If you haven't read Slaughterhouse: New Mission, read that first. This is a side story to that, and will not make any sense if you have not read it. With that being said, enjoy!

Slaughterhouse: Kinetica Rising

Enderdez45

Prologue: The Funeral

Toschi Hatsume's funeral was a sad reunion between Melissa Shield, Toschi's girlfriend, and the U.A. students involved in the I-Island Incident. A few weeks earlier, Toschi had suffered severe injuries in a fight; he had joined forces with the infamous vigilante Otowaru Chiraka, The Slaughterhouse. In his final battle, the Spanish villain Carbonado attacked Class 1-A; he sacrificed his life to save theirs. He died a few weeks later, in the same hospital where Chiraka had been held after he suffered his own injuries from the fight. At the funeral, Midoriya walked to the casket, staring down at the hero's body. Despite the severe burns Toschi suffered, his body had been completely repaired for the funeral, and the arm he had lost had been replaced with a prosthetic.

Midoriya blinked back a tear as he remembered the fight. Carbonado had thrown a red-hot ball of molten graphite at the students, and as it was about to hit them, it froze in the air. Toschi's Quirk enabled him to freeze any movable object in place, and then when he released it, any kinetic energy applied to it while it was frozen was instantly released, sending the object flying at whatever trajectory it was hit towards. Toschi had sent the orb back at Carbonado, but the force of the explosion as it ricocheted blew his arm off and severely burned almost all of his body. Despite their best efforts, doctors were unable to revive him from his coma, and he passed away.

Mei was uncharacteristically solemn throughout the funeral. She clung to Melissa, trying to hold back her tears as Toschi's friends spoke about his life and adventures. He had no immediate family; his parents had been killed several years prior in a traffic accident. Mei's parents were there, her mother distraught at losing her nephew so soon after her brother and sister-in-law. As Toschi's friends spoke and laughed about his time at U.A. years ago, Midoriya realized something: I never got to ask him about his time at U.A.

Toschi graduated U.A. from the Support Course five years before Midoriya got accepted. Strangely, he had been accepted into the Hero Course, but transferred out after his first year. Midoriya wanted to ask some of Toschi's friends about it, but he felt it would be rude to ask, so he forgot it. At the funeral, Midoriya saw Melissa give something to Mei, but he didn't want to press the matter. Afterwards, Melissa announced to the students that she was going to stay in Japan with Mei's family for a few weeks before returning to I-Island to continue her work.

A few days after the funeral, Midoriya entered the workshop to check on Mei. She sat with her back to him, tinkering with something he couldn't see. Occasionally, she would reach over to a laptop and type something in, and an error message would pop up. She groaned and leaned back, spinning lazily in her chair. She saw Midoriya and perked up. "Hey Midoriya," she said as he walked over to her, "what's up?"

"I wanted to see how you were doing," he said, and Mei sighed.

"It's tough; I've looked up to him my whole life. He was the reason I got so interested in building support items in the first place, and now that he's gone, I just…" she trailed off, and Midoriya placed his hand on her shoulder.

"You feel lost, right?" he asked, and she nodded, eyes closed. "I've felt that before. Somebody who I looked up to, someone I admired, someone I wanted to be, they left. They're gone now, but you know what? I choose to work hard so that I can live up to what that person expected of me; I work so that I can become stronger, so that next time, people won't have to die. I'm sure Toschi wanted you to be an even better inventor than he was, and he would hate it if you gave up on that dream." Mei sighed and rested her head on Midoriya's chest, not noticing him stiffening up.

"I know, but it just feels so different now. Like, when something doesn't go right, normally I just keep working until it's perfect. But now, I can barely find the effort to even try to fix things." She looked up at him, and he saw a tear in her eye. "If I can't do what I do best, then what am I? Am I someone Toschi would have been proud of? I can't do all the things he did, he was a hero! A hero who saved countless lives, a hero who saved our lives, a hero who gave his own life to help others! I can't be that!" She threw her arms around Midoriya's shoulders, crying into his chest. He froze, then slowly brought his hands up to her back, holding her as she sobbed. She cried for a few minutes, then her tears slowly stopped coming. She let go of him and sat back, wiping her eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't-"

"It's okay," Midoriya interrupted, "I get like that sometimes too." She laughed, imagining Midoriya in her place. "So, what are you working on now?" Midoriya asked, snapping her out of it.

"Oh, it's just something Melissa gave me," she said, turning around. "She was working on a prototype with Toschi, and she wants me to finish it." She spun back around, holding a very familiar device. Midoriya's eyes went wide as he saw the Full Gauntlet sitting in her hands. It looked about the same as it did back when he fought Wolfram, but it was longer, like it would cover his whole arm. He saw another spot of red on her desk, and he approached the other Full Gauntlet, amazed. "Melissa said you would recognize them," Mei said. "They're designed to be three times lighter and eight times stronger than before. They cover your whole arm now, so it provides even more support and protection. I redesigned it slightly so that it can integrate into your suit, and I made one for your left hand as well." She frowned, rubbing her chin. "Although, since you primarily use your legs now, I guess I could work on Full Gauntlets for your legs too. Oh, check this out!" She picked up a small circuit board on the desk and pressed a button on it. The two gauntlets shrank down, collapsing into bracelets. "You can deploy all of them at an instant! This would go on your wrist, but I'm trying to work out how to integrate this button into your costume. If I get it working with the leg Gauntlets, I think it could raise your strength so much that All Might would look like you." She snickered, and Midoriya looked at her, amazed.

"Mei, this is amazing!" he exclaimed, a big smile on his face. "But I thought the Full Gauntlet was destroyed…"

"Oh, it was. Melissa told me about how strong you were." Her eyes narrowed, and a smug grin came over her face. "She said it could take the full strength of All Might three times. You used it at full strength twice and it broke." He froze, face white. "You got some serious power in that body of yours Midoriya. When you become the number one hero, make sure you're using my babies." She winked and turned around, resuming her work. Midoriya shakily nodded and left, stumbling at the doorway as Mei laughed. Mei sighed as the door closed, glancing over at her laptop screensaver.

Her eyes stared back at her, her young arms waving at the camera. She was in elementary school at the time, and she was sitting on Toschi's shoulders, a big smile on her face. He was in graduation robes and was laughing at something off camera. Mei smiled as she remembered that day; in fact, that day was the first time she had managed to put something back together after taking it apart. Toschi had been so happy to get his phone back in one piece. She laughed at the memory and leaned over to grab a screwdriver, but lost her balance and fell to the floor. As she groaned and tried to stand up, a piece of writing caught her eye. On the bottom of the desk, a sentence stared back at her: Watch out villains, Kinetica is here!The message was dated, and Mei realized he had written it in his third year. She sat back on her chair and wondered what his school experience must have been like.