[X] Your drill is the drill that will GO BEYOND!
Although you weren't expecting to get much from watching it, you put in the DVD, a forgotten birthday present from your estranged relatives in Australia, and watched the first episode.
And the next episode.
And the next.
In fact, you got halfway through episode six before your mom came in, took one look at the naked man on the TV, and promptly confiscated the entire box.
In its place, she put on a lovely film about cats and lilies in space, if the title was anything to go by. Animation was only for children, after all, so that DVD must have just been some kind of weird porn, right?
You didn't mind too much - the kitty was cute, at least.
---
Not even a week later, you found yourself in hospital once again, suffering from severe combined immune deficiency.
In hindsight, ignoring Nidhogg's 'save data' had been a bad idea, as you woke up one morning to find your body's immune system attempting to destroy it. Naturally, after checking to see if it did anything useful, you shut off the automatic aspect of the process in favour of manually coordinating white blood cells, AKA big angry blood bits.
This soon proved to be a mistake, as the invasive microorganisms you'd brushed off as insignificant caused a surprising amount of damage while you were asleep, leaving you with a rapidly advancing ear infection, and no idea how to fix it besides [focusing] on the area and hoping for the best. That mistake had the opposite effect of speeding up the damage, to the hospital staffs' consternation.
You restored the original system pretty quickly after that, finding that you could preserve Nidhogg's 'data' by wrapping it in a layer of your own tissue.
It was following this event that you resolved to learn more about how the human body worked. How could you have ever hoped to be the hero that saves everyone if you weren't even capable of looking after yourself? It was this determination that drove you to crack open the heaviest textbook on human anatomy in the library, intent on spending the rest of your day poring over each minute detail. Said drive for independence proceeded to bite you in the ass when you realised that, being five, you couldn't understand a word in the textbook, and you had to waste the remainder of the day working up the courage to ask your mom for help.
And so, after the initial barrage of questions regarding your sudden interest, Story Time became The Biology Primer Slash Medical Terminology Learning Fusion Hour.
---
You loved your dad's quirk; it wasn't the flashiest, or the most versatile, and was in many ways more of an impediment than a power, but you loved it all the same. However, you would freely admit that it made situations like this... difficult, to say the least.
"Kaede…"
You struggled not to look him in the eye as he began.
"I know you're just trying to do research, but this is taking it a bit too far. You need to learn to respect other people's opinion. If they'd wanted you to eat their pet, they would have said so earlier."
As a self important five year old, you do not yet have the experience required to read people. You have even less experience with reading your father, who throws even the basics of facial cues out of the window by being a lizardman.
Your dad was famous, if in an unconventional way: when his quirk, which as far as you were aware was simply being a giant lizard person, began to manifest, somebody uploaded a picture and the internet exploded. Conspiracy theorists screamed their validation, deniers screamed back, and the despairing neutral faction silently wished for the apocalypse to bring an end their suffering. The stock market fluctuated wildly, entire businesses going bankrupt for their alleged views on the matter - there were even rumours of a secret cult forming around him. Not one bit of the event was officially covered by reliable news sources, either because they didn't want to be seen to take sides, or because they didn't want to acknowledge the worldwide bout of insanity.
This continued for several days, until things started to taper off. That did not necessarily mean that people had gotten over it and moved on - far from it: people only stopped because they realised that there was no purpose to openly declaring their allegiance for the oncoming war.
You had been told about this for your own safety, as time had not brought an end to the silent conflict. It was evident in the way that certain passersby would glance over at your dad for just slightly longer than necessary or socially acceptable. Even today, you could spot two conspicuously hooded figures observing your father from a nearby alley.
Speaking of your dad, the frills by the side of his neck were slightly raised, which wasn't usually a good sign. Ah, you'd just completely ignored his speech, and now he was annoyed. He rose from his previous position, making you crane your neck to look at him.
Now that you thought about it, you should find a way to get tall like your dad, maybe if you -
"Kaede, give me the cat. Now."
You reluctantly spat out the neighbors' beloved furball. Much to their relief, it was unharmed, but unwilling to do anything but screech at them and run off, likely to perform some genocidal form of stress relief on the local bird population. After the obligatory 'I'm very sorry's and 'I promise not to do it again's were done with, you immediately ran to your room and blocked the door. A manic grin took over your face, as you began pulling your supplies out from their various hiding places. Two bags of raw meat snatched from the freezer were emptied straight into your mouth, as were three out of four full sized chocolate bars, the last you saved as a treat for later. You'd found that eating high energy foods would let you make changes faster, and what you were about to do was going to take a while.
You'd got what you needed from the cat, several pieces of [potential] taken from various sections of its body. It would have helped to have the cat with you for this, but even the best heroes have to deal with setbacks.
The food took about two hours to break down and add itself to 'you', sped along by your [focusing]. It was painfully boring, but you kept your end goal in mind and persevered. Once the process was complete, you directed your attention to the cat pieces, and let the [possibilities] fill your mind.
You'd recently made a breakthrough in your research: you had your own tiny [potential]s, which acted as blueprints for the various parts of your body. You didn't know how you'd overlooked them before, but you think it related to how things that weren't fully 'you' stood out to you as if they were rainbow coloured horses. Now that you knew what they were for, you'd decided to abandon your previous attempts to make something from scratch, and move onto the next phase.
You could instinctively 'feel' what each piece could become; the pieces that were necessary were set in place, the rest left alone. The flesh around your midsection distorted as the you [focused] once more. Slowly, a shape began to emerge, growing outwards like a mushroom under timelapse. Several hours later, long after your parents gave up on calling you for dinner, it was complete.
It vaguely resembled a cat. A hairless, eyeless cat with no legs, that connected to your side where its tail would otherwise be located. There had been enough meat to make the majority of it, although you'd had to skimp on the bone density so as not to detract too much from your own. It felt like an extension of your body, and you could change it to the same extent, if you wanted to. Just one final check to make sure everything in the closed off system functioned correctly, and you were ready for the real test. Anticipation growing with every second, you began to break down the connecting tissue.
There - it was fully separated.
…
…
...Nothing happened.
...
You poked the cat. Still nothing.
Beginning to panic, you swallowed it. Despite the fact that it had quite literally been an extension of your body a minute ago, it was now somehow less 'you' than the original animal! Every organ you'd created was inactive, and the feeling of 'not-you' was growing in intensity with every passing second.
You put your head in your hands, and began breaking down your creation. You didn't have enough fluids left over to cry.
With the disappointing results bearing down on. you, you looked to the picture decorating the headboard of your bed. Your artistic talents were lacking, to say the least, but the idea was there: a skyline, sun and moon taking their places at opposite ends of the horizon, and every colour you could paint filling the void between the two. The ground was a lopsided curve of grey, and white paint spatters formed both the stars and the lights of the city below. It wasn't the most faithful reproduction, but you'd put your heart into it. Not literally, like your first attempt. Metaphors confused you sometimes.
That one scene from episode one had stuck in your mind, long after you forgot the rest of the show; it rattled around inside your head, manifesting in half remembered dreams of flying, of seeing it all for yourself. It was your end goal.
However, you didn't want to have to change yourself every time you wanted to go up, or stay flight capable permanently - fighting villains with big, fluffy targets on your back just sounded like a recipe for disaster. That meant that you needed a mount, and that meant that the stupid cat who couldn't even be bothered to stay alive was ruining everything! You knew that you could make living creatures, but there was just something missing from the end result that you couldn't place.
You needed to learn more about how bodies work, but there was only so much new information your brain could take in per day...
---
By the age of six, you understood enough about your body to make basic changes without landing yourself in hospital, such as growing some teeth for your secondary mouth. You loved how pretty the ziplike teeth made you look, and preferred to show them off whenever possible. While no progress had been made on your long term project, you could at least improve the speed of your [focusing] a bit by locating a few more nonessential processes to suspend.
You also knew just enough medical jargon to vaguely explain what you could do with your quirk. Your parents had been a mixture of relieved and furious that you were responsible for the dramatic rise in their health insurance premiums, rather than some mystery genetic disorder. Despite their initial reactions, they had been supportive of your drive to learn more about your capabilities, your mother even offering some advice.
Yuuko Shima, unlike many others in her position, chose to use her quirklessness as a double edged sword. On one hand, she was part of a rapidly diminishing minority that was societally treated as disabled. On the other, she was free to choose her future rather than be pressured into whichever her hypothetical quirk made her most useful for, she knew the laws pertaining to quirk based discrimination like the back of her hand qualified, and most importantly, she was fully qualified to give an outsider's perspective on quirks, and the problems they can cause in heroes. By attempting to learn about and diversify your capabilities, you had so far avoided falling prey to the 'have hammer, see only nails' mentality that many succumb to; however, she would take no chances with you making any other of the common mistakes.
"What do you mean, 'I can't tell anyone about my quirk'? I-is there something wrong with it?"
"Sweetie, no, no, don't be upset. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just that people might like it too much, and that might make them do… dumb things.
Her tone was reassuring, even if the words made no sense to you. The stinging sensation that had been building up in your eyes stopped.
"Look, you're going to be a hero, aren't you? That means you're going to be fighting a lot of bad people. If you let everyone know what you can do, then that puts you at a serious… It means they get to cheat."
You could understand that logic, except for one part:
"But all the villains are useless! There's new ones all the time, but none of them can even do anything!"
She smiled softly, patting you on the head.
"Not all bad guys are villains, Kaede".
---
You were nearly seven, and despite your protests, you would be starting school soon. You were not handling it well - what were you going to do? What if they picked on you? Were you really going to be required to wear a shirt?
Wait. What do you even do at school?
The best coping mechanism you could think of was to play with your quirk, maybe try adding something to make you a bit less cute.
Main action:
[ ] It is a proven fact that cat ears are intimidating. The fact that it would simultaneously enable you to eavesdrop and serve as a homage to the early supervillain Don Fluffles is merely a bonus.
[ ] A tail would help with your balance, and would also, as your father so expertly demonstrates, increase your defenestrating capabilities by 350%.
[ ] Then again, the cuter you look, the easier to get them off guard, and therefore into your mouth. You're thinking of getting some of those cute-yet-functional slitted eyes.
Additional action(s):
[ ] Write-in
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AN: I don't have enough faith in humanity to say that I'm certain that we wouldn't be that stupid.
Sorry to everyone who voted for the other options. Is it some consolation that it had some different than expected results?
Also, this action has more important repercussions than you might think… I could be less vague about it, but I think I enjoy making people worry. Just assume if it's in here for seemingly no, it will probably be relevant after this prologue bit is over. Probably.
