Chapter 45: I-Island (Arrival)
Summary: The start of the I-Island arc! Yes, I've included it...though it will be shorter than the movie plot. For reasons...
Warning! Chapters 43-46 were released all at once! Make sure you don't miss any!
Chapter 45: I-Island (Arrival)
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Izumi and Momo arrived on I-Island without any particular fanfare. They had taken one of the Yaoyorozu Group's private jets to Tahiti and taken it again on to I-Island. Aside from a bit of fooling around in the privacy of the jet's cabin, the trip hadn't been particularly eventful. Since the moving island was currently just north of the Equator and only a single time zone off of Tahiti's, they were essentially already adjusted for the jet lag and were able to smoothly transition into getting to work. It was something they both noted, wondering if it might be a good tactic to repeat in the future, taking a vacation nearby wherever I-Island was before the Expo. Of course, given just who they had working for Aegis as the local representative, who was also the only person aside from the three arriving that actually did R&D for the company, it wasn't a shock how smoothly it went on the arrival side.
"So, looking forward to seeing your uncle, Mel? I assume you know he's intending to show up this year. Tomorrow, right?" Izumi frowned, hoping she had known. All Might had only mentioned it to them when he'd asked if they needed passes.
Melissa Shield grinned at her nominal bosses, even as she directed a series of flying bots to continue double-checking their other minions setup of the Expo booth.
"Yep! It's extra awesome that he'll be here when I finally get to show off what I've been working on properly!"
That got chuckles from the two of them, even as the Izumi and Momo went over all the preparations that were already done, checking for anything Mel and her assistants had missed. Aegis would be showing off a new protype line created by finally successfully fusing Melissa's compression technology with various alloys created using YoRHa's knowledge of Maso/QE infused materials. Melissa's original compression technology had been potentially amazing, but limited by how fragile it was. Theoretically, the materials had been insanely tough, capable of holding up to even someone like All Might or Izumi. But that was because Melissa had, to Izumi and 2B's shock when they'd first realized it, actually come up with a way to infuse materials with QE. It made those materials tough while being extremely compressible…and also made the material shatter like so much spun glass once the QE in it ran out.
Now, after two years of hard work by Melissa, with input mostly from Momo and 2B, they'd gotten a much more efficient and broader set of materials. Materials that passively absorbed small amounts of QE, at that. It couldn't absorb ambient QE. So far only the teleport blockers they'd designed could do that at a scale that mattered. But it could absorb QE from anyone with a Quirk via skin contact, albeit in small amounts. With how efficient they'd gotten their new materials, however, those small amounts were enough to 'recharge' the materials over time. Currently, their new line of products was focused on utility. They didn't yet have a material suitable for shrinking circuitry, so they couldn't make anything electronic. But they could make things like compressible clothing, tools, and toys. There were even a few limited support items on the list, such as a respirator capable of filtering smoke and fumes that could be compressed down to a pocket or pouch sized cylinder.
In the future, now that they'd cracked the method needed to make larger QE absorbers, they were hoping to make more energy intensive items as well. Deployable barriers and shields, disaster relief shelters, and a hundred other things useful for Heroes and Police alike. Currently, the slow recharge rate of the skin-contact method meant that creating more complex support items was unwise, since they couldn't be reliably recharged between patrols if they saw heavy use. But they were getting there! And what they were showing off at the Expo would still be an excellent vindication of Melissa's work. Quite a few people had been unhappy when the 'Second Shield' went to work for Aegis, instead of any of the major R&D groups of I-Island. And Melissa was going to enjoy rubbing a few arrogant noses in her accomplishment. She'd joined Aegis specifically as only Izumi and Momo had been willing to simply let her run wild with her project, let alone been in a position to help her with it as they had been.
"Well, this all looks great Melissa, as usual. You have enough help to run the booth?" Momo stood up from checking over the holo-setup, flashing her business smile. "We'll handle the new HSN upgrades and Scouter Series rollout announcements, of course. Along with the QE field seminar. But the day-to-day stuff and the new product line are sort of your show."
Melissa rolled her eyes. She was used to the fact that Momo would slip into 'business mode' whenever it came time to organize things like this, even if she was just as informal with Melissa as Izumi the rest of the time. It was simply how she separated the need to be technical CEO and CFO of their company from the fact she was half-mad science buddies with Melissa when working on projects. Of course, with that new friend of hers in support, Izumi and Melissa were half-sure Momo was going to descend into full mad-science. Well…the world had been mostly nice while it lasted, at least. And Momo would make a relatively benevolent Evil Overlord when it inevitably came to that.
"Good. I think we can safely cross the last-minute check off, then. The bots look like they didn't find anything either." Izumi pointed to where the bots were returning to their charging ports, with all lights still green. "Want to go grab dinner with us, Mel? A few of our UA friends are already on the island. You could meet them?"
Melissa seemed torn for a moment, then nodded.
"Sure! I've already triple checked everything. I'm just, you know, being extra anxious this time…"
Momo and Izumi both grinned as their minion friend rubbed the back of her head. They got it, after all. The first reveals of the Hero Scouter and the HSN it connected to had all been incredibly nerve wracking. All the more so given how young they'd both been at the time. Sure, they'd had a lot of Yaoyorozu spokespeople and engineers present to do the heavy-lifting at those presentations, not to mention lending the Yaoyorozu Group's legitimacy to the project. But they'd still had to be there, since they were the only ones that understood certain parts of the system.
Intentionally.
There was a reason that no one had, yet at least, ever cracked any of the HSN servers or comm feeds. No one had managed to jam or otherwise disrupted them, either. They hadn't exactly been stupid enough to include a few of the key systems that the HSN used in the patent data, after all. Those key systems were heavily based on YoRHa's own secure network. Which meant they were several dozen generations ahead of anything else on Earth when it came to security. And 2B, Izumi, and Momo weren't in any hurry to let that change. Even if that did mean that Izumi and 2B still had to do pretty much all of the coding for the HSN when new features were thought up or requested. Given just how much vital intelligence now passed through the HSN in countries that had adopted it, a security breech would be a disaster. Honestly the numerous lawsuits by various governments trying to get backdoors into their system was another side effect that was far more annoying than needing to do some coding…
Ah well. Tradeoffs. For now, time to introduce their minion friend, to their living test dummies, other friends!
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Not everyone from Group A was there, of course. Tickets to I-Expo weren't that easy to come by for one thing, and several students had taken UA's offer of delays to their non-heroics course finals. Even so, several students had made it, and Izumi and Momo were quickly waved down by the group as they entered the restaurant they'd all agreed to have dinner together at. Jiro, who had been gifted a ticket Izumi and Momo had gotten for jointly 'winning' th tournament bracket, was looking a little annoyed sitting beside Iida, who had come along with his brother. The final member of Group A present was Tokoyami, though the person sitting next to him is something of a surprise.
"Yanagi! I didn't know you were coming. I'm surprised that Setsuna didn't mention it."
Momo was quick to greet the surprise Group B addition, even as Izumi speculatively noted how close she and Tokoyami were sitting to each other.
"Ah. I did not originally expect to be able to attend, due to previous family commitments. When those festivities unexpectedly cleared up, I was able to acquire a last-minute ticket from a classmate who was ill fortuned enough to require the extra time allotted to us for finals."
Momo took the wordy explanation with barely a blink, giving her a warm smile. Izumi waved herself, remembering their match in the tournament and once again noting that she really ought to talk to the telekinetic and see if either of them could learn from the other. Izumi had issues using her own telekinesis for anything requiring fine-control, while Yanagi had seemed to have something of a throughput issue. Unrestricted telekinetics, ones not limited to specific materials, were a bit uncommon. Not rare so much as not a dime a dozen either, particularly stronger ones. Which meant it was always possible they might have useful advice to share between them.
After greeting the unexpected addition, Momo turned to wave to Melissa. The American girl smiled cheerfully and waved at the group, causing them to reflexively wave back.
"Everyone, this is Melissa Shield! She technically works for Izumi and I, being the primary I-Island contact for our work with the HSN. As well as Quirk research in general, given where we are. She's also a good friend, however, who's a fantastic support engineer in her own right. Oh, she's American by-the-by, so don't mind the first names!" Momo let that sink in for a moment, before pointing to each of the students in turn. "Melissa, from left to right these are Yanagi Reiko, from Group B of our year. Then Tokoyami Fumikage, Iida Tenya, and Jiro Kyoka from our own Group A. I know there's at least one more member of Group B around some…"
A disembodied head being held by an arm floated from the side, right in front of Melissa. She yelped…then tried to tase it with a wrist-mounted taser. Izumi had seen Setsuna coming and reacted with lighting speed, catching the sparking taser prongs in midair a fraction of an inch in from Tokage's nose. Her fellow greenette yelped and zoomed backward.
"Right! Don't play practical jokes on Izu and Yaomomo's friends! Should have expected she'd be scary!"
Melissa was looking a mix between horrified and embarrassed, though the horror at least vanished when the rest of Setsuna's body caught up and she reattached her missing pieces.
"Uh…sorry about that…Melissa, right?"
The apology and question, coming unexpectedly in English, snapped Melissa out of her silence and she rushed to apologize herself. Tokage laughed it off, before properly introducing herself and joining the table. Thankfully, said table was a large one, and the three new arrivals took the remaining seats. Momo broke the moment of slightly awkward silence with a question.
"So, Setsuna, is anyone else from Group B going to be at the Expo? I believe from our own group, only Bakugo is arriving tomorrow with a regular pass. A few of the others were pissed since they had similar passes but couldn't get away with the late finals."
Setsuna nodded, seeming totally unphased by almost being tased. Izumi quietly suspected the overly-flirty girl had been tased before. Possibly often. But that might just be her wanting to imagine that as a suitable fate for scary extroverts that flirted shamelessly with her girlfriend. Her too, which was actually worse. Usually you only had to shoot down even extroverts once or twice. Setsuna was still cheerfully floating comments about threesomes months after the first time. Not that the idea was horrifying, given Setsuna was hot. But Izumi could not handle two extroverts. Hers was already enough!
"Yeah, it was the same with us. In our case a few passes changed hands, since there were people that took the finals at the normal times but didn't have passes. Like Reiko here!" Setsuna waved at her companion, who simply nodded. "Anyway, Pony is coming. She had tickets from the start. Apparently her mom is a hero in United States? Then Shishida got a ticket from Kendo. Kendo could have come. But she insisted on staying to help people prep for the finals, even though she finished hers early."
Iida's infamous arm-chops appeared, causing Jiro to scoot away from him with a grimace.
"That is admirable! I might have chosen the same, if not for the fact that my brother specifically requested I attend with him this year!"
Setsuna deadpanned at that response…and completely ignored it.
"Anyway! Sexy blonde chick! Any relation to David Shield? I mean, there's your name, and you're here on the island…"
Melissa blinked, taken aback at the brazen comment and question, but hesitantly nodded.
"Yeah, he's my dad. I pretty much grew up on I-Island because of him. Graduated from the university here early, though that's not exactly uncommon. Most of the kids on the island are here because their parents are scientists. And, well…genetics are a thing. Smart parents don't always mean smart kids, but…"
Everyone nodded as she trailed off. It made it a lot more likely, certainly. Thankfully, the sheepish comment had broken the tension and Momo moved into the gap to get the small talk flowing, asking everyone what they were most looking forward to about the Expo…