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Spiderling
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Chapter 4
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The morning air was cold and crisp, so much so it made her see her warm breath whenever she exhaled. Ochaco hadn't been in the big city before and she had thought that the air here could never be this fresh. Perhaps it was a reminder of home, a sign of good luck on this important day. To some it may seem silly or optimistic, but Ochaco was just that kind of person.
She reached the entrance of the U.A. academy while doing her best to ignore her nervousness and trepidation with a smile. If you made a point to smile in the face of problems, then they didn't seem as big somehow.
Just as she was entering she noticed a boy with curly dark-green hair standing at the entrance and looking ahead with similar nervousness. Ochaco couldn't help herself and approached him.
"Hey, you okay?" she asked, obviously startling him. She noticed he had rather big green eyes and freckles as well. "Sorry I startled you. Everyone around us looks so calm and collected so it was nice to see someone else who looked as nervous as I felt." She smiled at the boy who still seemed like he was at a loss of words from the surprise. "Well, we should probably go in, good luck!" She waved while going into the grounds. Hopefully he'd feel better.
Ochaco followed the instructions that she'd received when she had applied for U.A. and they led her to a large lecture hall. Finding her seat number, she put her backpack underneath, took her jacket off, folded it and placed it on her lap when she sat. Soon enough the hall was filled up and the pro hero Present Mic appeared to give a presentation.
She listened to the instructions closely making mental notes of all the important bits. There was a brief interruption by a boy with glasses who seemed way too serious, going as far as to scold some other candidate. What was his deal anyway, everyone had their own way of coping with nerves. She hoped she wouldn't end up in a group with him.
It was time for the practical and Ochaco gathered with everyone in her group at the entrance of their designated area. It was so incredibly big, like its own city, but it made sense. U.A. was a place that didn't save any expense in order to produce only the greatest heroes. After today, she'd hopefully be on the road to becoming one of them. She took a deep breath before closing her eyes and touching her palms together.
You can do this. You can do this. For Mom and Dad. You can do this.
She kept repeating her mantra until Present Mic's yell of "Start!" snapped her out of it. While confused at first like everyone else, she immediately jumped into action.
Initially there were plenty of bots but there was also plenty of competition. She moved away from the main group and started looking for "villains" in smaller streets. Her battle plan was simple, touch as many as possible at once, wait until they floated high enough and release them to their plummeting doom. She managed to rack up 28 points quickly, but to her dismay there were less and less bots to go around. Ochaco knew she needed to get a lot more if she wanted to have any chance of being accepted. She noticed a 3 pointer fleeing into an alley and made to follow when the ground shook.
She let out a yelp, but managed to keep standing. What was that, an earthquake?! There were panicked screams from all around her and everyone started running away. The ground shook again and one of the closest buildings started falling apart. She made an attempt to run away as well, but lost her footing and fell on the ground. There was a loud crash and she couldn't help out screaming when she felt sharp pain in her legs. Ochaco turned around and saw debris had fallen on them. This was bad, it seemed like at least one of them was definitely broken. She wouldn't be able to finish the exam.
There was an incredibly loud sound of machinery moving and looking up, Ochaco realized that was the least of her concerns. She stared in panic at the approaching monstrosity of the 0 Pointer. No wonder the ground had shook and building had crumbled, that thing was enormous! She whimpered and tried to crawl away, but that only caused her more pain.
There was a sudden loud hissing sound behind her. Ochaco turned around and saw something white shoot into the caterpillar tracks of the 0 pointer. Whatever it was, it seemed to have slowed its progress towards her. She heard a heavy thud next to her and turned around to see the boy she had seen from the gate.
Except it looked like a completely different person. It wasn't just the different clothing (he was wearing dark green pants, red boots, and a red shirt with what looked like webbing embroidery and a black spider in the chest area), but the way he stood and looked at her. There was no trace of nervousness from before.
"Are you okay?" his question made her focus on the situation at hand.
"My legs are stuck, I can't move!" Ochaco replied quickly.
He moved to the debris and lifted it with what looked like almost no effort at all and she felt silly. She could have used her quirk to do that, but the pain had made her panic. Her legs felt a lot better now without the pressure on them anymore, although there was still excruciating pain from one.
"I think my left leg is broken," Ochaco told the boy. As if things couldn't get worse, there was that mechanical whirring sound again. They both looked at the giant bot and saw it had freed itself from the white stuff.
"Could be dangerous to move her, it may cause bigger trauma to the leg," she heard the boy muttering to himself before turning to her. "I have a plan, but it will be risky. If it fails I'll come back and try to carry you away."
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Ochaco blinked and shook away the memory that had come back. It seemed like she had spaced out there. She turned towards Izuku, "You seem to have a habit of coming up with those. Well, since it worked last time, let's give it a go!" she said cheerfully.
"Oh, is that why you spaced out? Well, last time it almost worked out, I'd have been in trouble if you didn't have my back in the final moment," Izuku chuckled in embarrassment. "Okay, here's what I'm thinking."
Meanwhile Tenya and Bakugo had reached the device. Tenya was looking at the room critically. It was a large room, which gave him open space to move around as he pleased. The problem was the windows though, especially the one on the ceiling. He remembered the way Midoriya had jumped around buildings and used his webbing to scale them. Perhaps they should change to a different room? He tried lifting the "device" and it was quite light and easy to move. It was just paper-mâché. While the other rooms were much smaller, which would reduce his manoeuvrability there'd be less windows and by extension less chances for surprise attacks. But smaller quarters wouldn't work well with Bakugo's quirk either. Tenya turned to his teammate to discuss a plan and noticed he was leaving the room.
"Hey, where are you going?" Tenya asked him.
"Stay out of my way," the explosive teen replied menacingly. "This is finally my chance to crush Deku and pay him back for before."
"Didn't you hear Aizawa-sensei yesterday, you should forget about old grudges and focus on the task at hand," Tenya tried to reason with him, but to no avail.
"Shut it! This is part of the exercise too, if I get rid of Deku beforehand, we still win. Now don't interfere or I'll crush you too," Bakugo threatened before exiting the room.
Tenya shook his head. They'd have a bigger chance of success if they presented a united front. But maybe not, given how uncooperative his teammate was, not to mention the unfamiliarity of fighting together. Well, Bakugo's idea could work too, at the very least he should be able to stall them long enough. In that case, Tenya needed to do some changes and prep work himself.
After the 5 minute preparation time finished, All Might's announcement signalled the start of the trial. Izuku and Urakara successfully entered the building through a window. "I'll take lead, like we've discussed. Let's go floor by floor." They checked the first and second floor quickly, finding no signs of Bakugo, Iida or the device. Izuku had started thinking that he was wrong and Bakugo had actually wizened up enough to make a proper plan when his spider sense tingled. He immediately gave a sign to Urakara and she halted where she was. They were just about to reach an intersection and Izuku continued being much more on his guard now.
"What was that?" a boy with spiky red hair and manly costume asked from the observation room. The rest of Class 1-A were standing behind All Might and looking at the monitors along with the teacher. "He gave a sign to Urakara and she stopped!"
"Yes, it seems like Midoriya knows there's an ambush coming, ribbit," a girl with long green hair tied in a bow behind her back said, with her finger on her lips.
"Why's he still walking forward then?" Kaminari asked in confusion. He got his answer soon enough.
The moment Izuku reached the corner of the intersection, he ducked and rolled backwards, narrowly avoiding an explosion. He stood up in a relaxed stance, seemingly unconcerned with who was standing in front.
"So you dodged that. Good, I don't want this to be over too quickly. Not before I get the chance to properly stamp you, Deku!"
"Of course I dodged that Kacchan, you were grinding your teeth so hard I could hear you all the way from outside," Izuku replied.
"Stop calling me that!" Bakugo yelled and swung with his right arm. Izuku couldn't believe his luck, his old bully hadn't changed at all. He quickly grabbed the arm, stopping it mid-swing, spun his body against Bakugo's and before the ash-blond could even process what was happening, launched him hard in the air in Urakara's direction.
Unfortunately, halfway towards the girl hero, Bakugo rallied and used his explosions to flip himself and land on his feet, completely surprising Izuku. Of course, he's probably learned a lot of uses for his quirk since we last saw each other. So he can navigate in mid-air. Izuku looked towards Urakara and made another sign. Things had gotten a lot more difficult, but not something they hadn't prepared for. If they couldn't take Bakugo down in 2 minutes, then they'd go with Plan B.
"I knew it," Izuku focused back on the ash-blond who was glaring with hatred at him. "You're really underestimating me, Deku! Stop involving others and face me, you-mmpf!" Izuku fired webbing right at Bakugo's mouth and eyes. "You talk too much, Kacchan," he replied as he and Urakara charged at the "villain" from both sides. Bakugo screamed in annoyance (probably, it was too muffled) and spread his arms apart, pointing a palm at each of them before releasing a big explosion. Izuku managed to dodge by jumping to the ceiling and continued crawling, but Urakara let out a yelp while she was blown away. By the time the spider-boy had reached him, Bakugo had managed to remove the webbing around his eyes and mouth and quickly dodged the kick directed at his face by kneeling and rolling away. He fired another explosion at Midoriya, but the spider-boy managed to gracefully flip to the side. Izuku stood up quickly and threw a punch at Bakugo's head which the ash-blond redirected to the side by grabbing his wrist.
"Time to get rid of that web you love so much," the explosive teen said, making Izuku's eyes widen. He tried to disengage, but not before he felt a burning pain around his left wrist. He kneed Bakugo in the gut causing the other boy to double over and quickly checked it, seeing his web shooter was almost completely destroyed. Damn it, I don't have another one. He glared at Bakugo and fired a web at his eyes again.
This time his opponent dodged easily, "That won't work on me again, bastard!" Izuku ignored him and pulled.
Katsuki's eyes widened in shock and he quickly turned around, but it was too late. The web had hit Urakara who had come much closer to the fighting boys. With her being weightless, the explosive teen had no hope of dodging and she collided with him. Damn it, Katsuki had forgotten about the round-faced extra too engaged with Deku. He backhanded her quickly to the ground and directed an explosion at each of his opponents. To his annoyance, Deku not only managed to dodge, but also pull the extra away, since she was still attached to his web. That was the least of his problems however, the backlash from those attacks had been much more than he had anticipated and Katsuki was launched with great force into the wall, before crumbling to the ground in a heap. He was so dazed and confused, he didn't hear the sound of the web-shooter, until it was too late - he was completely pinned to the ground and covered in webs. Even worse, his palms were positioned in a bad way – one was facing the side while the other was underneath him, pressing against his body.
"Success!" Urakara yelled happily, jumping in the air, before suddenly going green and kneeling on the ground.
Izuku quickly came next to her and rubbed her back, "You okay? Did the explosion get you?"
"No, just dizzy.. I was flying really quickly and coupled with the side-effect of my quirk.. I just need a moment," the girl replied dizzily and Izuku remembered that she had a similar episode during the entrance exam.
"What the hell did you do to me, you fucking nerds?!" Bakugo yelled from the ground.
"Newton's Third law, Kacchan," Izuku approached him. "Normally you're not too affected by it, because you can regulate the force of your explosions and your body has built up natural resistance and strength to withstand them. However if your body weight is suddenly changed to nothing without you realizing.. Well, we saw what happened." The spider-boy explained and turned to his teammate, "That was great work Urakara, even if we couldn't finish as quickly as planned."
"We still managed to win, which is a big advantage. And we should have more than enough time now," the girl replied standing up, whilst holding the wall for support.
"HEY! DON'T IGNORE ME, THIS ISN'T-mmpf" Bakugo was silenced mid-rant when Izuku shot another web at his mouth.
"Actually it is. I know it's not the capture tape, but he's incapacitated enough, right sensei?" Izuku said, looking at one of the cameras.
In the observation room All Might's grin widened further. "Indeed he is, young Midoriya."
"You can hear them, All Might-sensei?" Ashido asked surprised.
"That's right, Ashido my girl, I have a communicator as well, in case I need to get in touch with them," All Might explained before pressing on a button to make an announcement. "Katsuki Bakugo has been captured by the Hero team and has been eliminated from the exercise."
Back in the building Izuku couldn't help himself. "Yesss!" he exclaimed thrusting his fist up. He turned to his teammate, "Okay, now for the next stage. I'll look from outside, while you check the rooms that have less windows or none."
"Got it! Is your wrist okay?" Urakara asked completely unconcerned with the bruise that had formed on her face.
"It hurts, but nothing I can't handle," Izuku said and jumped through the closest window while Urakara gave him a nod and quickly ran off, both of them leaving Bakugo webbed to the ground, shaking and alone with his thoughts.
It was Ochaco who found Iida first. Like they had expected, he was indeed in one of the rooms that only had 3 windows. It wasn't as big as the main room, but it still afforded Iida enough space to use his quirk adequately. She wondered what he was doing, the mech-boy seemed to be deep in thought and muttering to himself. She inched closer and finally heard him.
"It seems Bakugo has been captured without delaying them long enough. It's a shame, he had the perfect personality to play the villain.. Perhaps I should get in character too. That's right, I am now quite Evil."
Ochaco couldn't help laughing when she heard him. That was too funny, he was so earnest.
"Aha, you have given your location up, Urakara!" Iida yelled, pointing a finger at her. She snorted again and touched her communicator. "Izuku, I found him. He's in the south-west room on the fourth floor."
"Got it, I'll be right there," she got a reply and she came through the door, properly facing Iida.
"I know your quirk, Hero! You can make everything you touch float, so I have cleared the room of all objects to prevent your gimmick! Mwahahahahaha!"
Oh Gods, Izuku had better come quickly or she'd lose it. Speak of the spider, "Okay Urakara, I see you. When I tell you to, go for the weapon, I'll take care of Iida."
She nodded, which was noticed by her opponent, and stepped closer. "Ah, so you're in touch with your fellow Hero! But it matters not, all I need to do is stall for time!"
"Now!" Ochaco heard Izuku and she started running towards Iida. At the right moment she jumped, making herself float over him right towards the weapon.
"What?!" Iida exclaimed, "You can make yourself float too!? No matter, I am still faster!" he said and launched into a run to grab the paper-mâché device. The loud noise of a window shattering grabbed his attention and he turned just in time to see Midoriya coming at him and kicking him in the chest hard enough to make him scream and send him flying into one of the walls. Iida let out a grunt as he slid down to the floor. He hastened to get up, but was quickly pinned to the ground and wall by a plethora of Izuku's webs. Then came All Might's announcement.
"The Hero team has retrieved the weapon and has captured both villains! It is their complete victory!"
"Yes!" "We did it!" Izuku and Urakara both yelled and gave each other a high-five, but in her excitement the girl activated her quirk. Izuku felt himself float and remembered the feeling of weightlessness.
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"I have a plan, but it will be risky. If it fails I'll come back and try to carry you away."
The nice-girl swallowed thickly, but nodded resolutely. Izuku had to finish this as fast as possible and get her some help. He jumped away and shot his web towards the building next to the giant robot. By the time he got to the roof, the machine had come closer and was now reaching with its right hand for the nice-girl.
"Oh no you don't," Izuku said, before he jumped off the roof and fired several webs at the robot's right wrist. He swung under it and used his momentum to land on its chest. Still holding the webs, he ran up until he reached the robot's neck, circled it and started pulling on them. It was incredibly hard at first, his feet made an indent in the robot's head, but he managed to stop the arms' movement and to start pulling it upwards little by little. When the hand reached the head, he tied it around with all the excess webbing and then spent the remainder of his left canister making sure they were properly stuck together.
Izuku's spider sense tingled. "Uh oh," he turned quickly, just in time to catch the left palm of the robot before he got squished like.. well a bug. It was much harder with this hand, considering he was pretty tired, so the spider-boy knew he wouldn't be able to hold it for long. Focusing all his power in his legs, he pushed quickly and barely managed to jump in between the giant fingers before the hand smacked the robot's own face with a resounding clang.
"Perfect", Izuku quickly webbed the second hand together with the first and the head. The robot kept trying to free its hands and Izuku could hear some of the webs starting to rip, which caused him to panic and fire some more. Suddenly, there was a loud noise of tearing metal and the giant machine managed to remove its hands from its body, unfortunately for it, while still holding its head. Immediately explosions started rocking the mechanical behemoth and Izuku knew that was his cue, especially with how his spider sense started to go haywire.
He jumped, did a flip in the air and fired a web.. only for his right web shooter to come empty as well. Crap, I overdid it! That's what my spider sense tried to warn me off! Okay, he was plummeting rather fast but he'd have enough time! He quickly moved the glove up and removed the empty canister. He grabbed a full one from his belt, Oh God, it's gonna be close, and quickly replaced it. He looked frantically for a target, extended a hand, maybe I'll be okay, spiders fall from high places all the time.. right? and felt an impact.
Except it wasn't the impact of him splatting on the ground like a ripe tomato, but an impact of someone's hand hitting his face. He was so surprised, he didn't realize he was floating above the ground for a good 6 seconds. When he did, he looked around and saw the nice-girl was floating next to him on a big metal piece. It must be her quirk, he thought. I'm feeling so weightless right now. She joined the tip of her fingers of each hand, before muttering something and both fell to the ground. Izuku lacking in cat-like grace since his quirk wasn't Cat, fell flat on his face.
Groaning he rolled on his back. He could hear the nice-girl.. Was she vomiting? It was probably the mix of excitement and panic. Izuku decided to wait until she finished so instead he stood up slowly. He replaced the empty canister of his other web-shooter, "Good, that should do it for the rest of the exam."
Just as he said that an announcement came from Present Mic, "Time's up!"
Izuku facepalmed. "Oh well.. Maybe 24 points will be enough," he muttered to himself and approached the nice-girl. And here I thought I'd be saving the girl, but in the end I was the one that needed saving. "Thanks for the help at the end there, but I hope your leg isn't worse because of that."
"That was amazing!" she exclaimed with a huge smile and Izuku's brain finally remembered he was actually conversing with a female representative of his species, that wasn't his Mom. His face immediately turned crimson. "I can't believe you took out that massive thing! How did you only get 24 points?!"
"W-w-well I uhm.. Got sidetracked?" Izuku winced. "Some of the other contestants needed help and uhm.. Yeah.." he trailed off lamely, but perked up. "But you have an amazing quirk, r-really helped me out there. You'll probably pass."
"I doubt it, only got 28 points myself," the nice-girl said dejectedly and a depressed mood came over them.
"Good job, good job," they heard an elderly voice approach. Izuku turned and saw a little old lady passing candy around. Wait.. isn't that the Youthful Heroine, Recovery Girl?!
"Wait here, I'll go ask her to come have a look at you," Izuku said and jumped towards the pro heroine.
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"Yes, come over and take a seat," Aizawa-sensei waved at him from his desk. After the trial of battle was over, Izuku had gone to Recovery Girl to get his wrist looked at and bandaged and then to Aizawa-sensei, as instructed. As he sat, the teen noticed the teacher was looking at his injury. "Did you hurt yourself while you were swinging around being late, Midoriya?"
"N-no sensei, I wasn't late technically," Izuku cringed at Aizawa's unimpressed look. "This was from the battle trial."
"Oh? I'm planning on reviewing those later today. How'd you get injured?"
"Bakugo," was all Izuku said.
Aizawa-sensei was silent for a moment. "That does explain everything, doesn't it," the teacher shook his head. "Well, I'll watch the videos myself. That's not why you're here. And no," Aizawa-sensei cut Izuku out when he saw the teen open his mouth, "it's not because you were almost late, although I would really prefer it if you started using the door."
Izuku gulped and bowed his head with a muttered apology.
"It's because of this," Aizawa's said, sliding some papers across his desk so Izuku could see them. "Police reports of a mysterious individual, wearing U.A. academy uniform, with green hair, green eyes," by this point Izuku was sweating heavily and doing his best to look at anywhere but Aizawa-sensei or the reports, "freckles, who was shooting white ropes from his wrists. Apparently, he's been helping out people in the mornings, presumably on his way to school. Any of this rings a bell?"
Aizawa-sensei is a sadist! He's enjoying this! "Is this a good time to mention there's someone who has my exact same abilities, except they're evil?" Izuku tried.
"They are? And they are saving people because..?" the teacher trailed off with a raised eyebrow.
"They hate me and want to get me in trouble?" the teen said with a straight a face as he could muster.
"That shouldn't have sounded like a question. And the fact they look like you?"
"It may seem like me, but it's not actually me. Our appearances are similar and they can change clothes to resemble me even more, but it's obvious when we stand next to each other." At this point, Izuku was all-in and they both knew it, but the teen wouldn't give up. Eraserhead let out a sigh, took out a little bottle and put a drop of its contents in each eye.
"It's not a completely far-fetched defense, considering the superhuman society we currently live in," the teacher said. "But the burden of proof would be on you. Might I suggest perhaps toning down on the heroics until you at least get your license?"
"What was I supposed to do, not help those people?" Izuku asked. "Besides, for a lot of the cases I used my web-shooters and those aren't technically a part of my quirk, so it's not unlicensed misuse of a quirk."
"That.." Aizawa paused and thought about it. "is actually a valid point. But it will only hold as long as you keep things isolated to small incidents. If I were this individual, and this is just me thinking out loud here, I might consider wearing some sort of mask to avoid an easy identification."
Izuku's eyes widened before he quickly stood up and bowed, "Thank you, sensei."
"I'm not saying I'm agreeing or condoning this," Aizawa-sensei quickly said. "But I understand what it's like to have to choose between helping someone or.. Well, disaster. And these small acts of kindness are a good way to build foundation. Now, make sure to go home safely and to let your wrist heal," the teacher dismissed him.
"It's already feeling better, sensei. I guess it wasn't that big of a blast," Izuku shrugged. "I'm probably going to pass by the workshop first.. I need to start working on a replacement web-shooter, since.. Well, you'll see."
Aizawa-sensei's eyes narrowed again. "Power Loader should be at the workshop at this time, most likely working on costumes, so you'll have supervision. However, I think it would be a good idea if there isn't a repeat of any unfortunate accidents. Good day, Midoriya."
That wasn't so bad, Izuku headed for the workshop. Aizawa-sensei is a good person. Still sadistic and really scary though. The class 1-A homeroom had been right, Power Loader was inside the workshop. So was Hatsume, but she seemed to be busy looking at a tablet. After checking in with the teacher, Izuku headed for the webbed corner, sent a message to his Mom that he might be late, and started working. He tended to get really engrossed in whatever project he was researching for or working on, so losing track of time and his surroundings was natural. Really, his spider sense was a Godsend, it would warn him of all sorts of things ranging from an incoming avalanche of trash because he'd made an unsafe dent at the base of a garbage hill while looking for materials, to risking the wrath of his mother when he would be too late in going home or forgetting to call. This time it warned him of the approach of the pink devil, although it seemed that the tingles related to her were getting fainter after each encounter.
"Wow, that explodo guy really did a number on your web-gun," she said after casually picking up the remnants of his old web-shooter.
"It's not called a web-gun, it's called a web.. Wait, how do you know about Bakugo?"
"I saw it on the video recording from the battle trial of course," she replied easily while she was trying to pull a wire from the side only to pull the entire side.
Izuku stared at the girl. "Please tell me you didn't hack the school network to get access to those."
Hatsume gave him a weird look. "Of course not, silly. Higari-sensei gave me access to those videos to look at the way the costumes work, so we can do appropriate modifications and repair. I volunteered to help him."
Izuku let out a sigh of relief.
"I hacked the school network to gain access to your entrance exam video and your quirk appre-" Hatsume was cut out by Izuku's hand covering her mouth. He quickly glanced back at Power Loader, but it seemed like the teacher was busy working on something and hadn't heard her. He turned back to the girl, not noticing her eyes had widened.
"Can you.. not go ahead and announce so loudly that you're breaking school regulations?" he whispered.
Hatsume removed his hand and gave him a wink, "My, aren't you daring." To his amazement when he came back later tonight to review in his mind this particular incident, he did not feel flustered at all. Izuku just kept staring at the girl.
She let out a sigh, "There's nothing in the regulations that says it's forbidden to do it. Besides, I was curious about your quirk and I should know as much as possible if I'm going to be improving your gear."
"That's.. First of all, who said you're going to be working on my gear? I prefer to make things myself."
"And that's remarkable, you have the true spirit of an inventor," Hatsume patted him on the shoulder. "But from seeing this," she showed the destroyed web-shooter "and this," she motioned to the new one he was working on, "I can tell that you're lacking in the basics. For example, your trigger has too many mechanical parts to it and is made out of 3 stages. You can improve it a lot by replacing it with a simpler system – that will increase the response time and eliminate defects."
"I know that – Occam's razor. It applies to everything really," Izuku said annoyed. "The problem is when I used a simpler 1-stage trigger, the response time actually dropped."
"Here, let me have a look," Hatsume said, moved in, and pushed Izuku away. She produced a screwdriver from somewhere and started undoing his hard work. Weirdly, Izuku wasn't as annoyed with this. Instead he found himself intently looking at what the girl was doing. One thought kept bugging him though.
"There's really nothing in the school regulations about gaining unauthorized access to surveillance videos?"
The pink devil stopped what she was doing and turned to him, excitement evident on her face. "What's that? Do you want to watch those videos as well?"
"W-well I.." Izuku stammered. "I mean.. It'd be good to see things from an outside perspective.." he trailed off, since Hatsume had not even waited to hear his rationalization. She practically ran to her work desk, grabbed her tablet, and quickly came back.
"Let's watch them together! I have a lot of question for you," she said happily.
The spider-boy looked surreptitiously at Higari-sensei. It seemed like the teacher was really engrossed in his work. The teen did not notice the pro-hero's smile, since the helmet was in the way.
"Okay," Izuku said finally.
There would be times when Izuku would look back at this moment and wonder how much different their lives would have been if he had convinced Mei that hacking the school surveillance network was a bad thing.
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To be continued..
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Author's filtered thoughts: Apologies dear readers. I really wanted to write a scene where Izuku swung around the giant bot, tying its legs like in that really old movie called Star Wars and then punching it to topple it down. Only problem – the robot doesn't have legs but caterpillar tracks. So I did a scene where he tied its arms instead. On the bright side there's Mt. Lady, so maybe we'll see it one day.
This chapter took a long time to write. There are like 3 versions of it and then literally today I deleted about half of the final version and rewrote it. Let me know what you think gentle readers, was it fun?
I'm changing the posting schedule for this story – from now on it will be every Friday/Saturday, depending on which time zone you're in. It works better for me.
A response to Someguy's review from last chapter, since it's a guest account – notice I said it's hard to balance Izuku and Spider-Man's personalities, not Peter Parker's. Izuku is a shy introvert who feels comfortable when talking about things that interest him and are important to him, like all introverts. Spider-Man is.. well you described him. Peter Parker's personality has no place here.
Speaking of last chapter, it's really annoying when you notice a mistake you've made after you've posted a chapter, and then, even worse, forget what the mistake was. -_-
If you enjoy this story, please consider showing it some love. Do the hat-trick of fav, follow, and review.
Ta-ta ~
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