"Of course not." She replied cheerfully. "That would kinda ruin my offer. You obviously need some help fixing that flaw of yours, and I happen to have an old suit I made for colonization of Antarctica, that should work for you."
...
Shoto stared at her with a blank look, that reminded Mei of a confused puppy.
"You made a suit… To colonize Antarctica. Why?"
"Why not? It was a fun, easy project. Unfortunately, my wondrous baby would never be able to reach it's height of usability, due to international treaties. But I could modify it for you. So that you could actually just go to town without ever having to utilize your flames. You could grind your foe's beneath your ice as you please, without anyone to put a check on your power. "
She reached forth a hand that was shaking way too much. She really needed to go get some food, and painkillers asap.
Shoto looked down, then slowly and hesitantly reached forth his hand, to take it.
"Alright."
---
As Uraraka walked on shaking legs to the Nurse's office, she felt a sense of deep, deep disappointment, and sadness wash over her. It almost overshadowed how her entire body hurt like she had been a punching bag, her side in particular feeling like it was on fire with every single step.
She didn't cry though. She forced herself not to cry. She had to force herself through this last part of the tournament without doing it. She could cry after the damned ceremony was over.
She had put everything into this project, she had trained, bled, sweated, and fought tooth and nail to make her effective debut into one that fully embraced the message All Might had asked her to tell.
That she was here.
She had come so close to achieving that goal, only to get crushed at the finish line.
It was… devastating.
That devastation, however, was replaced by Horror, as she finally reached the Nurses office, and walked in on Izuku Venom and Recovery Girl.
After winning, Venom had shed the expanded bulk and returned to what Uraraka had come to deem his normal size. Then for reasons Uraraka hadn't understood, he'd decided to forgo walking back to the office, and instead be carted back by the robots instead. That had meant he and Izuku had reached the office, long before she had.
And so as she walked in, she came upon the rather grizzly scene of Venom having peeled away the head part of himself to reveal Izuku's open mouth with a lot of broken and shattered teeth, alongside a Jaw that had clearly been broken in two underneath the skin.
She froze completely, and just stood there gaping.
Recovery girl turned her head and glanced at her, then snorted.
"Well, if it isn't miss self-restraint herself. Go sit down, I'll take care of you when I'm done with Midoriya's Jaw."
Uraraka blinked, then after a moment of hesitation, she walked over to a chair and sat down, the pain in her own body screaming as she did so, but numbed by the horror before her.
"He-He's gonna be fine right?"
She winced at how desperate that sounded.
"Yep. We would normally have taken care of everything, but since we have Recovery girl here anyway, we decided to let her lessen our burden."
Some calm came back to her at that, until Recovery Girl spoke up. And her tone as she did so was as sharp as any lecture from Aizawa.
"If the boy didn't have a healing factor that let him regrow teeth, he'd have to spend the next month getting these teeth fixed or replaced by a dentist. Also, if he didn't, or if I hadn't been here, that broken Jaw would most certainly have left permanent nerve damage, and even if it didn't, it would have taken months to heal."
Uraraka winced at the rebuke. Her feelings of crushing disappointment for not winning the tournament, suddenly seeming really, really petty.
"I see Aizawa hasn't taught you kiddos self-restraint. As usual. That man..." She shook her head. "I will never understand why he decided that teaching children was his calling in life."
"Well, he does have a sadistic stream. Maybe he gets off on it? Also, there, I've lined up the Jawbones perfectly now, along with putting the splinters where they belong."
Uraraka felt a spike of incredible relief as the Jaw mended itself, though the broken remains of his teeth were still a ghastly sight.
"Thanks. I'll handle the rest. The kid should be up and awake sometime in the next two-three hours. "
"He'll miss the ceremony then. I'm guessing you'll handle that."
"We will." The quirk announced happily. It seemed rather pleased with itself for having won.
It wasn't before Recovery Girl had turned to her, and given her that sweet, sweet miracle healing, that Uraraka finally realized something as her side stopped hurting like it had been hit by an artillery shell.
"Wait, where's Shoto?"
"Your sullen friend left with the crazy girl once she woke up. Apparently, they were planning a sleepover at her place.
Todoroki. Sleeping over at Mei's place?
That… Was such a bizarre idea that she didn't even know what to make of it.
Venom had some rather spiteful comments on the topic, but as she leaned back, her body now healed, it began to fade as the reality really began to set in.
The tournament was over. She hadn't managed her first task, as All. Might's successor. Well, not fully anyway. She was sure she'd have made an impact, but… Being number one required more than just making an impact. It required rising to the top, and well beyond.
Though at least… She had made a decent first impression. She hoped.
---
"Mei Hatsume. Birth name Mei Octavius." The voice spoke in English, with a dark, smooth tone, absolutely filled with a deep baritone.
With a click, the image of a cheery young girl with short pink hair popped up on the screen, contrasted with images of the same girl with considerably longer Hair, and large bloodsoaked mechanical arms surrounding her said blood also splattered across her body, her expression a decisively neutral one as she looked down at the camera.
"Quite possibly the most brilliant mind of the 23rd century. The inventor of an energy generator that seemingly defies all laws of nature, a working, fully functional bullet deflector, enormously powerful, mechanical arms that responds to input from the brain better than any prosthetics ever could."
The speaker was a large, powerfully built man wearing an immaculate black business suit. In terms of looks, his face was unmistakenly one of direct African descent, only instead of a brown skin tone, he instead had one that was completely greyish white.
A similar hair color, along with blood-red eyes, revealed an albino nature, rather than the unusual coloring to be the effect of a quirk.
In terms of his quirk, the only outwards sign was the man's teeth, with a Jaw of very sharp canines.
"She first appeared in the city of Saga at the tender age of 7, where she was wandering the streets bawling her eyes out and crying for her parents. No one is entirely sure who said parents were, nor have the names she gave for them ever yielded results. The girl became a ward of the state, being thrown around from foster home, to foster home, until she was adopted by one Robin Hatsume, from which her current surname is derived. At this point, she disappeared off the records for several years, presumably living a relatively low-key life, until a few years ago where both she, and her foster mother was diagnosed with cancer. After that, the girl exploded onto the scene of mechanical Innovation."
"The mother died a year later, at which point we first attempted contact with our agents, but as one can easily surmise from this picture, said contact was negative. We will Thusly have to bring her to our side by force. There is also a rather massive time limit, as she is estimated to only have a year or two left to live before she dies."
Click. The image on the screen changed, now showcasing a smiling little girl with long dark green, wavy hair, sharp teeth, being held by a smiling older man in a lab coat, obviously missing one arm.
Beneath said image were two other ones, both showcasing large reptilian figures, both in the form of what looked like a mix between a human and a dragon.
"Tokage Setsuna. Only Daughter of Dr. Curt Connors, and thanks to our lovely Dillon's bungle last year, his only surviving offspring."
...
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