Summary: The chaos duo runs more experiments on their extra credit project.
Notes: Look at all this art!
I'm totally a fish
Sour Cream
Tegdirb
"You rely on your quirk too much."
Izuku almost felt bad saying it, especially since Shinso was taking time out of his day to talk to them during lunch. His quirk was amazing, so of course he relied on it, and it was part of him, so Izuku couldn't discount that, but…
"Yep!" Mei piped up, shoveling a spoonful of rice in her mouth. "But don't feel bad! Most heroes do, but that's why you have us!"
Shinso looked at them skeptically, "And how am I supposed to be a hero without my quirk?"
Izuku waved his hands frantically in front of him, "Not without your quirk! We would never tell you to hold yourself back like that! It's just that...well, you see…"
"It's the activation requirements." Mei interrupted. "You're pretty good at making people respond to you, but eventually you're going to come across someone who has more self control than you have sass."
Izuku couldn't hold back a huff of shocked laughter, "Yeah. What she said. The fact is that once people know about your quirk, you have a huge handicap. It would be like if a villain immediately took Snipe's gun at the beginning of a fight. He would still have his quirk, but he wouldn't be able to use it."
"The only difference here is that Snipe can use his quirk to protect his gun, you can't." Mei thought for a moment. "He also carries an extra gun. Izu-kun! Let's give Extra-Credit-Kun a gun!"
Shinso looked at them in shock and a bit of fear, so Izuku figured he wasn't quite ready for that, despite the amazing potential the idea had, "Maybe let's start with something smaller, like how we can prevent villains from finding out about his quirk."
"Nice thought." Shinso pointed at them with his chopsticks. "But that's the thing about my quirk. If you fall for it once, you know how it works."
"Maybe…" Izuku flipped through his notebook until he found a page that he'd used to scribble ideas. "How long does your connection last?"
Shinso shrugged, "No idea. I've never been allowed to control someone for more than a few minutes. That experiment with you the other day was as long as I've ever gone."
"That's not what I…" Izuku had to take a second to gather his thoughts. "I mean, that's good to know, but how long can you wait between getting a response and taking control?"
Shinso looked surprised, then thoughtful, "I don't know. I always thought it was best to just take control as soon as I can, so I've never actually tried to wait or anything…"
Izuku grinned and flipped to a new page in his notebook, "Perfect! So, how do you know the connection has been formed? Do you have to try to brainwash then or can you just feel it?"
"I can feel it." Shinso said quietly. "It's like the person is inside my brain... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you that. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."
Mei responded by slapping Shinso over the head, "Stop that! Good experiments are uncomfy! You never learn anything interesting just by sitting on your butt! So embrace the awkward!"
Izuku laughed, then saw the shocked expression on Shinso's face and laughed even harder, "I didn't know you could give inspirational speeches, Mei-chan!"
"I'm a woman of many talents." Mei said cryptically. "You'll never discover them all!"
"And on that terrifying note," Shinso drawled, "Do you want to start?"
"Of course!" Izuku responded with a grin. "Do you have the connection now?"
Shinso nodded with a concentrated look on his face, but didn't respond. Izuku nodded, it must take a fair amount of focus to keep the connection without completing the brainwash, "Mei, start the timer."
"Already on it, Izu-kun!" Mei pressed a few buttons on her phone and the experiment officially began. "So... Izu-kun. How are the hero students doing? Any opportunities for me to make super awesome babies?!"
"They're doing well!" Izuku smiled and grabbed one of the many notebooks he'd created for the project. Each student had their own notebook dedicated to their quirks and ideas, and while some were still completely empty, others were already halfway full. The notebook Izuku happened to grab was for one of the class 1-B students with a really cool copy quirk, "Take this guy, Monoma, for example! He can copy any quirk for five minutes, but I think there might be a way for him to create...well, basically a stockpile of quirks. If he has to touch a person's whole body, then that won't work, but if it works with any dna…"
"Then he can incorporate different quirks into his costume and always have them on hand when he needs them!" Mei grinned. "I like the way you think, Izu-kun!'
Suddenly, Izuku's brain went foggy as the increasingly familiar feeling of Shinso's quirk washed over him. It only lasted a few seconds before Shinso released his control.
"I am so sorry." Shinso was a little out of breath and looked pale and slightly sweaty. "I...I held on for as long as I could, but...why is that so difficult?"
"Because your quirk wants action." Izuku said. "Instinctively, people want to either do something, or not. No one likes being caught in an in between place. But this is great! You don't have to take control immediately, which gives you a few minutes to disguise your real activation requirements. Mei-chan! How long did he last?"
"Two minutes, eight seconds!" Mei declared. "I'd prefer if it were a little longer, but.."
"But we can train for that." Izuku agreed. "Ideally, we could get him up to five minutes between response and control before the sports festival, but we'll of course have to see how things work and…"
"Wait, back up." Shinso interrupted. "What do you mean my real activation requirements? And shouldn't I be focused on keeping control of people longer or controlling more people or giving more advanced orders or something? What's the point of training to wait before taking control, which isn't easy by the way, when as a hero, I should be trying to resolve situations as quickly as possible?"
Izuku looked at Mei, who shrugged. He thought they'd explained everything pretty well…
Shinso sighed, "How about you two start again at the beginning, but this time pretend that you're talking to someone who doesn't have a single clue you're trying to say...because I don't."
"Oh…" Izuku glanced at Mei again before taking a deep breath to try to organize his thoughts, "Um, ok. So, the main problem with your quirk is that it's more effective if your opponent doesn't know what it is, right?"
"That's the basic idea, yeah." Shinso rolled his eyes. "But what does that have to do with the time between their response and my control? Because from where I'm sitting, it seemed like a non sequiter."
"It's a red herring!" Mei grinned.
Shinso didn't look any less confused and raised an eyebrow at Izuku after apparently giving up getting anything close to a normal answer from Mei.
"It's about distracting whoever you're fighting with and burying the truth inside a bunch of useless information." Izuku explained. "For example, sometimes in books, something important will be thrown out, but the readers won't realize it, because the man with the scar who turns out to be the villain was mentioned right alongside a woman with a large hat who was completely unimportant."
"If you take control immediately after you get an answer," Mei flicked Shinso on the forehead, "then it's like putting a big neon sign above your head explaining how your quirk works."
"Oh thanks." Shinso said dryly.
"But," Izuku said quickly, "if you wait a few minutes between establishing the connection and giving the order, and use those minutes to do things like make direct eye contact or establish physical contact, or...I don't know, jump up and down three times while singing nursery rhymes, then…"
"Then no one will know exactly which of those things established the connection." Mei finished.
"I don't sing." Shinso deadpanned, but Izuku could see the faintest trace of a smile in his eyes, and it looked like he finally understood what they were going for. "Ok, so when do I start."
"Well, technically you started today." Izuku said cheekily. "But we'll have a schedule for you by tomorrow if you come by after classes. Do you have anyone at home that you can practice your quirk with?"
Shinso's expression immediately closed off...interesting, "No."
"That's alright!" Izuku said, forcing a layer of cheeriness past his curiosity and, surprisingly, a little bit of anger on Shinso's behalf. "Then you'll just have to practice with us! I don't want you to do any more today, since this exercise is still so new and it's the first time that your brain has had to do it, so we should let it rest, but starting tomorrow, you should start practicing that waiting exercise we just did two or three times a day. For the sports festival, you also need to be able to complete distracting tasks before you officially activate your quirk, so we should focus on getting you to the point where you don't even have to think about it and have full autonomy on when you activate your connection!"
Shinso looked a little pale, but Izuku noticed that he also looked determined, just like himself when he used to say he'd be a hero despite his quirklessness. It didn't work out for him, but if he could still help people like Shinso who deserved to be heroes, then that was more than enough. Shinso would overcome every obstacle put in his path and save so many people and Izuku would have a hand in that! It was almost even better than his own old dream.
"Perfect!" Mei broke the tension by grabbing Shinso by the arm and dragging him back out into the main lab. "Now that Izu-kun's had a chance to do his thing, it's my turn! I'm so excited! I have so many awesome babies for you to try!"
"B-babies?!" Shinso looked nervous and a little shocked, but why…? Izuk felt a little bad, but he couldn't help laughing when he realized that he had never actually explained some of Mei's more... exciting eccentricities to Shinso. Oh well, better late than never he supposed.
"She means her inventions!" Izuku managed to gasp between his chuckles. "Mei-chan calls her inventions her babies because she cares about them so much."
"I made them, Izu-kun!" Mei cried indignantly. "If you poured your heart and soul into something you'd call them your babies too!"
"I do pour my heart and soul into something." Izuku grinned cheekily. "I call them my notebooks."
"So... we're just going to be looking at inventions," Shinso confirmed, "not experimenting with human children?"
"The only human children we'll be experimenting on are ourselves!" Mei said gleefully, grabbing a large cardboard box from her workstation. "Extra-Credit-Kun! Grab that box under the table!"
Shinso shrugged and went to pick up the box, only to stumble when the weight was more than he expected. "What's in this thing, rocks!?"
"Oh hush, it's not that heavy." Mei dismissed. "Izu-kun, grab the other one."
Izuku shrugged and ignored the way that Shinso looked at him knowingly as he tried to pick up the box, only to grunt and fall backwards onto his butt, "Mei-chan, seriously?! How strong are you?!"
"It's not my fault you boys are weak." Mei shrugged. "Come on, we need to steal one of the soundproof test rooms."
Izuku stared after her in shock as she walked away and for the first time noticed how much muscle tone she actually had. She'd handled that box like it was nothing, even though both he and Shinso had struggled. He supposed it made sense with how much heavy material she had to work with while inventing, but it was still really impressive...
"Are you just gonna keep staring at her butt all day," Kohaku asked dryly, looking up from her own invention, "or are you actually gonna help her?"
"I-I, uh," Izuku sputtered and turned bright red, "I wasn't...I didn't…umm…"
Deciding that it was best to just cut his losses, Izuku grabbed the box and hefted it as best he could before leaving his snickering classmates behind and following Mei and Shinso. Mei was already taking things out of her box while Shinso was catching his breath and leaning against the wall. Izuku set his box down heavily next to the other two on the table and started shaking out his arms.
"That was…" Shinso looked at Mei, "Is she actually human? Or is she just some robot that killed its creator and started updating itself while pretending to be human?"
"Oooh!" Mei grinned. "If I…"
"No, Mei-chan." Izuku said patiently. "You can't make yourself into a cyborg."
Mei deflated, then brightened and was about to say something, but Izuku interrupted her before she could say what he knew she was going to say, "You can't make Shinso into a cyborg either."
Mei pouted, "It'd be a great way to get around that stupid one support item only rule that the gen-ed students have. And how is he gonna beat the hero course if he can't even lift a box?"
"Hey!" Shinso straighted up. "I lifted it! I did better than Midoriya anyway."
"Izu-kun is an analyst." Mei-chan said. "He can afford to be a weakling."
"Thanks." Izuku deadpanned, then frowned thoughtfully. "But in all seriousness, it would probably be a good idea for you to take up some sort of physical training, Shinso. Your quirk will probably keep you out of most fights, but there's always times that a hero has to rely on their body more than their quirk. Take Eraserhead, for example! He's such a great hero because of his martial arts training, not just his ability to cancel quirks!"
"You like Eraserhead?" Shinso asked. "I've never met someone else who liked him. Most people I talked to before UA just thought I was making him up."
"Oh, he's one of my favorites!" Izuku grinned. "Did you hear he's one of the teachers here?! Have you seen him yet?"
"No, I've been looking everywhere, hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the halls, but I haven't had any luck." Shinso frowned. "I guess he's just that good at stealth, huh?"
"I mean, you kinda have to be to avoid the media as a professional hero." Izuku said. "What do you think…"
"Experiments now, fanboying later." Mei said, popping between them with a large metal mask in one hand and three pairs of protective earmuffs in the other. "Put these on!"
Izuku put one of the earmuffs around his neck as Mei helped Shinso into the mask, "If you want, we could probably use one of the school's gyms to work out and try to gain some strength before the sports festival."
Shinso raised an eyebrow at him, "We?"
Izuku shrugged and stretched out his arms, "I sit in front of a screen all day, I've been getting sore. Everywhere online says that adding some physical activity into my schedule will help with that. Plus, I can't just call Mei-chan every time I need to move something heavy."
"I'm sure she'd be more than happy to open all the jars for you." Shinso smirked.
"Nope, too busy!" Mei said. "Now Extra-Credit-Kun, stand on the other side of that plexiglass and yell."
Shinso's eyes widened, "Yell?!"
Mei grinned and nodded, "We need a baseline for volume!"
"Ok…" Shinso walked across the room and waited until both Mei and Izuku had put on their earmuffs before taking a deep breath and yelling as loudly as he could, shaking the room. Mei took a few notes, looking at an instrument in her hands that Izuku had no idea what it was or how to read it, but assumed it told her something about the decibels or volume or whatever.
She pulled one side of her earmuffs away from her, prompting Izuku and Shinso to do the same, "Ok, Extra-Credit-Kun, now try to brainwash Izu-kun!"
Shinso nodded and turned to Izuku, "What's your favorite food?"
"Katsudon."
Izuku waited for the familiar feeling of Shinso's quirk to wash over him, but instead, after a few seconds, Shinso just shook his head, "I can't make the connection. Is this mask electronically transmitting my voice?"
"Yes." Mei said. "Is that a problem?"
"It must be a problem with quirk transmission." Izuku said. "Whatever establishes the connection is carried on the voice itself, so having a speaker probably blocks that part. Is that right?"
When Shinso nodded, Mei took another prototype from one of the boxes and handed it to Shinso, "Ok! Mask baby 2.0! This should magnify your voice without need for a speaker!"
"And you just have this?" Shinso asked.
"We knew that might be a risk." Izuku responded. "And Mei enjoyed the challenge."
"It's not as advanced as my other babies." Mei said. "But for now, it should amplify your voice and I can modify it later to act as a voice changer! Now go yell!"
Shinso walked back behind the plexiglass and screamed, making Izuku wince, even with his earmuffs. Mei wrote something down, then gestured for him to do it again. When he finished, Izuku felt like his ears were still ringing...or wait, was that something else?
He held up a hand to signal Shinso to stop and took off his earmuffs, "Do you guys hear anything?"
"I'm wearing earmuffs in a soundproof room." Shinso deadpanned. "The only thing I can hear is my own thoughts."
Izuku frowned but listened closer, and, sure enough he could still hear something coming from outside, "Do you hear that, Mei-chan?"
Mei nodded, "It sounds like alarms."
The three of them hurried to the door and opened it, only to be blasted with the sound of blaring alarms and flashing lights. The classroom was already empty, and their classmates were nowhere to be found.
"They must have assumed we heard the alarm." Mei said. "Or they tried knocking on the door and we didn't hear them."
"Did we cause the alarm to go off?!" Izuku was panicking. "I didn't think we were being that loud, but if something went wrong and I mean, sound can cause damage, look at Present Mic! Are we going to get in trouble?! What if they never let us near a test room again? What if they expel…"
"They're not going to be mad at us for setting off an alarm, Izu-kun!" Mei groaned. "And I don't think this was us anyway. It would have taken at least twice as much noise to trigger the auditory attack defense system.
"Should we leave?" Shinso asked. "I don't want to be here if that's a fire alarm."
"But my babies!" Mei said. "I can't just leave them!"
"Mei…" Whatever Izuku was about to say was cut off by the alarms going silent. "Or not."
The PA system crackled to life and Nedzu's cheery voice filtered through the speakers, "Hello students, the threat has been handled! Please calmly return to class!"
"Alright, then!" Mei said, pushing both boys back in the soundproof room. "Back to testing!'
Izuku thought it was odd that there was an alarm in the middle of the day, and what had Nedzu meant by threat? He meant to look into it later, he really did, but then Mei started another round of experiments, and he completely forgot.
Izuku notices something odd on the cameras as he watches class 1A.
Notes: Sorry this is a day late. I'm still alive, just suffering with writers block.
I've been looking forward to writing these next few chapters since before the beginning of the story!
Izuku sharpened his pencils and separated the notebooks he'd dedicated to class 1A. He didn't really think he'd learn anything new about their quirks today, since they were just doing a special rescue lesson, but it would be interesting to see how they applied their quirks in an non-combat oriented situation. He was particularly excited to see how Katsuki reacted to being confronted with a problem that he couldn't punch.
Izuku glanced at the clock. The class would be arriving in just a few minutes, assuming that no one had any issues getting into their costumes or anything, so he went ahead and opened up the camera feeds to get a visual of Thirteen already waiting inside. Their quirk was so amazing! Izuku made a mental note that he needed to get their autograph sometime, maybe after the sports festival?
Since the students hadn't arrived yet, Izuku figured he might as well use the time to familiarize himself with the facility. It was so cool! There were all sorts of different terrain that simulated different disasters that the students would have to deal with as pro heroes, and from his place inside the system, Izuku could easily see all the different controls for each of the zones. At any point, Thirteen, Nedzu or whoever was teaching could easily turn off any of the disaster zones if anything went wrong, or even turn them up or control them almost like a video game to offer their students more of a challenge. They'd all been set to the lowest automatic disaster setting for the first years, obviously, but Izuku knew he'd be asking Nedzu if he could observe one of the third years' rescue exercises so he could see the building's full potential. It was so cool!
Movement on one of his screens caught his eye as the bus finally arrived and the students started to file off following a grumpy Eraserhead like a line of little ducklings. Izuku snickered to himself. Maybe there was a way he could make sure Katsuki heard that? It would be sure to piss him off.
The last student left the bus, Izuku checked the schedule. Wasn't All Might supposed to be there today? As Thirteen lectured the students on quirk safety, Izuku hummed thoughtfully and pulled out his phone to check the news. Mei had called him to ramble about a new idea, right as he was about to get on the train, so he hadn't had a chance to read the headlines that morning like he unusually did.
Sure enough, All Might was all over the news, which meant that he must already be either near or over his limit for the day. Izuku couldn't really fault him, since those people obviously needed to be saved and being their hero was All Might's job, but he had been really looking forward to seeing his favorite hero perform rescue exercises just like his debut! Even if he wouldn't actually be in the same room, it still would have been really cool to watch something like that live.
With the mystery of All Might's absence solved, Izuku turned his attention back to the screens in front of him, where Thirteen was finishing up their lecture as a blackish-purple ...something… started to appear behind them. Izuku frowned and zoomed in to get a closer look. He hadn't seen any obstacles like that in the system, but it was possible he'd missed something…
Suddenly, every single camera cut out at the exact same time.
Izuku immediately attacked his keyboard, desperately trying to convince himself that there was no reason to panic. It must just be a weird electrical glitch or something! There was no way that that purple thing was a villain trying to attack the students, right? But, even if it was an electrical glitch, there was a failsafe on another electrical system that would trigger the alarms if a certain number of cameras stopped working, and that alarm wasn't going off. No alarms were.
After a minute of trying to get the cameras back up, Izuku hesitantly stood up and left his desk. It was probably nothing. UA's security was the best of the best! But it still wouldn't hurt to have Powerloader call Thirteen and make sure everything was alright, right? It was completely unnecessary and would probably annoy them, because there was definitely not a villain attack happening right now, but just in case there was…
Izuku slowly approached Powerloader's desk, only to find him talking to Hanzou. He didn't want to interrupt him while he was helping another student, but there might be an attack happening right now!
"Um, Powerloader?"
"Hmm, Midoriya?" Powerloader nodded to him, "I'll be with you in just a minute."
Izuku took a deep breath. The longer he thought about it, the more the whole situation just seemed wrong. He familiarized himself with the USJ, and there was nothing that was like that purple thing. Now was definitely not the time to let his social anxiety get the better of him.
"Actually, sir," Izuku tried to inject as much urgency as he could, hoping Powerloader would get the message without making the class panic, "I need you to check something out. Now."
Powerloader looked at him strangely, "Hanzu, just keep working. I'm going to see what Midoriya needs and I'll be back in a minute…"
When Hazou shrugged good-naturedly, Izuku walked back to his workroom as quickly as he could without running, grateful beyond belief that Powerloader was so different from his middle school teachers and trusted him without asking too many questions. It was nice and he would probably be crying if he wasn't so worried.
A part of him half-expected the cameras to be working again when he got back to his computer, making his entire anxiety attack an embarrassing overreaction, but of course, all of his screens were still blank. Izuku waited for Powerloader to follow him in before closing the door.
"Alright Midoriya, what is this about?" Powerloader asked. "It's not like you to interrupt like that. Mei, yes, obviously. But not…"
"I lost contact with the USJ." Izuku blurted out.
Powerloader froze, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"I was watching 1A over the cameras and everything was fine, but then there was this purple thing and the cameras just stopped working! I couldn't find anything like that in the system and there should be alarms going off but there's not and…" Izuku forced himself to stop rambling and took a deep breath. "I think it might be a villain attack."
Powerloader took a sharp intake of breath, "It's All Might, Thirteen, and Eraserhead there today, right?"
Izuku shook his head, "Thirteen and Eraserhead are there, but All Might's already at his limit. Um...is there any way you could call them? Just to make sure everything's alright?"
Powerloader was already pulling out his phone, "Why am I not surprised that you know about that? I'm sure everything's fine...this'll just take a minute."
Izuku held his breath as the phone rang. After a long minute, Powerloader took the phone from his ear and dialed another number, "Eraser sometimes doesn't answer the phone, you know how he is, he thinks it's a waste of time, but Thirteen should have their phone on them."
Powerloader's face grew more and more worried as the phone continued ringing with no answer until he finally put it away, "I need to report this to Nedzu."
Izuku gulped and sat down at his desk, pulling his keyboard toward him. So it was an attack then, "I'll try to reconnect with the cameras and keep you updated."
Powerloader nodded stiffly and left, only to return a second later with a small box that he set down on the desk in front of him, "Have you ever used a comm link before?"
Izuku shook his head and Powerloader took one out and handed it to him, "Ok, channel control is right on the side there, just tune it to channel three and you'll be able to talk to any of the teachers once they turn their comms on. It's an open line, so we should be able to hear everything. Do you understand?"
Izuku set up the comm like Powerloader had told him and put it in his ear, then nodded. Powerloader returned the gesture before throwing open the door to the lab, "Hanzou, as class rep, I'm leaving you in charge. Make sure nobody blows anything up."
There were some groans and exclamations, but Powerloader didn't pay attention to any of them as he closed the door to the workroom and left the lab as quickly as he could. Izuku distantly noted that he didn't run either. So they didn't want to cause a panic at the main school then. Ok, cool. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he started troubleshooting the cameras. He had only been at it a few minutes when the PA system crackled to life, but Izuku barely noticed the announcement.
"All teachers please report to the front office immediately. Again, all teachers to the front office."
There was a small string of code that seemed to be repeating and it looked almost like it could be a technology quirk of some kind that was blocking the signals. Izuku felt torn, on the one hand, having a quirk involved meant that it was almost definitely villains, but on the other, Izuku knew quirks. All he had to do was find the quirk's weakness and exploit it.
"Midoriya?" Powerloader's voice echoed in his earpiece. "Are you still there?"
"Yes, sir." Izuku didn't stop working, even as the other teachers started talking.
"Wait, the little listener's on the comm link?" That was Present Mic's voice, he knew it well enough from listening to his radio show for years.
"Young Midoriya's here?" All Might asked.
It seemed like Nedzu was ignoring all of them, since he addressed Izuku next, "Have you had any luck in re-establishing contact with the USJ facility?"
"Not yet, sir." Izuku said distractedly. "But it is a technology quirk and...Yes!"
"Do you have a visual?" Powerloader asked.
"What?" Izuku's brain took a moment to catch up. "Oh, no, not yet, but I figured out how the blocking quirk works. It seems to only be blocking a specific type of signal. I mean, that's obviously what our cameras are using, but I might be able to jury rig things from my side and use another type of signal to connect."
"Alright." Nedzu said. "Do that and tell us immediately when you get through."
Izuku felt a small surge of pride. Nedzu had said when, not if. He believed in him!
He shook his head. No time to think about that right now. Right now he needed to make sure that the teachers weren't going into this fight blind. It took him a few minutes to hack his way through, but he'd already tried hacking UA twice now, so he knew how all the systems worked and with the extra permissions that Nedzu had given him, Izuku had just barely enough experience and authority to do what he had in mind. He hit one final key, the cameras flared to life again, and Izuku didn't like what he saw.
Those were definitely villains.
"Nedzu, I have a visual."
"What's the situation?"
"Students have been scattered throughout the facility." Izuku reported. "Eraserhead is fighting, but he's outnumbered. There are dozens of them...mostly low level though, it looks like. Thirteen is by the entrance protecting some of the students. They seem to be in a stalemate with one of the villains, probably the one responsible for the purple thing I saw before the cameras cut out, considering they seem to be made of some kind of purple mist."
Izuku didn't know how he was so composed considering that there was a villain attack happening and oh god, people might die , but he supposed he was just too busy to panic. Or maybe he was channeling his panic into focus? That made sense.
Suddenly, the stalemate between Thirteen and the villain broke.
"Thirteen is down!" Izuku yelled. "I repeat, Thirteen is down!"
He heard several of the teachers swear over the line, but he was too busy starting at the screen to respond. Thirteen...were they even going to survive that attack? Is this what villains really did? Izuku felt so powerless. He wasn't even there! He couldn't even do anything to help them!
"There's a physical limit to how fast we can go…" Hound Dog growled.
All Might sounded worried, "Maybe I should…"
"No." Izuku started scanning the cameras again. "You're already at your limit. If you use what little you have left to get there, you're not going to have enough energy left to fight the villains. The students are holding their own for now. The one that hurt Thirteen has a warp quirk and turned their quirk against them. It was a lucky shot, and it won't work against most of the students."
"But…"
"Midoriya is correct." Nedzu said. "If there is a warp quirk, there might be other powerful quirks as well. The students need you to be as close to full strength as possible. Eraserhead is still there and the villains don't know that we know of the attack, so it's better to go as fast as humanly possible for now. Midoriya, let us know if anything changes."
"Will do."
Izuku felt so useless! There had to be something he could do! It might help the heroes if he could figure out why the heroes were there...and for that he needed audio. Izuku used the same hack he'd used on the cameras and started eavesdropping on the various villain's conversations, switching the microphones rapidly as he tried to overhear anything useful.
"...didn't tell me the plan, kid I swear!" One of the villain's was caught in Todoroki's ice quirk. "All they told me was that they're gonna kill All Might! That's all I know."
Izuku switched mics again as Todoroki started unthawing the villain. Not...the most hero-like, but then again, neither was hacking, so he couldn't talk, "They're here to kill All Might. I don't know why or how yet."
There was a villain near where Eraserhead was fighting, but he almost seemed to be supervising instead of fighting himself. Izuku switched to one of the mics near him as the villain started scratching at his neck. A stress response?
"When's the final boss gonna get here?" The villain's voice was raspy as he muttered to himself. "We're running out of NPCs!"
So...immature? It was hard to tell how old the villain was, but considering that he called his own men NPCs, he was almost definitely the leader. Probably antisocial, considering the video game references...final boss must be All Might. Did he know that the heroes were on their way? No, then he would have said something about final bosses or even mini bosses, but he didn't, so he was probably thinking that All Might was just late…
Still, the video game references gave him an idea.
Now that he'd done it twice, it didn't take Izuku all that long to hack into each of the different zones. Within minutes, he had the weapons of artificial flooding, earthquake simulators, flamethrowers and so much more at his fingertips. With Eraserhead slowing down, he had to do everything in his power to make sure that the students were safe.
"Alright villain, you wanna treat this like a game?" Izuku stretched his hands out in front of him, popping his knuckles. "Then let's play."
Summary: Izuku changes up the levels.
Notes: Some epic fanart from ParanoidPug!
Chapter Text"Alright villain, you wanna treat this like a game? Then let's play."
Nedzu felt a thrill at his protege's words and couldn't help the sharp smile that came to his face even as his coworkers shivered. He wasn't 100% sure what had prompted the challenge, since Midoriya's near constant muttering had trailed off after giving a passing analysis of who appeared to be the villain's leader, but whatever was about to happen, it was sure to be simply marvelous!
Nedzu had never been more grateful than he was at that moment for his protoge's mumbling habit. For never having received any training when it came to the man in chair position, as it was often fondly called, Midoriya was doing remarkably well! When he addressed his comments to the heroes, Nedzu noted that he was trying to pick the largest threats and most relevant details to mention, all while keeping his head and hacking through the system. Whatever small details his student happened to leave out were covered by his unintentional mutterings, so it all worked out. Nedzu had been a tad concerned when Midoriya had identified the glitch as the effects of a technopathic quirk, but it turned out that his worry was unfounded, as his student had bypassed even that challenge with little issue.
He was so proud.
"He...he sounds so confident." All Might noted quietly.
"He should." Midnight whispered back. "He beat a technology quirk from inside the system."
"And if it wasn't for him, we'd wouldn't know about the attack at all." Present Mic looked slightly pale, most likely wondering if the next thing Midoriya reported would be his husband's murder. Never having had interest in romantic connections himself, Nedzu couldn't even imagine what he must be going through. All they could do now, however, was get there as quickly as possible and trust Midoriya to handle the rest.
Izuku checked the cameras to make sure Eraserhead was still going strong before turning his attention to the students. The plaza wasn't a disaster zone, so he didn't have nearly enough control of it to do anything useful and if Eraserhead were here with him, he'd probably insist that Izuku help the students first.
Prioritize the rescue.
The students in the shipwreck zone seemed to be in the most immediate danger. There were just two students, a girl with a frog quirk and a boy with adhesive hair-balls, if Izuku remembered correctly. The frog girl could probably jump to safety with little issue, but the boy was panicking too much for her to do anything without leaving him behind, something that wasn't helped by the fact that the ship was literally sinking. It must have been one of the villains' quirks that damaged it and...yep, they all had quirks that took advantage of the water.
"Ok, easy enough." Izuku muttered. "Let's just see how useful your quirks are without any water."
Izuku hit a key and the pool started draining. It was slow going at first and Izuku was almost worried that the water level wouldn't go down fast enough to do any good, until he noticed that one of the drain settings was labeled whirlpool.
"Hmm," Izuku clicked on it, "I wonder what that does…"
It was as if the gates of hell had opened up beneath the villains as the water began to vortex down the drain. The villains were yelling, accusing one another of manipulating the water and creating enough general confusion that the frog girl was able to grab the ball boy by the waist and jump them both to safety. As they passed overhead, the boy started throwing his balls at the villain in a panic. Izuku almost wanted to facepalm. What kind of idiot thought it was a good idea to call attention to himself during a villain attack?
It ended up working out even better than Izuku could have hoped for, though, since the balls followed the flow of the water and brushed up against the villains, making them stick to each other. By the time the two students had reached the relative safety of the shore, the pool was almost entirely empty and the villains had somehow formed a ball of bodies that would be almost impossible to escape unless those balls somehow lost their stickiness, which according to Izuku's analysis of the ball boy's quirk, wouldn't be happening anytime soon.
One zone down...a lot of others to go.
Todoroki seemed to have things handled in the landslide zone, and Katsuki would probably just get mad if he received any help in the ruin zone, so that left the fire zone, the downpour zone, and the mountain zone for Izuku to choose from…
"Izu-kun!"
He startled as Mei slammed the door to his workroom open, "Hanzou is a boring class rep! He won't even let me make a little fire!"
"Not now Mei-chan." Izuku said distractedly. The kid with a tail quirk...Ojiro? He was fighting alone in the fire zone and there was a guy approaching him from behind.
Mei came up behind him, "Is that…?"
"The USJ." Izuku took control of one of the flamethrowers and turned it up to high. Ojiro whirled around as he heard the villain scream, but couldn't waste too much time figuring out what had happened, since another villain was already running toward him, using some kind of telekinesis to control the flames. "It was supposed to be a standard rescue exercise for 1A, but…"
Mei was silent for a long moment as Izuku cut off all the fire within fifty feet of Ojiro and his current opponent. The villain's eyes widened in shock as his entire weapon supply disappeared before he could blink, but Ojrio was the first to recover, using his tail like a whip to knock the guy out.
"What can I do to help?"
Izuku glanced over at his best friend, surprised to see her looking serious for one of the first times since he'd met her. It would have been enough to creep him out if he couldn't see the familiar gleam of determination and passion in her eyes as they quickly zoomed in and out, flicking rapidly between the different screens as she took in every detail.
"Close the door. We don't want the other students panicking."
As Mei complied, he turned his attention back to the fire zone. Ojiro had started running after he took out his last opponent, but he obviously didn't know where he was going, because he was just running deeper and deeper into the maze.
He sensed Mei behind him again, so he jerked his head toward the extra chair sitting against the wall and slid over to give her room to sit beside him. With one hand, Izuku grabbed one of the earpieces from the box Powerloader had left on his desk, and with the other, he created a wall of flames right in Ojiro's path to force him to turn tail. Good, he was heading in the right direction now.
Izuku threw the comm to Mei right as she sat down, "Channel three, controls are one the side. I've already gotten access to the disaster zones and the teachers are on their way, so we just need to keep the students alive until they get there."
Mei grinned as she plugged in another keyboard and pulled it toward her, "So I do get to make explosions?"
Izuku couldn't help smiling back, "As many as you want. Here, you can have the fire and downpour zones. I've been using the fire to guide Ojiro, that's the student with the tail, to the exit. I don't know how the ones in the downpour zone are doing…"
"Just leave it to me, Izu-kun!" Mei cackled, using a flamethrower to keep Ojrio from turning down a dead end. "This is so much more fun than listening to the class rep!"
"Midoriya," Powerloader somehow managed to sound both amused and exasperated, "did you really need to give Hatsume access to more dangerous experiments?"
"Oh!" Mei exclaimed, "Are those the teachers?! Hi, Powerloader!"
"If she handles two of the zones, I can focus on the mountain zone and the plaza." Izuku explained simply. "Don't worry, Mei-chan knows destruction better than almost anyone I know!"
Powerloader groaned, "That's what I'm worried about…"
Izuku turned his attention to the mountain zone just in time to see the girl with the earphone jack quirk, Jiro, push the electricity boy in the path of one of the villains, which didn't make any sense until the villain went down. Izuku rolled his eyes as the electricity boy gave the girls a confident thumbs up..was his name Kaminari? Anyway, how much control did Izuku have? A full earthquake would mess up the students as well, so he should try to avoid that, but...ah, that would work.
As a villain swung to attack the creation quirk quirk girl...Midnight had totally helped design that costume, hadn't she? Whatever, not important right now. Just as the villain was about to land a hit, he found himself launched into the air as a pillar of rock suddenly popped up out of the ground directly beneath him. Izuku grinned. The teachers probably used this feature mostly to change the landscape and give upperclassmen a variety of landscapes and obstacles without having to constantly rely on Cemontoss's quirk, but he could use it to...well, quite literally trip up the invaders, considering that he'd raised up a small ledge and made one of the villains fall flat on their face as they ran toward Jiro.
Keeping one eye on the mountain zone, Izuku glanced over toward the plaza, "Nedzu, is there anything I can use in the plaza? The only thing I see is the fountain, but that doesn't seem like it's going to be very useful and I don't think the villains have noticed yet, but Eraserhead is starting to slow down."
There was a soft gasp on the other end of the line, but Izuku couldn't tell which of the teachers it was from. Vaguely, Izuku was aware that one the mountain zone villains had popped up out of the ground and was making his way toward the plaza as well. Finally, Nedzu spoke up, "There's not any disaster simulators there, but every building on campus has defense systems if you can access them."
"Alright, weapons." Izuku muttered and poked around for a moment, "Perfect, found them."
"Good." Nedzu said. "Now, be aware that most of the fire power is not as...precise as this situation requires, and that the more lethal options might take a few minutes to warm up. Be careful, Midoriya."
Izuku nodded, his throat suddenly very dry, "O-ok. Um, that's a lot of pressure."
"Says the kid who's already started fighting back." Hound Dog growled. "Don't overthink it kid. Just do your best and save who you can. Everything else will have to come later."
Izuku glanced at Mei, who nodded at him firmly, and he felt a flood of determination take over him. "Yes sir! I'll do my best!"
He took a moment to look over his weapons options, deciding to use the guns only as a last resort. It looked like the best option he had was some kind of weighted net. He shot one experimentally at a knot of villains that was standing far enough away from the fight that Izuku didn't have to worry about hitting Eraserhead. The net hit the group head on, and instantly, all action stopped as everyone in the plaza turned to look and tried to figure out where the net had come from. The leader started scratching at his neck again.
After his initial success, Izuku was feeling a little more confident, so aimed another net at the leader. If he could trap him, then…
Izuku fired, only for the net to disappear into a purple portal right before it hit it's target. Another portal appeared near Eraserhead and the net came flying out, forcing him to dodge. Izuku grimaced, "Sorry. My bad."
The warp villain appeared next to the leader, looking quite a bit worse for wear from his fight with the students at the entrance. Izuku noticed a few purple balls stuck to the armor on his neck, along with chunks of concrete, so the two students from the shipwreck zone must have made it to the entrance and helped with the fight there. The two villains seemed to be talking, so Izuku scrambled to access the audio from the plaza, turning it up loud enough for both him and Mei to hear the conversation.
"...allowed one of the students to escape, Shigaraki." The warp villain's voice was deep and smooth. It would almost be calming if it didn't belong to a villain. "He will almost definitely raise the alarm, which means that the heroes will be here soon."
Izuku glanced over at the cameras for the entrance. Which student had escaped? Oh, that was perfect.
"The kid with the engine quirk escaped." Izuku told the teachers. "He should be heading your way now."
"Good." Nedzu said. "That means that the villains won't be expecting us so quickly. Notify us if anything else changes."
"Yes sir."
The leader was scratching his neck hard enough to bleed, "If you weren't our escape route, Kurogiri, I'd dust you right now! And tell me, why is the information we got so far off? I was told this would be a mob raid, so how come this level is acting like a tower defense?!"
Izuku gulped. They'd noticed his interference. He shook his head and forced himself to focus on the hints of the leader's quirk. He'd said something about dust, so did he have a quirk that allowed for dust manipulation? If so, Izuku would need to limit destruction in the plaza…
The villain that Izuku had seen escape from the mountain zone stepped between the two leaders and interrupted their conversation, "We have a problem. I don't know how, because I haven't deactivated my quirk since I stepped through the portal, but someone from the outside got through and seems to be using the building to fight back."
The lead villain, Shigaraki, if Izuku had heard correctly, suddenly stilled, "So, what you're saying is that someone is using cheat codes?"
"Um…"
The warp villain, Kurogiri apparently, interrupted the blocker's confusion with an air of professionality, "I don't suppose there's a way to tell where the interference is coming from? A set of coordinates would be most appreciated."
Shigaraki whirled to pin the blocker with a manic stare, only partially visible behind the creepy hand that the villain was using as a mask, "Yes! Tell us where the cheater is! Now!"
Izuku forgot how to breath and he could barely hear Mei's gasp beside him as she moved to crush his hand. If they figured out they were at the main school, they could warp to get them, which would put the rest of the student body in danger! The teachers were all gone to handle the attack, and if the location of the attack changed, they wouldn't be able to get here in time…
The blocker took a hesitant step back and raised his hands nervously, "That...that's not how my quirk works! I can block certain kinds of electronic signals, but I'm not a tracker! Even if I could track the interference like that, I'd end up with an IP address, which doesn't necessarily tell you where the computer is physically located!"
Shigaraki took his hand away from his neck and spread his fingers, "Then what are you even good for?"
Before Izuku could even react, Shigaraki lunged and gripped the blocker's face. A strangled scream left the man's mouth before it was cut off as first his mouth, then his vocal cords, then his lungs disintegrated under the villain's touch. Within thirty seconds, the only thing left of the blocker was a pile of bones, blood, and…
"Dust." Izuku breathed.