"Your problem…" The man whose yellow-gloved hand was closed around her face. "Is that you've grown used to your own power and control."
Uraraka was lying flat on her back on the floor of a small apartment in a very run-down building, housing a very old veteran of the hero business.
The man standing above her was one Gran Torino, a hero who had been a contemporary and best friend of Nana Shimura, All Might's predecessor to the power of All For One.
"How… How is that a problem?" Uraraka asked, as the small, old man stepped off of her and let go of her face.
"It's a problem because you have reached a point where you're complacent with your powers. You have a pretty decent level of control, and your body is starting to adapt to one for all's real power. Those two things are good. What is not good, is the way you use it. You're still using the power as you did at the start. Short, strong, powerful bursts, when you could use it much, much more efficiently."
She swallowed, as she got to her feet, trying to make full sense of what he was saying.
"You're saying that having control, and just adapting to the power over time isn't enough. That I need something more."
"Let me guess? Your plan was to simply train and let the power acclimate to your body so that by the time you graduate, you'd be at the same level with it as All Might?"
"... Something like that."
"A cunning stratagem…" He said in the most sarcastic manner imaginable. "It might actually have worked too if you'd had the time. Unfortunately for you, you don't. Time is not on your side. Nor on your enemies. But your enemies will not simply sit back, and wait for you to get stronger."
"Right… They'll try and cut me down before I can reach my full potential. That's the smart thing to do."
A feeling of fear begin to creep into her, but she crushed it under a wall of determination.
She'd accepted this burden willingly.
"That was what the whole invasion was about. Killing me now, when I'm not a threat to anyone."
"Most likely. Either way, you cannot simply try to follow All Might's path, where everything about your powers comes naturally to you. You don't have the time for that."
"So… What do I do?"
"That's something you'll have to figure out yourself. I'm. Heading out to go buy some grub. You clean this up while I'm gone, kay?"
And with that, the little man who had just laid her low without taking a scratch just left out the door while nonchalantly whistling a tune.
She stared after him for a moment, then began to clean up the mess their little bout had left on his apartment.
And all the while, her head was racing with what exactly he had meant.
She had a suspicion. The simple fact was, she had understood what he meant. He critiqued her for only using her powers in bursts. He wanted her to use them like she had one for all active at all times. The question of course was how she was supposed to achieve that.
I
Iida Tenya was walking down the street behind the hero he had chosen to intern under.
The Normal Hero: Manual.
He was a good hero, but in all frankness, there was nothing that stood out about him. At a hero rank in the mid 200's, he wasn't exactly a hero who stood out, which was only amplified by the fact that his chosen hero name and moniker were an example of self-deprecation.
His quirk was not particularly outstanding either, being a very standard hydro kinetic quirk, that didn't even let him conjure or produce water himself, but merely control it from an outside source.
Masaki Mizushima was, in every way, an average hero. Nothing wrong with him, but nothing outstanding.
Many heroes in training would have looked down on him for that, or at the very least, not respected him.
Iida Tenya was not one of those.
He fully respected Manual. He respected that he was a fine, upstanding hero. However, the teenager had not chosen the man because of respect, or any wish of future employment, either as an intern, nor a sidekick.
He had chosen him for the simple and only reason that he operated in Hosu city.
For here, there was a dark, cruel monster still roaming the streets.
The Hero Killer Stain.
He was very glad that his friends had not heard of what had befallen his family in recent times. Hardy-Ashido and Midoriya in particular.
If they had, they might have guessed his purpose for coming to this city. Worse, they might have decided to try and help him in what he had to do.
But, this was his fight, not theirs.
"Usually, I'm just waiting around for a call to come in while out patrolling. But lately… Everyone's been in kinda a panic around here."
"Because the number of patrolmen has been downsized?"
It was a rather callous way to put what had been happening around here, but Tenya wasn't able to put it in a more diplomatic and kindhearted way. Not without betraying exactly how he felt about all of it.
Manuel didn't seem to mind though.
"Yeah, that's right." He said in a kinda forced calm and carefree manner like they weren't talking about a serial killer roaming the streets.
"Sure is nice to have Ingenium's little brother with me though."
Normally, that line might have brought pride and a sense that he had something to live up to.
At that moment though, he was simply reminded of why he was here.
There was a very dangerous man roaming the streets of Hosu. A phantom that not even the modern law enforcement had not been able to catch.
A phantom he had come here to catch.
This whole trip might be completely in vain. It might turn out to have been a gigantic waste of time.
The chances of him running into the one he sought were extremely minuscule, solely from a mathematical point of view. The city was not small.
But still, he had to try. He had to make the attempt to catch the man, whose actions he could NEVER forgive.
I
Izuku was getting the distinct impression that Black Cat was not particularly fond of him.
And yet… Her brutal, brutal training regiment was proving itself REMARKABLY effective.
In one day of training, he had achieved more mastery over throwing the cannonballs, than the weeks of training in the forest had produced, using simple punching the arm the way Venom did.
He wasn't there yet, where every single shot he made was a strong, solid cannonball, but he had reached the point where his black balls more often than not held their mass as they collided with cars and trucks and all the rest of the broken and obsolete things you found in a junkyard.
The simple fact was that Black was right. This was the way to train it. Punching again, and again, and again while adding black mass to every punch, until doing so became second nature.
Of course, there was one downside to this kind of training…
Pain. His arms were nothing, but pain and agony.
Black cat had very early on learned of his adrenaline, and how it allowed him to shake off pain and such at the moment, once it got going.
She had promptly decided to use that, while cheerfully telling him that his healing factor would handle the aftermath.
So he had trained. And trained. And trained. He had trained in two-hour shifts, then had a 15-minute break before starting training again. 5 times.
He had begun to feel really beaten up after his first round of training. The second break had been agony. The third had been pain, where he longed for the damn break to end already so he could get back to the adrenaline. After the third break, the adrenaline didn't help as much anymore. The fourth break had been hell, and the adrenaline hadn't done ANYTHING other than make it easier to grit his teeth and keep going.
Now, his poor, poor arms were hanging limply, and covered in black liquid, having begun the process of healing every single sore, and pulled muscle he had.
Which was all of them.
"I must say Izuku, I was rather pleased with your performance." Black Cat said in a tone that wasn't quite warm but wasn't quite antagonistic either.
"T-thanks…"
"You picked up the flicker jab really well. To be honest, I had fully expected you to be working on it all day, not getting the technique down in a couple of hours."
Izuku felt a pang of pride in his chest like this he had had earlier in the day. Addmitingly, it was horribly dampened by the pain in his arms, but it was there.
As much as his arms hurt, Izuku couldn't help but feel that he had been right to want this.
It was hard, and so, so painful, but the progress from only day one had been amazing.
"I'm very interested in seeing how you do for the rest of the week. For tomorrow, we'll keep on training as we have today.
Izuku involuntary winched at that, while Mina groaned.
The pink Girl was not nearly as obviously sore as Izuku was, but the deep layer of sweat that coated her body(A problem Izuku didn't have thanks to his black suit) was the result of a training exercise that had lasted just as long As Izuku's training, only with way more lulls.
She and black cat had been sparring, and sparring at a tempo WAY beyond his and Black Cat's little skirmish.
Izuku hadn't actually ever gotten to see Mina just cut loose against someone who was just as fast as and more skilled than her, before.
The closest was when she fought against the lizard girl from the tournament, who had just completely powered through her blows, and speed.
Her dances with Black Cat however revealed a level of skill that once more out Izuku's lack of real combat experience in sharp contrast.
It had also made Izuku realized that Black Cat had been going Way, way easy on him because the way the two catgirls danced across the scrapyard, always making sure to keep out of his space was a real spectacle.
However, for all the massive tempo, it was still just sparring, and Izuku could tell that Black Cat was for the most part controlling the entire thing.
Mina had however managed to sock her across the face, which had left black cat with a black eye, but neither Mina nor her mother was currently commenting on that fact. It was more than Izuku had achieved. He wondered if that was exclusively because of the difference in speed between the two of them, or more experience on Mina's part.
"So… We're free for the rest of the day?"
"Sure. So long as you guys take it easy so you'll heal up properly for tomorrow, go do whatever you want after we're done eating dinner."
The three stepped up to a pretty luxurious hotel, which made Izuku make a double-take. Then reality hit him, and he just felt silly. Black cat was rich, of course, they were staying at someplace fancy and comfortable. Why would anyone WANT, to stay at a more standard place if you didn't have to?
The receptionist immediately recognized Black Cat, and almost immediately handed over two key cards.
Number 42, and 43.
She immediately handed them off to the two teenagers(In Izuku's case, a black tentacle shot out of his school uniform, and grabbed it, before retreating back into it.), then said:
"You Kiddo's go shower up, and be at room 42 in 40 minutes, and I'll be back with some food."
At that she waved goodbye, leaving the two teenagers to begin the trip to the elevator.
"Finallllyyyy…. Damn, I'm starved. What about you Midori?"
"Yeah, I'm a bit hungry. Do you guys… Always only eat after training?" Izuku said as they waited for the elevator.
"Ugh… Only when we're training. It helps build muscle. Of course, you end up being hungry as hell by the time it's all over."
Finally, the elevator came and they'd stepped in.
"Also… Sorry about mom."
"You guys don't usually train like this do you?"
"What the entire day, almost no breaks? No, we don't. I mean, sometimes we do but… Not for just regular training… I don't know… I was kinda hoping this would be a less boot camp-like."
"I guess…" His hand brushed the elevator door as he stepped in. "Nngghhh… She's taking the whole internship thing really, really seriously."
"No, I don't think so. Mostly, it's you I guess."
He turned to look at her as the doors closed behind them.
"Right… So, she wants to make up for me not being actually trained."
She motioned with her hand, as she leaned up against the elevator wall.
"No, I mean, she's been acting, really, really intensely ever since I got home from the day we chose our names. Hell, she spent 2 hours that day, just asking me all sorts of things about you."
He stiffened.
"Don't worry. I didn't mention anything about… What you told me at home."
For a moment, his body was as stiff as steel, the pain for a momentarily forgotten. Then he relaxed, tension going out of him.
"Thank you…"
She grinned.
"Don't worry about it. You told me that in confidence, and I'm not the sort of person who spreads that kinda stuff around."
He expected to feel a sense of the regular feelings he got when he thought about… Things from before he bonded with Venom.
Instead, he felt… A warmth seeping into him as he looked at Mina. One which made the ache in his poor, poor arms seem almost dull.
At least until he once again bumped on the elevator door on the way out, as he was instead focused on Mina rather than his surroundings.
Izuku took a sharp intake of breath, but unlike Venom(Who swore rather viciously inside of his mind), he didn't begin swearing in response.
Luckily, the rooms were just by the elevator door.
"You… Want me to open the door for you man?"
In response, a black tentacle shot out of his shirt holding the card key to room 43.
"Oh, right. Well, I'll see you at lunch Midori!"
She gave a wink, wave, and a smile as she closed the door to room 42 behind her.
Almost absently, the tentacle shot up to open door 42, and Izuku stepped in.
His first thought was that the hotel room was much, much more luxurious and impressive than his own home apartment.
It might not be quite as big, holy hell did it put his entire home into contrast.
The first thing he did as he stepped in and locked the door behind him, was to simply let his backpack drop on the floor, no longer stuck to his back by black liquid.
Then, his arms still hurting like nobody's business, he inspected the main room.
Two different, large double beds, a sofa, a TV bigger than they had at home, and way more expensive than theirs. Though he never watched much TV anyway, so it didn't exactly matter to him. He did have a suspicion that he and Mina would be watching a LOT of TV this week.
Just a hunch.
I
Izuku sank into the warm bath and felt an incredible sense of comfort envelop his entire body, especially his arms.
He closed his eyes, as he just… Let the warmth envelop him.
God, it had been a long time since he had gotten to enjoy a good, warm bath.
They didn't have a bath at their apartment, so the last time he'd enjoyed one was… A LONG time ago.
God, the difference between being poor and being rich was astonishing.
Not even the big stuff, just… Just quality of life stuff made such a difference.
Getting to enjoy a bath, when all you were used to was showers was… Amazing.
He did not get to enjoy the water in peace, however, as Venom crept in through the door.
"I thought you were going to watch TV?"
"We were, but we thought better of it. We do only have 20 minutes left before dinner after all."
Right… The dinner. With Black Cat.
"Mina's Mom… Doesn't seem to like us very much."
"Correction. She doesn't seem to like YOU. From what we've seen and felt, she doesn't seem to even think of us as a separate being."
Izuku thought about that. Then felt silly, realizing he had Venom right here. Obviously, he was bound to have some insight into the matter.
"Do you know… Why she doesn't seem to like me very much?"
"You mean BESIDES the fact that you're a BOY that Mina dragged along, completely unplanned, on this week-long internship?"
He nodded.
"Right… Black Cat probably had something big planned for interning with Mina, and now she's forced to compromise on it to train me. Also, probably not too happy about having to pay for an extra hotel room either."
Venom just stared at him.
"Yes. That is DEFINITELY what we were talking about. Regardless, the grand mystery of WHY she doesn't like you is irrelevant for the moment. The woman's expertise with both human martial arts, and the human body is invaluable. We must focus on mastering EVERYTHING, she has to teach us."
"This is what you were talking about in the forest right? That every species has their own unique martial arts?"
"Yes. We'll admit, we did not think much of this Boxing art. We shall have to look further into it's techniques once we get back home. For now, we must focus ALL our energy upon mastering the flicker jab."
"It's… A pretty neat move."
"Neat. It is a move that if we master it, and the rapid whiplike motion it uses to it's fullest, will allow us to rain down rapid-fire artillery upon demand. Neat, is a word for an uppercut. GLORIOUS is the word to describe the mighty Flicker Jab!"
"... If that seriously is gonna be one of our special moves, we REALLY need to work on a better name."
"How about… BARRAGE OF THE BATTLE STAR!"
Sensei no bulge. That…
"That sounds like something Katsuki would say."
"... You're just like Midnight. Fine. What do YOU propose then?"
Izuku considered.
"How about… Delaware Smash Air Force?"
"...No… Just… That's… No."
I
As Izuku knocked on the door(Or rather a black tentacle did it for him), he felt refreshed, and though his arms still hurt, the pain had faded a bit from both the refreshing bath and the black liquid coating his arms finally beginning to start actually fixing all the muscles.
Mina opened the door, wearing a huge grin.
"Yo. Mom's not here yet, but come on in."
Their hotel room was pretty much the same as his, with a sofa straight ahead from when you entered the door, and two large double beds on the side.
Mina herself had changed to something more comfortable, namely a set of dark purple pajamas.
She had also cleaned herself up, just like Izuku, as not a drop of the sweat that had coated her body was still there.
Her hero outfit was over on the balcony, seemingly being let out to air.
Mina noticed Izuku looking at it, and began explaining.
"The outfit is usually kept clean by my acid, but since we're at a hotel, and a scrapyard, I can't exactly keep it clean the normal way."
"Wait, you can just clean it with acid?"
"Well duh, anything that isn't resistant to it just disintegrates. That includes dirt and sweat. When I can use it anyway. For now, I'm just gonna have to do without."
"Wow, that's… Amazing actually."
"Eh, it keeps me clean. Of course, mom's had to keep me supplied with acid-resistant clothing since I was 6, so there's that."
She turned and plopped down on one of the beds.
"Anyway, you up for watching some good stuff later?"
"... What did you have in mind?"
"Well… I've been wanting to re-watch the Pokémon Special anime from 2124, and you're not familiar with the franchise at all, so I thought it might be a good intro to-" There she was interrupted, as her mother opened the door, and came in… Carrying two massive bags.
"Oh, you're here already. Good. Anyway, let's eat some good ass food."
The food in question was a mixture of sushi, chicken, burgers, 7 cartons of milk, spring rolls, and various other, smaller stuff.
It was all in all, almost twice the amount of food that he and his mom had back in the fridge at home.
Did Black Cat seriously mean for them to eat all of that in one go?
As it turned out. Yes, she did.
As Izuku ate some burgers(He had no idea where it was from, but it was way too high quality to be from a Mcdonalds), lifting it to his mouth with black tentacles, he sat back and watched as Mina and her mom proceeded to devour all the food, with a speed that meant that only half an hour later, they had eaten up almost everything, and drank 2 milk cartons each.
Had… Had Mina eaten this much back at dinner at her house? Come to think of it, she might have. He had been too in-depth with a talk with her dad to have really paid attention.
Once they were done, Mina looked absolutely satisfied, like she had just eaten the best meal ever.
Black cat had a somewhat similar look on her face. Then she turned to Izuku.
"Alright then, Izuku. Before I leave you two alone, to watch anime or whatever, I had two questions for you."
She pulled out a small writing block and a pen from the bag that had until very recently been absolutely stuffed with food.
She scribbled something down.
Then she held up the block for him to see what it was she had scribbled.
Mina leaned over to look, obviously curious.
"Tell me Izuku, have you ever seen this symbol before?"
Izuku looked down on said symbol.
It took him a few seconds before he recognized it.
Then, with a spike of alarm, his body was jogged with a bolt of sudden energy.
It was a cartoony buglike symbol. The same symbol he had seen in the bathroom mirror back during the tournament. During the first vision.
"And judging by that reaction, I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that you have seen it?"
"What is that symbol?" Mina said curiously. "Looks like a tailed bug."
"It's actually supposed to be a spider."
"Really? It really doesn't look like it."
"Not TOO surprising. The woman who designed it is blind, so there is that. Anyway… Tell me Izuku… When did you see it?"
He swallowed. At his side, Venom's head was watching Black Cat with a curious look.
"Well… During the tournament, while in was in the bathroom, I… Kinda had a…"
"Psychic vision? Dream? Seemingly picked out of where you were to some creepy old lair?"
He blinked.
"The first one…"
Black Cat's eyes narrowed, and she flipped over a page on the writing block and held up the pen ready to write.
Mina looked at her mom confused, then to Izuku, a mixture between worried and confused.
"I see… So tell me Izuku, what did Madame Web tell you exactly?"
Umm… What… What had the vision said?
Venom, thankfully, came to his aid.
The first Vision had 4 different messages. The first was that: March 17th - 2218. The end of all races. The second was: White hair and red eyes, shall bring doom to all the world. The third: The Abyss has teeth. And finally, the fourth one was just a quote from the Dragon Age franchise."
"The first time eh? That means the crazy old bat has contacted you several times then?"
"I… Had a second vision. After I woke up after the tournament."
"... Of course you had… So what did this one say?"
He swallowed, but once again, it was Venom who came to his aid.
"Well, unlike the first time, this time she made a bunch of glowing rocks appear in the air forming the message: A child shall be blooded, from her doom shall spring. He who lays with the jester, the man with red eyes, a bullet thrown, a bursting eye, a severed leg, a crippled man, a destiny you must not deny. Let him fall, leave him to fate, else wings so large they block the sun, the demon king a paltry speck, in shadow large as this. Flee the field, leave the battle, don't go there that day. March 17th, 2218, the year of Gods, the day the seers failed. Please… Don't go."
For a moment, there was silence, save for the sound of scribbling.
It was Mina who broke the silence.
"I'm… Really, REALLY confused here. Who the heck is this… Madame Web."
"Well… To answer that question in short Mina… she's a crazy old woman with psychic powers who thinks she's way more important than she is."
She kept scribbling, though Izuku did not miss the disdain her voice took on as she began speaking directly about this enigmatic "Madame Web".
"She's a woman with precognic abilities, who really, really likes to get involved in other people's business. She also really likes acting like her visions are unavoidable, or only has one damn alternative, when they can go off rails in so many ways."
"If they're so inaccurate, why are you writing this stuff down?"
"I didn't say she was inaccurate Mina. Just that she has a tendency to be really smug about everything, even when she's proven wrong."
She finished scribbling.
"Anyway… Let's go over these before we move on. March 17th - 2218. The end of all races. So, basically, a doomsday warning. Great. The last time she gave one of those, was in the time leading up to the damned clone saga."
Izuku piped up.
"Wait, this woman predicted the clone saga? The Era where-" "Yes. She predicted the whole, sorry affair."
"The clone saga…" Mina scrunched her face, obviously trying to remember something. "That was that time a villain in New York tried to kill everyone in the world and replace them with clones right? The Jackal I think his name was?"
"His name was Miles Warren, Mina. But yes. His stupid, stupid scheme to try and eradicate the human race and replace them with clones is pretty much the only thing anyone remembers about that whole damn mess anymore. There was a lot of stupidity going on back then that was not related to him, trust me."
It was… Kinda weird how Black Cat was dismissing the Clone Saga, an epoch that had defined New York for decades to come, as such a footnote. Then again, he hadn't lived through it, so maybe he was missing something.
"But forget about the damn Clone Saga. Warren is dead. What is way more important right now, is this supposed apocalypse next year."
She contemplated it.
"The second vision you had… It spoke of a battlefield. I don't really get the whole, a child shall be bloodied part, but there was at least one part that was pretty obvious. A guy with red eyes who "Lay's with the Jester.""
She snorted.
"That can only be Eraserhead and Ms. Joke."
"Wait, I thought he said he didn't have a romantic relationship with Ms. Joke."
Black Cat just looked at him, then got an amused grin on her face.
"Did he now? Well then… In that case, he is a filthy, filthy liar."
"Wait, he WAS together with someone? Were they cute together?" Mina piped in, obviously interested in this new revelation about their sour teacher.
"I'd say they were more hilarious than adorable, to be honest, Aizawa the straight man, and that girlfriend of his, the comedian who played off of him."
Mina looked absolutely ecstatic and adorable, as she contemplated the idea of Aizawa in a relationship, though to be honest, Izuku didn't quite see why she was so happy about the idea.
Either way, the mood was quickly deflated by the next line from her mom.
"Anyway… so according to Web, Aizawa is the key to this coming disaster."
"She… She said we should leave him to his fate."
"Yeah… probably something terrible will happen if we don't. Or something like that. Or… We could just take out the guy who will bring Doom upon the world early, and thus completely derail this entire prophecy."
Mina clocked her head.
"Red Eyes and White hair… Wasn't… Wasn't that how the leader of the league of villains looked?"
"It was. This… Shigaraki. All for One's protege, or son or… Whatever he is. It seems he's pretty obvious he's the herald of this supposed apocalypse. We take him down early, and thus derail the entire thing."
"We doubt it will be THAT easy."
"Yeah… That's kinda the problem with prophecies. Either you completely derail them early, or you do all you can, and then, surprise! Everything you did only lead up to the outcome you were supposed to prevent in the first place."
She looked down at the block, and what she had written.
"Well… there's a lot here. I'll look into it. You kids don't worry so much about it all. We still have plenty, and plenty of time to handle it all."
Izuku was about to protest, that they should probably discuss it more, only to be blindsided by Black Cat's next line.
"And now, unto the second question, I had for you Izuku. How exactly did you break the jaw and a finger from a teleporter from the Caribbean League?"