Chapter Text
Izuku wakes up in time to catch his alarm before it goes off. An analog All Might proudly presents a bold, red-lettered MON 6:00 AM, and Izuku lets himself lay in bed for a few more minuets before getting up to start the day.
By six-twenty-one, Izuku has made his way down to the communal kitchen. The only other person awake and functioning two hours before class begins is Iida, who looks up from his breakfast to greet him.
“Morning, Iida,” Izuku says, reaching to peek inside the fridge. He takes out the carton eggs from the back and wonders if he should make tamagoyaki or one of those traditional American-style omelets Toshinori likes. “I think we’re almost out of eggs—who was supposed to be on shopping duty yesterday?”
“Mina and Sero, I think,” Todoroki enters from behind, and Izuku turns to give him a smile. He was pretty sure that Todoroki wasn’t a morning person, but he still woke up early anyways, even if he just stayed in his room until a more reasonable hour. Sometimes he’d join Izuku and Iida early, but it was a bit of a surprise to see Todoroki on Monday morning. “But they didn’t go, they had extra classes. I guess we just forgot.”
Iida groans. “As class president, I should have seen that coming.” He frowns down at his rice before adjusting his glasses. “I’ll ask Mr. Aizawa about sending someone tonight or tomorrow.”
Izuku huffs a laugh, pulling out a pan from above the oven. “It’s all good, Iida. Don’t beat yourself up over it.” Todoroki moves in the corner of his eye, serving himself some rice, yawning. Izuku lights the stove and decides to go with the American omelet, just to shake things up a little (and maybe because Uraraka was nagging him about his “crazy dedication to routine” and “absolutely repetitive eating choices” the other day).
Iida has finished his breakfast and cleaned his dishes by six-thirty-nine but opts to still sit with Todoroki and Izuku as they work on their own food. He’s reading over a stack of papers carefully, and it catches Izuku’s attention—he lights up once he realizes what it is.
“Is that your essay?”
Iida confirms, and he’s happy to go over it with Izuku. Mr. Aizawa didn’t often hand out big essays like this assignment, and the class had been given two weeks to finish it—and it was turning out to be one of Izuku’s favorite assignments of the semester. An in-debth analytical break-down of either a closed (public) hero case or one of the class’ own practical lessons (of their own choosing), complete with a persuasive thesis and a nice list of citations. What more could Izuku ask for?
Izuku chose to write about a real pro-hero case, specifically one from about nine years ago that took place in France. It took all his will power not to pick something from All Might’s timeline, but Mr. Aizawa’s warning glare was enough to make him step out of his comfort-zone.
And step out of his comfort-zone he did.
Twelve pages of work sits upstairs in his backpack, carefully tucked inside a folder, and Izuku feels that his essay is a testament to his improvement since—well, since the beginning of U.A. His analysis has greatly improved after being nurtured by actual pro-heroes. Actually being able to test his theories for once didn’t hurt either. The case from France turned out to be a welcomed challenge, one he may not have been able to completely tackle at the beginning of the year. Izuku hopes that Mr. Aizawa will see how much he’s grown as well.
At seven-thirty, Izuku has come back from his morning run and showered. He decides to reread his essay at his desk once he’s dressed and ready for class—he’s already fished out every mistake and made every possibly revision he could think of, he just wants to read through all his hard work one last time before turning it in. Izuku can’t keep himself from smiling.
A text at seven-forty-five from Uraraka reminds Izuku of the time, and he slings his backpack over his shoulder and rushes downstairs.
“Hey, Deku!” It’s Uraraka who notices him first. The rest of his friends are gathered near the entrance, waiting for him so that they could all walk to class together. “What held you up?”
“I just kind of lost track of time,” Izuku laughs, and she rolls her eyes good-naturedly.
Izuku walks with Tsuyu, Uraraka, Todoroki, and Kirishima (who usually walks with Bakugou, except that Bakugou had already left by the time Kirishima was up). Iida is there too, despite normally wanting to be fifteen minuets early to homeroom at least. It’s probably Uraraka’s doing that got him to be anything other than unnecessarily early, but he seems to be enjoying himself anyways.
The group is approaching the class 1-A doors, and Izuku pulls out his phone to check the time. MON 7:52 AM. They’ll be just a few minuets early to their eight-o’clock class, so right on time, and Izuku moves to put his phone back but then—
He comes to a sudden halt.
“Midoriya?” Todoroki stumbles behind Izuku. It was probably only training that kept them from crashing. “What—?”
“Oh my god,” is all Izuku can manage. His voice is high and strained. The others have stopped as well, looking at him with varying levels of curiosity and concern.
“What is it, Midoriya?” asks Tsuyu.
“I—I left—oh my god, I left my essay on my desk. At the dorms.”
They all seem to blink once in sync. Then Uraraka is giggling, Todoroki sighs, and Iida is already starting to lecture him on the importance of being mindful.
“I’m gonna go run and get it,” Izuku drags a hand down his face, resisting the urge to groan. Class starts in a few minutes, and if he goes back now, he’s definitely going to be late. But Mr. Aizawa doesn’t accept late work, especially not for anything due two weeks after being assigned, so he can’t just turn it in later. “Here, uh,” He takes of his backpack and hands it to the closest person, which happens to be Todoroki. He gives his phone to Uraraka without really thinking about it. “Okay, I’ll be right back. Can you put that on my desk, please?”
“Wait,” Iida holds out his hand, but Izuku is already turning around, “do you want one of us to come with you?”
“No!” Izuku calls from the end of the hall, “There’s no reason for two of us to be late! Just—if Mr. Aizawa asks, just tell him what happened!”
Iida is saying something about running in the halls, but Izuku’s already dashing out of hearing range. Barely anyone is in the hallways, probably all in class like reasonable students (and teachers) who didn’t forget their important assignments. He runs the length back to the dorms and stops about halfway to check one of the wall clocks. 7:55 AM. Yeah, he’s definitely going to be late. Once he’s got the essay in tow—unprotected by its designated folder, which ironically he did remember to bring to class—he pauses once more on the way back at the same clock. 8:00 AM.
Officially late.
Groaning, Izuku turns to continue, already wincing at the glare he knows Mr. Aizawa has in store for him, when he notices something moving in the corner of his eye, from outside the window. He turns. Tenses.
There’s a woman on the other side of the glass.
The windows for this particularly long hallway are floor-to-ceiling, so despite the foliage lining the bottoms, Izuku has a full-body view of—of the woman. Except there is something off about her, aside from the fact that she obviously does not belong on U.A. grounds. She seems to sway gently in the breeze, as if tethered to the ground by only a few pounds, and she’s—glowing, emanating a faint aura that might just be the sunlight on her back, except it feels too ethereal. She’s hard to look at, like trying to view something through a blurry camera lens. Something whispers that Izuku isn’t really meant to look at this woman. She barely looks real.
Numbly, Izuku paws at his pocket, ready to alert Mr. Aizawa that there’s an intruder, vaguely wondering why the alarms aren’t going off, but his fingers only meet a small square of paper—the photo Izuku likes to carry around sometimes. It’s a nice photo, it means a lot to him, but it’s not his phone. Cold horror seeps slowly through his veins as he realizes he can’t contact or warn anyone on campus.
The woman takes a step forward and places a delicate hand on the window.
Izuku flinches back, bracing for the window to shatter or melt or crumble— but she doesn’t do anything more. His eyes finally focus enough to see the fuzzy shape of her lips moving, of her ocean blue eyes trained on him—the woman is trying to talk to him. As soon as the thought comes, words start to caress his mind, and Izuku can just barely hear the ghost of a voice. It has to be her voice, but it doesn’t come from behind the glass—it comes from within him, or maybe from far, far away. Her voice is slow, lyrical, but something deep within him tells him that it’s also old, impossibly ancient. As he stares at the woman, frozen, listening, the taste of salt dusts his lips, and a sea breeze strokes his face. Izuku is finally able to make out some of what the woman (is she really a woman, a human?) is saying.
“Please.”
Izuku startles. Takes a stuttering step forward.
“Please…. Help… pl…”
His feet move him closer to the glass, to the… woman. This is dangerous, something in him thinks. She’s an intruder, I don’t know how she got here, she could be dangerous. But his legs are moving anyways, and, well…
Izuku was never able to turn away from someone pleading for help.
“What…?” He’s standing directly in front of her. The woman’s face still blurs in and out, and Izuku wonders if it’s her quirk, but her can see her better at this distance. Her eyes have something desperate in them.
“… Please… name… you… help…”
“W-what’s wrong? What—why—why are you here?”
“…you…” The words don’t line up with her lips. Izuku knows she’s saying more than what he’s hearing, but he just can’t catch it all. “…help… name…”
“Name?” He’s nearly pressed up against the window at this point. Izuku has to peer up to watch the woman’s face, and he just now realizes how tall she is— she’s taller than All Might. Her mouth keeps moving, and her eyes scrunch up, but Izuku can barely make out a word. He’s starting to get a headache. “What do you mean?”
He places his hand atop hers through the glass without really thinking about it, a last-ditch effort. The window is inches thick, and her hand dwarfs his own. But he feels it, some sort of connection. The woman’s flowing, otherworldly body doesn’t clear up, but Izuku can suddenly hear her much better.
“Please, please, may I have your name?”
She sounds as if she’s at his side, whispering in his ear now. Izuku flinches. “M-my name? Wh—?”
“Yes!” the woman might smile then, but her face blurs again. “Let me have your name!”
“I—” his head is really starting to hurt. He thinks ‘what the hell?’ and for the first time, seriously starts to wonder if this is even real. “My name is Izuku. But who—?”
The world drops from under him.
The woman wraps her hand around his arm, through the glass, and she is clearly smiling now. Everything seems to disappear until the world is black and endless and it’s just him and her.
Izuku has enough time to think ‘ooh shit’, and then the blackness takes him.
Awareness comes back in pieces.
A clean breeze sweeps his face, brushing his hair back. Humidity licks his exposed skin. The air tastes of salt. He’s standing. His essay is in his left hand. Someone holds the right one.
He opens his eyes.
“W-what… what?” What the fuck?
The first thing he sees is the sky. It’s endless, deep blue as if evening is seeping in, even though it was eight in the morning a second ago. Then he sees the sea, the sand—they’re just as endless, stretching forever in opposite direction and meeting here, on the shoreline. He’s on a beach. A beach. Even though he was… just at school. What the fuck?
Then he sees the woman. He wonders why he didn’t notice her first, since it’s her hand that is clasped around his. And she’s so tall. And she is glowing.
She doesn’t blur in and out like before. She’s perfectly clear, illuminated by her own white glow. She is adorned in long, flowing robes that look traditionally Japanese, even if they are completely white, just like her flowing hair and the eyelashes framing her stark blue eyes. She stands at maybe eight or nine feet, with even proportions that make her seem like a small giant. Larger than life. Her skin is a warm brown, dusted in freckles that remind Izuku of sand. In fact, her entire being reminds Izuku of the beach, the ocean, this beach. She doesn’t have eyebrows. She towers over him. She’s smiling.
She is beautiful.
“Um—um—I—who—” He stutters pathetically, and she watches on with a knowing look in her eye. She’s still smiling. “What—where am I?”
The woman places her other hand above his, completely swallowing it in a gentle hold. Izuku notices even her hands are freckled. “Oh, my child,” she looks into his eyes intently. Her voice is clear now, smooth and low and perfect for her. “I have a more important question.”
Izuku almost says “Um, no, I really don’t think so,” but meeting her eyes steals his breath. It’s like staring into the ocean, the unknown, wondering how deep the waters stretch but never knowing, never knowing what dwells within. But she knows. No human has eyes like that, says a thought. Wait, what? Comes the next.
“Tell me, do you remember your name?”
The spell is broken, and the awe in his face makes way for bewilderment. Do you remember your name? What kind of question is that? “Of—of course I remember my name. My name is—… it’s… my name…is…”
The woman smiles.
He feels himself beginning to panic. “I—I can’t… remember.”
What the fuck?
But he does remember telling this woman his name. He does remember his friends, his mom, his teachers, all the times they said his name, all the times he’s said his own name. So what is going on? Why can’t he remember what is his name is?
“Do not worry,” the woman draws his attention, “You won’t be needing it here. It does not matter.” She kneels, but even on one knee she’s still so much taller than him. “You just need a new one. What shall I call you? Hmm… you will be… Mikumo.”
“M-mikumo?” he stutters. It’s not his name, he knows that, but that’s all he knows. And also, giving him a new name is really not fixing this extremely concerning situation of sudden and very specific amnesia. “Why don’t you just tell me my real name? I told you my real name before and, and I am kind of freaking out right now. And can you answer my question? Because, um, we are on a beach. Why? Are we on a beach? What is going on? Why don’t I know my name, why don’t I remember coming here? Did—did you do—something to me? What—”
“Mikumo,” the woman says, removing her hands and shushing him with a finger. Her nails are sharp like claws, manicured to a point. And white. “Calm down. There is a reason for all. I brought you here, my child. You are the only human who remembered—” he eyes dart to look at something behind him, and she tenses, cutting herself off. He—Mikumo—sees a faint fear in her posture and her face hardens. Suddenly he’s a little wary of turning around, because what in the world could make this huge, ethereal—being—afraid?
But he’s a hero in training, and he’s faced a lot of evil in the past year. He turns around, and—
What the fuck.
A huge, red, building towers behind him, offshore, maybe a three minuet walk away. At first, Mikumo thinks the building if floating on the sea, but he looks closer and realizes the building takes up and entire small island. It connects to the shore with a long, grand, red bridge that matches the greens and golds of and reds of the building itself. The architecture it traditional, obviously Japanese, and magnificent—it looks like some sort of insanely huge, over-the-top—… bathhouse. Mikumo wonders how this wasn’t the first thing he noticed, even if he was facing away from it.
But that’s not what the woman is looking at.
Nearing the grand bridge are these black… creatures. Mikumo has never seen anything like them. They’re big, maybe about as big as the woman, and they melt into the night background seamlessly, at least until they reach the colorful bridge. They move in a way that says the things are feral, and dangerous, and definitely not human. Other. They twitch and crawl, like black masses with four legs or four arms that can never decide on what form to take. Mikumo looks at them and understands the woman’s fear, even if he doesn’t know what these things are.
“Mikumo,” the woman takes his shoulders and turns him around with no effort at all, forcing him to face the solemn look in her eyes. The smile from before is gone. She is scared. “This is why I brought you here. We need your help. You have helped us before, and I have watched you. I know you can do this, my child, so please—go protect the Bathhouse from the majin.”
Mikumo still has so many questions. He’s still so confused, lost, but the look in the woman’s eyes is at least one thing he can be sure of—it’s the same look he glanced at before, back at U.A. She needs his help.
He’s handing her his essay, twelve pages of his best work that he nearly forgot he was still holding, and turns on his heal. One for All comes to life, five percent, and he meets the creatures—the majin— on the bridge in no time.
Up close, they’re worse. Mikumo doesn’t know what they’re made of, but by the way their bodies twist and slip and morph, he’s half-worried that the majin may not be corporeal enough to actually attack. They stop before him, surprised or shocked maybe, before the closest one dives forward, formless arms morphing into something sharp.
One kick knocks it back and buries it in the sand.
All of them seem to pause, waiting. It looks as if maybe that majin is now buried indefinitely. It doesn’t move.
But the sands begin to shift.
It scrambles up, dragging itself from its tomb limb by limb, fast enough it might leave something behind. Tumbling over the four others, it spurs them all into action, and it comes back with a vengeance. Five of the big, black, beastly things are charging, all at once.
I’ve faced worse than this, Mikumo thinks, dropping into a stance that his muscles just seem to know. But he can’t exactly remember what worse was, at the moment, what he’s battled before. They’re kind of like weak nomus.
Before he can remember what a nomu is, the majin are on him. Mikumo kicks up, tossing them back and watching as they skid in the sand. Even though they tower over him, with claws half his height and bodies that transform just to avoid and attack, they aren’t particularly strong. At least not against his quirk. But they are fast. Five at once is becoming a problem.
Mikumo sends the nearest majin back with a kick and only barely ducks under a swipe from one just behind the last. He sends that one off the bridge with another powerful kick. Ducks again. Kicks again.
This is going to be a fight of stamina. Mikumo jumps high, but claws still manage to graze his left leg. I have to outlast them. But…
Two majin scramble up from the sand, crawling over each other to get back to Mikumo. He sends the nearest one flying into them both. Ducks.
They don’t seem to be getting tired.
With a wide sweep of his leg, Mikumo sinks into a new stance: a balanced squat framed by two braced arms—a power stance. Use this when you need to focus on One for All in a fight, whispers a memory, a man who always smiles. Be immovable while you stop to increase your power, but don’t stay still for long.
Five percent to eight percent.
Mikumo ducks just as a majin jumps from the right side of the bridge. From under its belly, he sends it flying upwards. The others don’t even glance at their counterpart once they dig themselves from the sand again.
In terms of strength and even skill, Mikumo outranks these five. It’s just their numbers that will harm him. Together, they will outlast him at this rate, rip him to shreds then do the same to the Bathhouse. The only way to win this fight is to destroy them, which Mikumo can do, with enough of One for All. But…
Mikumo ducks. Kicks. Watches the five majin untangle themselves. It’s getting repetitive.
But I can’t just kill them, right?
They obviously want to kill him, if the last few minutes have been any indication. They also clearly want to destroy this Bathhouse for whatever reason, and probably want to kill whoever might be inside. He can’t afford to prioritize the lives of these things over people.
Kick. They aren’t even human. Two crash into each other. They don’t even seem to be able to feel pain. A slice down his shoulder blade. This can’t go on. Three pounce at once. But is it ever right to kill?
Mikumo jumps high, avoids all three. From his vantage point, he can see the glowing form of the woman watching on from below. She’s far away, but Mikumo remembers the look in her eyes. He can’t fail her, not when she begged him to save her (even if she did kidnap him).
Mikumo lands. Fires up One for All. Twenty percent.
And kicks.
The three in front of him explode.
Black splatters across the bridge and the sand. The three majin’s gooey, slick bodies struggle to knit themselves back together for once, reduced to two limbs or two halves. Not dead. The two remaining majin halt, and for the first time seem to concern themselves with the conditions of the others.
Mikumo stares, fists raised and waiting. But the three he hit with twenty percent aren’t recovering. The other two majin swivel warping heads slowly between the black masses strewn across the sand, and Mikumo himself. It looks like the first sign of intelligence.
Then they turn around and run.
Stumbling just barely, Mikumo forces his gaping mouth closed, but can’t wipe the surprise off his face. They’re running away? He’s bewildered. The three downed majin use what limbs they have left and quickly crawl after them, surprising fast for how off-balance they seem... and with how they are minus a few limbs. Mikumo blinks. Holds his fighting stance. Watches them leave. Thank god.
An ocean of black surges forward from behind.
Crawling from underneath the shadow of the grand bridge is an explosion of black matter, a towering wave of dark slime split down the middle—it’s hundreds of small majin.
They crawl over each other, running into themselves to move from their hiding place. They move so quickly that they seem to seep into one another. It’s a tidal wave of half-formed limbs and feral power. It’s chaos.
What the fuck?!
Mikumo looks around frantically, bracing himself for the wall of black matter. Were they under the bridge the whole time?! They must have been. He’s scrambling for a plan, a way to counter this, but hundreds of majin, no matter how small, will certainly overpower him. Shit.
But as the tidal wave continues, Mikumo realizes that they are all but ignoring him.
Are—are they running… from me?
They are. Within a few seconds, every majin is from beneath the bridge, darting straight forward. They follow after the five larger ones from before, who have already disappeared off into the endless beach. Mikumo wonders faintly if, away from the ocean, it will be less of a beach and more of a desert. Then he wonders what the hell just happened.
He stands there frozen in a slowly slipping fighting stance. His jaw has dropped again. The quiet of the beach without the hundreds of majin is unnerving, even if they were only around for a few (terrifying) seconds. Mikumo is waiting for the next shoe to drop. Or maybe for his legs to give out.
Screams erupt from behind.
Mikumo jumps about a foot in the air, whirling around. Oh my gosh what now. Are the majin still here?
But no, the majin really are gone. This is an entirely different crowd rushing him. Mikumo stares, shocked. Just how many shocks is he going to have to endure today?
The screams come from people, only they aren’t screams at all—it’s cheering. Between the ruckus are a few words like ‘thank you!’ and ‘did you see that?!’ and ‘that was amazing!’—these people are obviously, well, people, if the Japanese is any sign. He realizes they must be the residents (tenants?) of the Bathhouse. Except, they aren’t all… human.
Most of them run on two legs. A good portion of them are bipedal frogs in robes (for some reason). A few look like giant radishes. Some are floating. Only a handful look completely human, and they all seem to be girls in matching pink uniforms.
Now, with the rise of quirks, what defined a person as “human-looking” has become hotly debatable over the years, especially in terms of mutation quirks. Humans that were reminiscent of animals or plants or insects or just non-traditionally human were certainly not uncommon. But something about this group… Mikumo somehow knew that he wouldn’t be finding a human here.
The crowd meets Mikumo, finally crossing the full length of the grand bridge to cheer him on from where he stands, right in front of the steps. Voices of all kind fight to be heard, and those in the front shove each other to catch a glimpse of their savior. Mikumo still manages to catch the gist of what most of them are saying: thank you.
Reddening, he moves to scratch the back of his head but stop short as his back protests. Right, he’d been injured, both on his right shoulder blade and the back of his left leg. The injuries weren’t too serious, but they sure did a good job of ruining Mikumo’s school uniform. The pain doesn’t keep him from being embarrassed, though.
The crowd has circled him, a few feet away from touching him at all sides. For some reason, despite how eager they all were to rush him, no one is reaching out to actually make contact with Mikumo. It’s weird, but a respect for personal space not necessarily unwelcome. But, well, this entire situation is weird. This is all starting to feel like a fever dream… and the headache from earlier is coming back.
A hand clasps his left shoulder from behind. Mikumo knows who it is before she speaks.
“Now, now, everyone,” says the woman. The crowd quiets for the most part, darting wide eyes between Mikumo and the woman towering over him. Just their reactions tell him she is the one in charge of this place (which, frankly, he had already assumed based on her, well, everything). “Do not frighten this human. He did just save us, after all.”
The crowd blinks, in comical (or eerie) synchrony. Then, all together: “A human?!”
The people, who Mikumo finally (and faintly) accepts must really not be human after such a reaction, are back to their energetic chatter. The large radish men speak to each other in whispers, big hands obviously giving away their efforts to cover up their mummering mouths. The human-looking girls in red and pink uniforms squeal and gasp, like gossiping teens (even if some look older than anyone here). Some look excited, some absolutely appalled, but most of these strange people look utterly astounded. Mikumo doesn’t really know how to react other than going even redder.
“But, Miss Dagobah!” one of the girls in the front, a human-look-alike in robes pinker than the rest of her group, raises a hand high. Her voice is brass and commanding, confident, and she doesn’t struggle to grab attention (even if she is slightly yelling). “How can that be a human?” She points an accusing finger at Mikumo and scrunches up her nose. “Look at what he just did!”
The crowd is mummering their agreements (or disagreement in some cases), looking up at the woman questioningly. And, well, what was that supposed to mean? But something that girl said…
“’Miss Dagobah’?” Mikumo turns to look up at the woman. “As in… Dagobah Beach?”
The woman—Miss Dagobah—absolutely lights up at that, as if he’d told her she’d won a million yen. “I knew you were the only one who remembered!” She picks Mikumo up without warning, swiftly and with ease, as if he weighed nothing more than a pillow, holding him high up and directly in front of her despite his yelp of surprise. With her long arms outstretched, she presents him boldly to the crowd with a gleeful laugh. A strange sense of déjà vu washes of Mikumo, and he is vaguely reminded of one of those old Disney movies, the one with the lions that one of his friends love. (But which friend was it?)
“Um—”
“Listen, good spirits. I have claimed this human’s name and have brought him here to aid us with the majin. This is our Mikumo!”
The crowd gasps and chatters. Mikumo watches from his vantage point in Miss Dagobah’s hands and thinks he may be having an aneurism. Or a very intricate hallucination.
“Now,” Miss Dagobah gently places him back upon the bridge. Every person’s head moves to follow his decent. “This means no eating this one,” What. “Or turning him into a pig. Please be kind and treat Mikumo finely, like a guest—as you see, our human is very unique. I do not think I could find another who would remember and be able to defeat the majin.”
The crowd agree easily, though Mikumo can’t help but notice three or four of them look disappointed. A laugh bubbles up, edging on hysterical, and Mikumo only realizes it’s him laughing since the crowd move their attention back to him. They all move in that strange synchronicity again, and it makes Mikumo laugh a little harder. He feels like panicking.
“What,” and he can’t help but wonder what sort of face he’s making, with the way his voice sounds. “What—is going on?” Mikumo looks up, up at Miss Dagobah, who’s back to smiling. “What…?”
There’s too much he wants to say, that he doesn’t know. He only just barely stops himself from saying “What the fuck?”, as he so dearly yearns to, but only because cursing in front of this ethereal woman who kidnapped him feels akin to cursing in front of someone’s mother (the ultimate taboo).
“I think we broke him.” Says the girl in pink robes. She’s the same one who spoke up before, but now Mikumo is meeting her sharp eye. She looks distinctly amused.
Miss Dagobah places her hand upon his shoulder yet again. She must really like doing that. “Come now,” She says, but for once, Miss Dagobah is addressing Mikumo. “I think it is time I explain some things.”
That returns a bit a sanity to this situation.
Miss Dagobah begins walking forward, towards the red Bathhouse, and the crowd parts for her as if she were royalty. Mikumo moves to follow, hissing as his leg protests. The laceration is barely the worst injury he’s ever sustained, a cut uncomfortably close to an artery but thankfully just shallow enough not to have nicked it. The bleeding has mostly stopped by now, but the dark red does look quite dramatic against the pristine grey of his school uniform. His back is probably red as well.
“Oh dear,” Miss Dagobah stops in front of him. “I’d forgotten about that.” Her eyes are on his injuries, and Mikumo is faintly surprised to see the amount of genuine worry on her face. Even a hint of guilt.
“Hey, it’s—” It’s okay, I’m fine, is what he was probably going to say, but Miss Dagobah’s hand is already on his shoulder again and suddenly the world around him is slipping away into black again and only the two of them exist and—
Mikumo blinks. The world is back.
It looks a lot like an office… in the loosest of terms.
There’s a desk and a chair, both within a room, which indicate this new place is an office. Everything else here, however, indicates this place is a dragon’s hoard. Various lavish plants line the walls and stretch towards the large, intricately framed windows. Bookshelves line wooden walls, half-filled with books and half-filled with shrunken heads and diamonds and seashells and painted skulls and countless other things Mikumo can’t catalogue in one glance. Oriental rugs hide away the floors, and Mikumo suspects he might be standing on a small fortune, even if the rugs’ patters have been worn from years of use. He’s frozen in place, trying to take in the office, trying to reorient himself after—after teleporting? Was that what that was?
Mikumo feels the headache worsening. Despite the… unique beauty of this room, this is starting to feel like the epitome of a sensory overload, mythic-and-magic style.
Miss Dagobah pushes him further into the room gently, totally ignoring insanity surrounding them. After Mikumo is positioned in front of the tall, red-wood desk, Miss Dagobah seats herself in the chair, smiling. It looks like her throne.
“What—” Mikumo is so tired of being confused. “How did we get here?”
Miss Dagobah blinks, as if that isn’t a perfectly reasonable question. “I took you here, my child. Obviously.” She smiles as if that’s a perfectly reasonable response. Mikumo decides not to press it.
Concern, confusion, and curiosity seem to finally be catching up with him—Mikumo clears his head with a shake and steps forward, determined. He needs some answers.
“The people, they seem… surprised that I am human.” Mikumo starts, mostly because that comment about ‘not eating’ him is still on his mind. “Are you… not human?”
She leans forward, blinking blue eyes at him. She poses her face in a way that feels as if she is trying to decide how to explain a complicated topic to a two-year-old.
“I am not human like you, my child.” She says. Mikumo can’t find himself to be too surprised, but it’s still shocking to hear it confirmed. “I am the Spirit of Dagobah Beach, owner of the Bathhouse. I am much more than human.”
There’s a lot to unpack there. ‘Spirit’? Like a ghost? “But this doesn’t look anything like Dagobah Beach.”
She chuckles. “This place, I assure you, is most definitely Dagobah Beach. Just not the one you are familiar with.”
Mikumo frowns. “That… explains nothing.”
Miss Dagobah brushes her white hair behind her shoulder, eyes glinting. “Then let me explain.”
A spirit is an idea.
Once an idea is born, a spirit is born. In the Beginning, the biggest Ideas were Imagined, and the most powerful spirits were born. Chaos, Order. Knowledge. Balance. Etcetera. It is said those Early Spirits formed the world.
Dagobah wasn’t there for the Beginning, or for the Separation of the mortal and spirit worlds. But Dagobah was there, faintly, as Japan formed. When humans first found Japan, they traveled the entire island, from shore to shore. When the humans found Dagobah, before she was truly and idea yet, the place was a vast stretch of beach unseparated from the rest of the shores lining Japan.
But it was humans who had an idea.
As they chose to settle, humans attached themselves to Dagobah. They gave the place a name, a section of a map, a boarder, and a purpose. Dagobah Beach was a source of food, treasure, wonder, life. She was proud to be the spirit of such an idea of home.
The humans relied on her. The Named her. They were the source of her idea. She loved them like a mother loved a child.
But then… the humans visited less often. That was the start. They no longer took fish from her seas. They no longer accepted the gifts and shells she left for them on the shores. They visited less often, then hardly at all, then never.
They didn’t need her any longer.
Fish and treasure and fun and life and home—that was Dagobah. That was her idea. She was home for the humans. But as the years wore on, her children strayed further and further from home.
Trash began to pile upon the beach. Scraps, at first. That was the start.
Golden sands were littered. Metals and plastics, cars and technology, knives and bodies—they were all abandoned at the beach. She suffered under the weight of it all. Her seas polluted, the fish died and relocated. Her sands polluted, her treasures were buried forever or shattered on metal. The humans left her. The humans abandoned her.
The humans forgot her.
No human believed Dagobah a home. What is an idea without belief?
What is an idea if it is forgotten?
In the mortal world, Dagobah Beach was buried in sickening waste. In the spirit world, Dagobah Beach was under attack.
A weak spirit is an idea no one believes in. A weak spirit is the prey of a certain corruption. The majin were relentless in their attacks, night after night. The humans were relentless in their polluting, day after day.
Hope was low. At this rate, Dagobah would die buried in trash and torn apart by majin. With no one to remember her, she was forgotten.
Until a boy visits her.
The boy is human. Green hair, freckled cheeks, skinny limbs. But a child. She expects him to pass her by, leave the beach without a second glance and forget her like every other human has for the last years.
But he does not.
He returns to the beach every day. He removes trash from her sands every day. He never forgets to return to her.
She watches in awe. For the first time in too long, a human… returns to her. The child cleans the beach. He is weak, all skinny limbs and teary eyes, but he continues trying to haul away trash anyways. She watches in awe as the boy cleans and cleans, growing stronger every day. Returning every day.
And for what?
Dagobah doesn’t know. She doesn’t care. This is the first human to remember her in too long. This is the only human to care for her in too long. The boy leaves an impact. Dagobah Beach of the mortal world is clean, clear, unmarred by litter and filth for the first time in too long. Fish return, life returns, treasure returns, humans return. Dagobah Beach of the spirit world is recovering, the island that supports the Bathhouse is no longer sinking, the majin decrease in numbers. Dagobah thrives for the first time in too long.
But one day, the boy does not return.
He will, though, she tells herself. He always returns, he has every day for the past ten months.
But the boy does not return.
Dagobah worries. The beach is clean for now, but she does not miss when the humans who do not remember her carelessly forget their wrappers and plastic on her sands. It always started like this. The majin are less in numbers, but they are not few. If the Dagobah becomes littered again, she will be buried again, attacked at full numbers again, forgotten again.
She would not survive it.
Dagobah needs the boy. She stays attentive, waiting for a sign of him. No green hair, no freckles, no toned limbs. Where is her child? He came to the beach to clean, to help—he left because he must not realize she still needs his help.
She waits a few months for him to return. But she knows… she knows that if she just waits, he will forget her too. So she does something she never has:
She searches.
More powerful spirits have no trouble appearing in the mortal world when they need to. Dagobah used to have no trouble appearing, but she is weakened by being forgotten. Straying far from the beach in the mortal world is difficult. Searching is difficult.
But she will not give up.
And, months later, the boy visits. He is injured, he is crying, he is with a tall and skinny man. They speak. They leave. She follows.
Summer comes. The boy lives at his school, far from Dagobah. She finds him, watches unseen and incorporeal. She waits until the perfect moment, where he is alone and when she is strong enough to become somewhat physical.
“Please,” she had said, so excited and terrified and desperate and hopeful to be speaking to the child who remembered her. “Let me have your name.”
There was nothing to bind her to this mortal world—it is why appearing here is so difficult. There is nothing binding the boy to the spirit world, which is why it is impossible for him to appear there. But with his name, she can bind him there. She can keep him with her, he can protect the beach there, and she will teach him so that he will never forget.
“My name is Izuku. But who—?”
She has him. She will never be forgotten. She will never let her child leave her again.
Dagobah returns with a new hope. She calls him Mikumo.