Buried Treasure (BakugoxReader)

Ch. 24: Mutiny

***WARNING***
This chapter includes references slavery and assault. Please skip to the three asterisks *** part way through Dahlia's POV.

Dahlia's POV

"I don't want to hurt them... they've done nothing wrong..." I muttered as I moved the lifeless limbs of a dead lizard I was forced to play with. Captain Tomura had me working on a special project for when he next ran into the explosive pirate captain and the girl who couldn't be killed. I didn't understand why he was hunting them. They never attacked us first and I hadn't heard anything about a large sum of money for their heads. Every night, I would be tormented with flashbacks of the day I locked the blonde captain and his red-haired friend away in order to keep them from finding Ms. (L/n). I regretted it every day and prayed God would forgive me. I am not a good kid, in fact, I'm certain I'll go to Hell. I'm okay with that so, as long as my mom gets to go to Heaven. She's suffered enough in this world... she deserves eternal happiness.

Before we came onto this ship, my mom and I lived in a place I heard being called "Scandinavia". My mom, however, told me she was born in a Tanzania. My family had always been poor, and my mom was sold into slavery and separated from her son and husband. She was eventually brought to Scandinavia, which was where I was born. The Master always would have me come and demonstrate my quirk to him every night. I would dance and sing and make shapes with my electricity. He always told me that I was an angel on Earth, but it never made me feel good. He would kneel down to my height and run his cold fingers through my lavender hair and whisper in my ear, "You are the most valuable thing I own".

Then one day, I realized what those words actually meant. My mom and I were sold to Captain Tomura. At first, it wasn't too bad. My mom and I would just wash floors everyday, and we rarely saw the captain. My mom finished her chores early one night and was allowed to go to bed early. I still had another room too get through, so I came to our room a bit later. I will never forget my mother's screams as I stood outside the door that was just barely open. I peaked through and saw one of the burly pirate men grabbing her throat and trying to throw her on the floor. My mom was biting at his fingers and ripping his hair, all while wailing for help. I stood frozen, every ounce of innocence left in my body leaving me. This was when the man let go of my mother and threw her to the ground, storming out of the room and past me. He shouted all sorts of angry words and swore that my mother would be punished. I ran into the room and threw my arms around my weeping mother. Her already worn dress was tattered and barely staying up on her, despite her attempt to keep it up. Captain Tomura threw my mother in a rat-infested cell the next day.

He said that she deserved to die for disobeying that man, but that he would spare her if I followed his every order. Unlike my mother, I had a quirk and one that many deemed powerful. I mostly worked with canons, using electric shocks to boost the force they shot with, but recently Tomura had me working on much more complicated projects. I was forced to design the room that was meant to kill (L/n). Part of me was glad it didn't kill her because her eyes looked so tired and innocent, but I knew that my mother would be punished for my failure and that hurt worse than if Tomura were to take it out on me. ***Now he was having me spend every day locked in a room with a dead lizard. He told me that he had heard somewhere that electricity like mine could be used to animate dead creatures. Sure enough, he was right, and I spent hours every day making a dead reptile dance. He explained that I would be his secret weapon the next time he encountered the people of the Bakuhatsu. He wanted me to control living creatures just like I could dead ones. I had never practiced on a living creature before, so I wasn't sure if it would even work.

I let the lizard corpse rest once again and grabbed a book off my crooked shelf. The book was on anatomy and Mr. Kurogiri instructed me to study it. He said that knowing how human bodies worked would help me be able to control them. Controlling bodies with electricity was very difficult. If I hit the wrong muscle, the body would go haywire and it would take a while for me to gain control. I skimmed through the book and would close my eyes every now and then and try to picture the muscle being named on the page without looking at the illustration.