"Are we almost done? I swear I could have watched three seasons of my favorite show in the time I've been standing here."
Melissa's voice was a buzz of pure impatience, echoing off the sterile walls of the medical lab. She rocked on the balls of her feet while a futuristic looking machine finished applying a bright blue regenerative gel to the skin of her arm.
David Shield sighed, running a hand over his face. His expression was that of a man caught between fatherly concern and the exasperation of a scientist dealing with an impossible test subject. "Honey, you literally broke your humerus, radius, and ulna. A comminuted fracture. The 'eternity' you're talking about has been exactly seventy two hours. Most people would still be in a cast, dealing with the pain and waiting for weeks of physical therapy."
"But we're not most people!" she retorted instantly, her energy overflowing in a grand gesture with her healthy arm. "We have science! We have the most advanced regenerative technology on the planet! And most importantly, we're wasting time we don't have! The U.A. entrance exam is in a week and a half! Every hour counts!" She spun on her heels to face the third person in the room. "Come on, Uncle Might, tell him something! We can't just sit here."
Toshinori, sitting in a nearby chair, seemed to shrink a little under Melissa's fiery gaze.
"Young Melissa, I believe your father has a valid point…" he began, his voice cautious. "Prudence is a heroic virtue. We can't risk another…"
"Another accident?" she interrupted, her tone firm but without a hint of disrespect. "It wasn't an accident. It was a failed experiment. The only real risk is not trying again. Breaking my arm wasn't an ending; it was a data point. A very clear result that told us the 'release all the power at once' method doesn't work for me. Perfect! That's what science is about. Now we can discard that hypothesis and find one that does work."
Her optimism was so bright and stubbornly logical that it was impossible to argue with her. Toshinori exchanged a look with David, who could only shrug with a resigned half smile. He knew his daughter. Once her mind locked onto a problem, she wouldn't let go.
Finally, the former Symbol of Peace let out a long sigh. A small smile formed on his gaunt face. He felt guilty, yes, but the girl's determination was contagious.
"Alright, alright. Your spirit is unbreakable, I get it," he said, standing up with a slight effort. "But before we try anything physical again, Young Melissa, there's something I want you to see. Something Director Nezu sent me this morning. A… different approach."
With a gesture, All Might activated the enormous holographic screen that dominated one of the lab walls. The wall came to life, showing an aerial view of one of U.A.'s training grounds, known as the USJ.
"This is from Young Midoriya's project demonstration," Toshinori explained, his voice tinged with a pride he couldn't hide. "I want you to pay close attention to his method. Not to him, but to the student he's training."
The scene on the screen was hypnotic. They saw a girl with long green hair strike the ground. In a matter of seconds, the concrete field transformed into a dense, menacing forest of wooden thorns.
"Impressive," David muttered, approaching the screen with professional interest. "The growth speed is exponential. The control over the biomass is at a very high level. What's her Quirk?"
"Vine Control," Toshinori answered. "But raw power was never her problem. Her problem was a lack of control, the fear of hurting her allies."
Just then, a score of high speed attack drones were released from several gates. They swarmed the girl in a metallic frenzy.
And at the very center of that chaos, completely still, was Izuku Midoriya.
Melissa leaned toward the screen, her scientist's eyes analyzing every detail, every variable. Her impatience had been replaced by intense concentration.
"Wait a minute… is that the trainer? He looks very young. And he's… he's inside the direct attack radius. In fact, he's in the worst possible spot." She frowned, confused. "That makes no tactical sense. It nullifies any possibility of a large scale area of effect attack. It's reckless. Why would he do something so incredibly risky? He's limiting his own student."
All Might grinned, and this time his smile was wide, full of genuine enthusiasm. "Exactly! At first glance, it looks completely insane, but it's not!"
On the screen, the vines whipped through the air with terrifying speed and precision, trapping, skewering, and crushing the drones with brutal and efficient violence. But around Izuku's calm figure, something extraordinary was happening. The same vines that shredded the drones' titanium moved with an almost elegant grace. They diverted without even brushing against his clothes.
"That's impossible…" David whispered, adjusting his glasses. "The level of control needed to discriminate targets at that speed and with that proximity… it's nearly impossible. It would require superhuman processing power."
"She isn't the one controlling it all!" All Might exclaimed, his voice filled with admiration and revelation. "He is! He's using trust as a shield! The boy believes that if the student trusts him completely, her Quirk will instinctively recognize him as 'friendly' and won't attack him. And it's working! He's teaching her Quirk who to protect!"
Melissa watched, fascinated. Her lips parted slightly as her brain processed the implications of what she was seeing.
"I see…" she murmured, her voice barely audible. "It's completely different from your training method, Uncle Might."
Her mind rewound at full speed to her own painful first attempt, just three days ago. All Might's command had been clear, echoing in her ears: "Shout from the bottom of your heart: SMASH!" And that's exactly what happened. One For All had exploded. And her arm had been the first victim of that internal explosion. But what she was seeing on the screen was not an explosion.
Struck by a sudden idea, she turned abruptly, her eyes shining with the light of a new theory. She forgot about the regenerative machine, her arm, the screen, everything. Her mind was racing at a thousand revolutions per second, connecting dots she didn't even know existed before.
"Uncle Might, Dad… with all due respect," she began, her voice vibrating with a new energy, "I think we've been approaching this in a completely wrong way."
"What do you mean, Young Melissa?" Toshinori asked, intrigued by the sudden change in her demeanor.
"Your method," she said, and began to pace the room, her energy now channeled into a burst of scientific logic that couldn't be contained. "Your way of teaching One For All is like trying to heat up food by sticking a stick of dynamite in the microwave and hoping the result is edible. It's 'all or nothing.' Just shouting and releasing the power like an uncontrolled explosion!"
The analogy was so unexpected and visual that both David and Toshinori were silent for a moment, processing it.
"The fundamental problem," Melissa continued, gesturing with her hands to emphasize her points, "is that I keep seeing One For All as a bomb I have to learn to contain before it destroys me. An external force I must master. But what if that's the wrong perspective? What if it's not a bomb? What if it's more like… the microwave itself?"
She stopped and looked at them directly, her eyes shining with pure intellectual excitement. "Think about it! You don't always have to run the microwave at one hundred percent power! You can use twenty percent for thirty seconds to reheat soup, or one percent for a minute to defrost bread! It's the exact same energy source, but applied with control, with a specific purpose, and in the correct dose! It's not about maximum power, it's about regulation!"
All Might blinked, a little taken aback by how quickly her mind had jumped from one thing to another. "Young Melissa, are you seriously comparing the sacred power that has united nine generations of heroes, the very torch of justice passed from hand to hand… to a kitchen appliance?"
She smiled at him, her confidence so absolute it seemed to light up the room. "If the analogy helps me not break every bone in my body again, then yes. Absolutely. I need to stop thinking 'SMASH' and start thinking 'defrost'."
David Shield crossed his arms, a proud smile forming on his face. "Science is about changing paradigms when the evidence demands it, Toshinori. And the evidence of a broken arm is pretty compelling."
Filled with a new and fierce determination, Melissa reached for her arm and ripped off the last remaining sensors, ignoring her father's half hearted protests.
"Okay. New plan," she announced with the authority of a lead researcher about to make a breakthrough. "I'm not going to try to use five percent throughout my whole body again. That was stupid, premature, and we've already empirically proven it doesn't work. I'm going to try something smaller. Much, much smaller. We need a controlled baseline."
She planted herself in the center of the lab and took a relaxed stance. Her expression was no longer one of strain or rage, but of total, serene concentration.
"I'm going to try to channel one percent of the power… and I'm going to direct it only to my right index finger."
"Melissa, wait!" David exclaimed, stepping forward. "We don't know how your body will react to such a localized concentration of energy. It could be worse. You could burn out the nerves or…"
But Toshinori's hand on his shoulder stopped him. David turned and saw a new spark of hope in the former hero's eyes. It was the look of someone witnessing the birth of something new, an evolution he had never considered.
"Let her try, Dave," Toshinori said quietly. "My way caused her pain. Maybe… maybe she needs to find her own."
Melissa closed her eyes, oblivious to the exchange. She cleared her mind of the previous instructions.
Instead, she focused on the image she had just formulated. A microwave. A digital control panel in her mind. And with a clear, precise thought, she selected the lowest possible power setting: 1%. She visualized it flowing from the vast ocean of power inside her, traveling in an orderly fashion down her shoulder, through her arm, and stopping right at the tip of her index finger.
It happened slowly, visibly. Thin lines of crackling red energy began to form on the skin of her arm. But instead of engulfing the entire limb in destructive fury like last time, these lines of energy behaved differently. They concentrated. They danced, swirled, and focused, converging solely around her right index finger, which now glowed with a soft, pulsing red light.
She opened her eyes.
She looked at her finger, which was vibrating with perfectly contained energy.
Without hesitating, without giving her father time to protest again, she pointed her finger at a two centimeter thick titanium alloy plate that sat on a workbench across the room. And with a quick, sharp flick, she snapped it.
A small, sharp ZAP! echoed in the lab, a sound almost comical in its brevity.
A tiny projectile of pressurized air, nearly invisible to the naked eye, shot from the tip of her finger. It crossed the room in a fraction of a second and struck the titanium plate.
A perfectly clean, pea sized hole appeared in the center of the plate. A thin wisp of white smoke rose from the perfectly sheared edges of the hole.
David and Toshinori were in absolute silence. Their eyes went from Melissa's still faintly glowing finger to the small, smoking hole in one of the strongest alloys known to man. It was a minuscule result, almost insignificant compared to the destruction All Might could unleash. But the implications were gigantic.
Melissa lowered her hand. Her finger trembled slightly from the effort of concentration. A smile, small and shy at first, then wide, triumphant, and absolutely brilliant, spread across her face. She looked at All Might, her eyes shining with intensity.
"Okay," she said, her voice buzzing with pure excitement and adrenaline. The exhaustion was gone, replaced by the euphoria of discovery. "The energy expenditure was minimal."
She paused, her eyes scanning the lab, searching for a new challenge, her mind already working on the next step of the experiment.
"Now, let's try two percent. A linear progression should be safe." Her gaze fell on a robotic arm used for handling hazardous materials. "And this time, I want a moving target."