Chapter 2: Client-side, Server-side
A/N: Couldn't help making a latency joke considering the two Quirks Izuku got were latent ones from his parents, but there is still a reason for the title. Read on to see.
That night, as Izuku slept, he found himself standing in the hall of Vestiges. The last time he'd been here had been damn near a month ago when he'd been stuck unconscious from the aftermath of his final fight with Shigaraki, and that had mostly just been a congratulatory celebration. But today was different. He didn't even need to look at any of the Vestiges to see that. Stepping forward, he said, "So, uh… I think I got my parents' Quirks. I assume that's why I'm here?"
"Indeed, Midoriya." Yoichi, the progenitor, said. "You have been granted a unique opportunity, one even beyond the scope of my hopes for One For All."
"So, now what?" Izuku asked.
"We're not sure, to be honest." Nana replied, "But it seems that somehow, you've… made One For All genetic. As in, you can pass it down to your relatives."
"Huh. Is that why…" Izuku said, trailing off as he saw Nana nod. "Wow, that's, that's… great!"
Suddenly Daigoro stood up. "Yeah, it really is, kid. But you gotta remember to control it, y'know? And make sure that if you do have a kid, they've gotta learn too."
"Hm… Well, that begs the question of what they'd end up getting." Izuku said. "Fire bending seems definite, given my parents' Quirks, and assuming I keep going steady with Ocha-" suddenly he was sent reeling forward as he got slapped on the back.
"Well freakin' done, kid!" Daigoro said with a hearty laugh. "Didn't think ya had it in you. Nah, but seriously, just… watch for the signs, alright?"
Izuku nodded with a gulp, not sure what it meant that ghosts were making subtle hints at him getting laid with someone he'd literally just became girlfriends with. "Is… anyone else going to say anything?"
"Oh no, this… this is the funniest thing I've heard in a long time." Hikage said. "You might want to quit while you're ahead though. And I'm not just saying that since that's what I did."
Izuku nodded once more, then asked, "Hey, can I… go? If you guys are done poking fun at my lack of… y'know, I think I should leave."
En looked at Izuku then. "Unless Toshi over there's got something to say, I think so."
Izuku decided then to turn around and head out, only for a cough to turn his attention back. "Uh, Mr. Yagi…?"
"I've got something to tell you… later." Toshinori said. "Tell your mom about it when you wake up, it involves her too."
"Uh, alright Mr. Yagi…" Izuku said. "Thanks for everything, by the way."
Toshinori laughed. "Don't mention it, my boy. You really are a hero now. Now go out there and save people with a smile! …After you get your homework done."
Izuku laughed. "It's my first day back to school, I don't have any homework! And you're not my dad!"
"All the more reason to get out there!" Toshinori chuckled. "Now get up!"
Izuku found himself lying in his bed once more, still somewhat shaken by the fact that 8 grown adults had been making casual mention of his, a teenager's, love life, but when he began considering the implications of One For All being properly genetic like other Quirks, he found himself mumbling ideas as to just what kind of Quirks could possibly manifest given himself, his parents, and the Quirks of any of his female classmates (mostly Ochaco, but it never hurt to be thorough)
When his muttering became too much to keep track of, he whipped out a notebook, quickly scrawled One For All Genetic Results: Volume 1 on the cover, and went to work. Notably, he was doing this as he was getting dressed, and then later outside in 2-A's dorms, which, of course, garnered notice.
"Hey, is Midoriya… Planning eugenics?" Sero asked, elbowing Kirishima to get his attention.
"Huh, yeah, seems like it…" Kirishima replied. "That's… weird though. Like really weird. Hey Mina!"
"What is it, Kiri?" Mina asked.
"Look at Midobro over there!" Kirishima said with a point of his finger.
"Woah, that's… strange. Also feels really unethical." Mina said when she noticed the notebook. "Hey, Deku! What're you doin'?" Unfortunately, Izuku was too engrossed in his own mutterings to hear. Mina groaned, and was about to shout louder, when-
"OI DEKU, YOU'RE FUCKIN' MUMBLIN' AGAIN!" Bakugo shouted.
"Wha – huh? Oh, uh sorry about that…" Izuku said with a nervous chuckle. "Yeah, I got a bit caught up with something…"
"We can all see that, but, uh… genetics? Of One For All?" Sero asked.
"Oh uh, so you know those ghosts I sometimes see from One For All? Yeah, they told me that One For All's embedded in my DNA now so…"
"Wait, back up, ghosts!?" Mina asked. "Wow, that's… a thing. Anyway, continue?"
Izuku nodded. "Alright so since One For All is in my DNA it is conceivable that I could, well, conceive a baby who got One For All and all the requisite Quirks, which probably includes the ones from my parents, and now me, and then whoever the mom was, so I… made a journal cataloguing possibilities."
Jiro, who'd walked in by then, only caught the last part, and said, "You made a journal… cataloguing baby possibilities!? WHY!?"
"Oh, hi Jiro!" Izuku said with a wave. "And it's simple, really! One For All's a powerful Quirk and as we just saw last night it's really good at boosting other Quirks, and it also passes down previous Quirks so basically, I was just thinking about what different Quirk pairings could result in. You guys wanna look?" He lifted the notebook up, and while Jiro backed away, Mina decided she'd take a glance at it.
"Woah, this is… crazy detailed!" she said. "How long have you been working on this?"
"Uh, like half an hour maybe?" Izuku replied, causing all their jaws to drop.
"HALF AN HOUR!?" Kirishima said, staring blank at the completely filled in, perfectly organized pages. "Wha-bu-how!?" he spluttered.
"It was nothing, really, just me copying my mutterings mostly…" Izuku said, and by this point the rest of the class had begun filtering into the room. "Hey guys, so apparently my kids can get One For All now and I was thinking what kind of Quirks would result, so… here it is if you guys want to read it!" Saying this, he plopped the notebook on the table, prompting numerous stares and spluttered words in awe of the sheer information density (and mild creep factor considering these involved unborn babies of teenagers one of which he was dating)
"So, what do you guys think?" Izuku asked.
"Deku, is it really possible one of our future kids could have on-contact deoxygenation? What does that even mean!?" Ochaco asked.
"Oh, uh, basically our kid would be able to unbind all the oxygen in something by touching it since fires need oxygen to burn and your Quirk removes things on contact…" Izuku said.
"Does that include PEOPLE!?" Ochaco shouted.
"Presumably, yes." Izuku said matter-of-factly, still in Quirk Analysis mode. This earned him a slap. "OW! What was that for!?"
"WHY are you thinking up possible Quirks that are so deadly, Deku!?" Ochaco demanded.
"Well, they're just possibilities, y'know!" Izuku replied, trying to recover the situation. "Honestly, it's more likely they'd get something simple like fire bending, or on-contact combustion, or on-contact extinguishing, or whatever."
"And how would you know? We're not geneticists!" Ochaco said.
"Uh, well…" Izuku began, then he stopped. "Sorry about that. I was just caught up in the idea because it's just SO COOL, I mean a whole family of One For All users!? Come on!"
Suddenly everyone stared at each other, thinking about how self-sacrificial Izuku was on a regular basis, and very quickly, in unison, shouting, "IT WOULD NOT!"
"Well, I thought it was cool." Izuku said, then adding, "Anyway, do any of you guys want to know the possible Quirks for-" "NO!" "Alright, message received. Should we get to class?"
With a few hesitant nods, class 2-A left.
Later that day during heroics training, the class had been doing an exercise where a group of third year students were acting as vigilantes and the objective was to subdue them without endangering any of the first years they had been trying to save. On paper, that was fairly simple. In practice, however…
"Hey, why don't you get off my case!?" one of the 3-B students shouted as he used his Quirk to bounce off buildings to reach a group of first years held hostage by acting villain Void Out. (Thirteen)
Izuku was having none of it. "I know you could probably handle this, but you don't have your license on you! So please stand down, I'll take over from here."
"Yeah, and what're you gonna do then?" the student asked. "Try and kick Space Case's face in?"
"No, I've got a better plan." Izuku said with a smirk. "Say hello to Blackwhip!" At this the familiar black tendrils shot forth from his hands and latched onto the senior's arms, stopping him in his tracks.
"Hey, what the-" he cried out as he suddenly found himself faceplanting into the side of a building. As he fell down Izuku decided that maybe it was time he tried out his new Attraction. Thinking about pulling the senior student toward him, he reached out. To him, this was all he needed, as he felt himself grabbing onto the other student the same way as Blackwhip.
However, from the other side, the dazed student was not in any way slowing down, and as he saw the ground approaching, he started to panic slightly… only for Izuku's grip to finally settle and bring him to a halt just a few inches above the hard concrete. "Oi, warn a guy next time, got it!?" he shouted back.
"Wait, I thought I grabbed you!" Izuku said as he floated down and locked the senior in with a few strips of capture tape.
"Didn't feel like it, man." The senior said, annoyed. "At least not for like a second or so."
"Uh… I'll work on that." Izuku said, before he shot off toward the building the hostages were being held in. That's… odd, he thought. On my end I felt myself grabbing him, but he said it… took a second? That's never happened before… Blackwhip comes out instantly and so does Tidal Wave so… Hm… Well, I'll test it later, I guess. With that he continued on with the exercise.
Later, he found Void Out inside a large warehouse filled to the brim with shipping containers and cranes and all sorts of other things that her Black Hole could easily start tossing around. His various Smashes would all get thrown off by the intense gravity, so he realized he really only had one plan of attack: Use Blackwhip and Float to stay out of range and then try and use his newfound fire to break her concentration. This settled, he began to rapidly dart across the arena, all while Void Out shouted at him to hold still and stay down. Eventually, he found himself getting close enough and tried to let loose some fire… but nothing happened. What the- Oh come on, not now! He groaned, but then just as he was about to swing away for a second pass…
*FWOOM*
"AH! Hothothothot! I-I can't take it! I-I surrender!" Void Out shouted trying desperately to put out the fire on her suit while Izuku stared at the massive pillar of flame rising in the middle of the warehouse. Letting loose an Air Force Smash he blew out the flame, and then cuffed the now thoroughly handled Thirteen. (Void Out) Turning to the hostages, he noticed Tsuyu, who'd been one of the other students in his group, staring out at where the flame pillar used to be.
"Hey, Izuku, what was that? Kero." she asked.
"I'm not really sure, to be honest," he shrugged. "I figured I wouldn't really be able to land a solid punch since her Black Hole would just throw me off so I tried to use some fire to get her to stand down given her suit and all that."
"That much fire seems like overkill, kero," she deadpanned.
"I wasn't trying to get that much…" he said lamely. "It just… took a second."
"Wait, it 'took a second?'" she said, raising an eyebrow. "That doesn't make any sense, kero."
Izuku shook his head. "I don't get it either, but my Attraction did the same thing earlier when I tried catching one of the vigilantes. Nearly led to him faceplanting twice on concrete."
"Oof." She winced. "Do your other Quirks have this issue? Kero."
"Not even once." Izuku said. "Which is why it's so confusing that these two do."
"Well, have you checked on Thirteen? Kero." She asked.
Izuku turned to look back at the Rescue Hero, who'd taken off her helmet to try and let out the smoke. "Uh, I hope I didn't burn you too bad… I wasn't trying to, promise!"
"I- *cough* believe you, *cough* Midoriya…" she said. "But next time in Rescue Training, you'd better do perfect or else."
The half a dozen students in the warehouse all froze as they watched Thirteen slowly move to one of her finger caps and mimed opening it while pointing right at Izuku. "Uh, yes Ms. Thirteen! I'll do it!"
"Good! See you tomorrow then!" Thirteen said, back to her usual chipper self. With that, they all went back to the observation room.
As Izuku and Tsuyu arrived, Snipe waved them in. "Alright, we're all back," he said. "Now, I'm gonna show y'all some videos from each of your exercises and I want y'all to critique each other."
First up were a set of clips from Kirishima and Shoji's exercise involving Cementoss, and the vigilantes in question were a student from 3-A with an absorption Quirk, allowing her to suck up materials from her surroundings, and a different student with a compression Quirk, allowing him to compact anything to as high of a density as he wanted. Kirishima encountered the absorber first, who proceeded to create a hole in the floor underneath him that he fell right into. While it didn't take him too long to climb out, by the time he did she was nowhere to be seen, especially since Cementoss had started walling off the various alleys. He'd been trapped, and that was all there was to it.
Shoji, on the other hand, had heard the sounds of the concrete forming and realized Cementoss had left an opening: the parking garage. As he ran through it, however, he noticed the compressor was attempting to compact every single door in the area. Catching up to him, Shoji attempted to grab the senior only for one of the doors to get thrown in his face. He blocked it, and attempted to try the same against the senior, but realized there wasn't any time: there were too many doors to get through. Knowing this, he elected to instead head towards Cementoss. As luck would have it, the senior showed up at about the same time, and as he let them take down the wall in front of the hostage room, he ran up and subdued him and then charged Cementoss. Unprepared and tired from having to build so many walls, Cementoss went down quick.
Ojiro raised a hand. "I think both Shoji and Kirishima realized that stopping the vigilante was less important than handling the villain, but owing to Kirishima's straightforward mindset and admittedly useless Quirk compared to the vigilante he found, he was caught in a trap and found himself unable to progress. Shoji, meanwhile, managed to make use of the help he was given by letting the vigilante grant him access before capturing him and the villain."
Snipe nodded. "Right on the money there. On to the next one!"
The next exercise pitted Jiro and Mineta against Aizawa and twins from 3-B who could, respectively, turn anything adhesive or repulsive. Mineta had realized quickly that his balls could be thrown and remain sticky as long as he stayed out of sight, and Jiro noticed she could still sense things with her jacks if out of line of sight. The twins, for their part, made life hell for the two by either causing Mineta's balls to not stick or cause things like Jiro's speakers to latch onto nearby walls (or even get her jacks caught in a wall)
Still the two eventually managed to get Aizawa caught by latching his capture scarf to a ball and sound waves, which had no matter in them, ended up being the perfect way to disorient the twins and cause them to stick to each other.
Toru commented, "Despite Mineta's… Mineta-ness, he managed to hold it back in front of Jiro for enough time to come up with a solid plan with her, and they dispatched both the villain and the vigilantes efficiently and with minimal damage."
And so, the review continued, until finally it came to Izuku and Tsuyu. Izuku, who at the beginning had told Tsuyu to use her natural stickiness to keep herself from getting pulled around by the Black Hole, had let her split off, only for her to encounter a student from 3-B with a viscosity Quirk, allowing him to make any liquid he touched as viscous as he desired. This inevitably included Tsuyu's saliva, leading to her being unable to properly hold him down. Her mucus failed too, so eventually she decided she'd just jump on him and use her natural ability to cling to surfaces to hold him down. This worked, and she hopped back toward Thirteen.
When the clips were over, Iida raised a hand. "Midoriya and Asui-sorry, Tsu, elected to stop the vigilantes instead of handle the villain first, which I would argue is a bad example of improperly placed priorities. As well, Midoriya oddly appeared to have poor control of what I assume is telekinesis of some kind, with it only triggering after a short delay. Tsu was effective at ensuring Ms. Thirteen was suitably distracted before Midoriya arrived, and Midoriya also noticed that his typical physical strikes would be wildly off-target due to the strange gravity. However, his control issues seem to have struck again, as instead of what I assume was to be a short burst of flame, there rose, after a short time, a massive pillar of flame reaching the ceiling. Had Tsu not moved the hostages away before then things would have been significantly worse."
Snipe nodded, before turning to Izuku. "Alright, Midoriya, looks like you need to get those Quirks'o yours under control, ya hear?"
"I understand, Mr. Snipe. It's only my Fire and Attraction though, so I'm not sure why." Izuku said.
"Well, whatever it is, ya betta have a handle on it soon, got it?" Snipe said.
"Yes, sir." Izuku replied.
"Alrighty then, that's our time up for today!" Snipe then said to the class. "I'll be here helping the third years out so ask your homeroom teacher if y'all need anything!" With that, class 2-A filed out.
A/N: So, Deku's got some lag to deal with! And as anyone who's had to deal with bad ping on an online game can tell you, lag sucks. Big time. But the real question is, where's the lag even coming from? Feel free to review with your thoughts on that!