thedrakkenclaw

[thedrakkenclaw]

finally got an ao3 acct set up, so in the future i might be more tempted to post chapters there and simply link them back here instead of posting them here directly (tumblr doesnt allow me to paste rtf, which is kind of a huge pain in the ass lol). either way, a small milestone!

[thedrakkenclaw]

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use the tags, numbered in order, to read the chapters as they should be read.

[thedrakkenclaw]

Izuku absolutely cannot think, and the fragments of thought that bubble in the back burner of his mind are near incomprehensible. His first coherent thought ended up being, How did you even fall asleep this time? You don’t remember? You never remember, you stupid jackass. He rolled over and one of his wings got caught in his tethers, and he spent what felt like ten minutes trying to free it with no luck. Yeah, good going, Einstein. Now you’re stupid and stuck!

He heard the door slide open and someone walked in, but stuck as he was he couldn’t look out the glass and see his visitor, so he waited until they spoke to attempt identifying them.

“Er, uh, are you awake, by any chance?”

Iida. Thank god. “I’m stuck.”

Footsteps toward him, then quiet, then, “How… did you manage to do something like that?”

Great, now you’re so stupid it’s impressive.

Shut up, another part of him spoke up.

Oh no, you’re—I’m not doing this. Think like a normal person. None of this “mental debate” bullshit. None. Stop. Control yourself.

This doesn’t happen to Izuku especially often; only really occurring when he’s stressed on his lonesome: one voice is the critic, the other defends. Why is it happening now? Iida is here. This is the wrong time.

“Don’t worry, I’ll go find a teacher and ask for help. I’ll be right back!”

And now Iida isn’t here. Good going.

He’s going to find help, asshole. He’s not abandoning me.

Yeah, because you’re too stupid to—

“SHUT UP, GOD!” ...and now he really slipped.

Maybe you fried the microphone and everything’ll be okay. You never know.

The door flew open and several students entered, looking a bit frazzled.

“Yo, Deku, are you alright?” Kirishima asked.

Izuku didn’t answer him. No news is good news, right? Hah…

“Deku? Are you awake?” One of the girls; not Uraraka, though.

He figured a grunt would do as an answer, but it only served to make the group more squirrelly. Several voices were trying to speak over each other, attempting to get a word in edgewise, but Izuku tuned them out to the best of his ability and tried to fall back into the fog he woke up into.

[thedrakkenclaw]

“Bye, dad! Love you!”

“Love you too, Ocha.” He made a smooch noise, and ended the call. 18:52, the timer read. Jeez, that was a lot longer than I thought it’d be. She started down the hall to her homeroom, and entered only to find that Deku had managed to pass out again and Iida was wearing one hell of an incredulous look on his face.

“What happened here?”

Iida takes his time before answering. “I’ll—I should just start from the beginning. I asked him about heroes, and he’s rather well-read. He brought up how Kamui is pretty similar to himself, and before I knew it he was focused on his situation again. He found more of those stickers Recovery Girl put on him,” he explained, “the newer ones she’d added after the incident with Bakugou. I told him what they were, naturally, and explained why we’re still keeping him here—and maybe I shouldn’t have told him about the threats—”

“You told him about the threats?!” Ochako almost screamed. The kid was an anxious wreck; it was kind of hard to miss. Telling him about the threats was just about the opposite of helping.

“I—I’m sorry, I just got caught up in the moment. He figured out that they came from villains and that he was being targeted, but when he brought up his mother’s reaction…” He gestured towards Deku’s somewhat unnatural-looking sleep posture, “he freaked out. As a last-ditch effort, I asked if he wanted us to find his mother, and he met my eyes and told me his name and his mother’s, but then that...” He pointed at the chains, “There’s a tube in one of those chains, and they drugged him again. I wouldn’t doubt they noticed an increased heart rate or something of the like.”

Ochako gulped. “They need to stop doing that to him. It’s terrible, knowing that he’s so scared and he can’t even do anything about it since they won’t even let him stay awake, and...” Ochako looked from Iida to Deku, “Don’t apologize to me for over-explaining, either. I had to learn the hard way, too.” She thought back to the faces Deku made, flipping through the raw data sheets, hyperventilating once he stumbled on the vivisection photos...

She’d hurt him more than a few times, and it was salt on the slug that was her conscience.

Iida spoke up, “As guilty as I feel about this whole thing, we aren’t going to accomplish anything by standing here. Shall we head back to Heights Alliance?”

“Ah—you can just call ‘em the dorms, you know,” she teased. “Besides, with how everyone’s been the past couple days, I’m pretty sure it’s more than just the two of us who want to do something.”

The hallways were empty, echoing their footsteps as they walked. Ochako had a habit of checking the clocks that hung from the ceiling. UA used a 24-hour clock, since on the field, heroes would need to be able to read official updates on the fly, making a 12-hour clock inefficient. 17:18, 17:19, 17:21… The old-fashioned digital clocks displayed the time in red. Before they knew it, they’d made it from their classroom out to their dorm building.

Kirishima greeted them with a smile as they walked through the door. “How’s Deku doing? Shiozaki was so cool, talking to it—him like that.”

“Nice catch,” Todoroki chided.

“He… well, Iida found out his name, at least,” Ochako’s voice wavered a little.

“Whoa, really?” Kaminari butt in.

“Midoriya Izuku,” Iida said, rigid.

Kaminari repeated, “Midoriya Izuku… Why’d he tell you, in particular?” A flash of realization washed over his face as he mused, “You didn’t…”

“He did,” Ochako cut in.

“Hey—”

“If I have to get busted for it, so do you.”

Iida’s face contorted into the funniest pout Ochako’s ever seen; she’s pretty sure even his glasses fogged up for the act.

“Bakugou, didn’t you know him as a kid?” Kirishima ventured to ask, since Bakugou perked up at the drak’s name. “Did you just not remember it or something?”

“I didn’t want to remember it. That scumbag isn’t worth the time of day,” he spat, grappling in his pockets and fishing out a tangled mass of earbuds. “Round-face, you saw what he did to me,” he turned to Kirishima to finish answering the question. “He still kept following me around after that until I used full power on him. He was like a shadow; it was infuriating. I tried telling him, over and over, that he wasn’t gonna get anywhere with it, but the idiot never listened.”

Mina spoke up next, “How did you meet in the first place, anyways?”

“Shut up. I’m done answering questions for you, you shitty-ass peanut gallery.” He stood up and stomped off towards his room, the earbuds’ music’s static loud enough to make out over the other students’ conversations as it faded away.

“An explosive exit,” Satou remarked without a hint of irony in his voice.

“So, Midoriya, huh?” Jirou spoke up this time. “Did he say anything else?”

“He told me his mother’s name, too. Inko,” Iida said.

“What are we supposed to do with that information, then?” Ojiro asked. “I mean, we could try looking her up online to make sure she knows he’s safe, but there’s no way of knowing how many ‘Midoriya Inko’s there are.”

“Worse comes to worst, I can’t imagine we’d be doing any damage besides maybe being a minor inconvenience to some people,” Tsu, the voice of reason as always.

The band of 19 whipped out their phones, browsing social media for “Midoriya Inko” and mentions of “Midoriya Izuku.”

One Midoriya Inko, as it turned out, was quite active online, and bore a great resemblance to Deku, except…

“She’s an elf.”

“How is she an elf? He’s got her hair and everything, but shouldn’t she be a drak if he’s her son?”

Nonetheless, they managed to find that she lived in Musutafu, along with a post that mention her son, Izuku, having been gone for some time now, so this must be her...somehow. The group decided Iida should be the one to contact her, class president and all.

Iida Tenya to Midoriya Inko

Iida Tenya: Hello. Though this may not be of the best circumstance to any of us, my classmates and I from UA wanted you to know that your son is safe. We are deeply remorseful for the string of events that have led up to this, but he wanted us to seek you out and make sure that you know. [18:53]

And now, they wait.

[thedrakkenclaw]

When Izuku came to and tried to rub his eyes, it became immediately evident that his arms had been shackled and tethered to the now-steel floor.

The cage was renovated; it no longer had glass on all sides, instead favoring the classroom’s view while the sides adjacent to the walls had been replaced with tread plate steel, like the floor, and the top was still a grate.

My legs are shackled too, he noted after he cracked open his eyes. Great.

He scanned the room. Aizawa, Iida, Uraraka—thank god, Kirishima, Shinsou, Kouda, Ashido, Asui, Kaminari. Kacchan was absent, thankfully.

“He’s awake,” Aizawa said to Shinsou. “Try your Quirk on him.” Shinsou rose from his seat and trudged over towards the cage.

“You attacked Bakugou, huh? Pretty bold.”

He kept quiet.

“You know, when I first got here, I wanted to knock him around myself. The guy’s certainly one hell of a self-righteous bastard,” Shinsou laughed, a dry element to his voice. “And you knew the guy when he was just a lil’ tyke too, yeah? The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

He tried to read Shinsou’s eyes, but the guy broke eye contact and turned around before Izuku got anywhere with it. “I know about your… what was it, ‘thought-sharing?’ Uraraka tells me it’s harmless, sure, but I’m not taking any risks here considering what you did to Bakugou.”

Mindspace, the word crossed his train of thought, but he abstained from saying it. Even if he’d wanted to talk to someone besides Uraraka, he hadn’t ignored Aizawa telling the kid to use his Quirk on him, and following Shinsou’s example, he wasn’t taking any risks.

“What of you? A little birdie told me you were pretty freaked out when you saw those documents,” Shinsou turned back towards Izuku, and continued. Several of the students there gave an uneasy look, as if Izuku wasn’t the only one, and as he spoke Izuku noticed he’d quirked his lips at the word “freaked.”

“They really did some nasty stuff, huh?”

Kaminari, soft-spoken, said, “Yo, Shinsou…” but he cut himself off.

“That kind of stuff, it really makes your blood boil, doesn’t it? Tearing someone apart, literally, just for some information. It’s something a villain would do, for sure.”

“Wanting information isn’t inherently—”

He’d made his mistake.

“Sit down.” Izuku sits.

“Stand up.” Izuku stood.

“I don’t know, kiss the glass.” Izuku stepped towards the glass wall and laid his lips on it.

Izuku had dissociated before; that factor of the Quirk wasn’t so foreign to him as much as the fact that he had absolutely no control over—no connection to his body whatsoever. He was watching the world through the eyes of an automaton, and he wasn’t even able to give the commands to try and bring himself back.

In a word, terrifying.

A moment later, his motor control crashed back onto him and he heard Aizawa groan, “That’s enough.” Looking again in Aizawa’s direction, he spotted someone he hadn’t seen earlier—Todoroki? When did he get here? “Now, try it with Kouda.”

Oh. Well.

He heard some muttering, then Uraraka piped up, “Don’t worry, Deku! Shinsou is a nice guy, once you get to know him.”

Kirishima added, “Besides, if you let them do this now, they won’t keep trying in the future. This stuff is a lot of one-and-done, y’know?”

Izuku huffed, and sat back in the center of the enclosure. Kouda joined Shinsou behind the glass, and Kouda began his muttering, then Shinsou spoke to Izuku, who was powerless not to respond in his trance, and the two of them were able to manipulate him rather easily.

“Alright, stop. Now you initiate, Shinsou.” Aizawa directed.

Another monologue opened after that, and Izuku held his tongue until Shinsou mentioned he’d admired the work of heroes like All Might, and Izuku spluttered his fanboy nonsense on impulse. I really don’t like how this guy’s Quirk works—not that it’s a bad Quirk; it’s amazing, really, but this feeling of… paralysis, it really kind of sucks. Kouda’s muttering started again, and Izuku’s consciousness was dampened. He was able to notice, though, that this time, he only obeyed Shinsou’s demands outside of Kouda asking him questions and him answering them.

The third time his motor control returned to him, Izuku collapsed on the spot. Kouda’s Quirk relied on him being attentive, while Shinsou’s separated his mind from his body—it took a lot of energy, on part of all three of them, to collaborate in such a way.

It was chipping away at Izuku’s resolve; of course obeying his captors would mean things would go more smoothly for him, but at the same time he was grasping at straws trying to hold onto what little autonomy he had, and with how they talked about his skirmish with Kacchan, it was pretty obvious they didn’t trust him.

He was feeling more and more like the Deku Kacchan named him for.

The door to the classroom opened, Kaminari (when did he leave?) walking through the door with a taller hybrid girl he hadn’t seen before whose hair was seemingly made of long, flowing brambles, followed by Snipe.

“Oh, hey, we get to see Shiozaki in action!” Kirishima cheered. “Man, I wish we got to see more of you guys, 1-B. Such manliness…” His voice dissolved into mumbles as Aizawa stepped across the room to address Iida and Uraraka.

“You two know the drill. Unbuckle it from there, take it out, and buckle it up to the hook there on the wall.” Aizawa gestured towards the subjects of his direction while speaking.

The two replied, less than unison, “Yes, sensei!”

Uraraka, bless her heart, still had the courtesy to let him know she was about to touch him as she lifted him out of the cage. Snipe’s eyes bore into him from under the mask as the two hooked him to the wall—Probably to ensure that I won’t go berserk and attack anyone, his thoughts supplied, as if that wasn’t obscenely obvious already.

The duo backed away after they finished their handiwork, and Shiozaki approached him. She bent down to squat and matched his eye level, and said, “You know, when I was a little kid and I heard all those stories about the drak, I wanted to be one when I grew up. A creature so connected with the world around it, but also deep and feeling like one of us… it made my heart flutter. That I actually get to meet one—fate truly has blessed me today.” At that, she tensed in focus and her hair grew towards the floor, and when it made contact a small bush of tangled vines popped up between her and Izuku. “They told me you have plant-related magic,” she cooed. “By righteous power, it’d be an honor and a blessing to see your work.”

Izuku was caught between a rock—Shiozaki emanating a lot of potential energy in her Quirk’s vines that overwhelmed his verdant sense—and a hard place—the confrontation and Shiozaki’s oddly religious speech patterns were throwing Izuku for a loop because of just how unfamiliar they were. But, as before, he followed directions to minimize the potential of making a scene and winding up with even less freedom.

The vines wiggled and writhed under his touch before surging into a rose bush, flowers budding and blooming in a whole spectrum of colors on its branches. The entire process took perhaps ten seconds, and the room was stilled in disbelief, including Shiozaki, who now wore a surprised smile.

“That’s amazing,” he heard Kirishima say from across the room. “So manly…”

Aizawa stepped in after a minute to break the silence. “Yes, very impressive. Shiozaki, you brought the seeds, right?”

“Of course, sensei. I always have some on me.”

“Good. Lay them down between you, and allow it to use its power.”

Izuku stared at the flat, teardrop-shaped seeds, not exactly sure what he should do with them. He can’t identify them; he’d liked his power and all, but he never really had much of an opportunity to test it on plants he wasn’t familiar with since he was home so much of the time. Are they tree seeds? Some kind of bush? A flower? Grass—like, bamboo or something? How am I supposed to know what kind of magic to use on these things when I can’t even identify what kind of plant it is?

“Don’t fret,” Shiozaki said to him in a low, gentle voice. “Nobody’s going to get mad at you for what you do right now.”

Izuku swallowed back his anxiety for a moment as he touched the seeds, trying to shape the growth into a bush as he had with the vines. The plants weren’t particularly compliant, but about thirty seconds after he’d started, there was a ripe pumpkin bush between them.

Izuku noticed the looks he was getting and after a moment realized that he’d only grown one bush despite having held a handful of seeds. He explained, a bit sheepish, “Bigger plants tend to combine with each other when they’re planted real close together.” Some voices spoke up in understanding while a couple of them were surprised by the information; Kaminari in particular seemed on the verge of a breakdown.

Aizawa wasted no time instructing Iida and Uraraka to return him to his cage. Most of the students filed out after that, leaving Uraraka and Iida alone with him.

“Hey, I hope today’s load wasn’t too rough,” Uraraka started. “They thought that you being awake for so long during our classes yesterday was contributing to making you nuts, so they started drugging you again,” she frowned. Izuku shuddered. “I wanted to introduce you to Iida today. He’s our class president, and he’s a good guy; you’ll like him!”

Izuku eyed the tall, broad human. “You flatter me,” he tells her. “My name is Iida Tenya, and Uraraka here tells me you go by Deku?”

Izuku winced. Iida’s voice wasn’t as soft as hers, and even though his voice shared no resemblance to Kacchan’s, it still caught him off guard. “Ri—right, yes, I do.” Iida and Uraraka exchange looks.

“If you want me to call you anything else, you may let me know at any time and I will try my best to keep pace.”

Izuku wasn’t dead-set on keeping his name hidden for his own sake so much as his mother’s, and, to a lesser extent, his father’s. Mom deliberately moved into the middle of nowhere, smack dab in the woods, to keep Izuku safe, and if he’s dumb enough to screw that up for himself, the least he can do is keep her out of trouble. She really will kill me when I get back…

“Thanks.”

A rhythmic ringing sounds from Uraraka’s pocket, and she takes out her phone to look at it. Her brow furrowed and she said, “I have to take this; I’ll be back soon!” She ran through the door, waving to Iida and Izuku. “Bye!”

“That was sudden,” Iida remarked.

“Yeah.”

They sat and looked at each other for a bit, though Iida made a point of avoiding eye contact.

To be fair, Izuku didn’t like it much either. He only did it for the sake of entering mindspace.

“I’ve seen you have quite the affinity for heroes,” Iida said with faked confidence.

“Yeah.”

“Do you know of the hero Ingenium?”

“Yeah, of course! His agency in Tokyo employs 65 sidekicks, last I checked. Pretty impressive stuff.” Having said this, Izuku’s mind wandered to how he hadn’t had a chance to check the forums in a while. I wonder what they think of my hiatus. Maybe they think I’m dead, or something. May as well be, he thinks before he can stop himself.

“Well, aren’t you up on your information! The way Uraraka put it, it sounded like all your hero information came from Bakugou.” Iida cast a glance to the side.

“You think Kacchan told me everything I know about heroes? He just introduced me to them.” He knew better than to mumble at this point, so he just kept his voice up—it’d be hard to make a worse impression than he already had when it came to his nerdery. “I go on hero forums a lot. Keep up with the news, y’know? They’re saying Kamui Woods is going to soar in the rankings next semester, which is really cool since his Quirk is so similar to my magic.”

“Oh, but Kamui doesn’t have access to the, er, mindscape, though, does he?”

“Nope, mindspace is mostly just a drak thing. My mom and dad used to use it to talk to each other a lot while I watched TV.” Izuku lifted his arm to rub the back of his neck, but even after bending over backwards to compensate for the short length on the tethers, his neck had buttons stuck to it that he was pretty sure weren’t there before and got in the way of the gesture. Oh, fantastic. What else are they monitoring now? His hand migrated to his jaw, and more were stuck there as well.

“Those are monitoring your hormones,” Iida answered without being asked. “If your adrenaline spikes or you end up with an imbalance of some sort, then the teachers have to come in and make sure you’re not hurting anyone.”

Izuku squints and his voice deadpanned, “Cool.”

Iida looked down before responding. “I know you don’t like it here, and most of us don’t want to keep you.” Iida stiffens at Izuku’s look. “I-it’s the honest truth. This is for your safety now, too, even if it doesn’t seem like it.

“When you were taken, news broke out insanely quickly that drak really did exist, and that there was one at UA.”

“So why keep me here if UA’s explicitly a target?” Izuku’s expression remained bothered.

“I’m getting to that. After the official hubbub died down and those scientists finally left us alone, we started receiving threats regarding you. They couldn’t trace them, and all of the fingerprints on them were unregistered in police databases.”

“So I’m being targeted by villains, then?” He raised his eyebrows, but otherwise wore the same exasperated expression. “Great. Fantastic. Now my stupid mistake might cost me my life and my mom’ll…”

He almost choked on his own spit at that. What would happen? She’d be devastated. Hell, she probably already is with however long he’s been missing.

“De—Deku, are you okay?” Iida’s voice was muffled by the shifting of his restraints; chains pulling at one another in an awful chorus of twangs and jingles as Izuku struggled to make himself smaller.

“I’m sorry, Izuku.”

“It’s not gonna happen. The public would freak out and get too focused on the fact that he’s a fucking drak.”

“Your father says ‘hi,’ Izuku. He loves you, you know; even when he’s not around, he’s always thinking of you.”

“It showed you what I did to it, but it never showed you what it did to me, now, am I right?”

He sensed that Iida backed away from the cage, his arms raised in caution as if the thing were about to explode, and Izuku agreed with that judgement even if he didn’t have the ability to do it. Even if they weren’t connected in mindspace, Iida could probably distinguish that whatever was going on inside his head wasn’t his idea of a good time.

“Deku, can you talk to me? Uraraka should be back anytime now…” He was frustrated at her for saying she’d “be back soon.” Izuku couldn’t find it in himself to feel much of anything about it. “This—is this about your mother, Deku? We could try to find her, let her know of your situation and everything…”

Izuku’s crying calms to a few mild hiccups every now and then, and the two of them look at each other in the eye.

“Midoriya,” Izuku said. “Midoriya Izuku is my name, and my mother is Midoriya Inko. Please find her. Please make sure she knows I’m okay.”

Izuku then slumped over and fell out of consciousness, to Iida’s surprise. One of the chains had been laced with a slim tube that must’ve been used to administer a tranquilizer from afar.

[thedrakkenclaw]

hopefully ill be able to get more posted by monday ♡ sorry for the wait

i havent had any time to work on drakken claw this week but heres drak izuku’s hero costume

[thedrakkenclaw]

It was a Sunday morning, apparently, since the students were taking the day off. It’s odd that they only take off Sunday, thought Izuku, of all the days in a week. Sunday sounds like the kind of day that you’d get up and shout to the sky, ‘I’m ready!’ like Spongebob or something. He snickered a little at that; Spongebob Squarepants was largely a relic of a cartoon that hardly anyone in this day and age had actually watched outside of it being an endless source of memes ever since its conception.

Uraraka broke through the door in a hurry to run up to the cage and wave to Izuku with a smile, and Izuku panicked and tried to shove his shirt back on because this was indecent on his part.

“Hey, Deku!” She stopped herself before she could continue, “Oh, wait, Deku was what Bakugou was calling you to be mean… what’s your actual name?”

“No no no, you can call me Deku,” Izuku stammered, a bit flustered by her sudden entrance and embrace. “Like ‘dekiru,’ remember?”

“Oh, okay! Deku. You’re cute, Deku.” She pulled a chair over and sat facing him. “Your horns are like little bunny ears!”

“Bunny ears?” He raised a hand up above his forehead, where the verdant-green horns poked out from his mop of hair. “I kinda thought they look like All Might’s hairstyle,” he mumbles, belatedly remembering that his shirt is mic’d.

“You really are a fanboy,” she said. “...Listen, that’s not why I’m here, though. I… I wanted to apologize for what happened yesterday. I lied to you about making you feel safe, because you weren’t safe. They shot you and you didn’t even know what was going on until you were hit.”

“Uraraka.” Her face shot up at hearing her name, “You weren’t there, were you? You walked out, before it happened.”

“So what? I pulled you out in the first place.”

“Work with me here,” Izuku muttered, then spoke up. “I trust you more than anyone else right now. I just… I just want to know what happened while I was out - like, what they did with me - and what to expect coming up. That’s it. Could you share that information with me?”

“O-oh, sure, that’s nothing,” Uraraka squeaked, then bounced from her seat out of the room.

Izuku went slack, and relaxed muscles he wasn’t even aware were tensed. He only pulled his shirt up a little, looking under the buttons to the faded scar Kacchan left as a farewell back then and he traced the jagged edges of it.

What am I to these people? They refer to me like I’m an object. “It” this, “it” that. I don’t even know any drak outside of my dad and I haven’t even seen him in ages. I… don’t know anyone outside my family, period. My mom even does all the shopping; I rarely leave the house unless we’re out hiking or I’m able to pass off my appearance as being a costume or an extreme mutation Quirk. Kacchan was my only exception, and after he did this, Mom told me “no more exceptions.”

Why did I go?

“Got it,” Uraraka cheered as she barged through the door again. “I printed them all out for you, and if you give me a second…” She popped one of the cage’s fasteners open and slid the papers under the lid a few at a time, and sealed it when she was done. The papers scattered on the floor and Izuku would probably have a few papercuts if he weren’t a drak.

“I’ll probably get in trouble if I leave those in there with you,” Uraraka said. “They still think you’re dangerous, and that includes to yourself, with any object you’re given.”

“Not even a pillow, huh?” Izuku muttered as he collected the papers in a more tedious version of 52 Pick-up (the papers stuck to the floor by static and he had to pinch at them from the center to get them to come up).

“Unfortunately.”

After he felt as though he was reading the same thing for the third time, he went back to the ones he’d already read and noticed that they were reports written by the students.

“Is it okay that I’m reading these? It seems invasive,” he asked.

“Oh, no, don’t worry about it. I asked everyone if they’d let me, and only Bakugou objected.”

He scoffed. “I didn’t want to read his anyways.”

Reading through the papers, the fact that the students consistently referred to him as an “it” stood out more than anything else. Aizawa’s words about his official status float in his mind, but it still bothered him nonetheless.

The last paper he reads is the official data sheet pulled together by the school’s staff and their affiliates. It spares no fluff in presenting the information they’d uncovered: his height, weight, sex, documentation of various DNA samples, x-rays, EKGs, CT scans, and all sorts of other information that was completely lost on him.

Suddenly he felt relieved that they only took his pants off. With all the crap they scrounged up in here, they probably would’ve wanted to cut him open and look at his guts.

...He spoke, er, thought too soon, apparently, as he flipped the page. According to the annotations on the document, medical personnel were against operating on a perfectly healthy body, but scientists were lining their pockets to do it and document everything. The project went way far beyond just UA at this point. When isn’t something beyond UA? Grimly, his thoughts added, You know, “Go beyond. Plus Ultra!”

He didn’t dwell too long on the photos there. Even if he did, he was already thoroughly disturbed, and he might as well finish digging the tunnel he’d started, except…

The raw data ended there. The final document was a grading rubric developed by whatever teacher was involved in assigning the students’ project. He couldn’t find a name on it anywhere, though.

“Okay, I’m done,” Izuku announced.

“Alright! Give me a sec…” She unfastened the lock. “Okay, shoot!” It took a few tries to get the papers to go through the small slit, but ultimately it proved effective and she shut the lock again.

Uraraka let him sit a few minutes before breaking the silence. “So… whaddya think?”

He sat quietly until his voice dropped his response:

“Deku.”

“...Deku?” She echoed him. “That’s your nickname, right? You still want me to call y-”

“Am I a deku to all of you? I...humanids have a history of using us,” his voice was a soft, quiet whisper. “I grew up being told that drak hide because when you seek, when you find us, ready or not, we get used, killed, or both. I-I’m not - I’m not dead, a-and Ura-raraka, I believe in you, but when I get back home my mom is gonna kill me, because she always knows what happens to me when I’m out without permission…”

“That’s an odd thing to be worried about,” Uraraka said.

“You don’t know my mom.”

“It sounds more like you’re trying to change the subject, Deku.”

“I’ll do you one better,” Izuku deadpanned. “Why did all of these documents refer to me as an ‘it’ when you had conclusive evidence as to my physiological sex? Including yours.”

“Gender identity is an important part of hero training due to discrimina-”

“Then use ‘they!’” Izuku stopped. “I’m-I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but of all the things that have been bothering me this whole time, the fact that all of you have been referring to me like I’m a cinder block or something is killing me.”

“Uh-understood.” For a moment, there was quiet.

Of course, only then did the door slam open, Bakugou tearing the peace to shreds.

“Deku. Why would you want to read my paper, eh?” No response, just a pained look shared with Uraraka. “Huh? Don’t play games with me, idiot. You told Uraraka to give you our papers, and I was the only one with the forethought to consider, ‘oh, hey, maybe we don’t let the dangerous freak handle all the intel,’ but here we are anyways.”

“Kacchan-”

“Don’t call me that,” vitriol soaked Kacchan’s shouts. “I’m not gonna let you take over my brain either, like round-face over there, so don’t try any bullshit.”

“I can’t control people’s mindspace.”

“Just because it’s been ten years doesn’t mean I can’t remember you creeping on my thoughts. That was the whole reason I started thinking about how weird you really are.” Kacchan turned to the side and jeered, “because of course a goddamn drak would think it could ever best me - and with plant magic, too? You had your head up your ass since day one.”

Uraraka piped up, “Bakugou, stop. Are you just trying to provoke him?”

Bakugou only laughed. “Oh, so it’s a him now. You’re really letting it poison your mind, then, huh? You’re being too pedestrian with it. Those claws could make mincemeat of you if you’re not careful.”

“Shut up,” Izuku heard himself say. His self-control was waning at Kacchan’s antagonizing of the one person he trusts at all and instinctive rage would cut through his façade at any moment if this kept going, and Izuku wasn’t excited to see what kind of damage that would wreak. After all, the last time that’d happened...

“Or what?”

Izuku staggered; he knew he couldn’t come up with a response Kacchan would find satisfactory.

“Listen, round-face, this thing’s been giving you a one-sided story. It showed you what I did to it, but it never showed you what it did to me, now, am I right?” All the venom and rage on his face fell and was replaced by a cold expression that belied no emotions. He pulled up his shirt to reveal four old, light stripes on the skin of his back. “These scars were left by it; it sent me to the hospital with what it did back then. It has the power to kill with just its bare hands, and if you keep interacting with it all buddy-buddy, it’s hardly a matter of ‘if’ so much as ‘when.’”

Izuku was a mess. He’d turned away from Kacchan and Uraraka to hide from them that he was trying not to cry and failing miserably at it.

“See? Now it’s upset ‘cause I exposed its plot to trick you.”

“S-shut up,” Izuku choked out again. His hands were trembling, and he felt anger fear regret betrayal grief-

“You’re an idiot for not listening to me.”

and

he

LOST IT

Turned, crouched, jumped at Kacchan to shut him up, to put a hand around his mouth, glass shards scattered on the floor and blood and tears and snot dripping off his face which was disgusting, but he couldn’t take it anymore; Uraraka was a good person and she didn’t deserve this garbage, and Izuku howled in pain when Kacchan lit a powerful explosion in his face. It stung, but only made him more belligerent, and he tried to restrain his hands but he felt himself go slack as he felt a prick in his neck.

[thedrakkenclaw]

im gonna leave for about a week coming up, so i might post one more chapter before sunday, and after that ill be mia for a week. i'm still working on the story, don't worry!

[thedrakkenclaw]

Consciousness was becoming his enemy almost as quickly as loneliness. When he next woke, he was alone, and judging by the windows in the room, probably sometime in the middle of the night. The security lights that remained on didn’t do much for his vision, but it was enough to see in, and he could look at himself again.

He pulled off the jumpsuit top again, and lied down on top of it. He’s become awful tired of this box being so flat and unaccommodating, and having no top and two layers between him and the ground beat having a top and only one layer between him and the ground.

What does mom think? Is she okay? God, she’s probably worried about me; I’m such an idiot. I hear Kacchan back in the woods one time and I think it’s a good idea to go say “hi” as if he didn’t want me dead the last time I saw him a decade ago? God, a decade. How long have they even kept me in this place, anyways? What did they do to me when I was under? I hate not knowing, but… god, I don’t know if I want to know.

He spent much longer than he’d liked with his thoughts before he fell asleep through the rest of the night.

[thedrakkenclaw]

Izuku was kind of pissed off that they didn’t bother to give him bedding when he woke up to a cramped neck, tail, and sore back. There was a wider assortment of students there this time, a raggedy… what Izuku assumed was a teacher among them.

“Consider among yourselves the ethics of capturing someone and holding them for any period of time as well,” the man’s voice droned. “Quirk law and heroism is first and foremost a test of one’s morals - if your judgement is weak, you won’t be seen as an asset to the agencies you want to hire you.”

The class broke off into a hushed debate, small groups discussing the question. He could hear the group nearest to him struggling to grapple with it.

“I just don’t understand the problem with the amount of time you’re holding someone for,” spoke a red-head with very, very gelled spiky hair.

“It might have something to do with efficiency,” came from a girl with an enormous ponytail and a side fringe. “You shouldn’t spend too much time dilly-dallying on one job.”

“Good point, Yaoyorozu. I’m more curious as to why holding someone hostage is a serious enough issue for heroes to be associated with ethics,” said one kid…whose mouth was on the end of one of his…six…webbed arms? Izuku practically took a double take; he’d seen some weird mutation Quirks before, but this was a new one for him.

“Good morning,” the raggedy man spoke directly at Izuku - when did he even get over here?

“Go-good morning,” Izuku managed.

“I thought Hizashi was joking when he told me the class had actually caught a real drak. I can’t say I’m pleased that you’ve seemingly taken on the role of class pet and stolen all this real estate in my homeroom, but I suppose I’ll survive for their sake.” The man stood still, staring stoic at Izuku as he spoke.

“Pet? I-I’m not, like-”

“No, you’re not. But for the safety of everyone here, students and staff are to view you as dangerous, not unlike an animal, as we have no scope to the limits of your abilities and you were not brought here of your own volition. You will find that many of them would think otherwise,” he huffed, and began to walk away. “Call me Aizawa.”

Aizawa took his spot once again at the desk in the front of the room and called the class to attention, picking a student from every group to address his question to them.

“Aoyama.” A blond-haired elf with an angular smile lowered his hand, sitting by a pink-haired, pink-skinned hybrid elf-human and Iida.

“Well, Ashido said that we could bait them with their own friends and family or partners in crime and that would be a reason to capture people but also consider ethics, but I said that it’s not ethical to capture people who were innocent. Iida said we could ask consent from those that we capture, so that we’re not breaching their rights.” Aoyama finished with a flourish and Izuku could almost feel the ~flamboyant tildes~ following his words.

“Good. Remember to keep in mind that while the public’s autonomy is our main priority, if a villain makes a threat of mass destruction, it isn’t immoral to resist using backhanded methods to make them bend, assuming you aren’t risking innocents in the process.”

The discussion continued throughout the class, and as Izuku tried to remember their names he found out pretty quickly that the purple ball-haired kid, Mineta, was a gross pervert and definitely one of them he’d avoid communicating with if he could.

The classes were, perhaps, informative, but they hard to follow since all the teachers were pro heroes and Izuku didn’t even have a notebook. Izuku almost collapsed in relief when the ending bell rang… which was a silly thing to do because none of the students left and Aizawa was quick to return with a few other adults: a short, hunched over elf lady with a walking syringe stick, a large, imposing elf man with an underbite dressed in red and white, and a wild west-looking hero in a masked cowboy ensemble. Recovery Girl, Blood King, and Snipe.

Aizawa put a hand to his face, sighed, and said, “Alright, settle down. You all caught this thing for a reason, right? Stop milling about and wasting time.” At that, Iida disengaged the locks overhead, and Uraraka reached in.

“I’m going to touch you and make you weightless, understand?” Her voice was quiet and soothing. Izuku nodded, and was lifted over the top of the cage like it was nothing.

Once he was out of the cage and less than half a meter off the ground, Uraraka said “Release” and Izuku fell hard on his ass.

“Ow!” Some of the students laughed.

“That’s nothing, honey,” croaked Recovery Girl in amusement, and before Izuku could think to stop himself-

“Oh, Recovery Girl! It’s so cool to meet you, you’ve saved thousands of lives on the battlefield and throughout Japan! ...It’s an honor,” he slowed down, red in the face as the students around him did a bad job stifling their laughter.

“It seems kind of unfair that the draks can know about us but we can’t know about them,” one student mused. He thinks it was maybe Ashido, but the whole mess was hard to sort out.

“Settle down. How many times do I need to tell you all that you won’t accomplish anything by behaving like a mob?” Aizawa’s eyes were full of disappointment as the noise died down again.

“Hold still,” Recovery Girl whispered as she stuck earplugs into his ears. She tried to say something to him, but the earplugs completely blocked out the noise around him and that included her voice. She seemed satisfied at his curious expression and turned to nod at the other teachers, and some of the students filed out of the classroom - notably among them Uraraka and Iida. In fact, the only ones remaining were Shinsou, Shouji, Asui, Todoroki, Ojiro, a... sad-looking? Kouda, and Kacchan. A blindfold was then wrapped around his face, his hands cuffed, and then he heard a loud bang through the earplugs he was wearing and fell on the ground.

The pain didn’t register for a moment. Maybe if he didn’t try to figure out why he fell, he wouldn’t have figured out that why he fell was that he had a bullet in his back and that that shit hurts a lot.

He lied there for a hot second before hands were on him and retrieved the piece of metal from where he was struck, then something warm and soft and a little wet gave him a smooch and the pain died down to a dull roar.

The blindfold came off and he saw that the students’ faces were a mix of horror, intrigue, disgust, and relief. The earplugs came out and he heard, “...can’t keep doing these, tests, today. The drak doesn’t have nearly enough energy and is still tired from the last test you pulled while it was under from the drugs! I forbid it.” Recovery Girl spat the word “test” with such utter disgust, Izuku was surprised the lady could manage it.

“You heard the lady,” Aizawa followed, “we’re done for today. Someone go grab Uraraka so we can lift it back into the cage.”

Ojiro volunteered, and the other students filed back into the room. Uraraka approached Izuku, and warned him again before making him weightless and setting him back in his confines, Iida closing the grate and locking it. The teachers and staff then took their leave, the students remaining behind to ogle their… class pet.

Kouda was the first to approach him this time, but Izuku didn’t know sign language, so the conversation was a little one-sided until the kid started mumbling and Izuku fell into a trance. He could hear other students shouting in awe, but words flew past him; his senses only listened to Kouda until he abruptly stopped mumbling and everything was crystal clear again.

“You have an awesome Quirk,” Izuku told him. “Can you, uh, put me to sleep? I’d really like that.” The kid gave a vigorous nod and his mumbling continued until Izuku’s consciousness faded.

[thedrakkenclaw]

…

...Everything is hazy…

...can’t move…can’t focus…

-----------------------------------

Izuku’s eyes snapped open at the chattering of a cheerful girl’s voice.

“...and it made me wonder, ‘what kind of magic would I have if I were a drak?’”

“It’s certainly an intriguing idea,” a more masculine voice stated. “I wonder if the drak are limited to the four states of matter, or if their categories of magic are deeper than that.”

Izuku look and felt around himself. He was caged in from all sides; a thick layer of glass on all sides of him but up, where a heavy metal grate lied fastened instead, and was wearing a dark blue jumper lined with bold red and white stripes - am I wearing a UA jumpsuit? Fluorescent lights hummed above him and linoleum tiles swamped the floor underneath. There was a persistent fuzziness in his head that was threatening to lull him back to sleep, but he was also consumed by a familiar panic that left him unable to rest, because he’d been-

Trapped.

By humanids, of all things, based on the room he’s being kept in. It’s not that drak couldn’t have relations with humanids per se, but in the past humanids have tried to use them for power games and take advantage of them for any number of reasons, and threaten death if they disobeyed. Since drak were generally nonviolent, reclusion on their part was only natural.

That was what his mom had told him, anyways.

He looked out again and tried to take in his surroundings. The girl’s voice probably belonged to the (cute) brunette elf with a bob, while the more stilted male voice likely belonged to the tall, broad-shouldered human standing next to her. The room was stocked with desks that were mostly uninhabited save for those two, and… Kacchan, and a couple of others who were mostly keeping quiet: an elf with rich yellow hair, the other a dark-haired human with curious-looking earlobes. Are those audio jacks…?

“So you’ve finally decided to join us, Deku?” Kacchan had gotten up right next to the glass, his voice grinding against Izuku’s ears. “And here I thought you’d done yourself in, idiot. Do yourself a favor and grow a spine.”

“Bakugou, knock it off!” The brunette almost yelled, “it’s only just waking up!”

“‘Cause your screeching’s really helping it a lot,” he sneered and pointed at Izuku. “Anyways, you’re at UA under our watch, so don’t do anything stupid,” his palms lit up with explosive little pops of heat, “or else. You’re to answer to us, and the better you do that, the better we’ll treat you. Got it?” He turned around and waddled off, muttering something like “stupid Deku…” as Izuku confirmed that he was, in fact, wearing a UA jumpsuit.

The door slammed behind him and signaled to the brunette to rise from her seat, and she hopped over towards the glass separating them. “Sorry about Bakugou,” she sighed, “he’s got a bit of a temper. Though… he said you two knew each other as kids? That’s really fascinating. What did you think of him?” She paused, an expression of thought blinking on, then off of her face. “I mean, you must still remember him, since you showed up the other night.”

He was tempted to respond to her since she seemed so earnest, but the fact that he was trapped in a cage and that she seemed to have some semblance of having worked for this situation, he thought better than to indulge. Instead, he just looked up at her face, trying to read her eyes.  Brown, just like her hair.

“Uraraka, we don’t know what that drak’s capable of. Talking to it may not be the best idea,” the tall human from before said. Uraraka turned towards him as he continued, “His magic may be more mental or emotional; some legends did have drak with those abilities.”

“Those drak were also supposedly ancient,” Uraraka retorted. “Bakugou said this drak’s our age.” She spun to face Izuku again, who hadn’t moved in the slightest since. “Hey, are you stressed? I’m sorry. If I were in charge of this project, we wouldn’t’ve captured you at all in the first place.”

“We wouldn’t even have a chance of getting it to talk if we didn’t capture it,” came a voice from the girl with the funky ears. “Besides, we’re getting information from it whether or not it responds verbally.”

Izuku panicked a bit at that. This was about information? Why would they need to capture him to get information? It’s true that humanids weren’t certain that drak even existed, but it’s not like drak had some agreement to withhold information from them - there’s just not that many drak, that’s all it is. That, and drak were often exploited, but if it’s just information they’re after…

“Isn’t this a bit much?”

All eyes were on him in an instant and he wanted to disappear.

“Oh, so it can talk,” the honey-haired boy spoke up. “I was getting worried it was, like, mute, or something.”

The tall boy approached the glass and made direct eye contact with Izuku. “This is UA High, the m-”

“-most prestigious Hero educational facility in all of Japan,” Izuku finished for him, monotone. “I know what UA is; Kacchan used to show me all sorts of humanid stuff back then.”

A few voices murmured, “Humanid…?” before Izuku could even realize his mistake - he’d answered a question he hadn’t been asked. Stupid impulse, you don’t need to explain yourself to people like that. Especially not when they’ve got you under lock and key. It wasn’t the end of the world, though, if they’d focused more on humanid, the catch-all for non-drak peoples, more than the actual statement he’d made-

“And you remember it now? That’s impressive,” said the boy. God dammit.

“Weren’t you just telling us that we shouldn’t be talking to it?” Ear-girl again. “Between stopping us from running in the dorms with your Quirk going nuts and this, you really are horrible at taking your own advice,” she chided.

The human staggered before he sputtered out, “W-well, between Uraraka’s reasoning and the drak’s inaction, I figured that it must be- it must be relatively safe to engage.”

This banter continued amongst them for a while, and Izuku eventually learned the tall boy’s name was Iida, “ear-girl” was Jirou, and the honey-headed boy was Kaminari. Jirou and Kaminari’s personalities clashed, Jirou consistently at Kaminari’s throat, but they were also complementary in some ways; perhaps they’d known one another for a while? Iida was a straight-edge, by-the-books sort of guy who apparently had little self awareness in the heat of the moment, though for him it seemed hindsight was 20/20. Uraraka lingered behind after the other three left together, Izuku making out the words “study” and “test tomorrow” as they walked through the door.

“So… Deku is your name?” The sound of Uraraka’s voice on its lonesome cut through his concentration and brought him back to the reality of the situation.

“It’s an interesting name,” she continued after he kept quiet. “Like a puppet? Are you an actor?”

He let out a quiet snort. Sure, whatever. Just going to ignore the fact that it’s an insult flat-out, then? What kind of drak culture does she think I deal with?

“It sounds sort of sweet, like dekiru! You can do it!”

“That wasn’t what Kacchan had in mind when he came up with it,” he mumbled, mostly to himself.

“‘Kacchan?’ Oh, that’s adorable!”

Izuku thought back to what Jirou had said about him being there for information, and it being provided whether or not he spoke, and mentally slapped himself on the wrist for not noticing the microphone sewn into his shirt’s turtleneck. After he picked up on that detail and felt it between his fingertips, he began to think about what other devices were planted on him... what else they could’ve been monitoring.

“Was he a nice guy back then?” She had a fanciful look on her face and her eyes weren’t focused on him - she was picturing something in her mind, probably a younger version of Kacchan. He read into them again, taking in the color of her irises, and, focusing on her person, settled into her mindscape with his signature subtlety to try and figure out what her angle was.

The first thing he noticed was that the younger version of Kacchan she’d envisioned was too volatile, and not nearly as proud nor cocky as he truly was. Izuku was quick to rectify that for her; his own memories could easily fill the gaps her imagination left for him.

He could see her intent, and must’ve subconsciously decided he could trust her as he told her, silent and direct, “We were friends, once. Before his Quirk manifested. My mom and his enjoyed the other’s company, so they would meet up and bring us along.” As he explained, the mental image he created shifted to match his story. “He always wanted to be the best hero, and he was always good at everything he tried! I wanted to be a hero, but I… wasn’t as good at things. He’d laugh at me for it, but it wasn’t until his Quirk manifested that he started to, uh…”

Izuku didn’t vocalize what happened at this point. He just showed his memories, which were more emotional and painful than they were sensory, until the last and particularly vivid memory wound itself up.

The cool spring air burned in his lungs, full of floral perfumes in the forest where he and Kacchan had met after school ended. Kacchan had heard Izuku calling out to him, asking to play, but when Kacchan finally succumbed and followed him to their clearing, he screamed, “My dad told me to stop hanging out with you, ‘cause you’re a freak!”

Izuku cocked his head at that, but didn’t respond. Kacchan gets angry a lot, and he didn’t want to provoke him if he didn’t have to.

“You… you’re a drak, aren’t you? My dad told me you’d kill me someday if I kept hanging out with you, so fuck off! I never want to see you again!” And with that, Kacchan put his palm, drenched in sweat, up to Izuku’s stomach, and let loose a spectacular explosion.

“I don’t remember anything after that, and I don’t remember seeing him after that either,” Izuku hummed, “until I was captured and brought here from the same clearing. I… don’t know why I still went there, as if I expected to see him or something. Maybe it just smells nice,” Izuku quietly laughed.

“Oh…” is all Uraraka could say.

“I know you’re going to tell all your friends,” Izuku said. “You can tell all sorts of stories about me if you really want to, but Jirou said that you’d captured me for the sake of gathering information, right? Tell her I’m not a stickler, and that I’d have been willing to talk if I weren’t trapped in a glass box.

“I don’t know why Kacchan turned on me so violently back then, but… if his dad really did tell him that, I can’t blame him for it. I can’t blame any humanids, really, and wanting more information is… well, I’m always thirsting for a bit more knowledge myself, so who am I to judge? I’m just… scared. I don’t know what you intend to do with me, and I’m scared you’ll hurt me, or try to find my mom or my dad and hurt them. It’s stupid on my part, honestly-”

“Do you ever stop monologuing?” Uraraka’s impatient physical voice rang out and cut him off from her mind entirely. “I get that you’re suspicious and you have every right to be - even if we don’t mean any harm, that doesn’t mean people with the information we gather couldn’t be malicious - but I’m going to do everything in my power to help you feel safe here.

“And… you said you wanted to be a hero, right?” Izuku nodded. “You’re at the right place for it, you know! Maybe you could watch our class some days.”

Across the room, the door crept open and Iida’s head poked through, saying, “Uraraka, it’s time to go. We were headed out to get a bite to eat, remember?” Uraraka jumped to her feet, scurrying out the door, and Izuku was alone.

He figured that it’d probably be a good idea to feel around his jumpsuit for more devices, to get an idea of how closely he was being monitored. All this stuff must be wireless. It’s a pretty impressive setup, actually; too bad it makes me super uncomfortable.

It didn’t take long for him to find that some of the monitors were attached directly to his skin instead of sitting in the fabric, so he slid the top off over his head and examined himself again. Probably detects heart rate and breathing, he thought, noting a selection of buttons taped on his chest. Others were stuck to his arms and a good several on his head and horns, and using the glass on the cage as a mirror as best he could, he could see several were stuck to his back as well. His wings had only a couple, and his tail had several as well - they’re probably just checking to see if the tail has anything unusual in it or something. Most humanids don’t have tails, he reminded himself.

At the thought of taking his pants off to check underneath that layer too, he became incredibly uneasy at the realization that he was stripped down to, at most, his underwear… but he had his doubts; they were doing it for information, after all. He stole a glance under his pants for a fraction of a second and his fears were proven correct. At least they had the decency to do it while I was unconscious - wait, no, that’s even worse! He hid his face in his arms and tried to shake off this bout of anxiety. It’s not about you, it’s because they’re trying to research drak, they weren’t trying to be invasive towards you - but… but why couldn’t they just ask me first? He curled in on himself a little tighter, and stayed that way for a good while before pulling the top back over his head and resolving not to think too hard about it.

He fails miserably at not thinking too hard about it, but once the image of Bakugou stripping him came to mind he shook his head hard and waved his arms around and tried to just focus on All Might. Just relax, calm down, pretend All Might’s got your back and helping you out of a pinch, I swear to god you can’t be going crazy just because you got knocked out and dragged away by some humanids, stop freaking out right now or you’ll never get out of here just shut up and stop thinking about it imagine All Might sitting next to you and telling you to go to sleep and letting go of this place to go to sleep go to sleep go to sleep

go to sleep

go to sleep

...

[thedrakkenclaw]

Introduction to Drak

Drak are draconic people. In context, they’re parallel to mermaids; from a narrative standpoint, they’re mermaids that aren’t limited to water (because as a writer and an artist, aquatic settings for mermaids gets pretty monotonous and they’re incredibly limiting). They are mythological creatures, or cryptids. They have an elemental affinity that is usually inherited from their parents, though humanid society is somewhat confused on whether that may be a choice on the child’s part. Their elemental magic outplays Quirks by a large margin. Most humanids don’t think they exist.