Titanium Soul
[CHAPTER 4]: Plexus
[ALTERNATIVELY]: In Which All Might Gets Blood All Over His Own Merchandise
Plexus (n): any complex structure containing an intricate network of parts
Inko Midoriya hadn't started her day expecting to come face to face with her dead son's disembodied head.
Now, certain arguments could be made: namely that it wasn't so much his actual disembodied head as much as it was his consciousness transferred into a head-shaped hunk of metal, or that, knowing Mei, she kind of had expected it, just not to the degree to which it had happened.
Regardless, the current state of events was… relatively agreeable to her, all things considered.
She calmly set out cups in front of everyone and began pouring tea.
"YOU SHOULD HAVE FUCKING SAID SOMETHING, YOU ASSHOLE!"
"I'm not obligated to tell you anything, Kacchan. I'm only doing this now so you don't actually try to kill Mei."
Inko sighed and rested her hand on Katsuki's head. He opened his mouth to protest, but with a simple use of her Quirk, his lower jaw was pulled shut. "Katsuki. Shush."
He grumbled but complied.
That issue solved, she placed a plate of cookies on the table and sat down herself. Mei immediately snatched one and began munching on it.
Inko sighed and turned back to Izuku. "Izuku, honey, I've been doing a lot of thinking over the past two months. I… I haven't been a very good mother."
He opened his mouth to argue. "That's not-"
She raised her hand, and he stopped. "When you asked me if you could still be a hero without a Quirk… I didn't say yes. To this day, that remains my greatest regret."
Izuku blinked his eyescreens at her. "Mom…"
"Now don't get me wrong, I don't really like the idea of you being a hero. It's a dangerous profession and there's already enough kids willing to throw their lives away for it. But you know all that already, and you never even considered turning away. I know that once you've set your heart on something, there's no stopping you. And as a mother, I think there's a point where the only thing left to do is cheer you on, and I missed that."
She took a deep breath. "I guess what I'm trying to say is… go for it. As long as you give it everything you've got, as long as you keep getting back up when you fall, as long as you're finally living your dream… I don't think I can ask you not to."
Izuku bobbed his head solemnly. "I'll make you proud, Mom."
Her eyes brimmed with tears as she shook her head. "I don't doubt it, Izuku."
There was a moment of silence.
"WOOHOO!" cheered Mei. "Mamadoriya's approval: Check! Another victory for Hatsume Industries!"
The doorbell rang. Katsuki pushed Inko's hand off his head and got up. "I'll get it."
Izuku rose his eyebrows as his eyescreens flashed question marks. "Actually, what's up with him? He never really used to come over but by the looks of it he spends more time here than at his own house."
Inko smiled weakly. "I think he feels responsible for… well, for what happened. It has been pretty lonely, but I've been keeping busy myself too."
"HEY AUNTIE INKO, IT'S THE CREEPY SCARECROW GUY AGAIN! SHOULD I TELL HIM TO FUCK OFF?"
She rolled her eyes. "Tell him he may as well come on in. And do it politely, please?"
A few moments later the tall blonde man entered the room and looked around. "Ah, if you're having company I can come back later-"
She shook her head in exasperation and pulled up another chair. "Don't be ridiculous, Toshinori. These are just a couple of my son's friends. I'll get you a cup and-"
She was cut off by the familiar sound of the man spewing blood all over everything. Yaoyorozu screamed.
"Oh dear. Katsuki, can you go get the towels?"
Toshinori was staring at Izuku's robotic head, which was in turn staring back very intently.
Her eyebrows rose, and a knowing smile spread across her lips. "Oh, you two know each other already?"
All Might was in his house.
All Might was apparently a regular at his house.
All Might was familiar with his mom.
And Izuku was the only person who knew this. What the hell was going on?
Oh. Right. His mom was asking a question. A simple glance at All Might's (ALL MIGHT!) face told him a backup story from him was out of the question, meaning…
"Yeah, we ran into each other once... on a rooftop..."
Mom's head tilted curiously. "A rooftop? What were you doing there?"
That was another great question. "Long story short, All Might saved me from a villain and dropped me off there." There we go. Nothing to potentially leak All Might's secret but still not technically lying to his mom.
There was a suspicious twinkle in her eyes. Did… did she also know this was All Might?
The hero in question apparently managed to get over his shock, because he took it from there. "Yes, Young Midoriya and I spoke about heroes for a few minutes."
You know what? Screw it. "Actually, can I talk to you for a moment? Privately?"
He blinked, but nodded. Good.
Izuku turned back to his mom. "Can we use my bedroom real quick? We just need a few minutes."
She nodded, but the corner of her mouth twitched upward. She knew! She knew this was All Might. Oh god, his room was probably full of All Might merch and he was about to bring the man himself in there- why did he think this was a good idea?
He unfolded his spider legs and leapt off the table, skittering down the hallway to his room. His All Might themed name plate was still there. Oh god, why?
All Might (ALL MIGHT!) carefully closed the door behind him. Alright, focus on anything other than the nauseating volume of All Might merch in his room. Like the man himself. In his room.
Izuku quickly climbed up his desk, as All Might carefully sat down on the bed- All Might was on his bed!- "Okay, first things first, does my mom know you're All Might?"
He shifted nervously. "Er… that is to say, yes, she does."
Okay so his mom totally was messing with him, good to know- wait this is still All Might!
"Okay I have no other way to ask this so… what are you doing here? Is- is my mom under investigation? Is my house? Is Kacchan? Did he punt another toddler or something?"
All Might blinked. "Another toddler? Wait, no, that's not what I wanted to say- Young Midoriya what happened to you? I was told you died in the hospital?"
Izuku blinked. Oh, right, literally everyone thought he was dead, not just Kacchan and Mom. "Mei scanned my brain before I died and uploaded me onto a computer, I'm gonna be a robot hero now. You?"
He rubbed the back of his head. "Hey, just because I can only be All Might three hours a day doesn't mean I'm unconscious the other 21! Being the Symbol of Peace pays well and, well, your mom's Quirkless Rights Activist group needed funding. At first I told her I was just All Might's secretary but eventually I told her what happened on the rooftop… so here we are."
Izuku hummed thoughtfully. "So my mom is running a Quirkless Rights group now? Cool."
All Might blinked and snapped his fingers. "That's right, I never told you! My name is Yagi Toshinori when I'm in this form. Just don't call me All Might when I'm like this, or Toshinori when I'm All Might, and we'll be good."
A voice came from directly outside the window. "That actually explains a lot."
Mr. Toshinori (he knew All Might's real name oh God) spewed blood as Mei climbed into the room.
Izuku just sighed. "Mei, why are you like this?"
She shrugged and holstered her grappling hook. "I'm naturally curious. So this is All Might, huh? I thought you'd be wider."
"He gets wider," mumbled Izuku defensively. "Just not all the time."
She slipped her goggles down over her eyes and peered closely at him. "Is his Quirk that he gets 'roided up by grape juice or something? Is that why he endorsed that one brand?"
Mr. Toshinori straightened up indignantly. "That was just because I really like their juice and I didn't want them to go out of business! My power is the ability to harness the combined strength and determination of those that came before me- wait, no, this is a serious issue. Young Midoriya, is she trustworthy? We're talking about national security here."
Izuku sighed and retracted his spider legs back into his neck. "Mei, tell Mr. Toshinori your opinion on Non-Disclosure Agreements."
She waved him off. "Pshhhh, I am going into the Support Industry, and client confidentiality is a thing there."
Izuku raised his eyebrows. "I thought you said NDAs were, and I quote, for pussies who are too afraid of people being smarter than them to actually get things done?"
She grinned devilishly. "Well, I mean, Mr. Toshinori here isn't a client yet, so I wouldn't feel too safe if I were him."
Mr. Toshinori groaned and massaged his temples. "Yes, this is definitely going to be a problem."
Izuku set his face to his best disappointed expression. "See, this is the part where I'd smack you in the back of the head if I still had arms."
She wiggled her eyebrows at him. "Well, you'd get new arms quicker if we had funding, and Mister Symbol of Peace over here admits he has more money than he knows what to do with!"
Mr. Toshinori glared at her. "I'm not going to bribe you."
She gasped and clutched her heart. "Such baseless accusations! I'm not trying to get you to bribe us, I'm trying to blackmail you into considering a Support contract with us! No sweat if you decline, just think about it."
He sighed and held out his hand, which Mei gleefully dropped a business card into. "I already have a contract, but I'll see if I can't get my people in contact with you."
Mei punched the air victoriously. Izuku rapped his front legs together in imitation of a clap. "Well, now that that's cleared up, let's head back out? I don't want Mom to think anything weird is going on."
He made to leap off the edge of his desk before pausing to look around the room. "Ah… I guess I'll have to ask her to clean up the blood. I'd do it myself but, you know, haven't got arms."
Mr. Toshinori rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "I, ah… sorry about that."
Mei banged a wrench against the metal surface of her workbench noisily. Izuku's head looked up from the laptop he was rapidly typing on, and Yaoyorozu closed her pocket encyclopedia. "Ladies and gents of Hatsume Industries, might I direct your attention to the center of the room?"
The jury-rigged holographic projector strapped to the ceiling of the garage/workshop hummed to life, displaying a life-sized… robotic All Might?
"Ah, wrong one." Mei kicked her computer and the projection flickered to a smaller, normally-proportioned robot body.
Izuku stuck a spider leg into the air. "Actually can we do the other one-"
Mei threw her wrench at him, bouncing off his forehead and sticking into the wall. "No."
"But All Might."
"ANYWAYS, we have eight months until the UA Entrance exam. That's less than 250 days to build this beautiful baby right here, affectionately titled Corpus Primus." She waved her hand through the holographic body's chest, temporarily jittering the image.
Well, that didn't sound so bad-
Mei hit another button and Corpus Primus visually disassembled itself, splitting into thousands of intricate parts that then sorted themselves by material and manufacturing process.
Oh lord.
"Now, since Miracle Girl's Quirk lets us skip making things and lets us work with theoretical properties rather than practical, there's a whole bunch of parts we really want her to end up making. And you know what that means?"
Izuku hummed to himself thoughtfully. "Collecting my allowance backlog and using it to order pizza?"
Mei paused. "Not what I was going for but put that on the to-do list. What I was going to say was carefully plan out her diet and budget out the calories for the critical components. And that's where this bad boy comes in!"
She pulled out a thick stack of papers and slammed them on the table in front of Yaoyorozu. "The official Hatsume Industries 'Goal to Gain: Biofuel Blowup' Plan! A list of parts, in order of importance, with calorie consumption estimates and helpful tips on how to gain! Most of them amount to going hog wild at the nearby buffets until they kick you out, to be entirely honest."
Yaoyorozu blinked and flipped it open. "Is the entire first chapter just a list of phone numbers for nearby pizza places?"
Mei nodded. "Only the unhealthiest ones."
Izuku raised a spider leg. "What am I supposed to do, then?"
Mei blinked. "Your legs are multitools, Zuzu."
He raised a leg up to his eyescreens, before unfolding it into a screwdriver. "They are."
"Did… did you not notice?"
"I did not… how am I supposed to move anything, though? Half the parts are as big as I am."
Mei threw a second, smaller wrench at him. "Zuzu, where are you?"
"...your workshop?"
"Wrong. You are in the birthplace of ingenuity. What do we do when we have a problem?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Make a solution."
"What do we do when that solution inevitably explodes?"
"Call the fire department."
"And then?"
"Figure out what went wrong and try again."
"You know what I'm gonna say next, don't you?"
A grin spread across his metal face. "Plus Ultra."
"Go Beyond," she crowed victoriously. "You do know how to pronounce it properly after all!"
The garage door slammed open, startling the room's inhabitants. Mei scampered under a nearby table and hissed, Yaoyorozu Created a bo staff and dropped into a fighting stance, and Izuku accidentally punched his partially built chassis in the crotch with the rail-mounted assembly arm he was operating.
The imposing form of All Might stood in the open garage door as he posed, holding… boxes?
"I AM HERE! WITH PIZZA!"
All Might deflated to the comparatively spooky form of Mr. Toshinori as the garage door closed behind him, grinning wildly as he took in the room.
Yaoyorozu's staff clattered to the ground.
He winced. "Is there any chance I could convince you I have a really specific illusion Quirk?"
She looked between him, the pizza boxes that he should not still be able to hold in one hand, and the faint hand-shaped indentations on the garage door before shaking her head slowly.
Mr. Toshinori sighed and dragged his hand down his face. "I probably should have made sure you two were the only ones here before doing that."
Izuku tilted his head, still processing the fact that All Might brought them pizza. "...I mean, she's the one who needs to eat most of that. I'm a robot and Mei isn't a calorie alchemist."
Mei shrugged, climbing to her feet as if she hadn't just turned feral at exposure to sunlight. "At least we won't need to give her a cover story if we ever get around to collaborating with Dr. Shield." She took the pizza from Mr. Toshinori (who was All Might, who brought them pizza!?) and flipped open the lid of the first box. "Oooh, stuffed crust!" She pulled out a slice and bit into it with gusto.
Izuku hummed thoughtfully and turned to Yaoyorozu. "I'm sure you have questions?"
She nodded dumbly. Mei slid a paper plate laden with pizza down the table to her and began talking. "See, mister Symbol of Peace over there got hit really hard in the gut a few years ago and now he's missing, like, half his innards. He has about three hours of balloon animal time before he deflates into that. That sound right, Zuzu?"
Izuku bobbed his head and went back to the assembly arm. "Yeah, that about sums it up."
Yaoyorozu stared at Mr. Toshinori for a moment, before frowning. "How many people know? Besides us, that is."
He started counting on his fingers. Izuku's heart sank when he didn't get to his second hand.
"Four. Wait, no, Inko makes five!"
Then that meant… "Hatsume Industries plus my mom makes up half the people that know?"
"Well, the faculty of UA are mostly going to know next year-" Mr. Toshinori froze. "I should not have said that."
Mei slowly turned towards him with a predatory grin. "You're working at UA next year?"
He groaned and waved his hands halfheartedly. "Surprise?"
Yaoyorozu's phone rang. She checked it, before turning to the others. "Sorry, I've got to take this. Give me a few minutes." She walked into the Hatsume Residence proper and answered the call.
Mei slid up next to Mr. Toshinori and smirked. "What's in the entrance exam?"
He blinked. "I don't think I'm supposed to tell you that-"
"A Hero is supposed to use all the resources at their disposal to do the best job they can."
He stared her down. "And a teacher is supposed to use all their resources to ensure a fair assessment of their students' skills. This is non-negotiable."
She frowned. "You got me there. You gonna have any of the pizza?"
He shook his head. "No, when you're missing half your stomach your dietary options become severely limited." He looked around the workshop, from the half-assembled motors and piles of bolts strewn across the workbenches to the partially assembled chassis laying on an improvised surgery table towards the middle of the room. "So how's the whole 'Robot Hero' thing working out for you? Is there a way I can help?"
Mei put the hologram back up in a partial exploded view of Corpus Primus, leaving the actually assembled sections still together. Hundreds of parts continued to float around the room. "We're a few days behind schedule but we gave ourselves three weeks of wiggle room, so pretty good. Best way you can help is to bring us more pizza."
Mr Toshinori turned from the intricate display towards her, raising an eyebrow.
"No, seriously, Miracle Girl's Quirk can turn body fat into anything. Without her this would take another whole year and not just because electronics are expensive."
The door swung open once more. "You flatter me, Hatsume. It might have taken you another month or two at most."
Mei rolled her eyes and turned back to Yaoyorozu. "Right, we keep our food-powered universal assembler in one of the back closets. Standard garage equipment, that thing."
Yaoyorozu waved her off. "Regardless, that was just my legal team on the line. They went over the specifics of the UA admissions guidelines and since our friend here isn't legally a, uh… a person just yet, we're going to have to be smart about how we apply. It was suggested that you just apply for the Hero course yourself, Hatsume, and file Izuku as support equipment."
Izuku blinked his eyescreens. "That sounds… vaguely demeaning but logical enough that I can't complain?"
Mei nodded and pulled her application back up. "If it's stupid but works, it's not stupid."
Izuku, Yaoyorozu, and Mei gazed reverently at the completed form of Corpus Primus. It was a work of art, with clean white and forest green plating, polished metal and matte black highlights, and Izuku's classic bright red shoes. The green accent lights placed strategically across the body were dark, which reminded him...
"So, uh… how were we powering this again?"
Mei grinned and rubbed her hands together. "You remember that science project we did back in sixth grade?"
He blinked his eyescreens. "The Zero-Point Energy Generator? Yeah, why- MEI, THAT ONE EXPLODED!"
She smirked. "And that was the proof of concept. It exploded. If there was no energy, nothing would have happened. All I had to do was figure out how to harness that energy and bam, infinite power! Oddly, I only ever made progress after I hit 38 hours without sleep, but I got there in the end!"
Izuku tilted his head thoughtfully. "But it is stable now, right?"
Mei's waved her hand flippantly. "I hard-coded the overdrive threshold into the hardware, it shouldn't explode unless you disengage the safeties."
"Shouldn't or won't?"
"Definitely one of those."
"That's not very reassuring-"
Mei clapped her hands together. "Let's jam this baby in and see how it runs!"
Izuku directed the arm to remove the front chestplate, exposing a hole right where a heart would be. Mei carefully slid the softly humming metal shell that held the Z-PEG into the gap and twisted the wires together.
She walked over to her computer and initiated the startup sequence.
The lights flared a brilliant white before popping. An acrid smell filled the air as smoke drifted out the joints of Corpus Primus.
Izuku sighed. "You forgot to install a power regulator, didn't you?"
Mei frowned at the smoking baby and removed her Z-PEG. "Huh. Guess I did."
"We're going to have to replace all the electronics in this thing, aren't we?"
"Yep."
He groaned. "Tomorrow is the entrance exam, isn't it?"
Yaoyorozu nodded. "The recommendations exam was last week, but the general exam is tomorrow, yes."
Izuku skittered over to the laptop. "Mei, add the regulator then get some sleep, you have a written exam to pass tomorrow. Yaoyorou, how much pizza do you think you can eat tonight?"
She opened her mouth.
"Sorry, dumb question, I'll order six extra large. Triple cheese, stuffed crust… breadsticks, soda? Heck yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, we're doing this."
"Yaoyorozu! The wiring has been replaced, now we just have most of the components left."
"Okay, okay, let's see if I can't… alright, we don't have to assemble the servos from scratch, I can Create them in one go. You replace the circuit boards in the torso, I'll start with the tendon actuators."
"Mei just texted me, the practical portion is in five hours. It takes about 45 minutes to get there, add 15 for traffic, we're gonna have to be loaded up in four. Make sure your driver knows."
"Actually, he got a moving van for this. We can probably move out now and work on this in the UA parking lot until Hatsume can tell us which testing field she's in."
"Good idea, we don't have time to move the assembly arm so let's finish the main torso first, I can access everything else without it."
"Sounds like a plan- did Hatsume expect this to happen? Is that why our assembly table is a modified ambulance stretcher?"
"Yaoyorozu, you will eventually learn not to ask what Mei does and does not know."
"Call me Momo. You watched me drink two liters of Dr Pepper and eat six whole pizzas in one sitting, you've more than earned that right."
"Call me Izuku, then. Oh no, the circuit board burning out charred the graphene over here- part designation UT-LP-HS3? Thanks. That's it for the left pectoral section, everything good on your side?"
"Yeah, let's seal up the torso and move into the van, its waiting outside."
Izuku and Momo spent the next five hours working in silence in the back of the van, carefully replacing each part with precision, until-
"Mei sent the text, she says Testing Field C!"
The driver turned back towards them. "Where's it located?"
Izuku rolled his eyes and forwarded the man Mei's GPS coordinates. "That help?"
The van's tires squealed to a start as they began their way down to Testing Field C, probably breaking multiple traffic regulations along the way.
Momo's hands blurred into action, removing the left shin plate; the last section they had to repair. Izuku skittered down the body and unscrewed the burnt electronics, even as Momo Created the replacements.
"We're almost there, kids!"
Good, they were almost done. The shin plate was back on, everything was fully replaced, all that was left was to boot it up and head out. Momo flipped open the laptop plugged into Corpus Primus and booted up the initiation sequence.
Izuku skittered up to the neck and docked his head to Corpus Primus for the first time. The body hummed to life, accent lights giving off a soft green glow. The servos whirred to life, calibrating themselves to the correct tolerances, and adjustments made themselves where necessary.
A grin split Izuku's face as the van screeched into the lot outside Testing Field C. Momo scrambled to open the back doors as the driver drifted the car 180 degrees. The stretcher-come-workbench slid back, falling out the rear of the vehicle and catapulting Izuku forwards.
Izuku engaged his head's 'Hero Mode', folding up his plate metal hair into a smooth helmet surface. A mouthguard-style covering slid out to cover the lower half of his face, and a glowing green visor descended to protect his eyescreens. A bright red samurai-style crest flipped up on the front of his helmet, paying homage to All Might without blatantly ripping him off.
He heard Present Mic (Present Mic?! Izuku listens to his radio show nightly!) shout "GO!", and the hero course applicants milled around in confusion. Mei was waiting at the back of the crowd for him, and he grinned below his mask as he landed on his feet.
And promptly fell on his face while the other applicants finally realized the test had started.
What…?
Oh. That was a problem.
"Um. Mei?"
She looked down at him, unimpressed. "What's wrong now, Zuzu?"
"I, ah… I may have forgotten how to walk."
A/N [PIXELKIND]: And that's a wrap! This chapter was like, at least 1k longer than it normally would have been, but I took so long with it I figured you guys deserved it.
All Might is officially just a more charismatic and plot-relevant Hagrid, Izuku and Momo are on a first name basis, Corpus Primus is live, and Izuku also forgot how to walk.
A/N [Doobly]: Extra long chapter and an extra drawing! I hope the wait was worth it!
[WARNING: ffnet does not allow me to insert images into a story document. Please find this fic on Ao3 for a drawing of Corpus Primus, along with illustrations of various moments throughout the fic. Thank you.]
