Amour Propre (OMORI)

Caesura

"TIME'S UUUUP! Please return yourselves to the main building. No points will be awarded after this point, so uh, don't bother." Captain Canuck's voice came from over the intercom. There were speakers that Sunny now noticed on the side of the buildings. Omori just concluded destroying a robot that was larger than the others, taking more than one hit to destroy, even to the head.

Omori walked over to Sunny and bemoaned the fact that the test was over, "I never get to do anything. Ugh... this school better let me do cool shit again, or I'm gonna annoy you every night when you're doing homework or whatever."

"Yeah, well, the test is over. So uh... come back." Sunny awkwardly requested. Omori obliged and returned to Sunny as Alter Ego, but not before groaning loudly.

Unfortunately, the main building was quite a distance, so Sunny had to go running. Again. He was getting a bit tired, but thankfully, the test was already over by the time his exhaustion caught up with him.

On his way, he met Kel running past him at a wild speed. "Hey Sunny!" He shouted as he ran past. Sunny hoped he wouldn't be going against him in the early rounds of track and field day.

Sunny picked up the pace a bit and soon arrived at the entrance to the building.

He headed inside, thankfully not too sweaty due to the lovely bursts of wind occurring whenever the robots were felled by Omori.

As soon as he got in through the second set of doors, a lovely burst of cool air hit him, just like the wind prior. The air conditioning was turned on for everyone as they recuperated. Everyone looked exhausted, besides Kel, for some reason.

Sunny decided to investigate by sitting next to him and just asking. "Everyone but you is pretty tired, Kel. What's up with that?" He said, trying to sound more casual than he normally was, so to fit in with Kel's usual behaviour.

Lucky for Sunny, Kel was completely willing to answer. "Oh, it's 'cuz my quirk... uh, it's called Calorie Counter, and it lets me use as many calories as I want to do anything! Also, it lets me digest anything, so... I drank gasoline this morning, ehe..."

"Isn't gasoline... toxic?" Sunny worriedly questioned Kel's logic.

Kel shook his head with enthusiasm, "Nope! I looked it up and everything! Dad was kinda mad when I drank the fuel for the lawnmower at first, but he understood after I told him!"

As interesting of a fact that that was, Sunny still thought it was weird. He tried not to let his judgemental thoughts show on his face, though.

Sunny recalled what he had told his mother when she dropped him off. "Don't worry, I'll walk home!" He said foolishly. Now, he felt like an idiot. Sunny was at least getting the nice fresh air of the air conditioner to help him prepare for the walk home. He felt like he'd fall asleep if he stayed any longer, though, so he knew he had to leave now before he was napping with group B-C. At least, he assumed that there was a group that would come after them.

People came from all over the country to go to this hero institute. It would only make sense that there would be a third time slot for groups.

The institute only accepted 16 year olds as new students, though. The institute functioned as the next two years of high school, plus one extra. Afterwards, you'd be able to go to college while also being a full-fledged licensed hero. Some people just did it for the "easy" way into a higher paying job for college fees, while others, like Sunny, did it for personal reasons or just pure passion.

Canada was the third largest economy on earth at the moment. You'd think they'd have free higher education by now, but they didn't even have affordable optometry.

Sunny walked home, thinking about what led things to this moment. Why was a villain able to do what he did to Mari. What brought quirks into existence?

The question of the dawn of quirks is hazy. The catalyst was apparently the successful use of a particle accelerator on an atom. It was done in China, which had dire consequences for the world.

The political pressure from that initial period of discovery had all but disappeared by now. Mostly, now people think of what those scientists did as a net positive. Sunny was a bit I between. It wasn't all good, but it wasn't all bad either, obviously. Many modern conveniences wouldn't be possible without what that atom caused.

The acceleration of the atom had brought it to the speed of light, but then, it somehow kept gaining speed. It went faster, though, without going backwards in time as was theorized.

Instead, the atom built speed, and wherever it moved, new quarks would be created. Never before seen ones, ones that somehow came to influence our genetic code as more of them appeared around the world.

At first, this seemed like just a scientific breakthrough. Discovery of new subatomic particles, passing the speed of light, yadda yadda. Apparently, this actually had increased the speed of light to the top speed the atom reached before the quarks began to slow it down.

Somehow, that "universal constant" was no longer so constant. But after babies born after the event began displaying strange characteristics, there was even more sciences getting involved, wondering how a baby was blowing bubbles that could float in the air and remain in one piece for longer than just spit bubbles ever could. Wondering how some toddler ended up being able to use their fingertip as a lighter. Wondering how a child could turn parts of their body into steel.

More and more quirks appeared, the first generation, all were relatively tame. But slowly, more children with quirks began to appear. Then more, and more, and more. Each generation had fewer people born without quirks, and each generation people tended towards more effective and powerful quirks. Sure, there were rare exceptions to the rule, as there always were. The kid in Sunny's kindergarten who had a quirk that let him blow bubbles using a little hole in his index finger made him quite popular on the playground, but it probably wouldn't help much in the day-to-day, or in self-defense.

Bubbles. That was something on Sunny's mind. Along with a few other things he saw during the test.

During it, he was far too focused on following Omori or saving Antimatter that one time, that he had no time to think about what he was seeing.

There were bubbles, specifically. Bubbles that had parts of robots in them. They reminded Sunny of the pink bird's thing from Angry Birds, as stupid as that sounded.

The difference was that these bubbles were a blurry blue colour rather than a transparent pink.

Sighing, Sunny chose not to think about anything anymore as he reached his home after a very, very long walk. His legs hurt, his feet were stinging, and his head was full of rocks.

He didn't greet his mother as he entered the house. As he walked past, she said something, but Sunny couldn't hear it over his ringing ears.

Sunny entered his bedroom and promptly collapsed onto his bed, falling asleep in moments.