Capítulo 2001: 20
Cheat Code: Support StrategistClouds (myheadinthecoudsnotcomingdown)
Chapter 20: Anomalies
Summary:
Izuku notices something odd on the cameras as he watches class 1A.
Notes:
Sorry this is a day late. I'm still alive, just suffering with writers block.
I've been looking forward to writing these next few chapters since before the beginning of the story!
Chapter Text
Izuku sharpened his pencils and separated the notebooks he'd dedicated to class 1A. He didn't really think he'd learn anything new about their quirks today, since they were just doing a special rescue lesson, but it would be interesting to see how they applied their quirks in an non-combat oriented situation. He was particularly excited to see how Katsuki reacted to being confronted with a problem that he couldn't punch.
Izuku glanced at the clock. The class would be arriving in just a few minutes, assuming that no one had any issues getting into their costumes or anything, so he went ahead and opened up the camera feeds to get a visual of Thirteen already waiting inside. Their quirk was so amazing! Izuku made a mental note that he needed to get their autograph sometime, maybe after the sports festival?
Since the students hadn't arrived yet, Izuku figured he might as well use the time to familiarize himself with the facility. It was so cool! There were all sorts of different terrain that simulated different disasters that the students would have to deal with as pro heroes, and from his place inside the system, Izuku could easily see all the different controls for each of the zones. At any point, Thirteen, Nedzu or whoever was teaching could easily turn off any of the disaster zones if anything went wrong, or even turn them up or control them almost like a video game to offer their students more of a challenge. They'd all been set to the lowest automatic disaster setting for the first years, obviously, but Izuku knew he'd be asking Nedzu if he could observe one of the third years' rescue exercises so he could see the building's full potential. It was so cool!
Movement on one of his screens caught his eye as the bus finally arrived and the students started to file off following a grumpy Eraserhead like a line of little ducklings. Izuku snickered to himself. Maybe there was a way he could make sure Katsuki heard that? It would be sure to piss him off.
The last student left the bus, Izuku checked the schedule. Wasn't All Might supposed to be there today? As Thirteen lectured the students on quirk safety, Izuku hummed thoughtfully and pulled out his phone to check the news. Mei had called him to ramble about a new idea, right as he was about to get on the train, so he hadn't had a chance to read the headlines that morning like he unusually did.
Sure enough, All Might was all over the news, which meant that he must already be either near or over his limit for the day. Izuku couldn't really fault him, since those people obviously needed to be saved and being their hero was All Might's job, but he had been really looking forward to seeing his favorite hero perform rescue exercises just like his debut! Even if he wouldn't actually be in the same room, it still would have been really cool to watch something like that live.
With the mystery of All Might's absence solved, Izuku turned his attention back to the screens in front of him, where Thirteen was finishing up their lecture as a blackish-purple ...something… started to appear behind them. Izuku frowned and zoomed in to get a closer look. He hadn't seen any obstacles like that in the system, but it was possible he'd missed something…
Suddenly, every single camera cut out at the exact same time.
Izuku immediately attacked his keyboard, desperately trying to convince himself that there was no reason to panic. It must just be a weird electrical glitch or something! There was no way that that purple thing was a villain trying to attack the students, right? But, even if it was an electrical glitch, there was a failsafe on another electrical system that would trigger the alarms if a certain number of cameras stopped working, and that alarm wasn't going off. No alarms were.
After a minute of trying to get the cameras back up, Izuku hesitantly stood up and left his desk. It was probably nothing. UA's security was the best of the best! But it still wouldn't hurt to have Powerloader call Thirteen and make sure everything was alright, right? It was completely unnecessary and would probably annoy them, because there was definitely not a villain attack happening right now, but just in case there was…
Izuku slowly approached Powerloader's desk, only to find him talking to Hanzou. He didn't want to interrupt him while he was helping another student, but there might be an attack happening right now!
"Um, Powerloader?"
"Hmm, Midoriya?" Powerloader nodded to him, "I'll be with you in just a minute."
Izuku took a deep breath. The longer he thought about it, the more the whole situation just seemed wrong. He familiarized himself with the USJ, and there was nothing that was like that purple thing. Now was definitely not the time to let his social anxiety get the better of him.
"Actually, sir," Izuku tried to inject as much urgency as he could, hoping Powerloader would get the message without making the class panic, "I need you to check something out. Now."
Powerloader looked at him strangely, "Hanzu, just keep working. I'm going to see what Midoriya needs and I'll be back in a minute…"
When Hazou shrugged good-naturedly, Izuku walked back to his workroom as quickly as he could without running, grateful beyond belief that Powerloader was so different from his middle school teachers and trusted him without asking too many questions. It was nice and he would probably be crying if he wasn't so worried.
A part of him half-expected the cameras to be working again when he got back to his computer, making his entire anxiety attack an embarrassing overreaction, but of course, all of his screens were still blank. Izuku waited for Powerloader to follow him in before closing the door.
"Alright Midoriya, what is this about?" Powerloader asked. "It's not like you to interrupt like that. Mei, yes, obviously. But not…"
"I lost contact with the USJ." Izuku blurted out.
Powerloader froze, "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"I was watching 1A over the cameras and everything was fine, but then there was this purple thing and the cameras just stopped working! I couldn't find anything like that in the system and there should be alarms going off but there's not and…" Izuku forced himself to stop rambling and took a deep breath. "I think it might be a villain attack."
Powerloader took a sharp intake of breath, "It's All Might, Thirteen, and Eraserhead there today, right?"
Izuku shook his head, "Thirteen and Eraserhead are there, but All Might's already at his limit. Um...is there any way you could call them? Just to make sure everything's alright?"
Powerloader was already pulling out his phone, "Why am I not surprised that you know about that? I'm sure everything's fine...this'll just take a minute."
Izuku held his breath as the phone rang. After a long minute, Powerloader took the phone from his ear and dialed another number, "Eraser sometimes doesn't answer the phone, you know how he is, he thinks it's a waste of time, but Thirteen should have their phone on them."
Powerloader's face grew more and more worried as the phone continued ringing with no answer until he finally put it away, "I need to report this to Nedzu."
Izuku gulped and sat down at his desk, pulling his keyboard toward him. So it was an attack then, "I'll try to reconnect with the cameras and keep you updated."
Powerloader nodded stiffly and left, only to return a second later with a small box that he set down on the desk in front of him, "Have you ever used a comm link before?"
Izuku shook his head and Powerloader took one out and handed it to him, "Ok, channel control is right on the side there, just tune it to channel three and you'll be able to talk to any of the teachers once they turn their comms on. It's an open line, so we should be able to hear everything. Do you understand?"
Izuku set up the comm like Powerloader had told him and put it in his ear, then nodded. Powerloader returned the gesture before throwing open the door to the lab, "Hanzou, as class rep, I'm leaving you in charge. Make sure nobody blows anything up."
There were some groans and exclamations, but Powerloader didn't pay attention to any of them as he closed the door to the workroom and left the lab as quickly as he could. Izuku distantly noted that he didn't run either. So they didn't want to cause a panic at the main school then. Ok, cool. His fingers flew over the keyboard as he started troubleshooting the cameras. He had only been at it a few minutes when the PA system crackled to life, but Izuku barely noticed the announcement.
"All teachers please report to the front office immediately. Again, all teachers to the front office."
There was a small string of code that seemed to be repeating and it looked almost like it could be a technology quirk of some kind that was blocking the signals. Izuku felt torn, on the one hand, having a quirk involved meant that it was almost definitely villains, but on the other, Izuku knew quirks. All he had to do was find the quirk's weakness and exploit it.
"Midoriya?" Powerloader's voice echoed in his earpiece. "Are you still there?"
"Yes, sir." Izuku didn't stop working, even as the other teachers started talking.
"Wait, the little listener's on the comm link?" That was Present Mic's voice, he knew it well enough from listening to his radio show for years.
"Young Midoriya's here?" All Might asked.
It seemed like Nedzu was ignoring all of them, since he addressed Izuku next, "Have you had any luck in re-establishing contact with the USJ facility?"
"Not yet, sir." Izuku said distractedly. "But it is a technology quirk and...Yes!"
"Do you have a visual?" Powerloader asked.
"What?" Izuku's brain took a moment to catch up. "Oh, no, not yet, but I figured out how the blocking quirk works. It seems to only be blocking a specific type of signal. I mean, that's obviously what our cameras are using, but I might be able to jury rig things from my side and use another type of signal to connect."
"Alright." Nedzu said. "Do that and tell us immediately when you get through."
Izuku felt a small surge of pride. Nedzu had said when, not if. He believed in him!
He shook his head. No time to think about that right now. Right now he needed to make sure that the teachers weren't going into this fight blind. It took him a few minutes to hack his way through, but he'd already tried hacking UA twice now, so he knew how all the systems worked and with the extra permissions that Nedzu had given him, Izuku had just barely enough experience and authority to do what he had in mind. He hit one final key, the cameras flared to life again, and Izuku didn't like what he saw.
Those were definitely villains.
"Nedzu, I have a visual."
"What's the situation?"
"Students have been scattered throughout the facility." Izuku reported. "Eraserhead is fighting, but he's outnumbered. There are dozens of them...mostly low level though, it looks like. Thirteen is by the entrance protecting some of the students. They seem to be in a stalemate with one of the villains, probably the one responsible for the purple thing I saw before the cameras cut out, considering they seem to be made of some kind of purple mist."
Izuku didn't know how he was so composed considering that there was a villain attack happening and oh god, people might die , but he supposed he was just too busy to panic. Or maybe he was channeling his panic into focus? That made sense.
Suddenly, the stalemate between Thirteen and the villain broke.
"Thirteen is down!" Izuku yelled. "I repeat, Thirteen is down!"
He heard several of the teachers swear over the line, but he was too busy starting at the screen to respond. Thirteen...were they even going to survive that attack? Is this what villains really did? Izuku felt so powerless. He wasn't even there! He couldn't even do anything to help them!
"There's a physical limit to how fast we can go…" Hound Dog growled.
All Might sounded worried, "Maybe I should…"
"No." Izuku started scanning the cameras again. "You're already at your limit. If you use what little you have left to get there, you're not going to have enough energy left to fight the villains. The students are holding their own for now. The one that hurt Thirteen has a warp quirk and turned their quirk against them. It was a lucky shot, and it won't work against most of the students."
"But…"
"Midoriya is correct." Nedzu said. "If there is a warp quirk, there might be other powerful quirks as well. The students need you to be as close to full strength as possible. Eraserhead is still there and the villains don't know that we know of the attack, so it's better to go as fast as humanly possible for now. Midoriya, let us know if anything changes."
"Will do."
Izuku felt so useless! There had to be something he could do! It might help the heroes if he could figure out why the heroes were there...and for that he needed audio. Izuku used the same hack he'd used on the cameras and started eavesdropping on the various villain's conversations, switching the microphones rapidly as he tried to overhear anything useful.
"...didn't tell me the plan, kid I swear!" One of the villain's was caught in Todoroki's ice quirk. "All they told me was that they're gonna kill All Might! That's all I know."
Izuku switched mics again as Todoroki started unthawing the villain. Not...the most hero-like, but then again, neither was hacking, so he couldn't talk, "They're here to kill All Might. I don't know why or how yet."
There was a villain near where Eraserhead was fighting, but he almost seemed to be supervising instead of fighting himself. Izuku switched to one of the mics near him as the villain started scratching at his neck. A stress response?
"When's the final boss gonna get here?" The villain's voice was raspy as he muttered to himself. "We're running out of NPCs!"
So...immature? It was hard to tell how old the villain was, but considering that he called his own men NPCs, he was almost definitely the leader. Probably antisocial, considering the video game references...final boss must be All Might. Did he know that the heroes were on their way? No, then he would have said something about final bosses or even mini bosses, but he didn't, so he was probably thinking that All Might was just late…
Still, the video game references gave him an idea.
Now that he'd done it twice, it didn't take Izuku all that long to hack into each of the different zones. Within minutes, he had the weapons of artificial flooding, earthquake simulators, flamethrowers and so much more at his fingertips. With Eraserhead slowing down, he had to do everything in his power to make sure that the students were safe.
"Alright villain, you wanna treat this like a game?" Izuku stretched his hands out in front of him, popping his knuckles. "Then let's play."
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