BNHA: Undying (Ch 80) (Patreon)

“Almost all of you have failed horribly,” Cementoss says with a disappointed look on what counts for his face.

The third round of the exercise ended with the heroes failing to save the hostages, due to them being unable to find the right room and break through all the ice. What followed that round were the hostage takers and hostages (minus me) becoming the rescuers, and how did they do?

They forgot the entire point of the exercise.

See, the heroes were supposed to save the hostages without fighting the villains. Y’know, since that would mean they’re engaging in vigilantism and breaking the law. But apparently, the previous batch of arrogant and overall idiotic students set the bar for how the class would go.

There were only five people who actually managed to avoid fighting -with varying degrees of success. Ashido, Hagakure, Jiro, Tsuyu, and Uraraka. To be fair to Tokoyami and Yaoyorozu; they did try to sneak. But Dark Shadow decided that they wanted to fight and ignored Tokoyami’s pleas to stop, and Yaoyorozu became collateral to Kaminari letting his quirk go full blast when he got surprised.

He should really get an MRI of his brain done. Him shocking his brain enough to go into his ‘whey’ mode, as Jiro calls it, can’t be good for him. Actually, why hasn’t it already been addressed? Aren’t all of the teachers here supposed to be pro heroes!? How has an incredibly clear and alarming issue like this not been addressed!?

Nothing to do for it until after school, where I’ll be dragging him to the nurse’s office and demanding an actual full body medical examination. Recovery Girl wants to do the same to me anyways so it shouldn’t matter if I bring an extra person along. Partners in medical experimentation! But for now, I’ll just listen to Cementoss chew out the students for being blithering idiots who should  be made into sandwiches by an angry British man. 

“You were supposed to rescue the hostages. Not take down the villains.”

Iida’s hand shoots into the air as he interrupts the teacher. “But sir! Taking down the villains results in the hostages being rescued. Therefore, should that not be counted as successfully completing the exercise?”

“You’d still be arrested on vigilante charges though.” I point out simply, snorting at the aggressively affronted look the glasses-wearing boy sends me. “What? You think being correct excuses you from the law?”

“Well, if we were to actually be sent into a situation where we’d need to rescue people, it’s more than likely that the hero we’re interning under would have given us permission to use our quirks. Especially so considering that we wouldn’t be experienced enough to secure the building, villains, or hostages on our own.”

I nod in agreement at Shoko’s analysis and pat her head as a reward. She smiles and leans into the touch while I continue pointing out how the other students are idiots.

“That is a fair assessment, but that’s for an actual, real life situation. For this scenario it’s assumed that your mentor is away or otherwise incapacitated. For example; there’s a mass villain attack that they’re dealing with and they charge you with helping civilians get away from the danger zone. You come across villains who are taking advantage of the chaos to abduct some influential people to ransom off after everything dies down. As heroes, you should save them. But without permission to fight the villains, you’d have to grab the hostages and run.”

I look at Cementoss and see him with his arms crossed. “Anything else to add or did I cover it all?”

“Oh? Now I get to talk?” The block of cement asks in a surly tone.

…

Is this guy seriously pouting because I explained things?

“Not if you don’t want to!” I say in a cheery voice. I ignore his shout while I turn to the students and raise a finger. “The last point that you have to consider is that the villains can always kill or cripple the hostages to buy time for them to get away. Would you be willing to let someone die just so you can capture the villain? Something to think about.”

With the exercise probably done and the after-exercise reports done, I decide to take my leave. But it feels like I’d be leaving behind a tense atmosphere if I just up and walked back to the locker room. Which means…

“Hup!” I backflip/cartwheel away while the students stare in confusion and the teacher clearly thinking that he doesn’t get paid enough for this.

`~`

I climb into the vent outside the boy’s locker room after I change back into the school uniform, waiting for the perfect opportunity to catch my prey. I watch as students pass by below, the senpais of the first years clearly excited for the school day to be over. The first years themselves enter and exit the locker rooms, some loitering around while talking to each other before leaving somewhere else. Most likely the dorms.

But eventually, my target exits the locker room, his eyes lighting up upon seeing Jiro leaning against the wall. He waves excitedly as he approaches her. “Hey Jiro! What are you doing still hanging around?” He shoots her finger guns. “Did your jacks point you towards my electric personality?”

She snorts dismissively. “Already told you Sparky, not interested. I’m just curious about where this is going.”

Kaminari gets a confused look on his face, his brows furrowing while his head tilts. “Where what’s going?”

I take that as my cue and drop down from the vent, shouting a wordless battlecry with my arms and legs bent in the… jumping spider jump pose? The ‘I’ve got you now!’ pose? I’m not actually sure. It’s the one where you bend your arms and legs into ninety degree angles when you jump down at someone.

Not that my pose particularly matters since the moment I latch around the blonde we start falling to the ground and he lets out a yelp of shock at the same time it materializes around him.

“Ababababababa-” I lose control of my motor functions and my mouth goes off on its own doing the electrified person sound. Meanwhile, I can hear Jiro laughing her butt off at the two of us.

It’s actually an interesting situation. The pain of being electrocuted doesn’t affect me, but the electricity itself does. Which makes sense given that the brain uses electrical signals to communicate with the body. It also makes me wonder if, with enough practice, he could control someone with his electricity. Send the right signals and he can control anything they do!

Oh, looks like he’s overloaded! I pick myself up and pull the dopey-faced boy with me, two thumbs up twitching in front of him. Seeing his state, I shrug. “Well, Recovery Girl was probably going to need him to be in this state at some point anyways. Now is good enough.”

Before I can start dragging Kaminari to her office I’m stopped by an earphone jack shooting in front of me. “Hold one there, Green. I’m gonna need you to explain what you’re doing.”

I turn to the violet haired girl and raise an eyebrow at the cautious look in her eyes. “Aww, what’s wrong, Jiro? Don’t you trust me?”

“You’re a villain,” she deadpans.

“Whey~.” Kaminari says as if in agreement. Or it could be disagreement given how friendly he’s been.

I stick my tongue out at her. “I’m not hearing a no-o~.”

She lets out a huff. “Just answer the question.”

“Didn’t ask one,” I point out teasingly before shrugging. “But didn’t you hear me mention Recovery Girl? Pretty sure that makes it clear that we’re going to the infirmary.”

She raises an eyebrow dubiously, finally lowering her jacks. “Why?”

I stare at her for a moment. I stare at Kaminari, who lets loose another “Whey~”. I look back at her. I just kind of gesture at the boy vaguely like it should be obvious. Which it should.

“He fries his brain when he overuses his quirk. Do you not think that’s concerning? What if it gives him brain damage? Well, more brain damage.”

She blinks blankly at me for a moment before frowning thoughtfully. “If it could really hurt him like that then wouldn’t his parents have looked into it?”

“Whey~.” I’m gonna assume that’s him saying that they either haven’t, or only put in a minimum of effort. Like visiting a quirk analyst and seeing what they say. Which apparently wouldn’t have been much since he’s still like this.

I roll my eyes and start walking, gesturing for her to follow. “You would think so, but people tend to be… lazy with quirks. Not in training them, but in how they can be used. Unfortunately, this also applies to their negative aspects and how they can be mitigated.”

She hums with a thoughtful look on her face. “That… actually makes a lot of sense.”

I scoff as we turn a corner, the infirmary in sight now. “Well, duh. I mean, just look at you!”

She raises an eyebrow and raises her jacks to point at me. “Careful there, Green. That sounded dangerously close to an insult.”

I wave off the threat easily. Himi is scarier on a good day. Mostly when I tell her that she’s drunk enough of my blood and disagrees, but still. “I’m just talking about how easy it would be for you to get some sound dampeners that don’t interfere with your normal hearing range. Just something that would block or soften sounds that reach a certain threshold. It’s not like that hasn’t been done before.”

I keep walking, and it’s only when I reach the infirmary door that I look back and see that Jiro’s standing way back where we were with her mouth hanging open. I tilt my head and call out to her curiously. “Something wrong, Violet?”

“Whey~!”

The sudden nickname seems to knock her out of whatever thoughts had her frozen like that, since she shakes her head and speed walks towards the two of us. She grabs my arm and peers into my eyes, which I look back into curiously. “Are you serious?”

I blink and tilt my head again. “You mean about the sound dampening stuff? Yeah. I mean…” I shrug. “It’s not like enhanced hearing is anything new, you know? Obviously someone is going to look into support gear to help deal with that?”

She frowns at me for a moment before letting her head drop back to stare at the ceiling and letting out a groan. “Fuuuck. That would have been so helpful growing up.”

I shake my head and push open the door. I step inside as I wag a finger at her. “See what I mean? Quirk obsession blocks basic stuff like that from entering people’s minds. Which is why we’re getting Kaminari checked out.”

“What exactly do you need me to check?” I turn to look at Recovery Girl and give a small wave.

“Hey there, violent old lady.” I ignore the smack she gives to my leg, which only proves my point. I jerk my thumb over at Kaminari. “We want you to see if Kaminari overusing his quirk damages his brain.”

She looks at the blonde’s condition and nods her head easily. “It wouldn’t be the first time someone has crippled themselves with their quirk. Anything else?”

I nod. “Yep! Aizawa wants you to put your hand up my butt.”