Chapter Seven
Toshinori Yagi, All Might to most, sipped his coffee in the meeting room as he reviewed his plans for the class he was going to teach tomorrow. One learned best by doing, and from seeing his young students in action he was going to be able to test their mettle and see where their strengths lied. Today they'd been competing, theoretically against each other, but they were all individual events.
Heroing wasn't like that.
Heroing was a battle, where one pitted their strengths, both body and mind, against those of their opponents. These kids had practiced on their own, or maybe in schoolyard scuffles at the most. This would be nothing on actual combat, but one needed to walk before they could run.
Walk. Run. Fly.
Go beyond what you ever thought possible. Plus Ultra!
That was what it meant to be a Hero.
But, for now, some high-impact sparring would be best. Power Loader, or someone in his class, had built a decoy 'bomb' for one side of the exercise to defend tomorrow. He just hoped young Midoriya would be up to the task.
The door opened, seemingly on its own, causing Toshinori to lean over, seeing the diminutive form of UA's principal toddle inside. "Nezu," he nodded in greeting, "What's this meeting about? I was trying to figure out tomorrow's lesson."
"I haven't the foggiest!" the small, white chimera cheerfully replied. "I'm not the one who called this meeting, Aizawa was."
"Aizawa?" All Might echoed, looking up to see the man in question walking through the door.
Eraserhead looked tired, but then the man always did. "We have a problem," he announced, tossing a file on the desk. Clipped to the top was a picture of a muscular blond kid, a black jagged streak in his hair.
". . . Kaminari?" All Might asked, after a moment of wracking his brains for the name. He was pretty sure he had them all, but he was planning on reviewing them before the lesson, just in case.
"He's got another power. One he didn't show during the exam," Class 1-A's homeroom teacher stated. Slipping out his phone, he played a video showing the young man's legs turning to lightning, letting him sprint forward, then doing the same to jump a respectable distance for someone without a strength Quirk. "There's no record of him having such ability before, and it seems unstable. Like Midoriya's."
All Might felt his blood run cold. He knew why Young Midoriya's Quirk hadn't settled, but he was aware of only one other person who could grant powers. He knew his old foe still lurked in the shadows, but had he heard of Yagi's coming to teach at UA, and put one of his own in to spy on him?
The boy's performance in the entrance exam was good, suspiciously good, now that he thought about it. A competent spy would try to place in the middle of the pack, but a young boy, with a powerful patron? Toshinori could easily see such a child over-performing to win that Villain's approval, to show he was the best and deserved the attention.
Then, given a Quirk that he could pass off as his own in reward, he'd managed to get into the class that All Might was going to teach himself. He wanted to dismiss his worries as paranoia, but when fighting against that man it wasn't paranoia, it was proper planning.
"You know something," Aizawa commented coldly. "Then what do you make of this?"
Another clip played, the hidden cameras not getting a good angle. It was the ball-throwing test where young Midoriya had impressed him so. He'd thought the blast had been from Bakugo, given the boy's Quirk, and was shocked to see the blast that Kaminari had unleashed.
Principal Nezu, on the other hand, clapped delightedly. "Oh, good show!" he cheered. "It's always good to see the youth approaching their Quirks from unique directions!"
"Care to explain?" Aizawa drawled.
The chimera was happy to. At length. About electromagnetism. About 'right hand rules'. About something called a 'Lorentz Force'. Toshinori felt like he should ask David about it, but it sounded like something that wasn't Quirk reliant, at least. "I believe one of Power Loader's students made one last semester, though on a much smaller scale, and much less powerful!" Nezu finished.
Eraserhead nodded, having followed the explanation, or at least did a better job than All Might did. "So it would be possible with his registered Quirk?"
"Absolutely!" The principal agreed. "Though he should be warned not to use it near other students! Or indoors! Or on anything that he doesn't want absolutely destroyed!"
"I have," Aizawa stated. "Then there's this. Notice anything wrong?"
All Might watched what he recognized as young Kaminari's run through the entrance exam. As part of the panel of judges, he'd had to watch the runs of every student who scored more than fifteen points or gained the notice of the Judges during the initial test. Even with that, there'd been over two hundred of them. However, this video showed a ten second clipfrom the beginning, contrasting it with another from the end, repeating the process with four different pairs of actions.
"He's finding his confidence, Eraserhead," Tohinori sighed. He was just being paranoid after all, and Aizawa was grasping at straws. "A lot of students do a lot better once they start taking down their opponents."
More clips played, and he looked to Nezu to back him up, but the creature's eyes were narrowed. "Hmmm. You have a point," the diminutive creature observed, standing on the table to grab the file, dragging it back to his chair and opening it up, looking up from it to the video that ended. "Play it again, please."
The two men waited as their boss poured over the file, making thoughtful noises, the thump of his tail wagging audible. "A-HAH!" the chimera cried in realization. "By jove, I think I've got it!"
Putting the file down, he spread out the pages detailing Kaminari's parents. "I do not believe this is a 'new' Quirk, but merely a newly discovered expression of an existing one!" Taking out a tiny phone, the principal quickly brought up a news story about a man that resembled a smaller, un-muscled Kaminari. One who turned into living lightning that had a close resemblance to Kaminari's transformed legs, though lighter and brighter in color, a whitish-yellow to Kaminari's gold.
"You think he's always had his father's ability, he just didn't realize it?" All Might asked, seeing where this was going.
"Indeed!" Nezu agreed.
Aizawa shook his head, "That doesn't explain his increase in fighting skill. He went from amateur to second semester student in ten minutes."
"Ah, but it does!" the principal disagreed, holding up the page they had on the boy's mother. Taking it, All Might saw she was a fairly normal civilian who had an interesting quirk. Plasticity, from what the record read, would've possibly been enough to let her be a hero herself, if she wanted to, but she'd chosen to stay home and be a mother instead. Toshinori could understand the appeal of a quiet life, even it's not what he wanted. Then again, he knew that not everyone wanted to do what he did, and they were no lesser for it. He didn't, however, see how this explained the boy's sudden increase in skill.
Handing it over to Aizawa, the other man read the file, looking to the chimera for an explanation.
"Do you two know what neuroplasticity is?" Nezu asked, and All Might shook his head, vaguely remembering having heard the term a long time ago, while Eraserhead just narrowed his eyes. "It's the ability of the brain to form new connections, a person's ability to learn. Those who are young have a great deal of it, allowing them to understand new things quickly, while it decreases as people age." The mammal gave a superior laugh, covering his mouth with his paws. "Well, for some of us it decreases with age."
"So you believe his ability to be like Young Todoroki? A combination of his parents?" All Might asked.
Nezu nodded, "Not quite so starkly contrasted, and not quite perfect copies, but it does appear to be so. I wouldn't be surprised if Mr. Kaminari does not know of his ability himself. It would explain his impressive physique as well, given he lacks the callouses gained through resistance training."
That comment caused both men to check the high-quality photos taken of the student, focusing on his hands, and showing the principal correct. "If he could learn that easily, why did he do so poorly on the written exam?" Aizawa asked, though without the edge to his tone he'd had before.
"One can have gifts, but if they never apply them they might as well not exist," the chimera observed, getting an almost unconscious nod of agreement from Eraserhead. "I think we can expect great things from Mr. Kaminari. Then again, I think we can expect great things from all our students. Was that all?"
"The rest can wait," Eraserhead stated, turning to look at All Might. "You'll have him in class. If he pulls a coin from that necklace of his, call off the exercise. He said he wouldn't use them, but children can forget themselves in the middle of a fight. There's something. . . off with Kaminari, but I can't put my finger on it."
All Might nodded, "I'll keep a close eye on him, Aizawa. If there's something going on with him, I'll see if I can find it out."
MHA
Getting out of the shower, I found my phone was beeping with some sort of alarm. Opening it up, I frowned as the screen had been completely covered with a text box.
Greetings Valued Employee! As part of our ongoing efforts to charter the multiverse to better service our Valued Customers and support our Valued Employees, reclassification of Dimensional Danger Designations (D3) occurs periodically. Do not worry if your chosen Dimensional Variance's D3 has decreased, as the lowered tier classification will not result in the deduction of unspent points, nor the incurring of debt, as The Company assumes all responsibilities for the incorrect D3's. However, if an employee is currently serving in a Dimensional Variance with an increased D3, The Company will provide the difference to spend immediately, along with a bonus to offset any difficulties encouraged from entering a Dimensional Variance under-prepared!
Unfortunately all decisions made during Character Generation (Chargen) cannot be un-made, the quantum uncertainty of Valued Employees having been aligned during the intake process. Similarly, transfer to a new Dimensional Variance to allow one a 'fresh start' is similarly beyond the recompensiary budget of the D3 Detection Department (D5).
As such your chosen Dimensional Variance: MY HERO ACADEMIA - TIER 3 has been reclassified with a new D3 by the D5 as MY HERO ACADEMIA (CANON START) - TIER 4. With this change, please enjoy your additional: 50 POINTS (45 TIER UPGRADE 5 BONUS)!
We thank you for your patience in these matters, and wish you the best in your work for The Company!
Happy Hunting!
Click to shrink...
I stared at the screen, a button at the bottom reading 'I understand!'. My first thought was that I didn't start at the beginning of Canon, I started several months in, at episode three or four. My second was 'Oh Fuck. I'm a Beta-tester!'
I'd assumed that whoever I'd signed this faustian bargain with, or whoever had grabbed me to do this, was some ancient evil, something that'd existed for centuries and whom I was just another one of a million or more pawns in their grand plan. Instead, I had to wonder if I was one of a thousand, a hundred, or even a dozen. Or the multiverse was just really really big. Honestly, the notification gave me more information than the catalog had, and, thinking about it, it was more likely the second. That meant I likely wasn't the only one running around in the MHA universe, A MHA universe to be specific, which was. . . oddly comforting.
It was the multiverse problem. With literally infinite incarnations of everything, there was no true 'win' or 'lose', only an endless fractal of degrees in-between. In some, that knowledge could create a deep nihilism, one never able to truly 'make a difference', as there'd be an infinite number of places where they'd either not do so, or make things worse.
On the other hand, though, it could also be freeing. While you never could help everyone, you could help those around you. You no longer looked at things in the sense of the larger world, but in what you could do, and who you were. When the world was unimaginably enormous, you'd likely never be a big fish, so instead you needed to be the best little fish you could be. And if you messed up, well, it was a very big pond, or, given my circumstances, an infinitely large field with an uncountable amount of pools, subdivided by general similarity.
Hell, Elizabeth Comstock was on the list, not that I'd ever enslave her, and not just because she cost four times the amount I'd just gotten. That was a girl who pulled things from close alternate dimensions, which suggested that minorly different alternate dimensions existed.
That left me with fifty five points to spend; the question was what to spend them on. Mind Defense was very tempting, but true Mind Controllers were vanishingly rare in this setting, and, as far as I knew, none of the villains I'd face were. Soul Defense would probably let me tell All-For-One to screw off, right until he punched me in the face at a significant percentage of All-Might's strength. No, if I was at that point, it'd be better to just run.
The talents were possibilities, but Soul and Wild weren't terribly useful, and Social was still locked out, unfortunately. However, Science would let me develop my own support items, even if I wouldn't be able to use them in the sports festival. Clearing the Catalog app, I looked that up, to figure out how much time I had to prepare. Given that it was a chance for the students to show off, I figured it'd be a couple of months in, giving me more than enough time to get a handle on my abilities.
. . . or it could be in three and a half weeks.
Okay, new plan! I decided, trying to think of all that would happen and realizing just how little time I had. I needed to 'get gud' ASAP. That meant I was gonna need to pick a single skill, two at most, and run with it. I didn't know when we'd have the environmental rescue training, or did I?
Checking the Syllabus, there it was. Fuck. Okay I had two weeks until the League of Villains showed up and I needed to fight people that would kill me if given a chance. Static thrusters could wait, I needed to refine my Electrobody. Looking over the Perks, there wasn't anything that'd give me an immediate leg up, at least not with my budget. I was sure being a dragon would've helped, but I made that decision to put that off when I came here.
Actually, there was something I could use, and it was something I was already considering. A lot of my problems in experimentation stemmed from the fact that I was stumbling blind in my attempts to utilize electromagnetism. I really wanted the pocket dimension, but I didn't have the time to figure things out myself. Re-opening the app, I scrolled down to Science Talent. That was a little more than a Tier 4 capture, like Toga, would get me, but it was going to be worth it. I added it to my cart, skipping along to the exit, triple confirming I wanted it.
It took, but I didn't feel any different. Right, multiplier, not additive buff, I remembered. I was tempted to grab the Wild Talent/Defense combo to no-sell temperature based abilities, but I'd spent enough, and with my Windfall I was just under halfway there to Sweet Home and the ability to run if things got really bad.
Grabbing breakfast, thanking my mom, I did have an idea. "Hey Dad, can you temporarily merge part of yourself tech using your Quirk. Like ride along the top of power-lines, instead of going through them like you do when you go to work?"
He shared a look with Mom, before nodding slowly. "It should be possible, but I've never had a reason to do so. What would happen if you lost concentration while up there?"
I flicked my arm to lightning, shooting it down the hall, before retracting. "I'll catch myself. And I don't have to worry about being shocked, either."
He put down his paper, looking at me consideringly. "If you get tired, you stop," he stated with authority, adding as an afterthought, "And if a police officer asks you to as well."
I nodded seriously, even as my mother went, "Sugu!"
"We've been training, and I trust him to know when to stop," he disagreed, ending the argument, and turning back to me. "What brought this on?"
"Sports Festival is in a month, and for some reason I thought I had more time," I answered honestly. "Just realized I don't."
He just chuckled, picking his paper back up. "And you want to train. I'm sure you'll do fine, son. Just don't reach too far, too fast."
I grabbed my stuff and headed out the door, calling, "I'll try my best!" Walking to a power pole, I took a deep breath, centering myself. Shifting my legs to lightning, I launched myself upward.
It wasn't enough to get to the power lines, but it was high enough I wouldn't ground myself and have to deal with that. My arm shifted as I let my legs snap back, wrapping around the wire and pulling myself up. It was hard to balance, but, with my talented body, I could.
Shifting my feet, and only my feet, to lightning, I suddenly found it much easier to stand, my 'footing' spreading out over the electromagnetic field that surrounded the power line. I wanted to move forward, but getting a running start felt wrong. Wait, what if I fucked around with the way my feet spread out to create a differential magnetic field through induction? It was an idea I'd had trying to get the Static Thrusters to work, but with an electromagnetic field already in place, it should work better than my failed attempts to glide.
Doing so worked too well, launching me off the line, but I went straight up, able to reach out with my electric feet as I dropped, hook into the lines, and lightly land. I could hear a couple disapproving comments below me, but I paid them no mind. Thrust gained, I thought, leaning forward, and trying it again at about a third strength.
This did it, sending me shooting forward, manipulating the spin speeding me up or slowing me down. More than that, though, my connection to the field rooted me to it, letting me lean to one side without falling off. Speeding up, I twisted the field to launch me across the street, feet reaching down to anchor me to a different set of lines, and up alongside the train tracks.
Slipping on my headphones, I turned on my music and rode the currents on my way to school. Turning the speed up even further, it was easy to fly down the lines, the movements quickly becoming instinctive. I couldn't help but smile as I launched myself in another transfer, twisting and landing easily, following the tracks I'd need to get to UA. I was going to spar today, and I'd need to get ready for full-on, life-or-death combat in two weeks, but this? This was fun.