Ten clones and fifteen minutes later, the last Momo double collapsed into a pile of disintegrating mud, the exuberant smile on her emaciated face likely to make an encore later in my nightmares. Even if it were just a mindless shadow of the original, as per my own design no less, you'd have to be a special kind of fucked up to not feel disturbed after watching someone's body begin to eat itself.
All while they were perfectly chipper, just happy to be able to spend time with their new friend.
A bit too happy, considering that I made for shit company at the best of times, but I would have plenty of time to beat myself up over that later. For now, I had my hands full with the spoils of my plummeting karma.
I meant that literally. The slabs of solid metal I was balancing in my arms were fairly immense in weight, not that their comparatively small size would have made that apparent. None of them extended beyond the width of my chest, nor were they thicker than what I could encircle between a thumb and forefinger, though that didn't stop the ground from shaking once I'd gathered them all up and taken a single step.
Unless I'd missed it those few times I'd needed to drag her around, Momo didn't weigh nearly as much as just one of these. The Law of Conservation of Mass was screaming in the corner. If I wasn't used to shit like this by now, I would have joined it.
The cardinal sin of alchemy? Fuck it, add it to the pile of things that made no sense but somehow happened anyway. It would fit in nicely between me hopping dimensions, and me having sex.
Each piece of specialised, specifically-engineered-from-the-molecules-up metallic alloy made up for about four Momos, give or take. That was a good enough guess for now, because I didn't really want to go and ask the girl whose Quirk required her to eat a lot exactly how much she weighed.
I couldn't claim to be the perfect gentleman, but even I had standards.
"We're done, right?" Behind me, Twice was spinning the core of his apple between his fingers. He probably had no idea that we'd just casually shattered a universal standard with nothing but a smile and some funky play-doh.
"Please tell me we're done." The metallic bars didn't move when I tried to tug them into position with some hair. Apparently Muscular's Quirk didn't extend to every kind of fibre. What a garbage tier Quirk, why did I even bother taking it? "I don't need more memories in my head wondering how big your dick is."
"That's what she was wonderi- wait." I almost dropped the bars, which would have ruined the groups I was setting them down in along with a significant portion of the ground. "You get memories from your clones?"
"Is that really what's important right now?"
I flapped my jaw ineffectually at him for a moment, because yeah, information transferral without any physical input was kind of a big fucking deal. Twice was now leading against the universe two to zero when it came to knockout blows.
He just stared at me blankly from under his mask. He probably wouldn't have been so unperturbed if he'd known that I had three new ideas that we'd be testing in the future, all of which would get us put on a list at best and probably get us murdered at… not even worst, really, they probably would just kill us.
…Then again, this was Twice. There was an equal chance he'd be thrilled at the chaos that he could induce merely by existing. Actually, that was an idea…
Ok yeah, I probably had a problem. In my defence, there was too damn much in this world that inspired me to be a public menace. Mineta's natural gremlin energy clung to this existence with the kind of dogger persistence I would expect from his Quirk. I'd led a perfectly legal life before waking up in this world. Maybe Twice was just a horrible influence.
Though speaking of Twice…
"Yes, we're done here." Placing the last hunk of metal, the most pliable one that I'd be running through my joints, I clapped my now empty hands together and bowed to him without a single shred of sincerity. "Thank you for your hard work."
Rather than throw the apple core at me, which I'd honestly been expecting, Twice did nothing but flash me a peace sign and spin on his heel. The area of the treeline that he was walking towards parted automatically to let him through, a neat little trick that had taken me an hour to get working earlier.
The last thing I managed to hear before he wandered out of earshot was mumbling, almost impossible to discern properly. I think he was talking about my dick, though I could also make out "heiress" and "what the fuck".
The things those clones did to him…
Ah well. The time for worrying about the mental health of my friends could come later. Right now I needed to mutilate myself in the name of becoming unkillable.
Honestly, it was a good thing Twice had left. This next part was going to take a long time, and the last thing I needed was a distraction that could multiply itself and then torment me with the forbidden knowledge of the women that had stumbled into my life.
There had been three different kinds of metals that I'd drawn out of the Momo clones, separated out into different piles on the ground. The similarities between all of them were numerous; all of them contained at least some titanium, along with other compounds that I'd never actually heard of before ending up in this world. Whether that was due to my own ignorance or the fact that they simply hadn't existed before, I had no clue.
The smallest pile, a single rod all on its lonesome, was for my joints. Fittingly, the supremely dense couple of rods next to it would be going over my skull. The last seven, the business standard until I knew how well this would work and could figure out some formulas for improvements, would be for the rest of my bones.
Clenching my fist, I brought it down onto the biggest pile of rods with enough force to crater the clearing nearly to the treeline on every side. The dull ache of my hand had to be eased with Overhaul, but once I'd brought it back up to inspect the damage, none of the metal had warped enough to notice with a cursory inspection.
Whether I could improve on these or not was another question entirely. Some of these alloys weren't even out of the theory stage at I-Island, mainly because the equipment to make them was still conceptual. Building things up from the atoms wasn't actually an option in any existing fabrication process… aside from the one accompanying UA's newest dual Heroics and Business majoring student.
And if she just so happened to have those same materials available to her? Well, she was smarter than most of the people on I-Island anyway. Nobody would question it too harshly, unless they wanted her lawyers to bankrupt their entire bullshit atoll.
Really, I could count my entire life here as a success if I managed to sink the tax thieves that were I-Island. Not one single discovery worth a damn published in the entire time I'd been here? Hell, the very concept of Vitaceae as a vigilante or villain should have inspired at least some scientific debate from them. I'd tried to feel understanding before, but at this point that was just a fool's errand.
A fool I may have been, but I also didn't feel like piling even more work atop myself. If I did, I'd just make my own I-Island, with actual progress in multiple fields.
Still, that was for future Mineta to worry about. Current Mineta had less than two hours to fully integrate some experimental materials with every system in his body, without mutilating or killing himself in the process.
I took a deep breath, expelling it through my mouth and trying to push some of the nerves out along with it. I could restore my body fully and pull the metal out of my bones with Overhaul if something went wrong. There was no need to feel nervous about any of this, aside from the fact that I was inviting doom upon myself in every conceivable notion the further along this path I blitzed.
But, well, fuck it. Carpe diem.
The preparations were set. Overhaul knew exactly what to do. It would be the greatest assistant I could have ever asked for. The first rod, the one that had suffered the brunt of my force earlier, had the perfect proportions and density. Even as a mostly mindless clone, Momo Yaoyorozu was nothing if not thorough in her studies.
A pulse of Overhaul blasted away the many impurities that had gathered over the surface of the metal. A laboratory might have been a nice addition to the mad scientist theme I had going on, but if I knew anything about kids, it was that they had the strangest talent for getting into places they had no business being. The secret mad scientist laboratory would have to wait until Eri wasn't tempting fate.
So rather than perfectly sterilised surroundings, I had dirt, grass, and Overhaul to ensure I didn't end up accidentally incubating some kind of super-virus. Knowing my luck, it would wait until the process was complete and then turn me into an immortal zombie.
"You'd better fucking appreciate this, Mirko."
The metal sank through my skin. I watched my arm bulge as it burrowed through my muscles, seeking out the bones within. I felt it begin to scrape inside, because just coating them wouldn't be enough, I'd need to get inside them too. I'd need to make sure the bone marrow could still work afterwards, that my blood could still flow properly, that I wasn't just ending my life in the slowest and dumbest way imaginable-
The nerves didn't just stop working because I was running a mockery of nature through them. No, if anything, the pain was even greater, because I couldn't let them shut off from overstimulation. The pain, more so than the feedback from Overhaul, meant that it was working.
I'd thought, way back when I first fused Chisaki's Quirk with this body, that I'd never feel agony that intense ever again. I'd thought that would be the extent of the misery I'd force upon myself, for the chance to transcend the world.
I… was fucking wrong.
One hour and thirty-seven minutes.
One hour and thirty-seven minutes of ripping my body apart and then stitching it back together. One hour and thirty-seven minutes of counting the seconds as they passed, embracing the liquid hellfire as it ran through my veins and ignoring the urge to pass out and escape this latest stupid fucking idea.
The process got faster as I went. Of course it did; even if nobody would have guessed it after this, I was capable of learning. There wasn't a person on this planet that knew their body better than I did mine.
Don't take that out of context.
The joints had been the easiest, even if they were paradoxically also the most complex parts that I was changing. I wasn't going to question it, especially after my skull had taken over half an hour to get to a point where I didn't feel like I was going to explode. Even if I didn't use it very often, I still needed to make sure my brain didn't suffer the consequences of my own stupid actions. At least now, if it did decide to detonate, there was no chance of the blast escaping the metal shell I'd constructed.
My body felt heavy as I pushed myself to my feet and stretched my limbs out. Obviously, seeing as even with how dense I'd made myself, I'd still easily tripled my weight with this. The various things I've stored within my body had to be reorganised as well. My motorbike was currently moonlighting as a counterweight for my destroyed centre of gravity, and let me tell you, it was weird having the major components of a motorbike sharing space with your tailbone.
Especially when your tailbone was made of higher quality minerals than the bike could even dream of.
The walk back to the house was more about trying to find my balance again. Thankfully I didn't need to begin from the basics of walking, truthfully I didn't even really feel the added weight. I'd lost track of how compressed my muscles actually were months ago, and now that I didn't have to worry about accidentally turning my own skeleton into powder, I could probably go further still.
Not feeling the added weight didn't mean it wasn't still there, though. I was more top heavy now than Mineta had been before my interference. That humongous bobble head had nothing on a skull that was literally composed of fucking metal. Turning my neck too sharply could throw me into a spin before I could correct the movement.
I'd need to take some time to relearn the nuances of movement. Good thing I'd already booked in some time with a personal trainer that had obsessive tendencies. That kind of foresight would get me far in this world.
Oddly enough, the back door of the house, the one leading into the kitchen, was unlocked when I got back. I could have sworn that Twice had locked it when we left. Maybe he'd needed to grab something else before leaving with Giran?
Shrugging, I pushed it open, subtly Overhauling the doorknob back into proper shape after realising my grip had dented it. The timer on the oven chose that moment to trill, signalling that the cake that I'd made and instructed Gentle to put in there before leaving earlier had just finished. Gentle had explicit instructions to take it out if I wasn't available to do it, but it was a good thing I'd come back when I did.
Gentle was otherwise occupied staring at the newcomer in the kitchen with equal parts trepidation and awe. La Brava was right next to him, standing on a seat with both hands planted against the table. There were actual stars in her eyes as she stared at Eri, or more specifically, at the heroine that had Eri in her hands.
It was barely past two in the afternoon. Apparently, Mirko was early. I really should have seen that coming, honestly.
The door swinging shut brought all the attention in the room towards me. I glanced between the four of them, returning Eri's welcoming wave with one of my own, albeit with slightly less enthusiasm. Gentle didn't move anything other than his gaze, sending it bouncing between Mirko and myself with a clear question running through his mind. La Brava was far less subtle, pointing between us with a low squeal escaping her lips that reminded me of a boiling kettle.
I probably should have warned them that we would be having company this afternoon. In my defence, it had slipped my mind in between the grandiose schemes of world domination.
Finally, I settled on Mirko, one eyebrow raised in my best replication of Setsuna's flawless technique. Apparently my studies were coming along well, because an actual flush steadily overtook Mirko's face as she hefted Eri up to her eye level and waved her at me in a slow figure eight loop.
"This is a good child." The good child in question had lost all interest in me once Mirko's fluffy ear was within reach. Mirko did a valiant job of ignoring the small hands that were running along what I knew was sensitive fur, maintaining eye contact with me as she presented Eri like some kind of game show prize. "I approve of this child."
The timer trilled again. Gentle, being the closest, managed to snap out of his stupor after I cleared my throat pointedly, just in time to save our carrot cake.
If only he knew how close to disaster he'd truly flown.