Chapter 4 - Unstable Entropy

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The school was... well, a normal school, though not quite, the school was divided into two buildings, one to teach the children who had not awakened their Quirk or did not have it, and one for the children who had already awakened their Quirk.

Schools in Japan worked a little differently than in the United States, while in America the children always saw classes together regardless of whether they had Quirk or not, Japan separated them so that there would be less discrimination towards people without Quirk, although it didn't help much, in fact, it only made it worse, but everyone seemed to turn a blind eye to the matter....

Lena stood next to her father looking at the building in front of her curiously.

Fumikami Elementary School.

Today was the day where Lena was taking her first step on that long mountain of studies. For the first time, Lena was going to school, and she was a little nervous... okey very nervous, but she disguised it with her characteristic smile even though it seemed a little looser than usual.

"Well, I'll come pick you up when school's out, about 3 hours-".

"3 HOURS?! THAT'S A LONG TIME!!!" Lena shouted in surprise that it took the school so long, well, a long time for her.

Some parents looked at the commotion Lena was causing with sympathetic faces towards Winston since they had been through the same thing before.

Winston sighed. "It's not as much as you think Lena, it's only three hours it's not a lot of time believe me, you might even have some fun and maybe make some friends."

Little did he know that for a child three hours was like three whole lifetimes.

After Lena tried to convince her father to look for her earlier, failing miserably. She entered the school with a grim face, prepared to spend three lifetimes in a classroom with strangers she honestly had no desire to meet.

Walking through the main building she met a teacher who told her which classroom to go to, thanking the teacher with a smile Lena shot into the classroom using her Quirk, Lena disappeared from the teacher's sight to be replaced by a light blue trail which soon vanished into thin air.

Speaking of her Quirk, Lena had recently with the help of her father managed to name her Quirk.

Goddess of Ti-

Well, no.

Her Quirk was simply called, Entropy of Time, as she could control the Entropy of Time, although according to her father she shouldn't speed up her own Entropy too much as bad things would happen... but setting it back or speeding it up just a few seconds wouldn't do any harm, other than feeling a little hungry.

Arriving in front of the classroom, she walked in through the door to see that....

...it was empty...

Lena was surprised to be the first to arrive and made her way to the seat closest to the door, so that when the bell rang she could run uninterrupted to her freedom.

After a few minutes that seemed like hours, students began to arrive and before long almost the entire room was full, some of the kids were uncomfortable, some were crying and screaming for their parents to come back, and others were quiet as they talked to the person next to them.

And Lena... well she had fallen asleep waiting for her classmates.

After the teacher came in and slammed the door (which woke Lena up), she proceeded to introduce herself by writing her name and explaining the elementary school rules.

'Soooo boring...I'm going back to sleep-'

"Now...you, the brown haired girl who was sleeping, come introduce yourself to your classmates" Said the teacher as she pointed her finger at her and beckoned her to come closer.

Lena blinked in surprise before she quickly got up from her seat and stood in front of the class, looking around she could see several weird things with the boys possibly their Quirks.

One had horns and a demon tail, another had green skin, another had his eyes closed but could see, another had pencils for ears, and the list goes on and on...

"Good morning, my name the Lena Oxton!!!, I'm from the United States, soo please call me Lena, I like to run, sleep and eat, my Quirk allows me to...ehhh...become the fastest or slowest for a few seconds...or so I think, I still don't quite understand it...anywayy, my pleasure!!!". Lena said with a bright smile on her face before returning to her seat to let the next student through....

***

"Soo... how was school?" Winston asked as he looked in the rearview mirror at Lena riding in the back of the car with a bored grimace.

"Well, it wasn't so.... LIE!!! IT WAS INCREDIBLY BORING!!!! AND THE KIDS ARE WORSE!!!"

Lena shouted with a frustrated look on her face, as if she had just returned from a prison with the worst offenders.

"You're a kid..."

"THAT'S NOT THE POINT!!!" Shouted Lena pouting at her father's response. 

"HAHA!" Winston laughed out loud at his daughter's expression.

After the two calmed down a bit Lena explained what she didn't like about school....

"The classes are boring, most of the things I see this year I've already seen with you and the worst thing without a doubt are the kids..." Lena said as she looked out the car window.

Winston has been educating his daughter since before she got her Quirk, because he is a scientist he has been able to teach her a variety of things without much difficulty. While perhaps too advanced things for a child, somehow Lena soaked up the knowledge like a sponge, essentially getting a little (a lot) ahead of kids her age.

"What about the kids, did they bother you or something?" asked Winston worried that something had happened to his daughter.

"No, they're just ... idiots."

"Lena, vocabulary."

"But-"

"No buts"

"Finee. Well, they're dumb, I mean they don't know how to answer a simple subtraction or multiplication and worst of all they just talk about how awesome their Quirk is and try to brag about it to others... but the most annoying thing is that they just talk about being heroes.... I mean I like the idea of being a hero like Nana Shimura or All Might who protect people with a smile, but I don't go down the street yelling every few seconds "See how I walk?, My dream is to be a hero" or "Have you seen my super-duper-powered Quirk? It's just that my dream is to be a hero" IT's super annoying!". Lena said in an angry tone as she recalled the annoying situation.

"Well, that's the dream of many I'm not surprised they shout it every second, but they still don't know the risks and dangers of being a hero." Winston explained with a bitter smile. "When they know what they are up against let me tell you many of them will stop trying to become Heroes..."

After that conversation, they both went home to prepare food and get ready for Lena's daily practice.

Winston had done some very thorough research on his daughter's Quirk. He came to the conclusion that Lena basically wraps herself in Entropic Energy to move quickly.

Although "moving" is not a description, after all, she is stopping time for a few seconds.

According to Winston's research and a little experimentation. Lena was not supposed to remain in that state of "Acceleration" for very long, since she is essentially advancing her own Entropy to "move" while the world "stops" its own Entropy around her.

It's a complex issue, but basically, Lena shouldn't spend too much time using her Quirk in a row.

The limit Winston placed on Lena was that she should only accelerate her Entropy a maximum of 3 times per minute, or she could use all 3 accelerators and then back off her Entropy to get the 3 accelerators again, but the back off should then not be used for 2 minutes.

(A/N: You should not take this too seriously, it is just to give you an idea of the limitations.

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Accelerators: 3 Jumps - Cooldown 1 minute (Resets if you use Recoil)

Recoil: 1 Recoil - Cooldown 2 minutes

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If Lena exceeded the established limits... actually Winston had no idea what would happen since no one could know the future and even less with an energy as strange and unstable as Entropy, but of one thing he was sure, it couldn't be good, and he didn't want to risk his daughter's health because of his scientific curiosity.

After lunch, father and daughter went down to the basement where a large room awaited them, half of it was a scientific research place with various technological artifacts and the other part was a sparring area where Lena used to practice.

Lena headed for the sparring area while Winston stood outside with a remote in his hand.

"3... 2...1... BEGINNING TRAINING!" Said a robotic voice.

After that robots of different sizes came out to face Lena.

This training was to increase Lena's resistance towards Entropy, Winston had a theory that if Lena had more resistance she could do more Accelerations or reduce the cool down time.

Lena dodged the robots that tried to hit her without using Entropy, after all she only had 3 Accelerations and didn't want to waste them,

1 minute of cooldown in a fight can be decisive for victory or defeat.

Quickly Lena moved to the right dodging a blow from the robot, taking advantage of her height she quickly slipped between his legs and gave him a punch that left a small dent in his back.

The robot quickly turned around to face Lena. The latter was smiling from the adrenaline rush and barely managed to dodge the blow coming from the back of another robot.

After 5 minutes since she started training, she was forced to use the first accelerator.

After 14 minutes from the start of training, she used all 3 accelerators.

Lena by now was very sweaty, she may have had a higher endurance than most normal people but at the end of the day she was still a little girl.

At 25 minutes from the start of the workout, she used 3 accelerators and a recoil.

After 40 minutes from the start of training, she used 3 accelerators, a recoil and another 3 accelerators, putting her entire arsenal on cool down.

But Lena was determined to go beyond 30 minutes, she wanted to make it at least 45 minutes before giving up. Mainly to break her own record.

Winston, who was concentrating while reading some research notes he had recently been given, didn't realize that the clock had reached 30 minutes and that his daughter was about to make the worst mistake of her life...

Lena used the fourth accelerator, straining her muscles.

Then the fifth accelerator, pushing her body to the limit making her feel a lot of pain, but she was determined to beat her record.

Then the sixth accelerator...

BOOOOOOM!

A surge of blue energy shot throughout the basement of the house momentarily shutting down all the electronic equipment around him.

Winston turned quickly to see a gruesome sight.

All the robots had been deactivated, no, they had been annihilated, there was no trace of them left, not even the metal plates... as if they had simply been erased.

And in the center of the combat zone there was...

A ghost that disappeared and reappeared in different places and positions, but each and every one of them raising his hand towards Winston with a frightened look....

At that moment it was as if Winston's world had collapsed, he watched in horror as his daughter tried to call out to him for help.....

It took him a full minute to move, he felt as if his heart had been ripped out and his mind filled with panic.

Lena had been unanchored from the present, to become a ghost that has no physical form and that should not, nor can exist in any present time, nor in any reality...

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