A Slippery Slope: Ch 5

I'm back!

Computer is fixed, a certain virus cancelled all my plans, it's a perfect recipe for some good quality writing time.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

On a completely unrelated note, there's a 'rule' in writing that says "show don't tell" and that basically just means that your writing flows better if you lead your audience to a conclusion rather than just stating it.

For example, if a character is nervous in a situation, don't just say "_ is nervous", the character should let the audience know they're nervous, by acting nervous. Obviously that's a really simple example, but you get the gist of it.

Unfortunately I'm kinda bad at the more advanced forms of it :/

(This is in response to the general feeling I got from the reviews and a few PMs)

The things in the shadows were nomu, and Ujiko showed up not because "Izuku wasn't early" but because the nomu alerted him that something was up.

I tried to show this by having Izuku doubt Ujiko's reason, then immediately afterwards establishing the fact that Ujiko is willing to lie when it suits him, and then having the nomu bit at the end to tie it all together.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

But eh, looking back I can see how it's a bit vague, oh well, you can't get better if you don't have any mistakes to learn from.

(Also, yes Momo is on the character tags for a reason, but chill for a bit, we haven't even gotten to UA yet)

-Rain of Sins-

-A Slippery Slope: Ch 5-

Izuku had long since grown accustomed to working on the various nomu at the lab. Granted he was mainly just in charge of doing routine checkups, and anytime something actually exciting happened he was delegated to the role of assistant, but that didn't really matter here.

What did matter was the fact, Izuku could tell what lay before him was different from all the other nomu.

"My successor, behold my latest attempt at creating my magnum opus! My latest masterpiece!"

It was huge, an enormous hulking figure rivaling All Might in size.

It was covered in a thick, tar colored skin that bulged, and in some places ripped open, unable to contain the sheer volume of muscle mass the beast had.

It's mouth was a demonic imitation of a bird's, a bony beak filled with giant spikes of teeth.

And of course, as all nomu did, it's brain stood proud and exposed for the world to see, two sickly, beady eyes staring into the void.

It was monstrous, it was an affront to nature, it was…

"Amazing…" Izuku whispered, his eyes wide in awe.

Before him stood not just a creature, but a living testament to the power of science. The power to push beyond the natural laws that held the universe in place, to break and bend them to the will of man. To break free of the chains that had held down mankind, and become more than any human was ever meant to be.

The power to make dreams into reality.

The power to rewrite destiny.

Ujiko's laugh snapped an embarrassed Izuku out of his trance.

"Haha! 'Amazing' indeed my young successor! And I see your attention went almost immediately to the finer details, truly I have taught you well!"

Izuku blushed in embarrassment at being called out. While the nomu's appearance was impressive, the scientist in training had almost immediately beelined for the terminal to the left of the tube to get a look at it's genetic makeup.

And what a genetic makeup it was!

A quirk for increased speed.

A quirk for super strength.

A quirk for shock absorption.

A quirk for shock suppression.

Three different quirks for increased regeneration.

Not to mention the different mutation type quirks that had been layered on top of one another.

This thing was a monster.

""It's beautiful isn't it?" the doctor chuckled. "Why i'd say it's one of my best works of art to date!"

Impressive? Undoubtedly so. 

Beautiful? Art? 

Ehhhh, Izuku had learnt a lot from the good doctor, but one thing he hadn't picked up on was his teacher's sense of "art", and obsession with creating his "magnum opus"... though after seeing this, he definitely understood the man's reasoning for that last one.

Izuku's awe struck smile mellowed as a stray thought ran through his head.

"What are you planning to do with this?"

"Hmm?"

"W-Well…" Izuku stuttered, now actually thinking about what he was saying. "It's just that this could do a lot of damage if it got in the wrong hands, s-so I was wondering what you were planning on doing with it?"

"Ahh," Ujiko scratched his mustache, suddenly a bit sheepish, "Well, you see… I kind of, haven't really… thought that far ahead?"

"D-Dr Ujiko!"

"What? It's not like I was going to rob a bank with it!"

Technically true.

"W-Well yea, b-but still! You have a living super weapon in your basement! I-If the Heroes ever found out about this-" Izuku paled as he thought of the consequences of that happening.

"Oh relax kid, my employees know how to keep my mouth shut, and only the higher ups even know about these sorts of experiments." Ujiko hummed as he started fiddling with the tube's terminal. "Besides, 'Heroes' were part of my inspiration for this art piece anyway!"

"What?" Izuku questioned, honestly taken aback by the statement.

"Well… awhile back, I had the unpleasant experience of being stuck in a room with a guy who just wouldn't shut up about how 'one day he's gonna be really strong, and beat All might, and he'd be the best, and bla, bla, bla', long story short, it was very annoying! But it got me thinking. If I could make something that could go toe to toe with All Might of all people..." His grin twisted into a warped smile. "If one of my creations could fight the greatest Hero on even ground, then it would have to be my greatest masterpiece!"

Ujiko's grin weakened as he sighed. "Of course, now that I've actually tried my hand at making the thing, all you have to do is pull up some of All Might's old videos and it becomes pretty obvious. As impressive as the nomu is, it's a long way from beating the guy."

"Wow…" Izuku gazed at the take with a new light. "To think a little kid could inspire you to make this…"

Ujiko opened his mouth to correct Izuku, paused, and really thought about the person he was talking about before continuing. "Yea, I don't know how old he was, but from how he was acting, he couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 at most!"

This caused Ujiko to start laughing like he had told the best joke in ages, but Izuku didn't pay him any mind as he wandered back to the tank.

"So you were made to fight All Might huh?"

The quirkless student frowned as a picture of All Might's withered form waved through the back of his head. Glancing at the terminal displaying the creature's list of quirks and physical capabilities, Izuku couldn't help but begin to worry as a startling conclusion began to form.

Ujiko was a lot closer than he thought.

"Y-You'd have to add a l-lot more quirks t-to b-b-beat All M-Might!" He said instead, completely smooth, without any stutter at all, no sir, he had covered up that lie perfectly.

"Bah! 'Add more quirks' he says, like it's that easy! Come on kid, I thought I taught you better than that! Giving shit a quirk is a headache and a half, giving it multiple quirks is damn near impossible, and all the stress from trying to figure out how to do it is most likely the whole reason I lost my hair! Do I need to have a flash recap lesson on giving nomu quirks?"

"N-No sir!"

"Giving multiple quirks to a host is not difficult because of the quirk application process!" Ujiko began, ignoring Izuku's response. "Adding a quirk to a host is almost laughably easy with the technology we have at the lab, and as long as the host's body and mind have been augmented to handle the strain of these quirks, it is theoretically possible to have a nomu with infinite quirks, but does that mean the process is easy? No! It doesn't!"

"This is because the greatest challenge us scientists face when adding more than one quirk isn't the host's body or mind, it's not the application process, it's the quirks themselves! Quirks do not like one another! If two opposing quirks are placed in a host, then just as a body will reject organs it recognises aren't from itself, as with organ transplants, the quirks will reject one another! This is a problem unsolved to this day, and one that remains the single biggest roadblock in our research! This is so important, in fact, that I will repeat it! This problem has NOT been solved, we have only managed to find ways to work around the issue so far, such as using quirks similar enough to each other that we can trick them into believing they are simply a by-product of each other."

"The nomu in front of you is a perfect example of this, and is the absolute furthest we have been able to stretch this method. Every single one of it's quirks is a physical based quirk, and every one of it's quirks simply adds onto something the creature already had. It already could heal itself, it already had muscles, it already had skin and bones which naturally absorb shock and protect the internal organs, it is only because of this and two mutation quirks that rope them even further together, that the beast is not dead! And even then, it's genetic structure is teetering on the edge of total self collapse!"

"So Izuku!" Ujiko stopped pacing and whirled around to face his apprentice. "If I decided I wanted to make it also be able to turn into water, fly, and shoot fireballs from its eyes, what would happen?"

"T-The quirks would reject each other?"

"The quirks reject each other!" Ujiko howled. "The quirks would reject each other, the nomu would die, my hopes would die, all the resources spent on it would be wasted, it would be a huge financial loss, I would have to start all over again, and my mother would laugh at me for being a failure!"

…

"Ignore that last part."

"Y-Yes sir!"

Ujiko slumped against the wall, his anger at having his masterpiece basically called "not good enough" to his face, having been ranted away, and sighed as he lost himself in his thoughts.

His master's quirk was a horrifically beautiful piece of art, one that had undoubtedly sped forward his research by decades, but even then, it hadn't solved the problem of quirk rejection. All for One, contrary to what it's use implied, didn't steal someone's quirk, at least not in the way you would think. The quirk All for One bypassed the quirk rejection issue entirely by not taking quirks, but instead by copying them, expanding itself to imitate the quirk's abilities, and then destroying the initial quirk.

The quirk was incredibly fascinating to study, as almost none of what it did worked as you would expect it to. For instance, the ability to "gift" a quirk to another isn't actually a power of the quirk.

It's not an ability, but rather a built in safety mechanism, if the wielder absorbs a quirk that is detrimental to their health, they can "offload" it onto another host in order to save themselves… Quite a few steps away from a gifting mechanism if Ujiko could say so himself.

As for why it couldn't just uncopy a bad quirk without having to dump it on someone else, Ujiko believed it was just more evidence to his personal belief that nothing in the world was perfect, even something like a nearly all-powerful quirk.

It was sad really, not even All for One could solve the infinitely infuriating quirk rejection problem, and now his latest masterpiece- the one he could honestly say had the most potential of anything he had made in a long time, would never reach what it was could be capable of, all because of a single problem.

It was almost funny, such potential held just out of his reach, if only he could figure out how to make quirks play nice, or, since that was unlikely to happen anytime soon, find a way to ignore it completely.

"W-Well, what if we just did something that didn't trigger the rejection?"

Exactly, he needed to find something that didn't trigg- wait a moment…

"What about things that aren't exactly quirks, like engineering him to have denser muscle mass, denser bones, o-or having claws! Those are things you can do just by basic DNA editing! T-The technology was around a long time, like even way before quirks were a thing -though it was experimental at the time- but with a little bit of an overhaul on the foundation, I'm sure we cou-"

Ujiko just stared at Izuku, stroking his chin while zoning out everything his successor-in-denial was saying, the first two sentences bouncing around his head like an overly obnoxious beachball.

Carefully he walked over to the corner, where a small stool sat on it's side. He pulled it upright, and gave it a little dust off, in the back of his mind he was mad at Yuyara for leaving things lying about in such an important room, but he didn't act on it. Instead, he slumped onto the stool, and pinched the bridge of his nose.

"That… that would work." Ujiko's annoyed huff, finally caught the attention of Izuku, bringing him to stop his ramble. "That would- why didn't I think of that before? I-I've been working on my art for decades , I was stuck on trying to string quirks together for years, and all this time I could have just- I could've..."

Suddenly Ujiko stood up, the motion knocking the stool over, back into its original position.

"You." he jabbed a finger at Izuku. "Follow."

Of course the word 'follow' might have been a bit misleading, as the doctor grabbed the collar of Izuku's coat, dragged him out the door, down several hallways, and to a vacant room, where he unceremoniously tossed him in.

The scientist in training went to continue the single word train with a 'what', and a 'why', but Ujiko was already ahead of him.

"Stay."

And so Izuku, confused and just a tad bit scared, stayed.

The room was almost completely identical to the one where he had taken Ujiko's test, back what felt like forever ago. The walls were empty save for the cold steel they were made of, with the only things of note being the door, a wooden desk, a chair, and a ceiling light.

Though it wasn't like this was some special room, just because it looked like the testing room. Very shortly after he started coming to the lab on a regular basis, Izuku had learned every office looked like this - even the one Ujiko had commandeered when it became clear he was going to be spending a lot of time here.

Don't get the wrong idea though, just because all the rooms were the same, didn't mean they were all the same.

For instance, this room was empty, it was cold, stifling even. Meanwhile Yuyara and Ujiko's offices had personality, and an air of life. Ujiko's was just because he had a ton of empty coffee cups laying about everywhere, while Yuyara's was due to all the unfinished paperwork lying about, the occasional beer can, and the frickin minifridge she somehow snuck past Ujiko, ironically hiding it underneath the stacks of paperwork Ujiko lectured her about picking up.

Izuku was snapped from his thoughts as the door slid open and Ujiko walked in, pushing a cart full of books, boxes, and a tablet, slightly struggling do to its weight

"There are 300 items on this cart," He grunted as he gave it a final shove into the room, "And around another 500 on the tablet. These are all highly important documents that I've been meaning to see if I can use to further my own research. Unfortunately I haven't had the time to go through them yet." He coughed as he dusted off his hands. "Get those sorted and report back to me tomorrow, you're getting a raise- no scratch that, you're getting a promotion to whatever position gets you a private lab!"

"B-but I've only been here for t-two m-months!"

"Exactly! And you're already more competent than literally every other person I have in this building!" The doctor smoothed out a few wrinkles in his coat, and turned towards the door. "Now if you'll excuse me I need to set up an industry wide meeting, where I yell at everyone for failing to realize something so simple, for so long!"

"W-Wait d-doctor Ujiko w-wha-"

"You've got two weeks to get all that read, three days to compile any useful information, and then four more to hammer out a good idea or two -could be for a project, a study, or hell even a whole new field of science, I don't care as long as it's impressive! Then you're going to present said idea to a group of me and my top scientists!"

"This is your big chance kid!" Ujiko sent a wide grin over his shoulder as the door closed behind him. "Knock it outta the ballpark, and prove 'em I was right about you!"

Izuku watched the door close, staring blankly as his brain tried to comprehend what all exactly had just happened.

First,

What?

Second,

What!?

-Chapter End-

Hello! Future Zack cutting in again to past me's ANs, just to say that you should ignore any 'due dates' that I forget to remove from these, they've already all been written and posted on FF.N, I'm just going back and polishing them for cross-posting.

(So no, you don't have to wait 'til March for another chapter.)

Now back to past me.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

Due to a certain quarantine, as of literally five minutes ago, I am now out of Hot Chocolate.

…

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