The Protagonist System

178 Potent Choices (My Hero Academia)

After another long book reading session, this one with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that my reading companion pretty much giggled at the entire time, mostly because of my very good imitation of Igor's voice and mannerisms, I made my choice.

You have chosen My Hero Academia to replace the protagonist, Izuku Midoriya.
Moment of Potential Death: Swallowed by Slime Villain
Appropriate memories will be provided to you within a few moments of your insertion.
Good luck in your new life!

I knew this was going to suck, so I prepared myself for the disgusting feeling I would soon be experiencing. I felt another kiss on my lips and sighed. Thank you.

There was a feeling of friendship and shared loathing of what was about to happen to me before everything went black.

*

All Might crawled out of the sewers where he had chased the filthy villain and internally was disgusted with the thing. He knew it wasn't really the slime's fault his mutation made him the way he was; but, he couldn't help it. He wore people's bodies like suits and he was hunting for a new one... and had one in its clutches.

He couldn't allow the thing to take another hostage and used one of his restrained punches to blow most of the creature into small chunks. He went to the poor boy that was throwing up some of the slime villain's body parts and patted his back.

“That's it, get it all up.” All Might said and waited until the boy was dry heaving before he quickly sped around and gathered up the villain into two different soda bottles, one for the main mass and one for the 'head' part, or at least what he thought was a head. The eyes made sickening sounds when he slid them in through the mouth of the glass bottle and thankfully didn't pop or explode.

He noticed the dropped journal and flipped it open, only to see a page with his information on it and a fairly good drawing of himself. He knew the boy was a fan then and quickly signed his name across the picture. It would be a great distraction to give him and then he could slip away. His timer was almost out.

He talked to the boy briefly, helped him accept what happened, and then made his excuse and jumped away. He felt a dead weight flapping behind him and glanced back to see the boy had grabbed onto him before he jumped. Was the kid suicidal after his near-death experience?

Anyways, All Might landed on a nearby rooftop and had a conversation with the clearly nervous boy. He was sad to hear he was quirkless and even sadder to tell him to be more realistic than to want to be a hero without any powers. The hypocritical aspect did not escape him and he ignored his instincts as he bid the boy a good day and leapt away.

When All Might landed in a secluded spot, he changed back into his human-sized form named Toshinori Yagi and reached for the soda bottles at his hip, only to find that nothing was there. He knew he must have lost them somewhere between where he landed and that building, so he started searching.

It didn't take long before he came across a harrowing scene of a blond kid that was kind of exploding and was mostly covered by the slime villain. Yagi despaired that his timer had run out on his powers and he couldn't rush over there to save the kid like had had the last one. He also understood why the other heroes standing around didn't go help, either. Their powers weren't well suited to fight the villain without potentially hurting the hostage.

Before anyone else could do or say anything, a green-haired young man burst through the crowd and yelled something like 'Catchin' and then tossed his torn book-bag at the villain's face before tearing at the slime villain's body with his bare hands, like a madman trying to dig in the dirt without a shovel.

It was inspiring to see the boy sacrificing himself to save his friend and All Might couldn't let that go to waste. He ducked behind a dumpster and pulled from his limited reserves once more. He knew he was sacrificing even more of his time to transform and he would pay for it later. For now, he had two children to save.

*

I was internally cringing over my performance as I tried to desperately dig the explosive asshole out of the slime villain. I had to keep things the same for as long as possible, so that All Might would see me being a hero and would be inspired to save us. It was also going to net me some powers very soon.

“There's no need to fear, for I AM HERE!” All Might yelled and aimed his fist at us. “Detroit SMASH!”

I just barely pulled on Bakugo enough to get him out of the main blast of air and the slime villain was blown apart again. We fell to the pavement and the blond threw up a few black bits before the ambulance crew and the heroes grabbed us and took us over to the rescue vehicle.

“Why?” Bakugo asked.

I tried to look sheepish as I delivered my lines. “I just... I saw your eyes. You were pleading for help and... and... my feet, they just moved on their own. I couldn't... I didn't want that thing to...” I stopped talking and ducked my head.

“We really should charge you for quirk usage without a license.” One of the idiot heroes said. Kamui Woods was an arrogant jerk to bring that up right now.

“I... I don't... have a quirk.” I admitted and a lot of people gasped.

“You ran into a hostage situation without powers?” The guy wearing a white Gi asked. “Are you stupid or something? Do you have a death wish?”

“That was a very foolish thing to do.” Mount Lady admonished me.

I thought that was a stupid comment coming from a woman that wore white spandex that hid nothing at all and who posed for the camera when she became a 50 foot tall blonde bombshell. I pretended to listen to them as they kept talking and instead I ignored them and the police officers trying to question us.

My attention was on All Might as he talked to the press and handed over a thermos to the police to arrest the slime villain. He excused himself after a few minutes and jumped away, so I kind of did the same. Well, I didn't jump. I stood, handed the blanket to the paramedic, and walked away. Surprisingly, no one stopped me until I was across the street and someone grabbed my arm.

“I didn't need you to save me, Deku!” Bakugo almost shouted at me. “I could have done it myself!”

I looked down at his hand and narrowed my eyes at it. “You keep telling yourself that every time you close your eyes and remember the taste of that disgusting slime going down your throat.” I said and looked up at his angry face and smiled. “See you later, Tiny Firecracker.”

That last sentence I said loud enough that the nearby news crew heard it and they scrambled to get it added to the story. The horrified look on Bakugo's face about the stupid nickname I just gave him was worth the potential beatdown he would try to give to me later.

I set off and followed the route I knew would take me to where I would meet Toshinori and I pretended to scream a little when he jumped out of the bushes and greeted me. We had our little talk, just like in the show, and he transformed into his All Might persona and asked me to become his successor and inherit his power. This was the moment I had been waiting for.

“Thank you so much!” I exclaimed and jumped at him to hug him, which was quite inappropriate of me, and I plucked one of his hairs from his head as he tried to shove me off.

“Yes, yes, you're welcome.” The near skeletal man said with frustration and wiped his shirt off, as if I had left something of myself on him that he had to remove.

I slipped the hair into my mouth and grinned as the world turned grey and came to a stop. I had initiated something that All Might wouldn't have given me for another 10 months as he trained me up to handle a fraction of his power. It wasn't my fault he assumed I needed the time and he did agree to give me his power. I was just taking it a lot earlier than he ever expected.

World Paused.
You have reached a pivotal moment in the story and now have several options available to you.
Resume World
Travel to an unlocked world for free (x12)
Travel to a new world
Buy items from the Gift Shop

Warning: Excessive Power / Karma potential has been detected!
Please choose and option to deal with it:
Absorb it all and cause yourself / your body potential damage
Alter your own Power / Karma potential
Spend Karma Points
Convert to Karma Points
Convert to Store Credits

I rubbed my hands together and thought about what it meant, then remembered something I had done a very long time ago in the very first world I had gone to. When the same option had appeared then, it was when I had gained a bunch of magic potential from Mil-tan when Serafall had converted her into a reincarnated devil. It had given me several options when I chose to alter my own potential, so I chose that.

Please choose one of the following options to change your Power / Karma potential:
One For All power (overcharged) converted to Skill XP to level all skills to maximum
One For All power locked to Full Cowl (Current: 15%, increases with training)
Communication unlocked with bound soul fragments (Current total: 8)
Sacrifice dormant soul fragments for Karma Points (+20,000 each)

That last one was the option I was looking for. I could trade in those reluctant soul bits for a lot of points. I knew that none of them were willing to talk to me before I earned their approval by accomplishing tasks until they deemed me worthy, which would be a real bitch to do, so I decided to skip that whole mess and would sell them all, including All Might's remnant, even though he was still alive.

That was the downside of the Quirk Transfer power. It actually copied or took a part of your soul when it was passed on. Since I didn't want to suffer that, I would have to sacrifice all of the stockpiled power that All Might had been building up for the last 40 years to level up my skills to their maximum. That included all of my spells and my powers, like Elastic and Super Strength.

Surprisingly, I had also gained the lowest level of skills in the Quirks that were inside the One For All power. The first was Power Stockpile, where the longer you had it, the more power it gained. The second was Power Transfer, previously Quirk Transfer, where I could pass on the power to a successor.

Third was Gearshift, where I could change the relative speed of something up to four times and in any direction, which would let me dart all over without any trouble or add four times the speed and power to my attacks. The fourth was Kinetic Energy Siphon, previously called Fa Jin, where I could gather kinetic energy from anything within my range and give it to anything else.

The fifth one was Danger Sense and that was like a precognition power that let me sense anything trying to attack me, which was quite the useful power if it didn't get set off by random bugs landing on me and hunting for my blood or something. That would get annoying really quickly.

The sixth one was Black Whip and it created energy whips from any part of my body to attack or grab things, almost like extra arms. Unfortunately, it worked on an emotional trigger of anger and I wasn't sure if I could get that much use out of it if I had to be angry all the time to use the things.

The seventh one was Smokescreen and it almost made me laugh, because it made me into a smoke machine to create a fog-like substance that would obscure me. It wouldn't hide me in bright daylight, because you could see the form of my body through it. I could make myself invisible in multiple ways and that meant the power was pretty much useless to me.

The last one was a movement power and quite limited in its use. Float let me float anywhere I wanted to go, duplicating my Levitation and Locomotor spells. It was pretty much useless to me as well, unless I lost my magic again or it was restricted for some arbitrary reason.

That was a lot of skills and they were all at Level 1, so again, almost useless at their lowest power. They weren't going to stay that way, however. I had something to do to fix that and I took out my Adventurer Card and spent the XP to get it to Level 100 again to unlock the next Rank.

Congratulations! You have completed and item: Adventurer Card (Rank 2)
Bonuses Granted: High School DxD restored magic affinities (Ice, Light, Holy Lightning), Danmachi (teleportation circle, armor enchantments), Familiar of Zero (modified Brass Golem summon spell, copy enchantment spell), Adventurer Card (Top Rank).

With that done, I sold the soul pieces inside One For All for a whopping 160,000 Karma Points and then sacrificed the One For All power to maximize all of my recently ranked up skills and abilities.

My Divine Body glowed as all of my powers maxed out, the charge of One For All easily covering everything, and I grew about six inches in height from Midoriya's five and a half feet to my Divine Body's full six feet and my muscles popped out to give me a full physique again.

That presence appeared at my side again and hugged me tightly as a feeling of appreciating came from them.

I'm finally getting back to my old self, plus new powers. I thought with a laugh and there was a feeling of satisfaction around me. I turned my head to give them a kiss and heard a soft laugh echo in the emptiness in return.

I looked at the new Adventurer Card and the experience number it showed was still an infinity symbol and it also had an eye with a circle around it. I had thought the top rank card would start me over again to gain new experiences and I was wrong. My work in the Incredibles universe had given me a lot more than just Karma Points and my laugh echoed in the emptiness and the presence beside me joined in.

All right, I better get back. I thought as I completed the Adventurer Card (Top Rank) and unlocked Imagination Based magic from the High School DxD universe and perfectly remembered Grayfia's lessons on how to use it to do whatever I wanted. It also reinstalled the Party System with a few new updates and I mentally kicked myself for not thinking about using it during the last few worlds.

With my powers and magic pretty much maxed out after the One For All power-up, I was probably the most powerful person in the world of My Hero Academia. See you soon, reading buddy!

I felt a kiss on my lips and I chose the option to resume the world. Color seeped into the greyness and All Might still looked disgruntled after I had assaulted him. He let out a sigh and then grinned like a fool at me.

“Well, young Midoriya! Now that you've agreed to become my successor, we need to train you up to be able to handle taking on my power!” All Might boisterously said. “The entrance exams for UA will be held in about 10 months, so we don't have long to get you into shape. Meet me at that trash beach on the edge of this suburb on the weekend and we can get started.”

I blinked my eyes at him and wasn't sure why I was surprised that he didn't notice I was half a foot taller and my clothes didn't fit me anymore. Maybe when someone is a few inches over 7 feet tall, everyone looks smaller than them?

Anyways, I shook my head. “Thank you for the offer, All Might. I should be fine on my own as I prepare for that.” I said and patted his arm. “You've done more for this world than anyone else could have and you've carried the burden for so long. Now that you've finally found someone to take over when you retire, you can relax.”

All Might looked shocked as his form deflated and he became the near skeletal Toshinori Yagi once more.

“Can I have your phone number? If I have any questions, I'd like to call you. If that's okay?” I asked and he nodded. I took out the partially ruined journal that Bakugo had tried to blow up and opened it to the page with All Might's signature on it. He scribbled his phone number on it and handed it back. “Thank you, Mister Yagi.” I said and put the journal away. I'd repair it later. “Do you need me to call you a taxi or something? My home is only a street over that way.”

“Uh, yes. Yes, actually. I could use a lift.” Yagi said as his surprise started to wear off.

I nodded and motioned for him to follow me. “I bet you have a lot of stories you've never told anyone about your adventures over the years.” I said and he smiled. “You don't have to share them, Mr. Yagi. I just wanted you to know if you do want to reminisce about your decades long career, I'm willing to listen.”

Toshinori chuckled. “You're fishing for info about being a hero and also telling me not to tell you?”

I chuckled, too. “I think we both have adventures that no one else has heard about, sir.”

Toshinori laughed. “I suspected as much. I've glanced through that journal you have there, young Midoriya. That's not something you can write about without actually seeing the heroes and villains in person.”

I grinned and couldn't resist joking about it. “I've had more close calls with hero fights than a senior police officer on crowd control.”

The skeletal man laughed pretty hard when he heard that. “I can... just imagine... after today...”

“Oh, it's even better than that! The last one was where Mount Lady almost stepped on me during her debut, after she drop-kicked that giant shark guy, and she didn't even notice!” I said and he kept laughing.