Most of the times, stories come from conversations with people, and this one is no different.
I was talking to a few friends last month, and My Hero Academia came up. Like most conversations about shows with characters who have very different named powers, just like with Jojo or something of the like, the topic of OC's and their quirks came up. One of my friends said that his quirk would probably be plant control, based on a fluid his character would secrete., while another said he'd want to be able to create a powerful force field over a small area around him, the size and strength of which would depend on how awake he felt, and using it for long spaces of time or defending against powerful attacks would wear down his consciousness until he passed out.
I had a few ideas myself, one of which being basic telekinesis, of course, while another was the ability to create gravitational force over a large area, the strength of which could be increased as the area it affected decreased, but if overused would cause internal bleeding by screwing up the user's internal gravity. The one I eventually settled on, however, was much simpler and is the basis behind me writing this story in the first place. I won't explain it here, because I'd rather have it explained in the story.
All that being said, please enjoy my story, "You Say Run".
An Average Jo: Sorry that I beat you to the punch on this one, but you could always take the gravity increasing guy I mentioned in last weeks chapter. Sorry about my chapters being short, I'm still trying to break my habit of being as concise as I am, but it's difficult. This one is about twice as long as the last chapter, and I can guarantee that next chapter is going to be a long one as well.
EDIT: Small changes in progress that I should have made like, a month ago. Decided to combine chapters 1 and 2 into one single chapter.
Prologues Are Weird & The Ten Month Montage
Yuki P.O.V.
My name is Yuki Futeki, and I am beyond bored right now. Day in and day out, I go to a school where nothing interesting really happens. In fact, relieving how bored I am with such a normal school is one of the reasons why I want to be a Pro Hero, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm a teenager of 15 years old, fairly tall (About 5'10"), and a bit more muscular than I appear, looking normal for my age and height while in my uniform, but rather well built. I have blue eyes, and black hair put into a short ponytail.
Today had begun like most others. Wake up at five am, get dressed in my tracksuit, go for my early morning jog, get back home around six, take a cold shower, brush teeth, get dressed, fix some breakfast, get the lunch bento I made last night, lock up, and go to school. When I got to school, however, I was reminded of something that definitely broke up the repetition.
"Everyone seems pretty excited today," I said to one of my friends, Seto. Seto was always a pretty cool guy and had a mutation quirk that gave him the physical visage of a lizard and greater than average physical strength and durability. Before Seto could answer my question, however, we heard the most annoying noise the school had to offer as a blond haired student strode to us.
"Are you seriously saying you forgot what today was? You must have taken a few too many blows to the head, Futeki-kun." Monoma said this as he strode towards my deck with that annoying cocky grin of his. Monoma had always been a bit of an ass. Probably because of his fairly wealthy family, at the very least wealthy enough to get him whatever he wants.
Standing up to my full height, I stared him in the eye and pulled on a grin of my own. "Funny, I could say the same to you, Monoma. I remember you taking at least seven blows to the head last time you got to full of yourself, isn't that right, copycat?" I wasn't kidding around. Me living by myself, I wasn't exactly swimming in wealth, and Monoma knew that, and it put us at odds more than anyone else in this school. Last time we talked, he and I ended up in a fistfight, which, despite his supposed intelligence, didn't end well for him. Turns out, my quirk doesn't work so well for someone who didn't have the muscle to make good use for it.
My quirk was certainly a special one, essentially making it so I get stronger the more I fight. It allows me to absorb most forms of energy that touch my body, convert it, and redirect it back out as a kinetic force. Monoma thought that he could make use of it to at least bring us to a draw, but since I'm baseline physically stronger than him, I might as well have been fighting a weaker version of myself. During the fight, I started off by acting slower than I actually am, allowing him to think he had a good speed advantage on me as he peppered me with punches, and as soon as I had absorbed enough energy from his blows, I started to hammer him with enhanced punches of my own.
In the end, he never stood a chance.
"You may have won our last confrontation," he said while breaking into a sweat, probably remembering the scare he got from how overprotective his mother had gotten after the fight, "but that was only because of your dirty tricks, next time, I won't fall for that faked slowness. In fact, how about we go ahead and make a new bet. You plan on taking U.A.'s Entrance Exam as well, do you not? Then let us make a friendly wager. When I score higher than you on the entrance exam, you must prostrate yourself before me and beg for my forgiveness for you being such a thorn in my side."
"Alright, but when I win, you give me your allowance for the next two months," I smirked at him and put out my hand for a handshake.
"Deal, may the best man win." Monoma grabbed my hand and we shook, sealing the deal.
Smirking at him, I spoke. "Don't worry, I plan to. Go ahead and get your purse ready." At that, the teacher entered and we all took our seats. The rest of the day went by rather normally, nothing interesting happening as usual. As the day came to a close, I gave a challenging glare to Monoma as he entered his family limousine, which he returned.
The game was officially on.
As I got home and made myself dinner, I marked the date of the entrance exam on my calendar. The next ten months, I planned to put myself through nothing short of hell to make sure that if anyone got the top spot in the exam, it would be me. I knew just the place too.
Dagobah Municipal Beach Park had been I place I had played at a lot as a kid, mostly due to the fact that the trash made a good hiding place from grownups, as well as all the verticality of the place. Not only would cleaning that beach up would help with bringing my name to the forefront whenever I hit the Pro Hero stage, but a lot of the dumped stuff was fairly large, and would way more cost effective than a gym membership.
My thoughts were interrupted as I saw a fight on the small tv I had on the counter. Looks like some sludge monster thing got a kid and was holding him hostage. To my surprise, another kid with super frizzy hair, probably a year younger than me ran up to the thing and started clawing at it. Unfortunately, doesn't look like it was doing much. "Fuck, that isn't good. Someone needs to go and save the dumbass before he gets himself killed."
As the sludge guy rears up to hit the kid with the perm, All Might appears and punched the villain so hard it started to rain. "How the hell he'd even do that? Well, at least the kid is still kicking." After watching the frizzy guy and the guy who was held hostage get interviewed with mixed results, I finished cooking, ate, took a shower, and went to bed early, because starting tomorrow, I entered Hell.
Waking up the next day, I began to dress for a workout, putting on a pair of black sweatpants and a dark red no sleeved shirt. Then I put on a pair of old sneakers, didn't want anything good getting ripped up. Finally, I put on a pair of fingerless gloves, grabbed my bag and went out for a run to Dagobah Beach.
As I got to the location, I began to look around. I decided to focus on strengthening my core, back, and upper chest muscles today. My quirk requires me to get hit first to make it useful, so I'd need to be able to take a punch from someone as strong as All Might if I wanted to be number one. Finding a bar of metal that didn't look sharp jutting out from one of the trash piles, I climbed up to it, sat on it, and used my legs to keep a good grip on it as the rest of my body fell backward. Then, I began to do a set of five hanging sit-ups and could understand why this was a workout you'd usually see one of the really strong characters in an anime doing because it was essentially double the work you'd put into a regular sit-up.
After finishing my third set of that, I heard what sounded like talking from a short distance away. When I started the fourth set, I saw two people, the first to enter my view was a really tall guy, a skeleton of a man with long, blond bangs in a white t-shirt and dark green cargo pants, and he was followed by the kid from yesterday's news story. It seemed as though they hadn't seen me yet, so I decided to see how long it'd take for one of them to notice me while I continued on my workouts. My goal was at least ten sets of five hanging sit-ups.
While I worked towards my own workout, I heard something about cleaning to build muscle. I hadn't actually considered that up to this point, thinking I'd just use the larger bits of trash as workout equipment instead, but what they said sounded much more productive. Finally, it seemed that one of them, the tall one, noticed me when he looked out upon when the shorty would be cleaning up, and seemed to look indifferent to my presence, while the shorty seemed to get really worried. Looking towards them, I waved as I finished my last set. Grabbing my bag from where I set it on the bar, I let the rest of my body fall as I flipped in the air in an attempt to not hurt myself, landing it a roll and getting fairly dizzy in the process.
After recovering, I walked towards them. "I overheard a bit of your guys' talk. Sorry."
"How much did you hear, exactly?" The skeleton talked with a rather deep, familiar voice, but I just couldn't place it. "It's pretty rude to listen in on other people's conversations, you know," the guy said, looming over me as he pointed at me, surprisingly, he was even taller than I thought he was, probably somewhere around seven feet tall, and something about the look in his eyes intimidated me a bit, despite the fact that he looked about as muscular as a metal pole.
I held up my hands in defense. "Sorry, I didn't want to quit in the middle of my workout. All I heard was you saying something about cleaning up the beach." Offering my hand for a handshake, which was excepted by both, though the shorty was a bit reluctant. I decided to introduce myself. "I'm Yuki Futeki, and if I had to guess, you," I said, looking towards the shorty, "are probably here for the same reason I am. Training for U.A.'s Entrance Exam, right?"
The short kid looked at me as if I just threatened to take his lunch money, saying "How did you know that's what we're doing?"
"I saw you on the news last night kid, you're the one who broke past the barricade to fight that sludge dude, right?" I smirked at him and continued. "Gotta say, not much more ballsy than charging that thing down for a friend. Might as well have held up a sign telling the heroes around about how rad you are. Though I will say it was pretty dumb of you to not use your quirk. It's a good thing All Might showed up, or you'd've been done for. Either way, if I had to guess, you wanna put that heroic spirit to the test at U.A., right?"
"That's right," the walking skeleton said, "which is why I decided to train him. His quirk hits with a lot of blowback, enough to shatter him if he isn't careful. To combat this, he needs to build a great deal of muscle."
I looked at the skeleton skeptically. "No offense, but you're all skin and bones. How much can you train him?"
The skinny guy didn't seem to get phased by this, but before he could retort, the shorty responded first. "A- Toshinori-san is plenty strong, he is a great hero!"
This time, the skinny guy, Toshinori, spoke before I could question the kid. "What Young Midoriya-kun means is that I used to be a hero, but after an injury, I decided to retire."
Guilt entered my heart at that moment, considering I basically just mocked an injured veteran. Averting my gaze I spoke. "Sorry, I didn't realize, I've always had a bit of a problem with speaking before thinking. If you don't mind me asking, what happened?" To this, Toshinori smiled sadly, before going to sit on a bit of trash, and lifted his shirt up, revealing a blackened mess of scar tissue and stitches.
"I was fighting a villain a good few years back. The guy ended up punching a hole straight through me. Long story short, I ended up with most of my guts strewn across the ground, but I won. Ever since then, I've only been able to use my quirk for a limited time."
I was feeling really shitty now. Chances are, this guy was a really good hero, and here I was, making fun of him for the effect of him nearly dying to save people like me. I had to show him the respect he deserved. "Sorry, Toshinori. I didn't know. I've always had a bit of a problem when it came to talking before thinking." As I said this, I bowed with my arms at my side.
To my surprise, however, the tall man yelled at me. "Stop that, you idiot! What happened to me was sad, sure, but it's in the past. Nothing you can fix with an apology or pity. Hell, if you knew how strong I was back then, you'd know that it was my fault."
"Just how strong were you, if you don't mind me asking?"
"If I had to estimate, I'd say that I could probably take All Might himself, as he is now, down within ten minutes, and could have at least matched him for a short time in his prime."
This led to Midoriya and I both getting eyes as wide as saucers. All Might's strength was legendary. The man had been a pro for over thirty years and was only just now showing slight signs of slowing down. Despite this, his strength doesn't seem to have lessened much at all, but this guy says he was equal to the world's greatest hero in his prime. The possibility was unbelievable, but Toshinori didn't seem to give off any indication that he was lying. In fact, the look in his eyes showed nothing but absolute sureness.
"Are you sure about that, Toshinori? I can understand you being strong but as strong as All Might? 'Greatest hero in the world' All Might? 'Saved a million people during his debut' All Might?" I just couldn't believe it. I can believe him being strong, but I just can't believe him being stronger that All Might.
"Believe it or don't, I don't really care. We're burning daylight. Maybe we can keep talking later. Go on, kid, You'd better get started if you want to be prepared by the exam. Get moving!" As he yelled this at Midoriya, the shorty began with an "OK!" while Toshinori kept speaking to me. "Oh, and Yuki, you can keep doing what you're doing, but I don't want you helping young Midoriya with his cleaning. Can't have you stealing his training, can we?"
With a shrug, I said, "Don't worry about it, I'll just be using the stuff around here to train myself. I'm more focused on a more normal routine, anyway." As I said that I started walking towards a large girder that was sitting on the ground, and began to use it to deadlift while I watched Midoriya begin his own strength training. Looking at him from here I could definitely see that my original idea of him when I first met him was a bit off.
Sure the guy was a bit of a wimp now, but even I could see the fire behind his eyes as he ran around picking up trash to be disposed of. He definitely had the heart for hero work, that's for sure. I even found myself starting to get more pumped up just from seeing his enthusiasm.
He may not look like it now, but Midoriya could very well turn out to be a pretty good rival.
Two months had passed, and it was starting to become apparent that Midoriya was getting stronger. It was hard for me to tell at first, but if you looked close enough at his forearms and calves, they were starting to show a bit of the fruit of his labors. Speaking with Toshinori, I discovered how Midoriya's quirk worked. It essentially just gave him a great boost of strength, but he hadn't figured out how to control that power just yet, so if he wasn't careful, he'd end up breaking a bone every time he used it.
Considering the similarities between the ways our quirks would be used, I offered up my services to help Midoriya learn how to fight, but he turned me down, at least for now. It's understandable, considering that he could only fire off four attacks right now before he had to quit fighting.
It's been about four months, and Midoriya has started to pick up the pace. He was noticeably stronger and faster now. To improve morale, it seems that Toshinori called in a favor that was owed to him, and now All Might has begun to train us when he has the time, with Toshinori coming in to take up for him when All Might can't make it.
Since he was here, I decided now was the perfect chance to test my own durability. I managed to talk All Might into punching me with stronger and stronger punches to see just how far I've come. He agreed, albeit, reluctantly, and did so. I managed to get him to use about 5% of his strength before I started to really get hurt, which even he was impressed with, telling me that most villains he's fought couldn't even stand up to three percent.
My strength training was also coming around fairly well, and with it, the upwards limits of how much energy I could eat up and dish out. Currently, the maximum amount of energy I have fully absorbed was apparently equivalent to two punches from All Might at 2%, which isn't anything to snort at, though it was still pretty far above my current threshold, so I had to expel it pretty quickly.
Currently, we're at six months, it seems like I've made great progress towards my goal. I can currently absorb enough energy to put me at approximately .5% of an All Might, which is a great achievement, considering how strong the guy was. Unfortunately, Midoriya seems to be falling behind schedule, which is only making the kid feel worse because he keeps comparing himself to my progress. He still has about 50% of the beach to clean up but it seems like his speed hasn't increased yet.
I've also learned a bit about both Toshinori and Midoriya, but Midoriya much more so. From what Midoriya told me, he only learned that he had a quirk recently, but believed that he was quirkless for most of his life. This apparently led to his social life falling apart, even his best friend turned around and bullied him, becoming one of his worst bullies even. Something about the kid didn't sit right with me when he talked about it, because despite what his old best friend did to him, Midoriya seemed to regard this Kaachan with regard second only to All Might and Toshinori.
Whatever the case, I know I really want to beat this "Kaachan" guy. Hard. Unfortunately, seems the guy got a good lot in life despite his shitty disposition, ending up with a really strong quirk. Now that I think about it, the guy's quirk being so strong is probably why he's such an ass, but I'd have to meet him in person before I could make that judgment.
We were starting to come down to the wire, now that we're at eight months. I was now at able to absorb enough power to punch with a force equal to a 2% punch from All Might. Midoriya was still a bit behind, still having about 25% left to clean up, but was starting hurry up a bit more. Unfortunately, Toshinori, All Might, and I don't believe he'll get it finished by the exam. That being said, Toshinori did think that he might be able to use his quirk at about 1% now, but considering Midoriya's current lack of control over his quirk, he probably wouldn't be able to focus enough to control it enough for that.
Midoriya did say that people were starting to notice his increase in strength, at least his mother did. All things considered, I understood why it's taken so long. Midoriya's body wasn't really built for raw power, he wasn't all that big or broad, and his muscles seemed to prefer to keep their shape, only really being noticeable if one noted the definition the kid had. He might end up with a super growth spurt when he turns 18, but I doubt it.
Tomorrow was the day of the exam, and I decided to take today off from training, choosing to study instead. I believed that as of right now, I was more than capable of passing the practical exam, but if I didn't cram as much as I could into my head, I'd end up failing the written portion. Failing that would require me to do more work in the practical exam if I wanted in.
From what I could tell, Midoriya wasn't going to finish cleaning that beach any time soon. Sucks, considering that, for some reason or another, Toshinori didn't want him to try the Entrance Exam until he had finished, but maybe the kid could get a pass, just this once. It'd feel kinda shitty if the kid ended up not getting to go, considering how much the little guy wanted to go to U.A. Hell, it'd probably break the guy's heart.
Whatever the case, I couldn't let myself get distracted by my empathy for Midoriya. I need to become a hero, or else everything I've done up until now might as well have been pointless. I will become a hero, just like my father. I know my parents are watching over me, so I need to make them proud of their shithead of a kid.
And chapter one is up. This time around, we get some hints as to the condition of Yuki's parents, but nothing quite concrete. Next chapter, we will get to see the other star of the show, which won't be a surprise considering that I know most of you can read the tags for this story. I think the next chapter might take a bit longer for me to make, considering how much I like to detail out combat and because I might try to play around with the POV of the story.
Please leave a review if you can, criticism welcome, and thank you for reading.
Wait, what the hell is going on here?, this chapter is already done, why am I back here?
"Well hey there, big guy," a man says from behind me. Turning around, I see a man of about twenty years old. He's about 5'7", fairly fit, and wears a white hoodie, the hood pulled up, a pair of sweatpants, and a pair of sneakers. His eyes are hidden behind a black mask which only covers from his hairline to his nose. "Oh, so that's what it's like when you describe a new character."
Who the hell are you, why am I back here, and how can you see me?
"Well, that is a lot of questions that'll be fun to answer. Well, for starters, my name is Koete Shikaku, you're back here because you got bored in Universe Prime and felt like doing something fun for your followers, and I can see you because you created me about four hours ago. By the way, are you okay being all willowy and shiny?"
Fine, gimme a minute. Focussing for a few moments, I condensed my body into my preferred physical form. I was about 5'9" tall and wore an unzipped leather hooded coat with a red t-shirt underneath. I also wore a pair of square-shaped glasses, dark blue jeans, and a pair of black boots. My curly, dirty blond hair was about shoulder length, and the slight unshaveness of my face gave the impression that I didn't try as much as I probably should. There, that better?
"You look like someone's divorced dad, but it's better than talking to a mass of arguably intelligent life. So, now that you're done pretending to not know why I'm here, how about you take the liberties of explaining to that nerd on the other side of the screen about why you and I are here, Teneani?"
Fine, fine. Okay, so here's the deal, I was feeling thrifty, and decided to go back and do something fun, so over the course of the last two months, I've been writing these bio sheets for all of the characters I've created so far, and decided to go ahead and do the explanations in this way instead of just doing a giant wall of text like I did the last time over in the old version of chapter three. As I speak, you can see Koete struggling to push a cart which holds a massive amount of sentences. Snapping my fingers, two Nomu appear from thin air and push the cart in his stead. Starting now, and reoccurring every chapter for a little while, Koete, myself, and whoever we're talking about will appear here at the end, and the two and/or three of us will take the time to do some explanations on the logic or science behind some of the things that I believe may cause confusion.
"And as an example, today, we'll start off with yours truly," Koete says, popping up from out of frame. "Half to give you guys an idea of how this'll work-"
And half to explain who this guy is, as well as what he can do, I say. You see, while he may seem like someone I created to live exclusively in this studio set-shaped void in the dark recesses of nothingness known as my mind palace, that door over there, I point to a door in the background, through which you can see a bright light coming through under the door, actually connects to his house.
"That's right nerds, I am a canon existence in You Say Run. I'm twenty-four years old, white is my favorite color, and I'm a Sagittarius, kinda like Yusha, right?"
Shut up, idiot. There's most likely gonna be people reading this for the first time, and Yusha doesn't show up until chapter five, which I definately didn't need to go back and check to figure out.
"Oops, sorry, anyway, as you already know, my name is Koete Shikaku, which, for those of you who know your Japanese or are at least mildly proficient in the inner workings of Google Translate, roughly translates into 'Beyond visual sense'. Don't judge me, Teneani made that name in under ten minutes and didn't feel like putting much work into it."
Oi, shut it. Anyway, as he is technically an MHA oc, he does have a quirk, one that ties directly into his name.
"That's right. My quirk is called Omnidimensional Omniscience. For those of you who actually speak english," Koete says, glaring in my direction, "that translates to me having the ability to have infinite knowledge. Unfortunately, this only makes me about as intelligent as this guy, so that doesn't really amount to much."
Oh fuck off, dickhead. Anyway, this basically amounts to him having full knowledge not only on what has happened, is currently happening, and is going to happen down the line in this story, but also grants him full knowledge on every alternate world and series that I know. This also seems to give him access to this room of mine, and no matter how much I try, I can't seem to get him to fuck off either.
"Love you too, dad."
Speaking of dads, the reason why he has such a quirk is that unlike every other OC in this story, I don't feel like making an actual dad and backstory for him. As far as anyone in You Say Run knows, he's a psychology student in Mustafu, but in truth, he was only created like five hours ago.
"I'm also not all that strong. Unlike Yuki, I don't have any form of combat ability, though I am able to anticipate someone's movements far before they even begin fighting me, so there is that."
Yeah, so technically speaking, he is actually the strongest character in the story. I snap my fingers again, and one of the Nomu from before walk into frame from behind, carrying a large sign on his shoulders. On the sign, you can read Koete's stat sheet.
Koete Shikaku
Power: 1/5 F
Speed: 1/5 F
Technique: ?/5
Intelligence: ?/5
Cooperativeness: ?/5
Overall Score: ?/5
Along with these mystery level stats that put him beyond the ranking system, Koete is also really good at giving advice, mostly due to his omniscience, as well as being semi-immortal due to me not wanting to do this shit on my own.
"And that's the end of the explanation for this chapter, we'll be back in chapter three to talk about Yuki Futeki. In the meantime, have a good day!"
See you then.