Forest - [Niso]

Niso had had… a rough time, as of late. Mostly down to his own fault but a rough time nonetheless. None of his recent endeavours were the most safe afterall and he’d generally been dealing with the struggle of keeping his quirk active and, in turn, himself alive. He’d been disguising himself as someone else most days which came with it’s own constant strain of making sure his cells didn’t fall back into the natural state promoted by the structure of his bones and muscle tissue underneath. He had been practicing arson which lead to a lot of self inflicted burns he had to purge from the rest of his flesh, and constantly looking for MARINE, the drug he believed would help empower his quirk, meant he had a lot of false calls of fake drugs people tried to sell him to make an easy buck. Which in turn meant he had to use his quirk more to purge them from his system.

All in all, he was REALLY burning fuel at a near constant rate. Far more than even his usual reckless abandon forced him to endure. He rubbed his face with a deep groan as he pushed his way into a store not to far from one of his safe houses, his vision a little blurry. The issue with having full control over ever cell in your body was that when you finally felt sick or run down, it REALLY hit you. It was like that over exaggerated ‘man flu’ effect some people had where they exaggerated their own symptoms and made themselves feel worse because of it. Only in Niso’s case every cell in his body was suffering from it. He needed fuel. He really needed fuel… he wanted Cereal though.

Even in his current state, he felt a desire to fulfil his silly whims. Besides. It wasn’t like it was a bad choice, it had high immediate energy and a lot of carbohydrates he could burn for the rest of the day if he got the right brand… only issue with his plan was, this store didn’t seem to be selling any.

“…No cereal. At all?”

“No sir, sorry, we weren’t seeing many people interested since the people in this neighbourhood typically have unique dietary needs due to the heavy quirk popu-“

“Coco smuffs? Fruit woops? Trickz? Colonel crunchy? Nothing? Not even in the store room?”

“N-no sir. Sorry. But I know of another store that-“

Niso interrupted him by very roughly slamming his head on the counter in defeat. The blunt, painful sound soon broken by a unnerving chuckle from the base of Niso’s throat, a smile on his face as he lifted his head, not really caring for the pain radiating through his forehead and letting out a sigh of defeat that… sounded oddly blissful. “I just wanted ceeeereal…~” He turned about, grabbing one of the stands filled with brands of bubblegum and dragging it off the counter. He was tired. He was aching. But he juuuuuust wanted to have some cereal and now he couldn’t and now he was angry and frustrated and nothing was going right and he couldn’t find the pink girl and he still couldn’t burn down st martas and he couldn’t find any MARINE and-

Ignoring the blatant complaints of the man behind the counter threatening to call the police, Niso continued to make a loud enough ruckus to be heard outside the store as he continued to limply drag items off the shelves onto the floor with a long, tired groan. No Marine. No pink girl. No fire. Was cereal too much to ask for?

So, Niso had begun to reach for the gum at the very least, about to drag it down to the floor in a petty act of frustrated vandalism rather than a true desire for wanton chaos as he usually did, but his hand instead bumped into a carboard box that had been placed between him and his target. With tired, sunken eyes he slowly followed the box, the hand holding it, all the way up the beefy arm. Briefly he paniced. Muscles that big but also a bit of a female definition to the build had him worrying he’d somehow picked to have a tantrum infront of RedHorn of all people, but when the flecks of grey hair rather than blonde met his eyes, he internally sighed with relief as he met the gaze of this woman. The way they spoke was… a little dim-witted? If he had to guess from the rounder eyes they weren’t natively Japanese so it may just be a language thing, but he could understand well enough he was being offered the cereal box.

“…” He turned to the man running the counter, who was still very frustrated by how difficult he’d been as a customer… but a little scared by how he’d brushed off slamming his own head into his counter. Niso pointed to the box and the girl behind him while facing the store owner. “She’s paid for these?”

“As I said sir we don’t-“

“Right. Right. Er…” He looked about, still tired and disorientated as he glanced around the store, before turning swiftly and holding up a finger to the titan of a woman behind him and shifting down the aisles to the chilled section, grabbing the smallest carton of milk they had and a plastic spoon you usually took when getting a meal deal of some sort from the on the go options provided, placing both on the counter and slapping the necessary Yen on the table, taking his milk, wrenching the cap off with his teeth, and snatching the cereal that had been offered to him a little rudely off the woman, holding it close to his chest and focusing solely on his meal as he bit it’s lid apart too, and started to pour the milk directly into the interior plastic baggy inside, drenching the milk as he glanced back up to meet the eyes of the woman.

“… you don’t look Japanese.” He simply, yet kind of rudely commented as some way to start conversation, stepping aside so she could pay for whatever she was here for, idly crunching at plastic spoonfulls of cereal from the box, slowly getting his energy back as he accelerated his digestion process.

“Oof. Bowing. And here I didn’t take you for the formal type at a… erm…” He snapped his fingers. Even with just a spoonful rapidly being digested he was starting to get his whit back BUT it was equally difficult for him to find that word for a moment. He’d been messing with his own brain chemistry in the recent past so how that had all affected him hadn’t exactly been a direct science at the end of the day and definitely not something he could ever reasonably predict even if he was a neuro scientist. Odds were though his brain was still just catching up from the rapid refuelling he was putting himself through. “Glance. Right. Right. At a glance.” He corrected himself, delving into his box for another spoonful, resting his read against a store shelf as the girl bought their own stuff, just idly watching and taking them in. Their stature was definitely impressive afterall and Niso’s brain couldn’t stop trying to compare it to the only other woman with that much muscle. That he was aware of at least. RedHorn. Didn’t seem as tall but… was certainly striking nearly as imposing a figure from the muscle alone.

“I wouldn’t mind a place to sit.” He retorts, pushing off the shelf and waving idly to the somewhat irate shopkeep he’d cause a bit of an issue for. Dropping the spoon in the box while he walked and ruffling up his own hair which… seemed to have a bit more life itself the more he ate, having been falling flatly down his head seconds ago and now holding an odd sense of bounce to it by sheer comparison. “Dunno what you mean by story though… I’m just a kid who likes cereal. You? Got some… muscle quirk? I bet. I doubt even the Polish get that big without help.”

"Oh. Military history? Seem a bit young for that..." Even if the woman was... a fucking titan, she did seem a little young in the face. Young then, at least, the only other beefy woman he was aware of. For all the strength and muscle she had it seemed clear that her facial features were a bit more youthful than red horns by comparison... unless the woman before her had some de-aging quirk like himself. Afterall he was gonna be stuck with a bit of a baby face himself due to his regen factor allowing his cells to remain youthful and fresh themselves,so he wasn't in a place to judge it just... wasn't adding up yet, and he was curious about this odd woman now. "Can't say I get that. The military here sort of lost my trust after that whole 'semper fi' thing."

She may not have been in Japan at the time but the Semper fi incident, in short, was a time where the military had opened a display event to quirkers in the hopes of enticing them to join the military... buuuuut it had all gone VERY south when some radical elements of the military who hated quirkers tried to trap them all there and kill them. Quirkers hadn't really been trustful of the military since. At least for the most part...

His eyes lifted as he walked with the woman and she mentioned just calling him cereal boy. Also seemed to be being quite sarcastic about his comment with her size, bringing a scoff from him as he shook his head. "You can call me Niso." He answered pretty honestly. Afterall even if the name was recognized it wasn't like there weren't other people in the world who had such a name. "When i said 'kid who likes cereal' that wasn't a name that was just... me saying I like cereal. I mean I know you're getting used to the language but come on.~" He teased with a light chuckle, taking another spoonfull from his box before noticing the woman had so many boxes on her that it seemed like what he must look like when he was on a cereal binge and needed to stock up. He took another spoonfull, but offered it across this time. "I assume you like cereal too?" He asked, a little oblivious to how unsanitary it might be to share a spoon.

“You were in the military as a youth huh? They must start you off early there. Though… with your size I guess they may have just mistook you for someone older.~” he stuck his tongue out teasingly, clearly just joking about on the matter and turning his eyes back ahead looking for a place to sit outside while he ate his cereal. Buuuuut… he recalled how she said it was like semper Fi, just, not as messy, but not a success. He thought on that a little curiously for a moment, shooting Jess a side glance as it processed in his still refuelling brain. “Save you from… what exactly?” he asked, curiosity filling his tones now as he took another spoonful of his boxed meal.

When Jess clarified in turn that she’d just been messing with him on the mistaken name thing, his expression dropped a note or two and he rolled his eyes. “Oh haha.” He sarcastically chuckled back. “Remind me to invade Poland sometime in revenge.” Who knows, if he lived forever he might one day actually have the manpower to do that under his thumb.Still, he was still in a much better mood so he couldn’t exactly stay angry, especially since he could always kinda respect someone in a ‘lesser’ position, such as her being unable to properly speak Japanese, pulling one over on someone ‘stronger’ like him who was fluent. Heck being the small guy who wins the fight was pretty much his lifestyle. “… Nice Joke though.”

Niso didn’t react at all to Jess just chomping on his plastic spoon and very happily dipped it back into his box for another mouthful for himself. Afterall he had a regenerative factor of his own and he could just expel other people’s germs pretty much through force of will, so why worry about some mouth cooties like this when he was gonna live through it. The only things that tended to bother him were watching others partake in self destructive habits, like smoking or drug use, and even then he could put up with it for the right person.

“For a friend huh? They er…” He looked up and down her titanic size. “As big as you?” he’d question with a quirk of his brow, taking another munching spoonful for himself as he found an idle bench along the path, swirling about on his heels to fall back and take a seat while he enjoyed his meal, offering across another spoonful to see if Jess wanted to share any more. “So what brings you to Japan anyway? Something tells me your not the ‘family are here for business’ type of immigrant.”

Niso Narrowed his gaze at the larger woman’s attempt to subvert the truth but… well, he could respect the attempt at least. Where possible Niso tried to never lie and only ever subvert what the truth was at most. He found the truth was always the most interesting thing to speak. You could contrive any lie for a purpose, but the truth was random, uncontrolled. It gained a real reaction whatever that may be, and unlike a lie you could never fully predict the reaction the truth gained. Of course sometimes the truth was genuinely left best unspoken, so the woman’s attempts to slide past the issue could be respected. He simply gave a tired shrug and continued to eat, speaking through a full mouth of, by now, very soggy cereal. “Mair nuff.” (Fair nuff)

Niso didn’t even realize the whole ‘invading poland’ comment could be seen as a Nazi thing until Jess reminded her, and while he still stood by his ‘joke’ the fact he’d even briefly sounded like a nazi made his spine shift a little under his skin as a disgusting chill ran back down it, his shoulders quaking and shaking his head furiously. “ugh. No no no. Sorry. I don’t have anything in common with those absolute morons I assure you…” Niso really didn’t like the feeling of disgust even such a tangential connection gave him to such vile people. Sure, he killed and he tortured and sometimes he gutted people… but at least he was indiscriminate about it. He was a race blind psychopath! The best kind! “Still though. Lucky you guys. Germany invades you once and suddenly everyone else is gonna be too nervous to ever invade you again.~” He teased, trying to put a lighter spin on the same joke.

Niso’s eyes briefly widened and he became much more alert of the girl beside him when she mentioned she went to UA in Japan. Well, of course in Japan, she was here, but all the same it put him a little more on alert. No more than shifting his position a little though, still thoroughly relaxed. Afterall if she was a first year she couldn’t do anything to him. She would have likely been trained to just ignore him and try and get a real pro hero on the scene if she recognized him… did she recognize him? Was this all a delay tactic?... No. She wouldn’t have said she was UA if so. He took another bite.

“Well you’ll learn it through exposure quickly enough. It’s a complex language and I was born into it. Only reason I even figured out how to read and write is cause reading was my only form of entertainment for a long time.” He took another spoonful though, munching away. “UA though huh? I used to know a kid from UA. Kaz. Havn’t seen him in a long while… know him?” Odds were she didn’t, it was a sizeable school of a lot of busy kids. Never hurt to ask about his old ‘investment’ though.

Niso had to admit he was liking this girl. Her size was intimidating and the poor Japanese made her come off a little simple minded, but that would fix in time if he actually stayed in touch. What overruled both of those negatives anyway though was the fact that she seemed to have a great sense of humour. In his psychopathic eyes at least… He let out a hearty chuckle as she divulged poland’s ‘secret’, shaking his head a little as the chuckles rolled out. “Aaaah! Ya know for a UA kid you ain’t half bad. Surprised someone like you is stuck at that place.”

He was a little disappointed to not have any news about Kaz, but hey, it was to be expected at the end of the day. Freya was a teacher there now so maybe he could use his alternate identity to milk some information about him out of her. Shouldn’t be too hard if he chose his words right and even then she was a second year teacher so there was a one in three… maybe one in four chance she taught him directly, but he didn’t expect Kaz to be a support student. He never seemed the type. “Well that’s a shame, but it is a big school like we said.” He rolled back his shoulders, hoisting himself up a little further, sitting on the back of the bench rather than the bench itself, finding more comfort in it and also a mild sense of… ‘enlargening’ thanks to sitting taller than her on the back of the bench.

“Hm?” He asked, not quite catching what she said the first time, his brow quirking with confusion for a moment at the offer but… well it had always seemed fun when he saw it on TV… “Er… sure!” He chimed with a bright expression, chowing into his remaining cereal a little faster. By now he definitely should have been full but his stomache seemed like a bit of a bottomless pit. “Do you know a place we could go? Or did you mean like, another day, not right now?”

Really he probably shouldn’t do this. The girl was a UA kid and the more time they spent together the more information she potentially had to relay to the UA teachers and other students but… eh why not!?~ He liked the sound of lazer tag and he was nothing if not a creature of whims.