Chapter Thirteen
It was the day.
Waking up at 4 in the morning, it felt like the calm before the storm. I'd gone to bed early, citing tomorrow's extra-long training exercise and wanting to be ready. However, all that meant was I was now up, having gotten my full eight hours, and with nothing to do.
Messaging Mei, having exchanged contact info, and then having to enforce the rule that I wouldn't always text her back immediately, that she needed to wait twelve hours for a response if we weren't already talking, I sent: " Is it ready?"
Not getting a response, not that I expected one, I took a shower. I let the warm water pour over me, trying to wash away my worries with only moderate success. Holding one hand out, I pulled on the inner font I'd found the day after Mina and I had had our date.
From my palm, a thick fluid dripped, slowly.
Pushing it, I could increase the flow rate a little, enough to be from an anemic hose, but that was all. Furthermore the acid, and it was acid, was weak. I'd nabbed a couple litmus strips from the Design Studio, and it had a PH of somewhere between three and four, the same as apple juice. I could push it, a little, to drop it down to the 2-3 range, but too much and my hands felt. . . wrong. Dry, itchy, and just. . . off.
The fluid, also, was very obviously the exact same kind that Mina made, maybe half a shade more yellow, but that was all. Definitely not the type of thing to go throwing around, but also any fantasies of being handcuffed by villains, only to burn through them secretly, were a long way off.
Knowing it was possible, I had a little bit of control of the substance. If I filled a cupped palm with it, I could make it twist back and forth, and surge upwards unnaturally somewhat, but turning it into instant-armor like she could was also a no-go.
Either way, it was fun to practice with, and I knew I'd only get better with it, even if I wasn't working with Mina every week. The buzzing of my phone, current on my clothes, caught my attention, and I washed off, dressing and checking it.
N3c3ss1ty: It is! Can u come early 2 c our baby?
For some reason, Mei being up at 4:30 in the morning wasn't that surprising.
Sparky: Sure, see you at 6:45?
The response was immediate.
N3c3ss1ty: y not 6?
Sparky: Because the school doesn't open until 6:30.
N3c3ss1ty: 6 35?
Sparky: You're right, I'll see you at 6:50.
N3c3ss1ty: 6 45 it is!
Shaking my head, I put away my phone. Mei liked to push boundaries, in almost every sense, but knew when to back off if you pushed back. Give her a passive, noncommittal 'I don't think so', and she'd hear 'press harder, I need to be convinced!', but a firm ' No.' and she'd accept it and move on.
That, however, left me with time to kill. I'd managed to get to the base proficiency I'd wanted with Electrobody, thank Super-Christ, and I'd managed to work out another trick. It wasn't down to 'usable' levels, but it was at least to 'usable in a very select set of circumstances'. And today? Today would be one of those circumstances.
With nothing else to do, all of my current ideas past the paperclip phase, and thus not something I'd work on at my house, I mosied down and started breakfast. It was no Faerie Feast, but I could flip a mean pancake.
Other than the first one, of course. That one never counted.
First my mother, then my father came down, accepting breakfast as I served it to them. "Worried about today?" my mom had asked when she first came down, giving me a quick hug and starting up some eggs. I'd nodded. "I'm sure you'll do great, honey," she'd smiled. "And when did you learn to cook?"
Unable to resist the meme, I'd shot back, "I learned it from watching you." Though I didn't say it in, shall we say, 'correct' voice for the joke, and she just smiled at the compliment.
"I'm sure you'll perform adequately," my father reassured me over breakfast, in his understated way. "Do you know what you're doing?"
I shook my head, "No, just that it's another live exercise in our hero class at 'The USJ'. Apparently it's important enough that I might be home late."
"Universal Studios, Japan?" he asked incredulously, before his eyes narrowed. "No, the USJ. And you don't know what that is. An internal designation," he muttered to himself, reassuring me, "I'm sure they have their reasons for the secrecy."
"Being a Hero is adapting to the unknown, Dad," I shrugged.
"Besides, it's still a school, dear, I'm sure it won't be anything that bad," my Mom reassured us both. And if I hadn't already known what was coming, that would've jinxed it completely.
"You're early!" Mei cried in happiness. Waving to me in greeting. She was the only one in the design studio, and, after the first few days, Power Loader only popped in occasionally, or when Mei set off the fire alarm, which had happened thrice in about two weeks. "I knew you couldn't stay away from me and our babies!"
"By a minute," I replied, shaking my head.
"Still counts!" she argued, beaming. "Now get your muscley-butt over here, I need to show you how I made our baby work! You were half-right, the rotor couldn't handle the voltage, but the solution wasn't a secondary circuit, it was a matrix of aligning conductors! That way we can keep the output stable, the size down, and the speed up! I'm a genius!"
I laughed, "And humble too."
"Humble, shmumble," she scoffed. "I have no time for that when I'm busy making my amazing babies!"
"Notice I didn't say you were wrong," I teased, and she grinned back with a megawatt smile, continuing to go over all the minor improvements and tweaks she'd made.
"I still say if we used monofilament wire it would be even better," Mei grumbled.
I shot her a dry look. "And I told you why we couldn't. And Power Loader agreed. And he offered to get principal Nezu. Those only belong on very specific devices, given their lethality. Besides, would you've come up with these," I pointed out, indicating the interior spools, "if you'd taken the easy way out?"
She pouted, "Nooooooo. Fine, you win this time, Denki. You are this baby's daddy, after all. So, why'd it need to be ready by today?" she asked, sealing up the device, which she'd opened up to show off.
"Something special with the Hero course," I replied, feeling a little like a broken record. "Don't know what we're doing, so I wanted the Conductor Web in case I needed it."
Re-sealed, it was a three-inch diameter hemispherical disk, with a handle that unfolded from the bottom. It was made out of a pure white material, not having enough time to electroplate the outside components to match the rest of my costume. It was, however, missing something.
"Where's your sigil?" I asked, confused, having looked forward to seeing it.
"Sigil?" she repeated, just as perplexed as I was.
I nodded, "Yeah, your symbol, your crest, your maker's mark," I explained. "You made this, I mean, we made this, but let's be honest, it was mostly you." She nodded in unabashed agreement. "So, where's your Sigil, so that, when I use it, everyone knows you're the one that made it? Yeah, it'll just be my class today, but if this works like we're hoping I'll probably be carrying it with me from now on."
She stared at me. Eyes wide. "You. . . you'd do that?" she questioned, as if on the edge of tears.
"Um, I'm literally asking to? Did I say something wrong?" I asked, used to her sudden shifts in mood, but not this one. Did I say something wrong? Is there some Support Course Code I just violated?
"Did. . . did you. . .?" she stuttered, before suddenly hugging me and then pushing me towards a workstation. "Get the laser engraver! Wait!" I paused, looking to her, seeing she'd turned her back to me and was staring at the device.
"Yes?" I asked, when she didn't say anything else.
She turned to me, looking distressed, "I don't have a sigil!"
I laughed, shaking my head at the hurt look that flashed across her face. "You figured your name would be so widespread everyone would just know, didn't you?" I asked, smiling, having listened to her aspirational proclamations almost daily.
She frowned, nodding, and I grabbed a whiteboard off a desk, along with a marker, coming back to sit down on the stool next to her, my legs wide. One of the unexpected benefits of coming here, and by that I meant this universe, was that it'd cured my dysgraphia, my inability to write easily or draw anything more than stick-figures. It'd been something that'd dogged me during my entire life, my first life, and had made a career in the arts impossible, but either Body Talent, or being Denki had cured it completely.
That meant the drawing which would take me ten minutes before could be completed in seconds, drawing a hollow, eight toothed gear on the board, positioning it so that it was horizontally and vertically symmetrical to start with. "With your predilection for steampunk, I assumed this would work better than a simple circle, square or shield."
She hesitated, then nodded, moving to sit on one of my legs, staring at the board as if it might bite her.
In the circle left inside the gear, I drew a pair of perpendicular lines, one horizontal, one vertical. "For your eyes." On top of the horizontal line, I drew a capital English M, putting it so that it would be bisected by the vertical line. Under the M, I drew a capital English H, again bisected, the tops of the H meeting the bottoms of the M. "And your initials. The more basic English letters create a more geodesic, stronger looking design than the flowing lines of Kanji or even Katakana would. It is kind of basic," I admitted, frowning at it, "but you can scale it down easily, and I understand if you don't want to go with it-"
"I LOVE IT!" the inventrix shouted, practically in my ear, hugging me tightly. "Stay right here!" she ordered, running off to get her tools, taking her seat once again on my leg, leaning over the device, concentrating, tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth as her hands danced over the device, inscribing the design.
She paused, glancing at me, before adding something else to it.
Grabbing the painter, she went at it, the high-tech item allowing her to quickly apply the substance without the need to ventilate or wear a mask. She quickly painted the design the same bronze as my armor. I let her work, waiting, just watching her do her thing.
It was a nice sight.
Finally, she leaned back with a sigh, grabbing the dessicator and carefully using it on the paint. "So, whaddya think?" she asked, a tad bit nervously.
With one hand up on her back as she leaned away so she wouldn't fall over to let me lean in, which had happened before, I saw she'd taken the base design and embellished it, the letters now brass pipes, and the gear shape now had swirling patterns in the metal. I blinked, the patterns almost made letters.
Focusing on them, they did make letters, the level of detail work something only capable with the pinkette's Quirk, which allowed her eyesight to zoom in to ridiculous degrees, combined with a hand so sure it was almost a superpower itself. There, in Kanji, each character on one of the teeth of the gear sat the following: 発目明曁上鳴電気 .
Hatsume Mei Kaminari Denki.
The fact that she gave herself top billing was both expected and perfectly fair. The fact that she'd put my name on one of her devices, however. . . I looked over to her, and she grinned at me, and if I was the age I was, I would've missed the tension in that smile.
"It's perfect," I told her. "And you didn't need to put my name on it, Mei."
"Nope! This baby is both of ours, and you don't get to make and leave," she chided teasingly, relaxing. "But you're gonna need to keep testing, if you're gonna be my assistant!"
I shook my head, "I'd probably still do that, even if you didn't have me as part of your crest. So, anything else I need to know about this?" I asked, patting the device. She shook her head, and I glanced at the time. We still had over an hour before school started, and if I just sat and waited, I'd probably either do something stupid or burn myself out.
"So, in that case," I smiled, "what are we working on now?"
She jumped off my leg, starting to move over to her workstation, before running back, hugging me briefly, and then dragging me over with her as she started to describe her idea of a net-gun to capture foes. It could only handle three shots before the entire thing needed to be taken apart and rebuilt. Vaguely remembering the show, I suggested switchable cartridges. The "I was thinking about that!' was expected, and I felt like I hadn't actually helped, just regurgitated my foreknowledge.
Remembering a certain wall-crawler, I proposed that, if it were possible, instead of micropacking the nets she might be able to create a substance that'd expand into the net, which sparked an idea from her about possible oxygen-reactive compounds, and we were off to the races.
Classes dragged, Mina finally asking me, when we were working on practicing sentences in English Class with each other, "Like, what's got you edgy, Sparky?" She shot a glance to the other corner of the room, leaning in and whispering, "Are you gonna talk to Momo about. . . you know?"
Despite what we'd decided last Saturday, we'd both agreed to take it slow, just being friendly with the tall, dark-haired girl. If something happened, it happened, and if it didn't, it didn't. It's just that, now, if something did happen, it wouldn't cause problems between the two of us. We'd still hung out with her on Wednesday, and maybe been a bit more handsy than normal, but Momo hadn't said a word.
I shook my head, grabbing the syllabus we'd gotten, flipping to the calendar. Under today, there was a note about the possibility of hero class going on later than normal, and a symbol which, if you tracked it down to the key, meant 'The USJ'.
Mina's eyes widened, "We're going to-" she started to whisper excitedly, and I tapped the legend at the bottom of the page again. "Oh, it's something else?"
"Pretty sure," I agreed. "I'm just. . . not a fan of unknown variables. No," I corrected, before she could, "I'm just nervous about it being another fight."
She looked at me incredulously, "You. Worried about that? You did awesome before, Hun, you've got nuthin' ta worry about!" she smiled, and it did make me feel a bit better, despite myself.
"What's that?" Asui chimed in, leaning over her desk to join the conversation.
Mina sat back, "He's just worried about today's Hero class. He'll do fine!"
"But we're not there yet, callers!" Present Mike announced, the three of us jumping as he was staring right at us. "So let's go back to our regularly scheduled programming!"
Taking the hint, we started practicing our sentences again. For lunch, Mina told our normal lunch-mates about my observations, which only served to get them excited too. Then came the Hero course, Aizawa telling us that today's class was a rescue exercise that would be off-campus. "At The USJ?" Asui asked, breaking his stride.
"Who told you about that?" he asked, eyes narrowing.
The frog girl, her normal unflappable self, just replied, "It was on the syllabus, ribbit."
He paused, glanced down at his podium, flipped over papers, and nodded. "Glad to see someone read more than the very minimum." The accompanying unamused look to the rest of the class was expected, though it was by my classmate's reactions that I could tell who'd actually read it, staring back at him, and those who hadn't, who slumped in defeat. "Either way, suit up, or not, your decision, and meet up outside."
The class filed out, everyone grabbing the box with their number on it, and we all made our way to the lockers. It was easy to slip the device into a pouch, close it up, and continue as if nothing had happened, joining the others.
Deku walked out, still in his mix of phys-ed uniform and other gear, his old suit eaten by acid instead of burned by explosions this time, and I just shook my head at the inevitability of canon. Iida kept glancing between the disorganized class and the bus, muttering about ' not his place', and I left the OCD-accelerator to his meltdown.
Soon enough, we were all on-board, on our way to our first real life-or-death fight, the rest of the class smiling and laughing. Sitting down on the interior bench of the bus, across from Midoriya, I almost jumped when Mina plopped down next to me, grabbing my arm. "Re- lax Sparky!" she laughed. "It'll be fine."
I flushed in embarrassment, having thought I was hiding it better than I apparently was. "Pre-exercise nervousness is nothing to be ashamed of," chimed in Momo, sitting on my other side. "As long as it does not affect your performance," she added, "which, by what I've seen so far, it won't."
With that, for Momo, high praise, I relaxed back into my seat. There was no way to warn them what was coming, and my first instinct, to do some last minute power-brainstorming, would hurt more than it helped.
Despite what Anime would have you believe, the time for new techniques was not the middle of combat, and having either of my friends try something new and untested in a real fight would most likely end up with them injured. 'Fear not the man who has practiced a thousand punches once, but the man who has practiced a single punch a thousand times,' applied here. Momo was already starting to vary up the materials of her creations, but we hadn't spent any more time really talking powers when we'd hung out, so that was all the help I'd given her.
Mina on the other hand, already had on-the-spot ablative armor, ranged attacks, a decent Mover rating, and we'd finished up work on her 'Acid Knuckles' after, um, round two. I'd prepped her as much as I could and, short of fighting someone like Todoroki or myself, both of our powers hard-counters to hers, she'd, hopefully, be fine.
She'd been fine last time, but I'd already started creating waves by my actions, and with the limited perspective we had in the show, I didn't know enough about what was going on elsewhere to make any kind of determination about what could have been changed by what I'd already done. Was it all going to go as normal? Was my performance noteworthy enough to change their plans? Was I being arrogant by thinking the second was even possible?
I felt tug on my arm, Mina not having let go, and I nodded to her, acknowledging that I was getting lost in my own head again. Sighing, and refocusing, I nodded, "Yeah, fine, I just haven't practiced any kind of 'rescue' stuff, not like I have for combat."
"I get ya," Kirishima nodded, on the opposite bench seat. "But if you're gonna be a man, ya gotta defend as well as attack!"
"If we're pointing out the obvious, then there's something I want to say" Asui added, looking over to Midoriya, who'd she'd sat next to, the rocky redhead on her other side. "About you, actually."
The green-haired powerhouse, not ready to be the center of attention, sat up straight, eyes wide. "About me? What is it Asui?"
"I said call me Tsu," the frog-girl corrected blandly. Midoriya quickly apologizing. "That power of yours, isn't it a lot like All Might's?" she asked, staring at him with her creepily large eyes.
Deku, the worst at any kind of social deception, broke out into a nervous sweat. "What? Really? You think so, huh? I never really thought about that. I guess it's kinda mutter mutter mutter."
"Wait, hold on Tsu," Kirishima argued. "You're forgetting All Might doesn't hurt himself."
I had to throw in my two cents as well, "Also, Midoriya's got that cool green lightning, while All Might's just jacked to the nines."
Mina laughed, "You're just saying that because you're both jacked and have lightning!"
I smiled, allowing my hair to spark a little. "Guilty as charged."
"Still, I bet it's cool to have a simple augmenting type Quirk," Kirishima continued, looking back to Midoriya. "You can do a lot of flashy stuff with it. My Hardening is super strong," he said, holding up an arm that flashed into almost crystalline flesh, "and can destroy bad guys in a fight but it doesn't look all that impressive."
"Dude, you're literally biological diamond. That's pretty cool," I offered, Midoriya nodding and agreeing.
I sat back, letting them talk, only nodding in surprise when I was included along with Bakugo and Todoroki as the classmates with 'Pro Quirks'.
Bakugo blew up, metaphorically, when Asui called him out on being an asshole, and Sero took up teasing him when I didn't. Momo frowned at the byplay, but didn't say anything, and soon enough we arrived.
Disembarking we were met by a. . . woman? She was in a costume which was reminiscent of a space-suit, but the pants that ended at the calf and large, bright yellow boots undercut the image. I couldn't see. . . her? I'm gonna go female, I decided, as she motioned inside, either her Quirk or her gear modifying her voice. I couldn't see her face, but the way she talked was expressive enough to show that she was smiling and happy to see us.
We got the down-low on the 'Unforeseen Simulation Joint', an enormous building built like a theme park that could simulate all sorts of environments. Watching the hero named Thirteen, who could apparently make 'Black Holes', I had to assume the costume covered up a Mutation, likely hereditary like Mina's, which had nothing to do with her Quirk, her arms a bit too long for the rest of her body.
Thirteen gave an explanation of how her Quirk could suck things up and turn them to dust, which isn't how black holes worked. My semantic pedantic gripes aside, her talk was really about how to utilize destructive powers to help others, which was, if I was being honest, rather nice, and a very good reminder of the fact that, yes, we were throwing around deadly abilities.
Well, except for Hagakure, she only had to worry about friendly fire. Seriously, how did that invisible girl pass the entrance exam?
And then the lights went out.
Thankfully, the beige plates that made up most of the dome we were in were only semi-opaque, so we could see just fine, even if everything was now in the shade, and in front of the fountain, down on the promenade, a vortex of purple vapor spun into being.
From it a hand reached out, opening a hole in the now fifty foot wide spiraling whirlpool of darkness.
"Stay together and don't move!" Aizawa commanded, normally half-drooping eyes wide open and tense. "Thirteen, protect the students!"
Mina, at my side, stiffened, her hand finding mine as I watched Shigaraki step out of the warp gate. Followed by a muscular. . . thing. Vaguely man shaped, but with birdlike feet and inhumanly long arms, ending in three fingered fleshy talons, it's neck incredibly long and ending in a bone mask. Other monsters, Mutation Quirk users, Denki internally corrected, having gone through classes about not-discriminating based on the appearances of others, stepped through after that, the more human looking ones following behind the Villains who's different bodies probably gave them a Brute rating, enhancing their toughness.
Kirishima asked if we were starting the exercise, confused, and our teacher's snapped "Stay back!" made the rest of the class flinch, Mina tightening her grip on my hand. Eraserhead pulled his goggles on, meant to help hide who he was looking at so Villains couldn't predict when he'd blink and his Quirk wouldn't affect them. "This is real! Those are Villains!" he declared
Not looking away, I leaned over to Mina, whispering, "We trained for this. Just know that these guys play for keeps."
"You knew?" she asked, before shaking her head. "No, you couldn't've. Your bad feeling?"
I nodded, the only thing I could do without directly lying to her.
Then, standing eight, nine, maybe even ten feet tall, came the intimidating form of Nomu.
He'd been almost silly in the anime, a big, tall black-skinned bird-man thing with an exposed brain. Now, however, it was god-damned terrifying. It's eyes were in its exposed brain. Its black skin wasn't a flat color, it was oily, and evil looking, pulled taught across its form. The red streaks weren't just coloring, no, it was where its skin, not big enough to hold it, had split open, revealing the bright red muscles beneath.
I'd thought I might've been able to fight this thing a little, hold it off while All Might arrived. I was a fucking idiot, and this shit was so above my current capabilities it wasn't even funny. And then there was the army of villains, some seemingly normal, but almost half of them had monstrous mutations. Not like Asui, or Koda, and certainly not like Mina. No, they were nightmares given form, walking venus fly-traps, one man whose entire face was nothing but a giant metal mouth, and more.
Shigaraki and the Warper, whose name escaped me, traded banter with Eraserhead, shouting across the vast distance, and I, with my free hand, slipped out my phone, finding it had no service. I activated the distress signal I'd had Mei whip up, which lit, telling me it was transmitting, but I couldn't count on that. Putting it back in my pouch, I watched as the small army of Villains walked towards us, and most of my class remained in denial.
Hell, even Momo stepped forward, asking why the alarms weren't going off, seemingly only perturbed. Glancing around, only Jiro, Mina, and Bakugo seemed to be taking this seriously. I wasn't sure about Jiro, Bakugo had almost been killed by villains before and Mina. . . Mina was reacting to me, I realized. I was worried, so she was worried.
I wasn't sure how to take that revelation, but, if it helped her survive, then that was fine by me.
Maybe it was quiet. There was no ominous theme-music in real life while the villains were slowly walking the several hundred feet to us, several football fields at least, and that was giving everyone time to talk before they realized this was real. I pulled out the comm-device I had in another pouch, holding it to my ear, manipulating it with my Quirk, but every frequency was dead quiet.
My classmates talked about this being a targeted attack, Aizawa ordering me to contact the outside, and I had to respond, "Already tried, sir. Can't get a signal at all, and I'm transmitting out already." Our teacher nodded, and turned his attention back to the approaching army.
Because that's what it was.
Eraserhead was going to take on literally hundreds of Villains on his own, even after Midoriya explained to everyone that him doing so was a bad idea. The teacher's Quirk, the ability to shut down the Quirks of anyone he looked at, was great for one on one or surprise fights, but he just shot back, "Can't be a pro if you only have one trick," which wasn't a refutation of Deku's points.
The man then literally leapt off the stairs, falling several hundred feet and I had to remember that, while everyone looked human, they really weren't. It'd slipped my mind, somehow, that everyone here was capable of having some degree of Charles Atlas Superpowers, able to train to do literally impossible things. Hell, if they hadn't been, there'd be no way that Bakugo could fly on his explosions, the force and sudden acceleration enough to break his arms and burst his blood-vessels if this were the world I'd come from.
Eraserhead engaged the villains, also somehow controlling his scarf without touching it, which helped, as it was strong as iron, but I knew it wasn't going to be enough. I watched, trying not to miss a beat, as someone who's 'only' Quirk was in his eyes punched a four-armed man made of rock in the face so hard he sent him flying back twenty feet, before grabbing and throwing him with his scarf, finally retracting it without moving a single muscle.
It was a sight to behold, and I wondered if he could actually do it, at least before Nomu got involved, but Mina pulling at my arm broke me out of my thoughts, the rest of the class running for the door out, a good hundred yards away. "Midoriya, come on," I called, to the only other person who wasn't moving, and I turned, physically picking up Mina as I ran, easily able to shift my feet to lightning to catch up to the others, falling in line with Momo and putting Mina down as we ran together.
Sure enough, a dark vortex appeared before us, the warp-guy surging up in front of us, a twenty foot tall plume of dark gas. He monologued, while everyone let him, telling us about how they were 'The League of Villains', which was a terrible name, and how they were here to kill All Might.
Thirteen moved, opening up one of the tips of her gloved fingers towards the Warper to, if I was right, kill the teleporter, only for Kirishima and Bakugo to surge forward and engage him. Right, fuck, I forgot they did that, I berated myself, not sure what to do to assist Thirteen.
The smokescreen the two boys made didn't help, giving the Warper time to set himself up, and even when Thirteen commanded them to get out of the way, they stood there, letting the sentient miasma spread himself out, encircling us.
"Grab onto each other!" I yelled over the Villain's threats, my arm snaking out and grabbing Momo's hand, who turned to look to me, eyes wide in fear as the purple blackness roiled over us, with what felt like hurricane force winds pulling us away from the others and into the infinite darkness.