Chapter Text
Have you ever heard a hyena’s laughter?
Have you heard it bouncing off of wet concrete, skittering over the black sky and catching on the blank pinpricks where stars would be showing through without the smog and light pollution?
Hizashi Yamada has. Hizashi Yamada is tired of hearing it, in fact, tired of being followed by a laughing hyena all through the streets of Musutafu. Running errands, out on patrol, walking or driving to and from both of his jobs; he swears he’s even heard it in the recording booth for his radio show, but the microphone didn’t catch it.
Hizashi Yamada is sick and tired of this hyena.
Hizashi Yamada has no idea what he’s about to get himself into.
“Sho?”
“Mm?”
Hizashi was sprawled across their couch, head buried in the fur of their cuddliest cat, Mochi. He’d been acting weird for weeks now, and Shouta was really getting worried. He came home exhausted, and woke up at all times of the night to check that the doors and windows were all locked.
“Let’s go for a walk.”
By the time Shouta processed what his husband had said, he turned to see the man shoving his feet into a pair of jogging shows, loose hair hanging limply over his exhausted face. Shouta, though a night owl, was rarely one for “going on walks”, but he silently stepped into his own combat boots, shrugging into a coat on his way to the door.
The night was brisk, but not freezing, so the thin pajama shirt under his coat wasn’t the worst choice he could’ve made. They walked hand in hand through the dark streets.
From a rooftop to their left, a strange sound echoed.
“Hah. Hah. Hah. Hah. Hah.”
Hizashi stopped and turned his face up to the moonlight, looking at the high rooftop. Shouta stared up as well, tense, ready for a fight. The sound moved, traveling across the rooftop, cutting off abruptly when he swore it should’ve been leaping across to the next building.
Only Shouta whirled when it issued from the other side of the street next. Hizashi turned back, his gaze straight forward again, and squeezed Shouta’s hand as he tugged them onwards.
“It won’t do anything.”
Shouta stumbled into step with Hizashi, looking around and over his shoulders as the sound followed them. A slow, high-pitched laugh, inhuman and constant. It followed them through alleys, over bridges, even into an empty train station. Hizashi sat on a bench in front of the tracks, and Shouta gingerly set himself beside his husband, still glancing around.
“It’s been two. Weeks.” Hizashi leaned back and looked at Shouta. “It just follows me. It doesn’t hurt me, it doesn’t show itself, nobody else has heard it. Just me.”
Shouta jumped slightly when the sound became abruptly louder, circling them through the deceptively open station. He looked around, glaring at the tracks when he was certain he could hear the laughter from the other side, but the night was empty.
“I’ve even heard it in the recording booth,” Hizashi continued with a dry chuckle. “The microphone didn’t pick it up, though. I thought I was losing it.”
Shouta rested his hand on his husband’s. This was weird, really weird, but it didn’t seem like an outright threat. Maybe it was a vigilante, though it was definitely odd that they were the only ones to hear it.
Shouta straightened and inhaled deeply.
“HELLO!?”
Hizashi snickered into his hand, and the laughter only got louder. Shouta elbowed him and continued, only slightly quieter.
“Who are you?”
The laughter slowed to a stop. Hizashi looked around, suddenly uneasy, and both men shifted towards each other.
A slightly lower, drawn out sound echoed from their left. It was still rather high, like a young or feminine voice, but it almost sounded like a cheesy ghost impression; a wavering, drawn-out “ooooh”, curling around the entire station.
It ended with an animalistic chuff, and then a quiet voice whispered somewhere in front of them: “Hello?”
Hizashi looked like he’d seen a ghost, and Shouta leaned forward curiously. It didn’t just sound like an adult trying to raise their voice, or a natural high-pitched intonation.
That sounded like a kid.
“Hello?” Shouta tried. The laughter returned, faster and quieter this time, but it began to fade. He stood, squinting into the darkness as the sound leapt from one side of the station to the other, all the while growing fainter. “Where are you?!”
The laughter continued to grow fainter until it disappeared somewhere off behind them. Hizashi relaxed, still seated, while Shouta began to pace around the station, looking for speakers, recording devices, something.
“You got him to talk,” Hizashi said to his husband’s back. “That’s new.”
“He doesn’t usually?” Shouta turned to meet Hizashi’s gaze over his shoulder to see him nod.
Shouta paused, thinking for a second.
“He?”
Hizashi shrugged. “His name is Green.”
“Green.”
“That’s what his note said.”
From his pocket, he pulled a crumpled, nondescript napkin, which had messy, scribbled pencil writing on both sides.
Shouta crossed the space to take it, pulling out his phone to act as a flashlight.
HELLO, it read. I AM KALD GREEN, with “green” underlined twice. Shouta squinted at the atrocious spelling and large handwriting, flipping it to read the other side.
THE RODUNT FREDE ME. HE WIL GIVE YU ME.
Shouta frowned up at Hizashi. “The rodent? Does he mean Nezu?”
Hizashi shrugged. “I’ve been trying to corner the damn stoat, but he’s been avoiding me.”
From across the city, both men could’ve sworn they heard the faint echo of that same laugh in the direction of UA high school. They traded looks, and suddenly felt, in unison, the chill their nerves had been staving off. Hizashi stood and, taking his husband’s hand, they set off towards home in peaceful silence.
Nezu, principal of UA high school, was strolling through the oversized vents of his domain, a clambering human child hot on his heels. The green-haired boy was ambling along on all fours, his arms disproportionately long to allow for an otherwise unwieldy manner of movement. His skin was oddly warped along his cheeks, extending from the corners of his mouth, through a small stretch of scar tissue on each side.
A hyena mutation quirk, or at least that’s what Nezu always assumed. Nobody could say what exactly had been done to the boy in the lab Nezu was created in. All he knew for certain was that Izuku had been too young to remember it, he aged far slower than normal humans, and “Hyena” was perhaps the most innocuous description for his strange, ever-changing quirk. Just that morning, Nezu had rushed into the child’s hidden bedroom, set just off his office in between floors, to find him crying in pain, holding single tooth. Nezu had consoled him, inspecting his mouth to find another, far larger canine already visible through Izuku’s gums under the gap.
Nezu kept the baby tooth, though he was able to convince himself it was purely for research purposes, and had nothing to do with any sentimental attachment he’d absolutely not been developing. It was tucked in a vial, on a shelf next to the album labeled “research photos”.
His personal favorite was of the first time Izuku tried bone marrow. The boy had eaten with gusto and fell asleep still clutching the femur from his meal.
Not that he had favorites. They were for research, after all.
Nezu stepped out into thin air, dropping into a support course classroom and stepping aside to allow Izuku to drop down beside him. The boy swung down and laid flat on the table, eyeing the stoat with his limbs folded under him.
“We will make something new?” he rasped. Izuku’s voice was only recently coming in; he’d been completely mute for the first few years, and then began vocalizing like a spotted hyena rather suddenly a few months ago. The actual words appeared very abruptly, in full sentences, though he referred to himself as “we”.
If that was the worst of the psychological effects he saw from those experiments, Nezu would count them both lucky. He wasn’t hopeful, however, that the worst was past.
Nezu hopped off the table, striding to Power Loader’s desk to retrieve a box he’d had the teacher prepare. Power Loader, bless his heart, knew better than to ask questions; Nezu could always count on him to do as he asked. Izuku, as always, was right behind him, and reached over the stoat to lift the box, rising onto two legs and loping to the nearest workbench. At his full height, he was about five feet tall, though he usually moved on all fours or in a crouch with his head lowered almost level with his shoulders. His height was certainly an issue for the principal. Izuku seemed, developmentally, to be about eight years old, though he was by now in his early 20’s. His behavior, biology, and appearance, ignoring his size, certainly indicated pre-adolescence, but he ate more than an average family each day and had the agility and strength of most top-ranking heroes.
Nezu, ever the mastermind, knew it would begin to harm the boy’s development irreparably if he kept trying to hide him, and was working through a new plan.
Izuku carefully lifted the lid of the box, craning to peer down inside curiously. Nezu clambered onto the concrete surface and stooped to procure a smooth, geometric metal panel, near-identical to a jumble of others still inside.
“So,” Nezu smiled. “What do you think about giving Green a costume?”