Chapter 70: Cultural Festival
Summary: To infinity, and beyond!
Warning! Chapters 69-71 were all posted back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss one!
Chapter 70: Cultural Festival
Time and testing had passed in a somewhat frantic fashion as the Cultural Festival rushed toward the UA campus. Despite trying to keep it at least a little bit on the down low, so as not to be overwhelmed by numbers they couldn't handle, rumors about what the First Year Heroics students were up to had gotten around. Something not helped by the fact they'd run a number of full-dress test flights, taking first every member of the project, then groups of UA staff, up in their no-longer-crude space capsule. Numerous adjustments to the design, as well as properly fitting the insides and testing the weight limits, had resulted in an unexpected increase from taking up their originally intended 15 people per trip, to roughly 20. Of course, it was actually a weight and physically-available cubage based restriction, not numbers. So some flights were more populated than others.
By the time the day of the actual festival had come around, half of the students were needed for crowd control measures around the booth and stage that acted as ticketing. The wild numbers wanting to participate had, of course, presented all of them with a problem. The festival was set to last a good twelve hours from start to finish. In which time, they could only make roughly twelve flights. While the entire ride itself, from start to end, only took about forty minutes, they needed to recertify the ascent capsule for every launch, as well as give Izumi and Uraraka the short breather between flights. In total, averaging an estimated 20 people per flight, they were only going to manage to take up 240 people. At best and assuming no major issues.
Only.
Of course, that only was a bit ridiculous. Only a little over 600 people had been to space since the advent of Quirks caused societal collapse, and the only ones who had been since that time where a handful of individuals who were like Izumi. In other words, the extremely rare individuals with a Quirk of the right type to survive taking themselves to space, with little to no required equipment. Adding in their test flights, which had already taken another 173 people to Space, and their little Cultural Festival Space Program was set to put two thirds the total number of previous people ever into space. And have done it in less than a month, total, from first launch.
Suffice it to say that their current biggest problem was trying to figure out who got tickets. Thankfully, the leaks had started happening early enough that they'd had the time to work on a solution. Something that those students without the technical skills to help out with the Capsule and launches had been set to work on.
Izumi herself had never been more grateful to basically be a glorified engine, as she'd been able to avoid the crush of people. Momo, surprisingly, had managed to avoid the same. In her case, by dint of being one of them people needed to recertify the craft for launch every time. Uraraka was equally safe from the mob, as were Yosetu and Monoma, who were on hand to help patch any problems with Yosetu's Quirk. Iida and Kaminari were acting as backup for Momo's checks, which gave both of them safety as well.
The rest of both classes weren't so lucky. Kendo and Setsuna had taken charge, thankfully. With Kendo handling the students who were on crowd control duty, and Setsuna was on stage and managing the crowd that surrounded the booth. Presenting their solution to the masses.
"You're right to be excited people! But remember, in order to be fair to everyone, tickets for the ride to space are being raffled throughout the day! Only so many of you will get the grand prize of a trip out into the cosmos, but we've got plenty of other goodies for all of you to win! Even if you don't get the literal big ticket, you can get a limited-addition Thirteen Figure, signed by Thirteen herself! Or a limited edition All Might poster from the Big Man's own ride up during testing, signed by our number one Hero himself! There are even a few limited runs of us, the Heroics students who are making this all happen! Provided by Pascal Ltd just for this special event! Buy a ticket and everyone's a winner, even if you don't get the grand prize!"
Setsuna was acting as a barker shilling the solution. Specifically, the raffle they were running for what space they did have. A handful of tickets had been reserved for Heroes that had helped UA recently, just incidentally also luring them onto the grounds for extra incidental security during the event. But, aside from those reserved tickets, everyone else had to buy into a raffle. As Setsuna was shilling to the crowd, a lot of memorabilia had been donated by various parties, to flesh out other prizes for the raffle throughout the day. Soliciting the donations of which had been the focus of all the not-technically-inclined people from the First Year Heroics.
Ultimately, there would be up to ten drawings for seats on the actual capsule, held constantly throughout the day to provide a steady stream of passengers in a vaguely fair manner. All proceeds were going to a disaster relief charity, with the costs of making the capsule having been cheerfully absorbed by Aegis Inc. Running the entire thing as a charity raffle had made it much easier to solicit the prize donations, most of which came from either UA staff or Heroes that various students were doing Work Studies with.
"No pushing and shoving folks! Anyone that can't keep their cool won't be going up at all, since we won't be able to trust you not to do something equally stupid on the ride up! Get your tickets calmly folks! And remember, all of the proceeds for the raffle today are going directly to Recovery International! In support of Disaster Relief worldwide! Buy a ticket for a good cause, along with your chance for a prize!"
The very first ride of the day, containing the majority of the reserved tickets as the raffle hadn't had a chance to do its first draw yet, was a star-studded affair that had thankfully gone mostly unnoticed due to the early loading. Ryukyu, Miruko, Fatgum, Majestic, Selkie, Manual, and other Heroes and Heroines had been present. All of them had been provided tickets either by UA, as distributed by the Dean as part of his conditions to help them make it all happen, or else been given tickets by students they had taken on for Work Studies.
All of them, even the usually hard-to-impress Miruko, had been blown away by the experience. Nothing having truly been able to prepare them for the view of both Space and Earth from 130 kilometers up. And they were only the first group of the day. Izumi grunted as she landed with the third, this time a group of 23 since they'd had a few smaller riders. Not bothering to dismount, Izumi closed her eyes to let her mind rest as Mina lead a team of mixed Group A and Group B students to sweep the riders away. They had a room set aside where the excited people could chat and process…and they needed to get them clear so Momo and her team could work on recertifying the Space Capsule. The checklist had been streamlined, but couldn't be rushed, so they needed one set of riders out of the way as quick as possible to prep for the next.
"Izumi, you alright in there?"
Izumi jerked as Pony tapped on the glass of her mechsuit's cover. Essentially converting the oversized SFS design into a borderline full mecha had been one of numerous changes they'd made over the last month. Just because Izumi didn't need to breathe, didn't change how disconcerting it was to not do so. So they'd eventually tweaked the suit to be lightly pressurized. She wasn't really getting anything out of breathing, as the air wasn't hooked to an oxygen tank, but it prevented the constant itch at her entirely human instincts that said she needed to be doing so.
"I'm good! Just, this is just a bit more mentally taxing than I'd expected. I've been having to navigate a few weather fronts, too. Nothing major. Just some light rain."
Pony frowned in concern.
"Are you okay to continue? Do you need a break? We knew all along we might not be able to make the full set of 12 flights."
Izumi shook her head.
"Not yet. I'm fine for now, and 2B can take over for me if things get bad. That would drain us faster and we might have to call off a flight or two. But I don't think it will get that bad unless something goes wrong. I'm more worried about the internal capsule hardware. Any issues?"
Pony looked doubtful for just a moment at Izumi's reassurance, but she visibly pushed the worry away, trusting Izumi knew what she was doing.
"So far, so good. Momo had to pull one of the primary scrubbers for a spare. But the exchange went fine. And the backups haven't been needed at all."
Izumi nodded. That wasn't a shock. They hadn't had a lot of time to do a proper development cycle. So a lot of what they'd made, like the oxygen scrubbers, had been overbuilt. Brute force installations made deliberately to be hot swappable. It meant the weight of the capsule was significantly higher than if they'd had time to do the thing properly. But Uraraka's Quirk made that essentially a non-issue.
"Right. They're about to start loading again. Better get ready, Izumi! Don't push too hard!"
Izumi smiled and shook her head as Pony zoomed off, riding her horns down. She understood the other girl's concern, of course. But with 2B as a fallback if Izumi slipped up somewhere, there really wasn't anything to worry about. Besides, they'd done a full eight flights just a few days ago as a test and she'd been fine…
... ...
It happened on their ninth flight of the day, and Izumi's mind was fatigued enough that she almost didn't react in time. The alert that screamed across her HUD, for two and a half terrible seconds, didn't make sense. And then, suddenly, Izumi's adrenaline response surged, cutting away the fog as she abruptly did understand. Thankfully, 2B had been faster to react, calculating a radical course shift and popping it up on the display even as Izumi finally realized what was going on.
Someone was shooting at them.
Someone was shooting at them with surface to air missiles.
Without the capsule, the missiles would have been an utterly laughable threat to Izumi. She could dodge them, spoof them, or shoot them down at leisure. Unfortunately, these were heat seekers and despite the slow-speed reentries she had been doing, the bottom of the capsule was hot. Enough so that there was absolutely no way she was going to fool the missiles into missing. Something 2B had already realized as the new burn shifted the capsule out of the way, spinning the entire thing up onto its side as the brute force burn rotated them in mid-air to put Izumi between the capsule and the danger.
Unfortunately, the SFS wasn't armed. And turning it into a full mecha meant she couldn't summon anything in her inventory to a point outside of it.
Fortunately. That did not include 2B and her Pods, which didn't come from her inventory at all. In an unusual move for them, Izumi and 2B worked together to form two Pods simultaneously. Doing so essentially left her frozen in place as all of their mental effort was redirected, but Izumi had already issued orders to the SFS anyway. It was burning hard to push the Capsule as far off their predicted course as it could, burning QE at a rate that was causing the 'available QE' meters to plummet. And a damn good thing she'd done it, too. Even as the Pod 2B was controlling lanced out with a precision laser beam that knocked one of the two initial missiles out of the sky, four more of them launched. Not from one point, but from four. Four entirely different points from the first launch.
Izumi's own Pod zeroed the second missile and she watched as UA's defense grid came online and swatted two more out of the sky. The other two were too far out from UA's airspace for the grid to reach…but Izumi's instinctive maneuver to push the Capsule out of its original course had forced the missiles to course correct and come in from more or less the same angle. Hitting four missiles with two Pods, all coming from different vectors, would have been the next best thing to impossible at the short ranges involved. Two, coming from the same rough vector, was another story. The missiles had waited until she was below 5,000 meters and decelerating and the angle change, combined with their hyper cognition, let Izumi and 2B nail the remaining two birds at less than 500 meters out.
Not daring to believe the attack had ended, Izumi gritted her teeth, head pounding as she split her attention between the Pod and the SFS, ordering the suit to dive with the Capsule. Making a desperate bid go get into UA's air defense network before more fire could come. More fire that did come as five more missiles launched on the heels of the destruction of the last set. One launcher must have already been eliminated by someone, but that was cold comfort to Izumi as she and 2B nailed the two closest. More relevant was that her desperate dive had gotten them into UA's air defense net. The remaining three missiles were swatted out of the air by those defenses…
And then Izumi couldn't afford to split her attention anymore as they hit the threshold at which they had to slow down by if they didn't want to turn their riders into paste from the deceleration G-forces. She dismissed the Pod, grunting as she suddenly felt the strain her body had been under as the SFS obeyed her orders. Frantically boosting her physical transformation, ignoring how her reserves plummeted into the red, she shifted the angle of their burn, straining to slow the capsule's headlong plummet.
For several horrible seconds, Izumi didn't think she was going to make it. She was losing power too fast!
Then Momo was there.
Her girlfriend was snarling as she hammered into the underside of the capsule, sparking with visible arcs of One for All and trusting the Capsule's armor to protect it as she threw everything she could into Float. Barely a hundred meters from the ground, the capsule came to a halt…and then began a much more gentle but still faster-than-intended descent again as they scrambled to get it on the ground again before anything else could happen. Izumi was already ejecting from the SFS as she touched down, gasping for breath as her transformation failed and the internal oxygen of the suit was too thin to support her. A grim-faced Rocketti caught her, even as dozens of other heroes and security bots swarmed everywhere.
The moment she touched the ground properly, the mental whiplash finally did her in and Izumi gave in to the purple at the edges of her vision…
... ...
Izumi woke to the half-familiar view of UA's infirmary ceiling. Long seconds were required for her to process how she'd gotten there. Then, her head turned, looking for someone to get information from. Even as she did, she could feel 2B waking with her, reaching out in a more digital way to seek the same data. Half to Izumi's surprise, it was Jirou, not Momo, that she found sitting at her bedside. Though the reason why filtered back to her in raw data form from 2B. Momo, it appeared, was trying to help Dean Nedzu mediate a screaming match between a dozen military and political figures, the HPSC, and half of the Top 10 Heroes.
Leaving 2B to try sorting that out, Izumi parted her lips and tried to ask Jirou what had happened, but the noise came out as a croak. Jirou heard it, of course, her head whipping up from her phone to see Izumi stirring. She seemed to catch on almost instantly to what Izumi needed, quickly scooping up a glass of water and holding it up. Izumi was startled that she was still weak enough that Jirou had to half-hold it for her as she sipped to wet her throat. Taking a quick glance at her QE levels was enough to tell her what was wrong. She was still low on QE and recovering it very slowly. She must, she thought dully, have pushed the limits of her body's ability to absorb more of it by tapping constantly into the external power of the SFS for the nine flights they'd managed before the attack. She would recover, but she likely wouldn't be getting out of bed for at least the rest of the night. Turning to Jirou, who took the now-empty glass away, Izumi tried to speak again. This time, thankfully, it worked.
"Thanks. Can you tell me what's going on?"
Jirou's snorted, her jacks flashing out to lightly poke Izumi in the forehead.
"You mean, aside from you scaring us half to death by being halfway gone into anoxia when Pony caught you?"
Izumi cringed, peeking at her internal logs to see that Jirou was right. While the SFS had been lightly pressurized, it hadn't been kept oxygen rich. The pressure had only been for Izumi's comfort, not because she was actually breathing for the sake of oxygen. When Izumi had rerouted all power to try and save the capsule, parts of her transformation had failed. Her body had suddenly needed oxygen again and had none to work with. By the time she'd ejected and gotten into the oxygen-normal atmosphere, her body had been shutting down in a way that was lethal even for her.
"Thankfully, you were fine once they got you on oxygen and Momo gave you as much QE as your system could handle. Which wasn't a lot, and you used most of it up regenerating the damage."
Izumi nodded, grimly aware that this was probably the closest she'd ever come to death. Including even the dicey moments with the USJ Nomu. Another minute, possibly as little as thirty seconds, and it might have been too late. Still, she looked imploringly at Jirou, who sighed and poked her with her jacks again before relenting.
"Aside from you scaring us, the missile attack was one of two. The other was an extremely strong Nomu, which attacked Endeavor and nearly beat him before Hawks showed up to help bail him out. The really screwy thing is that the attacks weren't timed like they were meant to happen at the same time. Everyone's best guess is that it was two entirely different groups, that just happened to attack targets at the same time. But that just makes it worse, not better. Particularly since those were JSDF missiles that you were attacked by."
Izumi blinked, gaping more at the last bit than the rest.
"What? How? And wait…before that…is everyone okay?"
Jirou nodded, then made a so-so motion with her hand.
"On our end? Yes. Some of the civilians in the capsule were pretty banged up by your evasion. But the restraint systems kept anything worse than a few nasty bruises from happening. One of them did pass out from the G-Force load, but she recovered, even if they have her at Musutafu General for overnight observation, just in case."
With a sigh, Jirou handed her phone to Izumi and restarted a video on it. It displayed a nasty fight between Endeavor and a Nomu that seemed a cut above anything they'd see so far. Possibly short of the USJ Nomu. She winced as she saw a lot of damage happening to the buildings around them, though a number of other Heroes seemed to on top of it. Even so, she could already tell what Jirou was about to say.
"There are dozens of casualties, with at least 11 fatalities, from the Nomu and Endeavor fight. And they are still cleaning up after it. It's only been about five hours since you passed out, four and a half from the Nomu fight. So the casualty figure it likely to climb."
Fuck. Izumi knew it could have been much worse. Both in that fight and theirs. The flight she'd been attacked on had been another with over twenty people aboard. If one of the missiles had hit the Capsule, there would have been at least twenty-three casualties. Twenty-four if it had gotten her too.
"How was the JSDF involved?"
Jirou grimaced, face looking very sour as she responded.
"We don't know. The JSDF is citing rogue elements taking over their launchers. All of which were part of the defense forces still in Musutafu. Not the direct cordon around the school. But ones at other critical points throughout the city." An expression of disgust flittered across her face as she continued. "But that's just what they are claiming. They won't let anyone else near the launchers, or the personnel that were arrested for questioning. They are claiming it's out of anyone's jurisdiction but their own."
Flaming crap baskets. That explained why Momo and the Dean were trying to moderate a shouting match between a bunch of high ranked Heroes, a bunch of politicians, and several JSDF higher ups. Shaking that off as something she couldn't do anything about for the moment, she focused on what more she could learn.
"Anyone taking credit for the missile attack? And what is the public response?"
Jirou shook her head at the first question.
"No one claiming credit. Not even the League trying to pretend it was them. As for the public? That's hard to say. The fact that both attacks were stopped means the Heroes aren't looking too bad to the public. I think the JSDF being involved is splitting their anger to cover more than just the Heroes this time. But they aren't exactly happy, either. Things were just calming down…and now…"
And now they weren't. Izumi sighed and sat back, trying to process everything as Jirou filled her in on what the various news services had to say so far…
... ...
Under the cover of darkness, in an abandoned subway tunnel under a city which had been scoured by the flames of battle, a malformed canine self-destructed with a panicked whine. In its place was left a speck of void, growing into something more as it absorbed the intense QE that had been emitted by the Number 2 hero and the monster he'd fought. With the battle so recent, the speck began to grow much more rapidly than another, cities away. Though not quite so fast as a third which had recently planted itself in an underground cavern near a 'disused' facility of the Detnerat company, just a few kilometers outside Deika city. There, a suspicious amount of QE flowed into the forming void. If someone had been in place to backtrack that flow, the secret training grounds of the Meta Liberation Army would have been all too easily discovered…