Creation began on 07-25-21
Creation ended on 08-09-21
Neon Genesis Evangelion
My Hero, Shinji Ikari: Learning Curves
A/N: A Quirk is only as powerful as the person that understands how it works.
Thud! Shinji was knocked onto his back on the ground again by Midoriya, making it ten times since this night training started two days ago when he asked All Might if there was some sort of training exercise he could do to practice more with his Quirk.
"Are you sure you can handle this?" Midoriya asked him as he got back up, his body aglow like before after managing how to trigger some of his Quirk to work for him.
"Practice makes perfect, right?" He replied, catching his breath. "How long did it take you to control your Quirk?"
"It took me months to control my Quirk; nobody has it easy."
"My first time using Guardian was to protect someone I love. If I can use it to help protect others, I'll be in control."
"What about your arm?"
Shinji raised his right hand up and stated that his limb was fine; some of 1-A were getting on his case with their concerns about his arm ever since Bakugo had blown it off and he reattached it to his body. He had gotten a clean bill of health from Recovery Girl that his arm was fine, and its mild soreness had stopped after he got up on his second day of school. It wasn't even sure by her if this was an extension of his Quirk to regenerate injuries to his body after breaking down sufficient matter from his surroundings to provide energy for the recovery process or another mutation stemming from the Quirk. Either way, Bakugo had shown the class that Shinji wouldn't be easy to get the best of if treated without the kid gloves.
All Might observed the two teens exchanging blows as he had to wonder what else Shinji's Guardian Quirk was capable of. There were similarities between it and One For All, but unlike the Quirk meant to protect the world from foes like All For One, this one demonstrated the capacity to regenerate, something One For All didn't possess, just stockpiling energy and increasing the physical abilities of those that came to possess it. Seeing Shinji receive a kick in his waist by Midoriya's right leg, sending him sliding backwards, the former hero noticed how a small portion of the ground behind the fourteen-year-old boy atomized and dark patch of bruised flesh on his exposed side became a healthy light tone again; Midoriya was helping Shinji test the limits of Guardian's ability to improve Shinji's endurance, but it seemed like he was having the opposite effect based solely on demonstrating the Quirk's power to mend Shinji.
"Midoriya, just how hard did you kick Ikari?" He asked his successor.
"It wasn't supposed to be too hard," the green-haired boy responded; his Full Cowling spread the power of One For All across his body evenly, but he didn't think that, even without his modified footwear to augment his Shoot Style, he would be able to injure Shinji. "Ikari, how hard did I kick you in the waist?"
"It kinda felt like my stomach was going to burst," he explained to them. "But I'm fine now."
Across Gym Gamma, where they were training, small cameras were placed to record the data for Guardian to best determine which theories worked best to understand the Quirk better, and in case Recovery Girl was needed should either student go too far on each other.
"Increased strength and speed," went Aizawa, taking in the basics of Guardian, "heightened durability… This kid's a lot like you and Midoriya, except for the self-recovery ability and something else going on here."
"What do you mean, something else?" All Might questioned.
"You recall how Bakugo hit him a second time with his Grenadier Bracers at point-blank range? The first attempt blew the boy back, but the second attempt didn't affect him. Or last night when we had Todoroki and Aoyama up against him, he was knocked back by Navel Laser within five minutes of the training session, and then seconds later, he didn't seem fazed by Navel Laser at all. And when frozen by Todoroki, he was completely helpless until he was thawed out…"
"And then he wasn't affected at all by his Quirk when Todoroki tried to freeze him again, resulting in Todoroki unleashing fire on Ikari and making him back away," All Might responded. "Another trait of his Quirk, perhaps?"
"If so, it would explain why Bakugo was unable to hurt him the same way twice."
Soon, Shinji was on his knees in front of Midoriya, exhausted from the training; they had been at this for two hours now, and he looked like he was about to collapse from overexertion. His glowing had diminished to just barely covering his body and his dark veins on his wrists and face became gray.
"Can you keep going, Ikari?" All Might asked him.
"Un-uh," he responded, shaking his head in the negative; he was hungry and felt like he needed sleep, same as last night.
"Okay, hit the showers and then return to the dorms."
-x-
With the data they had gathered so far, Recovery Girl was able to come up with a theory for one of the reasons Shinji's Quirk operated the way it did, which wouldn't have been that far a stretch from what they knew about other Quirks. Reviewing the footage from the training sessions from last night and tonight, she saw just how Shinji was able to take a licking and be unharmed later on.
But will this theory hold up against his next opponent tomorrow night? She wondered, already having in mind one of the two students from 1-A he would go up against.
-x-
"I'm back," Shinji announced as he closed the front door and removed his shoes.
Shado, who was laying on one of the sofas in the living room area, looked up from her picture book and replied, "Welcome back, Daddy."
Rumiko came from out of the kitchen with Toya and greeted the teen.
"You look terrible, Shinji," she told him. "Who was it this time?"
"Just Midoriya," he explained.
"Just Midoriya? I was expecting you to be up against Ida or Yaoyorozu or…Mineta."
Shinji could see that, with the exception of Bakugo's suspension from the school and his confinement in the Heights Alliance dorms, the only other student that creeped her out was Mineta due to his perverse behavior, which was part of the reason she wore shorts under her skirt in case he ever tried to look under it. Not that he would ever let him; if it ever came between Rumiko and some other girl that caught his gaze, Mineta would learn the hard way that Rumiko was off limits.
"I think I'd be too much of a pain in his Quirk if I went up against him."
"I think your daddy means 'bottom'," Toya told Shado. "Or 'butt'."
"Eh-heh-heh!" The little girl snickered.
"Hey!" Rumiko reacted.
"Did you learn anything new about what you can do, Daddy?" Shado asked her father.
"Nothing I didn't find out the day before, sweetie," he responded.
"Did you two know that there's a student here with a Quirk that can copy other people's Quirks?" Toya asked their parents, reminding Rumiko that he had a question to ask them once they were both present.
Shinji and Rumiko looked at each other and then nodded to Toya that they were aware of the presence of a student here that possessed a Quirk of the sort.
"What does that mean?" Shado asked them. "A Quirk that copies other Quirks?"
"It means," Shinji explained as he lowered to meet her height better, "that the person that has this superpower…can't do anything to anyone without first copying the superpower of another person. If he wanted to fly, he would have to copy the power of someone else that could fly."
"Or if he wanted to run faster, he would have to copy Mr. Ida's Quirk, wouldn't he?"
"Yeah, that's right."
"That's…a little scary."
"Not if he is separated from other people. A copycat power is useless if there's no one with a Quirk to copy," Rumiko clarified, "and based on what our classmates in 1-A know about this boy, he can't use more than one copied Quirk at once, meaning that while he can copy any Quirk from anyone around for him to touch, he can only use one at a time. If he was using Kirishima's Hardening Quirk and needed to flee using Ida's Engine Quirk, he would have to stop using Hardening and leave himself vulnerable to whoever was hitting him. Or…if he wanted to use Todoroki's Half-Cold Half-Hot Quirk, he would have to stop using Shoji's Dupli-Arms."
But Shinji got the feeling that Shado was scared of such a power due to her own Quirk, one that had been used as an excuse by his father to abuse her. Though, he had his doubts that her Quirk could be of use to anyone if there was no concrete information on how it worked.
"On a positive note," Rumiko told the kids, "Hagakure is working on a new costume that can turn invisible like she can now."
"Miss Hagakure can make herself invisible now?" Shado asked.
"Yeah, it's just not easy for her to do because she's still practicing with her new on and off switch. Before she touched your cheek, her Quirk was always on, but now she has to learn to turn it on and off at will."
"Maybe your Quirk just affects random people with odd Quirks, Shado," Toya suggested.
"But…I made my grandmother disappear," she reminded him of the reason her grandfather hated her so much.
"One day, we'll understand what your Quirk can do, Shado," Shinji assured her; no matter what anyone else that couldn't deal with the truth thought, Shado didn't kill her grandmother.
Grumble! They all heard Shinji's stomach growl.
"I burned more calories because I didn't eat anything after school let out earlier," he expressed.
"Daddy, that's not okay. You need to eat more. Not eating is bad."
-x-
"…And compare this with what the hospital compiled on him, it would make more sense when you consider the fact that we're not entirely certain of his Quirk factor yet," Recovery Girl told Aizawa, All Might and Nezu about her theory on Shinji's Guardian Quirk.
"But can you be sure this is the case with Ikari's Quirk?" Nezu questioned her.
"He took on Bakugo's Explosion Super Move at close range," she explained to him, "point-blank. Not once, but twice. The first attempt clearly injured him to a degree, but the second attempt showed no signs of harm. When he got his arm blown off, he tore down matter from his surroundings to regenerate the severed limb. Earlier this evening after the training session to understand more about his Quirk, I checked him for injuries, and he showed signs of abdominal injury, but it was already recovered by the time I tried to use my Quirk on him."
"Some matter on the floor of Gym Gamma was atomized by Ikari after Midoriya kicked him in his waist," Aizawa backed up.
"His body probably uses atomized matter to provide additional energy to his regeneration when injured in a way that hinders him, but whenever he's injured in an extreme way by another Quirk, he doesn't seem to be affected by any Quirk the same way a second time. If this theory is true, then it is possible."
"Regenerative adaptation," All Might said, finding the theory impressive. "Are there any other Quirks like this Guardian that possess such an ability?"
"There are two other heroes that possess Quirks with similar adaptations, but they were never this…this advanced," Nezu informed. "The two share a common ancestor, but are from different families. The Armored Heroes: Kazuma and Ryuhou. They can only adapt to enemy Quirks for a short while, then have to adapt to them all over again. What makes you so certain that Ikari's Quirk adapts him to other Quirks on a longer basis?"
"I couldn't be sure unless he was exposed to the Quirks that hurt him the first time."
"It may be best not to put him in the same room as Bakugo for now, though," Aizawa stated. "He is still suspended for his reckless behavior against Ikari."
"Then what about Ms. Ashido, then? Her Acid Quirk should be the best way to know for sure if Ikari can adapt to hazards caused by other Quirks."
-x-
When the hero course was overlooked by Shinji, it did feel like he was back in a regular school due to the other requirements for an education. The only thing different was how the history class was more focused on heroes of the past than historical points like post war events or something natural disasters like earthquakes or tsunamis. There was something Shinji wanted to say about the current situation regarding heroes and identities that made no sense to him, but he wasn't sure how to question it to anyone. His only positive reaction to the history of this world was no Second Impact, no Angels, no paramilitary agency, no Evangelions…and that was something he couldn't complain about.
It almost feels like I've gone into the future, but it's just history being different from what I used to know, he thought as he scrolled through a history book, seeing that there were two global wars long before the first Quirk was discovered, exactly as he understood. Same dates, years, just everything else is off. But that's okay, really. It's a reset from my past.
Swat! He heard something nearby and looked up and saw Mineta on the floor…and Rumiko fuming with her left hand balled into a fist; the child-sized teen had clearly tried to mess with the teen mother and received a blow to his head.
"Really, Mineta?" Yaoyorozu questioned. "You're going to live a short life if you keep trying something stupid."
"He's lucky he hasn't seen me on a bad day," Rumiko stated.
"And what would be a bad day for you?" Mineta asked as he laid on the floor.
"Oh, trust me, you'd want to be far away from me when it happens."
Shinji got the impression that Rumiko was referring to her period days, and they were a monster for her to wrestle with because she didn't want to hurt anyone unless they hassled her, something she wished she could deny having inherited from her mother.
On the floor, Mineta showed that he had received a bloody nose.
"Not a Super Move," they heard Midoriya say, "but pretty impressive."
-x-
In his room, unable to do much of anything until his suspension was served, Bakugo read an old comic book. All he did was face Ikari and he gets suspended for going too far on him and perceiving his brat as a threat. And then, there is the warning not to do it again, otherwise his future as a hero would be over before it could even begin. He really hated his suspension and wanted to do something else with his time.
"Stupid Ikari!" He yelled as he threw the comic across the room. "He's as useless as Deku!"
Sometimes, he just wanted to hit both boys with his fists, but he wanted to hit Ikari more than Deku, his excuse being that he was the reason he had gotten suspended. But then he was reminded of Gaidoku and her son, and then Ikari's daughter. If their Quirks were just the power to find specific people or augmentation of their physical abilities or some strange ability to affect other people's Quirks, these four were just an embarrassment to the hero community. The only good hero was one that knew how to take no crap from anyone.
-x-
"…What's that, Rumiko?" Shinji asked as he noticed she was writing descriptions of something on paper.
"Oh, it's, uh… I was asked to try and come up with suggestions for a costume," she explained to him as they were eating lunch on the rooftop of the building. "But for the lack of trying, I can't imagine myself looking like any of the other heroines, and for one specific reason."
"What reason is that?"
"Some heroines wear bodysuits that don't exactly do as intended. Sure, they provide protection and assist in making the use of your Quirk more effective, but I've seen Mt. Lady and Uraraka. They look like supermodels because their costumes highlight their assets."
Shinji thought about what she said about them…and soon wished he hadn't. The bodysuits were subtle reminders of the plugsuits, and he had enough of those to last him a lifetime.
"Well, what kind of costume do you see yourself wearing one day?" He suggested.
"Since I can't do anything but find people that I have some association with, I'd probably dress like an ordinary person would. I'd be overlooked because my Quirk is next to useless."
"Except…your Quirk isn't useless…when you think about it from a different perspective."
"Huh?"
"You help find people you know. You lead people in the best direction when they have no way of knowing where to look for someone. And you're still developing your Quirk, so you're not at your best yet. Whoever says that Maternal Devotion is useless are kidding themselves."
"Thanks, Shinji. What about you?"
"Me?"
"Yeah, what kind of costume do you see yourself wearing one day?"
"Regular clothes with Kevlar underneath."
"Why?"
"I don't see myself trying to stand out too much. Nothing flashy or like armor. Probably like you, I'd rather be a nonentity, but I want to be someone Shado can see stand out among the people."
"Civilian heroes?"
"Civilian heroes."
"I swear, it's like nothing really gets you down, anymore."
"That's not true. I can be bothered by things and people that cause me to question why things are the way they are, like the concept of having alter egos in a superhuman society where nearly everyone has a superpower. I mean, if people eventually find out about what you can do, then it kind of defeats the purpose of having a secret identity. Right now, we have no secret identities and people know who we are because of what happened in Sapporo. Why have secret identities if our lives are not so secret?"
"You're thinking about it too much, Shinji. True, the majority of the world is made up of people that have some kind of superpower, but the primary focus of the superhero life is to let the general public know that they have people willing to protect them from criminals who try to do wrong. When people see heroes, they're not going to care so much about who you really are as much as they're going to care about what you did to protect them from the bad guys. Of course, the only hero I can think of that doesn't seem to have a need to hide their identity is All Might; he looks like a comic book hero that is drawn is shades that obscure his face perfectly. Even today, he doesn't look like he needs a mask if his face looks like the kind of mask that hides what he's capable of."
Maybe Shinji was thinking about it too much, but it did matter to him that he was in a world, in a society, where it seemed like the need for a secret identity was a moot point if everyone had superpowers and was a hero. This also applied to the men and women that followed the path of villainy, as they were researched by the public and identified as threats because of what they chose to do to hurt people. And on a personal level, he couldn't shake off this feeling, this…unrelenting sense…that something was coming, an inescapable storm.
"Shinji?" Rumiko spoke. "Are you alright?"
"Just a feeling," he told her; he couldn't describe it as anything else. "I probably seem like something bad is going to happen, don't I?"
"Only you're not sure what it is? Yes, but at least you're honest about it."
-x-
It was a crazy suggestion, but even though it was a risk on her part, Recovery Girl just wanted to let Shado know that she could trust the woman whose job was to ensure the well-being of others as a doctor. So she had Shado do the one thing that terrified the child most of the time every day since she and her father got out of the hospital in Sapporo: She had her touch the woman on her nose. That didn't sit well for the little girl, but she did as she was asked by her, fearful of causing the woman to do something awful.
Toya watched from the side in the office, and saw nothing go wrong with Recovery Girl. While Shado had trust issues with adults, neither child felt like this woman was really trying to harm them or their parents. He didn't even think Shado wanted to hurt anyone because of her past abuse by her grandfather…and because she was a sensitive child, far more so than others her age.
Recovery Girl didn't show any sign of having been affected by the little girl.
"Nothing so far, Ms. Shado Ikari," she informed the girl.
"I…really don't like to touch people much," Shado replied.
"You seem to be able to touch your father, Toya and his mother and not affect them. Why do you think that is?"
"We live together. I never felt a reason to think that any of them would ever try to hurt me. And Daddy is… Well, Daddy is the one person I know the most that doesn't want to hurt anyone unless he has no other way to convince who he's facing from turning away. He's got hands that don't enjoy hurting anyone."
"You do understand that as a doctor, I follow an oath that is to do no harm towards anyone in need of medical care, meaning that I can't hurt you any more than I can probably hurt someone else. Is it that hard for you to trust other people?"
Shado nodded that it was, but added, "When you don't know what they intend to do to you, or you know how they feel towards you based on their actions toward you, it is not easy to be open in front of others. You don't know if they want to help you, be friends with you…or hurt you…and you don't know what they want with you. Unless you're on the same boat as others in the same situation, you have…difficulty with just talking."
"You talk to me like everything's ordinary, Shado," Toya informed her, "and you're talking to Ms. Recovery Girl without trouble. And you touched her without making something bad happen. Isn't that a sign that you know you can trust her without being terrified?"
Shado still found talking to adults troublesome. It was only sheer will that she was able to stand speaking with Recovery Girl and not be worried about being touched by her.
"My Quirk, despite being one that is meant for helping people," went Recovery Girl, "can only be hurtful is the person is hurt too much."
"What do you mean?" Toya asked her. "You're the heroine that gets people walking again and using their hands if they get broken. There should be more heroines like you out in the world."
"Heal, my Quirk, has its limitations. I can't heal injuries if they're too severe and the people injured are too weak to be healed. Also, if they lose an arm or leg, I can't just make it so they can grow a new one. There's a difference between healing and regenerating."
"They sound the same, ma'am," Shado expressed; healing and regenerating seemed alike to her if that was what all four of them, herself, her father, Rumiko and Toya, did after ending up in the hospital after that day.
"Healing is similar to regenerating, but regenerating is often stated to include the ability or capacity to regrow body parts, which is something healing can not do. Sometimes, people can regrow fingernails when they are removed from their fingers. One part of their body's internal organs, the liver, is capable of limited regeneration if a person's healthy. But if something happens to cause harm to the eyes, ears, nose, heart or even an arm or leg, no matter how long you take to recover, you won't regrow those if they're gone. It places more value on how people should treat their lives with care."
Shado raised her left hand to her right shoulder.
"Miss Recovery Girl?" She asked. "My dad… That other boy, Bakugo…he really did blow his arm off, didn't he?"
That wasn't a question that Toya expected to hear her ask.
"Now, what makes you say that?" Recovery Girl responded.
"My grandfather would use his hands to tear me up and put me back together more times than I can count. I've seen him tear walls and floors apart. But Daddy, he…he doesn't know that I saw a video of him on the news while we were at the hospital after he defeated Grandfather. I woke up at night and the TV was on, and I saw him on the street…and it cracked in front of his feet. Some people believe that Quirks can be inherited, passed on or something, which is why some people have similar abilities, but wouldn't it be possible for Daddy to…do what Grandfather could do when he decided to use his hands?"
"Oh, come on, Shado!" Toya expressed, trying to change the subject from negative to positive. "If your dad could do half of what his dad could've done, he wouldn't do anything he couldn't undo if he went too far. He'd practice first and foremost. Well, unless he was able to do so instinctively, that is."
"In…instinct…ly?"
"He means having the ability to be able to do things without needing to be shown or taught how," Recovery Girl explained.
"Oh. Well, what I'm trying to ask is…if Daddy had gotten his arm taken off by the other boy, Bakugo, could he…use his Quirk to…put his arm back on?"
"Now, that's… That would be…"
The girl was only four, but her capacity for seeing things was not all that different from other children. Her suspicion for her father's Quirk being able to reattach his arm to his body was not as ridiculous as Recovery Girl wanted to make it seem to spare her the fear of him being anything like her grandfather.
"Except Shinji wouldn't echo what his father did to others," Toya told Shado. "If he could do that with his Quirk, he would probably just use it on himself to stay in shape for protecting others. I mean, tearing things apart and putting them back together again isn't always easy."
"If being a hero was easy, everyone would want to be one…but Grandfather…can't ever be a hero…because he chose to hurt others."
"Your grandfather can never be a hero because he has flaws that make it impossible for him to cooperate with others," Recovery Girl revealed. "He used to attend U.A., but that was only for his first year. Gendo was…completely irresponsible and had no self-control with his Wrath Quirk. He was dismissed from the academy and was told that he would never be a hero if he couldn't demonstrate any of the basic principles of being one. He had no sense of friendship, empathy, remorse, not even basic compassion. If one can't demonstrate any measure of those to anyone, they can't hope to be heroes."
"So, he was just bad all the time?" Toya asked her.
"More or less."
"And he was here for just one year?" Shado questioned. "We haven't been here for even a month, but it feels like we've been here for a good while. Not even a few friends, but some of the people we've met aren't that bad."
-x-
"…Units-03 and 04 will be upgraded in two more days," went Ritsuko to Misato, who seemed disinterested in what NERV was doing.
"That's nice to know, but we have no idea who's going to pilot them," Misato reminded her; last night, she had another dream about Shinji being alive elsewhere, having his right arm blown off by some boy that clearly had an attitude problem and didn't play well with others…and he just put his arm back on and dealt with the problem child.
"We're still looking for suitable candidates."
"I doubt you'll find them."
"Why the lack of confidence?"
"The Evas aren't exactly the safest thing, anymore, Ritsuko. Even if they're the only effective weapon we have against the Angels, they can no longer guarantee the pilots' safety if something goes too far…and sometimes, something does go too far."
But this was a war, and in any war, there would always be casualties. Some would be trivial and others would be personal. But in this case, with the aftermath of the last attack, the casualty was both trivial and personal. Except to minds like Ritsuko Akagi and Gendo Ikari; neither one actually cared for the well-being of the pilots so long as they piloted the Evas and fought the Angels to protect Tokyo-3.
"As long as they survive, that is what I'll have them do," Gendo had once said.
Personally, Misato blamed herself for letting Shinji pilot the Eva that last time. If she had seen what was going to happen to him beforehand, she would've opted for a different course of action instead of sending the Evas out to face the Angel.
"Whenever I think about him now, I see him glowing a bluish-purple with his veins blackened," Misato told Ritsuko. "What do you suppose that means?"
Ritsuko didn't have an answer for her. How could she respond to such a question when there was no logic to it at all?
-x-
"Don't hold back on trying to harm him," was what Ashido was told by Aizawa when she was brought to Gym Gamma to face Shinji to see how effective one aspect of his Quirk was alongside a surprise combatant.
"Uh…you want me to face both of them?" Shinji asked All Might and Aizawa, pointing to Ashido and Midnight, who was the second combatant he was informed about just a moment ago.
"That's right," Aizawa responded.
Oh, this feels messed up, he thought as he felt this was something he shouldn't be doing.
From the background check done on this Shinji, Aizawa and All Might were aware that unlike most other young people, Shinji, despite having been surrounded by women, had never raised his arms up to engage in any measure of violence against them. Even though he had been assaulted by two of them in his past, as much as he wanted to hit back, he restrained himself from doing so. His sense of pacifism the result of his environment and poor upbringing after the death of his mother and the abandonment of his father, Shinji was probably among the most fortunate to have developed a sense of morality that others wouldn't have developed in his case.
"Don't be sexist, Ikari!" Ashido encouraged him. "Bring it on!"
Shinji sighed and triggered his Quirk. Even if this was a training session, he didn't want to risk harming these two if they not as tough as he currently was due to being exposed to Quirks that were not entirely friendly. On the positive side, Recovery Girl was on standby if something went sideways, either to himself or someone else.
"Begin!" All Might told them.
"Aaaurgh!" Shinji yelled as he jumped into the air above Ashido and Midnight, his fists balled up to land the first blow.
"Whoa!" Ashido gasped as she shot her arms up and fired acid at him. I heard he was burned, but he probably has never experienced an acid attack before!
The acid struck Shinji in his waist and he felt an intense stinging sensation that sent agony up his brain. He fell backwards onto the ground and slowly raised his left arm up. Or rather, what remained of his arm. The flesh had been eaten away and exposed the muscle and bone.
"Aaaaaahh!" He yelled.
Aizawa was about to have Recovery Girl enter the gym when he saw the ground around Shinji crumble and atomize around his left arm and waist, and his flesh that had been eaten away by Ashido's acid regenerate and was good as new once again.
"Okay," they all heard Shinji say as he got up, "that hurt. That hurt like everything else hurts."
"Yeah, that's acid for you, Ikari," Midnight told him. "It eats away at everything it can."
"But look at you now," Ashido pointed out to the areas of his body that Acid had made contact with. "That measure of acid was intended to eat through flesh and inorganic material. You look better and the only part of you that was eaten away is your uniform. This time, I'll go for your legs and eat away at the muscles!"
She thrust her arms out at him and shot another stream of acid at Shinji.
Shinji reacted faster and slammed his right foot onto the ground and forced part of it in front of him to rise up to block the acid. From what he understood about acid, it took time for it to eat through something dense, like rock or concrete, so hiding behind a wall was a good move.
"The goal of this session is to test your adaptability towards other Quirks after what happened to you previously," All Might had informed him. "If this is an extension of your Quirk, it would likely affect you to an extended level. You have been harmed by Bakugo when he took your arm off, and you restored it to its previous state. If you need to be harmed and then tear down matter to provide energy for the regeneration process, you may be stronger than you realize. Maybe even able to develop invulnerability to these Quirks that have caused you harm."
"What do you mean by that?" Shinji had questioned him. "You're suggesting that once I get hurt by someone, once I recover, I can't be hurt by them again?"
"That's the possibility, meaning that you could possess the power of reactive adaptation."
"Reactive adaptation?"
"Once harmed by a power that is able to hurt you," explained All Might to him, "you can't be hurt the same way by the same person. Maybe this is temporary or even permanent, but if you were able to recover from what Bakugo did, then, even if it's only a temporary shift, his Quirk can't affect you right now. Maybe if he got stronger, but then you'd be stronger, too."
But even if he did possess such an ability that was part of his Quirk, Shinji didn't enjoy pain, and preferred to minimize it as much as possible. Now that he's been exposed to Ashido's Acid Quirk, there was a possibility that he would be impervious to it for a while, however long that would be. As he prepared to go on the attack, he got a whiff of an aroma that was very soothing and made him feel weaker.
"Whoa," he went, staggering a bit as he felt like he needed to sleep. "What's going on."
"Feeling sleepy, Ikari?" He heard Midnight say to him as she walked around his defense, the sleeve on her right arm ripped and releasing a strange, violet-colored mist into the air. "This is my Quirk at work. Somnambulist. Inhaling the aroma will knock you out in no time."
"That's…that's clever," he responded; he wanted to say that it was cheating, but if he had no knowledge of what anyone could do, it was his fault until he was prepared.
He couldn't hold his breath because he had already breathed in her attack on him. Falling to his knees, he felt weaker. He then felt something wet hit him on his back, causing what remained of his shirt to fall on; Ashido must've gotten behind him on the other side and used more acid against him. But the strangest thing of it was that he felt unaffected by her acid attack.
"No way!" He heard Ashido say behind him. "My acid isn't affecting you!"
He shook his head, trying to stay awake; if he lost consciousness, even for a second, he would be vulnerable to attack.
"Ah, is the hero getting sleepy?" Midnight taunted.
Shinji looked at her and frowned as he got up. He placed his right hand against his makeshift defense wall for balance…and shook his head again.
"It's not nice to taunt, but who am I to say that?" He spoke, and then slammed his face against the wall. "Aaaurgh!"
He injured himself, and then the wall atomized where he hit his face and he regenerated again, correcting his bloody nose and gash on his forehead.
"Whoa," he expressed, sounding better. "Not what I expected, but I won't complain. All your Quirk is doing now is blocking every other smell in this gym."
Midnight's eyes widened; her Somnambulist no longer worked on the boy that was clearly doing better than his father ever did while here, and he hasn't even been here for a full year yet. If neither Quirks affected him now, it was no longer optional for either teacher or student to face him without their abilities to overwhelm him.
Ashido released a stronger version of her acid from her hands that was the strongest she could produce and doused Shinji all over with it. She hoped that he could not overcome this variation of her acid with his adaptation. As the acid fell off him, she found that her method of attack didn't have the expected effect on him.
"That was uncalled for, Ashido-San," Shinji told her, having covered his head with his arms to shield his eyes from the acid (he couldn't be guaranteed that every part of his body was now impervious to certain Quirks that could harm him), feeling like he'd been doused in thick paste or slime. "Urgh! Ugh! It got in my mouth! Tastes like salt and vinegar! Yuck!"
"Oh!" Ashido looked away from him. "Time out! Suspend the training session! Time out!"
"I must concur with Ashido," added Midnight.
"Yeah," went Aizawa.
Shinji looked down at himself…and was reminded of the day he ended up in this world. The acid attack not only failed to harm him further, but it ate what remained of his gym uniform, leaving nothing behind but air.
"This is the second gym uniform that I've gotten ruined!" He expressed as he ran behind the wall. "This is not cool!"
Ashido removed her waistcoat and offered it to Shinji.
"Much appreciated, but that's not going to cover much, Ashido-San," he replied.
"I guess this means my theory has been proven true," they heard a new voice in the gym, and saw Recovery Girl with a large towel. "Young Ikari adapts to offensive Quirks and develops an immunity from later attempts against him."
"I don't believe that Ms. Midnight's Quirk is intended to harm anyone if it can only put people to sleep, Ms. Recovery Girl," Shinji told her as she came over and handed him the towel. "I had to injure myself to recover from my drowsiness. Arigato."
Recovery Girl found this boy to be very unusual from other students. Not only was he capable of tearing down matter to regenerate his injuries, including self-inflicted injuries, but he could undo the effects of Quirks that affected him harmlessly, too. She really wanted to see what else he could do, but had to remind herself that he was still a young man with a life of his own and had to be able to find his own way to a better future for himself and his daughter.
"Maybe we should start improving the uniforms so that they are a bit more resistant to damage," she suggested to All Might and Aizawa.
"Maybe we should progress to shifting our focus to having his Quirk copied by one of the students from 1-B," Aizawa suggested.
"Do you really want to take a risk with letting someone from 1-B copy Ikari's Guardian Quirk?" All Might questioned. "It would be just as unpredictable if we made a request to have his daughter's Quirk be copied when we still have no exact understanding of it, either."
"You want someone from one of the other classes to copy the Quirks of Shado and I?" Shinji asked as he came from behind the wall, the towel tied around his waist. "Me, I'm tolerable with that if it's all for the sake of understanding Shado's Quirk better, but Shado? She still can't handle being touched by people she doesn't know or trust. Before I left the dorms to come here, she gave me a look that had raised concerns."
"It's probably because earlier in the day," Recovery Girl revealed, "she had asked me about the incident with Bakugo blowing your arm off and wanting to know if your Quirk was starting to show similarities with your father's Wrath Quirk. She's more than likely worried that you'll turn out like how he did a little."
"Except my father… He used Wrath to hurt others because he chose to hurt others. He uses his hands to tear whatever or whoever he can to pieces. Shado's fear of anyone that needs their hands to use their Quirk, mostly men because of my father, isn't a fear that will diminish over time if she's not exposed to friendlier people with Quirks that are more positive than negative that require the use of their hands. I'm still making a list of people that could be friendly for her to be around so that she doesn't get frightened."
"We should probably have her and Gaidoku's son meet Eri," Aizawa suggested.
"The young girl that was rescued earlier this year before you found out about the four of us?"
"She's also recovering from her trauma and has made progress with the students of 1-A. We also need to understand how her Quirk, Rewind, functions, as well. There is a possibility that they're similar to one another."
"Similar…but not exact."
Still, Shinji wanted Shado to be able to be around others without being fearful of harming them or being harmed herself, and he wanted her to know that, no matter how similar his Guardian Quirk was to his father's Wrath Quirk, he would never echo that man's ruthlessness or vindictiveness when it came to hurting others, for better or for worse. Even as he looked at his right hand, Shinji understood that it would be a while until Shado wasn't so fearful of what he could do.
"I fought a villain that ruined an entire ward," All Might uttered, "and I can't use my Quirk, anymore, no matter what I do. Do you suppose your daughter would feel safe around a former hero that's harmless?"
"Honestly, Mr. All Might," Shinji replied, "Shado will probably want Ursa Guardian with her if she were to meet with anyone new."
"Ursa…Guardian?" Ashido spoke, confused.
"It's one of her teddies," he explained.
-x-
Shado was afraid, and had reason to be. Although her last memory was of falling asleep after Shinji had read her a story, she found herself in that building underground back in Sapporo, her arms and legs wrapped in old bandages under her faded, white dress. In front of her, down the lit hall, was Gendo, but he was wearing some sort of armor that invoked the sense of a demon to the girl as his eyes were glowing red.
"You can run, but you can't escape from me," he told her, taking a step forward, and making her take a step back. "I will find you, no matter where you hide."
"You're in jail," she uttered to him. "You're never getting out. The police and heroes, they won't let you get out."
"Do you honestly think the law will keep me locked up forever?!" He yelled at her. "You can't keep me locked up forever! One way or another, I will get out, and when I do, I will come after you, girl!"
"You come after Shado," they heard Shinji's voice as he appeared behind the little girl, dressed in a white shirt and black pants, "and I'll make sure you get sent back to jail again."
"You can't protect her forever!"
"As her father, I must keep her safe from anyone that threatens to harm her. I will never let you lay a finger upon her, ever again."
"You may say that now, but you can never keep her safe all the time. One day, you'll slip up. People always do. There's no escaping that truth."
"Your hands got maimed, so even if you could get out of prison, you can't use your Quirk, anymore. Your arms were your Quirk factor. No arms, no Wrath Quirk, making you no less dangerous than a regular person."
"I refuse to be locked away by the likes of you or anyone else. Don't you comprehend how, just as evolution has shown variations in mutations, people don't simply just give up after a setback? Sure, we come across a few stopgaps, but we don't give up just yet."
"Except you gave up when you were made to leave U.A. after one year there, Father. You couldn't make friends there, you couldn't demonstrate any capacity for heroism, you couldn't even rescue three civilians from a wrecked building because, as I was told, you saw the mere act of rescuing people beneath yourself. You can't cooperate with others, you refuse to protect people in danger, you can't do anything that makes one a hero! If you can't do anything that makes one a hero, then you will never be one, just a…a loser that had power…but no morality on how to use it."
Shado nodded in the positive on what Shinji stated; if her grandfather couldn't demonstrate any of the qualities of what made one a hero, he would never become one. Even if by some miracle that he had a second chance to make up for his failures, it was on him to do better than he didn't the first time.
"Like you two?" Gendo asked them. "You both possess power, but neither of you seem capable of being heroes. Not that you two or the Gaidoku pair are capable, that is."
"What do you mean?" Shado questioned.
"Look at the four of you; Ms. Gaidoku can only find people she cares about within a limited environment and her son has more than likely inherited the same limitations, one of you has the basic abilities of a regular strongman or athlete and another makes people disappear without a trace, effectively killing them. I doubt any of you will be heroes of any degree."
"But…Daddy is a hero. He rescued me from you. He stopped you from taking me away a second time. The police got you and locked you away where you can't get out. Daddy is a hero…and a good one."
"So says a girl afraid of anyone that needs their hands to use their Quirks if they're violent."
"She's only afraid of people like that because of the way you treated her," Shinji told him. "You are constantly violent, you treat Shado like she's deliberately cruel to you and she never did anything to hurt you, and you've never said one thing nice to her."
Shinji then walked around Shado and approached Gendo, his body aglow like before.
"You want to make a threat to escape from prison, you go right ahead and do so, but know that if and when you decide to come after us, I won't be the same as I was when I came for Shado that night we escaped. I will be stronger…and whatever you think about doing…I won't let you do it to her. I'll lock you up again…in that dark place you ended up in…and you won't get out again."
-x-
Gendo gasped as he awoke in the dead of night in his office from a strange dream. In it, he was facing a little girl that bore an uncanny resemblance to the Third Child…and the Third Child himself, standing up to him, saying something that was clearly meant to be a warning towards him, and when he raised his right arm to discipline him, he raised his own right arm up and punched him in his face!
Did he call that girl…Shado? He thought as he got up from his desk. And did that girl call him…her father?
It was confusing for him, as due to the fact that the Third Child was dead, there were no other relatives, excluding himself and Yui's father, but they were not on speaking terms with one another. And unless the theory of alternate dimensions truly exists, there was no other member of the Ikari family alive in the here and now. Except…what NERV did every time there was an Angel to face and overcome…left Gendo wondering if the old theory was within possibility and not a trick of the subconscious mind to give the illusion that someone you wish was still alive to make use of. He would need to speak with Dr. Akagi and see what she understood about it.
To be continued…
A/N: So now, we are learning that the Guardian Quirk owned by Shinji is enabling him to become resistant to the Quirks of other people he's exposed to and how he can regenerate from injuries. I think Shinji was right to question the point of having a secret identity in a world where nearly everyone has a superpower; there was hardly a reason for needing to have an alter ego if most of the world knew who you were already. The mentioning of the two characters from the s-CRY-ed franchise was my idea of how there are other heroes with abilities similar to the one Shinji's Guardian Quirk possesses, but may be at a level lower than Shinji's if his is more advanced. Read and review if you can until the next chapter. See ya!