Hello everyone, I am back! And in such short time, damn I'm good. It's been a long time since I've been this motivated to write, and words are just flying off of my fingers. But honestly, I don't have much stuff to go over this time, so let's just get to the chapter, shall we?

Enjoy!

"Ah, Midoriya, my boy, you're here early," Junichiro Oyama, the shopkeeper of the local junk store I frequent for parts, greets me loudly as I step in the shop. The man is a tall, muscular hunk of meat with tanned skin and a head so bare of hair and shiny that even with an LED bulb's light, it'll give you spots in your eyes. Don't even get me started on sunlight. The government makes him wear a hat at all times during the day in order to keep that glorious chrome-dome under wraps.

"Yup, I was just getting far into my most recent bionic arm prototype, but I was ran out of copper and steel for the materials," I explain, waltzing up to the counter and lazily lean my arms on the dense wood, propping my chin up by my elbow. "Got anything you think can help me with that?"

"Hmm… steel and copper, right?" he repeats as he turns away from the counter and looks out to the back of the store. He squints a little bit at something in the back, trudges over to it, and pulls out… apparently that something from the miscellaneous heap of stuff he keeps in the supply room. Coming back over, what I see in his hands is an old muffler, clearly aged and worn judging from the visible rust and heat-warping of the metal. He sets it on the counter in front of me and lifts an eyebrow.

"This work?"

"Hmm… I don't think so, too rusted," I reply, tapping the metal with a small hammer I had brought in my pocket. At one light smack to one of the most rusted portions of the muffler causes a chip of rust to flake off, before the tapped portion decides to give up and collapse inwards, and Mr. Oyama and I look at each other.

"…"

"…"

"Definitely a bit too rusted," he huffs while pulling the muffler off of the table, turns around, and throws it somewhere into the deep and mysterious depths of his shop, causing a muffled (hah) but still ungodly metallic clanging from where it went. "So, yeah that was… probably some of the best stuff I could get ya. Just got it from a customer a few days ago, said he was dropping something off at the junkyard a good few blocks away from here and tripped on it. Brought it here, wanted to sell it for revenge."

My ears perked up at one of those last sentences.

"A junkyard? In Musutafu?" I question, not hearing about it even from my lifetime of living in the city.

"Well, yeah. It's a little out of the way, considering that there isn't much of an industrial center in Shizuoka, but it's still decent sized. Apparently, U.A. and other local heroes use it as a drop off for scraps and the like," Mr. Oyama explains. "If you want some materials, that's probably the best place to get it."

"And you never told me this before… why?" I ask, my left eye twitching slightly in annoyance.

He shrugs. "Never asked."

Seeing me open my mouth to retort, he holds up a hand to stop me. "Also you'll probably start getting all your materials from there and not come here," he admits and takes off his hat quickly to rub his brow and the top of his head. "I mean, not that you actually pay me in money, but… y'know, it gets a little lonely around here. I mean, half of my customers come in here hoping that I'll happen to have shovels, rope, and trash bags. I'd rather have a kid than… whatever definitely illegal things those people are doing."

"Aw, you're gonna make me blush," I say lightly, fanning my face with my hands in mock fluster. The man stiffens noticeably, and his face grows serious, and I stop my fanning and think about it.

"…Please don't say such things," he says stonily.

"Yeeeeeep, right, that can sound a little bad," I at least have the decency to look and sound sheepish. "Sorry, sometimes I forget to watch my wording. Mom tells me it's the way I have died so many times that death no longer phases me that I feel like I have little consequences for my actions."

"What?"

"What?"

"Oh dear, look at the time, I'd best be getting to that junkyard now if I want to have time to tinker with what I haul back. Haha, that's crazy what I just said, I'd recommend you forget about, okaythanksbye," I motor off as I take quick steps backwards, looking at him all the way to the door. Feeling my back hit the glass of the door, I reach behind me and all but thrust my way outside the shop.

*~Ding-a-ling-a-ling~*

…

…

*~Ding-a-ling-a-ling~*

"Where is the-"

"Three blocks East, then take a right at the intersection, it'll be on the right side of the road."

"Okay thank you, Mr. Oyama," I happily smile at him, catching the man's haunted expression out of the corner of my eye as I leave again.

*~Ding-a-ling-a-ling~*

A drawn out, long-suffering sigh echoes in the empty shop. Wordlessly, Junichiro Oyama reaches under his counter and pulls out a glass and a bottle of whiskey and appraises them. A good few seconds pass as he sets the glass back under the counter, uncaps the whiskey, and takes a long pull.

…Of course, I don't know he's doing that. I'm not there.

But a tiny, green spider does sit watching from it's perch in a web in the corner of a ceiling.

Totally not related.

Following the old man's directions, I do actually find myself at standing on the opposite side of the street to a derelict wooden sign mounted tiltedly on a rusting iron fence. 'Musutafu Municipal Junkyard' can be seen painted on the sign in what I can tell even from this distance is chipped, white paint.

I shrug my shoulders. Better than nothing, and there does appear to be a sizeable pile of metal visible from the entrance.

I take a look around my surroundings. Little traffic, buildings that have clearly seen better days, and not a single other person in sight besides a businessman loitering outside what is clearly a bar smoking a cigarette. Good, nothing here to witness my descent into villainy.

I jaywalk to the other side of the street.

Gasp! I know. Shock. Horror. The end of days has arrived! Frankly, we might need All Might himself to deal with this societal menace!

Believe me, Izuku 61 and I are intimately familiar with the dangers of not following proper road safety.

Anyways, I'm here! The old and rusted iron bars of the fence at the front of the junkyard now flash their tetanus-y glory to me. Walking through the entrance, I'm all but blinded by the veritable treasure trove in front of my eyes. Pieces of rebar and steel beams dented, burnt, or otherwise warped and unusable from destroyed buildings. What appears to be dismantled parts of robots, the gold and blue color scheme of the painted metal betray their former employer of U.A.

I run over to a pile of the robot parts and investigate whatever metal they've been using to build their robots. I rap my knuckles on the cold metal.

Yep. Definitely metal. No shit, Sherlocke, what was I gonna find out there?

Shaking my head, I bring sling my backpack off of my shoulder and pull out a metal gauntlet and slot it around my right hand. Reaching into the bag again, I pull out a set of cylindrical metal rods, fastening them to my hips, lower back, and right arm, taking time to plug in a cable coming out one end of the rods on my arm to the gauntlet.

"OK. That should be…" I mutter to myself, staring at a blank screen affixed to the gauntlet above my wrist.

*Vrmmmmm*

"AHA! IT WORKED!" I shout to the open air, pumping my non-suited up left arm in excitement. This is the finished prototype of Invention #49-1: Single Gauntlet Exo-Skeleton that I was finishing up a few weeks ago while talking to myself about… something. Probably not important.

I talk to myself.

A lot.

…where was I? Oh right, the Invention.

The screen on my wrist hummed to life, displaying a minimalistic HUD of the battery power remaining and a rough outline of the gauntlet with percentages representing the durability of the individual pieces.

"Everything looks perfectly operational. Now, only one more thing to test…" I mutter to myself with a downright evil grin, reaching my left hand up to the goggles matted into my frizzly, untamable mop of green hair and pulling them down to my eyes. My vision darkens briefly before my surroundings develop a green tint to everything, then to an even darker, blue tint when I flick a notch on the side of the metal as they flick into 'Welding' mode.

Looking at my gauntleted hand, I press a tiny button at the top of the screen, and another icon appears on the display screen. A tiny microphone.

Ahem. I lean in ever so slightly.

"Go-Go-IzuGadget Buzzsaw," I enunciate clearly to the screen, microphone pulsing in accordance with my voice before going away with a satisfying jingle.

A series of mechanical clicks sound out in the silent junkyard as a panel in the palm of the gauntlet opens up and a spring-loaded buzzsaw shoots out, riding out on a track built into the palm and up my index finger. And there it flicks outward, extending from the tip of my index finger and automatically whirring to life once it has fully extended.

"BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" My demented, pre-pubescent cackling rings out in the empty air as I feel an absolute rush of euphoria at a creation actually working properly.

With the saw operational, I turn back to the hunk of what appears to have been the chassis of a U.A. robot, judging from the thickness of the metal and the holes indicating where arms should've been. Wires and various bits of metal still stick out of the holes, so I've got to be sure to collect those later. But first…

*NNNNNNNNNNIIIIINNNGGGGGG*

The terrible noise of grinding metal shocks my ears, but what's important is that from the site of impact, a mix of white and orange sparks rain from the incision. Satisfied, I pull the saw away from the metal, and the rotating blades slow slightly as I press the voice command button again.

"Retract."

From the command, the gauntlet gives the same jingle as before and the saw comes to a full stop before it follows the original sequence but in reverse, with the panel sliding back over the deposited appendage with a nice click.

Alright, so, about what I was hopefully thinking. The weight of the metal should've been sufficient enough, but with U.A. being 'Plus Ultra' and all that, I figured that they probably wanted to have the best material, and a titanium-aluminum alloy certainly fits the bill. Strong, lightweight, able to sustain massive loads, it's used in everything from airplanes to tanks.

Now… how would I get this out of here…

"Hey, you, Green Boy!"

I guess I could use my exoskeleton to carry it, but I don't really want to stress test this too hard and snap my arm halfway back to my house. Then I'd have to reset and do this all over again…

"Hey! I'm talking to you! Greenie, where'd you get that tech?!"

Nothing I have with me can probably help be haul this back. Wait… AHA!

*Thunk!*

I've got it! The inspiration hit me, almost like an empty can launched at my head and impacting the side of my skull. It even feels like my own genius has given me a massive headache, so burdened is my skull with my intellect! I just need to make something from the materials here, so best start searching. Looking at my feet to begin, I see… a can in the dirt, conveniently on the side of me that's throbbing and sufficiently close to me as if it had just landed there. So, if that's there, then the can must've been propelled, most likely thrown from… ah, probably from where that odd girl is standing atop a small pile of scrap.

And, if I can make even more conjecture, the fact that her arm is still outstretched in the tell-tale sign of having thrown something, I think I've found my culprit.

"Ah, finally you listen to me! Didn't want to throw that but you really didn't give me many options. I called your name twice. TWICE!" She hop-slides down the pile of metal and walks towards me stopping… a little too close to my face. "Can you believe that? I have babies to make, my time is precious, I don't have time to waste calling out to spaced out pieces of broccoli!"

…Huh?

"Wait, are you talking to me? And was that question rhetorical?" I ask dumbfounded, though without my control, it comes out even squeakier than my already high-pitched voice from nervousness. Look, I may have died more times than the average Tom, Dick, or Harry, but I've still talked to so little girls besides my mother that I can count them on one hand.

"Well, yes I'm talking to you, and also yes it was rhetorical," the crazy girl reiterates, swishing her head back and forth with her answers before her gaze shoots to my still gauntleted hand. "Ooh! Ooh! What's that? I see that it's connected to that thing on your back is that the power source? And I just saw it have a little saw on it a few seconds ago, so where'd it go? Is it in the palm? Does it come from a secret compartment? Is it replaceable?"

She gasps, eyes shooting back to mine suddenly, and she grips my shoulders in a deceptively strong grip, shaking me while staring at me with a manic look in her… crosshair irises?

"Has it ever exploded?"

…

Yep, so my crazy label wasn't too hasty.

"Well, to answer your questions in order: one of my excellent personal inventions, Invention #49-1, yes, into my palm, see the last answer, I suppose that's a yes, probably, and yes, several times."

…Is what I would've LIKED to say. Instead, what comes out of my terribly flustered maw is the ever eloquent:

"Uhhhh…."

Brilliant. Masterclass use of the Japanese lexicon, me. Snap out of it.

"Uhh… it's one of my Inventions. It's um… an exoskeleton with a single gauntlet right now I-," I mumble, swallowing the building saliva in my mouth to wet my dry throat. "I plan to make it a full exoskeleton in the future but I'm not there yet. And yes, it does have a saw, it's built into the palm of the gauntlet and rides up a little track to my index finger when activated by voice command." I manage to choke all of the explanation out, but my gaze is glued to the floor.

"Hey, that sounds pretty similar to one of my babies, Baby 49! It's an exosuit that is supposed to help with moving very heavy loads," she excitedly exclaims, all but humming with hyperactive energy given the opportunity to gush about her creations. "Too bad I couldn't figure out how to not wind the wearer's spine into a Slinky. Tsk, poor little mannequin."

Ah, how familiar. Don't worry, poor twisted and abused mannequin, I understand you pain.

"So, what brings you to my junkyard, Greenie?" the girl redirects to a completely separate question, brutally derailing that innocent train of thought. "I've never seen you around here, and the only people that come here are heroes, construction companies, and drug dealers, and me, so which are you?!"

"Umm! Uh… you?" I hesitantly shoot out, hoping to stop her hyperactive mind. And let me tell ya, it worked like a charm.

I can almost see the gears turn in her head, and I swear hear an imaginary faint grinding noise and a lingering scent of burning metal and grease as her face goes blank. This leaves me a chance to actually take in her appearance, now that her hurricane of energy has been temporarily halted. The girl is most likely around my age, judging from our similar heights and her youthful features. Resting on her pink dreadlocks is a pair of clearly homemade steampunk-style goggles, complimenting the smudges of grease and dirt on her face. Her eyes, I now notice, are a rather intense yellow with that very distinctive black crosshair pattern that seems to make up her irises surrounding a green pupil. Her outfit is a very functional black tank-top with a brown, grease smudged sweater tied around her waist. Finishing her outfit is a pair of heavy jeans with work boots, looking like she came straight out of a mechanical shop.

"Wait, if you're me, and I'm me, then who is the real me? Wait, what did that philosopher guy say on the internet? 'I think therefore I am?'" she mutters to herself, pinching her chin between her thumb and forefinger. "…Yup, I think, therefore I am me, so what does that mean you are? There can't be two me's, so that means…" All of a sudden, her serious thinking expression is lost when her mouth beams into a radiant, toothy smile and she does a little twisting jump.

"Who cares, baby!" the potentially insane girl yells before coming back to face me and holds out a hand for a handshake. "The name is Mei Hatsume, future greatest Support Company CEO. What's yours, other me?"

…

Oh, this girl is going to be the death of me, isn't she? And somewhere deep inside me, I can feel the literalness in that statement.

"Um… I-I-Izuku Midoriya, and um… likewise," I stutter out, hesitantly reaching my hand out to clasp hers. When I do, her other hand goes atop mine and shakes our hands forcefully up and down quickly.

"Well then, Izuku with 3 'I's Midoriya, I'd like to see you try, new rival! We'll have to both get to U.A.'s support course together, to make sure our eternal rivalry will never falter! Of course, that's after we become friends/rivals now, and carry it to that point, and no dying until I beat you, you hear?" Man, can that girl ever say a lot of words and only have like, 2 of them make sense.

Not wanting to hurt her feelings even though I didn't catch what she said but hearing the word friend in there, I feel inclined to agree. "Err… sure, Hatsume-chan, I'll be your friend."

Eyes alighting with happiness, she cutely jumps around a few times in a circle, which is impressive considering she's still got my hand in her handshake.

"Yes yes yes yes! I finally made a friend, take that Tetsuo," she yells out to… someone. A family member, judging by the lack of honorific. Her crosshair eyes bore into my skull, elation mixed with inventive manic and the promise of poor safety regulations. Truly a girl after my own heart.

Mei lets go of my hand and turns around on a heel, spinning back to the pile of scraps she came from. Walking back towards it slowly, she suddenly stops right before the scrap heap, turns back around again and… strikes a pose?

I mean, judging from the fact that her arms are linked above her head, with a forward and flamboyant posture to the rest of her body, I can only guess this is a pose. No human would actually rest like that naturally.

Then she closes her eyes, and I can swear there is an aura of sparkles around her, the universe itself lending the pose power. "Well then, my rival, I'll be seeing you again."

In response, my body feels a sudden urge to reciprocate the declaration with the same gusto that she did. All of a sudden, my shoulders square up to appear as tall as possible, and I turn my body sideways with my gauntleted hand facing her. Thrusting my torso forward slightly and pointing my hand at her menacingly, I turn my head in order to face her, and see that her face is alight in childlike wonder.

Again, sparkles seem to manifest around me, and my expression turns hard. "Make sure to improve next time we meet, rival."

What? Where are those words coming from?

Somewhere, Someplace in Japan

A black-haired, shark-toothed young boy dressed in casual, red clothing with a certain old, chivalrous hero logo on it, suddenly looks up from his air hockey game at the arcade, stands up, and takes a look stare at everything around him.

"Um… Kiri, you good?" a pink girl with tiny horns questions, knocking in the puck from his distraction.

"Hmm… somewhere, I felt like something really manly just happened."

Also Somewhere, still Someplace in Japan

"Hon? I feel a disturbance in the universe," a young lad with swept over blonder hair wearing fabulous clothing mutters, sounding strained. "There are some people that are positively ~sparkling~ right now."

His stomach churns and whines loudly, and the boy's face scrunches up in discomfort.

"Oh non."

Back to me (wait, what happened?)

We stand there awkwardly for a few moments, still posing. I clear my throat and she rubs the back of her head in embarrassment.

"Well, yeah, I should probably actually get going, I have to build a cart to haul this robot back…"

"…Yeah, I need to get back to the shop, mom and dad are probably worried at this point…"

"…Oh, but it was nice meeting you, Hatsume-chan…"

"…It was good to make a friend, Triple 'I' Izuku…"

"…"

"…"

"OK, goodbye!" we both mumble-shout at the same time, running to do our respective tasks at the junkyard.

Shuffling over to an old truck, I pull a wrench out of my backpack and begin to take off the wheels in order to build the cart. Halfway through, I see Mei running out of the junkyard, carrying an assortment of metal scraps in her arms while a toolbag hangs at her waist from a strap across her chest. The sight would be comical, seeing such a small girl carry so much, but I imagine I've probably looked like that before while working on stuff, so no judgement.

With not a word more, I finish my task in putting together a rudimentary cart and load up the robot chassis into the cart and it groans under the weight. It's slow going, but I do manage to get back to home before dark, having to go slower than normal from not wanting to damage the roughly put together creation.

Walking up the steps of the apartment with the chassis (I had left the cart sitting near the bottom of the stairs leading to our flight of stairs), I get to the front door and, without a hand to open the door, decide to just lightly kick the bottom of the door. I stand outside awkwardly shuffling my feet and adjusting the heavy metal in my hands for a few moments as I hear the shuffling of feet inside the house.

My mom, obviously, greets me at the opened door, and quirks an inquisitive eye up while looking at me up and down. "Finally, you're back, you took a bit longer than normal. Did you get distracted talking to Mr. Oyama?" She steps back into the house and into the kitchen, letting me through to my room where I deposit the robot body on the floor next to my desk.

Walking back out, I plop myself down on a chair at the table with my head lulled all the way back behind me. "Nope. Wasn't actually there too long, but he did direct me to a junkyard I had somehow missed," I tiredly explain and I rub my face with my dirty hands. "Though, I did get distracted."

"Oh? How so?"

"Well, when I arrived at the junkyard, I found that hunk of metal I brought back, but I wanted to find out what metal it was, see if it was useful for me," I say, gesturing aimlessly with a hand as I can see I have her attention. "So I do, and my creation doesn't malfunction or anything, but then all of a sudden, this girl appears from a pile of scrap like a crazy, pink gopher and throws a can at me!"

"And she was all like 'that's a neat gizmo, can you explain how it works, and has it exploded, and also you're my rival now, and also my friend,'" I explain, pitching my tone up to attempt to mimic her voice (a depressingly easy feat, puberty can't come fast enough). I now finally raise my head up to look at my mom, and man do I ever wish I had a camera to save a picture of the amazing mix of emotions on her face.

"…So what you're saying is: you now have a friend, and she's a girl, AND she seems to share a habit with you?" she counts off, and her grin widens even further and tone grows more teasing with every finger put up.

"I mean… I guess you can come to that conclusion from that set of information, yeah," I lamely acquiesce as a creeping, suspicious feeling creeps into my gut. "Wait… mom, it's not like-"

"MY SON FINALLY GOT SOME GIRLFRIEND MATERIAL, THANK GOD," my mother whoops in triumph and she strikes an all too similarly sparkling, yet different pose consisting of a hand on her hip and one hand gracefully framing her face from above. She face goes serene, and a sagely and knowing aura fills the air.

"Fufufufu…Now, tell me more about my future daughter-in-law."

…

Ah right, she's crazy too, I temporarily forgot.

And that's a wrap! Thank you kindly for making it this far and reading, it means a good deal to me that the perception of this story thus far has been positive. I was half-dreading posting here, because I was stepping into a pretty large fandom without much contact with those in it like I have in the past. But thankfully, the reviews I've gotten thus far have really spurred me forward, and I hope to live up to the expectations put forward unto me!

Speaking of, I figure I should respond to the reviews I've gotten thus far, eh?

-ITSLuka13 and inglesluis05: Thank you kindly for the praise!

-Kilo8: Yes, it certainly will. Sadly no real use of the quirk in this chapter, but it'll come in time. Mei is going to me... VERY fun to write, and I giddily await to write her with the half-straight man, half-cuckoolander comedy of Izuku.

-RoyallyFucked: Thank you, and I hope that chapter 2 keeps up the interest!

-Guest: Haha, yes, that's what I'm going for. Izuku's quite a bit OOC, but well, I imagine that having much greater than average familiarity with the Grim Reaper would put a LOT of things into perspective.

With that being said and done, leave your reviews if you'd like, they're my main inspiration for getting this stuff done as fast as it is. This is still very off of the top of my head, so that sudden bursts of motivation is what I'm running on!