12

Chapter Text

"Wha… What? How? What?" Dabi wasn't sure how to feel. For so many years he wanted nothing more. Years where all he had wanted to do was impress his father. But now, if you asked him? He wasn't so sure anymore. He had come to terms with his quirk's double-edged nature years ago, and for once in his life, he felt good. He had a job, he had a home, he had friends and a purpose. Dabi couldn't help feel a little bitter that this was being offered now. After everything that had happened.

Izuku raised his hands to either side of himself in front of him. "Before you ask, no. This is not a requirement, nor am I stating that you are somehow unable to do the job sufficiently now. I do not view your quirk as broken, even if the wording I used would imply as much. I have no doubt you can do the job without any problems. I am making this offer because I know how it feels to be looked at like you do. Which is, might I note, an incredibly stupid way for people to behave considering the society we live in." Izuku put his hands down on the desk and shook his head, a knowing and sad expression gracing his features. Mei had, Dabi was happy to say, no pity on her face. Instead, he found fury in her eyes, even if she had trained her face to be rather impassive. They may have fought like cats and dogs, but she would go to bat for him in a heartbeat.

"If you were to say yes, there are multiple ways I could do it." Dabi returned his eyes to Izuku and found him holding up several fingers. "First, we could take the longer route and I could study your quirk. Then, using that data, I could manipulate your quirk's genetic data to give you better resistance to your flames. The issue is, I haven't ever done that, and I have no idea what kind of side effects you could see down the road. Second, I can alter your genome to boost your natural non-quirk abilities. This is limited, as there is only so far I can take that without going into option three. You would see an improvement across the board of all basic functions. Five senses, healing, and most importantly, for you, temperature resistance. The third option is one that is a particular secret, even amongst secrets, because what I am going to propose is morally in a deep gray area, and ethically is incredibly illegal. I can rewrite your genome entirely." Mei's head whipped around to look at him in a combined expression of horror and fascination. She hadn't known he could do that. There was impressive, and then there was what Izuku was suggesting.

"In doing so, I can boost your abilities beyond even what I could do normally and incorporate some… let's call it accelerated evolution." Izuku's face was all business now. There were no jokes, and he wasn't kidding about what he said next. "Let me make something clear. If you choose option three, I can assure you of what could, can, and will happen. I can tell you why it is happening and even improve upon it once you've gotten used to it." Izuku was no longer the one sitting there with them. Instead, there was a haggard old man who looked through them while speaking. "But with all things, there is a price to pay for such a path and it is a steep one. Regardless." The air that was oppressive and suffocating suddenly lifted. Izuku was once again smiling as if the last few moments had never happened. "This isn't exactly a decision that could or should be made on the spot. Sleep on it. Then get back to me on your answer." Izuku stood, pulling a directory out of his desk. "You're in room three up top. Go get some sleep. I can show you everything in the morning. Phoenix, if he needs help or has a question, feel free to answer them for him."

…

Dabi was starting to get used to feeling out of his depth, but this was something else entirely. It felt as if he had just been tossed in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane and was expected to tell up from down. He stopped halfway up the second flight of stairs leading to the residential. "Phoenix? Are you there?"

Dabi only had to wait for a moment before the calm female voice spoke. "I am, Dabi. I monitor the facility at all times while multitasking between my other priorities."

"If I might ask for your honest opinion, why did Midoriya make his offer to me? Surely he has someone better he could give the job to. And fixing my quirk? Do I even need to vocalize how confused I am?" There was another moment of silence before Phoenix responded.

"I have not been… alive, as you humans would call it, for long. I have only been as such for a short time and have only been integrated with my full suite of systems for an even shorter period." Dabi sighed. That was a fair. He couldn't exactly ask a kid these kinds of questions, could he?

"However, I have observed a trend that I believe would be helpful to you in this situation. The individual you know as Midoriya Izuku does everything he can to help people. Sometimes even to his own detriment. You are one of the very few A-rank operators that he has in his network and, to my knowledge, the only operator that he has allowed on S-rank commissions with him. I have no doubt that he believes wholly that you can do your job, regardless of your decision. If you are wondering why he has extended the offer to you, there are many things that you can say about him, but Father takes care of his own."

…

Mei watched Dabi walk out of the room before turning to Izuku. "Since when could you rewrite the human genome? Don't give me any kind of excuse about having just completed your doctorates, either, because if you'd presented a dissertation on what you just described to Dabi? The entire world would have heard about it."

Izuku looked up at Mei and maintained eye contact, despite the bewildered and slightly irked state she was in now. He sighed. He had been doing that a lot lately, now that he thought about it. "Honestly, Mei? A long time ago, and no, I don't particularly want to talk about it." Izuku could see Mei about to launch into one of her speeches and threw his hands into the air. "I'll tell you eventually. But please, Mei, not tonight."

Mei's teeth clicked together and her jaw clenched. It frustrated her that there was something wrong that she couldn't fix. She couldn't help him if he didn't tell her anything damn it. It was her turn to sigh now. As much as she wanted to push, that wouldn't get her anywhere. Once Izuku set his mind to something, he didn't change it easily.

"Fine. But I am going to hold you to that. Shall we go look at the rest of the facilities now?" Izuku's smile at that didn't quite reach his eyes, which were still far too weary for her liking. But it was a start.

Izuku stepped over to one of his bookcases and pressed his hand to the back of one of the bottom shelves. There was a loud click, and the bookcase swung away from the wall, revealing another security door behind it. "Indeed. We shall."

…

It was another three days before Dabi had made his decision. He took a deep breath before entering the workshop where his boss was. Hatsume was working on what was inevitably, he was certain, going to blow up at least twice before she got it working. Right now it looked just like a small motherboard, but when it came to the Gearhead, he wasn't going to trust it. He found the person he was searching for looking down at a series of small hexagonal plates. The plates looked like a web of electronics, and if one thing was certain, he had absolutely no idea what it was.

"What exactly are those?" Dabi spoke up once Midoriya had set down his tools.

"Hmm? Oh. These are basically just ultracapacitors. Ideally, I'll make these again once we develop a few of our material designs over the coming week. These are just for a proof of concept. Something up? You don't usually wander into the labs." Izuku was looking at Dabi expectantly, waiting for the reason he had come to visit them.

"I made my decision. I'll go with option three." Izuku stared at him now, searching his eyes for any kind of hesitation. Any kind of doubt that would indicate he needed to tell Dabi to continue thinking on the offer. He found none and nodded.

"If you're sure of your decision, then alright." He stood, picking up a small bag of metal disks. "If you need me, I'll be in the bio suite, Mei." She grunted at him from where she was now, grabbing one of the many fire extinguishers in the room.

…

"Alright, this is how it's going to work. On your side, you're going to take this," Izuku held up a small white tablet, "and you're going to wake up in about a week. When you do, we'll have to take things slow because you're not going to be used to the sheer amount of sensory data you'll be exposed to following the changes." Dabi choked when he heard he was going to be out of it for a week.

"A week? How am I supposed to do my job if I'm out cold?" Izuku quirked an eyebrow before snorting.

"You say as if your boss isn't the one that's going to be performing the operation." Izuku shook his head then waved a hand at Dabi. "I think we'll manage quite well while you're recovering. If there is some emergency, I'll handle it, and don't forget I have a very grateful detective in my contact list." Izuku handed Dabi the pill and a glass of water before turning to prep several syringes. "Phoenix, prep the surgical bay. You have control of the arms."

"Roger that. The operating theater will be ready for surgery in t-minus two minutes." Izuku nodded his head. He suspected that it wouldn't take even that long for the sedative to kick into Dabi's system.

"When is this going to ki-" Izuku glanced over just in time to see Dabi's faceplant into the table. Phoenix snorted and he smiled. He loved being right.

…

Izuku was placing Dabi into the tank that would be his home for the next week when Mei came in and caught sight of Dabi. She turned pale and immediately turned and started throwing up into the trash can. Izuku could sympathize. He wasn't good with burnt flesh himself, and after he'd removed all of the third degree burn tissue, there had been less skin than exposed muscle. Besides that, he was an absolute god damn mess. His bottom lip at some point had been cut apart, as was apparent with the staples. But so had his masseter, depressor, and buccinator muscles, as well. Without the staples, the muscles around his mouth were just hanging from his face. Whoever had done his skin grafts was a god damn amateur and, were his nerve endings not all dead, he would have been in excruciating pain. As it was, Izuku wasn't quite sure how Dabi was getting along as well as he did. That didn't even include the other million issues he must have been having.

Izuku hooked the oxygen tube to the tracheostomy tube in Dabi's neck and sealed the tank. After a moment, the tank filled with a translucent green slime, suspending him in the middle of it. Izuku shook his head. He had a pretty good idea of who had done that to him, and the thought didn't please him. Just another reason for Endeavour to be on his shit list.

"Please. Please. Tell me that you didn't have Phoenix call me over here to see that mess. What the fuck happened to him? What the hell did you do to him?" Mei was still pale, but as her stomach had run out of contents, she was back on her feet.

"I didn't do that to him, I simply removed his burnt skin and staples so he could heal, and no, obviously not." Izuku walked over to a biological hazard bin and started stripping his surgical gear off while speaking. "I'm sorry about that, Mei. I didn't expect you to be over here so soon. You were rather invested in your project when we left."

Mei narrowed her eyes, concerned with the gaunt, haunted expression in his eyes. "Izuku… what time do you think it is right now?" Izuku looked up, curious as to Mei's question and responded about elevenish by his estimation. She shook her head "Izuku you've been in there with him for almost six hours, not two."

He jerked. "Well, fuck. He was more screwed up than I thought. Or maybe I've gotten slower." He gave a dark chuckle at that, and Mei eased down into a chair. "Regardless, I called you here for these." He pulled two syringes from one of the cabinets and brought them over to Mei. One was a pressure syringe, and one was a normal syringe filled with something or another.

Izuku gestured for her to give him her arm. She narrowed her eyes but did. If there was one thing she was certain of, it's that he wouldn't hurt her. Once he had completed the first injection, he placed the pressure syringe just below and behind her ear. With a hiss, the syringe deposited it's payload and left Mei thinking about how much she hated pressure syringes. "Mind telling me what those were now?"

Izuku nodded. "The first was a vaccine cocktail if you will. That should cover almost every chemical and biological agent I know of that could be used in an attack." Mei was giving him a weird look again, but he wasn't about to let his partner go unprotected so it was what it was. "The second is actually the tiny device you've been helping me with the last couple days. I finished them up and they're working now, so you get to, as you would put it, finally know what they are. If you tap the device, then you'll figure it out pretty quickly."

Mei continued staring at him, because who the hell was worried about chemical or biological attacks nowadays, but did as he asked and tapped the small disk now under her skin. There was a small click and then nothing. Wait. No. Not nothing. Her head dipped towards the ground as she struggled to think of what it was when she recognized the static. Mei's head whipped up so quickly that Izuku was worried she might give herself whiplash.

"You crazy son of a bitch, you created a subdermal communicator? What's the range? How did you condense the electronics that small? How. Just how?!" Izuku laughed now and gestured at her to tap it again. Once she had, and the device had turned off, he spoke.

"The range is theoretically infinite. While a normal model might have a limit of several tens of miles, yours, Dabi's, and mine are all QEC tech and linked with Phoenix's core. Which means that the four of us can communicate whenever the need should arise. If for some reason you have to turn it off, double-tap and hold for a second. It'll go into standby until you repeat the sequence."

Mei just stared at him. Then stared at him some more. Finally, she snapped out of her surprise and grabbed him by his shirt collar and shook him. "Are you telling me?! That you solved Quantum Entanglement Communication and DIDN'T tell me?!"

Izuku threw his hands up "No. No. Gah. NO. Stop shaking me please." Once Mei had let go of him, Izuku started speaking. "I knew how to make these, is all. But that is literally all I knew how to do with the theory. When we get the time, you can have the blueprints for them and reverse engineer how it works. I am sure you'll be able to figure it out."

Mei huffed but agreed. He kept pulling things out of his hat with no explanation. It was driving her insane. "Fine. By the way, I finished the prototype for the grapple gauntlet. You want to test it in the ranges testing zone?"

…

"What if we tweaked this here and targeted the light itself? We could theoretically bend it around an electromagnetic field."

"True, we could do that, but it would have to be perfect, else you would end up having what looks to be a mirage around the target."

"Fair enough, but let's see if we can't get a stationary model worked out before we try for a moving one."

…

"Are you saying what I think you're saying? We could do it, I mean. It would take us developing nanites to do it, but with Phoenix's abilities, she could interface with them all to install the command net."

"It's worth a shot. Nanite plating would be interesting, but it might be better to just use them as an emergency weapon, you know? Set them to deactivate after a certain time and blast a target with the grey goop of doom."

"Yeah, we'll want to focus more on the weapon development with those, probably. What if we used the stuff you were working with the other day? Create some kind of regenerative biosteel?"

…

"What if we used some kind of STF or MR fluid? We could use those to create effective armor."

"Fair enough, but I've no experience working with them so I've got no idea where to start with that. For now, I think we should stick with the carbon nanotube plates. They work as NIJ IV and are better than their steel variants."

…

Consciousness came as a slow trickle at first. It was like he had gotten the best sleep he had ever gotten in his entire life. His muscles were relaxed, and for the first time in years, there wasn't pain just for existing. When he had finally found the strength in him to open his eyes, he was confused at first. The only thing he could see, really, was green and a vague shape outside of that. The second thing he realized once his mind had clicked over was that whatever he was in was thick and slimy. When he tried to move, he found it slowed his movements with its sheer viscosity. There was a crackle, and a voice he recognized was suddenly in his head.

"Can you hear me in there, Dabi? Blink once for me if you can understand me." He blinked once. Midoriya hadn't mentioned he would wake up in a vat of slime. "Good. I'm sure you're confused right now, so I'll explain what's going on. You were. Well, your body was in worse condition than I thought going into the operation. So instead of recovering in a bed, as I'm sure you expected, you're in a vat of biogel. What is biogel, you ask? Well, suffice it to say, it's an anesthetic and clotting gel. But the important part, in this case, is that it also seals against infection. That gel is what kept you nice and clinically clean while you healed. It's been six days, and you are awake slightly early. So before we get you out of there and get that tube out of your throat that's letting you breathe, let me just ask you a few questions to confirm you're all there, mentally and we'll get you out.

....

The gel was drained and the tube hissed as it repressurized. When Dabi went to step out, Izuku had to catch him, as his legs weren't quite awake with the rest of him yet. Izuku removed the tube, leaving only a small incision where it had been. He wasn't worried since, if everything had gone well, the incision would be healed in a little while.

When the tube was removed, he immediately started hacking and spitting out green goop up onto the floor from where it had seeped into his nasal passages during his time in the vat. Izuku patted his back, just letting him get it out. He only looked back down at Dabi when he felt the man freeze. His brain was finally catching up with what he was seeing, and he couldn't believe it. His skin was normal. Normal. As in, it wasn't singed and burnt anymore. It also wasn't leaking fluid on him. He had hair on his arms again, and better yet, could feel his jaw again. He poked his lower lip with his tongue and found it to be intact. He looked up at Midoriya who was smiling down at him.

"Before you ask, yes, it's your skin, and yes, I will explain. You may want to sit in a chair for it, though. First off, the procedure was a complete success. That being said, due to the extensive nature of your injuries, I had to go a bit further than I would have liked. You're not entirely human anymore. Congratulations and welcome to the club."

It took a moment for that bit of information to sink into his still mildly groggy brain. When he spoke, it came out in a croak. He figured that's the result of a week without using his voice and a hole in his throat. "What do you mean by not entirely human? And what club?"

Izuku snorted, "First, if you've not caught it, I'm not exactly normal myself. The difference is, my lack of humanity is far more substantial than yours. I had to incorporate both Axolotl and Lobster DNA into your genome to help heal you. Overall, you should find yourself with everything we talked about before, a quirk that takes much more to harm yourself with, and a regeneration factor that rivals quirks that do the same thing." For the first time in a while, Izuku looked up from Dabi's medical reports and smirked. "Oh. I also made your natural hair color black. Should help."

Notes:

Bonus points to anyone that knows why I used Axolotl and Lobster DNA for the genome editing