A/N: Trying out a different perspective. It'll probably make it easier to see perspective changes.
--+--
"Seriously, thanks for what you did earlier, saving Pop. We really owe you one, kid."
"It wasn't anything important."
Hotta Jiro gave me an appreciative nod before his attention shifted toward the lavender-haired girl standing beside me.
"...But who's this? You didn't say anything about a plus one."
"Hi! I'm—" Nejire was about to introduce herself with a cheerful wave before I cut in.
"A friend."
I even went out of my way to distort your face, so why were you just about to introduce yourself?
The two brothers glanced at each other before looking at me with a weird expression.
"Your girlfriend?"
"No."
"Yep!"
"...Hey."
"Ehehe~ Just kidding!"
The brothers exchanged amused glances.
Well, whatever.
Originally, I'd planned to come here alone, but Nejire had insisted on tagging along after learning that she'd have to spend the weekend by herself.
It wasn't like I had anything particularly dangerous planned today, so I'd eventually said yes.
Nejire also wanted to look around Naruhata to see if she could meet the Naruhata Vigilantes.
So I decided to kill two birds with one stone.
If Pop☆Step was a part of the Naruhata Vigilantes, and the people who ran Hopper's Cafe were close to her, wouldn't I also be able to meet the other half of the Naruhata Vigilantes?
I remember there being a third, but that guy hasn't shown up in any social media posts in Naruhata, so I'd have to settle for the Crawler.
"Anyway," Hotta Ichiro spoke up, "what's with the face thing? Last time we met, you didn't have anything like it."
"And how are you doing… that with your face?" Jiro asked.
"Privacy… and Math."
"...Isn't that a little excessive?"
"Not really. Repeated exposure improves facial recognition."
"...Huh?"
"The more times you see someone, the easier it is to remember their face."
"Then why didn't you just say that?"
"Because you asked."
"..."
Technically, the facial distortion wasn't anything particularly complicated.
I'd already applied a slight spatial distortion around my face, manipulating the light that reached anyone looking at me.
It was similar to how I kept myself invisible when I talked to Midnight.
However, rather than completely obscuring my appearance, the distortion prevented people from perceiving my facial features accurately.
It was like looking at someone's reflection through rippling water.
You could tell there was a face, but remembering what it looked like afterward would be difficult.
The distortion was mostly there to discourage people from looking too closely in the first place.
For the hair, I just did a simple recolor, which was much simpler than the face censoring.
From my golden hair to a light brown to the point where it could be mistaken for blonde under the right lighting, and from periwinkle to a light lavender.
"Woah~!"
Nejire's sudden exclamation drew our attention.
She'd apparently lost interest in our conversation and was now wandering around the warehouse, looking at everything with sparkling eyes.
"Shun-chan! What's all this stuff?"
"Equipment… And who's this 'Shun-chan,' I wonder…?"
I glanced at her.
"Huh? Shun-chan is… Oh!" Nejire put a hand over her mouth, realizing she said something wrong. "I mean, uhm… Vanilla-chan! What's it all for?"
"..."
Before I could answer, she'd already moved on to something else, but whether it was because she accidentally said my name and was trying to brush it off, or real curiosity, I could probably tell.
"Oh… What's that machine…? And those boxes over there? Wait, why's there a bed in a warehouse? I wonder… aha…"
"...I'll get to you after we leave."
"...Ah."
I could easily see her sheepish expression underneath her facial distortion.
I'll be training you a bit harder for the next few days.
I looked toward the Hotta brothers.
They looked back at me.
"...What did you hear?"
Hotta Jiro paused before covering his ears. Ichiro quickly got the memo and did the same.
"We didn't hear anything!"
"Yep! We didn't hear a single thing! Haha, why's it so quiet in here!"
Jiro elbowed his brother.
"...Too far, bro."
I sighed. These two brothers didn't exactly spell out 'reliable'. The only saving grace was that Nejire called me by my nickname instead of my actual name.
"...Moving on."
"...She's always like this?"
"Pretty much."
"Must be exhausting."
"You get used to it."
"Vanilla-chan! Who's this!"
"...Mostly."
With a sigh, I made my way toward Nejire.
It seemed Nejire had already found everything fun from the warehouse and was now studying Kamachi Kirihito with undisguised curiosity.
He was looking back at Nejire, an expression that made it seem like he wanted to say something, before giving up.
"Don't bother him."
After all, we were still here for a reason.
To satisfy my curiosity.
--<>--
"Alright, Mr. Kamachi. Just stay still for a moment."
"...You're not going to cut me open or something, right?"
"...Why would I do that?"
I'm not a surgeon.
"I don't know! You're the one who wanted to experiment on me!"
"...That's reasonable."
Kirihito looked at me suspiciously before reluctantly settling down.
Well, I didn't need him to do anything particularly complicated.
I just needed to observe.
"...No one bother me for the next minute."
I said, and before hearing a response, I put my hand on Kirihito's chitinous exoskeleton.
Activating my Domain, I began examining his body from the cellular level, gradually expanding my analysis toward the structures responsible for his rather unusual appearance.
The first thing I noticed was that his current state was surprisingly stable.
Despite resembling a praying mantis, his internal organs were still largely human.
Mutant Quirks as a whole were pretty interesting to look into, but even so, the inside looked more like a human who'd gone through some transformation.
His skeletal structure, however, had undergone significant modifications, along with his muscular system and several other biological structures.
It was almost as if someone had taken a perfectly ordinary human body and forced it to develop for some reason.
Which, considering what I already knew, probably wasn't far from the truth.
'Hmm…'
The drug responsible for the transformation was still present in trace amounts, though most of it had already been metabolized.
That wasn't particularly surprising.
From the background information I asked him before doing the analysis, it had been quite a while since he became this way.
What interested me was the relationship between the residual compounds and his Quirk Factor.
A Quirk Factor was a variable that expressed a person's Quirk.
Of course, that explanation was a massive oversimplification, but for convenience, it worked.
The issue was that his Quirk Factor wasn't normal right now.
Rather than simply activating an existing ability, it looked like it underwent a complete change of its own, which was being reflected throughout his body.
Kirihito had said that before he was experimented on, he was actually a Transformation Quirk-Type.
I found that interesting.
I'd initially assumed that the bioengineering process had physically altered his body further down a Mutant Quirk line and that the drug merely amplified those changes.
But I'd gotten the relationship backward.
The drug had transformed Kamachi Kirihito into the mantis-person he was today, and it was the bioengineering that made it permanent.
And now, even after the traces of the original drug that made him this way had mostly disappeared, the bioengineering was continuing to maintain the changes.
'So that's how it works.'
That also explained why the transformation hadn't naturally reversed itself.
His body no longer recognized its original appearance as correct.
Instead, the bioengineering made it so that his body adapted to the altered Quirk Factor from the drug, treating his current physiology as its new baseline.
In other words…
"...I see."
"Huh? You figured something out?" Kirihito asked.
"Yeah."
"Seriously?!"
I nodded.
"I figured out why you can't turn back."
"...And?"
"Unfortunately, that's about it."
"...Hah?"
I ignored his increasingly irritated expression and continued examining the results.
Theoretically, restoring his original body wasn't impossible.
After all, matter was matter.
As long as I understood its structure, changing its position wasn't particularly difficult.
But that wouldn't solve the underlying problem.
His Quirk Factor would still be operating according to its modified instructions.
Even if I somehow restored every cell to its original state, there was no guarantee his body wouldn't start changing again.
Worse, forcibly restoring his original physiology without accounting for the altered Quirk Factor could produce some rather unpleasant consequences.
Possible organ failure, cellular rejection, etc…
None of which sounded good.
And unlike ordinary matter, Quirk Factors weren't something I could rearrange or modify.
As said before, they were like Schrödinger's cats.
I could observe a Quirk Factor's effects and analyze the physical changes they produced, but manipulating the Quirk Factor itself was an entirely different matter.
I needed to understand its properties before I could identify it through my Domain.
'...How annoying.'
It wasn't that I lacked the computational power.
I simply didn't have an easy way to interfere with the factor that made Kamachi Kirihito's body like that.
Well, I could always try brute-forcing it.
But considering that a mistake could leave him considerably worse off than he already was, that didn't seem particularly responsible.
Well, I do have a sample of an enhancing drug from Pop☆Step.
"...So?"
Kirihito's voice interrupted my thoughts.
"Did you figure something out?"
"Yeah."
"Seriously?!"
"Theoretically, I could reconstruct your original body."
"...!"
Kirihito practically shot out of his seat.
"YOU CAN?!"
"Temporarily."
"...Huh?"
"Your Quirk Factor has already been altered. I can reconstruct your original physiology, but I can't change the variable responsible for maintaining your current appearance."
"...In Japanese, please."
I sighed.
"I can turn you back, but you'll eventually turn into a mantis again."
"...Oh."
Kirihito slowly sat back down.
"How long would it last?"
"Don't know."
"Hah?"
"Could be minutes. Could be hours. Could be even longer."
"...That's a pretty big difference."
"Yeah."
I shrugged.
"There's also the possibility of complications, so I wouldn't recommend attempting it without further research."
Kirihito stared at me for a moment.
"...So you figured out how to turn me back, but you can't actually do it?"
"I can. I just don't know whether it'd be safe."
"Isn't that the same thing?!"
"Not really."
"..."
For a moment, nobody said anything.
"...Sorry," I added.
I'd talked a pretty big game, only to end up accomplishing nothing.
Kirihito scratched the back of his head.
"Nah, don't worry about it. Wasn't expecting a miracle anyway."
"..."
I considered explaining that I'd technically made considerable progress toward understanding the process, but that probably wouldn't mean much to him.
Understanding why something was broken didn't make it any less broken.
"Though," I continued, "I did figure out something useful."
"Hm?"
"The drug and the bioengineering process aren't the same thing."
Kirihito tilted his head.
"...What?"
"...It means if I can figure out how the drug altered your Quirk Factor, I might be able to find a way to reverse the changes that the bioengineering made."
"...And that means?"
Even Nejire would have understood that.
…Or would she? I wasn't sure.
At least I hoped she did.
"Basically, I know what caused your transformation. I just need to figure out how to undo it."
"Oh!"
Nejire, who'd apparently been listening from nearby, suddenly perked up.
"So you can turn him back, but you need more time?"
"That's the idea."
"And how would you do that?"
Kirihito asked, staring at me expectantly.
I shrugged.
"Don't know."
"..."
"But that's still amazing!"
Nejire interjected.
"...I guess."
Honestly, I would've preferred a more complete result, but research wasn't always about getting the answer you wanted.
At least now I had a better understanding.
And more importantly…
'...I've reached the limit of what I can accomplish here.'
Without a method of directly manipulating Quirk Factors, there wasn't much point in continuing to examine the same problem.
I could still study the drug itself, of course, but as far as reversing the bioengineering process was concerned, I'd hit a wall.
Well.
I'd satisfied my initial curiosity, but the results were disappointing…
Just as I was considering what to do next, I sensed someone approaching the warehouse.
"Well, perfect timing."
"...Hm? What do you mean, Vanilla-chan?" Nejire asked.
A few minutes later, there was a knock at the door.
Ichiro looked up.
"Huh? Who's that?"
"The Crawler," Jiro responded. "The kid asked me to call him earlier."
He made his way toward the entrance and pulled the door open.
A young man stood outside, wearing a familiar All Might hoodie.
Now came the second part of today's schedule.
A simple fan meeting.
--<>--
A/N: I'm alive! And happy birthday to Extra_Lover!
You know, one day im just living my life normally, until I get a DM from one of my long time readers on discord, asking this humble author for a Blink chapter for their birthday!
Not sure why I accepted, prolly cause the dm sounded so sincere, but I hope you enjoyed this chapter.
(I really hope this is Nov 4th, 12:00AM Philippine time by the time this uploads cause i suck at this time zone thing.)
I'll probably be spending my birthday in my dorms by myself, like the past few years.
--<>--
Also, now that I've finally posted, I can finally ask, does the cover art look fire or not cause omg its fire. Its a literal masterpiece.
That shi was hella expensive. 700 bucks.
Funny how I spent 700 bucks on a cover art for this fic but haven't updated in like... two months? I dont even remember the last time I updated lol.
I saw the reviews saying they keep forgetting the plot, and I'd have to agree, since I also keep forgetting the plot of my own fanfic.
I was actually thinking about dropping this fic cause i made isshun too op and dug myself into a hole with a broken wooden pickaxe, it made me feel like gege with how i was planning to kick this mc into the ground.
But with a discord member (thank you PYON) we found a possible method, so my motivation for updating was somewhat reignited i guess you could say.
Next chap is the last Naruhata chap for a while, moving onto a different arc.
No powerstone thing unless im actually planning to keep it, cause even I dont know when the next update is. Hopefully next week? Or maybe even tomorrow, who knows. Until I become more consistent ig.
Thank you for everyone who decided to wait.
Truly.
Kiss kiss!