Iron Deku

Chapter Two - Unchained and Ready

"Hey Mei, what's your quirk?"

Pulling her goggles up and off of her eyes, Mei turned away from her laptop and looked behind her to Izuku, who had sat back up on his workbench; wires trailing from the bracelets on his wrists all across the floor, some being plugged into Mei's laptop, and others into random machines the girl had insisted were going to help them speed up the process.

"Well, it's not exactly very impressive, but it does come in handy when building; it's called 'Zoom', and basically it lets me see up to 5 kilometres away..."

Mei explained, tapping her finger to her temple a few times; bringing attention to the crosses in her irises.

"What do you mean 'not very impressive'? That sounds like such a cool quirk!" Midoriya exclaimed, sliding off of his workbench with excitement as he allowed his nerdiness to shine through his more composed demeanour; a twinkle coming to his eyes that had been missing ever since he was locked away. A twinkle that, to Mei, had a sort of entrancing quality to it.

"Mei, you there?" Izuku chuckled, waving his hand in front of her face as she shook herself back into the present. Turning slightly red, the girl quickly spun back around to face her laptop, hoping that whatever cruel god had put her in this situation would take mercy on her by smiting her dead.

"T-Thanks Izuku..." The girl coughed, pressing a few random keys on her laptop.

"So how close are you to-" With a loud crackling noise, Izuku's body momentarily began to convulse; the light in his chest flickering and his knees giving out, causing him to fall to the ground with a heavy thud; the wires yanking Mei's laptop and causing it to almost fall off of her bench.

"Jesus Christ, Izuku; what the hell was that?! Are you okay?!" Mei yelled, spinning around quickly upon hearing the boy's cries of pain, any previous embarrassment she was experiencing disappearing in an instant. Pushing himself up onto his elbow, Midoriya let out a grunt of pain as he rubbed a hand across his Arc Reactor, feeling the crack in it through his vest.

"Shit, this isn't good; it hasn't even been a day and this thing's failing..." The boy observed, closing his eyes as he attempted to ride out the pain.

"You better not die on me, you hear..?" Mei quietly mumbled, crouching down to Izuku's level and resting her own hand on his Arc Reactor, causing the boy to snap his eyes open an look up at her with an embarrassed grin; the pain of being shocked starting to subside.

"Well, it may have hurt, but I'm actually sort of glad that that just happened..." Izuku chuckled, weakly pointing to the bottom of Mei's desk where the two wired-up bracelets that were once keeping the boy from using his quirk laid; smoke rising off of one of them.

"Wait, what?! How did-"

"The shock that was released must have acted as some form of EMP; disabling the whole bracelet!" Midoriya smirked; Mei joining in not much later as the two clambered to their feet; brushing off the dirt that had stuck to their clothes.

"Well then, now that we've got those babies off your wrist, how about you fire up that quirk of yours and we start to get to work on getting outta here!" Mei cheered, walking over to her laptop and pushing it back away from the edge of her workbench.

"Alrighty then... but, I have to warn you, when my quirk is active, my personality... changes... a little bit," Midoriya admitted, rubbing the back of his neck as he to walked over to Mei's workbench, bending down and picking up the now fried quirk-restraints.

"You're just full 'a surprises, aren't you..." Mei smirked, rolling her eyes at the boy as he shifted nervously.

"Okay then, here we go..."