Jowen2713 - Ah yes, asking the right question. Probably yes, hopefully there is someone around to reanimate Izuku after that happens.
PassiveNox - Yes, but she'll get better :D
(***)
Mei's investigation brought her all the way to some ruined home in the middle of the woods. According to her investigations, some foresters used it before the war. Then it was abandoned and slowly gave in to nature.
That is, until someone moved in. And Mei was certain that it wasn't a legal occupation. Then again, neither was Tsuyu's current accommodation. Considering the state of Japan, no one bothered to pursue people living in not their houses for as long as the legal owner wasn't there to protest.
Crime, yes. But so low on the list of priorities that nobody cared about it. So Izuku wouldn't care about it either.
Considering his need to fly to his destination, he had to go out in the late evening. Then, his dark clothes would make him far less noticeable. It was risky. Thankfully, his mom sent him a text message that she isn't going to return that night (something happened at her work), so he promptly phoned Mei (he needed his mission control for that one) and departed.
Flying wasn't that hard for him at this point. He wasn't going high - too risky if he, for example, lose consciousness or something. But he could go quite fast and for quite a long time, for as long as he didn't have to use his ability for anything else. Or for rapid directional changes.
He reached the edge of the city on foot, then flew over the forest for about thirty minutes, following Mei's instructions. Then he found himself floating above a rundown shed in the middle of the woods.
There was a faint light in the windows. There was life on the inside.
"You sure it's her?" He asks through the headphones.
"Absolutely." Mei replies. "My drone picked up some rocks floating around this very building. I just didn't see the girl using her meta-ability, so I can't tell you anything more."
"So you settled on meta-ability?" He asks while landing on the ground at a distance from the building.
"I mean, we can't just keep calling them powers or abilities." She replies. "And they are kinda meta, now aren't they?"
He sighs.
"Whatever suits you, Mei." He walks towards the building. He uses minuscule bits of his power to make himself lighter. Fewer sounds - and he doesn't want to startle anyone ins…
He decides he is an idiot and simply floats above the ground. Yeah, that's better.
He approaches the shed's entrance door. He isn't planning a confrontation. According to what Mei saw from her drones, the girl inside had a gun. That alone made him deeply disinterested in acting in such a risky manner.
He brought a letter. One in which he introduced himself as a person in possession of supernatural power, one attempting to gather others like him. To survive together - and perhaps made a world less of a messy place.
He mentions Overhaul, a supervillain with control over the yakuza in the area who might end up looking for her. Plus a warning that her attempts to remain concealed weren't as successful as she hoped for. People noticed that something odd was happening in those woods. And Overhaul might do so as well.
After a short deliberation, he added the part where he already saved a girl with a supernatural power that was abused by Overhaul, but considering the level of security his group ramped up after the event, achieving the same again might be extremely hard.
He left her one more solar-rechargeable phone, with an option to contact him if she felt threatened or if she wanted to work together.
Then he quickly leaves and flies back home.
(***)
"You want to do WHAT?" Mei asks him through a video chat first thing in the morning.
Izuku didn't even eat his breakfast. Why is she doing that to him? At least she is wearing clothes this time.
"I'm thinking about changing Tsuyu's house into our group's safehouse." He replies. "If she agrees to it. It's practically furnitured, we have someone to act as a guard on-site so no one steals stuff from us, AND it's away from prying eyes. I just need Tsuyu's agreement to that and… well, your technical help."
"Define technical help." She is simultaneously intrigued and worried.
"It needs electricity and water." He replies. "That's the minimum version. There is still water flowing through the sewers, no idea why, and I think it's mostly clean. So with some filtration or something, I don't know, we should be able to use it at least in showers and for cleaning. But this will need some investments. Plus, the bigger problem, the energy."
She sighs. Painfully.
"Well, I have good and bad news." Oh, dear. "Good news is that I can technically tinker around with solar panels and send them to you piece by piece. BUT I don't think I can vanish from my caretakers' sights long enough to install them. The same with whatever water filtration system I'll piece together. Besides, I'm not a plumber. And you mentioned that their entire basement is flooded, right?"
"Yeah, so it will need some serious remodelling." Izuku admits. "But we'll be able to do that with no one noticing. If everything works out, I'll even be able to get Eri there, so her current caretakers won't be at risk." That's one option. He isn't sure if putting all eggs in one handbasket is a good idea, though.
Mei looks away, her eyes clearly unfocused. She is thinking about something.
"I don't think that you can keep solar panels hidden." She finally says. "I could conceal them to a degree, but if they were large, that wouldn't be feasible. Someone would soon come to check out who moved in." That makes sense. "You said something about the connection to the sewers, yes? Is the water there a running one?"
"Uhm, yes, I think. The exit towards the river is apparently above the water level and quite close to the house. So the water goes towards it." Izuku replies. He is really not a hydrologist. And he only saw the entrance to the sewers. He actually does not know why there is still water in the sewers, except right after a rain. "Why do you ask?"
"I could probably piece up some pico-hydro power generator." She says finally. "It wouldn't produce much energy, but it should be enough for as long as we talk about powering a TV or two, heating water for the tea, and so on. Not an optimal solution, considering the placement, but it would at least be hidden. When winter comes and heaters will have to be on, I'll have to make you a proper power generator, though. So you'll have to get fuel somewhere. But I'll need to get proper measurements of the sewers."
That's still many months away, however. It's early July, after all.
"Mei, you're a lifesaver." He says, and she beams at him. "Now I just need to find an engineer to install all of that, because I'm sure as hell… wait." He can feel his phone vibrating. He pulls it out and… uh-huh. The forest girl. "The floating tree girl is calling me. I'll be back once we finish."
"Have fun." She tells him (her mind's probably already busy designing things). Then she severs the connection.
Izuku picks the phone up.
"Defiant?" The question comes. The voice is… girly.
"That's me, yes." He replies. Is she surprised by his youthful voice? Mei mentioned something about the voice-alteration feature in her soon-to-be Baby #2, and he is looking forward to that. "I apologize for intruding upon your house, but that was the least intrusive way of contacting you that I managed to think of."
"Leaving me a letter in the dead of the night, and freaking me out in the morning, was the least intrusive?" She sounds exasperated. He understands that much.
"Well, you are hiding in the woods. Apparently with a gun and some supernatural power whose exact mechanisms I know nothing about." Izuku replies. "I did not know how jumpy you are, and I decided to meet you indirectly. That was the least intrusive form of indirect contact that I thought of."
She is silent for a few seconds. Then she evidently digests what he said entirely and goes on.
"What are your plans?" Oh, straight to the point. Nice.
"I always dreamed of becoming a superhero." Izuku replies honestly. "Life gave me the means to do just that. I'm stopping crimes in secret, helping cats off the trees, and recently looking for others like me. Encountering Overhaul, a genuine supervillain, was a bit of an eye-opener."
"You're building up an army?" Well, the tone in her voice is noticeably hostile. Izuku can understand that. No one wants to get gang-pressed into a war. Still, why are potential superheroes so hard to recruit? Tsuyu's obstinate as well. Then again, if she doesn't want it, he will not force her.
Villains have it easier because their recruits already decided to be against the law. He, in the meantime, has to deal with people that simply don't want to choose either side. Pain in the ass.
"No." Izuku replies. "Joining my superhero crew is entirely optional. What I'm trying to do is to make sure that people like you aren't kidnapped and forced to do nasty things by people like Overhaul. The girl I mentioned in the letter? She is six years old. So I'm offering you protection. You're free to help me stop Overhaul if you want however, I will not complain."
"Your terms?"
"For protection or joining the superhero crew?" He asks back.
"Both." Huh. Not a very talkative one. Once again, an interesting diversion from dealing with Mei. She talks for them all.
"Protection as long as you aren't committing crimes." Izuku replies. "I don't count you living in someone else's house as a crime, for as long as the owner isn't there to complain. The same with illegal gun ownership. I assume its necessity speaking, not your choice. As for superhero crew, well. Unless your superpower makes you invulnerable to bullets, you're at best going to help from the sidelines. I can't tell you more without knowing what your power is. And without knowing what other skills you have."
It makes objects fly. He suspects that it's connected to gravity. But how? Nobody knows. Besides, Izuku's power has already expressed itself in several interesting ways. Who said other powers can't expand like that?
"Unless you need to build a house, I probably don't have other interesting skills." She replies, and Izuku freezes.
Truly, there is God. And he is endorsing whatever Midoriya is doing. Nothing else could explain this coincidence.
"Actually, I might be establishing a hideout for my little superhero crew right now." Izuku informs the girl on the other end of the line. "Are you interested in having a roof over your head and a company of people with superpowers while within the city's limits in exchange for helping me with electric installation and plumbing?"
"My… my parents had a construction company before the war." She says after a few seconds. "I know the basics, at least. So that shouldn't be the problem."
Oh, this is brilliant.
"Awesome." Izuku replies. "Simply awesome. Listen, I'll call you back in two or three days. I need to get some permissions for the renovations AND get some tools and parts and so on. Is this alright?"
"I… I guess so." The girls sounded surprised by it. Is it about his young age and odd amounts of enthusiasm in a cynical age?
Well, he IS living his dream life.
(***)
He phoned Tsuyu. The frog girl was - per her standards of emotional expressions - overjoyed by the idea. For as long as no one was going to bother her in the basement, except for the renovation process itself.
She really enjoyed Izuku's visits. After the first one, she was no longer that defensive. And not in a constant state of readiness to bolt towards the nearest exit.
She wasn't even fussy about him trying to teach her how to read. She wanted to read the books he mentioned to her on her own. Or at least the comics.
If only he could somehow persuade her to wear clothes while hanging out with him… baby steps, Izuku. Baby steps.
Mei, in the meantime, mumbled something about going to the church on Sunday because there was just no way that the semi-qualified engineer with superpower popped up RIGHT when they needed her.
She was going to start sending the parts to Tsuyu's house tomorrow. With her drones. Apparently, she made a slightly bigger transport one, which was powered up by small solar panels and could fly all the way from Kyoto on an auto-pilot (it then needed to stay on the ground for a while to recharge before going back).
Izuku realized Mei was terrifying when she counted the drone's carrying weight in kilograms of TNT.
(***)
He phones the engineer girl three days after their last meeting. He has temporarily put the search for meta-ability users on hold. There is no point in finding them when you don't have anywhere to put them in.
(It's better than figuring out how to tell Eri her mom is most likely dead, because she vanished from her home the day Eri did, and no one has ever seen her again)
"Uhm, yes?" He hears her through the phone.
"Preparations are finished." Izuku tells her. "Parts and tools are arriving. We have permission from the property owner, so to speak. Are you still on board? We need your engineering expertise to make it work."
He has a lot of skills. The ability to rearrange electrical installations to provide energy for a house in an abandoned district isn't among them.
"Yes, I… I don't really want to live in a forest anymore." Izuku is curious to find out WHY did she live in a forest, to begin with. But she'll tell him when she'll be comfortable with that. If the backstories of Eri and Tsuyu were anything to go by, sometimes having superpowers wasn't a blessing.
"Great." Izuku replies. "Pack everything up. I'll pick you up from your forest home at midnight."
That one time, he'll tell his mom that the junkyard he is carrying the junk from the beach needs a helping hand for a night shift. For as long as this doesn't happen often, she should fall for it. And yes, he hates the fact that he has to lie to her.
(***)
He landed a hundred meters away from the hut. Despite everything, he approached it as cautiously as possible. This could be a trap. Even with Mei's recon drone observing the entire area, he wasn't going to just waltz in.
No activity in the area. Save for a brown-haired girl wearing an aged hoodie, a backpack and a belt with a holstered pistol.
What was it with the meta-ability holders being mostly his age? Except for Overhaul and Eri, everyone was about his age. 17-19. Did something happen 17 to 19 years ago to make more people develop meta-abilities?
Then he noticed a hunting rifle attached to the backpack. Huh. Someone was nicely armed. Unless she lacked ammunition for those. Which was likely. Who would sell that to a girl hiding in the woods?
"Hello there!" Izuku waves his hand. She is a bit startled by it, but quickly composes herself.
"Uhm, you must be Defiant." She slightly botches the pronunciation. Probably out of nerves.
"Yes." He replies while slowly approaching her. He stops when he is five meters away from her. "Is that all that you are taking with you?" The backpack didn't look full of things.
"I don't have a lot of things." She replies, looking down on the ground for a second before forcing her eyes to go back to him. "So, uhm…"
"A quick question first." Izuku interrupts her. "What's your meta-ability?" He isn't turning his back to her before he knows at least that much. It's bad enough that she has a literal gun on her.
"Meta-abil… oh, you mean the power." She blinks at him in surprise for a second. "Wait, I'll show you."
She grabs a large rock from the ground, then touches it with all five fingers of her right hand at once. It seems to glow pink, although faintly. Then she let it off.
Rather than falling to the ground, the rock floats in the air.
This is such a cool meta-ability! Izuku already has an idea or two on how to apply it in combat. Even without it, the possibilities in for example search and rescue after a building collapse were enormous! She could literally lift entire segments of the building without risking that anyone would be crushed!
Mei is going to love seeing another foundation of physics obliterated in front of her.
"Negation of gravity." He says before letting out a whistle. "Nice. Five finger point activation is a new thing, huh." He adds, mostly to himself. "Well, we're going then."
"Wait, what about your po…" She is trying to say something when suddenly she finds herself being pulled both up and towards him. "Wawawawa!" She freaks out a bit, so he lets her down.
Bad move, Izuku.
"Oops. Sorry." Izuku says while she is staring at him in shock. "My meta-ability is telekinesis. Powerful enough to let one person fly all the way back to our hideout. Can you make yourself weightless?"
"Uhm, not for long." She calmed herself down a bit. "I get nauseous. But we can alternate if you… uhm, can I use my quirk on you?"
Dangerous. But he still nods and extends his hand. She doesn't know that, but he set up as many telekinetic barriers around him as he could. If that was a trap, he would not be the one to fall into it.
There is no trap. She touches him and he is suddenly weightless (and she takes a step back). It's a pleasant feeling. He feels slightly nauseous, but he figures out how to counteract it - just a small telekinetic pull to simulate gravity for his ear's labyrinth, to help it orient itself.
Cool.
"I think we won't have to alternate." He informs her. "I can negate nausea on myself with my meta-ability." It clearly surprised her. "Now, let's go!"
It's twenty minutes past midnight. It's pretty dark. But he can still see her beaming at the world when they are flying over the forest. He has to admit, that's a pretty awesome feeling.
(***)
They arrived at the hideout according to schedule. Normally Izuku would land on the edge of it and then continue on foot, but with the girl - Uraraka Ochaco, she introduced herself to him mid-flight - carrying guns, this wasn't exactly an option.
They land three streets away from the hideout. She is visibly spooked by the abandoned district (the ruined houses and empty windows are rather intimidating), but he reassures it doesn't look as scary during the day (it does though) and there is no one to find them here.
A few minutes later, they walk through the entrance door of the hideout. Tsuyu is probably out fishing in the river.
The ground floor includes a now abandoned (and actually pillaged) shop. Its windows are barricaded like all others. Izuku stacked all the shelves to the far end of the room, freeing the space for a small mountain of crates and packages.
Originally, there were Hatsume Industries logos on them. But before they left Kyoto, a certain mad inventor replaced those with some simple geometric symbols (vertical rhombus within a square) with a Metahuman Network written underneath.
Bold words for an organization with two regular members. Even if they are superheroes. But it's a brand, and they need that to appear more professional to whoever they meet. Even if Izuku dislikes the term personally (he just had no idea for a better one).
Uraraka is clearly looking at them for a second or two when the flashlight uncovers the logos for a moment. Then she follows him upstairs.
Izuku cleared one apartment from the belongings of whoever lived there once. He cleaned it up too. A lot of dust. He even took the sheets to a laundr-o-mat and invested some of his money into making the room appear comfortable.
The windows are still barred, except for some small slits. Naturally, it's almost pitch black. If you exclude the light from his flashlight.
He pointed Uraraka towards the entrance to the apartment.
"That will be your home for now." He replies. "One more member is living here, in the basement to be exact, but she is only here during the day."
"Only two members?" That clearly surprised her. Especially with how professional the crates were looking.
"We're only starting the recruitment." Izuku replies. "We have two regular members, but one lives in another prefecture. Tsuyu, the girl in the basement, isn't a member. More like, she is under our protection. Though I'm hoping she'll join us as well. The girl I saved from yakuza is living elsewhere too, because… well." He sighs. "We need running water and electricity first."
"Makes sense." She nods. Or so Izuku thinks. It's hard to say in the darkness. "Anything else?"
"Don't freak out when you see Tsuyu." He prefers to be playing it safe. "She is… her meta-ability makes her half-human half-frog. And I'm still trying to persuade her that wearing clothes is a good idea. She is very friendly, if slightly odd in behaviour. She might come out to meet you before I return here tomorrow to help you start with the renovation, and I'd prefer it if you didn't shoot her by accident."
"Oh." That is all that he hears back.
(***)
He phones his mom that his 'shift' ended earlier, and then returns home. He is tired - that was a lot of flying. But he is also thoroughly unsurprised when Mei sends him a message indicating that he'll either video call her and tell what he found out about the new girl's meta-ability or else.
Mei Hatsume knows his home address, can produce explosives and deliver them with her drone whenever she wants to AND have enough money to lawyer out of the accusations of mass murder. He isn't risking that war.
He calls her from his room.
"And?" It's the first word he hears. Of course.
"She can render everything that she touches with all five finger points weightless." He tells her. "Until she releases her ability by pressing all her fingertips together."
"Oh. My. God." Mei stares at him in a mixture of horror and… well, he would almost call it horniness if it wasn't Mei. Instead, he will call it a combination of excitement and a fixation on something. "What weight limit?"
"Ten tonnes, give or take." That's how much she told him. "It will probably grow as the time passes. It might have already grown, but she had no occasion to test her limits while in the forest."
"Holy. Shit." Mei is almost drooling at him now. "Do you realize what that means?"
"That when meta-abilities become public knowledge, we'll have to keep NASA from kidnapping her?" He replies. Mei beams at him.
"Yes!" He loves when she smiles at him like that. As far as he knows her, it's her highest form of praise. The 'I love working with smart people' packaged into a facial expression by someone who is a genius - and set 'smart' to a very high bar. "The biggest limit to our space exploration is how incredibly costly carrying stuff to orbit is. But she? She can practically yeet packages of spaceship parts or fuel to orbit with her bare hands. Two or three people with meta-abilities like her, working by the clock, and the costs of building anything in space will decrease tenfold!"
Mei using the word 'yeet' is going to be a common feature of his nightmares.
"Great, can I go to sleep now?" Izuku sighs. If he lets unfurl her wings, he is going to still be here when the morning comes.
(***)
The results won't be the Batcave, but... well, at least they'll have a base. Eventually.