Viridian: The Green Guide

Chapter 24: Bees

After dinner, Izuku finally had a moment to inspect the robotic bee he'd found. He'd have to give it to Eraserhead later, but he may as well find out as much about it as he could before then. It was the least he could do after all the trouble he'd caused Eraser last night.

He took the ziplock out of his bag and looked at it. At first glance, it seemed to be made of metal, but the longer he looked, the more it seemed like that couldn't be quite right. It didn't seem as shiny as it should be, which could be explained by some sort of matte finish, but that didn't explain the way that some parts of the bee seemed to be almost deteriorating, as if the bee itself were actually organic.

Izuku got out a notebook and jotted down a few ideas. He obviously didn't have the tools to break down the chemistry of the robot in his room, but there were many quirks that granted control over technology. There were also quirks that created metal-like alloys from the user's blood or tissue. Knowing that, it was completely possible that this bee was actually the result of a quirk, which would make it both organic and inorganic at the same time. And if it was the result of a quirk, there might be some mention of it in the news, especially if this quirk user had dosed people similarly in the past.

Over the next hour, Izuku found quite a few similar quirks, including one that allowed the user to control any living bees they came in contact with through pheromones, which was super cool and had Izuku reaching toward his notebook, but the most noteworthy belonged to a villain that had gained the moniker of Queen Bee a few years in Naruhata. There were several conflicting stories, considering that the people who controlled the bees seemed to have multiple quirks, which just wasn't possible. The most likely theory was that Queen Bee was actually some sort of parasite that infected a host. The host could still use their original quirk, but the parasite created a sort of hive mind that the Queen herself controlled.

It was a fascinating quirk and Izuku wondered how the heroes would even counter that. Maybe if they destroyed the queen? But there was always the possibility that another bee would simply become the queen, so if that was the case, they would have to find some way to track down every bee and destroy them, which would be pretty much impossible. It was a shame that such a powerful quirk was being used for evil. Izuku could think of so many ways that it could help people. The bees seemed to be able to hold small amounts of any liquid, so they could administer life-saving medicine, or even antidotes if a villain with a poisonous quirk attacked. Considering the hive mind, the host could most likely use the bees to spy and gather valuable intelligence by being an almost literal fly on the wall because no one ever paid attention to bugs. It was such a cool quirk!

Izuku took the bee out of the bag and tried to see if there was any way to hack into it. It probably didn't have a hard line, but since it had robotic elements, it most likely had had some way to communicate with it's queen, which meant that izuku could slip in and hopefully get into the bee's head. Of course, since the bee was quirk-made, there was a possibility that the robotic look was just a side effect and it was impossible to hack in, but it was worth a try, at least.

It took a lot of experimentation and it was almost time for bed when Izuku finally managed to wirelessly connect to the bee's...brain? Hard drive? Most of the files were corrupted, which was understandable considering how mangled the bee itself was, but Izuku did manage to find one called Directives. After quickly checking for viruses and trackers, which didn't turn up anything, Izuku opened the file.

If (Abdomen = full) {Inject any human}

Else {return to hive}

There were a few more commands, but that was the one that stood out to Izuku the most. That meant that the instant villains really were random victims, not simply using the bees as some sort of alternate injection method to get high. But why? What did Queen Bee stand to gain by turning random people into villains?

Of course, finding more information on Queen Bee led him down a rabbit hole of the instant villain craze that had happened in Naruhata. Just like what was happening right now, unsuspecting civilians were being dosed with trigger to cause chaos. On the surface, it seemed that Queen Bee was one of those villains that simply enjoyed causing senseless destruction, and that would have been the end of it, except for the fact that people called Next Level Villains popped up a little after that.

The Next Level Villains had all been instant villains at one time or another, but then disappeared. They reappeared a few months later manifesting permanent changes from human experimentation and dosed with huge quantities of trigger. Thankfully, they didn't have any permanent mental changes after the drug wore off and were mostly able to return to their normal lives, but none of them remembered being kidnapped or who had experimented on them.

Izuku frowned. The people behind this operation obviously had some goal in mind. Their experiments were leading to something, the only question was, what? It couldn't be the Next Level villains, because then the instant villains would have stopped after those appeared in Naruhata. Were they trying to find a way to make quirks more powerful? But trigger did that on it's own. So maybe trying to find a way to make a quirk permanently more powerful?

That made a lot more sense. Izuku was sure that many people with weak quirks would be willing to go through a lot of pain, and probably pay a lot of money, if they could have their quirk become permanently stronger. It did provide motive.

But then why have the instant villains? If they wanted to make the stronger quirks permanent, then why go through the trouble of dosing random people with a temporary drug, unless...unless they were using these incidents to evaluate victims for their experiments. They would be able to see which people had promising quirks and see how they reacted to the drug, then kidnap them later. Queen Bee wasn't creating instant villains to cause chaos and fear among the public and heroes, she was scouting out potential victims for the next round of experiments.

Izuku jumped as his vigilante alarm went off. Had he really been doing this half the night? Izuku stood and stretched, wincing as his back popped. He'd been in front of a screen for hours and really didn't want to spend another few hours sitting in the same position. He felt so selfish, because he was supposed to be helping people, even if it meant that he was in pain, but he just couldn't bring himself to sit back down. If only he could go out on the streets again.

Izuku paused and looked at his cast. The doctor said six weeks, and it had really only been around five, but...well, his arm was probably mostly healed by now. He should be fine to run around now, as long as he was careful to avoid getting into any fights. Izuku tried to talk himself out of going out, but apparently he'd been going more stir crazy over the past few weeks than he'd thought. Something about being homeschooled was making him even more restless to go out and run from the heroes.

Izuku dug his vigilante outfit out from the back of his closet and put it on, making sure he had a few marbles. It probably wouldn't be the best to use his slingshot until he got the cast off, so he didn't need enough for ammo, but he did need enough to let the heroes know it was him! He also grabbed the robotic bee from where it was sitting on his table, putting it back in the ziplock bag. This would be the perfect time to hand it over to Eraserhead and share what he'd just found out!

By the time Izuku left the apartment, he was buzzing with nervous energy. As he took off toward his patrol route, he couldn't help the wide smile that spread across his face. He'd really missed this.