#experiments tw

Leather cuffs strained against small wrists as Natalia threw her weight against them, thrashing to escape the hands that tried to hold her down, but Misha was merciless, had always been merciless. Screams still haunted the walls of the laboratory as the red haired girl fought, one of the other girls.

Inessa. Her voice was rough, tore through her throat at a higher pitch then the others.

There was peace in knowing that… as long as Inessa screamed it wasn’t Yelena, it wasn’t her sister. Still young, still sweet, still not ready for the  ‘next step’. Natalia herself was only ten, Inessa fifteen, but Madame told her she was moving up quickly, the prize of the soviet empire.

It didn’t feel like much of a prize. Girls entered the lab through cold, steel doors and either they returned, pale faced and catatonic, or they were never seen again. “NO!” A simple word but it seemed to be enough to set off the man trying to hold her down carefully. Large hands clamped around her shoulder, pressing them down onto the metal table she was tied to.

Cold panic crashed over the red room’s apprentice, feet scrambled over cold metal, trying to get a grip, her fingernails gained purchase on the soft flesh of the mains arm, tearing at his skin. Misha simply grunted, eased his grip, then slammed the girl back down, hard. Hard enough for her head to hit the metal.

“Now, sweet one, this isn’t the way for a future widow to behave.”

Natalia seized to move immediately as the steady thud of a cane struck the floor, walking ever closer. The voice made her shiver. Sweet as honey, so much care placed into it, but it never warmed, never made the words feel sincere.

“Administer the Serum.” The woman gave the order. A heartbeat later they tied off both of her arms, restraining blood flow to reveal her veins. Needles, thick and long pushed into her skin.

“Be strong, girl. You are marble and marble doesn’t break and you!” The voice turned to the man restraining her.

“If you can’t restrain a little girl we have no further use for you here, leave.” And leave he did, without as much as a second glance. This would have been her chance to fight, to claw open the restraints, to run before her screams joined Inessa’s, but every inch of fight Natalia had had accumulated at some point melt away with the arrival of Madame Helena.

“Don’t scream.” A voice whispered into her ear. Natalia flinched, taking a shaky breath.

“Scream and you’re dead.” The young girl repeated, her voice barely audible as she withdrew into herself, eyes glazing over as she trained her gaze onto the ceiling, hollow, as if her soul simply vanished into nothingness while faceless scientists hooked her up to the tubes, filled with electric blue liquid and wires leading back to a heart monitor.

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A gasp, something screeched in her ears, fuzzy. Her body was on fire, gasoline running through her veins. It was hard to breathe, to force air into her lungs, to stop her body from shaking in agony. Eyes screwed shut, only to rip open a heartbeat later. Seconds stretched to minutes, to hours as fire burned through her heart, her fingertips, down to her toes, eating its way inside her bones.

Still Natalia refused to scream. Willpower being the only thing that held her together as she drowned in pain.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen!” The words were registered but she couldn’t react to them, nor know who had spoken them as her body was thrown in another fit of convulsions, tearing against her restraints.

“The serum is burning her from the inside.”

“Her death will be on your hands.”

“Let her, another girl not worthy of the program. Another failed attempt. There will be others.”

Scream and you’re dead… Natalia held the words close, repeating them like a mantra over and over as her heart threatened to shatter her ribcage as it beat faster and ever faster.

The fire raged on inside of her, yet she never made a sound…

She was marble, marble didn’t break…

A last thought before darkness finally claimed her.

Even though he had only been told the tale once, as is custom in the Midoriya Clan, he remembers every word. Sometimes even whispered the tale to himself during the rougher days of elementary and middle school. It was forbidden to repeat stories already told, even to yourself, but Izuku needed to hear the story during those days.

The tale was a Tragedy, Izuku knew, but it also was a story of Hope in the Darkest of Days.

So, as Izuku watches everybody around him and holds Eri close because he’s the only one she’s letting close to him, in the hospital, recovering. He remembers the tale and the emotions it gave him.

So, as the adults in the room try to figure out a way to do the tests on Eri without causing a breakdown, Izuku carefully sets Eri down beside him on the hospital bed and adjusts their position so she’s laying next to him and they’re cuddling. Grimacing only a little bit as his injuries twitch and scream at him in irritation at his movements.

She stares at him in confusion, holding tight to his hospital gown.

He smiles at him and, ignoring every Midoriya instinct screaming at him to not tell the tale before non-Midoriya’s, whispers, “Would you like to hear a tale?” Eri blinks at him and tilts her head.

“Tale?” she whispers back. He nods. It may be forbidden, he thinks back to his instincts, but she needs this. Just let me give her something to hold on to as Hope. The instincts quiet down just like he knew they would.

“Would you like to hear a tale? You don’t have to,” he repeats the question, voice still in a whisper.

She thinks about it then nods her head, curling up closer to Izuku.

Izuku breathes in then out. He stares at the ceiling. The tale comes easily to him once he begins.

He begins, whispering the tale to Eri like all of his ancestors before him,

“This story takes place 200 years ago, around the beginning of the First Quirk Appearance. There were two orphan siblings, one older and one younger. The older brother was born with a Quirk. The younger brother was born Quirkless.”

“When the younger brother was six years old, one day on his way home from school, a van appeared and took him away. The van belonged to the government. He was sent to, what was called, the Lab.”

Eri’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, “But he’s Quirkless? I thought only Quirked people were taken .” Eri had also tensed at the word Lab. Izuku rubs her arm up and down soothingly.

“Not this Lab. This lab has been taking Quirkless children by the millions since the 20th century, long before Quirks showed up. And they had many facilities all over the world.” What’s even more of a tragedy was that this was a government-funded agency. There would be no Heroes and officers rescuing these children, not with the bureaucracy in the way. Izuku kept this thought to himself.

Eri looks up at him, “What about the Quirked brother? How did he react?”

Izuku shrugs and shakes his head. “Nobody knows. The only survivor who came forward to tell his story was the younger brother. We don’t know the older brother’s side. And this tale is lost through time so nobody knows the story.” Eri frowns sadly at that.

“The Lab and its Men in White Lab Coats tormented and experimented on these children. Few survived after the first couple of experiments. The younger brother being one of the few survivors. His birth name is lost in Time, having been forcibly changed to Subject 27 by the Men in White Lab Coats, codenamed First by the other children while they were in the Lab. For Subject 27 had been the first child since the Lab’s establishment whose body had accepted the experiments. The first who was able to access and use the powers forced inside of him and buried into his DNA. There were four other children out of the 25 million stuck in the Japanese branch’s Lab who survived the experiments. They were Subjects 100, 48, 19, and 9, codenamed Jagger, Gadget, Ruff, and Tiny respectively. When First was 14 years old, so a year younger than my age, some of the newbies started rebelling. They almost escaped if they hadn’t been killed off or dead because of the experiments, much to the Men in White Lab Coats’ disappointment. The five children who had survived the experiments had observed what had happened, using Jagger’s electronic power, noting the do’s and don’ts of escaping. Then, they conserved their energy, doing less as good on their training simulations but passing it off as their body just recovering from the latest set of experiments.” 

He pauses to take a breath and let Eri digest what she was being told. The trembling that had started up once he talked about the experiments and such slowed down when he mentioned they were planning to escape.

She looks up at him in confusion when she realizes that he wasn’t talking anymore, “Why’d you stop?” He smiles softly in response and continues.

“So, when the time was right, they struck. Jagger turned off all the power and purposely spread a computer virus to every single electronic in the facility. Unleashing the eldritch monsters some of the poor children had turned into because of the experiments due to their mind not being able to handle it. While also releasing the five children from their cages. While the poor monster children caused chaos and brought revenge upon their creators before the injuries and the experiments finally kill them, the five children escape in the chaos. Tiny gathers up all the paper evidence they will need, Ruff steals their weapons, Gadget turns each chemical component in the Lab into a bomb using the power forced upon her, and First weakens the infrastructure using her telekinetic powers. They stole an automatic self-driving car and First set the entire facility on fire while Jagger forced the electronic fence to open up then close behind them, turning up the electricity as it closes. According to First, it had set on fire soon after. They watched as the place they had known for most of their lives burn down to the ground. They knew the government agency would be after them, so they went on the run. Relying on each other to survive. Tiny and Jagger sent all the information they had gathered to the media on every platform, including the public internet.”

Izuku takes another breath and looks down to see Eri had laid her head on his chest and had her eyes closed. She was relaxed, but Izuku knew she was listening.

He didn’t realize the conversation around him has stopped. That everybody was listening to his story now, including the Pro Heroes resting in the room with him.

“First was 18 years old by the time the revolution/protests/riots they had started up came to a close. The Lab had managed to kill off every single one of the surviving kids, until First was the only one left. But thanks to their efforts, change was coming. The government agency that once was the Lab had been stripped and forcibly shut down, the remaining children freed and returned to their family. Once the public realized that it was Quirkless children who were being taken and their own who were forcing these powers upon those children, the public fairly quickly turned in favor of the Quirked population. People lost their trust in the government. Reform was demanded. Hero Society was created in response, not only to take care of the growing number of criminals with powers, but also to gain public favor again. The public wasn’t fooled. Under First’s command, the protesters stormed government capital in every country. They sat within the capital and made change upon, with the experimented-on children, the Quirked people, and other minority groups having the most sway over what will change. The rich were executed in front of their peers, politicians were stripped of their power, and the People took control with minorities having the most say as to what changes will take place. The government took back control 20 years after these reforms; unfortunately for the government though, the people had made it impossible for any loopholes or changes to be made to their reforms. Unfortunately for the Quirkless and ‘Weak Quirk’ holders, the government responded by changing public perspective on them over the next 200 years with propaganda and painting them out to be not worthy of living in this world.”

“Subject 27, or Tsunayoshi as he grew to call himself, never found out about his older brother nor reunited with him. But he never really did give up on the idea that one of these days, his older brother was going to found out what had happened to him. Tsunayoshi had decided to keep his identity a secret so by the time the reforms happened, everybody had forgotten what he looked like. So, his brother couldn’t exactly know it was him. Tsunayoshi was 23 years old when he approached a Midoriya, a Record Keeper, and asked for them to keep his story.”

Izuku finishes the story the same way Midoriya’s always finish the story, “I tell you this tale so that you may live.”

Eri had relaxed completely, glad that the Lab was gone yet sad that the two brothers never reunited. He glanced down to see that she was fast asleep and smiles. Even though it’s a sad tale… I haven’t even introduced Papa to her and she’s already a Midoriya.

“The older brother never wondered?” Someone speaks up. Izuku flinches and turns his head to see that everybody was sitting or lying in a hospital bed, looking at him.

He blushes when he realizes that he had gotten lost in the story and forgotten where he was.

Papa’s gonna be so angry at me when he founds out…

He stammers, “E- eh? I – I - …. Uh… What?”

“The older brother,” Mirio, sitting across from him, repeats, “This Tsunayoshi’s older brother. He never wondered?”

Izuku pauses then shrugs, “We don’t know. We were only ever told Tsunayoshi’s side of the story. Neither Tsuna nor any of us Midoriyas, nor the other surviving children before their deaths, learned of what the older brother’s fate was, not even Jagger was able to find any information on him. His story never got told.” Izuku had always been saddened by that, that they don’t even have a name and the older brother never learned of where his younger brother had gone.