I wake to the sound of dripping water.
A slow, deliberate rhythm — each drop echoing through the dark like a metronome for something patient and cruel.
My body feels wrong.
Heavy and weightless at the same time, like waking up after a twelve-hour blackout and finding the hangover waiting in the dark with you. I try to breathe — the only thing I can still control — but it's shallow, uneven. My chest doesn't rise right.
No heartbeat. Not even the faint thump in my ears that tells you you're alive.
Instead, I feel the cold wetness pressing against my skin… no, not skin. Whatever this flesh is now.
Then I notice it.
The wrongness isn't just the body. It's crowded in here. This vessel isn't me alone — it's a cluster, a knot of mismatched flesh stitched from strangers. And beneath that, something worse.
The souls.
Fragmented, tangled, gnawing at one another in silence. Most are shattered beyond recognition, scraps clinging to instinct. But three… three are still mostly whole.
Intact enough to be useful
The fascinating thing about Mahito's abilities — my abilities now — is that they don't just let me feel the soul. They let me see it. Perceive it. Interact with it.
I used to imagine the soul as something neat and abstract — a cluster of quantum data, or maybe a spark of pure energy humming inside the body. I was wrong.
The soul is movement.
It's a stream, always shifting, always rewriting itself in ways the body could never match. Up close, it looks like a cluster of endless, weaving strings, constantly braiding and unbraiding, wearing the body like a set of clothes it outgrew years ago
Or maybe it's just because I am a nomu .
I just observed the 3 intact souls trying to understand how they still exist even after the body is dead , why do the feel like touching ramen noodles with hand?
My theory of quirk is that they are mold for energy to shape into , like All For One's Vestige restraining Tomura and one for all users in izuku midoriya's soul space shows us that quirks are made of soul material .
So maybe I can just learn use energy directly and copy basic quirks like , strengthening is just producing more atp, healing is same but it's more about giving awareness to the cells to heal themselves like a pre recorded command
Maybe quirks are soul expressions similar to gene expression But totally unpredictable .
From what I remember most quirks are supported by body but there are cases like Dabi his awesomeness so great his body got damaged .
After trying to interact with the shattered souls other than the 3 I understand now what God mean't by when he said the world would nerf Mahito's abilities, kinda understandable Mahito was literally a child god and me not being a cursed spirit with the fact that this world doesn't have cursed energy so my only source of fuel are ATP and my soul because these cheap souls are so old they tast like car tyres , they have no flavour at all.
I draw in the trickle of energy from the shattered souls, directing it to the mush between my ears. Just enough to patch the cerebrum so the strange machines watching me won't notice. It's like hiding a knife behind your back — better they think I'm still dull.
If I remember right, God — or whatever bored cosmic scheduler threw me here — said I'd land one day before the Hosu incident. The "vs. Hero Killer" arc. Which means I don't have much time. Not just because the city's going to become a war zone, but because of the bomb.
Not a metaphorical one. A real one.
Sitting right inside me.
I can feel it, like a jagged shard wedged in my soul. It's not mine — it reeks of someone else. A splinter of All For One's soul, probably hitching a ride with the regeneration quirk. Great. Just great.
And the main body this mess came from? Yeah, that guy wasn't human even before the Nomu makeover. A literal bat-man. Not the cool kind with gadgets and moral dilemmas — the kind that drank the blood of children. Didn't even need to, just… liked it
He was normal until puberty thou then he he became all for one's follower.
I think his condition was something like that Toga girl — the stabby, cheerful one — only without the cheer.
I reach for them. Not physically — physically, I can't move yet. This is deeper, inside the place where they overlap and tangle with mine. The first soul I touch recoils instantly, but its resistance is clumsy. Its body is gone; instinct is all it has left. I wrap my will around it, feeling the twitch of awareness fade.
The second soul is easier. Its strings are frayed, thin, snapping with each pulse of whatever passes for blood in this body. I don't take much — just enough to keep it from unraveling completely. The fragments dissolve into me, and sensation spreads to my shoulders, my neck.
Something twitches in the darkness. My fingers scrape against metal — a floor slick with water. Chains rattle somewhere above me, faint and steady, like a heartbeat I don't have
I draw the fragments tighter, weaving the loose ends into my own soul, binding this heap of stolen flesh into something that might hold together. The body jerks. Breath drags into lungs not made for me.
I draw the fragments tighter, weaving the loose ends into my own soul, binding this heap of stolen flesh into something that might hold together. The body jerks. Breath drags into lungs not made for me.
I can finally see .
The world is dim and green, shadows shifting behind thick glass. Tubes snake into my arms, my chest, my throat. Beyond the glass, a wall of machinery hums. And in its reflection, I see it.
The most jarring part, though? No eyelids.
My eyes just… stare. Forever. Not blinking, not closing. Like some creepy doll in a store window at three a.m. I'll fix that later, when I'm not swimming in villain soup.
Yellow skin stretched over muscle that's too dense to be human. Talons. A pair of wings folded against my back, dripping in the same green liquid that pools under me.
I'm not just in a Nomu.
I am the Nomu.
And something tells me I'm not alone in this room.