A Slippery Slope: Ch 2

-Rain of Sins-

-A Slippery Slope: Ch 2-

Laboratory Overseer (or "Lab Head" for short), is the title given to those who help run and 'oversee' the many laboratories, research stations, and storage facilities of doctor Ujiko Daruma. The man is a genius, yes, but not even he could micromanage every detail of every research project of every building, so he didn't bother trying to. 

 One lab head per facility, a person who is given free reign over everything in the building - so long as they follow any and all orders from Ujiko, willingly hand over control when it is deemed necessary, absolutely under no circumstances withhold any critical information whatsoever from their weekly reports, don't interfere with other facilities work, and- arguably most importantly- Get. Your Job. Done.

So needless to say, it is an incredibly important position, and one Yuyara takes great pride in… even if most in her situation wouldn't. See, everything about a lab head is directly tied to their work. Lab supplies, funding, workers, prestige, even how much you got in your paycheck was directly tied to what results you turned in to Ujiko. 

On paper this works just fine. In practice however, it makes a sort of feedback loop: the biggest labs with the best supplies, that can focus on multiple projects at once, get the most work done, which means they get more supplies, which means they get more assigned projects, which means they get more work done, and so one and so forth. Meanwhile the smaller labs are left with few ways to compete.

Is it a perfect system? No. Is it moral? Debatable. But a quick crunch of the numbers actually shows that by having his top labs six or so labs constantly competing against one another, Ujiko gets more done faster this way than by playing socialism constructor, so he's unlikely to change it anytime soon.

Which brings us back to Yuyara. The youngest, newest, and as such, most inexperienced lab head. Assigned to the newest, smallest, and least equipped lab.

She had been an incredibly bright mind all throughout her career, her not-always-standard way of looking at things let her solve problems that had others scratching their head. This combined with her almost obsessive need for a better paycheck, due to the various debts she had acquired over the years, let her climb through the ranks abnormally quickly. So when she, one of the top performing scientists at the time, was approached for yet another promotion, she happily jumped at the chance, not even bothering to read what the papers she was signing said, let alone the tiny bits scribbled at the bottom of each page.

So when she first was told which lab she would be maintaining, she was devastated. How was she supposed to get anything done with this, it wasn't even built yet for heaven's sake! Not to mention that because of the nature in which her position was paid, she wouldn't be getting any form of payment until the lab completed an assignment, and even then- with the size of the lab and it's projected production output, her supposed "promotion" had actually cut her annual income. And by a not insignificant margin too!

So, knowing this, she did what any person would do. 

She went home, pouted, ate ice cream, watched shitty rom-coms, and may or may not have pulled out some emergency booze & gotten drunk.

A few mornings later, the bottles littering her apartment and her pounding headache really helped highlight her situation for her.

Her new position had no income whatsoever until the lab was finished, when it was finished she wouldn't have the income she did as a top scientist, she was basically a joke to her peers (the other lab heads), and she couldn't go back due to all the information she was given when she was promoted- Oh sure she could have turned down the offer when she found out about her lab, but she was part of the team who had worked on the latest memory erasing nomu, she knew what that thing did to people!

So with all this in mind she set a goal to fix her situation. She would make her lab one of the top labs or die trying!

Some might have called her brave, just plain stupid, or something inbetween. It didn't matter, her stubbornness paid off. 

She had won the lottery, the metaphorical golden goose, a royal flush in this game of poker, and if she played her cards right, it insured a golden highway to the very top.

Izuku Midoriya, Ujiko's hastily picked successor had decided to not only wander directly into her lab, but also live far enough away from the other labs that daily transport to and from them was deemed "more burdensome" than simply upgrading her lab.

It had barely been a few days and already new supplies, workers, and funding was pouring in, two new expansions to the lab were planned, and the list of things just kept growing.

So when the boss had told her to take Green, her new favorite person, and give him a tour of the lab, her new favorite place, she made sure to go "Plus Ultra" and give the best, most detailed tour she could possibly show off!

"And these are the nomu!" Yuyara proudly declared, her smile splitting her face. "Aren't they great!?"

"I-I-I-" Izuku stammered like a broken record, his face an odd shade from turning pale and going green at the same time. "I-I-I-I-"

"You ok Green?"

"I-I-I-Wh-What a-are th-those?"

"There the nomu!" Yuyara cheered with a small hop, seemingly un-affected from having to repeat herself. "And now that you're here, we're gonna get more!"

"M-M-More!?"

"Yea, more!" Her adrenaline high calmed down as she took in the kid's face. "Are you ok?"

"I-It's- Th-The-They're m-mo-monsters." As he pointed weakly to the tanks, Yuyara's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, before shooting up in surprise when she realized what he meant.

'Boss hasn't told him anything...' 

Now there was a lot of other thoughts that accompanied that, usually along the lines of 'SHIT SHIT SHIT!' or 'FUCK FUCK FUCK!' or even the very diverse 'SHIT FUCK SHIT!' But that main bit was the most important.

'Why hasn't the boss told him!?' She stood, smiling blankly at the kid, belying no sign of the flood of panic that was bubbling up inside her 'No-scratch that, why hasn't the boss told me he didn't tell him!?!'

'Wait… ' Her smile faded- '...Could it be? Is this the boss' way of telling me that my achievements and hard work have finally been acknowledged?' -only to come back in full force. 'Don't worry boss! I'll show you your trust is well placed!'

-Rain of Sins-

"SHIT SHIT SHIT!"

Pedestrians were roughly shoved to the side as a certain scientist dashed through the streets, cursing Kurogiri for not answering his phone, and panicking because of how much he did, in fact, not trust Yuyara with such a delicate situation.

-Rain of Sins-

"Well yes," she acknowledged the discolored Izuku with a confident chuckle "From a certain perspective, I guess they could look a bit like monsters, couldn't they? But lucky for us, they're a lot cooler than something as boring as monsters!"

"W-What do y-you mean?"

"Welllll…" Yuyara rocked back and forth on her feet. "Take Bigfoot for example. At best, it's a man with a monkey quirk. At worst it's a man in a fursuit, ugh BOOOORRR-ing!" She punctuated with an over dramatic yawn, smirking when she saw that despite the situation she had been able to draw out a small smile from Izuku, no matter how brief it may have been.

"These meanwhile have been genetically engineered by some of the brightest minds in the world, each holding a myriad of useful quirks!"

"W-Wait," Izuku stopped her, his brain processing what she was saying, "You gave these things quirks? And multiple of them!?"

"Yup! Now you're getting why they're so cool!"

"That's…"

"Genius? Impossible? Scary? Worrying? Terrifying but also beautiful at the same time?"

"AMAZING!" Yuyara blinked-not expecting that answer at all- as Izuku continued.

"Quirks are such a fascinating concept, they provide the basis for our entire society, but their inbuilt limitations provide a natural barrier that hinders the vast majority of the population, even pro Heroes struggle to grow once they run into the limit of their quirk, with Endeavor being a perfect example. If you could simply add another quirk on top of a person's natural one, you would not only be able to perfectly cover any of the original quirk's inherent weaknesses, but also-"

And thus Izuku began rambling to himself, now normally this was where someone would snap him out of his thoughts, either directly or indirectly, but this wasn't a normal situation. Instead of a class full of people perfectly willing to laugh at him, he was alone in a room with Yuyara -who worked for Ujiko, and was very notably still scared of accidentally pissing his successor off.

 Now Ujiko would also occasionally ramble whenever he was deep in thought, and Yuyara had learned the hard way that he didn't enjoy being interrupted. At all.

So she let the kid ramble.

And ramble.

And ramble.

And ramble.

And then he rambled some more! He rambled on, and on, and on, and on, until finally a stray through lead him back to reality.

"... how exactly do you make them?"

"Ah, that's the million dollar question now isn't it?" Yuyara chuckled, quickly recovering from zoning out during the kids muttering. "That information is usually saved for higher ups, but since you're the boss' new number two," She smiled and continued, ignoring Izuku's weak denile, "I'll make an exception"

'Ok Yuyara, you've got one shot at this. You gotta convince the kid to stay, not scare him off, convince him nothing's suspicious about the very suspicious monsters in the very suspicious lab tubes, all while sticking to the truth as much as possible' 

She gave herself a brief mental pep talk before crossing her fingers and beginning.

"The nomu are created using human bodies as a base, and injecting them with various quirks!"

The kid blinked.

Yuyara blinked.

'Ok, ok, rough start, but we can fix this, I just have to be smooth about it.'

"Which turns them into monsters!"

'Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-'

"But using people in experiments is obviously a very bad thing to do!" She rushed out before the kid could draw up the worst, though true, case scenario.

"S-So because of this," She stammered, picking her words very carefully, "One of our labs started experimenting with cloning technology!"

 True- though it was completely unrelated to the nomu project.

"A-And after a big breakthrough in the project, we attempted to use one of the clones to make a nomu."

Also true, but left unsaid was how it was horribly unsuccessful due to the fact they hadn't -and to this day still haven't- managed to make a clone that wasn't braindead.

"And not a few months later we had a completed nomu!"

True yet again, but this was hardly the first nomu they'd made, and it was only successful because they pulled the plug on the clone-nomu project and went back to normal bodies.

"A-And so, uhh- Tada!" She waved back to the nomu, a pained smile on her face and a bead of sweat rolling down her forehead.

'PleasebuyitPleasebuyitPleasebuyitPleasebuyitPleasebuyitPleasebuyitPleasebuyit!'

Slowly she opened an eye to glance at the kids reaction, and-

Wide eyes, slack jawed, and absolutely starstruck, the kid had eaten it up

"That's incredible!"

'Thank you Lady Luck!'

"What are you going to use them for!?"

'Fuck you Lady Luck!'

"That's a good question! A-And one I'm glad you asked!" 'Curse you Ujiko!' "And because it's such a good question I-uh… have an equally good answer!"

'ThinkYuyara, you're capable of stringing different quirks into a giant super beast, you can find a perfectly reasonable explanation for having living weapons being held in an underground bunker, en' mass!'

"Well if you think about it, their purpose is actually quite obvious," She said, hiding her panic with a cocky smirk, "The Nomu are adaptable to any environment, they can be given quirks to deal with basically any situation, they follow orders to the letter without complaining, they uh, well…" Yuyara trailed off, wilting as it slowly descended into an awkward silence. This was due to one very simple reason. She had run out of BS. 

Understanding that the risk of screwing the whole thing up was still very high, and that the cost of doing so would be even higher once the boss found out, Yuyara decided to employ a tactic that had helped her out of numerous situations in the past.

Deflection!

"Well, what do you think they're for?"

"M-Me?"

"Yea, you. You're Ujiko's successor, consider this an intro test to see if your brain's up to the task!"

"B-But I already t-took a tes-"

"I'm not hearing an answer, Green!"

Izuku, easily scared as ever, hopped back in panic, before beginning to mutter to himself, his mind frantically trying to find a concrete answer to a question that didn't have one.

As this happened, Yuyara let out a sigh of relief. 

Sending the kid on a metaphorical wild goose chase might have been a tad mean, but she wouldn't be losing any sleep over it. Now she hadn't spent that much time with the kid, but she could already tell how his head worked, she had worked with plenty of others who worked the same way after all. 

All she had to do was get him hooked on a thought process, and the kid would play cat and mouse with his own thoughts, descending into a ramble of muttering that would quickly spiral off the original topic, leaving the question far behind them to be forgotten so she cou-

"Workers!"

Yuyara blinked.

"That's what it is!" Izuku beamed at her. "You're going to use them as workers!"

Yuyara blinked again

"When you think about it, it's absolutely brilliant!" Izuku grinned as he continued his spiel, unaware of the dumbstruck expression on the labhead's face. "If you layer one of them with multiple fire resistance quirks and a few speed & strength quirks, it would make it perfect for rescuing people from burning buildings. You can make them perfect for performing rescues in deep water, unstable caves, and various other highly specified fields that few heroes are suited for, and then rent them out to agencies in need of them! And that's only on the Hero side of things, you could do the exact same thing for any labor intensive field, like construction or farming!"

Yuyara blinked thrice, before responding in really the only way the situation called for.

"Yes. You are completely correct."

Color her impressed, that wasn't a half bad idea. In fact, the more she thought about it, the better it sounded. It would not only give them a very believable, and more importantly legal, excuse for the public if the nomu program ever got leaked, all while providing a nice source of revenue as a cherry on top.

The youngest lab head scratched her chin in thought as she began to seriously turn over what the kid had suggested. One of the biggest concerns of the entire program was how if anything was leaked they had basically no way to avoid mass panic over the army of mindless monsters being hidden under the nation's nose. The kid's idea, while far from leak proof, was leagues above their current plan which could best be summed up as "brutally smash any and all potential data leaks with overwhelming force and hope it never gets to that level."

"C-Can I ask o-one more question?"

Yuyara turned back to the kid with a slight (but quickly suppressed) grimace. The kid's all-to-smart questions were quickly becoming her least favorite thing.

"Well of course!" She smiled while internally screaming 'No! No more questions! Save them for Ujiko, I'm running out of bullshit to come up with!'

"C-Could… I-If I join… do… do you th-think it would be p-possible if…"

"Green, ya gotta speak up if you want anyone to answer your questions."

"I-Is," He took a deep breath, "IS IT POSSIBLE TO GIVE MYSELF A QUIRK!?"

'Geez Green, when I said speak up, I meant speak louder not yell.' Yuyara leaned back at the unexpected volume. The volume was unexpected, the question itself however…

Yuyara let out a huff, she really should have known the kid was going to ask that eventually, and the answer was simple… but also complicated.

Yes, No, Yes, and No.

Yes: It was possible to give people quirks with the technology they had, the Nomu existed for a reason. 

No: It was not safe, as the human brain was not made to handle more than one quirk, and the result of brute-forcing it was evident in the nomu's animal-level intelligence. And while the result of forcing quirks into a quirkless brain was unknown, she didn't want to even think about what that would do to a brain that wasn't designed to handle any quirk. 

Yes: There was a way to do it safely, without harming the brain, but the only known way was with the use of Ujiko's boss' quirk. Who the doctor would occasionally talk about in reverence, but none of the lab heads had ever seen, let alone met, the mystery man.

No: Using the quirk on Ikuku would be very unlikely, as getting this man to use his quirk on, well, anything had so far been impossible. With every request made to research, use, observe, or even verify that the quirk actually exists, being immediately shot down by Ujiko.

So she told him this, wincing as the kid's shoulders deflated the more she explained. Though she passed the second set of points off as "rumors" just to be safe, if her boss wanted to be all secretive about a subject, then she'd leave it to him to explain.

"Oh… S-Sorry, for asking, the answer s-should have been obvious, huh?" He apologised, mumbling something about 'asking stupid questions' under his breath.

Yuyara watched as the brief flash of hope in the kid's eye withered and died in front of her. Wincing as a memory of an exact replica of that expression, mirrored on a small brown haired boy, flickered through her mind.

"W-Well hold on!" She rushed. "Just because we can't do that right now, doesn't mean we won't be able to in the future!"

Izuku perked up a bit at this. "W-What do you mean?"

"Well that's what science is all about right? Taking a problem and researching it. At first, the solution seems hopelessly out of your reach, but then you get to work and make a discovery. Sure it might seem small and insignificant at first, but one small discovery will lead to the next, which leads to the next, and before you know it your small discoveries have piled up and made a staircase to lead you right to the top!" She gave a genuine smile. "Sure we can't safely give people quirks right now, but then again we didn't know how to make cars in the past either. Or planes! Or… anything else we have!" She concluded, waiting for Izuku's response.

…

"So-uhhh" She vainly tried to keep the conversation alive after realizing the kid wasn't going to respond, before falling into an uncomfortable silence.

"...So it's possible…"

It was faint, barely a whisper, in any other room, without the eerie silence of the nomu storage room, she wouldn't have heard it at all, but that wasn't what mattered.

What mattered was that it was something. And more than that, it was the first real something Izuku had been able to grab onto since that doctor visit all that time ago.

And so Izuku, eyes filled with a fire that burned brighter than it had in years, clenched his fist and made a declaration.

A declaration to the world, and to himself.

"I'll do it. I'll study under you and Dr Ujiko, and I'll put my all into finding a way to give myself a quirk!"

Listen Nerd, I'm the only one from this school who's hero material, YOU GOT THAT!?

"A-And if it's not possible…"

No. A quirkless person can't b-

"THEN I'LL MAKE IT POSSIBLE!"

'And I'll become a hero!'

-Chapter: End-

*Sips hot chocolate*

Future Zack here again as I go back and edit old chaps. Ah, I remember when Kurogiri got his official backstory, and I ranted for 30 some odd minutes straight about how I was gonna have to cut him out of my carefully planned plot, and how a huge chunk of the story was now just empty.

It's actually what this ED originally was.

*Sips hot chocolate*

I'd say "good times" but they really weren't.

*Sips hot chocolate*

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https://discord.gg/Hy7g6UqGQd

Come, join, send shitty memes, and give constructive criticism.