A Day In the Life of a Maybe Mad Scientist Part 1
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A small, black haired boy was playing with his parents in a seemingly endless field of green grass which had a satisfying earthy crunch whenever it was walked . The sun was shining brightly, its warmth being just right to seem like a blanket over the three. They ran, frolicked, went on a picknick, played catch, and other fun events. The events repeated, and eventually they blended together into a sense of serenity and happiness. That was until the boy went to give his parents a hug.
The once sunny field became pitch black, as the boy was alone. He looked around to find nothing. And then looked down, to once again find nothing. Nothing. NOTHI-
Shiketsu 1-D Dorms
Shinohara suddenly woke up in a cold sweat, his heart racing. It took him a solid thirty seconds to come back to reality, and it would take him minutes to calm down. A voice from the other side of the room came through and looked at him with concern.
"You ok man?"
Shinohara let out an almost comical exhale out to cool his nerves, and then fiddled around in his blanket to put on his A.R.M.S. . The only time he took them off was to go to sleep, and even then he did it under the covers to make sure that his roommate wouldn't see. Once he settled down he then gave his roommate a response.
"I'm good. Enhanced Metabolism can fuck with waking up sometimes."
A lie, and an ill-prepared one at that. Shinohara hoped that his roommate wouldn't pry further.
Said roommate gave an "that's probably bullshit but alright" expression and went back to watching the basketball anime that he paused.
Shinohara, to take his mind off of what was happening before, decided to focus on what his roommate was doing. He didn't really care for anime at all and was confused why one would watch such a thing when you could do all kinds of other far more productive endeavors with your time, like inventing, building and upgrading laser technology.
"How do you even watch this stuff?"
The albino gave a droll but combative response.
"How do you stay holed up in a lab all day?"
"Because it's more productive than sitting on my ass. Your lithe and compact but capable physique would be perfect for participating in real sporting events, yet you watch it unfold on a screen."
Romero just looked looked back at him with a curled face and twitching eye that practically screamed "The fuck?". As much as Shinohara left him alone to do his own thing, he would sometimes really regret being his roommate.
"Who the hell talks about someone's "lithe and compact physique" first thing when they wake up?"
Romero sighed deeply, one of his signature things he did, and something he suspected would increase in frequency due to certain autistic midget he was currently co-habituating with. He quickly came up with a scheme to get him the hell away from him during afterschool hours coated as genuine advice.
"Look, you need a Hobby. And Friends. How about you sign up for some of those clubs that are coming about?"
Shinohara gained a pensive look as he rested his face upon one of his A.R.M.S.
Indeed, in order to become the best hero one could be, you had to network with individuals you were inevitably going to face evil with in the field. Yeah, networking. That's why he was gonna sign up for some clubs. Not because he desperately craved attention, validation, and affection from people that actually wanted to hang out with him. Networking.
But his networking would have to wait, as it was time to go to school.
Note: These classes are not in chronological order, as a schedule for 1-D has not been established.
Jade-Sensei's Art Class
Shinohara struggled with Art. It was an unfamiliar feeling, as throughout his entire academic career he easily succeeded with anything he put his mind to, but Art was different.
Today they were tasked to draw an animal, and Shinohara drew an armadillo. He didn't know why he drew it, it was just the first thing that came to mind.
Shinohara sometimes chuckled to himself about the irony of it. The one subject in which he was free from his usual constraints, able to let his imagination run wild, he was the least creative and proficient with. At least in his mind.
It wasn't the technical side of art Shinohara struggled with, he had many thousands of hours worth of practice hand-drawing schematics for whatever he made or intended to make. It wasn't his prosthetics either, his A.R.M.S. had been designed to be as precise if not more so than the human hand. If anything he he was far better at expressing his intent through the paper than the rest of the class.
In fact, Shinohara's classmates often marveled at immense prowess that he casually possessed with the visual medium.
As if to prove the point Gyoyu strolled over to his easel with an expression of bewilderment.
"Wow! That is awesome! How did you even do that?! Heh, I can even barely draw my donkey."
It was indeed a quite detailed rendition of the animal, several interlocking plates shaded to look as such without them being out of place nor overlapping along with precise applications of smaller strokes to make the underlying hair. It was truly impressive for a first year Art student.
One would think that all the extra attention and praise would make him happy, but alas it did the opposite. It only made him feel more hollow about the creations he produced. They were just drawings. Good, even great quality ones. But they weren't Art.
Shinohara spent a decent portion of the class looking towards his peer's pieces on the walls in envy. They possessed some ethereal beauty that his pieces clearly didn't have, something that left a nigh-permanent grimace on his face during the class period. His classmates tried to cheer him on or commend him for his effort. Though to him, they just didn't know what was wrong with the pieces he made and were just trying to make him happy for the sake of it.
The ever-preceptive Jade-Sensei however, figured out what was wrong with Shinohara's "art". While she never wished to disparage a student for their personality or circumstances, it was "soulless". It was if a machine created all of his pieces. Even the art created by the ultra-utilitarian Yuudai or the blatantly cheating Reiji showed some form of emotion or expression through the art however skewed it may be.
Shinohara's? Nothing. It was like the Art equivalent of the warehouse workers she'd seen back home in China after a really long day, just....going through the motions, doing for the sake doing. It was like it had no true reason to exist at all.
If that had any indication about how the boy himself felt, which it most probably did, it would seem that she had yet another emotionally distraught student on her hands. It also meant that she had another upcoming meeting with her archnemesis among the staff. Lovely.
Sugiyama Sensei's Combat Class
In the gymnasium, there was a line (or more accurately a huddle) of boys and girls on the opposite respective sides of the court as they just got done changing, waiting for Sugiyama-Sensei to tell them what to do. Though sometimes people from the two interacted and talked with eachother
Unlike Art, combat was something that Shinohara was middling at instead of outright struggling. He wasn't a martial artist by any definition, but he had gotten quite good at blasting his problems away.
"How's my favorite delusional manlet doing?"
Well, not all of his problems.
"Delusional?! You think out of the two of us I'M the delusional one?!"
There was a notable exception.
"Duh-Doy, you've got it in your head that your piddly flashlight arms can pierce through my perfect defense. Clearly Delusional."
Ikuno Koru, The Unbreakable Hero: Fumetsu. The current bane of Shinohara's existence. She is also ironically, the person he talks to the most during any given class. Though vitriol isn't exactly the best building of building blocks for friendship.
"I'll show you! I've got a new attachment on my A.R.M.S. that'll give you the burn scars you've been desperately begging for ever since we met!"
Ikuno gave a smug grin towards the boy and had a little chuckle.
"I'm sure that'll work out juuussst as well as alllll the other times. Oh wait, they didn't work at all."
Shinohara tried to interject.
"Well this'll be diff-"
Only to get interrupted.
"Not. Even. A. Scratch."
"JUST YOU WAI-"
In the background, the rest of the boys were listening and watching as a the smug girl kept mentally poking and prodding the diminutive cyborg who was getting progressively more angry by the second. Of these boys, Akuba was the first to break the tension about the plasma-emitting and indestructible elephants in the room in his typical jokey style.
"Ya know, if this goes on any longer I think I'm gonna report them to President Bubble for violating the No Dating Rule."
Yasu then gave a lazy glance at the situation, and then an even lazier thumbs-up following it.
"I ship it."
That earned him a relatively soft but still sturdy elbow from from Romero into his side.
"Ow! The hell was that for!"
Romero then gave him an explanation.
"That's for even insinuating the possibility of having to deal with that particular clusterfuck."
Yasu tried to meaningfully interject.
"Oh c'mon it's not that bad"
Both Romero and Akuba, along with the new addition of Reiji gave him an incredulous deadpan expression, with Akuba in particular pointing his open hand towards the situation currently unfolding in the middle of the gymnasium. A situation that Yasu once more bothered to look at.
Currently, Ikuno held Shinohara off the ground in a headlock while giving him a noogie and having a chuckling fit. Our protagonist was screeching and flinging his limbs about like a tweaking chimpanzee while having his A.R.M.S. charged up with plasma in a futile attempt to both escape and possibly (hopefully) charbroil the offender.
Yasu then sagely nodded.
"Fair enough. By the way, are you recording this Reiji?"
Reiji dramatically scoffed at the notion.
"Who do you take me for?! Of course I am."
While the boys present shared a little collective snicker about what was to soon appear on social media, Sugiyama-sensei strolled in to start up the class, along with separating Fumetsu and Miracle.
Shiketsu Cafeteria
While Shinohara had signed up for 2 main clubs after the big club announcement (thanks for writing that before I made this), those being Autobody and Gaming, they still had a while to set up themselves up. So, he went to an offshoot club that technically wasn't really a club that he mostly signed up for a as a "might as well".
Competitive Eating Club.
Shinohara had to eat a quite frankly absurd amount of food to survive due to his vastly enhanced metabolism constantly churning out energy. Along with that, as much as it technically violated one of the fundamental principles of life, he didn't produce any waste, with anything he ate turning into more fuel on a molecular level. Thus, any "competition" he entered in that had to do with food would honestly be unfair with how he could technically eat forever if he really wanted to.
Though something told him this wouldn't exactly be a competitive environment. A lot of somethings.
The "club" took place in the back room of the cafeteria behind the kitchen, where leftovers that would go bad by the next day were stored. The door that led to it had a shoddy wooden sign hanging from it on tiny with "Competitive Eating" on it. The bottom left of the sign looked to have a chunk bitten out of it. Shinohara had trouble guessing if that was an aesthetic choice or if someone actually took a bite out of the sign. He would find out when he opened the door.
Once Shinohara slowly opened the door and walked in, he saw a one of the spare lunch benches from the cafeteria set out with containers storing same kinds of food that they served at lunch earlier today, along with a single occupant who he was currently awkwardly looking at while she stopped slurping down the leftover noodles in front of her.
Atsushi Orochi, the Hard to Destroy Lizard Hero: Yamata. Although her appearance needs no introduction, one thing that did change from the norm about her look was that one of the hydra heads was chewing on some woodchips. It seemed that it indeed was not an aesthetic choice. She honestly had a slightly bewildered expression on her face, as if she was expecting to be left entirely alone in this faux "club" she and Karaburan made in order to not have to spend extra costs on any leftover food and get some alone time. The principal did warn her that people could technically sign up for the club, but she did not heed that warning.
Shinohara simply awkwardly waved to his sempai before sitting on the other side of the bench. He then attempted to start a dialogue to hopefully ease the tension.
"Sooo.....Are we just supposed to chill and eat the leftovers?"
"Pretty much."
Luckily Shinohara quickly caught on to the methodology behind the existence of this "club".
"Smart. Gotta get rid of this stuff somehow, might as well use some human capital. I'll take a wild guess that this shindig isn't receiving a lion's share of funding."
Orochi chuckled.
"As Mr.Tyler would say-ahem"
Her voice became deeper, accented, and much more gruff, clearly in an exaggerated manner. One of her hydras even drooped under her nose to represent the definitive mustache of the teacher that was being mimicked.
"Currently we are operating under a system of barter for goods and services"
That got a chuckle out of Shinohara too, and so he opened one of the containers and began chowing down along with Orochi in silence for a while.
bzz bzz
That was until Orochi's phone started ringing. When she looked at who was calling, it seemed as if her mood just got a significant bit brighter.
"Gotta pick this up...What's up Hiro!........"
After the word Hiro, Shinohara tuned out the conversation in favor of more eating. Though that name got him thinking. He saw Orochi helping Hiro walk to the stage for the big club event, and got a glimpse at the condition of his legs. Perhaps he could help with that. Shinohara oft saw Lixidite speaking the wheelchair-bound Mochi during lunch, and as the true hero he was he sought to use his knowledge to construct an a solution to his ailment, the general concept of which should more than be able to help out with Hiro's situation.
The Lumbar Extension: Ground Standard, or L.E.G.S. Though progress has been slow, especially with focusing on other (far more dangerous) projects. Perhaps having another person that he can immediately potentially help with his new invention could give him the motivation he needed to complete it. At the very least, an experiment having more test subjects was ni-
"Heh, what're you thinkin about kouhai?"
Huh. It appears that the conversation between Orochi and Hiro had ended while Shinohara took his usual "The Thinker" pose. He might as well give her the explanation, especially since it seems that she'd be able to easily communicate with Hiro himself about his plans.
"Well, you were just talking to Hiro of Class 2-D right?"
Orochi raised an eyebrow, while the hydras came together and tilted their heads in inquisitive confusion.
"Yeah?"
Ufortunately, Shinohara himself wasn't the best at communicating his plans.
"Well, he can't use his legs correctly right?"
That...was a poor choice of words. Orochi's initial inquisitive look sharpened into a not-so-subtle glare as her hydras did the same. The hydras then flicked their tongues out and let a hsss rumble throughout the room. The awkwardness immediately turned into a prominent horror for Shinohara as he began sweating. It honestly was like he was being affected by Lixidite's aura, but this fear felt much more real than the other mythical lizard's Quirk.
"Yeah?"
He immediately raised his metal arms up like a police officer just pointed a gun towards his head and began a hasty and.even more awkward explanation.
"Well, uh.... I uh...happen to have experience with prosthetics and artificial limb enhancements.."
Shinohara waved his hands in a tactical maneuver commonly referred to as "jazz hands" around to make his A.R.M.S more obvious in the eyes of Orochi and her hydras to emphasize the point.
"I was thinking about making something in order for him to be able to walk normally, the Lumbar Extension: Ground Standard, or L.E.G.S. and was wondering if you could tell him about that on my behalf since you talk to him much much more than I do."
That seemingly did the trick, as her glare softened and the hydras didn't seem like they were going to tear him apart any longer. At least Shinohara hoped that was the case. Orochi then vocalized a combination of a sigh and a chuckle with her hydras leaning back in seeming exasperation.
"What is it with you eggheads and your unnecessary acronyms?"
Shinohara stood aghast for a couple seconds, then slammed his A.R.M.S. on the table in pure indignation
"UNNECESARY?! I will have you know that including a succinct and informative naming scheme is essential to the process of scientific invention and innovation!"
Orochi and the hydras gave Shinohara a deadpan "Really?" look. Turns out, Orochi specifically had many more insights into the mind of a modern mad scientist than most regardless of their obsession of choice.
"Uh huh. And it definitely has nothing to do with making it seem cooler to other people and making you seem smarter."
"Yea-"
Shinohara stopped mid sentence as his face straightened into a faux-glare that looked much more like a childish pout than intended. Orochi had a smug toothy grin, with her hydras even radiating an aura of smugness that should be impossible given their lack of ability to make facial expressions.
The smugness remained as Orochi went back to eating, and Shinohara got a notifcation on his phone that the Gaming Club was about done getting set up. He left the room in a hurry, hoping not to be late to his first true networking endeavor. Networking.
"Uh oh. See you next time sempai, gotta go!"
Orochi was left alone in the back of the cafeteria, looking somewhat blankly and blinking at her food as her hydras stared towards the door that their strange "clubmate" just left from. Perhaps pure alone time in the leftovers room wasn't the best of ideas. Well, even a mythical lizard reaps what they sow.