MHA: Undying

I sit in a comfy chair, Himi hanging off of me as we stare at a monitor. It’s a live video of a nearly bare room holding only a futon and a stainless steel table. Oh yeah, and some random guy who’s supposedly quirkless.

I may have forgotten about him for a few days, but thankfully Kurogiri didn’t and has been making sure that he gets food and water. It would have been embarrassing if my test subject died before we even started testing anything. He even made sure to give him a tv! Of course now it’s removed so it doesn’t mess with the current batch of tests, but it’s a good thing that he wasn’t stuck in a room alone with his thoughts for several days without anything to distract him! I know exactly what that feels like!

But man, Kurogiri really does act like a mom. He cooks for all of us, he cleans up after all of us, he stops Shigaraki Tikiraki from decaying Himi when she hides his hands. And that’s not even counting how he wears an apron when he cooks!

That’s why he’s Mamagiri!

Anyways, back to the testing!

I hold down a button and the crinkle of speakers turning on resounds throughout the testing room, startling the guy and making him swallow his gum. It doesn’t need to do that of course, but I figured that it would give the place that sketchy ‘you’ve made a horrible decision’ vibe.

“So, you think you have a quirk!”

“Uh, no? You do?” The confused man responds.

“No,” I clarify, “that’s the name of the show.”

“I’m on a show!?” He shouts.

“Well, not right now. But if you do end up having a quirk we could make one! And you’ll be featured on the very first episode!”

He just deadpans in the direction of the speaker, causing the two of us to chuckle. “Anyways, these tests will consist of you doing and experiencing things you’ve never encountered before. This can include, but is not limited to: eating a person, singing in a variety of form-blegk- bit my tongue. Ahem, foreign dialects, contorting your body into a wide range of shapes, and dying.”

I really thought that leaving dying for last would get more of a reaction than he shows. But he just nods like that’s to be expected. It’s everything else that he looks weirded out by!

It just reaffirms what Himi and I know. Sane people make much less sense than crazy people. Which reminds me…

“We should probably get your name, huh? Or we can just call you One?” For whatever reason, the guy nods. So I just shrug it off as a sane person thing and we start the tests! By finding out what tests we should actually do!

After a quick questionnaire for the increasingly uncertain and confused ‘One’ we begin the first test! Whistling! Well, trying to whistle. Which doesn’t go very well considering that none of us know how to whistle. I ask Kurogiri and Shiggy but neither of them know how either. Which makes sense since Shiggy’s lips are as crusty as the rest of him and Kurogiri doesn’t have a mouth. Or a face.

So test one is a failure, but One himself isn’t yet! Worse comes to worse, I’ll ask All For One to give him a quirk as a consolation prize. Or kill him to see if he can come back to life like me. Either way works.

Anyways, the second test is a result of him not knowing how to swim, and thus never visiting the ocean! To put it in simple terms: we have Kurogiri open a portal from somewhere in the ocean to the ceiling of the room. He seems surprised that it works, One is surprised about the sudden waterfall that cracks the floor, and I’m surprised at how I forgot to account for how much pressure is being exerted on the water being transported. It’s a good thing the portal wasn’t directly above him or else we’d be out a subject!

Though we might be out of One anyways given how badly he’s failing this current test. He’s not interacting with the water in any other way than his panicked flailing. And it doesn’t look like he’s able to breathe it either. But he’s holding his breath so there’s no way to tell for sure…

Oh, there it is! Yep, he isn’t able to breathe in salt water! Kurogiri portals him out, and while he’s busy gasping for breath Kurogiri once again helps us out by sending the water someplace else. Where does he send it? No idea, but it’s gone so that’s all that matters.

After One recovers enough to beg for us to let them go home we continue on to test three! Electro- no, the salt water he inhaled might mess with the results. Though since we’re testing for a previously undiscovered quirk, it might not matter. Or it will completely matter. Quirks are weird like that.

After tossing a taser through yet another portal -I should really do something nice for Kurogiri after this- and watching him react like most people would to getting shocked while soaking wet and watching his gum fly out of his mouth, we move onto test, uh, four! Yep, I totally didn’t forget which one we’re on.

After that the tests continue with us occasionally taking breaks for One to rest. But nothing works! No matter what new things he experiences he doesn’t show signs of a quirk! We even feed him two of my severed arms that we keep frozen for emergencies! Both cooked and raw, both with and without him knowing! We need to threaten him a lot to knowingly eat human meat, but we do manage it!

By the end of the day he’s looking pretty ragged, which is perfectly understandable. As is the distant look in his eyes as he chews- wait a minute.

My eyes narrow as One gratefully accepts the break and pulls out another piece of gum. I press the button for the speaker, the staticy noise causing him to drop it in a small puddle of blood. Not his own of course, we kept the cutting testing and the bleeding testing light so that we wouldn’t accidentally kill him. And the blunt force testing kept all of his bleeding on the inside! That’s just some leftover from when we bled me to death and  poured it all on top of him. 

Nothing happened and I made a joke about how it was because it’s not the blood of his enemies, but he sassed me and said that I am his enemy! Rude!

But back to what’s caught my attention. “Where did you get that gum? I don’t remember ever giving you any.”

He scowls directly at the camera, one of the tests having revealed where it is., as a shudder runs through him. Probably remembered eating parts of me. “I always have gum. It helps calm me down from when people attack me for being quirkless. And when PSYCHOPATHS KIDNAP AND TORTURE ME!”

Hmm… “Well I have some good news for you, the next test will be the last! And not because we’re going to kill you for the test!”

His expression screams how done he is with all of this, and it remains like that when he falls unconscious from the sleeping gas I flood the room with.

After ensuring that everything is in place, we replace him into a room where there’s only a single shining silver cover. And when he wakes up he’s given a very simple direction.

“Under that cover is a piece of gum. Your only job is to estimate how large it is, and what flavor. Though I can assure you that it is not grape! The flavor of… well I can’t say evil since, y’know, villains. Maybe the flavor of trash?”

Ignoring my tangent, One stares at the cover for a moment before sighing and looking down, letting out a groan when he sees his outfit. “Why am I dressed like some fancy old guy?”

He doesn’t even seem to have the energy to be mad, he’s just tired. “Because why not? I can assure you that it’s important to the test! You should be happy we didn’t shave your head and stick a mustache on you!

He sighs again before glaring at the cover and the gum underneath.  It doesn’t take him long to give his answer, and when he pulls the cover up he sees that he was correct. Under the cover is cherry flavored gum in the shape of a human hand. About the size of my hand we fed him, actually.

He glares at the camera while a grin stretches across both my and Himi’s faces. “Congratulations, Mr. One. You… have a quirk!” I push the second button I have that I was doubting I would be able to push today and celebratory music plays throughout both our rooms.

His face doesn’t change from the deadpan glare he had before. “Really? You think me knowing that your sick and twisted mind would have one last torment for me means that I have a quirk?”

“No, One,” you can clearly hear the smugness in my voice. “You being able to make that gum appear is why I know you have a quirk. We made sure that there was absolutely no trace of any gum anywhere in that room, including in your outfit.”

I let him process that for a moment. Then he slowly brings his hand up to his face and stares at it. For a moment, nothing happens. But then, as if it was always there, a single piece of blue gum appears. His hand shakes as he carries it to his mouth, and once he makes the first chew, tears burst from his eyes.

He falls to his knees as his body shakes, and laughter bursts forth. He laughs as he cries. He cries as he laughs. But that’s ok. Because now, in today’s society-

He’s a person.

Back in the monitoring room I share a happy look with Himi. “Looks like you were right, Midosagi.”

“Seems so, Chusagi. But two people isn’t enough to prove my theory. Heck, it’s not even a pattern until there’s a third.”

She raises an eyebrow as a playful smirk stretches her lips. “Oh~? So you plan to do the same thing again? And again? And again?”

With each again, her lips come closer and closer to my own, until they meet. We share a passionate kiss, one filled with the thrill of celebration and progress.

It might just be one other person whose existence has proved the toe-joint test wrong, but it’s still another person that can serve as proof.

Proof that being quirkless… is one big lie.