Flea

Chapter Thirty One

The next few days passed painfully quickly for 1A and painfully slowly for Maeve. She kept trying to sneak out, abandoning her wheelchair to help in training. Aizawa wasn't having any of it and possessed a kind of sixth sense when it came to her location. He'd just point back at the inn, forcing her to slink away like a disgruntled, sick cat. Eventually, she settled and knuckled down on what Maeve had been putting off for a while. 

Her PhD. It couldn't just be anything; she had a specific goal in mind.

Maeve was going to cure cancer. Properly, this time. She wasn't going to be around forever and even if she was, cancer rates were increasing much faster than the girl could fix individual cases. However, if she created a device that imitated her quirk using some kind of chemical energy source, that would change the world.

Maeve had already collaborated with scientists on I island, but something told her this was her purpose, and hers alone. THIS was why she'd been born. The surgeon definitely didn't believe in any divine predominance but if her life's purpose was going to be one thing, it was that. She just had to work out where to start. 

By the time the exhausted students arrived back at the house by the end of the third day, they discovered her sitting in a growing pile of papers. The page's contents would have looked more at home in a chemical engineering or gene tech laboratory than a grassy meadow in the middle of nowhere. Maeve only snapped out of her thoughts when Uraraka waved a hand in front of her face. 

"Sorry Maeve," the younger girl squeaked. 

"It's actually dinner time, we've made some food for you."

Maeve stared at her with a dazed expression.  

"This is all shit," she commented with a sense of tired realisation. 

"Oh... I'm sorry? It looks really smart to me, I have no idea what any of it means."

Maeve chuckled.

"Something I've learnt over the years is that the intelligence of work often has little correlation with its shittiness. Anyway, I'm excited to see what you've all invented this time." 

Uraraka smiled at her somewhat nervously. 

"Don't get your hopes up. Bakugo seems to be the only decent cook in the class." 

"Well, that makes one more decent cook than I'd have if I tried to make it myself." 

True to her word, the food was still better than it would be if Maeve had been in charge. Still better than the hospital canteen as well, which was why she always scheduled her lunchbreaks at UA. Lunch Rush was her favourite member of the high school faculty. She had a poster of him in her room.  

All the guys were avoiding her, except for Todoroki and Bakugo. Apparently, Mineta's screeches that first evening had travelled through the entire compound. Her calling, "He got it easy, I didn't even give him labour pains," definitely didn't help the situation. In order to appease them, she scrounged up a guitar for Jiro and they had a singalong after dinner. The girl had taken a lot of convincing, but Maeve already knew that her voice was like expensive velvet and wouldn't take no for an answer. It turned out to be the highlight of the trip. The only one who didn't join in was Todoroki, but when Maeve asked Aizawa where the boy was, he just told her not to worry. Suspicious indeed. 

There was a supposed test of courage after. Maeve was keen to attend, it sounded hilarious, but her entire body ached. If this was what she was like at 18, the surgeon shuddered to consider herself as a Granny. Coughing so much had made her ribs painfully tender, and she'd been so exhausted Maeve had spent large portions of the day sleeping as well. If the girl hadn't been so sick, she knew she'd be constantly eating to try and replenish her stores.