I LIVE! The story is not dead like many have assumed, simply not the priority. Still, as I haven't uploaded any for Powers you Earn in a while, I thought I'd pull another chapter out. Quick question though; regarding Izuku's costume, do you want it to stay as I wrote it, or change it in a later chapter to look more like the big sister from Bioshock 2 (I have an in-story reason why he would change it, so don't worry about that.)? Let me know in the reviews. Onto the story!

Izuku was waiting on class to start, as he heard everyone talking about All Might being the foundational hero teacher. The gene splicer was excited himself but was more focused on his conversation with Yuga.

"So the belt acts as a reflector to make your navel laser work less like a flashlight and more like a laser. That's rather neat." he said with a grin. "Even if you don't have the belt, you could use it like a beacon. Have you thought about learning Morse code?"

"Non, Midoriya-kun. I think that would be a merveilleux practice. It's a rather sore point that my superbe quirk needs assistance, but you have given me a new path to s'aventure. Is that enough for your carnet?" The sparkling teen questioned. Seeing the confusion, he clarified. "Carnet means notebook."

"Yeah, it's a really fascinating quirk." he praised. "I was curious about-"

He didn't continue though as All Might's voice rang from outside.

"HERE I AM, COMING THROUGH THE DOOR!" he shouted, and Izuku wasn't the only person who was excited. The class watched with rapt attention as the number one hero walked in the door.

"Foundational studies! For this class, we'll be building your hero foundation through various trials! Let's jump right in with this!" he said while holding a card that had the word 'Battle' on it. "This will be a trial of battle!" the class was getting excited that they'd be going full tilt.

"And to go with your first battle, we have prepared everyone's battle gear to the requests you have sent in!" he said while the wall to the far side slid open revealing metal briefcases with numbers on them.

"Aw hell yeah!" the class shouted.

"Get changed everyone, and gather at ground Beta!" All Might announced. Izuku grabbed his costume opened it to reveal the suit he commissioned. Walking into the boy's locker room, he put it on one layer at a time. Looking at himself in the mirror, the outfit looked rather good on him. It was a lab coat in whites and greens with a black shirt under the jacket. The coat was made of a bullet-resistant cloth while the inner shirt was designed to resist cuts from knives. The belt had several loops for Izuku to put his Bio-Glow into, which he had stocked around five. The cylinders were metal with a thick glass down the side to show him if it was empty or filled. He had also put a knife on the back of his belt, in case he needed it. On the other side of the belt from his vials was a large pocket for his first aid kit and a sleeve for a mini notebook. Holding his head high, he stepped out to the training field.

"Damn dude!" Eijiro exclaimed at his classmate. "You look like a mad scientist, 'specially with the glowing needles. That the stuff your quirk makes?"

"Yeah." the gene splicer admitted. "If the substance isn't used to change DNA, then it starts repairing injuries in soft tissue and nerves. A good method of first aid if you know what you're doing. Your costume is also really cool!" everyone else was waiting and talking until All Might coughed into his hand.

"Alright! You all look like real heroes now!" the large blonde said. "Now, for this exercise, we will be doing an indoor battle trial! Can anyone guess why?" Momo raised her hand and was called.

"It's because a majority of all villain activities are done out of sight and in confined spaces. With heroes patrolling the streets, it just makes sense to stay under the radar and inside buildings." All Might nodded.

"That's exactly right! Now, we will divide the class into teams of two and have two teams in each exercise; one team will play the villains while the other will be the heroes trying to stop them." All Might was then bombarded with different questions from everyone at the same time. "Hold up now! Let me finish, and see if that answers your questions! If they don't, then you can speak up."

Everyone then heard the rules. The villains would protect a prop bomb for fifteen minutes, and the heroes would try to touch it. If they completed their goals or tied both of the opposing team, they won. When All Might told them about the random lots, Tenya spoke up.

"Sir! Wouldn't it be more advantageous to pick our partner?" the armored teen asked.

"Well yeah, but when are heroes able to choose who arrives at an incident with them?" Izuku pointed out, and the engine quirk-user conceded the point. Pulling lots, everyone found their partner and waited to see who would be facing who.

"The best plan is to bar up and preventing them from getting in." Momo said, pulling loose rubble and stacking it against the door.

"Do you honestly think that'd hold Kirishima for long?" Izuku countered. "Barricades are good, but we need to stall in other matters. Can you make a tape and recorder?"

"Yes?" there was obvious confusion in her voice. "How would that help?"

"I liked making horror stories with my uncle, and I thought voicing a certain conversation would give them pause. After that, you'd lay traps while I keep the heroes chasing shadows." there was a moment's pause as the nominated student took his plan into consideration.

"Alright, what script did you have in mind?" she liked a good horror as well, and thought with the building's poor lighting, it would have the desired effect. The gene splicer then pulled out his phone and went to the conversation he had in mind. Momo read through it and shivered.

"You want me to be the second voice?" she asked. The smile on the greenette's face made him look more like a mad scientist.

"Would you kindly?"

Eijiro and Ibara were finally allowed inside, and they walked through the front door. The vine-haired teen saw something glint from the sunlight, and went to check it out.

"Kirishima-san, I think our opponents left us something." she said, holding up an old-style tape recorder. Kirishima glanced at it curiously. Hitting the play button, they heard the conversation.

"Do you realize just how much this can tell us?" It was Izuku's voice, but the tone he held was emotionless, like he was watching a mold experiment.

"I just see the lives it'll take, but what did you have in mind?" Momo said, as if she was in mild awe of the "bomb". There was a tsk from the scientist.

"Bombs that utilize radioactive material as fuel leave large amounts of ionizing radiation that can take decades to leave." The brawler was starting to get nervous at the was the two were talking without inflection. "Tell me, what does that radiation do to the human genome, and what is the response?"

"It takes away parts of the genetic structure, and the body tries to fill in those gaps with the other half of an RNA sequence, but it often leads to mutations." the assistant said in a calm voice.

"Precisely dear, and while we may be charged for crimes against humanity, the target city was a base for a genetic research study, with almost a third of the city volunteering because of the compensation reward." there was a hum of approval from the other side of the conversation.

"Thus leaving more regulated individuals to have a natural case study from hundreds, if not thousands. We could accelerate research in this study while keeping a vast majority of the research teams in the clear from legal repercussions. But why this method?" she asked in curiosity. Ibara was starting to be concerned, already drawn into the story.

"Because I have no options left." the sadness in the voice spoke of loss. "My research confiscated, my home destroyed, my family dead, and now I'm wanted as nothing more than a petty thief for trying to reclaim what was mine." the spite in the scientist's voice was palpable.

"They saw me as a danger due to the nature of my research, well now the law will know me a far bigger danger with nothing to lose, and they will see that I can be a far larger threat than mere pieces of paper!" the pure venom in the words made the threat that much more intimidating, and momo's response was almost dead in comparison.

"And I get to see death in a far more grand way than killing a shopkeep downtown." though not laced with the emotions of her partner, the cheery way she said it was wrong. "Here's to genocide!" she chirped, and the audio cut, leaving the room in dead silence.

"O-okay… this is starting to get really freaking morbid; they thought the best way to stall us was through this?" the hardening teen asked, voice shaking. His partner was taking deep breaths.

"Let us just proceed. This is merely a distraction." Ibara commented, though she was just as spooked. The heroes continued walking through the halls, going up floor after floor in a sweep.

There was nothing. No traps, no more creepy tapes, no villains in sight. Just utter silence as the two heroes were searching around; the only sounds were coming from their breaths and footfalls. As they came to the fourth floor, Izuku snuck up behind and grabbed the redhead, making sure he couldn't shout before running off.

"Kirishima has been captured!" All Might called from the speaker system, making the vine-haired teen turn quickly. Now fully scared instead of unnerved, Ibara sent her vines out in a wide area around her before running up another set of stairs. Seeing a barricade, she shoved her way through with her quirk, leaving her in the room with the bomb, and Momo with a web of capture tape.

"Damn, Midoriya is scary. He took Kirishima without Shiozaki realizing until it was announced. Why didn't he try for her though?" Denki asked from the video room. The rest of the class had been watching, and while they didn't get audio, they saw Eijiro and Ibara tense at the message the villain team left.

"Most likely it was a calculated decision." Tenya spoke up. "As we saw Shiozaki-san use her quirk to cover her blindspot, we can assume Midoriya knew he would only be able to take one before the other hero would brace and make capture much harder. In a straight-up fight, Kirishima's Hardening would be difficult to plan around with anything other than brute force; Shiozaki-san's quirk, while more versatile, is easier to deal with when the proper tools are used. There's also the fact that trying to capture her would be harder in the first place as she could bind her attacker before they succeeded." there was a moment of silence as everyone took the information in. It dawned on most that Midoriya wasn't just strong; he was a strategist.

"I'm glad Midoriya is training to be a hero." Mezo chimed up. "I don't think I'd ever want to fight him for real."

"No kidding…" Mina whispered. As they talked, everyone kept their eyes on the screen.

Momo was having some trouble. She had wanted to burn the vine user's hair, but the plants were filled with liquid, making that rather hard. She was now using knives, but the vines were tougher than she thought. Thankfully, the bomb was on the far side of the room behind the capture tape she made, but sooner or later, the creation user was going to lose.

"Need a hand?" Izuku called from the ceiling, and Momo was more than happy to accept. Dropping down from above, the lanky teen's left hand was encased in ice, shards stabbing out from his fist. Thinking he was giving himself something to cut her vines, the hero backed up.

Unfortunately, that wasn't what he was doing.

With a flick of Izuku's wrist, the vines closest to the villain team gained a layer of frost, preventing them from bending as Momo smashed them with a metal rod. Ibara quickly tried to switch strategies, but the fewer vines made it harder. The vine user then decided that she needed to take Izuku down, as he was giving her more trouble. With the remaining tendrils she had, Ibara bound the tall teen, keeping him from using his ice.

And she received a bar of something dense to the chest courtesy of the opponent she lost sight of. Her vines went limp as Ibara struggled to find breath. She felt her wrists being tied and the signal going off, signaling the villains' win.

"You need me to take you the nurse?" Izuku asked with concern, kneeling down to her. She looked at the vials on his belt, but he shook his head. "Would you rather a kiss on the forehead, or a large needle being stabbed into you?"

"Nurse…" the vine-haired girl groaned and was quickly but smoothly rushed away in a princess carry. She found it funny given the green and violet victorian dress she had as her hero costume.

That's it for this chapter, but another one will come. I got the idea for Izuku's hero costume from (ironically) some artwork for a mad scientist villain Deku. As for the vials, the Bioshock 1 trailer when the guy stabbed himself to get Insect Swarm (though that particular plasmid will not be in Izuku's skillset.), and the syringe Elizabeth uses to revive Booker in Infinite; they look more durable than the glass cylinders in modern hospitals. If you liked my story so far, please leave a comment. Till next time!