3-In-1 Instant Quirks 11 (My Hero Academia, Villain SI)
"At least they bought my products." A small grin formed as the holographic projections of the school's first year students were displayed on the stadium's VIP floor surrounding the field. "Good to know that some people care about improving experiences here."
Instead of having to rely on various large screens (with barely decent close-up shots), the announcer's commentary or watching the proceedings waaaaay down below with one's own eyes (not that I had any issues with that), my technologies allowed the VIP's attending U.A.'s sports festival to have a closer, more accurate view of the events happening at the ground level.
"Rather than that… you're just happy that they paid you for it." Ochako candidly remarked by my side, sitting down in her seat while carrying several plates of food readied by the caterers.
"Oh? Did you just call me a greedy person?" I questioned the girl, who hadn't yet realized how blunt she was.
"E-eh!? I-I'm sorry, P-peter! I don't actually think you're greedy, or obsessed with money or anything-!" It took her a few seconds to start freaking out and began waving her hands frantically in her adorable attempt to apologize.
"Haha… I'm just teasing. But to clarify, while I'm glad that I'm getting paid for it, I'm more happy about the fact that everyone would be able to enjoy the show better. They won't miss out on a lot of stuff they used to. We'll even be able to hear the dialogue on the field thanks to my advanced sound receivers too. Mmm… there's a lot more I could say, but to sum it up, I feel immensely satisfied that I have improved the quality of life for everyone through my work."
"Oooh! It's like… the feeling you get when you know your work is gonna bring a lot of smiles to people! My parents say they feel that way sometimes when people are happy with their buildings."
Her bright (still) innocent smile and enthusiastic arm gestures made me want to pet her head.
"Yeah, like that. Ah, Nejire's gonna give the pledge now."
Ochako swiftly stuffed her mouth with some of the sausages she grabbed, then reached for some of the designed items with Nejire's name or face on it. While she was doing that I began to use my Helium pump to inflate a few Nejire head-shaped balloons.
The moment Nejire's very Plus Ultra-like speech ended the both of us threw the items out of the VIP room, letting them float in the air (Ochako used her Quirk on several banners) and shouted her name through voice amplifiers.
It was one of the rare occasions where Nejire's face had gone beet red.
"Operation Amazingly Embarrassing Friends is a success!"
"Go Friendship!"
My cheer was quickly matched by Ochako, our eyes met and within less than a second our palms impacted one another's in a double high-five.
She quickly moved to cancel her Quirk. About a split second before she realized that her Quirk didn't affect me, I used a minor compulsion Quirk to make her think otherwise. This was a fairly routine action at this point since she would end up using her Quirk on me (mostly unintentionally) to no avail.
I can only brush off so many incidents where Quirks don't work on me with the 'exotic warping energies' (suck it Ragdoll, and I mean literally, later…) excuse.
"Mph! Haha…! Oh god, Peter you..."
We both turned to the left in order to look at whoever was snickering at us. It was a familiar tall and muscular young man with short dark blue spiky hair, and a mini glasses wearing version of him, whose hair was flattened neatly like a little prefect from an old school I attended.
"Oh! You're here too Tensei? I see you brought your clone."
Tensei paused for a second, looked at his confused brother who was pointing to himself, then smiled mischievously, "Yeah! I finally took your advice and visited your affiliate labs in order to clone myself. As you can tell by the hairstyle, he didn't exactly come out the same way."
"B-brother! Introducing someone else with blatantly false statements is inappropriate to the highest degree!" Tenya Iida was air chopping with his hands as if they were imbued with the conceptual power to cut through falsehoods.
"Heh?! So he's really your brother and not a clone?" Ochako blurted out, seemingly trusting the words of the pro-hero after I had introduced her to the wonders of genetic engineering and cloning technologies.
"I am most assuredly not a clone!" Tenya denied vehemently while his brother enjoyed himself.
"But Peter said the cloning process can add memories though…" As always, Ochako's word filter was operating at the lowest possible setting.
Realizing that the first event was being announced, I quickly changed the topic before the younger Iida began jumping through the mental hoops to have an existential crisis.
"Stop teasing your little brother Tensei. Anyhow, you could have told me that you were gonna watch the sports festival!"
He shrugged while keeping a laidback smile on his face, "It was a last minute thing. My schedule opened up so I picked up Tenya here so that he could help me pick up anyone with potential that I might have missed."
"I will do my best to observe the participants and prove myself worthy of your trust!"
Ochako was covering her mouth, trying hard not to laugh at how 'animated' Tenya was.
"Good luck with that. I would suggest looking out for Nejire-chan but…" I trailed off at that point just as Nejire began blasting the field with shockwaves in the initial culling of the competition. Sucks to be those kids that got instantly KO'ed because the first event was a free-for-all survival battle.
Mirio survived the mayhem rather easily thanks to his Quirk while Tamaki buried his head in the ground, quite literally, as he dug himself a hole in the corner to hide in while transforming his back into a hard shell as a defensive measure.
"...yeah... My agency takes a page from assembly lines when it comes to hero work, your friend is way too versatile and powerful by herself. Outside of showing her the ropes I would only end up holding her back." Tensei admitted without much shame as he looked upon Nejire's overwhelming show of power with a degree of nervousness. Tenya's jaw looked as if it could reach the floor, it was hard to say whether it was from the curbstomp, his brother's admission or a mixture of both.
Rather than a 'survive against hundreds of unknown combatants' event that was initially envisioned, it turned out to be a 'survive against Nejire' event. Everyone was literally doing their best to avoid Nejire's attention or run like their lives depended on it, no one even bothered attacking one another when there was a much more present threat to their chances of advancing to the next stage.
Ochako and Tenya then began their own conversation starting from our mutual friendship with Nejire before the direction changed towards their preparations to become heroes. The two of them got along quickly as they talked about training and their Quirks.
Tensei and I discussed some business before speaking a bit about how we've been doing. He was trying to convince me to get more involved in the heroics industry beyond the 'portal scheduling' service I started up for pro heroes that needed to travel across Japan at short notice.
"Look, from what Tachibana-san spoke of you, I'm pretty sure you could just take the hero licensing exam, get your license then proceed to 'retire' immediately. That way you won't have to give up any of your positions as an inactive licensed hero while having access to the Hero Network. It will make organizing portal requests more efficient, hero response time goes up, you'll get lots of influence for it… I see this as an absolute win!"
"Your points are understandable and I do agree with them, to a point. However, my stress levels will go to the roof if I get closer involved with hero business, my personal life will be whack if I have to keep with your kinds of schedules-"
As the former pro-hero Amplifier acted as my first point of contact for friends when my phone line was 'unavailable' (no reception in my pocket dimensions) and for my work-related activities in general, Tensei ended up striking up a friendship with her over the phone when he tried calling me. She ended up mentioning my 'Villain Attack' performance one day and since then Tensei has deluded himself into thinking that I could be a great hero (not knowing I'm too far gone for that...).
I'm pretty sure he just wants me to act as some sort of inter-city portal network so I wasn't inclined to entertain his ideas. I could confirm my guess by reading his mind but I like him too much to do it, and it's more fun that way. And even if he wasn't addicted to my convenient travel services, my next guess was that the HPSC or some parts of the government were trying to entice me to save them costs or help the heroes more with what was probably the strongest known warping Quirk in the world.
The Japanese big wigs however, haven't annoyed me overtly for a couple of reasons. Firstly, they have competition in the form of foreign governments (the EU especially) that want me to remain 'in their service' even on a part-time basis. Secondly, I have already secured sufficient resources to make life very painful for anyone attempting anything on me. Lastly, there were a lot of 'accidents' involving any individuals that even thought about disrupting my life, to the point where every faction that wanted to use me believed another faction had an "elite death squad" laying in wait to kill everyone else trying to get me (lol), to their ever increasing paranoia.
Well, I guess I should at least thank them for the free Quirks. Hmm, maybe I should start sending them some flowers? My flower arrangement technique is rather amateur, but my calcium-rich skull vases should make up for it!
I went through the motions as I chatted with Tensei, noting that Ochako and Tenya ended up making a new acquaintance in Itsuka Kendo, who had 'won' the chance to join my pro-hero puppet Syndrome here after being an exemplary showing during a school trip to Syndrome's agency. Tenya's and Itsuka's school normally allowed their students to watch U.A.'s sports festival, unlike Ochako's, so their pro-hero associates (Tensei and Syndrome respectively) could easily get them out of school without hurting their academic record.
A shame that I needed to nuke Ochako's school. Well, it was her greater good anyways, she needed a better learning environment and I had the funds to provide that. I had already invested enough money to rebuild better schools for the students in her area immediately after, so Ochako won't need to feel guilty when I tell her the truth one day.
There was no need to make a personal move on the pretty red-head yet since Ochako would be a more than sufficient first point of contact.
She would come to me in time...
Tensei had ended up introducing me to Present Mic, or Hizashi Yamada, during the break, which involved an impromptu rap battle in English. He was pretty likable in person… hmm, guess I'll throw him and Shota a bone later on.
The rest of the break between the first and second event went by without any real issues.
Since most of the action took place in the stadium I figured that the obligatory team event would make use of the space outside of here. Sure enough, it turned out to be a sort-of obstacle course with standard hazards and enemies…
"-while protecting our Robo-VIP's!"
I haven't felt this much pain in my chest since that time I got impaled years ago.
"Uaargh! Bloody escort missions! I'm feeling sick just thinking about it..."
Tensei was equally as (exaggeratedly) horrified by what was happening on the field.
"Bodyguard jobs for First Years?! Nezu you sick fuck!"
The two of us looked at each other, communicated with our eyes and quickly clasped our hands to give the remaining students a prayer in support. We then spoke about our past experiences, Tensei with the real life examples of VIP Darwin Award worthy behaviors and my own video game frustrating NPC AI nonsense.
It wasn't exactly equal but it gave us something to talk about.
I watched as Nejire teamed up with a flat-chested girl with short red hair and a soft-looking girl that looked seriously out of place. A quick check of her Quirk and how little it had been trained confirmed my initial hypothesis that the latter girl was from the general studies course. It seemed that she had a [Cushion] Quirk that was… perfect for the event.
Wait a second. I did a quick review of my memories from the first event and noticed that Nejire seemed to deliberately avoid targeting the girl. I did give Nejire some probabilities of the potential events (the numbers always changed a little but it was still useful) which meant that she had likely taken that into account. And knowing how Nejire was like on a normal day she would have pestered everyone for their Quirk…
Oh damn, she made sure to leave all the extras with useful Quirks that would specifically assist her with all the possible second events, just so that she could use them to ace it!
Nejire you beautiful girl! When I told you to go dominate the school festival you really did go PLUS ULTRA in it!
I'm so proud of her.
As expected, with the help of the girl's Quirk that allowed her to 'cushion' and protect the exterior of any solid object so long as she maintained direct contact, Nejire was able to just speedrun through the entire 'escort mission' course of pain.
The other girl just seemed to be there in order to keep the 'Cushion Girl' and 'VIP Android' in constant contact using the increased abilities of her transformation type Quirk while Nejire carried them through the whole thing.
10/10 Teamwork in my book.
With most of the teams still just a bit past the startline by the time Nejire (and co.) got first place, she was pretty much given a long extended break before the final obligatory 1v1 matches for this tournament arc.
The first thing she did when given permission on the field was to look towards my seat in the VIP room. Nejire waved at me and then pointed at one of the exit hallways.
"The two of you are gonna catch lunch or something?"
"Yeah, we'll probably take a quick trip somewhere. Watch my seat, I'm still saving up my cinnamon rolls for dessert later on and I don't trust any of these guys not to swipe one. And yes, you can 'tax' a bit of it."
Tensei began his bodyguard job for my cinnamon rolls without any further prompting… after snatching one for himself.
Opening a portal to the hallway Nejire was exiting out from, I waited until she separated from her teammates before activating several Quirks to hide our presence, spoof the surveillance devices and create an illusion of us interacting in a wholesome manner. I quickly made a clone and designated a Mimicry type Quirk to it, which allowed the clone to copy and use any Quirks that are active within the area, then relinquished the duty of maintaining this illusion to it so that I could give Nejire my full attention.
Just as I finished my preparations, Nejire hugged/tackled me and started asking about how she did. I patted her head and brushed her hair affectionately as I told her how proud I was of her.
She pressed her face into my chest for a bit before looking up at me with her puppy-dog eyes and a cute pout. I sighed exaggeratedly, knowing that she had a request for me so I went ahead and asked her, "What would you like?"
"Some action! Like, the fulfilling kind! I was being really careful through the first round to make sure the best teammates for all kinds of events remained for the next round but it was hard to keep up the pace while trying not to hit specific people-" I listened on as Nejire ranted on about how weak her year group was, "-so I was hoping to let loose in the second round but it was too easy! That's why we need to spar right now!"
So to sum it up, Nejire hyped herself up for more of a challenge while still try-harding 'going Plus Ultra' against everyone and now needed to get rid of some of that tension.
I was kinda hoping out on a locker room kissing scenario but this works out too.
"Alright then, we have about 15 minutes to wrap this up so let's make it count."
Instead of bringing her to the middle of nowhere or a newly raised island protected by several barrier Quirks, I went ahead and transported us to a recently scouted out area accessible only by my newest Quirk.
To the unobservant it would have appeared as if I hadn't done anything but Nejire was able to pick up on the difference immediately.
"It's quiet. I can't hear any of the people out there, where did we go? Oooh, is this like, a pocket dimension that copies the area around you? Or...or…!"
"Not quite."
I snapped my fingers and blasted everything around the two of us into pieces. Nejire quickly took stock of her surroundings, quickly realizing that this world was devoid of living beings and that we now stood in the ruins of U.A.'s school grounds.
"I combined a limited time-adjustment Quirk, a Quirk that allowed the user to jump into paintings and a powered-up spatial Quirk to create a power that would let me travel through the timeline. It didn't work out as I expected, but I ended up stumbling upon this world between worlds instead."
"Eh? You found a really convenient training place by accident! Your Quirk really works in weird ways. So weird! Wow, it's really quiet, I guess this is what the end of the world is going to be like. If we get stuck here then are we going to be the new Adam and Eve?"
"In order, yes I found this place by accident. I'll elaborate on it in a bit. Next, I never did say my power was a Quirk, honestly I never did think of it as a Quirk since it's too OP. Thirdly, yeah, it does look like the end of the world, kinda like in those manga titles… story for another time. Lastly, we can't exactly stay here because each of these worlds will collapse in 24 hours."
"Worlds? There are more?!"
"Sort of. Okay, I'll keep it short since we'll want at least 10 minutes to let loose. Remember how the multiverse exists? Great. Now recall that we have all sorts of parallel worlds here, the world or universe isn't confined to a single timeline and can split off from each other like the roots of a tree. What my newest power lets me do is nudge myself off the timeline a little into the 'leftover' or 'excess regions' of the timeline that temporarily exist when a new timeline is formed. Essentially, we have a completely disposable replica of our world to play around with."
"So we can go all out? For real?!"
"Yes."
Nejire immediately accessed her stockpile of energy, manifesting it in a golden aura around her body, then punched me in the face-!
The impact was as if someone tossed their notepad at me.
I admired the view of the sky as I was sent flying through the air, across a significant portion of the ruins and right into a building. The building then collapsed on me like confetti in a surprise birthday party.
"She's gotten stronger." I say to myself as I watched her pretty shockwaves slowly crash upon my form, caving in the ground below me while crushing the building rubble into fine dust at the same time.
Even though it was mostly a focused attack, she had still spread a bit of her shockwaves out in order to crush the city block around me, such that afternoon sunlight would still reach down the gigantic crater she was burying me in.
I wasn't going to dodge or anything, even so, I was going to give her extra points for ensuring that she could still keep an eye on me.
Sensing the significant energy build-up above me, I observed and marveled at how she concentrated her shockwave's energy into a tiny white ball by adjusting their wavelengths, maximizing her output while slowing down her energy release speed to near-nothing, allowing her to accumulate it in one spot.
Now that I have a good look at it, I think her super attack is pretty cute.
My [Danger Sense] Quirk activated and tingled slightly in the back of my head for the first time in years. This girl…!
I smiled at the incoming attack.
This was the type of power where I needed to put in some moderate effort to block!
I maximized the power of my normally passive defensive Quirks and placed an arm in front of me, not bothering with my more powerful barrier Quirks as I wanted to take it head on, then waited for the attack to come.
"There it goes~ White Nova!"
She launched the white ball of energy downwards with a tiny shockwave.
It exploded the moment it impacted my arm. The sheer force of the attack forced my hand against my chest!
My passive sensory Quirks helped me regain my bearings as I finally began to move around. There was a large mountain sized void where a good part of Musutafu used to be.
The mild bruising on my arm was all healed up in an instant.
It's been so long since I felt any kind of physical pain.
Ah, Nejire, you wonderful girl!
Just for that I'm going to make my counteract really fun for the both of us!
I instantly appeared behind Nejire's airborne form and activated my [Thunderous Applause] Quirk to get her attention. She engaged in evasive manouvres without even turning around, knowing full well that I had already began my attack after I announced my presence.
"Gospel."
The air exploded outwards in blocks of sound as I uttered the 'chant'.
[Satanas Verion] was strong enough to instantly take down the likes of Endeavor at close range. It's power decreased as the distance between my targets increased, all-in-all a pretty balanced Quirk given that it was an easy to control, Anti-Unit type Quirk.
I wasn't able to come out with a cool name for this sound-based attack since I already had a more destructive, Anti-Army [Sonic Cannon] Quirk, so I just cribbed the name off the spell used by Bell's aunt from that one event in Danmachi.
Nejire had evaded the brunt of the attack yet she was still pummeled in the air and sent flying to the city's edge. I could just teleport to her, however, Nejire had a knack for reacting to my teleportation Quirk when she knew I would be using it in a spar.
As such, I went with the speed option. Moving at speeds equalling a lightning bolt, I launched several air pressure attacks at Nejire from different directions, appearing as afterimages for those capable of high-speed combat.
Nejire clothes were torn into pieces as she used a full body shockwave to cancel the attacks.
I lifted my arm, dragging the remaining buildings of the ruined city into the sky, then turned them into thousands of giant blades. Activating the Quirk [Enchant] alongside [Remote Contact], I anchored and amplified the effects of thousands of Quirks that I normally didn't use into each individual multiple-storey tall blades.
It became a dazzling lightshow of the traditional elements, anarchistic alterations of solid matter, a travesty on the laws of physics, time and space contorted in unnatural ways as the unpredictable attack fell upon her.
The frequently renewed defensive and regenerative effects that I anchored to Nejire's form were tested in this moment as Nejire desperately defended herself.
I warped the entire area, including the on-going barrage, to a different city in Japan. I touched the ground and transmuted everything into a twisted flesh construct. The city of corrupted flesh moved to my will and reformed as a thronging hive for monsters of my making.
Nejire had just blasted apart the last of my esoteric blade attacks only to be trapped in the maw of a faux cosmic horror.
My million strong army of grotesque alien constructs descended upon her in hordes and she struck back without hesitation. She destroyed my creations, the equivalent of B to A Rank villains of this world, by the hundreds and thousands with each of her attacks.
The only light within this lightless place was that of her shockwaves and her aura of life energy. Nejire was so beautiful. Watching her crush my minions within this darkest dungeon as the lone warrior of light filled me with great joy!
Alas, I couldn't let her continue at her current pace, she needed to be back at the event in the regular world. Time to jump straight to the boss fight.
I generated a gigantic pulsating heart within the centre of the dungeon and imbued it with unnatural abilities. Then revealed its presence in its stead-!
"Behold the heart of the world! Progenitor of life, father and mother, alpha and omega! Our creator... and our destroyer."
Nejire took the hint and began looking for the 'heart' of this army. She spread her shockwaves far and wide, maximizing its shine, and quickly found her quarry.
She swiftly charged up another White Nova and fired it at her target at 4km/s instead of trying to punch it like a dumb superhero.
Sniff! I'm so proud of her!
The return of my Quirks upon the 'death' of the boss monster so swiftly was a welcome surprise.
I decomposed the matter around us into pure energy, adding it to my stockpile.
"That was so cool Nejire! You were super awesome there, you really exceeded my expectations!"
"YEAH! I did it! Aaaah… I'm feeling sleepy."
I quickly topped her up with my own reserves, bringing her back to her energetic self and passed her a spare duplicate of her P.E. uniform.
She covered her front with the spare clothes and stared at me.
"What?"
"You forgot the underwear."
"Oh, whoops."
Her body was covered in light like one of those fairies in my fantasy anime so I ended up forgetting about the fact that she had been completely naked instead of just losing her school's exercise clothes during my second attack.
We quickly resolved that a few moments later and returned to the regular world.
The third 1v1 matches were astoundingly dull in comparison to our battle. Nejire had took it easy by showcasing her enhanced strength, speed and maneuverability along with her masterful fighting skills through her first few matches.
Only resorting to flying and blasting during the finals as she didn't want the competition to auto-forfeit until then.
I still had to use compulsions to make sure her less-than-happy contestants showed good sportsmanship and stayed for the fight, letting them show off their Quirks until Nejire defeated them quickly when she went on the attack.
I guess that says something about the quality of this year's students more than Nejire's overwhelming power.
"Amazing! With that kind of showing she's sure to catch the attention of every pro…!" Ochako then nodded to herself, "I have to work hard to catch up!"
So cuuuute!
Training such wonderfully cute girls truly is a worthwhile experience.
I really should finalize that list of Quirks I want to use as material for Ochako's improved Quirk. Fundamental force manipulating Quirks were quite rare so I was still a bit hesitant to part with those I gathered. If only I could breed them quicker-
-wait a second. I took a glimpse at the bright but familiar intelligence Quirk owned by Nezu.
Animals can have Quirks.
Why didn't I think of this sooner?! I should have just given some Quirks to animals and bred them together to get new variants of Quirks I want!
Well then, it's time to gather up thousands of rabbits for my Endeavor approved master eugenicist plan!