Inheritance of Giants

The Chain

Izuku moved quietly, one hand brushing against the wall to guide him. The floor was cold under his feet, but not painful. He liked the feeling. It reminded him he was still real. Still grounded.

The compound was mostly silent.

Somewhere far off, a vent rattled with loose bolts. A hum buzzed from a power relay overhead. And beneath it all, something else — almost imperceptible.

A rhythm. Not music. Not yet.

But a pulse. Like a heartbeat you could only hear if you believed it was there.

Izuku followed it.

Turned left past the medbay. Past the storage alcove. Past the shuttered diagnostics wing where no one ever turned off the blue light.

Every step made it stronger. More real.

By the time he reached the reinforced lab door — the one Kyotoku had sealed hours ago — he could feel it in his fingertips.

Like static on a screen just before the picture resolved.

The MP3 player was singing again.

Not aloud.

Not yet.

But it knew he was close.

And it was waiting.

Izuku reached out.

His fingers hovered over the access panel. Numbers blinked, demanding a code. Izuku didn't know it.

But he didn't need to.

The panel flickered. Glitched.

Then — unlocked with a soft chirp, like someone on the inside had opened it first.

Izuku swallowed. He pushed the door open.

Inside, the lights were low. Kyotoku's workbench was cluttered with graphs, tablets, and exposed circuitry. The MP3 player rested at the center of it all — inside a containment dome made of transparent alloy and reinforced Spacium shielding.

And it was glowing. Just faintly.

But undeniably. As if it saw him. As if it was relieved.

"Ah. A human child," an uncomfortably close voice rang — not with sound, but in the base of Izuku's skull. As though the words had bypassed his ears entirely.

Izuku whirled around.

And froze.

The creature before him stood taller than most adults, hunched slightly beneath the lab's low ceiling. Its skin was pale — a sickly gray-pink, like marble left to curdle. Wrinkled, elongated features framed its eyeless face, where two recessed sockets glowed faintly red beneath the surface.

But it was the tendrils that made Izuku flinch.

A thick mass of them hung like a beard from the thing's face, twitching slowly, thoughtfully — and from the cluster extended an orb, held gently in a single gloved hand, wires snaking back into its throat.

It wore a modified SSSP observer's coat — one tailored for beings of... nonstandard biology. The hem drifted slightly above the floor, as if gravity wasn't quite certain how to hold it.

"But," the being sighed with a weird robotic voice. "You aren't the human child I am looking for.

"Though, I don't think there should be any human children here, now that I think of it. So why are you?"

"I-" Izuku stammered. "I- the MP3 Player. I-i-it was calling me."

"Ah, is that so? I... Well, maybe I should have expected that. It has been giving off a lot of psychic waves, as if... calling..."