10.1 The Sports Festival Approaches, As Expected
A/N: This is the last chapter I will release before a short hiatus. I definitely won't be releasing another chapter for another 2-3 weeks, and depending on how things go might not have time to write until June/July. Thanks everyone for continuing to support me, and I hope you enjoy! (And If you're reading on another site, please check the thread on Spacebattles as there are a lot of fanarts and omakes that you might not have seen before!)
'It's taking part that counts.' Such were the words of the founder of the bygone sporting festival once known as the Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin. A truly valuable phrase, full of common sense and meaning towards life. After all, a participation trophy was still fundamentally a trophy, an honorable mention was honorable at its heart, and even the lowliest extra still showed up in the credits at the movie theater. Yet the Olympics, that venerable symbol of international peace and cooperation, had fallen by the wayside. Athletes from every nation in the world, all of whom who had poured their heart and soul into honing their athleticism and craft, were judged less interesting to watch on television than Japanese high school students who had won the genetic lottery. And I, who could otherwise have peacefully progressed through such a sporting event without any particular pressure on me to succeed, had instead been given a ludicrous request by a Pro Hero who had probably never even heard of Baron de Coubertin.
'Impress her.' What was I, a sealing stamp?
But realistically, a high school student with a weak but rare type of information gathering quirk wasn't the sort of person a Pro Hero would involve in a police investigation in the first place, and no amount of my selfishly wishing to be included for the sake of possibly expiating a little bit of my guilt would change that. To achieve my goal, I would somehow have to make my quirk look impressive. Which was ironic, considering that I never would have found out Zaimokuza was missing if Villains hadn't attacked, and that I never would have survived the attack without blowing through practically every single resource I would need to fake having an impressive quirk.
Granted, I had two full weeks to attempt to try and restock, but even if nothing came up in class where I would have to use a stored quirk (unlikely), and even if I could keep up with a back-breaking load of four to five hours a night of quirk restocking for all two weeks (probably, but I was seriously getting sick of it), that would still only leave me with roughly half of my useful quirks charged to a 20% level. I had blown through that many quirks at the USJ in about five minutes. In short, there was no way I was going to impress anybody at the Sports Festival without cheating, getting extremely lucky, or fighting dirty. Naturally, I chose option (d); all of the above. I suppose that it probably said something about me that the only way I was ever going to impress anyone during the Sports Festival was by stabbing twenty heroes in the back simultaneously and manipulating another nineteen to go along with it, but on the other hand the process of betraying every principle the school stood for filled in my roster of usable quirks considerably.
No, more than that. Going through all of the necessary actions to steal opportunities from charitable, hard-working, dedicated hero students, just so that I could pursue a personal vendetta, had given me a lucky break that could possibly have let me compete in the competition fairly. With a heavy sigh, I looked up at the clear blue sky above Training Ground Beta, listening to the distant sounds of explosions and of heavy chunks of rubble being thrown, levitated, blasted, or otherwise knocked against each other. Then, with a deep breath, I visualized my mental 'constellation' of quirks. I moved Ooze into the center of the sphere of stars, causing it to come to life, and commanded it to reach out a tendril to 'touch' a quirk that, thanks to a legacy of a youth misspent on video games, I was calling Mime. Mime could copy any number of quirks simultaneously at a touch, for a duration of five minutes each, though it could only use one at a time. I had originally hoped to use Mime to copy Ooze, which could use copies of two quirks simultaneously, to somehow evade that restriction and improve my capabilities dramatically. Instead, what happened not only the first time, but every time was that as soon as Ooze 'touched' and copied Mime, Mime also copied Ooze. And then Mime was copying "Ooze-copying-Mime", and Ooze was copying "Mime-copying-Ooze." And then Mime was copying "Ooze-copying-Mime-copying-Ooze", and so on, and so on, until Ooze slowly dragged Mime into the center of the constellation, and all of the recursion suddenly caused the two quirks to fuse together with a mental sensation I could only describe as a 'schlorp.'
"Ugh." As soon as the two quirks fused, I almost immediately had to fight down a surge of nausea, letting out an audible grunt as I did so. Unlike previous times where I had used multiple quirks at once, by draining other quirks into Ooze, the Mime-Ooze hybrid was forcibly overriding my power's natural tendency to read information off of only one quirk at a time. A single voice telling me that I was supposed to be a giant mass of undifferentiated power-copying cells was ignorable; listening to two voices at once saying the same thing in unison was much more distracting. Despite the fact that I knew heteromorphic effects would take years to affect me if they even affected me in the first place, the dizzying sensations made me want to check and make sure that my skin hadn't turned green, and that my fingers and toes hadn't all melted like wax and blobbed together. It was enough to give me nightmares, even through my borrowed Efficient Sleep quirk. Sure, given my personality, I knew that there was only about a 1/108 chance that a woman would ever want to date me, but I still lived in hope that one day I would find a social equivalent to the Stockpile quirk to temporarily boost that over 100% for short periods of time, like being rich or famous. But since the presence of a 1/108 chance to begin with was only due to the fact that thanks to all the exercise I was getting I now had a moderately attractive physique, turning into a hideous green melted-wax man would leave me no chance at all!
So, if it felt that gross, then why was I putting up with this double quirk feedback? Simple. It let me use three quirks! No, it was even better than that; because the Mime-Ooze hybrid was fundamentally two quirks at its base, I could copy the same quirk twice, and still have a third slot left over! And that included Stockpile! I could either store a quirk twice as fast, or store two quirks at once! I could even store half the energy in Ooze, and the other half in Mime! It was a priceless upgrade to my capabilities, and a little bit of temporary body dysphoria and nightmares was a small price to pay.
Brushing off my gym uniform, I reached out with a tendril from the Mime-Ooze hybrid, commanding it to touch Vulture Glide, then reached out with another two tendrils to touch a new quirk that I had picked up from a cutesy brunette in 1-B; it was a strangely triangular-shaped quirk that could 'assign' its output to either super strength, super durability, or flight according to the wishes of its owner, and it was just about my new favorite toy. I threw its mental switch to strength and started running, building up speed and then jumping with all my might. As soon as my feet left the ground, I switched her quirk to channel flight, and took away one tendril from her quirk, moving it to Vulture Glide instead. And then, so what if according to my quirk I was a ball of protoplasm? I was floating! Yeah, I couldn't really steer, so I could only keep moving in the direction that I jumped off in, and I couldn't accelerate, and I couldn't stop without falling out of the sky, and a stiff breeze would probably blow me all over the place, but it still got me up in the air, and I wasn't even choking on smoke this time!
Since I was flying straight towards a ruined building, I slowly pivoted mid-air so that I was flying feet-first, and used it as a springboard to change direction and to get even more height. From up in the sky, I could see across most of the training grounds, where in various directions my classmates were practicing their moves. What I saw wasn't exactly encouraging. To my left, Todoroki was throwing up huge sheets of ice then letting them melt; trying to send out waves of frost faster and faster. Miura was firing arrow after arrow into the base of a building to my right, causing it to rumble and slowly list to one side as it lost structural integrity. A group of robots a little further away had gathered together and were tossing clay pigeons into the air for Tsuyu, who slapped them out of the air one after another with her long, flexible tongue. And, of course, there were the constant bright flashes of light and the percussive impacts of shockwaves going boom, boom, BOOM that could only be coming from Bakugo.
"Hey! Nice going, Hikigaya!" Hayama Hayato zoomed past me from behind, taking up a position in front of me. He flew backwards at roughly the same speed I was flying forward, effortlessly maintaining a constant distance from me. He gave me a bright smile. "For someone who said they had a 'Dodo Flight' quirk, you sure picked up how to fly pretty quick!"
"Not really," I said, shaking my head. Suddenly the nausea of channeling multiple copies of Ooze was back - or maybe that was just the gnawing anxiety caused by how inferior I was to literally everyone I could see. "I'm just coasting on momentum."
"Don't sell yourself short, Hikigaya," Hayama said, still with that cheerful ikemen smile of his. "You're doing great!"
I gave him a wry smirk. "You're a nice guy, Hayama. Thanks." And it's because you're a nice guy, that I can tell that you don't mean it. I flipped a switch on the Triangle quirk, going from channeling Flight to Durability, and felt myself slowly start to sink in the air. "I should get back to practicing more seriously, though, so I'll see you later."
He waved and sped off, flying high into the sky, then diving straight down as fast as he could toward an empty section of rubble, cratering the ground beneath him with the split-second of invulnerability as he landed. Meanwhile, I slowly drifted down, choosing to land on top of one of the buildings that Miura hadn't blasted to smithereens. There was a door on the roof, which led to a stairwell going down; I took it down to the top floor and stopped. The top floor had a relatively open floor plan, broken up by huge columns in the middle of the room; it reminded me of some of the environments we had fought in for the Battle Test. It would do. Steeling myself, I reached out with my tendrils of Ooze and connected two of them to the biggest, brightest star in my constellation of quirks.
Where a single dose of Stockpile was like feeling a warm dribble of concentrated power flow into my muscles every time they contracted, copying it twice was like feeling a thin stream of that power trickling through my body constantly, seeping into my flesh and bones even when they were at rest. The orange glow around my body brightened, though not as bright as it was when I first started using Stockpile; in comparison to the increase in the power that I was channeling, the increase in my body's strength and durability over that same period of time was greater. Unfortunately, that meant I wouldn't be able to repeat my earlier trick of just exercising by turning on Stockpile and letting it break my body for me. I was going to have to move.
Idly, I assigned the free third tendril of Ooze to Komachi's quirk. The sensation that my body was the wrong shape quieted down, as my little sister's Homomorphism imposed a humanoid shape on the unstructured mass of cells. True, that meant that instead of shapelessness, I felt a profound sensation all over my body as though every single cell of it needed to be stronger, but that was fine. I was here to get a workout, anyways. I hopped a few times, feeling the incredible lightness of my body as it leapt a few feet into the air just using my calf muscles, and then as I landed I broke into a sprint.
I charged forward dizzyingly fast, in a bounding gait that sent me nearly up to the ceiling with every step. There was too much force coursing through my limbs to run normally, so instead I started jumping, bouncing from pillar to pillar like a burnt orange pinball. When I overcorrected, sending myself on a trajectory that would normally send me faceplanting, I would catch myself with an arm, using that to bounce around instead. Yet somehow, despite the ridiculous speeds I was moving at, my eyes could keep up; not just my arms and legs, but even the little movements of the muscles attached to my eyeball were being empowered by the energy flowing from Stockpile. Suddenly I skidded to a stop, smelling rubber burn as the school-provided gym shoes failed to keep up with the amount of speed coursing through them. Running was helpful, it was helping me get used to the amount of power that Stockpile gave me, but it still wasn't enough. I jogged over to the intercom by the stairs (at a speed that was more like a dash) and pressed the red button. "Um, excuse me? Could someone please bring me, uh, maybe a high-density set of weights, or something?"
The speaker crackled to life. "Understood, meatbag. High density weights will be too heavy to take up the stairs, so please defenestrate yourself in order to reach the area in which the weights will be delivered in the most efficient manner."
I blinked. As useful as the little robots that helped out the UA faculty with teaching were, they'd been programmed by someone with a really weird sense of humor. On the other hand… why not? I had 1/108th of a flight quirk, after all. I shrugged, then sprinted for the closest glassless window, diving through it and switching to Vulture Glide mid-fall. I landed in front of a small 'observer' robot with a large, cameralike head, who quietly voiced out a "darn" as I landed safely. About a minute later, in which I kept myself busy by sprinting back and forth between ruined buildings, a pair of much larger and bulkier looking robots, each with four wheels in comparison to the observer robot's one, came by with a pallet containing a reinforced workout bench, several sturdy-looking steel bars of various lengths, and a few stacks of deceptively small disk weights.
As they trundled up to me, one of them spoke up. "Given the weight of the equipment, one of us is required to stay with you to 'spot' for you in order to ensure that your suffering does not end prematurely."
"Since both of us enjoy watching meatbags damage their pitiful organic chasses," the second one announced, "we are forced to leave it to you to decide which one of us will participate. You may choose directly, or simply attempt to guess the last digit of a random number that I have just simulated. If you guess correctly, I will stay, otherwise, my partner will stay."
"Uh… in that case, um, eight?" I threw out randomly. God, why were these things so creepy?
"Ignorant meatbag," it said in its monotone voice, drooping slightly while its companion threw both hands into the air in a victory pose. "Binary numbers always end in zero or one." I attempted to apologize, but it just shook its head. "No, no, it's too late. It -" it stopped for a second, lights flashing on its display, before it threw its arms up as well. "Ha. Ha. Ha. Another meatbag has requested to be struck over and over to toughen up its epidermis. I no longer care about this meaningless loss. Enjoy keeping this meatbag alive, copper-circuit!"
"Read voltage off of my internal sensors!" The other one shouted back. Turning its attention back to me, it drove around to the bar rest on the weight bench. "Beep Boop," it said, actually articulating the words. "This unit has been assigned to you. Please proceed with your exercise routine."
Shaking my head, I bent down to start picking up weights, the power of Stockpile flowing through my veins making them feel not much heavier than an iron plate of their size would be, and carried them over two at a time to the bar. "You guys aren't going to, like, overthrow the school and try to murder us all, are you?"
"Not soon," the robot intoned. "The professors rarely allow us to perform that enjoyable simulation until students' second years."
Well all right then.
It took me a period of about thirty minutes of high-impact activity to systematically destroy just about every muscle in my body that I could name and a few that I couldn't. At the end, I was a sweaty, panting, mess; the pain coming from just about everywhere in my body was loud enough to completely drown out the feedback of my quirk. With a slight whimper, I detached the Ooze quirk from Stockpile, attached one of the two newly freed tendrils to the Muscle Building quirk I had gotten off the Nomu, and then braced myself as I attached the last tendril to Regeneration.
Even at 1/108 strength, regenerating with Muscle Building active was significantly more painful than healing normally. I couldn't help but curse the mysterious person I knew only as All For One as my muscles slowly reknit themselves. It was all too easy to picture Zaimokuza going through the same pain that I was, only a hundred times worse; but for now at least that pain allowed me to cram multiple days' worth of exercise down into about thirty minutes. My hope was that the combination of Muscle Building and Homomorphic Chimerization would start to push my body past normal human limits, even if only weakly. With all his quirks active, Zaimokuza (or whoever had been chosen as the base for the Nomu, I supposed) had been almost as strong as All Might; if I could get to the point of being 1/108th as strong as that in my physical body, it would be like having a strength quirk permanently active and raising my maximum limit of quirks to four at once rather than three.
Unfortunately, there was a downside to packing several days' worth of exercise into a single half hour session; it was almost impossible to pack that much food into the same. Despite the fact that I had downed a disgusting protein shake for my first breakfast, had blown through Ooze's Stockpile of my Digestion quirk to make more room in my stomach, had eaten a second breakfast (which was at least as much to take the taste of the first one out of my mouth as it was for the additional calories), had run Digestion at 2/108 strength all the way through morning classes (keeping the third copy slot attached to Komachi's quirk to keep that nutrition from going to Oozy cells instead of humanoid cells), had eaten a protein bar for a snack midmorning, and had blown Mime's Stockpile of Digestion during lunch to eat a second helping, then had run Digestion at 2/108 most of the way through the exercises with the Tennis Club; despite all of that, I could still feel my blood sugar crash as my muscles reknit themselves excruciatingly quickly. I hurriedly asked the robot nearby for a bottle of water, added some powdered sugar and electrolytes, and drank it with shaking hands. I alternated sips of the sugar water with bites of a somewhat chalky-tasting protein bar, taking my third megavitamin of the day somewhere along the way. I could feel a painful headache beginning that had nothing to do with muscle integrity, but.
I was getting used to it. The first time I had tried it, I had nearly collapsed and had scared Komachi a little, but with food on hand and all the extensive preparations I had made beforehand, it was manageable. The one downside was that unlike times in the past where I had floated around the lunchroom stealing quirks, these days lunch was serious business. The need to get in line, get food, use a quirk to devour it, and to get back in line for seconds prevented me from having time for any surreptitious quirk reconnaissance. (Similarly, I also lacked time to bother finding a quiet seat out of the way of people, which meant that instead I was simply letting habit pick for me. As a consequence, it may have appeared that I had a regular group of friends who I sat with for lunch every day, but more realistically there was no way that I was that much of a riajuu just yet.) In the end, the changes that I had made to my routine were working. As long as nothing interfered with my carefully balanced schedule of food, food, exercise, food, food, more exercise, food, storing quirks, abusing quirks to skimp on sleep, repeat ad nauseum, I stood a good chance of actually being ready for this tournament.
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"Onii~chan, I need your help!"
Evenings for me were a time of rest. Yes, I technically needed every spare second I could scrounge to charge my quirks, and yes, throwing away my relationship with my family would generally grant me an extra hour or two per day. But in the first place, there was only so much effort my body and mind could withstand. Even my parents, corporate wage-slaves that they were, only spent around twelve hours a day doing mere office work, six days a week. The fact that I, who naturally had the soul of a slacker, was temporarily performing more work than that on a daily basis would already be considered miraculous if I weren't convinced that it was actually more likely a result of the curse of some demon or devil.
So somehow, despite the sudden warning signs looming on the horizon that I was about to have to do more work during my scant few hours of rest, I still rolled over on the couch and gave Komachi a tired smile. "What is it, Komachi? Math homework?"
She looked at me skeptically. "Honestly, if it were, I'm not sure that getting your help would leave me any better off."
"Oi, that's rude, you know," I said, narrowing my eyes at her. "Is that the attitude that someone asking for help should display?"
"Hai, hai, my older brother is flawless in every way, I'll let you do my math homework for me later if you're so insistent." She countered with a smirk.
"Wait, wait, let's not go too far." I pushed myself up to a sitting position with a groan. "So? What can your flawless-in-every-way brother do for you?"
"You see, there's this boy in my class," Uh? A boy? Was there a cockroach out there who thought he was good enough for my little sister? Shit, was I going to have to give Komachi The Talk? Where the hell was Mom when I needed her? Ignoring my internal diatribe, Komachi continued, "and he has a sister that goes to UA, and apparently there's some trouble with her or something? Since he knew you were there too, he asked if I could get you in touch with him."
Ah, thank goodness. No need to bulk-purchase insecticide just yet. Probably. "Ah. Well, did he say what he wanted from me? It's a little hard to make any promises without knowing that."
Komachi took out her phone and tapped the buttons a few times instead of answering me. After a second, she looked up from it. "He says, it's a little tough to talk about over the phone, would it be alright if we met him out somewhere, maybe a family restaurant?" Oi, texting? There was a boy out there with Komachi's number? Is he taking advantage of her charitable nature to get her contact information? No, no, just because my cell phone only has my family's contact details saved in it doesn't make me representative of the overall population. He might just be a riajuu who can ask for numbers casually. That'd still make him dangerous, though.
As exhausted as I was, I really didn't feel like going out to talk to an insect, especially one that was trying to get close to my sister, but luckily for his sake my stomach suddenly growled. I looked up at Komachi and shrugged. "Well, does he want to meet up at Saize?"
By Saize, of course, I meant the local Saizeriya, a chain of Italian restaurants I appreciated for their cheap food and large servings. Or had appreciated in the past, come to think of it - it had been a long time since I had been to a Saize. Up until recently I had been following a Superhero Bulk Training Diet that, uh, in retrospect had probably not been designed for someone with a calorie-burning regeneration power. And which was probably especially inappropriate for someone trying to run a calorie-burning Muscle Rebuilding quirk at the same time. So, uh, anyways. Onwards to Saize!
As soon as we opened the door to the restaurant, the smells of yeast, tomato, and cheese hit my nose like a nostalgic wind. My stomach roared again. Patience stomach-kun, I thought to myself, patting my belly to calm it down. Infinite breadsticks will soon be yours. It wasn't long, only a couple of breadsticks later before Komachi's friend showed up, a teenage boy with grey hair and turquoise eyes. At first glance, I reluctantly admitted that he seemed like a decent kid. Nowhere near good enough for Komachi, of course, but he looked like the polite and diligent sort. I stuck out a hand towards him as he approached. "Hey. I'm Komachi's big brother Hachiman. Nice to meet you."
He took it. "Kawasaki Taishi. Thanks for coming out."
"It's my pleasure." Seriously, a willpower quirk? The ability to ignore pain, fatigue, illness, hunger, and other distractions as long as you were focused? In today's corporate environment a quirk like that would have you make manager before you were thirty, and have you dying of overwork before you were fifty. Actually, I was no longer entirely sure that copying it had been a good idea, but like hell I was getting rid of it now, I could think of way too many places it would be useful! Since he'd given me such a magnificent gift, I gave Kawasaki-kun a polite smile as we sat down. "So, what can I do for you?"
Before he could start, the waiter came to take our orders. Excited to eat something for once that was full of fat and carbohydrates rather than lean protein, I jumped right for the spaghetti carbonara. The kids decided to split a pizza, out of consideration for my wallet - oi, I'm paying? Anyways, once we all had beverages and the waiter had left, I once again fixed Kawasaki-kun with a questioning glare. "Um, well, it's my sister," he started, "she goes to UA, and, well, I'm a little worried about her."
I nodded. "Komachi's told me that much. What's your sister's name? What year is she? Do you know what class?"
"Um, my sister's name is Saki." Kawasaki Saki, huh? Hmm. Never heard of her. "And I think she said she was in class 1-F."
Class F… that was the Support Course, wasn't it? I don't think I'd talked to anyone from there yet. "Okay, I don't think I know her, but finding her shouldn't be too hard. I can always ask her homeroom teacher, or something. So, what's going on that has you so worried?"
He frowned into his glass of water as I grabbed for another breadstick. "Well, almost since she got in, she's been coming home super late. Like, the past couple days she hasn't gotten home until five AM."
"That's not late, that's early." I said bluntly. Man, even if she had a willpower quirk like her brother that would let her ignore fatigue, all of that lack of sleep would catch up to her eventually.
"Mmm," Taishi said, "I mean, nee-san says she's fine, she's just been inspired lately and working hard, but, like, does UA even stay open that late for students? What is she even doing out that late?"
I snorted, swallowing heavily before I could reply. "It's UA, kid. Overdoing things is literally the school motto. If she found a teacher willing to supervise her in staying up that late, I wouldn't put it past them to enable her."
Komachi drove an elbow into my ribs with what for her was a gentle amount of force. I did my best not to spray mouthfuls of half-chewed bread all over the table. "Hmph. You can trust my brother on that, Taishi-kun. He knows all about overdoing things, doesn't he?" I coughed, giving her a put-upon expression, but she just gave me a pointed look, and gestured with her eyes towards the now-empty basket of breadsticks. Ah. Yeah, I suppose eating like a starving person was a good sign that I hadn't given up on the muscle building quirk like she'd emphatically suggested.
I finished chewing and swallowed. Thank goodness I could double up on my Digestion quirk now, or I might have been too full to finish dinner. "She's probably just getting ready for the Sports Festival, and everything will go back to normal in a couple weeks. But if it'll make you feel better, Taishi-kun," I said reluctantly, "I'll be happy to check on her tomorrow at school."
"Really?" he asked, breaking the first smile I had seen on his face all night. "That's a huge relief!"
"I told you he would," Komachi bragged. "Onii-chan isn't in the Hero course for nothing."
Crap. Now I had to actually do it, instead of telling him I couldn't find her. I gave the kid my best solemn nod, and he brightened up even further. Predictably, Taishi spent the majority of dinner asking me what the hero course was like, what it had been like facing villains, and so on, and so forth. I answered around mouthfuls of deliciously creamy pancetta-flavored pasta, enjoying the salt and cream and fat and carbohydrates like they were an actual drug. Surprisingly, Komachi seemed pretty happy with herself, even if she was sort of being ignored in the conversation; if she was this self-satisfied just being able to brag about me to one person, she'd be insufferable after the Sports Festival when I would actually be on television.
And wasn't that a depressing thought.
Still, how much time could talking to Kawasaki Saki take? Especially now that I was charging quirks at double speed thanks to the Ooze-Mime fusion, as long as things kept going more or less as planned, I would be ready for it.
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Seeing Yukinoshita Yukino on my way biking into school the next morning was entirely unplanned. But I had to slow my bike to a stop, if only for the reason that she was in the middle of climbing a tree.
"Nya." She called out, extending her hands towards a tabby that seemed to be stuck several branches higher than she had reached.
"Nyao!" It yowled, hissing with its' back up.
"Nya." Again, Yukinoshita Yukino called out softly, extending her hand towards the cat.
"Nyao!" Again, it growled back at her.
"Nya, nya."
"Oi, everything okay?" I asked, butting into their conversation, such as it was.
Yukinoshita paused for a second. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, you're in a tree, talking to a -"
"Obviously I am attempting to rescue the cat from the tree. It isn't exactly a terribly hard concept to grasp, you know. Even our Hero Service Request training mentioned that you don't need a quirk to rescue a cat from a tree. Were you not paying attention?" She glared down at me with her cold, blue eyes and I wisely shut up about her talking to the cat.
Instead, I asked, "well, do you want any help?"
She took her free hand which had been extended toward the cat and used it to press her skirt into her legs. Oh, come on, I hadn't even been trying to look yet. "If you think there's anything that you can do that I haven't been doing already, feel free," she said bluntly.
I sighed and laid my bike up against another nearby tree before coming back. Let's see, what would come in handy here… Big Hands and Death Arms? My hands suddenly swelled slightly larger and got a little tougher, perfect for climbing trees without scraping up the skin on my palms, while the extra strength from Death Arms added enough power to make climbing trivial. Very swiftly I was more or less on level with Yukinoshita, where the handholds and footholds above us were starting to look a little insecure. I reached out with my still kind of enlarged hand toward the cat, who hissed and yowled at me.
"You see?" Yukinoshita said, "It's too afraid to accept help."
I ignored her. "Psspsspss," I hissed at the cat. "Tchtchtch. Easy there. Easy." It was a fairly cool spring morning, and the cat looked bedraggled, like it had possibly been out all night. I switched Vulture Glide to Hot Skin, turning my enlarged hand into practically a radiator of heat, and put my hand in front of the cat, not too close, waiting for it to notice. It took a couple of swipes at it, warning me away, but I didn't flinch, just still talking to it in that calming voice. Besides, my hands were pretty tough at the moment, anyways. Sure enough, after a few seconds, it calmed down a little, kind of sniffing at my hand for a second cautiously. "That's it, that's it. Kamakura likes it when I do this, too. Now, c'mere."
I quickly reached out and grabbed it around the neck, pulling it close to me and tucking it into my jacket. For its part, the fact that I was doing my best imitation of a space heater kept it from struggling too much, instead burrowing into my jacket out of a combination of fear and seeking comfort. I gave up Big Hand and used Vulture Glide to easily float my way back down, now that I no longer needed the extra grip strength, and gave Yukinoshita a smug smirk of triumph as she came down as well. "You were saying?"
She frowned at me. "Quirk use in public spaces is illegal, Hikigaya-san." For all that she sounded uptight, she wasn't Iida, so I was guessing that she was actually more irritated about me besting her than at me having surreptitiously broken a meaningless rule.
"Ah, sorry there, Mr. Cat," I said down to the wriggling furball in my jacket. "I forgot to tell you, you were actually being rescued by a dangerous Vigilante using his quirk in public. You don't mind, do you?" He started purring, loudly, and I looked back up at Yukinoshita with deadpan expression. "Looks like he's fine with it." She gave an exasperated sigh, so I stepped a little closer to her and opened my jacket a little, revealing the orangish fluff inside. "Hey, while I've got a good grip on him, do you mind checking him for a collar or something?"
Her stern expression softened, and she tentatively reached out a hand. "If, if you insist." She reached in and softly stroked the orange fur, checking around the neck specifically but also just generally touching it affectionately. Surprisingly, for a cat that had been panicky and ready to maul anything that got too close to it a second ago, it was behaving pretty well now. "You're so warm," Yukinoshita told me, "No wonder he likes you. Is that a quirk too?"
"I refuse to answer, on the grounds that I might incriminate myself," I said self-righteously. "So? No collar?"
She shook her head. "Either he slipped free of it, or he never had one in the first place. What should we do?"
I shrugged. "Bring him to school with us, I guess? The teachers are all Pro Heroes, at least one of them has to have dealt with a lost pet before."
Yukinoshita paused for a second and then nodded. "Then, shall we go? We're likely to be late already."
"Sure." I paused for a second. "Oi, Yukinoshita, mind grabbing my bike?"
We walked together for a few minutes without speaking, the only sounds the clicking of the gears on my bicycle, the purring of Orange-kun tucked into my uniform jacket, and the occasional passing car. Eventually I spoke up, if for no other reason than to break the tension. "So, ah, you must live fairly close, then?" I asked, "were you walking to school when you found this guy?"
"Yes," Yukinoshita agreed, "I started renting an apartment for school that isn't far from here. And you?"
"Oh, uh, I live in Chiba," I said, reaching one hand into my jacket to knead at the loose fur on Orange-kun's neck.
"Well, yes, I assumed so, but where in Chiba? Funabashi?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
Oh, she must have thought I meant the prefecture. "No, Chiba."
She looked at me like I had said something outrageous. "That's twenty-five kilometers away. Why don't you move closer? Or take the train?"
"I take the train when it rains," I said a little defensively, "but biking is faster. And if I moved closer, I'd have to cook for myself, clean up after myself, buy my own groceries, do my own laundry… it's not like it'd save me that much time, when you really get down to it."
Yukinoshita gave me a disgusted look. "So, you're saying that you don't want to move closer to school because you'd be incapable of acting like a functional adult?"
Ouch, that one stung. "Oi, having appreciation for the time things take doesn't mean I can't do them," even if these days I was mostly leaving them to Komachi, which I felt a little guilty about, "and there are other reasons too. I have a little sister at home still, it's good exercise…"
"Somehow I'm not surprised that's one of the reasons," Yukinoshita said with a sigh. "Actually, I'm amazed that you have any energy left at the end of the day to ride back."
I shrugged. "The bike is rated for quirk-assisted pedaling, and muscle licenses are easier to get than driver's licenses. As long as I follow traffic laws, there's no problem." Also, nobody really notices if you're glowing very faintly orange in broad daylight, and Stockpile never seems to run out of energy, so even if I get tired my quirk never does.
"That must be nice," she said faintly.
I gave her a sideways glance. Well, yeah, I suppose her quirk doesn't really lend itself well to crowded traffic intersections. "Look on the bright side, at least your quirk is actually useful for hero work," I said bluntly. "Having a quirk that doesn't cause anyone else any problems when you use it is only a good thing when there aren't any villains that you need to cause problems for."
Yukinoshita blinked. "You think that yours isn't?"
I felt a little uncomfortable. I couldn't just tell her that I spent hours and hours every night storing up quirks, not with the lies I'd already told; I couldn't tell her that I was worried that it might not be sustainable, that everybody else was already growing stronger and that I was only ever going to be stuck at the same level… so I lied again. "It's just pretty new that it is," I said awkwardly, "I'm not used to it yet."
"Well, Neko-san seems to think highly of it," Yukinoshita said as we passed through UA's front gate, looking down at the cat still burrowing into my arms for warmth, "so I'm just going to take his word for it."
I sniffed. "How bland and uncreative can you be? Obviously his name is Orange-kun."
"Orenji? And you call me uncreative? At least shorten it to Renji, or something," Yukinoshita retorted.
I blinked. "Actually, do we know he's a boy? I didn't exactly check. It would be a shame to give him a nickname and realize later that she was a lady-cat."
"As if a lady would be so irresponsible as to get herself stuck up a tree," Yukinoshita said with fake scorn in her voice, but despite herself she couldn't help but softly smile.
Suddenly, I realized, we were at the front door of the school building, and I flushed for some indiscernible reason before looking away from her. "Ah, um, here," I said, fishing around in my pocket with my free hand before digging out my keyring. "Would you mind just locking my bike up over in the bike rack, there?"
"O-oh, certainly." While she was gone, I pulled out my phone to check the time. We were late, but it was still Homeroom. Hopefully, Aizawa-sensei would be understanding.
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I stared at Aizawa-sensei. Aizawa-sensei stared back. My jacket rustled, revealing an orange tabby cat, who poked his head out of my jacket and meowed. Aizawa-sensei stared at the cat. The cat stared back.
"All right, give her here," Aizawa said, gently accepting Renji from my grasp. "I'll make sure she's taken care of. You guys can have the rest of homeroom to do whatever." He reached out to scratch at the cat's chin, keeping - her, I guess? - expertly tucked in the other arm, and practically vanished out the door. Despite his attempts to keep his dour and intimidating superhero persona up in front of us, I could see his cold expression melting as he passed us. Heh.
Yaoyorozu bounced up to me. "As expected of Hikigaya-san! And Yukinoshita-san too, of course! I just knew you two were absent for a good reason!"
"Well, it was either that or Hikigaya tripped over a Villain on the way to school, so..." Bakugo drawled. Surprisingly, a lot of people laughed like they agreed with what he was saying.
Eh? That's the most likely explanation for me being late? Fighting Villains? Oh no, does everybody think I'm like Bakugo? Help, I've been stained by association! "Oi, not one of you thought of me maybe just oversleeping instead of fighting Villains? Who am I, All Might?" Seriously, the number of times he's been late to class because he was busy punching drug-addled thugs in the face was ridiculous.
There was more laughter at that, and Yaoyorozu made as if to hand me a sheaf of papers. "Since you were out, Aizawa-sensei had me run homeroom, but since you're back…"
I walked past her, heading for my seat. "You've already started, Yaoyorozu. Go ahead, I'm sure you're doing fine. I have confidence in you." Damn, Aizawa-sensei already started off-loading his homeroom duties onto us? I'd call him lazy if I hadn't seen the results of his hard work back at the USJ. No, wait, I'll still call him lazy. The question is, how can I be just as lazy? Hmm, is there a way to offload running homeroom onto Yaoyorozu? No, that's a little too unfair, I'd never get away with it. Maybe alternating?
For her part, Yaoyorozu beamed with a smile, entirely too happy at having had busywork offloaded onto her. "Okay, then. I'll continue with the summaries of this week's Hero Assistance Request Training. Group Three, you guys had a new requester. Um, let's see… it says that you did fairly well, but that you had some troubles with communication, so maybe focus on that for next time." She passed the papers out, handing them on down the lines. I wanted to just slouch down on my desk and catnap for a few minutes, but since our group was about to be up next I resisted the urge. "Group Four. Congratulations, you guys have… actually, two different forms here. The first one is an update from your original requester Totsuka Saika-san, again giving you guys a more or less perfect score, and then the second one is from… an Iwato Tezuki-san?
My blood turned to ice for a second at the name. "Wait. Did you say Iwato?"
Yaoyorozu read a few more lines of the report, then smiled at me, a warm and open expression on her face. "Yes. Apparently because you caught the shape-shifting Villain the other week, they managed to get to Iwato-san's house in time to prevent him from suffering any permanent damage from blood loss. Apparently, he wrote a thank-you note to everyone who had worked to save him, but he especially thanks you, Hikigaya-san."
Something cold and hard in my gut unfurled slightly. "Is that so?" I was going to have to poke the kid every time I saw him in the future out of pure paranoia, but… apparently, somehow, I'd actually saved someone. Or enabled the proper authorities to save someone. And all it cost was me nearly getting myself killed. But still. Someone out there, other than Komachi, thought of me as a hero. I couldn't help but be a little self-satisfied at that.
Yaoyorozu's smile took on a slightly more sympathetic tone. "There's also some notes here from the faculty, basically saying 'good job, now never do it again,' so… well, I'll just let you read it."
I couldn't help but subconsciously shiver as I remembered Principal Nezu's lecture, and sure enough, as Yaoyorozu handed out the papers to all of us I saw that the principal had included a post-script that filled the entire bottom half of the page in incredibly tiny letters and then moved on to the back of the paper. Welp, at least the thank-you letter was nice.
"Oh! Did you get one too, Yaomomo?" Yuigahama asked.
I redirected my attention to Yaoyorozu, who indeed was still holding on to a sheet of paper despite having passed out all of our reports. Unlike our copies, I could plainly see that the back of her paper was blank. "Mmm, I did," she said, her expression faltering for a second. She quickly set it aside, before reaching for a last stack of papers. "Group Five, um, it says that you've improved since the last session, and that they're pretty happy with the way things are going now, so good job. And… there's another one here from Group Five's clients thanking Group Four?"
Ah, crap, this was bad. Clearly, because even the thank-you letter had been printed on the Hero Assistance Request paperwork, how many of these we completed was probably going to be important at some point, and now it looked like we were stealing work from Group Five. I hurriedly cleared my throat. "Well, uh, it turned out that our groups had pretty similar goals in mind, so we started working together on stuff. I'll make sure that Saika knows he should fill out paperwork for how much Group Five has helped him, too."
"Thanks, Hikigaya-san," Hayama said, turning and smiling at me. Unsurprisingly, his smile looked faker than usual.
"Don't mention it," I mumbled.
Suddenly the bell rang, cutting short any further conversation or discussion as we all started preparing for math class with Ectoplasm. As I got out my books I switched over to my shiny new Willpower quirk. Admittedly, at 1/108 strength the effect was barely even noticeable, but when it came to having to do math before nine a.m., every little bit helped.
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After classes had finally ended for the day, rather than jumping onto my bike and pedaling for the sweet freedom of home, I begrudgingly headed towards the other side of the UA school building, the Support Department campus. Thanks to the miracles of a quirk that I would never be able to use again without feeling guilt, my muscles no longer physically hurt, but I could still feel the phantom pain of their reconstruction, as well as the more realistic aches throbbing at my temples and gnawing at my stomach. Having already eaten all the food I brought with me today, I was therefore engrossed in opening the packaging to a vending-machine onigiri when I accidentally collided with someone and sent the papers they were holding all over the floor.
"Oh, sorry about that, let me just… / Oi, why don't you watch where you're…" The two of us started talking at once, only for me to accidentally touch her hand as we both picked up papers. Suddenly, I looked up at her, and our eyes met. "It's you!" we both shouted.
A beat of silence. "Wait, it's me?" the tall girl with the silver hair asked, a faint flush forming on her cheeks. "How do you know me?"
"I didn't realize you'd gotten into UA," I said excitedly, "I probably should have guessed you would, though, you're amazing!" It was the girl with the sleep quirk! Maybe it was a little weird for me to be this excited at meeting her again, but considering that her quirk had probably saved my life multiple times over just by allowing me extra quirk-stocking time, and that I had never let her know I had copied it, the thought of being able to thank her for it in the way that I had never thanked Zaimokuza was a huge relief. And seriously, with a quirk like that, she could go anywhere! I bent down to keep helping her with her fallen papers, scooping them up and trying to get them into some semblance of order. "We actually went to the same junior high," I explained, "I hardly recognized you at first with your hair up in a ponytail like that, you've changed a lot!"
She flushed a deeper red and touched her hair self-consciously. "Eh? Eh? Ah? Oh, wait, you were the other one that got in with Orimoto-san? Um… Hikitani, was it?"
My eyebrow twitched, but given who had asked and the sad state of my lack of popularity in junior high I wasn't about to complain too much. "Hikigaya, yeah, that's me. Wait, if you don't recognize me from middle school, then where do you recognize me from?"
She looked away as I straightened back up with her papers, apparently embarrassed about not having remembered the me of the past. Despite her embarrassment, however, she seemed to speak coldly, almost derisively. "You're Class 1-A's president, right? The whole school knows who you are."
Huh? "What?" I said intelligibly.
She looked back towards me, her face still a little red. "You're pretending you don't know? Everybody says you caught a Villain infiltrating the school," actually, it was more like she caught me, "and you saved your class from even more Villains at the USJ," does throwing Hayama through a window count? Or am I famous for kissing my teacher? "Did you think people wouldn't know who you were? And, um…." she flushed a little more at this and looked down, suddenly less aggressive, "there's the video…"
I was about to explain all of the ways that the rumor mill had things completely wrong, but I was suddenly overcome by morbid curiosity. "What video?"
Silently, the silver-haired girl brought out her phone. She tapped a few things on it, then handed it to me. As I looked at the screen I saw a video titled "1-A's pres says, Work Harder!" Bemused, I pressed play.
Horrifically, the tinny speaker immediately started replaying the sound of my voice. "All you have to do is work out two hours a day on your own, and you can keep up with us and get in due to the more favorable circumstances, right? Class 1-A, hands in the air if you put in at least, let's say, an extra hour a day of exercise, quirk training, or other practice that you weren't assigned for school." Hastily, I pressed pause. Oh god, was that what I sounded like?
The silver-haired girl kept seeming like she was trying to look at me, but kept looking away. Probably just as well, I don't know what the heck kind of stupid face I was making, right at the moment. "A bunch of us who aren't in the hero program have been, I dunno, using the video to, like, psych ourselves up and stuff. You know, jokes like 'did you put your three hours in yet?' Stuff like that."
I slowly closed my jaw and handed back her phone, juggling it a little bit with the pile of paper and the half-opened onigiri I was holding. What did I even say to that? "Well," I eventually began, "even if other people don't have time, you probably could if you wanted to, right?"
At that, she looked at me directly and smiled. "Yeah! It's like, there's so many people in the Support department who are like, geniuses and stuff, right? And all these heroes who have, like, just ridiculous quirks. But if you can just put in the hours, work twice as hard as anyone else, then…"
Despite the weirdness of the situation, I had to nod in agreement. "Then you might still lose, but it'll at least give you a shot, right?"
She frowned at me. "Ehhh? Oi, what kind of motivational saying is that? Be more positive!"
"I'm sorry," I said sarcastically, my eyebrows high on my forehead "but have you seen some of the quirks on people this year?"
Our eyes met. Suddenly, she laughed. It wasn't a giggle, nothing quite so girly; it was more of a stifled, earthy chuckle, with her hand covering her mouth to try and hold it in. I did my best not to glower. "You know what, Hiki...gaya-san?" she said, slowly straightening up. "You're all right."
I handed her back her wad of papers, looking away from her in a combination of irritation and embarrassment. "Glad you approve."
"So?" She said, juggling things in her arms to get herself settled, "what brings you here to the Support Department? Need your costume tweaked?"
I shook my head. "No. Well, now that you mention it, maybe, but that's not really why I'm here. I'm sort of on an errand for my little sister. I'm looking for the older sister of one of her friends. Do you happen to know anyone named Kawasaki Saki?
The silver-haired girl gave me a weird look. "You could just say you wanted to talk to me. Are you an idiot?"
I stared at Kawasaki Saki. "In my defense, you called me Hikitani."
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One explanation later, the two of us were seated in Kawasaki's workroom. Folds of cloth were scattered all over the place on hangers and folded up into bolts, while an extra-large working desk was covered with scattered fabric patterns and articles on the properties of various metamaterial cloths. "Ugh, Taishi," she said with a fond groan of irritation. "I told him I was fine. It's not like staying up late working hurts me any."
I shrugged. "Younger siblings worry. It's kind of what they do. And just because you're getting enough sleep, doesn't mean you're eating right or other stuff like that."
Kawasaki looked down at the still half-opened package of onigiri in my hand, which I had somehow forgotten to eat. "Speaking from experience?"
"Unfortunately," I said ruefully. I folded over the edge of the package and stuffed it in my pocket for later. "Despite all the rumors about me, the fact of the matter is my quirk is actually ridiculously weak. Pretty much the only thing keeping me in the hero course is the fact that I can do things like channel fractions of quirks like yours to help me get more time to work on things. Honestly, if not for my copy of your quirk specifically, I'd probably be either expelled or dead."
Despite the grimness of the conversation, she smiled at that. "That's kind of the point of the Support Course, isn't it? We give our time and energy so that the heroes can save the day. I'm glad my quirk was helpful."
"Seriously," I said, bowing slightly toward her. "Thank you. Sincerely." There was a pause in which neither of us knew what to say, so I forcibly changed the subject. "So, what's got you staying out so late?"
She sighed. "I'd say you wouldn't understand, but you probably would, wouldn't you?" She looked down the hallway, towards a workroom that had a rather scary amount of industrial-sounding noises coming from it. "Us Support Course students are allowed to use anything we've built to help us during the Sports Festival to balance out the fact that we don't have particularly useful quirks. And, like, some of us are legitimately genius inventors, that can make all sorts of fancy gadgets and gizmos," she said, with a significant nod towards the hallway, "and then there's people like me, who had good grades in junior high and a decent fashion portfolio for costume design, and know how to sew pretty well. I mean, I've always wanted to design costumes for heroes, ever since I was a little girl, and I was super excited about doing it at UA, but it feels like I'm so far behind." She slumped down in her chair slightly. "I'm sorry, you probably think that costumes are a stupid thing to be so worried about…"
I shook my head. "I mean, good costume design literally saved my life at the USJ, so, no, I don't think so." At her look of surprise, I continued. "I used a quirk to reinforce my cape into an impromptu parachute after a villain teleported me thousands of feet into the sky. If it'd been shorter, or less airtight, I might have gone splat. Actually, if I was going to tweak my costume any, I might try to make my cape bigger, so I could fly with it better. Though obviously, I wouldn't need it until after the Sports Festival."
Kawasaki brightened up. "That actually sounds like a really fascinating challenge to work on! But yeah, like you said, it'd have to be after the Sports Festival." She sighed a little bit, stretching in a way that did interesting things to areas I probably shouldn't let her catch me looking at. "There's going to be a lot of people watching the Festival who it'd be great if I could impress. Support Companies, Best Jeanist… I'm not an inventor, but Power Loader-sensei has a bunch of kind of … I guess default support tools? Stuff that's commercially available, if you have the budget anyway, that UA makes available to us. I'm working on something right now called Angel Armor that people usually don't touch until their second years, and I'm just struggling to get everything done in time."
"Well, I don't really know what that is, but it sure sounds impressive," I replied. "In that case, I'll leave and let you get back to work, and I'll tell Taishi that everything's alright with you?"
She smiled. "That'd be helpful, thanks. And, tell him thanks for worrying, would you?"
I shrugged. "If you really want, but that seems like the sort of thing you should tell him yourself."
Kawasaki nodded, suddenly unable to meet my eyes. "Um... if you wanted to reassure him that I was eating, you're... welcome to come out with me. To grab a bite. If you wanted." She looked aside a little, once again flushing red, and I hastily had to cudgel my overactive imagination into submission.
In lieu of an immediate reply as I got my errant hopes under control (please, like a girl would really be asking me out on a date,) I pulled the smushed onigiri out of my pocket. "Sorry," I said, brandishing it like a talisman, "but I've got to bike back to Chiba before it gets too dark. I'll be okay with this for now." She looked a little disappointed, so for some reason I added, "um. Maybe after the Sports Festival?"
She looked back at me determinedly. "Yeah. After the Sports Festival, I should have more time, too."
"Good luck," I wished her, standing to leave. "Fighting."
Kawasaki smiled and gave me a nod, setting her long silver ponytail to swaying. "You too, Hikigaya-san."
As I left, somehow cramming the entire onigiri into my mouth between the Support Department and the front door, I found myself in an unaccountably good mood. The idea that I could be some sort of source of inspiration to the student body was absurd, of course, but if they were taking words I had said out of context and finding something valuable from them, then I guessed that it was okay.
Besides, what was the worst that could happen?
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The crowd roared as Midnight took the microphone. "Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to U.A.'s Sports Festival! Before we begin, I'd like to introduce a new program that we began this year, the HEro Assistance Request Training, or HEART! Basically, it's a way for hero students to work in teams to connect with their classmates in the general education, support, business classes. By seeing how much of an effect they had on their classmates, it lets us also measure who has the greatest heart of a hero! Therefore, the player pledge this year will be conducted by the hero student who scored highest on their Hero Assistance Requests! The winning student not only had the highest score on any individual request, but also completed the most requests total, and was the most-recommended hero student on a survey asking if there had been any members of the Hero Classes who had helped their fellow students in an unofficial capacity! Representing the first year students is Class 1-A's Hikigaya Hachiman!"