The Emperor's Dragon

Cover Story

Tomura insisted they have pizza for dinner and since he had the credit card, Izuku was forced to go along with it. He'd have preferred katsudon but the teen would not order that. Dinner didn't fit into Kurogiri's more nutritious category but Izuku figured that was Tomura's problem.

After they'd eaten, and cleaned up as best they could - the dust was just not shifting from some of the corners in the kitchen, and under the benches was a disaster Izuku didn't want to think about - Tomura dragged him down to the closed bar. He set up his console and then shoved the keyboard at Izuku.

"You do the searches," the teen commanded.

Izuku frowned. "What are we searching for?" he asked, confused.

"Regeneration quirks," the older boy told him as if he was stupid.

"I don't think they will be on the 'net," Izuku objected.

"We can at least confirm if they exist," Tomura was defensive.

Izuku nodded. That was true. He began typing. 'Rejenarashone quirk.'

"Is that how you spell it?" Tomura asked.

The freckled boy didn't know but he hit search anyway. A whole heap of results came up but none of them looked to be what he wanted. They definitely weren't in Japanese. Izuku tapped translate.

"Turkish?" Tomura growled.

"Would you recognise the word?" Izuku asked. He was acutely aware that he was the one who went to school.

The teen didn't answer. Izuku typed more attempts into the search and eventually it suggested something that looked right. He hit search.

A Kiwi page came up as the first result. It had a picture of a starfish on it. It looked like a spider with fat legs.

"We don't want that," Tomura dismissed it.

"Maybe," Izuku agreed. "But it beats the next result," he pointed out.

That was a news article with a headline 'Regeneration Quirks - Fact or Fiction.'

"Tch," the teen replied. It was practically an instruction to look at the Kiwi site.

Izuku clicked. The Kiwi site was for biology and the picture of the starfish showed it regrowing legs. There was, however, a supplementary link at the top for 'Regeneration (Quirk)' and Izuku beamed as he clicked it.

That took them to another Kiwi page. He read quickly over the introduction which had him feeling relief. Regeneration quirks did exist! He knew they did on some level since Setsuna's quirk allowed her to regenerate parts of her body but he hadn't been sure how rare they were, or how encompassing they could be.

"Less rare than healing quirks," Tomura said, obviously reading more quickly than Izuku could. "But only by a small amount."

"How powerful are they?" Izuku asked, scrolling down. There was usually some sort of scale cobbled together on these pages.

The major delineations of quirks were mutant, emitter and transformer but under those definitions there was lots of variety. Healing quirks were usually emitter type but regeneration quirks were classified as mutant type. Izuku didn't care what type they were, so long as he could borrow it to give to his dad.

He found the image of the scales. Against the usual measure of strength, regeneration scored poorly, but there was a note that since regeneration should repair torn muscle fibres, it would be possible to use it to train to become as strong as humanly possible. By all the usual measures regeneration was a very selfish quirk type in that it only affected the user. Izuku could see lots of uses for it and he wondered why no one who had a regeneration style quirk was a hero. How useful would it be to know that you wouldn't get hurt badly?