ATOMIC STRUGGLE

8「the lab」2

Shinso panted hard, taking a second to wipe his chin as sweat threatened to drip down to his neck. Around him, only two other people were still standing, and one of those people was the villain known as Mare. She had stubbornly kept her mouth shut except to blow darts at people that came too close to her. 

The other villain, on the other hand, had gotten under Shinso's control fairly quickly. She had been pretty talkative, so it was easy to get her to respond to a question. Currently, she was laying on the ground behind him, so that he could keep an eye on her and make sure nobody could 'wake' her. 

Everyone else had gotten hit with a dart and had fallen into a deep sleep that they couldn't wake from just yet, thanks to Mare's quirk and whatever else it entailed. Midoriya was still up and using his quirk to evade blow darts and attempting to attack Mare, who was definitely on the defensive. 

Midoriya had figured out the other villain's quirk really quickly after deducing it was activated with sight and the fact that her power was to take away someone's sight. Obviously Hitoshi had tried to get both Saku and Mare, but Saku was the only one to actually respond. 

Suddenly, as Mare was evading an attack from the greenette, she stepped on one of the sleeping victims' arms, causing her to stumble. The step had caused a snap to be heard, and Shinso realized that Iida's arm was broken. Midoriya seemed to have realized this too because he went after the stumbling Mare with a new fervor to finish her off while she was off balance. However, she forwent her own comfort in favor of shooting a dart at Midoriya, who barely dodged, but had to back off for a moment to regain himself. 

That was when Mare paused, a frown on her face as he reached up to her ear. Both Midoriya and Shinso got ready for a new kind of attack, but instead, she just sighed and let a smile light up her face. "This has been fun, guys. Just to let you know, everybody here will wake up within 24 hours. Well, see ya," She peaced as her mouth was forced open. 

Gray fluid splurted out and surrounded her and, Shinso noted with abject horror, Saku's own body was also being engulfed by metallic fluid that was coming from her mouth. Neither hero in training could react before both villains had disappeared for the clearing. 

~*~

"So, you're Lord, huh?" Souta awkwardly attempted to strike up a conversation. His companion hummed. He and the person that their leader had referred to as Lord were making their way down the path, not exactly meandering, but not running either. Powerwalking, Souta decided was a good term for it. "Art, Mori and Mare talked about you a lot, but they didn't really explain where you guys met..." He trailed off, hoping to prompt the guy to explain more about the situation. 

Luckily for him, Izak was in a fairly lenient mood, so he decided to humor his new friend that was residing in his classmate's body. "We were made at the laboratory. The doctors' goal was to create a being with a quirk so powerful that they could take down All For One. The first set of experiments were given German numbers, since they were designed by the doctor from Germany. The numbers only go up to 50 in each language, and there were twelve lead doctors at the lab. 

"Art, as you call her, was in the Russian group. Her number was Sorokodin, or 41, and that was what she was known as to everyone back at the lab. I was in the English batch, which was the seventh overall attempt. I didn't manifest my quirk until age 5, so I also had a number, but I don't remember it. When my quirk manifested, the doctors' changed what they called me to Lord, since I was their Hail Mary, so to speak. 

"Of course, the other doctors continued to do experiments, artificially creating children and raising them; some were born mutants, some manifested an emitter type quirk, and some got a transformation type. However, after all twelve doctors had their own batch, no one stood a candle to me. They tried to recreate my exact genome, but apparently my quirk was a variable, mutation or whatever else they call random, and couldn't be recreated. In fact, most of the clones they made of me ended up quirkless. I was practically vivisectioned a few times in the doctors' frustration to get more of me, only got through that thanks to my quirk."

"What is a vivisection?" Souta asked, his forehead scrunched in confusion. 

"It's basically a disection, except the subject is still alive."

"Oh.." Souta looked away, his eyes bulging at the new information as he coughed awkwardly. However, he decided to press on with the subject line since he might as well take all of the information he could get. "So, I take it you weren't randomly allowed to go out into the world, right?"

"Yes," Izak confirmed as they continued heading down the trail that had been the confines of the Test of Courage. "It's important to know that the lab operated on American soil. Barely a year ago, the FBI came with a bunch of Navy Seals and--" The maroonette paused, his lips opening to form a sneer. "Liberated the experiments from the lab and arrested all of the doctors. Some got away, like Soroko--I mean Art--did," He corrected quickly. "I hadn't seen a need to run, so I was just with everybody else as the FBI herded us to temporary housing until they could figure out what to do with all of us. 

"Eventually, we were all given names, which is how I came to be named Izak Morgan," The sneer softened into a slight smile. "I'm not sure where the name Izak came from, but I do know that Morgan was the name of the Navy Seal that headed the operation. I saw him a few times, and he interacted with me like I was a nephew or some family relation. He was the one that got me into the habit of snapping when I use my quirk. 

"Anyway, the other kids that the doctors had documented as failures were dished out to orphanages of less prestige pretty fast since the FBI thought that they wouldn't be any trouble. The ones that were documented as somewhat successful experiments, and especially me being the only experiment that the doctors had labeled a complete success, took a bit longer to find orphanages that could handle stronger and more dangerous quirks.

"I was the last to go to an orphanage, and it only lasted about a week before I'd had enough and killed everyone there," Izak shrugged, causing Souta's jaw to drop. That was way too nonchalant! "It took another week for the authorities to notice, and so they took me away and contacted the government to see what they should do with me. In the end, I was shipped off to Japan, since they had the only known person with the ability to erase quirks, even if it was a temporary eraser. Oh, I should probably ask," The maroonette glanced at his companion. "Our teacher is Eraserhead, will you be alright?"

"Huh? Oh," Souta's mind was still reeling a bit from all of the information he'd just gotten, but he managed to give an answer with the universal 'OK' sign. "As long as he's not looking at my actual body, it's all good."

"Alright then," Izak inclined his head, and that was that.