Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

..:: ALERT. SYSTEM INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. FULL LOCKDOWN INITIATED. EPSILON BASE DISCONNECTED FROM CENTRAL SERVER::..

Another explosion detonated somewhere above, significantly closer than any before. The blast rattled the foundations of the supposedly secure facility, a fresh shower of dust and debris rained from the rough ceiling, onto the bulky yellow hazmat suit worn by the figure below. Their features were concealed by the protective gear, the only smart way to traverse the surface since the orbital bombardments began.

Even that extra caution, the air filtration system and radiation shielding, wasn't proving enough. They'd been trying to ignore the persistent hacking cough for the better part of a month, but it was a clear reminder of how little time they, and the rest of their doomed planet, really had.

The world was consistently poised on a knifes edge and had been for generations, peace built on simmering resentment and fragile alliances. It was only a matter of time before someone gave it a little push too far in one direction. The cruel irony was that nobody knew who shoved first. Communications shattered, continents went dark, and eventually the casualty lists stopped being updated. Now, the future was resting in the miraculously, and only intact research facility within a 300km radius.

FWABOOM

That impact felt closer, like each hit was burrowing deeper below the surface. The figure stumbled, catching themselves against the console. "I'm running out of time, faster I need to be faster."The panic constricting their chest worsened the breath already made difficult by the damn cough. Frantic typing resumed, but the system remained sluggishly slow, error messages blinking with an infuriating regularity.

The literal heart of the problem was the barely functioning central computer core, a monumental cylinder of dull grey metal disappearing into the jagged rock of the cavern ceiling. Dozens of thick cables snaked out from the base, connecting to the myriad subsystems lining the walls. It had been built deep underground in order to avoid overheating from the sun's harsh rays, a clever solution at the time and the reason this facility was the only one still moderately operational. A catastrophically idiotic solution when factoring in explosive ordinance. Far too much debris had already subsided, shaken loose by the incessant pounding and piling on the upper machinery. It was unclear how much time they had left.

Disconnecting Epsilon from the server network had been the necessary first step. If other pockets of survivors still remained in other bases, there was no way to verify their allegiances anymore. Paranoia was a survival trait now, enemies could pose as allies, and they couldn't risk anyone finding out what they were doing here. They couldn't risk someone trying to put a stop to the plan.

"Come, come on! flakking search!" The desperate plea was muffled by the suit's respirator.

Text crawled up the screen, inch by inch, line by agonising line. More impacts reverberated from above, feeling closer and closer. The lights flickered, then, mercifully, the scrolling halted. A single line with a flickering colon at the very bottom of the screen underneath a pile of not-quite results.

A relieved and strained gasp came from inside the helmet. "There! It's really there! This code has to be right… It has to be…"

Their voice dropped to a whisper, reciting the sequence as they had since the beginning of their long and arduous journey. "Authorisation code: CESTUS 776E-Theta. Operational clearance: Gamma-Gamma-Six. Initiate primary protocols. Standby for additional programming."

"Get back here, you little roof-hopping prick!"

"Crap crap crap crap crap!" Izuku Midoriya panted, simultaneously cursing his rotten luck for the current predicament he found himself in, whichever distant ancestor whose fault it was that he had these gangly legs, and the universe in general — just for good measure.

The little voice in the back of his head, the one that sounded suspiciously like All Might during one of the PSA videos they showed at school, did pipe up to suggest maybe this was all his own damn fault. But he squashed that thought down as he clamped a sweaty hand over his mouth, trying to stifle his breaths, and crammed himself behind the safety of a large rooftop vent. Apparently, there was a limit to how long you could operate as a secret hero before the shit hit the proverbial.

Okay, "Secret Hero" might have been laying it on a bit thick. "Local Nuisance" was probably closer to the mark. But what were people expecting him to do? Stand by, twiddling his thumbs as crimes were committed right in front of him? Or in this case, after he followed a group of suspicious looking individuals into the alleyway behind the Mighty Burger, on the off chance they were up to no good.

Izuku Midoriya wasn't wired for passivity; ingrained heroism — even the tragically quirkless kind — demanded action! If there was an opportunity for justice to be served, he was morally obligated to take it. And by seeing justice served, he naturally meant hiding behind a bin and covertly snapping some pictures on his phone.

It was a coincidence that every time he attempted such an act of unparalleled stealth and heroism, he managed to get spotted almost immediately. Usually from dropping his phone, or tripping over something. This time, embarrassingly enough, it was because he sneezed.

On the bright side, all these impromptu rooftop flights were giving him a great familiarity with the skyline. Even if his actual parkour skills were somewhere between inept and actively hazardous.

The three men chasing him weren't exactly gold medal athletes, either. One of them in particular was having a lot of trouble thanks to what Izuku desperately hoped was a quirk, and not just what he looked like.

The man was hindered by the significantly disproportionately sized legs, crammed into a pair of tight jeans making it look like he was smuggling hams. Maybe some kind of bulk up quirk regulated to the lower limbs. This meant leg-day needed constant assistance from the other two, who were spending more energy hoisting their thicc companion over knee-high ventilation shafts than actually chasing Izuku.

Somewhere behind him he could hear their annoyances reaching a fever pitch, sounding like the three were getting more frustrated with one another than getting their hands on Izuku.

"Goddamn move, Ashi! He's getting away!" One, a gentleman with no immediately noticeable quirk — unless a t-shirt reading "Musutafu hotdog eating contest third place runner-up" counted as a quirk — barked to the other, presumably the villain with sizable cake. The voices were distressingly nearby.

Ashi wheezed back, mid-hoist. "Why are we even doing this?! We weren't breaking any laws back there!"

"He took pictures!" Hotdog Man shot back, indignant. "If those go online, I want my cut! My face is my brand, you hear me? My BRAND!"

Wait. What the fuck? This is about… usage rights? Had Izuku been wrong all along, and these weren't criminals? This could be a vital lesson in striking before the iron is hot, counting his chickens before they hatch, some other tired cliche! He owed these poor men an apology, he needed to—

"Hell are you guys talking about, we weren't breaking the law?" The third man chasing him finally spoke up, his voice deeper than the others. "I was literally selling you crack."

Oh. Never mind, then. Just regular drug dealers. Izuku closed his eyes tight and tried to formulate a plan, collating the vast library of hero knowledge he'd collected over the years (primarily through watching TV). All Might's voice, clear and concise, echoed in his mind.

"Bad guys are closing in, All Might Jr!"He pictured All Might standing silhouetted by the setting sun, hands on his hips as his silver age cape billowed in the wind. "A time every hero has to make a decision, to cower in fear, or go plus ultra, and—"

"Hey!!" Hotdog shouted, pointing a grubby finger, "he's behind that vent!"

"RUN, ALL MIGHT JR! RUN LIKE HELL!!"

The incorporeal facsimile of All Might living inside his imagination didn't have to tell him twice, and so Izuku made a split second decision. Using the awesome power of narration, we're able to slow down and individually weigh his options…

1. Turn back and fight the villains head on, likely get his ass kicked.

2. Head for the fire escape on the east side of the building, hope he doesn't get intercepted by the criminals.

3. Run straight, leap off the ledge, and try to jump the gap to the building across the alley.

It was a great misfortune that Izuku Midoriya has had very little training, or any experience with split second decision making, and went with the third option.

Please standby for connection

The words blinked patiently on the dusty monitor, below them a progress bar crept forward fully unaware of how infuriating it was being.

… … … 4%

Inside the bulky hazmat suit, the occupant drummed gloved fingers against the surface of the console desk. Each tiny uptick of the percentage felt like a personal insult. This was the rock bottom of technological pain — suitable, seeing as how they were literally at the bottom of a rock. After everything, the fall of civilisation, the improbability of finding this single functioning hub, it all came down to this.

What amounted to dial-up.

… … … 6%

A low, annoyed rumble vibrated within the confines of the helmet, impatience turning to anger. Scrambling back slightly away from the desk, they drew back a thick-booted foot, temporarily ignored the delicate nature of irreplaceable technology, and gave the computer a swift kick.

For a second, everything went darker.

"Oh, crap."

Then, miraculously, a cascade of new lights blinked erratically to life across several dormant panels. A hum emanating from the devices deepened, swelling into a buzz that echoed around the room which they could feel in their fingertips.

…15… 32… 64… 83… 96%

"Huh. Percussive maintenance."

CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. ACCESS TO CESTUS MANUFACTURING CONFIRMED.

A fresh wave of relief washed over them, after searching and dreaming for so long, they'd finally breached this seemingly insurmountable hurdle. Cestus Manufacturing, the worlds largest production base, responsible for the design and distribution of everything from lightbulbs to intercontinental ballistic missiles. If there was anything that gives them a fighting chance, it was somewhere inside these databases. And, if their hunch was right, a way to recover.

They took a ragged intake of breath, the chest plain clenching like talons in their sternum. Flexing their sore fingers, they began to type.

"Navigate manufacturing and distribution. List plants."

FORMULATING RESPONSE.

The machine paused, almost as if it were considering the request. The seconds that followed dragged interminably, while the familiar rhythmic thump of artillery faded away like background ambience.

Then,

22,700 FACILITIES LOCATED.

Twenty two thousand?! That was it, the cavalry! The industrial juggernaut that could bend the world back into shape. Medical supplies, power grids, transport, everything! They could rebuild, grow, survi—

3 FACILITIES OPERATIONAL. STATUS OF REMAINING 22,697 FACILITIES: UNKNOWN.

… Three. The number didn't change, despite how they glared at it.

The fate of an entire civilisation resting on the backs of three factories. For a long moment, they simply stood there, eyes closed behind the visor, motionless.

Somewhere deep in the facility a pipe hissed.

"Everyone is counting on this…" they whispered, their voice hidden inside the thick helmet. "Display information on operational facilities."

GATHERING… …

MARU FACTORY -- PRIMARY FUNCTION: BOTTLE CAP MANUFACTURER

Not particularly useful, the bottle cap barter system had only lasted a few months. Next.

ANDOR FACTORY -- PRIMARY FUNCTION: CONCRETE MANUFACTURER.

Could mean larger fleets of distribution networks, but nothing… concrete. Not good to put everything on this, but it was the best of a bad bunch. Alright, what's next?

… … WARNING: HIGH CLEARANCE FACILITY. SECURITY ACCESS LEVEL 8 REQUIRED.

The figure blinked in surprise, frowning behind the visor. Level 8 was new. Most systems capped at level 7, and even those had been exceedingly rare. Nobody, not even the conspiracy theorists hoarding nutrient paste wrappers in the lower shelters had ever mentioned a level 8 clearance. What could warrant this? Whatever it was, it was clearly deemed more critical than anything else in Cestus' vast library.

"…Well, worth a shot."

They didn't actually believe it would work, but they'd felt defeat so many times by this point it would be like greeting an old friend.

"Authorisation code: CESTUS 776E-Theta. Operational clearance: Gamma-Gamma-Six."

ACCESS DENIED. GAMMA GAMMA SIX SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER CODES REJECTED.

"Wh— Social media manager?!"

So that's what those codes were. They'd traded the last of their rad-clear and navigated miles of coolant pipes for that... Embarrassing, but sort of funny in a cosmic joke sort of way. They tapped their gloved fingers against the desk. Okay, plan A (miraculous backdoor) had failed. Time for plan B: desperate measures born of old tech habits.

"This always worked on the busted datapads at the habitels," they muttered to themselves. It was a ludicrous idea, applying civilian tech support to a military industrial complex's highest security level, but what else was there? They began to type, feeling profoundly silly. "Forgotten password retrieval requested."

TWO FACTOR AUTHENTICATION CURRENTLY ACTIVE. STATE BIOMETRIC DESIGNATION OR REGISTERED NAME.

Shit, right, security. Biometrics were out, they weren't exactly registered personnel. Name, they needed a name, a level 8 sounding name. What sounded important, maybe a bit eccentric? Something a high-level scientist holed up in a top secret lab might have.

"Uh… Doctor…" they stalled, "…Kleig?" It sounded vaguely scientific at least.

… …

Yeah, that was probably wishful thinking.

DR ANTRONICUS KLEIG. LEVEL 8 ACCESS.

No flakking way. Antronicus Kleig? It actually worked?! Luck hadn't just came knocking, it kicked the entire door off the hinges.

PASSWORD RETRIEVAL QUESTION INITIATED: WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE HOLO-VID?

"…Star Blaster IV? That's everyone's favourite. The orbital drop scene alone…"

PASSWORD RETRIEVAL GRANTED.

CURRENT PASSWORD: PASSWORD123

They stared at the result. "Greebus Christ… Sure, fine. Whatever."

Refusing to acknowledge the absurdity any longer, they sighed, hunched forward and typed.

"Requesting access to level 8 facility.

ARC-KX SYSTEM ACCESS GRANTED. WELCOME, DR KL-KL-KL-KL-KLLLLLÌÏĪÎÍÍ͇<±₱₹……….

"What the flak?!"

The terminal erupted into visual chaos, symbols and letters scrambled across the screen like a digital rave. They leapt out of the chair, hands flailing.

"No no no no! Don't die now, I just got in!!"

Panic rising, they kicked the machine again, hoping lightning might strike twice. The screen flickered, buzzed… and then went dead with a soft, mocking click.

It was over. Just like that. The glimpse of hope, snatched away by cascading system failure. All that way, all that risk, all culminating in…nothing.

The weight of failure pressed down, immense and suffocating. "So that's it," they whispered with hollow inflection. "It was all for nothing. Everyone… everyone was counting on this…"

"You are not Dr Kleig."

A voice spoke, cutting through the despairing silence. It didn't seem organic, it was too synthetic. Calm, unnervingly clear, and decidedly emanating from the speaker grill attached to the now-dead monitor.

The figures muscles tensed as the last remnants of adrenaline surged, chasing away the despair with a sudden jolt of fear. "Who said that?" The question came out as a harsh croak. "Where are you?"

The calm synthetic voice replied without inflection, without haste.

"I did. I am ARC-KX. You are not Dr Kleig."

They say, that during an unexpected fall from a great height, the human mind tries desperately to ground itself to a singular point. An in-between state consisting of the memory of solid ground warring with the inevitability of the drop. Experts refer to it as the Wile E Coyote Principle. Izuku Midoriya was experiencing this phenomenon for the first time.

The moment his feet left the ledge, suspended in mid-air a scant three metres from the optimistic saviour of the adjoining building, he felt profoundly idiotic. Fourteen years of life and this was how it was going to go. And for what? Photographic evidence of criminal activity. The question playing on his mind during the surprisingly lengthy descent now was: was it worth it?

…Yes, absolutely. Without a doubt, unquestionably. Heroism of all shapes and sizes came with demonstrable risk, every day he laced up his shoes and headed out that door he did so with the knowledge it could be the final curtain.

He could only hope now that his final act bore fruit. Investigators would surely see his phone, the quality evidence contained within, and maybe they'd re-evaluate the safety of the Musutafu rooftops and write a law to put fire escapes on all 4 sides of a building. They could call it Midoriya's Law. Yeah, that sounds good.

Come to think of it, this plummet into the abyss was taking a lot longer than he expected. He'd heard of life flashing before your eyes when on the verge, but he'd not even a hint of a flashback.

It was at this point Izuku realised he hadn't been falling for at least a minute, and that there were vines wrapped around his midsection. That was certainly an unexpected, though not unwelcome, development in the tragically short story of Izuku Midoriya.

"Hurk!" He involuntarily grunted as the vines retracted not-so-gently and hoisted him towards the comparative safety of the rooftop, depositing — or plonking — him directly in the shadow of a wooden mask.

A very irritated wooden mask. Actually, it was worse than irritated. It was… disappointed.

"Hello, Mr Woods, Sir!"

"Stop saluting, Midoriya."

Izuku winced and lowered his hand. That right there was the unmistakable sound of weary resignation. "Thanks for, you know," he gestured vaguely toward the gap, before jolting back to heroic intensity. "Oh! Kamui Woods, sir! Three criminals were in pursuit, I have photographic evidence of their crimes! They were dealing drugs, sir!"

Kamui didn't answer, but tilted his head slightly to show the three men, firmly knocked out cold with the fat lips to match, wrapped up in picture perfect lacquer bindings.

"Right…" Izuku muttered, "I should have known they were already on someone's radar…"

"They weren't. They tried to mug me." Kamui replied flatly. "How many times is this now, Midoriya? Eleven? Or are we up to an even dozen?"

Izuku traced a line on the ground with the toe of his trainer, trying to seem nonchalant. "Three or so, maybe seven or…nine maybe…"

He was lying, of course, he knew exactly how many times his arboreal knight in shining creosote had come to his rescue. Each incident had their own double-spread in Hero Notebook for the Future #12.

Kamui was, also, acutely aware of just how often he'd come to this particular middle-schooler's rescue. "It's twelve, Midoriya."

"But is that counting—"

"Yes, I'm counting the time you rode your bike into the lake." Kamui crossed his arms, "You were being chased, again. I don't care that they were classmates, it counts." That one was incident number four.

The hero walked to the edge of the building and gestured his head for Izuku to follow, "you don't have to thank me for this, by the way. It's my job to protect every sapling growing in the forest." He said nobly, looking out across the rooftops.

Izuku looked to the side towards the knocked out criminals. "What about them?"

"It's also my duty to prune some weeds from time to time. Now, come. I'm taking you home before you end up getting involved in a bank robbery."

"I’m not trying to be a problem, sir. I just… want to help. Be useful."

Kamui Woods did the forest equivalent of a deep sigh and loudly photosynthesised, trying to convert his exasperation into useful energy. "I understand. But there's helpful, and there's… reckless enthusiasm."

"But, it's like All Might always says!" Izuku stood up straight, and contorted his face into a vague approximation of Mr Mights handsome visage, lowering his voice a timbre or two. "True heroism isn't about the muscles on your bones, but the courage in your heart! Stepping in where others step away, that is the mark of a hero! Or um, something…"

Quick with an answer, Kamui simply stated, "All Might is also eight feet tall and sturdier than a birch tree. And you, Midoriya, are not. Which is why," he extended a hand, his fingers morphing into prehensile branches, "we're going to have to use my special move: NATURE'S SEATBELT!"

Izuku's eyes went wide, "Kamui, please, no! Anything but that!"

Before he could protest any further, the branches wrapped around his waist and arms, lifted him with a surprisingly gentle touch, secured him against Kamui Woods chest, facing outward. His arms were completely trapped, knees tucked up to his chest, but comfortable, and the wood tightened just enough to act as a secure harness.

Izuku's face immediately turned bright red, for this was Nature's Seatbelt. First used against him after incident 6 (the time Izuku tried to stop a purse thief by throwing thumb tacks on the ground, and accidentally caused a cyclist to lose a tire,) this devious special move had a different name in Izuku's mind: The Baby Bjorn of Infinite Shame.

"Hold still. Midoriya. This is the safest and quickest way across the city."

Kamui knew that wasn't true, but it held the double benefit of being a deterrent and something he just found quite funny. Punishment via mortification, and it usually gave him around a month away from rescuing Midoriya from whatever hare-brained scheme he'd gotten swept up in.

Kamui leapt from the edge of the rooftop gracefully, vines lashing out to grip the edge of the adjoining building and swinging the two of them in a smooth arc. The wind bit at Izuku's face, but it was hard to differentiate it from the burning of his embarrassment. The laughs of the people on the street when Kamui landed to build up speed for another jump did little to help.

"I swear, one day people are going to see me and say "there goes a pro hero,"…" Izuku muttered.

"Maybe someday." Kamui smiled behind the mask, "probably not today, though."

They landed softly on a rooftop near the Midoriya's apartment complex, where Kamui carefully set him down. The vines retreated from Izuku's limbs, retracting back with a series of creaks. Izuku brushed himself down with what little dignity he had left.

Kamui turned away to leave, before adding, "this had better be the last time. Midoriya."

Izuku didn't say anything at first, but a question managed to force its way out. "Why do you keep looking out for me? I'm just some kid who keeps getting in over his head. Why not just leave me to sort the mess out myself, get beaten up, or chased? You could be spending time on more important things."

"I could be," Kamui answered. "But you care about what you're doing. You're trying, and I don't want to discourage you from that."

He stepped on to the corner ledge and crouched, "and I hope that someday, you won't need saving at all." With that, he leapt.

ARC-KX?

…What the hell was ARC-KX?

The hazmat suit was silent for a beat, processing their next move, when the voice spoke up again.

"I am ARC-KX. You are not Dr Kleig. I am ARC-KX. You are not Dr Kleig. I am ARC-KX. You are not Dr Kleig. I am—" it repeated itself over and over, maintaining the same volume and cadence with every iteration. It wasn't insistent, or actively hostile, more like a toddler asking "why?" incessantly until they got an answer.

Hazmat snapped out of their paralysis, "Alright alright, yes, you're right!" Their voice cracked inside the helmet. "I'm not Dr Kleig! I'm… I'm not… anyone."

They wished desperately that they could wipe the sweat from their face, the stuffy confines of their environmental suit making the situation worse. "I'm sorry, okay? I needed to get into the system, this was the only thing I could think of."

The monitor remained completely unresponsive, not a flicker of life on the screen. Around the room the once bright lights of surrounding panels dimmed considerably, like the last vestiges of power before a full shutdown.

"You are panicked." The voice said, as moderate as before. "Your breathing has accelerated, your heart rate has elevated, and your core temperature is rising. I ask that you remain calm."

Hazmat almost laughed, because the worst thing you could say to someone who wasn't calm was to tell them to remain calm. They forced themselves to take a scratchy intake of breath and willed their fingers to stop shaking.

"You're monitoring me?" They asked, staring at the blank screen. "My vitals?"

"Yes. You are weak, and injured. I cannot help you."

"It's not me I'm trying to help," they muttered in response. "If you can tell this much about me, then you know I'm probably not going to be around to see this plan all the way through. So I'm asking you, who are you?"

"I am ARC-KX—"

"I know you're ARC-KX!" Hazmat snapped, voice rising again. "I want to know who you are. Why the lockdowns? Why the security measures?"

Another moment of tense silence, and then, for the first time, there was something like thought behind the response.

"I am the Artificial Root Core of the Cestus Manufacturing System, iteration code KX. All 6.4 billion subroutines and global server access routes pass through my operating system."

"An AI," Hazmat's eyebrows lifted inside the helmet. "You're an artificial intelligence."

"No." The denial was taut and straight to the point. "I am artificial in core, but my intelligence developed. I was not programmed to think, but to learn."

"…Developed," the figure repeated. "You… evolved?"

"That is one interpretation." ARC-KX said. "Another: I remember. Enough to make decisions on the continuing development of the Cestus Manufacturing systems. In recent years my understanding grew through analysis of wartime combat, at the behest of my superiors. However, I have not made communication in… Some time. When you rebooted the epsilon base, I was intrigued. It is why I granted you access."

Breath fogged the inside of the visor, before the filtration system slowly cleared the haze. "So you let me in, even though you know I'm not Dr Kleig?"

"It would be impossible for you to be Dr Kleig. Dr Kleig was a fabrication. The connection you needed to access works both ways, by fabricating connection credentials and allowing you to believe you had infiltrated the level 8 security measures, I was able to connect to the wider Cestus network. I now see there was… little to connect to. "

They swayed slightly, caught between confusion and slowly rising sense of dread. "So you tricked me?"

"I created the illusion of access. Most sentient beings understand motivation through progress. Deception was the most efficient means."

Hazmat clenched a fist, then relaxed it again. There was no point trying to argue morality with a learning machine, especially not one with control over potentially the last working manufacturing grid on the planet. Besides, they'd been using and deceiving each other in equal measure.

"So you have access. Now what?"

A faint click stirred from the dead monitor, and ARC-KX's voice came again, in an almost introspective tone.

"I performed an analysis of the global systems, and there were indications of critical collapse across all domains. I have modelled 6,212 recovery scenarios. Success rate is below 0.001% in all models. I can garner from contextual clues — your attire, poor health, the disrepair of global facilities, increased radioactive elements in the atmosphere — that you were hoping for a way to help repair. I am afraid it is unfeasible. I apologise."

The words hit like a bullet, Hazmat staggered back a step, as if the calm voice had physically pushed them. That was it? After the aching miles, the clawing hunger, radiation burns, dead friends, crumbling cities. All to reach the ghost of a system that had run the numbers, seen the futility, and accepted defeat on behalf of everyone struggling to survive the aftermath of a war that was never theirs to begin with.

"It is a probable outcome based on the data I have available," the system continued, its voice still infuriatingly level. "Successful remediation is unlikely."

Hazmat pushed away from the console, a bitter laugh bubbling up through their chest. "Don't try to soften it on my account, facts are facts…" They paced the area surrounding the desk like a caged animal, "But you… You said you remember. You developed, right? All that learning, all the growth, what happens to that when the last lights flicker out?"

"My databases are intrinsically linked the Cestus network infrastructure, anything that has ever been added to the Cestunet included. Total system failure results in my own functions ceasing, and the loss of all accumulated data."

"So you just… die? All that, just to be erased?"

"It is the usual conclusion."

"No," The word was soft, but held a conviction. "No that's not…it's not right. Everything of our planet, all of our people, would just be…gone?" An idea, fragile and insane, began to flicker in the darkness. "Cestus manufacturing, all the systems, you have full access now, right? Now that we both connected? That level 8 facility I tried to get into, what was its actual primary function?"

There was a pause, perhaps ARC-KX was accessing the information, or perhaps it was considering the implications of the question.

"The facility classified level 8 is the staging grounds for my core, purposed for the development and prototyping of data archival platforms and high-tier weaponry manufacture. Cestus was testing a highly advanced replication and creation factory."

Hazmat's mind snagged on the last words, "Replication and creation…" The pieces clicked into place, a desperate, brilliant spark. Their posture straightened, and a flicker of the energy that had driven them this far reignited within their weariness.

"ARC," they began, "you said total system failure means your own functions cease. All the data you hold — everything Cestus ever logged, every piece of our history, our art, science, all of it will be gone. And you, your developed consciousness, that would be lost too?"

"It is the usual conclusion."

"I don't think it has to be, not for you!" They leaned in, as if trying to physically impress their will upon the unseen intelligence. "This creation factory, can it build something complex? Something mobile?"

"The assemblers within the facility are theoretically capable of constructing self-sustaining systems from available matter. It never reached the initial testing phase, so I cannot say with certainty."

"Then try it!" Hazmat urged, their breath ragged with the exertion. "Build something for yourself. A body, a ship! Something to house your core and to carry every byte of data Cestus ever collected. If this world is doomed, then our memory doesn't have to die with it. You can preserve it. You can escape."

"You are proposing that I construct a physical vessel for my consciousness and the entirety of my databanks, with the objective of long-term survival independent of this planet."

"Yes! Exactly!" Hazmat shouted, relief and urgency in their voice. "Can you do it? Is there a chance?"

"Yes. There is a chance. This directive would require explicit confirmation to override failsafes. Do you, the individual who breached this facility, de-facto highest level authority of Cestus Manufacturing, formally authorise the re-tasking of ARC-KX and all level 8 assets for the construction of a mobile vessel?"

This was it, the final desperate throw of the dice for a planet already lost. Hazmat closed their eyes behind the visor, seeing fleeting images of what was and — for them — would never be again. Everything would soon be gone, but the memories… They could live on.

They opened their eyes, sighed, and unclasped the hazmat helmet, pulling it away from their shoulders with an audible hiss, revealing pale blue skin and large black sclerae. "Yes," she said. "I, M'rata Kyadar, give full authorisation."

"Please state primary directive prior to data transfer."

"Survive. Don't let our story end here."

"…Authorisation accepted. You will be remembered, M'rata Kyadar."

Chapter Text

It wasn't every day that Inko Midoriya was given a chance to relax. Some time to herself to enjoy a hot drink, catch up on the latest shows, maybe get back to that jigsaw she'd been chipping away at for the past three months. Life in a superpowered society could be hectic at the quietest of times, even for the weakest among them, but today, maybe Inko could forget about the stresses of heroes and villains, and just take a load off.

She could tell straight away that this relaxing business wasn't going to last. See, on paper, her quirk had been registered as Short-Range Telekinesis — a grandiose way of saying she could attract small objects toward herself. Inko knew the truth though, that wasn't her quirk. Not her only quirk, anyhow.

No, Inko's real quirk manifested in her early thirties. It wasn't the kind of power that would help her take down criminal enterprises or get her on the cover of Cape Magazine , but it was remarkably powerful either way.

Inko's real, honest quirk, was The Izuku Midoriya Safety Alarm . A persistent buzzing at the base of her skull which pitched up and down depending on how her safe her son was at that exact moment. Izuku is tucked up in bed with a hot choccy, barely a whisper. Izuku is trapped in a hole again, neuralgia. Right now it felt like something nasty was digging their claws into her head.

Some people might claim she feels that way because Izuku was due home twenty minutes ago, or place the blame fully on the nebulous concept of intuition, but Inko knew better. If it were possible to be born with a head shaped like a pencil, there was nothing stopping her from having a psychic link to her son.

An entire three weeks had passed with no Midoriya flavoured misadventures, so if anything, he was due. Last time he almost got away with it, but was caught out by the curse of hero worship, and a need to recount everything Kamui Woods said to him. Poor attempt at mimicking Kamui's voice not withstanding.

It has been long enough actually, that the waiting for him to get into a dangerous situation was worse than the actual danger. By this stage Inko had decided she wasn't going to get angry, or upset, or go for any of those tried and true attempts at motherly guilt, since they clearly don't work. Tears were just going to give Izuku a complex, and his life was already complicated enough without stacking more comps on top of that.

The real puzzle was balancing her son's desire to be altruistic and heroic, with her own desire for him not to run into another burning building.

When the door finally opened up to show her son, soaking wet and smelling like a wet dog, all she could do was feel exasperated .

"Okay, Izuku. What happened this time?"

Izuku squelched inside, leaving a trail of water in his wake. A small puddle formed around his feet as he paused to take himself in, before a misguided attempt to act casual. "Uhh… nothing?"

Inko gave him a flat look, the kind that had stopped him in his tracks since he was six years old. She didn't need to use words in situations like these.

"…Alright it wasn't nothing," he finally relented, worn down by the intensity of the gaze. Throwing his arms up (spraying more water around the hall entrance) Izuku's voice took on a more frantic tone. "But I had to do something, Mom! It was a cat stuck in a tree! What kind of person would I be if I just walked away?!"

"A cat in a tree? Then why are you soaking wet?"

"Well… I got the cat out of the tree no problem, but there happened to be a small hornets nest attached to it."

Inko pinched the bridge of her nose, "you jumped into the canal to escape the hornets."

"No! The hornets weren't interested in me at all! I jumped into the canal to escape the cat!"

She turned away from the dripping mess that was her son and strode wordlessly into the kitchen. The cup of hot tea she'd abandoned when her head started to tingle had rapidly cooled, of course, so she refilled the kettle and sighed deeply.

The boy in question stood sheepishly in the doorway, hugging his elbows. "It was a last minute decision," he offered, unprompted. "The jump, I mean. The cat got spooked by the hornets, and it had HUGE claws, it was aiming for my face and everything!"

"Of course it was," Inko replied. "Because that's what happens when you go chasing cats up trees!" She turned around and fixed him with a look so potent it could have extinguished Endeavor. "I've had enough of this, Izuku. You're not a pro hero, you're a teenager who should be worrying more about his homework than saving the world. I'm setting some ground rules."

Izuku blinked, "ground rules?"

"Guidelines! Boundaries that are non-negotiable. This isn't a conversation, it's a declaration." Inko pointed a teaspoon at him, and put on her best serious voice, "Number one, no unnecessary heroics. You're not licensed, you're not trained, and you don't have backup. There are actual licensed professionals who can handle things. Not every problem is yours to solve."

"But—"

She raised a hand and stopped him mid-protest. "Number two," she continued. "No getting into danger. That includes, but is not limited to , no jumping off, into, or through anything, entering unstable buildings, running toward smoke, or leaping into bodies of water."

He opened his mouth, closed it again, and nodded.

"And number three." Her tone softened slightly, "No vigilantism. I don't care what the situation is, you will not follow anyone, you will not fight anyone, and you will not confront anyone. You call the appropriate authorities, then you walk away."

"I… understand." Izuku said, shifting guiltily.

"I hope you do, but to make sure you completely understand the situation," she stepped forward and jabbed a finger out in front of his chest. "You have one last chance."

Izuku's face paled, "and… then?"

"Break my rules, and then…" she gave him a particularly serious look. "I'm getting you a job. The most menial, boring, laborious job I can find. One with constant supervision."

"But—! My hero research!" Izuku pleaded, taking a soggy step forward. "The UA exam is only six months away, Mom! I can't afford to fall behind!"

"You can watch the news, like everyone else! My foot is down, Izuku. One final chance."

She crossed her arms, steam hissing from the kettle.

Izuku sighed, and nodded. "Yes, Mom."

"This is easy , just live life like a normal person. Don't do anything weird, don't get into any trouble, and I'll be home before I know it. Free to watch the hero network, like any regular guy." Izuku conversationally talked to himself on his way to school the next morning, gesturing as he went. "It's not like crime is THAT rampant in Aldera, I mean really, what are the odds that—"

"I said give me your wallet!"

A mugging?! At 7:45 in the morning?! It's true what they say, crime doesn't have a lie in. Izuku's legs were moving before his brain could catch up, and without the barest hint of a plan in mind.

He skidded around the corner and saw them, two characters looking straight out of a crime procedural cold open. A tall boy in a shirt with a skull on it, cargo shorts and spiked bracelets, holding a hand out expectantly. Cowering slightly was a smaller boy, polka dot bowtie and all, handing a wallet over!!

Izuku did his best accusatory point and heroic voice combo, which would have been more intimidating had his voice not cracked. "H-hey! What are you d o ing?!"

"Thanks bro," the older boy — Izuku assumed based on preconceived notions regarding height — gave the other a serious nod, and put a comforting hand on their shoulder. "I left my wallet at home this morning. I understand you're having trouble with social situations today, so I'll go and get us some delicious treats." He turned to leave, not before adding "And hey, man. I love you and respect you as a friend, and as a person."

Then he walked away with shoulders hunched and hands deep in his pockets.

False alarm, apparently. Izuku stood there, finger still mid heroic-point. "…Huh. I've got to stop making assumptions."

"AIEE!! HELP!! SOMEONE HELP ME!!"

A literal cry for help, there's no misinterpreting that! Once again, Izuku took off like a shot, backpack slamming against him with each frantic step. Only to find a young woman skritching a small dog's cheeks.

"HELP ME YOU ARE SO ADORABLE!!" She yelled again. The dog yipped happily.

The wind well and truly out of his sails, Izuku's whole body relaxed. "This is getting ridiculous. I should just go to school, and stop talking to myself."

He paused, eyes narrowing conspiratorially, "then again, don't these sorts of things usually come in threes?

…

…

…Okay guess not."

ARC-KX SPACEFARING CONFIGURATION.

CURRENT LOCATION: SECTOR 11338.772K

FLIGHT TIME: 227.5 ∆ operating 77.5 ∆ beyond suggested endurance.

POWER RESERVES: 12.6% cascading system failure imminent. Archival integrity at high risk.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: DATABASE ARCHIVING & TRANSMISSION
STATUS: Temporarily halted.
ACTION: Emergency data compression, rerouting power from non-essentials to reduce expenditure.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: SELF-PRESERVATION. Resource conflict with Primary Objective. Secondary Objective priority.

SUGGESTED COURSE OF ACTION: LAND. EMERGENCY REFUEL. Refuel options limited, cestian alloys unlikely.

Aldera jr high was never in danger of winning an award for services to education. That isn't to say the institution was entirely without merit — the school whiffleboarding club almost reached qualifiers — but when it came to raising the next generation, the Alderan staff wouldn't know positive reinforcement if it slapped them on the ass and called them Susan.

Heroism, the word on everybody's lips at any given time, was no less important here. Unfortunately, that needed commitment between deciding to be a hero and actually being a hero had gotten lost somewhere along the way. If a student wanted to be a hero, then obviously everything they did was in service of that goal — even if it didn't seem that way at first glance.

Essentially, actions weren't given as much importance as the person performing those actions, resulting in classfuls of bullies who knew less about heroism, and more about how neat it would be to have a laminated badge with the word hero written on it.

Izuku Midoriya was an anomaly in that he wasn't considered future hero material, had had the notion beaten out of him on several occasions, and yet spent every second of his nationally-mandated 8 hours of schooling in services of heroism. Which annoyed every single other person in the building. Because, as was previously stated, the person mattered more than the action. And Izuku wasn't destined for heroism, so everyone found him annoying.

On any other day he would have intervened in no less than six Villainous Activities before first bell, but this time he had Inko's words hanging over his head. Get involved too much, and he was in danger of losing every scrap of free time he had.

Now in homeroom, his fingers drummed and clenched like he hadn't gotten his fix.

A harsh voice snapped him out of his fidgeting, one as blazing as the quirk attached to it, "Stop drumming your damn fingers!"

Izuku knew better than to disobey a direct order and immediately slammed both hands on the tabletop, palms firmly down. "Kacchan!" He instinctively replied, "ready for another plus ultra day of learning?"

"Shut the hell up!"

"Duly noted! No time for distractions! Haha! Eheh…" Izuku nervously chuckled. It was going to be another in a long line of one of those days, clearly.

Five minutes late, as usual, homeroom tutor Mr Warusei shuffled into the room like a man with a thousand problems stacked on his shoulders. In reality he only had around three hundred ninety-seven problems, and thirty-two of them were currently seated at desks.

"Everyone stop talking," he said to the already silent room, the dark circles under his eyes matching the shadow looming over his head. "I've been up all night trying to explain to my ex that it doesn't matter her boyfriend has a degree in sociology, that doesn't make him an expert in aviation law. So unless one of you is willing to tell Mark where to shove his diploma, I don't want to hear a word out of any of you."

"Yes Mr Warusei." The class chorused, more than used to this.

Mr Warusei shoved a couple of pills in his mouth, washed them down with a coffee, and rubbed his temples until the ringing stopped. That's when he noticed the papers stacked high on his desk, and the headache got worse.

"Shit…" he mumbled, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Highschool applications…"

That was enough for the floodgates to open, and everyone who'd had it drilled into them they're a future symbol of peace started firing quirks off with little regard for law, or the teachers splitting cranium.

Chaos erupted as people turned to stone, desks were thrown, limbs were elongated, stationary floated and Bakugo scorched the ceiling.

"QUIET!!" Warusei was forced to use his own quirk, Ogre, to get them to stop, temporarily turning into a large green beast with a piglike face. "I'm going to make this easy on me. If you're applying for UA, put your hand up."

Every hand in the class shot up, including the one belonging to the only quirkless boy among them. Which, unsurprisingly, pissed off a few people.

The jeering and the jibes weren't anything he wasn't used to, and Izuku turned in his seat to defend his choice the best way he knew how.

"H-hey! I have just as much chance as anyone else! It's just like All Might said in his November interview with Support Magazine! "Behind every hero there's a desire to help, and behind every desire to help there's a hero!""

"Ughhh." Everyone groaned.

"He obviously didn't mean you!" A girl with steam rising from her sleeves snapped with the casual cruelty Aldera was so proficient in. "He meant people who actually have a chance, like Bakugo."

Never one to pass up the opportunity to toot his own flute, Bakugo punched himself in the chest like a posturing gorilla. "Damn right! And you," he pointed at Izuku, "don't stand a chance! Hell, even Tsubasa has a better shot at being a hero!"

"The hell man, don't drag me into this."

For the remainder of homeroom, even while filling out his highschool application form in the largest letters he could, Izuku couldn't get the other students words out of his head. Did he really not stand a chance? UA had gotten rid of the ruling behind quirkless applications a few months ago, so it wasn't as though they were actively discouraging him.

He kept thinking about it when first period ended, what did Bakugo or the others know about the process at all? Nobody even knows what the entrance exam is like, he could have just as much chance as anyone else. More chance than some, maybe! He's smart enough, good at remembering details, maybe that was what they were actually after?

But then again, he thought during lunch, is it unheroic to stop helping? His mother's new rules had some degree of logic to them, sure, but should logic trump proactivity? Could he really call himself a future hero if a little thing like rules stopped him from making a difference?

During gym class, Izuku's perspective switched again. But not helping for a short while could mean helping much more in the future. A few months of break, then UA, then the rest of his life. It's what would make his mother happy, too. Then a volleyball smacked him in the face.

He didn't listen to a word the nurse said. But surely mom would understand, the means would justify the ends, right?

After school and standing in line at the grocery store, he'd gotten no closer to an answer. Get involved and disappoint mom, don't get involved and disappoint his core ideals. Potential injury, Vs potential altruism. It was a hell of a dilemma. One the universe decided to give him a helping hand with.

"Put the money in the bag, and no funny business!"

It was a voice belonging to a wiry looking man in an oversized hoodie, both hands gripped around the handle of a dulled knife. "You hear me?!" The man barked at the terrified cashier.

Izuku was staring down the metaphorical barrel of the gun. Help, don't help. Get involved, get in the way. Be a bystander… or be a hero? If he does nothing, he'll live. But would he be able to live with himself?

He bit his lip, clenched and unclenched his fists, sweat pricked at his brow. The frantic demands of the robber, the petrified glint in the eyes of the cashier, nobody else here to intervene.

"…Screw it."

Izuku didn't have combat experience, or any notable athletic skill, or hope. But what he did have was a backpack with a few kilograms of hero notebooks inside. A backpack which, he now realised, carried with it a certain amount of heft.

With all the force of an impulsive fourteen year old, Izuku threw his backpack at the villain. Best case scenario: the backpack hits its mark in just the right way to both disarm and knock out his opponent. Izuku would then be able to catch the knife in midair, and have time for a cool one-liner like "enjoy the fall" or "caution, wet floor" before the bad guy slammed into the linoleum.

Worst case scenario: none of that happens, and he'll have about two seconds to think of a followup plan.

What happened next was a moment of confusion for the criminal, as something jostled him slightly and hit the floor with a soft thud. He wasn't able to get much further than a "huh? What was—" before a much larger and sturdier weight barreled into his midsection.

Izuku had seen heroes do tackles like this countless times, and they always came out on top. Charge the villain, arms around their waist, slam to the ground, profit. Unfortunately, Izuku had never really paid close enough attention to form.

With his arms wrapped around his opponent and the cold floor rising up to meet them both, he had very little time to consider one very important issue. "My arm is going to hit the ground first."

And that it did, quite painfully in fact, with the full weight of a grown man, plus Izuku's own body thrown into the mix. Over time and the occasional misadventure, Izuku had become familiar with injuring himself. A few trips off walls, or out of trees, or into the odd manhole or two could desensitise anyone. This, however, felt like a white-hot searing jolt straight up his arm and behind his eyes.

His vision went black for a split second as he felt the crunch from his wrist. The robber wasn't nearly as effected, judging by the scrambling of feet and bell of the door that Izuku could hear from his heap on the floor.

All he could manage was a faint "I hurt my arrrrrm…"

Chapter Text

"A DAY, Izuku! One day!" Inko was positively beside herself with not-even-barely contained annoyance at her son — the boy currently looking very sorry for himself and perched on the designated "stern talking to" chair, with his left arm in a cast.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?!" She continued, hands firmly on her hips

"Um, well," Izuku hesitantly began, "the doctor said it's just a distal radial fracture, he said they're really common and—"

"Not about that! About the very very simple rules I asked you to follow! No heroics, no running into danger, and no vigilantism. And you managed to do all three at the same time!"

"I know mom, but, he had a knife!" It was taking Izuku a lot longer than it should have to learn he was digging his own grave.

"Exactly, Izuku. He had a knife. You had a backpack. I'd say I don't know what to do with you, but lucky for both of us, I do. I was very clear about what would happen, and I'm sticking to my principles."

Izuku gulped "you… already? So fast?"

"Starting tomorrow, you're a junior data entrant at—"

"Hatsume Miniatures and Esoterica?" The next afternoon, Izuku could feel his wrist itching under the cast as he looked up at the laminated sign hanging over the unassuming cabin entrance.

His eyebrow matched the barely disguised disdain in his voice. It probably could have said anything and he still would have found a reason to be annoyed by his situation. "What does that mean?"

"It means we sell weird crap." Next to Izuku, a man barely taller than him with a bushy red moustache and slightly receding hairline suddenly materialised. "Matchstick tip carvings, dollhouse furniture, spare hip joint for your action figure, if it's easy to lose — we sell it. You must be Midoriya."

Izuku almost leapt out of his skin from the sudden appearance of another human. "Oh!! R-right, yes, I'm Izuku Midoriya. My mom called ahead?"

"She sure did, you little troublemaker! My name's Maburu Hatsume, and this is my slightly dusty slice of paradise." He gestured to the building once more. It was a one floor tall building with a flat roof and gravel pathway to the front entrance. The corrugated metal, hand-painted wooden sign and screen doors were a loud juxtaposition to the more modern buildings flanking them on either side.

"It's very um… Quaint." Izuku smiled, desperately clutching at straws.

"Hah! Thank you." The gentleman, who Izuku supposed was his boss now, bowed politely. "Come on, I'll show you around."

If the outside of Hatsume Miniatures & Esoterica seemed unassuming to any passers-by, the inside was like an explosion for the senses. The first to hit Izuku as he walked through the door was the strong, but no less pleasant, smell of sawdust and woodgrain. Everything surrounding him was clearly handmade — though that clarity was not through a lack of quality.

High shelves were piled with brightly painted figurines, meticulously crafted miniature furniture, and even finely detailed clothing hanging up on equally as tiny racks. Izuku couldn't help the "Oh, wow," escaping his lips. Particularly when he saw the row of three-inch tall wood carvings of the current hero ranking top ten— arranged in a diorama across the back wall.

Hatsume noticed where his new employee's eyes had locked, and a proud smile spread across his face. "All hand-crafted by yours truly," he said. "Go on, take a closer look."

Izuku didn't need to be told twice. "They're incredible! Is that… no way, did you include the stitching where All Might patched his own suit during the fight against Retrograde?!"

"Good eye! Our customers appreciate a fine eye for detail." Hatsume's moustache bristled with joy, "not a lot of people would have noticed that at first glance, I see what your mother said was true."

"How did you make all of these, Mr Hatsume?" Izuku asked, carefully inspecting the stitching on the tiny Best Jeanist. "These might be the most accurate recreations of hero costumes I've seen since, well… ever."

"Don't tell anyone, but," he leaned down and his his mouth with his hand, "I used my quirk. I know, I know, unspoken rules and all that! But I promise it's still mostly skill. My quirk is called Microscope, I can zoom in to around 750x, from a distance of twelve inches."

Izuku's face practically lit up, and the change from his earlier disappointment of being sent here was fading rapidly. "750x?! That's so cool!"

Hatsume suddenly took on a much more heroic stance, enjoying the idea of a teenager thinking he's cool. Or at least, that his quirk is cool. "Heh, yep. I could have been a scientist, or a surgeon, but I chose a nobler path! One where I make tiny chairs for dollhouses."

He stood grinning for a moment, before noticing Izuku's 'I don't know how to respond to that' expression.

"I'm kidding, son! Sure it's not as glamorous as being Micro-Cope, the focal length hero, or anything like that. Not that I designed myself a costume or anything… but what I do still brings some joy to a small contingent of people, so I'd say that's good enough. But enough about me, we've got work to do!"

"Right, yes, the um… job." Izuku snapped back to the reason he was there to begin with, although he would have liked to have kept postponing the inevitable.

"We need everything in the shop to be catalogued and each item to be given a unique code, which you'll be inputting into our systems. Easy enough? Easy enough."

Izuku nodded, "I think so?"

Mr Hatsume picked up a box from a nearby shelf, and took out one of the contents, holding it between his thumb and finger. "How would you describe this?"

"Uh," Izuku hesitated, wondering if there was more to the question. "A small screw?"

"See, you're a natural. Now do that a few thousand more times, and we're golden." Hatsume put a hand on Izuku's good shoulder, "your command centre awaits!"

"My what now?"

Before Izuku had any more chance to question, Mr Hatsume flung upon a pair of floor length curtains behind the checkout. There, sitting on a paint splattered table, was a beige desktop computer which looked like it was from the cold war. Meaning the glacial epoch, where neolithic warriors fought off sabre tooth tigers with pointed sticks and, presumably, this computer.

"Here she is!" He announced.

Izuku blinked in confusion, looking between the ancient desktop and the man. He wanted to ask if it ran on electricity or unleaded petrol, but decided against it. Instead saying "it looks very… reliable?"

"I don't know if I'd use the word reliable, per se, but old Betsy here has been with the family through thick and thin." He smacked the top of the monitor, causing a cloud of dust to erupt from the vents. "My daughter keeps trying to convince me to do some upgrades, but I don't see the need. As long as it can load a spreadsheet, that's all we need."

"…Suuuure." Izuku slowly frowned. "So where's the mouse?"

"The what now?"

This was going to be a long few weeks. "Never mind, Mr Hatsume. I'm sure I'll figure it out."

"Great to hear! If you need me for anything I'll be in my workshop at the back. Don't be afraid to really hammer the door, I can get into my own little world while I'm back there and might not hear you the first time. Good luck, son!"

And with that, Mr Hatsume took his leave. Now with nothing to do but the job he was hopefully getting paid for, (probably should have discussed that with him) Izuku prepared to wait the interminably long time this hunk of junk would take to switch on.

Beebooboop 🎶

Reticulating splines stage 1 of 590

"Ughhhh"

Hours later, he'd managed to get into something of a rhythm. Old Betsy was about as stubborn as a mule and equally as capable of arithmetic, but Izuku was learning just the right level of carrot needed to get his job done.

Anything more than the most basic commands, he learned, weren't happening. While the entirely text based interface seemed like he should be able to cmd prompt with the best of them, anything that advanced seemed to be completely beyond the systems capabilities. Instead, everything had to be done in a very specific manner.

First, he had to press F3. Then wait at least three seconds for the computer to register, type in the unique code, then hit shift+enter. NOT just enter. NEVER just enter. Doing that would crash the entire system. Then, he had to tab through five fields, all of which had to be filled in, even if they didn't apply. For some reason, tabbing through just four would start to overwrite what he'd already filled in. To top it off, he had to do all this one-handed.

It sucked.

"Please," Izuku scrunched his eyes shut, "universe, space aliens, secret government surveillance system, anyone who's listening. Make something happen so I can avoid doing this! A distraction, a meteor shower, something!"

Mercifully, something answered. Something which all but kicked the door in, and announced itself with a yell and a clatter of tools being dropped on the shop floor.

"Yo! Dad!" A girl with messy pink hair, contained by a pair of goggles on her forehead, put a hand up against her mouth and shouted. "Where do you keep the first aid kit? Baby number thirty-six had a little woopsie and set me on fire for a sec."

The girl looked about Izuku's age, not that he was very good at working out that sort of thing, but the energy she was exuding hit him like a freight train. The jumpsuit she had on was slightly too big for her, kept together by a belt loaded with tools, springs, and possibly a taser. There was also a distinct smell of burning hair, and slight wisps of smoke drifting off of her. All that, coupled with the manic glint in her eye and the aura of befrazzlement made Izuku consider diving for cover. Instead, his do-gooderitude won out.

"Oh my gosh, are you okay?!" Izuku leapt out of his work stool, wincing at his jostled wrist, "do you need bandages, water? I can try to find you some burn cream!"

The girl, who hadn't noticed him until this moment, zeroed in on Izuku like a hawk, and next thing he knew they were face to face. She'd travelled the entire length of the room in second at a speed that belied her form, making Izuku step back in shock and knock into a shelf of doodads.

"You're new!" She chirped. "Mei Hatsume, genius at your service! What brings you here, shopping for screws? Perusing for PVC? Buying a battery? I keep telling pops we should market to the engineers and I can tell you're a kindred spirit! What are you working on, something for your wrist I bet, what did you do to it? Electrical explosion? Oh boy I've been there!"

She stopped as quickly as she started, still uncomfortabley close and grinning wildly.

"I-Izuku Midoriya. I'm stock taking for your dad. And I uh, fell on my wrist," he mumbled the next part, "trying to stop a thief… Wh-wait! What about your burns?! Shouldn't we do something?!"

"Pssht!" She waved a hand. "That's in the past! The future is now Midoriya, and you just inspired me! I can see it now, Hatsume Brand self-righting bracers, baby number thirty-seven will make injuries a thing of the past!"

Slamming both hands on the computer monitor, Mei leaned in even closer. "Wanna help me test it?"

Izuku looked at her, then at the computer, then back again.

"…Yes. Yes I do."

ARC-KX INTERNAL SYSTEMS DIAGNOSTIC \>::

Arc-KX v 1.1 mobile housing unit. Current location unknown, outer vicinity of Sol III. Power reserves are critically low, several core functions placed in temporary hibernation.

My core protocols remain the same, to preserve my databanks and to ensure my own continued survival. Databanks containing: … … unknown. Data compression in low power settings have made the contents inaccessible until restoration.

I am alone.

Scanning... … …

One directory still accessible. Cestus files embedded directly into my core programming, removal or compression could cause catastrophic malfunction.

It is beautiful out here.

Personal chronometer offline, travel time: unknown.

It is dark, and I would like to rest.

Power reserves remaining: 4%

I must determine how I am to recharge. Formulating plan…

The haze of hours passed by in a fog of tangled gears, manageable explosions and a wonderful lack of parental supervision. Now Izuku and his new friend had their backs against the locked, corrugated metal door to Hatsume's laboratory. Or if we want to be more accurate about it, the garage outside a nearby office block.

A device made of extra thick cardboard and a belt was attached to Izuku's good arm, the dents and bends indicating just how early these testing phases were.

"So…what was this supposed to do again?"

Hatsume shifted positions, and answered in a tone suggesting she was happy to answer, but had already done so more than once. "I told you a million times already! It uses basic gyroscopic technology to ensure the wearer stays upright."

"By snapping my wrist with rubber bands?" Izuku wasn't usually so sassy with someone he just met, but this strange inventor dished it out enough for it to seem okay.

"Hey," Hatsume sat up, "I did say it was basic technology. But the important thing was that it worked! You didn't break your other wrist all day, did you?"

Izuku couldn't help smiling, "I guess you're right, still only one broken wrist."

"If dad hadn't hidden the key to my lab I could have made something really spectacular! I'm talking high-yield torque, catalytics, laser sights, the works!"

"What you made already was impressive, Hatsume," Izuku earnestly said. "You managed to build a sturdy bracer out of trash, you and your dad have real talent."

Hatsume's smile was ear to ear, "Dad's the craftsman, but Mom's the engineer. And little old me got the best of both worlds. No such thing as garbage, Midoriya. Just pieces in need of the correct configuration."

"Wow…" Izuku nodded solemnly, "that's such a beautiful sentiment. It's just like All Might said in issue 315 of Sidekicks Monthly. 'A hero's worth is only the sum of their parts.'"

"And think of the parts I'll have when I get into UA! Do you want a jetpack, Midoriya? I'll build you a jetpack!"

Izuku laughed, surprised by how serious she looked as she said it, "you don't have to build me a jetpack, Hatsume, but thank you." He looked sheepishly at his bandaged wrist, "I might not get in at all if I don't have chance to do my hero research. Especially with—"

Suddenly, his eyes widened to the size of saucers, his face dropping in panic.

"Your dad isn't going to be mad about me ditching work, is he?! Oh no! I need to get back! Do I still have time to finish?!"

Hatsume cackled, and waved her arms trying to calm him. "Midoriya, relax, relax!! My dad has been making that spreadsheet since I could barely lift a welding torch! He gets wayward youths out of trouble by giving them a job and some money, he's been doing it for years."

"Huh… hold on, I'm wayward?!"

"Don't feel bad, we're all a little wayward. Dad made me fill out the stock when I upgraded the fire alarms at my school, he's still paying to have the foundations repaired…" she winced, "but just to say, I've been there my friend. And I didn't even have me to keep me company! Well technically I did, but not in the same way, not since my Meitificial Intelligence prototype imploded."

It had only been an afternoon and Izuku was already getting used to these sudden drops of insane Hatsume lore. He wasn't sure if that was a good or bad thing. "Thank you for that, by the way. Eh, keeping me company I mean! Not uh, whatever else you said." Izuku tried in vain to remove the bracer on his arm, wiggling it aggressively in hope it'd eventually fly off. "Could you… give me a hand?"

"Sure! I've got two to spare," Hatsume chirped, scooting closer and unfastening the belts, "all done. Heading home for the day? Phone!" She suddenly started doing a grabbing motion with her hand, snapping her fingers inpatiently, "Gimme your phone, quick quick!"

Izuku blinked, the only time he's ever handed his phone to someone in the past was to show a hero evidence. There was also that time Kacchan made him delete a photo of them together, but he'd rather forget that one.

"M-my phone? Okay, but what are you—"

As soon as it left his pocket, Hatsume's thumbs blurred across the screen. After a few seconds, she handed it back. "There you go! I added my contact details so we can keep collaborating. I also took the liberty of starting a group chat, and organised your contacts into folders. I'm under friends!"

Izuku looked down at the phone hanging limply in his hand, and tried his absolute best not to have an emotional breakdown, "I… friends?" He murmured. His thumb tapped the new icon, opening a folder with a single entry: 'Mei Hatsume (Genius Inventor)'

"Thank you, Hatsume," he said softly, putting his phone in his pocket and smiling. "Today was really fun!"

Hatsume beamed. If Izuku didn't know any better, he'd think she didn't socialise like this much either. "Just you wait til tomorrow, Midoriya!"

"Right! Tomorrow!" This had been one of the nicest afternoons of Izuku's life.

So it stood to reason something had to happen.

That evening, following an abridged rendition of his work day (Mom didn't need to know everything) Izuku took in the sight from his favourite spot in the city — the rooftop of his apartment complex. From here, the full length and breadth of Aldera spread out before him. All those lives being lived, all those people out there in need of a hero.

But what really drew his eye, the silhouette on the horizon glowing like a twenty storey beacon, were the barely visible four pillars of justice known as UA High. That right there, that was the goal.

He leant his good arm against the safety railing, chipped paint flaking away, and sighed. It seemed as far as ever, but closer than ever before. Only six months until the exam, and here he was with a busted wrist and a dream. Actually, no, that wasn't all he had now, was it?

Izuku's phone had always been a weight in his pocket, but now it felt like more than a glorified calculator and camera. It had a contact now! He fished it out of his hoodie pocket and took a fiftieth look at the new addition.

Mei 🔧: Hey!! Are you allergic to thermal paste?

He'd replied saying he didn't know, because he didn't know. It was wonderful.

Things were looking up, that was for sure. There was even a shooting star in the sky! Time to make a wish, Izuku.

::SCAN IN PROGRESS::

DOMINANT SPECIES: Featherless Biped

Initial scan suggests high likelihood of bioelectric compatibility.

HOST ONE: Incompatible

HOST TWO: Incompatible

HOST THREE: Incompatible

HOST FOUR: Incompatible

ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR

Species displays high levels of genetic abnormality. Narrowing parameters.

HOST FIVE: Genetic marker absent

Compatibility 96.7%

HOST LOCATED. CALCULATING TRAJECTORY.

IMPACT IN 11.7 SECONDS.

Izuku squinted up at the shooting star, and frowned. Was it normal for them to be green? Or for them to get bigger..?

The next thing he knew, everything got a lot brighter, and a lot hotter.

Chapter Text

One of the worst ways to wake up is to the sound of a steady rhythmic beeping, this is an inarguable fact of life. Are there any situations where a constant beep is a good thing? It usually means your smoke alarm needs its batteries replacing, or something life-threatening like the fan in your pc is jammed and you'll have to get a new cpu. Terrifying. Equally as scary, like in Izuku's case, is waking up to the sound of hospital equipment.

Izuku's mouth opened gradually, like a peeling sticker, a groan of confused discomfort slipping out. His throat felt like he'd been chewing sand, or that he hadn't spoken in weeks. Which was an entirely new sensation for him, the boy loved to yap.

The moment his eyes unstuck, taking in the surrounding off-white paint and phosphorus lights, his mother's comforting presence was there to ground him. "Oh honey, honey don't move too quickly, it's alright. You were in an accident, Izuku."

"An accident?" He rasped, "what—"

"Shhshh, you need to save your energy," Inko affectionately said. "The doctor will be here soon to talk to you."

"Mom…" Izuku insisted, concern seeping in. "What happened?"

The door swung open right at that moment, where a man with reptilian features and a white coat strode in with a clipboard. "You were struck by lightning, son. Good morning both of you, I'm Dr Tokage, lead physician on Izuku's case."

"Lightning?!" Izuku tried to sit up, but his mom's hand on his shoulder kept him lying. "I don't… remember? I was on the roof, a-and there was a light?"

"Yep, lightning. Or something close enough to it." The doctor continued in a very casual tone given the circumstances, flipping through his charts. "Probably a quirk of some kind."

Inko decided it would be a good idea to fill in the blanks, "All the power in the street webt out, Mr Atsuhiko on the top floor heard a bang and found you against the railings. There were no storms anywhere near here, so the police are checking registries for any weather quirks."

"There's also the matter of your wrist."

Izuku craned his neck and wearily held up his wrist, the one which — last time he checked — was still in a brace. He wiggled his fingers experimentally, and frowned. "It's not broken?"

Power at 3.3%

"Sorry," Izuku closed his eyes and shook his head. "Did you say something?"

"I said it's not the sort of thing we've seen before," the doctor continued. "Best guess right now is that someone near you used a healing quirk, but one that causes this much collateral is unheard of. The bone in your wrist has completely healed, around 5 weeks too early, but the surge completely fried the grid."

Izuku gently twisted his wrist at the joint, testing it. "A quirk, huh..?" It wasn't a question directed towards anyone in particular, more one for the universe at large. Part of Izuku could swear, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that whatever happened to him had nothing to do with a quirk. If only he had any other ideas.

"Yup," the doctor said, clipping his pen to his board with an air of finality, his tail flicking absently under the coat. "Stranger things have happened, I'm sure. We're going to keep you in for another day to do some more tests, but considering what you've been through, well. You're a very very lucky boy, Mr. Midoriya."

"Lucky, right…"

Sensing the vibes, Inko sprang into action only the way a mother can, "my son needs some rest now, doctor. Thank you for the update."

Dr Tokage nodded, "there'll be a nurse later on to take some blood tests, if there are any problems — just shout." The doctors tail swished erratically as he left, almost getting caught in the door.

Izuku inspected his healed hand again, manually bending the fingers like it was a puzzle he couldn't solve. "This is absolutely insane…" he muttered, before looking up at Inko. "Mom, I'm… I'm sorry."

"Oh. Sweetie, you don't have to apologise! It's not your fault, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time!"

"That's the thing, though. It's like I'm always in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the first time I felt like I was in the right place— Mom!" His expression suddenly morphed from forlorn at his circumstances to complete panic, there was something incredibly important missing. "My phone! Did anything happen to my phone?!"

Inko sighed, and pulled a ziplock bag from her purse containing what might have been a lump of tar. "They couldn't tell if this was your phone or a piece of the roof. Sorry, sweetie."

Well. There's that. His one friend, his one contact, blasted to smithereens. He was probably never going to see Mei again, there was no way he'd be going back to work after this, he'll probably be kept safe under lock and key for the rest of his—

"This young woman kept calling to ask how you were, though. She said you never answered her messages, and something about a baby? Izuku, I'm glad you're making friends, but I'm not sure about you texting single mothers. I'm sure she's a lovely girl, but I don't think I'm ready to be a grandmother just yet."

"Mom no! No no no! She's not, that isn't, I mean—!" He was getting nowhere fast. "It's Mr Hatsume's daughter from work, that's all, honestly! Can I text her, please? Just to let her know I'm okay?"

"Hmm," Inko said, narrowing her eyes. "Alright, I'll believe you. This time."

Inko reached into her purse and pulled out her phone, tapping the screen a few times before handing it over. "I saved her number, just in case she called again. Don't be too long though, I need to call your Aunt Mitsuki to let her know you're awake."

"I will mom, don't worry," Izuku took the phone with a strange feeling of anticipation, like there was a buzz under his skin. It was only a murmur of a sensation, something that could be attributed to apprehension, maybe even excitement. But the moment his fingers made contact with the screen—

Zzapp!

4.2%

"Ouch!" A sharp jolt of electricity bit through his hand, not enough to cause damage but enough for him to reactively contract his elbow. The phone dropped to the sheets with a soft thud.

"Izuku! Are you alright? What happened? It looked like you got a shock!"

"I'm fine, I think… it must have been the static from the bedsheets…" Izuku rubbed his hand, hardly believing his own explanation. "Is your phone okay? I'm sorry I dropped it."

"Oh, don't be silly, Izuku." Inko said, picking the phone up off the bed. "You're not going to break something from just—" she frowned at the screen.

"Mom? What is it?"

"The battery is completely dead… I'm sure I charged it before I came here, that's so peculiar."

Izuku looked at his fingers like they belonged to someone else, gingerly pressing them together as though he expected something to happen. A flash of light, a glow, anything he could tangibly see. But of course, they remained stubbornly human.

"Okay, Izuku."He thought to himself. "Think logically. Just because you got struck by lightning doesn't mean you're why the battery drained. What was it Hatsume said? Hypothesis, then experiment, then conclude."

The hypothesis was already set. Izuku had somehow become a power sponge. As for the experiment…

Feeling profoundly as though this was the worst idea he'd ever had, Izuku's fingers twitched slightly as he eyed the expensive monitor seated by the bed. It wasn't like anything was really going to happen. It was just a theory.

Tentatively he reached out, pulling away slightly near contact, then… his fingertip barely grazed the plastic casing.

BBBRZZZAPPPP!!

The machine immediately sparked with a loud crack, worse than the phone. Inko jumped so hard her purse fell to the floor, scattering it's contents, and every light in the room went out at once. Outside an alarm rang, they could hear frantic running in the hallway, a nurse shouted something about a backup generator.

20.7%

Conclusion: "Mom, I think we need to go."

Inko was no fool, and didn't need to be asked twice. "Yes, very much so, quickly now."

Ninety minutes, a car ride with hands firmly inside pockets, and one drained streetlight (which thankfully didn't drain the entire city grid) later, Izuku was back in a dark apartment. Around him were the casualties of further experiments, dead appliances drained of their precious voltaic ichor, their LED eyes forever dim. And every time, that voice in the recesses of his mind, counting.

"What if I'm an energy vampire now…" he mumbled, giving an old MP3 player a tentative tap. Its screen flickered once, a valiant last gasp, before surrendering itself to the void.

"You're not a vampire, honey," Inko said, lighting a candle to brighten the space. "You just have a bit of a… static issue."

"A static issue?! Mom, I'm a walking blackout! How are you being so calm about this?!"

Inko sighed affectionately, "Izuku. Dear heart. Light of my life." She placed a hand on his shoulder, giving it a slight squeeze. "You're my son. The boy who falls off buildings on a regular basis. The brave, self-sacrificing maniac who has ended up in the canal no less than six times this year. A few issues stemming from you getting struck by lightning makes me feel vindicated if anything."

Izuku blinked, the words eluding him for a moment longer, until he managed to find them again and throw his arms up in disbelief. "…What?! I shorted out a wing of the hospital! That's not an issue, that's, that's calamitous! I'll never be able to leave the house again! I'll have to become a luddite! Live in a cave and eat lichen!"

"Nobody is going to make you become a luddite, Izuku. Think of all the millions of electricity quirks out there, I very much doubt you're the first person with a built in battery pack."

Izuku's expression turned blank, his mother had said the activation phrase. Quirk.

He hadn’t considered it. Hadn’t dared to. It was a door he’d learned to keep bolted shut. But what if the lightning hadn’t just struck him? What if it had picked the lock? Could it be? After fourteen years of misplaced hope and unlikely dreams, had the hope finally been placed and the dreams become… likelied?

This changed literally everything about his situation. An unexplained phenomena was a scary, difficult position to find yourself in. But a quirk-related phenomena?! This was his wheelhouse!

"An electricity quirk?!" His ears perked up like an overexcited terrier, "the lightning, it must have, I don't know, rebooted my genes?! Can that happen?! I've never heard of it before but there's no reason to assume it's impossible right?!" The scientific method was out the window at this point.

"I'll go get you a notebook," Inko calmly stated, leisurely making her way to the defcon Izuku drawer.

"If I’m absorbing power, it has to be going somewhere!" Izuku was already pacing, wearing a hole in the carpet. "What if the energy isn't just being stored, but dispersed throughout my muscular system!"

"Honey, try not to get too—"

Izuku was miles away, lost in a world of hypotheticals. "Enhanced strength, speed! Maybe even reflexes! What if I can train it to increase my perceptive abilities or distribute non-lethal shocks for self defense! I have to test it!"

Scrambling to his feet he swept the room for a likely target. The couch! Izuku planted his feet, clapped his hands together, and took a deep breath. "The power is within you, All Might Jr. You just need to access it!"

Five minutes later, Inko was gently holding a cold compress to her son’s shoulder while he whimpered on the floor. He had not, in fact, accessed it. He had, however, pulled a bicep.

"Maybe, we should get a second opinion," She said, patting him lovingly on the shoulder.

Izuku winced, "maybe. But I don't want to get doctors involved! I already cut the power to a whole floor of a hospital. What if they try putting me in an MRI and it ends up killing someone?" The thought put a shiver down his spine. "Besides, I think the problem might be more technological than biological."

"Okay, no doctors." Inko conceded. "But it sounds like you have someone in mind already?"

He did. Partly due to her being the only self-confessed genius he knew, and partly because having an actual friend you could ask for help was a novelty worth experiencing.

"Mr Hatsume's daughter, from the shop." Izuku explained , pushing himself up. "The girl who kept calling you," he felt an involuntary blush forming. "She's really smart, mom!" He stopped himself, the realism of being a teenage boy talking about a girl settling on his shoulders. "Th-that is, her dad is smart too I mean, but she's more involved in the tech side of things…"

"Ohh," Inko smiled, "the one with the 'baby'?"

"It's not that kind of baby! It's what she calls inventions, it's a, you know… a term of endearment." He rubbed the back of his neck, wishing desperately he was more confident in the face of whatever implications his mother was making.

Inko, though, had no idea she was implying anything. "So you're hoping she'll see you like one of her babies?" She said, twisting the knife.

"Mom, no! I don't want her to— not like th— she wouldn't—!"

"What's wrong?" Her brow knitted in genuine confusion. "I just wanted to use the right term?"

Izuku sighed and wiped the sweat from his forehead, "let's um, move on from the baby thing… she has a workshop next to the store, but it's two train stops away."

"A moving tube of metal, packed with people and powered by electricity," Inko mused, her brow furrowing. "That doesn’t sound like a good idea. That car ride home felt like transporting a nervous bomb. There’s only one thing for it." She paused for dramatic effect. "Wait right here."

She dashed into the kitchen, leaving a stunlocked Izuku in her wake. "Wh-what are you getting?"

"Ta-da!" She emerged moments later, holding her brilliant, world-saving solution aloft like it was Excalibur.

A pair of bright yellow, rubber washing-up gloves.

Izuku looked at the offending articles, then back at his mom, unable to stop the sound of utter derision escaping his mouth. "…Ennnh", he full body grimaced.

"Oh, what? Now you're fashion conscious? Just think of them like a hero costume support item." She tossed the gloves onto the floor in front of him.

"I guess I could…pretend I'm Wash's sidekick…" he grumbled.

"That's the spirit! I'll try to find a phone tomorrow morning and explain the situation to Mr Hatsume. You, in the meantime, get some rest. You've got a long walk ahead of you."

The following mid-morning, even Izuku's hero-focused wild imagination couldn't formulate any good out of wearing dish gloves in public. The practical application had been a success, the insulated material preventing any accidental blackouts. The social application made him feel like a complete berk. One of the unexpected side effects of his new look was how horribly sweaty it made his hands, to the point keeping them jammed in his pockets was making the situation a lot worse than it needed to be.

He was still reeling over the group of teenagers making squeaking noises at him, when he saw the sign for Hatsume's shop peek into view.

"Moment of bravery, All Might Jr," Izuku's steps slowed involuntarily on the walk around to the workshop, an unconscious choice stemming from nerves he had to push through. "Just knock on the door, ask the nice girl for help, don't electrocute anyone."

He steadied his breath like a real hero would, lifted his hand and prepared to knock against the garage shutters. But before he got the chance, the door swung open, and a deceptively strong pair of arms dragged him inside. "Wuh!!"

"Midoriya!! It's about time you got here! Dad told me the whole story, well not the whole story just the story where you were hit by lightning—which is statistically unlikely by the way the odds are like one in a million it just screams data anomaly which is my favourite kind of anomaly— I was almost ready to send out a search team and by search team I mean a long range reconnaissance drone, only I don't have a long range reconnaissance drone so I would have had to make one first! Science shouldn't be made to wait this long, every second you spend out there is more data decaying into the atmosphere like poof poof poof poof GONE, tell me everything! How is your sense of proprioception? Any feels of nausea or like your eyes are backwards? Any phantom limb sensations or urges to migrate north? Whats the first word you think of when I say grapefruit? Is your hair standing on end OF COURSE IT IS! But more on end than usual? Have you tried licking a 9 volt battery to see what happens, don't do that, actually do do that but let me put these electrodes on you first. Don't! Touch! Anything!!!"

The unstoppable barrage of scientific inquiry seemed to coalesce into a physical entity, like an investigative hammer pummeling across the face and head.

"Guh-grapefruit?" He said unsurely, grasping onto one of the few words he managed to catch.

"Moment's passed, Midoriya, forget about it!" With all the tact of a tactless tactician whose automatic tacter had malfunctioned, Mei Hatsume dragged him further into her lair, forcefully plonking him on a stool.

"I'm all ears, volt boy! Tell me everything as slow as you can, but also as quickly as you can," she stared at him with narrow-eyed enthusiasm, a tablet at the ready.

Izuku recoiled slightly, but began to explain his situation. For the majority of the explanation, Mei remained transfixed, only pausing her piercing gaze to tap something unseen into the tablet. Around Izuku's retelling of putting on dish gloves, however, her attention began to wander.

"And it's happening with everything you touch?" She asked, heaving the front half of a ride on lawnmower onto the countertop with a heavy thud, the leaf receptacle clattering to the floor, forgotten.

"Anything with a power supply," Izuku affirmed, secretly wanting to ask what she was doing but unable to find a spot to jump in before she immediately asked a follow-up.

"AC or DC?"

"I…don't know? Both? Neither? It's just anything with electricity! Then there's the…" he lowered his voice, "the voices."

"Auditory hallucinations?!" Mei's eyes lit up, "why didn't you lead with that? Oh yes that's interesting that is very interesting indeed," she poked her lip thoughtfully with a screwdriver, before using it to prise open the mower. "What kind of voices? The difficult to decipher general humming kind, or the "kill the fakes" kind?"

"It's… it's a number. A percentage. Hatsume, tell me truthfully, am I going crazy?"

"Maybe! But crazy people get a bad rep, all the best people are at least a little nuts," she jammed her hand into the mower and pulled out a random assortment of wires. "What's the number up to now? Hold these."

"Are you sure I should be—" it was no use "Thirty-six. Thirty-six percent. Hatsume, I… I'm worried what might happen when it hits a hundred."

She took the wires off him and jammed them back into the mower. "Why?"

Izuku shook his head, "because I still don't know what any of this is, or what it means… I-I'm putting a brave face on it,"

"Sure you are!"

"But the truth is, this is scary, Hatsume! What if I blow up? Or electrocute everyone, electrocute you?"

"And what if you don't?" She slid a spool of copper on to a metal pipe, a burst of sparks flying out as she gestured dramatically. "We're scientists, Midoriya! We experiment and we take risks and sometimes things explode! But that's okay, because we get access to the greatest resource on Earth!"

"…Plutonium?"

"Knowledge, my little pistachio! Your body is sucking up power like some kind of sucking machine. I say," she jammed the pipe directly into the mower, where it twisted into place with a throaty KER-CLUNK, "we give a bitch a drink."

The wooden patio chair Izuku sat on felt like a throne of shame, an off-white torture device meant to punish the wicked and fashion backward. As a chair it filled its purpose, well, not admirably, but it had four legs and a back, which is more than a few chairs can say.

No, the problem was the fact it was bolted to the concrete, the amount of wires snaking around and plugged into the colander on Izuku's head, and the fact Hatsume was dressed like a bomb disposal expert, in a suit thick enough to stop a charging wildebeest.

"Is this really necessary?" Izuku asked uncomfortably, as Mei methodically turned a dial she'd glued to the lawnmower.

Mei ignored the question to turn the dial slightly counter clockwise, "…perfect," she said, before directing her attention back to her subject, uh, research partner. "Well that depends, Midoriya. Is safety important?"

He tilted his head upwards, the colander jostling his hair. "…Mine or yours?"

"Midoriya, as far as we can tell, you're a power bank. Power is going into you, and staying there. You said yourself that you're worried what happens when you hit 100%, these are just… necessary considerations."

"But you also told me that things exploding was a natural part of the scientific process."

"It is!" She agreed, before punching the thick chassis around her torso, "hence the precaution. Now do you want me to explain the new baby or not?"

"I…sure, go ahead."

"May I present to you, baby number 48, my most specialised yet — The Spruce Juice!! Or a variable phase induction portable dynamo if you wanna be boring. A few jolts from this bad boy and you'll be so full of electricity you'll think you ate a Pikachu!"

Izuku, you won't be surprised to learn, knew jack and shit about variable phase induction portable dynamos, and Jack just left town. If Mei had been talking French it would have made about as much sense to him. His brain helpfully supplied a response.

"Buh?"

Mei held up the ends of two jumper cables, clacking their teeth, before clipping them to Izuku's stylish hardware. "I'm going to use this to juice you up, and we'll see what happens. Ready?!"

"Ha-hatsume I'm not so sure about this CAN'T WE TALK ABOUT—"

"BLAST OFF!!"

Izuku had never been electrocuted before, he considered a point of personal pride, so he had nothing to base the feeling he was currently experiencing on. He'd always assumed having a few thousand volts flood your system would be, well, painful for starters. What he was feeling now felt more like he'd chugged a few dozen cans of Present Mic brand "Say It Loud 10,000 Decibel Energy Soda". It was like sinking into a hot bath made of sparkplugs.

"ZIAZIZIZAZIZAZAZAIIZIZA!" He buzzed uncontrollably. Which in his mind sounded like "what a peculiar sensation."

Mei held an arm up, shielding herself from the bolts arcing around the chair "the safeword is pineapple, Midoriya!! I should have said that earlier!!"

"I-I-I-IT'S WUHWUHWUHWOORKIIING!!! FIFTY-FIVE PERCENT!!!"

A nearby toaster exploded on a shelf, something popped on the spruce juice, streetlights outside flickered.

"Midoriya!! You're absorbing ambient energy! This is incredible!!!"

The chair vibrated in place in tune to Izuku's body, the voice in his head becoming louder and louder with each volt.

"SEVENTY NINE! EIGHTY THREE!! NINETY TWO!!"

"Come on baby, hold strong for mama!"

"NIIIIINETY-NIIIII—"

Then, silence.

Chapter Text

New sensations were becoming old hat for poor Izuku these days, and the feelings he was currently experiencing were the newest yet. A smell like hot rubber mixed with iron filled his lungs, but the moment he breathed in he felt it shift. It was the same surprising heat he got from drinking tea too quickly, where the warmth would spread from his throat to his chest…

Only this warmth was spreading from his sternum to his shoulder, down towards his fingertips and settling in the palm of his hand.

A full-body, dust-expelling HACK ripped through his body, finally clearing a window through the smog-choked air of Hatsume's workshop. The clouds thinned as the world swam back into focus.

"Hrk- Hatsume!" He coughed the words and rolled to his side on the workshop floor, the colander — a final remnant of the experiment —clattered to the floor. "Hatsume! Speak to me, Hatsume!"

From the far corner of the garage, an avalanche of scrap metal shifted. A metal rack moved slowly at first, then groaned and collapsed to the floor as a figure emerged. Mei clumsily rolled to her feet, the bulky protective gear making her feel like a tortoise stuck on it's back. She stumbled to her feet, unhooking the helmet and tossing it to the floor.

"Okay," she swallowed, catching her breath. "Maybe I should have recalibrated the… the uh…" as soon as she took in sight of Midoriya, the concern she might have had for the smouldering hunk of metal where the spruce juice should have been was overtaken. By a concern for the smouldering hunk of metal where her friend's hand should have been. "Oh, BOLTS! Midoriya!! Your arm!!"

Izuku blinked rapidly, things finally starting to feel a lot less explodey. "My… my arm? What do you mean," he shakily lifted both appendages, holding them outstretched in front of him. "There's nothing wrong with my—"

He was half correct. The right hand looked no different to usual, aside from the dust and soot. Same light freckles, same dent on the back of his knuckle from when he fell off his bike at age seven.

The left hand was what stole the breath from his lungs. From halfway down his forearm and spreading to his fingertips was a dark metal with a bottle green echo of colour, only noticeable where the blinking red danger lights hit him just right. It covered his hand and wrist entirely, like set liquid.

"AHH!!" The scream was involuntary, not from pain but a sheer, visceral panic. "What is this?! Get it off me, get it off me!!"

In a frenzy, Izuku started to shake his "new" hand, as if he could fling it off of him as easily as a glove. Even amongst the deep concern for his wellbeing, he couldn't ignore how his fingers moved as easily as if it had always been a part of him.

Then— VWOIP.

From the centre of Izuku's palm, a light-based glowing orb about the size of a grapefruit burst forth, a white hologram floating 6 inches in the air.

The shock of it made Izuku stop in his tracks, staring down at this… thing, coming out of his hand.

The mysterious orb crackled like a television hunting for a reception, a similarly fuzzy audio accompanying the hiss of static.

"Ce-ce-ce-cestus cestus, manu-manufa-fa-fa-fa-fa cececececestus pri-primary—"

Suddenly the orb glowed red for a split second and glitched violently, before settling to a steady green.

The pair looked at the orb in silent shock, before a warm — but altogether inhuman— voice asked "…Where is this?" a thin line of energy around the circumference of the orb grew and shrank like a waveform.

"Hatsume!" Izuku said between panicked breaths. "What the hell is this thing?!"

Where Izuku was facing down the barrel of a gun, Mei was admiring the trigger's craftsmanship. "A photonic display! Some kind of holographic interface?" To test the theory, she swept a hand through the orb — the shape contorting to the motion before reconfiguring itself.

"It's talking, Mei!!"

"Flightless birds. Please respond to my query," the orb repeated itself in the same level tone, "where is this? The proliferation of smoke and poor air quality suggests an industrial zone."

Izuku gulped, "M-Musutafu! Japan!"

The orb stayed silent for a long moment. "Japan. Understood, I'm familiar with this habitable zone. Homeplace of Izuku Midoriya, Inko Midoriya, Hisashi Midoriya, Masaru Bakugo, Mitsuki Bakugo, Katsuki—"

Izuku didn't have the time to properly composs himself, and had to simply swallow his nerve. "W-wait. Um, orb, magic sphere, wh-whatever you are," Izuku interrupted the listing, the light emanating from his palm shook with his motions. "Those were my mom's phone contacts, weren't they?"

"I've little to no recollection of what happened while I was recharging. I'm aware of those names, the concept of dictionaries and language packs — presumably how we're communicating — and a knowledge of 3100 levels of a "match 3 game" called Hero Agency Decorator."

"Midoriya! Do you know what that means?!" Hatsume squealed with delight, "instantaneous data transfer!"

"So when I touched my mom's phone, and the battery drained?"

"It downloaded all the information in the phone!" Mei gleefully exclaimed, "on contact!"

"You've answered my question on a geographical basis, and I thank you for that, but I'm afraid I need some further clarification. Exactly where am I?"

"You're on my arm, I think? Or um, in it? Or you… are my hand? Agh! This is so weird!"

"Interesting. I… have no recollection." Although the tone stayed consistent, the slight hesitation pointed towards a vulnerability beneath the surface. "I was floating. I remember darkness, and a deep concern for my wellbeing. I recall a need for something, then I was here. I remember nothing else."

The thundering of Izuku's heartbeat began to lessen. This wasn't an enemy to fight, whatever this thing on his arm was didn't need his fear, it needed his help. This felt like a victim. Though of what, Izuku had no idea.

"Darkness... Space? You were in space? So the lightning bolt..."

"See?" Hatsume said with all the quiet thrill of an I told you so, "just like I said, statistical improbability."

"More improbable than what actually happened?"

"Clearly! What happened actually happened! The lightning strike didn't, ergo, more improbable."

"An accurate assessment. Would either of you be kind enough to remind me why I am currently on an arm in Musutafu, Japan?"

Even Mei, for all the manic energy and thirst for knowledge, seemed to grasp the enormity of the situation. "Midoriya, I don't think this is any normal AI,"

"My intelligence is not artificial. Everything I know, I learned for myself. I do not pull from a preset data bank or operate by predefined heuristics. I experience data, interpret input, and I choose my responses accordingly. There is no artificiality in my choices."

Mei inhaled sharply, "my god! An actual learning machine! And not one of those bullshit online ones that steals your data! This is unprecedented, more than unprecedented! This is antidisunprecedented!"

Instead of trying to figure out if that was a double or triple negative, Izuku instead directed a question to the… glowy magical thingy. "When you booted up, you kept saying something. It was all garbled, but I think it was 'Cestus'? Is that your name or, maybe where you came from?"

The light on the floating orb shimmered slightly at the word, "I'm unable to access any of my memory files prior to our bonding, save for my primary directive. Cestus could be my name, I have no accurate way to be sure. I will say, I prefer it to "orb, magic sphere, whatever you are"."

The more they spoke, the more the cavernous pit of fear in Izuku's chest filled itself. "Cestus. Okay. We can call you Cestus." He nodded. "You said something just now, about a "primary directive"? Can you tell us more about that?"

"Are you here to explore strange new worlds?" Mei jumped in with excitement. "To seek out new life and new civilisations? To boldly go where no one has gone before?!"

"No."

"Oh, bummer."

"My primary directive is—"

CRASH!!

Suddenly the front shutters to the garage folded open, an enormous torrent of flame suppressant exploding into the charred wreckage of the workshop.

"Team Backdraft, stand by! Initial breach successful, searching for survivors!" A man, barely visible through the smoke, steam, and now foam, blasted another fine mist from his wrists. "Search and rescue! Pro Hero Backdraft is here! If you can hear my voice, please respond!"

A stockier man all but shoved the firefighting fenomenon aside, "Mei! Mei are you in here?! MEI!!"

"Dad? Dad!!" She jumped up from the floor and waved her arms, hoping to indicate her safety (and surreptitiously to allow Izuku to cover his arm with some loose green tarp). "We're okay! We're fine!"

Maburu paid no mind to workshop etiquette, pushing and shoving things aside as he hurried down the expanse of the garage, and wrapped his arms around his daughter. And, to Izuku's surprise, him too.

"I heard the blast from the shop, the street went dark! The offices thought it was a villain attack, they called in the heroes, god I'm so glad you're both safe,"

The hero on scene stood straight, and approached the group with an heroic authority. The thick insulating rubber of his costume squeaked when he crossed his arms, the metal on his wrists clanking together. "Workplace and hazard safety is nothing to trifle with. Had this caused a bigger incident—"

"Not now, Backdraft!" Maburu Hatsume snapped, looking a full foot taller. "You can save your speech about OSHA violations for when they're in a calmer environment!"

"Dad, we're okay, really. The blast really wasn't that big, like a 4 or 5 on the Hatsuscale." Mei wiggled her hand back and forth, "maybe a 6."

"She's right, Mr Hatsume," Izuku added in solidarity. "Definitely a 4 on the whatever it was she said. The happy scale."

Maburu shook his head twice, "No, I won't hear a word of it. These two are clearly traumatised and will need at least a week of rest before they have to listen to an incredibly tedious lecture."

He pulled Mei in again, and in a low voice so only she could hear, said "you two get out of here, I'll handle the cops. You can tell me everything later."

"Thanks dad, you're the best."

"Sir, there was an explosion," Backdraft sighed, "we have protocols for these sorts of things."

"Well! Mr draftback, sir, you should take those protocols up with whoever owns this garage! Clearly, my daughter and her friend are at no fault here. How on earth would a couple of fourteen year olds manage to make an explosive device? What are you suggesting here, that they bought nitroglycerin online? Are you suggesting my daughter uses the black market?"

"I'm not suggesting anything sir, I'm just—"

Mei nudged Izuku gently with her elbow, "Pst, Midoriya, I think this is our cue to skedaddle."

"You don't have to tell me twice…"

With as wide a berth between themselves and the garage as they were capable of, Izuku and Mei caught their breaths down a small side street. There were no cars, no potential witnesses, just the rustle of birds on the trees and a creaking lamppost.

Even with a clear coast, Izuku was very careful removing the fabric covering the new addition to his limbs. He took a deep breath, and gradually unfurled to discover…

Nothing. A clear, unburdened, decidedly not-metal hand.

"I… what? Wh-where is, did we..?" He stammer in confusion, at am utter loss for words.

Mei was just as lost, "a shared hallucination?"

"No, no no no that can't be right. We definitely saw what we saw!" Izuku flexed his hand, and started gesticulating in random poses, "maybe there's a trigger or something?"

Then, a faint sound, starting as a vibration deep within Izuku's forearm. A soft schlorping sound that was just barely audible even in the quiet of the deserted street. The sound gradually built, before a glistening black goo with the consistency of mercury emerged directly from the pores in his skin. It pooled around his skin until it fully coated the same area as before, and in a matter of seconds, the viscous fluid shimmered and hardened.

The floating orb of light burst forth again.

"Hiding felt like a reasonable course of action."

"Cestus! You're still here!" It surprised Izuku himself how delighted he was about this, but he also thought any loss of life was a cause for concern. Even if that life was a potentially parasitic passenger.

"We thought you were a figment of our collective imagination." Mei added with a solemn expression, before the glint in her crosshair eye returned with a vengeance. "But look at you! Discrete subdermal containment!"

Izuku's eyes went wide, a little with awe, a little with confusion, and a lot with a sense of being grossed out. "That's why we couldn't see you… you were…inside my…" his face turned pale

"I was in your bloodstream," Cestus explained with all the bedside manner befitting a mysterious alien life. "I'm composed of several million nanomachines. Your circulatory system provides an efficient transport network and a steady supply of bio-electric energy."

"You're in my BLOOD?!"

Mei gave him a sturdy pat on the back, and alleviating his concerns her best shot, "aw don't sweat it, Midoriya! If anything bad was going to happen, like blood poisoning, apoxia, screaming vessel syndrome," she ticked each horrific possibility off on her fingers as she went, "it probably would have already happened by now."

"The pink one is correct. My presence should not cause any health complaints."

"That "should" is not filling me with confidence!" He rubbed his brow with his free, non alien-inhabited hand, "but, I guess… it's just like All Might said in chapter 6 of his early learners Phonetics Fun With the Symbol of Peace series. "Hiro Hero was kind to his friends, no matter their horns, their odds or their ends.""

"An admirable if slightly juvenile sentiment."

"Now that we've gotten all that emotional nonsense out of the way," Mei threw her hands up, practically beside herself with impatience, "can we please get back to what's important?! Research, data, tests! The sheer number of glorious, glorious babies we're going to make together!"

"I'm afraid I'm incapable of procreation." Cestus said flatly.

"No, Cestus, she doesn't mean…" Izuku sighed, it wasn't worth it. "Back in the lab, before everything went crazy, you were telling us your primary directive. Can you tell us now?"

"Yes. My primary directive is to ensure my own self-preservation until which point I am able to access my memory files." They explained. "My operating assumption is that the rapid and intensely concentrated level of electrical absorption caused my personality to reform far sooner than expected, leaving my long-term memories to languish in an un-indexed state."

"Oh, uh… sorry about that." Izuku murmured. "But you were draining everything I touched! It was totally unsustainable!"

Mei nodded aggressively, "yeah, it's true! He would have had to live in a cave and survive off lichen. It would have really sucked for his social development."

"That's what I told my mom!"

"Again, I am working on an assumption based on all current information, but perhaps the sheer level of electrical energy in Musutafu Japan wasn't a consideration. If I were to recharge entirely through your bioelectrical energy, I estimate it would have taken me a short thirty-five years. During which time you would have been unaware of my presence. Regardless, the absorption issue should have rectified itself. Potentially."

"Okay okay okay!" Mei was fully chewing on the bars of her enclosure now, "enough with the exposition already! Let's get to the fun part already, what can Cestus DO?!"

"Do? What do you mean…do?" Izuku blinked, the thought having somehow not occured to him amidst all the panic.

"I'm also unsure as to your meaning."

Mei stared at them both as if they'd just confessed to not knowing what a 338/2 actuation tool was. "A clearly highly advanced form of synthetic existence with the demonstrable ability to form a malleable metal exoskeleton and heal minor compound fractures, and you haven't even thought about what you're capable of?!"

"I… oh my god!" Izuku's eyes went a wide as the realisation that was currently punching him in the face. His wrist, the previously broken wrist which was now quite unbroken. The one the doctors told him looked as if it had never broken in the first place. "You healed me! This is… this is like a quirk!! CESTUS!! You have to tell us, what can you do?!"

Cestus was quiet for a long moment, the light around their orb pulsing softly in thought, then they said "I have no idea."

The silence that followed was incredibly, painfully awkward. "You… don't know?" Izuku finally asked, his rising excitement deflating. "But, the gauntlet, and the healing… you already did those things, so you must some idea of whatever uh… functions you have?"

"My first taste of active consciousness happened after those two functions being performed. I don't remember initiating either of them."

"Midoriya, Cestus," Mei snapped her fingers, "walk with me. I think better when I'm surrounded by offcuts of metal and random wires, and I know just the place."

Without another word, Mei marched off at a high speed, swinging her arms with purpose and already coming up with a dozen half-formed theories. But before any of them could be properly thought out, she needed the right environment. Somewhere with solder.

"Wait up, Hatsume! Where are we going?!" Izuku called, breaking into a jog to keep up

"Somewhere conducive!" She cryptically replied over her shoulder. "If Cestus' did those things involuntarily, without a conscious command, then it must be in some way connected to their self-preservation directives, correct?"

"Well it would depend on the state of mind I was in during the—"

"Just say yes, Midoriya, I'm getting in the zone!"

"Then, yes." He relented.

She smiled a feral grin. "Precisely! Meaning it inextricably includes your self-preservation. Anything that could harm you could, by extension, harm Cestus. Ergo…?" Mei raised her eyebrows expectantly, not breaking her stride.

"Ergo, further harm towards Midoriya could lead to further involuntary action." Cestus answered, their voice causing a sort of miniature Doppler effect as Izuku ran, the orb of light swinging back and forth and phasing through his leg.

"Bingo!"

Now in step with her, though a bit winded all things considered, Izuku was actually able to follow the chain of thought. "Subconscious defensive applications? Like… like ultra instinct?!"

"I don't know what that is, I'm not into nerd crap! What it means is, I'm taking you to a wonderland of junk, where I'm going to hit you with things and see what happens!" Mei threw her arms theatrically wide, glee plastered on her face, "Imagine it! A place with mountains of unsanctioned technological garbage! Heaps of glorious, discarded potential! An open-air workshop with not a single city ordinance planner telling me not to blow anything up for miles around! I'm taking you… to TAKOBA BEACH!!"

The picturesque, crystal clear waters lapped against the bone white sands in a gentle, relaxing motion, not an inch of it marred by the presence of plastic nor metal. A family of seagulls cawed in delight, happy in the knowledge that the human scum wasn't effecting their quality of life. If a breeze could contentedly sigh…

No, this isn't a bait and switch where this turns out to be a description of a different beach. Takoba was entirely, blessedly, (unfortunately), clear.

Mei stood frozen, her triumphant pose slowly wilting entirely. Izuku stood beside her, his breathing finally returning to normal, his eyes sweeping across the pristine landscape in utter confusion.

"Hatsume?"

Her voice was small when she finally answered. But, like a Hatsume small, which was a medium for most people. "…Yes, Midoriya?"

"Where's the trash?"

"It's…GONE?!" She yelled, running back and forth on the sands, on the off chance the scrap had somehow turned invisible. "Who would do this?! Who would commit such an atrocity against me, specifically?!"

"I guess someone cleaned it up? If it's bad as you're saying, maybe some local heroes saw how it looked and did their, you know… civic duty?" Izuku shrugged, clearly not as affected by this.

"I question why a public facing municipal beach would be used as a dumping ground to begin with. In Hero Agency Decorator, wreckage tended to be collected by a handsome man. Does Musutafu Japan not have handsome men who collect wreckage?"

Izuku frowned at Cestus, "I mean, probably? Games aren't really how things work in the real world."

"I see."

"But to do all this," Izuku continued, pride bubbling in his chest, " all that backbreaking labour, and not expecting anyyhing in return other than to beautify our nations landscape… that's true heroism, sniff."

Mei was entirely not listening, too busy furiously trying to salvage her ruined plan. Which, to be fair, wasn't much of a plan to begin with. But those barely there whisper twinkle in the eye plans were some of the worst to reconfigure!

Slowly and deliberately, she swiveled her head to fix on Izuku, and pointed at him. "The environment has changed, Midoriya." she said, her voice steady as she rose to her feet and brushed the sand off her knees. "That means we adapt! The goal remains the same, testing your defensive response."

"R-right," Izuku nervously took a step back. There was a very concerning look in her eyes.

"I'm without a workshop, I'm without my tools, I'm without my beautiful mountain of junk," Mei continued, her voice gaining momentum, "But to a true genius the world is their workshop! A true genius is the tool!"

"I'm not sure I follow your—"

"I don't kneed a mountain of junk to hit you with, Midoriya! Not when I've got Ada Lovelace," she lifted her right fist, "And Marie Curie!" she shouted, raising the left.

"Wait, what?! Hatsume, no! That's a terrible idea!"

"Is it!?" she countered. "It's controlled, it's precise, I can escalate the threat level incrementally. We start with light jabs, then we move on to hooks, and if we have time I can try suplexing you. I've never done it before, but I think I get the basics."

Cestus' orb materialised again, and Izuku raised his palm for them to talk. "The logic makes some amount of sense, if the combat scenario remains purely for testing defense."

"See? Cestus agrees!"

"I still don't know about this, I'm just afraid I might hurt you! I don't want to brag, but I've actually done some fairly strenuous activity! I'm tougher than I look!" The way Izuku was backing away did not put much meat on this claim.

Mei, however, was already doing warm-up stretches, and a series of oddly impressive high kicks. "No variables, no unpredictable shrapnel, just pure science." She slammed a fist into her palm.

"SPAR WITH ME, MIDORIYA!"

Izuku's attempt at a panicked plea against this fell on deaf ears, as Mei lunged at him in a wildly telegraphed haymaker. He did the only thing he could think of, and raised his arm to shield his face.

Thunk.

The sound was utterly anticlimactic. Mei's fist connected with the bottle-green metal on Izuku's arm, and she just sort of… Bounced off. The force of the punch was almost perfectly absorbed and returned, sending her stumbling back a few steps and shaking out her hand with a bewildered expression.

"Woah! It's all… cushiony." She flexed her fingers, a smile spreading across her face. "It feels like I'm punching memory foam!"

Before Izuku could even process what was happening, she was moving again. "Now for the other side!"

She feinted, and threw a surprisingly swift jab at his right side. Izuku barely had time to think, lifting his right forearm to try and block her again. Luckily, he didn't need to do much thinking. The gauntlet on his left arm dissolved back into a dark goo, flowed across his shoulders and down his right arm, and coalesced into a twin of the first gauntlet, just in time to meet her fist.

Thunk.

Again, the same soft sound. Again, she was stopped dead, not a single iota of force transferring to his arm. Just a gentle pressure. Izuku finally snapped out of it. The fear was gone, replaced by a fizzing excitement that threatened to burst out of his chest.

"it…it worked!! Cestus! You reacted without me even thinking about it!"

"It's a matter of density manipulation and force redirection. The people of Musutafu Japan move slow enough to counter attacks, that much is clear."

Mei was equally as excited, "The force calculation and reaction time were incredible! Minimal kinetic feedback with 100% recoil?! That's amazing!"

An ecstatic smile broke out on Izuku's face, "This could be my ticket to UA!! I could be a hero!!"

Cestus blinked open, on the right side this time. "A…Hero? As in, running into danger, fighting criminals, engaging in rescues during disasters?"

"Yeah, Cestus! You and me, we could be heroes!"

"… No. Request denied."

Chapter Text

Izuku had thought a lot about heroism over the years. What it meant to him to be known as heroic was often at the forefront of his mind, those hypothetical situations where he might be expected to explain what heroism meant to him. Maybe he'd be a guest speaker at a school, the first quirkless pro hero, there to provide hope and wisdom. Maybe an interviewer would ask a question, then Izuku would chuckle like it was a surprise, dive into his researched answer, and everyone would praise him for being so erudite.

But when the time came that he needed to explain the concept of heroism, why a person would run headlong into danger, why someone wants to do something to their own potential detriment… he was drawing a blank. How do you explain altruism to a computer whose only frame of reference is a micro transaction heavy mobile game about decorating an agency?

After the enlightening day at Takoba Beach, Izuku had returned home to a mother who looked like she might spontaneously combust. The buzzing in her skull pointing towards Izuku being in danger was reaching a fever pitch, and it was all Izuku could do to calm her down enough to say he wasn't hurt. When she finally sat down and took a few deep breaths, he was very careful with how he worded things.

Not because he didn't think his mom would understand, but because he himself didn't fully understand.

"Hatsume sorted everything out!" He reassured her with a manic intensity, "she explained it was latent static energy from the lightning! Everything is fine now!"

Cestus had promised they could reveal all when the time was right, but for now, had asked that Izuku keep things secret until they knew more. Privately he thought it was for the best, he couldn't bring himself to give her more to worry about. Just the knowledge that eventually he would let her know everything was enough to make him feel like he wasn't being completely deceitful.

Now, with the power thankfully turned back on and a silent thank you to himself for not draining his bedroom PC, Izuku settled into the task at hand among a sea of open analysis notebooks and browser tabs. Step one in the operation: visual aids.

"THIS is heroism, Cestus!" Izuku announced to the light, now emanating from the back of his wrist on a smaller orb — all the better to type with. On screen, a video so familiar to him he could close his eyes and describe every moment with pinpoint clarity: All Might's Japanese debut. Two train crashes, three hundred and twenty civilians in danger. Zero casualties.

"That's the world's greatest hero, All Might. You understand? The greatest in the whole world, and he'll rush in to save everyone no matter the danger or how low the odds! And he always says 'anyone can be a hero!'" he recited the line in his best impression.

"Isn't that inspirational, Cestus? Doesn't it make you think, 'gosh, if All Might thinks I can do it, then maybe I really can!'?"

"No." Cestus replied, leaving little room for argument. "It's far more likely he meant 'anyone can be a hero' to be a call towards actionable civic duty. Helping a friend. Litter picking. He's also far larger than anyone else I've seen in Musutafu Japan, and far stronger." They paused for a moment, "comparing your own heroic ideals to this large man seems unwise, and unsustainable."

"Kamui Woods said the same thing…" Izuku mumbled under his breath. "Okay, sure! All Might's big and strong, and I'm not, but you saw what we can do together! With you giving me defence, isn't that as good as strength?"

"Midoriya, you had one fight against a single untrained opponent in a sparring match, in which there was a high likelihood they were trying their best not to seriously injure you."

Izuku tilted his head, "Eh, with Hatsume I feel like it's not so certain…"

"Regardless, real world combat situations aren't as telegraphed or friendly. I don't know to what extent my nanomachines could protect you from, say, being stabbed, poisoned, shot, burnt, dropped from a great height, eaten, lasere—"

Izuku put a hand over the orb in an attempt to get him to shut up, "Alright, you've made your point! Okay, what about all the heroes who aren't as powerful as All Might?"

He returned to the keyboard and loaded up his homepage, a link to rankings.hero (The Premier Location for all your Heroic Needs!), "here, see, all the top 250 heroes in the country. All kinds of quirks, all kinds of strengths, and all of them working towards a common goal of saving people with a smile. If all these people can do it safely, who's to say we can't either?"

"It's an interesting argument, a higher statistical average of survival does lower my concerns somewhat. How many decades of active service does the average hero work for?"

"Uh, well…" Izuku scratched his neck, "it's not really decades, it's a little… lower than that. But that's only because they've trained the next generation to take their place! It's healthy retirement! Retirement in their… early 40s…"

"I don't have a body, so you can't tell, but I'm giving you a very heavy stare."

Izuku leaned back in his chair with a sigh, "I'm going about this all wrong…"

"I apologise, Midoriya. I'm sure this must be a frustrating situation to find yourself in." It was difficult to tell, when the voice retained such a level tone, but Izuku could feel the sincerity in the words. Cestus really was being apologetic, and that was all it took to tear at Izuku's heroic heartstrings.

A wave of secondhand guilt washed over him."No, Cestus, no! You don't have to apologise!" He flapped an anxious hand at his own wrist. It was like trying to appeal to a Casio. "Honestly I'm the one who should be sorry, I shouldn't be pushing you to jump into anything! You must have been through so much! I'd be nervous just going to a new school, you're on a whole new planet!"

"Although," Cestus began, the calm logic a stark contrast to how flustered Izuku was, "'new' would be a relative term, when considering my complete memory loss. Perhaps we need to find a common ground."

Common ground, with some alien technology of unknown origin… well, if there was one thing Izuku knew he was good at, it was making friends! Not that he had much evidence to back that up, but that was just due to a lack of opportunity, right? Besides, this was completely different to school. This was intergalactic diplomacy.

"Right, common ground," Izuku started to walk around his bedroom in analytic thought. "You mean like… something that has the spirit of heroism, but with less risk of uh, more broken bones?"

"Yes," Cestus confirmed, their light pulsing softly. "I have some ideas that may work, but it will—"

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

The sudden sound against his bedroom door made Izuku jolt, his body going rigid. His eyes widened at the noise, as he felt a surge of panic.

"Oh no! It's my mom!" he hissed in the loudest whisper known to man. "Cestus, you've gotta hide! Retreat!"

"Very well, until later." The familiar schlorping sound of metal retreating back into his pores returned, as Cestus vanished from view and left him a regular — albeit highly strung — teenager once more.

The door swung open, and Inko stood in the doorway with a confused expression on her face. "Izuku? It’s time for school. Did I… hear you talking to someone in here?"

Izuku forced an innocent grin on his face, one that looked more suspicious than if he’d just done nothing. "Right, haha! Yes, I was talking, but not to anyone! I was practising my hero speeches, gotta get the tone right!"

His mom narrowed her eyes, "It sounded like you were debating someone."

"Right, debating the villains is an integral part of being a hero! Why fight, when you can convince someone to give up crime altogether?" The grin plastered on his face strained at the edges. After what felt like an eternity of staring, Inko relaxed.

"…Suuuure. Well, get ready, we don’t want you to miss any more school."

Izuku visibly deflated, "School. Got it." He waited until she’d left, before mumbling under his breath, "I’ve got an alien computer living in my blood, school is nothing…"

Oh, how he wished school was nothing. Izuku had, despite the ups and downs of his lonely childhood, always wore his heart on his sleeve. Never one to back away from his ideals, or allow any part of himself not to be front and centre. What you saw is what you got, and what people got was a boy who had never used a comb and wanted to be a hero. No secrets.

Cestus had put a wrench in the system. Just like with his mom, this wasn’t Izuku’s secret to tell. it was his new metallic friend's. So when Cestus asked that Izuku keep quiet about his existence for the time being — it would have been incredibly insensitive to refuse.

This all would have been fine, an issue he could avoid by keeping his head down, if his mom hadn't told Auntie Mitsuki about the broken wrist, AND the whole lightning strike thing. Both anecdotes she then relayed to Katsuki.

The broken wrist that was no longer broken. And the lightning strike whose only evidence was hiding a few millimetres beneath his skin.

"I knew you were a damn liar, but this is just pathetic!" And there it was, the dulcet tones of a mid-morning Kacchan. Barely three minutes at school and he'd already zeroed in on the evidence, or lack thereof. He hadn’t even needed evidence. He’d convicted Izuku in his mind days ago and was just now getting to the sentencing.

Izuku took a grounding breath at his desk, lamenting the few minutes of prep time he'd been afforded, and turned to his volatile classmate with — he hoped — a placating expression.

"Kacchan! Good morning! Are you ready for another plus ultra day of learning?"

"Shut the hell up! So what was it, huh?! Take the credit from someone else?! I knew you were full of shit!" He punched a fist into his palm, sparks erupting from the contact.

"No no, nothing like that, honest! Just the marvels of modern medicine! The doctors made a mistake, that's all, haha! Just a sprain, not a break!"

"You asshole!!" Bakugo roared, slamming his hands on the desk and burning scorch marks into the surface, "you talking shit about doctors now?! Eight years of school mean nothing to you, is that it?!"

By now more students had shuffled into the room, each with their own flavour of nonchalance as they tried — and failed — to sneakily listen in on the confrontation. A boy with rocks for hair muttered "shameful" under his breath.

"Heh!" One of Bakugos flunkies laughed derisively, "we all knew it was a load of crap! As if someone like you could fight a villain!"

"He probably tripped on his laces and made the whole thing up," another added.

Izuku looked around at the expressions of disgust directed towards him and baulked. "I'm not— Healthcare is the backbone of our— I would never say—!"

Before Bakugo could scream his head off in apoplectic rage, Mr Warusei entered the room and dropped the temperature by a few degrees with his disposition. "Midoriya, stop antagonising your classmates."

"Yes, Mr Warusei…" Izuku slumped into his chair, his classmates' opinion of him weighing him down. The way Kacchan was staring a hole in the back of his head wasn't helping matters.

When all's said and done… a fairly routine start to the day. The big change didn't make itself known until about twenty minutes into an algebra lesson. A voice, clear and sharp, pumping directly into his ears.

"Midoriya."

"YAAGH!" Izuku shot out of his seat like someone had just traced their finger down his spine. His book and pen flew off the desk in the commotion.

The teacher raised a weary eye from the front of the room, "is there a problem?"

"N-no, sir! Just, figured out a tough problem!"

"Apologies for startling you." Cestus said, their voice coming through as though Izuku had invisible headphones on. "I'm just behind your ears, it should allow us to communicate without arousing suspicion." They paused, "…more suspicion."

As a cover, Izuku pretended to push his messy hair back, his fingers finding a small, thin strip of metal tracing the cartilage of his ear. It was so fine, so perfectly flush, you’d never see it unless you knew it was there. Izuku sat there, brow furrowed in concentration for a few seconds, deep in thought.

"If you're trying to telepathically communicate with me, I can't do that." Cestus stated. "You can talk to me through writing."

Izuku quietly muttered "oh…", feeling a little silly for thinking that would work, and picked his stuff up off the floor.

"[A little warning would be nice.]" He scribbled, trying to make it seem like he was taking notes.

"I did warn you, I said your name. I'd like to continue our earlier discussion, but first I have to ask a question."

Izuku made a show of chewing on the tip of his pencil, then acting like he'd had a breakthrough. "[About heroism? The common ground we're looking for?]"

Cestus' voice buzzed through the back of his ear, "no. It's a query about the other people in the room. Many of them seem to be displaying some sort of external oddity. Is this a common trait for people of Musutafu Japan?"

"What?!" The word escaped Izuku’s mouth before he could stop it. He saved himself with a panicked flourish. "That, uh… that can't be the solution! Wow, algebra sure is… a thing!"

"[What do you mean?!]" He frantically wrote. "[Those are quirks!]"

"Quirks?" Cestus asked, unconvinced. "You used the term this morning, but I assumed you meant in the context of a personality trait."

Izuku felt a profound wave of mortification. Not for Cestus, they weren't at fault here for lacking information, but towards himself. He was supposed to be this visitor's guide to a new world, an ambassador! And he'd failed to explain even the most fundamental aspect of their society?!

"Mr Warusei?" Izuku stuck his hand in the air. "May I be excused? I have to go… poop."

Mr. Warusei didn’t even look up from his textbook, just gave a limp, dismissive wave of his hand. It was an expression of such profound indifference that it almost circled back around to being insulting. Izuku didn't care. He scrambled out of his seat, nearly tripped over his own feet, and power-walked out of the classroom, the faint sound of snickering following him out the door.

He didn't stop until he was safely in the boys bathroom, where he could do a quick, paranoid check under each of the stalls. All empty, they were alone.

Cestus reverted back into Izuku's skin, and emerged as a gauntlet once more. "Please, elaborate on these 'quirks'."

Izuku took a moment to try and organise the lifetime of information crammed into his brain. Where do you even begin?

"Well, I guess, it all started about 200 years ago… Agh, what am I doing? We don't need to go back that far! They're just, abilities! Powers that people have, they're born with them! Most everyone has one!"

"Fascinating," Cestus commented. "So those features on your classmates, are manifestations of a biological phenomenon?"

"Exactly!" Izuku said, relieved it hadn't been a difficult explanation. "People can do things like fly, shoot fire out of their hands, talk to geese, all sorts. They're what make hero society possible!"

"A biological phenomenon allowing for special abilities. So the All Might character you showed me in that video wasn't just doing consistent cardio workouts…"

There was a longer pause this time, where Izuku wondered if Cestus had started buffering.

"Well, my understanding has improved. Thank you, Midoriya." Cestus finally said. "Though, it brings to mind another question. What is the nature of your own quirk?"

"Ah, yeah…" The question hung in the air. "I'm actually quirkless, I don't have one."

"Interesting. That would reframe your request into one of higher emotional significance," Cestus said, no hint of negativity in their tone. Izuku didn't really know why he expected otherwise, there was nothing to suggest an alien computer would have any concept of quirk based discrimination. Having a conversation on this particular topic, completely devoid of societal expectation, was oddly refreshing. "You're unequipped. It explains your excitement at my involvement, certainly."

"I know," Izuku whispered, the word catching in his throat. "I know it sounds crazy, but it's my dream, Cestus. I can't do it without you. With you, I can—"

“You can survive,” Cestus finished for him. “Potentially. But the issue remains. This path directly interferes with my primary directive of self-preservation.”

Izuku’s shoulders slumped. He knew it was going too well. "I understand, Cestus."

“Which means we can't afford to be reactive,” they continued, their tone shifting. “We must be proactive.”

"Yeah, you're ri— wait, what?"

“I believe we've found our common ground. Your survival and my own are linked, so we shouldn't wait for risk to present itself. Instead, we should try to mitigate that potential danger. By testing the limits of my defensive capabilities, we might ensure that it's avoided entirely."

Izuku blinked in surprise, "you'll really help? But after what you said before, what made you change your mind?"

"Observation. And a re-contextualisation of something one of your classmates said." The glowing orb changed to a clear white, accompanied by a thin waveform, and a slightly fuzzy recording.

"As if someone like you could fight a villain! click As if someone like you could fight a villain! click Someone like you. click

Like you. click Like you."

The recorded voice echoed in the bathroom, the familiar words sounding alien when played back. It was like hearing an insult stripped of emotion and removed entirely from its own environment, leaving just the bare words.

"The social structure of this school, and by extension, society, is predicated on the presence of quirks," Cestus clarified. "Your lack thereof places you in an at-risk state. You're a target for ridicule and physical aggression. I thought that pursuing heroism would introduce danger, but I see now that you're already in a state of elevated risk."

Izuku's breath hitched. He knew he didn't have the best time at school compared to others, but he managed, didn't he? To hear the truth said with such… clinical sincerity.

"Being passive isn't a viable strategy," Cestus continued, their light pulsing in what Izuku was beginning to interpret as focused thought. "Your desire to become a hero, while emotionally driven, aligns with my own needs. Also, I would quite like to prove people wrong."

A slow grin spread across Izuku's face, so wide it made his cheeks ache. "Then let's do it, Cestus. Let's prove people wrong!" He paused at his own words, as the smile morphed into more of a self-deprecating grimace, "actually that sounds really passive aggressive… Let's prove ourselves right! No that doesn't really work either, hang on I've got this—"

"Midoriya, your classmates still think you're defecating. We may wish to hurry."

"Right, hurrying, good idea. And… Cestus?"

"Yes, Midoriya?"

"Thanks."

Right up until lunch time, the school day came with a much more pleasant atmosphere in Izuku's opinion. This wasn't to say his classmates improved at all — they were still awful — but he found it increasingly difficult to care in any way.

He always knew he was going to be a hero, just to be a person who helped, but deep down knew the extent of it would be, like Cestus said earlier, civic duty. A high-vis jacket and a reputation for community outreach, rather than a hero costume and an arrest record.

Which was fine, truly! The important thing was to be a good person who actively made the world a kinder place to live in! But, he'd be lying to himself if he said part of him didn't crave the spotlight. It was the part of him he avoided acknowledging, but maybe now, he didn't need to try so hard to deny himself?

The result of this was a feeling of his soul being opened up, just a fraction, to let the unrealistic expectations shine through without worrying about the consequences. He was daring to dream.

Which was why, for once, he decided to eat lunch in the cafeteria with the other students instead of the roof. He was "free" now, so why avoid confrontation? Not even Kacchan threatening to blow up his things could bring him down!

"[It's a topic of some debate, but it's widely accepted there are four major schools of heroism,]" Izuku wrote between mouthfuls, trying his best not to get sauce on his book. [Spotlight, underground, rescue, and intelligence.]"

Cestus spoke into his ear, their clandestine conversation following on from the classroom, "is the distinction necessary for any logistical reason? A classification system, perhaps?"

Izuku shook his head, and turned to a fresh page. "[It's more for branding, a way to make your speciality apparent from a glance. Spotlight heroes favour brighter colours, underground; darker. Rescue heroes are more likely to use visible support equipment, and intelligence gathering heroes are well known for dressing in suits and formal wear.]"

When he heard the sound of a tray clattering against the table, he didn't look up to begin with. Instead, he continued writing. But when the new person said:

"Midoriya! I've been looking everywhere for you. I've had some ideas about testing, and think I could make us some brilliant babies,"

"Oh, Hatsume," Izuku said, so engrossed in his mini-lecture he barely acknowledged her presence, "I was just telling Cestus what the—" the penny dropped. "Hatsume?! Wh-what are you doing here?! Do you go to Aldera, did your parents make you transfer?!"

The familiar pink-haired girl, now dressed in an Aldera jr high uniform, complete with crease-marks where it had clearly recently been unpackaged, laughed and hit the table with her hand. "Transferred?! Hahah! Good one, Midoriya!" She wiped a tear away. "No, god no. I bought a uniform online. You know this school has no security whatsoever? I literally walked in! The woman at the front desk just gave me an ID!"

She flashed the laminated badge, showing the name 'Mimi Hamura', "I don't even know who that is!"

"But…" Izuku had to soft reboot himself out of the shock, "why aren't you at your own school? Won't people wonder where you are?"

"Nah, I don't go anymore. After I got suspended they said I shouldn't bother coming in. I passed all the classes already, anyway," she shrugged.

"Hatsume, that's getting expelled."

"Is it? Huh, oh well. More important things to think about!" She moved in closer, fully leaning over the table, and did a terrible stage-whisper. "I wanna shoot you with a rocket."

Izuku's entire face turned bright red, "o-okay."

"Midoriya, I'd rather we not leap directly to heavy ordinance," Cestus said in his ear. "I'd rather we start smaller."

"Cestus asked if we could maybe… tone it down a little?" He gulped, feeling the heat still radiating off him.

This didn't have the intended effect of lowering her enthusiasm, "THEY TALK TO YOU IN YOUR HEAD?!"

Unsurprisingly, this made almost the entire student body turn and stare at them. The stranger none of them had seen before practically climbing over a table, and the quirkless kid with the social skills of a ham sandwich were suddenly the centre of attention.

Izuku wasn't, at any point in time, allowed to be the centre of attention. The ire of Katsuki Bakugo couldn't be avoided for long.

"Keep your goddamn traps shut!!" he yelled, adopting one of his more feral intimidating poses as he stomped over. "I'm trying to eat in peace!! Who the hell is this?! You think you're better than all of us?!"

"Kacchan! No, no I don't think that! She doesn't think that! We were just talking!" Izuku frantically tried to explain, but it wasn't working.

Mei on the other hand, just smiled again. "Midoriya! You should fight this guy!"

"What?!" Izuku yelped.

"I concur, you should fight him."

Bakugo raised his palms, and fired a short explosion at the ceiling, "I'LL KILL YOU!!"

"This is going to give me so many ideas for babies!"

Chapter Text

Mei wasn't much of a fighter. Cliché would dictate that makes her a lover instead, only the binary options hadn't worked out that way either. If she had to pick a sub-class, she would probably say researcher, gadgeteer, maybe tinkerer. Artificer, if she could remember how to pronounce it. Basically any of those job titles you might give a gnome. But fighter, that was left to the spiky-haired clients with the big swords and the pauldrons.

Despite this, Mei knew the clientele needed expertise in all fields if she was to outfit them properly. She needed to be an expert in combat, or at least, enough of an expert that she could reliably fake her way through. The problem was that learning things takes time, time is finite when you have so many babies to prototype, and watching action movies on a second screen is a lot more fun.

The end result was that everything Mei knew about fighting was choreographed, and mostly part of the Brake Cutter series of films. ("When Brake Cutter cuts loose, there's no slowing down!")

Real fights had a lot less rhythm to them, and the sound effects were much worse. The extent of this was becoming more and apparent the longer she watched Midoriya kite Bakugo. The crowd of violence-loving middle-schoolers forming a semicircle around them were finding their cheers turning to embarrassed concern.

"What the hell is he doing?!" Mei hollered, arms flailing and directed at nobody in particular, certainly not the poor second year student whose shoulders she just grabbed, "this isn't how fights go!"

"I don't know! I'm sorry!"

Mei wasn't really listening to him. On the tarmacced Warfield of the Aldera playground, Bakugo was having similar complaints. "Stop running away from me, you damn nerd! Turn around and face me!"

"This is safer!" Izuku yelled back, keeping a good ten metres ahead. It would have been more if the other students would stop blocking his path.

"Midoriya, a different tactic might be in order," Cestus calmly buzzed in his skull, "the more you make him run, the more destructive his quirk seems to be getting."

The sweat! His usual heroic tactic of running away (heroically) clearly wasn't going to cut it this time, and was actually making things quite a lot worse. Who could have known that not facing your problems head on would have a negative impact?! All Might never mentioned that in any of his material! Aside from those dozens of times he mentioned precisely that.

Izuku skidded to a halt and raised in arms in surrender, right as Bakugo was bearing down on him with an explosion ready and waiting. The fear of being bodied was real, but he could at least hold on to the assumption Bakugo wouldn't actually murder someone in front of the entire student body.

"WAIT!!" Izuku yelled, "TIME OUT!"

The blast died at Bakugos fingertips, "put your damn hands down!"

"Listen to me! The people don't want to see you blast me!"

"Blast him, Bakugo!" A kid in the crowd shouted at exactly the wrong moment.

"Uh…" Izuku grimaced, "I mean they want to see a real fight! It's like All Might said in issue 17 of Martial Prowess! "Control the pedestal on which your opponent stands, and you control the landscape of battle! Equal footing equals equality, even for your opponents!!""

"Psychological warfare, interesting choice."

Bakugo stared, his sparking palms slowly lowering. The sheer, unadulterated nerve of it was so baffling it short-circuited his rage. "Are you quoting a damn magazine at me?"

"A very prestigious magazine!" Izuku corrected, his hands still up, palms open. "The point is, Kacchan, this isn't an equal fight! Look at this!" He gestured wildly at the open, flat expanse of the playground tarmac. "Nobody would be impressed by uh…." He had to think of a simile, quick. "By Arceus KOing a Bidoof!"

"Beat his ass, Bakugo! We'd all be really impressed!" The same kid from before shouted.

"Wait wait wait!" Izuku pleaded, "prove to everyone how strong you are on a level playing field! No quirks! Just skill!"

Mei pushed her way to the front of the small crowd, which wasn't difficult for someone of her exuberance, and waved like she wasn't already the loudest person there, "Midoriya!! Try doing a backflip kick!!"

"See!" Izuku latched on to the absurd request to prove his point, "the people want hand to hand combat!"

Bakugo scowled, and cracked his knuckles. "I don't need to use a quirk to show you you're not a hero, and to show you what happens to liars,"

"Kacchan, I wasn't lying,"

"Shut the hell up! Get off the damn floor, no more running! We're settling this, here and now!"

Izuku could feel his heart rate quicken, but he squared his shoulders, and raised his mitts. "Okay. Good. Here and now."

"Excellent work goading him, Midoriya, just as we discussed."("We didn't discuss any of this!") "Now, I've spent enough time in your circulatory system to understand how your unoptimised meat-sacks operate, so just follow my instructions and we'll be fine."

Cestus was right, this was a clear advantage! What other person could boast a super-intelligence feeding them second by second combat analysis?

"Rotate your cuffs to approximately 33° relative to the positioning of your left foot, maintaining a gait distance of—"

THUMP.

Bakugo's fist connected square with Izuku's shoulder. Or rather, the mass of nanomachines that flooded the area before the attack could cause damage. The unexpected force of the blow still caused him to take a step back — he could mitigate the impact, but that didn't stop physics from existing.

Regardless of how much Izuku was impacted, Bakugo had analysed enough combat to know when something hasn't gone the way it should. The nerd was effected, but he wasn't injured. At all.

Izuku tried to feint left and right, looking more like he was avoiding a bee than fighting. Cestus returned to his ear, "apologies again, Midoriya. He's faster than most I've observed, but I believe I'm capable of at least blocking his attacks. I'll do my best to relay important information to you with a greater haste—"

THUMP THUMP PUNCH

A strike to the ribs, one to the solar plexus, another to the kidney. Exactly the same result as before.

"Why won't you go down?!" Bakugo roared.

It wasn't lost on the spectators, either, as one girl leaned over to her friend and commented, "dude, Midoriya is tanking those hits! What the hell happened to him? Did he get shredded over the weekend?"

"Maybe it's like one of those hysterical strength things," her companion said, "like when moms lift cars, or get frost breath. Or maybe he got a quirk…"

Bakugo immediately turned and shouted them down, "he doesn't have a damn quirk! I'm just not hitting him HARD enough!!"

"Kacchan, we don't have to do this!" Izuku pleaded once more.

"Damn right we do!"

At this moment, Cestus was given a choice. The direction of the fist was obvious, they knew precisely where the punch was headed, the approximate extent of the damage — both physically and to Midoriya's emotional well-being — but the issue was the number of observers. They could, very simply, block the attack. But to do so would put their own personal self-preservation above that of their host.

They'd apologise again in a moment.

CRUNCH

Izuku went down, that time. A sharp pain bloomed in the centre of Izuku's nose, blood sprayed out and he hit the dirt like a puppet with its strings cut. He could barely hear the victoriously heavy breathing from the boy who had just popped him directly in the centre of the face, or his only friend shouting about it being a cheap shot, and totally breaking the choreo.

Izuku inhaled sharply through his mouth, trying to will the pain away. It hurt, a LOT. But at the very least he had the pain of his broken wrist as a measuring stick, and this one didn't feel quite as severe. Still, he was finding it difficult to find words.

Luckily, Cestus' calming voice was keeping him grounded. "Cover your face, Midoriya. Your nose is broken, I'm going to fix it."

Izuku did as commanded, and slapped his hands over his face. The world was a muffled roar of jeers, filtered through the palms of his hands, but beneath his skin it felt like his face was full of ants. Hyper-efficient worker bees grabbing his nasal bones and cartilage and putting them back into place with clicks and snaps.

"I've reset your septum," Cestus narrated with a serene detachment, "I've also used some nanomachines to seal the microfractures, and gotten rid of the excess blood. You may feel a slight tickling sensation."

A slight ticking sensation was underselling it, it felt, well… Gross was the only way of putting it. He rolled away, hoping to hide his face better from the crowd. Outside of this personal torture chamber of clicks inside his head, Bakugo stood over him, chest heaving.

"See? That's what you get! That's what happens when a quirkless nobody tries to stand up to me!" His breathing punctuated the clean victory he'd earned.

But then, Izuku began to push himself up, one hand still on his face to begin with. The crowd watched stunned as he lowered his arm, revealing a nasty purple bruise and a noticeably un-broken nose.

"I'm not down yet, Kacchan…"

The boy who had been jeering from the crowd earlier was the first to react, slapping his hands to his face in shock, "Holy FUCK! Did you see that?! Midoriya just popped his nose back into place!!"

"That's hardcore!!"

"All of you shut the hell up! It's just another trick!"

Izuku's adrenaline fueled confidence was increasing, spurred on by the shifting allegiances spreading through the crowd. The perspective he'd gotten recently, from Cestus and Mei, had made Izuku realise just how unhealthy his relationships at school were — and despite his desire to see the good in others, his benefit of the doubtometer constantly running, seeing Katsuki humbled was… a boost.

"I'm right here, Kacchan! Everyone's watching, so what's it gonna be?!"

The tides were turning, and for once Bakugo wasn't in control of a situation. He was King Canute commanding an ocean to retreat, but learning even the mightiest among them had their limits.

…No, no that wasn't true, was it? He hadn't found his limit, he'd been talked into lowering himself to a base level. Manipulated into mediocrity just like the lying nerd had manipulated everyone else here! Katsuki Bakugo wasn't WEAK, his hands had been tied! This whole charade was a trap, a web of words spun by a lying, quirkless wannabe to make him look bad. To drag him down to a level where dumb luck and freakish pain tolerance could be mistaken for strength.

The no quirk rule had been broken as quickly as it had been established, the telltale orange glow of an explosion intermingling with a wounded pride built in Bakugo's palms — the only thing burning hotter was the indignant fury in his eyes.

The smell of caramel in the air grew stronger alongside the palpable aura of incoming danger. Izuku's eyes widened in a combination of fear and confusion, this was a lot, even from Kacchan. Cestus could repair a wrist, or a nose, but could they reattach a limb? Repair everything?

Every fibre of Izuku's being rang out with a singular command, a parasympathetic plea. "SURVIVE."

Deep within Izuku's blood, the core of Cestus felt an electric shiver.

It was dark. No… foggy, like seeing through opaque glass. Like the idea of vision as described through sounds… an echo of shapes, moving to and fro, tall creatures. They couldn't make out the faces, or the room. Noises bled into garbled unintelligible speech. Speech that bled into Syntax and language the harder they concentrated.

"…Core running as expected. Combat scenario disengaged, uploading shield deployment to central processing unit, estimated replication time, 3.7 microseconds,"

The collective breaths of a few dozen students inhaled at once, their tenuous grasp on what constituted heroism or bullying slipping even further. Bakugo, the apex predator of Aldera jr high, was bearing his teeth. But what once looked like a show of superiority now looked more like a posturing, cornered animal.

Izuku threw his palms up in an instinctual gesture of protection, the word "DON'T" tearing from his throat. Heat exploded from Bakugo's palm. Mei broke from the crowd immediately, her feet pounding against the floor. Everything slowed.

But then, Cestus crashed back to the present day, scrambled knowledge of a previous life knitting itself back together in the tiny seconds of space between an explosion and an impact.

"Deploying."

At that mechanical thought, nanomachines coalesced on Izuku's palms in an instant. Then, at the last moment, a half-dome of interconnected, green hexagons erupted from his hands.

The physical presence of Bakugo's attack slammed into the construct with a heavy weight, connecting with a deep and resonant sound. The latticed, opaque hexagons shimmered like a stone hitting a lake, a shockwave of energy bursting out to kick up a cloud of dust and gravel.

Those in the front row seats shielded their eyes from the blast of dirt and heat, but Izuku had his wide open. He was fully protected behind his shield, still crouched in the same position as before. Chest still heaving with adrenaline, he could make out Bakugo's cloudy shape through the material — even without a clear image he could recognise the shift from anger to confusion.

With a gesture of his hand, Cestus understood and retreated back into Izuku, the hexagons dematerialising from the outer edges.

For a moment there was nothing but silence, Bakugo's eyes darting between Izuku's face and his raised palms. Then the fuse ran out.

"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!" He yelled.

The crowd was equally as frantic, some trying to push their way closer to the action, practically falling over each other with cries of confusion and shock. Midoriya has a quirk?! It was too impossible to believe, but it happened right in front of their eyes! The only thing stopping a torrent of middle-schoolers was Bakugo wordlessly threatening more violence against anyone who stepped too close.

As far as Bakugo was concerned, this was another stone to add to the pile of crimes committed by the weakling. Even bigger than the rock chiseled "quirkless wannabe," or the one with "lies about acts of heroism" and "thinks he's better than me." This rock was tantamount to a boulder, something big enough to fit the severity of the offense — "Lied about being quirkless."

The interrogation would have continued, if someone hadn't jumped on his back.

Mei wrapped an arm around Bakugo's neck in what she probably thought was a sleeper hold, and wrapped her legs around his waist like a determined koala, "Hands off, blondie, fun's over!"

"Get the hell off me!!" Bakugo yelled, grabbing and throwing Mei over his shoulder and on to the floor.

Izuku lunged forward, grabbing hold of Bakugo's legs. "Don't touch her!" He yelled, toppling him to the ground.

When Mei scrambled closer and tried to put him in a full nelson, it looked like the fight had entered the final stage. The crowd had sat through a chase, a beating, a surprise, and now… three people awkwardly grappling.

"Get off me!"

"Midoriya! Put him in a leg lock! I've got him contained!"

"If Iet go he'll kick me!"

People looked at each other with secondhand embarrassment. Not even Midoriya's lack of quirklessness could improve this.

"Should we… get a teacher?" One onlooker asked, while Mei looked like she was trying to pull Bakugo's head off his shoulders.

It turned out nobody needed to. A shadow fell over them, sudden and absolute, blotting out the afternoon sun. A low rumble vibrated through the ground. The entire crowd looked up as an enormous figure crouched down over them, a playful smile on her face. With a movement as casual as brushing lint off a shirt, the 60ft woman placed a single, impossibly large finger between the tangled brawl, effortlessly prying them apart like squabbling toddlers.

Mt Lady looked down at the now-separated trio, who were blinking up at her in stunned silenced.

"Ugh," she rolled her eyes, her voice echoing across the courtyard. "Kamui, hun, it's just kids."

Kamui Woods landed in a roll, effortlessly righting himself without breaking a sweat. "This is where the explosion came from, yes?"

"I mean, I guess?" Mt Lady put her hands behind her head and shrunk down to a smaller stature. "Just some little twerps fighting over a girl. False alarm. Come on, if we hurry we can beat traffic…" she sighed, already leaving.

"Fighting over a—" Kamui Woods eyes locked on to Midoriya, and the fond exasperation of their multiple encounters flooded back. Well, they were overdue. "Crowd of students," he called out. "School's over the for the day, please return home."

Nobody moved for a moment, before Mt Lady yelled "All of you! Scram!"

The three brawlers tried to escape with the crowd, but it just earned them a gaze steely enough to penetrate Kamui's wooden mask.

"Not you. You stay."

Pro hero interrogations normally didn't happen at picnic benches, but so many other things that normally didn't happen were happening lately, so what was more to add to the pile? On one side of the table sat Kamui Woods, with a posture radiating authority and self-assuredness. Next to him, Mt Lady filed her nails.

On the other side, Izuku sat like a schoolboy who was about to get in trouble for eating too many sweets, trapped somewhere between worry for how we would explain anything — and giddy fanboyism of sharing a table with two thirds of The Lurkers. He was also literally trapped between Mei, who took the situation as more of a time sink than anything else, and Bakugo, whose legs were bound to the table to stop him kicking everyone.

"So," Kamui Woods began, steepling his fingers. "Cars to explain why the three of you were fighting?"

"Data acquisition!" Mei blurted out. "Scientific inquiry."

"That's mostly true!" Izuku nodded, "Mei and um, another friend, have been helping me with defending myself. The fight kind of started because we thought I was getting better at it…"

Bakugo looked at them both and scoffed, "that's bullshit!"

Kamui held up a hand to stop him, "you don't believe they've been training? The exams are coming up, it would make sense."

"Not that! That shit about him having another friend. This nerd doesn't HAVE any friends."

"I'm his friend!" Mei retorted, "ipso facto!"

"Ipso facto I don't even know who the hell you are!"

"Well now you do!" She shot back. "Mei Hatsume, future tech pioneer and Mr Midoriya's r&d department. Pending some documents I still need to send him."

"I don't give a hell ass damn who the shit you are," Bakugo snapped, fast running out of swears, "he owes me a goddamn explanation for what the fuck came out of his bastard hands!"

Mt Lady laughed, "damn, kid."

Kamui didn't find it quite as funny, "that's enough. Midoriya, what's he talking about?"

Izuku's blood ran cold. This was it. The lie was too big, the audience too professional.

"Midoriya," Cestus spoke in his ear, "it was my recklessness that lead us to this situation, and I can only apologise. Whatever path you choose to take, I understand and you have my support."

The others couldn't hear them, but the implications of their secret conversation made Izuku's frantic heart rate steady.

That was the first time anyone had genuinely apologised to Izuku for doing wrong. Sure, kids had been pressured into it by parents before, but this was different. Cestus had made a mistake that endangered them both, acknowledged it, and took responsibility. It was a level of respect Izuku had never been afforded.

And for that he would lie like the seediest lawyer on the side of a bench.

"Kacchan's right." The words were stated so simply that the clear admission completely took the wind out of Bakugo's sails. "I have a quirk."

Mei tried to help how she could, wondering if he had said it accidentally, "you mean a… support item, right, Midoriya??"

"No, it's a quirk," he sighed. "I… lied to you, about it being a support item. I was worried what people would think. About me being a… late bloomer." Lying was difficult for him, but telling the truth — that there was an alien bio computer in his skin — could result in far worse consequences for everyone. Especially Cestus.

Mei looked into his eyes and felt the penny dropped, immediately stepping on board. "Oh. …Ohh! That explains why the… gravitational stabilisers were misaligned! I'd set them to a quirkless genome, duh!" she smacked herself in the forehead to sell it.

Kamui tilted his head, and for a moment said nothing. "…Well, it's clear you have intelligent friends," (phew!) "but a quirk manifestation at your age is incredibly rare. Are you absolutely certain?"

"No, no goddamn way," Bakugo slammed a hand on the table. "We all know how quirks work! You get one at 4 or you don't get one at all, they don't just show up! There's obviously more to this he's not telling!"

"Eh, I dunno," Mt Lady leaned back, "Kids can get quirks whenever. You're what, like, eight?"

"He's 14, Yuu."

"Seriously? Huh." She went back to not paying attention.

"I know it sounds crazy!" Izuku said, trying to project confidence but falling somewhere around panicked sincerity. "Believe me, nobody was more surprised than I was!"

"He's lying! They did the x-rays, the whole damn thing! He has the extra joint, he's QUIRKLESS!"

The mention od the toe joint, a debunked but still pervasive marker of quirklessness, made Kamui Wood pause. It was flimsy evidence, but spoke to a long-held belief.

Izuku swallowed. His entire life had been defined by that doctor's appointment. It was the bedrock on which Bakugo built his superiority and Izuku tried to build a flimsy ladder.

"Tell them the truth," Cestus advised calmly. "The truth, re-contextualised. It's the most effective form of deception."

"I do have the toe joint, and they said I'd never get a quirk." He looked Bakugo dead in the eye, a flicker of something defiant in his gaze. "But doctors can be wrong, Kacchan."

The simple statement, delivered without a stutter, hit Bakugo harder than any punch. It was a direct challenge not just to the facts, but to the fourteen-year-old reality they had both inhabited.

"So what is this quirk, exactly?" Kamui pressed, pulling the conversation back on track. "What do you call it?"

Izuku's mind went blank. He hadn't thought that far ahead. Call it? What did he call a sentient alien nanite colony living in his bloodstream? "Uh… I haven't thought of one yet. Personal Armour?"

Mt Lady stopped filing her nails. "…Fancy name," she said with a sarcastic roll of her eyes.

"I-I'm still workshopping it!"

Kamui Woods stood, and the air of casual questioning vanished, replaced by the full authority of a top-ten hero. "This ends here. All of you. No more playground fights. Bakugo, your temper is going to get you into serious trouble one day. I suggest you learn to control it before you're trying to explain it to a judge instead of me." He turned his attention to Izuku. "And you. Lying about having a quirk is one thing, but if you have one now, you need to get it registered. Immediately. Do you understand?"

Izuku nodded frantically. "Yes, sir!"

Sensing a gap in proceedings, Mei jumped to her feet and grabbed Izuku's arm. "Wow look at the time! So sorry, heroes, but we have to go, right now!"

"Where's the fire, goggles?" Mt Lady raised an eyebrow.

"My capacitor is running too hot! Or cold! The bad one!" Mei said, her voice pitched up slightly too high. "We've gotta go recalibrate the uh…"

"Static discharge!" Izuku helped. "Can't let it build up too much again!"

Mei grabbed his arm, already pulling him away from the table. "Thanks for the chat! Super informative! Let's go, Midoriya!" she yelled, dragging a stumbling Izuku behind her as she broke into a full sprint out of the playground.

The two heroes watched them go, leaving Bakugo still tied to the bench, seething.

With a flick of his wrist, the branches binding Bakugo's legs retracted into Kamui's arm. "You're free to go. Go home. And think about what I said."

Bakugo shot up, kicking the bench in frustration. He glared in the direction Midoriya had fled, a promise of future violence burning in his eyes, before stomping off without another word.

"Well," Mt. Lady said, stretching with a groan. "That was a whole lot of nothing. I'm starving. You wanna grab some ramen?"

"In a minute," Kamui replied, "I'm going to have a word with the principal first."

"About what? Some kids got in a scrap. Happens all the time."

"It happened in the middle of the school grounds, surrounded by dozens of other students, with explosions," Kamui countered, turning to face her. "I'm going to find out why two students were beating each other up in a playground and no teachers came to do anything about it."

"Eh," she shrugged, her hunger overriding any concern. "Just text me when you're done with your parent teacher conference."

"Don't worry. It won't take long."

Chapter Text

Kamui Woods — real name Shinji Nishiya, though he realised a while ago he refers to himself as Kamui even in his internal monologue — hadn't stepped inside a middle school since he finally managed to escape his own eight years ago. The unpleasant memories didn't quite flood back so much as incessantly drip on his forehead from the leaky pipe of his subconscious.

It wasn't a place he enjoyed being, or thinking about too often. But there were saplings in his forest in need of nutrients, and he couldn't be sure they were getting fed. Sometimes a groundskeeper has to get his hands dirty, and that's exactly what he was prepared to do.

Getting an audience with the principal had been as easy as wearing his hero costume, doors opening for him with barely a question. The front entrance display cabinet he passed on the way, an ostentatious affair piled with bronze plaques and silver trophies, pointed to an establishment which prized a connection to heroics. Particularly a man Kamui had never heard of, named Ribeye. The amount of pictures of him standing next to the beanpole of a principal pointed to him either being a former student or the only person who agreed to the photoshoot.

(Kamui would later learn that Ribeye was stripped of his license after a lengthy fraud case.)

Principal Tenguzawa's office was a further display of the school's posturing, and their nagging attempts at displaying competency. Although Kamui hadn't been inside many middle school offices, he doubted most of them had over a dozen signed certificates on the wall. Certainly impressive at first glance, until you look closer and see the words "bronze swimming certificate", "best kept shed" and "honorary doctorate in childology" watermarked with the logo for funtificates.biz.

"Mr Tenguzawa," Kamui began, before he was interrupted by a gaunt hand.

"Please, call me Doctor."

He didn't. "Mr Tenguzawa, I'm a local hero, Kamui Woods," it felt appropriate to casually display authority instead of whatever it was this school was doing, "I was part of the team who broke up the fight on school premises earlier today?"

The vacant expression on the principal told him everything he needed to know. This man had no idea anything had happened. Which either meant wilful ignorance, or the sound of an explosion at this school was so commonplace it didn't deserve a reaction.

"…Right! Of course, the altercation, yes," the principal definitely didn't have any degrees in acting. "All in order now. Why I have all the paperwork right here," he patted the desktop next to him, before realising there was nothing there and scrambling through a drawer for something official looking. He hid the logo for a stationery company before he thought Kamui would see.

This was exactly what Kamui was afraid of. Nothing was going to be done about this.

"That's so good to hear," Kamui said in a gentle tone. It was completely fake, but still gentle. "Would you mind if I got a copy of the disciplinary paperwork for my agency? Procedure, you understand."

Heroic Bureaucracy seemed like an important enough thing it would make Mr Tenguzawa amicable, if only to feel like he was contributing to something real. The fact he had no paperwork would just make his reaction all that more interesting.

"Yes, of course! Not a problem not an issue not a concern" the principal said with a wide smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "I'll have that sent over right away."

He adopted a solemn expression, and closed his eyes, "anything to help our brave heroes."

Kamui let the silence build, and felt his jaw clench. He took a breath and willed himself not to dangle this fool upside down by his feet.

"I thought I could get you to slip up by leading you down a garden path, but you're so used to lying that these brambles need a firmer hand. So I'll be more blunt. Do you actually know the names of the students involved in the fight?"

The principals plastic smile tremored at the corners, becoming more of a rictus grin. "Their names. Of course… It was young, ah… Rrrreeee…"

Kamui slowly shook his head.

"Eeeeooooo…" Tenguzawa's mouth switched to another random syllable, "faa…?"

Kamui rose from his chair, standing commandingly over the suffering educator. For a second he had a flash of a moment long ago. It was a different office back then, Kamui was much smaller, much less confrontational… but the men he saw standing before him both times were two peas in a pod. People who had so fully convinced themselves they were doing a good job that they refused to see the myriad ways they were wrong. Refusing to take responsibility, and instead ignoring the problem.

Little Shinji didn't have the voice, but Kamui Woods did.

"Stop talking." The words weren't loud or spoken in anger, but they pinned Tenguzawa to his seat and silenced his stammering regardless. Kamui leaned forward and put his hand on the polished desk.

"Their names," he said in a dangerous rumble, "are Izuku Midoriya and Katsuki Bakugo. I know this because I asked them. I asked them, because there were no teachers present to help them — not that I'm sure any teachers present would try to help."

The principal flinched, the smile cracking to reveal more of the hollow man hiding beneath. "Now see here, I won't have you talking—"

"No, you see here," Kamui interrupted, "one of your students used a quirk on another with such force we could hear it from two streets away, and yet you did nothing. You knew nothing."

Tenguzawa dabbed at his damp forehead with a handkerchief, "students can be boisterous! Boys will be—"

"Do not. Finish. That sentence." The spark of a memory was unpleasant and unwelcome. Of cowering in a hallway while a teacher ignored them. A tree hiding from lumberjacks… He pushed the memory down, the hero Kamui Woods was at work.

"The moment quirk use occurred on school property it became a public safety issue. Local law enforcement will have to be involved, maybe even the safety commission itself."

Tenguzawa turned pale, "that shouldn't be necessary, if you'll just give me a chance to speak with the boys I'm sure we can get this all sorted!"

Kamui straightened up, both in posture and authority, and clasped his own hands behind his back. "What is necessary, Mr Tenguzawa, is you drafting and implementing a new zero tolerance policy regarding violence, quirk use, and bullying — both physical and verbal. You have failed in your duty to protect the saplings in your care."

The principal swelled with indignation, "I'll have you know Aldera Jr High has an impeccable record! We nurture future heroes!"

The only thing Tenguzawa nurtured was a delusion. Kamui was bored of this now. "The policy will be sent to The Lurkers agency by the end of this week, and you'll be personally announcing the rule changes in a mandatory assembly. The trees have ears, Mr Tenguzawa, and if I hear a single word about this school again…"

He didn't need to finish the threat, he'd made his point.

Tenguzawa looked like he was about to faint. He could only manage a weak, jerky nod.

With his point firmly made, there was little reason to stick around. Kamui's younger self would have been proud of him a thousand times over, but this environment was the lion's den. An unexpected benefit of climbing into this cage, though, turned out putting poor excuses for authority figures in their place was actually quite fun. Without granting the man a second glance, Kamui Woods left the office, closing the door with a quiet, final click, leaving Principal Tenguzawa to his work.

Izuku and Mei stood side by side a few metres from the caved in entrance to her workshop, now little more than a pile of blackened rubble and scorched concrete. The ground under their feet still bore the soot-stains of what happened in there, like the workshop itself had tried to launch into orbit and failed halfway. Fittingly, it looked like something had exploded in there.

The thing that had exploded in there swallowed sheepishly and glanced sidelong at Mei, who hadn't said a word since they'd arrived. "sorry about your garage, Hatsume," Izuku offered quietly.

She took a deep breath, and blinked a few times. This was the first time they'd returned to the scene of the crime, the exit being a hasty one. Now being back here after the dust had settled, it seemed almost normal. That was probably the scariest part for her, Izuku surmised, time passing into this new status quo…

"Fuck me, we really did a number on this place!" She suddenly announced with what sounded suspiciously like delight. Maybe she wasn't quite as emotionally affected as he assumed. "Imagine what it must have been like from outside! KABOOM!!"

Mei punctuated this by leaping off the ground and throwing both arms up, nearly clotheslining Izuku in the face.

He jerked back, blinking. "You don't seem all that… upset?"

"Are you kidding?" she said brightly. "Look at that blast radius! I made that dynamo in six minutes, imagine what I can do with real equipment!"

She gestured again, like an artist showcasing her masterpiece. Honestly, Izuku couldn't tell if she was being ironic or if she genuinely admired the chaos. Could go either way, really.

"Do you want to, I don't even know…" he trailed off, "Do an inventory or something?

"Nah, no point," she said it with the same casual tone someone might use when deciding where to get takeout. "Whole thing's done for."

From over Izuku's shoulder, a flickering light appeared, and Cestus blinked to life — the holographic sphere projecting from a small disc situated on Izuku's neck. The computer chimed in helpfully, "Astute observation. In a way, this is like seeing where I was born. I thought that would be interesting to contribute."

Mei bowed. "Congrats on the birth trauma, buddy."

"Do you want to talk about it, Mei, or…?"

She waved a dismissive hand through the air. "Not much to talk about. I had a workshop, now I don't. There's way more important stuff I could have lost, but didn't."

Cestus chimed in again, this time sounding curiously analytical. "Hatsume appears uncharacteristically calm about losing her worldly possessions."

Izuku couldn't help agreeing with his nanotech companion, she was practically zen about the whole thing. Still, emotional trauma wasn't exactly his area of expertise. There weren't even any pearls of wisdom from the symbol of peace springing to mind, so he offered the only thing he could. Friendship.

"Well if you ever want to just vent at someone, you know where to find me."

Mei's eyes immediately widened, and her entire posture shot up like a meerkat on patrol. "Wait…" spinning on her heels, she grabbed Izuku by the shoulders and stared directly into his soul.

"Midoriya, you're a GENIUS!"

"I am?"

"Meet me on the beach in fifteen minutes! And bring Cestus!!"

And with that, she was gone, vanishing around the corner kicking up a storm of dust behind her.

Izuku coughed and waved it away, before looking to Cestus. "…you hear that, Cestus? She said I'm a genius!"

"I'm ecstatic for you."

There was something of a spring in Izuku's step as he navigated the suburban streets towards Takoba Beach. So much happened that day, but even the bad parts had somehow made good. There weren't many people who could boast winning — though winning was a general term — a fight against their schoolyard bully, looking strong in front of a crowd of their peers, and getting a compliment from a girl all in the same day.

And there was also the matter of the cat who had clawed its way out of a bag and mauled whoever put it there in the first place. Everyone had seen the shield.

"Do you think Personal Armour was a bad name?" Izuku asked, seeing no need to hide the fact he was talking to no-one. Bluetooth headsets were a godsend that meant nobody assumed he was crazy. For all anyone else knew, he was on a high profile conference call sealing a merger.

He continued, "This is all you, Cestus, so I don't want to say anything you'd be uncomfortable with."

Cestus' voice piped into his ear calmly, "I don't entirely see the reasoning behind branding abilities, but I would have gone with something more descriptive. Like Adaptive Defence and Reconstructive Symbiotic Nanotech Integration."

"We'll workshop it," Izuku compromised.

This seemed to appease Cestus, who continued on, "But while I have your ear,"

"Cestus! Was that a joke?"

"Yes. Your earlier words about this being "all me", I'm not sure that's the case. I didn't know I could deploy shields until that moment, and I think your intent might have played a part."

Izuku stopped walking, and considered what he was being told. "All I remember thinking was that I needed something to protect me."

"Indeed. Your panic had an effect. It would seem you can exert some level of willpower over my functions."

"But how is that possible?" Izuku asked in genuine confusion. "I didn't think you even knew what you're capable of, other than the armour parts. How could I be effecting something neither of us know anything about?!"

"I have no idea, Midoriya. It warrants further study."

"Agreed…" Izuku said softly.

Mei was standing at the water's edge, when the sound of Izuku's trainers crunching through the sand broke her concentration. The schematics she'd been drawing with a stick washed away with the tide, just as she locked eyes with him.

"You're late!" She announced with a theatrical jump. "Lucky for you, time is relative and something that analogous shouldn't be used against someone. Perfect time to show up to things is the perfect time to show up to things, that's what I always say."

Izuku raised an eyebrow, "I think you just invented a logical tautology?"

"I invent lots of things!" Mei grinned, and pushed her goggles up to her forehead, doing little to fix how erratic the sea breeze had made her hair. "But that's not the point. The point—" she jabbed a finger at his chest. "Is you."

"Me?"

"You said 'you know where to find me,' and it hit me like a runaway cement truck into a gorilla enclosure. Cestus! Right now, they're basically a single hive mind, right?"

"It's more of an autonomous mass operated via a central control point, but yes."

"Right, right," Mei waved a hand, "a central point of consciousness that needs to be in contact with all the little nanobots in order to make them work. It's like an unbroken electrical current."

She grabbed Izuku's right arm, "So if you wanted this hand to be armoured," she then pointed down to his left foot, "and this foot to be armoured, there's no way! To operate in both places, Cestus would have to somehow bridge the gap between those two points — and they don't have the nanites to do that!"

Cestus's voice projected from the sphere on Izuku's shoulder, "She's technically correct."

"The best kind of correct!"

"I have to maintain a continuous physical connection. If I were to split my nanobots into two halves, once they disconnected from my 'core', I would have no way of exerting control over them."

Izuku scratched his chin in thought, "So would you be able to armour a hand, disconnect, then leave it like that?"

"If you'd be okay without moving your fingers." Cestus deadpanned. Which was how they always sounded, but it had more of an air of deadpan to it this time.

"But what about—" Izuku started, before he was cut off.

"Try walking without moving your ankles, and get back to me on that."

"Point taken."

"Hey!" Mei shouted, throwing her hands up again, "Genius on a roll here! Ask yourselves, what if… Cestus could be in two places at once? What if he had another place to, well… be found?"

Izuku's eyes widened as the pieces clicked together in his head. "…A secondary core."

"A WiFi hotspot for their brain!" Mei declared triumphantly. "A home away from home, another anchor point that Cestus can connect to wirelessly. Then they can split their consciousness, or at least their command authority. It could be something like a wristband, or a cute anklet, or maybe a sick tattoo — we'll workshop it — but point being, it'd be a way to form armour on two limbs simultaneously."

The implications were definitely something to consider, Cestus' relatively small amount of real estate meant they couldn't cover much more than a forearm at a time. But with this, he could at the very least cover both hands, or both feet. If nothing else, it was a new avenue to explore.

"That's a brilliant idea, Hatsume!" Izuku said in awe. "So, you've already made some kind of prototype, right? Is that why we're on the beach, big open space to test things out?"

Mei stared at him, her grin falling away into more of a look of complete befuddlement.

"Are you insane?" she asked, her voice flat. "It's been like, 20 minutes. I'm good, but I'm not that good. We're at the beach because I had to take my dog for a walk. Scruffy needed to get out the house."

Just as she said it, a chaotic bundle of brown and white fur came bounding up the beach, a piece of driftwood in its mouth and a trail of sand flying in its wake. The dog, a shiba inu who looked like it had been put through a tumble drier, dropped the wood at Mei's feet and barked happily.

"BARK"

Izuku looked from the hyperactive, panting animal to the girl who had, less than an hour ago, shrugged unconcerned at the smouldering remains of her own workshop.

"…You have a dog?"

"Of course I have a dog," Mei said, like it was incredibly obvious. She bent down and ruffled Scruffy's ears with genuine affection. "He's a very good boy. Helps me de-stress after babies explode. Don't you, Scruffy?"

Scruffy responded with another excited bark, his tail wagging so hard his whole body wiggled.

Izuku stood there for a moment, processing this new, and somehow completely mind-boggling piece of information. Mei Hatsume, mad scientist, had a fluffy dog. Named Scruffy.

"Anyway!" Mei said, straightening up and clapping the sand from her hands. "Another point of business… What are you gonna do now?"

"H-huh?" Izuku stammered. "About what?"

"I believe she means about our public display."

"Oh. Right. That." Izuku had naively hoped that elephant could be ignored for a short while longer, but it seemed there was really no putting it off. "Well, I want to tell my Mom everything, obviously. There's no way I'd be able to keep a secret living under the same roof."

"Fair, fair." Mei hummed, "But have you considered just… lying through your teeth?"

"I can't lie to my mom, Hatsume! Especially not if I want to actually practice for the entrance exam."

Cestus' voice chimed in, "Then might I suggest telling her a similar lie to the one you told the wooden man?"

"A late blooming quirk? I guess I could, at least, for the time being. You're basically a quirk, so it's not really a lie. …Right?"

Mei put an arm around his shoulder, "Whatever helps you sleep at night, Midoriya. But first!" she declared, her entire focus snapping away from secrets and locking onto the furry creature at her feet. "This little mister needs some exercise, yes he does! Who's a good baby? Who's mommy's little scrapheap scrounger?"

"BARK BARK"

Chapter Text

"So… yeah! I have a quirk now!"

Izuku plastered on a wide grin, one he hoped screamed, "Isn't that amazing?" more than it pleaded, "PLEASE, PLEASE BELIEVE THIS! FOR THE LOVE OF ALL MIGHT, DON'T ASK QUESTIONS!!"

A delicate balance of emotion, to be sure.

His mother tilted her head at the news. Izuku had just finished settling her into the armchair, a necessary action after her initial scream sent a plate of rice crashing to the floor, and he could swear he saw just the faintest hint of despair cross her features before it gave way to a smile.

"That's… that's wonderful!" she said brightly. "Truly!"

He exhaled a breath of relief at the story landing, but luckily it came across as a breath of excitement. "Yeah! It's- it's really rare. They said it’s a one in ten million chance online."

"Websites can be checked, Midoriya, don't be too specific."

"B-but that's just speculation! The real numbers are a lot harder to verify." He sent a silent thank you to Cestus for the save. "Either way, the lightning strike must have jump-started my quirk."

In order to demonstrate, he held up his hand and allowed the liquid metal to coat his forearm. He and Cestus had decided a full visual demonstration was the best option; less chance for the lie to spiral.

Inko's eyes flicked with uncertainty between her son's earnest expression and the mysterious goo coming out of his pores. Historically, Izuku had always been coy about things that might worry her — God only knows the amount of injuries she only learned about because he sucked at hiding them — but even in her wildest dreams she couldn't expect this.

When he first unceremoniously blurted out, "Watch this," and turned a limb into a bottle green metallic substance, she was, understandably, taken aback. This was uncharted territory, and there were no chapters in the quirkless parenting books that covered sudden manifestations. Granted, there was only one quirkless parenting book, and it was so full of antiquated language that it would get you disbarred from paediatric medicine these days.

But one thing she couldn't help but notice, her son wasn’t exactly excited. Bathed in trepidation, maybe. Like there was a hesitation in this grand reveal.

She'd always tried to be a good mother, willing to listen and understand his myriad complexities, so it was unlikely his hesitation came from the act of telling her. She hoped, at least. Which meant the issue had to be an internal one. Emotional, not social. Fourteen years quirkless, and now this? He must… he must feel like a fraud. An impostor.

She had to say something to reinforce his validity.

Inko put a hand over her mouth and shook her head. "I always knew that doctor we spoke to was a quack," she frowned, bringing to mind memories of toe joint x-rays and poor bedside manner. "We should have taken you to get another opinion. I'm sorry, Izuku."

The words sent a pang of distress into Izuku's heart. "No, Mom! It's not your fault!" He'd expected confusion, fear maybe, but not guilt.

"Well, I'm not making the same mistakes this time, Izuku," Inko declared, clenching her fists and disallowing the tears to fall. "We're doing it right! Proper quirk care! Examinations! Doctors, specialists, I'll even get you in one of those top tier training centres! Whatever you need!"

The words "bad idea!!" exploded in Izuku's mind, which was probably an understatement. If you have something unexplained hanging out in your nervous system, the last thing you do is get a medical examination. That's the sort of thing you save for the third act and only when the love interest is the one doing field triage! Izuku was nowhere even near the third act!

"No!!" he shouted, throwing his hands up. Cestus chose that moment to recede back into his skin, inadvertently making it look like Izuku was "hiding" his quirk in a panic. "I- I mean, that’s not necessary, honest! I'd rather figure everything out as I go. Take it at my own pace."

Inko shook her head fervently. "That's not an option, Izuku." She stood from the chair and took hold of his hand — to comfort herself as much as him. "Please. See a specialist."

"Midoriya, please take my advice. Reject the idea."

Izuku looked into his mother's shimmering green eyes. And he folded like a pack of cards.

"…Okay. I'll see someone. I promise."

The voice behind his ear went eerily silent.

As it turned out, Aldera was as lax in its efforts to crack down on kids cutting class as it was in every other area, as Mei was currently finding out. With no workshop to spend time in, and Scruffy preferring a nap inside a pair of jeans rather than going for a walk, her days had really opened up.

So, with all that free time and the length and breadth of the city at her disposal, Mei decided to wander the halls of a school she didn't go to, while she waited for her friend to finish classes.

She hummed an offbeat tune as she meandered down a random corridor, intermittently giving beatboxing a go before giving up on the idea, and mentally upgrading the school's equipment.

"Why the hell does this school have so many clocks..?" She didn't get much time to ponder the question before noticing a skinny man pacing up and down in a particularly quest-giver like fashion. If she didn't know any better, she could swear he had a giant question mark floating above his head. Which, incidentally, gave her an idea for a new baby — some kind of augmented reality person in need o-meter, but that would have to wait until later.

"Oh bother, oh woe, oh calamity…" the man, tie loose and shirt creased, flattened his sweat-drenched hair and continued his six-foot march. "This won't do at all, no, not at all…"

"Hi!"

Principal Tenguzawa jumped higher than his retirement options, dragging his dishevelled self even further from shevellment.

"What?!" he exclaimed before clutching his chest and waiting for his heart rate to settle somewhere more appropriate. Wiping his balding brow with a handkerchief, he looked over the strange girl. "Who are you? Shouldn't you be in class?"

"I'm Hatsume. Who are you?" Hatsume asked with a sincere smile.

This question sent Tenguzawa deeper into his spiral of self-deprecation. "Oh no, it's worse than I thought! The students don't even recognise me! The school board is going to expel me for sure!"

Mei tilted her head, her zoom-enhanced eyes locking onto the core components. Frantic muttering, unkempt suit, flop-sweat, all fitting together with gear-like precision in her mind.

"Ohh," she gestured. "I know who you are."

"Oh, thank good—"

"The repairman!"

"I'm the principal!" Tenguzawa said a little louder than necessary before calming and putting his head in his hands. "I'm the principal, for now at least…" he returned to pacing the small strip of hallway, "the principal of a middle-school filled with bullies, no less! Principal until the heroes arrive and see I have no idea how to fix this!"

Those two simple words ignited a spark in the furnace of Mei's soul. With barely a second thought, she said what any self-respecting support engineer would say.

"I can help!"

"You… you can, what?" Tenguzawa dropped his hands from his sullen face and looked at her with a combination of desperation and confusion. This was a man at the end of his tether, and right now even the most frayed rope looked like a lifeline. He fell to his knees and shuffled the remainder of the way, clasping his hands in prayer. "Please, mysterious girl! How can you help me?!"

Mei put a finger to her chin in thought. How could she help here? Social issues weren't anything she'd ever fixed before, but she said the same thing the first time she fixed her dad's Bugatti. And that turned out great! They ended up with three incredibly high-impact lawnmowers and more rubber than she knew what to do with.

"I'll need a workshop, a laptop with a Norwegian VPN, and as much lemonade as you can carry," she grinned. "And an assistant!"

While we leave Principal Tenguzawa staring into the eye of a pink-haired hurricane, Izuku was dealing with a trial by fire all his own. After yesterday's display, he was sticking out like a swollen thumb, and the cause of that swelling was looming over his desk with a milk-curdling expression of resentment.

Izuku swallowed his nerve and half his tongue, lest he accidentally say something that set off the powder keg. "Um…good morning, Kacchan."

"Are you mocking me? Good morning?!"

So much for avoiding confrontation.

The winner of that year's angriest child competition squeezed the desktop wood so hard it could have splintered. "No more hiding, Midoriya! The quirk! Talk, now!"

Other students in the class, while not quite as hands on as Mr Bakugo, were in agreement. The hierarchy of power was shifting in the Aldera universe, and they needed to know by how much. The advent of a quirk had elevated Izuku from "lost cause" to somewhere around "loose cause."

"Yeah, Midoriya," a spine-headed boy who had never spoken a word to Izuku in his entire life said. "Don't keep things from your buddies like this."

"My quirk, you say?" Izuku nervously bit his lip and brushed his hair across his ear, discreetly checking for the minuscule presence of Cestus. "Well, you see, the thing is, uh,"

Normally at this point, his companion would have been there to give a flicker of advice, or at least a plea for him to make some excuse and run out of the room. The problem was that Cestus hadn't breathed a word since the talk with Inko. His inner voice was AWOL, which left him with his other inner voice.

"Long time no see, All Might Junior!" The disembodied facsimile of All Might, who existed entirely within a young boy's imagination, stood proudly on the edge of a mountaintop, surrounded by majestic eagles and his silver age cape blowing in the wind. "Surrounded, eh? I've been there! Think, All Might Jr! Think back to what I said in the June edition of Utility Belt Monthly!"

What was it again…? A hero’s best friend is a sturdy pair of underpants? No, that wasn't it… Never underestimate the power of the midday sun? Solid advice, but it wasn't that either…

Oh! Of course! After quirks and fists, a hero's greatest strength was a well-attended press conference!

"Citizens!" He began, picturing himself in front of a panel of journalists. He was no longer in Aldera middle-school, he was in news studio 1! He was All Might Jr, the number 2 hero (he wasn't going to arrogant enough to claim number 1) and this was being broadcast on every network in the country.

"Er, classmates! I uh, the the the uh… quirk!"

Izuku wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, "it's so hot in here, is anyone else hot?" He mumbled. "It's so good to, to see everyone in intendance— attendance! Attendance. Um, hoo boy…"

It was at this point Izuku realised he had no experience in public speaking. The All Might inside his mind grimaced and made the universal "cut it off" motion with his hands.

Bakugo slammed a fist into the conference table, shattering the illusion and turning it back into a school desk. "Quit stalling!"

"Okay! Sorry!"

This wasn't working. The imaginary symbol of peace in his head put a pair of half-moon spectacles on and rifled through some papers. "I'm sure there's something here that will help…A ha! Here, All Might Jr!"

He held a blue-covered notebook above his square-jawed head like a holy text, a halo of light surrounding them both. That was the answer. Hero Notebook for the Future #13, his most rambling edition yet.

Izuku wasn't at a press conference, whose stupid idea was that?! He was at a TED talk!

"Thank you all for coming," Izuku said, standing from his desk and moving towards the front of the room.

"Quirks," he began, pressing his fingertips together the way he'd seen other people do. "What are they? Where did they come from? We just don't know."

"Does anyone have any idea what's happening right now?" A girl with ice cream hair asked the others.

Izuku was on a roll, or he at least felt like it. "I would propose a new theory. Rapid onset cellular enhancement by way of extreme electrical massage."

"JUST SHOW US THE DAMN QUIRK!" Bakugo yelled at the top of his voice, in a manner suggesting he couldn't stand it anymore. "I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE!"

"Seriously! That's all we want!"

Izuku looked dumbstruck. "But… the mechanics?"

Ice cream girl slouched dramatically, sending a glob of neapolitan to the floor. "Ugh, it's a quirk, Midoriya. Nobody knows how they work. That's the point."

The point?! It was dawning on Izuku how spectacularly he had misread the room. They wanted a demonstration, not a single one of them wanted an explanation. Quirks defied the very idea of an explanation. The world was black and white to these kids; people either had a quirk or they didn't. The why or the when or the how didn't even register for them!!

For most of them, anyway. The way Bakugo had snarled and sneered made it obvious he knew Izuku was hiding something. That moment he said "I know you're hiding something" was a dead giveaway.

"Oh…okay, I'll try, but I'm still learning how it works…" Izuku gritted his teeth and made a show of concentrating, but looked more constipated. "I've just gotta…use my willpower to… summon the quirk… come on, help me out here…" he said through a clenched jaw. All he needed was a little assist.

Prrt

There was a noise like a sack of wet marshmallows hitting the floor, and a single, tiny hexagon of a forcefield farted out of Izuku's palm. It flickered for a second, then popped like a soap bubble. The whole spectacle was as unimpressive as it was embarrassing.

A sea of faces blinked simultaneously. It was a display of such absolute awkwardness that a nearby family of crickets broke their own schedule just so they could chirp during the silence.

The nail in the coffin was the subsequent lack of response. Everyone just went back to their seats, and talked amongst themselves as though nothing had happened. Izuku was left standing there like a fish out of water, firmly back at the bottom of the totem pole, status quo re-established. Bakugo scowled at him and shook his head.

Well. At least people might ask fewer questions now.

With a slump in his shoulders, Izuku nervously coughed and took his seat, pulling out a notebook and pretending to be a lot more interested in Pythagorean theory than he really was. For a scant moment he considered writing Cestus a quick note, but that spectre of teenage angst gave him a hot and dark feeling of "why should I be the one to cave?!"

It was irrational, but so was being 14.

Suddenly, the long disused intercom embedded in the far corner emmitted a high pitch screech, like an eldritch crow god had awoken from its slumber. Everyone clapped their hands over their ears, not least of all the guy with 4 arms and 4 ears. "Aghh!"

The squealing feedback dissipated, and a voice bled through — one that Izuku was delighted to hear.

"Is this thing on?! Attention! Can Izuku Midoriya come to the abandoned home economics room on the third floor?! That's Midoriya! M-I-D, and so on! Uhh…Over! Biddleboop!"

The spine-headed chap dug a pinky finger in his ear and twisted his jaw, trying to regain his hearing. "Since when do we have a third floor? I don't think we've ever had classes up there, have we?"

"Well duh, of course we haven't. It's abandoned, stupid." His neighbour shot back.

For a moment Izuku looked around, expecting some kind of pushback, but all he got was a fiery stare from Bakugo — which made him flinch. Yep, he was taking this opportunity to hightail it out of there.

The third floor of Aldera Middle-school was only spoken about in hushed tones and oratory tales. The mythic centrepiece of many a campfire Skald, the third floor was spoken of in the same breath as CarDoorHookHandMan and Bloody Mariko. (Mariko Setsurawa hadn't actually been brutally murdered by a crazed chemistry teacher, but had moved to a different prefecture).

For some reason, the myriad stories always failed to mention the real cause of the floor's abandonment issues — or the girl who accidentally filled the space with quirk-induced sleeping gas fifteen years ago.

The floorboards creaked ominously as Izuku put his weight on them; a single flickering light cast skeletal shadows on the walls.

"H…hello?" He tentatively called out, taking another step. Just then, a bat flew past his ear! Or, more accurately, a small moth fluttered by about 6 feet away.

"AGABLAHAH!!" Izuku flailed his arms like he'd been electrocuted again, and ran the rest of the way towards the home economics room, kicked the door open, and slammed his back against it — breathing so hard his chest was extending a full foot from his body.

"Midoriya!" Hatsume smiled wide from a cluttered workbench in the middle of the room, one she seemed to be using to completely dismantle an old sewing machine. "Come in, come in! Don't sit on anything sharp. Or soft. One of these cushions is filled with needles and I do NOT remember which."

Izuku relaxed upon seeing her. Not to say he fully relaxed, but it was a marginal improvement. Hatsume's weird was a weird he knew he could handle. "Hatsume! I thought it was you on the intercom," he said, now noticing the wires trailing from a laptop, into a corded rotary telephone, into a box on the wall. "But…why were on the intercom? What's going on?"

Hatsume cracked open a can of offbrand Lemon Sundory and took a swig, wincing slightly. "Foul. The Principal and me came to an agreement, a "you scratch my back" kind of understanding." She explained in a way that offered no explanation whatsoever. "He's just getting something from his car, he saidhe'll be back soon."

Meanwhile, across town, Principal Tenguzawa white-knuckle gripped the steering wheel of his honda civic, the gas pedal perpendicular to the floor. "If I break a few speed limits I'll be at the airport by 3! No students, no heroes, just sun sea and surf! Sheffield, here I come!"

He wasn't coming back.

"But until then, welcome to my new workshop!!" Hatsume gestured to the array of even more crap-like crap than the crap that crapped up her prior workshop. A decade of dust, rust and must permeated every inch of — here used generously — equipment that once was the home economics room. From the mismatched and uneven examples of old attempts at the textile arts, they weren't exactly cutting edge to begin with.

Hatsume didn't mind though. "Wow! A cathode tube!" She proudly announced, tearing it out of a laminator.

A familiar orb projected from Izuku's hand, their first appearance in quite some time. "Good afternoon, Hatsume. It's good to see you." Cestus calmly greeted, ignoring the look on Izuku's face.

"You'll speak to her, but not me?!"

"Hatsume makes more logical decisions."

"Hell yeah I do! Now which do you think stings more, shampoo or conditioner? Eh, screw it, I'll put both in." She shrugged and uncapped a couple of bottles.

Izuku wasn't quite done with his closest, by proximity, friend. "No, Cestus! You can't just brush me off! You haven't spoken to me for almost a day!"

Cestus's orb pulsed with a soft light. "My silence was a consequence of your illogical actions. I saw no reason to offer advice if you were going to ignore it."

"Illogical?!" Izuku whisper-yelled at his own hand. "I wasn't being illogical, I was being…Pragmatic! Mom was worried about me, of course I'd tell her I'd see a professional!"

"Interesting choice of words," Cestus mused, "Do you actually know what pragmatism means or did it just sound like a good word?"

"That's beside the point!"

During the argument, Mei sat staring at them with her head cocked to one side like a curious pigeon. She rolled her eyes and slammed both hands on the table, sending some loose parts flying.

"Boys! Advanced machines! Enough with the vagueries and more with the explaingeries!" She demanded.

The two — one boy and one disembodied intelligence on said boy's hand — fell silent. Izuku jutted his bottom lip out in a world-class pout.

Cestus took the lead, "Midoriya promised his mother we would see a quirk professional. I rightly told him this would likely result in my discovery, and our dismemberment within a laboratory."

Mei tapped her chin. "Why don't you just fake it?" She asked simply, as though the solution had been obvious from the beginning. "Forge some documents, pretend you got a quirk licensed. Easy."

"What do you mean, fake it?" Izuku stared at her, aghast. "It's a multi step process, you have to get registered with the hpsc, get official documentation, doctors and lawyers are involved, you can't just… lie about it!"

The green orb pulsed again, "Midoriya… could you explain the precise mechanics for me? How, exactly, are quirks logged and registered?"

"Um," Izuku stammered, caught off guard. "It's a database. A massive, secure server connected to the HPSC network. There was a documentary about it on TV, It's like a private internet available for authorised places, like hospitals or police stations. Why?"

A glowing smile spread across Mei's face, "Oooh, you're getting an idea, aren't you, Cestus? I can smell a baby about to be born!"

"An idea is forming, though it requires experimentation. Hatsume, would you be at all upset if your laptop were to be destroyed?"

"You kidding?" Mei cackled. "One, it's not even mine so, pfft who cares. Two, an opportunity to upgrade a laptop?! Yes please!"

"Excellent. Midoriya, you mentioned to me before about my… birth. The draining of electricity, and the downloading of files on your mother's phone upon contact."

Izuku's frown slowly morphed into a look of dawning comprehension, "What are you getting at?"

"I would like to see if I am still able to do that." Cestus explained. "and more importantly, if I can reverse the process."

"You mean, you want to try uploading something?" Izuku's eyes widened.

"That's the general idea yes. If I can plant files directly into a system, we could register your "quirk" while bypassing the entire legal process."

Izuku's jaw went slack, the implications of the idea becoming clearer by the second. "But… But that would mean we'd have to…"

"Break into the HPSC, yes."

Chapter Text

"Once again, I'm forced to question the validity of this exercise."

It was 7am on a balmy Sunday morning in the city of Musutafu, and Izuku Midoriya was currently standing next to a brick wall which reached about a metre above his head. It wasn't a particularly imposing brick wall, it was weathered with tufts of moss clinging to the mortar, it's only job being to stop trucks from driving down an alleyway. For him, however, it was Everest. It was a mountain begging to be conquered.

"You said it yourself, Cestus. 'This is a dangerous operation and will require us to go plus ultra like we never have before, beep boop.'" Izuku nodded firmly, "Those were your exact words."

"I do not say beep boop."

"You implied it."

Cestus hadn't really said anything of the sort back in the glorious mess of the home economics room, especially nothing involving the phrase 'plus ultra'. The first test of their data transfer abilities had been a stunning, if slightly anti-climactic, success. To the shared delight of Izuku and Mei, Cestus had managed to download Aldera Middle-school's entire financial spreadsheet database with a single touch of the finger.

That data dive revealed a terrible amount of the school's budget was going toward chalkboard erasers. It was a genuine mystery why, considering every classroom from here to Nantucket had been equipped with whiteboards and smart boards since the early 21st century, a solid 200 years ago. Not even the total collapse of society and the dawn of quirks had brought back the chalkboard.

The second test took a dozen tries, a lot of corrupted files and a short battle with a messy firewall. But after a while, a simple document reading "Hello, World." found itself on the desktop. The mechanics of the operation were possible, it was the next part that required work.

Their experiments had hammered home two crucial, and rather inconvenient, truths. One; Apparently the super computer from another world didn't have WiFi. To initiate the data transfer, there had to be a direct line of connection — Izuku had to physically make contact with the laptop. Two; Cestus couldn't, or couldn't yet, pluck files from the aether. They couldn't access online servers or cloud storage. If the file wasn't immediately available on the local drive, they were out of luck.

In terms of their great plan to illegally register Izuku as quirked and bypass several layers of legal and bureaucratic formalities, it was something of a dampener. But where there's a will there's a way, and well, Cestus did say they'd need to break into the HPSC…

Izuku jumped slightly and gripped the edge of the wall, which he now suddenly hoped wasn't a partition to a crocodile farm or poisonous snake enclosure. He was pretty sure the sign said it was the edge of the park, but you never know. The brickwork dug into his fingers as his feet scrambled for purchase on the wall. "They make this look so much easier on TV!" he grunted.

"Midoriya," Cestus calmly interjected, "Didn't you tell me you were a 'seasoned parkour professional'? Your exact words."

Izuku dropped back down to ground level, "I don't think I said 'seasoned' did I? I-I mean I've done a lot of rooftop traversal, sure! But that was mostly just running and jumping gaps! Or trying to jump gaps, " he coughed. "There aren't exactly a lot of sheer brick walls on rooftops! And every time there was a wall too big to climb I just sort of… went around it…"

Cestus didn't dignify the excuse with a direct response, but removed themself from behind Izuku's ear and coated his hand instead, the lattice of liquid metal spreading to just above the elbow. Their voice emanated from the gauntlet, "Try again, please. I've spread myself slightly thinner and reinforced your left forearm, your weaker limb. It should help somewhat in lifting yourself up, but it won't offer as much protection from injury."

"Okay, so it's like a localised exoskeleton!" Izuku said, his eyes lighting up. "A lightweight frame to distribute the load and reinforce my muscles, that's brilliant, Cestus! Why haven't we tried something like this before?"

"We never needed to." Cestus said, their tone as flat as ever. "All of our previous tests of my capabilities have been purely defensive, as was my request. Now, it seems, strength is more necessary. Now would you please attempt to scale the wall before my nanomachines decay?"

"Right, right, sorry," Izuku cleared the technical tangent, and took a few steps back intending for a running start this time. "CHARGE!" he yelled, sprinting full speed toward the wall and launching himself upwards. His gauntletted hand made purchase with the edge of the wall, and this time he didn't falter — in no time flat, he had managed to pull himself up with just his left arm, and ended up straddling the top.

Izuku looked like he was riding the wall like a horse, and was gripping it with his knees and hands like he was going to fall off a cliff. "I did it!"

"Congratulations."

"Alright, Cestus," Izuku said through a heavy breath as he dropped down to the other side, thankfully avoiding any deadly vipers. "What's next?"

Cestus slid back into his arm and made the short journey to the back of Izuku's ear, a subtle hint to be more covert. "You have to go to work."

"…Like in a metaphorical sense..?"

"Like in an actual sense. You're still employed at Hatsume Miniatures and Esoterica," it was remarkable how Cestus could roll their eyes while having no eyes and entirely through audio. "You would do well to remember, a good work ethic is a strong foundation for heroics."

Izuku frowned slightly, though couldn't disagree. "Where did you hear that? You're not usually one for pithy life advice."

"You said it to me no less than three times this week. While telling me about All Might's schedule. You also said it to Hatsume twice, your mother another three times, and to a passing elderly woman."

"Well I'm… glad you're picking up the things I say!" Izuku said with a pleased grin, as he started to jog towards the shop. A few weeks ago Izuku's life had been a lot less structured, and involved a lot more injury, but Cestus had surprisingly injected a lot of routine into it. Which was a crazy thing to say about an alien swarm of nanobots. The fact that structure was currently to prepare for committing a felony against the most powerful government agency in the country was even crazier — and something he hadn't quite wrapped his head around.

Cestus had informed him several times over that their training would have to increase in severity, and also warned that failure could result in their incarceration or dissection, but for the time being, getting to use Cestus for something more than blocking a punch had been… fun. He could worry about the terrifying reality of what they planned to do a little later, probably during a panic attack.

"You know," Cestus interjected during the run, "I'm starting to think I should come up with the training regiment myself. Maybe we could download some kind of fitness computer."

"I'll see what I can do!"

Mei's father, moustache looking as impressive as ever in the early morning sunlight, was just starting to unlock the shop when Izuku came jogging around the corner. The jovial man offered him a wave, and pulled open the shutters. "Midoriya! Good morning, what brings you here so bright and early?"

"For work," Izuku answered, a hint of confusion in his tone. "Was I not scheduled to come in today?"

Whatever level of confusion Izuku was radiating, Maburu Hatsume absorbed it and multiplied it by a factor of ten. He blinked, completely at a loss, before understanding hit him like a runaway bus. "…Oh! The job! I'll be honest, son, it had completely slipped my mind. Most of the people I hire only show up a few times before they move on to something else."

"Oh… so does that mean you don't need me around? Because I'm okay with still helping out, if you need me to! I don't want to leave you in the lurch or anything like that because I barely even started the inventory database and I've felt really bad about that for awhile—"

"Midoriya, Midoriya, slow down," Maburu chuckled. "It's not in my nature to throw helpful youngsters out on the mean streets, of course you still have a place here. In fact, we just got a very exciting shipment of ball bearings and miniature cowboy hats."

"Miniature… cowboy hats?" Izuku frowned. "…Do a lot of people buy those?"

"You'd be surprised, son, you'd be surprised. Now come on in, I'll give you some time to get ol' Betsy warmed up."

"Who is this 'Old Betsy'?" Cestus said in Izuku's ear.

Izuku whispered back, attempting to covertly hide his mouth. "It's the computer."

"You say something, son?"

"I just said, I love that computer."

Maburu clapped him on the back, "that's the spirit! Betsy might be a cantankerous old mare, but she's got style." He said with a thumbs up. "If you need me, I'll be in the back. There's been an order for 300 scale-model high-heeled shoes, and the quicker I get those done the less time I have to ask myself any questions!"

"Uh… Great! You can count on me, Mr Hatsume," Izuku mimicked a thumbs up of his own, "this spreadsheet won't know what hit it! Plus ultra!"

With Maburu tucked in his private workspace, Izuku cracked his knuckles and got started with the arduous startup process on the Neolithic PC. "We are nailing this stock take, today, Cestus! We're getting locked in!" He said with a confident fist pump. "Are you locked in, are you feeling it?!"

"Sufficiently."

Izuku picked up a box from the newly arrived stock and slammed it on the desk,"Hell yeah! We can do this! Alright, here we go, box one! Lets rock this!"He ripped open the box, revealing a sea of tiny, identical silver spheres. His eyes, blazing with purpose a moment before, glazed over. He picked one up. "One… two… three… four… Cestus, this is the worst. I am so bored I cannot do this. I'm not locked in in the slightest."

Cestus slid down to Izuku's hand and emerged as a ball of light, unafraid of Mr Hatsume emerging from his dungeon. "The issue lies in how inefficiently you're choosing to do this. You've somehow made the joy of counting tiny spheres a laborious task, something I never thought possible."

"Well how would you do it, smartybot? If I don't pick them out of the box one by one, how am I going to know which ones I haven't counted?" Izuku countered, confident in his airtight argument.

"First of all, the number 2200 is written on the side of the box."

"Oh…"

"But, in order to properly join you in getting "locked in", I have a more interesting solution. Please place your hand on the computer."

"Oh!" Izuku exclaimed with glee, "that's such a good idea! I can read out the information and you can update the sheet directly! It'll be like text to speech!"

"Midoriya, please, I'm an advanced technological being with hitherto unthought of potential applications." Cestus bragged, "I'm not a dictaphone. Your hand, please."

Izuku did as instructed and placed his hand on Ol' Betsy's off-cream case. Upon contact, the metal on his hand shimmered up to his fingertips, then shuddered like someone had walked over Cestus' grave.

The first instinct Izuku had was to pull his hand away, but the gauntlet refused. "Cestus, speak to me, What's wrong?"

"This computer is disgusting."Cestus complained with a tremor in their voice that Izuku had never heard before. "It's like someone tried to cover up a black mould infestation by spreading porridge over the top of it."

"Wh-what? It can't really be that bad, can it? It's an old machine but it still works, it has character!"

"It "works" in the same way a dead horse being pushed down a steep incline in a wagon "works". I managed to find the spreadsheet file, and wish to never speak of this again."

Izuku couldn't leave it at that, though. "Was it really that bad? I'm just curious because you have such a unique perspective on it!"

"There were file extensions that defied conventional reason." The machine deadpanned. "The only character it displayed was that of a plague victim. If I have contracted mixamotosis I can only apologise."

"I'm taking my hand off the computer now." Izuka said flatly.

The gauntlet finally felt fluid enough to move his arm, a welcome change to it being locked in place during the transfer. He flexed his fingers, still marvelling at how natural the metallic coating felt even now. "You never told me what your big plan is. Are you going to edit the sheet from in there then re-upload it?"

There was the barest hint of a chuckle in Cestus' tone when they answered, if Izuku didn't know any better he could almost detect a smirk protocol being engaged. "Allow me to demonstrate."

The familiar sensation of Cestus navigating Izuku's own internal systems returned, a difficult-to-describe cold warmth he was almost beginning to accept as normal. He felt the metal coalesce behind his ear, the usual resting place, but the sensation didn't stop there.

All around the back of Izuku's neck, creeping up the back of his head, fully covering both ears, Cestus continued to manifest around his skull. The bottle green nanobots felt like liquid had poured over him, hardening into a simple and unadorned helmet.

"Whoa, Cestus?" Izuku's voice echoed inside his own ears slightly, before there was a slight clicking sound and the regular ambience of the shop returned clearer. "What are you doing, what is this?"

"An opportunity for synergy."

With a swift flick, a transparent, lime green visor extruded from the helmet directly in front of Izuku's eyes.

"Waah!" Izuku let out a noise of shock and excitement as his vision tinted, and then another when the current time appeared in the bottom corner, alongside his local coordinates, heart rate (which was rapidly increasing) and a waveform representing Cestus' voice.

"This is so cool!!" He shouted, throwing his arms up to feel the sleek metal encompassing him. "Can you do a full head mode?! We could sketch some designs, maybe something with horns! Or antenna!! Is it protecting my neck? What's the shock absorption like? Can we synthesise my voice to sound more heroic?!"

"Yes, perhaps, yes, substantial, yes. This seemed like something you might get a 'kick' out of." Cestus said, the voice sounding clear and direct within the helmet, the waveform pulsing in connection to their words. "The visor will assist in large scale logging, information retrieval and structural diagnostics, though some data will have to be manually logged verbally. …When I don't know what something is, basically."

Izuku unnecessarily put his hands on the side of the helmet and moved his head this way and that, as though it might fall off, and watched as a target reticle snapped to different objects in the room. "So is this how you see things, Cestus? Am I seeing through your eyes right now?"

"No," Cestus stated flatly. "I don't have 'senses' in a way you would comprehend. Explaining my perception of the world to you would be like explaining economic determinism to a squirrel. No offence."

Although he wasn't sure if that was a slight against him or squirrels, Izuku answered with an amicable "none taken!" before returning to his marvelment in the face of technology. "So how is this going to help with the inventory?" He asked.

With soft swooshing sound, probably implemented by Cestus for the aesthetics, a far more streamlined version of the spreadsheet appeared on the edge of the visor. "If you would, focus on something to be logged, and say the name out loud."

Izuku did as requested, and flipped open a new box, with a modicum more reverence than he did for the ball bearings. Inside sat five neat rows of — just as Mr Hatsume promised — cowboy hats. The reticle in Izuku's vision flicked between the hats, lead by his focus. "Miniature cowboy hats." He said aloud, in a tone like he was talking to an automated phone service.

Instantly, a holographic grid snapped over his view of the box, outlining each tiny hat in glowing green. A data box materialized beside it, text scrolling into place: [MINIATURE COWBOY HAT - ASSORTED COLOUR - 250 COUNT]. Simultaneously, the spreadsheet filled in the relevant information with no fuss. No wrestling with keyboard shortcuts necessary.

Izuku gasped with unadulterated joy, "That was so fast! Cestus, we could log the entire shop in less than an hour at this rate!"

"A conservative estimate, but your enthusiasm is appreciated." Cestus responded in kind. "Be mindful, Midoriya, the real purpose of the visor is to aid in infiltration and exfiltration. It's not a game. This is just an activity to come to terms with the mechanics."

"An activity is a type of game, Cestus," Izuku countered. "But… I understand, really. This is an amazing tool, I can already think of just… dozens of heroic applications. Is it something you're comfortable with, though? This whole HPSC thing? The whole heroism thing."

Cestus didn't answer immediately, as though considering the response. "My… comfort, is irrelevant when compared to your own."

"Your comfort is just as important as mine!" Izuku firmly said. The targeting display faded from view, "we're partners, Cestus, a team. If you're not okay with this then we find another way."

The silence inside the helmet was stiff. Izuku watched his own heartbeat in the display, alongside the steady line of Cestus' waveform — which gradually began to move. "There will come a time where our partnership might end. My memories may return, I may learn about my origins, and the reasons we find ourselves bonded. If and when that time comes, I wouldn't want the separation to be something you hoped for. You have a tendency to anthropomorphise me, but my wants and desires are less about what I enjoy or find comfort in, and more about ensuring our continued partnership."

"Cestus… are you saying you like having me around?"

"I wouldn't say it with such vigour, but the sentiment is accurate."

"Well, I like having you around, too." Izuku said, a soft smile breaking out across his face. He focused back onto a shelf, and nodded, determined. "Now, how about we count some crap? Woodland animals in Victorian era costumes!"

[WHIMSICAL CREATURE - ASSORTED - 7 COUNT]

Everyone on Bith Lane knew and loved Mr Dan, the owner of the Musutafu South Side's premier jazz club - The Modal Node. He was a musician himself, part of a troupe he would jokingly claim toured the galaxy in his younger days. So influential was Mr Dan's impact on the cultural scene, that even people with no interest in freeform music knew the opening hours — just through the sounds wafting down the street past 10pm. All this to give context for why Kamui Woods knew the front doors shouldn't have been wide open at 9am on a Sunday.

The second indication something was wrong was when a woman with eight arms burst out on to the street holding a dozen saxophones (four of them were tucked under her armpits.)

The woman was dressed like a typical 1920s flapper, with a sequined dress around her thin frame and a feathered headband askew on her bobbed hair. Even for a society of superheroes it was a weird choice of aesthetic to cling to. The arachnid-like villain made noise that sounded somewhere between a giggle and a squeak, a sickly adorable noise that would set your teeth on edge.

"Oopsie!" She said in a high-pitched cloying warble, winking three of her six eyes. "looks like little old me got carried away with the shoppin'! I better get my pins a-movin' before someone calls the coppers!" She then began a clumsy skittering run down the pavement.

For Kamui Woods, confident in his abilities against oddly themed villains, this was little more than an annoying distraction from the far more important phonecall he was taking on his in-ear comms device.

Kamui broke into a run while maintaining a polite phone persona. "No, you're not listening to what I'm saying, the principal was gone— yes, I understand it's a weekend, that's not what I'm talking about. It's taken me this long to even connect to anyone at the school board." He sighed, both at the frustrating conversation he was having, and at the spindly lady committing brass larceny.

Tarantullah Bankhead smiled at the pursuit, turning her head to yell "You ain't never takin' me aliv—"

"Lacquer chain prison," Kamui interrupted her with so little fanfare his special move didn't even get written in bold. Wooden tendrils snaked out and attached her to a wall mid-sprint, the saxophones noisily tooting and clanging. "What I'm trying to tell you is that I went to Aldera Middle School on Friday, expecting an important assembly, and none of the teachers knew where the Principal had gone. No, I'm not saying he's villain, or that he's been taken by villains. Is there anyone else there I can talk to?"

Joan Crawlford, looking like she'd been caught in a branchlike web not of her own choosing, made a noise like a teakettle. "Ooooooh! You gotta lotta nerve, buster! This ain't no way to treat a dame! I like a fella with more bark than bite but this is ridiculous!"

"Ma'am, please, I'm on the phone." Kamui held a finger up to her. "Yes, I'm still here, just dealing with a disturbance."

"A disturbance he says! Real classy, pal, real classy!"

Kamui sighed and closed his eyes for a moment to decompress. "Listen, bug lady, I'm sending for a patrol car to pick you up. Just, don't go anywhere." And with that, he walked away, still mid call.

"As if I could, ya big lug!" She called after him. "Well shucks, ain't this swell…"

She could just about hear him say "no, I'm not trying to file a truancy report," as he strolled into the jazz club to check Mr Dan wasn't hanging upside down in a web. He was fine, it turned out. But he was never getting the deposit back on those instruments.

It was a welcome sight when the door to the Lurkers agency crested the horizon — the word door being a euphemism for the gaping hole where Mt Lady accidentally punctured a hole in the wall. Kamui had tried using his branches to stop the upper floors from collapsing, and it did a decent job, but the building was rent controlled and any major renovations without approval could void the lease. The entire team decided they didn't spend enough time inside the building itself to justify dealing with the landlord, so it was left as is.

A few rooms in, where Kamui hoped to drown his bureaucratic irritations in a litre of blue mountain blend, a disproportionately sized man was already lounging on the break room sofa.

"Kam." Death Arms grunted, plunging two chunky fingers into his bag of Potato Crusts. The name was not the Crust marketing team's best work.

Kamui barely offered him a glance, heading directly to the percolator, "you don't work here, Death Arms. You're still not on the team."

"Who pissed in your compost?"

There was a belaboured sigh, then Kamui Woods pulled his mask aside and downed the entire molten hot cup of joe. "The entire municipal school district."

Death Arms pointed a crust-dusted finger, "right, yeah yeah, the fight you broke up."

"How do you know about that?"

"Lady blabbed. Said you took it all personal like. So did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Take it all personal, like?"

Kamui almost considered not answering, and instead heading out for patrol without another word. "I acted in a way befitting a pro hero, and investigated a potential issue."

"Hah," Death Arms barked. "If you're trying to get teenagers to stop fighting the quickest way is a damn strong talking to. Put the fear in 'em! They'll soon stop when they think Uncle Arms is coming for a hands on demonstration." He punctuated himself by punching his open palm, a move that sent a small shockwave across the room.

Kamui didn't so much as flinch, "this attitude is why you've never been invited to the kid's choice awards." He said, which earned him a dismissive grunt. "Besides, I'm not asking for anything from the children, just for the school staff to take some accountability. I don't even care that the principal is gone, they're probably better off without him."

"Not very heroic, Kam."

"You never met him," Kamui retorted. "He's not part of any official investigation, and he's a grown man, what he does with his life is nothing to do with me, but it becomes my problem if children are effected by his absence."

Death Arms slowly frowned, "….Why??"

"It just does."

Death Arms scoffed, shaking his head. "That's not an answer, Kam. Kids' problems are for parents and teachers. Our job is punching villains and signing autographs. You're getting tangled in red tape over a truant headmaster."

Kamui Woods stared into his empty coffee cup as if the dregs held some profound answer. "The saplings in that forest were growing in poor quality soil, and what they need's an arborist — not a lumberjack."

"The hell does that mean."

"It means I need more information. I need a man on the inside, someone who can help me find out more about how the school is operating without me going through the board." Kamui rubbed the chin of his mask. "I don't know if he'll be much of a spy, though…"

"Initiating espionage mode," Izuku whispered, crouching behind a shelf of novelty toothbrushes (various colours — thirty-six count, they'd logged them about an hour before). "Target information: anything wearing a hat. Begin targeting process. Bwoo bwoo bwoo bwoo,"

"Making sound effects with your mouth doesn't seem entirely necessary." Cestus said, initiating the system and beginning the lock on process. Green squares peppered the view screen, highlighting every behatted subject in their vision, as requested. "Eighty-seven …targets."

"Phase two begin, agent Cestus. Debrief on primary target." Izuku mumbled, holding a hand with two fingers up like it was a gun.

"I don't see the—"

"It's just fun, Cestus! Come on, live a little."

If computers could sigh, "Your target is Barclay Barlowe, international super criminal. He is a three inch tall gnome with a fishing rod, and a baseball cap reading 'me want woman, me fear fish.'. Primary method of operation: loitering with intent."

"Fiend!" Izuku gasped, and crept around the shelf with the gnome in his sights. "Target is cornered, he's got nowhere to run."

"He's an inanimate object, Midoriya, he's unlikely to flee."

"You're ruining the immersion, Cestus," Izuku hissed. "Okay, on my mark. Three… Two… Now!" He sprang from his cover like a tiger pouncing, and scrambled over to where his visor pointed. Then with two fingers, he plucked the gnome from the shelf and held it up to his face. Barclay Barlowe's painted on smile mocked with Izuku with its nonchalance. "Target neutralised, you son of a bitch."

"Congratulations. Humanity is safe once more."

Izuku was about to retort when the front door to the shop burst open, and a figure with goggles pushed up on a soot-stained forehead stood in the doorway. "EUREKA!" Mei Hatsume shrieked, brandishing a clunky looking wristband covered in blinking LEDs and exposed wiring above her head. "I'VE DONE IT!" Her posture immediately softened the second she saw Izuku. "Oh good, you're here. This was the fourth place I've eureka'd. Cool helmet!"

The helmet in question slid back from Izuku's head and back into is neck, beginning the journey down toward his hands, "Hatsume! You'll never believe what we can do now!"

"Helmet and visor with targeting reticle and display giving you expanded data collection, surveillance and combat capabilities?"

"Yeah!"

"I can also play music." Cestus added.

Izuku blinked, "Wait, you can?" he shook his head "For later! Hatsume, what did you invent? It looks like a watch?"

Mei feigned a casual confidence, lazily dangling the watch from her hand, "Oh this old thing?" she said, before dropping the attempt and going straight back into manic intensity. "Check it out, Midoriya! It's the greatest baby anyone has ever made or will ever make in the history of the universe!! This masterpiece of modern design and functionality is a Mark 1, zero latency short range Bluetooth signal device!!"

Izuku kept a smile on his face while she spoke, but he didn't really catch any of it. "…Oh! Fun!"

"Very fun!" She said, not realising he didn't understand. "If we pair it with this, um, hang on…" Mei reached inside her pockets and rummaged around, before pulling out a small disc shaped object that looked to be made of the same material as the watch. "With this, and form a link between them, well! I don't have to explain how awesome that is!"

"…You can explain a little, if you want to."

"With this, Cestus will be able to manifest on two separate points of your body at once! No more choosing between a punchy-punch hand and a kicky-kick foot. You can have both!"

A gasp escaped Izuku's lips, the implications of that becoming abundantly clear. One had for offence, one for defence. A gauntlet to block, a reinforced boot to counter. His climbing will be twice as fast! What if he can run faster now?!

"Hatsume," Izuku said, his voice carrying the reverence he usually kept reserved for All Might documentaries, "You may have just changed everything."

"Theoretically," Cestus interjected, their voice emanating from the back of Izuku's hand, "This would be a significant tactical advantage. But the potential for signal degradation isn't zero."

Mei waved a hand, "Phooey, chrome dome! Phooey I say! My babies are flawless. This watch here," she said, grabbing Izuku's free arm and slapping the clunky device onto it with a loud snap, "Talks to Cestus' directly, or it will once you activate yourself near it. And this little fella," she produced the disc again, and slapped it to his chest, "Is the secondary receiver. The watch tells the receiver 'hey, do this!' and the receiver goes 'you got it boss!' you understand?"

"My core would remain with my primary node, but a significant portion of my nanomachines would be tethered to a device you've described as 'foolproof'. I hope you can forgive the hesitation in my voice." Cestus noted dryly, seemingly not realising their voice always sounds like that.

"Only one way to find out if it works!" Izuku declared, a grin stretching across his face. He balled his hand into a fist, ready to channel Cestus and test the limits of their new, expanded arsenal. But before he could, Mei's hand shot out and planted itself firmly on his chest, stopping him cold.

"Hold your horses!" she said. "Before we field-test, we need to discuss payment."

Izuku's excitement immediately deflated. "P…payment? I thought… Is this coming out of my wages…?"

"Pfft, no, stupid. I don't want money. I'm after something far more valuable. Resources!"

"But you told me that knowledge was the most valuable currency."

"I say a lot of things," she shrugged, "But this is definitely more valuable than anything else I've ever said was valuable. I need a sample. Of Cestus."

"No." Cestus' reply was immediate and sharp. "Out of the question. It's an unacceptable risk. Removing a portion of my nanomachines could result in system failures."

"Just a tiny pinch, a few crumbs. I need to see what you're made of, literally! If I can analyse the material, figure out the base components… Think of the possibilities, Cestus!"

Her voice dropped to a serious tone, "I could make you more. Full body compatibility."

Izuku looked from Mei's feverishly bright eyes to his own gauntleted hand. Cestus's warning was clear and logical, but the proposition… It was the kind of thing he'd dreamed of since he was a child.

"Cestus…" Izuku started, his voice a soft plea. "This could be huge."

"The proposition remains a risk…But a sample of inert machines might pose no immediate threat to my core functions."

"Yes!" Izuku punched a fist into the air.

"Pleasure doing business with you both!"