Spacetime Anomaly: MHA Fanfic

Chapter 14.4: Quirk Development Sparring Match-Ups

Quirk Development time had arrived and Izuku found it rather easy to set up the members of the group he was most familiar with. Kendo had the right idea when she declared that Quirk Development would involve a lot of sparring as that was what most people were going to be doing. Todoroki fighting Bakugo went without saying, but the others required Izuku to think deeply about how everyone would stack up.

However, before that, Izuku had to better understand the newcomer's Quirks that he didn't already know. Understanding of his reasons for requesting information on their Quirks, Izuku talked to each of the arrivals from Class 1-B, before taking a solid minute to come up with apt match-ups.

When he was done, he started his announcement, saying, "Alrighty then, Shoji-san, you've made some progress in replicating new types of organs, right?" When he received a nod and short explanation from the tall masked teen, he returned a nod of his own and stated, "Good, you're up against Hagakure-san. As the only one that can her body aside from me, you're the only one she could find any worth in fighting. She should also be able to teach you a thing or two about martial arts." He shivered as he recalled Hagakure's horrifying talent for learning martial skills; slightly fearful of what might happen to the boy if he underestimated her.

"Next would be Kendo-san and Sato-san. Kendo," Izuku peered at Kendo with a palpable warning, "Since both of you are power types, your martial arts will probably give you an advantage. Though you shouldn't expect an easy victory, I know how competitive you are." A depressing aura shook the hearts of everyone that looked at Izuku as he said, "Please for the love of god, don't overdo it..."

Turning to those who were next, Izuku said, "Kaminari-kun you're up against Iida-san. You're control of that technique you've been practicing should be good enough to make you a worthy opponent for our very own speedster. As for you, Iida-san, Kaminari's basic shock attacks added to his newfound speedy technique should be able to work out the kinks in your stiff fighting style. He'll also be giving you a chance to improve resistance to the numbing after-effects of electricity. I'm not expecting you to gain immunity even if you spared till the day you died, but learning to fight through the pain and numbness that comes from battling with most Elemental Quirks is a skill any hero should develop."

"Tokoyami-san, you and Dark Shadow are up against Tokage-san. Your progress in developing resistance to light has been coming through quite nicely, but it's about time we got you to start fighting hand-to-hand; and I do mean literally. You've got to stop over-relying on Dark Shadow and I can't think of a better person force you into doing just that than Tokage-san."

Turning to the girl with dark-green wavy hair, who he now knew as Setsuna Tokage, Izuku said, "As for why Tokoyami-san is a good match-up for you… Well, it basically boils down to a battle of versatility. Dark Shadow is not only good offensively, defensively, and suitable for auxiliary support, it's also sentient; in your battle, it will be the embodiment of offense. From what you've told me, your Lizard Tail Splitter Quirk would be his perfect counter as the embodiment of defense. Being able to split up your body, regenerate, track, and scout will make it a living hell for him to get a good hit in, while you have an untold number of chances to improve your own power." Knowing that power was something her Quirk severely lacked, Setsuna nodded; wholeheartedly in agreement.

"Kirishima-kun..." Izuku addressed the next group he would set up. He could already feel a headache coming through as he said, "You are up against Tetsutetsu. You two have eerily similar Quirks which just so happen to be well suited for training each other."

"Similar? They're totally different!" The silver-haired Tetsutetsu yelled. "I transform my skin into Steel and he just hardens up like a rock! I have temperature resistance while transformed, while he gets all jagged and sharp! See? Totally different!"

Pinching his nose in frustration, Izuku said, "You two are the only ones that can go all out in a sparring match without risking significant damage to the other. I'll agree that there are nuances to each of your Quirks; they're not entirely identical. But beating the ever-living crap out of each other through brawling would probably lead to both your Quirks becoming more durable before the Sports Festival."

Fortunately, Kirishima and Tetsutetsu were happy with their Quirk Development assignment after Izuku laid it out for them with simple terms. However, now it was time to address another potentially disastrous match-up. So, after drawing in another deep breath, Izuku turned to Monoma and said, "If you're fine with my suggestion, I'd put you against Ojiro-san."

Seeing no resistance aside from a twitch of his eye, Izuku explained, "Since your Quirk is dependent on skin contact to even work, pitting you up against him will help you develop two rather important skills. First and foremost, he's a prime example of one of your worst possible match ups. As a mutant-type that has been trained in hand-to-hand combat, if you were unprepared you might not even get the chance to Copy his Quirk before being incapacitated. So by learning to handle those like him, you might be able to net yourself the extra time to survive the encounter even if unprepared. Then there's also the benefit of picking up some martial arts skills from him, which should be important for obvious reasons."

With no retort from the Copy-Quirked blond, Izuku turned to the Tailed blond from his class and said, "Now, there may not seem to be anything in it for you to be fighting Monoma, since he's clearly weaker than you physically as proven by your individual physical conditioning training outcomes. Kendo-san has also told me he's not proficient in martial arts, so there's also that..."

"But," Izuku eyes glimmered seriously as he said, "His Copy Quirk seems to be more formidable than I originally anticipated..."

"You haven't even seen my Copy Quirk. What the hell are you talking about?" Since they met, Monoma had only attempted to use his Quirk on Izuku, which obviously failed since Izuku didn't have a Quirk. Naturally, it would raise alarms for someone who had never even seen his Quirk to judge it in any capacity.

"You don't know?" Izuku's eyebrows raised in mild surprise, "Your Copy Quirk seems to have a passive ability to improve anything you dedicate yourself towards." Seeing the blond draw blanks, Izuku felt a drop of sweat creep down the side of his face as he continued, "As you completed the physical conditioning part of today's training, your body showed increasingly noticeable levels of improvements the farther into the training we got. Before I knew you had a Copy Quirk, I assumed you had some sort of Quirk to facilitate adaptation, but on second thought, the ability to copy any Quirk under the sun, in and of itself, should be considered one of the highest forms of Adaptability-type Quirks."

Seeing Monoma's incomprehensible expression, Izuku concluded, "My guess is that since your body can adapt to so many Quirks, albeit only after making skin contact, your body is innately capable of mitigating Quirk drawbacks. If real life was an RPG game, you'd basically have natural resistances to everything or at least the potential for that."

"Tell me," Izuku suddenly had an interesting question, "What have you been doing before now to improve your Quirk?"

"Since Copying is the only thing my Quirk can do… the only thing the Quirk Doctors confirmed that my Quirk could do… the only training I've done is become as familiar with as many types of Quirks as possible."

"Mhmm… Have you ever done physical training as rigorous as today's?"

"No..."

"What about school work? Let's say that hypothetically, your Quirk works how I imagined it and anything you dedicate yourself towards is improved very quickly. Do you find schoolwork easy?"

"Y-yeah..." As Monoma thought about it, school work never had been difficult for him to understand. In fact, the more he studied, the easier it became for him to study at a later time…

"Welp, I'm adding that to my notebook," Izuku said as he conjured up a pencil and his notebook from his pocket dimension to write in an early entry for Monoma. "If you decide to come tomorrow, I'll have a bunch of other questions and information I'd like to get on your Quirk to see if I'm right. But for now, just start sparring already. We've wasted a lot of time..."

Though before moving on, Izuku addressed Ojiro and said, "Anyway, if Quirk really has that passive ability, you already know how much of a pain it will be to fight him; especially by the end of the training camp, right?" Seeing Ojiro nod, Izuku wished him good luck and moved on to the next group.

The next and final group to begin sparring was decided to be Mina and Tsuyu. Unfortunately, they didn't really have ways of improving each other's Quirks than by giving each other the chance to use it in combat. But since both were more than ready to begin sparring, they accepted being each other's partners.

Uraraka was still in the early phases of figuring out the nature of her Quirk. Though she made considerable progress in elevating her weight capacity limit and even reducing the level of nausea she felt, she was far from being able to apply her gravitational arrays for anything other than nullification. This was especially aggravating since Izuku had already derived secondary effects her arrays should be capable of achieving.

As for Momo… For some reason, she declined the chance to spar in favor of continuing her Creation Speed Training. In Izuku's opinion, she was probably suffering from tunnel vision, not being capable of seeing how terrifyingly fast she could create basic armaments. But since she had moved and was working on creating new things, he didn't bother her too much; for now, anyway.

That left out only Izuku himself and since he needed to take care of something, now that the training camp had been sorted out, he wouldn't feel guilt over leaving. After a quick announcement, Izuku created a Teleportation Gate and returned to U.A.'s Main Entrance. While en route to the principal's office, he made a phone call to his homeroom teacher.