"...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.
---
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.
---
"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.