╬══════════════════⟪⟪⟨◣𓆣◢⟩⟫⟫══════════════════╬
Musutafu City - 150 Years Later.
RRRR—CLANK—SHRRK
The sound of clashing metal and overworked engines filled the air.
"Hmm…? You there? Hakuchi!"
A fat, unkempt-looking man walked up to the young worker with prominent white ears, who appeared to be dozing off behind a massive piece of heavy machinery.
"Hey, old man… didn't I tell you last time to stop calling me that?" he growled, barely sitting up.
"It's Haku, not Hakuchi, you greasy idiot!"
"Oh, my apologies," the man replied mockingly, tilting his head. "Didn't realize furballs were that sensitive."
"Or is it just shedding season?"
"…Alright, that's it. I'm filing a complaint with Human Resources."
"Perfect," he answered almost automatically.
"You gonna add that this is the third time I've caught you sleeping two hours before your break?"
"Tch…"
Haku looked away as he stood up, trying to understand why the shift supervisor had come looking for him personally.
Maruta, for his part—despite appearances—wasn't the type to rat people out.
After decades working in construction, he understood how brutal the job could be.
Especially for someone as young as that mutation-type quirk kid who, if his instincts were right—and recalling the clearly doctored documents he had personally reviewed later—didn't even meet the minimum requirements to be there.
If he was being honest, he had been reluctant to bring him onto the team from day one.
But it was also obvious that his hiring had been nothing more than a matter of numbers.
The kid's quirk cut costs, saved time, and made certain tasks easier without ever having to stop the worksite.
And if something went wrong…
Well.
There was always the easy way out.
An administrative review here.
A lawsuit threat there.
And the company avoided any uncomfortable compensation.
It was awful.
Everyone knew it.
And the kid probably did too.
But hey…
Mutants had to find some way to put food on the table, right?
Maruta sighed and tossed him a safety helmet with a careless flick, nodding his chin toward an area cordoned off with yellow tape.
"You're up for inspection."
Haku blinked.
"…Is this some kind of bad joke?" he growled. "Because you've never been good at those, old man."
"Come on," Maruta replied with a shrug. "In and out. Ten minutes—fifteen, tops."
"Nothing complicated."
"Yeah, unless I get crushed to death first!" he growled. "You damn sociopath.
He jammed the helmet onto his head and swept his gaze across the site, clearly irritated.
"And Kibayashi?" he asked. "Isn't this supposed to be his kind of job?"
"Isn't he still here because of his sensory quirk?"
"He took the week off," Maruta replied without much interest. "Said something about a family emergency."
"And you believed him?"
Maruta hesitated for a second and lowered his voice slightly.
"If I'm being completely honest… I overheard him on the phone the other day, talking about a proposal with a local contractor."
"I think he mentioned a name… Uraraka Kōmu-ten, or something like that."
"Great," Haku spat.
"And in the meantime, all this crap gets dumped on me."
He fell silent for a few seconds.
"…But I don't blame him," he muttered at last, resigned.
"Neither do I," Maruta said. "Things have gotten a bit… heavy around here lately."
He shook his head, then straightened up quickly.
"Anyway. I need you to go down a few meters. Check if the ground's still stable after the last excavations."
"And try to wipe that look off your face. Look—I was thinking of grabbing a drink with the guys. If it helps, how about I buy you a beer after the shift?"
"I'm not a drunk like the rest of you, old man," he replied without looking back as he headed toward the marked area.
"But a bowl of carrot donburi wouldn't be bad…"
He stopped at the edge of the zone and stomped the ground three times.
The terrain responded immediately, giving way as if something invisible had been digging from within. A circular opening formed beneath his feet and swallowed him whole.
His quirk—Burrow—aside from giving him an appearance absurdly similar to that of a rabbit (much to his eternal irritation), allowed him to move through earth simply by stepping on it.
Fast trenches.
Temporary access points.
Improvised underground channels.
Work that would normally take hours, he could do in seconds.
And that was precisely why it was so dangerous.
His quirk didn't analyze.
It didn't detect structural faults, air pockets, or internal stress points.
It simply pushed its way through them.
And doing so blindly, when the ground hadn't yet been declared stable, meant only one thing.
Going down.
Testing the terrain with his own body.
And praying it wouldn't collapse on top of him.
"Yeah…" Haku muttered as he pressed his foot down again, causing the opening to stretch even farther below. "Nothing complicated at all."
The layers continued to part, one after another, until the light could no longer reach him.
And he knew it was time to stop.
He remained still, holding his breath.
He placed one hand against the nearest wall. Then the other. Pressed carefully.
Knocked on the earth twice with his knuckles and waited.
Nothing.
He slid his foot forward slowly, testing the ground before putting his weight on it.
One step.
Then another.
The earth trembled faintly, releasing a low sound—almost a muted echo—that faded away within seconds.
Haku let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Cold sweat ran down the back of his neck.
Convinced that everything seemed stable, he looked for the firmest spot around him to begin forming a path back to the surface.
That's when he found it.
Pressed against one side of the tunnel—an irregular cavity, as if something had been forcibly embedded there—the silhouette of an emerald-colored object protruded, partially covered in damp soil.
He had finished sooner than expected.
And with the confidence that the area was, at the very least, stable, curiosity pushed him closer.
Maybe he'd gotten lucky and stumbled onto something worth selling.
Though, if he was being honest with himself, he had no idea what kind of valuable object could possibly turn up in a place like this.
He ran his gloved hands over the exposed surface, checking its consistency.
Small.
And surprisingly hard.
He tried to pull it free, but it didn't budge at all.
He tried again.
Even when he shifted part of his weight onto it, the object remained firmly anchored in the ground.
Frustrated, muscles already tight, he tightened his grip and stretched one leg back.
THUMP… THUMP… THUMP
The ground suddenly gave way.
A hole opened beneath him, instantly releasing the pressure that had kept the object trapped.
Haku held it up in front of him, confused.
"…A toy?"
It barely extended past the palm of his hand.
Compact. Symmetrical.
Clearly artificial, with its oval shape and vaguely insect-like design.
There were no visible markings.
No inscriptions.
No obvious moving parts.
He was just about to wonder how something like this had ended up buried so deep—and in such good condition after withstanding so much pressure—when one of his ears picked up something.
It was faint.
Almost imperceptible.
But it was there.
Then the surface around him began to crack.
Thin fractures spread in every direction.
And water started seeping through them.
At first in narrow lines, quickly turning into uneven streams bursting from the walls and ceiling.
Everything happened so fast that Haku didn't snap out of his daze until a section of the tunnel broke loose and slammed straight into his helmet.
The impact tore it off his head and threw him hard against the wall.
Then another hit.
And another.
Everything around him was giving way.
The walls were collapsing.
The water kept pouring in.
And he was going to die. If he didn't get out of there!
Panic-stricken, he forced his quirk again and again, opening tunnels as fast as he could—but they collapsed immediately, crumbling before he could even begin to enter them.
Then he tried changing strategy and climbing.
It didn't work.
The surfaces were too slick and brittle from the moisture.
His hands gave out.
His feet slipped.
Every attempt ended with his body slamming back into the bottom once more.
And then he noticed it.
At some point, everything had started to shake.
He had to get out.
He had to get out now!
He had to—
He had to—
What was he supposed to do?!
"Help!" he screamed, his voice breaking. "Help! Is anyone there?! Please—anyone…!"
Unable to find another solution, he kept begging, his throat burning, praying that someone would hear him and pull him out.
The water was already up to his waist.
Chunks of earth, stones, and increasingly larger debris kept falling, striking him, forcing him down, making it difficult even to stay upright.
He tried to ignore the panic.
And forced himself to focus.
He heard it.
And for an instant, he felt something almost like hope.
Footsteps.
Dozens of them.
All of them… moving away.
Whatever was happening down there was apparently happening on the surface as well—and apparently, no one was going to stop for him.
They had abandoned him.
"God…" he whispered, his voice broken, sliced apart by the trembling that still wracked his body.
"How… how did it all end up like this?"
The shaking only intensified.
The water had nearly submerged him completely when, for a moment—strangely calm—he wondered whether anyone would ever find his body…
Or if they would simply leave him there.
Reduced to nothing more than one more orphaned mutant gone.
Then—
"Hey! Furball! Are you still there?!" a voice shouted from above.
"Can you hear me?! Hakuchi?!"
"Damn it, you idiot, answer!"
"Haku!"
And then he saw him.
The most irritating person he had ever been forced to work with.
Old-fashioned.
Rude.
Abusive.
A disgusting fat bastard who never missed a chance to mock him.
But there he was.
Hanging from a rope.
In the middle of a collapse.
Just to look for him..
"Here! Over here!" Haku shouted, raising his arm. "I'm here!"
Maruta turned at the sound and lowered himself a little further.
He looked relieved.
And strangely… thinner.
"What the hell are you waiting for?!" he roared. "Climb up already!"
From his abdomen, a second rope emerged and dropped down toward the boy.
Maruta had a quirk that allowed him to create ropes using his own body fat.
He'd called it Grease Knot.
It wasn't elegant.
Nor was it particularly practical.
But it had saved his hide more than once.
What he'd never imagined was that one day he'd use it to risk his own life for a kid he barely knew.
He wasn't going to lie to himself and say he was a good person.
Or that he was trying to live out some frustrated hero's dream.
But he'd promised that boy a bowl of carrot donburi in exchange for going down into that mess.
And damn it—
He was going to keep that promise!
The boy grabbed the rope as if his life depended on it.
He started climbing immediately, while fragments of dirt and rock kept raining down around him. It didn't help that the slick walls offered no solid point to brace against.
Still—
They both climbed.
Haku began stripping away everything that was soaked—anything that felt like it might drag him back down.
"Hey, idiot," the voice above growled. "If you're not planning on throwing away those ears too, you'd better hurry. This hole isn't going to hold much longer."
As if the place had taken that as a personal challenge, the walls began to close in, collapsing in waves, forcing them to pick up the pace even more.
But unlike the boy's young body, the old man's was starting to fail.
Holding a rope that long for that much time had taken its toll.
What had once been thick, sagging limbs were now almost completely spent—drawn tight, hard, and painfully thin.
His vision blurred.
Stubbornness forced his body to keep responding, but he wasn't an idiot.
At this rate, he'd collapse before reaching the surface.
Before he could curse himself for the stupid way he was about to die, a pale hand grabbed him firmly.
Haku.
The boy seized his arm and hauled him upward without a single word, digging his feet in fiercely and forcing the climb even harder.
"You know," he said between gasps, "it's impressive how you manage to stay just as ugly no matter your weight, old man… though at least now you're easier to handle."
Maruta barely managed to twist his lips into something resembling a smile.
He focused on keeping the rope steady with what little strength he had left.
He just needed to hold on a bit longer.
Long enough for that insolent brat to get them out of there.
There was no room left for more words.
The boy kept climbing, feeling Maruta's weight grow lighter and lighter in his arms.
And then, finally—
The edge.
Just a few more meters.
But his relief didn't last long.
The rope holding them together began to crumble in on itself, drying out and snapping without warning. Haku turned his head and found Maruta hanging unconscious against his chest, reduced to almost nothing.
There was no time to think.
Instinct took over.
Haku bent his legs and jumped.
And as they launched themselves upward, he begged the world—just this once—to let that absurdly useless-looking body be good for something.
Daylight blinded him even before the impact with the surface hit.
He rolled across loose dirt and debris, his heart hammering so hard in his ears that it left him stunned for several seconds.
Gasping, he lifted his head only to stare at the massive chasm that had swallowed the hill.
They were out.
"Hah… we… did it…" he laughed, out of breath. "Old man…"
He turned.
Maruta lay beside him, motionless. Shrunken down to almost nothing. Panic climbed up his throat.
Had he…?
Then the old man coughed.
"Huh…?" His eyes snapped open, still dazed. "Are we alive…?" He blinked. "We're alive! You're incredible, kid!"
Haku let out a weak laugh as he realized he'd worried for nothing over that idiot.
All the built-up tension shattered at once, and he let himself fall back beside him, too exhausted to keep himself upright.
"Yeah…" he said between laughs. "And you know what? I think I definitely want that beer now, old man."
"Tough luck," Maruta growled, "because right now I'm pretty damn sure I'm going for a huge plate of donburi."
The old man's stomach growled so obscenely that he didn't even try to hide it…
"Though… five wouldn't sound bad either."
They fell silent for a moment.
And then they laughed.
Covered in dust.
Broken.
But safe.
╬══════════════════⟪⟪⟨◣𓆣◢⟩⟫⟫══════════════════╬
Hey, how's it going? How are you?
If you made it this far, it probably means you're at least curious about what's going to happen next, and I hope I can keep you entertained.
Quick note: yeah, Izuku didn't show up yet. Sorry.
He'll be in the next chapter.
This chapter was originally meant to be a single one, but it ended up longer than I expected, so I split it into two parts.
And as always, if you've got any comments, criticism, or something you want to point out, feel free to leave it below.