The Steppe -- Izuku Midoriya

## Transcript

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PANDOR.

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EXPLORATION COMMENCED.

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Izuku

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Izuku had been curious of The Steppe ever since he'd first heard of it from somebody in the chatroom. An entire landscape outside of Epoche with limitless possibilities... he was in another world after all, so the chances of seeing something he has never seen back home have to be pretty high! Feeling confident about stepping outside for the first time now that his Quirk was back, Izuku journeyed out into the wilderness in hopes of finding something interesting. If 2B could find something as fascinating as a small clockwork dragon, it should be pretty easy, right?

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PANDOR.

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The area before you is completely vast as far as the eye can see, aside from the occasional farmland. You look about your surroundings, noting that this is probably just the beginning of it. You walk through the wide and open plains, heading far enough so you could see your prospects.

To the north, there's a forest. To the southwest, there's a nice beach. To the southeast, there's overgrown ruins. And if you go west, there's a mountain to climb if you so please... but this is arguably the most dangerous out of the four destinations. All have some interesting finds, so choose freely.

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Izuku

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'I don't see anything exciting about the forest right now, plus there's no telling what kind of creatures I might stumble upon. The beach doesn't look that interesting, either... Those mountains over there... No, it seems too dangerous. It's different than the training I did at U.A. Over there we at least had some assistance if we fell. I'd need some kind of climbing gear to get up there.' Izuku turns in the direction of the ruins. Something about them was drawing him in, telling him that this course of action was the best to take. 'The ruins are always where something's waiting to be discovered, right? Though, this isn't a movie, so it might just be a bunch of old architecture... Still, it's better than nothing, and I do wonder how those ruins came to be.' With his decision set in stone, Izuku set off southeast, a feeling of excitement and curiosity growing inside him.

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PANDOR.

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You head toward the ruins, anticipating an adventure ahead of you. The trek takes a while, but the slow transition from farmland into what you suppose are the ruins are indicated by the overgrowth.

The twisting vines are kind of a hassle to get through, but they thankfully don't cling onto you so terribly. Although, you notice something entangled inside the vegetation, and it seems to resemble a part of a building. Beyond, you may find more similar to it, but it's a bigger pile of debris and wreckage. Well, it's the ruins after all!

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Izuku

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Yep, those are definitely ruins. Though, maybe foolishly, he expected a bit more than just broken parts of buildings entangled in grass and vines and whatnot. Then again, nothing's stopping him from looking inside one of said buildings, right? Izuku looks this way and that to try and find a way inside that part of a building. A door, maybe? A window? Anything that remotely resembles an opening will do.

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PANDOR.

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There's not much of a door or window to be seen, although you find something resembling an opening. However, it's a bit too small for you to crawl through comfortably due to it being made by two collapsed columns atop each other. It would be risky to move anything to make the opening bigger, considering that there's more than the cracked columns stacked on each other-- it seems to also be supporting parts of a wall. You could look elsewhere as well, or... you could try going through here, somehow.

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Izuku

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Hm... Izuku has an idea, but it seems a bit too risky, even for him. He'll come back to this later. For now, he decides to head out further into the ruins to find something more immediately approachable.

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PANDOR.

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After precariously navigating through the ruins, you finally find an opening. You weasel your way in, and without any immediate incident. Seems like your judgement was correct.

Upon entering, it gives off a... stark feeling. It is definitely more than just stacks and stacks of debris. Now, there are sever places to start looking. You couldn't quite tell yet what this place is supposed to be, since dust and debris cover anything obvious. Parts of technology are scattered all over the floor, along with glass shards close to where you assume a window would've been. Of course, you can also proceed without checking it out... that is, if you could get more of the rubble out of the way.

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Izuku

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Izuku coughs as he enters, the dust hanging in the air slowly entering his lungs. The place has definitely been abandoned for a long time... Though pushing forward seems like a tempting idea, the boy is more intrigued by the strange parts of technology laying on the floor. He kneels down to examine them further. Does it look like anything he can recognize?

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PANDOR.

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You try to examine the technology more closely, but... you cannot make heads or tails of what the heck it's supposed to be. And if you get close enough to try to pick it up, it starts to spark... perhaps that would be a dangerous venture.

However, you do notice what would be a notebook similar to your own laying flat on the floor, scattered along with the glass.

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Izuku

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Huh? That's odd. Maybe someone left it in a hurry, or they forgot about it. Either way, Izuku picks it up and dusts it off properly before opening the first page.

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PANDOR.

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Inside, you find various calculations and drawings inside the notebook, which seems... nearly indecipherable to you. Despite being very bright and smart for your age, a lot of this is jargon you personally aren't that experienced in. If anything, you could tell that this is research of some sort... and something scientific.

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Izuku

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This does nothing for Izuku except give him flashbacks to math class, where his pen raced against all the other smart students, and where he quickly gave out the answer before they could. He was wrong about 50% of the time, though. He sighs, and decides to carry the notebook with him. Maybe someone smarter than him will be able to figure it out. At least, as far as he knows, this building was used for research of some kind. Is there anything else in the room?

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PANDOR.

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You decide to take the notebook with you, and search the floor for anything else inside the room. You find more, possibly ripped pages from the notebook you took with you. And as you guessed, it's just more gibberish that you couldn't make anything out of. Perhaps you exhausted all you could find right now.

The ruins seem stable enough for now, so you decide it would be safe to proceed. Unless you think you've found enough?

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Izuku

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Just to be sure he's not missing anything, Izuku collects the ripped pages and puts them back into the notebook. It'd be a shame if someone could start making sense of it, only to stop halfway through just because there's a couple of pages missing. With that, he presses forward.

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PANDOR.

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You take the notebook with you and proceed onward. You manage to navigate through the ruins without too much trouble, although you could really do without scaring yourself each time you ended up causing a piece of glass to rattle on the ground. Thankfully, you haven't found yourself stepping on any of them.

Proceeding onward didn't do much for you, however, and all you see is repetition of what you've been seeing before-- cold and caustic ruins. There's more pages littered around, but they seem to have the same gibberish as the ones in the notebook-- plus, all of them out of context proved to be useless to you.

Is it safe to assume that the rest of the ruins look the same?

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Izuku

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...Probably. Izuku would hate to lose himself inside these ruins anyway. Sure, if he starved to death in here he'd just end up back home, but still, the mere thought of having to endure hours and hours of agonizing hunger pains... it's not very appealing to him right now. 'Guess that's all I'm getting from these...' He looked at the notebook, brows furrowed, almost frustrated that his search didn't yield anything more effective. He didn't expect any worldshattering revelations, but something more than math homework would've been nice... If there's nothing else to be seen, Izuku will start heading back to where he came from. He decides that there's nothing else to be found here, and heads back to the city with the notebook in his hand.

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PANDOR.

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Exploration ended.