"It's a rescue training race!!" All Might said as he held a finger up, pointing at the sky with a smile beaming brighter than the sun. Damn, why were his teeth so shiny?
"If it's rescue training, then should it not be carried out in the U.S.J?" Ida suddenly called out, his hand shooting up.
"No, that place is for disaster rescue. What was I saying? Ah yes, a RACE!" His voice picked back up again, clearly somewhat tired of Ida's constant vigilance…
"This is playing ground Gamma. Where Densely packed lanes make this construction site seem more like a complex labyrinth! Make for groups of five! We'll do the training one group at a time. This is a competition to see who can come to my aid first! When I give the distress signal somewhere in the area, you all start simultaneously from outside the limits!" All Might explained, "Of course keep damage to the sounding buildings at a minimum!!" His finger pointed towards Bakugo.
Turning his head to the side Bakugo grumbled back some response under his breath.
"Alright, starting group take your positions!" All Might finished as he dashed into the gamma zone on his own.
Looking at Midoriya, Ojiro, Ida, Ashido and Sero as they all lined up and got ready to start he stood to the side arms crossed. Honestly, all this was on the back of his mind right now but it looked kind of fun.
It didn't take long before the first round was happening. Everyone dashed into the gamma zone as Sero pulled himself above the terrain. It was really interesting to watch as Midoriya used his first instance of full cowling in front of his class.
As the rest of the class was betting on who would win now that Midoriya showed such a shocking change Nick couldn't help but smirk in amusement. Those were clearly Bakugo's moves, how he turned through the air.
While they were good Midoriya could do better, after all, he didn't have the mid-air propulsion that Bakugo had.
It didn't take long for Midoriya to slip after that, once more Sero took the lead and after that, the round ended. Smiling a bit Nick was in the next group. Getting ready as he made his way to a starting position.
With the rest of his group, Mezo, Bakugo, Todoroki and Yaoyorozu ready he tilted his head to the side. Getting ready to start so he crouched down and bulked his legs up. He couldn't think of a way that any of his teammates could pull out an unexpected win.
As soon as the start signal blared he leaped into the air. Soaring as he looked around the gamma landscape to see Todoroki using ice and fire to skate above the arena and Bakugo propelling himself in a twisting motion through the air.
With both muscle augmentation and tendrils he made his arms into two really powerful whips that coiled like springs, both shooting him from the floor and pulling him forward at insane speeds. Landing with a crash on the tower with All Might he waited for the rest of his class. Bakugo arriving next shortly followed by Todoroki then Yaoyorozu and finally Mezo.
Complimenting his friend they all received tips from All Might before being sent back down to the starting point. The last two groups didn't take too long to finish either, after all, people were trying to go fast.
The rest of the lesson time was spent practising traversing difficult terrain. Good practice for all Heroes to have. After a while, the day finally came to an end. After getting changed and getting back to class a final round of questions and advice was given before they were all dismissed.
Seeing Midoriya go off towards the teacher's lounge Nick smiled. Maybe he should see Nezu before making a new body? Actually, that was a good idea. Waiting for Midoriya to go out of sight he made his way up the building's floors as well. Getting to the top he knocked on the principal's door.
"Come in!" Nezu's chipper voice responded. Stepping inside Nick smiled as the bear continued, "Ah Nicklaus! How may I help you?"
---
Nick sat in his shed. He had dug out a basement for it with his quirk ages ago which he hid away in the ground with an entrance that could only be found through deconstructing the floor. Honestly, he had done it because he thought it was cool to have a 'secret base.'
It was useful now, however. Getting down into the basement he looked around the mostly empty room. The only thing in here was some racks of storage for various failed ideas for mechanical arms or other experiments he had moved on from when he started using more external manipulation.
Making his way over the racks he grabbed most of the useless and mundane items that littered the shelf as well as a box of parts. He had an extensive talk with Nezu about the best way to go about this. And that was to make a body and then implant his minds into it one by one. That way he could take as long as he wanted to work on the body.
Grabbing various materials and parts he made his way to the centre of the room and with a wave of his hand the mechanics and materials broke apart in a cloud of dust before slowly reassembling into a medical bed with a glass top roof covering the thing. Putting his hand against it he wired up all the machines that would keep track of vitals and other bodily functions.
Moving over to the wall he grazed his hand along it as he made a shelf. On that shelf he put jars containing the unmodified DNA of all the quirks that he was going to try and integrate, he wanted to have unmodified quirks readily available encase he needed to start again or compare changes.
There were a couple of things to consider. One, the brain needed to be able to handle the load of the extra quirks, one of the problems that drove people to insanity and made the Nomu brain dead was the brain not being able to handle the mental commands of multiple quirks at the same time. That and the strain it would place on the nervous system activating more than one at once. Leading to insanity and or cease of brain functions.
These were easily addressed, just like with the Nomu Nick could enhance his nervous system to handle the feedback and strain, and he already had a large amount of brain power from high spec.
He had also figured out how Endurance interacted with the rest of the quirks, allowing the body to handle the strain of bearing multiple quirks at once and not start to shut down. It helped increase the durability of the nervous system and the added, 'morale' boost helped the mind keep up with multiple compatible signals.
So with Endurance and High Spec, he should be able to handle the stain without a problem.
The most difficult part however, and the biggest problem of all of this was weaving the DNA together, which was practically impossible. It not only took a lot of time and careful work. It was the part that meant that such an achievement was almost unheard of. And honestly, if Nick didn't get High Spec he would have given up on the entire idea of making a new body.
The only way he could think that Kyudai was able to figure it out was by examining All for One himself and seeing how his DNA weaved together. To have multiple quirks you had to have DNA inhabit the same spaces… that was just impossible, but there was a workaround, and without the Nomu he would never have found it.
Also, the base physical enhancements of the Nomu were insane, it was almost breathtaking and Nick was amazed by the sheer talent that Kyudai seemed to have, to have figured all this out even in 120+ years was impressive.
Examining the Nomu samples again he nodded his head. Now that he had the bed and the base 'ingredients' laid out he just needed materials. That was hard though. Putting a hand on the wall he he quickly found some tree roots and within seconds a ton of trees from above the ground quickly vanished and flowed into the basement. The holes were sealed up as the wall was repaired. There, plenty of organics.
Walking over to the table Nick finally got started.
He wanted to get this done before the forest training arc…
---
Nick didn't even hear Present Mic call out his name, looking up from his desk he rubbed his eyes as he said, "Sorry what was the question sir?"
"Can you give examples for their, there and they're?" Present Mic said, looking at Nick with an odd look.
Staring at the board he thought for a second. Damn, he only occasionally spoke English at home, he needed to think about this. "Their is a possessive pronoun, as in 'their dog is a golden retriever.' They're is a contraction of they are such as 'they are Heroes' being 'They're Heroes' for quicker informal writing?" Nick said, hesitating on the last bit, yeah contractions were informal.
"There can be used as an adjective, noun or adverb such as 'Heroes are there for me,' 'get away from there,' or 'stop right there'…" Nodding his head at his own answer he was pretty sure he got that all right.
Seeing Present Mic nod the teacher said shortly after confirming the answer and providing some more examples. "Do you want to go see recovery girl Hendrix? You seem out of it today." Kindly offering a chance for the clearly exhausted boy to rest.
"I'm alright sir, just tired that is all." Nick replied as he waved away the concern. He had been awake all night using his quirk to create the perfect body. And it had been harder than he thought it would ever be. Like it was almost impossible.
Without High Spec he wouldn't have a chance in hell of doing this but he was able to do it barely because of it. He had started by replicating the structure of the Nomu's body and using that to make a clone of his body. Basically, he just made an identical body of his own although it was made with a similar structure to the High-End Nomu. With that, he started to add modifications.
So far it had no quirks, it was just an insanely powerful body, it wasn't near the level of strength that Tomura's body was when he obtained All for One but it was a step in the right direction.
It had denser muscles, stronger bones, and thicker skin. Two hearts, three lungs. Basically a spare of each important organ with much greater strength given to each organ. He could pump blood faster to more muscle and breath more air. It was an upgraded human in every sense of the word.
He had started by implanting Endurance as the base quirk, which had been hard but straightforward. The hardest part was weaving in the other quirk factors. He saw why it took Kyudai so long to do so. He basically had to breed the quirks to get the same Plus Alpha strand to have both effects. But that took time, time that he was able to save by making those connections through overhaul but still it took ages. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be a starting point. He could improve the body when he was in it later down the line when he knew what he was doing. For now, he just wanted to get the base functions in.
Having too many quirks, for now, would be too hard, so he settled on the most important. Endurance, energy saver and gigantification. Those were the most important to him. Gigantification solely because he could isolate the factor that allowed the body to generate matter to grow itself. He had found it and was going to implement it.
---
Lunch came and went and soon they were all sitting around as Aizawa stood in front of the class saying. "The summer break is approaching. None of you have enough leeway to just relax. We'll be going to the summer break forest lodge." Aizawa finished sending the entire class into an excited celebration.
"However, should any of you fall short of a passing grade for the end-of-term test then you're stuck in school doing remedial hell." Sending the students into a panic mode, at least some of them were worried they wouldn't pass.
---
Time passed, it was 1 week before the end-of-term test. Nick had made progress on the body, it was going slow and steady. Most of the 'quirks' had been implemented but it was taking time, a lot of time.
"I haven't studied at all!" Kaminari yelled.
As the class started to talk about their grades to each other and how well they did.
With the class in a frenzy, so many events happened during that day. People talked and chattered and Momo the top of the class promised to tutor those that wanted help.
The written exam came and went, and most people felt confident about how they did. As Nick went home that day he could think of nothing but his new body. It was the day of the test exercise tomorrow, a fight against one of the teachers. He had already beaten Aizawa and he knew who they were going to pair him with. He wanted to give them a shock. He was the only option out of all the teachers after all.
Getting to his basement he walked over to the body floating in solution in the glass tube before him. Laying down suspended in the liquid. Placing his hand against some of the metal he felt the connecting tendrils spark to life. He worked his ass off until the sun finally rose... He had done it, it was complete.
---e
And so came the day of the test exercise.
"Right, the test will begin shortly." Aizawa said, standing in front of all the students with the other teachers. "Obviously you can fail this test, too. So if you want to head to the forest lodge then we'd better not see any pitiful blunders from you."
"Why are there so many teachers?" Jiro asked as she counted them.
"I've no doubt you all learned what information you could of the the test beforehand. So I think you already hold a vague notion of what you are to do…" Aizawa said as he looked over the students. Getting replies from Ashido and Kaminari.
Only for Nezu to crash their imaginary party. "Sorry, I'm afraid not!! Due to various reasons, we're changing the contents of the test, starting today!"
With some complaints from the class, the most asked question was, "What do you mean?"
"Well…" Nezu responded as he answered the question. "From now on, we'll focus our tests more on person-to-person battle activities. And Emphasizing a teaching environment closer to that of a REAL battle! Which boys and girls is to say… that henceforth. We will have you form pairs to engage in combat with one of these here teachers!"
Hearing the gasps of the class Nick just smiled as he tilted his head to the side. Keen on seeing what would happen.
"Now, who you all are paired with and which teacher you'll be fighting has already been decided. The way you tend to move, your grades and your degree of familiarity… we personally judged how you'll be pairing up based on all sorts of things, and we'll list the match-ups now!" Nezu said, his voice eager, he was ready to 'play.'
"Midoriya and Yaoyorozu are a team against." Nezu started.
"Against me…" Aizawa said, finishing the first pairing.
Smiling Nick thought because of Bakugo's rage having a different target he was sure that he would be paired with him.
Speaking up again Nezu said as he looked up at Nick. "Hendrix, you will be paired with… Bakugo, as a team."
He was right. Looking at Bakugo he saw the boy scowl but controlled his emotions. He disliked the boy, yes but he wasn't going to fail a test because of it.
"Your opponent will be…" Nezu continued. The class leaned forward eager to hear who Nick would be against.
"I'm Here. To Oblige!" The powerful form of All Might spoke as he crashed into the floor behind the two. Looking up at All Might Nick couldn't help but grin as he said.
His body was quaking with power, he was ready, eager to test out his new enhancements. The beating of his multiple hearts made him feel strong. He felt so much stronger than normal. He felt like he could at least challenge the symbol of peace. As Nick stared up at All Might Nick smirked as he said.
"Bring it on big guy."
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Sorry about the shorter chapter today. Feeling a bit sick so I want to get to bed. Let me know what you think of it!
Thanks for all the support and comments! Leave a review to let me know what I could do better or a comment with advice! Thanks for all the support so far!