Chapter Twelve
Deku
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Once the brutish creature was rendered weightless by Ochako, Eraserhead had no trouble at all using his bindings to throw it to the side. It impacted against the side of a building with a satisfying crunch. The remainder of the squadron they were fighting moved sluggishly, impaired but not stopped completely by Midnight's gaseous aura of slumber.
One of the hulking creatures got past both Midnight and Eraserhead, lunging for Mina and Momo's position. Momo readied a long spear to keep it ay bay while Mina sprayed the creature's face with acid. Unexpectedly it was struck with a car, thrown at it by a distant Mr. Uraraka. There was no time to shout gratitude for his assistance. Other than Ochako, none of them knew who he was.
Father and daughter made eye contact from across the divide of battle. He smiled at her. Her chest filled with warmth and pride as she returned his smile. Momo tossed a gas mask to Ochako, who rendered it weightless before throwing it to her father. It was the best form of gratitude they could offer at the time.
Over the chaos of battle, a distant audible humming invaded their senses. "Wasps!" Eraserhead called out. "After me! Take cover!"
The enemy air support had arrived.
With frightening accuracy, the airborne creatures moved into Midnight's miasma, using their constantly beating wings to dissipate the gas. Rather than move mindlessly to kill civilians as the heroes had expected, they focused on bringing more of the ape creatures back into the fight.
"Die!" the shout rang across the street, a roar of defiant violence, almost as loud as the explosion that accompanied it. Gang Orca and his loud deputy, Bakugou Katsuki, had arrived on the scene. The young would-be hero launched himself skyward, far beyond the reach of the hero in charge of him. His objective: the wasps that endangered the ground operations of the heroes below.
He spun with concussive force as he blasted enemies on all sides, tearing their wings to shreds. Their armored carapace proved more resilient, allow them to survive the fall once rendered flightless. The task of finishing the creatures off fell to Gang Orca, who used his own brutal strength to crush and incapacitate them.
As Katsuki softened his own landing with a set of smaller bursts, Gang Orca shouted toward him. "We're joining with Eraserhead! Help me provide cover for them!"
Rising to the sky like a rocket, Katsuki propelled himself toward the two other heroes and their deputies, diverting his course to kill two more giant wasps. He focused more explosive power on these than he used on the first group, unsatisfied with the idea that they would survive his power. "Die!" he cried out again. He barely dodged a spray of acid from the aerial foes, the stench of paper and meat filling his nostrils as his explosions tore the enemy apart.
Everyone was surprised when one of the larger ape-monsters launched itself skyward, leaping to snatch the explosive young man from air. Its violent intentions were clear: even if it faced explosive destruction, it would gladly die to kill this enemy. Katsuki smelled blood and gore as the thing hurtled in the air toward him. His own explosions helped to create distance between them as he retreated through the air… only to see a second one leap at him from behind.
For the first time, Bakugou Katsuki was worried that he would die here on a street whose name he didn't know. A fleeting though of his mother and father ran through his head… he wondered if Deku would be alive long enough to mourn him… he wondered if Deku would mourn him.
Fuck Deku, he thought. With a smartass smirk he let loose a series of explosive blasts that sent him away from the ape monsters like a missile knocked off course. He was satisfied that one of them was burned in the process, but he couldn't see how badly. He landed near the other hero team. "The cavalry has fucking arrived!" he remarked proudly, rescuing his own ass from the monsters.
The synchrony of the heroes' movements was amazing, as they moved with whip and bindings to pull the oncoming ape monsters across a pool of acid toward Katsuki, who struck the off-balance creatures with explosions to their faces. The detonations were precise, targeting their ugly faces.
Once Gang Orca plowed through another crowd of the monsters, his sonar disorienting them, the group moved quickly down the street together. They were joined by several civilians, among them Ochako's father. Eraserhead shouted an order back to the civilians, to watch after their own lives. "We can't force you to stay behind… but if you come with us you could die out here!"
The civilians did not respond. They had accepted the risks.
Running, the group kept Mina to the rear with Gang Orca. His mass of muscle would protect the group while she left a trail of acid as a tripping hazard. Ochako and Momo were in the center, protected by the forward flanking formation. Momo made two more gas masks as they ran, and Ochako made sure they got to Katsuki and Gang Orca. There was no time for introductions beyond that exchange. Eraserhead took point with Midnight to his right, and Katsuki to his left. They moved as a single unit, quickly gaining ground as they fought off stragglers and ambushes.
Mount Lady was clearly visible up ahead. Her struggle was desperate. The creatures swarmed around her. Her legs were cut and bleeding from multiple attacks. Some of the wounds were clearly bite marks. She wouldn't be able to stand much more of this.
Katsuki saw more than that though. In her desperation, she was using the shell, the Chrysalis, as a cudgel. A fair number of splattered monster corpses littered the ground around her, ignored by their fellows except as mounds of flesh to climb on their way to the battle ahead. The shell was painful to look at, making his eyes feel like they were being twisted inside his head. "Deku is inside that thing…" he uttered, unable to keep the words inside.
Eraserhead was going to remark back, inquire what the young man's relationship was to the boy in the shell… when Katsuki suddenly burst ahead from the group, breaking formation. "No, you idiot! Stay with the formation!"
Katsuki could not hear anything outside of his own rage. Deku was an annoying pebble, but god damn it, he didn't deserve this shit! "Fucking die!" he roared as he unleashed a torrent of explosive power, carpet bombing the enemy as they piled on each other in order to attack Mount Lady. Bakugou's actions caught over a dozen of the creatures, igniting the fur on their backs. The fires added crimson illumination to the entire city block, sharply contrasting to the dim lights of the city. Residents of the area had intelligently left their own lights off, lowering visibility dramatically and leaving the heroes at the mercy of a few ill kept streetlights.
The hulking monsters made surprisingly good fuel.
Midnight flooded the area with gas. Combined with the smoke, the entire block became extremely dangerous. Passing out in her gas would eventually lead to carbon monoxide poison due to the fumes of burning beast flesh. The street filled with the stench of burning hair and charred meat, and the undertone of decayed carrion refused to leave the air. If not for the gas masks that Momo even now was distributing to the accompanying civilians, the entire party would be in extreme danger just from breathing.
With Gang Orca's raw strength, Midnight's gas, and Eraserhead's bindings, they were faring well. Adding the support of Mina's acid, Ochako's anti-gravity touch, and Momo's ability to make any supply item they needed, and the three heroes were doing exceptionally well. Katsuki's explosions, and additional civilian support from Mr. Uraraka and his neighbors, helped clinch a decisive overkill factor in their favor. Victory, though hard won, felt like it was within their reach. Mount Lady's cavarly was finally here.
The less experienced fighters, deputies and civilians both, let out premature cries of joy when the enemy began to retreat. The four heroes knew better. As hard as it had been to get here, they knew that the enemy was fixated on the shell and the boy inside. They would not abandon it easily. It was, however, a chance they couldn't ignore. "Miss Uraraka, this may be a feint of the enemy, but it's the only opening we might have…" Eraserhead spoke, bidding her to approach. He turned to gaze upward at the hardest fighter in the city, the one who had been left on her own the longest. "Mount Lady, if you wouldn't mind…"
The four professionals went stiff as they stopped talking to take in the voice erupting from the comms system. The three younger women all looked on with concern. The air of victory they were all feeling felt somehow spoiled by the expressions of despair on the faces of the four heroes with them. Mount Lady set the shell down gently on the ground, a look of absolute anguish ruining her beautiful face. Katsuki landed nearby, the last to see that something was amiss.
Momo, standing close to Midnight, was barely able to make out the voice of Endeavor, the Fire Hero. She didn't catch the first pass of the message but managed to hear the second iteration. "A ceasefire has been called. I repeat: a ceasefire has been called. All heroes: do not pursue the enemy in their retreat. Do not pursue. A hostage exchange has taken place. All Support Corps members have been set free…" The message seemed full of hope… "All Might has surrendered to the enemy as a hostage in exchange for the release of all other hostages and for the ceasefire..."
The voice droned on with more details of the exchange, but Momo became too emotional to take it in. She gasped, tears threatening to flood her eyes. The two other young women and the civilians looked to her and Midnight, wondering just what had happened.
For his part, Katsuki turned towards Gang Orca, wondering what had gone wrong. After all, they had won. Deku was sitting right there. The shell was just ten meters away. "So… why aren't we grabbing the thing and going? I mean…" He was disturbed by the silent despair on Gang Orca's face.
Mount Lady's fist pounded down onto the street in anguish. Tears of frustration threatened to remove her already tarnished mask. "I didn't fight so hard for… this!" She blurted out the words.
"Someone tell me what the fuck is going on!" Katsuki demanded. The other extras nearby seemed to feel the same way as him, but it was clear to him that he was the only one brave enough to get answers.
"The hostages in the apartment complex were released… in exchange for All Might. Midoriya Inko remains in their custody along with All Might. All fighting has stopped…" Eraserhead said flatly. He showed no sign of emotion.
Midnight covered her face, not wanting to show her own emotions. Gang Orca clenched his fists and said nothing. Momo and Mina each were distraught like Midnight. Ochako dropped all pretense of professionalism and ran to her father, who embraced her. Mount Lady continued to weep.
Katsuki didn't understand what he had just heard, or rather he refused to understand. "So… ok. There's a ceasefire. That's the best time for us to move Deku out of here… we came all this way to rescue him, right? Right?! So, let's haul ass and get him out of this thing!" He refused to acknowledge the hairs standing on the back of his neck, the cold sweat on his brow. He refused to think about the implications of their words.
Eraserhead's eye twitched near where his face had been burnt. "If we disturb the shell, the enemy will execute All Might."
Mina turned to Momo, bawling her eyes out as she stained the taller woman's blouse with her tears and makeup. The others remained in the same level of emotional turmoil from before Eraserhead's revelation, though perhaps their intensity increased.
For Katsuki, none of the others mattered. He tunnel vision-ed his focus onto Eraserhead. "Deku… I… go to school with him." He almost called Deku his friend but felt horrible even thinking that. He didn't want to consider why it made him feel so terrible. "He's alone in there. We have to… I have to help him!"
Gang Orca straightened up and marched towards the shell. Eraserhead tried to get in the larger man's way. "Orca… don't disturb the shell. All Might…"
Orca brushed Eraserhead's hand away. "I'm just seeing if the kid is still alive. We'll talk after."
Katsuki felt something dangerously akin to hope, believing that if Deku was alive and healthy, that maybe they'd risk the enemy's anger and rescue him anyway…
The large man, wounded repeatedly from multiple battles, strode forward. He ignored the pain of his own body screaming at him, his own blood loss. He placed a large hand firmly against the shell and closed his eyes.
Waves of sound could be felt by everyone there, strongly reverberating through their feet and up through their hearts. Orca pulsed wave after wave of sound, as though thrashing desperate and lost at sea. His face creased with frustrated concentration. "He's… gone." He despaired aloud. "He's… liquified."
Katsuki didn't hear that right. It had to be a joke. The girls around him cried… but for what? It all made no sense to him. "No!" he shouted. "Deku is alive! I promised I'd rescue him! I'm getting him out of that thing!"
"Stop." Eraserhead says.
The young blonde ignored the professional hero as he strode purposefully towards the shell. "Deku! I know you're in there you spineless little shit!" he shouted, powering up as much explosive power into his hands as he could. This would be the biggest one he had ever produced… but he had a promise to fulfill.
He had to redeem himself.
A beacon, a spotlight from an overhead helicopter, flooded the area with light. Katsuki could see this fucking cage in all it's alien horror. Every nook and cranny, every twist of its metallic geometry, all reflected in the sudden onslaught of light. "I'm getting you out of there and taking your Quirkless ass home!"
Eraserhead launched a binding coil of faux cloth at the raging young man, but it was knocked aside by a powerful explosion. Katsuki continued to advance, building more power. "Everyone's been worried about you, you fucking ass wipe!"
Finally, point-blank range. Gang Orca wisely had stepped aside. Katsuki knew that this explosion would be big enough that he could accidentally kill himself with it. However, if All Might couldn't break this thing with an overpowered punch, then Katsuki would need every ounce of his own explosive power all focused onto a single point to even crack this thing.
So, he unleashed everything. All at once. Putting all his feeling and all his power into a single defining moment, he struck forward, forcing as powerful a blast as he could in as tight a space as possible… but nothing happened. There was no explosion.
Bindings wrapped around his shoulder and his waist. Despair filled him when he finally remembered what Eraserhead's Quirk did to other Quirks. For the first time in his life, Katsuki felt what it was to be powerless… Quirkless… the same feeling he had rubbed into Deku's face for years. He lashed out, striking the shell with all the futility of a child's tantrum.
None of the heroes or their deputies present would ever forget the image. Katsuki clung helplessly and futilely to the side of the shell. They didn't understand his relationship with the boy inside. They did however ache for the anguish that none of them could free him… not anymore.
"I'm sorry Deku…" Katsuki whispered. Tears filled his eyes. Tears! Fucking tears! For stupid Deku! Fuck! "Fuck it Deku! I want to help you! But I can't! We can't save you! You have to get yourself out of there! You have to get out here! Deku!" Tears flowed down his face as an expression of undilutable rage consumed his facial features. He beat the shell so hard with his fist that the onlookers were afraid he'd break his own bones, punching it as though it weren't a warped wall of metal.
His anger only seemed to grow with each tear that left his eyes. Eraserhead pulled hard on the bindings to restrain the young man, but Katsuki forced his feet into the ground and leaned in towards the shell, shouting at it even as he was dragged away. "They have your mom, Deku! They have All Might! Do you hear me?! Do you, Deku?! They have your mom!" His volume increased feverishly. He tasted his own blood from how much strain he paced on his voice. It was sad to watch, as though his shouting at this dormant shell would have some kind of reaction.
Until suddenly, there actually was a reaction.
It began as two small points of light, like faint green stars shining through the surface of the shell. Most of them didn't notice because Bakugou Katsuki was still shouting, obscenely thrashing about as he did so to fight against Eraserhead's bindings. As the two lights grew brighter, they were joined by a third. It was clear to all present that the light wasn't from outside the shell, but from somewhere inside…
"He can hear me…" Katsuki whispered at first. His voice was hoarse, sore. His throat was bleeding from how loud he had screamed at Deku just now. But he'd recover, he told himself. He laughed a bit, ignoring that the bindings were coming loose. "He can hear me!" he declared loudly.
Everyone was shocked by what they were seeing, none more so than Mount Lady and Eraserhead. She had carried this giant weight around for the better part of several hours on end without a single reaction from the boy inside. Eraserhead for his part had given up on the situation once All Might had been captured… but now he was reconsidering their options. If communication could be established, perhaps they could skirt around the agreement.
"Kid." Eraserhead spoke up, getting Katsuki's attention. "Do you think you have a better shot reaching through to him than the rest of us? We're short on time. The enemy commanders will head this way, and once they get here we have to retreat."
Katsuki nodded. "I can get through to Deku."
"The kid's name is Midoriya Izuku..." Eraserhead commented.
"Deku is a nickname I gave him… a different way to use the kanji in his name." Katsuki told the half-truth with only mild discomfort. "Now, let me talk to him. Anything you want me to ask?" He had the nerve to smirk despite how sore his voice was.
"Just establish whether he can understand what you're saying." Eraserhead said flatly.
Katsuki was dimly aware that the others around him were speaking to each other or commenting on what they had all just seen… were still seeing. None of the rest of them mattered. They were all extras. In this moment though, Deku mattered. The thought disturbed and excited him, angered and exhilarated him. He walked forward and placed a palm on the shell again. "Deku. Can you hear me?" He strained to speak, forcing himself to sound normal despite how sore his throat was.
The three lights inside seemed to move, as though turning to shine in his direction. They were arranged in a triangle of sorts, if he imagined each of them at the tips. The one at the top of the triangle was the brightest. He dismissed the idea that they were eyes, but he had the thought fleetingly. Maybe a helmet with a head lamp? Yeah that made sense. "Deku. Answer me. Can you hear me?"
Nothing.
He punched the shell again. "Answer me you fucker! Can you fucking hear me?! Do you remember what I said just now?! Deku! They kidnapped your mom! Do you get that you stupid pissant?! Your mom is a hostage! All Might is a hostage! Hell, Ingenium is dead! Is any of this registering you little shit?!" As his temper flared to life, he punched the shell again hard enough that he hurt himself. "Fuck!" he declared.
The rest of them were aghast at his… percussive method of establishing contact.
The lights inside grew much brighter. They were accompanied by another set of lights that danced and strobed, growing brighter, then dimmer, then brighter again. The lights emerged in irregular bursts, long and short pulses emanating from the center of the shell. The three primary lights endured during this display, but there was no change other than this luminous display. Katsuki despaired. If Deku was in there, he was probably responding just to volume, just to the times that Katsuki was hitting the shell.
He turned and slumped down onto the ground, leaning back against the shell. An uncomfortable silence fell over all of them. The lights, while novel, had proven meaningless. Katsuki was dimly aware that at least one of the young women nearby was crying. To him, that didn't matter.
All that mattered was that Deku was gone. Bakugou Katsuki had failed. And he felt like shit.
He leaned his head back against the fucking shell. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't warm either. "Deku… I wish you would just say something… even if it's muffled… just… say something." He spoke up despairingly, turning his head as though to speak over his shoulder.
Lights continued to flicker, over and over again behind him. The lights were getting brighter as well. He turned on his ass to really look at this thing, and immediately had to shield his eyes. The others were backing away from instinct, but Katsuki remained seated as light flooded from within the shell. A corona of green light washed over him as he sat there, immediately gaining his full attention. The light was warm, like sunlight at high noon. The corona spread outward, engulfing meter after meter of the streetscape. Within the corona, everything was flooded with soft green light, as though the light caused everything inside the corona to have its own glow.
The lights within the shell continued to grow more and more intense, the irregularity more difficult to look at even as the original triangle of lights became bright beacons. Katsuki stood and gawked in amazement at the display, at his own skin glowing, at everything being illuminated around him, at the sudden warmth that wrapped around him. The corona continued to stretch outward, encompassing an area at least ten meters on all sides of the shell, creating a dome of light with all of them inside.
Mount Lady had shrunk down to her normal size and was like the rest of them in awe of the massive display of light. Although centered on the shell, there was no clear mechanism for how the light was projected. Further, the heroes all were awed by how the light seemed both warm and tangible. Although the light was visible from outside the corona, the field of light within the corona seemed dense, as though the air itself was thick with light.
Then the light took on new dimensions, as the light projected out towards the base of the corona grew thicker, brighter, denser. Then the brightness diminished until actual shapes and images were discernable. They were all standing on what appeared to be the floor of a desert or perhaps a sandy beach. Winds moved through, sweeping at small sloping dunes at their feet. Pillars of salt emerged from the desert floor only to erode in the wind and be added to the sands, emerging and falling apart in a continuous cycle.
It was Momo that first spoke up… "It's like… some kind of hologram…" she looked about. "But does the image mean anything?" She asked.
Mount Lady looked around, walking and examining the illusion. Her feet moved through the light-projected sands as though they weren't there, so there was no solid mass to speak of. If felt more like moving through something thicker than air but thinner than water and was warm enough to feel even through her clothes. But something was bothering her, something only she was able to notice. "It's scaled down."
Momo turned to the older woman and tilted her head. "Scaled down? What do you mean?"
Mount Lady knelt next to one of the diminutive dunes and pointed out her observation to everyone else. "Some of these dunes have human footprints, and they are all tiny. From how small the prints are, this image is projected from a perspective far larger than what I'm capable of in my giant form. The only reason I caught it is that I'm used to looking down for tiny clues from above like this."
"Hey! Deku! What the fuck is up with the sandy projection! If you can make a light show in there use it to do something useful! Use words you fucking dumbass!" Katsuki, as impressed as he was by the display of lights, saw it all as useless when what they needed was for fucking Deku to get off his ass and get out of that shell. Why couldn't he just act like a fucking rescue-ee.
"He can't." Gang Orca interjected. "I'm not sure if you understood earlier, but your friend in there is completely liquified. If that shell he's trapped in cracked open right now, he'd run across the street like an egg."
Mina wiped tears from her eyes as she perked up. This entire day had been an emotional roller coaster for her. The shock that they all arrived here for nothing was replaced by the awe at this amazing display of light. Now though there was a puzzle to solve, and she wasn't going to let herself sit the discussion out. "That means he has no vocal chords… so he can't talk! "
Once again, the lights inside the shell sputtered and strobed, lighting off and on at irregular intervals. "But clearly he can hear us…" Ochako observed, stepping towards the light, stepping out of her father's reach. "How can that be possible?
Momo seemed to light up, not from the external display around her but from the brilliance of her own mind. Inspiration had struck. "He's not just liquified… he's turned into an undifferentiated cell mass! Every cell in his body is both a nerve cell and a stem cell! It's a complete reengineering of how multicellular organisms grow, like a strange composition of gestation and metamorphosis as we know it. If he can hear us, that means that every cell is able to sense and able to think! He's…"
Her own thought process haunted her suddenly. "He's turned into a gigantic brain… a supercomputer…"
Katsuki wasn't buying it. "Huh? You. Ginza Girl. You're not making any sense." He said, nicknaming her on the spot for her choice of expensive clothing. "Deku wouldn't turn into a giant brain. He's not exactly the top of our class."
Momo was about to say something as a retort back when she was cut off.
"Everyone. Shut up." Eraserhead said flatly. He was paying attention to something in his comms system. The other heroes followed suit but were not getting anything. "Switch your earpieces one channel higher. The signal is better." He practically muttered the words at them as he tried to focus in on what was being said to him.
Katsuki couldn't help it. He held it breath in anticipation. The others, deputized and regular civilian alike, hushed to complete silence as the heroes listened with complete attention to whatever news was coming in.
Midnight and Mount Lady both suddenly laughed, not at something funny. It was an automatic release on tension. "Yes!" Mount Lady shouted. "Fucking yes!"
Even Eraserhead's smile seemed infectious. The way he glanced over at the shell while his smile grew made Katsuki and the other deputies start to hope. "This kid…" he spoke barely above a whisper.
"What's going on? Someone, tell me something!" Katsuki demanded.
The blonde turned as he felt Gang Orca's hand rest on his shoulder. The larger man was smiling at him as he offered up his own earpiece to his deputy. "Kid. You're going to want to hear this for yourself. Trust me, it's better straight from the source."
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Like most others in Japan, Hatsume Mei was watching the news. The fact that she was watching from the comfort of her garage while she was working on an invention was the only thing that was remarkable. Inventing wasn't new to her. Allowing herself to be distracted during her work by the television, however, was. As disconnected as she could be from interpersonal relationships, she knew hours ago that what was transpiring in Musutafu was probably the biggest news story of the decade if not the century.
Hostile aliens. The thought alone was absolutely, completely, maddeningly frightening. News anchors from around the world offered their own useless commentary, their own spin on the story, but the facts were amazingly simple. Earth, or more specifically Musutafu, was under attack. The aliens had kidnapped a single Quirless youth and were experimenting on him inside a metallic construct. Everyone else called it a shell but Mei saw it as something completely different. It was clearly some form of mobile laboratory.
She was shocked just like everyone else when All Might turned himself over as a hostage. It was about as shocking as Ingenium's death earlier. Neither of those two events though caused her to stop her work. After all, her next invention may be needed in the war to repel the aliens.
War. Not a euphemism regarding villains or lesser criminals. Actual war. The thought was harrowing, but what else could this attack be described as?
A green glow from her television jolted her attention, tearing it away from her work bench. The laboratory-shell was out in the open on the street, and light was being emitted from the inside. The pulsing light came in long and short pulses. It puzzled her. Something about it seemed off.
"It's not random… it's not random!" she shouted to no one. She was the only one home.
She stopped toying with the objects on her workbench and propelled herself across the floor in her wheeled chair, stopping herself at her computer. She pulled up footage of the current news reel and played the same segment back again. Then again. She still couldn't figure it out. Then she slowed the footage down.
Long and short pulses. There were only two pulse lengths. She tested to ensure there wasn't a third pulse length, and was satisfied to disprove the null hypothesis, or rather, to prove that there were only two pulse lengths… "Binary! It's a signal in binary!" she shouted again.
She switched to her preferred binary programming interface and input the ones and zeroes… and got nonsense as a result. She reversed it… nonsense again. She switched programming languages over and over again, but each time she came up with nothing but garbled text. "But it's binary! And it repeats! It has to mean something!" she lamented.
Frustrated, she pulled up the online biographic piece about the kidnapped young man. After admitting that he was kinda cute, she moved on to the meat of her search: his hobbies and interests. There had to be a clue here into this code!
It was so obvious that she felt like an idiot once she realized what she was up against. He was a nerd for heroes, but not just heroes! Apparently, he excelled in hero-history courses… history! Yes! He was using an old code!
"Morse! He's using Morse! It has to be!" she cackled as she pulled up a free Morse translator program online. It was crude, but she could make something elegant later. Speed was mandatory. She ran the binary signal through, or rather dots and dashes…
"Success!" she shouted, standing in victory. Her chair clattered onto the floor, but that didn't matter. The text was translating into…
English? Fine. English! She was terrible at that language, but she could pull up an English to Japanese dictionary as well. She did wonder however why the code would make sense only in English when the source was a young Japanese male.
Finally, the text made tangible legible sense to her! "I can hear you. Stop. Please hold on. Stop. Yes, I can hear you. Stop. I am coming. Stop." She grew more and more excited as she continued to read.
She gasped with excitement. It was like making a new baby, a new discovery, an invention! "I am coming to save you all. Stop! I will make this right! Stop! Tell my mother that I am coming to save her! Stop! Yes, I can hear you! Stop!"
She was shaking with excitement. More and more text continued to appear. The program was running perfectly, and was capturing the dots and dashes, translating them into English, then into Japanese… only now it was happening in real time! Communication had finally been established!
Wait. What was she supposed to do next? Oh yes! Call someone! Who? Oh! The Support Corps! What was their number? She looked it up… of course! Emergency services!
She pulled out her cell phone and dialed for an emergency. As it picked up she barely gave the operator time to breathe. "Hello operator! Please patch me through to the Support Corps staff handling the Musutafu attack! I have a message from Midoriya Izuku!"
The operator didn't seem impressed. "Izuku. He's the guy trapped by the aliens in Musutafu. He's communicating using a Morse light flare signal. Patch me through, sir. This is probably the biggest emergency in Japan right now, so no this isn't a waste of emergency services. Yes, I'll wait."
She tapped her foot, not from annoyance but excitement. She was about to blow everyone's minds. She eyed her screen as more and more lines of text scrolled past her. "Don't worry, Izuku. You and I have never met, but I'll make sure you get your say!"
While Mei was waiting for Support to pick up the line, she decided to cobble together a text to voice translator. She hoped it would be a good approximation for his voice, which she had never heard in her life. Oh well.
"Oh! Hello, Support Corps? Yes! My name is Hatsume Mei, and I have cracked Midoriya Izuku's code. What code? The one he's been transmitting ever since Mount Lady put him down… the light show! I…" she grew frustrated that the man on the other end of the line seemed to feel this was a waste of time.
"Look. The guy trapped inside the shell is transmitting pulses of light even as we speak. It's in Morse, and it translates into English. I have a program running right now that is fulfilling those steps and is also translating it again using text to voice. Do you want my help or not?" she spoke with more venom and authority than she had ever injected into a conversation before. She didn't like it, but it felt necessary.
She couldn't help but smirk when she heard the man's reply. "Good. Now, help me figure out how to patch his answers to the heroes on site that are trying to communicate with him."
