TradedCages

“No, sir.” Wally admits quietly. “I do know my own number though.”

“That’s good, you can use the Dick’s phone to call yours.”

“I don’t have his password, can you unlock it?” Wally hands out the phone to Bruce, thanking Alfred as he put a plate of breakfast in front of him.

Bruce goes to unlock the phone but is interrupted by a commotion of the front door opening and slamming back shut. Bruce jumps up out of his seat and races towards the front hall. There is a small thud and a murmured “Shit.” And then Bruce is entering the hall to see Kid Flash- in uniform- in his foyer.

Alfred, Damian, and Wally are all behind him as the stutter to stops at the sight. Except for Wally, who brushes past them all and approaches Dick in Wally’s body.

Bruce knew that Wally was Kid Flash. But he was not expecting Dick to have decided to run here like that.

“Hey!” Dick exclaims, rubbing his head and glancing at the crowd. “It is actually so hard to go slow in this body. I tried and then ran into the wall.”

“Yeah, it takes some getting used to.” Wally mutters. “Did you run all the way here?”

“I did yeah. I wasn’t going to, but then I couldn’t walk around at a normal speed and I didn’t want to go wandering around in this outfit anyway. I am not prepared to fight your enemies, I don’t know how your powers work. So, I just ran here instead. Thought it would be faster than trying to get transportation.”

“Definitely.” Wally takes a deep breath, and then sighs slowly. “I’m sorry this happened when I was in uniform.”

Oh, you couldn’t have known.” Dick waved him off. “It’s my birthday.Sorry if it pulled you away from something.”

“I had just finished, it’s fine.” Both of them were being entirely too awkward. “Happy birthday.”

Dick smiled and chirped, “ Thanks!”

Bruce cleared his throat, drawing attention to himself. “ Perhaps you should switch back now.”

“Right!” Wally, without delay, put his hand- Dick’s hand- on his own body’s cheek, where it was uncovered by the mask. A dizzying moment later, they are back in their own bodies.

“Well, you must be hungry after that run, why don’t we all go back to enjoying some breakfast.” Alfred directed Damian back to the kitchen by his shoulder and the rest of them followed.

“There is this Doctor, who does all sorts of genetic experimentation. He studies quirks, truly fascinated by them, but he doesn’t really care about things like ethics and legalities getting in his way. And long story short, he somehow got ahold of some of Eraserhead’s DNA -don’t ask me how, I wasn’t alive for that- and he used it in one of his experiments. The result was me. A clone created in the efforts to combine Eraserhead’s quirk with a different quirk.” Izuku gestures to himself. “The Doctor had some people working for him, one of them aged me up so they could skip right to the age of quirk development, and another implanted memories in me so I would know what my ‘purpose’ was. I am technically a failure. The doctor was trying to get the other quirk to become eyesight based, but Eraserhead’s quirk turned out to be dominant. The Doctor was going to kill me and start over, but he got an offer to work with some other villain, big opportunity, and he jumped on it immediately. He left the shutting down of that worksite to a few underlings, and luckily enough, one of them decided to save me instead of kill me.”

“That was when I was around five, what they aged me up to in order for my quirk to develop, so it was a while ago. So far as I know the Doctor is still working his new job. And I try to stay far away from any whispers of him. I don’t know exactly what he would do to me if he knew I am still alive, but I know I don’t want to experience it.”

“Okay. So, some clarifying questions. Do you have any idea who this Doctor is? Or have any other information on him?”

Izuku shakes his head. “No, he had a few actual names, changed them whenever he started working somewhere new officially. And I only know that because I heard them talking about the Doctor getting a job at a new hospital and needing new papers. But the only thing he was ever called while doing his illegal work was Doctor.”

“Is there anything at all you can tell us? Do you know who he is working for now?”

“Nothing helpful. No one actually talked to me in that place. I was less of a person and more of a tool to those people. It wasn’t like I could ask any questions. The only name for his new employer I got was mutterings of All for One made by other staff.”

Tsukauchi sucked in a breath at this. “You said this was ten years ago?”

Izuku nodded slowly. “Roughly. I know the date we left was about ten years ago.”

There is a moment of silence as Tsukauchi takes a breath, writes a few notes, then shakes his head. “You said you stay away from him, do you know where he is now?”

“Last I heard he was setting up shop somewhere in the Tohoku region.” Izuku shrugs. “But he always moves whenever people get suspicious. And they always do, because wherever he goes, people disappear. He always needs new people for his experiments.”

“He needs people now? Not just DNA?” Aizawa asks.

“Uh, yeah.” Izuku wrings his hands together. “The new job, it still lets him experiment with quirks, but I know that his work with cloning stopped with me. Whatever he is doing, he is taking people for it. It’s hard to get information without popping up on his radar, so I don’t know anything aside from that.”

“Well, that is worrisome. I will try to look into patterns of missing people.” Tsukauchi says, jotting down more notes. “Do you know what kind of people he is looking for? Easy targets, age range, anything could help.”