"Wait… So you aren't holding a grudge against Midori?"
Shoto leaned against the wall as Mei had stopped working on his suit for a moment, just to look at him.
As usual, her talking had been a mixture between enthusiasm, and practical and effective science. Right up until the topic of Midoriya Izuku had come up.
"...Should I be?"
"Of course! He crushed you in the tournament! Humiliated you in front of hundreds of thousands of people. Doesn't that get your blood BOILING!? Is that not why you're seething with barely hidden hatred and underlying rage all the time?"
"...No, he doesn't really have anything to do with that."
It would seem Mei had gotten quite the wrong impression about his motivation. She wasn't too far off with her assessment of his anger though.
Mei looked at him with a look of absolute disappointment… for about 10 seconds before turning back to the suit and continuing in a nonchalant tone.
"If not against Midori, then why are you so angry all the time then? I kinda just assumed it was all directed at him, given what an unlikeable, hateable, and inheritably wretched guy he is, but apparently not."
Shoto cocked his head. He was not close to Midoriya beyond talking with him a couple of times, but that sounded very unlike what Midoriya was like.
"You really don't like him do you?"
"What gave it away? The way I ripped his pain receptors inside out during my fight with him? Oh wait, you were in the hospital bed during that. No, I don't like him."
Quite the opposite it would seem.
Bakugo and Mei… Both hated their resident Spider-Man quite a lot for reasons that went beyond Yuei.
Many would probably have grilled Mei for more information, but the fact was… He did not care about it, one way or another.
"To answer your earlier question… The reason I'm "Angry" all the time as you say… The person I Hate , Is my old man."
"Endeavor? Why?"
"...Do you actually want to know?"
"Sure. If I didn't, I wouldn't be asking."
It was… A bit off how Mei would say things that could either have been rhetorical, or mocking, and just saying it like it was.
She genuinely wanted to know, even as she began working on his suit again.
Well, it was not like he cared about keeping it some sort of deep secret.
"My father is the second greatest Pro Hero of all time. He has the most resolved criminal cases of any hero in history. A living legend. And yet… For all that, for all his might and efforts… He could never beat All Might."
"Not too surprising. He does not possess much charisma, and his power is far, far below that of the Current number 1."
"Yes. My father… He always saw All Might as a roadblock. An eyesore that he could never beat on his own. No matter how hard he tried."
He felt his chest tighten hard as he continued.
"So he came up with another plan. Another way to surpass All Might."
At that Mei did turn back to look at him, clearly curious, though her eyes were hidden by her black goggles so he was only able to read her expression through her facial muscles.
"You've heard of Quirk Marriages, yeah?"
Mei had, that much was clear by the way her face turned into a disappointed frown.
"A quirk marriage? That was his big idea?" She snorted, then turned back to her work.
"Yeah, I know about them. Back in the early days of Heroes, people were already realizing that quirks, being a genetic pass down, could be bred to be even stronger with the right set of parents."
"Yes… My father… My father was one such. He used his wealth, his power, and his fame into pressuring my mother's family into forcing her to marry him… All so that he could get his hands on her quirk."
Mei snorted.
"An Ice and fire quirk combined is that it?"
"Yes. Someone with not only far greater potential for firepower than my father, but able to compensate for all his weaknesses."
He did not attempt to hide his sheer disdain as he said it, instead letting his loathing pulse through every word.
"If your old man had been smart, he would have focused on finding a bride with a Heat immunity quirk. That would have been a far, far better potential combo than what you ended up with."
He hadn't really considered that.
"I couldn't care less about that. What matters… Is what my father did. How he treated us… Me… My mother…"
He felt his hand clench into a tight fist.
"That bastard raised me as nothing more than a tool to fulfill his own ambitions. I hated it. I still hate it… The way he treats me as nothing more than a tool for his own ends… The way he drove my mother to complete madness."
He looked out over the room, the tech students going about their own business, all well away from the two of them.
He felt… Different from all of them. He WAS different from all of them. As marked by the scars on his face.
His hand went up to touch it, the phantom pain in the now destroyed pain receptors around his eye kicking in as it sometimes did.
"As far back as I can remember, my mother was always crying… All because of Him. And she just got worse and worse… I can't stand to see that left side of yours… that's what she said as she threw scalding water on my face."
Mei stopped working, having noticeably frozen.
"You've probably figured this out by now… But me not using my left side, is revenge on Him . Never using my father's Quirk… No… By rising to the top without using it… I'll have denied him EVERYTHING."
Mei turned around slowly, in a very different manner than her usual, manic, and energetic way. Though what her direct feelings might be was hard to tell from behind that pair of glasses, but he thought her face looked… Confused? Not concerned, confused.
"Okay…? So you want personal revenge on your old man…"
"You disagree?"
"No, I'm not really against revenge. I know better than most the power of spite and anger, and how it can get you through hard times… But… There is an obvious question here."
"...Do tell." He said, cold as Ice.
Mei didn't flinch.
"Okay, so you blame your dad for being abusive, for driving your mom to insanity, and by extension, for getting you scarred across half your face. So you decided not to use his powers just to spite him. I get that part. Makes sense… But… You want to become number one? The next All Might? Couldn't you just… Achieve the exact same result by resolving to become a great Underground hero? Like Aizawa? That way, you deny him the satisfaction of thinking you needed his flames to get by in life, while also refusing to even play his game at all. By becoming an underground Hero, you don't partake in the ranking system that your dad cares about so much, meaning you can become a great Hero while completely denying him anything… While also not having to go through the insane cutthroat and all-consuming road of actually becoming the next number one."
Shoto just stared at her, feeling… Numb was the best way to describe it.
"You… You hadn't even considered that as an option have you?"
"...No. No, I had not."