Chapter 65: An Announcement and New Training
Summary: The Festival is announced, and UA adjusts it's training in response to recent events...
-Warning!- Chapters 64-66 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any of them!
Chapter 65: An Announcement and New Training
"Good to see all my minions present at once for once! Since you're all present today, I have an announcement for you. Some of you, who are parts of clubs, may already know…but the UA Cultural Festival is coming up in a month!"
Midnight stopped to let an excited murmur build in the class, before slapping her riding crop firmly in hand to re-gather everyone's attention.
"Now, the Heroics Department does not officially have any sort of specific involvement in the festival. However, you are encouraged to attend and be seen. If that means you feel like setting up your own booth, that's fine. If it means you want to participate with your club? That's great. If all if means for you is showing up and spending time interacting with the regular courses or participating in events like the Beauty Contest? Boring but also fine!"
Midnight cocked one hip, pausing for dramatic effect again, before going on.
"The point is that the various other courses don't get very many chances to interact with Heroics! That's understandable…but also can be a big problem for you in later years. UA has never considered removing the other courses for a good reason. Many of you will need connections with everyone from advertising specialists to lawyers if you ever want to build your own agencies. And, as I'm sure you're all aware, fourth year Heroics here at UA is dedicated to letting you run your own agencies out of the school. The connections you make to the students in other courses could make or break a lot of you, since knowing the right people can make an otherwise marginal independent agency work once you leave UA's support structure! Many of those who fail to make those connections end up spending years as sidekicks…if they ever manage to get their own agency at all."
Quite a few people were nodding along, now. That policy, of having students run a pseudo-agency out of UA for a year after getting their full license, was one of the major things that set UA apart from other Hero Universities. It was also how they'd been able to tighten up their security so quickly, as many of the pros that owed UA for acting as their agency launch platform had responded to the request for more help from alumni.
It was also how a campus as utterly massive and sprawling as UA hadn't been overrun during the Clone Swarm attack. Even without counting the students that had stepped up, UA had a lot of Pros either on campus or nearby at any one time. It was only the sheer scale and utter brazenness of the attack that had allowed the Clone Swarm to penetrate fast enough for students to need to step up. Something which had been since rectified by moving the 'starter' agencies of fourth years from one central location to a more scattergun set of facilities around the perimeter.
Another attempt at an attack like the mass invasion of UA would find itself faced with much faster reactions. It was only the fact that no one had ever tried something of the same nature before that had caught everyone so flat-footed. Previously, even during the Era of Chaos, all attacks on UA had been thrusts at specific points along the defenses. Usually by no more than a dozen powerful assailants. What amounted to a small army had been something new, at a time when most of the really heavy automated defenses had been deactivated due to peacetime builddowns.
"However you choose to do so, you are strongly encouraged to participate in the festival in some fashion. Moving on from that, however, we have a new topic to cover in theory class today…how to coordinate large scale engagements. While we hope those are behind us, with the League of Villains still technically out there, the possibility of something similar can't be dismissed. As such, we've added something new to the curriculum in response. The theoretical half of which we will be covering this morning…"
... ...
"Good afternoon, students! Welcome to Swarm Tactics 101…created with your help! So give yourselves all a pat on the back!"
All 39 students of Groups A and B looked at each other in confusion. That…wasn't the opening statement any of them had expected. Particularly not after having been abruptly brought together for one giant class. Or, for that matter, after the theoretical lectures they'd gotten from Midnight and Vlad King earlier in their respective days.
"Don't worry! I can sense your confusion! But the answer to that confusion is really quite simple! You see, Swarm tactics have been historically rare in the Hero and Villain world! While they are not unknown, with yours truly having encountered them on more than one occasion during my career, they are both uncommon…and normally not quite so dangerous as some of your own encounters with the phenomenon."
All Might paused to let them process for a moment, then expanded on his statement.
"As a general rule, Swarms are usually the result of a single Quirk. One notable villain I faced could control swarms of bees and, indeed, one of your own classmates is theoretically capable of doing the same thing."
Several eyes turned to Koda, who shrunk in on himself but reluctantly nodded. In theory, at least, he could do just that.
"As with Young Koda, however, under normal circumstances Swarms are made up of large numbers of weak things. It's extremely rare to have a Quirk, or even a combination of multiple Quirks, that can produce high numbers of high-quality enemies."
Here All Might stopped to gesture at one of the instructors standing with him, Ectoplasm-sensei.
"Indeed, we are extremely lucky to have on hand one of the only such Quirks known to exist in Japan. And even then, Ectoplasm can only produce copies of himself of the same strength, if he wants to make enough clones to be called a Swarm. His total capacity is also well short of what you encountered in both the Invasion of UA and at your Provisional License Exams. Normally, the only way for such numbers to happen is more like what occurred at the USJ, with a large number of villains gathered in one place. And, again, there were few truly powerful villains in that group."
There was dawning realization on a lot of faces as they struggled to come up with other examples of the same situation. The attacks on the other schools, obviously. But that was part and parcel of the events All Might was talking about. Many of them began to get an idea where All Might was headed even as he finally got there.
"For that reason, it is by studying how you reacted to the situations in question that we have learned much. In particular, a dissection of Group A's approach during the Provisional License exam, contrasted with several exam sites that didn't do nearly as well, proved immensely helpful in creating an entirely new Anti-Swarm doctrine and tactics class. As did the successes of both Groups during the UA invasion. Other actions, both from the Era of Chaos and even from Pre-Quirk military records, have also been combed through by Nedzu. All with an eye toward forging an entirely new set of basic tactics for use against enemies that are both high quantity AND high quality. You went over the fundamentals of what we discovered with your respective Theoretical classes earlier today. Now, it's time to put those theoreticals together into a practical attempt. Here is what the first exercise will look like…"
... ...
As Mina checked her HSN connection and discovered who else was patrolling the section of city she'd been assigned to, she grimaced. Part of her was glad neither Momo or Izumi registered, as she was quite certain their professors would have something particularly nasty planned for their best organizers and strategists. Unfortunately, without either of them being present, it was going to be much harder to gather the handful of heroes in her section together. The professors had very intentionally mixed the two Groups together, ensuring they wouldn't be as comfortable or familiar with those that they were forced into grouping up with to stop or contain their Swarm. A Swarm that would consist of unknown bots and armed Ectoplasm clones.
Her quick ping of the system had shown that Asui and Kaminari were the only other Group A students present, with Kendo, Kodai, and Tetsutetsu being their Group B counterparts assigned to the zone. That was a seriously mixed bag. On the one hand, Kaminari had become a serious firepower asset at this point and gave them a flyer/scout to work with. On the other hand, neither he nor Asui were really natural leaders…which left herself as the closest thing they had to that on the Group A side.
The Group B students were an even more mixed bag. Mina probably knew the Group B students, both as a whole and individually, better than anyone else in Group A. Her own highly social nature meant she'd made herself friendly with them at every turn she got a chance. That meant, in turn, that she knew the personalities at work here, along with at least the basics of their Quirks. Kendo being here was seriously great. She, unlike Mina herself who could fake it at best, was a natural leader. Unfortunately, the other two were potential problems. Kodai was a fantastic utility addition to use against their Swarm…but the girl had serious communication issues. Not intentional ones. The girl was just naturally quiet. Nothing wrong with that, but not ideal at all for communicating during something like this.
Then there was Tetsutetsu…who was a headache and a half. It had taken Tokage nearly dicing his unmentionables to finally get the denser Kiri-clone to wear actual armor, and despite all efforts by everyone, he was still prone to being a bull-in-a-china-shop. Kendo was one of the few people he would listen to, but she was going to have to sit on him hard to get any sort of tactics out of him beyond 'rush in and punch.' At least some recent upgrades to his gear made him very tanky, even more so than Kiri in some ways, so they could presumably use him as a blunt object fairly well.
Sighing, Mina did her best to apply the lessons Midnight had covered this morning to their environment. The golden rule about Swarms that had been pounded into their heads was to never ever let them envelope you. Knowing she'd likely be in charge of Kaminari and Asui for at least the first couple of minutes after combat started, Mina tried to find a place they could funnel their opponents into. Hopefully, once they properly linked up, Kendo would take over. Mina wasn't exactly the best suited for this level of group tactics.
Hmmm…maybe she could use the acid spray-nozzles Izumi and Momo had made for her to bring down that wall over there? That would create a 'Killzone' of sorts for anything on the ground. And Kaminari could cover them from the air, from at least the initial assault…
... ...
"Air strike, left flank, 10 meters out!"
Shoji was struck by a feeling of surrealism as he watched Tsunotori act on his callout. As Rocketti darted in to release a fusillade of dumb-fire rockets that obliterated the robots and paint-ball-gun armed Ectoplasm clones, he struggled to fit this into his original view of Heroics. Everything about his current task was almost alien. The fact that he was somehow in charge, more or less, as someone who had proven able to direct others on a tactical level before. The fact that they were employing what amounted to military Close Air Support tactics against a swarm of villains. Even, or perhaps especially, the intentional collateral damage they were doing in order to help box in the never-ending waves of enemies…
"Mantis! Breakout, right of center! Containment!"
He watched as another 1B student answered the call out, a whirl of razor-sharp blades entering the fray where Red Riot had gotten tied up duking it out with a pair of the enemy heavy hitters. Kirishima getting bogged down had let the weaker drones begin leaking through their defense cordon, but Kamakiri was rapidly containing the leak. Shoji shook off his disquiet at how different this was from what he'd imagined being a hero to be and concentrated on the tactical situation. It was what it was, and this was the reality they lived in for now, though another session with Hound Dog to work through the dissonance he was feeling might not be uncalled for…
... ...
Izumi had known the moment she and Momo were put in the same patrol area that this was going to get ugly. And she'd been proven right when All Might had joined the fray in their portion of the city. Worse, a new type of flying drone with a lot of kick had joined him in waves, along with more normal villain bots and a few zero pointers. As she and Momo were the only two fliers of the group, and they were charged with protecting an entire hospital, they'd been forced to separate instead of trying to take All Might on together. Mudman and Vine were doing an incredible job at area denial on the ground, and both Pulse( Jioru) and Long Weizi (Rin) were proving to be remarkably good anti-air fire support as Momo flashed around the perimeter of the hospital to deal with the airborne drone waves.
Unfortunately, that left Izumi alone to deal with All Might. Worse, there was no way she could hold back against him by using one of her partial transformation Modes to give her better combat endurance. She was forced to go full transformation, not even able to pull back her ECM and ECC suites since somewhere in the mess of ground drones were at least a dozen Electronic Warfare platforms that were trying to hammer not just her, but the hospital's systems behind her. 2B was handling that cyber-attack while easily keeping up her side of the combined mental state required for a full transformation. But even 2B couldn't also run a Pod on top of both of those tasks. Which left Izumi truly alone against All Might.
Frankly, she was getting her ass kicked.
All Might knew she could take it, so he wasn't holding back, forcing Izumi to respond in turn. Despite the fact she knew for a fact she was technically faster and stronger than he was at this point, if only by a very few percentage points, All Might still had decades of combat experience on her. And he was taking her to school in the most brutal way possible, all while her timer ticked downwards. Her hard work since starting UA had paid off, increasing her reserves enough to give her almost twenty-three minutes now at full power. But half of that was already gone…and they'd been assigned to hold this hospital for half an hour.
She needed to do something to change the equation, or they were never going to make it.
Grunting as she was slammed through a building for the third time, Izumi growled and used the bare moments were All Might couldn't see her to pull out the current result of her attempt to make a Super Move. She felt 2B's disgruntled emotions as she did so, her partner speaking into their mind link an instant later.
"It's not ready yet, Izumi. You know we haven't beat the backlash completely."
"I know. But I can take it and we need the edge if we're going to win this."
She felt 2B's reluctant agreement…even as she inserted the chip they'd been working on into the back of her neck. She had to leap clear a moment later as All Might found her and crashed into the pavement, creating a massive crater where she'd just been. Izumi, midair, took a deep breath and committed, activating the chip even as she dismissed Virtuous Contract and equipped two heavily customized and very thick bracers from her inventory. Based on the YoRHa Type 3 Combat Bracers, they were big, bulky hunks of metal. Ones that held a secret.
... ... ... ... ... ...
System Override: Programming Initiated
…
…
…
Berserker Mode Alpha v0.87 Activated
... ... ... ... ... ...
The words sped across Izumi's vision even as she grunted in pain, the secret of her bracers obvious only to her as internal needles punctured her forearms in places suddenly weakened for just that purpose. An instant later, the QE reservoirs in the bracers began pumping half-raw QE into her. As the half that wasn't denatured was Izumi's own waveform, her body accepted the raw input and her rapidly dwindling reserves shot upward. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, there was currently no way to control that flow, not with a device as small as the Bracers. There was a reason they needed the large QE transfusion chair and external machine for feeding All Might extra One for All energy. And so far they'd failed to solve the miniaturization of the control systems.
All of which meant it hurt like a bitch when her reserves filled to overflowing and she channeled the overflow into her entire body. A body which groaned under the strain, her healing factor desperately trying to keep up and slowly losing ground as the raw energy boosted her beyond the tolerances of even her fully transformed state.
There was just a bit of blood in her smile as she landed, eyes that had closed in pain prying open and glowing out at All Might as his own eyes widened at the flare of QE so strong he could feel it around her. It was also far, far too late for him to get out of the way as she kicked off with pure speed even he couldn't track and planted a fist in his solar plexus, deliberately opposite of his wound so as not to truly hurt him. Despite the careful aim, All Might could do nothing as he was hit hard enough to send him back through the building…and two more after it. A comet of visible pure QE trailing after him as he groaned and rolled out of the way of the next hit in desperation.
The training ground shuddered as All Might found himself truly outmatched and on the ropes for the first time in decades…
... ... ... ... ... ...
Author's Note: So, not a lot to say about the training itself. But...how did you like the reveal of A2's Berserker ability? I've had that little twist planned from pretty much Day 1. It's part of the reason I had 2B sent with ALL of YoRHa's database, instead of just what would have been in her own systems. I think I did a decent job of translating the Game Ability (which didn't have a specific explanation of how it worked), into a sort of Super Move for Izumi. It's too much of a double edge sword for her to use it all the time. But when she REALLY needs a boost, it's now there, and she can still refine it a bit more.
Just as a reminder, by the by...All Might might have his 3-hour limit intact because of the energy transfusions. But he's still injured and not at all at his Prime Strength. Even with Berserker Mode, Prime All Might would take Izumi to school hard. It's only in his somewhat weakened state she's now able to beat him...at considerable risk to herself. Growth, yes. But not unrealistic growth. She'll get there someday.