ikigai

little cat up in a tree

By the time Maeda finished welding the circuits back in each's place it was already past noon. Her hands were dirty with oil and skinned here and there from pushing them through the bended shields of metal. Her hair—too short to be tied in a ponytail—was slicked back with sweat and even more oil. She grunted as she struggled to pull out the rest of the damaged pieces without breaking something important.

She spent thousands on this huge pile of rusty iron. She spent months building it. And there it stood the prodigy, the most difficult to repair, the most capricious fuck she had ever built up with her own hands—a fucking pile of rusty iron.

Her skin prickled with anger, a cold shiver raising the hairs on her arms and nape. Her rage was so close to bursting up to the surface as hot tears. Her flesh was burning, yet her sweat felt like ice melting out of her every pore. She placed her grip deeper inside the core and pulled with so much force she should've been more scared her muscles would rip than not getting what she wanted. And worst of all—it was useless. The main shield didn't bend. The skeleton was too damaged to be dissasembled with the core still inside. She could just make it move, but that wasn't nearly enough to get the core back.

So fuck her quality work then.

Maeda stumbled back. She didn't notice her heart throbbing earlier, but now the pain hit hard. If she would've just turned around, she could easily solve the problem by taking her pills. But she didn't. Her head was spinning and her temples pulsing so hard the dizziness made her whole body uncapable of taking those shitty meds at the moment. The panic boiled her blood.

The trial would take place in a few days. She couldn't fuck it up now. She planned everything to detail. Everything was going fine. She was doing fine. She couldn't possibly fuck this chance.

So apparently someone else had to in her stead.

The thought of the piece of shit wrecking the security sistem and her Zero lights up her arms. She started to punch the skeleton harder than she ever punched a human being. Her knuckles splinted and bled and the oil on her skin ignited as the fake memories of what she thought happened rumbled through her mind. She shouted but couldn’t even hear the syllables leaving her vocal chords. The iron conducts the energy to the circuits and the core, causing the machine to jolt awake and move and act just like the broken robot that it was. Maeda doesn't stop. She goes on and on and on until her body can't keep up with her rage.

Zero wasn't playing an important part in the trial because the rest of the robots were operating perfectly. It wasn't supposed to be involved in the trial at all. In fact, it should've not been created. UA's heroes made a bargain with her and required some boring-ass dangerous machines, not a revolutionary piece of artificial intelligence. Their robots—they were built to be destroyed. They were cheap and weren't worth much of her extra attention. Zero was more like one of old pieces. The one she did find the mental strenght to finish after her seclusion.

Long story short, Zero was the sort of thing that could get her back on her spot without forcing her to rejoin the hero society. Mayday—the leader of the useless, pathetic and weak, ready to kick ass and help the hero society as though she never left and they never failed her.

With one last burst of energy she strikes the scraps with her foot. The whole skeleton shudders and collapses. Maeda's heart is pounding hard in her chest, freezing shivers roving through her spine. She changes her mind. She does need those shitty meds. Her hands finally searches for the pills but they're uncontrollably shaking.

The fire on her skin is slowly extinguishing but her skin remains dirty with black oily traces. She struggles to open the plastic bottle—wich is annoying her even more, if possible—and when she finally succeeds getting her grip right, the pills fall down.

She swore, collected a handful off the floor then swallowed them all like they're just sweets. Except they were not. Sweets don't taste this bad. She shouldn't have taken that many pills. Uyeda would scold the hell out of Maeda, but that's a problem for the future her. Right now, she just wants to stop her heart from aching.

Already sitting on the floor among the rest of the pills, she leaned against a skeleton part and brought her knees to her chest. She was out of air. Out of energy as well.

"Dumb bitch."

She pictured the whole moment in her head but from someone else's perspective and it made her cringe, her nose wrinkled behind the shielding of her arms. She managed to disgust herself. Sorry-ass. Attention seeker.

Well, no one would've actually come in but why did it have to feel like this? It was like seeing a dramatic character crying in the shower because mommy said no. But this time, she was the dramatic ass character. She would've liked to punch herself for making a scene.

"This is embarassing," she scolded her mind. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

She sighed. No overthinking could rebuild the robot.

But the thing was that she worked hard. She actually worked hard for it this time. She made Zero by herself. She woke up in the morning and actually got it done.

What was even the point in getting this worked up on some big metal toy if she couldn't show off with it? What was the point in getting something like this done if the people were still gonna call her lazy?

There was no point.

She got a heart ache and woke up early for months for nothing.

She sighed again, rubbing her eyeballs with the heels of her palms. Exhaustion finally creeped into her bones and now she could see how stupid it was to react like that. God, that was so cringe.

She got up the next moment, her heart still hammering like crazy against her ribcage (couldn't decide if it was from the embarrassment or her bad health), and had one more look at Zero. It wouldn't be so hard to fix if she could get the core out and it shouldn't have been so hard to get the core out if it was in the process of fixing.

Perhaps she couldn't get it repaired until the first trial but it would help to blow some steam off if she'd know the dickhead who destroyed it in the first place and why. Especially why. This was straight up sabotage.

She circled the mess, looking for another perspective point but couldn't find it. Nothing. Not a clue.

So she let a long shaky breath out and gave up.

"I guess it is what it is now."

Except it was not. It would be written on her sweaty forehead with one paranthesis at the beginning and one at the end of the sentence. She knew herself better than this. She told that to herself as if it could stop the next tantrum she'd throw.

She pretended not to care about the smoking trash by not looking at it. As though it would repair itself if she'd just ignore it.

A new problem for the future her, that was. Right then she deserved a snack and a five-working-days-long nap. But soon she started to consider what her existential crisis did to her clothes and overall look. Turned out the pile of trash wasn't the only thing smoking and smelling like it got out from the hell of syntetic wigs.

She completely forgot about the keratin-based circuit boards she hoped would help if replaced with new ones. The solder mask did not protect the tech-brain from this short circuits-producing bitch. The stench impregnated in her clothes—well, if that's what you could call them—and hair and skin and everything. She just reeked.

Her knuckles stung like darts arrows stuck beneath the skin. The cold shiver was back.

First, she'd take a shower. Bandage her fists, restock the energy, lock up the broken robot. Second, she'd send for the one who probably knew about the state of Zero before her. And, at last, she'd have have no reason to not focus on the trial and the job she was given.

After all, the moment the great All Might would sign the papers, she'd be a hero. A real hero. No more robots, no more laziness and no more throwing tantrums. No overthinking and no more unnecessary drama. She had to do this one perfectly. Maeda would have everything she ever wished for then.