Chapter Fifty-Six
"Alright, what's wrong?" Mei demanded.
"What?" I asked, looking up from the soldering I was doing. "I, um, what makes you think something's wrong?"
The pink-haired engineer scowled, hands on her hips. "You're working thirty percent slower, and you're not talking. You always talk!"
From his desk, Power-Loader called, "He has his Combat Final today, Mei, give him a break. I'm surprised he's here at all."
That was an option? "I said I'd meet you here, so I did," I shrugged. "And... Mei, um, do you think you could make something that could be worn normally, but could have some combat capability? I could power it off myself, but it needs to be something I can take with me wherever."
"Armor is allowed, weaponry is not," the Pro warned us, only... that wasn't a no.
The inventrix frowned, tapping a grit covered finger to her chin. "Oh! How about collapsible suit with strength assist!"
"Power armor is considered a weapon," Power-Loader sighed.
"Besides, I have strength kind of covered, but," I hesitated, looking at the teacher. "Would capture foam be a weapon?" He nodded. "Damn. Well, armor's a good place to start." The line between 'armor that has power' and 'power armor' was the second the armor was able to move by means other than the user's body. The hydraulics in the armor we made for Mina were just tipping over the line, as while her acid was a key component, her Quirk was considered the 'control' method, as technically it would work with any fluid, you just couldn't do anything with it. That was also why the harnesses for the Sports Festival had been perfectly fine.
While I had visions of a suit-up sequence like that from Iron Man 2, it would honestly be better to have something more like that watch-glove thing from... Winter Soldier? It was Bucky he was fighting, but I couldn't remember which movie. Regardless, that didn't matter, and I quickly described my idea, as, while I hadn't yet found something that could hurt me while I was made of electricity, I wasn't so arrogant as to believe I was invincible. More than that, it took time, effort, and concentration to maintain, making me choose between attack capability, maneuverability, and range, and I could only pick two.
If at all possible, I'd want to see if we could integrate even a basic electromagnetic array into it, giving me flight capabilities, but the nature and complexity of the design needed so that I could get the required delta-V without enough resistance that it literally melted the metal in my hands, like I had in the Sports Festival, made that unlikely. Thankfully, the safety layer we'd built in for those gauntlets had kept me from getting burned, but if the array was going to be hard to make, somehow making the glove modular, and folding, without being full of holes was effectively impossible.
Thankfully, with something to focus on in the design phase, and with something that felt like an answer to my current issue, the time flew by until the bell rang and Power Loader kicked us out. Mei had her own academic finals, finals she'd turned down any help in studying as she'd emphatically stated that 'we could be spending that time makin' Babies!', and I had to head back to classroom 1-A.
Before I could take more than a step, I felt a hand on my sleeve, and turned to see Mei staring at me. "Partner, are you in danger?" she asked quietly.
I chuckled, "Mei, I'm a Hero, we're always in danger. It's part of the job." From the look on her face, she didn't find my joke funny. "Not right now," I answered her seriously. "But, I'm worried about later. Not now, but if we could have this ready before we went to I-Island, I'd feel a bit better. And maybe if we could make something for you, though you should be safe."
The pink-haired girl gave me a searching look, before breaking into a wide grin. "Stealth-tech, huh? Haven't tried that before. Don't worry, Partner! We'll be safe, and they'll be sorry!"
There was a nervous energy in the room as I walked in, everyone knowing that today was the last day of finals, and that it would be a combat test. For the most part, I tuned out the chatter, people talking about how they were ready, how they weren't ready, about how they were glad to be fighting instead of thinking. I didn't correct Kirishima on that last one, just shaking my head.
The final bell rang, and a moment later Aizawa leaned in through the doorway, the class going silent in an instant. "Get your costumes," he commanded, lifting a remote and clicking it, the hidden storage in the wall opening to reveal the numbered suitcases, holding our hero outfits. "And meet me in front in ten minutes."
Without another word, he left, and the class waited a few seconds to make sure he was gone before it exploded into noise once more, everyone hurrying to get their case while talking about the test. "Is it robots?" Sero asked. "I heard it was robots."
"It's not robots," Mina replied, several others stopping to look at her.
"Then what is it?" Midoriya asked. "I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be robots, considering how easily we dealt with them, but I wasn't sure what would be a good replacement given our current capabilities and experience; I suppose there could be strong robots, but there's a mental flexibility that's needed to mutter mutter mutter mutter..."
"Shut up, nerd!" Bakugo yelled. "It doesn't matter what it is, I kill the crap out of 'em!" the teen paused. "But how the fuck do you know, Racoon Eyes?"
My girlfriend smiled mischievously, "Girl's gotta have her secrets. Right YaoMomo?"
Yaoyorozu froze, suddenly on the spot, before she gave a little shrug. "You'll all find out soon enough, and knowing won't help enough to matter," she declared.
"Oh come on," Ochaco whined, before hanging her head when Momo shook her head no. " Fine."
We headed to our respective changing rooms, suiting up. My own costume had only shifted a little, integrating my new glove design, another pair of electromagnetic arrays on my feet which I still was getting used to using, as well as making Mjolnir an official part of my kit. In my pockets I had a few capture foam grenades, two small spray-bottles of the dissolving fluid, as well as half a dozen 'electric' grenades. We'd managed to drop the amps enough without sacrificing voltage to make them disabling, without being deadly. Technically we'd done that with the ones I'd brought to the Sports Festival, but it was still dangerously high. Now it was something more akin to the natural use of my Quirk, big and powerful, but only disabling.
Mind you, we still hadn't figured out how I could release the absurd amounts of voltage I could while keeping it as, relatively speaking, harmless as it was, but Mei had put me through a number of tests to try and figure out exactly how I did what I did. Power-Loader had eventually told us that what we were doing was effectively advanced Quirk research, something that government labs had been trying, and failing, to do fully do since Quirks had first arrived. He'd only done so after we'd slammed our head against the wall for several hours' worth of morning meetings, because he didn't want us to give up too early.
And, in a way, he'd been right to do so, as we had made some improvements from studying what I did. It also helped blunt the aggravation when we looked at Ochaco's Quirk and got nowhere. Mei had finally had some kind of breakthrough, muttering something about 'space-time distortions', but her first experiment had created an odd kind of reverse-black-hole. It's lasted for microseconds, only an weird bubble of distortion in the air when we'd reviewed the footage, but in that time it had thrown everything in the lab against the walls, ourselves included, hard, and Power-Loader had summarily banned us from doing anything related to that in the Studio.
Mei hadn't been happy, but when I'd explained that if the lab had been filled with other students, who didn't have someone making sure everything was safe, they could've been hurt when their half-finished devices were suddenly thrown in the face, she'd relented.
"Thanks again for the boots," Midoriya told me, and I focused on what was happening now, realizing I'd been getting lost in my thoughts. He was strapping on the sabaton-greave combo I'd whipped up for him. The inside was padded to hell and back, as Mei and I had called him in to have the boy show us how he overstressed himself when he pushed his power farther than his body could take, something my own built-in power copying limits seemed to be stopping. We couldn't negate the backlash entirely, but the 'pulverize my own bones' issue was caused by the force of his own strikes distributing themselves naturally on whatever limb he used it with, which meant it did so inconsistently.
By using armor, padding it, but putting an interlocking weave of carbon-nanotubules throughout the entire thing, the stress of any strike would be pressed down across his entire foot or leg. We'd warned him that doing so meant that there'd be no intermediate 'fractured but okay' stage, and that enough force would break his bones into a collection of fingernail sized chips, like he had before, but with it he had a much higher threshold before that happened. The points of his body we couldn't do that for, like his heels and the tips of his toes, we'd just armored to fuck and back, making it a solid-enough block that it'd spread out the force enough for the weave to kick in, no pun intended.
"No prob," I answered easily, "They working out for you?"
" Definitely," he smiled, strapping on the second boot, folding up the thinner armor that covered his calf, making the entire thing appear seamless. Mei had more of a steampunk 'black matte metal, riveted in place' idea for the boots, but I'd convinced her to go for something a bit more aerodynamic, and also something without as many thin edges, which super-strength could easily turn deadly. "But, do you think you could do something for my arms?" he asked.
I laughed, " Later, Deku. We've got some projects of our own, but I'll talk to Mei."
"You are responsible for the changes in Midoriya's outfit?" Ida inquired, eyebrows raised. "I had wondered how he had secured them, given that we were not permitted a full redesign until this fall."
The green haired boy nodded, then blinked, looking at me. "Did you do the upgrade I got before the internships?"
I shook my head. "No. I was kind of surprised by it, the design seemed a lot. . . tougher than your first one," I lied, at least about not having expected the costume change. I remembered from the first three seasons of the anime that I'd watched.
"Oh, I just thought, seeing how Mei gets..." he trailed off, glancing my way and paling, "Not that there's anything wrong with her! She just gets excited! And, since they changed it without asking, and since she tends to start making things-"
I had to nod, "No, I can see why you think that. But, no, Mei wouldn't do that, even if I wasn't there. She does tend to throw things out, but if you don't want them, she's not going to make you take it, even if she whines a little. She wants her Ba- her inventions to be used by people that appreciate them." I glanced at his costume. "If you want something more like your original, I can talk to Power Loader and Midnight." Before, I'd liked the new look, but my time at UA had underlined how what the design company had done was not okay. "Costumes are serious business, and-"
"No, it's alright!" Deku said, waving me off. "I, I actually kind of like it. It took a little to get used to, but it looks less like Al-, more like something that's different."
"If you're sure," I replied slowly, going back to lacing up my own armored boots, which had taken some design elements from what we'd done for Deku, but Mei had decorated with a lightning-design, our maker's mark built into the knee-pads, all of it covered with a thin layer of transparent metal to keep it from degrading with use.
I was filling my pockets, when Mineta spoke up from behind me. "Hey, Denki? Could, could I get a redesign too?"
Turning around, I wanted to say no, but the hesitant hope on his face made me ask, "Why?"
The boy waved at his metallic diaper. "This was supposed to be poofy pants."
"... I'll ask Mei," I told him. "And it probably won't be until school starts again, but remember what I said. Hit on her, and you can wait until fall like everyone else." The boy nodded, grinning, and went back to putting on his mask, having to fit it over his ball-hair.
"You fuckin' nerds gonna yap 'bought your shit all day, or we gonna go?" Bakugo demanded, and I just shook my head. While Minetta was changing for the better, Bakugo obviously wasn't.
We still made it with a minute to spare, beating the girls by a few seconds, and the class loaded up on the bus. However, the discussions on costumes hadn't ended. Mina had finally gotten her costume okay'd by the Support Commission, and everyone wanted to know about it. Mei and I had nixed her 'xenomorph, but sexy' idea, which Mina had complained about, until I asked that she run it by Midnight, and then she'd relented.
Instead my girlfriend looked like a steampunk Samus, sans helmet or oversized pauldrons, keeping her purple and green mottled bodysuit, though it was now half-hidden under the armor and tubing needed to make her pseudo-power armor work. Amusingly, the flashes of skintight suit you could see, if anything, made her more sexy, as if you were catching glimpses of something you shouldn't, even though it was just the costume she'd worn before.
Mina had let Mei go a bit nuts, her only request was to 'keep it hot', and a quick explanation on my part had helped my partner understand that the heroine meant attractive, as the inventrix had already started drawing up plans for an ignition system. My girlfriend had been getting used to it, and was at base proficiency already, or I would've asked her to avoid using it for the combat final. She still had a long way to go before utilizing the power armor fully, but, when she could, she'd be an absolute terror on the battlefield .
Amusingly, the one main downside of most power armor, that being speed, wasn't an issue. Not only could Mina skate on her acid just as fast as she had before, but because her armor was effectively thought controlled, as it was her Quirk that moved it, that cut the latency down to practically nothing.
"Oh man, that's so cool!" Kirishima gushed, looking over her armor, as she preened and posed.
Half the guys turned and looked to me, asking without words if I'd made it. "That was 90% Mei, 10% me," I told them. "The more steampunk it is, the more it was her, and the more, um, techno-medieval it looks, the more it was me." I didn't really have a term for it. Science-Fantasy? No, I didn't do a lot with extra decorations, as that kind of ornamentation wasn't really my thing.
Asui glanced down at her costume, then over at Ochaco's, then back at me, raising an eyebrow. Froppy's costume looked exactly as it had been before, the changes so small I'd been able to hide them in her wetsuit, and Ochaco's only visible difference was the back armor, almost like Todoroki's, but colored to match the rest of her gear. "Though if I'm updating something, I'll try and keep the original aesthetic in mind, and reign her in," I added.
"Just because one of your classmates works in Support, doesn't mean you should bother him for everything," Aizawa noted blandly, as he sat in the front, a robot driving. If I hadn't been getting a crash course in future-tech I would've been worried, but the reason that all cars weren't self-driving was legislature, not a failing in the technology, and, as we weren't leaving UA's campus, it wasn't an issue. "Go find a Support course student of your own."
The class collectively turned to me. "C'mon, man. Hook us up!" Kirishima requested.
"Ummm..." I trailed off, thinking of the few other Support students that I'd met. They'd been... kind of unpleasant, really. Not quite telling me to 'stay with my own kind', but there'd been a definite 'what the hell are you doing here' vibe, which had only gotten worse after the Sports Festival, when Mei had been the only one in her discipline who'd passed the first round. Then again, given that almost no one ever showed up early to the Design Studio, and Mei was there every single day, I kind of had my doubts about their effectiveness. "Sorry, I just work with Mei and Power Loader. Maybe ask him?"
"Why not ask her?" Sero questioned.
Mina winced, "That's not gonna work, hun. She's kinda... intense."
"Intense?" Todoroki echoed, in the near-emotionless way he often did.
"She's not a fan of the 'slackers' in her class, and they think her putting in extra hours makes them look bad," I explained. "Not all of them, but, she's abrasive if you're not used to her."
"She's like the Bakugo of Support," Mina shrugged, which, wasn't exactly right, but wasn't exactly wrong either.
The boy in question scowled, half standing in his seat, "What the fuck that's supposed to mean, Horns?"
"She means Mei's driven, and doesn't have a lot of patience for people when she thinks that they're holding her back," I explained.
The explosive teen scowled, considered that, and sat back with a nod.
Collectively, the entire class exchanged glances, all of us having expected another eruption, but... this worked.
Before someone else could talk, Aizawa announced, "We're here," the bus slowing as we reached the same training grounds that our entrance exam had taken place at. We filed out, six other teachers waiting for us, including Power Loader.
I'd talked to him earlier, and the Support Course had their exams this afternoon, the morning being the test they were given off to put any last-minute touches into their project. Singular. When I'd looked at the shelving unit full of things Mei and I had created, the Pro had just nodded and declared, "You're both getting an A."
Aizawa took his place with the other teachers and sighed. "Now then. Let's begin the last test. Remember, it's possible to fail this final. If you want to go to camp, don't make any stupid mistakes."
Jiro blinked, "Wait. Why are the teachers here?" she turned to Momo. "Unless..."
Before Yaoyorozu could respond, Aizawa continued, "I expect many of you have gathered information and believe you have some idea of what you'll be faced with today." He looked directly at me, and I just smiled, shrugging.
"Robots, right?" Sero asked, grinning, but even I could tell he doubted that.
"Actually," Nezu's muffled voice replied, as Aizawa's scarf, which had been unusually poofy, expanded more fully, "this year's tests..." The mammal popped up, one paw in the air while the other braced on Eraserhead's cheek, the man looking so done with today. "Will be completely different, for various reasons."
" Principal Nezu?" a good portion of the class questioned at once.
Our diminutive administrator pulled himself out fully, using Aizawa's scarf to repel down the man's side, the man just standing there, waiting for this to be over. "The tests now have a new focus!" he announced. "There will be Hero work, of course, but also teamwork and combat between actual people."
Deku nodded, "Like I thought."
The chimera flashed a sharp-toothed grin, leaning forward and pointing at us. "What does that mean for you? You student will be working together in pairs, and one trio," he added, a flash of something crossing his non-human features, before he threw his paws up in the air in excitement. "And your opponents will be one of our esteemed UA teachers! Isn't that fabulous!"
The panic was palpable, Ochaco asking, "We're... fighting the teachers?" she looked to Mina, who nodded, and the class realize that the three of us weren't surprised in the slightest.
Aizawa looked around, and noticed that we were the only ones unsurprised, and met my eyes, giving me a slight nod, before continuing, "Additionally, your partners and your opponents have already been chosen. They were determined at my discretion based on various factors including fighting style, grades, and interpersonal relationships. First, Todoroki and Kaminari are a team." The man perked up a little, and threaded his binding cloth through his hands, grinning as he finished, " Against me."
Well, that's certainly different, I thought shooting a look Shoto's way. The thermokinetic just gave me a nod, eyes distant, already thinking of what we could do. Eraserhead's Quirk worked on everything, including OfA, and the man was stronger than should be physically possible for a normal human, some sort of Charles Atlas effect at work here. That meant, with my Quirks suppressed, I'd likely lose a straightforward fight, and while I had a few toys, the man was deadly with that cloth of his, which, knowing my luck, was an insulator.
This was going to suck.
Aizawa continued, "Then we have Midoriya paired with Bakugo." Both boys gasped, looking at each other in shock, but the teacher wasn't done, "And their opponent is..."
From above us, dropping down seemingly out of the sun, came All Might, who announced, "I am here, to fight!"
"We're up against All Might?" both boys questioned disbelievingly.
"You're going to have to work together, boys," the Symbol of Peace announced, "if you want to win."
"And for the rest of the combatants!" Nezu stated, raising a paw, obviously having let Aizawa announce the first two because the man wanted to provoke an, entirely reasonable, reaction from us.
The first match was, surprisingly, exactly as I remembered it, with Sato & Kirishima going up against Cementoss.
The second, however, was different. Asui was still going up against Ectoplasm, but she was doing so with Ochaco, instead of Tokoyami. Actually, thinking about it, I considered, looking around, Thirteen was nowhere in sight. Right, Nezu said there'd be a trio, since we're one student down, I realized, as he continued.
Third was different as well, as while Mina was still going up against Nezu, she was doing so with Tokoyami.
Fourth was another one the way it was supposed to be, with Jiro and Kouda up against Present Mic.
Fifth was the trio, where Ida, Yuga, and Momo all were facing off against Power Loader.
Sixth was another normal one, Sero & Mineta vs Midnight.
Seventh was my fight, which, at least, would give Todoroki and I some time to plan.
Eighth was Toru & Shoji vs. Snipe. Another one I sort of remembered.
And, of course, because he was the protagonist, Midoriya and Bakugo fought All Might last.
Having announced our fate, Nezu turned a wide grin on us all, clasping his paws together.
"Doesn't that sound like fun?"
AN: Battle Arc #3, Begin! As always, the next three chapters are up on !