The Emperor's Dragon

Whys and Wherefores

Despite the fact that he had been running late, Izuku still made it back to the office space just as Kurogiri messaged him. He shot back a message immediately, asking for a few more minutes. The misty man sent him back a nodding emoji, and as Izuku got his breath back he took off his gakuran. His undershirt was tucked in. Izuku felt the waistline of his shirt, patting it to feel the broken scales that were there. If they weren't actually attached to him, they weren't reabsorbed.

Carefully he pulled up his inner shirt and then brushed the loose scales to the floor. Some were in pieces. Others were whole, but they'd all broken from him when Kumou had hit him. They weren't strong enough. They had provided some protection. Izuku had to admit that. He was sure the hit would have hurt more if he didn't have the scales, but the fact remained they had broken when a twelve-year-old hit them. He probably should have just relied on shock absorption but using that was a bit obvious. His quirk was Fire Breath. If he'd just stood there and taken Gatarui's blows, it would have been obvious that something was wrong. The scales were the better option. But-

Gigantomachia breaking them Izuku could deal with; Gatarui breaking them was a different matter.

Though...

Izuku frowned. Was he being fair? Gatarui had a spider-type mutation quirk. Spiders were strong, so Kumou might have increased strength.

That would also explain why he was annoyed that Izuku kept defeating him.

He shook his head, allowing his hair to go back to being green. Kumou probably did have increased strength. His scales stood up to quite a bit of abuse when he wasn't using his strength quirk. He needed to do some research on spiders to figure out what Gatarui's skills might be, though it didn't seem as if the boy had poison or webs. That was something.

He had poison. At least his dad told him he had. He'd gotten it when his dad was unconscious, and he didn't like to remember that time. He hadn't experimented much with the quirks his dad had given him then. Dad had told him that his quirk had wanted to keep two of them. Night Cat, which allowed him to see in the dark, was used occasionally. The other one was Poison Fang. He hadn't used it at all.

He hadn't even tested it.

Izuku bent down and swept up the fallen scales as best he could. He picked out a few whole ones and put them in his bag, but the others he put into the bin. The office wasn't serviced, but he took the bin bag home with him for disposal every few days unless there was foodstuff there, which meant he took it back that day...

Izuku sat down and held one of his scales. If Gatarui had increased strength, then it was perhaps okay that it had broken. And... maybe it was a good thing that he had regeneration. Others wouldn't walk away from a fight with the other boy. That would be why Gatarui always wanted to fight him.

So... if it happened again, what did he do? He could just knock him out by taking his quirk, but Izuku didn't know what people remembered of that. Usually, Giran used his quirk to make those he practiced on forget. What would happen if he did it without Giran's quirk? He would have to find out preferably before he was forced to find out.

And if Gatarui challenged him again... He'd deal with that when it happened. Maybe he could poison him?

But to do that, he'd have to find out how strong his poison was. He held up a scale, rubbing it between his fingers.

It looked like he had some research to do.

-ted-

It was interesting how hindsight made everything clear. Mirai sighed as he looked at the report. It was a report that wouldn't usually come to Heroes, especially not to him but with his investigations, he had put certain electronic tags on things, and here it was.