A Slippery Slope: Ch 3

Statistically speaking, one of these days I'll get a chapter out on time (this one was on me btw, no callender mishaps this time), but then again statistically speaking, life should give me both time to write, and stable wifi at the same time every once and a while… Which hasn't happened yet

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

Moving on.

There's been so many emotional outbursts from the smol green bean in the recent chapters.

He's a great character, don't get me wrong but it sucks that cannon!beginning Izuku is so polar. It's either Hero Mode" no fear, go all out. Or Meek, and passive. It makes it difficult to guide him through certain situations.

They mitigate this in the show by having all the trouble come to Izuku in the beginning, gradually building him up until he gets the confidence to go and track Bakugo down when he was captured by the league of villains at the training camp.

AKA: They used character development

Sooooooooo

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

It's about time for some character development.

-Rain of Sins-

-A Slippery Slope: Chapter 3-

"Hey Green, ready for your first day?"

-Later-

"Nonononono, the red vial goes over-"

-Later-

"Pay attention, if you do it like this…"

-Later-

"You know kid… I knew you were going to surprise me one day, you are my successor after all, but I'll be honest… before this moment… I didn't think it was possible to catch that on fire…"

-Later-

"Izuku!"

"Y-Yes D-Dr U-ujiko?"

"Stop stuttering, it's annoying!"

"S-S-S-Sor-"

"WHAT DID I JUST SAY!?"

"Aaaaaaah!"

-Later-

"Uhhhhhh."

"Don't tell the boss?"

"S-Sure!"

-Later-

"A-Are you sure you want me working on the nomu? I-I mean I only started here a f-few days ago…"

"Meh, you'll mostly just be handing people stuff. Besides, what could go wrong?"

-Later-

"The left one. NO! The other left! Oh shit, OH FU-!"

-Later-

"W-What does doing y-your paperwork for you have to do with b-being a scientist?"

"It's uhhhh, character building"

-Later-

"So the red vial goes…"

"Yup, now you're getting it!"

-Later-

"Unlike early genetic engineering techniques that randomly inserts genetic material into a host genome, genome editing targets the insertions to site spe-"

"Green! Stop muttering to yourself when you're reading!"

"S-SORRY!"

-Later-

"Hey, good job Green! You did it!"

-Later-

"Way to go kid!"

-Later-

"Not half bad Green"

-Later-

"Keep up the good work!"

-Later-

"You're doing great!"

-Later-

Izuku sighed as he dropped his head on the table, his forehead making a 'fwump' noise as it impacted the open book beneath him. It was an interesting book, covering the more exotic theories behind how quirks worked. But the book wasn't what had him sighing, it was the fact that tomorrow would mark one full month of him working at the lab, and quite frankly he was exhausted.

It had been quite an experience.

One one hand there were times when he got to learn things he had never imagined, and was allowed to truly let his mind run free, no one was really bothered by his muttering, and his more off-the-wall ideas had actually been encouraged… And then on the other hand there were times like on his second day, where he almost burnt off his thumb.

But generally speaking, Izuku could honestly say it had been an overall enjoyable experience.

Now not all of it was enjoyable, sure, especially that first week where he learned the hard way that no matter how smart he was, he had no idea how to operate in a lab environment. Izuku didn't walk in on the first day and suddenly start schooling highly studied scientists. At first he'd stumbled around, tripping on his own feet, and provided as much help as a human sized sack of potatoes. But the "trial by fire" as Ujiko put it, while painful, had turned out for the better, and with time to get over his nerves and some personal tutoring from Ujiko, he now was able to at least keep up with Yuyara and co while they worked.

Izuku continued to muse over his time in the lab silently, until he was snapped out of his thoughts as Yuyara plopped down on the bench opposite from him with a happy smile, unceremoniously dropping her food tray onto the bland cafeteria table with a metallic bang.

Yuyara had been extraordinarily helpful to Izuku since he started at the lab- though how much of that was her genuinely being nice to Izuku, and how much was just her trying to get on the good side of Ujiko's successor, was still up in the air.

"Hey Green, whatcha reading?" Yuyara asked, though more as a way to begin a conversation than actual curiosity.

She got two bites into her meal before she registered the fact Izuku hadn't responded. Sending a questioning glance up from her food, she got-

"I am currently reading 'Jonathan Gold's extrapolated theories on quirk usage' written by Jonathan Gold."

Yuyara simply raised an eyebrow in response, causing Izuku to blush in slight embarrassment.

…

"Ujiko told me the best way to stop stuttering is to clearly think out everything I say beforehand, so I can read it like a script."

"Aaaaah." She nodded in understanding. "I understand now Mr robot, you don't have to continue explaining."

"R-Robot!?"

"Yea, no offense," Yuyara spoke through a bite of food, "But it makes you sound like a robot."

Izuku blushed in embarrassment and tugged at the hem of his lab coat. Speaking of his lab coat, he had gotten it on his first day in the lab, where Ujiko had proudly "bestowed it upon him". Later that day he had offhandedly mentioned it was itchy to the doctor, who in turn glared at Yuyara, who admittedly hadn't actually done anything wrong this time. The coat hadn't been slightly itchy since… It was actually a bit creepy.

"Anyway, here ya go."

"What's this?" Izuku questioned as he took a folded white bundle from Yuyara.

"It's a high quality medical face mask that doctors wear, with your tendency to catch chemicals on fire, boss wanted me to give one to you."

"H-Hey, that only happened once!"

"Green, you sent an entire storage rack up in flames."

"S-Still only once!"

Desperate to change the topic, Izuku defaulted to a question that he'd been meaning to ask for awhile now.

"Why do we only have sporks?"

Yuyara rolled her eyes, well aware of his obvious attempt to shift the conversation away from anything embarrassing she could tease him about, but still responded anyway.

"They're cheaper."

"Cheaper?"

"Mmhm, easier to buy one one utensil than two."

"Th-that's the only reason?"

"What? You got something against sporks?"

"N-No! It's the o-opposite actually!"

"Opposite?" The scientist smirked. "Now this sounds good."

"W-W-Wel," Izuku stammered, well aware he had just talked himself directly into a corner, "When I was a kid…" He trailed off into a mutter, nervously fiddling with the book in front of him.

"Come on Green, you gotta speak up if you want anyone to hear you." Yuyara snickered.

"Wh-when I was l-little, I th-thought they were cool b-because they were like sp-poons with a qu-quirk…"

To Yuyara's credit, she waited a few seconds to start laughing.

"Q-Quirk? That's * snicker * that's amazing! HAHA!" She took a moment to compose herself. "S-So green, * chuckle * do you have any other random questions that will never benefit humanity?"

"A-Actually!"

Izuku, eager to steer the conversation a different way again, pulled out a notebook from his coat with "Lab Analysis vol 1" neatly written across the cover in permanent marker. The notebook, while still new, showed considerable wear from consistent use, and it's cover had several stains and burns spread across its face.

"I-I've been wondering about your quirk."

"My quirk?" She raised an eyebrow. "Meh, my quirk's useless."

"You mean it doesn't help you with your work?"

"No, I mean it's just useless in general."

Yuyara sighed as Izuku tilted his head in confusion, before he could prompt her, however, she brought up a gloved hand. She turned it around and stared at her covered palm a few moments before beginning.

"My quirk," She said, "Is completely useless in every way, it's not helpful for any job, it's not helpful for being a hero, it wouldn't even be helpful if I wanted to become a villain. It will never benefit anyone, and by its very nature I-" Yuyara let out a shaky sigh. "Oh what the hell, you seem like a good kid, and you're gonna be sticking around, might as well get it out of the way..." She refocused on Izuku. "I'm gonna tell you a story, Green."

Yuyara took a deep breath and her eyes, normally filled with a strange mixture of cheerful mischievousness, seemed to almost sink as if a weight had been put on them.

"When I was a small kid, I was was what people call a "latebloomer", I didn't have an extra joint in my toe, so I should develop one, but even after all my classmates found their's, I still hadn't. But despite the occasional teasing, I considered myself a happy child, living happily with my family. I had my mom, my dad, and my little brother." She began with a wistful smile. "It was just the four of us, I didn't have any cousins, my parents both being single children, and my grandparents had died before I was born. We weren't well off, but we weren't poor either. We were right in the middle class, and we liked it that way. My parents had good enough jobs to be able to take us to eat out every friday without worrying about the cost, but weren't high enough up to have to worry about important business meetings making us cancel our annual family trip. We were happy… were happy that is."

Any semblance of a smile on her face died as she continued.

"When I turned eleven years old, my mother got sick… very sick. The doctors weren't sure what it was, and only really knew three things, 1. It wasn't infectious, 2. They didn't know how she got it because she didn't have it before, and 3. They knew nothing else about it. A few days after she checked into the hospital, I started having nightmares that she would die, and it freaked little me out.

"My mother, the stubborn woman she was, managed to convince the doctors that since the disease wasn't transmittable, I should be able to sleep with her to help my nightmares. That night she held me close, and told me she wasn't going anywhere… She died the next day."

Izuku paled

"Her death hit my family hard, but it hit my father the hardest. It wasn't long until he started drinking and visiting a counselor for his bouts of depression. He never got abusive or neglective, but he stopped spending as much time with me and my brother, afraid his washy-washy mental health would rub off on us. He was never the same. But with both my mom and dad out of the picture, the responsibility to look after my little brother, who was five at the time, fell on me.

"Fast forward a few years and things had stabilized, I had turned fourteen, and my dad had done well enough to get a raise that more or less covered the income we lost with my mom's old job. I was doing well in school, and had decided to become a doctor, that way I could keep anyone else from losing their mom. It sounds stupid when I say it now, but back then I had my heart set on it… It was about this time when my dad started coughing.

"At first he laughed it off as a common cold, but as a month passed and it didn't subside, he finally relented and went to see a doctor… and then another, and another, and only when every doctor in the city had given him the same answer do I think he actually accepted what they told him. He had the same thing my mom had.

"Dad immediately started quarantining himself in his room, only leaving to go to work and to cook us food. When he was out of his room he washed his hands profusely, started wearing a cheap doctor mask, and took to limiting physical contact with me and my brother. It was all for a good reason when I look back, the doctors may have said it wasn't transmittable but he had still gotten it somehow, so he was doing everything he could to keep us from getting it. But as the years dragged on his condition slowly got worse and worse, and with every hacking cough, he isolated himself more and more, the only possible silver lining we had was that it hadn't progressed nearly as fast as mom's had.

"His increased isolation had the unintended side effect of making me almost completely responsible for raising my brother. By the time I turned 18, I was running the house by myself, I did the laundry, I was in charge of the groceries, I made dinner, I had even decided against college so I could get a job to help with finances, during these days I would often complain to myself how much work i had on my plate… It was only later that year that I realized how much my dad had been helping me out. Sick, old, and on his deathbed, he had somehow steered me in the perfect way so that when my brother and I returned from his funeral on a stormy night, I was completely prepared to take care of the two of us.

"Life dragged on, and before I knew it I had hit my twentieth birthday and things were finally looking up, I had just gotten a raise and my brother's 14th birthday was right around the corner. I decided to buy a big cake for the two of us to celebrate, money had always been tight with just myself working so I hadn't been able to get either of us a real cake since my father died, and I just knew it'd make his day.

"When i walked home that evening, cake box in hand, I found myself genuinely hopeful for what the future would bring, I was happy, I was-"

Yuyara sighed and lowered her face to rest in her hand, the story seeming to be physically draining to her, letting out a warmth-less chuckle with her next words.

"I was so stupid.

"I walked into my rundown house that day to find my brother collapsed on the floor, once I rushed him to the hospital the doctors didn't just confirm my worst fears, they told me something worse

"My brother wasn't just sick, he had been sick for a long time, hiding it from me so I wouldn't worry. He was immediately hospitalized, and I was politely informed that he had slipped into a coma. And just like that I was alone, no friends, no family, my only positive was that the doctors let me spend time with him during visiting hours, which I made a point of going and holding his hand at least once every day. Of course just when I thought I had hit rock bottom, the medical bills started arriving. I had to start pulling double shifts, and working extra time just to cover them. All the while my brother's condition kept worsening, which means he needs more medicine and better doctors, both of which cost more money, money that I didn't have.

"So I started borrowing money. I took loans from banks, when they stopped I went to loansharks, when they stopped I went to the yakuza, and every day when I went to see my brother he was doing worse and worse.

"That's how Ujiko found me… Sitting in the rain, tired, alone, and crying my eyes out on the side of the road. My apartment had kicked me out due to not being able to pay rent, the banks had frozen my account, and all the shady people I borrowed from were nipping at my heels for my long overdue payments.

"The doctor recognized my potential and used my situation to 'adopt' me into his science program. He gave me a bunk in one of his biggest labs and an opportunity to prove myself, fully knowing I would work my ass off to climb my way up to better and better paying positions to handle my debts, providing him with an extremely motivated worker without him having to so much as lift a finger.

"Of course this was also the time I gained access to the resources I needed to study my long overdue quirk. I reasoned that maybe, just maybe, if I could find a way to activate it, it would benefit my situation somehow."

The scientist let out a hollow chuckle, wiping a bit of water from her right eye.

"The irony of all ironies, I wasn't a late bloomer, I had my quirk all along, my quirk, my wonderful power-" She took a deep breath to steady herself. "If I touch someone with the palm of my hand, I accelerate any disease they have, hell it's grown over the years and now I can actually give people diseases I've accelerated before… and I wanted to become a doctor as a kid?" She turned her attention away from Izuku and back to her food, stabbing at it. "What a fucking joke…"

Izuku didn't know what to say in response, hell he didn't know what to say in general.

"Oh- You don't have to worry!" Yuyara's head suddenly shot up, misinterpreting Izuku's silence "I wear gloves, see? I can't turn my quirk off, but it doesn't work without skin contact, so you're perfectly safe"

"N-No, th-that's not it! I-It's just…" Izuku fiddled with his lab coat "Wh-What happened to y-your..."

"Oh," Yuyara smiled with a sad sympathy, "My brother still hasn't woken up but he's stable nowadays, his condition stopped declining after I started wearing my gloves everywhere…" She gave a sad laugh. "Go figure."

A somber silence fell upon the table as they ate, it wasn't uncomfortable, but it didn't feel right to talk. This continued until Yuyara finished eating, and an alarm on her phone went off, signaling she needed to be somewhere.

She collected her tray, and began walking away before pausing and turning back to Izuku

"Look, I didn't tell you all that for pity, it happened a long time ago and I'm over it all now, but… shit this is gonna come across real arrogant isn't it? I know being quirkless has its own reasons for being shitty, but you shouldn't put yourself down about it so often, because even if you're quirkless, well… sometimes I wish I was born without mine."

Yuyara's story lingered in Izuku's head throughout the rest of the day. It lingered as he went home, it lingered as he ate dinner, and it lingered when he laid in bed that night.

It stayed with him not just because of how powerful it was, but because it left him with a question to mull over. A question that went against everything he had been taught as a child, against everything preached to him by everyone he'd met, and against the very core of his childhood dreams.

Yuyara's quirk had caused tragedy for her and her entire family, and with the sheer volume of people in the world, there had to be others with quirks just as bad, if not worse, than her's.

Maybe quirks weren't all they were cracked up to be?

Maybe, just maybe, that by being born quirkless… he had dodged a bullet.

These thoughts made him think. So he thought, and then he thought some more… and then a bit more. He thought a lot about the thoughts.

Such thoughts included "how could he help these people?" and "could he even help these people?"

These thoughts prompted more thinking, which prompted more thoughts to be thought about the thoughts.

Unfortunately Izuku's habit of feeding his entire attention to a single line of thinking had the downside of turning his situational awareness down to a level barely above that of a rock's.

Such situational awareness would have been very useful the next day in class, when he muttered and scribbled in his notebook, failing to notice a certain blond who's glare burned into the back of Izuku's skull.

-End Chapter-

Well, what do ya think?

Izuku's time at the lab is coming along nicely, and we've got a bit more insight on our sciency side character. 

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

Speaking of Yuyara, please note, this is not an OC centered story. Yuyara has depth yes, but this isn't because she's going to be playing a huge role in the story, this is because a character without any personal motives or drive comes across as flat and stale and boring as hell to read.

(although her role has been expanded from "make lab not feel empty/ help Izuku with character development" to something with a bit more impact now, just because MHA cannon finally decided to get around to giving Kurogiri an actual backstory that ever so happens to run completely parallel to my carefully laid plot) (Ok look, I know I'm a tab bit salty, but I specifically went to check his wiki page waaaaay back when I was first planning out the rough draft, and now I find they changed it recently)

So if you were worried I was turning this into an OC craze, you can rest easy now.

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

On another note, I got to play with the "Chekhov's gun" principle this chapter! Yaaaaay, plot threads!

Oh, and Bakugo! Bakugo finally showed up again, didn't he. (For like half a second, but same difference)

*Sips Hot Chocolate*

If you want details to my thought process for more Bakugo, there are two reasons for this.

Fancy actual stuff for plot reasons. I like having things explode, and Bakugo is a limitless source of big kabooms

P.S. My birthday was on Monday, and I skipped a bunch of important junk to celebrate ('cuz why not?)

P.P.S. I slept through most Tuesday due to cake and ice cream overdose, missing even more important stuff

P.S.S. Don't try dipping a stale poptart in Hot Chocolate (Don't ask)

P.P.S.S. Missing important stuff means that when you get back, people dump all the work you missed onto your head, regardless if your chapter is finished or not.

P.P.P.S.S.S. I am literally writing this on top of an entire essay and a small mountain of paperwork (Because everything important in work and college happens when you're away). Note: I'm not asking for pity or trying to give an excuse why this is so late, it's just me ranting because ranting is fun.