My Hero Academia: The Next Generation discussion

((Thank you!))

Echo sets AJ down on a metal bed and clamps her arms and legs to it. She sets up an IV on her arm to keep her levels steady. AJ murmurs something in her unconsciousness, and Echo watches her for a moment, and then reaches down and takes AJ's mask and hood off, revealing dark red hair looped twice into two long ponytails. Echo places a mask over AJ's nose and mouth to keep her under. She puts AJ's metal mask on a nearby cart and walks into a different room.

Marx marveled at the sight of her face, considering he’s never seen her face before, but this wasn’t a time for ooos and ahhs. He sneakily summoned a set of threads that pulled echo towards him, stunning her. “Now, who’s this? Someone with enough guts to think this would never happen, that’s for sure.” Marx quickly sucker-punched echo from the back.

Echo twitched her bat ears and glared at Marx, and whispered something inaudible. She blinked at him, her pale eyes wistfully staring down at the floor, looking vacant. She unsheathed her weapons, twin katanas. She slashed through the threads easily, and then the sucker punch finally hurt her. She crouched, hiding her pain, and slashed at Marx's face with the swords.

Marx quickly dodged, but was slightly scathed by one slash. “I’ll be taking those, thank you.” As soon as Marx saw an opening, he summoned threads that shot towards the handles of the blades, making an attempt to pull them to Marx.

(Srry I went to the gym)

((Morning!))

Echo raised her brows, and unsheathed a pair of throwing stars, which were poisoned. "I would rather not kill you. And I have a feeling you wouldn't want your friend dead either." Echo said, straightening herself, "I have a poison connected to her IV. Any wrong moves and I will press this button, and she will die an agonizing death." She says with a straight face.

"-and why exactly do you need her for all this?" Marx got a strong grip on the swords. He has never trained himself in swordfighting, but now he wished he had taken some time out of his day to.

"Her quirk is... very unique." Echo says simply, "Not that she would tell anyone about it. You don't even know it, don't you?" She says, "Would you like to know?" She asked, "I always encourage curiosity. Surely even the training heroes know this about me. Or, of course, to make me seem less human, Echo." She says, and snaps her fingers, a signal she was training her bats to recognize.

“I mean, I asked, but she never told me…” Marx kept his guard up, not knowing what the noise could mean. He realized that the place was dark. If he died, nobody would know.

"Confidential Information. A quirk that allows the user to be boosted by any and all secrets she keeps." Echo told him, flicking her bat ears, trying to hear how far the bats were. She extended her wings, "It's very, very interesting, and very useful to my studies. Put down the swords, and you might go free with your friend soon enough." She told him, her small voice commanding and direct.

“That explains a lot…” Marx remembered AJ avoiding questions, now he knew it was for the sake of her quirk. “What are you trying to do to her?” Marx refused to let go of the blades until he got an explanation for all this.

"Test exactly what her quirk can do." Echo told him simply, and then her bats all came out, hundreds of thousands of bats, screeching and flying at Marx, in an attempt to get him to drop the swords. One landed on Echo's shoulder, an albino bat, very small, and delicate looking. "What are you trying to do, hm? Rescue her?" Echo asked, tilting her head at him, "I know all there is to know about her, and she's probably not worth it." She said briefly, waving it off, "I'll give you one. Last. Chance. Surrender, and give me my katanas back and once I'm done figuring her quirk out, the both of you can leave unscathed." Echo pitched again, "Don't try my patience."

Marx summoned as many steel threads as he could and wrapped himself into a loose ball. “I’ll give you the katanas, but I can’t promise surrender. If you’re going to be running tests on her, I want to at least see everything.” Marx put both of the swords in one hand and held them by the blade, holding them out to echo through the crowd of bats.

Echo whistled in the strange way bats understood, and they came to a stop, disappearing into every nook and cranny they found usable. "Like I said, I feed curiosity." She told Marx, smiling slightly and taking her swords, "Thank you." She said, taking them quickly. She waved Marx over to a small tablet mounted on a pole on the metal bed AJ was on. "This is her heart beat," She said, pointing out a squiggly line, "This is her blood pressure, this is the output of the IV, and this is what controls the poison, as well as the tablet on my arm. She told Marx, explaining what each of the things meant, "There is no way to detach or stop it, unless you have a code, do not touch unless you want her to die. Which of course would be unfortunate for the both of us." Echo said sternly, and whistled for the bats to go back where they had been before. The albino one still sat on her shoulder, but climbed to rest on the top of her head. "This is Mitsumi, an albino bat, I presume you've never seen a bat before, like most people?" She asked, turning to Marx.

“Actually, I have.” Marx remembered his fantastic experience his AJ, and the baby bat falling asleep in his arms. “From what I know, they take a liking to me. I think the newborns are really cute.” Marx thought that Echo may not be so bad, but if she wasn’t, why would she have a button that poisons her? “Who are you, anyway?”

"I am the so-called 'villain', Echo. You could also call me Renma if you care enough." She told Marx, "I am currently doing an extensive experiment with quirks, it's my goal in life to find out exactly how they work." She explains, and it's easy to tell that she's not much older than Marx or AJ, "Do you know her name?" She asked, pointing at AJ over her shoulder. "Not many people do, she's very well-disciplined in her lies and secrets. It's almost admirable..." Renma says, trailing off.

“She asked me to call her Secretkeeper, her hero name. As long as you don’t poison me, maybe I could help you out.” Marx summoned a thread. “Marionette is my quirk name. I also intend for it to be my hero name. Honestly, being a villain is your choice and your choice only.” Marx noticed that despite her being a bit shorter than him, Renma looked around his age. “Overall, nice to meet you, Renma.

"Her name is Ayaka Venus, adopted daughter of a former minor hero." Renma said simply, "I don't really want to poison anyone in general." She said, shrugging. "I know. Your quirk was another interesting one." She agreed, nodding, "It is not. It's not really anyone's fault I'm called a villain, excluding my father." She says stubbornly, tilting her head slightly up. She could hear exactly where he was, but she wished she could see him, it'd always just be easier to see. Her eyes were pale blue, the result of unsuccessful experiments.

Marx kept his eyes on AJ’s heart rate. “So, how do you know all of this? You sound like her yourself, knowing all of this information. What’s with your dad, anyway? He’s a villain and wants you to follow in his footsteps?” Marx tilted his head, holding out his hand to shake.

Renma laughed, "No and definitely no." She said, smiling, "I track the people whose quirks I find interesting for about seven weeks to normalize myself with their patterns, and then do a couple of tests and then leave them where they live once I'm done. I've never killed or hurt anyone yet, the poisons are precautionary to make sure that you wouldn't kill me." She says, tilting her head, the bat atop it shuffling, "I heard you coming. If you haven't noticed by now, I am blind, and with my quirk, Bat Trait, I have possibly the best hearing of any person in this country." She said, "My father is... an annoyance of some and the bane of others."

“Hmm… that explains your cloudy eyes… they look really nice, by the way. I think that’s gonna be one of my favorite colors now.” Marx reached over and gently patted the albino bat on the head.

Renma's arm moved so fast it was nearly invisible. "Thank you. But don't touch my bats." She told him, her quick grasp gone as soon as it appeared. "Mitsume is very... delicate, and I'd prefer not to have her broken. Your hands also probably have some kind of bacteria that bats aren't immune to. Not a personal attack, just a truth." She blinked at him, her ears moving slightly, "The tests begin." She whispers almost inaudibly.

Marx made a thin layer of thread to cover his hands, induced with a sense of Deja vu. “In case you don’t know, I just made myself some thin gloves out of thread.” He snapped his fingers, but it was muffled and didn’t echo. “Just in case.”

"I don't really care. Bats are delicate. Don't touch." Renma told him, becoming extremely overprotective, realizing that as a child, she'd hoped someone would say that about her. She huffed out a breath and shook her head. "You said you wanted to help?" She asked, tilting her head at him slightly.

“Sure, I just won’t let you do anything bad to her, or I might have to resort to physical force.” Now that Marx has gotten to know Renma, he didn’t want to resort to physical force. “I don’t think either of us want that.”

Renma shook her head, "You still don't get it. Stupid hero academy, what're they teaching there anyways?" She said, sighing, "I don't hurt people, and I don't kill them either. Ayaka wouldn't be in harm's way if you hadn't followed, but here we are. I'm also not the big bad or whatever of the story you think you're in, I'm barely even alive at this point. I just want answers." She said, huffing again, "I find people, do experiments, and then leave them in a safe place, and they never even know it happened. Except this weird thing that they sometimes remember my voice, which is where my totally scary villainous name comes from. Echo." She says, "Anyways, let's begin." She said, turning to AJ

“I’m just saying, just in case anything goes wrong…” Marx sighed. “Sure, let’s do it.” Marx had a pensive look on his face, as if going through some complicated dilemma in his head. He kept his eyes on the heart monitor, every beeps representing another second of life.

Renma waved him over to a sink, "Gotta wash your hands." She says lightly, specifically not forcefully. She was not a villain, at least not in the way that most people described villains. She could always have attempted to stop Marx from following, but where was the interest in that? She wanted to teach; it was in her blood. Feeding curiosity of those similar to her was her point of all this. She didn't care how the world viewed her, as long as she was still learning. "First, some physical tests, I'm going to tell you exactly what I'll do, alright?" She said softly, going into her focusing mode. She drew her quirk in, her bat ears and wings retracting. She always seemed smaller without her quirk, but learning how to do things without it was invigorating.

Marx walked over and turned on the hot water. First, the layer around his hands suddenly disappeared, then he proceeded to wash his hands for a while. While washing, he replied. "Sounds good! Do you think she'll hate me for allowing you to run tests on her, no matter how harmless they are?" Marx felt anxious about this, since he still wanted to know AJ as a friend.

"I don't think so, she's a very lenient person. But she may hate me, she hates being vulnerable. But that's alright. You can just say I knocked you out too or something, whatever it takes to save your skin I guess." Renma said quickly, "Okay, we'll start with a simple physical test. I have a chemical that tests the physical abilities, I'm going to inject it into the IV. Keep an eye on her stats, would you? Her heart beat is going to rise, and that is normal."

“Got it.” Marx walked back to where AJ was there lying down. His eyes quickly darted from her heart rate, to the blood pressure. “What questions, exactly, are you trying to answer?” Marx was now convinced that Renma really wasn’t that bad. She just needed answers.

"Just the extent of her quirk." Renma said, flicking a syringe with some liquid inside it. "It's not too complicated, we'll be working on this for a little bit and then I'll have all the information I need." She injected the syringe into the flow of the IV. "How's her heartbeat looking?"

“Well, it’s normal right now,” Marx said, looking at the IV as the liquid entered her body. After a little while, her rate started to rise. “Okay, now it’s up to… around eighty or ninety beats per minute.” Marx stated, watching as the squiggles appeared more often.

"That's normal it should rise to about 100 and stay around there for almost two minutes." Renma told Marx, tapping on things on her arm tablet, "Hm... abnormal..." She muttered to herself. The heart monitor's pace rose very quickly, suddenly shooting to 120. Renma didn't appear to notice.

“Abnormal?”Marx kept his eyes on the heart monitor.“Okay, it just rose drastically again. I’d guess 130 by now… what should we do?” Marx got a bit nervous, but his expression didn’t change.

"She reacted badly to the chemical, probably allergic." Renma told him, and the monitor let out a long, dreadful beep rather than the pulsing short beeps, "Sweet rot, this is terrible." She said, grabbing the defibrillator off the shelf, turning it on, silently bringing it over to AJ's bed. She did a couple of things she'd done in practice, but never for real. She got ready to use it when AJ's heartbeat returned to normal. She turned and blinked at the heart monitor, mildly stunned. She put the defibrillator away, so glad she didn't have to use it.

“What was that!?” Marx was amazed in response to the sight. AJ was breathing heavily, like there was a monster about to burst out of her. “Is she okay!?”

"She's fine, just an adverse reaction." Renma said, "You two should probably leave now. Most of the chemicals I've made have a lot of the same things, each just slightly different, so she'd have the same or similar reaction to the rest." She told Marx. "She should be just fine, might have a headache or something, a side-effect I still need to work out." She said while taking the mask off AJ's face and the IV out of her arm, "She'll wake in around an hour. Leave, don't come back, and don't tell anyone I'm here and I'll leave you alone." She said to Marx, staring him down, "I know where your dorm is, who you're related to and who your friends are. Don't test my skills and you'll be just fine." She says, softening her look, "Thanks for the company, though, it gets lonely with just me and the bats."

“You sure you don’t want me to stay here with you? How do you even get these chemicals? Do you make them yourself?” Marx looked over at Renma, sort of understanding her loneliness, like it was nostalgic.

"Yes, I've been living here alone for two years and am perfectly capable with myself and yes, I make them from everyday items, along with a couple of chemicals only available to 'villains'." Renma told him, "It's remarkably easy." She said, smiling quickly at him before letting it drop just as fast.

“Well, if you want me to leave, I’ll do that, just please promise me that she’ll be fine.” Marx walked toward the door, but hesitantly stopped and turned his head back at Renma.

"She will live, it wasn't a bad reaction, or she would have not come back." Renma said sourly, "Despite what some of the idiots at your school think, science is very interesting and curiosity should be welcomed." She said, sighing slightly, "Feel free to come back if you find any curiosity too much to bear, I'm happy to explain anything science-ish or quirk-ish." She said, "Door's on the left side, that's a barricaded exit. I'll leave AJ in her dorm, don't worry. What she needs most now is rest." She told him, turning away.

“I agree. I adore science! I’ll be sure to pay you a visit. Just so you know, I’ll be waiting in her dorm, unless my overthinking gets the better of me. Do you know how long she’ll be here?” Marx glanced at AJ.

"Not for another half an hour, probably. She'll be just fine." Renma said, nodding, "I assumed." She disappeared into the darkness, and made her way to the back rooms.

((Thinking end scene or time skip?))

((Whatever you’re up for, if we skip maybe it would start in AJ’s dorm?))

((That works! I'll post!))

((kk!))

((Posted! ^^))