one around his neck fell away--he had been struggling to get in any air, at that point.) His quirk grappled with the woman’s, and for a while he couldn’t tell who was winning. On one hand, he could at least struggle, now, and potentially break free (he ignored the fact that he was being held in the air; he’d levitate himself if it came down to it). On the other hand, for all that his levitation could counteract the woman’s rope conjuring, she was now throwing ropes from her entire right arm and leg at him. The ones sprouting from her leg seemed to be sturdier.
The minutes passed by in a blur, but painfully slowly at the same time. Eventually, his small body and untrained quirk began to flag. The woman’s ropes were coming from up to her neck, now. She had also started using ropes from her left leg to further restrain Kacchan. Izuku could feel his quirk beginning to weigh on him, and he floundered.
No—no! I can’t give up! He thought desperately. I’m going to be a hero, and a hero never gives up! I have to get out and help Kacchan, and then Mom and Auntie Mitsuki! I can’t stop here! I can’t let the villains win!
“Noose, where is our third accomplice?” The barrier man’s voice broke him out of his thoughts. Neither villain had spoken up to that point, and if he could’ve, Izuku probably would have jumped at the man’s unexpectedly deep voice.
“I don’t fucking know,” the woman—Noose—hissed. “We were all supposed
to come here about ten seconds apart. If he doesn’t get here in the next minute, I swear I’m going to kill that—”
“Ah, you weren’t just about to insult me, were you?”
Another man, this time wearing what looked like a vulture mask, stepped gracefully out of what Izuku could how definitely tell was a portal.
“Where have you been?” Noose spat.
“Slight delay,” Vulture Mask replied breezily. “Are these two younglings our targets?”
“What do you think,” Noose deadpanned.
“Very well.”
And before Izuku or Kacchan could do anything more, the man with the vulture mask raised both arms in their direction, and activated his quirk.
It would later become one of the quirks Izuku feared the most.
All he could hear was screaming. Tears suddenly streamed down his face unimpeded, and it took him a while to realize that a lot of the screaming was his own. Pure, unadulterated terror ran through him like magma in his veins, like someone had taken all the suffering and fear from the earth and tried to stuff it inside of Izuku instead. Cold hands grabbed his heart and squeezed it so hard he felt like it would burst. Long nails raked down his nerves, and his lungs struggled to function properly. Izuku had never known any kind emotion that could even compare to this. The experiences from the occasional bully paled in comparison. It felt like he was dying—was he? Is this what is was to die from a villain attack? Did every casualty suffer like this? He could feel his throat begin to go raw from his sudden lack of oxygen and his seemingly endless shrieking. The world was a mess of color through his tears. He couldn’t process anything except the pain, and that horrible, horrible feeling. His brain became a hazy, muddled stream of stop, please, someone help—it hurts, it hurts so much, please, I’m scared, please stop please—
And the relentless terror stopped. It wasn’t completely gone, no. It was like someone had taken a white-hot iron to his very being and left him to burn, and then come back to remove it. The iron was gone, but it left behind a terrible burn. The terror still ran through his veins, but he could finally take in a shaky breath and respond to the outside world now.
“Thank you for finally arriving, Panic Attack,” the barrier man said casually, like nothing had happened. He was seemingly unfazed. “Noose looked like she was struggling with them for a while, there, but now we should be clear to go.”
Noose’s shoulders were tense. Izuku was sure she was scowling under the mask.
“Of course, Barrier,” Panic Attack said. “Hold off the ladies while we make our exit. Noose, if you would?”
“Yeah, whatever. Let’s get this over with,” she said. She retracted her ropes enough so that Izuku, gasping and shaking uncontrollably, was within arm’s reach of her, while Kacchan was moved above her head. He had tears on his face too, Izuku noted with a heavy heart. And he was deathly pale. He had been hit with that fear quirk just as bad as Izuku had. Both of them had stopped using their quirks. They were essentially paralyzed.
When Noose turned to walk back through the portal, Izuku’s position was shifted, and he found his mom’s eyes again. Tears were streaming down her face, and she had both hands pressed against the barrier. Her eyes were wide and desperate, and through his slightly blurry vision he could see her shaking. Distantly, he could register Auntie Mitsuki screaming for her son.
Noose had disappeared through the portal. Izuku was heading towards it next, and fast.
“Mama,” he whispered.
He didn’t hear her response, but he saw it on her lips.
Izuku , she was saying. Izuku .
And the new look in her eyes crushed him. Even as the purple gas enveloped him and his vision went dark, the image didn’t— couldn’t— leave his mind.
His mother looked like she had just watched her entire world crumble before her.
Going through the portal was an odd experience, to say the least, but before Izuku had time to dwell on it, it was gone and they were somewhere that he didn’t recognize. It looked a bit like the hallway of a hospital, except instead of where the wall and rooms on the right should be, there was thick glass with doors about a dozen feet apart from each other along the whole length of it. It looked like a bunch of glass holding cells.
And in those cells were people. They all wore hospital clothing, and seemed to have laminated bracelets, but each and every one… their expressions told stories of unspeakable horrors.
Izuku felt his feet touch the floor, and he looked up at Noose apprehensively.
“I’m tired of carrying you brats around,” she said shortly. “You can both walk.” As she spoke, the ropes around him and Kacchan began to retreat back into Noose’s skin, until only one remained curled around their wrists. With that, she started walking forward with purpose, dragging both boys behind her like they were just pets being strung along.
Both of them could also feel Panic Attack’s presence behind them. Neither dared use their quirks with him there, not even the brash blonde. They weren’t eager for a second helping of terror-turned-superhuman-ability.
So they stumbled down the hallway, trying to keep pace with the larger woman. Their wide eyes stared through the glass as they went, sometimes meeting the eyes of some of the people trapped inside. Some of them gave them pitying looks. Others shrunk back at the sight of the two adults with them.
It’s like… it’s like a glass prison, Izuku thought. These people are trapped.
Will we be, too?
Before Izuku could begin spiraling, he noticed the sudden lack of pull from the rope tugging him forward by the wrist. They had stopped, somewhere around the middle of the long hallway. In front of them was a room identical to every other one, except for the fact that it was empty.
Kacchan’s quirk came back to life with several loud pops . Most prisoners in the areas directly to their right and left flinched at the sudden noise.
Then he felt his spine crawl , like cold fingers had run down his nerves. He stiffened, waiting for his heart to squeeze again or for his breathing to become shallow, but nothing else happened other than that. A warning, then. It seemed to work, too. Kacchan had gone pale again, and though he looked so frustrated, hands clenched and posture rigid, he had turned off his quirk.
“Don’t try to resist, and I won’t need to use my quirk any more than necessary,” said the cold, cold voice of the male villain.
Noose stepped towards the door of the glass cell, where there was a security panel. She swiped a keycard across a scanner—where had she even gotten the card from, it was just there one moment and gone the next—and then pressed the pad of her thumb on another, smaller scanner. With a small beep and a click, the door opened a crack. Noose swung it open all the way, and without further ado she unceremoniously swung both her arms forward so that Izuku and Kacchan had no choice but to tumble inside.
The next thing they knew, the final rope retreated from their arms and back into Noose’s, and the door of the cell was slamming shut.
“You stay there until someone comes here to get you, got it?” The woman was leaning against the glass wall and peering in at them. It felt vaguely like they were in a tank at some twisted zoo. “And no funny ‘I’m gonna escape’ business, or this guy—“ she jabbed her thumb behind her where Panic Attack was, “—will know. That’s all.”
And she walked away, down the hallway. Panic Attack seemed to contemplate them for another second before he followed her without saying anything else.
Izuku noticed how anyone who wasn’t leaning on the far wall of their respective rooms already immediately pressed themselves as far from the man as possible when he passed. For such a populated place, it was eerily silent, until both villains had finally disappeared out of sight. Only then did hushed whispers break out, and sympathetic glances were thrown at the two new additions to the place.
Kacchan seemed to finally get his anger back, too.
“Let us out!” He screamed, running to the front of their cell and banging on the glass. “You can’t keep us here! You fucking can’t, you hear me? The heroes are gonna come for us and then I’m gonna beat you up so bad you’ll wish you’d never been born!”
“Kacchan,” Izuku protested weakly. His only response was an increase in his friend’s screaming, plus the added use of his quirk. The glass didn’t break, and no one came to make him be quiet. Izuku guessed that the glass was resistant to many different kinds of quirks, including heat and force, simply because if it wasn’t, then a lot of the other people here would probably have broken out already.
The fact that escape would probably be difficult if not impossible only served to heighten his anxiety. And now that they were being kept prisoner with no knowledge of when they would be able to get out, it was becoming harder and harder to keep his despair at bay. He was trying his hardest just to keep his mind alert for any kind of weakness in the glass walls. For any kind of opening they could take advantage of.
What would All Might do?
The thought surged to the forefront of his mind, and he paused in his wandering around the cell. What would All Might do?
He’d just Smash through the glass , another part of his brain answered. But no, neither Izuku nor Kacchan could do that, so All Might’s quirk didn’t count. What would All Might do if he couldn’t use his quirk? That was better. He—he would keep smiling! All Might always smiles, and his smile always makes other people feel safe! And he’d stay strong. He’d push through anything that would be thrown at him.
Izuku wanted to be a hero like All Might, so he’d stay strong too. He would smile to reassure people just like All Might. Izuku forced a grin on his face right as Kacchan stopped banging on the glass and turned around to face him, fuming.
“What’re you smiling for, shitty Deku?” Kacchan said.
“I’m smiling because that’s what All Might would do!” Izuku exclaimed. Even with all the enthusiasm he could muster, he could still feel himself shaking minutely. “We—we have to s-smile like All Might until the heroes c-come find us, right? His smile a-always makes people feel better, so maybe we c-can do that too.”
“We’re not All Might, stupid!” Kacchan marched forward, grabbed Izuku by the shoulders, and shook him back and forth a little. “We’re not—we can’t—“ He broke off with a frustrated yell, releasing him and turning around so he could release the largest explosions he could manage. Which, if he was being honest with himself, weren’t really all that large.
“Kacchan…”
“You can smile all you want, Deku,” he said. “But that isn’t gonna help us bust out of here and beat these villains’ asses!” He emphasized this with another explosive punch to the glass at the front of the cell.
“You aren’t getting out unless they want you to,” a voice interrupted. Izuku looked to the cell on their left, where an older man was sitting with his legs crossed, facing the two boys. Kacchan stopped what he was doing to consider him a moment before striding forward, arms crossed.
“What makes you say that, old man?”
“It’s just a fact we’ve all been forced to accept,” the man croaked. “The heroes aren’t coming. And the scientists here? They’ll use us over and over until we die. And maybe I’m being harsh, or whatever—but I’m telling you kids this so that you don’t get any false hopes or ideas in your head.” With every word spoken, the people within earshot, mostly silent until now, were murmuring angrily at the man for speaking so bluntly to the children, and Izuku could feel his smile becoming more and more forced. He felt his newfound resolve crack, just by the tiniest bit.
In a wavering voice, he spoke up. “M-maybe the heroes h-h-haven’t come yet! I-I’m sorry you l-lost your own hope, uh, s-sir, but that’s—that’s the one thing I won’t be doing!”
There was a pause after his outburst. Then the old man burst out laughing, causing everyone in his direct vicinity to flinch.
“I like your spirit, kid,” he managed between wheezes. “You’ve got some backbone in there. It’s unfortunate that it isn’t gonna help you one bit—not here.” And as if to punctuate his statement, the sound of footsteps reached them from down the hall, audibly coming closer. Everyone tensed, and no one made any kind of sound.
The owners of the footsteps turned out to be four people in long, white labcoats, the two in front holding clipboards and the two flanking them empty-handed, but very visibly more muscular.
All of them wore a belt with a sheathed gun.
When they were passing by their cell, Kacchan immediately ran forward to bang on the glass and demand to be released. When he started to use his quirk on it again, one of the people with a clipboard stopped. The other three noticed and stopped with her. Kacchan’s efforts redoubled at this, but the woman only watched him with an unreadable expression for a few seconds before making a note on her clipboard and continuing the way they were going.
She’s the leader of the four , Izuku deducted once all of them had moved on. And what was that all about, anyway..?
The next, and considerably weaker explosion from his friend shook him out of his thoughts before they could begin.
“Kacchan, y-you’re going t-to hurt yourself if you k-keep using your quirk!” He squeaked, and rushed to him. Before the next punch could land on the glass, Izuku grabbed his arm, halting it in place.
“Let me go, shitty Deku, I don’t care, okay?! I don’t care, I don’t—“
“Subject 8378,” a booming voice interrupted. The sheer authority in the tone and its volume made it practically impossible to speak over. Kacchan stopped fighting Izuku’s grip, and they both turned in the direction the voice came from.
The four people in lab coats had stopped in front of a cell just two down from them, and were staring inside. The woman that had observed Kacchan spoke up again. “You are to come with us for examinations. You are to offer no resistance, and to come quietly.” The woman paused for a few seconds, staring at the shaking young man who she had addressed. The entire hall was dead silent. “We’re opening the door.” One of the two without a clipboard approached the door to the cell, holding a keycard, much like Noose had.
There was a click, and a shrill beep, and the door swung open silently. The five people in the cell had their backs pressed against the far wall, and the young man— Subject 8378 , he’d been called— looked like he was beginning to hyperventilate as the two burly scientists approached and grabbed his arms, one on each side. The two with clipboards watched indifferently from the doorway.
When they passed by Izuku and Kacchan again, going back the way they came with the trembling, wide-eyed prisoner, neither of them managed to shake off enough of their shock and confusion to demand freedom again before the chance was gone.
The next hour—or it could have been minutes, he couldn’t really tell—was spent in near silence, Izuku having sat himself down in a far corner to try and process the events of the day while Kacchan paced their little cell, occasionally grumbling incoherently or letting off a few sparks from his hands. Whenever they made eye contact, Izuku sent him a shaky smile, which made him scowl in return and continue pacing. The old man hadn’t attempted to make conversation with them again.
When he couldn’t take it anymore, Izuku broke the silence. “W-what… what’s going to happen to us?”
Looks of understanding and sympathy were his only response until a woman, who was in hospital garb like everyone else and looking like she was in her mid-thirties, approached the glass separating them, but she was in the cell on his right, and not the left, where the old man was.
“I don’t want to lie to you, so I won’t,” she started, not unkindly. Her voice was soft, soothing. She knelt down next to him, or as close to that as she could get when there was thick glass separating them. “If you’re here, then that means the ‘doctors’... well. They’re going to treat you like they do the rest of us, which—which isn’t exactly nice. At first, it’s going to be like an injection at a regular doctor’s appointment, except a lot more at once and considerably...less easy to get over.” The people within hearing distance seemed to release the breath they must have been holding when the woman didn’t speak as bluntly as the man had. Even Kacchan had stopped pacing and was standing next to Izuku, hands clenched and scowling but otherwise silent. “But you’ve gotta stay strong, alright? You keep that attitude that you’ve been sporting, no matter what. That mindset you’ve got, about smiling through anything like All Might? That’s a good mindset to have. Don’t change it, alright?” Izuku nodded, giving her a tentative smile.
“My name is Tsukanoma Kibou, but just call me Kibou, or Tsu,” she continued. “Mind telling me your names, kiddos?”
“M-M-Midoriya Izuku,” he stammered. He was shaking minutely, again. He had always disliked needles, and he hated the feeling of one in his arm or shoulder. But if he could be brave so that his mama wouldn’t hear him cry in the doctor’s office, then he could do the same now, right?
“Bakugou Katsuki. What’s it to you?” Kacchan said shortly.
“Well, I didn’t want to address you as ‘Kid 1’ and ‘Kid 2’,” Kibou chuckled softly. “No need to be all suspicious towards us. We’re all in the same boat, Katsuki.” Her brief smile was gone after that, as if suddenly reminded where they were. “I suppose I should keep telling you how this normally goes. Those of us who have been here for a long time can’t really measure time very well anymore, but if my guess is correct then on the same day that someone is brought in, they get taken for their first examinations. Which means a group of them will probably be coming to take you two fairly soon. The first few days, it goes how I explained just now. It’s just injections, really. They’ll also put you in hospital-type clothing, like the rest of us. I—” she paused for a second, looking down at her lap and sighing before looking up to meet their eyes again. “If I could help it, I wouldn’t be telling either of you this at all. You’re just children . You’re kids , and yet—“ she broke off, breath hitching for a second as she closed her eyes. She took a deep breath before continuing, smoothing her expression over quickly.
“After that, it’s gonna get a little messier. They’re gonna tell you to demonstrate your quirks, and based on that…” Kibou trailed off, and shook her head, eyes suddenly distant, like she wasn’t looking at them anymore and instead reliving some distant memory. “Let’s not worry about it for now, okay? Hey,” her eyes brightened like a thought had struck her. “If you don’t mind me asking, what day and year is it? I bet a lot of us would appreciate knowing how much time has actually passed.”
“May 23rd, 20XX,” Kacchan said, ignoring the abrupt change of subject. Several people listening in gasped softly.
“Oh,” Kibou breathed. “It’s been… quite a while since I’ve seen the surface, huh.” Neither of them answered. The question wasn’t for them. They shared a moment of silence while everyone around them seemed to process the information. It looked like word was spreading along the hallway, too, whispers being carried from cell to cell. After another few seconds, Kibou broke herself from her thoughts with a slightly strained smile. “Well, if there’s only one good thing about new people, it’s that at least we get a small update on the world outside, I guess. I only wish they would stop taking people in the first place.”
“H-how have you been guessing the passing of time? There’s gotta be a time where they feed us every day, right?” Izuku asked. Kibou nodded.
“After they’re done with whatever they needed from us, they normally give us some food—however terrible it is—and water before we’re taken back here.”
“Have you ever tried running away?” Kacchan grumbled. At that, anyone watching them converse turned their heads away and Kibou got a conflicted look in her eyes.
“This...this ‘project’ that we’re taken to be a part of has been going on for a very, very long time, see. I think it may have actually started over a century ago, even. I was kidnapped and taken here just like everyone else, and this has been going on for generations . So I wasn’t here when it happened, but there was one time when the people here before us managed to collaborate and make an attempt to escape. The layout and organization was a little messier back then, so the prisoners were able to take advantage of that. And they rebelled.
“It’s said that it was absolute chaos. There were people fighting, getting injured, and most were killed in the bid for freedom. But despite that, and despite the horrors that the survivors had to witness afterwards, we call it the Great Hope Event.”
“B-But that sounds horrible! Why would you call it that?” Izuku asked.
“Well,” Kibou said, “We don’t know for sure, but there is a rumor that someone managed to actually escape, all those years ago. And that rumor was and still is enough to keep some of us going, even through everything that’s done to us, and even though it happened so long ago. There’s a tiny spark of hope that the heroes and police are investigating to set us free.
“No matter how small or how fleeting, hope is hope, and in this place,” as she spoke, her gentle smile started to falter. “You need to take every little bit you can get.”
At that moment, another group of scientists came to take another person from their cell nearby. They gave the same speech, and the prisoners gave the same reaction. The whole interaction had an air of something that had been repeated so many times it was practically routine. And maybe it was.
After that, Kibou remained silent, staring off into the distance. The only thing breaking the tense silence was the occasional whisper from one person to another somewhere, and the tap-tap-tap of Kacchan’s feet, once he resumed pacing around their cell. He didn’t speak, and honestly, knowing him, that worried Izuku.
Dealing with his best friend when he was genuinely angry was one thing. Having him be completely silent when Izuku wasn’t using his quirk on him… that had never happened before. It unnerved him.
So Izuku stayed in his corner, curled up into a ball and watching apprehensively every time another squad of the people in the white lab coats passed by, taking or bringing back a captive each time.
And when the realization that he and Kacchan and the rest of these people would probably be trapped here for a long, long time finally hit, it took everything he had to keep his small smile on his face and not break down then and there.
Kibou was right. It was impossible to tell how much time was passing. It could have been minutes or hours (not days, Izuku reasoned. He would’ve been very hungry by now) since they got tossed into this place. And with each passing second, his unease seemed to multiply. At some point, Kacchan had grown tired of walking in circles and resigned himself to sitting against the farthest wall from the door with a huff, about a foot away from Izuku. His eyebrows were furrowed. Izuku took one look at his friend and scooched closer, leaning into his side just slightly. Just enough for Kacchan to notice.
“Stupid Deku,” was the only thing he grumbled, but Izuku noticed how Kacchan, nearly imperceptibly, leaned back.
But the tentative moment was ruined.
The hushed voices in the hall quieted considerably, making the stomping of boots ring out clearly. It was those scientists? Doctors? Whatever they were—again.
Except this time, when they stopped, Izuku could meet their eyes head on.
It was his and Kacchan’s turn to go.