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Hidden in Izuku’s room, between the layers of his mattress, is a handmade notebook. One he goes to great lengths to keep hidden from prying eyes.Hidden in Izuku’s room, between the layers of his mattress, is a handmade notebook. One he goes to great lengths to keep hidden from prying eyes.
It’s the plainest of all his notebooks, the rest all sporting stickers or fun calligraphy that Nooroo encouraged him to try.
Izuku had hand-bound the book himself, with a style that would let him add more pages to it at a later date if he decided to. (He doesn’t plan on it.) He’d taken the time to carefully choose the cover and pages, the waxed strings that bound it, and the carefully woven magic that prevented anyone from opening it without his or Nooroo’s permission.
The title on it is a single word, written with a dark purple marker. There is a single red triangle beside the word.
Kamiko.
Inside are only a few pages of notes, barely a full three, and a carefully drawn picture. All of the notes are written in a language taught to him by Nooroo. It’s an all but forgotten language. One that only the Kwami or the Miraculous Guardians knew. Izuku has two notebooks that he uses that language in; his notes on the miraculous and the Kamiko notebook with the red triangle.
He used the language in places where he wanted to be sure that no one but he and the kwami would know what was inside of them. And, for those two books, he wanted to ensure that no one would be able to find the secrets he keeps inside them.
The notes in the little, carefully hidden book talk about memory.
They talk about how the human mind remembers everything that it sees, but it’s designed to sort the priority of those things to be recalled later. The mind tries to make a priority for what it will need or want later, and sometimes it can choose wrong. And that makes it very easy to forget things that should be important. Or remember things that ultimately don’t have much meaning.
That’s how forensic hypnosis allows people to remember details of crimes or suspects that they couldn’t remember on their own. These can be key things in solving crimes and finding criminals that had escaped.
But those kinds of evidence aren’t admissible in courts and for a very good reason.
People are also very imaginative, so it is actually very common for people to “remember” things that never happened. A hypnotist can unwittingly influence what the person under hypnosis remembers by suggesting what they might be able to see or not see in their memories. Thus rendering the information untrue, or fabricated, and potentially learning to false conclusions.
People who’ve been through traumatic events or are under extreme stress have trouble with their memories. The extreme emotions cause their brains to misfile the information, making them forget important details. If they can remember what happened in the first place. Repression was a large part of trauma.
Some types of neurodivergence have memory issues as part of their symptoms. Another reason for that the people who have them struggle. Because they have a brain that just can’t figure out what is and isn’t important to recall.
The notes mention that the psychic ability to manipulate memories is called “Mnemokinesis”.
Very few people have quirks that can affect someone’s memory, but they do exist. Most of their abilities revolved around being able to recall things themselves and not forgetting them.
Some, however, can alter the memories of others. Shuffling around those priorities that the brain used to sort so that important things were forgotten, and insignificant things were remembered. Or even removing the memories entirely.
And the human mind isn’t the only thing that can struggle with memories. Computers can also have problems. Data can be corrupted and lost. Recordings and equipment can glitch and make the resulting data unusable. Updates can accidentally erase the data that should have been left untouched. It was more common than people seemed to think, but with the right professional, it was possible to repair it. Or at least repair the programs involved.
Some of those can be very obvious, something seen right away and fixed in short order. Others can be so subtle that the owner of the computer never notices until someone else points it out to them. Sometimes, though, the error is never found. Not until long after the original owner had discarded the equipment. And they are none the wiser.
Computers are harder to influence with quirks. Destroying them was easy, but altering the data in ways that most would never know? To tweak and hide and remove without being noticed? That was much harder.
But it wasn’t impossible.
The last page is a drawing of a person. It is the most detailed drawing Izuku has ever made.
(He and Nooroo are the only ones who have ever seen it. He hopes they are the only people who ever will.)
The person is effeminate and very old, though it’s hard to tell if they’re actually a woman. They look as though they’re made of layered paper, covered in unintelligible writing, with only their half-lidded eyes looking like actual features. They’re dressed in a long, many-layered kimono that’s decorated like the pages of a scrapbook, covered in images that look like clipped-up photographs, though none can be deciphered. Something that looks like a pendulum or a pocket watch hangs from their obi and their hair, and there is a serving ladle clutched in their hand.
Despite their strangeness, they look grandmotherly. Kind. Caring. Someone safe, despite their strangeness. The kind of person that people would always trust.
The drawing is simply labeled “Meng Po,” and there is a date written in one corner. It is the day Eri started living with them.
It was the first Kamiko Izuku had ever made. (It is the most dangerous Kamiko he has ever made.)
(He prays that he will never need to use their powers again.)
Chapter Afterword:
Meng Po is a character/being from Chinese Mythology. More specifically, she’s part of the cycle of Reincarnation. She is the old woman who serves souls Five Flavored Tea/A bowl of soup before they reincarnate. If they eat/drink it, then they’ll lose the memories of their previous life. If they don’t, then they will remember their previous lives after they incarnate.
This is the Kamiko that Izuku made to rescue Eri. Her power is the reason the Eight Hands will never be able to find her or continue to create/refine the Quirk Erasing Drug.
Simply put, Meng Po made them Forget about Eri.
She made them forget that the drug was made from a quirk. She made them forget who they got the quirk from. Forget that there had been a little girl living in their base. Forget that the Boss had been left the custody of his granddaughter. Forget that Overhaul had been a (rotten excuse of a) foster father for a short while. Not even the computer data about Eri remained.
To them, Eri does not exist.
And because of that, they will never look for her or try to take her back. They have no reason to hunt her down or hurt her again. Only her comatose grandfather will remember, but when he wakes up, he’ll have his hands full with other things than where his granddaughter has gone. (He’ll just pray that she’s safe and happy, wherever she is.)
The fact that Izuku was able to make someone with that kind of power scares him a little bit. Being able to alter someone’s memory to make them forget an ENTIRE PERSON, that is seriously powerful. As “minor” as making people “forget” something sounds. It’s an incredible amount of power and a terrifyingly effective Kamiko.
He knows he can call on that kind of power, as long as he has what she can do written down. Even if he didn’t “save” the butterfly that he used to make her.
And he really hopes he doesn’t need to use that power again, even if it saved his wonderful little sister.
