-Rain of Sins-

-Trial of Fools: Ch 5-

Momo backpedaled and ducked under a fist that would have nailed her square in the temple.

This was bad.

She tried to disengage, but her assailant was relentless, chasing her and sending attack after attack her way.

This was very bad!

She sent a pleading glance towards her trusty pole, but the weapon laid far out of reach, knocked out of her grip and forcing her to fight with her fists,

This was very, very bad!

Momo dodged a blow, but realized too late that it was a bluff and she’d jumped straight into the path of the real attack! She tried to bend backwards to avoid it, but in her panic she lost her footing and fell backwards instead.

This was… well, it would be bad if her opponent would take this seriously!

“Bakugo Katsuki! Stop laughing this instant! This is a serious spar! I’m an opponent to take seriously!”

“Ha!” Bakugo laughed at her, hands in pockets, not even bothering with a combat stance. “That’s mighty high talk for someone who just tripped on their own feet and fell on their ass!”

Momo blushed and pushed herself to her feet, she raised her hand to say something, but froze at Bakugo’s smug grin. With a defeated huff, she sulked across the ring and picked up her staff.

They had stated (un)officially training together after the attack on the USJ, when both of them signed up for access to the school’s training facilities for off hour training- with the two of them picking the same time slot completely by coincidence.

It had started small: Momo was taking a jog, so Bakugo joined in to prove that he could run longer than her. Bakugo was training his quirk and trying to get a better throw distance than on Aizawa’s test, so Momo joined him and tried to make a cannon that outdid her own score. Aizawa cleared them for use of the obstacle course? Well that clearly called for a competition to see who could get the best record!

And so on and so forth, until they got to where they were today- Bakugo had pointed out that she sucked at combat, she had trouble making things on the fly, and couldn’t fight well without them.

Most would take it as an insult, and it was, but Momo had been around Bakugo for a while and had started to be able to pick up on his brand of constructive criticism for what it was.

So she asked for his help in fixing it.

Which led to her current situation, being ruthlessly smacked down in “physical training spars” where he wasn’t allowed to use his explosions, and she was only allowed to use her pole. Say what you will about Bakugo, he may have been prideful, but he was good at what he did, and that didn’t just end at what he could do with his quirk.

“Hiyah!” Momo swung her pole at Bakugo while his back was turned.

“Don’t broadcast a sneak attack, idiot!” Bakugo sneered as he effortlessly sidestepped the thrust. “Also your form sucks.”

“What’s wrong with my form!?”

“Hell if I know, I don’t fight with a fucking stripper pole- I just know your off balance.”

“IT’S NOT THAT KIND OF POLE!” Momo turned beet red and gave up ‘form’ in favor of swinging her pole like a bat, as hard as she could, directly at the blond’s head.

“You’re also holding the thing too tightly-” Bakugo deflected the bat downwards, and kicked his knee up into the middle of it, forming a crude lever that yanked the pole out of momo’s hand and sent it flying.

Momo watched her lifeline spin away into the air with wide eyes, and dashed for it, trying to position herself to catch it when it came back down…

Only to suddenly faceplant as Bakugo kicked her legs out from under her.

Bakugo caught her rod with a smirk, and gave her a smug look that she wanted so badly to wipe off his face.

“-now you're holding it too lightly.”

…

She was going to kill him.

-Rain of Sins-

The outskirts of the large faux city was almost identical to how Ochako remembered it from the original training exercise, with the only noticeable difference being the fact that there were almost twice as many people crowded around as last time, with both classes 1-A and 1-B joining for joint-training.

Aizawa, and Nighteye conversed with various students, schooling them on form and fighting technique before All Might arrived and the class “technically” started. While Vladking kept the large group organized, and finished the final setup for today’s exercise.

But as Ochako scanned the crowd, a sinking feeling began to form in her gut.

Where was the green haired boy from the entrance exam?

She’d assumed that he’d been put in class B! He’d saved her when no one else would! That was more deserving to get into a Hero school, than anything the other student had done!

Not to mention that he took out the Zero Pointer! The thing the size of a skyscraper!

There was no way he’d failed! He should have had ten times the score that she herself got!

How could-

“Tap Tap, guess who it is?” Ochako turned around to the familiar voice, but couldn’t see the person who tapped her shoulder. After a few moments she broke into a grin as her brain registered what that meant.

“Toru?!”

“Yup!” The invisible girl hopped in place, not that anyone could see it.

“But how? I thought you were expelled after the first-day test!”

“Oh, I was, but the principal decided to step in and just move me to class B instead! Isn’t that awesome!”

“Oh my gosh! I’m SO happy for you!”

Ochako eagerly leaned into the conversation, it was a desperate attempt, and she knew it was a futile one, but she wanted so desperately to forget about the absence of the green haired boy. The boy who had somehow failed the test where she succeeded.

The boy who had spent the last ten minutes of the exam saving her instead of getting points.

The boy with a heart of a Hero who had failed to get into UA, while someone as morally disgusting as her had.

-Rain of Sins-

All Might sighed as he thumbed his scar, frowning at his reflection in the glass window.

His fight back at the USJ had been a difficult one, and while the injuries he suffered in it weren’t all that bad compared to the worst he’d ever had, the Lizard had given him a scar.

Scars weren’t that big of a deal for him, he had accumulated so many over the years that it impossible to count them all. This one though, was different.

It was on his face.

Now, not to be egotistical or anything, but he kinda liked his face.

There wasn’t inherently anything bad about the scar, it didn’t inhibit him in any way, and a recent survey found that men thought it made him more “manly” while females thought it made him more “roguishly handsome”.

But he didn’t like it! Sue him, it was his face, he had jurisdiction over what made it look better!

Though if he was honest with himself, he knew that most of his negative feelings of the scar were tied to how it'd made keeping his secret identity a secret so much harder.

It was a long claw mark, running from right above his lip, up and right over his eye, resuming just past his eyebrow. All in all, it took up the entirety of the top right quarter of his face.

Aka: It was really easy to notice, and really hard to hide.

He had actually kept a dollar store mask in his back pocket, in case his time limit ran out when he was on the job, and he needed to flee the scene without anyone connecting the dots.

…that had caused an old lady to call the cops on him because she thought he was a Villain.

All Might sighed and pinched his nose as that embarrassing memory came back to him.

Why couldn’t things just be simpler?

Speaking of things that should be simpler…

All Might sighed again, and suddenly felt twice his age.

He toured around all the top Hero schools in Japan last week, and gave speeches to each of them. Officially it was to raise spirits and reassure the public after the USJ attack. Unofficially it had been for a bit more of a selfish reason.

…a reason that had failed, when, after nearly twenty different speeches, he hadn’t found a single strand of green hair in any of the crowds.

That boy… Nezu had shown him his paper test score, with brains like that the kid should have been able to qualify for any other number of Hero schools, regardless of his ability to fight.

And after that scene with the sludge villain, All Might just knew the boy had the heart of a true Hero! That he had what it took to become One for All’s next wielder!

But that raised the question…

Where was he?

-Rain of Sins-

“I’m going out.” Izuku spoke aloud to a room devoid of human life. “The plan’s been approved, and the pieces should be being put together soon enough.”

He walked over towards a somewhat bulky metal contraption that sat next to a bastardization of a chemistry set, with wires and tubes going every which way, and a large vial in the center that was slowly being filled with a bubbling black liquid. The computer they were both hooked up to displayed jumbles of data, indecipherable to the normal person, and was simply titled [Project Entropy: Prototype A7].

“Unfortunately any royal flush is useless without all five cards, and it looks like it’ll be up to me to supply the last puzzle piece.”

The rows of glowing vats didn’t answer him, and it was debatable whether the things inside them even heard him speak… if they could even hear at all…

Jeremy however growled and stepped forward, the nomu ready to depart at a moment's notice.

“Sorry boy.” Izuku lifted the contraption from its case and swapped out the chemistry set’s vial with an empty one, keeping the full one for himself. “I’d take you with me, but I’m afraid you’d spook the target into fleeing.”

“But don’t worry…” Izuku walked back to his central command desk and picked up what was quickly turning into his new favorite creation. It was a small containment tube, about the length of a human forearm, that held a strange squid-like creature suspended in a light blue liquid. The top and bottom of the tube were capped off in mechanical lids.

He picked it up by the handle on the top and entered three number strings, separated by a dash between them, into a keypad on the top.

Longitude, Latitude, and Altitude.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

He pulled the trigger on the underside of the handle, the liquid crackled with electricity causing the squid to trash in pain, and with swirl of familiar gray foam-

Jeremy whimpered, suddenly alone in the ominous room.

-Izuku Midoriya was gone.

-Rain of Sins-

Physics was weird at times.

For instance, you’d think that making something weightless would make it light- that something weighing less than a balloon would just bounce off whatever you threw it at. But the things she used her quirk on still had mass, mass had nothing to do with weight and was actually determined entirely by volume and density.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

And since the equation for force (F) was an object’s mass (M) multiplied by its acceleration (A), physics made it so that something weighing less than a butterfly could hit harder than a dump truck.

Another weird bit that people didn’t tend to think about was air resistance. Typically most schools’ basic physics classes teach kids to ignore air resistance in problems, it’s so miniscule that unless you're dealing over incredible distances or with extraordinarily precise numbers, it makes such a small difference that it really doesn’t matter.

But when you take away gravity, air resistance becomes the only thing that matters. It made it so whatever she made float would stay still and not float off, and that whatever was moving would eventually come to a stop somewhere.

If you added everything together, the fact that she could technically lift more than even All Might, her ability to boost her mobility by temporarily making herself weightless, and the fact that she could use her quirk’s weird interaction with physics to hit harder than most pros could, she was on paper an incredibly valuable asset to any team for their most recent exercise.

An exercise, most would say, that was almost identical to their first ever exercise in this class- which she’d been useless in, and got frozen by Todoroki within the first minute.

There were some key differences though. First off, instead of being randomly drawn lots, the instructors crafted each team from the ground up. The defenders wouldn’t just be stuck in a random building, they would get to pick any location in the fake city, and would be given the better part of an hour to set up defenses- defenses that could include anything they wanted so long as they were non-lethal and it was physically possible for the attackers to enter the building. To offset this, the attackers would have a larger team, and would use that same amount of time to plan their assault.

This was all to better simulate a realistic raid on a hideout, no competent faction would ever assault a base unless they believed they had superior firepower, and even then would have to rely on competent planning to overcome a defenders natural advantage of entrenchment.

Ochako understood all this, she even understood why Aizawa had been so insistent on changing team labels from “Heroes and Villains” to “Attackers and Defenders”, but what she couldn’t understand was why Aizawa had the brilliant idea of putting her on this team!

“Die!” Bakugo obliterated the support beams in the subway station that had been marked for destruction, creating rubble that could be used to create barricades and block off hallways.

Momo carefully applied explosives to the remaining supports and electronically connected them to her phone, making it possible for her to seal off entire wings of the underground structure at a whim.

Bakugo collapsed literally the entire entrance and intermediate landing area, forcing any would-be invaders to enter though the, much narrower and poorly maintained, maintenance tunnel.

Momo filled that entire auxiliary space with more tripwires, pressure plates, and boobytraps to turn any conceivable assault into a sluggish grind against unending fire, and had used the blueprints of the station to great advantage- blocking hallways, making fake doors, and transforming the two floors between their base on the third floor and the surface, into a headache inducing maze that looped back around on itself countless times, and was sooner to lead you into another trap than any meaningful progress.

And Ochako… Ochako just moved the heavy stuff wherever she was told.

As she said before, on paper she was a valuable asset, in practice however…

“Hey Ochako!” Momo waved to her with a grin. “Could you move this pillar to help block off that hallway over there?”

…She felt useless.

-Rain of Sins-

Tsu twisted her new arm with an odd expression on her face.

Synthetic prosthetics were on the commercial market, but they were rather pricey and while they weren’t fragile, they would break under combat.

The support department said they would have her a new combat ready arm within two months, but a student named “Mei” had apparently decided to make her one ahead of time as an extra credit assignment.

So that would leave her with three robotic right arms, which was two more than she needed, and three more than she wanted .

Don’t get her wrong, she was grateful for each of them- for her parents to spend the cash on her civilian grade one. For the support course for making her a durable one as an “add on” for her Hero suit. And for Mei’s hastily constructed one, which was the whole reason she could participate in class. But while she was extremely thankful…

The dull metallic gray hand closed into a fist, and Tsu had to suppress a grimace at the alien feeling of not feeling the limb she controlled. Deciding that she didn’t want to think about it, she forced her attention upwards, and to her team.

Their team was composed of the “Chivalry Bros”- Aoyama and Mineta, then Ida, Jiro, Todoroki, Ibara, and of course Tsu herself.

“Allright,” Aoyama stepped forward with an easy smile, “What’s the game plan? We’re going up against the two top scoring students in our class, does anyone have any ideas on how to counter them? I have a couple plans, but I want to hear yours first.”

Aoyama was… different. It was difficult for Tsu to put into words.

He’d stopped using eyeliner, mascara, or whatever type of makeup that’d been giving him a doll-like appearance, and because of that he just looked more… real?

It was hard to describe.

He still had his hair combed & treated with something, and he still had that vague air of bravado that he’d always had, but when combined with easygoing blue eyes, and a honest smile, well…

She kinda thought he looked like a generic politician.

… Which is a weird thought to have of a classmate.

“You mean, what’s your game plan.” Todoroki scoffed, “I’m not putting my success in the hands of you clowns.”

“HEY!” Mineta shouted. “Who’re you calling a clown!?”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright!” Aoyama shrugged and gave Shoto a nod. “I haven’t done anything to prove myself worthy of any sort of leadership position, if Todoroki or any of you want to go with your own plan then that’s fine! I have no objections, so long as we share those plans with each other to minimize any risks of friendly fire.”

That seemed to do the trick in defusing the situation. Todoroki huffed, but stalked off without saying anything.

“I’m sorry for Shoto’s behavior, he’s been more and more agitated as the festival gets closer.” Ibrara walked up with a smile. “But I’m more than happy to fill in for his stead, how can I help?”

“Wait, you want to listen to me?”

“Indeed, is that really such a surprise?” Ibara laughed softly. “Humility is the greatest sign of leadership that exists.”

The blond blinked at her in bewilderment, but regained his composure quickly enough.

“Todoroki, one of heaviest hitters, is already going down there- alongside the rest of us might I add, we have the firepower to contend with them, but we’re dealing with Momo here, I don’t doubt that she has numeros tricks up here sleeve, and I’ll bet hard cash on her having an escape plan for if things go south.”

Aoyama gave her a keen look.

“You’re unique amongst our team in the fact that you can match Bakugo in power and cover a large area.”

“You want me to act as the gatekeeper?” She asked in confusion.

“Something like that, I want you to use your vines to create a perimeter, and if you notice them trying to escape then engage them, and try to hold them until we can catch up and reinforce you.” He scratched the back of his neck. “I know it’s not the most flashy of positions, but it’d be a huge help if you’re willing to do it.”

“Far be it for me to sacrifice the mission’s integrity for mine own vainglory.”

“Thank you, it really means a lot.” Aoyama clapped her on the shoulder and gave her an award winning smile. “At least if I understood that correctly.”

An air horn blew in the distance, and Aizawa’s voice echoed over the city’s loudspeakers.

“The training exercise begins now.”

Ibara nodded to him and he waved after her as she walked off to begin her task.

Panning back to his team, Aoyama couldn’t help but smile. Ignoring him and Mineta, they had some of the highest ranked members of the class on their side- and even if Jiro wasn’t great at combat, she was perfect for recon.

Even if they were up against Momo and Bakugo, he was confident that it’d be an even fight.

He’d ask what could possibly go wrong, but the ominous feeling in his gut, that he did his best to not let show, had already answered that question many times over!

-Rain of Sins-

“ Eeek !”

“Get Down! Find cover!” Aoyama chose to ignore the very girly screech that had come from Mineta, and focused on getting everyone out of harm's way.

…well, everyone else out of harm's way.

Jiro just sighed in defeat, looking like she’d just bit into a lemon, and glared down in embarrassment at the overkill of capture tape wrapped around her stomach.

“Sorry guys,” She muttered, looking away in shame, “I said this way was clear because I didn’t hear anything moving, this is on me…”

“Nonsense Jiro, you said that there were no people ahead of us, and last I checked, you were right!” The unofficial team leader tried to send a grin at her, but was forced back down as the demonic child between a confetti blower and a t-shirt cannon spat another volley of capture tape his way. “Besides, this is just another opportunity to learn from, and become an even better Hero!”

“Yeah, thanks…”

Aoyama winced as his motivation fell short, but turned his attention to the more immediate problem.

Bakugo had blasted a hole in the ceiling, and Momo had apparently had the inspiration to fill it with a demon- a demon she in turn filled with a frankly ridiculous amount of replicated capture tape. The contraption wasn’t electronic, but instead purely mechanical, being triggered to drop down and start shooting by a tripwire Ida had accidentally stepped on in the low light conditions.

Mineta was pinned down, Ida and Tsu didn’t have range, Jiro was out, Todoroki gone, and Ibara back up top.

Which left him.

Slowly creeping out from around the corner, he unhooked his sword from his belt, and prepared to improvise.

Now calling his newest addition a “sword” was a bit of a lie, it was just a long metal pole that had conductive glass surrounding it, the “blade” of the glass was actually rather dull. The entire thing had started as a joke between him and Mineta, about the whole “knight” theme, but had been taken by the support department and turned into something actually usefullish.

His hero outfit was designed to redirect his laser so that he could shoot it in multiple directions; the sword, with it’s mirror handle, and accompanying gauntlet, functioned the same way- it just allowed him to aim better.

Aoyama leaned out around the corner and held out the somewhat heavy and rather unwieldy sword, closed one eye, stuck out his tongue, and began taking pot shots.

The first blast went wide, flying off down the hallway.

The second was closer, and successfully scored a solid hit on the wall.

The third time’s the charm though, and while he missed the turret, he nailed the ceiling, which caused the entire hallway’s roof to come down and crush the thing.

Sue him, holding a four foot metal pole out by the base and trying to keep it still is difficult, trying to do that while shooting plasma through it is even harder! Pot shots were all he had for now, real aiming was for tryhards or something!

“...Well then!” Ida coughed awkwardly as he rose from his hiding spot behind some rubble. “I guess we’ll have to find a way around.”

“No shit Sherlock.” Minetta stumbled out of his own hidey hole, fumbling with his suit’s new face mask, and nearly had a heart attack when Tsu dropped down from the ceiling right next to him.

Aoyama sighed. One member down, their strongest awol, and their second strongest forced to stay behind, less the Defenders escape and force tie- though Aizawa had stressed that it wasn’t a “tie”, just a 2/3 win to the Attack and a 1/3 win to the Defense, but whatever.

‘Even fight’, yeah right.

-Rain of Sins-

Momo watched intently on her monitors as the group of three knight cosplayers and Tsu fumbled their way through the first floor’s traps, while Jiro made her way back up top. None of them had noticed the bluetooth security cameras that she’d periodically installed throughout the place.

While she wasn’t the biggest fan of the medieval aesthetic that the group was apparently going for, she could approve of Aoyama’s decision to trim down on the ‘dazzle’ for form, and turn the suit of armor into an actual suit of armor- but she was still annoyed by the fact he’d left out the helmet!

The head was the most important part to protect! If anything he should be wearing only a helmet.

And she while could definitely approve of Mineta’s decision to dispose of his grape-diaper-thing for armor- even if it was just lightweight aluminum, the fact that he was wearing a full-face helmet left a bad taste in her mouth.

His helmet had an open top, so that he could still use his quirk, but that meant the only real reason he had to wear a helmet was for the faceplate. A faceplate that covered up his scar.

Momo sighed and shook her head, right now she needed to focus on the exercise, she could worry about how to help her classmates later.

Another monitor showed that Shoto had been brute forcing his way through her maze, on the other side of the building. Freezing everything solid, and being slowed down more by the maze, than by the traps.

Pushing herself to her feet, Momo exited the large supply closet that she’d turned into a strategic base of operations, and found Bakugo and Uraraka bickering lightheartedly about something or another.

“I’m heading out.” She said, startling the two. “Ochako, you’re in charge of watching the monitors until I get back. Bakugo, you're on guard duty. Both of you keep the earbuds I gave you, and contact me if anything happens.”

“Uhh, ok, but where are you going?” Ochako asked innocently.

“Todoroki’s making his way through corridor C without much difficulty, I need to delay him, or lure him into one of our contingency failsafes.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Bakugo asked with a raised eyebrow, obviously not sold.

“No, but you’re our best combatant so you need to stay close to the capture point in case of an emergency, and since the plan was to have Ochako here to move the capture point if things got really bad, well…” She shrugged. “I’m the only one left.”

Bakugo gave her a once over with a keen look, almost like he was reassessing what he’d been seeing.

“You have that entire floor littered in enough traps to make Tartarus ashamed, but that asshat doesn’t care, he wants a straight fight.” He looked her dead in the eye and smirked. “Don’t give it to him. Melt his frosty face.”

“Don’t worry,” Momo chuckled, Bakugo’s confidence reassuring her, “I wouldn’t do it any other way.”

-Rain of Sins-

Stain hissed as he swung his blade up, barely managing to deflect the spear of high pressurized water that would have taken out his eye.

He was currently fighting with a pair of Heroes that he hadn’t prepared to fight, they had stumbled upon him by chance when he was finishing off another Hero.

They were Fireboy and Watergirl… or was it Sharkboy and Lavagirl? He didn’t know, and didn’t care- they were identical twins and they looked the exact same except one had red hair and the other had blue.

More importantly, and more annoying, they both had O-type blood, the type his quirk worked the worst against. So whenever he downed one, by the time he downed the other, the first was back on their feet again!

Combine this with their seamless teamwork, and the fact that Stain was already tired from his last fight, and well…

He had a problem.

“It’s time!” The blue twin shouted.

“To end this!” The red one exclaimed, taking a mirror stance.

They held their hands together, and their quirks began mingling. The water and fire flowing into one another, evaporating into a orb of superheated steam, but mixing at a perfectly even rate so as to not cause the reaction to run out of control.

“For our!” “Special Move!”

“”FLASH BURN WAVE!””

Stain grit his teeth and backpedaled, getting ready to dodge but bracing himself to tank it if he couldn’t.

But just as the twins were about to launch their KO, something shot out from the shadows and slammed into the blue twin’s shoulder.

The effects were immediate.

The amount of water flowing into the attack dropped drastically, causing the fire to run uncontested, and the delicate balancing act to fall apart.

The red twin’s eyes widened and they tried to cut their fire, but it was already too late.

The orb exploded in a gout of fire and steam, causing both twins to screech in pain. The steam, fog, and smoke from the explosion filled the alleyway, but that was fine.

Stain’s ears were just as sharp as his eyes.

Stain flung himself forward, swinging his blade in a large arc just below the source of both screams, and then caught himself in a roll which he used to spring back to his feet.

Four wet thumps, two light and two heavy, confirmed that his sword had cut true.

But as his opponents fell, his sword didn’t.

He carefully scanned the area, eyes meticulously checking every spot, ears open for any sound. But after finding no trace of anyone, he narrowed his eyes and carefully made his way over towards the blue Hero’s headless corpse, and leaned down for a closer look at the thing in their shoulder.

It was a black syringe, about the length of his hand.

“What the Hell is that?”

“Project Entropy…”

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere, causing Stain to spring into a defensive stance, his head pivoting, and his blades ready.

“Trigger doesn’t actually do anything to a quirk, what it does is force your body into extreme panic, triggering an extremely strong fight or flight reflex, and causes the body to shut down the natural inhibitors it has in place to keep you from hurting yourself. I was actually quite disappointed when I figured that out, but it did get me thinking…”

Out of the shadows stepped Izuku Midoriya, his black rebreather on, and fiddling with a somewhat bulky contraption on his arm.

“What if I, someone who knows quirk biology better than all but one person on the planet, attempted to do what no one else before has managed to accomplish due to Trigger’s jury rigged nature?” He fiddled a few seconds more before turning his arm and holding the device up for Stain to see, it appeared to be some sort of crude mechanical crossbow.

“What if I turned it from a stimulant, to a suppressant?” With a push of a button, another syringe, filled with a viscus black liquid, slotted itself into the face of the device.

Izuku smiled, though no one could see it, with a calculating gleam in his eye. “Why I think people might just start taking me a bit more seriously.”

Stain kept his sword firmly between him and the suddenly much more dangerous threat. “...What do you want, Spook?”

“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Izuku chuckled. “But I think I have an even better one…”

-End Chapter-