Canon Fodder-CHAPTER 52 MY QUIRK

The auditorium full of students was separated into four groups based on seat rows. Toru was in my group so we stuck together. Split by men and women we went to separate restrooms to change into workout clothes, but I decided to stick in my street clothes. I recognized a few others from the My Hero Academia manga in the group, but luckily there was no Midoriya. The green haired protagonist would struggle enough passing this, and I didn’t want to mess with the canon too much. Not yet anyway.
Kids all around me, I did decide to put on my training weights. The legs were 250 pounds each, and the wrists were 175 pounds each. I had grown accustomed to them during my time learning the gates. Where these people were peak strength for high schoolers, I estimated I was peak strength for a pro-hero. I needed to push myself and keep training.
The highly dense weights were sewed into a brown strap about 12 inches long. They buckled on to ensure there was no shifting. My pant legs and shirt sleeves covered them up nicely. I was tempted to pull out my Jitte but most everyone else was using fists. So I decided to hold off my true skills. I knew my quirk, but not as well as I should. My original self was driven to become stronger, but I felt I could figure out the skill more easily with practice.
I began to cycle chakra through my fists and body. Preparing for the fight. My pink heart necklace hanging from Toru’s neck allowed me to know just where to look.
“I see why you wanted me to wear this necklace now,” she mumbled. Pointing at her chest where I was positive a nice rack resided.
“It looks great on you,” I said. Getting more used to talking to an invisible girl. “Want to work together?” I asked.
She hesitated. “Isn’t this supposed to be an individual test?”
“Did they say that?” I asked. I couldn’t remember them saying that anywhere. “Heroes work together all the time. Tell you what, I’ll be your sidekick.” I flashed her chest my best smile.
“If you start trying to look me in the eyes, fine,” she said.
“Ugh, just today,” I said. She didn’t reply, but I guessed that was a yes. Looking ahead there was a large city before us. The crowd from the auditorium was assigned to four different sides of the faux-city that was about two square miles. My group waited impatiently as people stretched or psyched themselves up.
I walked closer to Toru, doing my best to not touch her invisible and naked body. “I’m really fast. We could get ahead of the crowd if you jump on my back.”
“Sounds like you don’t need me,” she said.
“Oh I do. I fight better with a beautiful woman close by,” I said. Giving her my best grin. “And I need to make sure my necklace is safe. I’d hate to have to be the one that haunts you.”
She giggled nervously again. “Okay,” she whispered.
“Perfect. When we start, jump on my back and hold on for dear life. We will be moving quickly,” I said.
Keeping Toru close, I wondered when the test was going to start when Present Mic announced, “And the 10 minute timer starts…now!”
“Fuck,” I said. Grabbing Toru I thought I got her hand. Twirling her around I threw her on my back and ran into the testing grounds.
While I was running into the fake city people were groaning or questioning if it was true. Present Mic yelled, “What? There’s no countdown in real life. Get going!”
I was already a quarter mile in before anyone else entered the city. We had passed by a few machines that were to be the ‘villains’. I left them for the slow people.
“You good?” I asked my necklace as I set her down.
“Uh yeah,” she said, getting her footing.
“Good. Go time,” I said. A five foot tall machine with gatling guns screeched to a halt beside us. I jumped up, slicing my hand like a blade into the metal snake neck. The thing burst apart easily. I jumped over it and was attacking another.
“Joints are weak!” I yelled at Toru. She did something and the arm of one of the villains exploded off. I guessed she kicked it. And we went about it. It was about five minutes in before other people even came close to where we were. We had a good section of the street littered with machines by the time we moved on.
I ran with Toru down an alley only to be stopped by a group of three machines. One punch broke off the heads of two machines and Toru yelled as she incapacitated the other. I was having a lot of fun. I guessed that someone had a quirk to make these breakable robots easily. Heading down another alley we came out to see the giant robots worth zero points. It was as big as one of the buildings as it moved in the street.
I looked up to see Midoriya already in the air. His arm covered in the lightning like streaks as he used One for All. He punched the flat face of the robot. A resounding boom went out as the robot’s face was caved in. I couldn’t help but be a little impressed. I wanted to be that strong.
“He’s falling!” Toru yelled beside me.
I noticed Ururaka on the ground in front of us. I ran toward her. “Stop his fall!” I ordered. She nodded, her eyes wide in shock as I lined her up and threw her at the falling protagonist.
She slapped his face as she passed. She did the hand signal to make him float but began to fall herself soon after. Midoriya stopped falling a few feet from the ground but dropped when she stopped the hand motion that allowed her to use her skill. I jumped over, grabbing her out of the air before she hit the concrete street.
“Thanks,” she said. I could have grabbed Midoriya, but this was an important bonding experience for the two of them.
“Your ten minutes are up!” A voice announced over speakers.
I noticed Midoriya’s dismayed look. I frowned but walked over. Bending down I said, “They grade you on how many monsters beaten and people saved, you’ll do fine.” He looked up at me with tears in his eyes. I gave him a wink and walked away as the old healer woman walked over to the broken protagonist. I found my necklace holder close by.
“What did you whisper to him?” She asked.
“I asked him if he saw this floating necklace, or was I the only one seeing things,” I said. I felt someone hit my arm. Laughing I corrected, “No, I said he did a good job. He looks pretty beat up. Thought he could use a compliment.”
I started walking back to the entrance we were assigned. Toru followed. We were quiet for a time but she eventually broke the silence. “Thanks.”
“Anytime,” I said.
“You don’t know what I’m thankful for,” she replied.
“You are thankful that I went 60 seconds without making a ghost joke,” I said.
She giggled. “Yes, I am thankful for that too,” she admitted. We kept walking. “Thanks for talking to me.”
“Don’t need to thank me for that,” I said. “Thanks for the water. And the great view.” I looked at my necklace again.
“You’re hopeless,” she whispered.
“That I am,” I said. “So want to be my new best friend?” I asked.
“Best friend?” She asked.
“Yep, we will be put in Class 1-A at UA. I could use a friend,” I said.
“You’re very confident,” she said. “You really think we will be in the top class?”
“I do,” I admitted. I knew she could have gotten into it without my help. But I liked Toru, she deserved more screen time in the manga. “I will need that necklace back though.”
She hesitated again but slowly lifted it up. I leaned forward making her put it on me. “What is that?”
“My symbol,” I said without shame.
“A heart?” She asked.
“Yep. I’m a lover,” I said, sending her a wink.
We made it to the exit and as others arrived we were escorted off the school premises. I said bye to Toru and decided to work my way home. My dad and I lived outside of town. I had to take the subway to get near the edge of town then a bus to get further out. Then it was a few mile walk to our place. It took about 1.5 hours to get in and out of town. One of my goals would be living on the campus when I was accepted. I didn’t worry too much about making it in 1-A. I’d killed a good 20 villain robots.
During the quiet time as I traveled back to my home, I played with my quirk. It was quite a bit different from chakra. Almost an innate skill that automatically happened with my body, like breathing. I had awoken the power when I was three years old. Back then I had fallen down a flight of stairs but was unhurt. Prompting my parents to take me to a doctor for tests. Thanks to those tests, I knew I had a quirk and some of it’s potential. But current me suspected that neither the doctors nor I knew the full scope of the power.
My Quirk was called Disperse. Back in the day the specialized “Quirk” doctors explained to me that under heightened danger, my body would disperse kinetic energy that came into contact with my skin.
Normally when someone jumps down from a great height, they widen their stance, allowing them to distribute the force, or kinetic energy, over a wider area. Which made it so they could absorb the blow. That is what my Quirk does. When I fell down the stairs as a kid, rather than a lot of kinetic energy absorbed by a small area as I hit the stairs, instead I was able to distribute that energy over a wider area. I still felt the force, but was unharmed because it was mitigated to my whole body at once.
Old me had tested the power a few times, simply jumping down from a roof or something not overly tall. And it was rather convenient for the power to be automatic, but I felt he had been slacking to find it’s potential for some time.
What I saw most important about the power was that if I could train it, maybe the power would allow me to catch bullets. The real danger of a bullet was a moderate amount of kinetic energy focused on a single point. If I could learn to focus the power, I should really be able to make anything that comes at me almost negated.
Another factor in pushing me to dig into the Quirk more was the fact that my mind was from another world. I could control Chakra, and was still trying to understand Haki. I knew that powers such as these were never what they seemed at the beginning. As I had gotten stronger than my three year old self that awakened the Quirk, my Quirk should have gotten stronger as well. I merely had to figure out how to use it.
So that’s what I did in the following days after the entrance exam. I had no school to go to. And no one to look over my shoulder to ask what I was up to. I was going to join the best super hero school in the country. A place where tons of super villains would be focused on like some wannabe gang of Voldemorts. This world wouldn’t be easy, and training my Quirk had to be my highest priority.
I first practiced my Disperse Quirk by jumping off trees. My instincts thanks to Naruto World caused me to naturally move chakra to my legs to empower them and absorb the fall, so it took some time to be able to rely on just my Quirk. And as past-me knew, Disperse really did work. I would land on the ground and wouldn’t be hurt.
In this world all Quirks had drawbacks or weaknesses though. Something that made this power limited. For instance, one of the main characters could control fire and ice, but if he used one of those elements too much, he could get too hot or cold, causing him issues. My Drawback was that I had to absorb this energy. Meaning every inch of my body took damage, and if I dispersed too much, I would eventually damage myself. A fact old me had tried to limit. But I noticed a lot that he hadn’t.
For one, the old me in this world didn’t notice that the kinetic energy dispersed was actually absorbed into my body then expelled out to the rest of my body. My Quirk wasn’t actually forcing the energy to disperse over a wide area toward me, in truth it was being pushed out of me. It helped to think of the energy like someone yelling, and my body was a cave. If someone were to yell in a cave, the sound waves would bounce on the walls, reflecting back to hit one another, then continue on until the energy had run out of juice further away.
This was an important distinction because the energy entered my body. I had been training for years to sense and control chakra. Why couldn’t I absorb this energy? It was a daunting idea, but one I felt was correct. My mind had decades more experience than the old me in My Hero Academia world. If anyone could figure the quirk out, it was me. And I did.
It took time of course. My first mistake was trying to redirect the kinetic energy by jumping from higher and higher locations. No matter how much my mind wanted to try to control my Quirk under these conditions, I couldn’t do it yet. So I relied on Newton’s Third Law of Motion. For every action there is an equal or opposite reaction. This is explained by if I push about one pound of force onto a wall, the wall is actually pushing one pound of force back at me. So technically force was being applied to me. Not much, but it was there.
After understanding this, I began to stomp on the ground. Energy from the force the ground applied to me would move through my body and I would direct it to my open palm. It took a few days, but I was eventually able to see it in action. I stomped, I redirected the energy to my palm that had a sheet of paper overtop of it. As soon as the energy left my hand, the paper shredded in two as it was thrown up into the air. Proving that I could reuse this energy my body dispersed. Which made me redouble my efforts as I worked on my plans for the world.
I kept plenty busy that week with practicing my Quirk. My dad was a workaholic. Or at least he became one after my mom was killed. Working in a small office building at the edge of town he was the first one in and the last one to leave. I tried to get him to open up, but the guy had been hurt hard by my mom’s death.
I couldn’t blame him though. She had been pregnant at the time and the old guy lost all sight of the future because of it. After the incident he moved us to the small house outside of town to be close to my grandparents. They practically raised me. My grandpa got sick last year and died, and my grandma soon followed. It was a sad truth to admit that the world I was in wasn’t perfect. But I kept my focus on the prize and kept going.
I got the acceptance letter for UA at the end of the week. It was a video recording of the mouse principal congratulating me for getting in. I got the high score of 90 points. 70 points for villain kills then another 20 points for the rescue I helped make happen with Midoriya and Uraraka. My quest finished and I had a nice and new Disperse Quirk in my Status Screen.
My dad actually had a smile on his face when I showed him my acceptance letter. He said he was proud of me. Then went back to eating. I chewed my lip, and for once forced the issue that I had been thinking on as I trained my Quirk.
“Dad,” I said. He looked up at me, blinking as if he didn’t realize I was there. “What would you do if they caught the guy that killed mom?”
His eyes widened a little. Looking down to his plate he thought for a moment. “I’m glad you’re going to be a hero, son,” he admitted. “Cus I would kill that bastard in a heartbeat.” I nodded. That was answer enough for me. Though my control of my Quirk wasn’t ready for battle, my next course of action was decided.