If You Give a Slime a Cookie || Niso {SAGA}

Niso gave a dramatic hiss through his teeth as the boat man turned out to be one of the were-cats, tapping his finger against the air as if he’d just made some big realization with her words. “Ya know what when you’re right you’re right. Here I was thinking the island full of zombies was the bad guy, or maybe the bad guy was inside us all along but. Nope. Immortal were cat guy. Definitely evil.” He gave a sound nod, definitely being just a smidge sarcastic but he’d been playing dumb the whole movie just cause he enjoyed seeing Parasyte’s reactions to things, especially a moment like this where she seemed to think she had one up on him. In truth he’d seen the movie before. A tale of immortal witches sucking the life out of people so that they might live forever? Yeah, riiiiiight up his alley. Still, he’d pretended it was new to him… it had been nice watch Parasyte sort of ‘watch along’ as if it was a new experience for the two of them, and he had fun playing along too, even if he was sure his acting skills weren’t the best today.

He leaned back into his own corner of the couch, a pillow hugged to his own chest and some sour twizzlers in the other hand, tearing off a nice big length of them in a single bite, his face scrunching up unnaturally so on one side thanks to the deeply sour taste now flowing over his tongue. He’d be fine, plus it was good training to make sure he kept himself solid. He’d been getting better, bit by bit. Just the other day he’d mastered remaning… mostly, solid in his sleep. He just kinda hoped he could keep that up once Luzia got better…

Speaking of… he glanced in the general direction of Luzia, a soft sigh flowing out of his nose. He remembered being stuck in that room while he was trying to re-form from his MARINE experience but… he imagined comparatively it wasn’t anything like what Luzia was going through. Niso was hardly sane to begin with so losing a few more marbles hardly made any difference but Luzia… as much as she had endured, as much as Niso had this great image of her, he’d come to realize she wasn’t as strong as he once imagined. He still loved her, still admired what she could do but… where he endured and pushed through everything to live, for Luzia life could be pain a lot of the time… and she tried to dull that pain with drugs most of the time. He was thankful for Iseul keeping her supply up but his regular checks on her were less to see if she was still alive, Niso was always just secretly checking she hadn’t tried fiddling with the dials on the morphine pump again…

Blegh… he… he didn’t need to think about this right now, his dull gaze returning to the screen just in time for another fun chase scene, a slow breath flowing through him, only disturbed as his eyes flicked over to Parasyte, chuckling at her question.

“I think… if someone were to cut my head off in an instant I could prooooobably hold out for maybe a minute, if somebody didn’t stick me back together in time though I’m pretty sure I’d be screwed.” He tapped his noggin. “Once the initial burst of Marine wore off I started needing a brain again… its more malleable than it used to be but it’s still pretty much stuck in my skull… for now.” He shrugged teasing.

“On the other hand… if I had time to prepare….” He placed his hand against the side of his neck, the flesh from his palm fusing with the side of his neck. “If I had the time to prepare I could have the necessary stuff flow up my arm instead of my neck and put my head in my hand that way. I tried it once before. Takes a stupid amount of time to do but it really freaked out a kid.” He smirked somewhat proudly, the sound lf snapping, elastic flesh coming off as he dragged his hand off of his neck, everything snapping back into place quickly enough. “How about you? Where do you sort of…” He gestured vaguely. “Begin? I mean I’ve seen you still go full puddle. Is there anything say.. at your core?”

“Lungs inside my head…” Niso hadn’t really thought of that… he knew from experience there was only so much he could condense or shift an organ before it sort of lost it’s purpose so tiny lungs sounded a little less viable but… if he at least made some sort of secondary system he might be able to… “Crap I gotta write that down and try it later!~” He doubted he’d able to survive as JUST a head but he could definitely increase the time he could last before getting his head back to the rest of his body if he put some countermeasures like that in place. The tiny organs wouldn’t last long, probably be very inneficient too, but hey, every second counts when you’re missing your head. Niso briefly looked about frantically for a paper and pad but, giving up just as quickly, he looked down to his arm. Rolling up his sleeve, he winced, clearly in some form of pain as black patches of skin formed the words he was looked for across his arm, effectively creating chungs of dead skin to spell out what he needed. “Ooookay… just gotta remember not to heal that and I’m golden.” He shout Parasyte a warm smile, making sure she didn’t think he was actually hurt or anything from what he’d done before easing his sleeve back down.

Niso snorted softly as she felt Parasyte was encountering the language barrier again or something as they struggled to handle the reality of the word ‘horse man’, casually shaking his head. “I’m not sure if you actually know what the headless horseman is, or if you’re trying to get me to turn into an all human centaur. In either case, I sadly think my days of trick or treating are looooong lost to me… ah heck. I can change my face. Maybe I’ll put on a disguise, age myself down a bit… take you out trick or treating this October. Could be fun. Chill autumn air should mean you don’t melt too…~” Could Niso age himself down? He… he’d always been so young and baby faced he’d never really considered trying but it should definitely be a possibility right? Especially since he took Marine… heck with his face he’d just have to make himself shorter…

Trick or treating could genuinely be fun, he quietly mused to himself.

Niso glanced back to the screen idly with the voodoo dolls showing up… oooo he knew some people he wish he had one of those for. He wondered if he could find someone a voodoo quirk and get some of Thunder’s hair… or Gs. That fucking vigilante. He’d make voodoo dolls of his summons and get them to tear him apart…hehehehe…~”

Niso was snapped from his thoughts by parasyte responding to his earlier comments, tipping his gaze back to her as he leaned into his corner of the couch… soooo… - “Well I mean, I imagine a lot of people don’t get to survive losing an arm in the middle of a fight so I wouldn’t worry too much but… well it’s definitely interesting… back when I went full goop on that Marine stuff I… well it was hard to really tell when I finished and where I began. It was really extreme. I was like….” He leaned over, showing Parasyte his finger. “See the lines? The fingerprint curves from tv shows? The little ridges between them… I was even small than that…” He fell back into his corner, swaying his arms broadly with some exaggeration. “And there were TONNES of little, tiny mes. Little tiny minds and all of us wanted to come out on top. So we made more of ourselves…” He sighed deeply as his head hung back, recalling the… vague sensation of consciousness and… pain…

He shook his head.

“I-I shouldn’t get too into it. Point is. It was hard to tell when losing a part of myself was… too much, so I guess I can get it.. the Marine’s no longer as extreme. I know I can slime out sometimes but I need a brain to really function. Whenever I let it go slimey, fixing it is my first priority… I can’t imagine what it’s like being that slimey state all the time though…” He tipped his head in thought.

“You ever lost some of yourself before? Does it… grow back?”

Niso glanced across and shot Parasyte a smirk as she was clearly trying to get a view of what he was doing with his arm, but if she wasn't going to ask he wasn't going to make hr worry with the details, just rolling his sleeve back down all the same.  "You should.~ I always like to figure out new ways to survive. That's the ultimate goal afterall-!" He thrust his arms playfully up into the air at the same time. "Living forever Bishes!" he chimed with a nice wide grin, turning his ultimate goal into a playful chant for the two of them.

His joy faded however as Parasyte asked what trick or treating was. Honestly, Niso had only ever seen it done in cartoons so he wasn't TOO sure if it was even a japanese habit. Maybe it wasn't just being at St martas that meant he hadn't experienced it as a kid but... eh. He shrugged and offered an explanation. "The idea is kids get dressed up in costumes, not always scary ones, and once a year they can go around asking for candy at doors. It's just a little holiday tradition. The idea is meant to be you get a treat, or you play a trick on them, but not a lot of people actually go through with the trick... I think I would have though. It'd have been fun to mess with people who didn't hold up their end of the holiday bargain.~" He leaned over and nudges her through the pillows encasing her. "We should try it this year, see if anyone does it in Japan. I bet you'll have fun.~"

Niso was indeed Niso, but much like Para he didn't wanna think about the chance that he might be. He knew he still had a few 'others' mixed in with his current makeup. Sometimes they'd try to generate out of him, maybe get enough cells to briefly form a face before he killed them off, some just got scared of trying and lived as part of the larger whole but... there was no real evidence he was the original at the end of the day. He... felt he was. Something about how he remembered the onset of Marine... he remembered slowly being surrounded by the others but, maybe he was just one of the first in a certain area to gain individual consciousness and...

Ugh... hurt to think about it... he was alive. Whichever one he'd been he'd survived. All that mattered.

He glanced back over to Parasyte and focused on her... so she was fine losing chunks here and there huh? That was kind of reassuring... assuming she did just... get it back in time at least. "Sounds like crying." He muttered, not sure if that was even a helpful comment to make but one he made all the same.  The eating to gain more mass was just... logical too.

"If it doesn't go away, that's when I take medicine. I take it in the morning and in the middle of the day, but if I feel really bad, friend says to take it then, too." She frowned more, lowering her hand and feeling her skin pull, leaving trails of slime-like flesh between them before she shook them to break them. "It...isn't like when Luzia takes too many medicine. I think. I mean, I don't think it is. I don't feel floaty like she says. I just feel normal."

"There are different kinds of medicine. Some can make you feel really good, some can make you feel really bad even though it does something good for you. I've never really needed any... I think your friend gave me stuff to help with the pain when I was reforming. Some to help me clear my head but... typically when a part of my body causes me trouble I just get rid of it and replace it. Just..." He lifted a hand. A black ring formed around his index finger and... it fell off. From where it was a slow process of regeneration began, fleshy nub growing longer and longer, probably giving him his finger back after a minute or so. "Easy. I do the same with any part of me that hurts or breaks." The finger that dropped off slowly curled up like a dying leaf, turning dry and starting to crumble as the cells rapidly died off now that they were cut off from the hive mind that was Niso's cell structure now.  "Can't imagine what it's like to be so frail you have to rely on medicine... er... n-no offense intended." He awkwardly cleared his throat, knowing parasyte couldn't really help the way she was born afterall and definitely not wanting to offend his best friend of all people, he just... didn't have to rely on a lot of things others did.

"We could work on a costume together." He tried to offer as a solution. He'd seen some people go in pairs to try and have their costumes make more sense. He thought for a moment and came out- "Oh there's this one like slime monster in Scooby doo, maybe I could sort of wear you on the outside and have you ooze over me so we look more like it or..." No that could be a bit offensive to her, and people might think she was just a costume so they'd get less candy. "Oooor...if normal clothes slide through you... well a sheet can't go through you if it covers all of you right? Ghost costumes are a classic. Or we could just saw the slime is the costume! Quirks are still new, I bet a lot of people would buy that!~"

Either way he was almost determined now to have Parasyte go trick or treating with him!

With the curling death of his discarded finger he pulled back a bit at her question, chuckling a little, not meaning to be dismissive as he understood her worry, but finding it oddly funny all the same. "No no no. I... I knew I was getting rid of it and I didn't wanna make a mess so I had the cells ready to kill eachother off. I can do stuff like donate organs and stuff just fine. Sometimes it happens instinctively in a fight cause I don't like the idea of someone else getting a piece of me and figuring out how my quirk works, but it's really nothing to worry about." He reached over, running his fingers through her goopy hair without any sour reaction to the unfamiliar sensation it created.


Sinking back into his seat Niso wasn't too happy with the immortality coming to an end either, but it was a good enough cartoon to enjoy. He looked across to Parasyte as she mentioned her meds again, feeling a little bad that he'd had to make her take the meds she found so unpleasant more and more, but just as he was about to get out a sorry, he found his breath catch in his throat... she... she said that so casually. He ended up just breathing out a chuckle, caught of guard, in disbelief.

"You're... joking, right? I mean your friend can just... get more of whatever it is, right?"

Niso kept a warm smile as she seemed on board with the idea of actually being a slime monster, his brow quirking a little as she mentioned changing color. “You can do that?” He’d ask, sometimes forgetting that she didn’t actually wear clothes but just sorta… shaped them out of what she was, same with her hair. He’d bonk his own forehead with his palm when she corrected him and he likely realized his mistake with a ‘Oh yeah, of course’ chimed in for good measure. Changing his skin pigment wasn’t something he ever did very well. He could add color to his skin, like a healthy glow, or make himself paler, but full on skin color change had always been difficult, so the brief idea that she could do it had caught him off guard, thinking it was another thing he might be able to learn.

When Parasyte went on about him hurting himself he felt like he could have gone into a bit of a tirade about how pain was just the body sending signals that it was in danger as a motivator to get you out of it and that, since he could heal through most things, while he still hurt and felt pain, Niso had learned to ignore those signals LONG ago, so he technically wasn’t hurting himself buuuuut… well parasyte’s huff was kinda cute, and with his warm smile he just gave a quiet nod. “Sure Parasyte. No hurting myself in your domain. Understood.~”

He pulled is hand back from rubbing her goopy hair, offering a warm smile. “Nice you care, but you don’t have to worry. Really.~”

Of course though, as Parasyte’s Narrator was soon to say, the good times couldn’t last forever… Even from the initial spark of the topic the color had started to drain from Niso’s face and he wasn’t even doing it on purpose. The more parasyte talked the more she explained… Niso had to deal with people dying before sure but in st martas other kids just… disappeared, as a teen, as an adult, he was the one that did the killing… this was the first time hearing someone he actually cared about, and someone so young… had a time limit.

Niso tried to suppress that burning urge to do something that he felt with Luzia… it wasn’t rage this time but that sense of danger, of threat to someone around him. He needed to move suddenly, pushing off the couch and starting to pace between the TV and the couch.

“S-so… the medicine is just gonna stop working? Like your building up an immunity or something? I… okay, okay that makes sense but… t-there’s gotta be something right? He can change up the formula or something and.. what do you mean BETTER I mean you’re parasyte! You’re a goopy bundle of joy and innocence its not exactly like you’ve got a normal to get to so…”

He was really just trying to process this. The idea she was on medicine was one thing but the idea her quirk, those aspects of people he thought were so amazing and fantastic was… actually killing her? That… i-it should have made her better. Made her stronger. It did! She helped people, she helped him, so much with her quirk so…!

“O-okay so… y-your quirk helps people survive m-maybe that’s just your natural state? I-I mean I’m gonna live forever, especially if I’m with you s-so maybe we can just team up forever or something or… or…” He was running his fingers through his hair. T-they probably already thought of that. “M-maybe Marine can… n-no that’d probably just.. m-make you goopier… er….”

He turned sharply on his heel, trying VERY hard not to yell, coming out as a hushed ‘shout’, the cadence of a whisper but the energy of a yell. “Why did you come to the fire if it was gonna speed this up!?!??!” He didn't mean to tell her off but... between Luzia potentially not recovering her quirk and now this bombshell that, on some nebulous time frame Parasyte's quirk was gonna kill her... how else should he react!?

"...." She had... a point. He didn't like hearing the fact that even the intended use of her quirk didn't seem capable of saving her but even as she spoke about how... if she hadn't been with him for the fire he probably would have went himself. Maybe he'd have been fine. Maybe... maybe if he hadn't shown up Luzia wouldn't have ever bothered going seeing that he hadn't shown up but... he ran his fingers back through his hair. Even hearing her explanation he couldn't absolve himself of blame, heck if anything he was just blaming himself more...

He stepped back towards the couch, turning on his heels and falling back onto his ass, sitting on the floor with his back against the foot of the couch breathing slower and just taking this all in. Parasyte had a deadline and she just gave it to him. He had to do a bit of math to get it but... god he was expecting... 10, 15 years or something but no. 3 years and... not even actually that. He swallowed with a dry throat as she mentioned her dosage was doubled and assuming the 3 years was just how long the meds should last...

"A year and a half... at most." He muttered. He maybe shouldn't have, he felt like he was effectively giving her a new deadline... his head was hurting, his brow tight and furrowed. His shoulders tense... "I... so even if you got more it's just gonna wear off... there's..." Something caught the front of his brain, a question in the mess. Maybe he was just looking for a distraction. He glanced back to Parasyte latching onto specific words she used.

"Wait... other people? What other people?" He knew from himself and Luzia that Iseul was open to helping others but... it was only just dawning there may have been people before parasyte.

"...Okay. I'll... let you know." Niso responded to her comments about her 'censor'. Niso knew well enough her difficulties communicating certain things. He didn't know if it was quirk or science based of course, he just knew he... hated it. Sure the idea was sound, censor a child who may leak information they couldn't afford getting out there but... it felt cruel. Unusual, almost like some odd form of torture to remove the control of a practical child over their own body... he tensed a little thinking about that, pulling his knees into his chest as he kept his eyes locked on the floor, focusing on just... listening.

He'd repeat any words that were censored, a few leading up to them, and then try to replicate the sound he heard come out of her. He didn't interupt otherwise, just catching those like she wanted but even without a correction... he got the gist. He didn't fully understand Iseul's side of things, Parasyte's friend, but he understood enough. They were some kind of group that helped heal quirkers who couldn't live with their quirks. Whose quirks were killing them or... just making them fall apart. Niso took a slow breath as he imagined what it might be like growing up like that... it was basically like being a child in a cancer ward only... much more gruesome. Even if there were only ever four of them, to just... lose your friends one day, the few people you had around you, to watch them dissapear or... in the last case, see them die like Parasyte had seemed to. He swallowed hard... he didn't remember a lot from his time in St Martas but the memories caught him at times ever since he'd tried to heal his brain in the search for Luzia...

Sometimes kids just... never came back. He was almost thankful his body went into a fugue state. If he could remember all that... if he'd consciously gone through it all... he didn't think he'd be able to muster the energy that Parasyte could. Even just dealing with Luzia and Parasyte alone was a lot for him to process it seemed.

He thought on what to say, how to react but... what could he do? He had no words of encouragement. Whether their quirks were like parasytes or they were just random kids with other deadly quirks she knew basically what was going to happen to her, how time would flow for her. One day she was gonna be here and the next she wasn't and that day was coming RAPIDLY for her...

"I... sorry. I didn't mean to drudge up memories like that I..." He rested his cheek against his pulled in knees, unsure what to say or just... how to let his thoughts flow. A lump rested in his throat and he wasn't sure if he was consciously causing it or not. Even with his quirk he couldn't find himself able to get rid of it. He glanced to her, then to the floor again, not really sure how to move forward, how to process....

Pushing off the ground, he relied on instinct. Not the one that was telling him to curl up into a ball, that was a dumb instinct. Instead he pushed himself up, moved onto the couch, and without much to say he scooped an arm around the pillows surrounding Parasyte and just sat with her at her end of the couch, words not easily processed through his lips, just resting their, an arm about her... thinking.

"... If your friend thinks of anything... anything that gives you... a few more years... months. A day. You tell me okay?" He still couldn't quite look at her directly, his gaze just off staring into nowhere inparticular. "I know I can't do anything now but... anything okay?" He gave her a light squeeze with the arm around her. "If I'm gonna move heaven and earth to help my most favorite girl get her quirk back... I can at least go through hell to make sure my second favorite girl gets a few more days okay?" It was a downer topic and... he wasn't sure his words were helping, but they were all he had for once.