{}{}{}{}{}

Chapter 3: Preparations

{}{}{}{}{}

People noticed very quickly when I gained a sudden interest in advanced scientific principles, engineering, and programming.

It's now nearly Christmas during my first year of high school, and life was chugging along. I had spent the rest of the summer training with Fumikage and my parents (who told me more about their lives from back when they lived in Europe), and beginning my designing of Anesidora. I quickly discovered that, while I could quickly learn the required knowledge for the weapon the Velvet designed, that same knowledge wasn't quite as useful in this world, where Dust - crystallised elemental magic - wasn't available. The RWBY universe used Dust for everything, so I had to almost reinvent the wheel when it came to Anesidora's technology.

I scoured the internet looking for any information of the devices and principles needed, and found a few useful papers. Holographic technology has been in use for a while now, even if it's limited to some high end labs and workshops. From what I've managed to find, efficient, free standing holograms are only available in labs that are build with projectors built into the floor or large tables, which means that the projector designed for Anesidora is actually smaller and more efficient than things rumoured to have been developed on I-Island, the artificial island literally build for quirk research and technological advancement.

Other parts though, are not so easy. After spending months redesigning the basic circuitry of Anesidora to be powered by electricity, rather than Dust, I came across a few issues. Even if the holographic projector of the weapon is greater than what's been developed here, Anesidora couldn't project hard-light without the Hard-light Dust that is not accessible in this universe. So, again, I searched the internet for scientific papers broaching the subject.

There was a woman in India that could produce hard-light constructs by using nearby photons. She refused to let her quirk be studied while she was alive, not wanting to be a guinea pig, but did donate her body to science after death so some of the best researchers in the world have looked into the topic. That meant I wasn't starting from scratch, but there was an issue that had those researchers cursing the dead woman. Her quirk has been found to release a frequency of energy that interacted with photons at a target location and excited them, forcing them into a state of solidity. No researcher has been able to find the frequency required for her quirk to work, or even the energy that her quirk used. As such, hard-light technology has evaded the world of My Hero Academia.

And that wasn't even the only problem. While I have been learning to program, assisted by the programming Velvet learned to do while making her weapon, it wasn't nearly enough do anything with Anesidora. I'd need a program able to take measurements from sensors, from dimensions to material, and create a model for the projector to, well, project. That meant that I needed to be a lot better at programming, 3D modelling, and have a sensor suite capable of analysing and compiling the data of sensors that I do not have.

Anesidora was looking like a far off dream, until I remembered something.

I-Island, the centre of scientific research and advancement in this world, had been a plot point in the anime my daughter and I watched. My little gemstone had picked it for a movie night one time, and the two of us had watched it with her sister, my youngest daughter. It was the first time my youngest had joined us to watch anything, even if she fell asleep before it ended, so I remembered enough about it to look up a few things.

David Shield was one of the better scientists on I-Island, and definitely the most famous, so I was able to look up the name. He worked with All Might while the man was in America, and had won a Nobel Quirk Prize due to his research. Over the last few months, I joined several science and engineering boards, and the man was notorious on them for being near impossible to contact, but I also remembered that he had a daughter that developed some kind of hero gear for the main character of the anime.

And so, Melissa Shield was found. It took some digging, enough to make me feel like a creep of the highest order, but I found an e-mail address that apparently belonged to her. It made sense, given that her father was famous, that most people not living on I-Island didn't even know she existed, but she was a way forward towards the completion of Anesidora, so I sent her a message.

I didn't expect to get a reply so soon, but the new year had barely started when I had received an interested, if cautious, e-mail.

[-]

I was messing with a camera plugged into my laptop, checking over the connection after being told it was a little off by me new acquaintance.

"That should be better," I said in English, tabbing back to a video call. "Is it all good on your end?"

"It's fine," a male voice answered from the screen.

"It was fine before," a female one added, sounding a little exasperated with the guys in the call. "The microphone and camera were slightly out of sync, but it didn't need fixing immediately."

I smiled a bit and shrugged. "Well, it's fixed now." A light hearted glare was directed at me from the blonde girl. "Moving past that, as I mentioned in the e-mail, my name is Neito Monoma."

"I think, despite how you got in contact with us, that's it's nice to meet you... can I call you Neito?" David Shield replied, smiling a bit when I nodded. "Neito it is, then."

I scratched at my neck a bit in embarrassment at the reminder. Even over a week later, I hadn't moved past the 'creep' feeling. "Yeah, I probably could have handled that better."

"Maybe, but you're the first person to find a way to contact me by yourself," Melissa told me, sounding impressed. "I actually tried to find the address you messaged. It took almost all afternoon." Yeah, Covert talent helped me look in the right places as I went. "And the video you sent over about the hologram projector was impressive."

"Thank you."

"Which brings us to the next topic," David cut in. "Your projector, at the size that you demonstrated, is several steps ahead of what's used anywhere, even I-Island, but you said something in one of your e-mails about not wanting your name on it?"

I shrugged again. "The projector isn't anything that couldn't be developed by refining the hologram projector designs I found of the ones built into dedicated rooms. In fact, that's where I took the foundation from. Besides which, the projector is as small as it is for a purpose."

"You intend to make a tool out of it," David correctly assumed. "Small, portable, but still extremely useful in the right circumstances... You intent to make hero support gear out of it, don't you?" Melissa perked up, her eyes widening in interest.

"I do, sir. More specifically, I intend to make my own hero gear out of it." That got an interested look out of both of them. "I'm still a few years out from U.A., but I intend to get accepted into the hero course when that time comes, and Anesidora will help."

David frowned, looking to be trying to figure something out while Melissa typed something on her phone. "Sender of gifts?" Her father then smiled, showing his train of thought.

"Greek," he declared, and I chuckled at how alike their actions were.

"It is. I've figured out the circuitry and shell of it, as well as the possible positions of the devices required to make it work, with a decent amount of flexibility should I want to change some things when I try actually making it... but I've had some trouble in certain areas." I opened a file on another tab and added it to the call's chat, watching the father-daughter duo focus their attention on it when it arrived on their end. "One of the main ones being resources. While I managed to build the projector, it was relatively simple and inexpensive compared to the rest of it, and even the projector could be refined with better materials."

David whistled. "I can imagine. The specifications for these sensors alone..."

"What about here?" Melissa asked, pointing at her screen. David looked it over. "It's almost blank, but the notes say 'frequency modulator/emitter'. Is that something different from the projector?"

Narrow eyes studied the basic blueprints I sent over, but I only spoke when they looked back at the camera. "That's part of what I was hoping to offer for help in this," I told them. "I read what I could find about holographic projection and found a paper on hard light holograms." David's eyes widened, glancing back at the blueprint. "I saw that research has pretty much stalled because the scientists can't see the quirk in action, and am willing to help. My quirk is called Copy. Upon physical contact with biological matter of a quirked individual, I can copy and use that quirk for ten minutes."

"You could copy the quirk and help advance hard light research by giving us an active sample to scan and gather data from," David realised, a smile working its way onto his face. "And you said part of the offer?"

"The material scanners I've been designing for Anesidora should be able to penetrate through over half a meter of material, and with the right program and modelling system, be able to develop a complete and accurate projection of the interior of a device," I told them, making their grins widen as the exchanged glances. "I'd also be willing to spend time over summer copying and helping you get active readings on any quirks you're researching at the time, though we'd have to figure out how that would work."

"I've got an idea," David smirked. "But it'll have to wait until summer." He looked towards Melissa. "That's probably when I'm going to have the time to dedicate to this, as well as get the permission for the transport of a limited biological sample."

The conversation continued for a little bit before David's phone rang and he had to go. Then Melissa and I spoke a little more, not really sticking to a topic for long before something new crossed our minds. That had to end as well though, so we bade each other goodbyes and the call closed.

"Right," I said to myself, staring at my reflection in the black screen before closing the laptop. "How to explain to my parents that I may have entered a business relationship with perhaps the most famous scientist alive?"

[-]

Dad and I were working in a nearby park, surrounded by various pieces of metal and devices. He was helping me with tedious work so we could finish before my second year started in a week, but in his words, "There's nothing sensitive here, so there's no reason to be bored without a view." In his defence, the park was an excellent place to relax, and it still being a bit cold didn't mean much when our bodies were made of wood.

"Hurry up, will you?" Dad taunted as he set down another finished piece of metal. "You've been stuck on that one for a few minutes now."

"Damn thing's rusted together," I complained, before noticing that some materials in his 'done' pile are in similar condition. "How did you get the screws off? Mine won't budge."

"Experience," he smirked at me, before rolling his eyes at my deadpan glare. He held up his hand, which I noticed wasn't quite what a hand should look like. The tips of his fingers were shaped differently, forming almost a sharp wedge. "It's a bit of a strain, but I can shift around the material I become slightly. I still have to work with the same volume, but my quirk doesn't care if you look perfectly human when you're not made out of flesh and bone."

I frowned, absorbed some metal around my fingers and focused. It took a minute, but I experienced the sensation of pushing against something with my fingers, dulled as it was by them being metal, and the tips of my middle finger flattened out like a long fingernail.

"Watch out," my dad cautioned. "If you snap anything, it's hell to put yourself back together."

I raised an eyebrow at him as I thickened the shaped finger. "You've had to put yourself back together before?" He chuckled.

"Oh, yeah. I've lost an arm before." He tapped his right forearm, where I knew a scar rested. I had asked about it before, a long time ago, but he didn't answer. "One woman I met could split things in two after a few seconds of contact. I'm just glad that she figured trying to cut anything thicker, like my torso, would take too long. I had to have a friend find the exact material my arm had absorbed in order to reattach it. It was hot, even through the sensory dulling my quirk causes, like I was being welded together with a blowtorch."

I winced, but made a mental note that it was possible to heal myself if I was using my dad's quirk. Almost any other manner of healing quirk would be preferable, but I had to work with what I had available.

"The shapeshifting must have been useful though, back then," I mused, quickly moving on from that topic. "How many times did your fingers become keys to break into somewhere?"

Dad laughed. "Ah, that takes me back! That's actually how I started, you know?" He wore a fond grin on his face. "I did exactly that and broke into the group's safehouse. It was a bit before I joined them, and I couldn't get the original members to stop calling me 'Lockpick', even after I got another codename."

Things like this have come up in conversation several times since my mother and I had started getting better. By now, I knew that Dad was the main defence of some low tier villain group that moved around Europe. Mother's family all seemed to have Aura as a side effect or fuel for their quirks, and many of them were heroes, or training to be, when she left. That explains the combat skills that she spars with, even if I've reached a point where I'm winning just over half of our matches.

After I copied Mother's quirk, they both seemed to start treating me as someone who could make decisions for myself. Very few things were secret any more, and I'd often be told reasons behind decisions made and had an option to go along with it or propose something different. It was refreshing, after spending ten years treated as a child (ignoring that physically, I am, and emotionally I'm definitely not as I was in my past life), and it was what had them barely say anything about my upcoming work with the Shields. I just got cautioned about people taking advantage of me, especially given the potential and versatility of Copy.

[-]

"So this is her?" I asked rhetorically, looking through several pieces of glass at the body.

"This is her," David nodded. I noticed him keeping an eye on me as he brought me in here. "You okay? I've worked with researchers and scientists that couldn't handle working with corpses before, so it's fine if you aren't."

'Me, not fine with the dead? Perish the thought', I thought to myself with some level of dark humour. The memory of the car from so long ago came to the front of my mind, quickly replaced with an image of me in the woman's place, donated to science and made into a lab experiment. I couldn't tell if I was picturing my old self, or me as I am now.

All of those things got replaced though, by the words spoken to my before my rebirth. The promise that I'd have an afterlife to look forward to. It made me wonder who this woman was spending time with.

"The body doesn't bother me," I told him truthfully. That got me a raised eyebrow. "You could consider me a religious man, of a sort. The dead are just flesh and blood. The soul is... elsewhere. It may make people a bit squeamish, but that's never been a problem for me."

David nodded before typing something into a keypad, opening a door of to the side that lead into the room where the body was being kept. "Shall we get started then? I've had the sensors set up since I heard you boarded the plane." I smirked a bit at the enthusiasm, following him in.

I have to admit, when I reached out and made the offer to the Shields concerning quirk research and Anesidora, I didn't factor in the possibility of them inviting me to I-Island for a few weeks over the summer. I should have, since it was a rather simple solution to the whole 'quirk copying' thing, as well as allowing me to work with the scientists and engineers that would be working on Anesidora's different parts, but due to the island's fame as a rather isolated society, me visiting here didn't cross my mind.

I arrived here rather late last night, and Melissa was there to greet me as the plane landed. She led me through all the security procedures and towards where I'd be staying for the duration of my visit, excitedly pointing out various areas and buildings that we passed by on our way. It was interesting, seeing her in the flesh rather than on a screen; seeing that excitement that I sometimes saw during our video calls (that happened rather frequently after the first one so we could chat about our work and keep in touch. NOT because we were secretly crushing on each other and couldn't accept it, no matter what Dad said to tease me).

Come morning, David dropped by and asked if I was up for starting the research on the hard light quirk. While I had been invited to remain on I-Island for a few weeks, they only had permission to keep the body for one of those weeks before they had to return it to.. somewhere.

Which lead to now, with me staring a target with sensors all around me. Photons flickered in and out of my vision, pausing and solidifying before I lost my metaphorical grip on them. The speakers in the room came on as I refreshed my time limit with the quirk.

"Are you okay? Is it working?"

"It's fine, David," I said, rolling my eyes. "You can't expect me to master a brand new quirk instantly, especially since I've never even seen it used before." Even my Psychic talent, configured as it is to work with Copy, doesn't let me just master any quirk I come across. Still... "I learn fast though, so I'd estimate about half an hour to build a decent understanding, on my part, at least. You should be getting some readings in this next ten minutes."

True enough, David was narrowing down and reconfiguring some of the sensors after ruling out certain things, seeming to get more excited with each ten minute window that went by. By the time I understood the general mechanics and limitations of the quirk, he'd narrowed down the type of energy the quirk emits.

"It should be replicable if we were to reconfigure some of our radiation generators," I was told during a break. "The method the quirk uses to then create those constructs, and shape them at the user's will is still a mystery, but I'm confident we can- Why do you have your eyes closed?" Excited he may be, David did sound a bit concerned when he asked that.

I just smiled at him. "The woman's quirk factor is in the eyes. When I copied the quirk, everything appeared dull, and several colours seemed to be missing from my vision. I think her quirk absorbs light at certain intensities and wavelengths and then translates that into whatever energy it uses."

"But if you've got your eyes closed... Is it damaging?"

"After an hour of near constant use? Probably a little," I admitted, a little sardonically. "That's why I called for the break. I read the report on the body's condition and there wasn't anything noted in her eyes, so I figure the pain is temporary, but my eyes are still light sensitive."

David hummed a bit. "Okay then. This is still the most anyone has managed to figure out about this quirk, and we've got a lot of data from it already. You take a break until, say, three o'clock this afternoon, and I'll go over the data with a fine toothed comb. It's ten now, so Melissa should be up. I'll ask her to bring over some dark glasses and a cap for you."

I did indeed take a break, as per his orders, but only from quirk analysis. When Melissa arrived, her father sent the two of us off while he worked on something else, which led to Melissa showing me her workshop.

"That's a lot of books," I noticed. Compared to my room when I was working on the hologram projector, the place was pristine, but it still had books and papers scattered all over the table that sat in the middle of the room. And from what I could see, those where only the books that wouldn't fit on the shelves. "Analysis of mutatio type quirks, advancements in engineering, a debate on the forces behind physical enhancement quirks..." I looked over at the blonde girl and raised my eyebrow. "High school mathematics? That doesn't quite fit, does it?"

She chuckled, picking up said book and slipping it onto a shelf in the corner. "A lot of my time in here is actually spent studying. I wasn't as good a student as I could have been when I was younger, so I spent a lot of time studying to catch up."

I looked at her, more than a little impressed. "Which put you in a position to design hero support items before you finish high school? That's a heck of an improvement, Melissa." She smiled at the praise.

"I recently graduated, remember? But thank you. Besides, I think you have me beat there," she claimed. "I've never seen anything like Anesidora before. You've refined hologram technology enough that it could actually be used by the public now, and you're helping with hard light projections as well."

"That last one, I put squarely at the feet of your father and any other researchers he call on for the project," I denied. Honestly, with how Velvet's template worked, I had mixed feelings on being praised for Anesidora's design, but I was still a little proud. A lot of the design had to be reworked to make up for the missing Dust, after all. "Anyway, what was it you wanted to show me?"

"Oh, right! It's over here." Melissa stepped up to a desk against a wall that held a computer, hitting a few keys that opened an almost-but-not-quite-familiar file. "Papa and I agreed to help you make Anesidora, supplying resources that you'd need to make it." I nodded silently, as this wasn't anything new. We've discussed this topic a few times, suggesting new ideas over our video calls. "This is the file I've been using to keep track of what you and I, with a bit of insight from Papa, have come up with for possible materials."

Amusingly, the file that she pulled up had two versions of my initial blueprint, each one annotated with the possible materials I remember us suggesting. On one of the blueprints, there were also some changes to the proposed shape that those materials would allow, as well as some extra notes concerning some changes to how the support item would work.

"What've you got in those notes?" I asked, watching as she grinned and started explaining her ideas and defending them when I played devil's advocate.

One of her ideas was using the holograms to create a camouflage system.

"We would need to program the projector to account for light levels, but I think it could work."

"The camera would be a major sticking point when it came to that. Any program working with the projector could recreate an environment, but visual data would be what's being processed. It wouldn't be like the sensors that we plan on using for the hard light projections."

"That shouldn't be a problem. Some of the cameras we use here are really good."

"Maybe... I'm not sure about including it in Anesidora though. It's use is for hard light projections to compliment my quirk. What about if we designed a second device for possible camouflage tool; let each device keep to their purposes."

Then I saw something in her notes that I was interested in.

"That's Papa's work. He got in touch with some people who created a prototype of the sensors you designed, and I heard that it worked. It's gotten refined since, making it smaller than you accounted for in your design, so we should be able to fit in this instead."

"That'll be useful. It was initially designed with something of a theme, being in the shape of a camera, but my designs would be a little awkward to use in the field. Are these the sensor schematics?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Then yes, this should be far easier to work with. With the right shell, we could make it the size of a flashlight and create a wireless connection to the projector. I've looked into the kind of support gear heroes and villains usually use, and the things that could interfere with that connection are few and far between."

"We could also add an extendable cord to Anesidora's box as well, just in case. It would create a direct connection with a few extra seconds if need be."

"That's an idea. Hey, would attaching it to the arm of my hero costume be worth it, when I finally get around to designing it? Part of my quirk allows for a rather persistent forcefield, which would extend to my clothes and possibly support items as well, so I don't think it'd be at risk of getting damaged."

"It might... your quirk gives you a forcefield?"

"It's from my mother's side of the quirk, yeah."

Our conversation moved on, discussing one idea after the next. I was grinning by the end of it, having done away with the mixed feelings I got from using Velvet's work in this world. While her Anesidora was definitely the base, I could confidently say that the changes Melissa and I came up with made this version entirely ours.

[-]

Some time late into the third week, Melissa and I were having lunch. I was set to return to Japan tomorrow, so we were taking the day off from our work on Anesidora to enjoy ourselves, especially since the rain that had fallen over the island over the last few days had stopped and the sun had broken out of its cloudy prison. Unfortunately it was due to rain again tomorrow, so we were enjoying our time outside while it lasted.

I'm not sure what prompted my train of thought, but I was listening to Melissa describe some of the support gear she was working on, which included something that should be able to withstand s few hit from All Might, of all people. She had just finished describing the gauntlet, and some of the most sincere praise left my mouth.

"You're quite amazing. You know that?" I huffed a light laugh when I saw her blush, though I enjoyed her smile in response. "Some of your work, the blueprints and prototypes... I could never imagine being able to so what you do." I watched a bit of confusion slip into her smile, and carried on. "I saw the list of your project files a few days ago. There's so many things there that I wouldn't have bothered coming up with, simply because I was focused too much on Anesidora, my support item."

I nodded to myself, confident in my mental assessment, before staring her straight in the eyes and smiling as brightly as I could. "You have this drive to design and create things that can help so many people, all around the world, and you don't let anything stop you. Because of that, Melissa, I think you've become something of a hero of mine."

The answering smile was something so genuine that I'd end up dreaming about it, to my embarrasment.