Titanium Soul

[CHAPTER 12]: Assiduity

In Which Izuku Probably Dooms His Entire Class By Accident

ASSIDUITY (adj): constant or close application or effort

At precisely 6:30 AM, the fire alarm went off.

It went about as well as could be expected, given the fact that it was everyone's first night in the building and nobody was really conscious enough to be held responsible for their decisions.

Immediately after it started, there was a deafening thundercrack coming from what Izuku later realized was Kaminari's room, followed by the power going out. There were screams, slamming doors, and what sounded suspiciously like a very large very angry cat let loose in a room full of swords.

Izuku sighed and began to disentangle Mei's unconscious body from the half-built maintenance pod; the girl slept like a rock whenever she actually went out.

Somewhere above him, a series of small explosions and the sound of shattering glass denoted Kacchan making it out of the building. A faint "Great Idea!" rang out, followed by another shattered window. That one was probably Kirishima.

Izuku glanced idly to the side as Sero Hanta rappelled down past his balcony using his tape as rope. He threw Mei's finally-freed body over his shoulder and made his way down the hallway.

A door burst open, releasing a whirling mass of inky darkness, screaming and roaring and altogether refusing the accompanying pleas to "Control yourself, Dark Shadow! This is not the time!"

Izuku's eyescreens switched to their flashlight configuration, bathing the hallway in an eerie greenish glow.

Tokoyami sighed in relief as the writhing darkness receded into his feathers. "Thank you, Midoriya."

Izuku shrugged and continued on his way down, taking the stairs since the power was out.

On the ground floor, he ran into a mostly conscious Kendo leading a line of mostly-unconscious girls to the exit.

Falling into step behind them, he finally made his way outside.

Iida stood in the center of the lawn, still in his pajamas, sternly lecturing an unrepentant Bakugo and a somewhat embarrassed Kirishima. Shinsou, laying on the grass, looked up from his phone to give the rest of the class a smirk laden with the raw smugness of someone who hadn't even gone to sleep in the first place.

The girls filed over silently. After a moment of unsteady standing, they collapsed gracelessly into a large pile- save for one. Yui Kodai placed a small object on the ground and released her Quirk, restoring her own bed to full size in the front lawn of Heights Alliance.

She slipped under the blankets, pulled down a sleeping mask, and… just went back to sleep, apparently. What a power move.

After a few minutes of waiting as the last few stragglers filed out of the building, the fire alarm shut off.

"So…" said Kaminari. "Does that mean we're allowed to go back in?"

Kacchan snorted. "Of course not, dipshit. When a fire alarm goes off, you have to wait for the fire department to come. What are you, suicidal?"

"I'm tired," Kaminari answered. "I just wanna go back to bed! It's like 4 AM!"

"That won't be happening anyway," came Aizawa's voice from the pleasantly arranged shrubberies that hugged the base of the dorm building. He stepped out from behind a bush that honestly didn't feel big enough for anyone to hide behind- anyone except maybe Mineta. "Now that you're all up, I figured we could get a nice head start on today's activities."

"After someone checks the dorms for a fire," stated Kacchan. "That wasn't a scheduled fire drill."

"Oh, but it was," said Aizawa. "It just wasn't on your schedule." He clapped his hands. "Alright, I want everyone in their gym uniform and waiting in the field by 7 AM."

Ashido glanced at her phone and made a vaguely horrified sound. It was probably supposed to be a gasp, but she was still mostly asleep so it came out weird. "But it's already 6:43!"

"Then you should probably hurry up." their teacher said blandly.

Shinsou stood up and calmly meandered back into the building, followed by a significantly less calm and distinctly not meandering Kacchan. Iida and Kendo began to try to get everyone else up, and Izuku glanced at Mei, still asleep, still slung over his shoulder.

"I should probably get you into your room in 1H, huh?"

"Don't bother," said Aizawa. "She'll be participating too."

Izuku stared at his teacher, and then back at his unconscious best friend. "With all due respect, sir… I don't think she's waking up anytime soon."

Aizawa looked at him despairingly, then over at the pile of students who were, despite Iida and Kendo's best efforts, still asleep in the front lawn of the dorm. He sighed, then pulled out a walkie talkie. "EH to PM. You are cleared for Quirk use, I repeat you are cleared for Quirk use. Make it hurt. Over."

EH? PM? EH could stand for Eraserhead, but whose hero name had the initials PM…? Oh. Oh shit. Aizawa quickly slipped on an incredibly sturdy-looking set of earmuffs and smiled. They'd only been in the same school as this man for a day and they already knew that that smile promised only pain.

A disgustingly cheerful voice roared to life with physical force, violently echoing inside Izuku's chassis.

"GOOD MORNING, CLASS 1A!"

Izuku winced for a moment. Not because he was in pain, but because his microphone array was very expensive and he was not looking forward to asking Momo for replacements the literal first day on campus.

His classmates groaned and shifted, as if trying to escape the sonic bombardment quaking the very ground they lay on.

"I'M YOUR FAVORITE RADIO SHOW HOST, PRESENT MIC, HERE WITH A WEATHER FORECAST! TODAY YOU CAN LOOK FORWARDS TO A STEADY SHOWER OF SUFFERING, PUNCTUATED BY OCCASIONAL BURSTS OF RATIONALITY! BOY AM I GLAD I'M NOT IN YOUR CLASS THIS YEAR!"

[Resigned; 2 barometers and 57% of the microphone array are no longer functional. I will prepare a repair cost estimate to present to UA.]

But… they'd gotten them for almost free from Momo? They would just get replacements from her?

[Smug; Exactly.]

Yeah, HERoS was spending way too much time with Mei. Oh well.

"Jesus, Zuzu, turn down the radio," came a faint grumbling from over his shoulder. "What time is it? Noon?"

"Time to put on a gym uniform and head out to the field," Izuku responded nervously. "I don't want to know what happens if we're late."

Aizawa nodded wisely. "You're right, Midoriya. You don't."

Well, that was terrifying.

By 7 AM, the entire class had miraculously managed to stumble into their gym uniforms and make their way onto the field. Aizawa stood waiting for them next to an even taller stack of crates than had been there the previous day.

"That was a genuinely pathetic showing, everyone. Every morning until the start of classes, I expect all of you to be dressed and waiting for me here at this exact time, do you understand?"

He waited for everyone to nod before continuing. He began pacing in front of them. "Our first order of business is to- Kuroiro. What is that?"

Kuroiro blinked, then held up the paper plate he was eating from. "Midoriya's leftover casserole, sir. I was hungry."

The class held its breath as Aizawa squinted at him silently. After a moment, he nodded. "Very rational. Good work."

Kuroiro gave a jaunty salute and went back to eating.

Ashido's eyes widened and she raised a hand. "Aizawa-sensei! I didn't have breakfast either, can I go back and have some too?"

Aizawa frowned. "Show of hands, who hasn't had breakfast?"

Everyone except Izuku, Iida, Kacchan, and Shinsou raised their hands. Kendo flushed with embarrassment but raised hers as well.

Aizawa sighed and popped open one of the crate lids, sticking his arm into it and rummaging around. "It would be an irrational waste of time to let you go back now, but sustained strenuous exercise on an empty stomach would, arguably, be worse. Fortunately for you lot," he pulled a handful of pouches out of the crate, "having emergency rations on hand is only rational."

He distributed the pouches to everyone whose hand was raised, a sadistic grin growing as the recipients read the packaging with dismay.

Ashido smiled at hers. "Ooh, banana flavor!" She uncapped the pouch and brought it to her mouth, instantly freezing. After a single, slow swallow, she lowered it with a blank face. "I don't think the people who made this have ever been in the same room as a banana."

Kaminari stared down at his jelly pouch mournfully. "You know when you ask your mom to stop at McDonalds, and she says 'we have food at home'? This is the food at home."

"I dunno guys," said the empty space that was wearing a UA gym uniform, "I kinda like 'em. Like, I wanna know where I can order these."

Everyone else who had gotten a jelly pouch turned to stare at Hagakure.

The uniform fidgeted. "Maybe I just got a better flavor? Lemme check." The pouch was lifted, and the invisible girl choked. "Bean flavor? I thought it was, like, cucumber or something!"

Kuroiro simply watched on smugly, still eating the casserole.

Aizawa cleared his throat. "If you're done complaining about my emergency rations, we have work to do."

He leaned against the stack of crates and continued. "For the next few days, we're going to be working on your Quirks. While I'm sure you all know the gist of what you can do, most of you likely haven't quantified exactly what your capabilities and limits are. I've read your Quirk registrations and have prepared the necessary equipment to test everything. Any questions?"

Iida raised a hand. "Sensei! Why is Miss Hatsume here with us? She isn't on the roster, isn't she supposed to be in the Support Course?"

Aizawa looked at Mei for a second, then massaged his temple. "Right. I didn't explain that yesterday, did I? Everyone, this is Mei Hatsume, she's going to be our class's Support Auxiliary this year. What that means is that she's a member of the Support Course but she's with us for any practical lessons and activities. Officially, she's here to observe us in action to better understand our Support needs. Unofficially, she's one of four and a half people in this school qualified to even think about Midoriya's insides and is here to make sure he doesn't kill himself on a refrigerator magnet or something."

"Well, excuse me," mumbled Izuku.

Kendo raised her hand. "Just in case she's unavailable, who are the other three and a half?"

Aizawa sighed. "Midoriya himself, Yaoyorozu in 1B, Principal Nezu, and the half is Power Loader. Does anyone have a question relating to the actual activity?"

Izuku slowly raised his hand.

"What is it, Midoriya?"

He nervously wrung his hands. "What if, hypothetically speaking, I have actually quantified exactly what my capabilities and limits are?"

Aizawa looked down at his tablet, then back up at Izuku. "Send them to me, then go do push-ups over there," he said, gesturing to a far corner of the field.

"Well, um. What if, hypothetically, you know… exercise did not work on me? Because I'm a robot?"

Aizawa gave him a dead-eyed stare. "Did I stutter?"

Izuku straightened up, almost involuntarily. "No, sir."

Aizawa nodded slowly, then turned back to the rest of the class. "Alright. The rest of you, find the crate with your number on it and get started. If you don't remember your number, I have the roster right here. Hatsume, you're looking for the box marked 'S.A.'."

[Amused; I have compiled your specifications and sent them to your teacher. Let us engage in meaningless and repetitive physical exertion together, sir.]

Maybe later. Right now, Izuku had a mission. He detached his head and skittered down to the ground.

[Disappointed; I see how it is. Very well. I shall toil alone, silently, as is my duty. As I shall be doing forevermore, bereft of allies. You are lucky I am not equipped to feel loneliness.]

Hmmm. That one wasn't from Mei. She wasn't that good at poetry or psychological warfare- at least, never on purpose. Who else was HERoS talking to…? But never mind that, that was a question for later. Izuku's eyes scanned over the rest of his class, searching for a suitable candidate-

A hand reached down and picked up his head by the plate-metal hair. Aizawa's dull red eyes stared down into Izuku's own impassively.

"Was there any part of 'go do push-ups over there' that you failed to understand? Did you fail to comprehend the lesson of yesterday's tests? I do not tolerate slackers in my class, Midoriya."

Izuku's eyescreens blinked. "I'm doing them, though?"

Aizawa looked over at the corner of the field, where Izuku's headless body was indeed doing push-ups. He looked back down at Izuku's head. "Very funny," he said without a hint of humor in his voice. "What is it you're doing over here, then?"

Izuku tapped the tips of his spider legs together nervously. "I just, um. Really like Quirk analysis. So I wanted to watch. And maybe ask questions."

At the word 'questions', Aizawa froze. He got a distant look on his face, or perhaps simply thoughtful. It was hard to tell with the underground hero. "Ah, yes," he said slowly. "You did have a lot of questions."

Izuku would have nodded, if he weren't being held by his head. "I promise I won't disturb anyone! I just want to know things!"

Aizawa's eyes drifted back down to the tablet in his other hand. From what Izuku could see of the screen, it looked like the specs on Corpus Primus 2 had been pulled up. His teacher mumbled something about supercomputers, intelligence Quirks, and 'testing psychological resilience' before shaking his head and smiling. "On the contrary, Midoriya," he said, "I think your input will be incredibly valuable at this stage."

Izuku stared up at his teacher, who placed him on his shoulder. "Are you sure? This is just a hobby, I'm not professionally trained or anything."

Aizawa's smile only sharpened. "Then it'll be a learning experience for all of us. Now, what do you think about Aoyama's Quirk?"

Two pages of notes and the Wikipedia article on light physics instantly came to the forefront of Izuku's mindspace. A lighter, more wholesome mirror of his teacher's evil grin appeared on his face. "Sensei? I am so glad you asked."

Momo Yaoyorozu was having a calm, leisurely morning. She'd woken at 8:30 AM, had eaten a pleasant although admittedly very American breakfast prepared by one of her classmates- Tsunotori, she recalled- and was now slowly exploring the Heights Alliance building.

She stepped out onto the roof and was surprised to find one of her male classmates crouched at the edge, frantically writing in a notebook with one hand, using binoculars to peer out into the nearby sports field in the other.

"Ah… Monoma, was it?"

He glanced up at her, then held up a finger to his lips. He pulled her down next to him and whispered. "They have someone with a hearing Quirk, we have to be careful."

Momo blinked. "Who does?" she asked, obligingly keeping her voice low.

Monoma grit his teeth and looked back over at the field. "Class 1A," he spit out with surprising venom. "They're up to something, I swear it."

Momo Created her own binoculars and looked out over the field. The members of 1A seemed to be spread out across the field, each engaged in their own activities. Lets see… that was Kendo, doing single finger handstand pushups… that was Bakugo, who appeared to be fighting a barometer (the barometer seemed to be winning)... Izuku's headless body was off doing push-ups in a corner of the field… Mei was standing at the opposite end, speaking into a walkie-talkie? Ah, there was an eye exam board moving steadily away from her.

"They appear to be testing their Quirks," noted Momo.

"This is psychological warfare," insisted Monoma. "They're doing this to show off. They're as good as declaring they don't need to keep their Quirks secret to win the Sports Festival!"

"Well, surely there are better ways to do that than training in the field at 10AM," Momo reasoned.

"They've been there since 7," hissed Monoma.

"Really?" asked Momo. "That seems a little extreme."

"They've already taken the Fire Department and Present Mic. What's next? Will they attack our dorm and take it too? The support labs? The Business Course?"

Momo blinked. "The Fire Department?"

Monoma flipped back in his notebook. "At exactly 6:30 AM their fire alarm went off-"

"And woke you up," said Momo understandingly.

"What? No." said Monoma. "I was already watching them then. It was getting kind of boring, so I was glad when it happened. But then-"

"You were already watching them," said Momo flatly. "Why? How long have you been up here?"

"I've been up here since 9 last night," said Monoma offhandedly. "But you don't understand! They're planning something! Nobody else is keeping an eye on them, so the duty falls to us! I SHALL NOT ALLOW UA TO FALL TO THEIR DASTARDLY PLOTTING!"

"Hm," said Momo, standing back up. "Well, good luck with your… stakeout?"

"Espionage," Monoma clarified testily. "Intelligence gathering. The day they turn against us, I will be prepared to destroy them."

"That's worse, though," said Momo. "You understand how that's worse, right?"

"I will protect this school from the shadows," said Monoma. "If I must taint myself with darkness to do so, then so be it. Thus is the path of a true hero."

"Hm," said Momo. "I think you might want to talk to Hound Dog about this. He's the counselor, right?"

"Of course!" exclaimed Monoma. "I need to secure the neutral faculty members to our cause before those heathens can get to them! Thank you, Yaoyorozu! I will do so post haste!"

Momo hummed with some amusement and much concern as Monoma ran back into the building, leaving her alone on the roof. "This is going to be an interesting year," she mumbled to herself.

"...and that's why to really figure out how Yanagi's Quirk works I think we'll have to do a round of tests, have someone die right there, and then do the same round of tests again," finished Izuku.

Aizawa nodded to himself and jotted something down on his tablet. "You understand why we can't actually do that, right?"

Izuku's head nodded sadly. "Yeah. Hey- do you think if we dug up my own body she could use my ghost? That could be fun."

Aizawa turned to stare at him. "I hope you understand why we're not doing that one."

"It's not grave-robbing if I'm giving someone my corpse," insisted Izuku. "Or, I guess, ghost? If you're still not sure we can try having her do a seance at my grave to see if my ghost agrees."

Aizawa ran a hand down his face. "You know what? I don't have the energy to explain why that's bad. If you can convince Yanagi, your mother, Principal Nezu, the police chief of whatever precinct you're buried in, whoever is in charge of the graveyard, and your ghost to let you do it, go for it."

Izuku made a mental note to talk to all of those people. "I mean, odds are it doesn't actually use ghosts, it's more likely to be a mildly inefficient form of telekinesis that's losing its energy by emitting interference across various wavelengths. But to know for sure, we need to confirm a ghost."

"Would you look at that," Aizawa said abruptly, raising his voice to address the entire class. "It's noon. That means we're done here. Go back to the dorms and do your blood rituals, or whatever it is teenagers do in their spare time." He smirked then looked down at his tablet. "And get some rest. You'll need it for tomorrow."

The teacher lifted Izuku up off of his shoulder, hesitating for a moment before placing him gently onto Corpus Primus' neck stump. HERoS re-socketed Izuku into the robot body just in time for Mei to bump up against him.

"Getting all buddy-buddy with the teacher, huh," she teased. "Good idea; things will be way easier if they trust you to supervise me."

He blinked. "Nah, he was just interested in my analysis. He said it'd be a learning experience for all of us?"

A few yards away, Kacchan paled and turned back to stare at their teacher. Strange.

"Weird," said Mei. "Did he say anything else?"

Izuku shrugged. "He seemed pretty interested in the questions I had. I think he also mentioned something about getting me answers over the next few days? Not sure what that meant."

Mei ran a hand down her face and sighed. "You were analyzing us while we worked, weren't you?"

He nodded. "Yeah? Why?"

She shook her head sadly. "He played you, Zuzu. He's making our lives hell under the guise of Quirk training and you've been giving him ammo all day."

Izuku froze and frantically thought back to the hours of analysis he'd dumped into his teacher's ear. That couldn't have been it. Aizawa just thought his analysis was interesting. It had nothing to do with… oh, who was he kidding, that was totally it.

"Whoops," he mumbled sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Ah well," dismissed Mei. "It's not like you gave him anything for me. You did all that analysis years ago."

"Um," said Izuku softly. "About that…"

Mei stared at him for a moment.

He scratched the back of his head nervously, looking anywhere but her. "There's a sixty percent chance your eyeballs distort space to do what they do and I didn't know what to do with that information."

She sighed. "Damnit, Zuzu."

A/N: I couldn't sleep because of the wasps in my walls, so have this chapter.

Seriously, it'd be a nightmare if I could sleep. They're just buzzing, angrily, like an incredibly stressful dark reflection of ASMR. They've been there for over a week.