Kapitel 2000: 19
Cheat Code: Support StrategistClouds (myheadinthecoudsnotcomingdown)
Chapter 19: Noise
Summary:
The chaos duo runs more experiments on their extra credit project.
Notes:
Look at all this art!
I'm totally a fish
Sour Cream
Tegdirb
Chapter Text
"You rely on your quirk too much."
Izuku almost felt bad saying it, especially since Shinso was taking time out of his day to talk to them during lunch. His quirk was amazing, so of course he relied on it, and it was part of him, so Izuku couldn't discount that, but…
"Yep!" Mei piped up, shoveling a spoonful of rice in her mouth. "But don't feel bad! Most heroes do, but that's why you have us!"
Shinso looked at them skeptically, "And how am I supposed to be a hero without my quirk?"
Izuku waved his hands frantically in front of him, "Not without your quirk! We would never tell you to hold yourself back like that! It's just that...well, you see…"
"It's the activation requirements." Mei interrupted. "You're pretty good at making people respond to you, but eventually you're going to come across someone who has more self control than you have sass."
Izuku couldn't hold back a huff of shocked laughter, "Yeah. What she said. The fact is that once people know about your quirk, you have a huge handicap. It would be like if a villain immediately took Snipe's gun at the beginning of a fight. He would still have his quirk, but he wouldn't be able to use it."
"The only difference here is that Snipe can use his quirk to protect his gun, you can't." Mei thought for a moment. "He also carries an extra gun. Izu-kun! Let's give Extra-Credit-Kun a gun!!!"
Shinso looked at them in shock and a bit of fear, so Izuku figured he wasn't quite ready for that, despite the amazing potential the idea had, "Maybe let's start with something smaller, like how we can prevent villains from finding out about his quirk."
"Nice thought." Shinso pointed at them with his chopsticks. "But that's the thing about my quirk. If you fall for it once, you know how it works."
"Maybe…" Izuku flipped through his notebook until he found a page that he'd used to scribble ideas. "How long does your connection last?"
Shinso shrugged, "No idea. I've never been allowed to control someone for more than a few minutes. That experiment with you the other day was as long as I've ever gone."
"That's not what I…" Izuku had to take a second to gather his thoughts. "I mean, that's good to know, but how long can you wait between getting a response and taking control?"
Shinso looked surprised, then thoughtful, "I don't know. I always thought it was best to just take control as soon as I can, so I've never actually tried to wait or anything…"
Izuku grinned and flipped to a new page in his notebook, "Perfect! So, how do you know the connection has been formed? Do you have to try to brainwash then or can you just feel it?"
"I can feel it." Shinso said quietly. "It's like the person is inside my brain... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you that. I don't want to make you uncomfortable."
Mei responded by slapping Shinso over the head, "Stop that! Good experiments are uncomfy! You never learn anything interesting just by sitting on your butt! So embrace the awkward!!!"
Izuku laughed, then saw the shocked expression on Shinso's face and laughed even harder, "I didn't know you could give inspirational speeches, Mei-chan!"
"I'm a woman of many talents." Mei said cryptically. "You'll never discover them all!"
"And on that terrifying note," Shinso drawled, "Do you want to start?"
"Of course!" Izuku responded with a grin. "Do you have the connection now?"
Shinso nodded with a concentrated look on his face, but didn't respond. Izuku nodded, it must take a fair amount of focus to keep the connection without completing the brainwash, "Mei, start the timer."
"Already on it, Izu-kun!" Mei pressed a few buttons on her phone and the experiment officially began. "So... Izu-kun. How are the hero students doing? Any opportunities for me to make super awesome babies?!"
"They're doing well!" Izuku smiled and grabbed one of the many notebooks he'd created for the project. Each student had their own notebook dedicated to their quirks and ideas, and while some were still completely empty, others were already halfway full. The notebook Izuku happened to grab was for one of the class 1-B students with a really cool copy quirk, "Take this guy, Monoma, for example! He can copy any quirk for five minutes, but I think there might be a way for him to create...well, basically a stockpile of quirks. If he has to touch a person's whole body, then that won't work, but if it works with any dna…"
"Then he can incorporate different quirks into his costume and always have them on hand when he needs them!" Mei grinned. "I like the way you think, Izu-kun!'
Suddenly, Izuku's brain went foggy as the increasingly familiar feeling of Shinso's quirk washed over him. It only lasted a few seconds before Shinso released his control.
"I am so sorry." Shinso was a little out of breath and looked pale and slightly sweaty. "I...I held on for as long as I could, but...why is that so difficult?"
"Because your quirk wants action." Izuku said. "Instinctively, people want to either do something, or not. No one likes being caught in an in between place. But this is great! You don't have to take control immediately, which gives you a few minutes to disguise your real activation requirements. Mei-chan! How long did he last?"
"Two minutes, eight seconds!" Mei declared. "I'd prefer if it were a little longer, but.."
"But we can train for that." Izuku agreed. "Ideally, we could get him up to five minutes between response and control before the sports festival, but we'll of course have to see how things work and…"
"Wait, back up." Shinso interrupted. "What do you mean my real activation requirements? And shouldn't I be focused on keeping control of people longer or controlling more people or giving more advanced orders or something? What's the point of training to wait before taking control, which isn't easy by the way, when as a hero, I should be trying to resolve situations as quickly as possible?"
Izuku looked at Mei, who shrugged. He thought they'd explained everything pretty well…
Shinso sighed, "How about you two start again at the beginning, but this time pretend that you're talking to someone who doesn't have a single clue you're trying to say...because I don't."
"Oh…" Izuku glanced at Mei again before taking a deep breath to try to organize his thoughts, "Um, ok. So, the main problem with your quirk is that it's more effective if your opponent doesn't know what it is, right?"
"That's the basic idea, yeah." Shinso rolled his eyes. "But what does that have to do with the time between their response and my control? Because from where I'm sitting, it seemed like a non sequiter."
"It's a red herring!" Mei grinned.
Shinso didn't look any less confused and raised an eyebrow at Izuku after apparently giving up getting anything close to a normal answer from Mei.
"It's about distracting whoever you're fighting with and burying the truth inside a bunch of useless information." Izuku explained. "For example, sometimes in books, something important will be thrown out, but the readers won't realize it, because the man with the scar who turns out to be the villain was mentioned right alongside a woman with a large hat who was completely unimportant."
"If you take control immediately after you get an answer," Mei flicked Shinso on the forehead, "then it's like putting a big neon sign above your head explaining how your quirk works."
"Oh thanks." Shinso said dryly.
"But," Izuku said quickly, "if you wait a few minutes between establishing the connection and giving the order, and use those minutes to do things like make direct eye contact or establish physical contact, or...I don't know, jump up and down three times while singing nursery rhymes, then…"
"Then no one will know exactly which of those things established the connection." Mei finished.
"I don't sing." Shinso deadpanned, but Izuku could see the faintest trace of a smile in his eyes, and it looked like he finally understood what they were going for. "Ok, so when do I start."
"Well, technically you started today." Izuku said cheekily. "But we'll have a schedule for you by tomorrow if you come by after classes. Do you have anyone at home that you can practice your quirk with?"
Shinso's expression immediately closed off...interesting, "No."
"That's alright!" Izuku said, forcing a layer of cheeriness past his curiosity and, surprisingly, a little bit of anger on Shinso's behalf. "Then you'll just have to practice with us! I don't want you to do any more today, since this exercise is still so new and it's the first time that your brain has had to do it, so we should let it rest, but starting tomorrow, you should start practicing that waiting exercise we just did two or three times a day. For the sports festival, you also need to be able to complete distracting tasks before you officially activate your quirk, so we should focus on getting you to the point where you don't even have to think about it and have full autonomy on when you activate your connection!"
Shinso looked a little pale, but Izuku noticed that he also looked determined, just like himself when he used to say he'd be a hero despite his quirklessness. It didn't work out for him, but if he could still help people like Shinso who deserved to be heroes, then that was more than enough. Shinso would overcome every obstacle put in his path and save so many people and Izuku would have a hand in that! It was almost even better than his own old dream.
"Perfect!" Mei broke the tension by grabbing Shinso by the arm and dragging him back out into the main lab. "Now that Izu-kun's had a chance to do his thing, it's my turn! I'm so excited! I have so many awesome babies for you to try!"
"B-babies?!" Shinso looked nervous and a little shocked, but why…? Izuk felt a little bad, but he couldn't help laughing when he realized that he had never actually explained some of Mei's more... exciting eccentricities to Shinso. Oh well, better late than never he supposed.
"She means her inventions!" Izuku managed to gasp between his chuckles. "Mei-chan calls her inventions her babies because she cares about them so much."
"I made them, Izu-kun!" Mei cried indignantly. "If you poured your heart and soul into something you'd call them your babies too!"
"I do pour my heart and soul into something." Izuku grinned cheekily. "I call them my notebooks."
"So... we're just going to be looking at inventions," Shinso confirmed, "not experimenting with human children?"
"The only human children we'll be experimenting on are ourselves!" Mei said gleefully, grabbing a large cardboard box from her workstation. "Extra-Credit-Kun! Grab that box under the table!"
Shinso shrugged and went to pick up the box, only to stumble when the weight was more than he expected. "What's in this thing, rocks!?"
"Oh hush, it's not that heavy." Mei dismissed. "Izu-kun, grab the other one."
Izuku shrugged and ignored the way that Shinso looked at him knowingly as he tried to pick up the box, only to grunt and fall backwards onto his butt, "Mei-chan, seriously?! How strong are you?!"
"It's not my fault you boys are weak." Mei shrugged. "Come on, we need to steal one of the soundproof test rooms."
Izuku stared after her in shock as she walked away and for the first time noticed how much muscle tone she actually had. She'd handled that box like it was nothing, even though both he and Shinso had struggled. He supposed it made sense with how much heavy material she had to work with while inventing, but it was still really impressive...
"Are you just gonna keep staring at her butt all day," Kohaku asked dryly, looking up from her own invention, "or are you actually gonna help her?"
"I-I, uh," Izuku sputtered and turned bright red, "I wasn't...I didn't…umm…"
Deciding that it was best to just cut his losses, Izuku grabbed the box and hefted it as best he could before leaving his snickering classmates behind and following Mei and Shinso. Mei was already taking things out of her box while Shinso was catching his breath and leaning against the wall. Izuku set his box down heavily next to the other two on the table and started shaking out his arms.
"That was…" Shinso looked at Mei, "Is she actually human? Or is she just some robot that killed its creator and started updating itself while pretending to be human?"
"Oooh!" Mei grinned. "If I…"
"No, Mei-chan." Izuku said patiently. "You can't make yourself into a cyborg."
Mei deflated, then brightened and was about to say something, but Izuku interrupted her before she could say what he knew she was going to say, "You can't make Shinso into a cyborg either."
Mei pouted, "It'd be a great way to get around that stupid one support item only rule that the gen-ed students have. And how is he gonna beat the hero course if he can't even lift a box?"
"Hey!" Shinso straighted up. "I lifted it! I did better than Midoriya anyway."
"Izu-kun is an analyst." Mei-chan said. "He can afford to be a weakling."
"Thanks." Izuku deadpanned, then frowned thoughtfully. "But in all seriousness, it would probably be a good idea for you to take up some sort of physical training, Shinso. Your quirk will probably keep you out of most fights, but there's always times that a hero has to rely on their body more than their quirk. Take Eraserhead, for example! He's such a great hero because of his martial arts training, not just his ability to cancel quirks!"
"You like Eraserhead?" Shinso asked. "I've never met someone else who liked him. Most people I talked to before UA just thought I was making him up."
"Oh, he's one of my favorites!" Izuku grinned. "Did you hear he's one of the teachers here?! Have you seen him yet?"
"No, I've been looking everywhere, hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the halls, but I haven't had any luck." Shinso frowned. "I guess he's just that good at stealth, huh?"
"I mean, you kinda have to be to avoid the media as a professional hero." Izuku said. "What do you think…"
"Experiments now, fanboying later." Mei said, popping between them with a large metal mask in one hand and three pairs of protective earmuffs in the other. "Put these on!"
Izuku put one of the earmuffs around his neck as Mei helped Shinso into the mask, "If you want, we could probably use one of the school's gyms to work out and try to gain some strength before the sports festival."
Shinso raised an eyebrow at him, "We?"
Izuku shrugged and stretched out his arms, "I sit in front of a screen all day, I've been getting sore. Everywhere online says that adding some physical activity into my schedule will help with that. Plus, I can't just call Mei-chan every time I need to move something heavy."
"I'm sure she'd be more than happy to open all the jars for you." Shinso smirked.
"Nope, too busy!" Mei said. "Now Extra-Credit-Kun, stand on the other side of that plexiglass and yell."
Shinso's eyes widened, "Yell?!"
Mei grinned and nodded, "We need a baseline for volume!"
"Ok…" Shinso walked across the room and waited until both Mei and Izuku had put on their earmuffs before taking a deep breath and yelling as loudly as he could, shaking the room. Mei took a few notes, looking at an instrument in her hands that Izuku had no idea what it was or how to read it, but assumed it told her something about the decibels or volume or whatever.
She pulled one side of her earmuffs away from her, prompting Izuku and Shinso to do the same, "Ok, Extra-Credit-Kun, now try to brainwash Izu-kun!"
Shinso nodded and turned to Izuku, "What's your favorite food?"
"Katsudon."
Izuku waited for the familiar feeling of Shinso's quirk to wash over him, but instead, after a few seconds, Shinso just shook his head, "I can't make the connection. Is this mask electronically transmitting my voice?"
"Yes." Mei said. "Is that a problem?"
"It must be a problem with quirk transmission." Izuku said. "Whatever establishes the connection is carried on the voice itself, so having a speaker probably blocks that part. Is that right?"
When Shinso nodded, Mei took another prototype from one of the boxes and handed it to Shinso, "Ok! Mask baby 2.0! This should magnify your voice without need for a speaker!"
"And you just have this?" Shinso asked.
"We knew that might be a risk." Izuku responded. "And Mei enjoyed the challenge."
"It's not as advanced as my other babies." Mei said. "But for now, it should amplify your voice and I can modify it later to act as a voice changer! Now go yell!"
Shinso walked back behind the plexiglass and screamed, making Izuku wince, even with his earmuffs. Mei wrote something down, then gestured for him to do it again. When he finished, Izuku felt like his ears were still ringing...or wait, was that something else?
He held up a hand to signal Shinso to stop and took off his earmuffs, "Do you guys hear anything?"
"I'm wearing earmuffs in a soundproof room." Shinso deadpanned. "The only thing I can hear is my own thoughts."
Izuku frowned but listened closer, and, sure enough he could still hear something coming from outside, "Do you hear that, Mei-chan?"
Mei nodded, "It sounds like alarms."
The three of them hurried to the door and opened it, only to be blasted with the sound of blaring alarms and flashing lights. The classroom was already empty, and their classmates were nowhere to be found.
"They must have assumed we heard the alarm." Mei said. "Or they tried knocking on the door and we didn't hear them."
"Did we cause the alarm to go off?!" Izuku was panicking. "I didn't think we were being that loud, but if something went wrong and I mean, sound can cause damage, look at Present Mic! Are we going to get in trouble?! What if they never let us near a test room again? What if they expel…"
"They're not going to be mad at us for setting off an alarm, Izu-kun!" Mei groaned. "And I don't think this was us anyway. It would have taken at least twice as much noise to trigger the auditory attack defense system.
"Should we leave?" Shinso asked. "I don't want to be here if that's a fire alarm."
"But my babies!" Mei said. "I can't just leave them!"
"Mei…" Whatever Izuku was about to say was cut off by the alarms going silent. "Or not."
The PA system crackled to life and Nedzu's cheery voice filtered through the speakers, "Hello students, the threat has been handled! Please calmly return to class!"
"Alright, then!" Mei said, pushing both boys back in the soundproof room. "Back to testing!'
Izuku thought it was odd that there was an alarm in the middle of the day, and what had Nedzu meant by threat? He meant to look into it later, he really did, but then Mei started another round of experiments, and he completely forgot.
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein