Defective (MHA)

Taiko crawled to the tree trunk and realized that he was not going to make it. The children lost interest and passed by the majestic tree, not noticing Taiko on the opposite side, almost at the very top. He tensed up, but his muscles, as luck would have it, did not obey him after such a climb up the tree. Taiko was overcome with hatred for his weakness. Why did he want to implement this plan so much?

The wasps began to cover his body, crawling over his clothes and face. At some point, realizing the situation he was in, he was overcome by a primal and paralyzing horror that did not allow him to collect his thoughts. One step to the left - one step to the right, he would fall and die. Fear...fear...fear... He could not go anywhere or run away, he was surrounded on all sides, there was no one nearby, except for useless children from whom one could not expect help. There was no way out of this situation. A sharp release of norepinephrine caused his quirk to awaken.

At first he felt heat in his childish and scrambled palms, a small heat. The seconds dragged on too long, until this heat became the only thing that focused Taiko's attention. Everything unnecessary was gone. There was a pop and the tree trunk broke off along with the hive.

The girl smelling of bacon turned around, hearing some noise and cracking, in response, the hive landed right on her head. The queen bee whose hive was destroyed considered the girl's head her new hive and climbed into the eye of the unconscious girl. Thus a new symbiotic quirk was formed. The children screamed and ran away with frozen tearful grimaces. The wasps realized something new and began to fly to the new queen bee, covering her body. After some time, the buzzing stopped, as did the sounds of birds in the forest.

***

Taiko was lying under a mountain of branches, all scratched and battered. Suddenly, light fell between the cracks in the branches into green eyes. For a moment, a familiar mustache appeared in a small gap. His empty head was not visited by thoughts at all, including because of the inability to explain what had happened and where he ended up. Just before waking up, it even seemed to him that he had died, but since he felt a sharp pain, the option was rejected by itself.

It seems that he only closed his eyes for a second, but Taiko woke up already in the hospital...

This was not the hospital he was familiar with: his first thought came to him. The room was darker and the light was dim, as if not from the sun, but from a lamp. The ceiling looked stronger and thicker. The familiar device from his life in the hospital was beeping nearby, showing the pulse and basic vital signs.

Taiko tiredly stood up and looked around the room, simultaneously feeling the treated abrasions, finding the burning pain interesting. A dark laboratory opened up to him, which was apparently underground, at least it had no windows. At the table with large monitors sat an old man in strange glasses that he knew.

- Oh, you woke up after all. - His gaze suddenly fell on the jar with bruises and formalin, inside which the Queen Bee was kept. - I would be interested to know the details of what happened so as not to speculate, young man. - Taiko felt the other side of his father. The dark and tense atmosphere made him nervously swallow the saliva that had become stuck in his throat.

- I... uh-uh. Well... - Taiko could not say anything, hiding his hands behind his back and nervously fiddling with the sleeve of his sweater. At some point, he realized what a fool he seemed to be from the outside, he was easy to read, and he himself gave everything away because of his insecurity. Father seemed like a completely different person now. Not the old head doctor, his gaze was very piercing and insightful.

Taiko realized that he had been silent and muttering for too long, trying to comprehend the fact that the girl smelling of bacon was no longer there and would not be. She would not bother him and seek his attention. Taiko already understood from the blood on the jar that something had happened to her and it was either he himself or this old man who was to blame.

- Taiko, what you did was definitely bad. - Taiko thought that this was about what he had done. - You broke our little rule and left the hospital. - Contrary to his guesses, Father was more angry about breaking the rule than about the indescribable tragedy that Taiko himself did not fully understand, but felt in his gut.

- I was wondering... - the freckled dark-haired clone of Sensei said quietly.

- I understand. There is no worse feeling than unsatisfied curiosity. - Father changed his stern tone to a softer one. - However, if you hadn't gone on your little adventure, this wouldn't have happened. - Kyudai Garaki waved his sleeve towards the jar with the Queen Bee. - A very interesting specimen, right?

Taiko stopped being so nervous and came closer to take a closer look. The queen bee with a disproportionately large pulsating belly was floating in a nutrient liquid and was in a coma. His gaze immediately caught the bruises on the jar.

- A-and what happened to that girl?

- After that incident, there was a big fuss in the hospital. - He pointed his fingers upward, making Taiko realize that they were under the hospital. - To avoid unnecessary problems and attention from the police, I had to change the focus to the forest... - He wiped the lenses of his glasses. - I hinted to them that the girl could have gotten lost in the forest. They believed me.

The scientist stood up from the table.

- It looks like I'll have to let you in on what I'm doing earlier than expected. - The scientist handed the jar with the queen bee to Taiko. The boy followed him into another room, going deeper into the laboratory.

The door swung open automatically. It was dark in the room, but a second later the light in the bulbs turned on by itself. The large room revealed several operating tables with modern equipment. On one table lay the same girl with her eye cut out. Taiko stood in a stupor. Questions arose.

- "What did he do to her?!" Why is she missing an eye? Is she alive?..." - Taiko approached hesitantly. Her skin was pale, and there was a bleeding hole in her eye. She was not breathing, she was dead. Her distracting chatter was no longer audible.

The old scholar watched the boy's reaction carefully. His voice sounded harsh in the echoing room. - Aren't you scared?

Fighting back the lumps of doubt in his throat, he decided to speak. - She didn't deserve this. Even if she was annoying.

- Whether she deserved it or not. What difference does it make? There is no God who would judge us after death, no standard of justice and fairness. It's time for you to understand, boy, the rules were invented for only one purpose - to control us like a herd. The only thing that matters in life is knowledge and strength. You will become truly strong only when you understand this, and the will from outside will stop imposing "rules" on you.

His words were alien and not entirely clear to Taiko. Noticing the lack of understanding in his eyes, the old man smiled.

- You will understand in time. - Kyudai pressed the wall button, a small gate opened, which led to the red-hot furnace of the crematorium. Taiko felt an intense heat. The girl's corpse was sent straight into the furnace. Tongues of flame enveloped her body and began to impartially turn it into dust.

Taiko continued to look at the flames with a mesmerized gaze, raging through the durable thermal glass of the crematorium chamber. Deep inside the scientist and the All for One clone, questions tormented him. Taiko wondered how he had managed to survive and get off with only bruises after falling from such a height. In addition, Kyudai Garaki suspects the destruction of the tree of the quirk of one of the children, and considering the fact that Taiko was at the epicenter of events and was suspiciously under the branches, it definitely hints at not just his indirect participation, but direct.

- "This small explosion that knocked down the crown of the tree could be a spontaneous awakening of Taiko's quirk. We need to organize a couple of lessons for him," the scientist thought.

Support and bonus content: patreon.com/Verrix