MHA: Lust Quirk

The Development Studio smelled like burning solder and hot plastic.

I'd been here before, but the workshop had redecorated since my last visit. Three new scorch marks on the ceiling, one in the shape of a handprint. A drill press that had been bolted to the floor was now bolted to the wall, sideways, for reasons I couldn't guess. The far corner had a pile of metal that might have been a motorcycle or might have been a very aggressive toaster. Someone had written ACCEPTABLE THERMAL LIMITS on the whiteboard in red marker and underlined it four times and the handwriting wasn't Power Loader's.

Mei Hatsume was at her bench. Her back was to the door, salmon-pink dreads swept to one side, goggles pushed up on her forehead. She was welding something that was either a gauntlet or a small rocket. Sparks hit the table and bounced and some of them hit her bare arms and she didn't flinch. A half-eaten rice ball sat on the edge of the bench next to a circuit board. She'd taken bites between welds.

"Hatsume."

She didn't look up. "Thirty seconds."

I waited. The welding torch hissed. A piece of metal clanged on the bench. She pushed the goggles down, then up, then down again. Her cross-shaped pupils contracted to pinpoints as her Zoom focused on the weld seam, checking it at a resolution that would've required a microscope for anyone else.

"Done." She spun on her stool. Her face was smudged with grease on both cheeks and her grin was the kind that made other people check the exits. "Hayami! You came back!"

"You told me to."

"I tell a lot of people to come back. Most of them don't." She was already off the stool and crossing to a cabinet on the far wall. On the way she kicked a cable out of her path and stepped over what looked like a jetpack prototype held together with tape and optimism. The cabinet had a padlock on it and a sticker that said BABIES IN PROGRESS and she unlocked it and pulled out two cases. "I've been working on your stuff since the Sports Festival. The gauntlets from V1 were good but the force distribution was uneven. Your right hand was absorbing twelve percent more impact than your left because the knuckle plates weren't compensating for your slightly wider right palm."

She opened the first case. New gauntlets, black, matte, slimmer than the originals. The knuckle plates were contoured differently, the wrist straps had a quick-release mechanism, and the padding inside was a material I didn't recognize.

"V2. Lighter by twenty percent, better force distribution, and the palm grip has a micro-texture pattern that increases contact friction. Try them."

I put them on. The fit was different. Better. The V1 gauntlets had felt like wearing boxing gloves with hard plates. These felt like my hands, but armored. My fingers moved freely and the weight sat evenly across both wrists. I made a fist. The knuckle plates aligned perfectly. I opened my hand. The palm grip textured against my skin.

"Hit the test block."

She pointed at a reinforced metal block bolted to a platform near the wall. The block had dents from other students' tests. I punched it. The impact traveled through the gauntlet and the force spread evenly across my knuckles and my palm absorbed the shock and the block dented deeper than the other marks and my hand felt fine.

"Good?" she said.

"Good."

"Now these." She opened the second case. Boot soles. Flat black pads with internal layering visible through a transparent section at the heel. "Shock-absorbing landing pads. You jump from three stories, these distribute the impact across the full sole surface. Your knees don't take it. Your ankles don't take it. The pad takes it."

She was already on the floor. She grabbed my right foot and I almost fell over and she said "hold still" without looking up. She pulled off my school shoe, slid the pad into the sole cavity she'd clearly designed to receive it, strapped the ankle adjustment, and started muttering about load vectors.

Her hands were on my calf, adjusting the strap tension. Her face was at my knee. Her dreads were brushing against my shin and her fingers left grease marks on my pant leg. She was completely focused on the engineering, her cross-pupils dilated as she zoomed in on the strap mechanism.

"Flex your foot."

I flexed. The pad shifted, settled, locked into place. She grabbed my ankle and rotated it, testing range of motion. Her fingers were calloused and warm and strong from years of workshop tools and she handled my foot with the same clinical intensity she'd handled the welding torch.

"Other one."

She did the left foot faster. Same process, reversed. She tested both ankles, had me shift my weight side to side, and made a small adjustment to the left strap with a screwdriver she pulled from somewhere in her jumpsuit.

"The force absorption coefficient is point-nine-seven at terminal velocity, which means a three-story drop produces impact equivalent to stepping off a curb. Five stories brings it to point-eight-three, which you'll feel in your knees but it won't damage. Above five stories I recommend a rolling landing to distribute residual force." She looked up from my boot. "Don't jump from above five stories."

"I'll try."

"The compound in the pad is a shear-thickening polymer that stiffens on impact and relaxes between contacts, so repeated short drops are actually more efficient than one long one because the polymer resets between..." She trailed off. I was looking at the gauntlets on my hands, turning them over, flexing my fingers. Opening and closing my fists. The weight was right. The fit was right.

"Hatsume."

"What."

"These are incredible."

She was still on the floor. Her hands were still on my ankle strap. Her cross-pupils dilated again but this time it wasn't Zoom. Her mouth opened a fraction. Her grip on my ankle loosened.

"You think my babies are incredible?"

"Yeah."

She stared at me. From the floor, face at knee height, grease on both cheeks, goggles on her forehead, dreads falling across one eye.

"Come back after the exam," she said. Quiet. Her voice was different. Slower. "Tell me how they performed. Every detail. What worked, what didn't, what broke, what surprised you. I need data."

"Okay."

"Every detail." She was still holding my ankle. "Most people just say 'it worked' or 'it broke.' I need the in-between. What the impact felt like at different angles. How the grip held during sustained combat. Whether the boot pads shifted during lateral movement or if the straps held under directional stress. The data between 'it worked' and 'it broke' is where the design lives."

She looked at the gauntlet on my right hand. The one stamped with her initials and my name. Her jaw was set and her eyes were bright and the grease on her cheeks made her look younger than she sounded.

"I'll tell you everything," I said.

Her lips pressed together. Her chin dipped. Then a crash from the back of the studio, a column of smoke rising from Bay 3, and Power Loader's voice cutting across the workshop: "HATSUME! WHAT IS ON FIRE?"

She was off the floor before the sentence finished. "THE THERMAL TOLERANCE IS WITHIN ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS!" she yelled, sprinting toward the smoke. Her goggles came down over her eyes. Her dreads flew behind her. She vaulted over a workbench and was gone.

I stood in the empty workshop. The smoke from Bay 3 was thin and grey and smelled like melting plastic. Mei's stool was still spinning from where she'd launched off it. The two cases were open on the bench. The locked cabinet said BABIES IN PROGRESS. The rice ball was gone. She'd finished it at some point during the fitting without me noticing.

I put my school shoe back on over the boot pad. The fit was snug but comfortable. Collected the gauntlets. The right one had a small stamp on the inside of the wrist strap: MH-HAYAMI-V2. She'd labeled it with my name.

I walked out.

Momo was in the hallway.

She was standing near the studio door with a notebook in her hand and a pen tucked behind her ear. Her hair was in the ponytail. Her blazer was unbuttoned, sleeves rolled to the elbows for skin access.

She looked at me. At the gauntlets in my hand. At the door I'd come out of. A smudge of grease from Mei's fingers was visible on the outside of the right gauntlet.

"You go to the Development Studio frequently," she said.

"Hatsume builds my gear."

Her eyes moved to the gauntlets. Her gaze traced the knuckle plates, the wrist straps, the micro-texture on the palms.

"I could build your gear."

The words came out and her mouth closed immediately after. She blinked. Her pen hand tightened on the notebook.

"You could?"

"My Quirk creates any non-living object." She said it like she was reminding herself, not me. "If I understand the atomic structure, I can replicate anything. Carbon fiber, polymer compounds, specialized alloys. I could build what Hatsume builds."

She wasn't wrong. Creation could make anything Mei could make, probably faster.

"Maybe you should," I said.

She straightened. Her notebook came up to her chest. Her pen was gripped between two fingers and her jaw was set and her ears were turning pink at the edges.

"I'll prepare some designs," she said. "Based on your current combat profile and the specifications from your existing gear. I'll cross-reference with Aizawa-sensei's known tactics for the exam."

"I'll need your measurements," she said.

"You have my measurements. We trained together all week."

The pink spread from her ears to the back of her neck. She looked at her notebook. "I'll have preliminary designs by Friday."

"Sounds good."

She nodded once. Turned. Walked down the hallway at a pace that was slightly faster than her normal stride. Her ponytail swayed. Her ears were still pink.

I stood in the hallway with Mei's gauntlets in one hand and the image of Momo's pink ears in the other. Two girls who wanted to put their work on my body, and neither of them was thinking about that sentence the way it sounded in my head.

I walked back toward class. The hallway smelled like smoke from Bay 3. Where Momo had been standing, the air was clean and faintly floral.

My phone buzzed. Mina: "what are you doing"

I looked at the gauntlets. At the hallway where Momo had been. At the smoke still curling out from under the studio door.

"Nothing," I typed back. "Getting gear for the exam."

Three dots. Then: "bring me a snack on the way home 🛸"

The alien emoji. Always the alien emoji.

I pocketed the phone and went to find a convenience store.