Chapter One | Rainbow

May

Noa pushes through her online courses for as long as she can and as her due date approaches, she works with one philosophy - the more work she does now, the less work she has to do while in the hospital and after she gets home. Getting legally emancipated is much easier, it turns out, when your mother signs you over and you have a steady unexplained income coming in; on top of the own school sending her checks every month, the bastard that got her pregnant had the same idea to keep it under the radar; apparently his parents weren't exactly thrilled at something like this ruining their reputation either.

So fuck them. She can do better without them and she'll prove it. She already has an apartment. She plans on getting a job after her baby gets here. The doctors told her to expect a girl and so that is what she prepares for. Her one bedroom apartment is not much, but she hopes that it will be enough. It's big enough to fit a crib beside her bed and the baby supplies throughout the closet and kitchen.

She never had any younger siblings or even friends that had younger siblings. She never even played with dolls when she was younger. She doesn't know what to expect when her baby comes and she doesn't have anyone to ask either, so she puts the brain that got her into Shiketsu in the first place to work. She researches. There's not much research about how being younger can affect the baby or birth, but she finds resources that are willing to help her - she saves their number and a few calls later, adults that do know what to expect are carefully explaining everything to her' a few of them try to convince her to go for adoption, but each time one of them come on the phone, she just cuts the call. She reads about the after effects to expect and it scares her to her core, but she swallows it down and knows that this is what she chooses so she will see it through.

Her liquidation quirk - the ability to turn any part of her body, or her entire body, into any liquid provided that she knows the chemical compound of it - comes in handy. It makes the swelling in her feet go down and her joints aren't as sore as everyone told her that they would be.

When her belly is so large that she feels like she is going to burst - she does. With liquid coming out of her in a way that is definitely not from her quirk. It seems like it takes forever, but after lots of crying and pain, she lays in a hospital bed with a little bundle in her arms. She's sixteen - too young, the doctors say, but she doesn't care. The moment that she holds another living being - a living being that came from her; it's the easiest decision that she has ever made.

Her daughter takes after her. It's a relief, even if it wouldn't have made much of a difference to her, the idea that her daughter takes after her makes her proud. She is chubby with round cheeks and pinker than she thought she would be, but she didn't know babies could be so messy when they first come out. She shares her red eyes and dark hair. Despite Noa's slightly tanned complexion, Gini is pale and pink. It suits her.

"Gini," Noa tells the doctors with a soft voice and eyes that don't leave her daughter's.

June

Noa sits in the small kitchen of the apartment with a nursing baby against her chest as she finishes her homework on the laptop in front of her. Her feet are swollen, but the doctors were too worried about her using her quirk while nursing. Something about them worrying about her diluting her breastmilk or interrupting the healing process after giving birth. So instead of turning her lower half to water just to relieve the pain, she downs a painkiller with morning coffee that's now in a cold mug beside her laptop. The bags under her eyes are starting to form, a side effect of having to wake up every few hours to feed a new baby.

She tries to do what the doctors told her. She tries to sleep every time that Gini falls asleep for a nap, but she still struggles to get through her school work.

It's not how she expected to be spending her seventeenth birthday. Her mom used to make her a special dinner for her birthday, maybe give her a small present, but she hasn't so much as even received a phone call today. As much as she hates it, it is starting to make her heart hurt and she can feel the tears starting to prickle in the corner of her eyes as the day starts to pass by.

It makes her want to sob and scream. Curse the world - curse her mother, the school, that bastard who hasn't even so much as asked for a photo of his daughter. She even lied to the doctors for him - claiming that she didn't know who the father was. She got a little extra that month from his parents for it, but all that did was make her want to tear up their money.

She showers for the second time that day - between the baby vomiting and needing something to help wake her up so she gets work done, she finds herself showering more and more these days. But even when she takes a shower, it's still nothing like the hot, steaming ten minutes long showers that she used to take. She has to take cooler showers now, with a bath mat on the floor and tear-free body wash and shampoo because each time she showers, there's a little baby clutching to her hip now. But she does find that the shower, at the very least, makes it so that her daughter doesn't see her cry.

It does take twice as long to dry off and get dressed; with some time spent pinching at the fat that still clings to her hips and the dark marks that mar her stomach and thighs. It makes her feel like she has a brand new body - a body that she still hasn't gotten used to.

It's late in the evening when Noa stands up, stretches, and decides that it's not fair for her to slouch around and mope. Not when Gini is looking up at her with innocent, bright eyes that make her feel like the world. Her daughter is awake and so is she, so she takes her daughter out and when they come home, she has all the ingredients to make her special birthday dinner. Her mom never taught her the recipe for it, but she didn't have to when the internet still exists.

As she eats her dinner, a warmth blooming in her chest, she holds a box in her hand.

"You know, they say you're not supposed to dye your hair just because you're having a mental breakdown," Noa playfully tells Gini, who smiles ominously, "But I think the people that say that obviously haven't had a mental breakdown. So what color do you think we should for mama?"

She eyes the many boxes, most still in the shopping bag. She bought every color that she saw - from natural to unnatural to bleach. She glances at the vivid neon green hair color box in her hand.

"Yeah, I think you're right," Noa muses, bobbing Gini on her nose with the tip of her finger, "We're going to go rainbow."