Here's the published Chapter 1 for Of Death, Heroes, and Pork Cutlets.
Here's part of Chapter 2 I managed to write almost three years ago, and drabbles describing what would've continued after that point.
As always with my fics or AUs, warnings apply. Especially for this one, since it's rated E for explicit descriptions of blood and gore.
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The institution of the Japanese police often gets flack for essentially being the clean-up crew in the aftermath of a villain attack. The lackeys of law enforcement in the day of pro heroes.
However, there are special teams the government directly created, designated to assist the heroes, nearly being heroes themselves. The SAT, or Special Assault Team, originally created in 1977 for a national safeguard against terrorism, was partially repurposed in 1996 during the rise of quirks.
In 2017, a few years after heroes were finally starting to be formally recognized by police, the government decided first to supervise the actions of the top heroes using the SAT just in case they went rouge.
SAT members were also among the casualties of the first great attack from █████████.
Once trust was further built between the police and the pro heroes with the founding of the Hero Public Safety Commission, the seedlings of the institutionalization of hero training, and governmental registration, instead of being watchdogs, in 2043, they became allies.
As the views of police began to shift more in favor of heroes instead of police, the SAT shifted further into the shadows until they became relatively unheard of. The first officially-recognized underground heroes were members of SAT who decided to utilize some of the freedoms heroism gave them while still associating heavily with the police.
By 2100, the name SAT had disappeared from many vocabularies. By 2175, it seemed almost as though they were nonexistent to the general public. By now, barely a Japanese citizen, even among the prefectural police, would know what you’re talking about. Some police even have stories of training with comrades who suddenly just left, deciding against continuing their training, without knowledge that they were accepting a new training altogether.
However, underground and certain pro heroes are aware of the existence of the SAT. The top trusted heroes, rated on a different scale than the publicity ratings, all acquire knowledge and potential usage of the SAT when the situation cannot be handled by a group of heroes alone, especially if the knowledge of the situation is not viable for other heroes except the one raising the alert. The SAT are often called on for Level 4 to Level 5 threats, or issues in which extreme secrecy is required.
All █████████ terrorist attacks have qualified for Level 5 alerts and the need for extreme secrecy.
And at the moment, despite being a Level 4 alert, the apparent reawakening of the dead also requires extreme secrecy.
——
The area is blocked off.
SAT specialists were brought in as soon as All Might had given additional information on the presumed quirk in question, and the specialists make sure that not a single sight, sound, or smell of the event is open for public eyes. They use their quirks to cause people to subliminally turn a blind eye or put up innocuous detour signs further away. Some roads are suddenly under construction. Some street lights suddenly stop working and need repairs. Nothing out of the ordinary.
A straight line of SAT officers stand at each end of the little tunnelway, all decked out in combat gear that could take a beating and armed with both bullets and tranquilizer darts. Bullets usually weren’t brought out, only used for if no other option was viable.
Quite frankly, they aren’t sure what options are viable. Training had prepared them for living combatants, after all.
“Fuckin’ hell...of all things. Of all things, it’s this. Shit. Should be thankful this happened at this location with All Might in particular present. For all intents and purposes, this is—”
The officer is given a subtle elbow to the side, the man choking on his muttered words.
“Don’t. Don’t say it.” The other officer grits her teeth behind her helmet. “Don’t say anything that could jinx this right now.”
There’s only two people between them and the other line of their comrades, each trusting the other to be careful. The first, the No. 1 hero of Japan, All Might. As the SAT is well aware of his limitations, he’s still in his deflated form, shadowed eyes staring straight at the other person, his phone in his hand.
Said other person is still groaning intermittently, his sickly pink brain matter exposed to the world and blood staining his white undershirt a very deep red. The crack in his skull runs all the way from somewhere under his bushy mess of green hair to the unfortunately crumpled nose smushed against his face like an abandoned post-it note.
Getting rid of the slime villain was an easy task—simply tossing the bottles to the officers for them to take to jail. The boy had followed the movements of his hands, however, so caution had keyed everyone up except for the short, lanky corpse himself. Especially when those pale, sea-foam eyes had settled right back on All Might.
“Hhhh...nnh...hhh…”
His skin’s gained a terrible pallor with so much of his blood coming out of his body. His nose dribbles with it, and it seeps out of his mouth, though most of it had spurt out from the initial damage to his head. He stumbles on unsteady feet, trying to stand up straight but being unable to for long periods of time.
An officer, carefully watching, brings her intercom up to her mouth. Her voice comes out of the top of the heavily armored car. “All Might, thank you for your patience,” she begins. “We’ll start the apprehension process.”
All Might nods firmly in reply, still staring at the boy.
“Hhhhhmm...nnaaAAah…”
...Is this some curse, All Might wonders. Because in all his years of being a hero, he has never once seen a quirk like this. At least, he assumes it’s a quirk.
Right?
Because he is not going to let himself fall into superstition. He’s doing his best to consider this situation logically, as illogical as it is. Even so, he’s only known of quirks that extend a person’s life span if they are alive. After all, that was the only way his former nemesis had been alive for so long. But he’s never seen a quirk that brings one back from the dead, especially not so half-heartedly.
The boy groans up at him, and he holds in a shudder.
No...he won’t let horror movies influence him in this real life situation. He has to think pragmatically.
Like how the boy has yet to look away from him, yet has not moved to attack him. The boy can clearly see despite the foam green color of his irides and the white shade that has overtaken his pupils. He’s only stumbled and tried to stay up straight, all the while staring up at him.
“...Young boy?”
He stays staring, wide open. All Might sees a resemblance between the boy’s current appearance and that of a dead, rotting market fish.
“Young boy… Young Midoriya, can you hear me?”
--- ---
And that's what I managed to finish.
Anyway, here's where it was gonna go.
Izuku's body seems to respond to his question with some more mindless groaning, but he realizes it's starting to sound somewhat like a word. The lines of SAT officers steadily close in as he tries to understand.
The more he hears it...the more it sounds like he's trying to say..."all"?
All Might? No...he has to be overthinking it.
Meanwhile, behind the defensive lines, the clean-up crew arrives. They're the ones who will be cleaning up Izuku's blood and waste before checking the sewage lines for his potentially biohazardous blood.
One of the people who arrived for the clean-up had been eating lunch in the van. They had just a bit of it left, that being a few pork buns. One of the others (eh, how about Chide) chide him for bringing food to a death scene, wondering how he could do it.
Meanwhile the guy...eh, let's call him Bun Man. Bun Man says something along the lines of "Dead body or no dead body, I've gotta eat to clean it up."
All Might gets a notice from the encroaching SAT members that the cleaning crew has arrived. He reports that he understands.
As he feels regret over the current condition of Izuku's body, he sees the boy's nose twitch. Though it's crinkled up against his bleeding face, it still moves a bit.
He sees the pale pupils in the body's eyes tremble, then constrict.
The deceased, who had been swaying harmlessly just moments before, suddenly turns his head with an audible crack. A low groan leaves his gaping mouth, startling the SAT team, who firm up their stance.
Izuku's body turns away from All Might and starts walking toward the line.
The SAT team he's facing calls out for him to stop moving, but he keeps stumbling toward them.
In an attempt to get him to stop, All Might contemplates grabbing him. His memories of watching zombie movies makes him not want to. After all, if he gets bitten and turned into something, he still has some of his energy left. What if he goes wild?
But he's not stopping his forward stumble. Perhaps he really did imagine the boy trying to say something. Had to be his own guilt.
...At the very least, he could keep his body from doing things that would endanger others. He'd just have to focus on not getting bitten.
So, All Might takes off his shirt--not like they haven't seen his dilapidated body before, anyway--and wraps it around one of his arms. The cloth should be able to keep the teeth from biting too hard once he grabs him.
He then goes for it, grabbing hold of Izuku's limp left arm, his wrapped arm going around his collarbones.
Izuku's body stops.
All Might starts to br--
Izuku's body steps forward again, dragging him.
He feels the shirt get wet with Izuku's almost completely drained blood and, apparently, saliva.
All Might's still not inflated, but he has some energy left for his quirk. Of course he'd be a bit weak when it comes to stopping him in such a form.
So, All Might inflates, using his quirk to become buff again.
Izuku's body stops short of stumbling forward, shoulders going slack.
The SAT team starts moving in a bit faster, seeing that the deceased has been constrained. All Might starts to say it's all ri--
Izuku's body lets out a groan, and he stomps down.
His step causes the concrete below him to crack. Most importantly, he drags All Might--inflated and using his quirk--forward for that step. And the next one. And the next one.
He starts stumbling faster as the groans turn to snarls. And All Might, to his shock, cannot stop him. Even as he digs his feet into the ground, using the full force of his weight (over 500 lbs in his buff form), the body trudges forward. At least he strains, but the fact anyone's able to pull against All Might in this form at all shocks the SAT members.
Their team leader approves of lethal retaliation as soon as All Might cannot hold on any longer. They'll shield All Might to prevent him from getting killed, but the kid, or what's left of him, has to go.
The boy's gaping maw lets out snarls now, saliva dripping as he lowers onto his hands and feet, crawling forward against All Might's strength and weight. His fingers shred against the ground, but they're bloodless and pale, leaving little more than pulpy, fleshy residue. His nails loosen and fall off from the strain.
But he continues forward.
All Might pulls with all his strength, but despite that, he continues.
Steam starts coming off his body, and he curses.
"Shit... Shit!"
His body weakens in a puff of smoke.
Silence...
Then Izuku's body bursts forth from the mist, mouth agape as a shrill shriek echoes in the tunnel.
The SAT team immediately begin non-lethal retaliation in an effort to get eyes on All Might before they shoot. But Izuku's suddenly quite fast.
And he's strong, too.
He bulldozes right through the line, even when a guy with a strength quirk tries to stop him. His lanky body acts like he's not there at all, running forward.
The cleaning crew, seeing this, begin to scramble to hide or avoid him as more SAT crew take aim.
Izuku's body runs right toward one of the guys who tripped and fell, now screaming bloody murder.
His mouth opens wider.
Several crew take the shot, hitting their marks.
Izuku's head explodes into gore. His body falls to the ground in a frump of limbs, right at the feet of the guy he was running at.
The man stares in shock at the now headless body. Well, mostly headless. The bottom jaw was still clinging to the bottom of his neck.
He starts to sag, and the SAT team starts moving in.
But then he cries out in shock and horror. All Might looks over from where he is in the tunnel, stumbling to his feet to go and...try...something.
Izuku's body hasn't stopped moving.
His hand, worn down to reveal the tips of his finger bones, cling to the man's ankle. His other hand reaches up, grasping his other calf. He cries out for help as someone takes a shot at the body's chest.
The headless body doesn't even flinch as it crawls up onto the man. Now, they can't take any shots except to kill them both.
The guy begs for help as the mostly headless body gets on top of him. The tongue in its bottom jaw lolls out, seeming longer than before and much too prehensile. The throat gurgles above him, and the man begs to not have his face eaten off...
But the body's face crawls past him.
Instead, it approaches his hand.
Just as the man starts to beg to not have his hand eaten, the body's suddenly barbed tongue shoots out, making him scream.
A SAT members shoots.
It hits the body in the shoulder, but that doesn't deter it.
Instead, it drags the thing it caught with its tongue closer...
The box with the man's remaining pork buns in it.
The raw, fleshy fingers stumble over getting the box open, and the man, scared, stiltedly tries to get from under the body. Of course, with the blood and bile and waste, it smells disgusting, and he almost vomits. But he holds back enough to move, even able to adjust the body to get from under it.
The instant he has space, he backs away.
But the body isn't paying attention to him.
Instead, it has gotten the pork bun box open and is ripping the remaining buns apart before swallowing the pieces. It even puts a bun against the base of its head and allows the tongue to pull it in, swallowing it whole.
Once all the buns are gone, the body sits back on its knees.
Then, it twitches.
The bullet in its shoulder falls out.
So do the other bullets that shot into it.
The flesh around its jaw gurgles, and blood starts to drip from its destroyed fingertips. Then, with crackling and wet noises, the body shifts and changes...growing something...
Within seconds, the body forms a new head.
However, unlike the one the body perhaps had before, it now has a jagged, pale scar from the top of it's hairline head down past its nose and toward its upper lip.
When it...when he sighs, he sounds relieved.
He sags to the side, flopping over quietly.
Everyone stares, frozen, and in shock. Then, the SAT squad leader calls on them to move in, and they quickly go forward, cuffing the boy's wrists and binding him in as many ways possible.
You know, I was going back through my fics, and I really do miss writing for It's Always the Quiet Ones and Of Death, Heroes, and Pork Cutlets, but I know I don't really have the spoons to write those stores at the moment...
So, why not write them as drabbles on here?
While they won't be the completely fleshed out versions that I'd wanted to post, I think writing this will be good enough for now. I still really enjoy them, after all, just as I enjoy Magical Boy.
I'm still holding out on gathering enough spoons to keep doing that one, and I may eventually flesh the stuff out for IATQO and ODHAPC, but for now?
Drabble time.
I'll be using "iatqo" and "quiet au" for drabbles related to Quiet Izuku's story, and "odhapc" and "zombie au" for ones related to Zombie Izuku.
