Chapter 11

"Again." Izuku said and the bots began activating once more. Sleeker models of what he would have fought during his training days at UA and outfitted in black, heat resistant armor and smart combat based AI programming, these robots were the ultimate upgrade compared to the archaic technology of a decade ago. Izuku tore through them like Swiss cheese. Outfitted in his full gear, Izuku began pummeling the enemies right and left, adding to his score. Since they were robots, there was less need of him having to hold back. Having eliminated most of the ground threats, gun turrets and aerial drones began pelting him with rapid fire as he leapt up in the air and activated Float. He still couldn't move as fast in mid-air as he would have liked, but he more than made up for it in ingenuity and versatility as he fired off several Delaware Smashes on both hands to propel himself around in mid-air, turning off his flight Quirk only in moments where he needed to sharply move towards the ground. The trick was learning how to switch it off and on and which direction to aim his hands, since Nana Shimura's Quirk was only good for levitation and not movement. Unlike when he used his Delaware Smashes in combat, he couldn't be as precise with his shots, not having his other hand to brace his arm and aim. The only comparison he could think of was like trying to fire a gun without using the sights and not having the support to take the kickback. The fact that he could do both now with little margins for error was a large mark of improvement. The suggestion had come one of his American professors, a man by the name of Tornado Arms, who could rotate his arms in a way that could generate sheer-force winds.

He was doing well with erasing the amount of time it took for him to take down the peon robots, but he also had to watch out for their organizer as well. A quick series of chain-reaction explosions fired at him as Ground Zero himself came charging in from the sky.

"Your reaction times are getting slower!" he admonished his rival despite the latter having shaved three seconds off of his record from the last time. Izuku crossed his arms and flicked his fingers on both hands simultaneously, causing him to spin in a tight, mid-air corkscrew. Utilizing the force of his spin, he wound up a St. Louis Smash with his right foot and felt the base of his boot meet his sparring partner's forearm, knocking Ground Zero towards the floor. His gauntlets were capable of containing the power five times the amount of a C4 explosion, so it didn't surprise him that it so readily absorbed the impact of his kick. Support technology was truly amazing.

"You just going to stand there smiling like an idiot all day or are you going to keep fighting?!" the ash blonde snapped his wrists to his side as he rocketed upwards to meet where the grinning hero was floating, causing the grin to fall momentarily from his face as he motioned to counter the offense. Rather than charge head-on like he normally would, Katsuki began moving around him in a serpentine fashion as his explosions darted him fast and upward. Izuku activated Blackwhip to pull himself out of the way before sending it back towards his opponent, the tendrils netting together like a gigantic fishing net as it moved to ensnare his prey.

"TOO SLOW!" Katsuki smirked, voicing Izuku's thoughts as the former closed his fist into a small circle and fired off a round of mini beams of energy, yelling, "AP SHOT MACHINE GUN!" as they accurately piercing through each weak point of his Blackwhip Net move. Izuku felt a twinge of frustration as he painfully retracted what was left of Blackwhip to his side and amped up the energy level of One for All to forty five percent... then fifty... fifty-five percent... As the percentage of power continued to steadily rise, Izuku felt his level of control over it begin to wane. It was like trying to harness a hurricane or steer an out of control car down a highway. The stronger it became, the more his grip on it began to slip that he could only do fast movements forward rather than versatile turns. Right when he had pushed himself to go over his older limit, which had capped out at about seventy five percent, was when a chime went off on his phone.

In that split second decision of him looking towards where his bag was, the power level sharply dropped and Katsuki took advantage of his broken concentration and slammed his knee into Izuku's torso, the plated steel of his knee pad sinking hard into Izuku's gut.

"Am I not entertaining enough that you have to pay attention to your phone!?" Kacchan growled with a malevolent scowl. "Stop screwing around and FIGHT ME!" He punched and ignited the air in front of him, which Izuku deflected with his other arm, forcing the shot outward as he jumped back, his feet touching the ground.

Hanging onto such a roller-coaster of power that he could still barely grasp, Izuku activated his newest obtained Quirk and let loose. Adrenaline coursed through him, causing everything to appear to be moving slower as bright green lightning crackled around him. His skin began glowing a similar color, illuminated by the light as small fissures around him broke through the ground as he launched himself back into the air, creating a small crater and breaking apart the walls where his feet pushed against it. Katsuki tried to dodge, but only could avoid one or two moves before getting hit by the other three. The one that sucker-punched him in the gut had him almost hurling up his lunch, which he aimed at towards the ground in front of his feet.

The explosion hero coughed before adopting a manic grin, wiping his face with the back of his hand and pounding his fists together, shouting,"COME ON! Show me what you got!" and firing off another ballistic round of AP Machine Gun shots. Izuku dodged all of them, moving faster than Katsuki could aim as he flickered in and out of his line of sight. He was on him in less than a second, sharply curved through the air and delivered a point-blank strike to the shoulder, slamming his rival towards the ground in a way that would have him tasting dirt for weeks.

However, once Izuku hit that ten second mark was when he felt it. The sudden drop of energy where everything felt heavy and worn out, like he had taken a shot of something and was abruptly coming down from the high like a cold bucket of water. His strength faded as his limbs felt strangely light as entropy took over, the backlash of using Burst finally hitting him. Acting on a reflex, Izuku used Float to keep himself hitting the ground at full force, only managing to float a meter off the ground before releasing it and landing on his feet. Leaning woozily on his knees, Izuku let out deep pants of air as the energy of One for All faded and finally took in his surroundings.

The training grounds of Ground Zero hero agency was a large, isolated facility the size of a small indoor sports arena. Inside of it was insulators, noise cancellation, Quirk dampeners, and a slew of other combat-laden tech hidden inside the panels of the walls. It was one of the most advanced privately funded training facilities in Japan and one of Izuku's personal training grounds. Due to his office not having enough space to have an efficient exercise space, he would often train with Kacchan at his agency, since the latter enjoyed sparring and both of them had a bad habit of breaking a lot of things in the process. Currently, it was littered with the remains of robots and rocky debris, including one of his arm weights which had exploded upon impact against a last minute block from Bakugou.

"You alright?" Izuku exclaimed, going over towards where his friend was picking himself grudgingly off the ground. Rather than smack his hand away, Katsuki clicked his tongue and clasped his gloved hand around Izuku's and pulled himself up onto his feet. Then when Izuku thought his friend had finally grown up a little, he took two steps back and smacked him upside the head.

"IDIOT! What the hell was that?! I can't believe I got my ass kicked by punches that were so sloppy! DAMN IT!"

"S-Sorry!" Izuku rubbed the back of his head while Katsuki went over to where his gear was stored and took a long swig from his water bottle.

"Don't fucking apologize! Learn from it. I get that that little unicorn brat reset your arms, but don't think this excuses you from pulling your punches, Deku."

"Right." Izuku nodded with some trepidation before grabbing his own water bottle and taking a greedy swig of water. He looked down at his phone, curious if someone from the office had texted him about an emergency that required his assistance, but was disappointed to find that it was only a notification for his event calendar. Someone else had replied to his invitation to the hero museum as Not Going. He placed his phone back inside its fortified case and pocketed his phone, rubbing his wrists tenderly as he unstrapped the black bands wrapped around them. Izuku visibly sighed in relief as the weighted limiters they had strapped to their arms and legs hit the ground with a soft thud. He could still see the splattered mess the ones on his right arms had made, sand littering the ground like someone had flipped over a sandbox. "Sorry about ruining your arm weights, Kacchan. I'll pay for them."

"It's fine. I can always buy another one." Katsuki shrugged while rotating his wrist as he adjusted his arm bracers. "So how goes mastering Burst?"

Izuku sighed. One of the latent abilities given to him by One for All from the sixth user, Burst was a Quirk that both increased his output of adrenaline and added an extra boost of energy that practically had him coated in it, but like an actual adrenaline high, it left him incredibly wiped afterwards. What was worse was that it could only be activated when he was running at a higher energy percentage that made it difficult to control and think rationally, which made it a very hard Quirk to train with. Even after discovering it, Izuku could still only manage to use it for about ten seconds before tapping out. Ten seconds was a short amount of time to blissfully be in that state, but took him five seconds to fully charge the power and five to use it, during which time, he could move at unparalleled speeds as his body was pushed to the limit.

"Even after all of that, you still can't use Burst more than ten seconds." Katsuki stated rather than waiting for a real reply, "Any other new Quirks I should know about?"

"No... for whatever reason, no matter how hard I try, I can't access the other users." He only just began to see the images of the second and third user, but like the fourth user, neither of them would talk to him or be present for most conversations. Meanwhile, Daigoro Banjo, the fifth user of One for All, wouldn't shut up, occasionally giving his two cents even when it wasn't warranted or needed when Izuku had tried to contact the other users for guidance, constantly bragging how his was a top-tier Quirk while Six would sigh and Four would roll his eyes. "I can use One for All at almost ninety percent, but I still don't have all of the Quirks at my disposal."

"Well you'll figure it out. You always do. You're relentless like that. I fucking hate it. Makes the rest of us look like a bunch of amateurs." He then placed his hand over his ear and spoke. "Hey, Twitch, get your ass over here to the training ground and bring Stitches. I got another job for you two."

"O-Okay, boss." Izuku heard a tinny voice over the mini com-link before the blast doors opened to reveal a jittery boy with dark indigo hair and periwinkle eyes with no visible pupils. Following behind him was a basically a living rag-doll, a girl with curly red pigtails that looked more like pom-poms and was covered in stitches and patchwork all over her body.

"I need you to reassemble all the bots back into working order."

"R-Right away, sir!" the boy called Twitch stammered, his thumbs twiddling nervously as he made his way over towards where the junk heap of shrapnel and former gun turrets lay discarded.

"What do ya need me to do, Mista Ground Zero, sir?" the girl asked, her voice betraying her Kansai accent.

"I need you to patch up a few weight limiters." He picked up the discarded weight that had been torn to shreds and handed it out towards the redhead. Rather than be discouraged by the barely salvageable arm weight, she just smiled and graciously took it from him.

"No problemo. I'll have this fixed up in a jiffy!" Stitches then pulled out a pin she had fixed between her teeth like a toothpick and stuck it between the two edges of the fabric and began rabid-firing her fingernails at the fabric, producing bits of thread from spools on her wrists. Whoa! So fast! Izuku thought as her hands quickly went to work in sewing the weight back together.

"Make sure they don't break as easily this time!" Bakugou shouted back towards the middle schooler, who flinched from the unexpected boom in noise. Having seen Twitch come in here multiple times before, Izuku watched as the boy sighed and stepped over the plate of one bot.

"Aren't you being a little hard on him?"

"It's not like I'm taking advantage of him. This helps him grow too." Izuku watched as the jittery boy came over to fix the machines. However, he had never stopped long enough to watch, having usually left the training arena before Twitch was called in. That must have meant that Izuku had gone through Kacchan's entire cache of guns and killer robots that there were simply none left to replace the ones that he had already broken.

"But don't you feel bad giving them so much work to do? I mean, they're just kids."

"It's better than having them do nothing but make tea for me. I can make my own damned tea. I don't need some intern doing it." Izuku bit his lip thoughtfully at that statement, feeling a swell of uneasiness flood through him. The boy pulled down his goggles, blue energy glowing from his hands as various machine parts- nuts, bolts, wires, plates, computer chips, etc -all came back together to reform into something shiny and almost like brand new, albeit a bit smaller than before.

"Whoa, what was that? Some sort of telekinetic Quirk?" Izuku exclaimed, causing the boy to flush in embarrassment.

"Umm... it's uh... technopathy, actually..."

"It means he can move and assemble technology with his mind." Katsuki stated matter-of-factually.

"So amazing! How does it work? Can it affect all machinery or just specific man-made structures? Is that some sort of variant of metal manipulation or magnetism? I suppose that either is possible, since both involve metal and telekinetic energy but that doesn't explain the light that comes from his hands when he-"

"Shut it, you damned nerd! Let him focus."

"Oh sorry!" Izuku clammed up almost immediately. Sure enough, the kid began twitching his fingers again and the robots began putting themselves back together. "You're so lucky to have him. He must save you hundreds in support-gear repair."

"Thousands," Katsuki corrected, "Don't know why the Hero Association didn't extend this program to people other than wannabe pro-heroes in the first place."

"Exactly. So many people fall through the cracks, people that don't always make the cut for the hero track despite having all of these amazing Quirks that could be put to good use elsewhere. Wouldn't it be great if there was a program that helped people find their calling like that?"

"What, are you serious? You want to start up another program?"

"Why not? Other countries like America and many countries in Europe have working Quirk licenses for jobs other than hero-work, and Japan already has an allowance for healing Quirks. Why not provide something similar here too? I talked to Shoto the other day about it."

"Oh yeah? How is icy-hot?"

"Good, I think. From what I can tell, anyways."

"And what does he think of your little recruitment program?"

"I already asked Shoto, and he said he was willing to shell out a donation for it."

"What makes you think you're qualified to run another program? You can't even run your own agency, and you want to start up another program?"

"W-What makes you say that?"

"For one thing, you're asking for donations and are here training with me when I've never once gone to train at your agency, which means it's not capable of our level of combat, which means you don't have the funds to support it. Not to mention, you're so damned distracted by your phone going off, you can't even focus, which means you must be worried about something going wrong at the office which means you're mismanaging everyone. I bet you have your newest employees doing the easy jobs while you and the others handle the rest of the actual tasks that you need done for a hero agency, which means you have no time to train them. And since you love projects, you probably have a bunch of people who break themselves or break things as easily as you do, which means your funds are spent towards property damage, equipment repair, and medical bills, and whatever is left is used to cover the asses of your employees and the rent."

Izuku's lips clamped together, left utterly speechless at his rival's shockingly accurate speculations. Most people wouldn't have been that observant and bold enough to make such a Herculean leap in logic without solid proof, but his deductions were spot on. Once again, Kacchan proved just how amazing a person he was.

"Well, I've never managed anyone before..." he admitted, shyly poking his index fingers together.

"So what? Just tell them what you want them to do and let them get it done. That's always worked for me."

Izuku blanched. Yeah, but you have an interesting way of asking for something. Was that it though? Was he not being assertive enough? His brow creased in deep thought. But he didn't want to come off as mean, and Kacchan had an abrasive personality that most people wouldn't get along with at first glance. It was what kept him so low on the totem pole in terms of hero ranking, despite being right up there with him and Shoto, since a large part of it was determined by approval rating of the general public.

"Seriously, just do some restructuring so that one of the sidekicks can oversee the office while you focus on running the head of operations. Kaminari will be fine. He's an idiot, but he's not stupid. Plus, you've got Sparkles there too, right? He's your business partner. Shouldn't he be a part of the decision-making, like adding a new recruitment program?"

"But there's a lot of precise paperwork, and it has to be done a certain way or they'll just send it back-"

"Just make the interns do it. That's what they're there for. Aren't you the one with the business degree? Shouldn't you have this already figured out from day one?" Izuku felt like he was swallowing a bitter pill, Bakugou voicing every little insecure thought that had popped up in his head over the past year of him building up his agency.

"But..."

"God, all these years and you still can't handle confrontation? Fucking grow a pair, Deku!" It was at this point that Katsuki had grasped Izuku by the collar of his shirt. He didn't do it to be intimidating, only having two inches on him in height, rather just to shake some sense into him, but in that moment, Izuku felt very small, similar to the days where he had been regularly tormented by Kacchan on a regular basis. "Where's the kid that stood up to me, looked me straight in the eyes and said he was planning on becoming the number one hero? You can't do that if you're constantly holding everyone else's hand on the way there!"

"I..." Izuku trailed off. He always thought he did what was best for the agency. Had he been so blind to doing everything perfect that he focused inward instead of outward towards his office as a whole? What kind of boss did that make him?

Rather than bring him up like his discussions with Katsuki normally would, the pep talk only seemed to bring him lower. Timed with the memories that had been triggered from Katsuki's aggressive negotiations, it muddled everything into a sickening mess of insecurity, worthlessness, and self-loathing. He tried not to let it consume him, reminding himself of the good points of improvement that had been pointed out to him. Flaws and grievous errors on his part had been brought to light, sure, but it paved him a pathway forward. It had been sobering, an eye-opening experience, to be sure.

"So who was that on the phone? Did someone set fire to the break room or something?"

"No, ah, it was just a Facebook notification for the hero museum event this Sunday."

"Ah right, the new hero origin exhibit and All Might TV show promotion event. That's this weekend?"

"Yep. I've got tickets reserved for this Sunday, if you want to come."

"I can't. I'm busy."

"What? But you never work on Sundays."

"I already have plans."

"For what?"

"I just do, okay!?" Katsuki snapped, being a bit more defensive than even Izuku had been expected as he flinched at the hot-headed blonde's abrupt change in temperament. "Beside, it's not like the exhibit's going anywhere."

"Oh... okay." Izuku smiled warily. Sure, he was a huge All Might fan, in some ways most people would say was borderline unhealthy, but so was Katsuki. Had his friend really grown out of it after all this time?

"Isn't there anyone else you could ask? What about your coworkers or that idiot Four-Eyes?" Katsuki suggested. "He's into hero history and academics and shit like that."

"I already asked, but he and Aoyama work on Sunday. I wonder if Ochako is available..." Suddenly a small explosion hit him in the side. "Oww! What was that for!?"

"Don't let your guard down. You were wide open." The blonde got back onto his feet, tightening the straps on his combat boots. "You up for another round?"

"I'm going to just use the bots this time."

"Again with the bots? This is the sixth time already," Katsuki grumbled. "If you couldn't kill them as quickly as before, even without arm weights, what makes you think this time will be any different?"

"It's like you said, Kacchan. I need to work on my reaction times." Izuku declared before stepping back onto the field. Once Ground Zero and his sidekicks were clear and out of the way, Izuku announced with a clear and resounding voice, "again!" and the exercise began all over again.


Author's Note: Should state that Burst is a headcanon of mine for explanations of why Izuku turned into the lightning equivalent of the Human Torch in the latest MHA movie, Heroes Rising. It is not, in any way, a canon ability that he has and is more of me just having fun theorizing what his other five Quirks are. Also, I apologize if some of my updates are a bit weird or spotty. Try as I might to avoid it, I caught the 'rona recently, and I'm currently just trying to ride it out. Most of my symptoms are pretty mild, but they still suck royally. I'm still going to try to keep up my weekly updates that miraculously still keep happening.

References include Royal Pain from Sky High, Harley Quinn and Red Tornado from DC Comics, the turrets from Portal 2, the Hyuuga clan from Naruto, and Nui Harime from Kill la Kill.

Hero/Villain Profiles

Professor Cain Windsor
Hero Name: Tornado Arms
Quirk: Corkscrew
He can create mini tornadoes by rotating his arms at high speeds.

Name: Tetsuya Gijutsu
Hero Name: Twitch
Quirk: Technopathy
He can assemble and disassemble technology with his mind. Once he disassembles something, he has the knowledge of how to put it back together again. The more knowledge he has on the item in question, the better the device is.

Name: Nuuju Harime
Hero Name: Stitches
Quirk: Sew
By using her rabid fire fingers and a special spool of thread, she can sew anything together.

Fun Fact: Originally working as a sidekick under Best Jeanist, she left to work for Katsuki due to him leaving a lasting impression on her.