The last thing he remembered was gold.
Gold flooded the cinema screen. Luffy's fist through Tesoro's gilded face. He'd always thought Tesoro relied too much on constructs.
Then his chest clenched.
He tried to inhale. Couldn't. The theater lights bloomed white, then vanished.
Heart attack. Thirty-four years. Cheap beer and worse food. No surprise. Just consequence.
---
Darkness.
Then *this*.
Walls of muscle pulsed around him, squeezing. He tried to move—couldn't. His body was too small, too soft, folded against itself. A womb. Being born.
The pressure surged. Light bled through—harsh, surgical.
Then cold hit his skin.
Air rushed into lungs that had never breathed. The sensation was so sharp he screamed—but the scream died when he opened his eyes.
Gold.
His own reflection in the surgical light above: irises like molten metal.
'I'm a baby. I'm actually—'
His thought cut off. Involuntary tears flooded his eyes. He couldn't hold the sentence. His infant brain kept slipping.
'Focus. Focus—'
A woman's voice cut through. Not fear. Exhaustion.
'Well. That explains the kicking.'
He tried to turn his head. The motion was jerky, uncoordinated. His neck muscles spasmed halfway through, and his head flopped to the side. He saw her in fragments: dark hair plastered to her forehead. Brown skin flushed. Gold weeping from her tear ducts, from her fingertips, from every pore. Liquid metal cooling into flakes on the bedsheet.
Gold Generation. His mother's quirk.
She smiled at him. Tired. Real.
'Hello, little Midas.'
Not fear. Acceptance.
---
A nurse reached for him. Her gloved hands were steady—she'd done this thousands of times. Midas's tiny fingers closed around her thumb on pure reflex.
*Crack.*
Not bone. The latex glove split at the palm. The nurse gasped, yanked her hand back. Her thumb was red, already bruising.
'His grip—' she started.
'He's strong,' Cybele said calmly. 'I felt him breaking my ribs from the inside for three months. You think I didn't know?'
The nurse stared at her. Then at the infant.
Midas lay on the receiving blanket, vision blurring from the overhead lights. His adult mind screamed questions—'What am I? What can I do?'—but his infant body sabotaged him again. His focus slipped. His eyes crossed. The room swam.
He tried to hold on to the thought. Failed. His body chose that moment to cry—not from emotion, from reflex. The sound was thin and reedy and humiliating.
He hated it.
---
Doctor Saito entered. Small man, large hands, a permanent crease between his brows. He'd delivered quirked babies before—flames, phasing, even a child who'd screamed so loud it cracked the windows.
He stopped when he saw Midas.
Not because of the gold eyes. Because the infant was *looking at him*.
Newborns didn't track. Their vision was blurry, their attention random. This child's gaze followed Saito's movement across the room. Deliberate. Intentional.
Then Midas's focus broke. His eyes unfocused, drifted. A spasm ran through his limbs—the startle reflex, triggered by nothing. He blinked hard, tried to find the doctor again, couldn't.
'Still a baby,' he thought bitterly. 'Can't even hold eye contact.'
Saito picked up the quirk assessment tablet. Waved it over the tiny torso.
The screen lit up.
He stared at it. Blinked. Looked again.
'His muscles are denser than mine.'
He swallowed.
'His bones too.'
Silence.
Even the monitors seemed quieter.
'That shouldn't be possible,' he said.
Cybele watched from the bed, gold still drying on her cheeks. 'Is something wrong with him?'
Saito didn't answer immediately. His left foot shifted back—half a step, unconscious. Away from the child.
'There's no polite way to say this.' He kept his eyes on the tablet, not on Midas. 'Your son's physical baseline is four times adult standard. He's less than ten minutes old. His neural patterns suggest awareness. Organization. This isn't a quirk yet. This is his *body*.'
'So he's strong.' Cybele's voice was flat. 'I already knew that.'
'You don't understand.' Saito finally looked at her. His professional mask slipped—just enough to show something underneath. Unease. 'Whatever his quirk turns out to be, it will be layered on top of *this*. A child who can crush bone with his grip before he can crawl. Who sees and tracks before his visual cortex should be functional.'
He paused.
'The registry monitors cases like this. I have to file a Code Black.'
Cybele's gold eyes narrowed. 'No.'
'It's not optional—'
'I said no.' She reached out, ignoring the nurses' protests, and pulled Midas onto her chest. His tiny body pressed against her skin. Warmth. A heartbeat he recognized. 'He's my son. Not a threat.'
---
Midas, pressed against his mother, felt something shift.
Not her heartbeat. Something deeper. Behind her sternum, a knot of light pulsed—slow, rhythmic, connected to her skin by threads that shimmered. Her quirk. Gold Generation. He could see it. Could almost *reach* for it.
The pressure built behind his eyes. His infant brain screamed overload. His vision doubled, tripled—
Then pain stabbed behind his eyes. Hot. Sharp.
Warm liquid slid from his nose.
Blood.
He'd pushed too far. His body wasn't ready. His nose was bleeding because he'd *looked* at something he shouldn't have.
The world tilted. He couldn't hold focus. The knot of light vanished. His limbs went limp, saved by biology from doing something he couldn't take back.
But Saito had seen something. The doctor's face had gone pale.
'Haruko,' he said, very quietly. 'Leave the room.'
'Doctor?'
'Now.'
The nurse obeyed. The door clicked shut.
Saito knelt beside the bed, keeping distance. Looking not at Cybele but at the infant in her arms.
'Mrs. Vantablack. Your son just tried to access my quirk.'
Nobody spoke.
The heart monitor beeped. Once. Twice.
Cybele's arms tightened around Midas. Still not fear. Protection.
'What does that mean?'
Saito exhaled slowly. His voice dropped.
'It means he can interact with quirks directly. Not just his own. *Others*.' He paused. 'In forty years of medicine, I've seen two cases like this. Both children were taken by the Hero Commission before their first birthday. I never heard what happened to them.'
The silence stretched.
Midas, drifting on the edge of exhausted sleep, heard every word.
'That wasn't a gift. That was a target.'
---
Cybele looked down at her son. Gold eyes closed now. Tiny chest rising and falling. A thin trail of dried blood under his nose. He looked fragile. Harmless. Hers.
'You're not taking him,' she said.
Saito shook his head. 'I don't have that authority. But the registry will come.'
'Then let them come.'
She pulled the blanket higher, covering Midas's shoulders. Her gold tears had stopped. In their place, something harder settled behind her eyes.
The doctor stood. Walked to the door. Paused with his hand on the frame.
'Mrs. Vantablack,' he said without turning around. 'For what it's worth… I hope you can protect him.'
He left.
The latch clicked.
Midas would remember that sound for years.
---
Cybele pressed a kiss to her son's forehead. Gold flakes transferred from her lips to his skin.
'I named you Midas,' she whispered. 'Because everything I touch becomes treasure. And you're already mine.'
---
*In the hallway, Karl—quirkless, silent, present for none of this—checked his phone. A message from work. He typed a reply. Then he walked past the door of Room Four without looking inside.*
*He would not return for seven years.*
*Midas would remember that too.*