Chapter 24 – For the growth of our society.
"What the hell is all of this?" Rimi's voice shakes as she looks around the laboratory. The scientists are all moving, making haste, but she sees it all so slowly. Maybe because of her training with Pinnley, but it seems like the world is moving slower. She can hear her heartbeat as she watches the experimented individuals tremble and thrash in their tubes. A feeling of deja vu washes over her, but she cannot remember where she'd seen something like this before.
Segments of their words are heard eventually.
"Shit, that's the girl, the one who—"
"—finished! We're finished unless we—"
"—his daughter. What are we going to do if—"
"—restrain them!"
The last voice dominates the crowd. Everyone stopped, looking at the scientist who'd shouted before they all looked back at the children. There were only a few seconds of hesitance, curious eyes concerning themselves not with the result of attacking children, but instead the consequences of something unseen. This hesitation didn't last long, as they broke into a frantic sprint toward the children.
Alerted, Izumi staggers in fear, the intensity of the roaring scientists frightening her to her core. It felt familiar, yet she'd never seen it before.
They're a few feet away when they come to a halt, beads of sweat dripping down their faces. Izumi had felt this before too, the feeling of bloodlust pouring from the girl beside her. Rimi's golden eyes practically shined through a glow of blackness surrounding her, engulfing the terrain.
"Restrain who? Me? You? You're going to restrain me?" There was a trace of arrogance mixed in with the genuine confusion in her voice. 'Is it because of my size? It must be, that has to be the only reason. Otherwise, who in their right mind would try taking my freedom — again?' She wasn't fond of having her movements restricted, not after so much experience fighting Izumi and Pinnley. Not ever since her aunt tied her to a chair in the middle of nowhere.
"What a joke," Her hand traces a line in front of herself, connecting dots with each of the scientists. "Move." The look of surprise on their faces is priceless, experiencing the loss of their control for the first time in their lives. Each scientist is thrown from the ground and pushed in a direction not of their choosing.
"W-What is happening!?"
"I can't move!"
"It's her quirk! Shit!"
Loud crashing comes from all sides of the laboratory, scientists collide with various obstacles in the distance. Rimi lacked consideration for whatever materials or resources she'd have harmed by throwing the scientists. She felt no sympathy for the men and women. The blood on the floor, the individuals in the tubes, and their immediate hostility showed her everything she needed to see. "You're all bad people, aren't you?"
She didn't expect one of them to respond, but they did. "Never! Everything we do is for the growth of our society!" The speaker was a young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes, gritting her teeth as her frame was pinned to one of the stainless steel tables.
"Growth of our society? Well, I don't know the specifics of what you're all doing down here. It's rude of me to make assumptions, but you're running a secret lab under somebody's house. Plus, you attacked me and my friend."
On cue, Izumi snaps out of her frightened daze, wiping the sweat from her forehead. She was the least fazed by Rimi's bloodlust, but instead, the tension generated from all of the adults charging at her with malicious intent. "You all... who are you? What are you doing under my home?"
Silence comes from them all, yet, the blonde woman is the only one who musters the courage to answer. "We can't tell you that..."
"Why?" Izumi asks, staying close to her friend in case of any unexpected danger.
The woman grimaces in hesitance and still replies. "You aren't supposed to know. No one is. We can't— we won't tell you." Suddenly, the woman finds herself sinking deeper into the table, a pressure building up on her chest that nearly knocks the wind out of her.
"You're the Kiyabu Corporation." Izumi feels her heart drop to her chest when Rimi says this. Looking at her friend, she discovers Rimi is facing the far right of the laboratory. "There's a lot of equipment with the kanji spread around. I saw something similar upstairs once."
The Kiyabu Corporation was the organization that allowed Izumi to live the carefree life she has now. Wealth steadily came in whenever her father and mother went to work, improving the quality of quirks throughout the country. Rimi had learned a bit about the corporation during her trip to the zoo when Chiyoku Takeuchi exercised her 'hard-earned' knowledge about the group during Izumi's appearance.
"That can't be," Izumi interrupts Rimi before her friend can speak. "This isn't like anything they've done. I've seen it, the process they go through to develop quirks. It's a rigorous exercise that drills the fundamentals of your quirk into your head, something you can't forget. It does it to the point where using your quirk becomes akin to breathing for you, and only increases from there."
Her hands melodramatically move to the countless tubes containing humans inside of them. "This isn't what my father's corporation does!" The ferocity in her words surprises Rimi. She knew the child could bring out emotions besides her usual energetic ones, but the mix of emotions in her words shows a prominent trace of fury. "It doesn't... experiment on people!" The truth of the scene couldn't be denied, even for the adolescent girl.
The people in these tubes were being experimented on. "These people... Who're—!" Water builds in Izumi's eyes at the sight of a familiar person. One of the women in the tubes, a middle-aged woman with black hair who looked rather unremarkable, had stood out to her. Her clothes were stripped from her, just like everyone else's. A reptilian tail wrapped around her waists, presumably a result of a mutant-type quirk. Izumi's words imply the rest of her features are unordinary.
"M-Ms. Makibashi... She didn't have wings, she didn't have claws. What... what did you do?!" Baring her teeth like fangs, the white-haired child turns to the scientists who are all released from Rimi's quirk. With their freedom to move returned to them, the scientists rise to their feet, collecting themselves with conflicting faces. Some looked angry, some looked anxious, and others looked disheartened.
"Mr. Kouromu? What happened to his eyes?"
"Mr. Yokae's legs weren't like that -- they weren't like a snake's. He was a toad-mutant."
"Mrs. Natsumaki's wedding ring was affixed to her finger thanks to her quirk. Why is it around her neck?"
Izumi remembered the names of many of the tubed individuals, now that she looked at them. They'd been maids and butlers are the mansion at some point. "Mother said they'd resigned and moved elsewhere." The relationship she had with her maids and butlers was a simple one. They spoke and they played and they smiled, and then they left. These interactions always left a positive mark on Izumi's mind. She didn't get to meet many kids her age since she was often home-schooled, taught by a teacher her father paid. Of the children she'd met, Rimi was the first one who she felt she could call her friend—her first friend.
Izumi's eyes shined with a foreign intensity. Rimi didn't know her friend could make such a frightening expression, and neither did the blonde-haired scientist they set their sights on. Her emerald eyes bore through the woman as Izumi walked up. She wasn't paralyzed anymore, but the blonde-haired woman didn't move at all. She couldn't bring herself to move as the white-haired woman moved with the calamity behind her.
'How had these two come to meet?' The blonde-haired woman pondered. 'I'd heard that the butler upstairs was more active, but I never thought that it'd be because of her... not here...' Her heart was racing, Rimi could tell.
"What did you do to my friends?!" With a newfound temperament, Izumi appears in front of the woman in the blink of an eye, her hand resting against the woman's stomach. As if she knew the implications of making physical contact with Izumi—something Rimi herself still didn't fully understand—fear topped her face.
"W-We improved them! Altered their genetic code and bodies, looked for their quirk factors, and—" One of the scientists yelled the woman's name.
"Katabuto!" The scientist who yelled the woman's name was met with an intense glare, silencing him. Katabuto, the blonde-haired woman, quickly deduced the danger that these two posed to their safety. They weren't able to do anything when confronted with Rimi's quirk.
Then, Katabuto kept going, "We artificially improved their quirks, some of them. For others, we ran tests to see the limits of their bodies. Some had to have limbs removed, and some even died. I'm sorry." The woman's sincerity was shocking to the two, but more shocking to Izumi. The girl's eyes were burning with fury and sadness, her eyes watering.
Her hand clinches into a fist, gripping the woman's shirt, threatening to tear her fingernails through its coarse material.
"You killed my friends?! You experimented on them, like guinea pigs?!" Izumi was startled by how honest the woman was. She had no reason to believe she was lying, despite the atrocities before her. Rimi stayed close to her friend, eyes tracing across the room to ensure none of the scientists did anything that might cause the two of them any harm.
"They volunteered!" Katabuto's declaration is enough for Izumi's arm to fall to her side. The child stumbles away from the blonde-haired woman, the tears that'd been building up in her eyes working down her cheek, finally. "Our experiments are conducted on those on the verge of death or volunteers... In this case, the maids and butlers you interacted with were all members of the Kiyabu Corporation!"
Silence loud enough to deafen a man follows. Izumi didn't say a word, believing the woman's words without hesitance. Rimi is quiet too, letting Izumi's realization sink in and allowing her to understand the scientist's words.
The scientist's words held weight, considering the scene before them. All the butlers and maids she thought she'd forged positive friendships with might have been fraudulent. Each interaction could've been had with underlying intentions of keeping the child oblivious to the science experiments beneath her nose.
She thought about her mother and father, the lies they'd told her. They must've known what was happening here, there wasn't a doubt in her mind about it. Rising to her feet, Izumi turns to face the tubes with the bodies of her former butlers and maids in them. Then, she turns to the unrecognizable children and supposed bystanders. "Then, all of these people... They were—"
"Dying," Katabuto finishes for her. "They were dying, in some way or another. Most were volunteers, thankfully. People who wanted to help make a difference, for the growth of our society." Rimi's ear twitches when Katabuto repeats that phrase.
"Why are you telling her all of this?" This time, Rimi is asking. A skeptical look is on her face, hiding the twisting sensation in her chest. She felt like she'd greatly overlooked something while watching over the scientists around the laboratory.
Katabuto hesitantly glances around at the scientists before answering, her hands clasped over her chest. "Truthfully, I've told you all these things for two reasons. Firstly, because one of the children of the Kiyabu Corporation's owner holds the authority to know whatever information we haven't been restricted from giving."
'That sounds like it makes sense. I've got no clue how business works, though.' Rimi shamelessly admits to herself.
"Secondly, by spending all of this time talking with the two of you and giving your answer, I've bought time."
"Huh, that does make a lot of sense." Nodding her head, Rimi turns to look in Izumi's direction. Her heart skips a beat when the woman's nonchalant tone slips away, allowing her words to be fully understood.
"You've wha— Ackh?!" A mighty force affects the side of Rimi's small body, a sharp ache rushing up her body. At the corner of her eye, before she is thrown into the ceiling, she sees a short patch of white hair.
Izumi first looks to the place in the ceiling with Rimi crashed into, finding her friend's teeth gritting together in a familiar painful expression. Before Izumi can turn to see the person responsible for sending Rimi flying, a hand lands on her head. She'd not heard any footsteps at all, nor would she get the chance to hear them any longer. Her vision blackens, and she loses consciousness.
Rimi's eyes shot openly shortly after she'd crashed into the ceiling 'Ugh! I blacked out for a second!' Looking around, her blood boils when she sees Izumi's unconscious form being lowered to the ground by a young woman, appearing to be a teenager. She had black hair braided into a long ponytail, but the most offsetting part of her was the silver eyes that were locked with her golden ones.
"Damn, Yoshiyuki. Your cousin's pretty sturdy for a kid." Her attention locks on the perpetrator responsible for sending her flying into the ceiling. A young male, roughly the same age as the black-haired girl who'd put Izumi to sleep, stared up at her with a grin on his face. Wearing a backward baseball cap, Rimi feels the most danger coming from him and his unnatural strength.
Then, she has a realization. "Y— Ugh!" She groans while pushing herself from the ceiling, using her quirk to stop herself from falling to the ground and potentially being assaulted as soon as her feet touch the ground. "Yoshiyuki?"
Smiling, the Yoshiyuki girl is entertained by Rimi's usage of the ceiling as a platform. "Yeah, you're Rimi, right? Cousin Kimiko's daughter. That makes you my cousin, squirt. Kamisami Yoshiyuki's my name, but you can call me Kami." Grandiosely holding her hand against her chest, Kamisami's chest puffs out, a delightful smile on her face.
Neither her white-haired companion nor Rimi looked entertained. "I'd rather not."
"Fine, fuck you both then. Just get this over with, Kiyabu." The boy's surname is more concerning to Rimi than the Yoshiyuki at the moment.
"Kiyabu...? Then you're—" The Kiyabu boy's form flickers from her vision, and she finds his form beside her. This time, she can keep track of his movements. When he sends a fist out to strike her waistline, Rimi's guard is already up, ready to block the punch. However, when she sees the fist connect with her arm, she instead feels the impact through her guard, against its target. 'Huh?!'
Sent flying by the punch, Rimi is sent flying across the ceiling, using her quirk to maintain her position high above the woman on the ground. Her instincts warned her about the woman, telling her that being near her was more dangerous than being near the Kiyabu boy. Nevertheless, his previous attack would be troublesome to fight.
"I definitely blocked that punch," Rimi remarks, suspending herself in the air before she can hit the far side of the laboratory. Rubbing her waistline, she focuses her attention on the white-haired teen.
"Maybe it didn't work, since you're like 4." Shrugging his shoulders, the boy's snarky remark would've gotten to Rimi if she weren't purposely composing herself. Her thoughts were brainstorming the potential abilities of the two, and how to escape this place with Izumi.
Kamisami stayed near Izumi's unconscious body, preventing Rimi from reaching her.
A problem presents itself with targeting the woman with her quirk too. Right when Rimi is preparing to use her quirk on the Yoshiyuki, the Kiyabu boy's form flickers to life in front of her, despite having to fall to the ground after each leap he takes. His knuckle moves towards Rimi's face, and the child uses her quirk to twist around moments before it'd have connected with her face.
Yet, she is still thrown back by the shock of the attack she'd carefully avoided. Her vision flashes and blood runs down her nostril as she's sent flying to the ground. The sound of shattering glass draws cries of protest from the spectating scientists, unable to flee from the sudden battlefield.
"Mr. Hopachi, please try to avoid our equipment! There's no telling how much progress we can lose if you aren't careful!" Katabuto's words are enough to draw Rimi from her stupor of crashing into a match of vials, miraculously avoiding glass stabbing her back.
In the nick of time, Rimi pushed herself to the side moments before Kamisami's hand would've come crashing down on her face. Her hand slams through the table Rimi landed on moments ago and splits it in two in a showcase of raw strength.
"Ooh, you're nimble." Kamisami flicks her wrist, knocking some of the pieces of glass from it. "That old man must've been training you upstairs, right? It'd be problematic if we let you get into your zone then."
The white-haired boy, Hopachi, catches Rimi when she tries to ascend back to the highest point of the room. His fingers interlocked, he holds his fists together above his head, then slams them down into Rimi's back. This time, she feels the pain immediately upon impact.
She manages to yank herself to the side, ceasing her momentum before she can be thrown down into Kamisami's grasp. Moving like a bullet, her feet land on the ground beside Izumi, who was left unattended thanks to Kamisami's pursuit across the lab.
"You've got an annoying quirk, bulb-head." Collecting Izumi into her arms with the support of her quirk, Rimi holds her friend close as the two fast-moving figures come towards her. Instead of letting either get close, she collects the surrounding wind into the palm of her hand and slams it into the floor beneath her. Immediately, the laboratory is thrown into chaos. The ground beneath the two's feet erupts and becomes uneven, and Rimi could've sworn she saw Hopachi's body jitter.
Scowling, Hopachi tries to gather his footing, but he's not quick enough to move before Rimi, who requires far fewer supplementary movements. By the time Hopachi had his feet firmly on the ground, Rimi and Izumi had already crossed the entrance of the lab that they'd entered through.
They don't get further, because Rimi collapses to the ground.
"H-Hrrgh!" A pain sheers through her mind, her small frame collapsing to the ground in a mixture of exhaustion and pain. Her hands grasp at her hair, a bellowing wail reaching out from her conscious. 'Shit! Shit! It hurts! What's going on?!'
Struggling to move through the pain and lack of control over her body, Rimi can only watch as Hopachi's figure flickers to life in her darkening vision, at the boundary just beyond the entrance to the lab. "You don't play enough games, squirt. You never use all your energy during the first phase."
She surely would've had a witty remark, if she could move. Rimi's body failed her, and voices began to claw their way through her mental defenses.
Vulnerable, she is left susceptible to Hopachi and Kamisami, the latter arriving at the former's side after a few moments. "I was curious about your quirk's limits..." As Kamisami speaks, the distance between them becomes smaller by the second, yet Rimi cannot muster the strength to stand.
Unfocused, she can't gather the concentration to use her quirk in the slightest. 'I-I'm finished...!'
They both stop when a voice comes down the stairwell on the far side of the hallway. "Young Hopachi, it has been a few years since we've last seen each other, hasn't it?" The familiar voice manages to put Rimi at ease, despite the abundance of pain steering her body into a squirming mess.
"Hell, I didn't know you could still breathe, old-timer!" Nervously fixing his baseball cap upon his head, neither Hopachi nor Kamisami can conceal their worries when Pinnley emerges at the bottom of the stairwell, an old-fashioned sword in his hand, already covered in blood.
Clicking her tongue in frustration, Kamisami takes several steps behind Hopachi, letting the combatant stand ahead of her. "I thought some quality time with my cousin would be fun. Now that you're here, I've got a shitty taste in my mouth." She scoffs.
"Goodness, to think the Young Master would hang around a delinquent from that troublesome woman's family. No, I suppose your father's placed you two in the Security Division of the corporation, hasn't he? I was once offered a place on that team but politely declined. Had I known he'd induct children into their ranks, I'd have spoken against it sooner."
Pinnley laughs to himself as he arrives at Rimi's side, his eyes scanning the squirming child. "So, this is the consequence of overexerting your quirk... No, this isn't much of a consequence at all, considering you've consistently used your quirk for weeks now. Still, you should rest now." Taking the sword into both hands, Pinnley's eyes reflect a glint of light.
His eyes land on Izumi's unconscious form, and his bloodlust permeates the air like a thick, weighing gas. A miasma of malicious intent crushes Kamisami, who grits her teeth in frustration, turning to look for something of value in the lab that may be able to suppress the monster that had appeared before her. "The punishment for putting your hands on the Young Miss, Ms. Yoshiyuki."
When her name is spoken, all of the courage she'd put into her prior statements drained away from her. Kamisami falls onto her body, looking past Hopachi with a primal fear controlling her.
"Surely, you hardened your resolve to endure it!?" Pinnley's bloodlust poured out like a current that not even Rimi had seen the old-timer muster.
It was only contained when the sound of a speaker carried a voice throughout the laboratory. Rimi's fading consciousness can only hear some of it, but whatever was said was enough to make Pinnley's bloodlust dwindle away. The voices turned into a distance muffle, and Rimi struggles to make out their meaning.
"—daughter to—"
"—child elsewhere, I don't—"
"—forget—"
"—understand, Pinnley?"
Then, her consciousness withered, succumbing to her pain and exhaustion.