Of Quirks and Time Part Five
Izuku looked around the ancient factory. It was perfect. There was even space to exercise and train without drawing attention to themselves.
The small office that overlooked the disused working floor would make a good living space. It had a good view over the factory, the windows were easily reachable and even the ceiling was thin enough to easily punch through. There were also a few buildings near enough that even Monoma could make the jump with the copy of Izuku's quirk backing him.
They were planning to raid a junk yard that night and uncouple a few car seats to bring back as beds. It was only a few kilometers away. Izuku could have carried that kind of stuff off even without his quirk, thanks to All Might's training on the beach.
He wished that their bathroom worked, though…but without electricity or water, they were out of luck. They'd have to make other arrangements for their water and bathroom needs.
He glanced at Monoma, exhausted from their day of walking. He winced in sympathy, knowing that the other wasn't as bad as Izuku was about a year and a half ago but still not as used to activity as he is now.
Izuku's stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn't eaten anything today either.
He and Monoma looked at each other.
"We need food but we can't buy it," Monoma stated, addressing the elephant in the room.
"What do you suggest?"
Monoma frowned and said, "Grocery stores have more food than they ever actually sell. I could aim for stuff that's about to expire. With your quirk, I'll be fast and strong enough to make off with more than usual. We should choose somewhere away from here…I don't want anyone following us back."
"Are you really okay with stealing, though?"
"It's stuff that probably would have been thrown out. Plus, we can't afford to get unhealthy, especially you. I've seen the way you eat and exercize…you have to be healthy to keep your quirk from breaking you, right? A few days like this and I'll bet your use of it will start declining, won't it? We can't let that happen."
Izuku felt tears pooling. It was true. And with…the current situation, he couldn't afford to weaken and risk injuring himself. "Is it that obvious?"
"I live in a dorm full of hero students too, you know. 1-A isn't the only class with members that need to eat and exercise in order to maintain their quirk use."
Izuku could already picture a couple of 1-B students who might have such requirements right off the top of his head.
Although he didn't like the idea of stealing, he knew that if All for One came for him, he had to be strong enough to fight the Villain off at his full strength. The villain wasn't crippled here, as no one had been able to stand up to him yet. Izuku couldn't afford to be handicapped that way.
The robbery was surprisingly easy.
Especially after Izuku and Monoma spotted a five year old girl who shrank a hero toy to slip into her pocket and Izuku asked a very pertinent question.
"Hey Monoma, do you have to have skin on skin contact for your quirk to work?"
"No, it can be any part."
"What if you only had a hair to work with?"
Monoma stared at him, first in confusion, then in dawning comprehension. "I'm an idiot."
Although the items shrank in size, they did not lose their weight. That proved to be the main limiting factor to what they walked out with. Of course, with Izuku there, that wasn't even that much of a limitation, considering even at the start of his training, he could move a refrigerator while All Might sat atop it.
No refrigerated goods of course, due to their lack of cold storage.
No one even noticed.
When they got back to the factory Izuku and Monoma started emptying their pockets and Monoma collected the goods: mostly cans, boxes, and bottles of water and other drinks, although there were a few fresher thing like a few fruits and vegetables that didn't need to be refrigerated.
"We did good," Monoma said. "This'll keep us stocked for…Midoriya? What's wrong?"
"I used to steal stuff for my med kits all the time. I…I hoped to be done with that. With bending and breaking laws."
"You've broken laws before?"
Izuku nodded. "Stealing supplies for my med kit. Letting a kid in another class user her healing quirk on me…hiding how much Kacchan used his quirk."
There was a hitch in Monoma's breath before sighing. "It was something you had to do then...right?"
"Yes."Izuku replied
To his surprise, the other sank to his knees before asking, "Then this doesn't mean we're really villains for this, right?"
"Then, what about all the other people who committed crimes the law because they needed to?"
They both fell silent for a while after that.
They never did make it out to the junk yard that night.
The first part of their night was actually started when Izuku dropped some cans and boxes in front of Monoma and asked, what colors? Hair dye and colored eye contacts.
In the end, the other had decided to go for brown eyes and black hair, for now. They'd pose as brothers. They'd save the rest of the colors in case they needed a quick identity change.
They found a nearby building where the water was not completely cut off, perhaps a malfunction in the system. Izuku would never trust the stuff coming from the pipes for drinkability but it was probably good enough for washing.
Either way, they both took turns showering in a rickity shower that spurted as much air from the pipes as it did water, using products that they had grabbed that evening.
Izuku helped dye Monoma's hair, but the lenses turned out to be a bust because they needed some fluid and case that the duo didn't have. "This should be good enough for now anyway," Monoma said, looking at his hair. "Plus, blue eyes are recessive, so we can still play the 'brothers' card."
When they got back, Monoma spent a while walking around with the girl's hair in hand, shrinking items and returning them to their proper sizes, over and over. Apparently, being in constant contact with the hair he'd collected meant that he had constant access to the quirk.
Izuku had pulled out his notebook, writing about implications and questions that came with that…as well as the quirk he was copying.
They were careful not to sleep too close together, lest they repeat the last nights events where Izuku's quirk hijacked Monoma's.
The next day, they decided to stock up on some clothes. Izuku's steel toe boots made nice weights, but they would get worn out and they drew eyes. Plus, their current outfits consisted of a combination of school uniforms and hero costumes. Not good for blending in.
It wouldn't be until the next night that they went to the junk yard to steal beds and 'targets' for practice. The hair Monoma had made it a lot easier.
After they were settled, Izuku had an idea from the incident earlier. Why not go vigilante while they were here? Monoma could use different people's hairs to keep his identity secret, seeming like multiple different people. And although he didn't say it out loud, Izuku was also sure he could manage with minimal use of his quirk, making it harder to recognize if news of his activity reached the wrong ears.
"Getting the hair for that will be the trick though."
The next day, he and Monoma walked past a set of stores and shops…including a barber shop, looking in to see a woman sweeping hair together and dumping it into a dust bin.
The two boys looked at each other, clearly having the same idea. They slipped over to a dumpster next to the building and grabbed a few trash bags before carrying them off.
A week after they had robbed their first grocery store, the first hair Monoma had snatched lost it's viability. As long as Monoma had that hair on him, he had been able to access that quirk at will but then, the second to last couple days, he'd had to roll it between his fingers more and more until, finally, it just stopped working altogether.
Same for any quirk who's user they could get stuff like hair or through spas and salons they garbage dived for, as long as he could have contact with it.
They were stealing Velcro straps and small rubber bands to set up constant points of contact, either to secure the hair in place or wrap it and hold it in a ring for Monoma to wear. They tried to do both so Monoma would have a backup if one was lost.
With these in place, Monoma time limit was replaced with a very different set. How quickly and accurately he could swap out his quirk set.
The minimum Monoma could hold a quirk he picked up was one minute, meaning that if he staggered the 'pick up times' evenly, he could swap out quirks every fifteen seconds or half a minute. If he held the quirks for a full minute, he could swap them all out at once.
Then there was the pick up control. Having to touch people directly had made it a minimal problem, because it was hard to test that limit; he was not likely to come into contact with too many people in a given moment. Now, he could access more quirks than he could hold and he discovered that if he didn't concentrate, the quirk set he would pick up would be completely random. He still slipped up on what he wanted to grab half the time, but in the first week had improved from having to make several attempts to get a target quirk.
Still, for now, Monoma decided he'd just carry quirk smaller sets in the field until he got the hang of things.
Meanwhile, newspapers talked about a new uptick in vigilante activity. Izuku and Monoma made sure that, whenever the original quirk user was arrested, they made use of the collected quirk in a way that made it unmistakable, to ensure the persons innocence was known as best they could.
They didn't know it but this one considerate choice to protect these people would be their undoing for all attempts to stay off the radar of one of the people hunting them.
The worst one.
All for One frowned as he picked up a newspaper. They were more of a novelty item than anything, these days. A small portion of population still preferring paper between their fingers over the scrolling of a screen. The trans-dimensional refugees had proven very proficient at laying low but he'd been enjoying himself trying to track them down.
It wasn't often that people gave All for One the slip even for this amount of time, as he had grown so skilled at tracking people over the years.
The article he currently read was devoted to the most recent episode of the latest local drama of the strange uptick in varied vigilante activity. Apparently, a couple days ago one of the suspects had been apprehended. But last night…
The person's quirk, seeming the same very one, was being used. He read again.
Oh. If this meant what he thought it might, he couldn't have that. Anyone with quirk that took or duplicated other quirks were either in his pocket, in him or completely removed from the equation.
He had some phone calls to make.