Work Text:
The tape recorder is clicked on.
- You are Aoyama Yuuga, correct?
- Oui, that is correct~ ✨
- How did you say that with your mouth.
- Some things are best kept secret!~ ✨
- What the fuck.
Statement of Aoyama Yuuga, regarding the monster who used to live under his bed. Statement direct from subject, recorded 21 November 20XX. Statement begins.
This story happened... a long time ago. It was back when I lived in Paris, for one. It was in that hazy time in childhood before your quirk manifests, so long ago that it's almost incomprehensible, the idea of not having a quirk; and yet, you know that it happened, you remember a time when it wasn't there, when it would be a great surprise whenever you got it.
I believe I was about four years old, nearly five. My family was particularly well-off, and my parents moved in circles that I really didn't understand. I still don't, not really. It was all "Fairchild" this and "Rayner" that, whenever I got curious enough to try to listen to whatever conversations were happening behind closed doors. It was boring, and rather frustrating, to have entirely normal parents whose "private business meetings" really were private business meetings.
It was them and their weird English friends, no offense to you monsieur, and though it was boring, it wasn't too bad. We were comfortable, back in France. I wanted for nothing there, and I never wanted to leave; the thought of moving to another country would never have occurred to me.
Then, somebody got mad at my parents. I don't remember what happened, just that there was yelling coming from downstairs while I was in my room. Eventually, the yelling stopped, and somebody knocked at my door, a man that I recognized from some of my parents' business meetings. He crouched down to meet my eyes, and he smiled at me and said, "I've got a present for you, but you've got to keep it a secret, okay?"
I later found out that my parents didn't know that the man was still in the house. They didn't know that he was talking to me.
I told him that of course I would keep this present secret. I was four and I wanted whatever this man was offering me. Looking back, it was such a horrible decision to make... but alas. Nothing can change the past.
The man reached into his bag and pulled out a blanket. It was disappointing, the thing was ratty and old and underwhelming for some "secret." Still, I took it, if only out of politeness. This, I think, is what sealed my fate.
The man smiled at me, and then left, while I stuck the old thing in my closet. The rest of that day was normal; things didn't start to get weird until I went to bed.
I was already under the covers and almost asleep when it happened.
It started when I became aware of a cold rattling noise, almost like breathing, somewhere within my room. It sounded hollow, yet almost congested; like what I'd imagine a mummy to sound like if it still had lungs. I looked around to try to find the source of it, but I didn't see anything.
I don't know what prompted me to sit up and look down at the floor directly by my bed, but I did. At first, nothing looked amiss; and then, I saw it. Something that looked like it might have once been a human hand, with blackened fingers twisting up from underneath my bed, glistening with what looked like ink, and covered in wart-like growths; the fingers were far too long to be human, they resembled gnarled tree branches far more, reaching up and up and up towards me. The palm of the hand was nowhere in sight.
I was paralyzed with fear, too paralyzed to scream. I could just sit there and stare, watching helplessly as its spindly fingers climbed the bed, slowly, creeping closer to me. It wasn't made of shadow, not quite. It was made of ink or blood, it left blackened trails of liquid wherever it actually touched my bed.
When I noticed this, I threw my blanket over my head. If it couldn't see me, it couldn't get me. It can't get whatever part of you is under the covers, that's one of the fundamental rules of safety from the monster under the bed. Eventually, I thought that it would be safe to look out again, just to see if the hand was gone.
It wasn't. It appeared to have frozen in exactly the position it was in when I'd thrown my blanket over myself, but it started moving again the second I stared looking at it. I threw my blanket over myself again, and didn't remove it for the rest of the night.
It went on like that, for a while. Every night, that hand would creep out from below my bed, and every night, I would sleep fully covered by my blanket. The monster under my bed would not get me through that protection, I was certain of it.
Until, well. There's always an "until" in these things, non? I was safe and protected by my blanket until eventually the thing decided that I wasn't scared anymore. Mostly because I wasn't, really; it had become routine. Hiding under my blanket simply became the way that I slept, not the way that I trembled in fear, or contemplated the monster.
I was under the covers, as usual, when I felt the hand curl its too-long fingers around my covered ankle. I froze like a deer in headlights, my eyes startled wide open. I barely breathed, as I heard its body shift out of where it was hiding to stand, towering above me. I could feel that it was far taller than the bed I was laying on, trapped on, from the way that its hand was angled downwards to keep its ironclad grip on my ankle. Then, I heard what was almost a hissing noise as it leaned down, close to where my head was, to whisper almost directly into my ear.
"The blanket never did anything."
With that, it ripped my covers off of me and left me exposed to it, with only my pajamas as protection. I looked into its face to see only a wide, sinister smile staring back at me through the darkness. Its teeth were sharp and dripping something black, the same substance that its fingers trailed whenever they touched something. It must have been blood that it was dripping, it must have been the blood of whoever it had eaten before.
It reached its horrible hand, with its unnaturally long fingers, towards my chest. I could see it glistening with someone else's blood in the little light there was in the room. Its face leaned closer too, and I scrambled back against the wall, but it was no use. There was no point. The thing was going to kill me. I was going to die.
Its fingers reached my chest, and their dampness seeped through my pajamas. They were cold on my chest, and I felt the sharpness of them scraping at me. That was when I started screaming. That was when the reality of it really crashed in, that I was going to die.
Then, a blast of light ripped through the monster, and it wailed in agony as it thrashed away from me. The smile had twisted into an ugly grimace of pain, and it dove back under my bed where it was no doubt regaining its strength to return again.
My parents came running into my room to see my shirt in tatters from the light, the light that I belatedly realized must have come from me.
My mother ran to me and asked what had happened, while my father stayed behind her after turning on the light. I just started crying in her arms, too hard for me to get any words through. She just hugged me through it, waiting for me to calm down.
Eventually, I did manage to tell her about it. The monster, and the blanket, and the light that had come from me. I didn't even notice at the time, and it was just then starting to make itself apparent, but where the light had come from- where the laser had fired from- it began ebbing in waves of undeniable pain. My father was the one that asked the fateful question. He asked when the monster first appeared, and I told him that it was the day that the strange man gave me the weird old blanket that he told me to keep secret.
Mom and Dad stilled completely, then slowly locked eyes with each other. Mom asked, in a delicate, shaking voice, where I had put the blanket. I told her that it was in my closet somewhere. Okay, she said, okay, baby, thank you for telling us this. We're gonna be going on an adventure now, okay? Mommy's got friends who live in Japan, which is a whole other country! I think that going there would be fun, don't you?
And so my parents packed their bags and mine, though they never touched my closet when they packed my things. We were in Japan the next day.
It wasn't until years later that I found out why we left, and why we had never gone back. That monster was set upon me by an old business associate of theirs, and if I hadn't screamed when I did, if my quirk hadn't been what it was... it would have killed me. That's what he was banking on, too. Apparently, they had gotten him angry, though they still refuse to tell me how. Touching that blanket was how I had gotten its attention. It was still searching for me in France, according to them; if I went back, it would find me and kill me. The only reason it hadn't followed us to Japan was because it was too injured to listen to our plans to leave.
That thing... it stole my home from me. My entire country, the place where I was born and should have been raised, I will never see it again because of that monster. Although, in a perverse sort of way... I suppose I do owe it something.
Did you know that 0.5% of quirkless people still have the potential to manifest a quirk in dire circumstances? Like those instances where people suddenly develop strength enough to lift a car, or some other superhuman ability, for just a moment while under life-threatening pressure? Usually, those quirks are of the variety that actively harm their user, for instance, someone with a fire quirk not being fireproof. Or, perhaps... a boy with a laser that hurts him to fire it.
I would have been quirkless if not for the monster under my bed, the monster that was brought to me to hurt my parents. I have the toe-joint and everything. I have to wear modified shoes, specially commissioned for me, thankfully rather than those bright red mass-produced eyesores. So, I suppose that I should thank it, for allowing me a chance to become a hero, with this self-destructive quirk that it awakened.
Statement ends.
The tape recorder is clicked off, and then on again a moment later.
- So it appears that Aoyama's parents were involved in some kind of fear cult, though with the mention of both the Fairchilds and Maxwell Rayner, I've no clue on which one. They certainly angered a member of the Dark, which led to... that. Aoyama himself seems... marginally aware of this? He knows that there are monsters, not just quirks, at any rate. This reminds me- apparently he's one of the lucky few who actually get a quirk out of an encounter. I've seen a few statements like this, where some are fortunate enough to come out the other side of one of these things with not only the normal trauma, but a newfound quirk to boot. I'm sure that I would have been jealous, were I a few years younger. Hell, I was jealous, when I first started working at the Institute and came across those statements, few and far between as they were. Then again... if Mr. Spider gave me a quirk, would I have ever used it? Probably not. A quirk wouldn't suddenly make everyone like me, not to mention that I don't think I would've been able to use it without thinking about him.
- You know, I think that that's enough self-pity for one day. New subject- Hawks still has yet to reschedule or find an excuse not to come to the interview in three days' time. Hopefully, that means that he's actually going to come in and give a Statement, and I can actually tell him about the horror show that the League actually is, if he somehow hasn't discovered that already.
- It has been brought to my attention that Todoroki Fuyumi has been reported missing, and that the police's current theory is that she committed suicide, which... isn't wrong. I hope that Shouto, and Natsuo, wherever he is, are aware of the truth.
- I still feel useless here. I'm just gathering Statements at this point, and for what? What is there for me to Know here? I feel like I'm just filling my time, before whatever actually matters comes along and brings all of this into wretched clarity.
- End recording.
The tape recorder is clicked off. It clicks itself on, seemingly a moment later; it is a different place, and a different time.
- Hey, Bakugou, I get the whole "stick it to the man," disrespect for authority thing, but even when we have to dress up nice, how come you never wear a tie?
- Hey! What kind of dumbass question is that, Dunce Face?! Can a man just not like ties?!
- I think he just doesn't know how to tie them.
- Of course I know how to tie a tie!
- Then why don't you ever wear one, huh?
- ...If I tell you guys, you have to all swear not to bring it up again. Ever.
- Oooohhh, is this some kind of you-have-to-be-a-level-ten-friend to know this? Top-secret secret, only for the bestest of fwiends?
- Yeah, and you knocked yourself three levels, Pinky. Get out.
- Noooo, we walked the halls of doom together, that means we're bonded for life!
- Fine, you annoying fucker. Do you all agree not to tell a single fucking soul?
General murmurs of assent are heard.
- ...Did you hear about that sludge villain attack, about two years ago.
- Oh yeah, where the guy took this one guy hostage, he had an explosion quirk, right? Just like your... wait. That was you?!
- Yeah. Can't wear ties anymore because it feels like I'm being choked again. Being there... it was like being buried alive. I couldn't move. The slime of that guy, it was so close I couldn't breathe. I felt like I couldn't get it off of me for weeks after, like it clung to me still, long after all the sludge was gone. Even now, it feels like I still carry that with me, like a mark in my fucking lungs.
- That's... damn. If that happened to me, I wouldn't wear ties either, man.
- Yeah, no, I don't think anyone would. That's actually a reasonable reaction to... that.
- Now you know why I told you not to bring it up again.
- Of course we won't.
The tape recorder clicks itself off.