Beauty and the Titan

Chapter 23

"... I need to spend less time with Mei around." She mumbled to herself looking the armor over one more time.

With the inspection done she sat at one of the benches, drinking some soda and observing the TV that showed replays from the best moments in the festival so far. Right now it was showing their giant friend fighting against #6 heroine seemingly without any problem, not even trying.

Her sky blue eyes followed every movement of his mechanical body, being an engineer herself she could easily pick up those small unneeded movements that every human did. A small twitch of his fingers here, unnecessarily shifting his weight around there. It was subtle, but if he would be a real machine there wouldn't be any of that, the moment when Mirko ripped off one of his antennas it was crystal clear that it was painful to him if one would pay attention to his blinking eye.

With a better angle from the camera, the moment that Izuku activated his ability was amazing. From his broad back four, long and green jets of energy emerged looking nearly like wings and in the same time he moved. His foot ripped out a chunk of the concrete floor from the strength he used, one of his arms winding for a straight jab that would probably deliver enough energy to decimate anything in his path.

After the fight ended she saw the scene where the steel giant helped his opponent and something caught her eye. The rabbit heroine shouted something at him, with Izuku's eye lighting up witch meant he replied. It didn't look as if it was about the fight, with how irritated Mirko was.

"Hey, Luna. Can you dig out some audio from that? What are they talking about?" She asked her daughter, with the small round drone in it's charging dock nearby.

"I don't think that's really nice to do. I don't want to make Papa angry." Their daughter replied in an unsure tone of voice.

"Don't worry, I'm just curious that's all. I'm sure Izuku wouldn't mind." She replied, trying to coax her.

"Umm... Okay." Luna replied, getting silent for a couple of seconds. Then she recounted what she found out. "Papa called her Tiger-Rabbit witch really seemed to surprise miss Mirko. She wanted him to explain where he heard that but he said that she needs to win with him first if she wants to know."

"That's strange, I never heard someone call her that." Melissa replied absent-minded.

"Earlier Papa called her one of the best defenders of humanity, I thought that he referred to heroes but it seems strange." Luna supplied, remembering their conversation before the fight.

"Indeed... And you said that he froze before the fight too, right?" The blonde inquired.

"Yes. We were talking about visiting grandma Meyia and then he asked about his opponent. I compiled a short profile for him together with a photo and then he didn't replay to me for 3 minutes and 47 seconds after that. I insisted that he shouldn't fight but Papa only said it was a glitch and we shouldn't worry. When I wanted to tell you and Mother Momo about it he ordered me to not do that..." The artificial construct trailed off at the end, probably once again taking note of the fact that she spilled out something that she shouldn't.

"Don't worry, it will stay between us. But thinking about it, Izuku did freeze up when he spotted Inko-san. He was unresponsive for a minute too, until Mo started to talk to him." She pondered aloud.

"Mother, do you think that miss Mirko reminded Papa about someone too?" Luna asked, more or less following her mom's thoughts.

"It's highly probable, but I don't know why. We know that Izuku is quite old chronologically, but we don't know his actual age. Momo found him 6 years ago and if she saw it right the equipment surrounding Izuku could be dated at late 20th or early 21st century, that would indicate that he could be as old as the quirks. Izuku could be even older, maybe government at the time captured him as a test subject because of his meta ability? It was a common occurrence at the beginning of the quirk era." Melissa started to drone on, with her daughter listening attentively.