Precision, Dave had learned, created its own kind of echo. Not a loud one, but a ripple that traveled through connected systems in subtle, often useful ways.
He found the echo waiting for him in the hushed, sunlit silence of the municipal library on Saturday morning. He was cross-referencing a material science text with a paper on kinetic energy distribution when a shadow fell across the table.
It was the elderly woman from the dog incident. Mrs. Shirogane, as he'd later overheard a neighbor call her. She carried no air of dramatic gratitude, only a quiet, purposeful bearing. In her hands was a small, unmarked case.
"The calm boy from the street," she said, her voice like dry paper. It wasn't a question.
Dave closed his book and gave a small, respectful nod. "Ma'am."
She placed the case on the table between them. It was an old, sturdy USB drive, the kind used for serious, non-cloud-based data. "My husband," she said, her knotted fingers resting on it for a moment. "He spent forty years modeling urban infrastructure failure. Not for heroes. For engineers. He believed quirks were just… new forms of load and stress."
She pushed the drive toward him. "His models. Raw data, simulation parameters, failure point analyses. It was his life's work. The university said it was too specialized." She looked at Dave, her eyes sharp behind her glasses. "You looked at that street, that car, that dog, and you didn't see a drama. You saw a physics problem with too many variables. He would have appreciated that."
Dave didn't reach for it immediately. "This is valuable."
"It's a tool," she corrected. "Tools belong with people who understand their use. Not in a drawer." With a final nod, she turned and left, her footsteps silent on the carpet.
Dave picked up the drive. It was cool and heavy in his palm. The reward for invisible action was not praise; it was more responsibility, more knowledge. It was a better dataset. Hive, attuned to his focus, hummed with a low-grade anticipation. A new library had just been opened.
On Monday, the social ecosystem of the schoolyard presented a new data point. Bakugo's group was in fine form, their noise a focused beam directed at Izuku Midoriya, who stood by the fence clutching his latest notebook.
But the signal was different.
Izuku's usual flinch-and-stammer protocol was absent. His shoulders were tense, yes, but his face had smoothed into a strange, placid mask. His eyes, wide behind his lenses, were fixed on Bakugo. He wasn't seeing a tormentor; he was, Dave realized, recording. Tracking the arc of Bakugo's gestures, the cadence of his insults, the way his companions mirrored his aggression. He was dissecting the social attack like a complex chemical reaction.
Subject Midoriya is replicating observed conflict-avoidance protocols, Hive noted dispassionately. Emotional suppression significant. Analytical focus primed. Objective appears to be data acquisition, not engagement.
Bakugo, sensing his words were hitting a different, spongier surface, finally scoffed and shoved past him, the lesson over. The crowd dissipated.
Later, at the same fence line, Izuku drifted near Dave. He didn't speak for a long minute, watching the clouds.
"It's harder than it looks," Izuku finally said, his voice quiet. "Trying to just… watch. To not react."
Dave didn't look at him. "It's not about not reacting. It's about choosing your reaction's point of application. Reacting to the noise is a waste. Reacting to the structural weakness it reveals is efficiency."
Izuku absorbed this, his brow furrowed in thought. "So… you don't ignore the attack. You study the attacker."
"You study the system," Dave corrected softly. "The attacker is just one component."
Izuku nodded, a slow, deliberate motion. He wasn't asking for friendship. He was calibrating his own instruments, and he'd identified Dave as a reference point. He walked away, already pulling out his notebook, not to scribble hero stats, but to jot down what looked like behavioral flowcharts.
The calibration was noticed.
It happened in a hallway after the final bell, a space momentarily cleared of traffic. Dave saw the maneuver before it was complete—Bakugo angling his body, two of his usual satellites subtly slowing to block the ends of the corridor. A classic entrapment, low-risk, high-intimidation.
Dave didn't alter his pace. He walked until Bakugo's chest was a barrier in his path, then stopped. He didn't look up at Bakugo's face. His gaze went, instead, to the boy's hands. They were half-clenched at his sides, tiny, wet pops of light and sound sparking in his palms.
Bakugo glared down, a smirk twisting his features. "The quiet freak. You got something to say, now that your little note-taker isn't here?"
Dave said nothing. He watched the sparks. They were inefficient. A visible, auditory byproduct of poor reaction control. Hive supplied the numbers: estimated 15-18% energy loss to light and sound, sub-optimal sweat-to-propulsion conversion.
"Cat got your tongue?" Bakugo's voice rose, the pops in his hands growing louder, more frequent. The lack of a verbal response was clearly not in his script. "Or are you just as useless as Deku? Just smarter at hiding it?"
Finally, Dave's eyes lifted. They met Bakugo's not with fear, defiance, or even acknowledgment of a challenge. They held the flat, assessing look of a technician reviewing a malfunctioning piece of equipment. There was no emotion in them at all.
"Your ignition efficiency is poor," Dave stated, his voice calm and clear, devoid of insult or praise. It was a report. "Over fifteen percent of your glycerin sweat is combusting pre-propulsion. You're wasting energy." He paused, letting the clinical analysis hang in the air between them. "It's loud."
He then took a smooth step to the side, his movement a simple re-pathfinding around a stationary obstacle, and continued walking down the hall.
For two full seconds, there was silence. Then a violent CRACK echoed behind him—a blast directed at the floor, not at Dave. A roar of pure, incoherent frustration followed.
Dave didn't flinch. He didn't speed up. He didn't look back. Hive logged the event: Social aggression protocol: Null Response enacted. Subject Bakugo's reaction indicates systemic frustration. Threat probability unchanged, but engagement matrix now categorized as 'inefficient use of resources.'
He had not fought. He had not fled. He had performed a diagnostic and stated the results. To Bakugo, who lived in a world of victories and defeats, of explosions and roars, this non-participation was an utter void. It was something he didn't know how to fight.
The universe, Dave reflected, had a way of staging impromptu examinations.
The test occurred at a crowded crosswalk after school. A delivery robot, its guidance system glitching, lurched from the curb. Its cargo tray upended, spilling packages into the street. A bicycle courier, swerving to avoid the tumbling boxes, lost control and fell.
Dave's perception didn't narrow; it expanded. Hive partitioned the chaos into simultaneous, manageable streams.
Stream One: A high-end tablet computer, the courier's most valuable and fragile asset, ejected from its bracket, spinning toward the pavement. Dave's left hand shot out, his fingers intercepting it with a clean, non-extraordinary catch, his arm absorbing the momentum perfectly.
Stream Two: A dense, cylindrical package rolled toward the path of an oncoming scooter. Dave's right foot shifted, not a kick, but a precise redirect, nudging it back onto the curb with just enough force to stop it safely.
Stream Three: The courier was unhurt but stunned, the robot was still malfunctioning, traffic was beginning to snarl. Dave's other hand was already pulling his phone from his pocket. He hit the emergency call shortcut. As the operator answered, his report was ready: "Junction of Main and 5th. Non-injury incident. Delivery robot malfunction, pedestrian obstruction, minor traffic disruption. Services needed: traffic control, robot retrieval."
He stood there, holding the tablet, standing near the dazed courier, his voice calm and factual on the phone. In under seven seconds, he had addressed the three most immediate sub-problems of the event with the bored efficiency of someone tidying up a spill.
From the shadowed alcove of a closed shopfront, a man in a dark trench coat watched. Shota Aizawa, running on three hours of sleep and enough caffeine to kill a lesser man, was on his way home. His hero instincts were dialed down to a dull, exhausted hum, but his eyes, perpetually unimpressed, missed little.
He didn't see a Quirk. He saw no flash, no strain, no visible sign of power use. What he saw was more interesting: Priority triage. The boy had solved for data loss (the tablet), secondary collision (the package), and systemic escalation (the call) in one fluid, thoughtless sequence. No hero posturing, no panic, not even the gleam of someone pleased to help. Just… systems management.
Aizawa's dry, tired eyes lingered on the boy's school uniform for a half-second longer than necessary before he pushed off the wall and melted into the crowd. Another data point, filed in the mental cabinet marked 'Potentially Not a Waste of Time.'
That night, in the quiet of his room, Dave plugged in Mrs. Shirogane's drive. While the data compiled, Hive presented its own findings from the day.
It displayed a social map of the school, highlighting Bakugo's node of influence. Then it overlaid a series of probability curves and suggested actions.
Social standing optimization available, Hive communicated. Leveraging observed instability in Subject Bakugo's social node, probability of elevating user's influence and reducing future friction is 68%. Suggested actions: strategic alliance formation with secondary group leaders, targeted information dispersion regarding Subject Bakugo's inefficiencies, social reinforcement of the 'Null Response' as a superior tactic.
A cold flicker of distaste, sharp and entirely human, went through Dave. It wasn't directed at Hive, which was only doing its job—optimizing systems. It was directed at the very concept.
"No," he said aloud, the word final.
Clarify, Hive requested. The proposed path reduces conflict and increases user control. Current social dynamics are inefficient.
Dave leaned back, staring at the ceiling. He thought of Bakugo's furious, confused explosion. He thought of Izuku's focused, silent observation. He thought of the simple, clean lines of solving a physics problem versus the tangled, ugly mess of manipulating human hearts.
"Some systems are not ours to optimize," he stated, his thoughts crystallizing into a core principle. "Social dynamics, personal conflicts, peer hierarchies… unless they escalate into direct, physical threats to well-being, they are background noise. We observe them. We understand them. We do not manipulate them. We do not play in them."
He felt Hive processing, weighing this new, qualitative parameter against its core directives of efficiency and preservation.
New constraint acknowledged, Hive finally responded. A new rule was forged, etched into its operational framework: The Non-Interference Directive. Social optimization protocols were siloed off, tagged as low-priority, only to be activated if a scenario crossed the threshold into physical danger. Hive was learning that Dave's calm wasn't just a tactic for survival; it was an ethical boundary.
At dinner, the news played footage of a flashy, new hero making their debut—a whirlwind of light and sound that left a city block decorated in sparkling, non-destructive foam, the villain trapped in a giant, glowing bubble. The hero was laughing, waving to cameras.
Kenji chewed his food, unimpressed. "All that power, and the biggest threat is a potential sugar rush from all that glitter."
Aiko smiled. "It's what the cameras want. The spectacle."
Dave watched the screen, then looked at his parents—his mother who healed quietly, his father who fixed unseen networks. He thought of the USB drive full of silent, powerful knowledge, and the rule he had just given his power.
"Loud is easy," he said, not to them, but to the understanding settling within him. "Quiet is a choice. Control isn't about having an off switch. It's about knowing the exact moment, and the exact magnitude, to turn it on."
He knew the shape of his path now, not as a dream, but as a calculated trajectory. He would not walk through the chaotic, roaring center of the storm. He would walk its calm, precise edge, where observation met action, where the smallest, most correct intervention could silence the greatest noise.
In his mind, Hive accepted the new directive and turned its full attention to the engineering models now unpacking on his screen. The real work had just begun.