[Masao Ando]

During the advent of Chugen, many people give gifts to their superiors or ancestral spirits. Even if some don't they might at the very least take the time out of their day to hang out with their colleagues or loved ones. Masao did none of those things. Too busy working away at her workshop, Masao was improving her craft, trying to get the framework of this one sword model just right. This year had to be the year where she finally made a breakthrough and made something that proved that she belonged in the Department of Support. This sword, it very well might be the miracle she was grasping for.

She kept her workshop rather neat, with weapons and tools lining the walls everywhere, but the counters, tables and floor generally being surprisingly clean for a place where smithing took place. She inspected the sword she was working on closely after it had cooled down a bit. There was a problem with the blade, but what had she overlooked? She went back to review the schematics going over the details one step at a time to track down the place of error. ''That doesn't make any sense.'' She muttered to herself. Her long red hair was tied back so that it wouldn't get in the way while she worked. Aside from her standard UAU uniform, she wore a black apron over it, an article of clothing that could practically be considered her work uniform at this point.

She had left her workshop open for the day, always happy to serve the students of UAU. Although, given that it was Chugen she wasn't expecting many to drop by. Hopefully Ylva was behaving. If that girl went behind her back and broke rules she would never hear the end of it from the school administration.

Mafdet Khepri

[Mafdet Khepri]

"Aww not again." Khepri whined while dropping a fourth broken spoon on the table. Their eyes narrowed into a squinting glare. That bowl of soup wouldn't keep besting them. Reaching into the open drawer next to them their nails scratched across hardened plastic. "Hmm?"

Welp, they were officially out of spoons. How could they possibly fix this? Their eyes gleamed. A riddle! How can the soup be eaten, the spoon shortage be fixed and the evidence be hidden before Hogo got mad at them? With a waggling tail they stood up. It was time for another adventure!

---

"Happy Chugen, senior!" Khepri cheerily said while dropping more than almost a dozen 'gifts' on the table, both their current batch and the one from back when they tried to dig through the wall. For several long, awkward moments they maintained eye contact with Masao without blinking.

"Well? Do you think you can fix any of them?"

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Tags: Masao Ando

[Masao Ando]

She turned to look at the catbug as they entered, meeting them with a blank stare. ''Chugen?'' She was familiar with the holiday, although she wasn't sure Khepri's gesture exactly fit the bill for your typical Chugen. Nevertheless, they probably had good intentions and as such she wouldn't mind humoring them. ''These spoons? Yes I can fix these, feel free to have a seat.'' She began gathering up the spoons and putting her other project aside for the time being. ''What is your name? I don't believe we have met in a personal capacity before, but I recall seeing your face at the hero introductions not too long ago.''

Fixing spoons like this wasn't exactly hard, but given the sheer number of spoons it might take a little bit. Still, she didn't mind chatting with the other student in the meantime, figuring out who they were and what these spoons were for in the first place. Their quirk perhaps? ''I'm Masao Ando. As you've probably guessed I'm a support student who specializes in working with metal. Normally this manifests in a passion for sharp weapons however, not spoons.'' She inspected one of the spoons closely, treating Khepri's rather silly request with utmost sincerity. ''Still, this looks like a trivial job. May I ask what you use these spoons for?'' Assuming they weren't a support student since she knew a lot of their faces, even the first years, Khepri was most likely either in the business department or hero course. Her money was on hero course considering how odd this request was.

Mafdet Khepri

[Mafdet Khepri]

"Hi, I'm Khepri. Mafdet Khepri!" The catbug enthusiastically stated. "Who are you?"

They attentively listened to Ando's entire response before replying. 

"Soup." A moment of silence passed before Khepri continued. "Oh, only these four though. The others were meant to expand a cabinet."

Having finished explaining absolutely nothing Khepri let out a thoughtful hum.

"I don't think my roommates would be happy with sharp spoons."

Or maybe they would? Khepri wasn't too sure. They'd definitely be asking Hogo and Hebi later though. Just in case Khepri would go buy a new pack of blunt spoons later though to cover all bases. Maybe some with fun patterns on them. They remembered seeing some inspired by modern art in an online store, with some luck no one would notice the difference despite the handles being curly and the heads having cutouts. 

"I can use one though. Can you make it durable? Oh, could it fire lasers? Hmm, maybe not the lasers, that'd make the soup easier to heat but harder to eat~."

 Khepri thought for a moment longer on what could possibly be added to it, their original goal in coming here long forgotten. From the history books they haven't read they remembered that they were often carved with religious symbols back in Ancient Egypt. Their grandfather had made sure they'd studied up on anything relevant to their 'peaceful religious gathering' cult that 'wasn't a cult stop calling it that Khepri'. 

"Can you put a put a cat and a scarab on the back? Oh, on the handle not the bowl. Egyptian magic makes it so that if you carve them into the bowl your soup leaks through it."

It'd taken seven spoons before Khepri came to that conclusion. They weren't able to keep testing because the neighbors locked their windows afterwards so they couldn't get to their drawers anymore.

"Or maybe you can? I don't know how far magic goes. Do you know?"

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Tags: Masao Ando

[Masao Ando]

''Soup.'' She repeated blankly, then looked down at the spoons again. ''I see. Mafdet-san, this is trivial work.'' She was already putting herself to work, but following their conversation all the while. ''Not sharp spoons. Surely you just want them fixed if the purpose is for them to aid you in the consumption of food?'' She nodded her head once. ''Durable is no problem, but it will take a little bit longer.'' It was an odd request, but a request nonetheless. As a support student her role was to support others and even work that seemed pointless or miniscule at first could still benefit her. It was all working experience after all.

''Back of the spoon?'' She turned it around to review the back of the handle before looking back at Khepri, expression unchanging. Then, she took a small piece of paper and drew up a rough sketch of what the cat and scarab might look like. ''Something like this?'' She handed the paper to them. ''If not, then I'm going to have to ask you to be more specific. Working with metal, even spoons, isn't strenuous to me in the slightest. As for Egyptian magic...'' She put the spoon down with a gentle clank and looked back at them. ''That does not fall within my field of expertise. I work strictly with metals that are practical in nature, there is no magic of any kind involved in the process. I can help you with the spoons, but you will have to ask someone else about magic if you seek a more sufficient answer.'' Turning back to continue working she spoke up again.

''How did you know to come to my workshop? Word of mouth?''

Mafdet Khepri

[Mafdet Khepri]

"Soup." They repeated with a happy nod. "That's fine, can I wait here until they're done?" Khepri added with a tilt of their head. Returning to the dorm before they replaced the spoons seemed like a bad idea for some reason they didn't feel like thinking about. 

"Yeah, back of the spoon. For balance. I don't want the front to fall off."

Leaning over the drawing Khepri squinted their eyes, turned the paper sideways, upside down and finally over to look at it from the back before nodding. "Yeah, like this but Egyptian." 

Attentively listening to Masao's reasoning on the magic Khepri found themself agreeing. No one can do everything and magic and metals were two very different subjects. Why, in a great many folklores around the world they were actively detrimental to each other. Some tales had it so that mages didn't wear armor because metal stopped mana. Others had anything related to magic be weak to metal such as the fae, albeit Khepri knew that was different because the fae were only kept away by 'cold iron' which meant iron not warmed in blood and was a scary story to keep people from going to war when it wasn't necessary lest they lost their immunity to the tricks of the fae. 

Just like the fae though magic was tricky. Some magical knowledge was even dangerous so clearly just knowing things could have consequences. Maybe it was for the best if Masao didn't know. It might make them worse at smithing.

"Okay, I'll do that and when I do I promise I'll try not to tell you."

Because that was what heroes did. Keep secrets if it was for the greater good. Khepri themself had kept many of their illegal outings a secret for the greater good so they had plenty of experience. Why, only about seventy percent of the people back home knew of their outings, second-hand recountings notwithstanding!

"I don't know, the knowledge was in my head. It might be word of mouth but maybe it was word of text? I'm not sure. I've read a lot of things so it might've been on one of them. Sometimes I read wrong though so it could be that I know because it wasn't on there."

Their attention strayed as they looked around the forge, spotting all the tools, doodads, knick knacks and other things they also didn't know the name for but probably had one. There was no way the fae stole it after all, not with all the iron in here. Not unless they had the completely wrong idea about Masao.

"Hey what's that called?" Khepri asked while pointing at a random place without looking where. "I think I had one of those back home but I'm not sure. It might've just been something that sounded like it."

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Tags: Masao Ando

[Masao Ando]

''You want to wait here?'' Did they have nowhere else to go? Well, it's not like they were getting in the way and she didn't mind the company since Khepri wasn't Ylva. ''Of course, you may wait here, or leave as you see fit.'' She nodded along, taking in Khepri's input as they spoke. Customer was King after all. ''But Egyptian...'' That was going to be a little more challenging, deciphering the vagueness in the specificity of their request. ''I'll see what I can do.'' She always welcomed a challenge no matter how small.

They continued to speak in a manner which she found odd. Maybe a speech quirk of theirs? She wasn't one to judge, but sometimes it took her a moment to get what Khepri was trying to say. She had asked a rather simple question, how had they heard of her workshop. From what she could parse through their answer, it sounded like it could have been word of mouth, or one of the posters she had put up around campus. ''You do?'' She smirked, amused by their antics. ''Perhaps you have a little bit of a weapon smith in you.''

What an eccentric individual. Usually she was annoyed by buffoonery, but today she was enjoying their company. ''Mafdet-san if I may ask, what was the inciting incident that made you join the hero course, or put differently, why do you want to be a hero?''

Mafdet Khepri

[Mafdet Khepri]

Khepri's eyes widened much like their horizons. They couldn't believe they hadn't considered it before. But for less than fifteen hundred yen would a company truly...

They would. Khepri had seen greed in action so many times they didn't even doubt it. Their stomach turned at the thought. With Khepri's own mutation giving them animal-like traits it wasn't much of a leap to realize that there was a fair chance actual animals could gain a variety of quirks as well. A bear might gain intelligence, a seal in the past had mutated to grow a horn -Khepri had seen that themself at the zoo. They'd forever be ignorant to the fact that it was a narwhal.-, a monkey or a hedgehog may be able to generate golden rings and perhaps an animal could even learn to smith weapons.

Khepri swallowed. The only meat they'd eaten in the past day and a half was duck. If they truly had a little bit of weapon smith in them the bird must've been a natural prior to its passing. 

Before the train of thought could bring Khepri's mood down they were distracted by Masao's next question.

"Hmm, the inciting incident?" They replied while deep in thought, memories flying by backwards until the catbug was all the way back to one of her walks back in Egypt. It had been a complete coincidence that they'd stumbled into a home invasion in progress. The culprit hadn't spotted Khepri due to them having entered from the second floor window. The catbug hadn't liked how terrified the inhabitants looked while the robber was threatening them and decided to take matters into their own hands. "I punched as hard as I could and the guy went down." The relief and gratitude Khepri had seen in the moment right before they kept walking and left the scene had stuck with them. They didn't know why but whenever they thought back to it that was the moment that came to mind first. The look in their eyes. "So I decided I wanted to keep doing that and ended up here."

With a cheery smile Khepri looked right at Masao.

"What about you? Why are you here?"

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Tags: Masao Ando

[Masao Ando]

Hearing Khepri's point of view wasn't only interesting because of how... Eccentric they were, but hearing their reasoning for becoming a hero was just as intriguing due to how atypical they were for a hero student. No offense against other hero applicants, but Masao had observed a lot of commonalities between them. Traits you see go again and again in the different students. It took a certain mindset to become a hero and the desired qualities of any given hero served to narrow the pool of potential heroes somewhat. It made sense to her. After all, why wouldn't you want a combat or capture hero that is brave and competitive? How about a support student who knows their stuff and is either pragmatic or inventive? What made Khepri so interesting was, well... Everything they were.

While Khepri pondered her question, Masao turned her attention back to the work at hand. Fixing up these spoons? She would make short work of a task like this and still produce a result that was of high quality. Her honor as a member of the Ando family was on the line after all. It wasn't until they responded that she looked up and almost laughed, but to see her laugh was a rarity. There was even a rumor floating around that she was incapable of laughing because of her quirk. ''An active effort I see. As for myself, it is due to my quirk and my family name. Everyone in my family works in the hero business. I inherited the armor, so that was what was expected of me too. Of course I have my own reasons as well, I'm not just some mindless drone that follows everything her parents tell her to.''

There was a pause as she returned to her work, then a few seconds later she spoke up again. ''Your spoons will be done soon, Mafdet-san. I hope you find their new condition satisfactory.''

Mafdet Khepri

[Matsu]

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[attr="class","likedotitle2"]Approved

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+7500 EXP for Masao Ando
+75 TOKENS for Mafdet Khepri

PHARAOH LEAP.

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