Rei looked out the window, at the moon, beyond the metal bars of her room.
She did not like the nights.
The darkness that seeped into the world as the light left it, surrendering to the return of the primordial void…
The brightness fading as slowly but surely, the old human instincts began to seep in telling you that there was something wrong here…
Humans were not creatures of the night, not even when they were in peak mental shape.
She was not one such.
But the thing she hated most about nights… Was sleeping.
Nothing would happen to her here in this room. She knew that, despite what instincts told her.
She was safe here.
The four walls of this room might be a cage… But it was a secure cage.
Sleeping though… Sleeping was surrendering herself to her dreams. And her dreams… Her dreams were not safe for her. Her dreams… Her dreams could hurt her in a way that her current life could not.
They could remind her of how no one in the world wanted her. No one cared about her wretched life.
Not her parents, not her children… No one cared. And she had only herself to blame for that. That was why she was here.
She put it off for far, far longer than was healthy, but eventually, sometime around the first hour after midnight, Rei turned to her bed, the tiredness beginning to take full hold.
It did not take long once she actually laid down, her eyes closing, her senses slowing down… And then…
She felt a massive PULL and yelped.
The world became colors, gold, red, black, blue, purple, pink, orange, green, dancing around in a massive rainbow of energy, and in one short, all-encompassing moment, it seemed to her that in front was a bridge like a frozen, enormous rainbow…
Then she was pulled past it, beyond it, moving on and on seeing glimpses of a world beneath her until… She stopped.
She gasped and fell over on her knees, suddenly feeling a… Pressure on her entire self.
She took deep breaths, then realised that beneath her was not anything from her room. In fact… It was like nothing she had ever seen before.
It was cobbled, glowing, golden stones, like something out of medieval Europe. Only instead of grey, the material between the stones looked like a cast black diamond.
Was this… A dream? It didn't feel like a dream.
She raised her head…
The world around her was… Breathtaking.
Mountains… It was like the Himalayas stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. It was hard to make it's features out, but… They were lit up by a black sun, and… A golden sky. Not blue, or red, or orange. Pure, total gold, without a shred of hue or different shades of coloring.
"Finally! I was starting to wonder if you were planning on staying up all night."
Rei scrambled to her feet as she turned around… And was struck by the sight in the opposite direction of the mountains.
It was… It was a city.
A city that stretched on beyond the horizon. Beyond comprehension.
A black and golden city that at the same time seemed both ancient, medieval, futuristic, and… Something more. Something Alien.
Citadels of gold and black, with… Something wrapped around the walls. Something moving. Something that made Rei feel fear into her soul.
Spires that stretched up so far that she could not see the top, though she was far, far away.
And she was far away.
What she was standing on, was what looked like a small plateau of cobbled stone beside some massive structure built into a mountain.
It was far, far up in the world.
The view was so striking and all-encompassing, that she at first missed who had been talking. A small, teenage girl with golden eyes and pink hair.
She had completely missed her, mesmerized by the world around her.
She looked… Completely normal. Like any other girl, Rei might once have passed on the street. The only thing unusual about her was some form of a strange, metal gauntlet.
The girl was holding up… A plaque with writing?
"Wh-who are you?"
"Hatsume Mei." She held up the plaque.
"Now, as you can clearly hear… You can in fact read this right?"
Rei frowned, taken completely aback.
"Yes… I can."
"Sweet. Then you know this is NOT a dream. Human beings can't read in their sleep after all."
She… She vaguely recalled having heard that somewhere.
The girl, Mei, nonchalantly discarded the plaque sideways to the ground, uncaring of it, now that it had served its purpose.
"You…"
She began to understand, her baffled mind was starting to make sense of it all.
"You pulled me here with a quirk… This is some… World you created. To talk to me."
The girl threw back her head and laughed.
It echoed and… She felt her skin shake, and. What? What the hell was this horrible, horrible noise?
Mei turned and motioned with her arm towards the bizarre city so far away.
"Made? Nah. THIS place LONG predates me, Rei. It predates Earth and the Human race too, by some… Billions of years."
"I… I see."
Mei turned back and… There was something in her eyes then. Or… In one eye?
"You feel it don't you? The pressure… The connection… The Link between you and here?"
She nodded slowly.
"What you're feeling… Is the bond between you and this place. The bond between all those of us who have been through true Madness."
She had actually been thinking about madness.
She felt her body shake as the pressure seemed to grow way, way stronger.
By comparison, Mei was completely unfaced.
"You… You feel this too?"
"I did once. But… I ventured into the city."
She did not elaborate on what that was supposed to mean.
"I see you've recovered well from the time you poured boiling water over Shoto's face."
She flinched.
"You… Know about that?"
"Sure do. And if you were as broken now as you were then, you would have reacted WAY worse than you are now. That's good. That means this wasn't a gigantic waste of time."
Rei felt nothing but absolute confusion, and that fear in her soul that would not go away.
"What is this place?"
"An excellent question!"
Mei suddenly became way more cheerful, as she clapped her hands together.
"When sentient beings feel anything, happiness, rage, lust, joy, or whatever other feelings they might have, it creates enormous amounts of energy. And that energy does not simply vanish. It all goes… somewhere. That somewhere is here. This place was fashioned by that enormous energy, at the beginning of this universe, by a God who used it as his base for his crusade against all living things. It has had many names throughout history. Knowhere, R'lyeh, Jotunheim, and many more… But the original name is Carcosa."
Rei did not know any of those… Except for one.
"...Jotunheim? From… Norse Mythology?"
"Yes, that Jotunheim. It was Thor who killed the God who made this place after all. The real Thor I mean, not the sanitized version from the Marvel universe."
Rei had… Many thoughts. The first was that this all sounded absolutely insane. Maybe fittingly, this girl had pretty much admitted to being insane. Just like she was.
Another thought was that she was having an episode… She'd completely lost it.
But… Somehow… She knew that was not the case.
Some deeper, more primal instinct told her that she was neither dreaming nor seeing things that were not there… But then again… That was probably how most insane people felt.
Maybe she was just insane.
For the moment she decided to treat it as if it was real.
"So… This is Jotunheim… So… Where is Asgard then?"
Mei's smile, which had been energetic, faded.
Then she pointed towards… The mountains Rei had seen when she first came here?
She turned back towards them.
Her eyes widened as she began to truly see what it was.
Not mountains.
Stones stacked atop one another… Stones so large they were as tall as skyscrapers and just as wide.
It was a castle wall.
One broken and ruined… But still titanic in size, dwarfing anything she had ever seen… Save the black city opposite it.
"Nothing lasts forever. Not even Gods. Ragnarok took this place a thousand years ago… And that was that. No rebirth, no resurrection of Balder that Christianity added later… just "The End" and that was that."
She felt numb.
Had she been a practicing religious person, these revelations probably would have completely shattered her entire worldview.
As it was, it was just… Overwhelming.
"So… The Norse Gods… Existed…?"
"Yes. Ironic isn't It? All those countless religions and their afterlives, but as far as I can tell, every single human warrior who ever died in battle ended up here."
"Why… Why did you bring me here?"
What possible reason could anyone have to bring HER to this kind of place?
"I needed to talk to you. And knowing you went Insane, I knew I could simply pull your consciousness here."
That… Just raised even more questions.
"You… Needed to talk to me...? Couldn't you just have… Arranged a meeting at my psychiatric ward?"
"You go to war with the army you have. I don't have the actual connections with your family to get such a meeting approved. Nor do I have the cash to bribe the facility, or the political connections to have such a meeting happen regardless of other factors. I do however have a deep, deep understanding of the underlying fabric of the universe, and the means I need to make use of that knowledge."
She walked up to her, and stopped right in front of Rei, looking the taller woman in the eyes.
"No one other than us knows this meeting is taking place. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you are still sleeping safely and soundly in bed. Even Quirks that are capable of sensing souls will not be able to tell something unusual is going on. Either way, it was as good a means of communication as any."
"You… Did this… Just so we could talk… In private?"
"Yep."
She was insane after all. A different kind of Insanity than Rei's, but insane nonetheless.
"About… About what?"
"Your son Shoto."
Shoto. Her baby boy. Her pride and joy… The sweetest of her children…
She heard cries... A scream… A boy who was marred forever by… By… Her hand…
A brief flash of the purest blue lit up the world right in front of her face.
Rei blinked, as the screams were immediately silenced. Her heart suddenly became way, way lighter.
Mei pulled back the gauntlet, now looking like it was made of glowing, frozen, flayed skin.
Then, like nothing had happened, she continued.
"Shoto is an acquaintance of mine."
That brought some semblance of curiosity back to Rei, who for the moment was able to completely ignore the insane and bizarre circumstances that had led her here.
"How… How is he?"
"Sullen, moody, and on an eternal search for people who will listen to his life's story. Also, he doesn't really think things through."
Rei felt a strong pang of guilt at that.
"He is still trying to be a Hero though… Even if he is stupidly inept at planning things through. Speaking of which."
The pink-haired girl tapped Rei on the chest.
"The actual reason I wanted to talk to you, is that Shoto desperately wants to talk to you again."
"He… He does?"
Her voice suddenly was infused with an emotion she hadn't felt in so, so long, that she had practically forgotten how it felt.
Hope.
"Yes. However, he has not reached out to you, nor does he plan to do so, because he has it in his head that you despise him, and never want to see him again."
The whiplash in emotion as self-loathing and guilt came back to her, was so strong, that once again the voices returned in full.
Mei, nonplussed, simply lifted her gauntlet up to Rei's face, and once more unleashed a massive burst of brilliant white light.
"Focus lady! FOCUS! Don't think about that stuff, put it away, you can wallow in self-pity on Earth. You do that here, and you're absolutely fucked."
She blinked. Then focused on Mei's face.
Strange… for a moment, it looked like she only had one… Then reality reasserted itself, and she was struck by how determined this girl looked.
"Now listen closely, this is important. Shoto wants to talk to you, and reconcile and reconnect… But he is only going to do that if YOU reach out to him first. Do you get it?"
She nodded.
"You… You really care about this… Don't you?"
"Yeah? If I didn't care, I wouldn't be here, now would I?"
"...A sweetie, aren't you? I'm glad… Glad Shoto found someone who cares."
Her eyes wandered to the side. Towards the city that still made her spine freeze cold.
"Even if… By bizarre means…"
Mei looked her in the eyes. Then withdrew her hand back.
"I do care. Not for the reasons you want to believe… But I do care."
"...That's enough then."
"No, it's really not. Caring without action behind it has no results whatsoever. It is as useless as ."
She turned to look over at the great city, Carcosa.
"By the way, you probably figured this out by now, but the rapid and massive shifts in your moods and the unclearness of your thoughts right now are not natural. They're a result of being here and not having paid the toll. You'll process this far more coherently once I send you back home."
"I see… What was that about a… Toll?"
"Well… Those who wander into the city itself… Well they, whether they like it or not, have to face the current Monarch here. They come and go. There isn't anyone around anymore with the strength to rule here in perpetuity. And once you're brought before the throne… Well… If the boss likes you, you'll have to sacrifice something. There was a bloke some centuries ago called Lovecraft. He came here… Met the then King… And got to leave. His toll was his bravery, and ever since that day, he was terrified of pretty much everything and everyone until the day he died. And he was lucky. He got to go home relatively sane."
"And… And what did you give up?"
Mei, who had been gazing at Carcosa, turned back to her with a cheeky toothy grin.
Then, she reached up to her face… And tapped one of her eyes with her finger.
She didn't close it, and Rei winced at the sight, as the eye didn't flinch at being touched, instead making a sound like flesh tapping a metal surface.
Only…
It was just… Wrong.
"Same as the price Odin paid long ago. It was a good trade though. I didn't reach the old Death God's heights… And it did not give me what I wanted… But I would never have reached the heights I have now without the clarity I got on that tree."
Rei felt a pang of sympathy flare up inside of her for this child.
"How… How did you even get here? How did you even find this place?"
"Oh, that! Well… There was a guy once, who alongside his slave… Burnt my life to ashes. He promised my parents a lot. Then, when it came time to deliver… He stabbed us in the back. That part isn't important here though. What's important is that he left behind a… Well, let's call it a battery. It's an energy source directly connected to this place, capable of drawing upon the wast energies here."
"So… You used it to get here?"
"Actually I used it to try to break the space-time continuum. A fool's errand. I ended up here by complete accident."
Mei's attention was drawn to something in the city itself.
The world became fear. Primordial, total, all-encompassing fear.
Every single sinew of herself was struck by the knowledge that something was focusing on her.
Something knew, she was here.
She fell to her knees as every part of her began to shake.
"Hmmm… The Queen noticed us. We should… Probably get going before that goes anywhere."
"The… Queen?"
The words came out like tar.
Mei had begun to rapidly tinker with her gauntlet.
"Queen of Carcossa. Took my eye, and hung me on a tree by a spear. That's her. Here."
She plucked out… Something from her gauntlet.
Something brilliant. A small, blue star, shining with light and warmth.
"This will prove it wasn't some hallucination. Also, it should help you out with bad dreams if you have those."
She opened Rei's hand and closed it after having put the star in it.
"I…I-"
Click.
Rei blinked as Mei had put her gauntleted hand up against her forehead, finger gun style.
"Bye Rei!"
There was pain… Then colors and lights.
I
Rei woke up with a severe pounding in her head. For a moment she wondered if she'd been drinking heavily… Then she saw the white roof and walls and she remembered where she was.
What a strange dream…
The sunlight of the morning bathed the entire room in an almost ethereal way, only broken by the pattern of the metal bars.
That and a strange, blue shine that… That originated from her closed fist.
She held up that fist to look at it.
A deep, blue glow that lit through the hand, making it glow like a brilliant star.
Or… Maybe it hadn't been a dream.
I
"OWWW! Fucking watch it!"
"Ah, sorry just… Shaking a bit today."
As she retried trying to fix up Bakugo's arm armor, she managed to do it without pinching his flesh between two pieces of metal this time.
Having finished up, she went back to her workbench.
She leaned over it, trying to steady the shaking in her entire body.
She had things to do after all. She could hardly afford to be held up by something stupid like her soul having a panic attack.
"So, how do you like it?"
Bakugo stepped up in front of the mirror, obviously checking himself out.
The armor she'd designed for him was a rather basic suit of plated metal, that had been put through the process of bathing it in energy from Carcosa.
Just like her arms. Extremely strong, ridiculously lightweight when compared to it's mass, and she'd even modified it to give it a nice, Damascus-like pattern on Bakugo's request.
"I look way too much like a fucking samurai."
Mei shrugged a cheerful smile on her face despite her shaking.
"Hey, you rejected my first armor set for you."
"Yeah, it was literal Knight armor!"
"Yeah, the Europeans perfected protection on the battlefield all the way back in the 17th century… Frankly speaking, Samurai armor is frankly worse than European designs in every way when it comes to protecting the body… But it is quite more articulate, especially in the shoulders, and arms."
Bakugou moved his arms in a rotatory motion, seemingly testing how limiting it was.
The actual suit's design was indeed based heavily upon Samurai armor, though it had obvious influences. It had a "Breastplate" composed of several long bands of metal overlapping each other, with a strong enough structure it would not break under force, nor buckle and harm the body as a whole when taking a hit, but also giving considerably more articulation than a single piece breastplate.
Other than that, the plate "skirt" part of the armor that was so common amongst actual samurai armor, was instead replaced by a set of upper leg guards that was heavily based on the Berserker armor from Berserk.
Someone who would be flying around like Bakugo did when fighting could not afford to have a loose-fitting bit of metal to protect big points of his anatomy.
Especially the bit between his legs that was now protected by metal pieces exactly the same as the one from the aforementioned berserker armor.
"This works way better than the first try… But, it also looks really stupid too. Way too haphazardous. It has no coherent theme or looks at all!"
"Well of course. This is the first prototype for this design. We need to hammer out how it works before we actually make an aesthetic design to go along with it. Also, we'll eventually gonna replace those big, chunky gauntlets with pocket-dimension storage tech. That way you'll be able to pull out just as big and strong attack equipment without the added weight of carrying around those dumbbells on your arms."
Bakugo seemed very doubtful about that.
"So that's… An actual thing? You're not fucking with me?"
"Oh no, it's a thing."
"Huh."
He actually seemed contemplative at that.
"So… The future is gonna be one where anyone can pull shit out of their ass. Great."
She shrugged, which was quite a strange sight as she shook with every bit of the motion.
"People have known how to bend dimensions for storage for quite a while now. However, as the Human race is want to do, we have now begun making strides toward using that tech for killing each other… But don't worry. We're still long away from it being practical enough that everyone is gonna be able to pull out a chain gun from what is effectively a hammerspace."
"Then how the hell is it gonna be useful for me then?"
"Same reason I'm making you regular metal armor, rather than power armor. Unlike most, you have the wonderful advantage of being naturally heavily shock resistant so your body would be able to cope with being able to fire off large-scale explosions. You don't need heavy padding to shrug off the impact of bullets, so long as the physical object is stopped by armor… Similarly, what I have planned for you, will allow you to pull off moves that would have ripped a normal body of flesh to pieces from the backlash of it all."
It was always a fascinating thing to explore Quirks, and figure out what made them tick.
Unique possibilities with every single one.
Was there a loophole? Some unique secondary power that could be exploited?
In what way did they break the laws of the universe?
And how could you use all of that?
As she considered that, Todoroki Shoto entered the room.
Strangely she recognized him now. That was good. It usually took more repeated exposure than this for that to happen.
The boy looked… More at ease than usual. Happier, though he didn't exactly glow with joy.
He opened his mouth to say something. Then closed it and looked her over.
"Are you… Okay?"
"Yeah, just fine."
"Do you… Need to sit down?"
"Nah. How did it go with your mom by the way?"
Shoto froze.
Bakugo, who had been twisting his arms in a motion, clearly trying to figure out how his gauntlet would work while wearing a segmented cuirass, turned his head to look, surprisingly curious.
"You know about that? How?"
"Well, I could say it was a guess, given how much happier you seem than last time we talked… Or how you canceled our appointment for yesterday… Or it could be because I was the one who encouraged her to reach out to you."
Shoto stared at her.
Then he nodded.
"That… Would make sense."
Then, he actually bowed toward her. Not an over-exaggerated bow, or a full-on submissive pose, just a polite, proper bow.
"You have my thanks."
"God that's lame."
Bakugo rolled his eyes at it, but as he stood up, Todoroki just looked confused.
"Why? This is how you properly thank someone. Why would that be lame?"
He actually looked kind of endearing, completely baffled by the very idea.
Then he actually looked Bakugou over.
"I must say though, that your current outfit does in fact look very lame."
The deadpan way he delivered that line without a hint of malice was even more endearing.
Mei for her part did not continue listening to their following, very loud conversation, instead turning her focus on the things she had done to improve his suit.
Also trying not to rip it's more delicate aspects apart with her shaking.
It had been a while since someone had thanked her like this for her work.
It felt… Nice.
Then again… It usually did. She liked getting both praise and gratitude for her brilliance.