"Honestly! It didn't even occur to you that you'd damage your ear after seeing Todoroki do the same thing to that steel bar? Idiot!" Hagakure yelled.
"I may be indestructible but that hurts all the same," Clark retorted. Even if he could actively feel his eardrum knitting back together, it was still healing slowly, and his balance was screwed at least for the rest of the school day. As a result he got to be carried over All Might's shoulder like a sack of flour while Hagakure followed behind.
"She's not wrong young Kent. Quirks like ours require an absolute understanding of how matter will act under any conditions. Otherwise you could find yourself doing the same thing to whole buildings, especially if you keep getting stronger!"
"Just how many people are going to lecture me today?" Clark groaned.
"As a matter of fact," Kelex said from his belt buckle, "I streamed the battle to Lord and Lady Kent. They expect a call from you tonight."
"Great," Clark thought.
"Don't worry too much. It's not as though you've been doing this very long," All Might said.
"Do worry a little though," Hagakure added. "At least enough that you won't do this again."
"Exactly!" All Might exclaimed.
Clark slumped over All Might's shoulder, and didn't lift his head back up until they had returned to the control room.
The rest of the battles were a blur for Clark, not in the least because he was largely distracted by the feeling of his eardrum regrowing. At some point Izuku sat down next to him with a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. When the time finally came to leave, Clark could at least walk, if unsteadily. It seemed that flying home would be out of the question, so they'd have to take the train. As they were leaving, Bruce came up to them.
"Midoriya. I need to speak with you. Now."
Without waiting for a response he grabbed Izuku by the collar and dragged him away. Clark flopped down on a bench nearby to wait.
"What's t-this about Wayne-san?" Midoriya asked.
"Like I said. We need to talk. I realize that excluding you from the exercise may have come off rather… poorly. But frankly we need to get that quirk under control before you do another damn thing with it," Bruce asserted.
"But the only way I can do that is by using it-"
"Using it properly."
"What?"
"I hacked the UA servers-"
"Y-you WHAT?!" Midoriya exclaimed.
"And got ahold of the video of your punch recorded through the Zero-Pointer's optics."
"You hacked the UA servers?!"
"Focus." Bruce pulled back the sleeve of his blazer to reveal a platinum wristwatch with a black leather strap, and clicked a button on the side. The center flared up and produced a holographic screen similar to those in the acceptance letters. The video played back until Midoriya was in the center of the frame, when Bruce paused it.
"Look at your arm."
Midoriya examined the video, but failed to see what was significant.
"What about it?" He asked.
"It's glowing," Bruce deadpanned.
At Midoriya's blank stare he continued.
"All Might's don't, which logically means you have more energy concentrated there. In all likelihood you're trying to channel the full power of your quirk through your arm when it's meant to be distributed through your whole body."
Midoriya stared at the image for a few seconds before facepalming. "Oh my God…"
"That's what I thought. Meet me at this address on Saturday at ten." Bruce turned off the watch screen, tucked a card in Midoriya's breast pocket, and strolled away.
Izuku walked back to where he had left Clark, and found the American was gone.
"Clark?"
"Up here!"
Clark slowly descended a little before he stopped flying and simply let himself fall the last ten meters.
"I was able to get off the ground so I went above the ozone layer to increase my energy absorption and finish healing. You still wanna take the train home?"
"To be honest I think I do Clark. I'm not really in the mood to fly."
"Fair enough. What did Bruce want?"
Midoriya groaned as he thought about the revelation.
"He wanted to talk about One for All. Specifically he showed me what I was doing wrong."
"Wait what?"
"I… I tried to use its entire power in just my arm. That's why my bones broke. He hacked the UA servers," Izuku said.
"He what."
"I'm still getting over that part myself to be honest. He hacked the servers, pulled the video of my punch from the Zero-Pointer's memory, and figured that out at a glance."
"Holy shi- Great Scott."
"What?"
"My parents have been telling me to work on my language."
"A-and that's your solution?"
"Yeah I know. Just came out that way."
"How on Earth did it "come out that way?"
"I watch a lot of old movies. Guess they rubbed off on me."
"How does that even-"
"DEKU!"
They both turned to see Bakugou, standing there like a man who didn't get his ass kicked only a few hours ago.
"Kacchan?"
"The rich bastard. What's his quirk?"
"He doesn't have one."
"BULLSHIT!" Bakugou roared as he stomped forward. "He might have convinced everyone around here but you're not quite stupid enough to believe that, now WHAT IS IT?"
Izuku felt a slight vibration in the air next to him, and recognized it as the gravity inversion from Clark preparing to get airborne quickly.
"I-if he does Kacchan, then I don't know what it is. He's performed at the highest limits of the human body, but only at those limits. Everything he's done could theoretically be accomplished without a quirk, and the only unusual thing is he can do all of them where most quirkless athletes in the past had to focus on one or two specific things. It's possible he has a passive quirk that allows him to grow further than a normal human could through continuous training, but when Clark looked at his DNA,-"
"ENOUGH! SHUT UP WITH THE DAMN MUTTERING DEKU! I GET IT, BASTARD IS JUST STRONG!"
"Why do you care anyway?" Clark asked.
"WHAT?!"
"You heard me. Why does it matter how he's strong. He is. If you want to beat him, train harder."
"SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU DAMN HICK!" Bakugou yelled back as he began to stalk away.
"I wonder if it hurts to yell like that all the time?" Clark pondered. "Human vocal cords should not look like that."
The train ride home was uneventful, and Clark went to his room almost immediately to call his parents.
He placed his "phone," on the table so that Kelex could form a holographic screen. Her unit at home did the same and opened a video link.
"Evenin' Clark." Neither of his parents looked happy.
"Hey Ma, Pa. How's planting going?"
"Well enough, Kelex has been a big help with logistics and paperwork." Jonathan said. "She organized half the major sales last season, brought in enough money to move us up a tax bracket."
"I don't understand why you won't let me fabricate drones and so I can do the physical work as well. You and Lady Kent do not need to remain common laborers." Kelex said from offscreen.
"We appreciate the offer," Martha responded gently, "but we wouldn't have started a farm if we weren't prepared to do the work that came with it."
"Back to the matter at hand," Jonathan said pointedly, "What was that today? You were treating that exercise like a game, you left your partner behind to fend for herself, and worst of all you were acting like those boys weren't even worth your time. I don't know who I was watching in there, but it sure as hell wasn't Clark Kent. Now you better tell me right now if I somehow raised you to be that disrespectful."
"Sorry," Clark hung his head thinking about how the fight had gone.
"Don't tell us that," Martha said. "We aren't the ones you disrespected. You will apologize to them."
"Yeah. Yeah I will."
"Now go eat dinner," Martha said. "I can hear Mrs. Midoriya calling you."
Clark had noticed the same a moment ago.
"Good night Ma, Pa. Love you." The link closed and Kelex turned back into her smartphone form.
Clark floated across the room and out into the hall.
"-he's so amazing mom! He beat them both before they could do anything! And he doesn't even have a quirk!"
Midoriya's excited description of the day had been playing in the background for the duration of Clark's call with his parents. He reached the kitchen and promptly choked on a laugh at Izuku's imitation of Bruce's "Batman face." It wasn't quite as accurate as his All Might impression but it was close. Both Midoriyas looked over at the sound. Clark righted himself and tried to mask the amusement on his face. He failed miserably.
"Sorry I took a minute," he said. "I was on a call with my parents; I had to say goodnight to them."
"Oh, don't worry about it Clark. We were just sitting down anyway," Inko said.
"Sounds like Izuku was telling you about the other exchange student."
"In detail. I was frankly more surprised by Bruce Wayne of all people deciding to be a hero than anything else."
"Who wouldn't want to be one though?" Izuku asked. "How did him performing like an old Olympic athlete not get your attention but that did?"
"I suppose it simply seems mundane compared to what you two can do. I realize he's quirkless but it just… doesn't compare."
"Sure," Clark acknowledged. "but the brain in that guy's head… it's genuinely frightening. If he had some time to think about it, I think he could probably figure out a way to take out more than half of our class at the same time."
Bruce Wayne's Penthouse
"The takedown protocols will have to be revised again," Bruce said. "More new information from the fights."
Alfred looked up from the magazine he had been reading while waiting for dinner to finish in the oven. "Master Bruce, have you considered that your continued maintenance of these protocols may be inappropriate?"
"How so?"
"They are your schoolmates."
"Exactly. Better I have a safe way to incapacitate them ahead of time than be forced to come up with something on the spot that might accidentally be lethal. Mind control quirks have been proven to exist."
Alfred stood and straightened his bow tie as the oven chimed before retrieving the casserole dish. With his bare hands.
"No matter how many times I see you do that, it never stops looking wrong."
"Why on earth would I use oven mitts when I do not need them master Bruce?"
Alfred's quirk was an incredibly simple, but unfathomably powerful one. He was utterly indestructible. He could not be burned or cut or shot. His bones could not break, his teeth could not even be chipped. There were precisely two vulnerable tissues in his body, and those were his hair and nails.
"And yet you refuse to spar with me if you're not wearing gloves."
"Oh master Bruce… I wear gloves for your protection."
"You do realize a punch in the mouth would be fairly tame compared to league training?"
"Indeed I do. But the methods of the League of Shadows are not examples one should follow. Is that not why you left them?"
"Touchè. Schedule says it's search and rescue training tomorrow. I'll have to check the rebreather and first aid equipment tonight."
"I doubt you'll need the kit for an exercise."
"It constitutes substantial weight that I would have to carry in a live disaster situation," Bruce pointed out. "Frankly I should probably try to incorporate it into permanent inventory anyway given the demands of hero work."
"Very good sir. Anything you'd like me to prepare?"
"Rebreather, line launcher. Probably going to want a larger supply of explosive gel than usual. Shaped charges have some utility for clearing debris. Some magnesium flares maybe… Bring a thermal capable satellite into position over the facility as well."
"I'm afraid that will not be happening. You do of course own the satellites, and you should make use of them in the field, but I will not allow you to use them in training. Such things become crutches very quickly. Not to mention it would practically be cheating, and this is still a school activity."
"Fair enough. We should pack my suit in the carrying case this time. It would be a waste of fuel to keep using delivery pods when we don't have to."
"You intend to carry it?"
"The whole suit only weighs about fifty pounds, and I only have to get it to the locker room. Only reason it required two delivery men was the weight of the crate and the combined weight of all the specialized modules."
Alfred stood, wiping his mouth with a napkin. "Will you be needing anything else tonight master Bruce?"
"No. If you need to find me for any reason, I'll be in the workshop for the next hour."
"Very well. Goodnight sir."
Notes:
USJ is coming next, this is where the story will really start to go off the rails from canon.
Please comment if you have any thoughts! Even a little bit of substantial input helps tremendously!