Finders Keepers [Alfonso & Niso]

Niso didn't exactly make a lot of friends with the way he lived his life. He was a very chaotic person, friends for him were sometimes easy to make but even easier to turn into enemies with how easily his nature could turn on a dime. As such, it wasn't uncommon for him to take a beating. Sometimes it was one and done, people were done with him, took out their frustrations, and left him in the dust. Other times it was a more engaged sense of vengeance. Maybe he'd screwed over a black market dealer or left someone to the cops during a simple bit of shoplifting.

Whatever the case, it had somehow ended with him being impaled this time.

Niso didn't remember the fight too well. He'd recieved some heavy blows and eventually had the sharp end of a rust metal poke thrust through his torso. Now, luckily, thanks to his quirk he never kept his heart where people where expecting, so the blow was far from lethal especially thanks to how his quirk could stop him bleeding out. He still faded into unconsciousness, but the trained reflexes of his body made sure his bleeding was minimal and his repairing processes were kicked into overdrive. His body couldn't kick the metal rod out of his torso, but at the very least it had the ability to re-arrange blood vessels around it and muscle tissues to work with the impalement. There'd be a lot of re-shifting to be done when the metal rod was eventually removed, but in this moment itself, he was just...out. Busy healing and busy on surviving. That's all his body cared about, fucked up anatomy be dammed.

Without the sense of time passing Niso had no idea how long it had been since he'd been impaled and fell into the abyss. What he did register was that there was a bright light at the end of the tunnel here. Oh no. Not his time god. He'd happily hold a middle finger up to you at the pearly gates if he had a chance of clinging onto earth on his way down to hell. With a sharp gasp of breath he reared up to sit and the light faded a fair bit without it being aimed directly at his eyes. His hands balled into fists rubbing at his eyesockets, vision very blurry thanks to a fucking miniature sun being blared into his dead eyes as the first thing he saw when he came back.

『Uuuuugh who invited flare-man?』Niso groaned as he rolled his shoulders back, one arm not being able to do a full roll as his shoulder blade got caught on the rod pushing through his torso. It took him a second to get his barings and even then he wasn't sure where he was. His eyes flickered left and right, eventually finding the older man standing beside him holding a scalple. Rather than fear however, he greeted this man, who he'd just practically revived infront of, with an immensely bright smile wide eyes.

『Oh hi!』

『Ooooof.』 Whining as he held the sides of his head, Niso was not enjoying the sudden yelling one bit. His expression was still on a playfully positive side but it certainly dipped into a form of mock misery as the loud sound pounded against his ears. Whenever his body went into intense self repair like that Niso's blood pumped extremely slowly, so his brain was working on pretty much half the viable oxygen it needed to stay alive and was just starting to boot back into gear. As such every sensation was heightened to an agonizing degree, and the sound alone was enough to make his head pulsate with a migraine.

『Geeze if you're gonna harvest someone's organs at least be quiet about it geeeeze.』Clearing out one of his ears with his pinky finger, Niso shook out his head and felt the migraine fading as the normal flow of oxygen started to slip towards his brain, his body still in a general sense of agony, though focused around the pole in his chest he actually felt pretty normal, given that's where his healing had been focused. Apparently the man needed more reasons than the fact he was alive to not cut him open. Well that was new and Niso couldn't help but chuckle. 『Well, aren't you an odd one?~』

Pulling himself around so his legs hung off the edge of the operating table, he lightly flicked the metal rod in his torso, giggling as the metallic vibrations ran up through his torso and tickled his ribs. 『Well for starters, I'm clearly alive. Secondly, I'm clearly not gonna die easily if you do end up deciding to stab me, and thirdly, as for how I survived being impaled in the chest...』 He rolled his eyes back and scoffed. 『Who the hell keeps their heart in their chest? That's amateur hour.』

『What tone?』He quickly asked, clearly not catching onto what the old man was getting at. As far as he was concerned he was treating this guy with the same tone he gave everyone...then again he was currently sitting here, impaled, so manybe his usual tone wasn't all that well recieved by most people. He shrugged it off casually and continued to listen with a chipper but mildly lazy expression in his eyes. He watched him rip off his own mask with some intrigue, wondering if he cared about being caught if he was so bold about it, meanwhile he just casually continued to swing his legs, finally noticing he didn't have a shirt and the man losing some of his attention as his eyes began to wonder the room, wondering if his shirt was still here somewhere, not caring that it would be soaked in blood by now.

『Hm? Oh sorry my mind was elsewhere. What were you asking about?』 He asked, but quickly catching on as he snapped his fingers with the thought re-entering his mind. 『Oh! Your asking about my quirk? Well no reason to be secretive about that. Maybe once I tell you you can er...』 He casually pointed at the metal protruding from his chest. 『Figure out a way to help me remove this thing? I can live forever with it there at this point but it's gonna be a real pain in the ass.』 He gave it a sharp tug and hissed. One downside of his healing while unconscious was it sealed impalements in him without a second thought. Given enough time he could make his skin cells and internal organs move away from it and get enough space to just slide it out harmlessly, but he was a bit eager to get it out a fair bit quicker than that.

『Yeah tho! It's definitely a quirk!』 He reared back on his hand before kicking up to his feet. Seemed he still had his pants and easily slid his hands into his pockets, a nice wide grin on his face. 『My orphanage never bothered to register me, but I call it 'cellular consciousness!'』 He seemed to get a little giddy as he rubbed his hands together, loving the chance to explain his odd biology. 『See, most people can only actively control how they walk and talk and do stuff! I can control everything! I can tell every last cell in my body what to do and where to be, soooooo when I'm stabbed, I tell it to stop the bleeding, focus on healing, and so my pulse stops, and my body heals, and then, I wake up, and that's where we are now!』 He chimed in with an even brighter expression, though his mind began to wonder quickly and he turned away from the old ban, picking up a bone saw off to the side and letting out an excited sound as it started to spin.

『Oooo maybe this'll work!』He brought the bone saw to the rod in his chest, the spinning blade meeting the rusty metal. A sharp spark shot off and hit his eye, and he dropped the saw and tumbled about as he gripped his face. 『OW OW OW!』

『uuuugh fine I won't touch your toys. Just stop yelling geeze.』 He whined softly rubbing the side of his head again as the old man continued to yell at him letting him have his bone saw back as Niso blinked out the burning sensation in his retina as his cells rapidly began to replace themselves and expunge the burned cell tissue, essentially blinking out a bit of eye-crust that easy went unnoticed once it was out of his eye. 『Seriously your the one who dragged a random corpse here and was gonna slice me open. Why exactly are YOU the one who seems to be complaining most?』

He tipped his head off to the side, genuinely looking for an answer for the moment, but as he took in the offer for the other person to remove the piping from his body Niso was at least open to the idea. He didn't know how hard it might be to remove it himself since it was all rusty and his bag of supplies had been left in whatever alleyway he'd nearly been killed in, so he at least had to be open to the offer here. Oh so this guy wanted a literal piece of him? He supposed he could oblige, but he did have a caveat.

『Well firstly are you gonna remove it or do I need to remove it myself cause dragging a string of muscle out of my arm isn't gonna be a pretty sight for either of us~』Despite the gruesome imagery depicted by his words he, as ever, managed to maintain a strong smile, but it seemed he was definitely all four it whatever the case. More importantly though- 『I can't make new cells without fuel though. If you're asking me to give up some muscle you're at least gonna have to throw a big meal into the deal too. I'm not exactly well fed as is and I don't have muscle tissue to spare in my current condition...but other than that you got yourself a deal!~』

Stepping closer he offered one hand for a shake on the deal with the other resting on his hip. Offering to let a doctor slice him up for not one but two things, after what he'd already been through, was probably a terrible idea, but Niso was hardly the kind of person who was going to think things like this through.

With the deal shook on Niso had enough to take this...rather odd man at his word. Really there was a lot of reasons he shouldn't let this person near him with a knife, but he was pretty convinced he'd be able to take him if the two of them got into a fight thanks to his own quirk. Turning about at the guidance to sit on the table, he hopped right back up and scooched himself back along the edge of it. 『Okay so are you gonna remove some muscle from my torso or my arm cause if it's my arm maybe don't take too much? I've got barely any biceps as it is.』 He was joking, not really caring about being a beefy person, but he at least hoped to get a laugh from his self deprocating joke.

As the operation went on, Niso would winch and flinch, but any pain brought about by the removal of the foreign object wouldn't recieve an extreme reaction. Niso was naturally just used to pain that it just wasn't an issue. At one point it even felt like it was tickling him. Pain was always a sign damage was being done to the body, and while Niso still experienced pain, he knew there was nothing to worry about, so he recieved it a lot different than most people.

『Name? Niso Konto. Orphan so I have no medical history that I'm aware of』 He smiled despite the bummer topic as the man continued to work on his torso. He tipped his head off to the side, thinking on what he wanted in terms of a meal. 『I always like cereal but that's not really a meal...a hamburger would be nice...』 His eyes flicked around the room, recalling he had no idea where he was. 『Actually is there a mcRonalds nearby? I don't exactly know what part of the city we're in at this point...』

Niso was mostly joking but he could tell by now that this old coot was definitely more the type to take a conversation completely seriously rather than allow them the room to joke about anything like that. Was a bit of a bummer but he supposed he could live with it, idly swinging his legs under the edge of the operating table and blowing a puff of air out of his nose as the doctor start to cut into his torso, his right eye twitching as an instinctual reaction to the pain, but not yelling or gripping the table for dear life. The pain definitely ‘smarts’ but it didn’t have an outright brutal reaction that it should have had. When the doctor examined the wound the metal pipe had left, it was almost as if his body had adapted around it, his skin healing around the edge of the pipe and curling inward about it to prevent bleeding, and the moment the pipe itself was being removed, he bled surprisingly little, Niso having the foresight to stop the blood pumping through that section of his body till he was sure that the pipe was fully removed.

『Aw, you don’t have the decency to even walk me down there after trying to chop me up? Whatever happened to all the gentlemen in the world? For shame creepy doctor, for shame.』 He chimed, chuckling a little though hissing through the pain as the pipe continued to be twisted loose from his body. Suffice to say it was hardly a pleasant experience. He was about to open his gob again when Alfonso boldly went in to snip out a bit of his muscle fibre, making Niso’s entire spine crawl in pain and finally gripping the table as a reaction. His body was very vulnerable about the wound afterall. Even if he could heal around wounds like that his body was never going to adapt for it’s insides being available to the open air, though just as his blood vessels and finer internal organs began to slip into the open cavity provided by the removed pipe, his skin cells began to rapidly multiply in an attempt to cover up the wound so they could re-arrange themselves safely inside. It was a slow process but it was certainly working. Notably there seemed to be a faded flesh scar across the open wound, but as the skin healed where it used to be, there was now a patch of fresh, fully acclimated skin in the middle of the straight-line scar.

『Aaaah!~ Now that’s better don’t ya think? Thanks doc. Guess I should count myself just a little lucky you wanted to hack up my body like some common lab rat!~』He kicked off the table and bounced to his own two feet, before his eyes began to naturally wonder around this odd and kinda creepy little operating room. 『What ARE you doing here anyway? I mean, in this day and age a guy dragging corpses off of the streets isn’t just something you’d expect to see in a horror Manga, but it’s certainly still on a list of top 10 creepy things to run into. Care to elaborate what you’re up to here evil mastermind?~ I mean, I did give you my muscle for your research, seems like a fair trade of info~』

In truth Niso wasn’t all too curious and wouldn’t put up a fight if the other man didn’t want to give up the information, but at the very least his natural sense of intrigue wanted to know. He was always on the look out for the next fun distraction, and if this odd man’s experiments happened to be the next fun thing he was looking for then…well, suffice to say he wouldn’t be annoyed with himself for hopping on that information train early and riding it all the way to fun town. Heck maybe he could even milk this guy for a bit of spare cash now and then by offering him more research material to work with.

Speaking of which, the two may have noticed his muscle fibre seeming to suddenly have a fit on the waste tray to the side. Niso’s quirk basically gave him a strong sense of consciousness throughout ever cell in his body, making every part of him a living, active thing. As such, being removed from the larger whole the muscle fibres were in no way having a good time, dying slowly in the exposed air. The fit it was having like a wriggling worm would continue for a few harsh moments before slowing down into the last squirming motions of a dying creature, and then, finally, with no ability to drag oxygen or nutrients into it’s system naturally, it would simply lay there and die like a pathetic worm who couldn’t hold on.

Niso just watched it with an odd little smile the whole while. The cells in it were still alive and could be experimented on, but the consciousness of Niso that remained had been choked out, and now all that was left was normal tissue with quirk DNA inside of it. 『Heh, hopefully that’s still of some used to ya. My quirk doesn’t tend to last so long outside my body. Guess I should be thankful!~ I don’t want two of me walking around just because a bit of muscle I lost decided it didn’t want to go down easily!~』

Niso listened to the old man ramble on about his work supposedly for the greater good and due to the Japanese higher ups taking his research away, but the question remained as to what his research was. He did mention they seemed to have similar quirks which definitely registered as important. Was he researching quirks in general, or just his own? It was difficult to say without an answer, and so the natural question arose. 『Well that’s all well and good mister but really I still have no idea what you’re doing here.』 He shrugged somewhat casually, a chuckle almost coming out of him from how grandiose this odd old coot could get, though at the very least he had to say this man was rather amusing. He seemed far more on the order side of the equation than fully on the chaos side, but he could appreciate his grandiose nature to the point Niso wouldn’t get rid of him too soon if push came to shove for whatever reasons. 『Would you be so kind as to try that again, only maybe this time actually tell me what it is you were researching that was so heinous for the higher ups to have to knock you down a peg?~ I’m sure if it’s reached conspiracy levels I’ll find it absolutely fascinating!~』

He would watch and listen to the old man as he hopefully gave some more details to the young little chaos driven teen, but even if he didn’t Niso would find his offer that followed certainly intriguing. The idea of fetching corpses, or even creating them for this man did sound a little morbid, but he was happy for any form of income he could get. He was reminded of one of the rare shows the poor TVs at the orphanage could get, it regaled a morbid but comical tale of people who killed so they could sell the corpses to science. He supposed this was a more modern, and more openly illegal version of that old arrangement. Niso’s smile crept higher up his cheeks as he considered it, raising a finger to add his own addendum to the arrangement.

『Well as appealing as money will always be, how about you also become my doctor?~ I mean as you can see I’m not gonna need ya much, but I can’t exactly go to a normal hospital if you’re gonna have me collecting corpses for you next time, so how about next time I get impaled, I come to you if I can’t handle the removal process. Sound like a fair deal doc?』 He smiled wide with his hands in his pockets, his chest finally starting to fully close over, to the ripples where his wound was implied some internal work was still going on to make sure everything was in order on the inside. Niso didn’t have to focus on it too much as his body just seemed to instinctually start re-alligning itself back to a normal state.

『Oh and, of course, I need to know what exactly you want~ I mean do I grab people willy nilly for you? Do you focus on mutants?~ Gonna have to throw me a bone there doc, or you’re gonna have a few pointless slaughters to your name before you know it~』 It was at this point it registered to Niso that the good doctor here may have just wanted him to collect corpses he found in the streets. That was a lot less morbid, and Niso wondered for a moment if he should regret mentioning how easily he was open to the concept of killing for money…eh. This guy was dragging corpses off the streat to harvest them without permission. He couldn’t be the type to judge, surely?