As she woke, Mei could feel the beginning of a powerful ache in her side, that punched through the fact that she felt incredibly drained. It was the early signs that her painkillers were about to wear off and that she needed to go and down some more as soon as she was able.
For the first few seconds, that was all she thought about. Then the memory of recent events caught up with her, and her mood soured immediately.
She hadn't managed to beat Izuku after all.
Then she remembered that even so, she had caused horrible, horrible agony upon him at least, and a smile planted itself firmly upon her lips at the memory.
His screams as Eren took him had not been any different than how the two of them had screamed as the lightning from Mikasa had wrecked through them earlier in the fight, but she knew better.
She had, after all, used herself as a test subject for Eren several times.
It was an agony beyond any other imaginable, so horrible that she had managed to get it approved as a glorified taser, given that anyone exposed to it, would immediately lose consciousness as the brain and body, wasn't able to handle it.
It was horrible pain, but only for a brief, brief moment.
Of course, she had not brought up the fact that if someone with, say, a healing factor that kept them awake through pain, no matter how bad it was, then this reaction would not happen. They would instead suffer hell for as long as Eren ran.
She wondered if Nedzu had seen this as a possibility, or if his forcing her to dial down the length of the process was just something he'd done just in case.
Either way, she had no means at the moment to hurt Izuku more.
At least, that was what she thought until she sat up, and noticed a sullen… What was his name? She wracked her brain, trying to dredge up his name until she remembered.
"Todoroki Shoto right?"
The sullen boy turned to look at her.
"Yes."
She looked into his eyes, and she saw it. The resentment. Perfect. Obviously, he despised Izuku for crushing him. She could work with that.
"I Must say you lost rather spectacularly against Midori back there. Lots and lots of ice with a body that's not equipped to handle it."
The boy's sullen look turned from sullen to a scowl.
"Please don't tell me you're also gonna give me a lecture about embracing my accursed flames."
"Of course not." She replied cheerfully. "That would kinda ruin my offer. You obviously need some help fixing that flaw of yours, and I happen to have an old suit I made for colonization of Antarctica, that should work for you."
Shoto stared at her with a blank look, that reminded Mei of a confused puppy.
"You made a suit… To colonize Antarctica. Why?"
"Why not? It was a fun, easy project. Unfortunately, my wondrous baby would never be able to reach it's height of usability, due to international treaties. But I could modify it for you. So that you could actually just go to town without ever having to utilize your flames. You could grind your foe's beneath your ice as you please, without anyone to put a check on your power. "
She reached forth a hand that was shaking way too much. She really needed to go get some food, and painkillers asap.
Shoto looked down, then slowly and hesitantly reached forth his hand, to take it.
"Alright."
I
As Uraraka walked on shaking legs to the Nurse's office, she felt a sense of deep, deep disappointment, and sadness wash over her. It almost overshadowed how her entire body hurt like she had been a punching bag, her side in particular feeling like it was on fire with every single step.
She didn't cry though. She forced herself not to cry. She had to force herself through this last part of the tournament without doing it. She could cry after the damned ceremony was over.
She had put everything into this project, she had trained, bled, sweated, and fought tooth and nail to make her effective debut into one that fully embraced the message All Might had asked her to tell.
That she was here.
She had come so close to achieving that goal, only to get crushed at the finish line.
It was… devastating.
That devastation, however, was replaced by Horror, as she finally reached the Nurses office, and walked in on Izuku Venom and Recovery Girl.
After winning, Venom had shed the expanded bulk and returned to what Uraraka had come to deem his normal size. Then for reasons Uraraka hadn't understood, he'd decided to forgo walking back to the office, and instead be carted back by the robots instead. That had meant he and Izuku had reached the office, long before she had.
And so as she walked in, she came upon the rather grizzly scene of Venom having peeled away the head part of himself to reveal Izuku's open mouth with a lot of broken and shattered teeth, alongside a Jaw that had clearly been broken in two underneath the skin.
She froze completely, and just stood there gaping.
Recovery girl turned her head and glanced at her, then snorted.
"Well, if it isn't miss self-restraint herself. Go sit down, I'll take care of you when I'm done with Midoriya's Jaw."
Uraraka blinked, then after a moment of hesitation, she walked over to a chair and sat down, the pain in her own body screaming as she did so, but numbed by the horror before her.
"He-He's gonna be fine right?"
She winced at how desperate that sounded.
"Yep. We would normally have taken care of everything, but since we have Recovery girl here anyway, we decided to let her lessen our burden."
Some calm came back to her at that, until Recovery Girl spoke up. And her tone as she did so was as sharp as any lecture from Aizawa.
"If the boy didn't have a healing factor that let him regrow teeth, he'd have to spend the next month getting these teeth fixed or replaced by a dentist. Also, if he didn't, or if I hadn't been here, that broken Jaw would most certainly have left permanent nerve damage, and even if it didn't, it would have taken months to heal."
Uraraka winced at the rebuke. Her feelings of crushing disappointment for not winning the tournament, suddenly seeming really, really petty.
"I see Aizawa hasn't taught you kiddos self-restraint. As usual. That man..." She shook her head. "I will never understand why he decided that teaching children was his calling in life."
"Well, he does have a sadistic stream. Maybe he gets off on it? Also, there, I've lined up the Jawbones perfectly now, along with putting the splinters where they belong."
Uraraka felt a spike of incredible relief as the Jaw mended itself, though the broken remains of his teeth were still a ghastly sight.
"Thanks. I'll handle the rest. The kid should be up and awake sometime in the next two-three hours."
"He'll miss the ceremony then. I'm guessing you'll handle that."
"We will." The quirk announced happily. It seemed rather pleased with itself for having won.
It wasn't before Recovery Girl had turned to her, and given her that sweet, sweet miracle healing, that Uraraka finally realized something as her side stopped hurting like it had been hit by an artillery shell.
"Wait, where's Shoto?"
"Your sullen friend left with the crazy girl once she woke up. Apparently, they were planning a sleepover at her place.
Todoroki. Sleeping over at Mei's place?
That… Was such a bizarre idea that she didn't even know what to make of it.
Venom had some rather spiteful comments on the topic, but as she leaned back, her body now healed, it began to fade as the reality really began to set in.
The tournament was over. She hadn't managed her first task, as All. Might's successor. Well, not fully anyway. She was sure she'd have made an impact, but… Being number one required more than just making an impact. It required rising to the top, and well beyond.
Though at least… She had made a decent first impression. She hoped.
I
"Mei Hatsume. Birth name Mei Octavius." The voice spoke in English, with a dark, smooth tone, absolutely filled with a deep baritone.
With a click, the image of a cheery young girl with short pink hair popped up on the screen, contrasted with images of the same girl with considerably longer Hair, and large bloodsoaked mechanical arms surrounding her said blood also splattered across her body, her expression a decisively neutral one as she looked down at the camera.
"Quite possibly the most brilliant mind of the 23rd century. The inventor of an energy generator that seemingly defies all laws of nature, a working, fully functional bullet deflector, enormously powerful, mechanical arms that responds to input from the brain better than any prosthetics ever could."
The speaker was a large, powerfully built man wearing an immaculate black business suit. In terms of looks, his face was unmistakenly one of direct African descent, only instead of a brown skin tone, he instead had one that was completely greyish white.
A similar hair color, along with blood-red eyes, revealed an albino nature, rather than the unusual coloring to be the effect of a quirk.
In terms of his quirk, the only outwards sign was the man's teeth, with a Jaw of very sharp canines.
"She first appeared in the city of Saga at the tender age of 7, where she was wandering the streets bawling her eyes out and crying for her parents. No one is entirely sure who said parents were, nor have the names she gave for them ever yielded results. The girl became a ward of the state, being thrown around from foster home, to foster home, until she was adopted by one Robin Hatsume, from which her current surname is derived. At this point, she disappeared off the records for several years, presumably living a relatively low-key life, until a few years ago where both she, and her foster mother was diagnosed with cancer. After that, the girl exploded onto the scene of mechanical Innovation."
"The mother died a year later, at which point we first attempted contact with our agents, but as one can easily surmise from this picture, said contact was negative. We will Thusly have to bring her to our side by force. There is also a rather massive time limit, as she is estimated to only have a year or two left to live before she dies."
Click. The image on the screen changed, now showcasing a smiling little girl with long dark green, wavy hair, sharp teeth, being held by a smiling older man in a lab coat, obviously missing one arm.
Beneath said image were two other ones, both showcasing large reptilian figures, both in the form of what looked like a mix between a human and a dragon.
"Tokage Setsuna. Only Daughter of Dr. Curt Connors, and thanks to our lovely Dillon's bungle last year, his only surviving offspring."
The man glared at one of the other people in the room, an older woman with long, greying hair, that once upon a time could have been any color, but was now firmly on the way to the kind of white that only came with age. In contrast to her master, she wore an outfit that couldn't have looked less professional if she tried, wearing a set of jogging pants and a t-shirt, alongside not wearing either shoes or socks.
She met the man's gaze and did not lower her head at the rebuke, but she didn't say anything to contradict him either.
Around the table the other people present gave her glancing looks, that quickly returned to their boss as he continued.
"Now that her brother is dead, Tokage is all that remains of Curt Connors immortality experiments, the living result of his attempts at an artificial healing factor. Again, we have had contact with her, and as you guys should well know by now, our attempts to bring her and her family back into the fold did not go to plan."
As he talked, the voice got darker, harsher, and with an edge of menace in it, as he kept glaring at the older woman.
"Subsequently, as Hammerhead's trip to Japan ended with complete failure, we lost our one shot at returning her home to the Caribbean before she came under the protection of Yuei."
Click. Once again, the images flashed and were replaced by a different one, this time of a single picture, the mugshot of Yuei's number two contestant, looking very, very tired.
"And Finally We have Uraraka Ochako. A random nobody that no one had ever heard off, that had a very well-established quirk, that suddenly developed an utterly monstrous strength quirk. And given what we saw her do in this tournament, I think we can safely assume that she is All Might's successor to One for All."
Click. The picture of Uraraka vanished, replaced by a series of images showcasing various things, ranging from scientific inventions to pictures of before and after pics of a lizardman regrowing their body parts, to All Might doing various feats of strength.
"Uraraka, Mei, and Tokage. These 3 girls will be our targets. Each of them represents an invaluable resource that must be secured at any cost. Especially Mei. We must learn the full secrets behind her great energy generator. Without it… Well, as useful as her bullet deflector is, a device that costs a million for every projectile deflected is not practical."
"True, true. We cannot afford to waste such coin on mere peasants after all."
The speaker was a man wearing a green outfit, a purple cloak, and a large, blue sphere over his head. In some regards, he looked even more out of place than Dillon did, as he was the only one there wearing a costume, whereas everyone else was wearing fine clothing or military equipment.
"Indeed. If we can have the bullet deflector turned into a cheap alternative, it would completely revolutionize everything. It would, in fact, be the final excuse I would need to fully replace our police with heroes. After all… what good is police with guns, in a world where the trusted handgun just became obsolete?"
Around the table, the reaction to this idea had was somewhat mixed.
Dillon grinned at the prospect, Mysterio's reaction was impossible to read behind his glass head, while the 4 other people there had looks that varied from agreeing, to strongly disagreeing with the sentiment.
In particular, there was an older man who looked exceptionally troubled by the idea, and as his boss moved on from Mei, his expressions remained troubled.
"Then there is Tokage, Curt Connors daughter. The final result of his old experiments to regrow his missing arm, without the minor flaw of turning into a mindless lunatic at the transformation into a giant lizard. Our attempts to reverse engineer the healing factor from her family's blood have proven rather fruitless. Maybe Warren could have done it, but alas, we will have to do without him."
"That leaves us with only one option. Bringing her back here so that we make use of her body directly. Either through her actual flesh or if that doesn't work, we will simply have to pass down her powers the old-fashioned way."
A man with a face and mustache that couldn't have made him look more like an older Zorro if he tried, nodded solemnly.
"My granddaughter is ready, your grace."
"I would rather it not come to that. Eugenics and breeding is such an… Imprecise art, even without using surrogates. Nonetheless, I'm glad to hear she is ready for it, if it becomes necessary."
The older man, who had been looking very troubled by the ideas of what Mei Hatsume represented, shot the Zorro look-alike a disgusted glare, before turning back to his boss, as the albino man continued.
"And finally, we have Uraraka Ochako, heir to One For All. The quirk that took off half of old Shigaraki's head. It is, to put it lightly, the single most powerful quirk of all time. And lucky us, it a quirk that is passed down, with ALL that such quirks bring with them."
All eyes turned to look at one specific person, an older, black woman with dark blue hair that had several streaks of gray in it.
When she spoke, her voice had a heavy French accent to it, and there was a surprising amount of passion in them, compared to how little she spoke.
"The girl has the gathered power of 9 different people in it. Given that her master was foolish enough to hand that enormous amount of power, into the hands of someone with a quirk of their own… Well. It is certain that he does not fully understand the implications of such."
"Yeah, the Japs aren't a spiritual people at all. It's a sure bet he just thinks of quirks as scientific evolution or some such nonsense."
There was some chuckling around the table, but it quickly silenced as the blue-haired woman resumed speaking.
"Regardless… One for All is the result of the original quirk of Shigaraki's brother being passed on, but only after being fused with a quirk that allowed the stockpiling of power of time. Such quirks as the original owner held are not unique. But usually, such quirks are alone. Over time, as they are passed on, they bind the souls of those unfortunate enough to carry the quirk, and by doing so, they make sure their powers are still lashed to this world, long beyond their deaths. As such, you get individuals with wide, and potentially very versatile powers. However, these powers are neither stronger, nor weaker than they were in the original user's lifetime. That is not the case with One for all. With it, each and every generation, not only pass on their powers, but with every soul, it passes through, and every year it holds within it's current vessel, that power will continue to grow, and grow, and grow."
"Huh, yeah that explains All Might's massive power, but if that's the case, shouldn't All Might have way more power than just ridiculous super strength?"
"Yes. He should. I am not certain why this is not the case, but our task does not change. We must secure the power of the stockpiling quirk. THAT is the key to acquiring an All Might of our own."
The albino nodded, and with a final click, the screen behind him went blank.
"Aye, and I think that is all. Uraraka Ochako, Mei Hatsume, and Tokage Setsuna. These 3 are our goals for the upcoming operation, which we will discuss more as the preparations come along. Any further questions?"