Chapter 70: Chapter 67
It has been two weeks since the whole All for One debacle. Things have changed a bit --Or rather, a lot-- after everything that had happened.
First of all, the team lead by Best Geanist has managed to keep Gigantomachia down when he got out of being stunned from my attack. It took plenty of elbow grease on their part, even managing to wriggle his massive frame out of the populated areas and minimize their casualties. Because of their effort, the walking disaster was taken down as well.
The doctor was also taken in, albeit with great difficulty. Because he has a teleporter by his side, chasing him became the harder ordeal rather than taking him down.
It was only thanks to the efforts of another team full of people with tracking quirks and mobility quirks lead by both Eraserhead and Ragdoll from the Wild Wild Pussycats that he was apprehended. From what Nedzu 'slipped' about, he was a person of interest for being the brains of the operation and some people was initially putting pressure to remove the kill order. Their agenda is clear, hey wanted to get their hands on his research. Fortunately, Eraserhead was already given specific instructions by Nedzu so the doctor is no longer around.
Which ties to another point. Government spies have managed to get through the cracks of the security system making use of the post disaster response and began snooping around for more information and, quite possibly, DNA samples.
In a world of quirks, nukes became obsolete in the face of proper quirks. When a prominent case of a certain muscular woman can command the skies, or when an obvious case of man that can punch a hole through mountains appear, the radioactive bombs become less and less of a deterrent. The weapons of mass destruction are people with the appropriate quirks to do just that.
All for One, with his ability to give and take quirks became the prime weapon that would allow them ease of building a super army. Decades of carefully done genetic manipulation that can be finished with a single touch would have any of country drooling at the mouth. That, or they can save time, money and resources in research and development by simply stealing the work from the doctor, which is thankfully located by our side first and promptly destroyed. Any country would have loved to get their hands on that.
Except for Japan, that is.
Japan has already tasted the brunt of his appearance multiple times throughout history. Most of everyone is already tired of him and his entourage. The kill orders assigned to them were dutifully carried out by the heroes who participated until the end. Originally, I even thought to burn away any traces left of his biological identity but surprisingly the most of the heroes present voluntarily did that by themselves without any input from others. In fact, the hate ran deep enough that they made a game out of it and was betting at whoever could get rid of more.
This incident has left a scar on the nation. With a disaster on this level, it would be hard for everyone to keep pretending like nothing has ever happened.
The old coots at the diet assembly has argued almost nonstop, to the point that some of them have even carried a sleeping bag to take naps in the middle of the ongoing meeting. It sounded unprofessional, but when taken into account that they have probably stayed there for at least three days says a lot about their dilemma.
When the identity of the doctor was revealed, everything slowly began to unravel and was brought to light. It got worse when it was leaked online, people were aghast at what they read tha they launched a lynching around his property. Hospitals, orphanages, and various other institutions are being looked over with a fine comb. What they found was an intricate web tax evasion, illegal drug manufacturing, human trafficking, illegal experimentation, illegal human experimentations and a whole lot of other crimes which only added to the government's headache as they couldn't believe how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Old policies are being looked over and constantly revised, New laws are being brought up, drafted, revised and introduced, and certain restrictions are being reconsidered to be loosened while some are being considered to be even more restricted.
Big changes are happening in Japan and everyone is just holding their bated breaths in anticipation, waiting for whatever happens next.
I wasn't exempt from the change.
Now while the catastrophic battle was recorded during the incident by some idiotic person somewhere, Nedzu already has a contingency in place to prevent further leakage of digital information, probably with the use of rudimentary AI to scour the cyberspace. Probably because the contingencies in place were only searching for data that occurred during the incident, that they overlooked what happened afterwards?
There have been news of me healing hundreds of victims. It was already known that I'm a healer, but people have been assuming that I could only heal a dozen or two a day, or that maybe my rate of healing is slow, or perhaps that there were side effects or drawbacks to my healing. So when it came out that I aided hundreds with no backlash on either side, there have been debates about the exact workings and strength of my quirk among the academic community. Some are skeptical, some are dismissive, It is a bit annoying to have my medical skills glossed over and forgotten like that since I worked so hard for it. People just assume that my power does all the heavy lifting and I didn't know any better.
Meanwhile, most of the general public has only been singing me nothing but praises, thanking me for my efforts. The haters that did rise from this were swiftly silenced amidst the voices of my supporters.
Of course, the newfound fame came with it's own sets of ups and downs.
A good point would be that I can feel own existence growing stronger and becoming more refined as my name and the news of my deeds spread further. Already, I can say that it would take a little while to digest my new strength.
On a bad note is that I'm famous. It feels a little- no. It felt really weird to have people I don't know, recognise me and everyone greet and treat me like were close. It was very uncomfortable and mildly annoying to go out and have people point at me and disturb me. Like during one of my and Kuroko's dates when we almost got swarmed if it wasn't for Kuroko teleporting us out of there on time.
I'm no even safe in the dorms anymore since journalists are persistent hounds. Even if they couldn't enter the building legally, there are so brave idiots that still break in by force. The one's that abide by the law would use drones or camp out nearby instead. They even wait on me outside of school waiting to get a scoop of news. They figured that a rising start like me could probably give them something to write about on the historic event since they heard a thing or two about me from the other heroes that participated that day.
Fortunately, the heat started to die down once they realized that I would be handing out an interview. It got so bad that a multiple points, I asked Hevun-sensei if I could sleep in the hospital instead. And there are also other times when I decided to crash in on the other side instead.
Well, it involved less sleeping during the first few days on the other side. Instead, I was helping out to fight the giant miasma catalyst that kept wrecking havoc all over the place. I did most of the fighting at first, just to let everyone else catch a break and let them recover their strength. Afterwards when we had to switch, it would be my time to rest. It was only until after they managed to scrape together a decent shift schedule to shuffle the responsibility that they didn't need me to fight singlehand anymore.
Even now after two weeks, the mana catalyst is still going strong with just half it's original strength, but at least it got more manageable now.
It also helps the fact that I drop by more often over on their side regularly because over there, I can train without reserve by using the mana catalyst as a training dummy. After all, just because I received an rapid growth in my strength doesn't mean my control got any better. --Although it would be nice if I also grew a bit more taller. Kuroko already has a few inches over me--
With my newly expanded energy reserves, --Not that I need more but I won't look a gift horse in the mouth-- I can afford to pour in more energy into my attacks so they can deal more damage. But at the same time, this also allows me the opportunity to experiment more with my powers in other creative ways rather than just making them hit harder and hoping for the best.
I just realised this afterwards, but in terms of offense, aren't I basically just a laser version of All Might? Ugh, and I called myself a living artillery. Is it because of eight-grader syndrome? Very embarrassing.
If it weren't for accidentally creating the Wisps-Heads, I wouldn't have noticed the discrepancy in the lack of variety. It is an oversight that I very much like to have rectified as soon as possible. As the saying goes: "There are no weak powers, only unfit users." Since I already have the power, I have to work hard to make it more 'Me'.
The slight problem is that I'm drawing a blank for it. I tried playing around with my powers with, in and of itself was good training but sadly wasn't what I was looking for so I shelved that idea for a later time.
For now, I'm taking another break and was just putting in the finishing touches on my newest piece. It's the post battle scene depicted on a long canvas. I did it as a tribute but looking at it from another angle it just looks like I'm trying to take advantage of the situation to further my art career.
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..
...
...On second thought, I suppose that I can also shelve this for another time.
I have other places I need to be anyway. With work at both the hospital to check up on any patients to see if they're recovering right, along with doing my shifts at Judgement to strike down any opportunistic idiots, to studying for the entrance exams, even though it's still a few months away.
As they say, no rest for the wicked.