Chapter Text
Anaxa loved having Yaoyorozu as an intern, he really did. They had similar enough quirks, the knowledge they gathered to make full use of them gave them expertise in chemistry. They both loved to plan out operations and act as the brain behind their teams. They both had a love for the dramatic, what with Anaxa flipping his gun before firing it and Yaoyorozu making a cannon when the opportunity made the mistake of presenting itself.
But she didn’t share his love for quirks.
Don’t get him wrong. She loved learning about ways she could optimize her quirk, how to factor in her teammate’s quirks in plans and how to overcome poor quirk matchups. But she didn’t find joy in the minutiae of quirks. Why they worked, their theoretical limit, what vestigial mutations they gave their wielders and why.
So he couldn’t be more pleased to know that she had a classmate who was a quirk enthusiast. And it wasn’t even a new person! Midoriya was someone that March kept bringing up in conversation, he’d even gotten on Evernight’s radar for how close he got to figuring out her quirk and its activation requirements.
To say Anaxa was mildly impressed would be like saying him gouging out his eye caused slight discomfort.
Sadly, Midoriya wasn’t his intern. Phainon had gotten his hands on him and refused to share, then Cipher called them in to deal with the League and MLA in Deika and then Hysilens just had to flood the city. Now though, the repairs had been taken over, the evacuees could return to their homes and Anaxa could finally talk quirks with Midoriya.
He fiddled with his ring absentmindedly as he waited for Midoriya to arrive. He’d sent Trinnon to get him while Anaxa waited by the elevator that led to his lab. He heard two sets of footsteps to his left and whipped around to see Trinnon all but dragging Midoriya.
“Naxy.” Trinnon said curtly, releasing Midoriya and running back to where she came from.
The triplets were needed for transport, getting the people Hyacine treated for their sunburn, getting the captured and deceased villains to either jail or the morgue and so much more. They were going to need some serious vacation time when all was said and done. Anaxa didn't envy them.
“You called?” Midoriya asked, trying and failing to contain his nerves.
“Yaoyorozu says you’re the class’ quirk expert,” Anaxa said, calling the elevator “she says your analysis is second to none.”
Midoriya shook his head and waved his hands in front of his face.
“What? No, she was just being nice. It’s not that good, anyone could do it.” he denied.
“Oh really,” Anaxa said in a disbelieving tone. The elevator doors opened and he stepped inside, gesturing for Midoriya to follow, “March’s sister, Evernight. What do you make of her quirk?”
Anaxa had seen it countless times before at The Grove. Researchers who undersold their skills in either an attempt to be humble or an aversion to praise. Those kinds of people had to be shown their own talents.
And like a switch flipped, his previously self deprecating demeanor vanished and was replaced with an excited one that reminded Anaxa of how he first was when his quirk came in.
“That one really puzzled me. I originally thought it was an elemental quirk since March can control ice but she didn’t show any control over an element other than that time she exploded out of a bubble of water.”
Anaxa suppressed a smile. Evernight liked replacing memories of her walking into a room with memories of her exploding out of water to throw people off.
“Then there was how she always seemed to know what everyone was thinking, so I thought her quirk was mind reading.”
The elevator doors opened and they walked out into the lab, not that Midoriya noticed. He had brought out a notebook that he dedicated to figuring out Evernight’s quirk and was flipping through pages. Anaxa thought he saw a page that was signed by the hero herself, he’d have to ask her about it later.
“But then March let it slip that their quirks work against each other. Her memory is also perfect and she talked about always having a slight headache, which I know comes from overusing mental quirks. Then Yaomomo talked about how she had a fleeting memory of her checking a phone that didn’t belong to her before the attack on Hosu.”
His talking then sped up and Anaxa was only able to keep up because the researchers at The Grove talked leagues faster than Midoriya and were much less coherent.
“She said her sister was an underground hero and they tend to hide their quirk activations or just straight up lie about them. Aizawa sensei hides his quirk’s tells behind his goggles and half of the Flamechasers are underground heroes so who’s to say March wasn’t telling the whole truth about her quirk. All her role models are underground heroes after all.”
Anaxa took a seat and gestured for Midoriya to sit down.
“So my theory is that March’s quirk has some sort of mental aspect that keeps her memories from fading or being tampered with. Therefore Evernight has to have a quirk that can affect memories in some way. That would also explain why every civilian we evacuated was first hostile or wary before they started saying the same thing about ‘forgetting about the renovations’. And given how she dresses in crowds, I would also hazard a guess that part of it is always active and the activation requirements are sight based, like an inverse of Aizawa sensei’s where they have to see her instead of the other way around.”
Midoriya stopped to catch his breath and looked around for the first time since he started talking.
“Most people just assume she has a mental quirk of some kind and leave it at that.” Anaxa said, watching Midoriya’s eyes widen in awe as he continued taking in the sights of the lab.
What he didn’t say was that most underground heroes didn’t ask what their allies’ quirks were, instead they asked what they could do, whether it be incapacitation, support or muscle.
“Where is this?” Midoriya asked.
“This is my lab. Any drug that we take off the streets gets brought here for me to analyze. All drugs have a signature in them, something that would tell me if two different drugs were made by the same distributor.” he explained, gesturing to the sealed bags labeled ‘Trigger’ and ‘Venom’.
Anaxa watched Midoriya and could’ve sworn he saw the gears in his head spinning faster and faster.
“I’m ready to learn all you can teach me about this aspect of underground heroism!” Midoriya declared, bowing his head.
“Oh no, your internship is over,” he laughed, waving his hand and allowing Midoriya to stand straight, “it ended the minute the raids had concluded. This is more so I can get an outside perspective on a personal project of mine.”
“But why would you want my help?” Midoriya asked, slipping back into self deprecation, “you’re already a respected expert in the field and- ”
“But even an expert can overlook something trivial.” Anaxa interrupted, “Back at The Grove on the Islands, researchers were always in pairs or more, where one would cover the other’s blind spots, highlighting issues the other failed to consider.” He readjusted his ring “I had a research partner once.”
He shook off the traitorous memories of her brown hair and her cyan eyes, the breakthroughs they made together and the long nights they spent in the lab.
“But that’s in the past. What matters is I continued with the project, and now that it’s somewhat near completion, I feel like it’s time to share it with someone who would understand its significance.” he said, standing up and walking to a cage where a rat was residing.
Midoriya followed and examined the rat carefully.
“And the project is?” he asked tentatively.
“Giving quirks.” Anaxa revealed triumphantly.
Whatever reaction he was expecting, it certainly wasn’t Midoriya’s face draining of colour and looking around the lab like it was covered in live cockroaches.
“H-h-how?” he breathed, clutching his notebook tighter.
“We found that the quirk factor was in the blood, then for the extraction we compared a quirked person’s blood with that of a quirkless person’s”, Anaxa explained.
At that, Midoriya’s free fist clenched.
“After that, I used my quirk to turn the part of the blood that wasn’t the quirk factor into water and boil it away. Transmuting the blood into a gas damages the quirk factor. At that point it was a matter of how to safely give the quirk.”
That last part took the longest. They had isolated the quirk factor within 3 months of research and how to give the quirk in less than a week. But quirks were like the blood they were drawn from and the recipient could have a negative reaction to the quirk so it took years to find out how to tell who was safe to give it to.
“How did you get the blood?” Midoriya asked with barely restrained rage.
Anaxa didn’t understand why- Oh. ‘Scientist harvests blood from vulnerable for project’ was eerily similar to Overhaul. He should probably clear it up quickly if he didn't want to lose years of research.
“I drew my own blood”, he clarified, “my research partner was quirkless so she drew her blood for the comparison.”
Midoriya’s posture relaxed and his expression shifted from anger to embarrassment, before a thought struck him and he materialized a new notebook.
“Blood is pretty complex.” he mused, shifting back into quirk questioning mode, “How did you transmute it? Did you do it at once or in steps? Yaomomo said the flames grew in proportion to the object you're transmuting. What's the ratio of that? Do you wear-“
“Midoriya breathe.” Anaxa instructed, chuckling. Midoriya was reminding him more and more of his younger self.
“To answer some of your questions. I transmuted it all at once,” he explained, holding up his hand and cloaking his fingers in green flame, “it takes a bit of extra concentration but I can make it so each of my fingers can transmute a different material.” He dropped the flames, “In fact.”
He reached up to the back of his head where his eyepatch was clipped and undid it, letting it fall off his face. Midoriya’s expression was torn between shock and curiosity. He took out his lapis eye and handed it to Midoriya, allowing him to inspect it.
“At The Grove you were only allowed to use your quirk in research if you’d demonstrated a certain level of control over it.” Anaxa explained, recalling how he made his case before his superiors and smiling, “To show that I had that level of control, I gouged out my eye and transmuted it into lapis right there and then.”
“Woah,” he voiced, handing Anaxa back his eye
“Anyway, I’ve completed the quirk giving process and it should now be ready for human trials.” Anaxa continued after re-fastening his eyepatch.
Midoriya got down and observed the rat drinking from its water bottle, the one that was mixed with bleach.
“And you’ve given a quirk to this rat?” he asked, when Anaxa nodded he continued “what quirk did you give it?”
“Vendetta.” he responded, at Midoriya’s curious look he clarified “It’s Mydei’s quirk. It regenerates any lost vital organs, quickly flushes poison from his system and ‘reattaches his soul’ after touching Castorice, among others. All to stop him from dying.”
Midoriya’s eyes widened and he shot up, looking at Anaxa with unrestrained excitement.
“That’s such a cool quirk. And you could give it to ER patients to give doctors more time to treat them. You could also give it to heroes before a major raid so there won’t be any casualties.” Midoriya exclaimed, lightly shaking Anaxa, “Does the quirk also include the safeguards or does it act like Monoma and only include the raw quirk?”
“Only the quirkless would be able to take both the quirk and its safeguards, a quirked person’s body would only be able to take the raw quirk. So they’d get Vendetta’s regeneration but not the almost inactive pain receptors.” he explained, prying himself from Midoriya’s grasp.
“I guess it makes sense. A quirked person’s quirk factor would already be strained by two quirks, but it would snap if it also had to deal with both of their safeguards.” Midoriya muttered. “But wait, won’t the quirk factors be under the same amount of strain anyway?”
Anaxa smiled. Midoriya had once again proved that Yaoyorozu wasn’t lying about him. Anaxa and his research partner had been puzzled over that particular issue for months and why the test animals kept having adverse reactions to the quirks.
“Not if the given quirk was different.” Anaxa said, watching the rat squirm a bit and spit out some water before it calmed down and continued drinking, “The quirk factor can only handle the strain of two quirks if one of them is passive. Vendetta is a passive quirk, only activated when its activation requirements are met, so anyone could have it. But only the quirkless would be able to handle a quirk like Creation or Reason, one where the user has to choose to use it.”
Anaxa saw a glimmer of something in Midoriya’s eyes and tears formed in his eyes.
“A special gift to the quirkless.” he said under his breath, looking back at the rat happily drinking from its water bottle with hope filled eyes.
Midoriya’s look reminded Anaxa of the eyes of hope his research partner had before they started the project. How she would express excitement for its completion in her own way, before she stole the research to make those abominations.
He followed Midoriya’s gaze to the rat cage.
“Yes”, he said quietly, “a special gift to the quirkless.”