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Their Hero Academia – Chapter 48: Three More Stories

Presenting the next raw and unedited chapter of my on-going, next-gen, My Hero Academia fic, Their Hero Academia!

Earlier chapters can be found here

Shota Shinso in The Perks of Being a Fanboy

So far, this had been the best week of Shota’s life. He got to work with the Number Four Hero, Ground Zero! The guy who’d snuffed out Mustang Flame, blown Shatterstorm to pieces, and even out exploded the Living Bomb! One of Uncle Izku’s—Deku!—best friends! Who’d help take down the League of Villains!

He’d gotten to go on patrol with him! He’d gotten all kinds of extra training too! And he’d gotten to work with a bunch of different Sidekicks, including Sonic Boom! In fact, Ground Zero had been very insistent that he work with as many of his Sidekicks as possible. Something about “broadening his experiences as much as possible.” Shota had even found a new frequency for his Quirk that could make stuff explode by vibrating it just right! That one had almost gotten Ground Zero to smile.

Though really, Ground Zero didn’t talk to him too much, except in short, one or two word answers. Of course, Shota was asking him a lot of questions, about his fights, and his Quirk, and what it was like working with Red Riot or Ingenium or Uncle Izuku or… It was really weird how he didn’t seem to know all the details like Shota did.

Either way, it was so exciting! He was even being allowed to sit in on a briefing about a new crime wave Ground Zero was tracking. Though Ground Zero had been very insistent that he not speak. He was supposed to watch and learn. He could do that!

“Okay,” Ground Zero said, standing at the foot of the table. Counting Shota and him, there were eight people sitting at the table. A miniature projector hung from the ceiling displaying a map on the whiteboard. Multiple points on the map were highlighted and Shota gave them his attention, trying to see if there was a pattern. “Let’s take a look at it again.”

He pointed to a spot on the map. “Flash Freeze has hit here, here, here, and here. We stopped the last two, Shoto stopped the second one.” Ground Zero made a face at the mention of Shoto’s name. For the life of him, Shota couldn’t figure out why. Shoto was a great Hero!

“And the first one was stopped by Pinky, of all people. He’s not after money, he’s not trying to make some nutjob phony baloney statement, he’s just out to get his damn jollies making people scream. Bastard’s too smart to just be throwing out random attacks. But I can’t see the damn pattern.”

Shota stared at the map again. It tickled something in the back of his mind. Wait, the Villain’s name was Flash Freeze, right? He shot a hand up in the air.

“This ain’t school, kid,” one of the Sidekicks, a man named Step-Mine said.

“Shut it,” Ground Zero said. He fixed Shota with a serious look, crossing his arms. “This better be good, kid.”

“Which Flash Freeze is it?” he asked.

Ground Zero gave him a confused look. So did the Sidekicks. “…What?” he asked, flatly.

“Which Flash Freeze is it?” Shota asked again. “I mean, the first one fought Endeavor and All Might a couple of times, but that was when they were young and he’d be way too old now. The second one mostly operated in Hosu City and fought the first Ingenium a few times and even got beat by Native, but he liked to kidnap people and freeze them and hold them for ransom, he didn’t get into fights if he could help it and definitely didn’t go looking for trouble.”

He sucked in a quick breath and kept going. “Then there’s the third one, who only showed up twice, but he fought Creati both times, about twenty-three years ago. He was also the only one who didn’t have ice powers; he had a camera lens on his chest that froze people in place when he hit them with the flash. Then there was the fourth one, who was part of the second League of Villains, but he died in a prison yard fight after they all got capture, and then there was actually a fifth one about three years ago who fought Sequoia Rose, but she talked him down before he could hurt anyone and last I knew, he actually reformed after prison…”

“Is there a point to this?” another Sidekick, Bulleteer asked. Shota recognized that tone. It was the same way everybody sounded when he was talking too much. He’d done it again.

Shota looked down at the floor.

Ground Zero, meanwhile, approached him and bent down so he was eye level with him. “So,” he said, kindly, “lots of Villains have used the name, huh?”

Shota looked up and nodded. “Uh-huh. Lots of people with ice Quirks like to use it.”

Ground Zero looked over to Sonic Boom. “Can you look up the statuses of all those Flash Freezes?”

She nodded and tapped a few keys into the computer screen in front of her. “First one’s currently in a retirement home outside of Bespeen. Second one is still in prison. Third one was paroled years ago, but no criminal activity since then. Fourth is confirmed deceased. And the fifth is likewise paroled and working for a non-profit environmentalist group.”

Ground Zero made a non-committal noise. “Okay, still doesn’t tell us anything.”

“Told you it was a waste of time,” Bulleteer whispered to Step-Mine.

“Out.” Ground Zero growled.

“Boss, what?”

“I said out!” Ground Zero snapped. “You’re off the case.”

Bulleteer looked like she was going to protest, but a glare from the Hero shut her down. She left, but not before giving Shota a dirty look.

Then Ground Zero turned his attention back to Shota. “Kid…” he began, then stopped suddenly. He looked to the map then to Shota then back to the map again. “Kid, did any of those Flash Freezes have fights at those locations?”

Shota considered the map, wracking his brains. He hoped out of his seat and went over to it. “The first one fought Endeavor here. The second one was only in the city once, but he fought Present Mic here. And then the third one fought Creati here. The fourth one had a battle with Burnin’ here…”

He stopped and his fingers lingered over a currently unmarked portion of the map. “The first one fought Sequoia Rose here, but you don’t have anything marked there…”

He turned around and Ground Zero was smiling.

“Kid’s right,” Sonic Boom said. “And if he keeps up the pattern…”

“Then that’s where he’ll be tonight,” Ground Zero said. He punched his palm with his other fist. “And we’ll be waiting to kick his ass.” He paused for a moment, looking over his sidekicks. “Looks like we got ourselves a Villain fanboy. And Loud Kid here figured it out. …Why couldn’t any of you do that?!”

The Sidekicks looked distinctly uncomfortable, shifting awkwardly in their chairs. Ground Zero gave Shota’s hair an affectionate ruffle. “Don’t worry about them. I’ll deal with them later. But you, you did good, kid.”

***

Sora Iida in Flight Fight

Sora sat on the edge of a rooftop, legs dangling over the side. Carefully, she removed her helmet and placed in on the roof, running a hand through her hair. She unclipped the thermos from her belt and poured a coffee into the lid. She took a long drink, feeling the caffeine surging through her system.

“What the hell, kid?” Kestrel asked. The Number Twelve Hero let her white wings spread out behind her. They contrasted sharply with her dark skin and were the same shade as her hair. Which was somewhat curious. The moth-girl, Kocho, from the Sports Festival, had also had hair that matched her wings. Was that a common factor in winged Quirks? “Just the fumes from that are getting my heart racing. What’s in that stuff?”

She gave her mentor a little shrug. “Just my usual blend. A combination of several brands noted for their high levels of caffeine as well as a large quantity of sugars.” It was her mother’s recipe, useful for pulling long nights in the lab or otherwise powering past the body’s usual limitations and pesky habit of requiring sleep. Who could sleep when there was always so much to be done?

She missed working in the lab. The projects she and Tensei had been working on still required significant amounts of testing and fine tuning and every moment lost was difficult to get again (Theoretical exercises about manipulation of the space-time continuum had suggested they were more likely to break causality and destroy the universe, so they had abandoned that plan.). But she also admitted that she had learned a lot from Kestrel already. The Razor-Wing Hero was one of the few Heroes who possessed both flight and incredible speed. Her own practice drills had been invaluable, especially for high speed turns. Sora would have to work them into her own practice routines and share them with her brother.

She also found herself missing Toshi. Her very first boyfriend, possibly her very first serious one. She liked him very much, his smile, his optimism, the curious but also adorable way he flailed and had difficulty talking when she was physically demonstrative. And, of course, the feeling of his muscles.

Kestrel pinched the bridge of her nose. An unexpected reaction. “Kid,” she said, “you’re going to give yourself a stroke at this rate. That stuff ought to be characterized as a biological weapon!”

The repeated “Kid” nomenclature was also something of a puzzlement. Kestrel was only eight years older than she was, the daughter of former Pro-Heroes Hawks and Mirko. She’d risen through the ranks rapidly in that time, cracking the Top Twenty within the second year as a full-fledged Hero and holding that position all that time.

She took another drink of her coffee. “Perhaps,” she said. “But I am quite used to it. As I am quite tall, you can see the worries of stunting my growth are baseless.”

Kestrel laughed at that. “Good joke, kid.”

“Joke?”

***

“Couple of jaywingers up ahead,” Kestrel said, pulling her goggles down. “Might just be kids acting up… but we should check it out.”

Jaywingers was common police and Hero parlance, referring to people with flight Quirks operating outside of designated flight path zones. While some use of flight Quirks for travel by civilians was permitted, there were still regulations and paths to be followed. There was too much air travel and too many buildings for such to be otherwise. A regrettable, but reasonable, balance between the freedom to exercise one’s Quirk and the need for a safe and regulated society.

“You take the one on the right,” Kestrel said. “I’ll take the one on the left!” She flapped her wings extra hard and took off like a shot.

“On it!” Sora said, giving herself an extra boot from her Jetpack. She would probably need a long drink or two of grape juice to refuel after this excursion. Fortunately, she had designed her Hero uniform with several storage compartments for juice rations, as had her brother.

It was, in fact, a teenager, perhaps a couple of years older than her. A boy, with spikey green hair several shades brighter than Toshi’s. He was dressed all in black leather. He didn’t have any obvious flight enhancements, such as Kestrel’s wings or her Jetpack. No were there less obvious means of propulsion, such as manipulating explosions or flame, or even wind. Even their teacher, Skyline, used what was technically a telekinetic body sheath to fly.

Pure flight Quirks, like something out of magna, were quite rare. Fortunately, he kept moving, since her Quirk required forward momentum and did not allow her to hover.

She pressed a button on the side of her helmet, activating the sound amplification speakers built into it. “Attention! You are in violation of multiple ordinances concerning flight path and speed! Please land immediately!”

The boy looked over his shoulder, then rotated in midair so he was facing her, while still flying backwards. “You going to make me, robot?” he asked, a self-satisfied smirk crossing his face.

“I have been authorized to use all necessary force to detain you,” Sora replied. “But would prefer not to cause undue injury. So I am again requesting that you land.”

“Nah,” he said. “Don’t think so.” He made a rude gesture with his hand, then spun in the air again and added a burst of speed. “You can’t catch me, Hero!”

“An interesting hypothesis,” Sora said, realizing that her height and armor made her age difficult to determine. If he believed her to be a full-fledged Hero, then so be it. “Let us test it.”

She spread the fingers on her right hand, sighting along the length of her gauntlet. Then, the brought her middle and ring fingers inward, double-tapping a button built into her palm with a precise application of force. Instantly, a long cable, ending in a loop, launched, covering the distance between herself and the teen. She let it fly and it wrapped around his ankle, letting her pull it tight.

He jerked in midair, flailing for a minute, slowing down to float and look back at her. He made another gesture that was even ruder than the first and tried to remove her capture weapon, but to no avail. His features went slightly paler, but he took off again, trying to fly every which way.

Against his pull, she adjusted the engine pipes of her Jetpack, so that she was pulling counter to him. She had a pretty good idea of his velocity and force now from having watched him, and the math needed to calculate the best degree of counterforce was simple enough. Then, she pressed her palm with her index and middle finger, triggering the retrieval spool for her capture weapon. Against that and against her own thrust, he stood no chance.

His face turned to a snarl as he realized there was no escape and he instead put all his flight power into flying towards her. His fist hit against her helmet hard and knocked her back, but the padding inside and metal outside protected her nicely. His first, however, was not so lucky.

“You… bitch!” he snarled, clutching his hand.

“I gave you ample opportunity for surrender,” she said. “The time for niceties is now over.” Her own fist struck out and clipped him upside the head. His head spun around and his eyes went wide, before he simply collapsed in mid-air. Her capture weapon ensured he did not fall.

“And that’s what you get for such salty language!” she said to his unconscious form.

***

On a near-by roof, Kestel made a call to the local police. They’d be sending someone as quickly as they could to retrieve the two jaywingers. Though Sora doubted that was what they were. Not with how much of a fight both of them had put up. Kestrel’s opponent had possessed some kind of force protection Quirk, which he had been able to use for both flight and offense. Several of her feathers were still imbedded in his clothing from the fight.

“Ugh,” Kestrel said. “Gonna be a big stack of paperwork for these two.”

“A simple apprehension form is not that complicated,” Sora told her.

Kestrel shook her hand, then opened her fist, revealing a couple of vials on her palm. “Trigger,” she said. “We haven’t been seeing a lot of it on the streets. Someone’s been buying up the whole supply or even raiding other criminal’s shipments. So I really want to know where they got it. We’re just lucky they didn’t get to use it.”

Sora perked up. Her primary skills were in machinery, but her knowledge of chemistry was nothing to sneeze at either. “Perhaps a scientific examination of their sample may yield insight into why they have it or how they came to possess it? Assuming they do not reveal anything voluntarily.”

The winged woman grinned. “Knew there was a reason I went with an egghead for an intern.”

***

Chihiro Kaminari in Plug In, Turn On, Get Shocked

“Seriously, Aunt Momo,” Chihiro said, “this is way too much.” They’d spent a lot of the first day of her Internship going over designs for her new costume and now, on the third day, it was finally ready.

Creati was the Number Eleven Hero, having been the Number Ten until Aunt Pony had taken the Number Seven Spot. Her Agency was large, boasting a number of different Sidekicks with a wide variety of different Quirks. Aunt Momo’s managerial skill and intelligence made it one of the smoothest operating Agencies in the entire country. Even if she was her godmother, Chihiro knew she was lucky to be working with her.

She needed the new more than she’d been willing to admit. Her original costume had been bare bones, little more than a yellow track suit with lightning bolt striping. She’d looked like something out of an old movie. No Support Gear, no nothing. The closest it’d gotten for doing anything for her was the fact that the jacket had pockets.

And as various events had proven, she really needed more than that. Mom has all the sound systems built into her costume, Dad has his Sharpshooting gear, she just jabbed things with her Extension Cords and electrocuted them. Which led to her letting out too much electricity at once. Which led to her temporarily frying her brain. And there definitely wasn’t enough in the costume stipend for this kind of overhaul.

Sure, she recovered faster than Dad did… But it was hardly a good use of her Quirk and it left her vulnerable while it happened.

The new costume was something different entirely. A black bodysuit was combined with white torso armor and boots, along with a small headpiece and visor. Finally, additional bracers and black circuit lined-gloves completed the ensemble. The bracers primary function was to allow her to plug her Cords into them, so that she could fire her electricity long range. Her output would be monitored by the visor, so she’d know when to back off.

More importantly, however, was the tool belt, containing numerous small devices she could power with her own electricity, like a flashlight, a strong magnet, GPS, a more complicated communications rig, even an electric arc welder. Each could be attached to the bracers or run independently. She’d still have to be careful, of course, but it gave her a chance to actually do something.

Aunt Momo had worked with Mrs. Hatsume to design the whole thing. They were even talking about a miniature rail gun and some other ports to plug into on the torso armor and boots. But those were apparently still in development.

But this represented something. She was well aware that, while her Quick was reasonably powerful… it really was a poor draw of the limitations of both of her parents’ Quirks. Like Mom, she was limited by what she could make contact with, and like Dad, she risked brain breakage with overuse. The worst of both worlds. That anyone supported her dreams of being a Hero at all was a sign of their faith in her, but this…

This would let her make good on that faith.

“You deserve the chance to be the best you can, Chihiro,” Aunt Momo said.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” she said, rubbing the back of her head awkwardly. “So really, thank you. But all this tech… I can’t imagine what this all cost, even with the friends and family discount.”

Aunt Momo shrugged. “I always budget generously for research and development. One never knows what might be needed. And I can’t make everything myself. Think nothing of it.”

Pretty much everyone in Chihiro’s immediate circle of friends was, to put it bluntly, well off. Some simply came from money to begin with, like the Iida Twins. And nearly all of them had a least one family member in the top One Hundred Heroes or higher, which came with significant earnings, to say nothing of merchandising. Even Chihiro herself was far from poor. Mom’s co-careers as musician and Hero did very well, and Dad, well, even the lower hundreds still drew a lot of cash.

Aunt Momo and family were in another class entirely. The Yaoyorozu and Todoroki fortunes were significant enough even before Aunt Momo and Uncle Shoto had gotten married.

But she knew Aunt Momo well enough to know that “think nothing of it” translated into “more expensive than most people could comprehend.”

Chihiro filed that under things she wasn’t going to think about.

“Come then,” Aunt Momo said. “Get changed and we’ll give it a good shakedown.”

***

“You say you wanna be a Hero,

But you feel like you’re a zero,

Feels like you lost without a fight,

Feels like you can’t do anything right,

But what you don’t know,

What you don’t see,

Is all you gotta do…

Is believe!

Take a stand,

Say “this is for me”

You’ve got the power,

To shape your destiny!

When your back’s to the wall,

That’s where you’ll excel,

Tell all those haters

They can go straight to hell!

You might start out small,

Maybe breaking your bones,

But someday you’ll be the greatest,

That anyone’s ever known!

You say you wanna be a Hero,

But you feel like you’re a zero,

Feels like you lost without a fight,

Feels like you can’t do anything right,

But what you don’t know,

What you don’t see,

Is all you gotta do…

Is believe!”

Chihiro retracted her Cords, powering down the speakers that had been built into her costume. They were mostly supposed to be used for voice projection, but she could loop her phone into it too. The music snapped off immediately. She wasn’t as good of a singer as Mom was, but she could carry a tune and harmonize well enough. “Believe” was the best-selling song Mom had written and that had been on a dare with Dad on whether or not she could get one of the schlockiest songs to sell. She’d expected that no one would want to play it, ever.

So of course it had gone to number one and stayed there for months. Mom used to say it had paid for their current house.

Chihiro, on the other hand, agreed with Dad. It was a great song.

“I always did like that one,” Aunt Momo said. She nodded smartly. “I’d say that confirms all of your equipment is working well.”

Chihiro let out a cheer. “I’ll say! I still can’t thank you enough, Aunt Momo. I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“I told you,” she replied, “think nothing of it. But still… perhaps over tea?”

***

Chihiro really wasn’t much of a tea drinker, but when your godmother dropped a small fortune on you in new gear, you had tea when she said you should have tea.

Her private office was spacious and expensively decorated, looking more like a study in a mansion (And Chihiro had been in the Todoroki-Yaoyorozu mansion, so she could confirm this) than anything else.

“So,” Aunt Momo said, after taking a sip of her tea. “I truly hate to do this, but as a mother… I must ask. Tell me about Izumi.”

“What?” Chihiro asked, taken by surprise.

“You’re one of her closest friends,” Aunt Mono went on. “And, as a mother, I worry. She tells us that everything is all right, and I saw her do quite well at the Sports Festival, but you see her every day.”

She put her teacup down and folded her hands. “So please, Chihiro, tell me how is she doing?”

“She’s fine, Aunt Momo,” Chihiro assured her. She understood, of course, why Aunt Momo might worry. Izumi’s health had had its ups and downs over the years, but it had largely stabilized over the last few.

Hero training was intense and physically demanding. It required incredibly physical shape and pushed even physical paragons like Midoriya or Shoji to their limits. Her own Quirk was less reliant on physicality, but Chihiro was often left exhausted by it as well.

She’d often seen Izumi being helped back to the locker room by Kirishima-Bakugo, who’d shoot daggers at anyone else who came close, ratcheting back the venom only when Izumi made her. Chihiro didn’t understand the friendship between the two of them at all… but she herself was friends with both Izumi and Mika, two people who couldn’t be less alike, and so wasn’t in much position to judge. Mika also insisted there was something more going on there, but was committed to being tight-lipped about it. Though if there was, something there had definitely changed since school started…

“She’s good,” Chihiro said. “Gives it everything she’s got. Plenty of friends. Helps some of the rest of us study. Hasn’t collapsed since the first week, unless you count the Sports Festival, and frankly, anything than can make Kirishima-Bakugo collapse would take out anything short of an elephant.”

She frowned, feeling very uncomfortable with the question. She knew Izumi questioned every day whether she was good enough to be in the Hero Course, if any given day was going to be the day her body let her down, let someone else down. And she also knew she tried harder than anyone to keep up and go beyond.

“And I’m sorry,” she added, “but even if she wasn’t… I’m not gonna rat her out. That’s Izumi’s business, not mine to blab. But I’m not worried about her, for what it’s worth.”

Aunt Momo’s mouth opened in protest, then closed again. Finally, after regaining her composure, she spoke. “Thank you,” she said. “For your honesty… and your reassurances. I wonder sometimes, if I worry too much.”

Chihiro shrugged. “You’re a mom. Kind of your job. Pretty sure Mom’s always worried I’m going to shock my brains out.”

That got a smile from Aunt Momo. “She may have confessed that occasionally.”

The ringing desk phone interrupted any other questions. Aunt Momo saw the caller ID and answered it. “Hello, Denki,” she said, switching it to speaker phone. Worry tinged her voice now.

That was weird. Why would Dad be calling? Izumi was interning with him, though…

“Oh, ah, hey, Momo,” Dad said. “So, ah, we may have, ah, screwed up. Izumi knows about Plague.”

Aunt Momo went pale at that.

Who or what was Plague?

#my hero academia #their hero academia #shota shinso #sora iida #chihiro kaminari #momo yaoyorozu #katsuki bakugo #fan fic #fan fiction #my writing

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