A/N: A note on my interpretation of Stand use: I believe that even the Stands that show close to no personality still have a sort of rudimentary intelligence or 'processing power' to them. Because Stands are psychically linked to their Users, this processing power lets them better multitask between themselves and their Stands. This parallel processing also helps Stand Users cope with controlling Stands that they would otherwise have a hard time dealing with some aspect of their Stands, like actually being able to have a Stand with incredibly high speed react at that speed or a Colony Stand User being able to keep all the parts of their Stand straight. Required secondary powers, basically. The exception, of course, are Automatic Stands that have their processing power mostly not linked to the User or Stands like Prophet's Song or Earth, Wind, and Fire that are either objects or inherent abilities that don't really move around on their own.

ゴゴゴゴゴ

Katsuki held a hand out, letting a few raindrops fall on its palm before moving back closer to Izuku. "Damn, it's really starting to come down out there, huh?" He looked around the area in range of where Izuku was sitting, which was untouched by the rain but foggier due to the warmth his Stand was generating, and then up at where the rain seemed to just stop as if it hit some sort of invisible barrier. It looked like the raindrops just evaporated away before they could come down around Izuku to Katsuki. "And you can just completely block it all with Don't Stop Me. Are you using its fire cape thing to do that somehow?" he asked, thinking back to the drawing of Don't Stop Me that Izuku had shown him.

"Something like that, yeah," Izuku muttered, shrugging. Unseen by Katsuki, he was making his Stand punch and kick the raindrops away, simultaneously keeping the two of them dry and practicing hitting things with his Stand while it was moving at its considerable max speed. It was odd; with his real eyes he could only barely see Don't Stop Me, and only then sometimes and as a green blur, but somehow the part of his mind that was controlling the Stand could keep up with the insane speeds it was moving at perfectly well. Izuku was curious how that worked. He'd had a bit of trouble with it at first, but now didn't seem to be having any problems keeping the actions of his physical body and his Stand straight, even though they seemed to effectively be moving at drastically different time scales. To Don't Stop Me's eyes, the raindrops, humans, and even the occasional car that passed by seemed almost stationary. This made it quite easy for Izuku to hit each raindrop with the Stand's fire vambraces before they got close to the ground.

"Well, I know I'm crossing my fingers that nobody calls you on it," Katsuki said, then sprawled onto the bench a respectful distance away from where Izuku was sitting. "I didn't think it'd rain, so I didn't bring an umbrella, and it doesn't look like you have one either." He poked a finger into the sky, swirling it around to indicate the invisible "barrier" blocking the rain. "'Side from your Stand, which apparently works pretty fucking well as one. Honestly, I'm kinda jealous."

"Yeah, it's a bit foggy so hopefully nobody notices," Izuku said. "I didn't know Don't Stop Me would work this well at blocking the rain until I tried it, so that's good to know."

"And it makes it nice and warm, too," Katsuki added, leaning back in the bench. "I'd choose sauna bubble over sitting out in the rain any time. Still, when's that friend of yours getting here?"

"He's almost here," Izuku said. "I... don't know why, maybe because we developed Stands around the same time and were nearby when it happened, but Monoma-kun and I can sorta tell where each other is. It's... pretty vague, but combined with my Quirk sense..." Izuku paused for a moment, then pointed at a building across the street from them. As soon as he did, a blond-haired boy holding a black umbrella rounded its corner. He immediately looked over at Izuku and jumped. Or rather, he jumped when he saw the green blur darting around over him. "That's him."

Monoma quickly crossed the street, still wide-eyed at Izuku's almost casual display of Don't Stop Me's speed, and closed his umbrella when he stepped into the "bubble" Izuku was providing. "It's... good to see you again, Midoriya-kun. Is this a friend of yours?"

Katsuki sat up and gave a glance to Izuku.

"Yeah," Izuku said. "His name is Bakugou Katsuki. Our parents are friends, too, so we've basically known each other for our entire lives."

Katsuki let go of a breath he hadn't even known he was holding. He held a hand out to the fellow blond. "'Sup. What he said. I'm not a Stand User myself, but D-Izuku told me about them."

"Monoma Neito," Neito replied, shaking Katsuki's hand. "A pleasure to meet you." He looked back to Izuku. "So, have you figured out your Quirk yet? If not, I realized on the way here that I could potentially use my own Quirk to try to help you figure it out."

Izuku winced at the question and resulting reminder of the nature of his Quirk. The hesitation carried over to his Stand, which stuttered in its onslaught against the rain... when it was directly over Katsuki.

"Augh!" Katsuki spluttered from the impromptu shower. He glared at Izuku, annoyed, but took a deep breath and just wiped the water off of his hair with a suddenly-sparkling hand that seemed to just suck up the water. He paused and looked at his hand, but the golden light that had momentarily wreathed it had faded away before he could properly see it. The globs of water that had been held on by the golden light fell to the ground.

"S-sorry, Kacchan," Izuku muttered, biting his lip. "We... did figure out my Quirk. And we were able to do a lot of testing when I had the appointment with the specialist, so I have a pretty good idea how it works, now."

"Oh, that's great!" Neito said. "What is it?"

Izuku fidgeted. "It's... uh..." His hands started to tremble.

Katsuki cleared his throat. "Izuku is a bit nervous about telling other people about his Quirk, after how his classmates treated him for being Quirkless. I uh... admit I'm kinda guilty for part of that too, to be honest, but I've since realized that that was shitty of me. Izuku, do you want me to explain it for you, us to give you a moment to calm down or something, or just wait 'til you're feeling a bit more confident about it to tell him?"

Izuku took a deep breath, then shook his head. "I'll do it, just... give me a moment, please?"

"Oh, I can wait to hear it," Neito said. "Trust me, I get issues with people not liking Quirks." He sighed. "My... my classmates are also pretty dismissive of me, because my Quirk just lets me use other people's Quirks and isn't any special ability of its own..."

"Well they're assholes," Katsuki said. "And I know that's kinda rich coming from me, of course, but it's true." He gave Izuku a look when he said that. "And honestly? I like my Quirk, but if anything, I'm kinda jealous of ones like yours. You said you can use other people's Quirks, right?" He made a small explosion. "I can do that. Only that. It's cool, but sometimes I kinda wish I could try out other peoples' Quirks too, y'know?" He scratched the back of his head. "Sorry if that's, like, making light of a serious problem in your life, but... I think it sounds like a cool Quirk, if you can put aside people being shitty jerks about it."

Neito smiled. "Thank you. Don't worry, I understand what you mean and very much appreciate the sentiment." He held out a hand, creating a small explosion in a move mimicking Katsuki's. "You're right, it is quite nice to be able to experience so many Quirks, at least when I get that opportunity... Sorry for the intrusion, by the way, but I rather like it when I get to experience a new Quirk, even when I don't get to actually use it. And..." He struck an odd crossed-arms pose that made it almost look like he was hugging himself, summoning enough parts of his Stand to have one covering about half of the surface area of his body by clinging to him. "You'll be glad to know, if you really want to try out other Quirks, that my Stand, Millionaire Waltz, is a sort of enhancement of my Quirk. In particular, it can allow me to impart Quirks that I copy to others, though with certain limitations."

"Well damn, that sounds pretty fucking useful," Katsuki said. "By the way, if you're doing something with your Stand or whatever I can't see it."

Neito, who had been trying to show off his Stand, sighed. "Right, I forgot. Unfortunately, though, if Izuku is still unwilling to talk about his Quirk I don't think I can show you that, yet, because you probably won't get much out of it if I gave you mine aside from what I can just do for you. Not to mention, for whatever reason my own Quirk tends to cause headaches in whoever I give it to." He chuckled and shook his head. "I suppose it doesn't take kindly to being copied, ironically enough."

"I uh..." Izuku muttered haltingly, then took a deep breath and continued. "I think I'm ready to tell you about my Quirk. If you're still curious."

Neito smirked and leaned backwards, summoning enough of the miniature golden versions of himself that made up his Stand below him that they were able to hold him up like a chair, though without armrests or a back one could argue that it was more like a stool. "I'd love to hear it, if you're ready," he said. "And once you tell me, I'd be happy to tell you what I've learned about my Stand."

"Okay that's pretty impressive," Katsuki said. To him, Neito appeared to be floating. "I'm guessing you're having your Stand hold you up?"

"Something along those lines," Neito said, then looked expectantly at Izuku.

"The name I decided on for my Quirk was Pluck," Izuku said. He took another deep breath. "It... lets me copy one Quirk atatimewhilemakingtheuserunabletouseit." He rushed through the latter half of the sentence. Don't Stop Me faltered again as he did, causing a few raindrops to fall through its exclusion zone around the edges.

"Wouldn't it be simpler to just say that you can st-" Neito started to say, causing yet another wince from Izuku.

Katsuki cut him off by quite loudly (and quite fakely) clearing his throat. "Izuku's a bit... sensitive about the s-word, still."

Neito nodded. "Ah, sorry. Still, it sounds quite useful, and it'll be nice to have a friend with a similar Quirk, I think. So, what's your activation mechanism?"

"It took some testing to figure out, but it turns out that I can only use Pluck on someone if I anticipate what they're about to use their Quirk for," Izuku explained. "There's some leeway to it, so I don't have to basically have future vision or mind reading to use it at all, but I need a bit more detail than just 'they will activate their Quirk.' I can activate it at any distance, as long as I can feel them even faintly with my Quirk sense, and in the testing we couldn't find an upper limit on both distance and time for holding a Quirk once I have it. Though, it's likely that there is some limit to both as I can still feel the connection the Quirk has to its original owner when I've... accessed it." Izuku started to grin as he talked more about the information he had on his Quirk. "It's interesting; I can actually use that connection to track someone as long as my Quirk is working on them. Normally, my Quirk sense fades over distance and through walls, but I could still feel the sorta negative Quirk from the volunteer they brought in to help testing from all the way across Bakkuta."

"'Quirk sense?'" Neito asked. "How does that work?

"How it sounds like, I guess," Izuku said. He waved his arms vaguely in the air around his head. "I can sorta... feel the location of any body part affected by Quirk Factor aside from my own, relative to a point somewhere in my head, probably where the sensing mechanism is in my brain. There's some level of... texture, I guess, or maybe color, to Quirks, but I don't really have any innate understanding of what any of that means so for now all it means is that I can recognize Quirks I've felt before. The location part is actually pretty accurate, though, as long as it's not through a wall or really far away, so I automatically have a pretty good understanding of what parts of the body a person's Quirk affects. I can even tell what you're doing with that body part, if it has enough Quirk Factor in it. For example, I can tell where Kacchan's hands are and what they're doing because that's where his Quirk Factor is the densest, and it looks like because your Quirk involves replicating other Quirk Factors it just passively fills your entire body. Though, except for a layer around your skin, parts in your brain that most people have at least some of, and your copy of Kacchan's Quirk it's a little... washed out, I guess because it's not being used for anything at the moment." The copy of Explosion looked a bit pale compared to Katsuki's original, but Izuku had noticed that it became a bit more vibrant for a moment when Neito actually used it. It was likely that Neito had to 'activate' his copies before using them. Maybe he could only use a set number at a time. Could he improve that?

"Very interesting," Neito said, nodding his head. "It seems your Quirk is quite versatile, even if it can't hold as many Quirks as mine. What's the fake description, if you don't mind me asking?"

Katsuki raised an eyebrow. "'Fake description?'"

"Ah, yeah," Izuku said, flinching. "Apparently it's... pretty common for certain types of Quirks to really stand out to people who would want to abuse them, to the point that there has to be... dummy entries on the Quirk Registry with things that aren't quite accurate but don't put anyone in danger from the sort of people that hack into the Quirk Registry..."

"The Speedwagon Foundation did a study on it, once," Neito added in. "There were even certain 'keywords,' apparently, in Quirk names that traffickers seemed to have especially searched for, to the point that you actually can't officially name your Quirk with one of them." He put a hand on his chest. "'Quirk' is apparently a big one, hence why my Quirk is simply called Copy instead of, say, Quirk Copy and also why I know this to begin with. If you were to somehow gain access to my non-secure Quirk Registry file, it would state that I can copy certain skills and talents from people through skin contact." He held up his right hand and pointed to it with his left hand. "The omission, of course, is that those are the ones that involve using Quirks. It's not even untrue, to be fair; I do gain a certain level of knowledge directly related to using a Quirk I've copied so that I can actually... use it, though unfortunately it can only take me so far compared to the original owners who have been using them for years."

"Mine is short-range telekinesis, basically," Izuku said. "With the heating aspect of Don't Stop Me in there as well. They couldn't think of a way to spin... exactly how my Quirk works... in a misleading enough way, but thanks to my Stand we had options." He kicked a pebble off the ground. It almost sailed clear out of Don't Stop Me's rain shield, but a quick green blur knocked it back toward Izuku, then flew ahead and caught it before it could hit him. The pebble held mostly in place, wavering slightly, seemingly on the palm of a blurring, flickering copy of Don't Stop Me. Despite this, the green blur of Don't Stop Me still darted around the 'bubble' of its own making, though it also flickered and blurred in the direction of the pebble, and splitting the time between the pebble and the rain shield meant that the rain shield got smaller. Izuku quickly let the pebble drop, setting Don't Stop Me fully back to warding off the rain. "Plus, the description makes it seem pretty similar to my mom's Quirk, and the name, Pluck, sounds similar to Mom's Pull and is vague enough that it could just as easily be a reference to me being able to 'pluck' up objects and move them around."

Neito's Stand-made chair nearly collapsed when he saw Izuku's Stand 'double.' "Man, how fast even is Don't Stop Me?" he asked, awestruck.

Izuku concentrated on Don't Stop Me, both the near-imperceptible green blur flitting around them and the seemingly frozen world that he could see through its eyes. "Pretty fast," he muttered. "Honestly, I wonder how far I could take it..."

"What's going on?" Katsuki growled, then sighed and took a deep breath. "Sorry, I, ah... still can't see your Stands."

"Oh, sorry," Neito apologized. "Izuku somehow had Don't Stop Me split between this rain discouraging thing he's having it do and holding up that rock. Since self-duplication is a bit of a digression from its Stand ability, I had to assume that it was simply moving fast enough to appear to leave a duplicate. Well, almost. The flickering ruined the illusion a bit..."

Katsuki nodded. "Damn, yeah, that sounds pretty impressive. Kinda wish I could see it. So, uh, in the future could you do me a favor and describe any interesting Stand stuff so I don't get left out?"

"Oh, yes, of course!" Neito said.

"Sorry, Kacchan," Izuku said. "I actually have an idea I've been considering that might help with that, if it works. We can try it at the place I wanted to show you two, if that's okay?"

Katsuki shrugged. "Worth a try, I guess." He turned to Neito. "How about you?"

Neito stood up, dismissing his Stand-made chair and picking up his umbrella as he did. "I have no problems with that. How about I tell you two about my Stand on the way over?"

"Sounds like a plan, then," Izuku said, getting up. "I'll lead the way. This probably goes without saying, but don't get too far away to me if you don't wanna get rained on."

"'Course," Katsuki said as he got up as well. "Didn't really plan on going outside the anti-rain bubble. Lead the way."

As they walked, Neito summoned a single member of his Stand and gave it to Izuku for him to look at. "As I said earlier, my Stand's name is Millionaire Waltz. For the benefit of those of us that cannot see it, it is what's known as a Colony Stand, meaning that instead of one large humanoid Stand it takes the form of multiple smaller humanoids, though the whole still only counts as just one Stand. It takes the form of multiple golden versions of myself, about the size of an action figure each, wearing quite nice black tuxedos. I believe there are around fifty, though I haven't been able to count the actual amount. They all have clocks on their backs, about the size of a pocket watch, though they don't function as clocks and only have the minute and second hands. Instead, they act as a countdown for its ability, when I use it." Neito looked at Izuku, pointing to the Waltz standing on the palms of his hands. "If I may, Midoriya-kun?"

"Oh, go ahead," Izuku said.

The Waltz turned its back to Izuku, to show him the clock. With a ticking sound like a watch being set, the hands wound forward, clockwise, from their starting position (a position labeled with zero, though it was where twelve would usually be on a clock) until the minute hand reached three, then started counting back down counterclockwise. As the clock wound up, the Stand-part's features had shifted from Neito's until it was a golden version of Izuku instead. "Millionaire Waltz's ability functions quite similarly to my own Quirk, Copy, in that each part of the Colony can copy a person's Quirk through direct physical contact. So far, it has the same time limit as my actual Quirk, and I'm hoping that it will grow with Copy's time limit as I train it up. The clock sets itself to my current time limit and then starts counting down, so I can use it to keep track of how long until I lose the Quirk. Ah, and when a Waltz copies a Quirk, it changes to look like the person it's using the Quirk of. Despite the fact that I can currently hold only two copied Quirks at once, my Waltzes can only hold one each. This feels like a harder limit than the time limit to me, though." He smirked and summoned the remaining number of his Stand, with a few on his shoulders and head but most by his feet. "Not that that's much of a limitation, though, with how many of them there are. The copied Quirks are also weaker than what my Quirk copies, proportionate to how much smaller the Waltzes are compared to me, but again, with the quantity available to me I might as well be able to use several full Quirks at once."

"And they're probably a lot more annoying to fight than just you being able to use the Quirks, since you can just fucking assault someone from all directions in a way you probably can't with just one body," Katsuki pointed out. "Plus, y'know, the fact that most people can't see them."

"Yes, thank you," Neito nodded. "I'm hoping to be able to use that to my advantage."

"That's really interesting!" Izuku said. "I wonder if it's using your Quirk somehow, or if it's just emulating it based on your own understanding of it..." He looked at the Millionaire Waltz in his hand, still showing his face, then looked at Katsuki. "You said something earlier about also being able to give copies with Millionaire Waltz, right?"

"I believe I did." Neito raised a hand, and one of the Waltzes by his feet faded into a golden aura before reappearing on his hand. "I can demonstrate by allowing you two access to each others' Quirks, if you want?"

Izuku and Katsuki nodded their consent. Neito placed the second Waltz on Katsuki, then activated both of the Waltzes he had placed on his new friends at once. The one on Katsuki morphed to look like him, as Izuku's had done, while Izuku's Waltz only rewound the clock on its back because it hadn't fully run out of his Quirk. Neito then quickly picked up the Waltzes and switched them so that the Explosion-bearing Waltz was on Izuku and the Pluck-bearing Waltz was on Katsuki. "There's already a bit of time missing, as my Stand's donation ability can only give what time they have left. Still, it should let you try out each others' Quirks for a bit, and if you want more I can just do it again. I will activate my ability... now." On his signal, both Waltzes started ticking again, their clocks running down in fast-forward, and their faces shifted back to Neito's.

However, for whatever reason the two Waltzes' times ran down at different rates. As if wanting to one-up Don't Stop Me's blazing speed, the clock of the Millionaire Waltz on Izuku had blurred to a speed that made its turning almost imperceptible to all but Don't Stop Me's accelerated vision, while Katsuki's Waltz seemed almost reluctant to give up Pluck from the sluggish speed that its clock moved at. Izuku gained Explosion as soon as the Waltz on his shoulder reached zero, lighting his palms up with a few minor sparks to test it out. Katsuki had let him try out the original a few times, and he was already noticing a few differences between using Pluck and the copy that Millionaire Waltz gave him. He briefly wondered if it felt any different from directly using Neito's Copy.

A few seconds later, Katsuki's Waltz finally finished its countdown. Katsuki immediately winced, clutching his head. "Agh, fuck, my head! Izuku, do you ever get headaches like this?" He took a few deep breaths, causing some more golden sparks to dance between his hands and his head. "Okay, I think it's getting a bit better now. I guess my head ain't quite made for randomly getting new senses all of a sudden."

Izuku blinked, looking at Katsuki. "Huh, what was that golden light coming from your hands just now? Ah, and are you okay?" He examined Katsuki's copy of Pluck as best he could with the original. It was the first time Izuku was able to actually view his own Quirk like he could anyone else's, though there was a slightly faded quality to it that Izuku figured probably came from it being a copy. There were hints of it everywhere in Katsuki's body, like with Neito's, but less concentrated in most of his body except for the brain where there was even more Quirk Factor than Neito's, likely due to the sensory aspect.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Katsuki said, rubbing his temples. "The sense just... really hurt my head when it came in, I guess. Don't know what you mean by golden light, though." He felt the sides of his face that he'd touched when the headache first came on. "Doesn't feel like I got myself with any explosions, but maybe I just let off a few firecracker pops from the surprise..." His eyes drifted between Izuku and Neito. "Damn, having an entire new sense feels pretty weird. How the hell did you ever think people were just like this, Izuku?"

"I told you, the doctor literally said it was impossible for me to have a Quirk!"

"Shit, yeah, sorry," Katsuki quickly responded, then winced and rubbed his head again. "Gah, maybe it's like what you said about your Quirk, Monoma?"

Neito winced. "Ah, yes, that sounds possible, if it's a problem with Quirks that can hold other Quirks in general. I did feel a similar resistance when trying to give it to you. My apologies, Bakugou-kun, I should've thought of that before..."

Katsuki shrugged. "It's cool, but do you think you could turn it off?"

Neito frowned, screwed his eyes shut for a moment, then sighed and shook his head. "Sorry, I don't think I can. You'll have to wait it out."

"Maybe I could try?" Izuku suggested. "Unless it just won't work on an identical Quirk, I could try to take it off your hands... or brain, I suppose... until it times out?"

"Wouldn't I have to try to st- ah, borrow a Quirk for you to try?" Katsuki asked, frowning. "Feel like there's a few ways that could go wrong..."

"Not quite," Izuku said, smirking. He put a hand to his side, where Katsuki couldn't see it from where he was standing. "How many fingers am I holding up?" he asked, despite not holding up any. "He's going to 'look' at my hand," Izuku thought to himself, or rather to Pluck.

"Wha-" Katsuki started to say, then fell silent as Izuku yanked on his copied sensory Quirk. There was a moment of resistance for some reason, then it went to him just like every other Quirk he'd used Pluck on up to that point. Izuku hadn't even needed him to answer his question; all he needed to do was draw Katsuki's attention to his hand like he had predicted to use his Quirk on him. They'd found, when testing his Quirk, that nothing stopped Izuku from taking a Quirk after asking its user to use it in a certain way. It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that he could trick someone into using their Quirk in a way he anticipated. Izuku made a note to himself that sense-type Quirks seemed especially susceptible to that, given that all it needed was a momentary distraction. "Woah, thanks, I feel better already."

"Oh, that feels weird," Izuku muttered as he felt his Quirk sense doubling up in a weird way due to suddenly having two copies of Pluck at the same time. "It's a little disorienting having the same sense active twice, a bit like going cross-eyed except I can't turn it off, but I don't have a headache yet." He blinked, noticing an odd discrepancy between this usage of Pluck and his few past usages of the Quirk, and looked at Katsuki. "Kacchan, you still have access to Explosion, right?" It didn't look like there was any changes with the original Explosion, but he couldn't feel a connection to Katsuki at all...

"Huh? Lemme check," Katsuki said, then made a few firecracker pops. "Yeah, why do you ask?"

"Huh," Izuku said, then tested to see if he still had the copy of Explosion Neito had given him. A few pops later, he was pretty sure he still did. "Okay, that's weird. I think... maybe, because the copies Millionaire Waltz gives are temporary, they aren't properly... attached, I guess? So when Pluck takes it, I guess it doesn't establish the connection back like it does with other Quirks?"

"Strange..." Neito muttered, stroking his chin. "We could test that more later. I wonder if that works the same with the Quirks in my Copy, or if those would count as part of the Quirk..."

"Oh, yeah, that's a really interesting question," Izuku said, then stopped. "Oh, this is the place I wanted to bring you guys! Takoba Municipal Beach Park!" He pointed to an area that... looked more like a landfill than it did a beach or a park.

"Izuku," Katsuki said flatly, staring at the mounds of garbage higher than their heads. Heck, at some points the walls of garbage looked higher than an adult's head would be.

"Yeah, Kacchan?"

"This place looks like a dump. Literally."

Neito cleared his throat. "I'm, ah, sure you have your reasons for taking us here," he said, "but... It certainly isn't a picturesque beach."

"I noticed this place when we were going home from my Quirk assessment," Izuku said. "It apparently used to be a nice place, but some problem with the currents caused trash to start washing up a few years back. Apparently it got to be too much and people just... started using the place as a dump. Now, nobody comes here unless they want to throw something out."

"Sucks, but that still doesn't answer why you wanted to show this place to us," Katsuki pointed out.

Izuku grinned. "Follow me." He headed for a 'valley' in the middle of the piles of trash, a narrow path that curved off to one side. Katsuki and Neito exchanged a few glances, then shrugged to each other and followed after him. The path Izuku took them down twisted to one side, then the other, then let out to a clearing of sorts. There was a large area still mostly clear of trash, with lower walls of trash to the sides than to the land- and sea-facing sides. Most of their view of the ocean was, unfortunately, completely blocked by the piles of trash, with a single hole in the wall parting around a sort of pier with a gazebo on one end. "Like I said before," Izuku said, "people only come here to illegally dump trash. And in here, nobody's gonna be able to see us behind that big trash wall. It's... technically not entirely legal, but I thought we could come here to have a big open space to train in, plus we could probably use some of the trash for training and exercise if we're careful!"

"I see what your idea is now..." Neito muttered, looking around the sandy 'arena.' "It's quite convenient that you stumbled upon this large area, especially with how hidden the entrance is and how easy to get through it when you know where it is."

"Oh, I actually cleaned it up a bit the last time I was here," Izuku said. "It was actually pretty easy with Don't Stop Me, though I had to be careful with some bits..." He smiled. "I actually thought that maybe, while we're training here, we could try to clean the place a bit? You know, make the world a better place?"

Katsuki gave a small, mirthless laugh at that statement. "You really are a better hero than we ever were, huh?" he sighed, shaking his head. "Fuck it, let's be heroes while we're at it!"

Izuku smiled at Katsuki. "Yeah! But first... Wanna try that idea I had, to see if we can give you a Stand of your own?"

"Sure, why not?" Katsuki said, shrugging. "What'd ya have in mind?"

Izuku walked to the middle of the trash clearing, signaling for the others to follow him. He stopped just a bit before where he believed the center to be and had Don't Stop Me dart low to the ground, sticking a finger in the sand. Izuku was mindful of the fact that it was still raining and Don't Stop Me couldn't stop the rain while doing this unless he wanted it to take much longer, so he tried to make it as fast as he could. He sent it in a quick circle around the center, throwing up a rooster tail of sand as it drew a circle in the ground. While he was at it, he also had his Stand "breathe" a stream of Emerald Flash at the spot in the middle of the circle he was making, the fire aura-coated air creating a burst of steam when it hit the wet sand. The whole thing only took a fraction of a second, but by the time Don't Stop Me had finished its task the rain had almost hit Katsuki, Neito, and himself. Izuku immediately sent Don't Stop Me to knock away the rain directly above the three first, starting with Katsuki, then going to Neito before taking care of himself.

"WAGH!" Neito shouted, flinching back from the green blur just above his head. Unfortunately, this caused him to stumble back into the rain. "Warn me next time you do that, please!"

"S-sorry!" Izuku said, wincing. Don't Stop Me was back to blocking the rain, so Neito didn't get any more water on him. "I, uh, probably should've thought that through better..."

"What happened?" Katsuki asked. "I think I can guess, but..."

"Yeah, I... kinda did something dumb..." Izuku admitted. "I had Don't Stop Me bat away the rain so it didn't hit him, and you too, but..."

Katsuki winced. "Yeah, I probably woulda flinched if I could see that, too. 'Specially with how fast you made it sound." He looked at the still-steaming circle Izuku had just made. "Speaking of seeing it, though, what are we doing with that circle? Does Stand-generated heat help Stands develop or something?"

"Oh, no, I just figured you wouldn't want to sit down on wet sand," Izuku said. "Though now that I think about it that does sound plausible, so hopefully it helps. My idea is... Did I tell you the thing about Stand Users kinda attracting other Stand Users somehow?"

"Sounds familiar," Katsuki nodded. "Think you mentioned something like that after the fight with that one wolf asshole."

"Right, so my idea is to see if we can maybe use that effect to... I guess draw a Stand out of you. Sorta like rubbing magnets on a piece of metal to make it magnetic, but with Stands?"

Katsuki raised an eyebrow. "That... doesn't sound like it'd work, but I guess I'm the one with the least amount of Stand experience here."

"Yeah, honestly I'm not too sure about it myself..." Izuku sighed. "I do have a theory that it might be why family members of a Stand User are more likely to become Stand Users, but I couldn't exactly find any scholarly sources on how Stands propagate through families online..."

"Honestly, that makes about as much sense as everything else I've heard about Stands," Katsuki said, shrugging. He walked over to the circle Izuku had prepared, patted the dry ground a bit to make sure that it had cooled down enough to be safe, then sat down in the middle. "Alright, how are we doing this?"

"I stand here," Izuku said, walking to a spot about a meter and a half from Katsuki, a good distance away but still close enough that Katsuki was well within his range, then pointed to the area on the opposite side of Katsuki from him. "And Neito stands over there, as close to being equally distant to you compared to me that he can. You try to meditate or concentrate on your fighting spirit, since Stands are made from fighting spirit, and Neito and I will also try to stoke our fighting spirits as much as possible. While we do that, we'll have our Stands go around you in a circle." Having said that, Izuku changed up how Don't Stop Me was stopping the rain from falling over the three of them, going from a mostly random pattern that resulted from eliminating raindrops as soon as they got close enough to the ground to circling around in a clockwise circuit that got the area over Izuku while also covering Katsuki and where Neito was supposed to stand. "I'll have to do it closer to you, because Don't Stop Me is Close-Range and also I need to stop the rain from falling, and Neito, can you have all the bits of Millionaire Waltz out and going in a circle farther away?"

"I think I get what you want me to do," Neito said. He put himself where Izuku had indicated, then sent out all of Millionaire Waltz and had the miniature semi-Stands arrange themselves into a large circle. "Should I have them move the same direction that your Stand is moving in, or the opposite direction?"

Izuku frowned, thinking for a moment. "The other way, I think," he finally decided. "Maybe it'll make some sort of twist in the... Stand magnetism that... creates spiritual turbulence that makes it more effective?"

"That doesn't sound right, but I suppose I don't know enough about Stands to dispute it," Neito shrugged. He had the circle of Millionaire Waltz start walking counterclockwise, as Izuku had asked. "And now I suppose we try to work up our collective fighting spirit?"

Izuku nodded his head vigorously, smiling and clenching his hands. "Think about All Might saving people! That always works for me!" He scrunched his face up into a surprisingly good imitation of All Might's face and started mimicking the hero's signature laugh. His body started to produce a green Stand aura in response to his emotions, and his Stand managed to get even faster.

Neito followed in laughing, striking a suitably dramatic pose. "Your enthusiasm is infectious, Midoriya-kun! But then again, I suppose that is the point of this exercise!" He closed his eyes in concentration, and soon emanated a golden aura to match Izuku's green. His Stand also picked up its pace, carving a large circle in the wet sand with its many tiny feet, but its speed was still nothing compared to Don't Stop Me.

Katsuki, for his part, closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He found his thoughts drifting to Izuku, school, and his and his classmates' past treatment of Izuku. "Do I even deserve a Stand..." he ruminated to himself, thinking about the awful things he had done to Izuku. He had believed the hype of his peers and teachers when they told him he was destined for greatness, but... recent events made him see how he'd let them lead him away from being an actual, good hero. Still, Izuku was holding his hand out to Katsuki in friendship despite everything, and Katsuki refused to bat it away this time. He didn't know what he was supposed to focus on to make Izuku's idea work, or if it would even work at all for that matter, but Katsuki tried to gather his resolve to learn what it meant to be a hero and hoped that would work.

"Oh, Kacchan, your hands are glowing!" Izuku eventually shouted, piercing the silence.

"Oh shit, really?" Katsuki asked, quickly holding a hand up to check it. Sure enough, it was radiating some sort of sparkling golden light. Still... "Why do I feel like I've seen this before, though?" He looked past his hand, which slowly lost whatever energy it was that had built up, and checked where Izuku's Stand had to have been circling. Nothing there, even though he could see where it was batting away the rain...

"Didn't you notice a golden light coming from Bakugou-kun's hands earlier, as well?" Neito pointed out. Katsuki looked around himself at the circle Millionaire Waltz was making in the sand. Again, he could see the sand shifting a bit from the tiny feet disturbing it, but couldn't actually see the Stand.

"Oh, yeah! Kacchan, does this mean you have a Stand now?" Izuku looked so excited, but...

Katsuki shook his head, frowning. "I don't think so? I still can't see your Stands, at least, even though I can definitely see where they should be. Don't know what that glow was, but it ain't a Stand..."

"Huh, that's weird..." Izuku muttered, crossing his arms and frowning. "Is it the beginning of a Stand? No, then you'd probably be able to see something from our Stands, at least... Something other than a Quirk or a Stand? Maybe, I guess, but if that's the case then how many things are there..." He looked like he might have had more to say, but before he could put it out there, he was interrupted by a clattering sound from the 'entrance' of the clearing. He, Katsuki, and Neito turned to the entrance to see a blonde-haired girl limping her way into the clearing, leaning on the pile of trash. Her clothes were soaked, tattered, and torn, like she'd been attacked by some wild, clawed animal in the rain. Each gash in her clothing had a dark red mark under it, which added to the appearance that she had been attacked, but somehow there was no blood anywhere on her body. There were also a few claw marks on her exposed arms and face, most notably and most horribly over her right eye. The eye with the claw marks was closed, and neither Izuku, Katsuki, nor Neito could tell if she even had an eye under the giant, seemingly-scarred gash.

The girl tottered forward, panting, and collapsed in front of the circle of Millionaire Waltz. Neito had his Stand stop moving in its circle, then had the parts closest to the girl examine her. "She doesn't look very good," Neito observed, not that it needed to be said. She was almost hyperventilating even though she'd stopped moving, and her one, good, golden eye, slit like a cat's, was rolled up in its socket. One of the Waltzes jumped onto her left shoulder, which had a very large rent in the fabric of her blouse. "Huh, she's got a star-shaped birthmark on her left shoulder. It looks different from the rest of the markings on her, and it's got a marking over top of it. How did this even happen to her? They don't look like normal wounds or scars, it's almost like normal skin if someone just stained it red somehow. She has no normal wounds, but a few old scars from what I can see..."

"Did you say a star-shaped birthmark?" Katsuki asked, getting up. "Didn't that one wolf asshole also have a star-shaped birthmark on his shoulder, Izuku?"

"Huh, yeah, he did," Izuku said. "Weird, I wonder if that means anything. And if it's at all related to those red marks..."

"Ack, what..?" Neito exclaimed, clutching his own shoulder in sudden pain. Drawing back the hand that he'd touched his shoulder with to examine it, he saw that it had some blood on it. "Did..." He looked back at the girl to see that she'd somehow managed to bite down on one of his Millionaire Waltzes with her small but exceptionally sharp fangs without any of them noticing. "Shit, she might be a Stand User!" Neito cautioned as the girl bit through the Waltz.

The Stand did produce some sort of blood, but it faded from existence when the Stand part faded out due to being bisected. The girl, perhaps sensing that the Waltz had disappeared, curled in on herself and started sobbing. As she curled into a ball, an ominous red aura started to waft off of her body. A dark red shape slowly rose from her body, starting off a formless blob before gaining a head, arms, and little bat wings. Heart-shaped protrusions adorned its joints, forehead, and the area over where its heart would have been, if it had a heart. Horns curved back from its temples on either side of the heart on its head. A blood-red tongue flicked over the blood-red fangs in its just-formed maw, and it opened eyes as gold as the girl's, though with sclerae so dark a red they were almost black.

"WRYYYYYYYYYY!" it screeched protectively over the prone, shivering form of the girl.

"U-uh, Kacchan, she just manifested her Stand and it... looks pretty intimidating," Izuku said.

"Well, fuck, I can see it," Katsuki responded.

ゴゴゴゴゴ

Stand Name: Millionaire Waltz

User: Monoma Neito

Namesake: Millionaire Waltz by Queen

Dub Name: Millionaire Dance

Type: Colony, Long-Distance, Quirk

Stats:

-Destructive Power: C
-Speed: C
-Range: B
-Persistence: B
-Precision: A
-Developmental Potential: C

Appearance: Millionaire Waltz takes the form of numerous tiny golden boys that look vaguely like Neito, wearing black, tuxedo-like suits similar to Neito's eventual hero costume except with a pocket watch-sized clock on the back of the coat. When a Millionaire Waltz copies someone's Quirk, it morphs into a golden version of that person instead of Neito.

Abilities: Unlike most Stands, Millionaire Waltz seems to be capable of using Neito's Quirk, Copy, though with a few restrictions. If an individual Millionaire Waltz makes physical contact with a person that has a Quirk, it will be able to copy that Quirk for up to the same amount of time that Neito can. However, they may only hold one Quirk at a time. They do not automatically gain access to any Quirk that Monoma has copied and can't copy Quirks from Stands, including Millionaire Waltz. If a Millionaire Waltz touches someone while it has a Quirk copied, it can allow that person to take the remaining charge of the Quirk. This lets Neito copy that Quirk as normal except for the missing time at the cost of removing that Millionaire Waltz's copy of the Quirk. However, other people that he gives a copy of a Quirk to in this way might not be able to carry more than one copy of a Quirk at a time, due to not possessing Copy. As a downside to Millionaire Waltz's ability, each Millionaire Waltz can only use the Quirk it has copied at a fraction of its power and suffers Quirk backlash "normally" as would be proportional to their body, which is transferred to Neito at the same rate that damage normally does for a Colony Stand.

ゴゴゴゴゴ

A/N: TO BE CONTINUED (insert Roundabout noises here)

I will admit, I may have drawn some inspiration from Soul Eater (specifically Crona and Ragnarok, in the whole 'person with amorphous humanoid thing made of a suspiciously blood-like liquid coming out of their back' thing) in forming my mental image of what Himiko's Stand looks like. At least what I remember from the anime and those characters, it's kinda been a while since I've watched it and I still haven't gotten around to reading the manga. Though tbh I do feel a bit bad about having the edgiest-looking Stand overshadow Neito's Stand appearance...

In hindsight, I might have made this chapter a bit too exposition-heavy. Originally, I'd wanted what eventually became the whole chapter to just be the first half of chapter six, but it was already getting to be the usual size of my chapters at that 'halfway' point (though honestly in hindsight the A/N is kinda making it feel particularly bloated because I wrote a lot here...) so I just decided to make it another cliffhanger. Well, at least now you know more about Izuku's Quirk and Neito's Stand! There are three reasons I named Izuku's Quirk Pluck. I think I said two of them in-chapter, that it's a name that simultaneously describes how he can snatch (pluck) a Quirk out from under someone to stop them from using it while also sounding like it could be something a lot different without that context and that it sounds close enough to a plausible name for Inko's Quirk to seem like there's a bit of family theme naming there that would make it more likely for someone to assume the two were more similar. The third reason, honestly the one that I think I might've thought of first, is that it's actually a JoJo reference, though what it's referencing might be a bit abstruse (hint: think part 1) so it's possible some people might not have noticed. Kudos to you if you did, though.

A few fun facts and notes about the Quirk-granting aspect of Neito's Stand: I wasn't originally thinking about giving him that part, but a confluence of two ideas ('should I give Millionaire Waltz another power to make it more than just Copy Again' and 'what happens to the ability if someone steals Neito's Quirk') had me add that particular ability. Mechanically, his ability to take copies from his Waltzes is basically just his ability to grant other people copies, just applied to himself. Millionaire Waltz isn't directly his Quirk, just an ability that his subconscious or soul or whatever formed his Stand based heavily on his Quirk. As such, it can only interface with Neito's Quirk through the context of the mechanics of its own ability (if nothing else Copy only works through direct physical contact and I feel like Stands probably can't count unless maybe they have the person's actual physical DNA in them like, hypothetically, some sort of blood-based Stand), so it specifically has the ability to donate Quirk copies to Neito's Copy Quirk. And if it can do that, why can't it donate copies to other people? If another person has a Quirk that lets them temporarily or permanently hold other Quirks, like Pluck or All For One, Millionaire Waltz will also place its copies within those Quirks so that they work like they usually do with the Quirk, except if the Quirk can permanently hold Quirks it will still lose the MW copies after the time limit is up unless it specifically creates permanent copies instead of just stealing the original (so no Quirk duplication glitch for AFO). As for the thing about people having a limit to how many copies they can hold, the copies are a bit safer to have than getting additional Quirks from AFO due to being temporary and MW probably being slightly more optimized for that purpose (he'd probably be more likely to cause debilitating but temporary migraines than serious and permanent brain damage, which is something at least), but it's still entirely possible for Neito to overload people if he gives them too many and people probably kinda start to resist MW depending on how dangerous another Quirk would be for them. Generally, I think I'll have it that most people can hold at least one copied Quirk so that the donate ability isn't totally unreliable, but they likely won't have the capacity to comfortably hold more unless they have a relatively 'simple' and/or 'weak' Quirk (and I guess the other way around probably works too) or are just flat-out Quirkless. However, some people can probably have better compatibility for multiple Quirks even with 'high-storage' Quirks and possibly better compatibility to certain Quirks (for example, Hagakure might be more compatible with Navel Laser because she already has a light-based Quirk), so it's possible Neito will be able to squeeze a third or maybe even fourth Quirk into some people without too much trouble. Maybe even more, but what's the likelihood that Neito will ever come across someone with near-perfect compatibility to all Quirks?

And maybe I'm blanking on something I could use to make it a bit better, but writing about Colony Stands is semantically weird, at least with how I understand them. Technically, a Colony Stand is only one thing no matter how many parts it's in. It has to be, to not conflict with the rule against having multiple Stands (not that the rules are particularly set in stone, to the point where you might as well just say 'except for when they don't' after explaining each rule). I'm probably just overthinking it, though.

Also I swear not everyone is going to have a Stand named after a Queen song. I admit that I've named a lot of them after Queen songs because I like Queen, but there probably shouldn't be too more after those three and I kinda retroactively made a reason for why Izuku, Shouta, and Neito specifically all have Queen songs. You might be able to guess what it is tbh.

Because Stands are basically materialized willpower and Izuku, being an Anime Protagonist, has been demonstrated in canon to have so much willpower that it can sometimes work to his detriment (he can and will break several bones and still power on like he's not experiencing the agony of breaking several bones, as long as it's to save someone), I kinda decided to myself that his Stand is well on the more powerful side. By like a wide margin. At the moment, because he's still young and inexperienced, it's not quite as powerful as it will be later on in the bulk of the fic, but I'd say it's probably still around the level of Crazy Diamond or Star Platinum at the beginning of DiU (I think Jotaro said that Star Platinum was greatly weakened from years of disuse at that point, so that the hyper-powerful Stand that I think at some points was even called one of the strongest Stands in the world at its peak wouldn't be a complete game-breaker in the smaller pond of Morioh) in most of its stats. Don't Stop Me's speed, however, is its best stat and is probably already approaching the likes of Silver Chariot or Star Platinum (barring time stop, of course), plus it has a kinda-sorta speed-based ability to supplement that. I think someone once guessed that Don't Stop Me's name was Speed King, after one of the Part 8 Stands. Obviously that wasn't quite right, but I'll admit that I was kinda amused with how accurate that description was.

I think I will have a lot of fun with the entrance exam, when I get to it.

Oh, also, yet another question I thought of recently that I've been considering but don't entirely have an answer for yet, so again I'm gonna ask you, the reader, and see if considering your opinions tips me one way or the other: would you say Izuku's Quirk is Emitter or Transformation? Yeah, the obvious choice is Emitter but I'd say one could argue that it's Transformation in the way Shishikura Seiji's Meatball is Transformation. Seiji can knead flesh to transform it, which works best on himself as it lets him somehow detach parts of his body and turn those parts into giant floating fingers that Meatball works through, and then he can knead other people's flesh to smush them into And-I-Must-Screamballs (apologies if you were eating when you read the phrase 'And-I-Must-Screamball,' by the way). If you wanted to call Meatball Emitter and not Transformation I wouldn't argue with you, I kinda thought that myself at first, but I suppose the logic is that because its primary function is transforming Seiji, then he can also transform others, that makes it more like a Transformation Quirk with some Emitter aspects. I guess it's only a slightly more complex sequence of actions than a Quirk that allows you to, say, transform part of your body into a gun and then shoot bullets made of your hair with it, which would quite definitively be a Transformation Quirk despite clear Emitter aspects. Honestly, to me All For One is already starting to toe the line of Transformation with how AFO (the dude) doesn't appear to have any visible mutant traits despite presumably having stolen Quirks that would give him those and tends to body horror when actively using his Quirks (though that's mostly due to stacking Transformation Quirks, some of which may already be body-horror-y even without stacking). Izuku's AFO-like Quirk, I think, takes this semi-Transformation aspect a small bit further by actively transforming both user and victim in a way that allows it to steal Quirks faster and more seamlessly than the original All For One can (I think that AFO usually takes at least a bit of time to steal a Quirk due to Drama from what I've seen/heard and tends to leave its victims dazed and disoriented, while Izuku's variant can take them instantly and with no more discomfort or disorientation to the target than Erasure). Which I suppose brings us back to the Meatball comparison, where Izuku can transform other people to transform himself in a sort of opposite way to Seiji's transforming himself to transform others. But I've ranted a bit. To get back to the original question, in case you've forgotten or glazed over much of this paragraph (honestly I would not blame you, this thing got long), would you call Izuku's Quirk Emitter or Transformation?

And honestly come to think of it I think an argument could be made for One For All having Transformation aspects to it, and not just in how All Might is able to use the stockpile energy to make himself look beefier and less skelatal than he actually is. Or maybe Mutant since its ability kinda stems from being being a weird Quirk Factor?