Harleking31: Stain has a quirk yeah, but it's only paralyzing people when he drinks their blood
He displayed insane amounts of durability, speed, and strength in his fight, not to mention spacial awareness, which weren't related to his quirk. Plus he got pretty resourceful with a couple of cheap homemade support items
And Aizawa fights Quirkless against everyone, he just evens the playfield against some of his opponents. He learnt his fighting style with the capture tool through sheer training (took him 6 years but he did it)
And there's a black market of support items going on, surely getting your hands on some decent equipment for an acceptable isn't all that difficult if you really put your back into it, or villains wouldn't be getting s***
Re: Fair. If anything, he exist in a place above-and-beyond IRL Olympian Athletes. As for his "cheap homemade support items", they're just knives and swords and shit he hasn't properly maintained since his appearance in My Hero Academia: Vigilantes. Aizawa similary being able to leap to and from power lines is impressive, as is his martial arts abilities.
HOWEVER! The current issue is that my SI reincarnated into the body of an 11-year-old who'd been napping in the Coma Ward for a year, so it's not like under ordinary circumstances he could reach Stain & Aizawa's levels of superhuman ability; not without seriously stunting his growth.
As for Illegal Support Items, that requires start-up capital.
LoamyCoffee: Not much for me to say but that I'm liking your headcanon for this so far. Ooh, don't worry kid. The readers will have b*** in your place, fantastic and irritating to be aware that something is hot but your body isn't able to react just yet.
Ooh, aftershocks of placing a soul in a new body?
Re: Puberty in of itself is a living hell for one who's been through that awkwardness already. And you can't really tackle that in anything other than an Isekai story; that or just a very-specific circumstance.
As for what capped the previous chapter…~
*AHA*
As I'd said to myself the night before, I left "tomorrow's problem" for myself to deal with the next day.
Sure, anyone half my physical age would've been shouting from the rooftops if a Quirk-like event manifested itself, but it had been late, and I didn't want to drag anyone out of bed. Way I figured it, if it wasn't a one-off, what was potentially my Quirk wasn't going anywhere. If it was a one-off caused by dain bramage, better I found out in the morning where everyone was amenable and not dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.
It was important to treat people the way you wanted to be treated, because that shit did pay forward!
I mean… Isekaitis was real, so that meant Karma was a thing? Right? Right?!
Moving on, with all that in mind, once Hitomi had arrived for her morning check-in, the staff and I got to work to see if what happened last night in front of the bathroom sink was my Quirk.
The lazy option to check for this sort of thing was to take an X-Ray of both feet and see whether or not a certain joint in the pinkie toe was absent. However, that method's infallibility had been disproven years ago since it didn't account for Latent Quirks; Quirks that manifested not through the body's maturation like the X-Gene in Marvel, but instead activated in response to external stressors like the Meta-Gene in DC Comics.
Though in my opinion, a missing toe joint just seemed like lazy, lazy writing…
The more-accurate, labor-intensive option, was to run bloodwork and/or tissue samples and seek out the Plus Alpha, the "Quirk Factors" summing the physical and genetic traits that composed a person's Quirk. Say a person had [Fire Breathing]; not only would their body have the instructions to convert chemical energy into thermal energy, the body would also have the instructions to create the necessary "insulation" to stop you from cooking yourself from the inside out.
On the inverse however, Quirks didn't always come with secondary powers that made them actually usable. Sometimes a person with a Fire Quirk would utterly lack the necessary [Fire Proofing] or [Fire Immunity] to make use of their Quirk, so they would either exhaust themselves, or in the worst case, inflict crippling first or even third-degree burns on themselves. A person who could protrude bone spikes like the "Wolverine Frog" might lack the Healing Quirk necessary to close up after they retracted aforementioned bone spikes. A person who could fire concussive blasts from their eyes might utterly lack the "bracing" necessary to use their Quirks without snapping their necks and killing themselves, if they were lucky.
The above cases were known as "Secondary Quirk Dysfunction", a percentage of Meta Abilities expressing this property. Sometimes a person could grow out of that phase through the natural maturation that came with growing up into an adolescent or to adulthood, as a more-mature body was simply better-suited to handling the power; like how "Kid" Goku in Dragonball GT could still use his [Super Saiyan] transformation, but his ten-year-old body wasn't mature enough to handle that much power running through it. On the inverse, a Quirk could remain self-destructive no matter how mature the body was.
The concept of Quirks in of itself was fascinating, even if only from a spectator's point of view. However, happening upon the "Quirk Singularity Theory" by now-disgraced Quirkologist, Kyudai Garaki during the course of my studies… While the theory itself isn't a popular one, given this new world places so-much value on how-strong one's Quirk is and/or how-well one can control it… at the very least I can understand why people would want to bury their heads in the sand on such a subject. If Quirks became something rampant, uncontrollable, it could undo the quote/unquote "peace" this world has managed to achieve.
The even-less-popular "Quirk Extinction Theory", a follow-up to Kyudai Garaki's work by another Quirkologist (who had the good sense to publish this theory anonymously), postulates that as Quirks continue to grow stronger and more complex, so too would the level of Quirk-related violence. This could either be caused by mental disorders brought about by the onset of Quirks requiring more processing power than an un-augmented brain could provide, or just their sheer destructive capability that the older generation can't hope to match and the temptation therein.
That was the short-term.
In the long, the growing complexity of Quirks and violent incidents could result in either the complete extinction of all mankind as mass conflicts and hysteria broke out, or the self-destructive end of all those with paranormal powers leaving those without Quirks to pick up the pieces after the literal-and/or-metaphorical fur stopped flying.
This part of the "Quirk Extinction Theory" was doubly-unpopular because of the religious undertones it brought to mind.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Matthew 5:5
And make no mistake, mothers could still lift their cars off of babies, brilliant minds could create world-changing technologies, but to be Quirkless was still synonymous with being "meek".
The only reason David Shield, greatest Support Item and Hero Costume designer in the world, and Nobel Prize winner on top of all that, got as many accreditations as he had was because he had a Quirk. Had he not had one, it was likely he'd have spent his career being passed over for those only passably brilliant, as long as they themselves possessed even the most minor of Quirks, if not having his work stolen outright under the pretense that "a Quirkless person could never come up with something so-brilliant".
A depressing thought, to be honest.
Doubly-so because in my case, the Villain that had attacked "Takehiko" in the orphanage had directly damaged the Quirk Factor, meaning if this body's original Quirk was still in there, it no longer had the software necessary to activate it.
Sooo… barring some sort of "Quirk Factor Transplant" or something else equally shady, in this country, I was potentially doomed to working in a Black Company until all the overtime, mental, and physical abuse of an over-worked and under-paid manager killed me. That, or all those things caused someone else to go postal, killing everyone in the building with a runaway Quirk during a Death March when the flesh was spongy and bruised.
At least if I didn't play up my "tiger hair" for everything it was worth. Even Heteromorphs with the most vestigial of physical abnormalities were better-off than those without any Quirk at all.
Of course that, was a story for another day…
*AHA*
"I'm worried about him…" Hitomi hummed somberly as she picked at her mid-day meal.
"Take-chan? About what?" Kaminaga asked.
"It's about his bloodwork…" she said somberly. "What he said happened to him last night sounds like a Quirk, but if he's still Quirk Factor Negative, then…"
Kaminaga simply nodded, since it went without saying what that'd mean for his future.
"I'm scared… I'm scared of what's going to happen to him," she said turning her gaze out the window. "Kids will make fun of you if your Quirk is 'lame', but it's even worse if you don't have one at all. Doubly so if you go to school near a Hero Academy."
Quirkless Abuse was allegedly at its absolute worst in Musutafu near the Shizuoka Prefecture because of its proximity to Yuuei. Not like that was something people liked to advertise, given how "un-heroic" it was, especially in the shadow of All Might's alma mater. And given half the juvenile Villains that cropped up were Hero School Rejects who couldn't make the cut but still felt like the world owed them something… well…
There was a reason being a Hero, and being Altruistic, tended to be mutually exclusive.
"But didn't Takehiko have one to start with? What was it called? [Structure Appraisal]?"
"Yes, it was…" Hitomi hummed, a little embarrassed she'd let that detail about him slip in the past year. "However, if he goes back into the public school system, I don't think they'll take him at his word if he says 'a Villain stole my Quirk'."
"Even though there are guys out there like Eraserhead or Negator that can cancel Quirks?"
"Both of them are Underground Heroes who largely conceal the fine print of their Quirks, and even then it's only temporary. What happened to Takehiko… Having your Quirk outright stolen is the stuff of old wives' tales. If he says that, then-"
"They'll double down and bully him even worse," Kaminaga hummed somberly. "Well… How long do the brass need him around for?" she questioned, since being Quirkless was of less social import the further from Elementary School one got.
Sure, people without Quirks did get passed over for promotions and career advancement in the working world, but that was only in the absolute worst of circumstances. If you were good at your job, and people could recognize that, it stopped mattering whether you had a Quirk or not.
Contrary to popular belief, it was possible to have a fulfilling life without a Quirk. You just had to work for it a little harder, was all.
"I don't know… And I haven't been able to tell him about… about…"
"Abouuuut the crazy guy who was carving him up in his sleep?"
"Well, I mean… Dr. Shiga never left any marks so-"
"Hey, at least that creepy-ass surgeon can't cut him up now that he's awake, right?" Kaminaga asked.
"Yes… I suppose he can't…"
*AHA*
Based on my testimony from the night prior, the possibility existed that what occurred was a visual and auditory hallucination.
Dain bramage could still come about from those recovering from comas, especially if the coma was Quirk-related, so after lunch while my bloodwork was being run, Hitomi wheeled me into a room with a large CT Scanner; a technology that hadn't changed, at least on the exterior, very much since the 21st century. Apparently this model could also do live screenings of neural activity, which became increasingly important as Quirks and Quirk Factors came further into play in the field of medicine. If dain bramage could make a Quirk run rampant, that shit needed to be locked down pronto!
"Takehiko-kun, do you have any fillings or piercings we need to worry about?" the technician inquired from the adjoining room.
"Pretty sure I don't," I say picking at my teeth.
At the very least, Takehiko had stayed abreast of his oral hygiene before switching to an all-liquid diet…
"Don't worry, he doesn't," Hitomi reassured.
Well, if anyone was to know the intricacies of my current body, it would be her.
"Alright, then. If you can just lay down, we can get started."
After that, there wasn't much I needed to do other than lay back and let myself be slid into the machine's interior. I'd have tapped my finger on the slab I was laying on, but I didn't want to do anything that'd skew the results.
"So, can you repeat for me what it is you saw?" the technician inquired.
"Well, I was brushing my teeth, my hand spasmed-"
Hitomi winced.
"-, I dropped my toothbrush, I reach down to grab it, and suddenly, everything just freezes like I hit the Pause button on the remote."
"And the reason you didn't bring this to anyone's attention then?"
"I didn't want to drag anyone out of bed in the middle of the night," I answered. "If it wasn't a one-off, it'd be there regardless of when I told anyone about it. If it was a one-off, well… Better I find out in the morning where everyone is amenable from not getting dragged out of bed in the middle of the night."
" . . . A fair assessment," the man conceded. "I don't want to get your hopes up, but it might be possible to possess powers independent of the Plus Alpha."
"What, like ESP or PK?"
"I'm amazed someone your age even knows what that means."
"Oh, Takei-kun is very, very smart!" Hitomi said singing my praises. "Before I met him, I never knew about the Russians attempting to harness psychic power before Paranormality. Something about how during the Cold War when everyone was pointing nukes at each other, the East and the West kept searching for the next big weapon to throw over the Iron Curtain."
"Oh? Sounds like Takehiko is very knowledgeable," the CT operator conceded. "You must really enjoy history."
"I suppose…" I hummed aloud.
It wasn't that I was a history buff; I was the farthest thing from. It's just, in the 23rd century where everyone paid attention to nothing but Heroes-this and Heroes-that, any special attention paid to the time before Paranormality without looking it up from a book or a phone was considered amazing. Almost like everyone forgot there was a world before superpowers.
Well, their ignorance is my gain, I suppose. Unfortunately, I don't think my meta-knowledge will do anything about Japanese history…
But that's a story for another day.
"That time-stopping sensation. Do you think you can activate it again?" the technician asked.
"Maybe… If I focus on the memory, I might be able to 'trigger' it again," I say aloud. 'Unless it's like in Attack on Titan where Eren couldn't Titan Shift until he had a 'task' in mind, like that thing with the spoon. Or was it a fork…?' I mused to myself.
"Alright then. I'll keep the scanner running for any abnormalities, although…"
"I won't get my hopes up," I assured him. "At the very least, I want to put this thing to bed."
Inhaling through my nose, and exhaling through my mouth, I emptied my mind, recalling as much of that memory as I could; the sensation, the urgency, of wanting to catch my toothbrush before it hit the ground.
After a few moments, that foreign rumbling hit me like a quake, that high-pitched whine heralding a sudden vividness of clarity before my eyes, while everything else delineated between red and blue.
*AHA*
"Hmmmmmm…" Hitomu hummed, squinting through her special mono-lensed glasses since the monitors' "blue light" wasn't exactly present; a common issue amongst mono-eyes. "I'm not really sure what any of this means."
"It's understandable. Neuroscience had to rapidly evolve as the Plus Alpha changed what went on upstairs," the CT technician replied. "Emitter Quirks, 'Elemental' especially, use a lot of processing power, while Transformation-Type rely more on muscle memory. Mutant Quirks can radically alter the shape of a brain based on what additional limbs and physical attributes one possesses. In special cases, it'll take two or three experts just to find out what's wrong with a single brain."
"And is there anything wrong with his?"
"Well… The coma didn't do him any favors, but what I'm really worried about is the damage we can't see."
" . . . "
*Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep!*
"W-What's happening?!" Hitomi cried out.
"His brain's lighting up like a Christmas tree," the CT technician replied. "Takehiko, are you alright in there?"
"Y-Yeah, I'm fine…" Takehiko replied, a hand going up to his forehead. "It… It wasn't a full 'stop' this time. More like… slow motion, I guess?"
"You guess?"
"I mean… unless there's just something wrong with that clock across from the CT machine," Takehiko replied. "It kinda looked like the second hand got lazy all of a sudden."
"Hmmm. Interesting," the technician mused. "Think you can do it again?"
"That feeling of an icepick between my eyes tells me 'noooooo'."
"Well, at least he isn't putting on airs," Hitomu mused cutely.
*AHA*
"So… What's the verdict?" I asked.
"Well… I'd need to pass these findings along to a specialist, but there's definitely something going on up there," the technician mused looking at his monitors. "That being said, this ability of yours… I'd hesitate using it too-frequently."
"Why so?" I asked, ceding toward the opinion of someone infinitely more-knowledgeable about the human brain than I. "Icepick-feeling notwithstanding, I mean."
"The human brain only takes up 2% of the body's weight, barring deviations caused by the Plus Alpha. Despite how-little mass it takes up in comparison, at-standing, the brain consumes 20% of the body's sum energy reserves."
"And you're afraid I might empty my battery?"
"In a sense," the doctor admitted. "I'm no expert in ESP, and most PK users are phonies, but this ability in of itself… It could put a tremendous strain on your neural tissue, and that's even if we discount the pre-existing damage."
" . . . !"
"…Oops," the technician winced at Hitomi's look.
"No, no, its fine. I kinda suspected I was dain bramaged," I returned, the two of them blinking at me for some reason. "Anyway, it's not like dilated time is actually good for anything unless I can act on it."
One such example I can recall is from the second season of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Like myself, the antagonist Kyoya was someone who had Reincarnated from their original world; while his [All-Seeing Eye] did grant him accelerated perception, 300x normal speed I think, that ability was all but useless against someone who could match if not completely exceed that perception. When Hakuro used his [Crestwater Slash] at his opponent's neck, Kyoya had been completely incapable of dodging because while he could see the world around him at 300x speed, he may as well have been standing still; which in context he was given Hakuro's skill with the blade.
Thusly, in the end, all that Kyoya's [All-Seeing Eye] had done for him was give his decapitated head more time to reflect on all the evil he'd until his mind caught up to his body and died.
"At least we can put this matter to bed," I sighed. "Maybe I can use it for test-taking, or something."
"Mental fatigue aside… that's actually a pretty useful Quirk, if you can get a handle on it," the technician hummed, ushering Hitomi and I out.
"Takei… Takehiko-kun," my nurse said to me as soon as we were outside.
'Uh oh… I know that tone.'
"Can I… have a word with you?"
*AHA*
As it turned out, Hitomi had received the results of my bloodwork between the end of lunch and my appointment with the CT Scanner. As far as I was concerned chemically, I was Quirk Factor: Negative.
Thus, with the added affirmation that I was likely going to remain "Quirkless", at least on paper, I decided to redouble my training and my studies. If knowledge was "power", then ignorance was "weakness", and in a world like this where those without "powers" were ostracized in a turnabout reversal to the popular trend in fiction…
According to Hitomi, Yuuei was not only one of the greatest Hero Schools in the world, but its other acclaimed academic courses could equally lead to great things. Even if the General, Support, and Management courses weren't as-glamorous or make you a household name like All Might, Endeavor, Best Jeanist, and so-on, simply graduating from Yuuei, on any level, opened up more doors than any other high school could provide.
Even the most-prestigious non-Hero-affiliated high school couldn't hope to compare, and the only ones that could were the greatest Hero Schools in America, Russia, and Europe, who instead of nukes possessed the greatest quantity and quality of Quirk-wielding individuals as a "deterrent".
Turns out China was no longer a world superpower, but that was a story for another day…
Hitomi herself had graduated from Yuuei's Class C at the near-top of the General Course, and as such was able to attend Tokyo University with a full scholarship. While the complete and utter lack of binocular vision due to her mono-eye made her ineligible to become a surgeon, she had been able to earn her nursing degree because she simply loved to take care of others. While it was true that anyone with a doctorate could do much the same, she admitted to not having the constitution to actually tell someone they were going to die and that there was nothing to be done about it.
And of course, her aversion to blood, was yet another deterrent from that career path.
Now, in my previous life I only knew about Tokyo U from my collection of Love Hina manga. However, that Tokyo U had been able to withstand the "Neo Dark Ages" and persist into the modern day, made it the ideal choice for a Quirkless individual like myself. And given I no longer had the "Autism Debuff", it was actually very possible that I could graduate from top-of-the-line schools and make a fulfilling life for myself.
Or at least more-fulfilling than I had previously been able to attain.
Not that there was anything wrong with the life I'd made for myself! Though dying definitely had put a stop to any upward mobility I'd been working towards…
Of course, unlike the "big break"s to be found in Isekai stories, if I wanted a successful future in this world, I'd have to actually work for it. There was no God with a capital "G" to give me a "Cheat Ability" out of pity for the way I'd died, and I hadn't been Reincarnated into the scion of an affluent family, rife with socioeconomical opportunity regardless of how-many or how-few "fucks" I gave. Being Quirkless, it was completely possible I wouldn't be able to achieve any of that, but at the very least I could try.
Thus, with Yuuei and/or Tokyo U in my sights on the horizon, I scarfed down my lunch and resumed my studies.
You'd be surprised how much study and research one can accomplish when one's brain has dibs on the domestic blood supply.
*AHA*
Later that afternoon, Hitomi sat in with me as I watched yet more old Hero TV footage, the accompaniment of violin, cello, trumpet, drums, xylophone, and other instruments for their orchestral score always able to get me pumped. The glitz and glamor of Sternbild only further reinforced my desire to visit the megalopolis someday; though to that end, I'd need money to really enjoy any of it. You don't go on vacation to spend all your time in a hotel room, after all.
For the time being, watching then-Live recordings of Hero TV had become my favorite past times.
On the one hand, I was pretty fucking stoked that the events of Tiger & Bunny were a part of this world's history; the "Corporate Age" of Heroism always fascinated me due to the deeper layers, like interpersonal politics between heroes who simultaneously competed against and worked with one another. On the other, all the familiar faces had been dead for around a century on the tail-end of the "Corporate Age" where heroism shifted to the "Commercial Age", which in itself was depressing.
Sure, there were museums and monuments dedicated to all the old Heroes that Apollon Media, Helios Energy, Helperides Finance, Kronos Foods, Odysseus Communication, Poseidon Line and Titan Industry all sponsored out of the world-famous Justice Tower… but if I'd had any choice in the matter, I'd have wanted to be Reincarnated into Sternbild instead...
'Oh well. At least for the time being I have all this great footage!' I beamed with a shit-eating grin as Kotetsu unleashed his "Wild Roar" in the pursuit of justice.
Sure, his more-traditional costume of cowl-type mask and cape was considered outdated by today's standards where secret identities were a rarity, and back then it was affectionately referred to as the "crapsuit" by the fans… but Kotetsu Kaburagi aka Wild Tiger represented an ideal of heroism that was in short supply in the modern era.
The noble, altruistic spirit of self-sacrifice; a more-honest, heroic motivation that I valued above the more or less literal "corporate shills" that dominated the Corporate Age. Thanks to my "meta knowledge", I was probably the only person alive who truly knew how-much Kotetsu had to give up and endure, just to stay true to his heroic ideal. Sure, his heroic ideals may've been inspired by the charlatan, Mr. Legend, but Kotetsu made that heroic spirit a reality through his own hard work.
This is of course assuming all that stuff with Maverick and Ouroborous remained unchanged in this timeline. I couldn't exactly go digging for that sort of thing because on the off-chance Ouroborous was still around…
'Wait…' I mused as Blue Rose used her signature "Cutie Slide" to escape gunfire; a cringe-worthy "Super Move" if ever there was one. 'If Tiger & Bunny really happened in this timeline, what about series like Talentless Nana…?' I pondered, a shudder rolling through me.
It wouldn't really surprise me if in the earliest days of Paranormality, that world governments sequestered Quirk-users to isolated islands and had them kill one another off Lord of the Flies style. And since the Multiverse was no longer theoretical, at least to me, it only made the possibility greater that someone without power could trump those with through skill and deductive reasoning alone.
"Takei-kun? Is something wrong?" Hitomi asked.
"I-I'm fine! Just a chill!" I returned as her beautiful pink eye regarded me.
Sure, she may've been a Heteromorph, but to me she was still a good person, and that was what's important, both here and in my old life. To me, it didn't matter if you were white or black or whatever. If you were a good person, I had no problem with you. If you were an asshole… well… It was less that I was racist as I hated all assholes "equally".
It truly did sicken me that with the sheer diversity of body types, racism still existed. Not to mention all that bullshit in the middle east that was still going on…!
"So, who's your favorite for this season?" I asked in the same tone as someone asking about a live season of spectator sports.
"Hmmmmmm…" Hitomi hummed, tapping her finger on her chin. "I think I like Origami Cyclone. His kabuki poses in the background always make me laugh."
"Yeah, he is kinda funny…" I admitted. It wasn't that I disparaged Ivan Karelin's conduct; [Shapeshifting] only gave him so-much mileage since he didn't possess a "Copy Ability" to go with it. It's just… in the context of the Corporate Age, for the majority of his career, Origami Cyclone was more of a "gag character"; someone that companies could hire cheaply to sneak their corporate logos into the screenshots of other Heroes as they took center stage and posed for the camera.
He definitely had his moments of badassery, which only went to show how-amazing ordinary humans could still be, independent of their Quirks.
Of course, it was only an eventuality that such celebrated individuals fell to the wayside, the Olympics going the way of the Dodo as televised events like the Yuuei Sports Festival and its foreign equivalents became the hit broadcasts of each quarter.
"For me, it's the same as always. Wild Tiger!" I said striking a pose in my bed, Takehiko's child-like exuberance shining through to the surface.
I blame the juvenile brain housing my consciousness.
"Yes, I really like him too," Hitomi smiled. "You know, he reminds me a lot of All Might."
"How so?" I asked. As far as I knew, All Might was just a more-streamlined version of the Hulk with great PR. Sure, he was amazing by this age's standards, but I just couldn't bring myself to find him very interesting, what with how-easily he beat all the baddies.
I had no problem with the fact that he could save lots of people, but just like with Superman in my old world, I just didn't find "god-tier protagonists" to be very interesting unless there were even-stronger god-tier antagonists to keep challenging them. You'd think a manga where the bulk of the cast was Immortal in one way or another would be boring, but Ken Akamatsu proved me wrong on that front.
Not to mention, that god-damned smile weirded me the fuck out… The only people who smile like that are those with some horrible secret.
That or a disgusting fetish on their internet search history.
"I guess it's how he always prioritizes the people over Points," Hitomi hummed.
"Yeah… He'd have been a great Hero if he were born in this age," I nodded. Throughout the bulk of Wild Tiger's career, even though he saved so-many people with his [Hundred Power], he was always in second-to-last on the Hero TV Leaderboards; at least until Barnaby aka "Bunny" came onto the scene and the two pooled their resources.
Sure, other Heroes like Sky High, Blue Rose, and Fire Emblem had a ton of stopping power, but their self-aggrandizing would hardly ingratiate them to the current generation if they were here. Endeavor, I could tell at a glance, was the sort of Hero who cared more for the fame that saving people got him, than the saving of people themselves.
It really was depressing how-few Heroes like Wild Tiger there were in the present. And sure, this All Might guy was the "Symbol of Peace" and all, but there was something unsettling about that smile of his. Not "villain in disguise" or "presidential candidate"-levels of unsettling, but the Genre Awareness I carried with me from my old life… just gave me a gut feeling there was more to his story. Most Heroes would flaunt their Quirks whenever they got the chance, if not make their own opportunities to do so unprompted, but for some reason, All Might always seemed to deflect when that line of questioning came up. The guy had been a licensed Hero for more than three decades, and people still didn't know what his Quirk was.
That line of thought was cut short as Wild Tiger's eagerness to save the day necessitated a premature interruption in the usual thirty-second commercial break Hero TV tried to squeeze in between lulls in the action.
Maybe it wasn't healthy, escaping from the present by obsessing with the Heroes of the Corporate Age, but it was still my decision to make.
*AHA*
AN:
Sure, Tiger & Bunny has fallen out of the public eye since we never got that follow-up Season to the anime and the manga's been inert for a while, but I can't help but compare what kind of Hero Wild Tiger is next to Deku and All Might. Putting the two side by side, I really feel like if Wild Tiger had been born in the world of My Hero Academia, he would've been wildly successful as a Hero.
Sure, his [Hundred Power] only lasted for 5 Minutes at his peak, 1 Minute after his decline, but a literal 100x Multiplier is still a 100x Multiplier no matter how long it lasts. Especially when you consider that without his power, Kotetsu is still perfectly capable of out-performing most Olympic athletes and professional Weightlifters. If you can multiply your... everything 100x, then it doesn't really matter how long you can do it for, just as long as you get it done quickly.
All Might made due with a 3-to-1-hour window, same as Kotetsu, so I really can't help but put the two of them on the same pedestal in terms of Heroic Spirit. Especially when their Altruistic spirit parallels one another so well.