Not many people knew it about Nemuri, but she was actually quite the morning person. She would even go as far as to say that if she wasn't awake before the sun was up, then she could consider her entire morning wasted. It wasn't really something she shared during those parasocial
'tell us about yourself' interviews over the years since it kind of spit and danced on her entire brand, but it was true.
It was one of the many (and she meant
many) differences between her and Snowie that she had picked up on since she had first brought him home. While she thought it was a waste of daylight to sleep in, her son seemed to think the only thing sunlight was good for was sleeping in front of.
Between that and him eating his own weight in food every day without managing to gain any weight (or any
visible weight) she was
positive one hell of a growth spurt was waiting just around the corner for her kid.
Going by the fact that they were already around the same height, she was sure her snowball kitten would be an avalanche tiger by the end of next year.
Now, Nemuri didn't want to be one of those moms that wished their kid was a little mini-me, but she had to admit that it would've been nice to have Snowball wake up and spend some time with her
before she had to wrangle teens for seven hours straight.
Working away at the stove with a light hum, Nemuri watched the dark orange sun slowly rise above the soft pink clouds in the distance and took a moment to just appreciate the fact that the only things she could find herself wanting for were silly little things like that. Maybe she was just riding the combo-chain thrill of her son getting a scholarship
and a new friend back to back, but she really did feel like she was starting to get a firm hold of things for Toji.
Between the soft whirl of the fan above the stove and the sizzling butter in the pans in front of her, Nemuri almost failed to catch Snowie making a rare early-morning appearance as he shuffled into the kitchen from down the hall, looking unusually awake as he hovered in the entrance to the kitchen, seemingly unsure about interrupting her as she got started for the day.
"Morning, Snowie! I didn't wake you up, did I? You usually sleep like a rock, so I might've gotten back into the habit of whistling while I cook…"
Shaking his head at her slightly in response, Toji slowly walked into the kitchen while pawing at his chest with a soft frown.
"Nah, I didn't even realize you were
steamboat Willy posting IRL. I kinda just woke myself up…"
No matter how often her son tried to convince her otherwise, she was still fully convinced all the
'slang' he belted out at her was just him trying to make fun of her…
less than perfect grasp on English. Seeing it written down? Fine. Hearing her son slur a sentence out at 5AM? A bit less than fine.
She wasn't sure
where exactly Snowie was from (he would insist he was from
'around' and give a new spot he grew up every time) but his English was thick enough that she could tell he had one heck of an accent on the down low. But more importantly-
"
Aww. Are you feeling alright, kiddo? Get hit by some old memories that wanted to pretend they were still fresh? I've been down that dirt road myself a few times over the years. We can talk about it in the living room while eating breakfast, if you want."
Slowly shaking his head back and forth at the offer, Toji looked back down the hallway towards his bedroom with a weary glare before turning back towards her with a small frown.
"Nah, I didn't wake up from anything like that. And uhh… I kinda have to pass on the breakfast offer. I kind of can't eat anything at the moment. It's kind of tied into why I woke myself up."
Pulling the pans off the electric burners and turning them off with a flick of her wrist, Nemuri was quick to strut across the kitchen towards her son so she could fuss over him as he continued to hover near the far corner of the room.
"What's the matter, Snowie? Is your stomach giving you issues? There's some medicine in the bathroom cabinet you can take, if you think it'll help."
Hmm. His forehead didn't feel overtly warm as she pressed the back of her hand against it, and his complexion was still as vibrantly blank as ever, so if Toji was having problems with his gut they were probably internal only.
Wriggling out of her grip with a huff of exasperation at her, Toji looked back towards his room with a nervous glance before staring back at her with an expression of forced-neutrality that looked incredibly jarring on his usually placid face.
"I'm not sick, I'm just…
shit, I really don't know how to say this without defaulting to
vagueposting. Ok, so I got a new quirk. I can at least start there."
Nemuri was quick to grab onto her kid and try inspecting him a second time at that, as if her staring at him wide-eyed hard enough would suddenly make his newest quirk show itself.
"Really? That's great! What did you manage to awaken this time? I assume it's food related since you keep rubbing your belly and mentioned not being able to eat earlier. Did you get some sort of low metabolism quirk?"
Jeez, she couldn't think of a
worse quirk for her glutton of a son to get besides that. Snowie must've had the same thought as her about how much of a nightmare that quirk would've been, because he was quick to let out a nervous titter of a laugh as he took another step away from her and back towards the hall.
"
… Kinda? I don't really need to eat while it's active, and I got a feeling that the regeneration keeps me from having to worry about stuff like food or breathing, but-
shit, I'm getting ahead of myself. You know Egyptian mummies?"
Uhh… does she
what? She guessed she knew a few things about them, yeah. If anything that's probably one of the few things her and the kiddo have an equal amount of knowledge in, considering how much heritage and history got obliterated by villains before the vigilante era could stop them from stealing entire dig sites and museums away.
"Besides the fact that they got robbed a lot and turned into brown paint? Not a whole lot. I can tell you a few facts about how many paintings Martin Drolling probably painted with them, but not much else. Why, is your new quirk
mummy themed?"
It only took her maybe a second of imagining what he would look like with all four of his quirks on full blast before she realized that her goose might've been cooked. And since she had a honker, it was a
slow roast.
Between her kid's creepy glowing eyes that made you feel like your quirk was getting tugged like a lawnmower chain and
Somnambulist, her kid looked like a big albino mini-them fusion between her and Shota. Dear lord,
everyone was going to think he was their after-school project by the time they met him... even Shota!
… Dammit, wait a moment. She already told Shota that she was
adopting a kid. He'd know Toji wasn't her bio-brat before they even met. Welp, there goes the best prank idea of all time.
"Yeah, I'd say it's pretty damn mummy themed. So this is going to sound kind of stupid, but
I'm the quirk. Kind of." She wouldn't really say that sounds stupid, but that was mostly because she didn't even know what that was supposed to mean.
"
You're the quirk? Do you mean you woke up with a projection based quirk, or do you mean you got a heteromorphic quirk that isn't external?"
She wasn't really sure why her kid was acting like this new quirk was some sort of horror show. Neither one of those things were exactly out there, but she supposed she could understand being weirded out from going through a literal out-of-body experience for the first time.
"I mean I'm a… you know what, how about I just
show you? Just… don't touch me when you see me, alright? I'm kind of worried even being this far away from myself, let alone other people poking away at me."
Behold, the least paranoid projection user.
Pfft, no wonder her brat was acting so spooked in his own home. She's pretty sure the only quirk user more anal than a projection quirk a mile away from their own body would be a sentient quirk a mile away from it's person.
"Don't worry kiddo, I promise I won't shake you out of your chakra meditation or whatever your actual body is currently up to. Lead the way, Snowball."
Following after her kid as he silently led her to his bedroom at the far end of the hall, Nemuri watched as he paused in front of his door for a brief moment to glance back towards her before he slowly pushed open his bedroom door and stepped inside the inky black room, the light from the winter dawn not yet strong enough to break through his blackout curtains.
Reaching up to the light switch by the door, it only took Nemuri one flick of a switch to let out an involuntary shriek, and it wasn't because she had a shit electrician.
"Holy fu-! … Pfffft, Hahaha! Oh my
Lord, Toji! I was expecting you sitting cross-legged on your bed or maybe laying on it as if you were
literally projecting. What is
this? Some sort of totem? It looks… Artistic.
Very artistic!"
And she did truly mean that, as backhanded as the compliment might have felt in her mouth as she choked on her own manic-tinged laughter at the sight of a bone-white sculpture looming over the foot of Toji's bed.
If someone were to ask Nemuri to describe what she was staring at in two words, her first choice would still be
'Holy fuck', but if she could request a mulligan her
actual two words would be
'unfinished masterpiece'.
Staring down at the wide circular base of the sculpture that now dominated the space in Toji's room, Nemuri slowly looked up and watched as what was once nothing but smooth white stone slowly grew and morphed from the chest-up into a seamless carving of an androgynous figure with it's head slightly turned downwards as if locked in deep thought, it's flowing stone hair hung behind it's ears and flowed down both shoulders.
Despite screaming at first sight of the thing, and just how minimalist a majority of the base and lower half appeared to be, '
unfinished masterpiece' was still underselling just how beautiful it truly was.
Looking closer at the featureless face that stared away from the viewer and towards the floor in disinterest, her eyes traced every sculpted muscle and tendon that even a master artisan would have skipped out on and found herself unable to find a single detail missing on this effigy of her son.
And it
was an effigy of her son, that much she could tell even through the lack of direct facial features carved onto the face. The head shape and the long flowing hair that tumbled down it's back and shoulders were already recognizable enough on their own, and that wasn't even getting into how both it and her son shared the same exact skin tone and hair color.
Nemuri also didn't need to be an art teacher to see why Toji said this new quirk was mummy themed. The entire thing from looked like a strange fusion between a funeral urn and an Egyptian tomb effigy, with even Snowie's flowing hair almost managing to look like a pharaoh's nemes headdress.
"So I get why you said
you were the quirk now, but I still don't really get what you meant by not having to eat or the…
regeneration, was it? I don't really see the total connection here. Is this some sort of totem that gives you enhanced healing? I think I've interacted with a few heroes that had quirks similar to that sort of thing."
Except all of those quirks were usually either barely noticeable, drained stamina in exchange for a boost somewhere else, and
almost always worked on everyone that got caught in the radius. She was picking up absolutely nadda from Snowie's newest quirk, so she doubted that was actually it either.
Raising her hand to brush it along the chest of the effigy resting in front of herself, Nemuri was shocked to feel just how
warm the sculpture beneath her hands was. Instead of the feeling of cool marble that she had been expecting, she was instead greeted with a warm thrum of heat emanating from the surprisingly rough surface of what had appeared to be smoother than glass marble.
Dragging her hand across the chest of the strange sculpture right in front of her, it wasn't until her palm rested right above the center of it's chest that she managed to feel it.
Bmb~Bmb~Bmb~Bmb~Bmb~
… Oh. When Toji said he was the quirk while standing in the kitchen, he wasn't being metaphorical. Slowly pulling her hand away from the living effigy right in front of her, Nemuri turned to stare at her son as he hovered about a foot away from her and the statue.
"Snowie, I know you get information about your own quirks as soon as you get them. Mind explaining what exactly your quirk is to your dear mom before she drops dead from a heart attack?"
While this wasn't nearly the creepiest or most startling quirk she had ever personally interacted with, it was still one heck of a mind screw to find out your kid turned himself into a bone jar at the crack of dawn. Honestly, living with Toji was starting to make her realize why the dawn of quirks obliterated society for a straight century. She had a full life's experience handling quirks and medical services and she still felt like she was on the verge of going insane by how many curve balls his random quirk awakenings kept tossing at her.
"I'm calling the quirk Canopic Jar. It basically lets me collect all my bits, bobs, and jiblets into a jar that's made out of bone and sinew and uh… control my leftovers like a puppet? I'm not really sure how to describe how this even feels… besides weird, I mean. I also get some super regeneration for a bit after I re-merge with myself."
Right, that at least finally explained what he meant when he said he was the quirk back in the kitchen. Silly her, assuming her son was just referring to something normal like her son being an astral projecting guru instead of a sapient vase made out of flesh, blood, and bone.
"So just to be clear, you aren't in any danger from splitting your own body in half and hollowing yourself out? Actually, nevermind. Me saying that out loud just made me realize how insane that question is. Just… just go put some street clothes on, we're going to the hospital. Again."
Here's hoping she can fast-track an appointment with that quirk specialist at Jaku General. She knows neither she nor Toji were keen on the idea the last time it was floated as an option, but that was before she got the once in a lifetime experience of feeling her son's heartbeat stuck inside a statue made out of his own bones at the ass crack of dawn.
"Should I reabsorb my organs before we go to the hospital? I feel like showing up to a hospital with no organs would kind of piss a hospital off." Nemuri couldn't help but laugh at that dumb comment from her brat of a son. It's nice to know that even if her kid was now an old world movie monster, he was still just her goofy brat of a son.
"
Pfft, I'm pretty sure the hospital staff would have a few emotions besides anger win out if someone walked in missing all their major organs… but also yes, please for the love of God put your organs back in."
AN:
Me: I should go back and edit in a bit at the end of the chapter when he gets the newest quirk, so it helps flow into the next chapter.
Also me: I shouldn't skip the first reaction and description of his new quirk, better have an entire chapter dedicated to him getting the new quirk.
Sometimes I honestly don't even know what my own endgame is. I really do just be doing shit.
Should I go back to the last chapter and edit out the added in bit so this chapter has more of a justification for existing, or just accept this goof for what it is and let it ride as-is?
