My Hero Automata

Chapter 31: A Scarecrow and a Rat

Summary: A second debriefing with Nedzu and All Might points out the obvious and highlights some potential problems.

Chapter 31: A Scarecrow and a Rat

... ...

Twelve hours later, Izumi was once again going over her experiences. Though, this time, her somewhat smaller audience had simply had her upload the video feed from her visor and played the entire thing out at double speed, only occasionally pausing to ask questions. That had taken the better part of an hour, followed by another hour doing the same with the Overwatch stream that the HSN had recorded. That time everything had been played at four times speed, but Nedzu had stopped it more often to make some point or other to the other three people in attendance. Those people, of course, were Izumi herself, All Might in his Small Might form, and Momo. Now that the second video had finally come to an end, all of them leaned back to sip at the admittedly delicious tea that Momo had just refreshed for them. Nedzu waited a few moments, clearly enjoying the tea himself, which probably said quite a lot about how good Momo was at preparing it. Eventually, he set his cup down and spoke into the heavy silence.

"Reviewing all the footage, including that which has been made available from other heroes, proves two points. First, that All for One is almost certainly alive. One being such as the Nomu at the USJ breech could have believably been the result of an old project. Ten more of them appearing, however, diminishes the probability of that to nearly zero."

Nedzu paused just a few heartbeats to let that process, then moved on to his second point.

"Two, there is no question that Izumi was specifically targeted. That portal was opened with the Plasma Nomu directly targeting her from the start, and it never stopped even when Nejire-chan and Spring finished their own fight and attempted to intervene. Ryukyu was similarly jumped, but I believe it likely she was targeted merely to keep her busy."

Izumi grimaced but nodded.

"I came to the same conclusion when I was engaging it, at least about it targeting me. Its set of Quirks were just a little bit too on point for it not to be deliberately targeted. I doubt it was made specifically to fight me, not in so little time. But I suspect they picked the best one to...test me, I suppose. All for One considers me the most likely candidate for One for All's current holder, I believe. Or at least he did."

Nedzu nodded, eyes glinting in approval of the observation.

"Precisely. But the question then posed is does he still think that way? He used a Nomu that was, in many ways, the opposite side of the coin from the USJ brute. A way to maximize the new data he got on you. What, then, would be his conclusion?"

It was Momo that answered that, clearly having been thinking along the same lines.

"While we can't know for sure, I suspect the new data will have caused him to reconsider. Or at least injected a level of uncertainty. Compared to the USJ, he saw Izumi exhibit a broader base of abilities. The biggest one being the ability to summon a Pod. He can't have previously known where the Pod present in the Plaza came from. He might even have believed it was a security bot belonging to UA."

Nedzu nodded along, but gestured to All Might, who had been silent thus far...and was presumably the one that knew his nemesis the best after their years of playing cat and mouse. Given that the man underneath the All Might persona was far from stupid, he had to have absorbed a great deal about his opponent during the long fight against All for One's empire. There were a few moments more of silence, before Yagi finally spoke up.

"I'm afraid, in this case, the relatively unknown nature of young Midoriya's Quirk works against us being certain. If he was willing to probe like this, it means he isn't sure. He hates unknown variables. But the fact that it was an unknown at all, in turn, means he failed to get either UA or Nishimura & Croft's analysis of her Quirk. I think he'll probably be more confused and frustrated now than anything."