KATSUKI: I'll take care of you.

NIKO: It's rotten work.

KATSUKI: Not to me. Not if it's you.

To be home is to be dead.

  Home was where it began. The lifelong rot that threatened to slowly grow and eventually consume you. Poison was comfort to a child who has never known better. She'd eaten her fair share as a young girl. It stung but it was all she knew. Ruination was home to her because she had never lived anything else.

The poison she consumed was slow to kill. It would eat and eat in till all that was left was the residue. To her, the poison's name was Dad, and to her mother, its name was Husband. Her mother's dose was deadly, and it lead to Niko wonder how she lived so long. By age six, the poison nearly killed her. It was an accident, he'd claimed. He hadn't meant to take it that far, however now the poison had scarred her, made her a painting of its radiation. Her mother didn't survive this time. She overdosed, and was reduced to ashes. The poison—no—her father—got away, leaving her mother dead and home right along with her.

The poison never dies.

  No longer her father was the poison. Now, she was the poison. And it followed her everywhere. There was no place where Niko Namai could go that she did not leave rotted. A tainted girl she was: so corroded that whatever she touched disintegrated, just as her mother had. It was almost ironic, wasn't it? That the poison was hereditary. Maybe that's why Niko lived and her mother died. Only someone who was born polluted could survive the poison.

  Home does not exist, no matter where you look.

Foster care is made to give hope to kids, that finding another home is possible. For Niko, it only proved what she knew: that the idea of a home was a lie. When she was still young, new to the never-ending cycle that was the system, she had that hope. After all, they had promised her. And she knew how promises worked. But instead of a promise of toxin, this was a promise of healing. And, of course, the worst lie she'd ever been told.

Nobody wants a child full of venom. Niko had learned that over the years, after experiencing rejection after rejection, new town after new town, new family after new family. The cycle was continuous, ceaseless in its mission to drive her mad. In till, if only for a time, the cycle was broken.

  Katsuki Bakugo was the first person to see her beyond the poison.

Katsuki was more bomb than boy. He was aggressive and demeaning, a kid that most parents would tell their children to stay away from, but Niko was the same. She was dangerous, a young girl with a powerful quirk and an unstable life; she was the prime example of how a villain was made. However, Katsuki didn't care. He and his crimson eyes could look at her and peel back all the carefully arranged layers that kept people away. He saw her for exactly what she was: a girl who just wanted normalcy—a kid with a power that she had no idea what to do with. He didn't care about the poison, or how she was hazardous. Katsuki just saw her. To her, a girl who'd lived most of her life drowning in sullied waters, he was a desperate breath of fresh air. However, it was only a matter of time before Niko polluted that, too.

  Nothing good ever lasts.

Niko was accustomed to that before she met him. Friends were never an option in her eyes. She'd found over the years of constant moving that it was never worth it to try, as it never lasted. People were always just there to Niko. They, in her blighted mind, were nothing but placeholders. After all, too many had blurred her life over the years. At some point, she'd just stopped caring about who and came to the conclusion that she was forever alone. Though, Katsuki changed everything.

  She hated attachment. That weak feeling that tugged on your heart when you missed someone. It made her feel so incredibly sick that she'd barricaded herself from the feeling completely. But with him she just couldn't stop it. It was like another form of poison; except this one was sweet and made her feel all too good inside. So good, in fact, she'd went ahead and ruined everything. But what else could someone expect out of a girl molded by malice?

  The poison was inescapable.

Niko hadn't meant to scar her foster father. Even though his snake-like beady eyes always glared at down at her so horrifyingly, as if her very presence threatened him. Niko grinned and bared his torment, as this was the only way she could keep the only friend she'd ever made in her life. However, after a while, torment always got old. She knew this to the very depths of her rotten flesh, and so when the poison inevitably go to be too much, Niko had no choice but to let it out. That one mistake cost her everything. As soon as Niko had tripped, the system's bloody claws dug themselves right back into the roughly-healed scars they'd already left on her, and dragged her back into the never-ending vortex once again.

  Wounds that never healed always bleed again.

Niko was fifteen now. Immune to the disease that was her life itself, she'd never let herself out of the cycle since then. However, after three more years of suffering under the foster care system, someone had finally found something of value in her. The Hero Public Safety Commission found her quirk, one that Niko herself had always regarded as a curse, as a wonder. They saw her poison as special, something they were oddly sure she could use to become a hero. Niko had never seen her quirk in that light before—as an asset rather than a hindrance. So when they offer her a free education to any hero school of her choosing, their only ask in return for her to pledge her loyalty and her quirk to them, there was no way in hell she could refuse.

  After spending nearly all her life suffering from the poison, the quirk that made her so dangerous that she'd never even gotten close to being adopted after spending nine grueling years of her life in the system—the same quirk that had killed her own mother, any ounce of a simple hope that it could be used to help rather than harm was a miracle she could never reject. This opportunity to be a hero, something that had always seemed so out of reach for her that when Katsuki brought up how he thought she could be a hero beside him, she would laugh and claim that someone like her could never be a hero. However, she was now on track to prove herself wrong.

  It was a no brainer decision that Niko would pick UA as her school, since it had been the school that her only friend had sung praises of. UA High School accepted her request to study there with open arms, allowing her to take the entrance exam and providing her with a place to stay under the care of Shota Aizawa, a man with a quirk perfect for dealing with her poison. Under his watchful eyes and the startling comfort of actual stability, Niko Namai's life was thrown onto the rough path of a young hero.

  As she adjusts to this new way of life, Niko's still sore wounds find ways to keep her in pain, as she begins having to face the feelings, emotions, and ghosts of her past that threaten to ruin her for good. She starts to train her body and mind to accept her quirk—her poison—and how to use it to save rather than destroy. Niko faces the explosive boy who makes her chest tighten up and her heart beat faster. She meets new friends in the form of her classmates, and begins to rework her rotted understanding of what home truly is.

  However, in the abyss of her mind, doubts that are still engraved into her very soul manage to linger. The truths that she has concluded throughout her life haunt her, as well as the burden of her origins. The poison that is just as much as hers as it was her murderous father's still eats away at her, still continues to taint her existence with its cruel hold on her. In spite of everything her new life had given her—in spite of his crimson eyes that bled with love every time they met her sickly aqua ones, Niko knew, deep down, she'll never truly escape what she was:

  Someone who wasn't meant for anything other than ruin.

NIKO NAMAI.

QUIRK: NUCLEAR.

KATSUKI BAKUGO.

QUIRK: EXPLOSION.

DEDICATIONS!
loveysgarden  sunIoves

ANNA YAPS!

Well well well, here I am with another spontaneous fic (as if I haven't been planning this for nearly two months). I spent like half of my summer slowly making my way through mha and alongside watching it my brain couldn't help but create an oc bc if I like a story, it's inevitable that I end up creating an oc to go with it 😭. Also btw sorry if the summary is ass!! I may rewrite soon but for now I'll just have to deal with it. But yeah! Nuclear Decay is the product from my obsession, and I can't wait to share Niko and her story with all of you! Now onto my honorary yap session!

☢️ Nuclear Decay follows my oc Niko Namai, whose quirk is probably one of the coolest powers I've managed come up with! Her quirk, of course, is Nuclear, and it is exactly what its name is. She has the ability to produce nuclear power/energy with her own body through nuclear fission. Her body goes through nuclear fission two times a day; once in the morning and once in the evening. Her body's main organs and cells have naturally mutated to have a second purpose other than their primary function, which makes them essentially act like nuclear fuel rods, initiating the fission reaction that creates the energy (super complicated ik, but really all you need to know is that her body naturally produces nuclear energy). In theory, she is akin to a miniature nuclear reactor. Of course, given the fact that she is literally radioactive, her quirk has made living a normal life pretty much impossible (which is the reason she never stayed in one place for too long; people just didn't want to deal with a child with such a dangerous quirk).

☢️ Niko and Bakugo's relationship is very much a slow burn ™ because of just how both of them are as people. As described in the summary, Niko has an extreme aversion for attachment due to the fact that every time she has allowed herself to have attachment it was always ended in tragedy. So naturally this makes her ability to accept and express her feelings towards Bakugo a big problem! And in Bakugo's side of things, he is, of course, himself and is also very emotionally constipated. So it makes for the perfect storm of angst and chaos that I just love to write bc apparently I hate happiness?? Anyways, they are definitely the childhood friends to rivals to friends to lovers ever! Their dynamic is so so dear to me and I can't wait for you guys to read it!!

☢️ Also for some context for Niko (bc I always personally like to know what a character looks like so I can imagine them correctly while reading), she has tan skin, warm brown and wavy hair, aqua eyes (due to her quirk; the color of her radiation/nuclear energy when she wields it is also aqua), and she has two major aqua colored scars (the color is bc it was the result of radiation/nuclear damage) on her body; a smaller one that is just below her right eye, and a large one that is located on the right side of her stomach. If anyone wants to draw her sometime I do not mind at all!! If I could I would in a heartbeat, but sadly I was blessed with the ability to write (sometimes), not the ability to draw!

That's all I have to yell out into the void for now!! See you guys in the prologue (yes im writing a whole prologue, I haven't done that in ages I fear)