“Delivery!”
She opened the door; the scent of flowers hit her first. On a neatly arranged wreath lay a short note, written in Hawks’s familiar hand: Plain words. Even so, a trace of warmth clung to the strokes.
“That bastard Hawks... sent another one.”
Her lip curled into a small, wry smile. Beneath it, something faintly warm spread in her chest.
Mirko stepped into the living room and stopped before a mirror. Prosthetic arms, right leg, the fitted piece at her clipped ear tip—in the reflection stood ‘Bunny the Weapon’, flesh meeting steel. She smiled at herself.
“I can still run. I can fight... and I can love someone, too.”
The words sounded almost true—and that ‘almost’ was the ache. Her gaze drifted to the seams between skin and alloy, and old memories rippled up from somewhere deep. Hands braced to the floor—push-ups until her arms trembled apart. Both heels driving into a villain’s chest—the impact bone to bone. Sweat drowning breath, body pointed only forward. Then, she had been pure motion, pure will. No machine hum, no metal sting—only heartbeat, sweat, and laughter bursting out.
Mirko met her own eyes in the mirror—a body layered with steel, a mouth lifting itself into a smile. The memory was sweet, and brutal. She turned away from the mirror to the table where her daily prosthetics sat. Beside them was a card from Lightly Labs, the handwriting a chaotic scrawl as ever.
[Test Report! Baby No. 47]
New alloy blend: durability +22%, skin feel +18%! Tea vibration cut by 0.3 g—life-changing, right~★ And tuned to match Miss Bunny’s big laugh, so go boing through today! Ohoho! —
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Mirko let out a dry laugh. “‘Go boing’, huh? Same old spiel.”
The cheerful words felt distant against the raw memory of her own heartbeat she just felt. She slid on the prosthetic, slow. The joints meshed smooth; her fingers moved almost naturally. She lifted the teacup—porcelain steady in her grip—and raised it to her lips. Steam rose, warm and alive.
“Warm...” she whispered. “Feels almost like a real arm. ...Almost.”
A faint smile touched her mouth, but her eyes sank somewhere deep. “Prosthetics... are good.” The fingers curled and opened, graceful, obedient. Then a tiny click lingered in her ear. “But... it isn't truly my body.”
She took the arm and leg off. With a hiss and release, the weight fell away. Her body felt lighter—yet strangely hollow. In the mirror stood bare shoulders without arms, the emptiness where the leg had been, the scar at the ear tip. Stripped of steel, there was only skin and wound.
Then—Hawks’s face rose beyond the glass. A man without wings, who still stayed close.
“He lost a Quirk... and I lost two arms and a leg.”
A wingless man, an armless rabbit—their voids were somehow the same.
“...He really does like me.” The words came short, but a faint smile ghosted across her mouth. “And... I don’t exactly dislike him.”
“If we married...” Her voice rang low, filling the quiet room. “I’d be a wife. Maybe a mother.”
A scene flickered—hands held, a child soothed, a soft warmth that broke against the edges of reality. She grinned at herself. “Am I enough? Who’d dare—”
But behind the grin, the real questions stayed.
Mirko drew a quiet breath and faced herself.
A pause. Her lips pressed tight.
“...And yet.”
She closed her eyes, set a prosthetic down, and traced the scar along her skin. It was part of her life, yet already the texture of the past. Her present self was the new continuity the prosthetics had built.
“If I go back eight years... memories could collide, or vanish.”
She inhaled. The choice stood clear before her: Either could define her. But one thing was certain—no one else would decide. The person who fought and rose again in this body was always herself.
Mirko met her own eyes in the mirror.
“If I want it... I own it.”
The words landed clean. The air in the room eased. And in that stillness, for once, time felt on her side.