Chapter Ninety-Nine

I... may have lost my cool a little, but I wasn't exactly wrong, and I made sure we finished our mission. That was what was important. Pixie-Bob had opened the door of the communication shed as I approached it, and stiffened a little at the sight of me, but I'd just smiled, which had for some reason made it worse, before she'd shown me to the small bathroom in the back, and I'd stripped, surprised at the fact that they'd had hot water in the shower within, but, given the team was mostly women, and my Support training had shown me close to a dozen ways of doing so easily, I guessed it shouldn't be that surprising.

A knock at the door had announced Tiger, who, at my direction, had opened it while I was still showering, the large man dropping off a clean set of clothes. After a while, the water finally ran clear, and I worked my arm and shoulder, some residual soreness present, but it was more akin to an overstrain from getting carried away at the gym than true injury.

Checking the time, there was still just under an hour left in the exercise, and I dismissed my phone, sighing, wanting nothing more to stay here under the water, but a Defense pinged, and I groaned, getting my butt in gear. Drying, dressing, and leaving, I nodded to Pixie-Bob, and left the shed, all conversation stopping as I did so.

"Sparky!"

And I was almost bowled over as Mina tackled me, clearly worried. I sparked for a moment, but I pulled it back, my resting amount of OfA more than enough for me to catch her, smiling down at my lover, who was a bit scuffed, but looking me over, searching for something. "So, how was your trip?" I questioned, as the feeling of her being here helped in ways I couldn't really describe.

"Better than yours," she replied, holding tightly onto me. "They said you were hurt!"

"Yeah, Monoma decided to betray our team, and nearly took my arm off in the process, but I'm healing," I reassured her.

Fury blazed in her, "I'll kill him!" she declared, but I wrapped my arms around her, keeping her next to me. "Sparky, let me go! I'm gonna give that asshole a piece of my mind!"

The blond boy in question was looking at the two of us fearfully, as he should, while I told Mina, "I've already had words with him. The matter is settled. Just don't trust him in the near future."

"He's still standing, so it wasn't enough," she groused, but stopped trying to pull away from me. "You okay?"

"Yeah," I smiled, holding up a hand and turning it into an electrical claw, "I just stopped holding back while Shiozaki provided the transport. This task was eezy peezy after that."

That got a laugh out of her. "Of course you'd build something. You know she can't get out of it, right?"

"Oh shit, really?" I asked, looking up, and, yep, the zealot was still in her chair. She could probably just grow more hair and cut herself out, but she could also retract the damn things, having some kind of internal 'vine-hair-reservoir' she was pulling from, which made about as much sense as most Quirks did when looked at closely and you started trying to figure them out. "But it shouldn't be that hard to undo the tie-in points."

Mina sighed, "Sparky, you're, like, the only one here that knows about that stuff! Come on, let's go help her."

It really wasn't that hard, though I did have to shift my hands into some odd shapes to loosen the knots easily, lacking the proper tools, but if Shiozaki had used her free-standing strands she could've done so easily herself. Soon enough, the religious girl was freed, and quickly made for the bus, to use the small bathroom located in the back of the vehicle.

Nabbing the remains of one of the chairs and some of the metal I'd used for struts, it was simple to force them into a rough chair, taking a seat, my lover amusingly plopping herself in my lap right after I did so, treating me like I might run off and get hurt again the second she took her eyes off me.

I didn't mind, relaxing, not paying too much attention to the chatter, only perking up when I heard Momo's voice, the girl a bit singed, as were the rest of her team, but she wore a bright smile as she exited, the others weary and more than a little rattled. Bondo was wearing a backpack loaded down with 'evidence' bags, Jiro had headphones, and Kendo an interesting pair of gloves on, ones which extended all the way up to her elbows.

"YaoMomo!" Mina cheered, springing up, and pausing, looking back to me with an odd sort of worry, but I stood as well, and followed her over to the Creationist, who was equally happy to see us, enthusiastically talking of her journey, as she discover that, yes, setting off explosives in a tube did technically turn the tunnels into a giant gun, and by creating a payload, then explosive foam charge, then capture foam cap, she'd managed to blow the one of the giant dirt-snakes in half.

"Damn!" I smiled appreciatively. "Not bad!"

"Really? My teammates were rather vociferous with their concerns," Momo noted, glancing at the other three, Jiro and Bondo having sprawled out on the grass, while Komori talked to Kendo, the orange-haired girl stiffening and sending a glare the proto-Villain's way. Something I had no issue with, as while I wouldn't want Mina to get in trouble slapping the shit out of the boy, that was to keep her out of trouble, not to protect him.

"Pffft, that sounds amazeballs," my lover disagreed. "We appreciate your love of all things that go boom, babe!"

Blushing slightly, the girl looked away. "It's not explosions that are important on their own, it is merely that they are often effectively used in strategies that take proper advantage of situational conditions," she deferred. "Denki's railgun is similarly effective, but uses no accelerants at all!"

"Yeah, Sparky's pretty great too," Mina grinned. "Speakin' of, did you fight the electric guys, YaoMomo? They were the worst."

I shrugged, disagreeing, "Not really, they didn't do much to me," then laughed at her flat look. "Yeah, I could see how they could be nasty."

"They were, but, as they used a spark-creating device, explosive foam was quite useful," the creationist offered, and then rolled her eyes as my lover turned back to me and mouthed the word 'Boom!'

Not commenting on that, I asked, "So, those gloves Kendo were wearing looked interesting."

Factoria's eyes lit up. "Oh, yes! I actually based them a little off what you told me about your own collapsible gauntlets, as, while her hands enlarge, what she is holding does not, but things she wear do a little, so, after a couple checks, I constructed those! Folded down, they're akin to full plate, and with weighted knuckles, but, when expanded, they stretch out to make something more akin to studded leather, with a kind of brass knuckle setup, though, of course, without the interior grab bar."

"Wait, were her knuckles covered," I asked, and Momo nodded. "Okay, that's not brass knuckles, they're kind of mis-named. You used knuckle-coverings, which you wouldn't want the grab bar for at all, and which would've gelled well with her pre-existing martial arts expertise."

"Oh, good!" Momo smiled. "To be honest, I was not quite sure how they worked, and thought I was missing something simple."

Mina waved, "Nah, YaoMomo, you got this. But if you need some hands on instruction, I'm sure Sparky will be happy to give it to ya!"

"Yes, that would be most appreciated," the rich girl smiled, missing the subtext completely. Or, based on the slight blush, maybe she didn't? Either way, she moved on, describing the materials and interlocking designs she'd spun up on the spot, which, while fairly basic, worked, though she'd tried to get a little fancy with the compression spring, which worked for now, but'd give out pretty quick as it was cycled over and over again, if my mental calculations were right.

Regardless, talking about it, and our various journeys, helped pass the time, until the buzzer went off and, moments later, the ground off to the side shifted, seeming to vomit up the missing team. Koda, Toru, and the welder dude were tied up, while the mantis guy was stuck in a block of ice that was quickly melted by Tiger, who used a standard Support unfreezer, which would bring the temperature of something up to a set point without the risk of burning via over-heating.

From there we got back into the busses, and it was a short trip to basecamp for lunch, then a rather interesting lesson on wilderness navigation and survival, using the surrounding forest as an example. They had us walk around a bit as the Pussycats pointed various things out, and instructed us on the use of a compass. It was… rather relaxing, really, my wounds completely healed by the time we'd finished, the sun slowly approaching the horizon. The lessons, to my surprise, picked up with another walk after we ate, the Pussycats really hammering in this instruction, though it broadened to include the problems with moving through places like swamps, mountains, and ruins, both of the freshly made and 'long abandoned' variety, delineating the dangers of both, first among them a lack of structural stability, leading to collapses, with instructions on how to either escape them, or survive them if the first wasn't possible.

"Are collapsed buildings really that dangerous?" Kirishima questioned skeptically.

"Yes," I replied, only to realize that Aizawa had spoken as well. The man nodded for me to continue so I explained, "The problem is that you're dealing with layers." I turned my hands electric and curled elongated lightning digits to make a basic grid in front of me, which the rest of the class could see. "Imagine the horizontal lines are floors, and the vertical lines are support columns. Mina, put your finger here?" I questioned, looking at a space between my ring and middle fingers, which she did. "Then If any of them go," I pushed my middle and pointer fingers together, leaving the thumb 'layer' sitting on top, "then the ensuing force might be enough to make others go," I pushed together my ring and middle fingers, trapping her digit, though I was careful not to shock her, then my ring and pinky, making a solid 'stack', "and then the force from the top one, or ones, falling that far then and hitting with a sudden stop might be enough to make them collapse," I brought together my thumb and pointer fingers together, electric digits now a solid block, with Mina's finger trapped, "so you're hit, then fall, then hit again, all because something you couldn't see gave out."

I sighed. "Total collapses like that are rare, but even a partial collapse," I extended my fingers out, freeing Mina's, then repeated the collapse, leaving the 'top' and 'bottom' layers intact, "can be bad. Because do you send in more people to help those now trapped?" My lover dutifully added a few more fingers to the free 'bottom' layer', and then I closed my hands around hers, "Oh, look, now you've lost four people instead of one. Nature's pretty stable, and understandable, but when buildings start to go down, shit gets dangerous, and you want to rush, but the extra force you put the structure under while doing so might be just enough to collapse things, or maybe you'd be fine to do so but you've got something else quickly weakening, working like a timer, until it all goes, and you just don't know," I stressed, twitching a little, Mina's hands tightening on mine for a moment, and I nodded to her, untangling my unnaturally shaped digits and letting them snap back to normal.

"Kaminari is right," Mandalay agreed while I did so. "That's why we normally have Pixie-Bob use her Quirk to shore things up, Ragdoll finds people, I keep them calm and stop them from making things worse, and Tiger goes in, with a few helpers."

I blinked, "God, that's useful."

"There's a reason we're ranked thirty-two in all of Japan!" Pixie-Bob noted proudly.

Wait, really? I thought, having completely missed that, Denki not having cared about anyone other than the top ten.

Listening, the advice they were giving us was damn good, and matched up with my own experiences, only for me to pause, as… when had I experienced a collapsing building? Let alone enough of them to instinctually know the additional superfluous details they were leaving out?

I didn't realize I'd gotten lost in thought until I felt Mina take my hand again, gently pulling me forward. "Memories?" she whispered to me, and I wiggled my free hand in a 'maybe' gesture, because… because it wasn't memories, just… skills?

Regardless, I focused on the lesson, paying close attention, hoping I'd never need this intel, but it was far better to have it, and not need it, then need it, and not have it.

Soon enough, we were sent to bed, but while some part of me did feel tired, I still felt oddly energetic, so, after the others had fallen asleep, I slipped out, an odd, well, electric feeling making me a little twitchy, and I put a bit of distance between myself and the boy's cabin, until I was out of sight, and then tried to relax, which didn't really work.

Flashing parts to electricity didn't really work either, neither did creating a few actual arcs, so I stood there, eyes closed, feeling out the parts of me that were me, which was an ever-growing set of senses, expanding with each new power. Feeling those out in turn, each one was different, and… there.

That's what the feeling was, and, chasing it down, I flexed it, only for something to click into place, the world gaining a secondary layer of existence, surrounding me, only, not?

It was all around me, and below me, but not above me, and, reaching out mentally I could only 'grab' a handful, which, in turn, reached back at me, bouncing off my Defenses, but not violently though, like it just stumbled into it really. Focusing, I had the… whatever it was, but it needed form, it needed fullness, but above all it needed function. Manually trying to handle it, as it tried to reach into somepart of me in turn, but was blocked, either into my mind, body, or soul, I suggested a cube for a form, but that was denied, as, to it, cubes had no function or purpose, and, while I had the feeling I could make it accept that shape, it wasn't how it was supposed to work.

Okay, lets try it the other way, I thought. Function? To play around and get a sense with the power, though I wasn't sure which of my classmates powers had these requirements. Fullness? Okay, that one seemed to be more of asking 'how much' so… as much as it could comfortably do. Form? I had no idea, but this time, I felt the power slide against my Defenses, skimming them, and coming away with… something.

"Arf?"

Turning around, I saw a small shape was pulling itself out of the ground, and I took a step back, hands shifting into claws, but I stopped as I saw…

A puppy.

A puppy made entirely out of dirt.

A puppy made entirely out of dirt, that was only four inches tall, and which I could feel a connection to.

"Ruff?" it asked, confused, and I knelt down, causing the construct to very faintly query me, and I kind of prodded it to go ahead. "Arf!" it barked happily, a tiny, incredibly faint sound, as it ran forward to me, and ran head first into my leg, bouncing off and yipping happily, running back and forth with gleeful abandon. Hesitantly reaching forward, it paused, looking up at my finger, which was almost as long as it was tall, and I gently scratched it behind its compacted dirt ears, causing it to close its eyes, or really the twin black voids where its eyes should be, and wag its tiny little dirt tail.

On one hand, it was kinda cute, on the other, did this count as playing with myself?

Reaching down, I picked it up, the small construct turning about in my palm three times before laying down, curling up, very well behaved, but, then again it was just me, expressed through the lens of Pixie-Bob's Quirk, right?

But why her, and not my classmates? I wondered, but, then again, the answer was the same as why I'd picked up Mandalay's Telepathy Quirk: I'd been around it constantly being used and she was very skilled with it. Feeling the connection to my construct, it was like a tiny little mental tether, only noticeable by the way it rubbed up against my Defenses, and I could tell it was kind of running a weird sort of 'virtual machine' in my mind, or soul, as some part of me was going 'What would a puppy do?', and feeding it instructions.

However, if that was true, then I should be able to reach through that connection and…

The puppy kicked a leg, then turned to look up at me, as if to ask 'Really?', but I ignored it, trying to get it to lift the leg, at which point it instantly did so, but because I asked, so I tried to directly get it to lower it, and it just kicked again, as I'd used the wrong muscles, only it didn't have muscles, since it was just dirt and…

Okay, I got why Pixie-Bob was so skilled, if this was the base power, because this was way more complicated than it seemed at first.

Trying to create another dirt-puppy, my copied Quirk didn't, and, as I tried to reach for a new construct, the puppy whined concernedly as it started to lose cohesion, so I instantly stopped, only, it wasn't real, it was just how I thought a puppy would act when it started to come apart, and I couldn't make it stop and… what?

So, did I accidentally just make life, because that's what it fucking felt like, but, of course it felt like it. Having created it, should I now keep it going? It was a fucking puppy, and I didn't want to kill it, but I couldn't tell if it was really alive as it was doing everything I thought it would if I created life. Should I go find Mina? I wondered, as having her interact with it, with it modeling my expectations and not hers she might be able to tell the difference, but how was I going to do that, and I could feel something start to hit my Defenses as I started to freak out a little, because this was not what I signed up for, and this sure as shit wasn't playing around anymor-

And, just like that, the dirt-puppy came apart in my hands.

Not with a piteous, heart-wrenching whine, nor with a concerned bark cut-off halfway, it just disintegrated without enacting any of the nightmarish actions my worries could conjure, it just, like a sand-sculpture hit by the rising tide, lost cohesion, with the faintest sense of 'task completed'.

Trying not to hyperventilate, I stared at the pile of dirt, I reached for the power again, answering Form? with 'puppy', Fullness? as 'the dirt in my hand', and Function? with 'sit there for ten seconds', feeling it kick into gear, remaking the dirt puppy, who did not act like a puppy at all this time, just sat there, unmoving, and I stared at it, examining it, realizing I'd been doing do for way longer than ten secon-

And it came apart again. Again with 'task completed'.

But… oh, I realized, as giving it an objective measurement like 'ten seconds' meant jack all, as it was basing itself off my own understanding of things, so if I lost track of time, so did my Quirk, which meant it wasn't working on exterior metrics, so I wasn't creating life and…

Good.

Just… Good.

Dumping the dirt, I shakily rubbed my hands off on my white undershirt, staining it, which, dumb, but, holy shit.

Though I had to wonder why I thought I could create life like that, since Quirks didn't work that way, but I had a Soul Deep certainty that such a thing was possible, one that had no source.

"Fuuuuck!" I swore my Defenses still flickering, as I backed up against a tree, feeling the thought hit something in me, something that shouldn't fucking be there, though, again, I DIDN'T KNOW HOW I KNEW THAT!

"Kaminari?"

I flinched, setting off a corona of lightning around me, OfA spiking into Full Cowl, hands electric claws, then froze, as Aizawa was standing in the clearing, leaning against a tree, Toru's quirk highlighting him clearly, and a quick look around showed it was just us.

"H-Hey Eraserhead," I replied, pulling back on my Quirks, still shaking a little. "Sorry. Nerves."

There was no judgement in the tired man's eyes as he nodded, not saying a word. An awkward silence stretched, and he just waited, and while some part of me said this was an interrogation tactic, his body language was all wrong for that, but, fucking again, HOW DID I KNOW THAT?

"You alright, Volt-aire?" he questioned, sounding concerned.

I wanted to say no, wanted to tell him even a fraction of what was going on, but. . . I had no idea how to do that. No idea how to start. "Kinda?" I shrugged, deflecting, "All healed up, though I think it might've also healed my tiredness or something in the process, because sleep's… not really a thing for me right now."

Aizawa nodded. "Been there. About today, is that alright?"

"Uh, yeah?" I replied, a little confused. "Monoma's a, well I want to say a dick, but, a number of people let that boy down, and for him to… He's just a teenager, so it's not… as long as he gets better, and doesn't pull that shit again, I have no problem with him," I stated, in a somewhat rambly response.

My teacher regarded me, remarking, "You're a teenager, Kaminari."

"Well, then I hope others give me that kind of slack, though hopefully I won't need it," I quipped. "Definitely won't be a backstabbing, teamkilling fucktard. I'd never be like… but I'm sure I'll find novel and interesting ways to fuck shit up."

Eraserhead again said nothing for a long moment, weighing his words carefully. "I understand wanting to be alone, but doing this? It isn't healthy."

I gave the notorious loner a skeptical look.

"Do as I say, kid, not as I do," he quipped right back. "But are you worried you'll hurt them?"

The thought hadn't even occurred to me, and, as I started to actually worry, my teacher told me, "Good. Then go back and try and get some rest. We're only here for two more days, and you should make the most of them."

Instinctively, I wanted to disagree, but, again, I knew the value of sleep, and knew how much it sucked to go without, on a far deeper level then I could remember having any cause for. "I… okay, Aizawa. I will."

Pushing off from the tree, I started to head back, and the power nullifier added, "Also, when Vlad talks to you, could you try and be respectful?"

I lifted an eyebrow, "Eraserhead, I'm always just as respectful as a person's actions call for. No more, and no less."

The tired looking man sighed, "Yeah, that's what I was afraid of."

"Hey, as long as he doesn't do something dishonest like tone-police or pull rank to dodge the topic, I'll be nice," I argued.

The other man didn't respond.

"Oh, this is gonna be fun," I muttered.

"Goodnight, Kaminari."

"Goodnight, Aizawa," I replied, heading to bed.

AN: The Next Four Chapters Can Be Found on and Subscribestar!