47

Chapter Text

Kaminari didn't know why classes had been canceled this fine Saturday, but he had no plans on wasting it. Two entire days off from class and class work was exactly what the doctor had ordered after the week of training everyone had had. Waking up an hour later than would have been possible otherwise, Kaminari gave a long stretch and a lazy grin. Yeah, that's the shit.

The young man practically skipped downstairs at the smell of food and wasn't disappointed when he found a plentiful feast of bacon and eggs on hot trays in the dining room. Various members of the dorm were scattered across the room, the living area, and the kitchen. All of them were in various states of eating. Kaminari quickly grabbed a plate and reached for the eggs, but a voice calling out from the bar interrupted him before he could even reach them.

"And good morning to you, too, Kaminari. When you finish breakfast, you're with me for a while." Kaminari froze and slowly turned his head, praying that the voice he'd heard wasn't real. Midoriya stared blankly at him over the coffee mug that he'd lifted to his lips. Kaminari felt his Saturday plans shatter even as he dropped to his knees dramatically.

"Nooooooo-" Kaminari cut off as Ashido slapped him upside the head, hissing.

"Too early for that." Her narrowed eyes and pointed finger had Kaminari putting his hands up nervously.

"Come on, Midoriya. I thought today was supposed to be a free day." Midoriya nodded his head along with Kaminari's statement.

"You're right. It is a free day, and for everyone else, it has already begun. For you, however, it starts after we deal with your quirk training. Relax, though. It's not so much training as an extended discussion. You're the last one before rescue week begins on Monday." Kaminari physically drooped.

"Fiiine."

Midoriya hid his amusement poorly behind his coffee mug, even as he glanced to the side. Silently, he flagged down Iida, having come in the front door. "Back from your morning run, Iida?"

"Indeed!" Iida's arm chopped down again. "It's a perfect way to start the morning!"

Ashido groaned into her food. "Why do we have so many morning people in this class?"

"It is integral that we, as aspiring heroes, get the correct amount of sleep, Ashido! We must also keep up with our conditioning and get into the habit of rising early!" She groaned again into her food.

"There is food for everyone, Iida. Grab yourself a plate and leave Mina with her food." Midoriya turned his head slightly, calling out into the common area. " Momo, Uraraka, Hatsume says that your new outfits are complete. Tsu, Shinso, Hatsume has design ideas for you two and Kirishima." Midoriya waited for the man to look over from the bacon he was stuffing into his mouth. "You apparently have some material choices waiting for you, something about your waist cape thing. Aizawa wants all of you to head to the support department and check in with them sometime this weekend."

Midoriya got an affirmation and nodded before tucking back into his food.

…

Kaminari shuffled in his seat. Across from him, Midoriya was skimming through a manila folder and making small annotations in the margins. "Alright. Well, as I said, this won't so much be training as a discussion. Describe your quirk for me."

Kaminari stopped fidgeting, surprised. "Oh, I thought you were using like, one of those logical ruses or something, like the start of the semester to get me in here?"

Midoriya quirked an eyebrow at him. "How are you all supposed to trust me if I mislead you constantly? Especially for something like this?"

"Point, I guess. Well, I generate electricity." Kaminari raised his hand, displaying the electricity arcing between his fingers. If I push too much out of me, I get really out of it, though, and I can't aim it like, at all."

Midoriya nodded his head, still annotating in the folder. "And what's the longest that you've been 'real out of it,' as you put it?"

Kaminari shrugged. "I've never really timed it. Try to avoid it, you know. I don't like the gaps in my memory. Same reason I don't drink very heavily."

"And what does your current voltage look like?"

"Last time I checked, at my maximum, I was putting out something like a million volts and some change." Midoriya's eyes snapped up at that, his eyes widening slightly.

"Please tell me you haven't tried using your full voltage while in contact with someone."

Kaminari shook his head. "No, I've never needed to. Why?"

Midoriya nodded again, seemingly relieved as he set his pen down. "Do you want to know the reason that this is a discussion and not a training session, Kaminari?"

Kaminari shrugged, feeling that the question was rhetorical, rather than a legitimate one. "I'm not opposed to it, whatever the reason."

Midoriya chuckled lightly. "The reason is that the quirkless hand-to-hand training you guys have been drilling for this last week? That is your training. You said you couldn't aim the electricity, and if you push too much, then you get stupid. Why do so then?"

"Because I need to shock the villains?"

Midoriya quirked his eyebrow again. "Kaminari, you're a walking human taser. Now, I'm all for having a ranged option, but the air is an awful electrical conductor. There is a reason you can't aim it very well. Not only that, but we need to retake your voltage measurements, because either you are reading that measurement wrong, or, if what you've said is true, then you need to seriously reign it back, else you'll kill your classmates."

Kaminari blinked in shock at Midoriya. "What? Kill them? It's just a bit of electricity, and if air is so bad at conducting electricity, what about lightning?"

"What? What do you mean how does lightning work? Dielectric breakdown is how-" Midoriya froze, looking up. Slowly, Midoriya voiced his sudden worry. "Kaminari, did you take physics in high school?"

Kaminari grimaced. "I mean, I did start Physics 1, but I couldn't ever understand any of it. Letters get jumbled enough as it is, and all those symbols and numbers, too? I just couldn't get it. So they transferred me out."

Groaning, Midoriya's hand smacked into his face. Kaminari blinked. "Kaminari, have you ever told any of your teachers that? Exactly that?"

"Tell them what?" Kaminari tilted his head slightly in confusion. "That the symbols were getting jumbled?"

"Yes."

"Not recently? Why would I?" Midoriya let out a long, suffering sigh. "What? Isn't that the same for everyone? My elementary teachers always just told me to go back to my desk." Kaminari grew concerned when Midoriya, eyes closed, began smacking himself with the edge of the folder

"One thing at a time, it is. Physics is integral for someone with a quirk like yours. As is electrical engineering, which you'll want to look into alongside your hero courses. It's how I know that if you are correct and you really are putting out a million volts, you would be outputting around a hundred thousand milliamps through direct contact with another person. It takes barely one hundred to stop someone's heart, and that's if they aren't wet. If they are wet, that figure would be something around a million milliamps."

Kaminari blanched at the numbers. "That would be… bad." Midoriya hit himself with the edge of the folder again and sighed.

"Yes, that would be bad. Secondly, I'm going to ask you a series of yes or no questions. Answer them quickly, please. Do you read slowly compared to others?"

"Yes?"

"Did you have trouble learning to read?"

Kaminari thought for a second before nodding. "I guess, yeah, but I'm just not bright."

Midoriya stared blankly at Kaminari at that comment. "How often do you feel like you have spelling mistakes in your work, even after spell check?"

"All the time? But I do, though?"

Midoriya stared, simply stared at Kaminari for a long moment. He fidgeted anxiously until Midoriya spoke again, slowly this time. "Alright, we're going to put a pin in the quirk discussion until a later time. Right now, we're going to head over to Hound Dog's office and have him test you."

Kaminari jerked. Why do I need to see the school psychologist? "Why do I need to be tested by the school shrink?"

"Because you aren't stupid, Kaminari. You're dyslexic."

…

"Hatsume!" Uraraka yelled across the support lab. The woman in question popped up and out from under the… Uraraka didn't actually know what it was supposed to be. The frame of some kind of vehicle, she thought possibly, was suspended from the ceiling in one of the mechanical bays.

"Legs!" Uraraka winced at the name. Even if she knew Hatsume meant nothing by it, the wound was still, metaphorically speaking, quite fresh.

"You know Midoriya wouldn't be happy with you calling me that, Hatsume."

Hatsume blinked owlishly before nodding. "What he doesn't know won't hurt him." Hatsume tilted her head down and to the side to speak to someone who was seemingly working on the same frame. "Setsuko, your converter looks good, just double-check your wiring going into it before giving it a test. Otherwise, you'll fuse the wires to the system and fry all of it." Hatsume extracted herself from where she was working and gestured for Uraraka to follow.

"What exactly was that thing?" Hatsume pulled a black case from a nearby storage locker, even as she grabbed a clipboard and began jotting down notes as she walked. At the question, Hatsume briefly glanced over to Uraraka before flicking her eyes back down to the clipboard.

"Third-year student, Kuno Setsuko. She got excited when she got the chance to work with our company's smaller energy storage cells and decided to try working on an old hover engine mock-up she created in her first year. It's rough, stupid rough, but if it works, it could be revolutionary." Hatsume shrugged her shoulders, setting the clipboard down and picking up the case before handing it to Uraraka. "Working or not, she's got a job with our aeronautics department if she wants it."

"Riiight." As interesting as that was, Uraraka was more interested in what Hatsume had just handed her. "Is this?"

"Right you are. Those are some prosthetics to go with your new hero costume." Hatsume pointed at the support lab's changing room and tossed Uraraka a set of locker keys with an id tag. "If you want to get changed, we can check over the costume and test the new legs. Izu wanted to be here for that but left me instructions, instead. Apparently, something came up."

…

Uraraka stepped out of the locker room to half of the support students standing by in wait. Black and silver lined the edge of Uraraka's jaw, the metal connected to the black undersuit that trailed down her neck and disappeared underneath the main outfit. Uraraka's new costume looked reminiscent of the G-Suits that fighter pilots would wear with a few key changes. Gone was the skintight latex and in its place was a baggier, black and white suit covered in buckles and pouches. Where there would generally be air bladders, one would find thin, pink-accented polymer plates protecting vital points and disguising the thicker protective fibers and plates hidden underneath the surface of the suit. Thick, fingerless gloves covered her hands as the steel in the knuckles protected her delicate joints, all while leaving her quirk available for use.

The most important parts, however, were the four tubes connecting the suit to her new legs. Two on each leg—barely two, maybe three inches from the suit to the top of the new prosthetic—sleek black and armored legs designed to mimic the look of combat boots with small silver circles interspersed along the length.

The class whooped and cheered, startling Uraraka even as she walked back towards Hatsume. Hatsume seemed to have been having the same discussion with the newly arrived Yaoyorozu and jumped at the noise. Hatsume scowled before turning and looking towards her. The scowl turned into a smirk.

"Looking good there, Uraraka. I'll give you the rundown in a moment." Hatsume spun back around to Yaoyorozu. "I don't know what you were thinking, keeping that back-breaking hell-tome literally against your spine, but the new interface should be working now. Go ahead and give it a test. If everything is to your satisfaction, then pack it back up and you're free to go. Otherwise, stick around and we'll address the issues." Placing the keys to another locker in Yaoyorozu's palm, Hatsume turned to Uraraka, gesturing her into one of the testing chambers.

"Questions. Go."

Uraraka immediately fired her most pressing one at Hatsume. "Why do I feel like these legs are filled with bees?"

Hatsume winced, looking sheepish. "Yeah, that's to be expected and also why Midoriya wanted to be here. The new legs are currently cleared as high-level support gear because they theoretically should provide you with the ability to fly, or, well, float quickly."

Uraraka felt a headache coming on as she was reminded of Midoriya. "Hatsume, say it clearly. What exactly do these legs do?"

Hatsume slapped her fist into her open palm with an oh look on her face. "Right, I haven't told you yet. It's a lot like we just gave you a tail. Embarrassingly, Powerloader and a few of the students pointed out to us that we don't need to give you a lot of thrust because we're dealing with a weightless object. Went completely by both Midoriya and myself. These just use air currents to theoretically move you. It also lets us inflate the air bladders in your suit as needed using the small computer system inside the suit. The legs are connected directly to you through the prosthetics, as are the new abilities. The buzzing you're feeling is likely your brain trying to adjust to what may as well be a new limb."

"You two can't ever make things simple, can you?"

"What part of this seems like it could be made simple?"

"Touche. How do I use them?"

"Well, you'll want to use your quirk on yourself. I've got no clue on that one. Izu just said to feel it out and that it would take a fair amount of training before you'll be comfortable using it in the field."

"Wonderful. By the way, why was everyone staring at me and cheering?"

"Huh?" Hatsume glanced over from the door and waved her hand. "Oh, a couple of the students got to work on your costume. They rarely get to see the costumes they work on modeled for them. Usually, they just come back to us destroyed and with complaints. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'll be right back. I think someone is yelling for me again."

Uraraka frowned before tapping her hand on herself. Well, let's test this out.

…

Hatsume stepped out of the testing room only to be met with the blank stare of a frog. Hatsume startled before chuckling. "Damn it, why?"

Asui took a step back before blankly croaking. "Midoriya said that you wanted to see me?"

Hatsume rubbed her eyes. "What? Oh, right. One of the support students showed me a few designs that I thought you'd want to look at. Transponder beacons, several gauges of marine flare, that sort of stuff. Besides that, I took a look at that thermal regulator of yours. We have a redesigned mockup of it that I want you to test out."

"Does the support lab usually test out improvements to our hero gear?"

Powerloader called out from across the room before Hatsume could respond. "No, Asui. They tend to only occasionally do it upon request. Hatsume's just made it her mission to review your class' gear."

Asui just shrugged. "As long as things don't get added or changed without my approval, I'm fine with it."

Hatsume sputtered. "I'm an engineer, not a used car salesman. I'm not going to make you take anything yo-" A resounding thump came from the testing room behind them, causing Hatsume to peek her head back into the room. Crumpled against the base of the far wall, Uraraka groaned on the floor.

"I'm good. I'm good." Hatsume gave her a thumbs-up and a grin.

…

The two classes trickled into the lecture hall slowly. Aizawa knew that they were undoubtedly coming in only after seeing the room change notice posted on the door of their normal classroom. When Midoriya entered, Aizawa silently pulled a flask from his left nipples pocket. He took a slow drink before sliding it back into place. Aizawa met the eyes of his coworker standing beside him. He arched an eyebrow.

"Want some, Kan?"

Sekijiro blinked at him slowly. "No, I don't believe so. Isn't it a little early to start drinking, Aizawa?"

"You'll want some, too, later this week." Aizawa glanced at the clock before clapping his hands to gain the attention of the students. "Alright, everyone. Welcome to the first Rescue Week of your time here at U.A. As you may have noticed, both 1-A and her sister class, 1-B, are here right now. At the behest of several concerned individuals," Aizawa's eyes briefly flicked across Midoriya and landed on Shuzenji at their side, "we'll be doing things a little differently this year. Normally, we'd have taken all of the classes separately to the USJ for your rescue introduction."

Vlad took over from there, and the students' eyes moved to him. "But, instead, we'll be spending Monday through Thursday this week with two classroom guests, gaining a crash course in first aid," Sekijiro gestured to Shuzenji, "and rescue later this week from Thirteen. This will culminate in a joint trip to the USJ on Friday. Any questions before we begin?" Several students raised their hands and, seeing who it was, Aizawa and Sekijiro both had to bite back groans at their respective students. It was going to be a long week.

Notes:

This is the last chapter before the USJ. We're getting into some serious action starting next chapter!