Been A While. All I Can Say Is School.
Enjoy.
.....
"—LIVE, damn it, LIVE!"
Something slammed into my sternum.
I snapped awake with a gasp right as I collided with a face full of pink hair and manic goggles.
"AH! You're alive!" Mei practically squealed, straddling my chest like some gremlin paramedic. She held up a sparking taser baton. "I was about to try jump-starting your brain again. You have no idea how scared I was ..."
Wait, did she actually care —
"I thought I was going to jail for accidentally frying your brain. Juvenile detention. My dream career, over! Do you know how humiliating that would be?!"
Ah. There it is.
My first instinct: punch her into orbit.
My second: maybe thank her.
I settled for pushing her off me.
"Get. Off."
Mei rolled off of me like I'd asked her to scoot away from my shoes, not get her ass off my chest. "Jeez, you pass out one time and people get all dramatic," she grinned, already scribbling something on a stray circuit board. "So, how do you feel? Any tingling? Twitching? Sudden urges to build mechanical limbs? Loss of motor function? Loss of memory?"
"Please stop talking..."
I sat up slowly, rubbing the bridge of my nose.
My head felt clearer than it had since that day in the park—the haze, the static, the off-feeling that made me avoid logic like I owed it money… gone. Replaced with a very real migraine and a flood of clarity I didn't ask for but welcomed all the same.
I muttered under my breath. "Of course the cliché transmigrator memory awakening involves death-by-electrocution."
"How long was I out?"
"Like fifteen minutes," she said cheerfully. "You collapsed harder than my exoskeleton project when I forgot centripetal force existed. Rookie mistake."
I glared.
"So maybe I missed the tuning frequency by one decimal, who hasn't? Failure is the mother of progress."
She waved proudly at a charred nightmare of wires and mesh on the table. "Prototype Neural Static Nullifier Mark One! Only mildly—"
"That nearly killed me."
"And think how strong your neurons are now!"
My eyelid twitched.
"Tell me you aren't serious."
"Of course I am, but nevermind that now"
She blew a raspberry at that and started rummaging through parts. "You're in luck. I think I collected enough failure data to build a Version 2.0! Less explosive. Probably."
"…I'll pass."
"Huh?"
This girl really tried to butterfly-effect my cerebral cortex. I thought I was being careful. I flagged every foreign component before it could touch my skull.
Turns out, the universe loves proving me wrong.
Still… this time I wasn't exactly mad about it. I stood up and initiated a self-scan. Red lines ghosted across my vision as Meta Eye ran a full neural diagnostic.
The results, were not what I expected.
Neural conductivity: Normal
Radio-frequency residue: None detected
Behavioral inhibition markers: None detected
Limbic pattern disruptions: Cleared
⚠ Neural quirk-factor surge detected — origin: regenerative overwrite
My breath caught for a second.
What…?
No lingering RF clusters.
No implanted control nodes
No behavioral inhibition markers.
The distorted neural pathways that were lit up before… gone.
'Hold on. What does that last part ....'
My brows furrowed on that last part. A surge in quirk-factor. From the regeneration process?
…That was new.
My eyes narrowed slightly. I didn't know what it meant yet — only that something in my brain wasn't the same as before. Meta Eye had never flagged anything like that during a scan.
Hold on, what did regeneration process even mean?
My thoughts were interrupted by the followup report.
■ Neural reconstruction detected
■ Severe pulse trauma logged at coordinates [x.04 y.12 z.88]
■ Localized tissue destroyed
■ Regenerative processes: 97% complete
'... Well, that says a lot ..'
I thought, a chill running down my spine. My brain wasn't magically healed. More like violently scorched.
The pulse from Mei's little science grenade hadn't just scrambled the brainwashing signal — it went nuclear on the tissue where that conditioning node was sitting. Fried it completely. Took a chunk of my brain with it.
The surrounding pathways were so damaged they probably looked like overcooked spaghetti for a minute there.
The only reason I wasn't dead, braindead, in a vegetative state or indefinite coma was because my body's regeneration kicked in while I was unconscious… and rebuilt fresh neural tissue in place of the destroyed section.
Which was technically what had happened to the past me after enduring countless experiments under All For One.
In other words, a violent data thrashing before hitting factory reset, but I almost flatlined in the process.
I almost died.
Well, not technically as from the looks of it, unless the greater portion of my brain was destroyed and my head wasn't severed off, I would heal from anything eventually.
Was I angry? Yes.
Was I relieved? Also yes.
Did I want to confess that to her? Absolutely not.
"No," I said flatly. "I'm not trying another visor. Give me the discreet behind-the-ear microplate like we discussed. The one that takes longer."
She blinked. "But that'll take days."
"I can wait."
In truth, I might not need it at all now—but a backup wouldn't hurt. Especially considering whose quirk just got barbequed out of my skull.
However, trying another half baked prototype she created with no prior testing? How stupid does she think I am?
[Don't answer that]
For better or worse, the brainwashing was gone. Which meant clarity was back—and so was vengeance.
Despite everything, coming here hadn't been pointless—it fixed more than it broke.
Three things, actually:
One, the garbage in my head was gone. Two, I finally remembered what kind of transmigration deal that damned ad had hooked me up on. And three… now I knew exactly whose spine I was going to use as a lawn ornament.
All For One.
It was so clear now. Every missing detail. Every unexplained gap. Ten years of torture and experimentation. And he left me alive just to become some future puppet?
Not happening.
However, that currently left me with a new, 15 year old, pink haired problem that went by the name, Mei Hatsume.
From this entire ordeal, I'd learned exactly how monumentally stupid coming here had been. Granted, that stupidity was artificially amplified — literally coded into my brain by a psychotic immortal megalomaniac — but still. The fact remained.
The command basically took my already healthy dose of transmigrator paranoia and cranked it up to Demon Slayer PTSD mode. I avoided UA faculty because "what if there's a spy," but happily entrusted my brain to a girl who builds rocket boots out of scrap metal and energy drinks.
Actually, when I put it like that, I deserved at least 40% of the blame.
My reasons for avoiding the teachers weren't based on logic—they were based on an artificial compulsion to handle everything alone, tell no one about my troubles, and avoid revealing anything suspicious to authority figures.
But the deed was already done, and now I had to deal with the possibility that Mei Hatsume was the very spy I was trying to avoid.
"You're a very dramatic client, you know that?"
Mei uttered, squinting at me.
"Look who's talking."
She shrugged and scribbled on her blueprint. "Fine! New microplate brainwave scrambler coming right up. Low-profile, high-frequency scramble, stealth-grade shielding. But that one costs extra ... In snacks."
I paused.
"I'm sorry. How much of what?"
She leaned in and smirked. "Payment for this genius? Ten yakisoba buns, three taiyaki, and one mint chocolate chip parfait."
"I never agreed to—"
"Too late, I already wrote it down!" She flashed her notepad: Ken – owes buns + parfait. Payment non-refundable."
My suspicions just fell by 20%.
However, highly unlikely didn't mean zero. So I needed more to go on than that. I watched her for a moment — goggles back down, tongue sticking out slightly in concentration as she scribbled formulas and snack prices side-by-side like they belonged on the same blueprint. Either she was genuinely just a chaotic inventor… or she was the world's most dedicated sleeper agent.
Time to be sure.
I activated Meta Eye, pulling up a full vitals overlay and muscle-twitch readout. I watched her movements. Micro-expressions.
"Have you ever heard of All For One by any chance?"
Mei paused, blinked twice and looked up. "Huh? Who's that? Is it a hero name? Or a wrestling move?"
Pulse steady. Eye dilation normal. Zero stress spikes. No micro-expressions. Not even a flicker of recognition, anxiety, or suppression. Just honest confusion and whatever lightning storm of engineering enthusiasm existed in her frontal lobe.
"Yep. Wrestling move."
"Cool. Sounds dramatic."
Completely blank. Either she truly had no idea what I meant ... or she deserved an Oscar.
It at least alleviated most of my concerns.
Just when I was about to turn it off ...
'All For One would be a cool name for a jet-propelled battle chair. I'm definitely naming one of my babies after that.'
I froze, eyes widening.
"Um ... Did you ... Say something?"
I asked.
"Huh? No. Why?"
'I didn't say anything. Or did I? Did I do that thing in which I talk while I'm working again?'
I blinked while looking at her. Second time, I was sure I hadn't heard it with my ears.
'Well this is new.'
___
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