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Everything was so hot. Izuku hadn't meant to do it. He promises. Izuku didn't mean to lose control. The mean men were just hurting him more than usual. Poking and prodding. Cutting and slicing. Injections and that annoying beeping sound. It was all too much.Then everything was on fire.Izuku's fire wasn't normal. No fire that originated from a person's quirk was ever truly normal, Izuku knew that, but Izuku's fire was special. Izuku's fire was green and burned hot. Hot, hot, hot. So hot that if the flames touched you, and you didn't put it out in time, you'll be ashes in just over a minute. Izuku knows. Izuku's counted when the mean men made him burn people.Izuku's fire wasn't always green and a flesh-hungry monster. No, Izuku's fire used to be orange and beautiful. But the bad men did something to Izuku. They said they 'improved' him. Improved meant you make things better. Izuku didn't feel better. Izuku's quirk ate people and spat out there dusty remains and Izuku was scared of his own quirk. But the more scared Izuku got the stronger his quirk burned. The more happy, sad, angry, nervous, Izuku got the stronger his quirk got. Izuku's learnt to be quiet. No one gets hurt when Izuku's quiet.But now everyone was getting hurt and Izuku was just getting more and more worked up and scared and he couldn't calm down. The fire burned bright and cast an evil green everywhere it went as it feasted on anything in its path. Metal, drywall, paper, plastic, even people were all for the taking as the great burning beast gorged its self on the building and its inhabitants. And Izuku wasn't doing anything.Izuku kneeled on the floor of the lab crying as the room burned green around him. The beast that was Izuku's quirk was still hungry but there was nothing in the room left for it to feast on. Flames licked at Izuku's naked body, having eaten the clothes already. The monster traced old burn scars that covered Izuku's body but the mean men had done something to him that stopped his quirk from eating him anymore.Screams and cries of agony bombarded Izuku's ears. So many people were getting hurt because of the burning, green beast that was Izuku's quirk. If he had just kept quiet everyone would be okay. If Izuku had just let the mean men continue whatever they were doing no one would have gotten hurt. If Izuku had just remembered not to get scared, to keep his emotions under wraps and quiet then the fire wouldn't have spread and it wouldn't have devoured everything in its path.The sound of screams and Izuku's own cries filled the air, accompanied by the crackling of the fire.Izuku wished Haken was there. Haken was nice. He always made sure that Izuku stayed quiet but he was so kind as well. The mean men just told him to shut up and locked him in a windowless room when he got too rowdy. But Haken, Haken made him laugh happily and actually helped him control his quirk when he lost control.Haken would hold him close and would hum that little song that always made Izuku sleepy and he wouldn't get devoured by the flames. The doctor's had given Haken a self-healing quirk that, whilst not on par with Super Regeneration, was enough to fight off the burning bites of Izuku's flames.Haken would make everything better. Haken would make the great, green monster go away. Haken would protect Izuku from the world.But Haken wasn't there. Izuku was all alone. Alone, as he cried and the building burned around him.If Izuku concentrated his hearing, if he drowned out the crying and screaming and the crackling flames, Izuku could almost hear Haken. Could almost hear his hacking coughs as smoke filled his lungs and as he desperately called out Izuku's name like the parent that Izuku only distantly remembered. Izuku could almost hear the cries of his name get more and more desperate as Haken ran further into the belly of the beast. Almost hear but not quite because Izuku was a terrible monster who could only hurt and killed people and no one cared enough about him to-"Izuku!" Haken cried in desperate relief as he burst through the remains of the double doors. He reminded Izuku of a rampaging Elephant looking for its lost child despite the man's willowy figure."Izuku!" Haken cried again as he ran up and collected Izuku up into his thin, yet infinitely strong arms and held him to his chest. Haken buried his face in Izuku's curly locks as Izuku clutched on to Haken's shirt."Ha-Haken! I-I was- I was so-so s-scared! They, they were hurt-hurting m-me, and-and-and-" Izuku cried brokenly into the older man's chest."Shh, shh. It's alright now, Izuku, it's alright. You don't have to tell me anything." Haken reassured him quietly but somehow Izuku still heard him over the raging fire that filled the entire room. "Let's just get out of here now, ok? How does that sound?" Despite the question, Haken was already moving, running if the constant jostling was anything to go by, but Izuku was content so long as he was with Haken.They passed screaming people and people calling out to them for help but Haken just kept on moving. Izuku tried to look but Haken had a good hold on the back of his head and refused to let Izuku see what carnage his quirk had caused. The boy was already terrified of what his quirk could do to a single person; best not let him see what it could do to an entire building.Izuku could feel and hear Haken using his own quirk to navigate the building. The sound of metal on metal grated against his ears but Izuku just buried his face further into Haken's chest. Izuku listened as Haken used the blades to manoeuvre debris out of their path and felt it in his gut when Haken used the blades to get them over a seemingly impassable obstacle.As Haken was getting them out of the building, Izuku fantasized about their life outside of the lab. Away from the mean men and the experiments, away from the Doctor and his boss, the Faceless Man, away from the needles and scalpels and the other people that the Doctor used in his experiments. Izuku imagined it would be happy. Haken would be there with him and they could both be happy. Haken would read him books as he went to sleep and he could make Haken breakfast in the mornings and they would just be happy. No more windowless rooms. No more killing. No more experiments. Just Haken and him. Happy.So, when Izuku felt the cold air against his back he grinned happily because they were finally free! Haken's hand on the back of his head slackened and Izuku peered out into the world for the first time in who knows how long. It was dark and Izuku could just make out twinkling stars in the pitch-black sky but the green glow from the lab and the flashing red and blue lights made it how to properly see-Red and blue?Izuku turned his head around and as he did Haken tightened his grip once again.There were firemen that were trying to put out the green flames from Izuku's quirk and there were police officers that were looking up at the ablaze buildings in concern and confusion. But, right in front of him and Haken, were heroes. Actual heroes. Izuku hadn't seen heroes since... before. An excited grin spread across Izuku's face but that was when he noticed Haken's unnaturally still posture.Izuku looked up at his friend in concern. Haken stared at the heroes before them in a confusing mix of dread, apprehension, and defiance.Looking back at the heroes, trying to figure out why Haken was acting so weird, Izuku noticed how the heroes were looking at them. It was hard to tell with all the lights but the looks the heroes were giving Haken and him didn't look friendly. Izuku could see some of them, the ones with transformative type quirks, that were readying their quirks. But that didn't make sense, Haken and him needed help and heroes helped people, so they were going to help them. Right?One of the heroes stepped forward. Izuku didn't get a good look at the man before Haken was taking off. Izuku heard one of the heroes shout for them to stop but Haken just kept running. They had made it three streets away when one of the heroes caught up to them.Haken tripped up and would have fallen on top of Izuku had he not turned and protected Izuku's fall at the last second. Looking at his friend's feet Izuku saw some sort of white cloth tying Haken's legs together. Seconds later a large figure jumped on to the scene followed shortly after by a shorter figure with floating hair. Izuku couldn't distinguish much more than that before Haken was pushing him to his feet and telling him to run."But, their heroes-"Haken grabbed him and the two of them shot up into the air, propelled by Haken's Blade-Tooth. They landed on a roof and Haken made short work of sending him down the fire escape."Listen to me Izuku," Haken said, holding Izuku's face gently, but firmly, in his hands, "if the heroes capture us they're going to be no different from the mean men when they discover what the Doctor did to us. They'll experiment on us and they'll try to make more people like us. Do you want that Izuku?"Izuku could remember all the pain that had filled the experiments the mean men had conducted on him. How much it had hurt when they were fiddling with his quirk. Izuku didn't want anyone to have to go through the same things he did."Then you'll run, got it. Run and don't look back. I'll hold the heroes off long enough for you to get away and then I'll come and find you." Haken declared as if it was the easiest thing in the world and he was about to fight off a group of professionally trained heroes."But, Haken, they're heroes! They'll capture you and then I'll be alone and I'll end up hurt someone again but you won't be there because you're captured and-"Haken cut him off before he could get too far into his mumbling. "It'll be alright. It might not be right away but I'll find you, ok." Haken paused and looked at Izuku intently. Izuku swallowed down the lump in his throat and nodded. Haken smiled sadly and gave Izuku's forehead a kiss before he sent him down the fire escape. "Good, now get going. The heroes will be here soon and I don't want you getting caught up in this."Just as Izuku landed back on solid ground the sound of metal sliding against metal filled the air and a cry of pain followed shortly after. Following Haken's instructions, he fled the area as fast as his legs would carry him.Izuku only prayed that he would reunite with Haken sooner rather than later.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Nekomura Kuromi was no one special. His quirk was nothing special either, just a simple mutation quirk that gave him the attributes of a cat. Kuromi was just another one of the street kids that plagued Musutafu's red-light district, doing what he had to to survive.Kuromi would preach to the high heavens above that he didn't have a heroic bone in his body. He didn't care about saving ungrateful bastards that would just ignore him as he was now. Kuromi didn't want to get mixed up in any of the idiotic world that was heroes and villains. Sure, the red-light district could use a serious crackdown on crime but no one that called the district home wanted an attention whore hero to do the job. A hero would just invite the criminals to escalate their crimes to combat the hero and before you know it the red-light district would be a warzone.So, Kuromi didn't want to be a hero and being a villain would just bring needless attention. Both worlds just invited trouble. Kuromi wanted nothing more than to avoid anything to do with either world.Too bad the world had other plans for Nekomura Kuromi.You see, whilst Kuromi tried his hardest to keep a low profile, he had picked up a reputation in his time living in the district. It wasn't a bad reputation per se, as long as you didn't own anything valuable or weren't an asshole anyway, but Kuromi just couldn't help himself when he saw someone in need of help. He was several of the working girls' go-to babysitter when their neighbours refused to watch their kids. He was adored by the other street kids, mainly because he usually had at least three stray cats following him at any time but Kuromi liked to believe that he had won their favour when he stole food and shared it with them.Anyway, Kuromi was a good kid. He saw a person who needed help and he just couldn't help himself. Call it animal instinct but Kuromi just liked to call himself a decent human being.So, when Kuromi spotted a naked kid, passed out behind a dumpster, in the alleyway behind his current squat, he did the decent thing and went to help them.The kid was young, but luckily there were no signs of assault on the kid's body. At least no recent assaults, the kid was practically a patchwork of scars but Kuromi could concentrate on that when he had the kid somewhere safe.Picking the kid up, Kuromi realised just how light the little guy was. Kuromi wasn't a big kid, fourteen years old and barely breaking five feet. He was skinny as a twig to boot but even he knew that despite having nearly a full foot of height on the kid that he- and yes, the kid's a he, something like that is kinda hard to miss when a person is butt naked- should be harder to lift. Though, considering how the boy was literally bone-thin, Kuromi guesses the kid weighing about the same as a bag of baby kittens kinda makes sense.Kuromi made his way up the stairs at the back of the shop that was his current home and headed up to the empty flat above the abandoned storefront. Stepping through the empty frame where there used to be a door Kuromi made his way towards the empty bedroom he laid claim to. He set the mystery boy down on the nest of blankets in the corner of the room. Once he was happy that he had gotten the kid into a comfortable position, he went over to a small bedside table the previous owners left behind and lit a candle that he stole with a match from a box of matches that he also stole.Kuromi put the candle in a cup that he found and brought the candle closer to the boy for a better look. What he saw made his stomach turn.The most obvious thing about the boy was the missing eye. The entirety of the right side of the green-haired boy's face was a mottled mess of old scarring. It wasn't all over his face, the worst of the scarring, that was definitely from being burned continuously over a multitude of long periods of time, was centred around his missing eye and got fainter the further out you went. Then there were the scars running over that. Three long jagged lines, starting just below the little boy's hairline cut down his face, cutting savagely over the empty eye socket (was that how he lost the eye or was it the burns?) until it stopped at his jawline. They were massive, like something you would see on someone who was mauled by a bear. Whatever or whoever made them must have really not liked kids.There were more burns scars, though the only ones that looked even remotely close to as bad as the scarring on his face were the scars on both of his hands and arms. Some parts of the boy's arm looked horrific like the skin had literally melted off of the boy's bones and then was stuck back on by some cheap, back-alley doctor. Other parts of his arms however just looked like something that any regular person could get if they're bad enough in the kitchen. The worst parts were concentrated around his forearms, though his right shoulder looked particularly bad as well.Stab wounds also littered the kid's tiny body. The wounds looked out of place on him. Too big for such a little body that Kuromi justed couldn't fathom how the boy had gained them. There was a particularly large scar on the under his left ribs that almost look like the kid had been impaled on a drill or something, the skin around it twisted as if whatever the kid had been stabbed with had been spinning at the time.The most worrying scar, however, laid across his neck. The scar looked old, at least a couple of years old by that point and Kuromi just couldn't fathom the type of person that was sick enough to cut a little boy's neck open. The scar was jagged, and Kuromi just had this feeling that the weapon of choice had had a serrated edge. It was raised from the skin, only a little lighter than the healthy skin around it. The old wound cut all the way across, all the way from his left ear to his right ear. How the kid had survived that, Kuromi didn't know nor did he want to know. All Kuromi did know was that the kid needed some serious help. When Izuku woke up he was immediately on alert. He was too comfortable. He was warm and he was laying down on something soft and plush. The men that worked for the Doctor made him and all of the other people that the Doctor liked to torture sleep on the cold, hard concrete of their cramped cages. The only warmth in any of the cages were the people they were forced to share their cages with. Nothing soft or fluffy could be found in the lab. No warmth in the cold building except for Haken.Sweet gentle Haken who always made Izuku's nightmares go away. The older man never strayed far from Izuku, always staying close to him to offer what little comfort he could in the hell hole that was their home. Haken who sung him lullabies and weaved fantastical stories to lull Izuku to sleep. Izuku had heard some of the ladies in the lab called the willowy man 'maternal'. Izuku didn't know what the word meant and when he had gone up to Haken to ask him about it the older man had gone as red as a tomato and said it was nothing.Izuku opened his eyes, wanting to find the source of the unusually comfortable surface in the sterile lab. Confusion ate away at him as he did.There were no cage bars or bleak grey walls. Now that Izuku was more aware as well, he noticed that there wasn't the background noise of the other people in the lab; not the Doctor's assistants or the big brutes that hung around and none of the Doctor's other victims were making noise either.There was still a quiet background noise to everything around Izuku but it was unfamiliar. The unfamiliar sounds of cars and cooing birds floated into the equally unfamiliar room.The room Izuku was in was odd as well. Gone were the cold and sterile grey and white walls of the lab and instead chipped brownish-red paint covered the walls. The room was sparsely decorated, little more than a small wooden table and some drawers that looked a couple of decades too old to still be standing filling up the room. A ratty old blanket was partially covering a window over on the opposite side of the room from him, sunlight streaming through the gap the blanket had made.Looking down Izuku found even more blankets, an entire nest of them that he had been laid in. All of the blankets were old and only a few threads kept them from completely falling apart. Despite their horrendous state the blankets were incredible to lie on. Despite looking older than the Doctor the blankets were all still incredibly soft and fluffy. Izuku imagined it was what sleeping on a cloud felt like.Despite the comfort though, Izuku couldn't stay. He had to find Haken. The older male would know what to do. Maybe Haken knew why they were in an unfamiliar place.Izuku stood up unsteadily but he quickly gained his footing and headed for the door in the corner of the room. He twisted the doorknob experimentally to check if it was locked. When the door swung open he quickly vacated the room.Turned out Izuku was in some run-down flat. Chipped paint covered the walls and every few steps revealed a new hole somewhere in the walls. Exiting the room found Izuku in a Y-shaped hallway with empty doorways on both sides of him and an empty doorway in front of him that seemingly led down a set of stairs. The door to his right led to a seemingly empty room whilst the other doorway seemed to lead to what Izuku assumed was a living room.Izuku towards the living room, being able to hear someone bustling about inside. He was mindful of the marked and fragile looking floorboards as he made his way towards the room. Thoughts of what just was going on rushed through Izuku's mind. The previous night was all a blur. All Izuku could remember of the events of the last day was being taken to the experimentation room by some of the Doctor's men and then everything was just... green. Had Haken managed to get them out somehow? Did the Doctor let them go? Why were they in some rundown apartment? Thoughts continued to rush through his head as he slowly made his way towards the room at the end of the hallway. For some reason, Izuku also had a sense of... apprehension? He was feeling warier and warier the closer he got to the room. What if it wasn't Haken in the room? What if one of the Doctor's assistants had kidnapped him to make him be a villain?Izuku halted just outside the room. He could hear whoever it was inside moving around. He glanced back behind him. If he moved quick enough Izuku could make it around the corner and out the door leading to the stairs before whoever was inside the room even heard him.Before Izuku could act on his plan a loud crash emanated from inside the room and before Izuku even knew it he was rushing to help his friend. Haken was always looking after him so it was only fair that he looked after the older male in return.Sadly though, it wasn't Haken in the room.It was an older boy, not as old as Haken but definitely older than Izuku himself. He had medium-length black hair and a very pretty face with long lashes and a cute little button nose. A pair of black cat ears stuck out of the top of the boys head and a long tail of the same colour stuck out from underneath the boy. The boy had on a pair of tight-fitting, dark blue jeans with rips in them and a black tank top. Around his neck was also a thin choker that resembled a cat collar.Izuku stared at the boy on the ground for several silent seconds. It was so long that Izuku hadn't even realized that the boy had finally opened his golden cat-like eyes.The silence between the two boys was finally broken when Cat-boy, as Izuku dubbed him in his head, opened his mouth. "Hey, kid, you alright?" When Izuku only looked at him, Cat-boy clarified himself. "You're crying," Cat-boy stated softly.And Izuku said the only thing that could come to mind as his world seemingly shattered around him due to impatience and impulsiveness. As Izuku sobbed in front of this stranger, in a place he didn't know and alone properly for the first time in his life, and cried out brokenly, "You're not Haken."