Higher class Virtue Armors had their pilots don full body suits that would interpret their movements to the mech, making them far more agile and responsive.

But Aizawa was forced to work without a pilot suit or artificial intelligence. So the fact that he managed to stand up at all was kind of unbelievable.

"Where'd you learn to do this manually?"

"Used to be a pilot for the Empire, but after a while, I realized we weren't the good guys..." Aizawa trailed off, his remaining eye looking into the distance. He shook his head, refocusing on the task at hand. "They don't like free thinkers so they put me down here."

"Wait... then that means you're not a NULL descendant?"

"The Empire makes slaves of whatever they can."

Most slaves, like 99%, were the scattered remnants of the NULL Pilots who had children before dying. Once the war was over, the Empire needed a bigger workforce, so they chose the NULL descendants as the perfect target to enslave. With the Virtrian citizens on-board with the idea, it became the NULLists and the Virtrians. And with the Virtrians in power, the NULLists were a 'species' that was designated as inhuman, due to the NULLs in their DNA.

Of course, NULLists didn't actually have any NULL DNA from their parents, and they were entirely powerless. But it was good optics to paint them as dangerous creatures with the blood of aliens in their veins.

"We got incoming!" Someone shouted from a vantage point on a nearby hill. "4 Archangel-Class Virtue Armors!"

"Can you handle those?" Aizawa asked.

Izuku smirked. "They'll be dead before they even know it."

"And then, we take their cities, one-by-one."