12 A Slippery Slope: Ch 7 (End)
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu- don't worry, the story's not dead, I on the other hand am most certainly dead.
I'm dead! I'm slumped over in my chair right now, dead… well, not physically dead, metaphorically dead, I'm mentally exhausted right now, so metaphorically and mentally, I am dead.
*Sips Hot Chocolate*
But not my grandmother, no, she's actually dead, and is, inadvertently, the reason why this is so late (sortta). I mean I didn't know her all that well, and her death didn't have me huddled in the corner with a mental breakdown or anything, but it was still tough.
Though on the other hand, dealing with the family fallout drama afterwards, whoa hoho- now that was a serious candidate for a mental breakdown, albeit one with a lot less crying and a lot more of "smashing my head into a wall until I fall into a fucking coma so I can stop dealing with this Bullshit"
*Sips Hot Chocolate*
Gotta love family!
(AN 2: I may or may not have gotten hooked on this fancy new 'tropical fruit punch' I found at the store on sale two days ago, and I may or may not have gone through an entire gallon of the stuff already in a vain attempt to drown my sorrows)
-Rain of Sins-
-A Slippery Slope: Chapter 7-
"Work smarter not harder… two birds with one stone…"
The young scientist repeatedly mumbled to himself as he flipped yet another page.
On paper it was a great idea, he only had time for one project but needed two things, so have that project be able to fit the requirements of both the things he needed.
But there was one problem… Where was he gonna find something like that?!
The answer came to him surprisingly quickly.
The cart.
Ujiko had told him to use it after all, and that coupled with a crippling lack of other leads led to the very obvious choice of action of 'read through the cart's contents until something interesting pops up'. Unfortunately Ujiko had been spot on in his description of what it was: a bunch of important information that he wanted to see if any of it could be useful to his research. Which implied both that it was A): all highly unorganized, and B): any interesting finds would be buried under a vast majority of useless info.
Which led him to his current situation, hand digging through the cart's contents book by book, page by page, all while finding nothing for his troubles. This was his third day straight so far, and at the rate things were progressing it was looking like he'd be back tomorrow as well.
Izuku scratched the back of his head as his frown deepened, nothing he'd seen so far was anything close to what he needed. Oh sure there was quite a bit of interesting information, and quite a lot of it would be very beneficial to his work in the lab, but outdated theories on genetic programming wouldn't exactly help him beat up robots.
And boy was he glad he actually thought to look into said exam, or he would have wound up looking stupid with his original idea of just building a buttload of sleep darts!
Closing the book he was currently holding with a snap, and tossing it over his shoulder to the ever increasing pile in the corner, he reached absentmindedly towards the cart when something caught his eye.
Down at the bottom of the wheeled cart, only now revealed after so many items being removed, and still mostly hidden under the overflow of books and notepads, was a box. A battered, dented, partially crumpled cardboard box with more than a few stains to its name, that looked woefully out of place alongside the other, though very unorganized, reasonably well kept books.
Meh, what the hell? It was worth a shot.
Pulling the surprisingly heavy box off the cart, and out from under it's book-esq prison, Izuku gave it a brief once over to make sure it hadn't been torn open before casually flipping open the box's top, only to be greeted with a virtual Pandora's box of content.
In the box was a large collection of manila folders, nearly all of them having the words "Classified" or "Restricted Access" printed on the front of them, some practically falling apart with age, all of them bursting with papers and graphs. There were stacks of papers that had very obviously been sent through multiple shredders in the past, painstakingly stitched back together, and considering there were more than a few that were half burnt it was very clear someone had wanted these gone .
Hell, there were even honest to goodness floppy discs, just sitting there, no one had used tech like that since way before quirks. And just to top it off, none of it was in Japanese.
Interest officially piqued, the young scientist began pulling everything out and organizing it into manageable piles. Quickly two different major categories began to form, the ones he could kind of understand, and those he had no idea where to even begin.
"Ok, so these are in English," Izuku placed a slightly moldy folder to his left, filled with the English language he had learnt the basics of in school, before picking up a paper filled with something very much not English "But these… what ar- wait-" He blinked, "is this… Russian?"
Sure enough, the box had been filled with an almost perfect split between English and Russian with a good bit of German scattered about, which really only raised more questions than answers. Having now pulled everything out, Izuku sat back with a huff, going over everything a second time, and slowly but surely the gears began to turn.
The age of everything, the obvious attempts to destroy many of the files by either shredding them or by fire, the really old tech and floppy discs, the large "Classified" stamps-
"These are pre-quirk government files…" He said numbly as it all clicked together.
There was a good fifteen seconds of silence before Izuku dropped his head into his hands and let out a miserable groan.
Ok, first off: how the Hell did Ujiko manage to get any of this? Actually no, scratch that, he didn't want to know, there was no way in Hell it was anyway even remotely legal. He should shove everything back into the box and pretend he never even saw it, maybe even burn it to save everyone the headache!
…
Buuuut…
Izuku cursed his curiosity as he reached for the more important looking files and pulled out his phone to help translate.
Quickly it became apparent a reasonable chunk of it was completely useless, whether due to the paper being too far damaged or simply because the information it contained was of no value, the effect was the same.
Tossing aside yet another report of political corruption and potential treason, Izuku absentmindedly picked up a binder sitting off to his left. Flipping it over a few times to figure out which side was the front, he gave an interested yet disappointed "Hmm" when he figured out the binder didn't have the secrets of the universe printed neatly in bold letters on the first page, but acted as a timeline of sorts, one that detailed classified activities over a period of years.
Already resigned that this most likely wouldn't hold anything of value he sighed and began to skip through it halfheartedly.
Blah, blah, blah, more political corruption, useless, useless, useless, quirks start appearing, blah, blah, genetic experimentation to understand where quirks came from is fruitless- interesting but still useless for his current situation, blah, blah, numbers start increasing, general misuse of quirk powers, mass panic, blah, blah, military crackdown, riots, skip some pages, governmental collapse, anarchy, useless, useless, Silver Order, anti-quirk extremists, blah, blah, blah, "In order to better combat the emergence of omega-properties I put forward the motion to begin-"…wait.
Doing a double take, and re-reading the small cluster of paragraphs he had almost just completely skimmed over, Izuku's perseverance paid off, and his eyes widened like something out of a cartoon.
Quickly he began shuffling through the mounds of paper like you would a puzzle box, pulling out anything that seemed to have any sort of connection to what the binder detailed.
Fumbling out his new journal from the inside pocket of his lab coat, Izuku began hastily jotting down bits of information without any coherent organization. And as he sorted through the various documents, each paper acting like a piece to some deformed jigsaw puzzle with his own notes to fill in the gaps, a grin slowly grew across his face.
Quirks, despite how common they are in the general populace, were an extraordinarily dangerous thing, and there was a definitive reason that so very very few people in history had ever been born with two, and why there had never been a case of someone with more than that.
… a reason Ujiko had seen fit to show Izuku first hand. The stress exerted on the human brain by even a single quirk is extraordinary , and adding more just stacks more on top, magnifying the issue… to an extreme degree
Ujiko had taken Izuku to one of his larger facilities to observe the final steps in the nomu creation process. The young boy had watched, horrified, as the brain, unable to naturally survive the strain put upon it, had been injected with various chemicals to stay operational, causing it to balloon outward. At the same time, the tissue around the top of the head began to decay, dying at an alarming rate, and flaking off like nightmarish snowflakes, this allowed the engorged organ to burst through the weakened skull, leaving the now finished nomu with it's signature exposed brain.
Izuku had run out of the room as soon as the operation was complete, and between frantic breaths had asked his teacher why, why would they use chemicals like that if they had such a horrific effect?
Ujiko's response had been calm, simple, and horrifyingly enlightening.
They didn't.
For all the large needles and menacing tubes, the injections to the brain had only been to keep the organ from dying under the strain. The swelling, the tissue decay, all of that was a direct result from putting an unnatural amount of quirks into the body and their correlating strain on the brain- the swelling in particular was simply the body attempting to adapt in order to handle the stress it was put under.
The demonstration had been Ujiko's brilliant way of convincing his protege to not attempt to give himself a quirk without direct supervision, after Izuku had refused to stop bringing the topic up in conversations for the first few weeks.
Needless to say, it had worked very well.
…
However ,
Izuku's grin sharpened to have an odd gleam as the young scientist's mind flashed back to Ujiko's personal nomu, and the suggestion he had given the old doctor during their meeting.
Genetic manipulation didn't just pertain to quirks now, did it?
Izuku's pen was practically flying as it streaked across the papers haphazardly scattered around him, so absorbed in his work was he, that he didn't even bat an eye when one of the lights flickered and died, douseing half the room in darkness, nor did he notice when his elbow knocked one of the various papers off the table.
Silently fluttering to the ground in the shadow covered room like some wannabe fallen angel, it landed with a slight spin to reveal a mess of Izuku's hastily written gibberish, titled with bold, neatly printed words that stood out amongst the frantic scribble that covered it's face.
"Project Neptune - The super soldier experiment"
-Rain of Sins-
Thunder crashed as the night sky lit itself for but a fleeting moment, only to be enveloped once again by the weave of black hanging overhead.
Thick blankets of rain fell from the heavens and crashed upon the earthly city, drowning out all noise save for the wind that it rode upon.
A crack split the air once again, as lightning rent the sky in two, and upon the highest of skyscrapers, teetering on the edge, the pale light illuminated the distinctive outline of a man.
The darkness that cashed back down upon the world once the lightning vanished, made most of the man's features indistinguishable, save for the large labcoat he wore, fluttering in the wind and completely drenched by the rain.
"You know…" He began. "I find storms like this to be such an interesting irony, I mean," He gestured to the sprawling city below him, "Humans seem to bend the world around them almost instinctively, we carve holes through mountains for roads, we burn down forests for space, we bridge over rivers for convenience, and we build our cities on every corner of every continent. We act as if we're the masters of our planet, owner of all, and beholden to no one… But storms like this?"
The man let out a chuckle, as he raised his hands, turning his palms up to catch the rain pouring down around him.
"When a storm like this comes around we can't do anything about it! Oh sure, we build our barricades to keep from flooding and huddle in our houses to stay dry, but that's not really doing something, that's reactive, not proactive." He scoffed. "The point is that, despite all our boasting and smugness, we can't stop a storm from happening. You can level a mountain range, but you can't blow up a storm, no sword, no gun, no tank, no plane, no weapon humanity has ever made in its long history of trying to kill itself can stop a storm from hitting a city! All that we can do is either get out of the way or hide inside... Which leaves us with you."
The man laughed as a worryingly close bolt of lightning struck, rocking the building.
"The butt end of a cosmic joke by the world itself! Your 'gift' that you take such pride in, the ability to see someone's future, lets you see the storms beyond the horizon, but that's it, that's all it does! You have no secret weapon, no plane, no tank, no gun, hell you don't even have a sword, and because you have no proactive choices, all you have left are reactive ones. You can either get out of the storm's way, or huddle inside to stay dry!"
The man cackled as he swayed dangerously near the ledge. "You see that AllMight dies, you see what I do when I come, you see so many things -so many storms swirling just out of sight, and I can't wait! I can't wait for them to arrive, and too see what you'll do! Will you run or will you cower and hide, because if you think you can fight a storm without even a sword, well..." He chuckled "Then you must be dreaming, and if that's the case, here's some advice-"
WAKE UP!
Nighteye jerked awake to a crash of thunder.
"Just a dream" he grunted to himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose. Taking a moment to collect himself, he blinked wearily at his desk as his memory came back to him.
'That's right' he mused grumpily to himself as he eyed the various papers stacked to organized piles about his desk. The Yakuza he had been monitoring had become more and more active recently, meaning more work and all-nighters on his end, but the Yakuza (for as annoying as they could be) wouldn't have been able to overwork him this bad even if they tried. No, the blame for any recent gray hairs could be placed solely on something much smaller, fluffier, and infinitely more frustrating at times.
The future sight hero scoffed as he read through Nezu's reply letter, assuring him that UA security was as tight as it could be, and that he would funnel any reports of a villain that matched the description Nighteye had given him, directly to his agency.
The Foresight Hero could only give a heavy sigh as a disturbing sense of dejavu settled over him, this was almost exactly what had happened between him and nezu when he first got his vision of AllMight's death.
The principal would smile and nod his head, giving some help here and there when he could spare it, and assure that if anything came up he was only a call away, that he trusted Nighteye.
… but he didn't believe him.
Now it wasn't really Nezu's fault, it just so happened the principle worked on a slightly different branch of logic than most people, due to his quirk. High Spec let the little mouse-bear see the world through a filter of pure logic, every action had both a consequence as well as a reason for happening, and the world at large was like a vast array of interconnected strings of dominoes. Each domino that fell was itself an action, the consequence of the domino before it, and the reason for the one after it. Given a big enough picture, Nezu could follow the dominoes along and perfectly predict the way things would turn out in any given situation -not because he used some voodoo black-magic, but because to him it made logical sense. Thing X happened because thing Y happened all the way back here, and if he prevents thing Z from happening, then situation L will never occur.
But this black and white view of 'happens' or 'doesn't happen' comes with an annoying byproduct, if presented with something that didn't make logical sense, didn't fit into his string of dominoes, the principle tended to not take it very seriously.
Which is why Nighteye, who's quirk tended to not care about logic, found him so infuriating to work with at times.
He had gone to Nezu the day after his vision of the man in the lab coat, but as he paced about the principal's office, explaining in detail what he saw, what could happen, what would happen, Nezu had just sat there nodding along with a smile on his face, and a knowing, sympathetic, look in his eyes -the same look you would expect from a father listening to his son tell him he was going to be the first astronaut to land on the sun.
So Nezu would make some promises, buff up security, and maybe toss him a bone or two if something came up, but it wasn't commitment, no, it was appeasement , doing just enough so Nighteye couldn't complain and nothing more.
Nezu was just now starting to take his warning about AllMight seriously due to his dwindling time limit, two years after he had first given it.
Two years of time they could have been preparing, gone.
And it was happening again, but just like last time, there was very little he could do about it. Sure he could work on it by himself, but he lacked the resources, contacts, and diplomatic weight that Nezu had through UA, compared to that, what could a former sidekick of the fading top Hero bring to the table?
Which left him here, sifting through files of petty Yakuza activity while everything creeped closer, and there was damn near nothing he could do about it.
But that didn't mean he wouldn't try… he was too stubborn not to.
-Rain of Sins-
Ujiko was pacing, it was a bad habit of his whenever he got particularly lost in thought, add on his occasional muttering and you have a picture perfect start for a 'mad doctor' character. Well, at least that's what his colleagues would joke about way back at the start of his career, he had told them off for stereotyping, but looking back and considering where he was now, well...
Ujiko's train of thought was interrupted, when the very person he had been waiting for the past half hour to arrive finally decided to bother turning the corner.
"Izuku!" he shouted, causing the boy to jump "You're late!"
"LATE!? Wha- n-no I'm not, I made sure to get here exactly when you told me to be here by!"
"Bah!" Ujiko made a dismissive motion with his hand, waving away the point Izuku had made. "Early is on time, on time is late, and late is Unacceptable!"
"Now I know you're scared!" He said as he grabbed Izuku by the shoulders. "But listen to me. You are ready for this, you can do this, believe in yourself not because you have some special talent but because you've worked for it! Why, you've worked almost as much as me, and that is a feat impressive beyond words, so hear me now. There is absolutely no way you'll mess this up!"
He gave a wide smile. "You're gonna do great, kid."
Izuku couldn't help but stand a little straighter
"Errr, well… You'll most likely do great."
Ujiko let go of Izuku and moved his hands as if to weigh his options. "I mean- do to the theory of probability, there's technically no such thing as an 'absolute'. So yes, you caaaan do it, but there's also always a small chance that you'll totally mess everything up. So you should always remember to have a backup plan because no matter what you do, that chance -no matter how small- will always be there, and you'll never be able to get rid of it!"
Ujiko nodded sagely to himself, proud of catching that teaching opportunity to impart some of his favorite wisdom upon his protege, completely missing how said protege had lost just about any bit of 'standing straighter' he had acquired.
"But really, you shouldn't worry- I've done speeches and presentation stuff in front of these guys before, and they're a fantastic audience."
"R-Really?"
"Yup." He said, popping the 'P'. "It goes about the same way every time- I stand up and talk, they sit there nodding along, then, when I finish, they all clap and give various praises! It's as easy as apple pie is American!"
'Is it really that simple?' A small smile worked onto Izuku's face as his head peaked up. 'Of course it is, Dr Ujiko wouldn't give me something I couldn't do! I've just been overthinking everything! I can do this!'
"Although…"
Ujiko brought up a hand to stroke his mustache.
"I am the one who writes their paychecks, and I did fire the last guy who kept trying to go against the outline I presented." He hummed in thought. "So now that I think about it, it makes a lot more sense that they'd act so docile… but you don't have any of that do you? You're not their boss, you don't pay them, and even if they did say something what could you do? In fact, now that I'm thinking about it, actually, they probably hate your guts."
Ujiko hummed as he got lost in his thoughts.
"I mean- think about it. These are guys who've spent literally their whole lives trying to climb up the ladder, and then I go and pull you in from outta nowhere, completely undermining all their work. Like, they've gotta despise you."
By the time he finished, Izuku was as still as a stone statue, and about as pale as one too.
Ujiko on the other hand, gave a "Huh" and continued to stare out into space for a few seconds before blinking a few times and bringing his train of thought back into the real world.
"What was I talking about again?... Oh yes- IZUKU!"
"Y-Y-YES!?"
"My most important advice that I can give!"
He grasped his successor by his shoulders and stared directly into his eyes.
"Don't Fail!"
And with that he spun around, stuffed his hands in his pockets, marched down the hallway and around the corner.
…
Izuku blinked.
He blinked again.
Was…
Was that It?
"D-Don't fail…" He repeated Ujiko's last bit of advice to himself.
"G-Great advice!" He told himself, less to remember, and more to convince himself that it somehow classified as actual advice.
...
Oh who was he kidding, he was gonna die.
…
"Oh! And also!" Ujiko poked his head out from around the corner, pausing to ignore Izuku's yelp of surprise. "Stop stuttering, you're just gonna wind up pissing people off and making a fool of yourself. If you're going to be a true man of science you need to present your art to the world with a clear, confident voice! So no more stuttering!"
Izuku sighed and slumped into the wall as Ujiko ducked out of sight-
"Oh! And remember!"
-only to immediately jump back to attention as the mad doctor appeared yet again.
"The best way to impress someone is to make your statement big, loud, and most importantly, memorable!"
And with that Ujiko nodded and walked away for the final time, a satisfied smile on his face. Truly, he had just done a good thing, a net positive for the world at large.
His steps slowed as a thought crossed his mind.
Was… was this how Heroes felt when they did good things? He closed his eyes, as a smile graced his face.
But this wasn't one of his normal smiles, no- it wasn't maniacal, it wasn't from laughing, or from joy, or even forced, no, it was a smile of contentedness.
If this was what doing good things felt like, then he could say that maybe, just maybe… he understood the Good Guys just a little bit better.
And so he stood there, just letting the warm feeling of content wash over him.
"Was…" Yuyara, who had been standing in a nearby doorway, croaked. "Was that the first time you've done a motivational speech?" She asked with a blank smile and just the tiniest twitch in her left eye.
"Why yes it was!" Ujiko pruned with pride. "I had to improvise a few parts there, but I personally think it turned out really well towards the end there, don't you?"
Marching off before she could respond, The doctor completely missed the worried look on her face as she hurried after him.
He had full faith that Izuku could do this, and nothing could convince him otherwise.
-Rain of Sins-
Izuku couldn't do this.
He knew it when he woke up that morning, he knew it when we entered the largest lab Ujiko had in his underground science empire, he knew it when he walked up the incredibly long set of stairs, avoiding the elevator just to delay it a bit longer, and he knew it for sure standing in front of a group of people glaring at him with enough heat to melt steel.
"Don't Fail" Ujiko had said, but unfortunately, that didn't really help in the current situation.
The room was large, but not overly so, about the size of a small movie theater. Izuku himself stood on a neatly polished wooden stage, with several spotlights shining directly down upon him. In front of the quirkless boy were exactly twenty five rows of seats, each helpfully labeled with a number emblazoned on the wall next to it, each row was slightly elevated to the one that came before it, with a set of crimson rugged stairs cutting through the middle.
These seats however, despite being capable of holding a little over 200 people, sat completely empty, instead Izuku's audience sat at the very back. At the end of the room, elevated above the rest of the room by a ten foot wall, sat a long curved desk, made of a rich dark wood and highlighted with what appeared to be strips of gold, the entire thing probably cost more than the apartment building Izuku lived in.
But if the desk was intimidating, the people sitting at it were another matter entirely. In the very middle Ujiko sat, fingers linked in front of his face, with his goggles tilted at just the right angle so they reflected the light with an eerie white glow, masking any emotions he might have portrayed otherwise.
On either side of him sat five people, totalling ten in all, some wore neatly fitted lab coats personalized to give them an air of authority, others opted out of lab coats entirely, wearing luxurious suits and dresses, some wore armbands while others had insignias sewn directly into their fabric, but even without that it was quite obvious who they all were.
These were Ujiko's top lab heads, the ones who completed the vast majority of the doctor's work and research, and in return had been given vast amounts of wealth and authority in his science emperium.
Izuku gulped, although the control they wielded was limited to the labs and facilities they owned, their influence was practically everywhere, best demonstrated by the fact each and every one of them had a direct line of access to Ujiko at all times- and not just to his assistant, but the ability to make a call the doctor himself at anytime and for any reason.
Needless to say, they were the people Izuku would very much like to avoid pissing off... unfortunately if the way they glared at him was any indication, the majority of them already hated them- and he hadn't even done anything yet!
The reception wasn't all negative though, off to the side, sitting on a chair dragged in from a floor below and looking hilariously out of place next to the fancy suits of the top brass, sat Yuyara, who Ujiko had dragged along to give Izuku 'moral support'.
She gave him a weak smile and a shaky thumbs up.
Very inspiring!
What wasn't inspiring was the giant screen that loomed behind him and over his head. It was obviously supposed to be used for the presenter's visuals so the far away audience could actually see what they were talking about.
Now the reason this was uninspiring, was the fact that If he had known about said screen, he would have gladly prepared for it, instead he stood lamely beside the easel he had spent half an hour dragging up the stairwell, filled with painstakingly hand drawn graphs and charts. Charts that, due to the distance between him and his audience, probably couldn't even be seen clearly!
It was obvious that this place was supposed to be used for very important announcements, but it was equally obvious that no matter how important it may be, Ujiko was Ujiko, and had proceeded to not register this fact at all but instead go 'Ooh, shiny' and hijack it for Izuku's presentation without a second thought.
Izuku gulped and sent a hesitant glance towards his 'audience' only to immediately break eye contact under the harsh glares they were sending his way.
'Don't Fail, Don't Fail' He repeated in his head, panicking wouldn't help him here. Ujiko was expecting him to do well, and having a panic attack on stage most likely didn't classify as 'doing well'.
'Don't Fail, Don't Fail' He clenched his fists and forced himself to take a deep breath to try and calm down.
'Don't Fail, Don't Fail' He could do this!
'Don't Fail, Don't Fail' Ok, maybe he couldn't, but that didn't change the fact that he had to.
'DON'T FAIL, DON'T FAIL!' So He might as well do his Best!
He stood up as straight as he could and locked eyes with the burning, judgmental glares.
"H-H-H E LLO EVERYONE!"
Only to flinch when his voice cracked horribly on the first word.
… The only reaction from the audience was Yuyara letting her head drop into her hands with a sob.
He wasn't wasn't exactly a public speaker, ok!?
Tuning his voice down so he wasn't yelling, and clamping down on his stutter with as much force as possible, he started again.
"Hello everyone, I'm here to give a-" What was this? A speech? A presentation? "T-TALk to you about a-a potential, experimental, procedure I addapte-err- developed to increase the efficiency of nomu production- I mean of the nomu produced from the nomu production!"
Coughing awkwardly, Izuku shifted to something that couldn't stutter on words- his trusty easel. Grabbing the first slide, a blank poster sized sheet with only his name lamely scrawled across the front, he moved it to the back of the easel, revealing the next slide in the set. This one was filled with just about as many charts and graphs as he could fit on it, with quite a few sticky notes sticking off it because he ran out of room and needed to add more.
"Th-This is project Neptune!" He bit his tongue, berating himself for the stutter. "It's an experimental procedure applied to the, um, the b-bodies before the main nomu procedure. It uses DNA splicing a-and a combination of serums that, if implemented correctly, should- a-at least in theory- increase any nomu's base ca-capability by at least 20% at the lowest, a-and up to 63% at the highest"
"This is possible because, uh…" He quickly patted down the lab coat he was wearing before pulling out a pointer stick. "B-because it increases things such as muscle fiber concentration, bone density, r-red blood cell count, a-and such!" He pointed to the graph situated on the topmost left of the sheet. "Y-You can clearly see here that quirks use these base, uh, th-these base values as a multiplier and not a linear add on-"
His audience leaned forward and squinted in an attempt to see what he was pointing to on the easel, while Ujiko made his first visible reaction since the presentation started by calmly tapping the side of his goggles.
What? Was that supposed to be some kind of signal!? A message!? What does a single dot mean in morse code!?
Pushing past the anxiety riddled questions swirling through his head, Izuku turned back to his easel, finding comfort in the swathes of numbers he could read off to sound like he knew how to hold a speech.
-Rain of Sins-
"So let me get this straight-"
This was not good.
"You want us to dump, who knows how much time and money into this 'experiment' of yours without any proof that it will even work?"
This was really not good.
"W-Well if you look at the numbers I-"
"Numbers are one thing, results are another."
Things had been going- well, not good, but not terrible for Izuku.
He had managed to bumble his way through the rest of his presentation without making too much of a fool of himself, managing to mask any stuttering by using a deluge of numerical values instead of words. But just when things seemed to be looking up- and by that of course I mean he had run out of slides, said "The End", and was about to run out the door- his, oh so wonderful, audience had started doing the one thing he had prayed they wouldn't do.
They started talking.
Talking and asking questions, questions that he couldn't just dump numbers on until they went away.
"I'm starting to genuinely wonder why you even called this meeting in the first place."
Oh and that was another thing, apparently they all thought that he had Ujiko call this meeting! He would laugh at the irony, if he weren't too busy having a panic attack.
The man sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration as his fellows nodded along in agreement. "And really, even if it does work, why even bother? If we want a stronger than usual nomu, we can just give it a strength quirk."
"B-But Q-Quirk rejection…"
"Quirk rejection is annoying, but strength quirks are a dime a dozen- the sheer volume of them that we have on record almost guarantees we'll be able to find a small one that won't destabilize everything."
"B-But w-wai-"
"I happen to agree with Dr Rome on this." A woman at the far end of the table said. "Your idea is reckless at best and just plane dangerous at worst." She sneered. "Honestly this whole thing is just-"
"BRILLIANT!"
'Huh?'
"ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!" Ujiko shouted with a laugh as he stood from his seat. "Tell me my boy, will this treatment work as an improvement for all quirks or just physical ones?"
"W-Well," Izuku stuttered, caught off guard by the changing subject, "Obviously there a-are a few quirks like invisibility that it wouldn't affect, but it should have a noticeable increase in just about e-everything else"
"Wonderful!" Ujiko clapped. "This! This right here is why I made you my successor! Hold up some of those slides again, I'm interested in some of those calculations- actually, no wait, nevermind! I'll just come down there and look at them myself! That'll be much more efficient!"
What followed was a blur of laughing and shouting from Ujiko, and grumbling and complaints from the lab heads, who, due to Ujiko having spoken up, couldn't really say anything against his proposal anymore.
With his adrenaline fading off, and his mental train in a twist, Izuku's memories of what followed immediately afterwards were a bit fuzzy, but there was one specific part that stuck out to him.
"My boy, here's a word of advice," Ujiko laughed as he led Izuku out of the building, "When trying to coin something to a group of people, you only ever really need to bother convincing the most important person in the room. And here's a secret to go with that advice-" The mad doctor chuckled as he pat Izuku on the shoulder, "You already had me on your side before you even got on that stage!"
-Rain of Sins-
Yuyara hummed drowsily as she walked down the stairs to her lab's lower levels, her cup of coffee occasionally swaying a bit too far to either side for any onlooker's comfort.
It had been roughly a month since Izuku's big presentation, and subsequent reveal from Ujiko that it apparently had been his way of trying to, what was it again, break Green's confidence problem? She didn't really know to be honest.
Ujiko had explained it to her in some grand speech afterwards, buuuuuut, what he said didn't really make all that much sense to her, considering ya know, Green turning green on stage didn't seem like an indicator that he had gained any self confidence- but hey, she wasn't about to say anything, she liked being paid!
All that aside, the past month had been a lot less terrible than she had anticipated. Ujiko had been genuinely excited about Izuku's idea and had commandeered a section of the lab to give it, alongside a handful of people, to Izuku for him to start testing.
(And he did this without telling Yuyara beforehand, much to the young lab head's annoyance)
But it was fine! She was a big girl, she could deal with being annoyed. After all, she was an adult, and could deal with these things in a healthy, responsible way.
That is to say, she could spread the pain and annoy everyone else at her lab, because it was her lab, and she was their boss.
With a smirk, and a flash of her ID badge, the door to Izuku's section of the lab, looking exactly identical to every other door in the building, slid open with a hiss.
"Oh Greeeeeeeeen!~" She called out lazily as she stepped into the room. Green was going to hate her, and she knew he was going to hate her, because she hated people when they messed with her early in the morning- ugh, and now she had just reminded herself that yes, it was very early in the morning, and of course, now that she was thinking about it, she was suddenly much more tired than she was a few seconds ago.
Fuck psychology, it was her brain, it should work the way she wanted it to. She drank the caffeine chemical, give her awake-ness.
She hated the morning, fuck 'breakfast is the most important meal of the day', if you want to eat early, eat brunch- anything earlier than that is too early. But she had a job to do, and if she wanted to get paid (and eventually get her paycheck to go up a few zeros) she actually had to work. Hence why she was always one of the first at the lab in the morning, and hence why she was always in a bad mood until lunch.
What? Just because she was lazy didn't mean she didn't do her work, no, she did her job and she was damn good at it too! The only reason Ujiko grumbled about her 'slacking around' but never actually threatened to fire her, was because of one thing, one very fucking specific thing.
Paperwork.
She did her job, produced as many results as possible, reported to Ujiko, and did all the important parts that running one of the boss' labs required you to do.
But paperwork?
Bullshit.
Literally all of that garbage was useless Bullshit , with a capitol B. A bureaucratic tangled mess of fucking bullshit that all the top Lab Heads had the smaller labs fill out, because God knows Ujiko would never bother managing the day to day events of every fucking lab he had scattered around Japan. So of course he would just pawn off all the work to someone else, all he cared about was that his deadlines were hit- and Lord knows how he got when people missed deadlines.
*cough* Literally traveling in person to some tiny lab in the rats ass of nowhere because Hero activity put them behind schedule. *cough*
The paperwork was bullshit, it was useless beyond useless, held no value, and was fucking time consuming! She wasn't touching that with a 20 foot pole, no, she was letting it all pile up in actual, physical piles that gave Ujiko an aneurysm every time he saw them, and she was gonna keep doing that until he caved and let her hire someone to do it all for her.
Great now she was thinking about mornings, and paperwork, and all the bullshit she had to deal with, and now she was in a pissy mood.
"Green! Where are you?!" She shouted as she walked past yet another DNA sequencing machine, identical to the past 30 before it. "Anyone home!?"
Peeking her head through any doors she came across, it wasn't long until she came to the end of the lab branch, and the final door which- after a quick hiss of air- revealed that 'Anyone' was in fact, not home.
"Hmph." She huffed as she trudged into the final room. "Green must have finally realized coffee isn't a direct substitute for sleep." She grumbled to herself as she fished around in her coat's pocket, eventually fishing out, and popping a mint into her mouth. "It only took him a month of falling asleep at his desk to realize it- although I'll gladly take him falling asleep at his desk everyday over babbling about the damn UA entrance exam everyday, and thank God he stopped going on about that, future boss or not, I was going to throttle him if he brought up the fucking thing one more time..."
Her grumbling tempered off as her attention was distracted by the very obvious thing glowing in the middle of the room.
After a few seconds of staring, and with a bit of a laugh, she realized that the large metal cylinder sitting menacingly in the middle of the room with a spotlight directly over it, was a containment unit.
"Geeze Green, I know you're proud of that prototype serum you developed, and yea you're still getting used to the whole scientist bit, but you don't have to make it look like something out of a crappy 80's Mad Doctor movie."
Walking to the obnoxiously obvious thing, she gave it a once over before she ever so carefully jabbed her thumb into the big button on the side.
With all the flare and over the top dramatics you would expect from something straight out of a crappy Hollywood movie, the cylinder shook, shifted, and slid open with a gout of white fog to reveal-
"It's empty?"
Yuyara scratched her head as she stared at the very empty spot where a vial of some kind was clearly supposed to be sitting.
It wasn't like it was supposed to be empty, Izuku had been ecstatic when they finally managed to get a working prototype a few days ago and had babbled to her about it over their lunch break. Could he have moved it? If so, why? It wasn't like there was anything useful he could do with i-
"Well… think about it, your problem is that you have two different goals, but only enough time to prepare for one, sooooo…"
"Do something that will do both at the same time?"
"Bingo!"
Her breath caught as her conversation with Izuku all that time ago came back with full force.
'H-He made the thing to work with nomu immediately before the transformation process! A-And nomu before the process…'
Normal human bodies, without any artificially injected quirks, in other words.
"They're just like him…"
Yuyara stumbled back, gripping the edge of a nearby table for support, her brain flying at a hundred miles a minute trying to figure out what she should do, what she could do, and what the hell she was going to do.
She knew, from Izuku's previous babbling, that the UA exam was this month on the 14th at 7:00 am sharp, and it was currently- she frantically pulled out her phone-Monday the 14th, 6:48 am.
…
"Fuck!"
-End Chapter-
-Arc: A Slippery Slope: End-
Fuck indeed, Yuyara, fuck indeed.
Now.
*Sips Hot Chocolate*
IZUKU WILL GET A QUIRK, DON'T HURT ME! *Cowers in corner*
Look, I know everyone was/is expecting him to get a quirk- and he will, the story literally wouldn't make sense if he didn't, but just letting him give himself any quirk he could ever want, right at the beginning of the story, would instantly drop him into OP waters, and OP characters can't be challenged or pushed like weak ones, and without failing and struggle there's no character development, and if there's no character development for the main character then I'm writing my story wrong!
*Ahem*
So yes, he will get his fancy quirks, but only when he is ready.
*Sips Hot Chocolate*
Speaking of being ready, if you can't tell, I like to stack up my small hill of dynamite instead of setting it off as it comes.
*cough* Building up to the fucking entrance exam for 35k words now *cough*
So please excuse the last stretch of chapters for not having as much "zap" as you might expect for a MHA fic, I assure you it'll be worth it in the long run.
*Sips Hot Chocolate*
On a completely unrelated note, just a few more favorites, and we'll hit the '500 favorites' goal that's been sitting on my goal wall since we hit 200 (Man that feels like forever ago), and we're drifting ever closer to that illusive 1K follows, if we hit that then I guess I've been doing somethin' right.
Oh! Also-Also, while we're talking about stories. I updated my profile. Story ideas come to me overtime just as I daydream/slack off at work and in class, but while I write down and keep a bunch of good ones, very few of 'em have long standing potential. IE: I could get two or three really good arcs but after that the plot would kinda just float off and not really make sense.
I went ahead and tossed a bunch of those onto the bottom of my profile page for no other reason that I was just really bored and didn't have my laptop with me to write. If you wanna pick one of 'em up and write one then go ahead, they ain't half bad ideas, and if your bad at naming or have a hard time coming up with stuff (I speak from experience) I went ahead and put the names I used for them when I was planning them out on paper to see if they would work. So y'all could use em if you want to.
If you do wanna write one all I ask is that you PM me, not even for permission or anything but just 'cuz I get bored and like to read, and I'd totally read whatever people came up with from those.
All that said, it's just about one in the morning and I have to be up early tomorrow, so I'ma end it here.
Stay safe guys!
