Carnivore

iii) Seco

ZINNIA'S RECOVERY COULD NOT HAVE BEEN ANY SLOWER, even if she had tried to imitate a snail. Her session with Recovery girl wound up with the elderly woman nodding thoughtfully to herself, but uttering nothing that could give Zinnia any indication of progress. Zinnia herself didn't feel any different after Recovery Girl's quirk treatment beyond the small decline of energy that had hit her, and her morning treatment the next day was just as promising.

Whether it was because Zinnia's case was a difficult one, or because the damage was on the inside so one couldn't really tell any difference. All Zinnia knew was that it felt like she wasn't improving, and she was getting worried.

Regardless, Zinnia kept up with the small-scale quirk usages throughout her free time and tried to will the anxiety away.

Though that was a lot harder than it probably should have been.

She hadn't seen her mother when she arrived home, though she had heard the woman, and she was promptly accosted by her siblings, who all hurled abuse at her for her incapacity to heal Kali anymore.

They hissed it at her as if she had decided on her own that she just wasn't going to do it anymore, not that their mother had forbade it. And by the end of it, Zinnia had retreated into her room and stayed there until morning. It took a long time for her to calm herself down enough to sleep, and she was out the front door before anyone else was awake enough to hassle her.

Her arrival at classroom 1A following her morning session with Recovery Girl was met with a few pleasant greetings from assorted classmates, and the excited form of one Ashido Mina springing up in front of her to drag her over towards Kaminari's desk with an excited gush about their work on her so called costume.

The design Zinnia found herself faced with was a giant mess of lines and eraser rubbings, combined with smudges from resting hands and a huge mess of scrawled notes in two completely separate handwritings.

'So! What do you think?!' Ashido eagerly asked.

Umm, nothing really? She could only see eraser pieces and smears.

Though Zinnia let out a breath as she picked up the pages and brushed off the debris that covered them.

The design she found herself staring at was a skin-tight set of clothes that, quite simply, looked like somebody had taken a morph suit, drawn some lines on it to give an impression of the divide between pants and a chinese-themed shirt, and painted it in black and red leopard print.

To Zinnia, who preferred baggier clothes, it wasn't the most pleasant of outfits.

In fact... since when was black and red leopard print a thing?!

'I think you're designing a costume for someone who has the figure to pull off skin-tight.' Came Eijirou's comment all of a sudden, causing the petite girl to practically jump. 'And Zim doesn't really have that.'

Zinnia hadn't even heard him come to stand over her shoulder, but there he was, peering down at the costume sketches with a curious frown.

'What? But Kennedy-chan can pull it off!' Ashido complained.

The girl in mention could only sigh as she handed the papers to Eijirou and pulled the sleeve of her baggy blazer up to her shoulder.

'I have no flesh on me.' Zinnia admitted as she showed her twiggy arm to the healthily figured girl. 'I'm going to look like a blotchy toothpick with bad hair if you put me in something skin-tight.'

'Oh.' Kaminari deadpanned. 'Damn, we spent hours working on that...'

But Zinnia let out a breath as she pulled her sleeve back down, glancing at the pages in her friend's grip for a moment, before she looked up at her friend.