The Archivist of Nyx - Awoo will be there, worry not. It will be different type of hilarious. Also Aizawa's really poor only after this chapter. LET THE CHAOS BEGIN!
Spalex00 - Thank you :D
Detrametal - Mitsuki is being very... Bakugou, yeah. Then again, they were best friends with Inko, right? And it's great that someone recognized the Shining reference, Aiko is an eldritch abomination of culture :D
SmokyGhoul - No idea, but he does have something very nice happen to him in a few more chapters.
(***)
"Midoriya." Eraserhead decides to ask, although he is almost certain that he doesn't want to know the answer to his questions. "Why is Hatsume here? Why is she wearing a foreign military uniform and an ushanka cap? Why is Yaoyorozu wearing a different foreign military uniform and a monocle?"
They are all standing at the edge of a large clearing in the forest that's technically part of the greater UA compound, just not exactly used for a lot of things. The word 'all' includes Midoriya, Yaoyorozu, Hatsume, the four teachers doing the inspections, and, oddly enough, Kirishima, Shimura, Uraraka and Denki.
"You aren't going to ask why I'm wearing a uniform as well, Aizawa-sensei?" Midoriya looks vaguely hurt by it.
"I just don't want to know." Aizawa replies honestly. "Now, please answer the questions." He has to know what they are dealing with. As soon as possible.
"Well, we've managed to figure out what exactly is Yaomomo's quirk using as fuel… I mean, it was rather obvious that it wasn't a direct mass-to-mass conversion, as she doesn't have enough fat to not turn into a skeleton after a single battle." Midoriya says, casually dropping the bomb that everyone thus far misunderstood her quirk. "My first theory was that her body has a quirk adaptation that makes her fat storage much denser, but she assured me that her weight is perfectly normal. So it had to be something else."
Yaoyorozu doesn't seem to care about his words. Surprising. That, or Eraserhead understands women less than he thought (and he already had a rather low estimate of his ability in that field).
"So, since we knew that we were looking for fuel rather than material to be converted into something else, we managed to strike a breakthrough!" Midoriya announces with a bright, wide smile. "Through the development of some special snacks composed almost entirely of the right compounds, we've managed to allow her to produce much more things!".
Eraserhead somehow develops a deep desire to expel him at the spot. He doesn't yet know why. He just knows that it should be done for the good of them all.
"That doesn't answer my questions." He replies instead. Because, alas, he can't. Nedzu would just re-enroll him. And that's NOT a very educational thing.
"Well, we've decided to make the training of her ability a bit more… fun." Midoriya replies and Eraserhead shudders internally. "Because certainly, most of her strength comes from new designs, but the sheer volume of what she produces has a more long-term influence of improving the quantity of things she can produce. More practice, more cost-efficient and faster assembly. In short."
"So…" Aizawa decides to give him a slight push to finally move to the subject.
"So we've decided to organize proper training for that!" Midoriya beams at him, completely oblivious at Eraserhead slowly starting to have nightmares with him starring in the main role. "My clothes have been modeled after General Patton, a very good American commander during the Second World War. I believe Yaomomo came clothed after General Erwin Rommel, although with an added monocle for style, yes?"
"Jawohl, kommandant." Yaoyorozu promptly replied, before taking a sip of tea from a cup that Eraserhead wasn't sure where she brought from. It certainly wasn't there a few seconds ago.
"Well, and Hatsume is just… generally Russian, I think?" Mei nods. "She is here because of her babies…"
"Our babies." She says, while absentmindedly playing with what Eraserhead would have recognized as a gold star medal of the Hero of the Soviet Union if he knew more about ancient history.
"Alright, our babies, were necessary in the establishment of this exercise." Midoriya concludes. "Well, she also helped with assembly, because Yaoyorozu certainly can't produce all of that at once! We amassed it for close to a week, starting at the Yaoyorozu's estate, but they and Principal Nedzu were nice enough to move all of it here."
"Move all of what exactly, Midoriya?" Eraserhead asks, despite not wanting to know the answer. Yayorozu and Hatsume suddenly whip up some sort of tablets and click on their screens.
Suddenly they can all hear a distant roar of engines. Very, very heavy engines.
"Midoriya, you didn't." Aizawa starts realizing what it is about. He doesn't have the right time to voice his displeasure before TANKS (and one or two non-tanks but still armed military vehicles) start rolling onto the field in front of them from the opposite ends.
Ten machines per side. If he recognizes them correctly, one side is all German machines. The other, all Russian. All of them look old. Judging from their commanders' outfits, probably from the Second World War.
"This time, I'm going to win!" Hatsume shouts. Eraserhead wants to shout as well, but he is too dazed by the madness in front of him to utter a word.
"No you won't." Momo gives her a wry smile while standing at attention and fixing her monocle. "Because German engineering is the world's finest!"
Mei replies by singing. In Russian. Eraserhead is told later that it's a song called 'Katyusha'. Which is a very apt name, although he realizes that only when his question about how they are going to count kills if they can't use explosives is answered by the Katyusha on Hatsume's side suddenly unleashing its explosive payload at the encroaching German steel.
They have explosives.
They got permission for them.
Snipe agreed to that for as long as they let him drive a tank. And for as long as they are cautious with them.
Momo (and Mei), somehow, managed to earn licenses for handling explosives. They were qualified (if low on experience) bomb experts. It was Midoriya's idea that they managed to realize in record time.
NO ONE TOLD ERASERHEAD ABOUT THAT.
Aizawa is suddenly happy that Nedzu hired Mr. Compress and Stain because he is about to murder Snipe and he isn't taking over his classes.
(***)
Yaoyorozu won. It was rather one-sided too. Hatsume didn't seem to mind. For her, it was just another occasion to show her babies to people. She decided that this presentation (of a remote-control system for the tanks) was a success, at least judging from four absolutely stunned (and maybe a bit horrified) teachers in front of her.
What came next was the second stage of the quirk exercise. Yaoyorozu promptly created a giant electromagnet. Uraraka made it - and Denki - weightless. He hopped on top of it, and began to power it up, practicing his long-term low-level power discharge (although it was actually rather high-level, just not his standard discharge level).
The electromagnet was then promptly sent flying over the field, gathering up smaller pieces of metal scattered by the explosions. With Denki still on top of it. Apparently Uraraka figured out how to control the gravity of objects to a degree - and spread the effect to adjacent items.
So she was continuously spreading it from the electromagnet to whatever new items were attached to it, the amount of negated weight growing with every object. She held it for as long as she could, and when she could do it no longer, the electromagnet dropped to the ground.
Then Shimura turned everything to dust, while trying to do it either as fast as possible, or as detailed as possible, or to only influence some of it at first and so on. And the electromagnet continued its journey until the field was clear from most but the heaviest debris.
Which was then dusted by Shimura or used as punching bags by for example Bakugou (although they took the unexploded ordnances out before letting him do it).
"Do I want to ask why Kirishima is here as well?" Eraserhead asks. He feels like he got ten years older during the past thirty minutes. The teachers accompanying him appear to have done so as well.
"I mean, his quirk is about resisting attacks, tanks are useful in training this." Midoriya replies. "And in measuring the growth in his quirk's strength."
Eraserhead stares at him, his mouth open. Surely this isn't what he thinks, right? Surely he is only… wait, what else could this possibly mean?
"Midoriya." Eraserhead asks slowly and carefully. "Did you… fire a tank cannon at Kirishima to test his durability?"
"Yep!" Midoriya doesn't recognize the abject horror in his teacher's voice and replies with a wide, happy smile on his face. "We started with machine guns, then slowly went up. It's a perfect form of training, because it includes both explosions and impacts, especially the penetrative ones! Of course, we're sending Kirishima to regular check-ups with Recovery Girl, especially when we just one-upped the calibre."
"And it's super manly!" Kirishima looks pumped up. Ectoplasm looks even more like a ghost. Cementoss is slackjawed at the horror in front of him, and Midnight looked like she was considering leaving the country and becoming a nun to escape from her traumatic past as UA teacher.
"Midoriya." Eraserhead takes a deep breath in. "What is wrong with you?"
He has the audacity to look shocked by the suggestion that something's wrong with him.
(***)
Eraserhead decides to start again. But with someone notably more… subdued. Something to help the teachers get a breather for a moment and stop themselves from going insane. As they are very, very close to losing it.
Surely, Kouda Koji can't have a weird training exercise, right? He has that fuzzy and shy personality, and his quirk is about talking with animals. Midoriya can't do anything weird with that, right?
"What do you mean…" Eraserhead really wants to die right now. "... by 'deer jousting'?"
They were wrong. Midoriya managed to do something weird with that.
They enter Koji's personal training area to see Mineta and Nirengeki Shoda of class 1-B battling it out. Both of them are riding atop particularly large deers, using their antlers as handlers and trying to throw each other from their mounts with long sticks pretending to be lances.
Kouda is in the background. He is giving another deer a small wad of money (WHY). The deer delicately takes it into its mouth, and departs into the forest.
What the fuck? What the ACTUAL EVERLIVING FUCK? What just happened? Why did it happen? Did someone sneak some drugs in Eraserhead's coffee? Why would a dear accept money?
"Well, normally animals can't comprehend very detailed instructions." Midoriya starts his explanations. "However Kouda can tell them to do rather complicated things. I've made a theory that repeated usages of his quirks on the same animals actually stimulate their intellectual growth. They don't make them much smarter, but they expand their horizons, introducing new, human concepts and so on. So… we've begun to experiment on how far we can take them."
Alright, Eraserhead. You are a teacher. A veteran hero. Sure, someone must have hit you with an insanity-inducing quirk, but you can do it. Do it the same way as you did your relationship with Emi ever since she knocked your house door's in and dragged you out for a date.
Wing it.
"So… you started to bribe them?" Be calm. Be calm. Be calm. "What do they even need money for?"
"Oh, there is a shop down the street that sells a lot of natural food." Midoriya replies. "Almost at the forest's edge. We made a deal with the owner that they exchange the money brought by the deers for some food that they can eat safely. Apparently having deers come out of the forest to buy food from you really drives your sales up when you're selling organic food. We're actually getting most of the money back for this, especially after they realized what a spike in popularity it gave them. "
Well, he can imagine that.
"Midoriya." Eraserhead really wants to jump out of the window now. Alas, he is outside. No windows in sight. "Stop corrupting the local wildlife, please."
Kouda quickly starts gesticulating. Sign language. Thankfully, Eraserhead knows it (so does Midoriya, but that concludes the list of people who can speak it in the vicinity).
"Koji." Eraserhead is sooo done right now. "Refer to this as 'teaching your furry friends about the joys of living in a capitalist society' again, and I swear to god, you're going to get expelled faster than you can say 'public ownership of the means of production'. Did I make myself clear?"
Even more gestures. Koji seems to be vaguely pouting (hard to say when you look like you're a stone golem).
"Koji, no." Eraserhead is adamant. "You aren't teaching them how to compete with humans on the market in order to obtain financial independence. You are messing up their lives. Stop doing that." More signs. "What do you mean by 'I refuse to close my pet rabbit's stock market portfolio'?"
"He is either very lucky, or actually figured out more about it than we did." Midoriya comments from the side. "I mean, he isn't getting wealthy or anything, this is still the real world. But he is consistently earning a few percent more money than he is losing. And we have no idea how."
Eraserhead pinches the bridge of his nose. He is so absolutely tired right now. He knew that it was going to be bad, but he didn't know that it was going to be THIS bad.
It's not even all that insane. Kouda speaks animal language, but the point is, animals DON'T have a language. How do you explain to a dog what colour red or a square shape is? They need to understand instructions, otherwise Kouda's quirk would be no better than normal animal training. Or animal control (and those typically let you control one or two animals, not a small army of that - that requires giving them some degree of autonomy).
So, naturally, it has to bestow certain degrees of instinctual understanding of human concepts to whatever animal gets influenced by it, if only enough of it to understand simplified instructions. Like, 'attack the man in red clothes' without a long description of what 'red' and 'clothes' and 'man' are. Doubly so to report to Kouda what they saw when used as scouts.
Midoriya simply went plus ultra with testing how far it goes. Expanding the limits of Kouda's quirk in the process.
Only he, of all people, noticed that it had to work like that. Literally everyone else just treated Kouda as some nondescript Doolittle-wannabe. Or more like, a random guy who can make an animal do some tricks. Probably including Kouda himself.
Eraserhead was still thinking deeply about the implications of this (such as the absolutely endless capacity of Koda Koji for acting as an animal trainer, one capable of making any animal do things basically impossible to normal animals), when a crow appeared out of nowhere, landed on Kouda's shoulder and leaned towards his face. Eraserhead could see a banknote in its beak.
"Koji." Kouda finally has the decency of looking ashamed. "One week detention, unless you manage to convince me that this bird understands the difference between money that is owned by someone and money that was lost by its owner and thus can be brought to you without it being an act of theft."
Kouda failed to do it and promptly obtained the first detention in his life.
Its length gets doubled when one of the two deers used as mounts sticks its tongue out at Eraserhead.
(***)
"So…" All Might (okay, Yagi Toshinori) shows up to ask them a question when they return to the teacher's lounge.
They all look like walking corpses. The things they saw… Midoriya was a mad genius when quirks were involved. Absolute, mad genius.
That, or he was cheating. Honestly, Aiko might have already become a deity when no one was looking and was now fucking up with everyone under her thrall (and the fabric of reality as well) at her brother's instructions. Eraserhead wouldn't be surprised.
"Worse than we expected." Eraserhead says. The other three teachers nod faintly from their seats. "Much worse."
All Might decides to sit. In his opinion, the best part of having a stomach again was that he could drink. Alas, most of what he drank was actually coca-cola. And what he just heard sounded like something that requires something heavier to deal with.
"What about the provisional license exam?" He asks. Eraserhead chuckles bitterly.
"This isn't even a question of whether they'll pass it." He replies. "Only how much they are going to terrify and humiliate the other participants in the process. Despite having one year less to hone their skills."
"Honestly, we'll probably stop teaching them about hero stuff after the first year." Ectoplasm adds. He is leaning back on his chair, staring emotionlessly into space. "They'll have it all covered. Rest will just be training fundamentals, getting practical experience in the field, contacts in the business and normal subjects."
"What the hell is wrong with this year's students?" Midnight asks. Her upper body is lying face-down on the table. With her head in that position, she is speaking into the table. "Is this some sort of social experiment? Is this Nedzu's giant prank? Are we teaching some next generation androids or aliens pretending to be humans?"
This is a progress in a way. At least when compared to the idea that they are all eldritch abominations from hell that she had about thirty minutes ago.
Okay, the eldritch abomination class is still many years in the future, at least if Aiko is only a vanguard of her generation. Did Nedzu's school get so famous that monsters from other dimensions were enrolling their only outwardly human children to it? Is All Might actually an eldritch abomination that decided to become a hero in the human world for kicks? That would explain an awful lot.
"Half of them will land in the Top 100 right after graduating." Cementoss comments. "I wouldn't be surprised if some, most likely Midoriya, Yaoyorozu, Bakugou, Todoroki and Yoarashi, graduated straight into Top Ten. People are going to remember this year's UA students as something else."
In Eraserhead's opinion, their quirks are already there. They only lack actual combat experience, which is why they would still need numerical superiority to win against the PLF heavy hitters (or present Top Heroes). But once they figure this out…
All Might looks torn between paternal pride and abject horror at what the future was going to hold.
(***)
Eraserhead isn't even surprised when he returns to the teacher's lounge two days later to see Sako Atsuhiro playing poker with his rabbit. The one that he uses for vanishing tricks.
They are both utterly unable to read each other's bluffs. Atsuhiro was winning, but it's a way less narrow victory than Eraserhead thought possible in such circumstances.
(***)
One week later Eraserhead was happily walking down the road on the UA grounds. The classes were over, Midoriya didn't do anything crazy while they were happening, things were going just as planned.
That's when he heard a tank engine's roar. Approaching him.
Oh no.
He didn't recognize the exact type of a tank, but it was a lighter one. He could see Aiko Midoriya in a tanker helmet staring at him from the commander's hatch at the top of the turret. Naturally, someone covered it in occult symbols to keep with the whole Dreaded Aiko theme.
Eri Midoriya was also wearing a tanker's helmet, only she was looking around (clearly enthusiastic about the whole ordeal) from another hatch in front of the turret.
Oh God, it was spreading. Especially after Yaoyorozu figured out how to produce fuel. Cost-efficiently. Hatsume was already experimenting with various additives for increased performance and lower environmental impact.
It was bad enough that Snipe arrived at school yesterday driving a Sherman Firefly (with some limited automation so that he could drive it on his own). Now, this. Sure, they couldn't drive them outside of the UA grounds, and they weren't carrying any explosives, but…
The tank passes by him. After half a minute Eraserhead has a dreadful realization that he didn't see any adults in that tank. So he promptly chases after it.
Thankfully, they aren't driving it quickly. It's pretty much a walking speed. Nedzu was rather adamant about no tank driving competitions on the school grounds (fun and happiness aside, what if someone was run over? Someone who wasn't Kirishima, because Aizawa is 90% sure that Midoriya drove a tank over him at some point for 'training').
There are now rather restrictive speed limits on UA grounds. With a sign underneath mentioning that they only apply to tanks. Midoriya (and the enfant terrible duo of Yaoyorozu and Hatsume) was, of course, to blame.
Turned out that yes, they had someone else aboard. Unfortunately, Mandalay's nephew (currently visiting Aiko, his best friend for life) doesn't count as adult oversight. Neither does Satsuki, Tsuyu Asui's six year old younger sister, who apparently got talked into it by Eri (her best friend for life since they both moved into the UA).
Hatsume child-proofed the tank's inside. She had the audacity of thinking that it covered all issues. What if the fuel spilled and caused a fire inside of the tank? No, Kouta, you being there with your water quirk doesn't constitute an answer. And what if someone fell off their hatch and got wounded or run over by their very own tank? Why is no one thinking about safety nowadays?!
Eraserhead wants his class to graduate as soon as possible and let him live in peace.
(***)
1-A Chatroom
AcidParty: you know what
AcidParty: I absolutely love this school
AcidParty: especially once it turned into a boarding one
AcidParty: Everything's crazy but in a good way
Invisible: YES
Decay: yes
Decay: when I wanted to play a tank simulator, Hatsume turned one of Yaoyorozu's tanks into a life-sized controller
Decay: Only on UA, people
Riot: All Might's giving me workout tips
Riot: I wholeheartedly agree
ZapZap: *remembers his youtube channel that he is running with Endeavor's son*
ZapZap: Yeah, absolute madness
AcidParty: did you notice that the madness grows progressively stronger the more time Aiko-sama spends with us
ClassPresident: please stop worshiping my sister as a deity
ClassPresident: We have more time to spend together now due to the whole boarding school part
ClassPresident: it's in no way connected to her
BlackDarkness: I know it's a bad moment
BlackDarkness: But I'd like to point out that the Japanese Association of Sapient Quirks is in the process of getting converted into worshiping Aiko as their goddess and savior.
BlackDarkness: Dark Shadow claims that he is getting a lot of converts and that it's on the way to make the Church of Aiko into its official religion, but I'm not sure how much it's them going verbally along for fun.
BlackDarkness: Should I cut Dark Shadow from spending time on the internet?
ClassPresident: …
ClassPresident: I'm so done with this.
Mindhack: I'd like to point that out that this school used a hundred meters tall murder-mecha for its entrance exam, freely letting their potential students suffer broken bones or worse in order to get accepted. And people were going along with it.
Mindhack: No complaints, despite it being incredibly dangerous.
Mindhack: What we are doing is at best comparable to this, not worse.
Mindhack: Sanity is overrated, either way.
ClassPresident: Yeah, precisely.
ClassPresident: And don't have me started on the UA transmitting children's fights (sport festival) as entertainment.
ClassPresident: Sure, quirked people are generally much tougher than those before the quirks, but c'mon.
ClassPresident: It's a miracle that no one has died thus far.
GravityGirl: Oh
GravityGirl: That's one idea that I didn't have.
GravityGirl: Guess I'm not going to watch UA school festivals ever again.
AcidParty: … yeah
ClassPresident: watch it
ClassPresident: Nedzu needs the money for security and to pay the teachers.
ClassPresident: Plus, well, assemble murder robots to mess up the potential students while denying the chance to get enrolled for those with less flashy quirks.
ClassPresident: … nvm, please don't watch it.
Mindhack: lol
GravityGirl: ;_;
ClassPresident: BACK TO THE MAIN SUBJECT
ClassPresident: Provisional license exam in one more week guys.
ClassPresident: And honestly, we're slowly reaching the limits of what I can consider easy quirk gains.
ClassPresident: I've run out of unexplored avenues (plus the results of quirks being fundamentally misunderstood because most of the quirk counselors are a joke) for you to move through. From now on, it's all repetitive training and potential quirk awakenings in some extreme circumstances.
ClassPresident: So right now we have to deal with the UA Crush.
ZapZap: With what?
ClassPresident: Apparently it's normal for other schools to gang up on UA students during the provisional license exam, as their quirks were shown to the world during the school festival.
ClassPresident: Since we are all first years instead of second years, we can expect them to double up on that.
ClassPresident: Eraserhead isn't planning to tell us about it, but… well, I have sources.
CreativeSpirit: … of course you have.
BoomBoom: -censored- yeah
BoomBoom: time for murder
GaleForce: yes
GaleForce: this is going to be awesome
GaleForce: let's crush the crush
ClassPresident: oh that's certainly our plan!
ClassPresident: We're going to test some early game class-wide tactics to make sure everyone passes during the next week
ClassPresident: anyone has something against it? something to add?
BlackDarkness: Dark Shadow has an idea.
BlackDarkness: but I'm not sure if you'll agree
ClassPresident: …
ClassPresident: Does it include Aiko?
BlackDarkness: yes
ClassPresident: then the answer is no
AcidParty: EXERCISE IN DEMOCRACY
AcidParty: we're voting about it
AcidParty: But first, BlackDarkness, tell us about it!
(***)
I have no idea what sort of drugs I was under when writing this chapter. But the goal was 'put as much crack in it as possible without yeeting the 'treated seriously' out of the window'. I hope I succeeded.
Also Kouta you playboy, driving a vehicle around with three ladies your age inside? Wow, he started early.