Chapter Text
Hi guys, It's Jack here. As stated above, I wanted to spend some time elaborating on what actually happened in chapter 1. I know coming back to this story after 3 years must be somewhat strange, but now that I am through college, I figured I could take some time to elaborate on what's going on behind the scenes here. I'll review this stuff in chronological order (as it appears in the story). Basically, this is just my place to nerd-out. Without further ado, let's begin.
AT shot: The inspiration for this move comes from a real-life phenomenon used to destroy tanks. In the military, the warhead type is called HEAT (High-Explosive Anti-Tank). It works by using an explosive behind something that's not too hard to deform, (usually a soft metal, although I've heard stories of people using det-cord (a type of explosive rope) and water to punch a hole in the engine block of a truck) to create a hypersonic projectile that can easily punch through the armor of tanks or other reinforced structures. Another word for this effect is a 'shaped charge', named as such because of the internal shaping of the warhead. Most modern HEAT projectiles shoot a jet that is a couple of meters long and which travels around Mach 20 (7+ kilometers per second 5+ miles per second), however, you can, in theory, change the parameters of the cone (circumference and depth) to focus the stream at basically any pre-determined position. In practice, the further away from the cone you try to place the focus, the less destructive power you will have.
In my mind, this could act as a variable range attack for Bakugou. On his hero suit he carries a number of different prefabricated copper cones, each with different focus points, ranging from +50 meters to as low as + 25 cm. If he runs into a particularly difficult villain he could use the AT shot to punch through their defenses. Naturally, the shorter-range cones would be more efficient, but since the other success parameter is the explosive force behind the plasma, I think he could do a lot of damage with this, even in the not-so-realistic universe of MHA where people with no durability quirks can easily survive stuff that would kill a normal human. That being said, in a more realistic world, getting hit by this is a death sentence. Not only is this tantamount to getting hit with a spear except the spear is moving 20 times the speed of sound and its blade is hotter than the surface of the sun, but the extreme heat of the copper plasma would be enough to rapidly vaporize internal fluids like blood and cause a steam explosion inside the target. Not fun.
next up: Uraraka's take-down of Todoroki.
I am sure there's at least one Todoroki fan who read this and was somewhat surprised or disappointed by Uraraka's one-hit take-down of Todoroki. I would like to spend some time here clarifying what happened as I did a poor job of explaining it in the story.
This has to do with how Urakas quirk. It seems to me at least that her antigravity ability doesn't actually remove inertial mass from what she touches. That is to say anything under the affect of her quirk still has some resistance to change in velocity.
This has some really scary consequences.
To illustrate these I'd like to imagine what happens when Uraraka throws a punch at someone who's under the affect of her quirk. Without gravity to stabilize them the apparent force of her punch is much higher and more momentum transfers to their skull. Their brain still wants to remain still and only starts moving when the skull crashes into it, leading to... Bad things.
The point is that being under the effect of Uraraka's quirk allows her strikes to bypass the bodies conventional defense systems (or more accurately turn them against the body itself) and basically punch at your insides without breaking the skin.
Hits to the body would likely result in bruising of the organs or other forms of internal bleeding while hits to the head would be a fast track to TBI town.
Finally I wanna talk about the nitroglycerin shenanigans at the end of the fic:
Basically nitroglycerin is what we call a vasodilator. It does what it says on the tin, basically forcing arteries and veins open so that they can accommodate more blood.
Often used as a heart attack medication, nitroglycerin can be great for people experiencing a block in vein or artery leading to the heart as it can force the artery open to allow blood to flow through.
The problem with the chemical really relies on a fact of human biology: we do not have enough blood in our body to completely fill out circulatory system. It is necessary to be this way as otherwise our veins couldn't constrict to help move blood around our body.
This is why nitroglycerin is so dangerous if improperly handled. If all the veins and arteries in our body are forced open, gravity will do what it does and pull blood away from the brain. This happens very suddenly.
I worked as an EMT for a while and heard stories of people who touched nitroglycerin gel and almost immediately collapsed (because if it wasn't bad enough, the stuff can be absorbed through the skin). Luckily the effects are very temporary especially in small doses.
Obviously, I had to tone down the realism here because I didn't want high-five-ing Bakugou to cause the other person to faint, but even without the whole explosive part concentrated nitroglycerin is super scary.
Anyway, I hope I was able to clear some stuff up in this chapter.