How Love Began
Mei Hatsume was in the workshop at UA High, fixing a batch of her robots, or 'babies' as she called them, that broke during hero training. She had been personally assigned by the Heroes working at UA High to make inventions like the weight bracelets that were used in the final exams. Ever since then, Mei had been working pretty much nonstop in the workshop, which was fine with her.
As Mei was finalizing the next upgrades in her test dummies, she heard her door slam open. Mei jumped before looking at the door, revealing the fiery tempered Katsuki Bakugo. He was still in his superhero costume, but he was holding one of his grenade shaped gauntlets in his left hand.
"Are you one of the nerds that work here?" Bakugo asked, placing his gauntlet on the table that Hatsume was working on.
"Haven't you ever heard of knocking?" Hatsume countered, with her arms crossed in front of her chest, much like the expression on her face. Bakugo rolled his eyes, before knocking on the table.
"Anyway, one of my gauntlets isn't working. It stopped working during training and I need it fixed," Bakugo said, pointing to the gauntlet on the table. Hatsume looked at the outside of the gauntlet.
"Well, what happened?" Hatsume asked, while still looking over the gauntlet.
"I have no idea. I was in the middle of a fight with the robots, and when I tried to shoot a giant explosion, all I got was a fucking sparkler show, and got me attacked," Bakugo explained while Mei picked up the gauntlet and grabbed her tools. Bakugo took a seat on chair nearby, and took his phone out.
After half an hour, Bakugo looked up from his phone, and saw that Mei was still looking through his gauntlet. Bakugo, who was starting to become impatient, decided to take a break from his phone and go to where Mei was working. Bakugo looked at the gauntlet with Mei, trying to see what she was looking at. When Mei turned and saw Bakugo, she slightly jumped, and moved to the edge of the table.
"Uh excuse me! I don't need any help when it comes to machines," Mei exclaimed, sticking her nose up.
"Well clearly you do, because you're taking for-fucking-ever to fix it!" Bakugo argued, getting in her face. However, Mei didn't budge, and pushed Bakugo away from her.
"My job requires patience so that I can get all the details I need about what I'm working with and so I could ensure that I could fix the right thing, and not make it worse. I'm making sure I look through every nook and cranny to make sure that I don't miss anything. Now either sit down and shut the hell up, or you can have someone else fix it!" Mei exclaimed, waving a screwdriver in Bakugo's face. Bakugo looked at Mei with his eyes wide open and veins on his temples bursting. Before he could scream at her, Mei went back to working on his gauntlet. Bakugo, instead of screaming decided to go back to his seat.
"So…you were in the Sports Festival, right?" Bakugo asked, looking away from Mei. Mei stopped working briefly and looked at Bakugo with a raised eyebrow.
"Where did that come from?" Mei asked.
"I was just trying to start some conversation. You got a problem with that!?" Bakugo exclaimed.
"No, but that was kind of an odd topic to bring up, apropos of nothing related to the Sports Festival happening," Mei explained, leaving Bakugo slightly flustered.
"Well…it's the only thing I could think of. It was where I had one of the biggest accomplishments of my life when I won first place," Bakugo responded, with an air of ego surrounding himself as he brought up his victory.
"I remember that. Well, more so the fact that you were tied up like an animal," Mei said with a smirk, trying to hold in her giggling.
"Hey shut up! It was that Icy-Hot bastard's fault for not bringing his A-game to our fight. He brought his…B+ game, and it pissed me off!" Bakugo yelled, with memories of that battle swarming back into his mind. Mei rolled her eyes with a smile on her face while she was taking the outer layer of Bakugo's gauntlet off.
"Despite that, you did amazing throughout that whole tournament. That quirk of yours is pretty great too," Mei responded.
"Well, you weren't that bad yourself. I love what you did to Glasses in your match," Bakugo said, chuckling a small bit at the memory of his bespectacled classmate Tenya Iida being forced to advertise Mei's inventions.
"Thank you, and that boy served as the perfect subject to show off my amazing babies! You have no idea how many emails I've gotten from support companies who want to work with me," Mei said with pride oozing out of her voice.
"Well, I can't say that you didn't deserve it," Bakugo responded before a thought entered his head that he never really thought about until now. "Speaking of your match, why did you just walk out?"
"Well, I got my babies seen by all the major support companies so I didn't see why I needed to continue," Mei explained, still looking through the inside of the gauntlet with a pair of tweezers.
"But why would you enter something and not want to win first place?" Bakugo asked completely shocked by her admission.
"I mean, I'm not much of a fighter, and a lot of those guys in the tourney like you, Todoroki, Midoriya, and Tokoyami are fighters who could probably kill me if you wanted to. Plus, my mission was already accomplished, so I didn't want to get some battle damage for nothing," Mei further explained. The two sat in silence, with Bakugo being unable to say anything about that. The silence went on for five minutes, before Mei put the gauntlet on another table.
"Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I figured out what's wrong with your gauntlet. There are a couple of tubes that are cut in the middle. You were spilling your nitroglycerin like sweat…"
"Wait, how do you know that? I never told you about my quirk," Bakugo asked with an annoyed tone to his voice.
"Well, I do research on everyone in UA so I can help them to the best of my abilities. Anyway, you were accidently spilling your sweat all over the inside of your gauntlet, and that's why your explosions didn't work," Mei continued, with an accomplished smile on her face.
"Alright, so what's the bad news?" Bakugo asked.
"Well, I don't have the right tubes to fix it. They have to be a specific size or else you could either wind up blowing your arm off, or not having enough power for an explosion. I have to find the right size, and make sure that it's the right make as well," Mei explained. Bakugo looked at her with his eyes wide open, and his mouth agape. He wanted to shout something at her, but for some reason couldn't find the words.
"So if you want, you can come back tomorrow, and I can show you the ones that you'll need from now on so that you can be well informed for the future," Mei suggested. Bakugo looked at her, and saw from the window that the sun was going down before letting out a long sigh.
"Alright, I'll come back tomorrow, but there damn well better be some progress made, or else shit is gonna go down," Bakugo threatened, with Mei once again not being intimidated in the slightest. Mei smirked, and pet Bakugo on the head, rubbing her fingers through his spiky blonde hair.
"I look forward to it," Mei said in a sing-song tone before making a 'shooing' motion with her hands. Bakugo stomped out of the workshop with a light blush on his face.
'That stupid bitch! Who the hell does she think she is shooing me like that!?' Bakugo yelled in his mind, being unable to get the pink haired inventor out of his head. He shook his head, and started heading to his room, hoping that he could calm down and get some sleep before tomorrow.