Chapter 10
Although the first half of the exercise had been carried out quirkless (oh the memories...) Izuku had more than enough time to practice his quirk later on. All Might´s time limit had decreased again as a result of his wound from the USJ incident, which left him not enough time to visit the gym in his "muscle form" to watch him train. Still, the opportunity to show off a bit for his idol made him giddy. With his mentor steadily growing weaker he needed to push himself harder than ever before to become worthy of All Might´s legacy.
He swallowed nervously at the mere thought of becoming the next Symbol of Peace, but he owed it to his mother, to his friends – no, the whole world to try his best at fulfilling that role. The nasty voice of his inner doubts reminded him that he would never be able to live up to the greatness of his mentor, that he was useless, unworthy, just a Deku-
"NO!" he screamed mentally, clamping down on those thoughts of inferiority that had been drilled into his head since his fourth birthday. Even though he had told some of his experiences to Ochako and his mom, letting out absolutely everything out in front of Hound Dog had been incredibly relieving. It had taken multiple hours until he could properly open up about that topic, but it had been worth it! Of course Izuku couldn't tell the counsellor everything, because the existence of One for All was a secret, but the weight of the mistreatment that he had suffered for most of his life had been lightened just enough to make him feel like he was starting life all over again.
Hound Dog had also shown him how to meditate "to calm his centre" whatever that really meant. When he was worried or stressed it still took him a while to clear his mind and focus on the here and now, but he was getting better at it. Izuku hoped that it would help with his control over One for All and he liked to believe that it worked to a certain extent.
That was also what he was currently doing to prepare for using his quirk. Now was the time to test if his quirk counselling had been a success.
His breathing slowed, his mind emptied of doubts and his veins began to thrum with power. Izuku opened his eyes and grinned up at the skeletal form of his favourite hero.
"Look! I can channel it through my entire body!"
Green lighting danced over his skin, but it did not hurt him.
"Very impressive, young Midoriya." replied All Might with a similar smile.
"Remember how I told you that my body is like an egg in the microwave oven?"
The number one hero cringed at the terrible comparison.
"Well, I think I got the perfect power setting down. Now the egg doesn't explode anymore! Although I still haven't punched anything, so I don´t know if it really works. Would the egg explode if I-"
"Young Midoriya, please never talk about exploding again." said his mentor sternly.
"Y-yes, All- uh Mr. Yagi."
They were not completely alone so he needed to make sure to only address him in his civilian name, lest the secret of All Might's 'muscle form' be discovered.
"How much of your quirk can you safely use so far?"
"Uhm... Like I said, I didn´t test it. I only tried to manifest as much of the quirk as I can handle... Like dragging something from the depths of the ocean to the surface without suffocating..."
"Your metaphors should really be centred less around you dying."
"Hehe... I guess... I can't say for sure, but when the lightning appears like it does right now, it feels as if I am calling upon maybe... three to five percent of the total power?"
"Very good. Very good, young Midoriya. Do you want to see how your technique holds up on the field of battle?"
"W-why are you saying this so seriously?"
"Come on! Stand up! Punch this sandbag with as much force as you think you can handle! Let your heroic desire become your strength!"
"Uh... okay."
Izuku gathered the small trickle of overwhelming power inside him and tried to disperse it throughout his whole body as he had been instructed to do. His vision shrank as he focused solely on his target, doing his hardest to keep the egg from explo- uh, cracking.
"I call this... MINOR SMASH!"
Nobody could tell if Mr. Yagi was coughing from laughter or because he had gotten sand in mouth after the bag detonated. Nonetheless, it was obvious that he was proud of Izuku´s achievement. Even Recovery Girl was pleasantly surprised when she had to heal only two hairline fractures!
~[#҈#]~
Kaminari Denki stared at the case held up to him as if it was going to explode, then at his blond teacher like she was a rabid ferret ready to attack.
"Take it, Kaminari, and open it." Tanya repeated impatiently, eyes narrowing a millimetre which had the boy scrambling to follow her command post-haste.
"Yes, Ma'am!" he yelped as he opened the case, only to stall as he stared inside. "Um, what is this?"
"Support gear. Power Loader was willing to whip up a prototype based on the functionality I described to him." she explained.
Tanya had been lucky that she was able to convince Power Loader to create the weapon at such short notice. All it had cost her was a signed autograph for his niece, who was apparently her biggest fan. The propaganda network of the HPSC was unreasonably effective if they could boost her popularity so much, despite her just doing her job properly.
"Okay, I get that... I guess, but, uh... why does it look like a weird gun?"
"Because it is in fact a weird gun, though for legal reasons, I suggest we continue calling it a support item."
Denki looked from her to the strange device in the box, tentatively taking it out and setting the case on the floor beside him. "You're giving me a gun?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes, because our spar a few days ago showcased for me how cumbersome your quirk can be in certain circumstances." she explained.
"Using it at too high wattage impairs your mental faculties, and you're liable to shock an ally if they happen to be too close. It also lacks effective range, which this will rectify nicely."
"By shooting people?" he said sceptically. "Why not just become a police officer instead?"
"Because this weapon does not use gunpowder as an ammunition propellant, instead operating through the use of a strong electromagnetic pulse to fire bullets, which your quirk will generate."
As she explained this, she began pointing out some of the features in the pistol-like weapon in the boy's hand.
"By eliminating the need for brass casings, the magazine is able to hold twenty rounds, and the lack of an onboard power source aids in the compact form even more. Also, as it's powered by your quirk, muzzle velocity can be adjusted situationally by you, allowing for both subsonic and supersonic rounds which would normally not be feasible for small arms. In fact, on the lowest end, the bullets are hardly lethal at all, which makes it a fine piece of support gear for taking in villains alive. Honestly, for a prototype, it's a rather robust weapon already. Power Loader outdid himself. He even provided a nice thigh holster for you."
Denki stared down at the small pistol in a new light, a smile pulling at his lips as he looked back up at her. When he did, however, the smile faded.
"I don't get it. Why would you do something like this for me?"
Tanya tilted her head.
"I don't understand what you mean."
"Well, it's just... Don't you hate me?" he asked awkwardly, looking away. "Like, that spar yesterday was just an excuse to kick my butt and embarrass me in front of the class, right? I mean, I know that stuff with the picture was out of line, and I get that, but-"
"I don't hate you." Tanya interrupted. "I don't like your lackadaisical attitude towards your heroic studies, and perhaps I was upset about the photo, but that's in the past. It is my job as your teacher to correct your behaviour and, among other things, instil in you the appropriate attitudes to become an effective hero. I don't expect you to be the perfect hero, or even student right now, but I do expect you to improve with time, and for you not to waste my efforts on you." she tilted her head and asked quietly: "Are you a wasted effort, Kaminari?"
He stared, mouth slightly agape, before his eyes became moist and he shook his head. "No, Sensei! And thank you! I promise I'll be better from now on!"
She smiled fondly at the boy, but smoothed her expression when he refocused his attention on her. "Good." she said. "I hope you strive not to waste your new instructor's time either."
"Um, new instructor?"
"Of course, I'm certainly not fit to teach you how to use that. After all, I don't use guns." Tanya said with a shrug, and it was the truth in most ways. She'd hardly used a gun in this new life, relying almost entirely on her quirk for her public operations. Even in her previous life, she wasn't so arrogant as to claim she was a sharpshooter.
No, the man approaching them was far more qualified than her.
"Howdy." Snipe greeted, tilting the brim of his Stetson at them when he came to a stop beside Tanya. "So the lil´ lady here wants me to teach ya how to use that little peashooter, that right?"
"Indeed." Tanya confirmed, holding a hand towards her student. "This is Kaminari Denki, and I think he has much to learn from you, sir. Not just in how to utilize his new tool in the context of heroics, but also in managing his image while doing so. After all, the fact that you have become such a well-respected hero in Japan, a country known for its very reserved views towards firearms, is a testament to your PR skills."
The much taller hero looked away, scratching the side of his gas mask-covered face as he muttered, "Well shoot, I already agreed to teach the kid. There's no need for flattery, miss."
"There isn't." Tanya agreed. "I am only speaking the truth, now Kaminari, I know you're probably eager to try out your new equipment, but I suggest you first read the instruction manual Power Loader provided so as to not risk blowing your fingers off."
"Yes Ms. Degurechaff!" he nearly yelled before turning bodily towards Snipe and bowing at the waist towards the man in a show of respect Tanya had not seen from the boy yet. "And thank you, Snipe-Sensei. I promise to take this training seriously and to not waste your time."
"Thanks, I guess, now come on, kid. The shooting range is on the opposite side of campus, and we're burning daylight as it is."
"Yes, Sensei!" Denki said as he grabbed the case and hurried after his new tutor.
And so, Tanya watched the pair leave with a small smile and new hope for the boy's future. Now if she could only figure out how to correct Mineta Minoru's deviant behaviour without flinging the little horndog into orbit. Maybe she could brainstorm with Himiko to come up with something. Her partner had a wondrous ability to make people do her bidding even before she showed them her knife collection.
~[#҈#]~
Meanwhile, Himiko was going over the mission plan that had been sent to her through the encrypted network of the HPSC Special Operations Unit. Her infiltration of the League of villains had gone off without a hitch. She had created somewhat of a name for herself in the criminal underworld by murdering countless people either directly or falsely claiming responsibility for their demise. It was not work that she actually enjoyed, but nobody would notice that when she wore her trademark smile wherever she went.
There was only one person in this whole, wide world that was able to detect the sorrow and disgust beneath her mask. She was the personal sun of Himiko´s life; her sole star in the bleak darkness that otherwise threatened to swallow her up. Yet this source of comfort and affection was bound by the same chains as she was! Neither of them was free from the iron-hard grip of the HPSC.
These... pigs forced them to do their bidding. To bloody their hands so that this rotten society could decay just a bit longer. It was abhorrent how corrupt these men in fine suits and their lapdog heroes in motley costumes had become. She would kill them all if she could!
But she couldn´t. Not when it would put her love at risk. For her saviour she would endure.
So Himiko had taken on the role of a villain in order to blend in with the rest of the lowlifes that housed in this city. Like a good, little soldier, she followed the demands of the pigs that held her chains and carved the name "Blood Dancer" into the fearful hearts of villain scum. She shuddered to think that she could have become a hopeless bottom feeder if her love hadn't saved her.
Hanging out in bars and flirting with stinky, drunk men was so not cute!
Regardless, her infamy had spread wide and multiple organizations had tried to hook her already with empty promises. Only one of them had been the one she was allowed to accept: The League of Villains.
A band of clueless psychopaths without restraint or intelligence or cuteness. Worthless.
However, her orders said that she had to get close to them so she played her usual game and enticed them with her body and her combat prowess. The alleged leader was a manchild who only acknowledged her as a human being because she defeated him in a match of Mortal Kombat 32. That made her his "favourite NPC" and he started to even listen to her suggestions from time to time.
His pride had been hurt badly by his failure to kill anyone at the USJ which had made it child's play to goad Shigaraki into immediately seeking revenge. He promptly sent her on a mission to break into the "high-level dungeon" to steal the safety codes that would let them bypass the automated security to the sports festival. It was stupid, childish and ridiculously dangerous, but he did not appear to care.
Shigaraki´s babysitter, a misty bartender that gave off uncomfortable vibes, attempted to dissuade him from the terrible plan, but the hand-loving moron was having none of it! All it had taken on Himiko´s part was to self-assuredly declare that she could accomplish any mission without backup or die trying! For a second she felt pity for whoever was the real leader of this nonsensical organization. Who needed enemies with such subordinates?
Why the pigs wanted her to instigate a villain attack during the UA sports festival of all places was beyond her. Did they want to weaken the school's reputation? Or strengthen it? At the end of the day it was unimportant. The whole world could burn as long as she was together with her senpai.
Now she was reading over her final instructions before the plan could commence.
Protocol 21749-b was rather simple. Himiko would receive the package with the blood of Aizawa Shouta (commonly known as the underground hero Eraserhead) six hours before the launch of the operation. The life fluid had been channelled off from the regular blood tests that the man underwent by an insider in the hospital, who soon after would be found as the unfortunate victim of a memory loss quirk which made him forget the last two weeks of his life. It was a clean, humane and effective way to wrap up a loose end that could potentially turn into a liability later down the road.
Himiko, or as the documents called her: "Carmilla", would ingest that blood two hours before school started and exit the hospital with Aizawa´s face. Her quirk could not replicate physical injuries so she needed to get her disguise of bandages and plaster casts right. The videos of Eraserhead´s body language and typical mannerisms that had been attached to his dossier were all blurry and short, so she needed to make up most of his behaviour on the spot.
Oh well, the extra challenge would make it more fun.
Not to mention the chance to tease Tanya a bit in her new form! The cute faces she would make were going to be hilarious!
~[#҈#]~
Tanya let out a deep breath as she closed the door to her apartment behind her and finally took the time to check her phone. Her newest post on hero-net about social equality was blowing up which was nice to see. Apart from that nobody else had sent her anything of importance. Just the usual spam of marketing deals and requests for interviews. Nothing that her automatic reply system could not deal with.
Then she pulled out her special, unofficial, untraceable and most importantly secret phone from a hidden pocket and checked that too. Despite being as technologically secure as humanly possible the HPSC did not like to send compromising data through their network often. The reason had been something about emerging technomancy quirks, but Tanya could not care less.
So it came as a surprise to find a new message in her inbox.
[Do not be alarmed by a familiar face. More commands coming soon.]
What? She read the text again and subsequently deleted it from the device to leave no trace.
This was most likely a 'know-only-what-you-have-to' case. There was no other reason for this instruction to be so vague and cryptic otherwise. Possessing mission critical information could be dangerous, especially when dealing with mindreading quirks or similarly frustrating abilities.
But still...
Was she in danger? Probably not, seeing as she was supposed to "not be alarmed". Also why had the word "face" been highlighted? This whole scenario was fishy. Furthermore, now that she thought about it, Himiko had been acting strange over the last few days, behaving more clingy and moody than usual. Did she know what was up?
Tanya did not want to be dragged into this mess. If a conflict of some sort arose then staying at UA should be her safest bet. From what she could tell the security had been amped up considerably. Cameras and motion detectors in the hallways were everywhere. With over a dozen pro heroes on site Tanya was sure that the HPSC was not crazy enough to cause a fight near the school grounds. Those spineless paper pushers would not dare to upset the smartest being on the planet.
She sighed again.
"I am not going to get involved. If they call me in, I´ll just claim that my school work required me to stay there or risk breaking cover. I have a flawless record! I deserve some rest, damn it!" Tanya angrily muttered to herself.
"Damn you Being X for giving me this much power!"
Once again she wondered how her third life could have gone differently if she had been born with an ordinary, plain, weak quirk. Instead she had been "gifted" with near limitless potential and was chained to an organization that used her however they saw fit. A nostalgic experience, one could say.
Her quirk worked in a variety of ways, some of which were not unlike the magic of her last life. Officially it was registered as "Light Walls", but as it was often the case, this entailed far more than what the name would suggest. In its most basic form Tanya could form shields of translucent, silver-shimmering energy which had given her the moniker "Argent". They were resistant even against excessive force and could cover more than a football field with their surface area.
She could manipulate certain properties of these barriers like their shape, position, opacity or permeability. By applying a force field around her feet and torso she could "fly" through the air, although in reality she was just pushing herself with a nearly invisible platform of sorts whose position she altered along a calculated vector.
The greater these changes, the more focus energy this took out of her though. For example, clouding a barrier so that normal sunlight could not pass through was far, far easier than manipulating it until no radiation of any kind could pierce it. Of course this also applied to how big her shields could become. A four thousand square metre force field required at least four thousand times more stamina to maintain than a one square metre large one. Subsequently it had taken her a nearly inhuman level of training to push herself to endure such strain.
Nonetheless, that quirk made her ideal for crowd control or rescue work, because she could hold back either large amounts of people or debris. Separating protesters, supporting collapsing buildings, levitating wounded civilians or utterly immobilizing criminals were all tasks she excelled at. No wonder that she had reached the top of the national hero rating charts so quickly (with the subtle help of the HPSC of course).
However, should the force that pressed on her defences exceed the capabilities of the shield then it would collapse in rather painful fashion and she would be unable to erect another one for a few seconds afterwards. A substantial weakness that she covered by erecting multiple smaller barriers in a staggered fashion next to each other, so that if one failed it would not cause her whole support structure to collapse.
As strong as her quirk was to fend off normal humans, "normal" did not exist in the world of the twenty fourth century anymore. Mutant type quirks often came with slight strength enhancements and/or spikey bits that could be used to concentrate kinetic energy into very small points. Anyone with a crowbar or an axe could also replicate this effect to smash through her defences with comparative ease. It would still be hard to accomplish, but multiple villains working together could make short work of her barriers.
Of course she could limit her surface area and channel that energy into more powerful fields that could withstand those blows, but that would be merely delaying the inevitable. Tanya was not fond of focusing on pure defence if attacking could prove more far safer. After all, nothing was gained from committing resources to merely delay an enemy. Her second life had taught her the importance of mobility and overwhelming firepower to crush any opposition before they could really become a threat.
Due to her barriers being constructs of pure energy, they had no physical mass or thickness which made them excellent blades if she pumped enough power into them so that they could actually separate solid objects from another (which was not much). The downside of using her quirk as a weapon in this way was that it was simply too effective.
The smallest amount of error on her part would bisect a man or at the very least lacerate important blood vessels. Humans were annoyingly fragile things and she was not sure if even the Commission could save her from the public backlash of openly killing a villain. Tanya would rather not risk being labelled as a murderer (although that description would be more than accurate). Therefore, she resolved to only ever use her "Silver Slice" technique in case of a catastrophic emergency.
Far more applicable were her "Silver Wedge" and "Silver Bash". Whoever at the marketing department had come up with these stupid names should be fired for their apparent lack of imagination. It was an established part in modern hero culture to cry out the name of your attack like a moron before using it, so her handler had vehemently insisted for her to partake in this absurd ritual. Luckily she only had to scream like a bad action hero when cameras were nearby.
The "Silver Wedge" was technically also a blade, but ninety five percent less lethal. As the name aptly described it was a wedge, although the naked eye couldn't see that. Basically, two small shields were overlapping each other in a V-shaped form, creating a relatively dull edge compared to the practically two-dimensional "Silver Slash". In reality it still served as an extremely sharp knife or sword that she could control at will.
Tanya´s "Silver Bash" was the simplest of all weapons since the dawn of humanity: A club.
She simply projected a small, hard force field over the head of her target and pressed down with enough force to knock them out. If it didn't work the first time then repeated bonks on the head typically put most of her victims out of commission. It's effectiveness came from the fact that most people never bothered to look directly up if their eyes had not mutated to do so.
Her range to use any of these attacks amounted to more or less exactly forty metres in every direction, but Tanya was optimistic that she could expand that area with time and effort. Discipline and diligence had carried her this far already, so it stood to reason that they would carry her further. Quirks also had the chance to spontaneously evolve under stress, but that was pretty rare and not something she could rely on.
Anyways, in Tanya´s opinion, it was now time for more ice cream. She deserved it for the stress that was soon to come.
