She woke up to light. Golden light. Not coming through her window, but directly in front of her face. Her attempts to cover her eyes showed that the light was oddly… persistent. Actually, she couldn't block the light no matter how she tried.
Blinking, she took a better look at the sheet of golden light hanging above her.
Welcome to My Hero Academia: The Game!
Was this the work of some malevolent quirk that addled her mind? Reaching out revealed that she couldn't really touch the light, and that it moved with her field of vision. Closer examination showed a button saying "OK" on it. When she focused on it, the screen popped away.
She scanned her room with her eyes and with her vines, but there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary. If this was the result of a quirk, they had some range.
Rising to her feet, she attempted to prepare for the day ahead. The keyword being attempted. Despite all her efforts, she simply could not take off her sleeping clothes.
After her third attempt to wrench her shirt off, another golden menu appeared before her.
You seem to be struggling to unequip your items. Say or think "Inventory" to open your Inventory page.
The golden screen quirk returned again, and she felt sort of glad her shirt remained stuck on. She did not like the idea of being observed while changing- and clearly, she was being observed.
Feeling a bit foolish, she grew out her vines so they encased her fully before muttering "Inventory." Another gold screen popped into existence, one that depicted her face, surrounded by a number of golden squares. Some were filled, most were not.
Touching it did nothing, but thinking her sleep shirt off, did, if that made any sort of sense. The fact that whatever this was could apparently detect her thoughts was quite worrying. But she couldn't exactly cower in her room all day, could she?
She changed into her uniform and 'equipped' her Saint Michael medallion in the necklace slot. The screens informed her that the former helped with her studies, while the latter provided a seven percent boost to damage against those she considered evil. Which sounded nice, if it actually meant anything.
The numbers, the statistics… it reminded her of the video games her brother occasionally played. In fact, if she didn't know any better- and if she didn't already have a quirk- she would say this was some particularly odd quirk manifesting.
Nothing she did seemed to make the screens leave her alone, even when she hopped on an outbound train at the last possible second. It wasn't conclusive proof, but it seemed to be stuck to her, so she figured she would attempt to make the most of it.
Ibara had always had an appreciation for math and science, above it being something that kept her from failing classes. God had written the cosmos in mathematics, and to understand the creation was to understand the creator.
The statistics the strange quirk gave her could be worked with. Analysis proved she had health points, along with a series of more detailed descriptors, some of which seemed to overlap. Wisdom and Intelligence, Strength and Vitality…
Her 'build', if that was the proper gaming parlance, was slightly biased towards Dexterity and Wisdom, but was otherwise evenly spread.
It was a bit odd seeing the numbers so plainly displayed, though. She was tempted to go and quantify the Strength measure, in newtons of force delivered or some such.
Honestly, the apparent separation between the numbers and the real world bugged her at times. What did HP mean? It seemed an arbitrary measure, Vitality multiplied by a constant plus a constant. She was literally given the formula.
She supposed it wasn't too strange for a quirk to work that way, to be "in a box" with its own strange rules that didn't impact the larger operation of physics. It just bugged her.
Searching through help menus and the like seemed to indicate a robust system. She hadn't searched for inconsistencies or loopholes deliberately, but it seemed well thought out. There the stat numbers, but there were also perks:
Conviction: In a world filled with misery and uncertainty, it is great comfort to know that, in the end, there is light in the darkness. +1 Wisdom, Resistance to Mental Debuffs
Skills as well:
Photosynthesis (Level 1): Increased recovery of Stamina in sunlight. The more vine area exposed to the sun, the greater the rate of recovery.
(It was flaky like that. Hard numbers here but not there.)
Her checks through the menus also destroyed any lingering suspicions she had. The Gamer's Body perk genuinely affected her: when she attempted to nick herself with her shears, there was no wound. No blood. Just a drop in HP.
It was too complex to be a trick, she thought. And if it was real, she had a duty to utilize it as best as possible. She worked through the help guide, took notes, and plotted a tentative path along the skill tree.
The furthest reaches of the tree were beyond her vision– cloudy icons, censored names– but even the closer ones had barriers to entry, both getting earlier skills and statistical requirements.
One side of the tree was more physical. Vitality, Strength, and Dexterity requirements for fine control of the vines, stronger vines, shaping them into weapons and hardening them like wood. The other was more cerebral: Wisdom and Intelligence let her grow things, poisons and salves… Charisma had pheromones, drugs that modified behavior in exploitable ways.
With all due respect to heroines like Midnight, she didn't particularly want to go down that path. Ibara had her thoughts about how some heroes could tend towards being crass and oversexed, and she had even more thoughts about how the hero system was responsible for that… She would avoid that matter altogether.
Perhaps the greatest discovery in the skill tree was Observe. It was practically a quirk on its own, giving her detailed information about objects, quirks, and people. Assuming it wasn't some elaborate trick, she had been given remarkable power, something like several quirks in one.
It was still a little strange, but as long as she had it, she had to make good use of it. To whom much is given, much will be required.
One problem that cropped up was the matter of leveling up. Doing so seemed the best way to exploit her ability, but the problem was gaining experience. XP was gained from defeating foes… the first thought that came to mind wasn't workable. She wasn't prepared to be a vigilante and wasn't willing either.
That left another means: quests. Participation in the community pushed her closer to that next level. Helping make lunches or doing charity. It was slow. It was gradual, but it was basically what she did before.
(She unlocked an Aromatherapy skill after using the thurifier as an altar server. Strange, but not unwelcome. It would work well with some of her eventual skills.)
There were small quests, but there was also a major one: Get Into UA, which was basically what it said on the tin. There was a massive pot of XP up for grabs if she succeeded, many times what her daily quests got, and a considerable sum of money. Her volunteer work quests did not provide money, and she was curious if this quest money was legitimate and where it came from. But she shouldn't be counting her chicks before they hatched… she had to get in to get those rewards.
The system was helpful because it gave her hard numbers to work with– some Observation of UA first years gave her an idea of the stats she should aim for– and it meant she could work out until her Stamina was literally at zero. Fortunately, she could improve skills without leveling up and just training, but she was already seeing decreasing returns… However, the best benefit it gave was, inarguably, skill books.
Reading books boosted skills in a very literal, numerical sense. Well, not just books. Her church gave out pamphlets for some of the Latin songs they sang. That unlocked a Latin skill. With a Latin skill, she could read books in Latin…
She would never have to worry about failing an English class, that was certain. Polyglots made very good heroes, especially when responding to large-scale disasters.
(It also let her pick up Aramaic, which was nice. Lacking in practical use? Perhaps. But nice.)
Her level-ups were few and far between. She estimated she'd gain about two levels between her gaining the ability and the start of UA, and that was about right. Two levels and perhaps a third of her way to the next before UA, which was something to work with. All points from leveling up went straight into Wisdom and Intelligence, for a strong score in the written section…
The question was picking out Perk and Skill unlocks that would carry her through the practical half of the exam. Rumors said it was robots, which put the kibosh on exploiting poisons or most substances that her plants could produce (at the moment). She didn't mind too terribly, because she knew unlocking Thicker Vines and Vinewood would make her more adaptable overall. Stronger vines, made of better material? That was obviously useful.
She only had one perk unlock, though, so it seemed like you got one every other level. Still, she was fairly confident her choice was strong: Swift Repose cut the amount of sleep she needed for healthy functioning by an hour, and let her choose how long she would sleep when she did. It was the best she had, considering Eidetic Memory was locked behind high intelligence.
Still, seven extra hours of preparation for UA each week left her in a good position before the exams, she thought.
She took what steps she could to increase her chances. A full, nutritional breakfast and an equally nutritious bento for buffs throughout the day, a pair of glasses– which provided more intelligence than her contacts, why not– and a thin bracelet picked up from a secondhand store that provided a minor speed buff. Because it was red.
Illogical, but just as illogical as the whole package overall. She checked, the boost worked. The game's numbers, when it provided them, were accurate. It made her wonder at the mechanism behind it all, the 'code' of this strange game, perhaps even the 'coder', if it was something other than providence that had given this ability to her.
Despite all this, and despite her apparent resistance to mental debuffs did not stop worry churning in her gut about the exams. Her numbers were comparable to UA first years, even a bit above the average in Intelligence and Wisdom… but she worried that the system might suddenly stop working, that the benefits and her own preparation might suddenly disappear.
It didn't. She worked through the questions with a fairly cool head, and while she couldn't get hard numbers like she could with speed and strength– stopwatches and scales, respectively– it did almost feel like she remembered things more easily, with less straining her mind. She was almost certain she had gotten some questions incorrect, but she managed well enough.
(She barely noticed anyone past her own nose, and she didn't do nearly as much Observation as she probably should have, but she got through it.)
And then, the practical portion of the exam, where they would be scored by how many robots they disabled. The system overall felt a bit gamey, with point values and whatnot, but it had a special meaning for Ibara:
This was the first time she was fighting an enemy with the Gamer system. This was the first time she would earn XP from something other than quests. In fact, she had carte blanche. She would be rewarded for it.
Wrath was not becoming of a hero… but she did feel glad to finally put her skills to use. This was a training exercise, but she would be an instrument of justice yet.
Use vines to entangle the feet and trip them, or trap them so her vinewood could grow into sensitive joints. It was hard getting to them, with so many high mobility quirk users racing around, but she caught her fair share. Every robot killed provided weeks' worth of questing XP. It was ridiculous.
There was the occasional ping of her level up, which she immediately fed into Strength and Dexterity. Hopefully, any UA observers would just think she tried a bit harder as the rest went on, perhaps catching a second wind.
She ended up providing a lot of assists– the rules didn't specify how those counted, if they did– just because her abilities tended towards slowing and stalling. Some people were courteous enough to thank her.
The fighting provided a lot of experience. Other than literal experience with combat, there were nice boosts to her skills and actual experience that pushed her up another two levels.
For most of the week afterward, she went to pray. She had gotten distracted with work from UA, not spending as much time in contemplation as she could have. There was nothing to do except wait– and send a few letters to the other hero schools, for security's sake.
She liked her church. It was small. Cozy. One of the oldest in Japan, rebuilt after the madness that was the beginning of the age of Quirks. It was newer than Quirks, yet at the same time much older.
Really, she wasn't that different from the people of the past. They were called to do the best with what they had, whether that something was oratory skill or literal superpowers. Getting a big head about her abilities was folly. She was a human just the same, subject to the same sins. The same faults. An age of heroes did not necessarily mean an age of virtue.
A golden screen popped up in front of her about halfway through a Rosary. Get Into UA: Success! There was a tone, her level shot up, and a wad of money dropped into her lap. She resisted the urge to drop everything and check those numbers, instead working through the rest of prayers, with a special focus on thanksgiving.
This was before the letter even arrived. The system could be wrong, but she doubted it. And if it was true… well, the system had the ability to cotton on to discussions she couldn't hear, then. It knew UA's verdict almost as soon as it passed. Marvelous.
The concrete results of the quest sitting on her lap were also marvelous, in their own sort of way.
She looked at the pile of money. Observed it. Compared it against ones in her wallet– which sat securely in her inventory most of the time– and even checked the serial numbers. She wouldn't know what made serial numbers right, but they didn't seem wrong. As far as she could tell, she had received no small amount of money from thin air.
This ability did… things to reality. Considering what it had done so far, she did genuinely think it had generated real money from thin air. Again and again, she was reminded how incredible this ability was.
She thought on it a bit more–Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us– and when she was done, she stuffed the whole sum of her reward money into a donation box for a soup kitchen.
The glory of this ability wouldn't last forever, as surely as her time on earth wouldn't. She needed to do good with it as long as she could.
Omake:
She looked at him…
One for All (Level 1): When activated, boosts Strength of user by a factor of X, where X is the total number of users of OfA. Current factor: 9. Recoil experienced: 99%
Full recoil? That sounded unpleasant… and what sort of Quirk had multiple users?
Working title was "Life's A Game (and I Would Like to Speak to the Programmer)". Gamer fics are fun, huh? Idk how this will go. I'd like to think backburner but my backburner constantly rotates to different stories. My perfidious muse :(