Chapter Text
Keigo took a look at the innocent looking forest. The trees stood in a kind light, with dark speckles running up the bright brown trunks. These speckles shifted to a pale pink as his eyes worked their way up to the canopy of leaves, which were varying shades of pink and purple. The sunlight almost looked sweet as it filtered through the treetops.
Certainly nothing bad could happen here, right?
His lion paws crunched against the dirt and stone path louder than they needed to as he walked beside Kaina. They had just arrived at their quest destination. He pointed to the tree tops with a goofy smile and said, “look, they’re the same colors as your hair!”
Her eyes never left the seemingly unoccupied spaces behind the tree trunks. “It surely must take eyes as sharp as yours to notice that.”
Keigo snickered and placed his hand on his blade at the same time. “You wanna know something else these sharp eyes have noticed?”
The sunlight caught the golden streaks in his eyes as they flicked towards one particularly fat tree. Kaina followed his gaze, and her grip shifted on her bow.
“No no, I see them too,” she murmured.
These thieves didn’t stand a chance.
The tavern felt odd with all its boisterous cheeriness to the five young questers. The weight of their new knowledge pressed on all their thoughts. They found a table in the corner of the room, where the racing music was more distant and couldn’t grate against their anxiety as much.
Mina was the first to speak, her voice so timid, the weight of their situation felt even more heavy. “Do you really think the Original is back?”
No one could respond for a moment, all lost in the shadowed catastrophes playing out in their minds.
“It would explain where that message on the wall came from,” Ochako whispered at last.
“There are other explanations,” Hitoshi snapped. “I think he was lying, just to scare us.”
“I don’t think he was,” Izuku murmured, instantly drawing all eyes to him, which made him tense. “I- I’ve been working on sensing magic imbalances - you know, the shifts between natural life and how dark magic steals from that. That’s one of the things my magic lets me do. And I… I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?” Shoto asked, frowning.
Izuku sighed, clenching his fists on the table. “There have been a couple times I’ve felt a twinge of something so heavy- like the weight of everything in the world contained in a split second of sensation. Almost like a whole city was being held on the point of a needle. Something that out of balance…? I don’t know.”
He ducked his head, pushing it into his hands. He let out a sharp sigh, and his mutter was so soft, they could barely hear it over the chatter of the tavern.
“I don’t think he was lying.”
The next moment was the longest sixty seconds any of them had ever lived through. The implications of what they’d just learned stampeded through their heads, and none of them could think of anything other than the ruin of everything they cared about.
“Why don’t we just head to the HPSC ruins,” Ochako suggested in a voice she strained to keep still. “If Stain was telling the truth, then we might be able to find something there about the Original. That would at least confirm whether or not Stain was honest. And from there… we’ll figure out our next steps.”
Hitoshi ran an agitated hand through his hair, before shrugging. “Alright fine, sounds good to me.”
“I don’t know what else to do, so sure,” Mina agreed.
When Izuku’s face lifted from his hands, a deep furrow remained in his brow, and his eyes stayed stuck on the table like a weight was tugging them down. Noticing the distress in the lines of his features, Hitoshi said, “Stain said some pretty nasty stuff to you in particular. Are you, I don’t know, okay?”
Mina nodded along with Hitoshi. “The stuff about your sword and being incompetent - you know that’s not true, right?”
“Yeah, I’m alright,” Izuku replied, mustering the strength to lift his gaze to theirs for a second. “I talked with Yagi about it, and he helped.”
That at least provided a dim pinprick of light to their dismal expressions.
“So this new mentor of yours really is all that, huh?” Hitoshi asked.
Izuku nodded with a whisper of a smile. “I’d say Shoto has the most reason to be upset right now. He’s the one back in the Flamelight kingdom, which is probably the last place in the world he wants to be.”
This drew a couple glances away from Izuku, in exchange for Shoto’s comfort.
“I think we all have decent reason to be upset,” Shoto said.
“It still must be pretty uncomfortable for you here,” Ochako replied.
Shoto shrugged. “Overall, it hasn’t been as terrible as I thought it’d be. It’s actually somewhat pleasant, returning to a place that’s so familiar. Many of the people in the palace were happy to see me. Even- even my father.” His expression darkened. “That has been the only truly unpleasant part of returning.”
“You ran into your father?” Ochako asked, eyebrows lifting.
“It was brief,” Shoto said, voice curt. “I don’t think I said more than two sentences. I doubt he was still happy to see me by the end of it.”
Ochako’s face crumpled. “He didn’t seem to have changed at all to you?”
Shoto went as cold and still as one of his ice structures. His mouth clamped shut, and his friends glanced at each other.
“Even if he has,” his words broke through at last, “I don’t want anything to do with him.”
It felt like disappointment tinted the air, making all their faces fall. Compared to the loud joyfulness of the rest of the tavern, they seemed to be stuck in their own blue bubble, congested with a heavy sadness.
Shoto shifted in his seat. “I visited Iida yesterday. The healers said he’d be able to fully recover, but he didn’t seem to be doing the best to me.”
“When we visited him, he was hellbent on pursuing Stain, even though he could barely move,” Ochako said, and Izuku nodded.
“What a moron,” Hitoshi muttered. “And it’s all to avenge his brother, right? He was a little less coherent when I visited him with Mina. All he could do was mumble on about how much he needed to kill Stain while drifting in and out of sleep.”
Izuku nodded again, a little more miserably. “He’s so obsessed with the idea, it’s gonna get him killed.”
“If we survive, you know, all this,” Mina began, “maybe we can find his brother and get him to change his mind.”
“I can’t think of any other way to save him,” Ochako agreed.
“If we survive all this,” Hitoshi repeated, his voice a low mutter.
Ochako huffed out a sigh. “Well, I’d rather do something than sit around and worry. Why don’t we plan our trip to the HPSC ruins.”
The group couldn’t do anything but agree. The foreboding in the air weighed down on them throughout the entire discussion, and no length of lighthearted tunes from the tavern could lift it.
The empty road waited in front of the group, though they weren’t exactly springing forward to start their journey. A lingering dreariness made them hesitate. The sun hadn’t even motivated itself to come up over the horizon. Deep blues still dominated the skies, suppressing the orange rays leaking over the grassy fields.
“You see those mountains, rising up in the distance?” Hitoshi asked, pointing to some jagged peaks that were just at the edge of visibility.
“Yeah?” Ochako replied.
“Are those the mountains we’re gonna have to go over?”
“Yeah…”
Hitoshi let out a small whimper of despair. Ochako gave him a comforting pat on the shoulder.
Izuku was mentally running through everything he needed for the third time, when the rushed patter of approaching footsteps interrupted his anxious, repetitive thoughts. He turned around to find Yagi jogging down the path towards them.
The group turned their curious gazes to him, and Yagi had to stop to put his hands on his knees. As he wheezed air in and out, Izuku walked up and asked “hey, you okay? What’re you doing here? We’re headed out soon-”
“I know, I know,” Yagi interrupted, still out of breath. He straightened and waved his hands to shush Izuku’s concerns. “I just wanted to talk to you one last time before you left. Though it took me a while to find it before leaving, I have something to give you. Was worried I’d be too late.”
“That explains why you’re so out of breath,” Izuku said. “I guess it’s a good thing we were taking so long to head out.”
“I’d say so,” Yagi answered, before he planted a firm hand on Izuku’s shoulder. The young quester’s eyes widened slightly, and he tilted his head at Yagi. “I’ve heard that a lot of mentors give their pupils their swords. I’ve technically already done that, even though I wasn’t even there for it, but I wanted to give you something directly from me.”
He bent down to open the bag he’d brought along, and after a second, he pulled out a decorated sword sheath. Izuku could immediately tell it was meant for the phoenix sword, and his mouth fell open at the intricate designs of swirling winds and wings.
Izuku was still gazing at it with wonder as Yagi dropped it into his hands. After running his fingers through the detailed, weaving crevices of the design, Izuku looked back up to Yagi with big, grateful eyes.
“Thank you so much. This is beautiful.”
Yagi smiled wide. “I hoped you’d think so. I want you to accept this gift remembering what we talked about yesterday. Don’t make the same mistakes as the last person who used this sheath.”
Izuku’s expression turned more serious, and he nodded. “I’ll remember.”
Yagi’s expression brightened again. “Good. Now, your friends are waiting for you.”
“Right!” Izuku took a quick minute to switch out his sheath for the new one. Yagi took a step back so Izuku could rejoin his group, but the young quester surprised him by closing the distance again to give him a tight hug.
Yagi smiled and laughed, filled with a warmth he’d been devoid of most of his life. “Have a safe journey.”
Hitoshi looked up at the craggy peaks with a dreary gaze. They’d been weaving through giant outcroppings of rock all day, and the path had grown even more difficult to discriminate from loose gravel. He looked behind him at the field of rock spikes they’d already survived, and he felt a mixture of pride and weariness.
Ochako must’ve seen similar worn expressions on everyone’s faces, because she called out, “how do people feel about taking a break here?”
Everyone immediately finding an area of flat rock to sit on was enough of an answer.
Hitoshi plopped his head into his hands, already feeling like he could doze off right there from exhaustion. They had to be almost there.
“Hey, it looks like we’re past halfway!” Mina exclaimed from beside him, making him flinch.
“What- you-” his surprised stammers stopped when his brain actually processed what she’d said. “Oh thank sleep. We’re almost done with this crap.”
“Yup,” she giggled, and Hitoshi noticed how she only seemed as worn out as Izuku and Shoto - the ones who used swords. They had to physically train a lot more than Ochako and Hitoshi, who focused more on magic abilities. “Also, sorry! Did I surprise you back there?”
Hitoshi looked down and mumbled, “only a little.”
“I thought that was impossible,” she responded, amused.
“I wasn’t paying attention,” he grumbled.
Mina laughed again, and Hitoshi’s magic couldn’t help but catch a snag of her enjoyment and bring a faint grin to his face as well. “I guess when you’re tired, you’re not as good as doing your magical presence sensing thing.”
He shook his head. “Only physically tired. I’m mentally tired all the time.” He gave her an intrigued look. “You don’t look too tired, though.”
She shrugged. “An alchemist doesn’t always have a ton to offer to a party, so I try to keep in pretty good shape so I can keep up my part time quester job. Besides,” she moved the collar of her jacket down to reveal where the darker pink scales spotting her skin were more clustered. “I’ve got a bit of my ancestry working in my favor.”
Hitoshi’s eyebrows twitched upwards. “I’ve always wondered if you were part dragon.”
“Just a little bit,” she said, making the tiny hand gesture with her pointer and thumb. “In my distant ancestry. Gives me just a touch of fire magic, which I usually just use to start any small fires I need to brew potions.”
She snapped her fingers, and a tiny, flickering flame appeared above her fingertips. She gave the warm light a fond smile.
“That’s pretty cool,” Hitoshi said, and laughter wheezed from Mina’s lips.
“Says the person with the most powerful telepathy magic I’ll probably ever meet,” she shot back, and he frowned.
“I’m not just being nice,” he replied, voice low with seriousness. “You don’t need some spectacular magic to be a cool person. You’re using your skills to a good end, and I think that’s pretty cool.”
Mina’s eyes widened as a pleasant surprise overwhelmed her amused chattiness. Hitoshi blinked at how he actually left her speechless for a moment.
“You haven’t started treating me differently,” Hitoshi murmured.
She broke out of her stupor and tilted her head. “Hm?”
“After what I said, about how I suspected you of thinking of me in a particular way, you haven’t changed the way you act around me,” he clarified. “Which is odd, because I haven’t shown any signs of reciprocation.”
Mina’s grin returned. “I don’t need reciprocation to have hope. You’re the only person I’ve ever thought about this way, so I doubt someone else is coming along for me. That just leaves being patient and seeing if you’ll ever think the same about me.”
Hitoshi raised his eyebrows. “I’m the only person you’ve ever thought about this way?”
“Yup!” she cheered.
He sat in silent thought for a long moment, which grew to be so long, Ochako called everyone up to start climbing again. It wasn’t a rejection or an acceptance - and Mina would take that.
Nestled in the midst of a rocky valley, Izuku couldn’t imagine the HPSC headquarters had looked any less barren when it was operational than it did as ruins. The sharp edged rocks didn’t have any vegetation growing around them, except for a pale, slippery moss creeping up some of the crevices.
The ruins themselves were hewn of the same stone as the mountain, making everything blend into the same soulless grayscale. Portions of the building had entirely collapsed, leaving nothing but mounds of stones. Many of the walls remained intact, however, leaving a large, arching entrance for the group of questers to approach.
From one end of their eyesight to the other, all they could see was gray.
“I don’t know about you, but I’d never want to live here,” Mina said, gazing up at the doors.
The entry doors were at least twice the height of a person, made of an oddly dark gray metal that created dull shimmers in the cloudy light. One door was barely hanging on to the frame by a single hinge. The other stood strong, unbudging.
“There’s no decoration anywhere,” Ochako noticed, and when Izuku looked around again, he saw it too.
Every wall was a smooth, blank slate of stone. The doors were plain metal. The steps were clean cut and orderly as they filed down the plain mountainside. Not a single enhancement of creativity could be seen.
“How miserable,” Hitoshi muttered. “Even I prefer more color than this.”
A small frown had burrowed itself into Shoto’s face. “I might just prefer the palace to this.”
“They did everything in sheer practicality,” Izuku said, remembering what he’d read about the HPSC. “It’d cost extra effort to make it look appealing, when all they needed was a place to store and train people. It didn’t matter if those people liked it there or not. They didn’t have a choice.”
The group shuddered. This place was more akin to a prison than anything else.
Ochako took a step towards the doors. “Well, with that wonderful introduction, why don’t we head inside.”
Keigo leapt into the air and latched his lion paws onto the shoulders of one of the twenty thieves surrounding him and Kaina. With a whooshing flap, he rammed the man’s midsection onto a tree branch and left him groaning in the tree top.
“You know, it’s crazy to think that we’re still going on quests together!” he shouted over to Kaina.
With the purple glow of her magic, she sent one of her arrows zooming through a thief’s wrist, pinning them to the tree. “It has been some time, hasn’t it?”
As Keigo returned to the ground, he spun his wings around him and released a wave of yellow lightning that crackled over the ground and knocked three more thieves back.
“You ever thought about visiting the old place? Just to see what’s become of it?” Keigo asked, drawing his sword to block an oncoming dagger. With a loop of a slash, he knocked the dagger away and left the thief with a bleeding hand. Another slice to the leg, and the thief was left immobilized.
“Not in the slightest,” she growled back, dipping her arrowtips in her paralytic poison.
“I mean, that’s fair.” Keigo walked up to the three thieves he’d sent to the ground and threw a bolt of lightning at each of them to knock them out completely. The bright charges zipped down his arm and sprung from his fingertips, making the sound of thunder as they struck the fallen thieves. “I wouldn’t want to stay the night there either.”
“Especially not in those beds.” She shot off three arrows, which took on a purple glow, before stabbing into the shoulders of thieves. They fell to the ground with shouts of agony.
“Oh yeah!” Keigo turned to the thief he was feeding electricity into. As they slowly sunk to the ground, sparks flying around them, Keigo said, “if you think sleeping in those trees is uncomfortable, you should’ve seen where they made us sleep! For years!”
A stone ledge stuck out from the wall, so short that if someone were to lay on it, their feet would hang off the end. Shoto held out his hand, which cradled a bright, curling ball of flame, so they could see it clearer.
“Is- is that a bed?” Mina asked.
“This is the room with all chests holding the clothing, and the underground creek they’d use to bathe is right next to here, so…” Izuku winced. “I think so.”
Hitoshi shook his head with a swear. “I’d get even less sleep here than I already do.”
Shoto lifted his hand torch into the air, so that it illuminated the dozens upon dozens of stone ledges lining the walls of the gigantic room. The beds climbed all the way up to the ceiling, and deteriorated wooden ladders had to be used to reach them.
Mina let out a small, heartbroken sound. After a second of hesitation, Hitoshi put his hand on her shoulder to comfort her.
Izuku and Ochako looked at each other, both thinking about their mentors. It was shocking and torturous to try and imagine how they’d survived in such a deprived environment. The sight of the ruins opened up a whole new side of their mentors’ lives they’d never quite thought about.
“I almost don’t want to see more,” Ochako murmured.
Keigo dropped the now unconscious person he’d been zapping to block a slash from another thief’s sword with his own blade. He put on a thoughtful expression as he held the thief back and said, “though I don’t think the beds were even that bad. After a day of the training we went through, they felt soft as feathers.”
Kaina kicked a thief in the face, knocking both their teeth and their consciousness out. Then she immediately whipped around and shot the hand of another thief rushing her, forcing them to drop their dagger. “I remember the bruises I’d get for daring to hit just the rim of the bullseye.”
Keigo raised his eyebrows at how she was actually sharing; she typically shut these conversations down pretty fast. In a crackle of blinding lightning, Keigo sent a jolt of electricity through the metal of their touching swords. The thief went flying backwards into a second thief with a flash of sparks.
“It took me forever to learn all the moves with a sword,” he replied. He propelled himself in the second thief’s direction with a massive flap. He pulled his legs to his chest and angled them in front of him, before kicking into the thief’s chest, cracking a few ribs, and probably a few more as the thief hit a tree. “Flying and magic always came much easier, but not swords. Probably the most painful time of my entire life.”
“Oh yeah,” Kaina muttered, watching as several thieves dropped to the ground, unable to move as her poison turned their limbs stiff. “They’d come up with some new training devices by the time you were there.”
“Please don’t tell me that’s a collar,” Mina begged.
Izuku bent down, scrutinizing the varying sizes of metal rings lying on the floor of what was obviously a training room. “Not just collars. They’d go on people’s wrists and ankles too.”
He picked one up and dropped it, which made a harsh, loud clang reverberate through the whole room.
“Holy crap, that sounds heavy,” Hitoshi said.
“That’d rub your skin raw in moments,” Shoto added.
“You’re right,” Izuku muttered. He looked around the room at the various training methods. There were targets, punching dummies, obstacle courses on the ground and in the air, and pits for trainees to fight each other. “Every time someone messed up, they’d have another ring put on them. Keigo joked about it once.”
“Joked?” Ochako asked with a horrified raise of her eyebrows.
Izuku nodded grimly.
“Though I think my most painful time was actually after my first quest.” Kaina walked up to the thieves affected by her poison. Their veins had turned purple, branching out from where her arrow had pierced them. She gave them each a complimentary kick in the head to knock them out.
After taking the time to send a tight streak of lightning into the chest of a thief trying to sneak up behind her, Keigo gave her a curious look.
“I was supposed to kill a kid,” she mumbled, and Keigo’s face fell. “She was the daughter of some important political figure. I’d only gone through desensitization training for killing adults, so I came back without completing my quest, crying in fear. You wanna know what they did?”
A thief jumped out from behind a tree, running towards Kaina. Without looking up, she drew her bow and shot her arrow straight through her attacker’s knee. They fell at her feet, and a second later, they were knocked out. That marked the last of the thieves.
“They had someone else capture her, alive, and brought her to me,” Kaina growled, clutching her bow. “I thought they were going to force me to kill her, but no. They tortured her slowly to death in front of me. I still hear her shrieking sometimes. The message they wanted to send was clear. If I had just listened, everything would’ve been so much easier.”
Keigo tilted his head. “The message they wanted to send? Not the message they did send?”
She let out a coarse, cheerless laugh. “No, what I actually learned that day was that I couldn’t let any other children die because of me.”
A real, tender smile tugged at the corner of Keigo’s mouth. “Is that why you did everything you did with the kids? Taking all the child assassination quests, then faking their deaths after taking them to a safehouse?”
“Exactly,” Kaina said quietly.
A puff of laughter escaped Keigo’s nose. “It sure made for an interesting last quest for the two of us.”
Though the next room they found appeared the least atrocious and menacing - metal drawers and boxes covered the walls - the information it contained disturbed them more than anything else they found.
“It’s amazing to see paper preserved like this,” Shoto said, peering at a decades-old quest report. The letters were still crisp.
“I almost wish it wasn’t,” Mina mumbled, holding her stomach. “Everything I read makes me sicker. Do you know how many questers they killed, just because they worked with dark magic users? They said it was to ‘maintain the perceived glory and success of questing’ and ‘reduce the perceived threat of dark magic,’ but I don’t get it.”
“I think it just boils down to their own selfish fear,” Ochako muttered, glaring at the scroll in her own hands.
Izuku dove into another scroll-filled drawer. “If we’re going to find anything about the Original’s ties to this place, it’ll be here,” he told them.
Hitoshi threw his unrolled scroll onto a tabletop. “If I read another report about them either wanting to kill or recruit people with telepathy magic, I’m burning all of this.”
Izuku didn’t have the chance to retort, because Ochako gasped with a call of, “Izuku, come look at this!”
He rushed over. “Did you find something?”
“Well, not something related to the Original… but look! This was the last quest our mentors went on for the HPSC! They did it together.”
The ring of cheer in Ochako’s voice made Izuku puzzled for a moment, until he read the report himself. “Wow… it’s amazing they did that.”
“I know!” Ochako exclaimed, beaming.
“What happened?” Mina asked from across the room.
“Our mentors were sent on a quest to wipe out a group of stolen children,” Izuku explained. “The HPSC thought the public would be too spooked if they knew so many kids had managed to be taken, so they decided it was better for the kids to never be found at all.”
“Stupid,” Hitoshi grumbled.
“But our mentors disobeyed!” Ochako continued. “They got all the kids to a safehouse - this one church that was particularly known for their protection of children - and refused to return. The HPSC collapsed shortly after. I’m guessing they helped return all the children to their original homes after that.”
Izuku smiled as he reread the report. “To grow up in a place like this and still be that compassionate. I sometimes think our mentors are the most amazing people in the world.”
Ochako laughed, bringing a bit of light to the dark, dismal building. “I do too!”
“Have you ever thought about telling Ochako any of this?” Keigo asked, tentative. “She might benefit from-”
“That’s enough,” Kaina cut in, voice sharp enough to be more terrifying than a blade. “Where’s the one you left conscious?”
Keigo ducked his head, recognizing he couldn’t push the conversation any further. “Right over here.”
He flapped up to the tree and grabbed the thief off the branch, before dumping him on the ground in front of Kaina. She pointed the tip of her arrow an inch from his eye, and he tensed with a squeak of terror.
“Tell us where your main base is,” she demanded, pulling the arrow back further into her bow’s strings.
“Right over the hill with all the glory dew trees. There’s a big trap door by a boulder. You can’t miss it.”
Kaina scoffed, lowering her bow. “There’s loyalty for ya.”
Keigo lifted into the sky, pushed upwards with a powerful sweep of his wings. “Hey, at least this means we’ll be done by morning!”
He flew off to scout the area around the base, while Kaina gave the thief a final, satisfying kick to the head.