Good News: I managed to make it through last night's little… episode, physically unscathed.
Bad News: Last's night's little episode disturbed enough "silt" in Takehiko's brain that now I was starting to suffer from his past traumas. Losing his parents to a Villain attack, getting attacked by another Villain in an orphanage a year later, getting attacked by yet another the year after that…!
Honestly, I'd hate to see the kid that isn't rattled by shit like that.
As it stood however, even though it wasn't explicitly "my" trauma, the fact remained that all of Takehiko's past incidents were starting to hurt me as-badly as if they were my own traumas. This could probably be taken as a sign that I was "settling in" to this new body, though thankfully my past memories weren't being "overwritten"; a fate worse than death in certain cases.
Back to the matter at hand. While "I" was technically only present for the most recent of traumas, that I'd been able to seriously consider self-immolation so that HItomi and her family could get away from a botched and hastily-planned rescue attempt, it was proooobably an indicator of how-cracked I was.
I thought that with my adult mind, I'd be able to get over this incident, put it all behind me.
As it turned out, I could not.
At least, not without a lot of therapy from an accredited psychiatrist specializing in PVSD, otherwise known as Post-Villain Stress Disorder.
It's somewhat telling that this world is so-obsessed with 'Cops vs Robbers-I mean, 'Heroes vs Villains', that they'd even make a designation like "PVSD" instead of lumping it in with the pre-existing PTSD like any sane person would.
*AHA*
It was also somewhat telling that I woke up screaming the following morning.
As one would expect, the previous night I had recurring nightmares about myself in various forms of vivisection, and that shit followed me into my waking hours.
What sucked about it even more was that Hitomi had been waking up alongside me all night to serenade me back to sleep with one of her mother's lullabies whenever I had a fit of night terrors, to the point that in the morning she didn't have a bag under her eye; she had a whole handbag under her eye. That and every time the officers stationed outside my room kicked the door in whenever I started screaming bloody murder, Hitomi nearly had a heart attack.
I mean sure, I couldn't exactly control how my trauma-addled mind affected those around me, but it really sucked that I had to drag such a nice woman into my own brand of suffering…
"No, no, it's okay. It's a nurse's job to look after her patient. Don't' worry about me, you just focus on getting well." -she'd always tell me in that sweet, motherly voice.
She was so-angelic, too pure for this world, that it utterly disgusted me to find out she was still single.
Why and/or how do I know she doesn't want to stay single?
Let's just say her mono-eye is really expressive whenever married couples or married couple-adjacent topics come up on TV, and leave it at that…
"I'm really sorry…"
"There, there. You have nothing to be sorry for~" Hitomi said sweetly stroking my hair, even as hers stuck out in all directions.
" . . . "
I don't really know what possessed me to do what I did next, or even in what language, but a moment later the lyrics for "Silent Night" spilled out of my mouth like word vomit, and I started to serenade her to sleep. I don't know if Takehiko was a naturally-gifted singer or if Hitomi was just dead tired from looking after me all night, but three quarters of the way through Hitomi laid her head down on the pillow I laid out for her, and she was out like a light.
I wasn't completely sure if it was something my mother sung to me or if it was something from Takehiko's memories, but at the very least it did the trick.
Hitomi really was too good for this world…
*AHA*
Now, I don't know how word of my incident spread or who-all was told or even how-much was allowed to be told, but Kaminaga was nice-enough to come in and pamper me even though there was nothing wrong with my hair, nor was Hitomi present to fondle.
"Really… You didn't have to do this for me…"
-is what "the adult in me" said when presented with a "So-Much-Sugar-You'll-Get-Diabetes-Just-From-Looking-At-It" Strawberry Shortcake in a neat confectionary box.
Not that it would stop the kid (whose body) I was in from eating aforementioned cake.
"Nonsense! After everything you've been through, you deserve more than that yucky hospital food!" Kaminaga replied fervently, cheeks puffed out cutely.
"You do make a good argument," I conceded as I looked back into the box.
Seriously, this looked like the sort of thing Erza Scarlet would commit homicide over!
Well, moreso than in the Canon at least.
"Mmmmmm! Sugoiiii!" the child I-was-in blurted out, eyes twinkling as it hit my taste buds.
"I thought you'd like it~ What child your age doesn't like cake~?"
At least she didn't bring me American fast food. After putting that slurry into my original body for close to three decades, I wasn't exactly eager to put any of that chemical laced crap into this body. There's no telling what went into it now.
Cake on the other hand was an exception.
And it seemed like Kaminaga thought much the same, because she had one for herself as well.
It'd have been rude of me to bring up that her portion was bigger than mine, so I wisely chose not to.
Kaminaga and I then spent the next hour eating cake and watching Hero TV recordings on the new TV the HPSC had installed across from my bed. It had obviously been done in some attempt to placate me over what had happened right under their own noses, but given most-everything in this new world was largely transactional, I had zero problems reaping the rewards from other people's sense of guilt.
Even if I did have to suffer from a mind-scarring tertiary villain attack for me to get this kind of image resolution…
"Oh! Before I go, I got you something!" Kaminaga said as the Hero TV timeslot came to an end. Skipping over to the door and grabbing something she'd set down upon arrival, she rounded on her stylish high heels and deposited a large shopping bag topped with pink tissue paper into my arms with gratuitous use of her Quirk. "Happy early birthday!"
Ah, that's right. About the only thing I had in common with Takehiko Tokei was our date of birth. I never cared to memorize the exact minute I was considered "born" on that day, but I guess at present that was no longer important.
Setting the tissue paper aside and removing the bag's contents, I was both surprised and amazed to see a chibi-style "Hitomi-Sensei" plushie, clad in a pink blouse, black skirt, and white lab coat. Its limbs were stumpy and its head bigger than the body, so it looked like a Powerpuff Girlplushie all things considered. The reflective dark-blue hair and yellow ribbon were all done to incredible detail, but what amazed me in quality the most was the gem-like mono-eye set in the plushie's face atop a cute smile and rosy cheeks.
"This… This is…"
"It's cute, huh~" Kaminaga winked, and I swear to god a little five-pointed star jumped out at me. "I made her myself~"
"V-Very cute…" I found myself stammering, looking into the plushi's mono-eye before I hugged it to my chest, a nostalgic feeling washing over me before my eyes went wide.
"Noticed it, did you~?" Kaminaga winked. "That's right! Chibi-Manaka smells like the real thing too~"
"URK!" I lurched in shock was what I now knew to be the scent of Hitomi's lavender shampoo washed over me.
If this were an anime, this would be the part where the background went black and white cracks like a broken window spread out behind me in a halo.
"Honestly, getting Chibi-chan to smell just right was the hardest part. Compared to that, everything else was easy~!" the woman beamed ecstatically.
"But… This means a lot to you, doesn't it?" I asked trying to give it back.
The kid in me wanted to hug it and never let go, but I bulled through this body's immature hardware with my mature software.
"Oh don't worry, that one's my spare. The original Chibi Manaka-chan is waiting for me at home~"
Seeing the flushed expression on this busty woman's face, the way she was hugging herself and writhing in front of who, for all intents and purposes, was a prepubescent child, I couldn't help but ponder what sorts of depraved things Kaminaga did with her Hitomi-sensei plushie.
Come to think of it, what sorts of depraved things had she done with this one…?!
" . . . "
" . . . "
" . . . "
Aaaand like that, I'm scarred for life.
Again.
God I need friends my own age…
*AHA*
The following day, I learned what happened to that crazed nutball who tried cutting me open like a science lab frog.
Due to the somewhat sensitive nature of what my biomass was being studied for, Dr. Shiga had been shipped off to Tartarus, one of the most-secure super-criminal containment facilities in the world.
Now, from the comic book side of things I was getting some Arkham Asylum/Strykers Island/Belle Reve vibes after learning about it. The reason supervillains weren't just killed off for everyone's convenience there was because a Publication running out of antagonists had no real future, aside from spin-offs where the Villains and/or Heroes did all get killed off like Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again, The Marvel Universe Kills Deadpool, etc. etc.
In the real world, where real people could turn into super-criminals at any given moment from a population pool of over 5,000,000,000 with as many possible Quirks or Quirk combinations…
The ability to capture super-criminals alive and incarcerate them long-term was both a show of the country's military might, as well as the strength of its Heroes. Now that I was here, in such a world where superpowers were quite literally a "dime in a dozen", the societal importance of being able to contain super-criminals in such a fashion actually made sense. After all, if every Quirk-related criminal were to be killed on sight or otherwise executed summarily, the world would probably turn into an oppressive regime like Superman's from the Injustice series where everyone feared their government; and if a people truly fears its government, then that country has no future.
Probably why countries like North Korea and China no longer exist in their original forms in "22XX", but that's a story for another day…
Getting back to the original point, this model for judicial incarceration only made logical sense in a world dominated by SPBs. In comic book worlds where SPBs were microscopically in the minority, it made non-literary sense to just kill them off if they were serial murderers.
But that's neither here nor there.
Sure, I'm pissed that Dr. Shiga isn't getting the axe for what he did, or if he is I just haven't been made aware, but even if I don't like that he's just being carted away instead of getting the chair or the needle or the gas or the firing squad, it's not like the government will take an 11-year-old's thoughts into consideration anyway…
But hey, no-one had broken out of Tartarus or any of its branch facilities yet in the world's history, so they must've been doing something right.
Still, that left me in a very precarious position; at least from the perspective of the grownups around me.
Here in this hospital adjacent to the Hero Public Safety Commission, I was supposed to be in a "safe space". But, being blatantly attacked by a Villain in this capacity, one who had been working under their own noses for over a year while being pathologically insane, it only made sense that I would 'demand answers'. 'Cause after all, the moment I stopped feeling "safe" here, was the moment I started making their lives a living hell by trying to escape. Thanks to my rehab and my slightly-abnormal recovery speed, it would only be a matter of time before I could act on any "hypothetical" threat of flying the coop.
Sure, I could make a break for the elevators, but this being a world of superheroes, I found myself in a very unique position to be able to carry out certain "power fantasies" I had back home when I thought about writing stories.
If I couldn't make a break for the lobby, I could always smash out a window and scream to some nearby Hero that I'm being held "against my will" at the top of my lungs, and in a world where Heroes are beholden to their adoring public like politicians are to their constituents, they might very well have to take my pleas seriously.
*AHA*
As it turned out however, I would not need to break any expensive windows. After Dr. Shiga's attack on my person, the powers that be were being very upfront about what the hell was going on.
Sure, the possibility existed they were only offering this courtesy so I'd have no "reason" to become a Villain or Villain Sympathizer in the future, but I'd take my "lumps of sugar" where I could find them.
At the moment I found myself back in a familiar interrogation room-like space, only in more fair company than Tsukauchi Naomasa.
Her name was Smith Kuroko, or "Kuroko Smith" from a Western perspective. She was a tall leggy woman with fair skin, brown eyes, jet-black hair cascading like water, and dressed in the attire of a typical government agent; white dress shirt, black tie, black blazer, matching professional skirt, black pantyhose, matching heels, and a pair of black sunglasses to complete the look.
Smith… Smith… Smith… That name sounded familiar, and I'd definitely seen her somewhere before in my previous life, but my reincarnation-addled brain was drawing up blanks, or rather, "fog", whenever I looked at her. It was like peering down into a bargain bin of DVDs at the mall and you could only see part of the cover art of a DVD you recognized at the bottom through all the others.
Maybe she was a Men in Black character I'd forgotten about? Agent S? She certainly dressed for it, and…
Shit! Was Men in Black actually fact in this universe instead of fiction?
With the proliferation of Mutant/Heteromorphic Quirks out there, it was certainly feasible for extraterrestrial life to hide out on this Earth as refugees… No one would ever know the difference, if that were the case and I weren't just making correlations where there weren't any…
It of course once-again dawned on me that I had literally forgotten more first-hand knowledge about the multiverse than anyone else here could possibly ever hope to learn…
"So… I should probably start by saying that this isn't an ordinary hospital," Ms. Smith hummed, breaking me from my internal thoughts.
*AHA*
"Oh really? No shit, what gave it away? The fact that there's no-one else on this floor but me?" Takehiko asked, his voice oozing with sarcasm.
"Couldn't pull one over on you, could we?" I asked with a raised brow.
"Not on your best day."
Which was fair, since Dr. Shiga had been far from subtle when he finally went off the deep end.
"So… You finally going to tell me why I'm HPSC HQ-adjacent?"
"Tell me… How much do you know about 'All for One'?"
"Other than being an old wive's tale like the Boogeyman to keep uppity little shits in line, I know that, 'hypothetically'," he said making air-quotes, "if he were real, his is the most-dangerous sort of power in a world where 'powers' are everything. After all, what sort of Hero would risk losing their paycheck and the lifestyle to which they'd become accustomed over a Villain who could steal their Quirks with a love tap?"
"Well you sound pretty jaded," I hummed idly, crossing one leg over the other to break the tension.
It would later occur to me, retrospectively, that if he actually had hormones to rile up and there weren't a table between the two of us, that tactic would've worked much better…
"I've been attacked by Villains three times over in just as many years. What do you think?"
"Fair point," I conceded. "I'll probably catch all sorts of hell for this later, but Hitomi's a friend-of-a-friend so I'll be straight with you."
Why was I being so-upfront with this kid? Simple. Because I couldn't even begin to count the number of children, teenagers, and young adults who grew up to become Villains because some government asshole in a black suit screwed them over and disenfranchised them to the system. Sure, it wasn't a perfect system, but it was the only one we had and if-anything, it "worked.
"This All for One guy who might've attacked you, if not just someone with a 'Cloned Quirk'… Something about your Quirk Factor didn't really agree with him-"
"So you people think my DNA is the 'magic bullet' that can kill this All for One guy?" the kid interrupted. "Assuming he's actually real, at least."
"More like… incapacitate… There's nothing inherently toxic about your DNA when introduced to a secondary body," I answered, wondering where a boy his age learned the term 'magic bullet'. People had stopped believing in magic anything when Quirks started manifesting.
"Don't you have some kind of Quirk-suppressant to keep this guy in line? Or does Tartarus rely on nano-explosives implanted in their spinal columns for that?"
"Where the hell did you come up with that idea?!"
"Sounds to me like you're deflecting."
"What? No! We don't do that!"
"Maybe not in this country. I'm sure human rights violations happen somewhere in the world."
Christ, this kid was jaded as fuck…!
"No, suffice it to say, All for One isn't exactly the sort to sit still for… that sort of thing…"
"Aaand you can't just take him out with a drone strike because he either has a Healing Quirk, or a 'Drone Control' Quirk?"
"Technically speaking… All for One was declared dead three years ago…"
"Aaand you're still planning for him making a comeback because no-one found a body?"
Geez, what kind of orphanage did they put this kid in…? What kind of eleven-year-old thinks this way?
"Something like that…"
"Well, at the very least you don't have to worry about me narking on you to anyone for telling me all this."
"Geez, how considerate of you."
"Still not sure how I feel about you guys harvesting me for meat, though. I mean, yeah, I was in a coma so you probably used a loophole, but I'm not sure how I feel about it now…"
"Hey, to be fair, the only reason that shit flew for the last year was because Dr. Shiga's Quirk let him make it so there weren't any marks on you after we got our samples."
"And you couldn't just clone the tissue samples you needed instead?" he asked skeptically with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not saying you should've made anything smart-enough to do algebra, but…"
"There's… still a great deal about the Quirk Factor we don't understand. To put it as simply as I can, 'freshness counts'. You can't just clone a Quirk Factor and cram it into someone else."
"And yet! You think the guy from the orphanage was a cheap knockoff instead of the real McCoy."
Okay, seriously, was the kid a history buff before coming in here or what? "Real McCoy"? Who talks like that anymore? Is he some sort of time traveler?
"That's a very strong possibility," I stated, lest he catch me spacing out.
"Well, I mean… If it's that important to you, can't you just find someone else with a Quirk like that nutty professor? Not that I wanna get carved up, but if you just put me under for a bit, and actually pay me this time-"
"We would… but 'Healing Quirks' are incredibly rare, even with such a wide pool to draw from," I answered. "Government agencies and criminal organizations alike scoop them up as soon as rumors of 'miracles' start floating about, and even with Mandatory Quirk Registration in this country, people can still slip through the cracks or have their records 'misplaced'," I continued. "There is a faculty member at Yuuei with a Healing Quirk, but she can only accelerate the body's own healing ability, so hers would leave behind scars; and even then I doubt she'd ever consent to harvesting biomass from a living person, no matter how noble the purpose."
"Well, figured I might as well try…" the kid sighed. " . . . Do you need blood? I can probably give that away. The only other fluid I think you'd find useful won't be ready until my, ahem, male genitalia fully descend from my abdominal cavity," he phrased carefully.
"Kid, I deal with Villains all the time. You're allowed to say 'until my balls drop' to this lady."
Seriously, though, what kid talks like this? It's like talking to a grown man in a kid's body.
Heh, maybe he was an "Isekai Yuusha" who happened to wake up in a comatose body~
*AHA*
"So how did things with Smith-san go?" Hitomi asked the next time she came around.
"Okay… ish…" I replied. "I'm not really sure what's going to happen with me now," I said running a hand up my arm. It was faint, but I could feel very slight changes in texture from where Dr. Shiga had cut bits of me away before using his Quirk to, allegedly, re-grow the lost tissue.
It still disgusted me that Dr. Shiga's various psychoses flew under the radar so long…
"Oh…" Hitomi hummed, looking at her shoes somberly before raising her eye to meet mine. " . . . I was against it the entire time, you know. After I found out, I mean. But when they told me about all the lives you could save, I…"
"Don't go thinking you're a sell-out. This is on 'them', not you," I said as she became downcast. "I'm just happy you stuck around long-enough to wake me up from that coma."
"T… Takei-chan…~" Hitomi whimpered, her hands going to her mouth and tears falling from her eye before she reached over and embraced me. "You're too good for this world~!"
'I'm not even from this world…'
I wasn't 100% sure if I should feel guilty over this whole reincarnation thing, but it still gnawed at me like rats.
"Hitomi-sensei…"
"Hm?"
"I…"
" . . . ?"
"Um…"
" . . . ?"
" . . . I'll tell you later," I sighed, chickening out at the last moment.
I'll tell her someday.
Someday…
*AHA*
. . .
Don't judge me. This is a very delicate issue.
On the one hand, Hitomi might think I went into my "Chuuni phase" early which would completely undermine any attempt of mine to get the truth out. I'd seen enough anime and read enough manga to know, even as an American, that the whole "reincarnation" angle is a done-to-death favorite among those with "Middle School Syndrome".
On the other, she might feel completely betrayed that it wasn't her patient that woke up, but a late-20-something man from another universe who reincarnated into the body she'd been taking care of for a year straight.
No matter what I do, it'll change the dynamic of our relationship when I tell her, so my only real choice is to hold off on doing so until I'm one-hundred percent sure what kind of "Reincarnation" it was. The Devil is in the details, after all. Unfortunately, with my PVSD the way it is, I'll have to put up with some rando bugging me for however many days a week the higher-ups in the HPSC are willing to pay him and/or her for to assuage their guilty conscience of failing to properly screen that complete and total nutbar.
Honestly, though, I'm surprised they were so forthcoming with psychological aid. From what I vaguely recall, going to a shrink for anything in 21st century Japan was highly frowned upon since "the nail that stands up gets hammered down". Of course, with the proliferation of Meta Abilities and the various psychoses/complexes that came about from having or not having them, I guess it made sense that the stigma against shrinks in Japan would change over time.
I was thankful for the opportunity, at least. If I let this fester like a mental illness, I really might become a Villain someday. And even if I didn't have a Quirk, the "Meta Knowledge" I brought here with me from my original world could be very dangerous. Bruce Wayne/Batman might not have a "Meta Ability", but his ideas were what made him truly dangerous; so-dangerous in fact he could topple literal gods in most of his comic book runs!
At the very least, the present world I reincarnated into wasn't based on an anime I'd been familiar with, otherwise who knows the kind of damage I could've caused.
Still, something's been nagging on my mind. It's been on the tip of my nose, but I just can't grasp it.
Ah well. If it were "important", I would've remembered it upon Reincarnating.
Tomorrow's problems for tomorrow's me.
*AHA*
The "problem" that I found waiting for yesterday's me the day after was my child psychiatrist, who also had a minor in treating PVSD. Her name was Dr. Wong, and she was completely ordinary; at least in physical appearance. She had smile lines around her lips, square glasses with thick frames, parted black hair, and drab clothing over a yellow blouse. For all intents and purposes she was an average middle-aged Japanese woman you could've found anywhere in pre-Paranormality Japan.
"By the way, racist name."
-is what I had enough tact not to say out loud after finding out her name.
Not only would it be wildly racist to say so, possibly, but the reference would fly right over her head assuming Rick & Morty is also a thing here.
As for the room itself, it wasn't Dr. Wong's dedicated office, and was thus sparsely furnished with the bare essentials. The only thing that really stood out to me was the stereotypical "therapy couch" upholstered in dark brown leather, which I was currently laying down upon.
"Now then, Takehiko-kun, tell me how you're feeling," Dr. Wong began, adjusting her glasses. "About the Villain attack, I mean."
Really? That tired old line?
Fine, whatever. Might as well lay it all out on the table.
"It made me feel hurt… It made me feel inadequate… Like I'm not good-enough."
"Oh, well… That's a very mature response for someone your age," Dr. Wong hummed as she scrutinized me; I assume all the rest of her child patients denied they were scared in any fashion until the cows came home, and that she had to work a lot harder to break this much ground. "Is it wrong of me to assume your past experiences with Villains has somehow galvanized you against the real world?" she continued.
"I mean… It matured me to the point I feel like a late-20-something in a body too-young for it, so you tell me."
Feels good to get some of that off my chest.
"Hm, yes, that's a common result of surviving a Villain attack during your formative years," the woman mused. "Which brings me to my next question; how do you feel about Heroes, since it was completely ordinary people who saved you? I'm not counting Hawks because he only appeared at the very end and you were succinctly traumatized before his arrival."
"I mean… My opinion of Heroes is still pretty neutral. I don't worship the ground they walk on, but I don't hate them either, and I'm not delusional-enough to think that Heroes 'create' the Villains they fight simply by existing, or that if Heroes disappeared people would stop being complete assholes to one another and Villains would stop popping up every five minutes," I returned, a little bitterly. "If anything, I'm honestly more-interested in the Corporate Heroes because their true colors as a Hero shine when it's more-literally their paycheck on the line and they could be dismissed at any moment."
"So your interest lies in the progenitor of the current Heroic Age…" Dr. Wong said holding her chin. "I can't say I'm not surprised. People try to pretend that things have changed from back then, but fights between Heroes and Villains are still largely treated as stage shows for excitable children, or inconveniences for working adults because they're made late for work."
"That is what it feels like, yes," I nodded.
Fact of the matter was, Quirk-related crimes were so woefully common whenever they occurred, that thanks to cellphone cameras and social media, there really wasn't any profit to be made in Hero TV-style programming anymore. The closest you got were the high-profile chases the Ingenium Agency sometimes resolved, or the "Hero Chasers" who put their lives on the line to get in-your-face footage of Hero vs Villain fights.
"Onto the next topic," Dr. Wong said taking notes. "From what I understand, while your nurse's father was fighting that Villain-"
For some reason, I hated how that word seemed to elevate the mentally ill…
"-you asked her younger sister to… douse you in medical ethanol and set you on fire so they could escape while Dr. Shiga was, hypothetically, scrambling to put you out," she said reading what must've been an incident report.
'Shiiiiiiit…!'
"Now, altruism isn't completely dead in this day and age, but what you suggested be done to you… That speaks of a much deeper self-loath-"
"Before you go off thinking I entertain thoughts of self-immolation on a recreational basis or that I have a deathwish, let me make something abundantly clear to you," I said cutting her off, leaning on my elbow and looking her dead in the eye. "Those restraints weren't coming off any time soon, and with Dr. Shiga hopped up on super-steroids, I wasn't exactly swimming in options. I tried stalling, but all that did was buy enough time for ordinary people to show up and put themselves in danger. Hitomi-sensei's dad almost got killed, and if Hawks hadn't come in when he did, I don't know who would've won. Way I saw it, if I was going to die horribly while strapped to an operating table anyway, I might as well die quickly. At least if I burned to death it'd be over quickly, as opposed to the alternative which was basically me roleplaying as Ikezukuri!"
Fucked-up thing about that was, the first time I saw that happen wasn't on a YouTube video; it was in a tragedy manga called trash where some poor woman got prepared like live sushi in front of a bunch of yakuza…
And I didn't even have to go to the Darkweb to find it. That shit was on the regular old internet for everyone to see!
"You do realize in either scenario, you'd have still wound up dead, right?"
"Dead is still dead; it's just a matter of how-long the universe drags it out for," I said flatly. "And at least if my plan panned out, Hitomi and the others could've gotten away with their own lives. I'd rather my last moments not be guilt-ridden with thoughts of how I got other people killed alongside me."
My last death didn't jar me all that much since, as far as I can remember, it was basically instantaneous. If I'd been fatally hit by "Truck-kun" like every other "every other Isekai hero", assuming the hit didn't kill me on-impact, my death would've drug out for however-long it took my body to give up from its injuries and just croak. In the latter case, the trauma similarly would've been more impactful.
In a way, it made sense as to why I was as-callous about self-immolation as I had been; knowing with a glut of certainty that "reincarnating into another world", while-unlikely, was at-the-least possible, did that to you. It was either that, or some sort of brain abnormality the CT Scan hadn't picked up.
Either way, I was pretty sure I was "cracked", which I guess was no big secret after what I'd told Mitsumi to do to me…
"Takehiko-kun… You can't honestly expect to be able to defend yourself from a grown Villain as a child, do you?" Dr. Wong asked sympathetically.
"Doesn't matter whether or not I could've defended myself. Doesn't matter how-close I came to getting turned into Ikezukuri. That guy got a one-way trip to Tartarus and he's never coming up for air again, so the way I see it, I don't need to give that guy a second thought anymore."
"Normally I'd say that isn't a healthy way of handling things… but you are right in a way I suppose. In most circumstances, getting sentenced to Tartarus is a one-way trip."
"Isn't it normal for people to stop thinking of 'Villains' after they get caught and sent to jail?"
"I'm sensing air quotes in your dialogue. Would you care to explain why?"
" . . . It's so stupid. People just arbitrarily… elevating criminals into 'Villains' just because they have a gimmick," I said bitterly, speaking my mind. "Everyone treats it like a spectator sport, never once giving thought to how-easily they could get dragged into a fight, how-quickly something could go horribly wrong. They never stop to think about all the people that aren't saved by Heroes, or even how some of the Heroes they idolize so-much only care for the prestige and couldn't give a rat's ass about saving people when the cameras aren't rolling."
Sure, I thought a real-life world of Heroes and Villains was cool, but that didn't mean I wasn't still critical of it. Hell, I only got more critical of the current system the longer I lived inside of it as an unwilling participant.
In Sternbild, Albert Maverick had orchestrated crimes for one of the earliest-licensed Meta Ability users, Mr. Legend, to stop so that-way those with Meta Abilities would have a future in a world then-dominated by those without Quirks. Without his machinations in the timeline I'd observed paving the way for those with Quirks to find acceptance by the general population, even going as far as to lay down the groundwork for what legally constituted a 'Villain' in this brave new world to give those with and without Quirks a common enemy, the schism between those without Quirks and those that had them, would've only continued to grow until the world reached its breaking point. So basically, if he hadn't done what he did when he did, there's no way the then-current law-abiding society would've even lasted long-enough for Quirk-users to eclipse the Quirkless. Some might see it as evil, but whether he knew it or not, he and Ouroboros had laid down the groundwork for the longest uninterrupted period of peace the world had ever known. To paraphrase Robert Downey Jr. in his role as Tony Stark, Maverick had "successfully privatized world peace" without even realizing it.
Nowadays… With all their posturing and grandstanding and self-aggrandizing, most of the 'Heroes' I saw on TV came off as being no-different than Red Nose from One Punch Man. And trust me, that was a LOWWWWWW bar to straddle and-then-bust-your-nuts-on.
The longer I observed this world and all the issues that went ignored, the more this system's flaws showed through the veneer.
People think that "peace" is something they're entitled to, a paid-for house they get to live in rent-free, but that isn't true in the slightest. This world's current society, which seems so-sturdily-built on the backs of Heroes and Sidekicks and Support Companies, and even on the backs of the Villains the aforementioned fought, is just a temporary resting place; a hotel we checked into for vacation that we must one day check out of. No matter how we cling to it, the moment we stop fighting for it, is the moment the check comes due…
I could only pray that this world didn't wear me down until the point I became so-disenfranchised with it, that I did something monumentally stupid like 'joining the Dark Side'…
*AHA*
After that, while she scribbled the session's observation on her notepad, Dr. Wong gave me what sounded like a canned speech meant for survivors of Villain attacks geared toward soliciting future sessions while glazing over the exorbitant fees.
However, since it wasn't me paying the tab, I just decided to tell her that future sessions were still on the table, and went on my way.
"All for One…"
Come to think of it, Naomasa almost shat a brick when I placed "one for all" and "all for one" together in a sentence. But if "All for One" was basically the "Demon Lord" in a world of Heroes and not just a line from a dead Frenchman's book from hundreds of years ago, what the hell was "One for All" supposed to be? Some kind of horrifying weapon like the Soul Cannon? Something that inexorably exhausted the life of the user for the sake of others?
I suppose in a way comic book heroism itself was like the Soul Cannon, with guys like Peter Parker/Spider-Man putting so much of themselves into their "work" they neglected their real lives and suffered for it. Sure, it was meant to be "inspiring", a man giving of himself for the greater good no-matter how much it set them back, but you could only watch a chronically-miserable guy wallow about in a shitty apartment with no girlfriend for so-long before you got sick of it.
Unfortunately, it seems like that particular brand of heroism died with Kotetsu Kaburagi's generation… True, the commercialization and privatization of super-powered law enforcement made the world the safest it had ever been, with Japan having a world-record low of 6% compared to the rest of the world's 20%. But at the same time, what it meant to actually be a Hero had all but vanished from the public eye thanks to a system that actively rewarded selfishness and punished altruism.
"Well, it's not like there's anything I can do about it."
Ideals without power are a joke, but power without ideals are hollow. Problem for me was I had no power, and thus nothing to weigh in on things.
Hopefully this world had some kind of "chosen one" to save it, because I've read enough comics to know that this right here, it won't last. And knowing my shitty luck, I'll live juuuuust long-enough for the next Civil War, Secret War, Identity Crisis, or Superman Theory to cause this whole house of cards to come tumbling down.
Christ, I really am cracked, aren't I?
"Takei-kun~!"
"Hm~"
"How was today's therapy? Did everything turn out okay?" Hitomi asked sweetly as she walked up to me, a cherubic smile on her face.
" . . . "
Well… I suppose there's some good to be found in this world.
"Yeah. I think I'm going to be okay."
Chapter 10
"Smith-san, Takei-kun is not doing okay!"
"What do you mean?" Kuroko asked, eager for any excuse to take a break from her mountains of paperwork.
As long as she was "consulting" with someone from the HPSC's medical branch "about an ongoing matter", no-one could accuse her of slacking off~
"He's been putting up a strong front for me, and he's been going to his therapy and rehab, but… He doesn't smile anymore. He thinks I don't notice, but I do. His expression… It's completely hollow whenever he thinks I'm not looking. What's worse is, I think I'm the only one to notice. The only one who cares."
"Well, he did narrowly survive another Villain attack. I mean, seriously, three in one lifetime…?"
"Sure, he survived… but I don't think he thinks this place is 'safe' anymore…" Hitomi whimpered. "Takehiko…"
Wow, if she were using his actual name, it had to be serious.
"He… He's stopped watching Hero TV. It's his favorite thing in the world, but now… All he does is train, eat, and sleep."
"What, like some kind of health nut?"
"No, more like an anime protagonist."
"Oof, that is bad…"
And it really was. In a world of Meta Abilities where you could find "anime protagonists" with their own unique power on every street corner, to have a very real person dedicate their every waking moment and impulse to physical conditioning and nothing else, that was truly a sign that someone had reached their limit.
Hell, surviving even one Villain attack was enough to make someone want to dedicate every fiber of their being into becoming a Hero, so for someone to endure that threefold, yet have no hope of becoming a Hero, or even the desire to…!
"We need to get him out of here," Hitomi spoke up, knocking her from her internal monologue. "With Dr. Shiga out of the picture, now is the perfect opportunity. If they manage to vet another person with a medicinal Quirk, they might not ever let him go. The time to act, is now."
"Well, it's nice to see you have a little backbone~" Smith hummed. "Don't worry, I'm sure all of us on our end will be able to think of something."
"Please… just… We need to save him. We have to-"
"-because no-one else will," Smith finished with a nod.
*AHA*
So… I was finally allowed to leave whatever floor I'd been being kept on for the past year.
I still couldn't leave the building wholesale, but it was implied that as long as I kept my mouth shut, I'd be able to move about with the other patients. The majority were Heroes, no-one I knew from the news, but the rest were either related to Heroes who "pulled some strings" to get them the best care in the country, or had been injured in a Villain attack in such a way that it'd be embarrassing to the HPSC if they became motivated to talk openly about certain organizational flaws to the media.
Stepping out of my own little gilded cage for the first time, I was able to see for certain the sheer diversity of Meta Abilities in this world. Not so much in what was being used, but listening to patients dick-measure about their Quirks, whose were stronger, whose were "cooler", or seeing just-how-far Heteromorphic abilities could warp the human body…
I mean seriously, Quirks that made you look like clowns, or robots, or… Lego blocks…?! I mean, sure, I already had some idea that a number of Quirks would purely vestigial like in the X-Men, but honestly, why would having a Quirk that gave you a head like a Lego block be considered 'better' than no Quirk at all?
For the time being I chose to ignore everyone, putting up with them as-little as possible. I'd read books in the library and take my meals in whatever private corner I could find, but what really caught my attention was the private gym. The name "Silverman" stirred something in my memory, but like many of them, that too was muddled.
Didn't matter, I finally had something I could pour all my nervous energy into, and the buffet of top-of-the-line gym equipment was more than able to accommodate.
"Wow, look at him go!"
"What kind of Quirk do you think he has?"
"Gotta be strength."
"No way, looks like high-speed punching to me."
"Oh! Like the High-Speed Hero: O'Clock!"
I tried to tune out the peanut gallery's speculation on what my non-existent Quirk was, disgusted but utterly numb to the fact that people put so-much importance on Quirks, that the idea of hard work existing independent of one was completely foreign to them. I wasn't even doing anything all that special, just punching the sandbag as fast as my body would allow.
I may or may not have been pretending I was beating Dr. Shiga within an inch of his life.
Listening to them prattle on, I could somewhat understand where anti-Meta comic book organizations like The Purifiers and Cadmus and so-on were coming from. Not about the whole genocide angle, but wanting ordinary people to not be considered "lesser" by people whose abilities were completely random.
These people were so arrogant, their noses turned up at anything without a Meta Ability, that it was a miracle the Quirkless population hadn't flat-out revolted yet, or just hunted them to extinction when they had the chance.
Not that I would've advocated for shit like Talentless Nanato occur, nor would I be cool with an organization like the Creature Rejection Cult which I still hated with a passion. As far as I knew, there wasn't any mainstream Anti-Quirk organization out there, and hate crimes by the Quirkless against their polar opposites were a rarity. Of course, between the Quirk Singularity Theory and the Quirk Extinction Theory, the Quirkless could very well get their day in court once the dust settled.
But hell, I was still banking on the complete and utter collapse of Hero Society predating any hypothetical of that far-flung nature.
Refocusing on what I was doing, hands brought up to my face, as I planted my feet and started to weave back and forth, I struck out at the sandbag with a deluge of hooks that made it bounce from side to side, a steady *POW* *POW* *POW* filling the air.
"OOOH! That must be his future Super Move! The 'Figure Eight Punch'!" another bellowed.
I hate this world and everyone in it…
*MHA*
"Smith-san, I need a status report," Hitomi said into her phone as Takehiko walked out on her, likely to the gym if his clothes were any indicator.
"I brought it up with the others, and we've been workshopping a few ideas."
"Well, tell them to double-time it, because I've been doing some digging on my end, and our window of opportunity will close in just short of a week."
"Oh? What did you find out?"
"The HPSC has been putting out feelers for a replacement for Dr. Shiga after he got shipped off to Tartarus, and according to the head of the Foreign Affairs Office, they're in negotiations with someone in America who might allow them to resume Takehiko's ongoing biological studies."
"Oh? And how'd you dig something like that up~?"
"I… had to bat my eye at the old pervert, show a little skin…" Hitomi shuddered in revulsion. "He didn't get his hands on me, but it's both amazing and mortifying how much confidential information a man will let slip if you undo an extra button or hike up your skirt…"
The man's eyes also never drifted above her neckline from the moment she entered the room, but she didn't need to burden Ms. Smith with that bit of dirty laundry…
"Well, you know how-pricey these medicinal Quirk users are. The HPSC can't let it slip why they need a Quirk like that before he's in the country, so they will take their time of it so they don't tip their hand. Not to mention, with Stars & Stripes growing in prominence, American immigration into Japan has been decreasing bit by bit, so anyone who does is under greater scrutiny."
"So with all this in mind… six days?"
"Let's make it 'five'," Smith replied. "I'll consult legal, see what our options are."
"Smith… You're 'legal'…" Hitomi deadpanned.
" . . . Fuck. Well, guess I'd better get working then. You keep working on Takehiko-kun, get him ready to leave without letting him know we're getting him ready to leave. If we tip our hand too soon, there's no telling what the President will do to us."
"Please, hurry. I don't know how much longer I can let him suffer like this…"
*MHA*
Hitomi had been acting strangely the past couple of days. Asking me what kind of food I wanted to get as soon as I was out of the hospital, what kind of school I'd like to go to, what tourist spots in Japan I'd like to visit, what I'd do with my 'own room'…
Part of me thinks she's plotting something, but given I'm surrounded by plots and intrigue, and in a world of superheroes that just screams- "There's always another secret." -, I could just-as-easily be "jumping at shadows". The fact that I'd checked whatever paper money I could find for vaguely Nordic watermarks may've also been proof that I was digging too deeply into this world's "dark side" to be considered healthy…
At the very least, I had a number of theories on that front to work on; A) Ouroborous didn't exist in this reality, B) Ouroborous did exist but not "domestically", or C) Ouroborous, if the aforementioned A)/B) were-applicable, was smart-enough in the modern day to not tag paper money with their 'gang sign' like in the version of Sternbild I'd seen.
When I wasn't leering at every dark shadow searching for psychotic Villains to run away from, I dedicated the whole of my time to physical conditioning. I mean sure, I still loved the old-school Heroes like Wild Tiger, Origami Cyclone, and Dragon Kid… but I just couldn't find it in myself to enjoy watching them fight long-dead Villains and "Villains" anymore. Not when there were only so many hours in the day I could make any real use of before my… this, body, gave out from exhaustion…
I never really talked to anyone in the gym, and if that made me come across as antisocial or standoffish… that was fine with me. I didn't intend on ever working with any of these people, not in their field of profession, and arrogant SOBs like them made for poor company anyway. Hell, everyone down here tended to be so self-centered, I doubt they even noticed.
The sun had already begun to set by the time my body started flagging the onset of genuine fatigue, but since Hitomi and the other nurses kept foisting a wheelchair onto me, I figured as long as I could wheel myself back to my room, I could at least push myself to that level of exhaustion.
As I rewatched the clips on "YouTube Archive" I'd flagged for myself, trying to get the Dempsey Roll right, I felt eyes on me, though then again, maybe it was my wanton paranoia making my hair stand on end.
It wasn't that I intended to get into fistfights if shit ever went pear-shaped again, I just wanted to make sure if I did get caught up in any comic book bullshit, I'd at least go down swinging; leave behind a black eye or two as-well-as "a beautiful corpse" as the saying goes. As for why I was using boxing and MMA videos as reference material, I couldn't exactly ask for martial arts training; not in this day and age as a Quirkless person, that'd just raise too many red flags since the modern MMA scene was dominated by Heteromorphs, and boxing by remote-controlled robots like in Real Steel; though in the case of the latter, it was centralized to North America.
No, as much as it sucked, if I ever wanted to be able to defend myself, no one was going to help me, but me.
And sure, Jack Dempsey had been dead for over two centuries, and his clips were largely in black and white, but it didn't change the fact that his knockouts were among the most-beautiful to be found in the back-when times. And it doesn't matter what Quirk a person has; if I can make their brain 'rattle', even a little, at the very least I can make an opening for myself to haul ass.
As I went through repetition after repetition, chugging water from the cooler to stave off the near-crippling exhaustion as much as I could, that hair-raising feeling got too-irritating to ignore, and I rounded on the purported source of my unease.
Sitting back against the wall, a gnarled wooden cane in hand, was an extremely short elderly man with heavy wrinkles and a scrawny build. He had a light complexion, brown eyes, and spiky grey hair styled short with a trimmed beard. His attire consisted of hospital scrubs much like mine, though it seemed like even a Child's Small was too big for the guy, as-shrunken with age as he'd become. Hell, his feet didn't even reach the floor anymore.
"Who're you?" I asked of the very Yoda-like man; that was just the sort of vibe he gave off.
"Torino," the old man replied hopping from his seat, his cane tapping loudly on the floor as he hobbled over. "It's rare, you know," he hummed aloud. "Finding any sort of work ethic independent of a Quirk I mean."
"Yeah, I figured," I muttered, since in all the time I'd come to the gym, everyone had some form of Quirk, no matter how minimal. It was like every Quirkless person I'd met stopped caring after they were four years old, while even the smallest amount of work was enough to inflate the ego of a Quirk user.
Not that I felt too bad for the Quirkless population. If they've all "given up" on themselves, that's on them, not me. Let them wallow in their misery, or pursue unrealistic dreams, but me? I intend to let my labor define me, not whatever superpower I do or don't have. And being Quirkless is only a pitfall close to big Hero Academies like Yuuei or Shiketsu where elitism was the norm; both were places I'd avoid like the plague as long as I could help it.
"You know, you actually remind me of one of my students," Torino idly hummed. "He wanted to become a Hero more than anything, even when everyone told him 'no'."
"And let me guess, he either died trying, or got some bullshit power because he was a 'late bloomer'," I spat.
"You don't think very highly of Quirks, do you?" the old man hummed with a raised brow.
"Quirks? No. No, I don't have a problem with those; Quirks are just a tool," I said shaking my head ruefully. "It's the people," I spat. "The day you're born, it's a Russian Roulette to see if 'Super-Jesus' will grant you some awesome power, and if he thinks you're not worth it, well… You could be a successful businessman or a brilliant scientist, but you'll always be considered second-rate to someone half-as-good-as you as long as they have a Quirk and you don't. Hell, even having a damn Lego block for a head is considered 'awe inspiring'," I spat.
"Well… I won't deny that isn't somewhat true…" the old man admitted.
"Honestly, if some huge scandal or something utterly destroys the current system… I sure as hell won't be too broken up over it. A rotten tree can only bear rotten fruit, no matter how much you pretty it up with trimming or fresh fertilizer or flowerbeds. And someday, the hatchet man will come to knock it all down," I huffed, idly wondering in the back of my mind why I was trying to validate my viewpoint to this complete stranger.
Maybe it was the whole Yoda thing…
"Yes, well, hopefully I'll be dead before that happens and it can be someone else's problem," the man called Torino said adjusting his grip on his cane.
An interesting response. Most of the time whenever I got riled up and went off on a tangent like this, people acted like I had blasphemed against their god and deity, or just thought I was practicing to become a news pundit; or at the very least that I was being sarcastic. That this guy wasn't looking at me like he wanted to melt my face with laser eyes, had me thinking maybe he was a retired Hero who'd seen enough of the world to find the cracks in the veneer, and was too fed up with something broken to bother defending it anymore.
" . . . So what're you in for?" I asked making small-talk.
"Oh, my arthritis' been actin' up, joints ain't what they used to be, but hey, figured I'd actually use these benefits I'd paid into for so long before I croaked," the old man shrugged as he walked up to my punching bag of choice. Squinted eyes appraised the slick smear overlapping the vampiric face I'd crudely drawn in marker on its white vinyl surface, and then to my fighting implements of choice. "You know that isn't good for you, right?"
"I'm a fast healer," I grunted, ignoring the ache, burn, and tingle of my split knuckles as my fingers stuck together.
Hell, half the time when this happened, people assumed it was some sort of "Liquid Armor" or some other nonsense, and they let me be. I wasn't about to disparage them of their jackassery, no skin off my nose. And as long as this body could heal from minor wounds like this overnight, I might as well take advantage.
"Sure, when you're young, but if you're trying to impress a girl, scars can only get you so far," Torino huffed. " . . . That look in your eyes. I take it you've had a brush with death. And recently at that."
"Something like that," I returned, clenching and unclenching my fists. "I can't count on anybody to save me, but me."
"That's a dangerous mentality to have nowadays; and crime's the lowest it's been in years."
"You saying I'm wrong?"
"Now I never said that, bouya," Torino shrugged. "Still, you really should take better care of yourself. That pretty nurse of yours has been skulking after you the past half-hour, and she looks worried sick."
Looking up over my shoulder, I caught the hint of a jewel-colored eye as its owner slipped back from the doorframe with an adorable squeak, ebony hair and that same jewel-like eye peeking out to look at me a few seconds later.
" . . . Hey," I sighed, my gut twisting in knots as Hitomi came up to me with an aid kit in her hands and a hurt look in her eye, disinfectant already at-the-ready.
*AHA*
"So… I see you've been training," Hitomi hummed as she wrapped my hands.
"Yeah."
"You've been working very hard, you know."
"The only way I know how."
"Just… take care of yourself, okay?"
"I always do."
"No. You don't."
Ouch.
"I just… I'm just… tired. Tired of 'villain this', 'villain that'. Peace of mind's the only 'peace' I'm ever gonna get…"
"There are people who will help you."
"Yeah. And look how well that turned out."
" . . . "
Damn.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to come out that way."
Hey, I wasn't too proud to admit when I was wrong.
And out of the many things Quirkless people could be nowadays, 'proud', was rarely one of them.
"Just… try to hold on a little longer," Hitomi pleaded.
*AHA*
'Just try to hold on a little longer.'
What the heck did that mean?
Eh, probably some BS they told you in this world to keep you going to therapy.
Hey, as long as I wasn't footing the bill…
"You're wasting a lot of energy, you know. Too many unnecessary movements."
This guy again…
"I'm not one of your trainees, so why do you care?"
"Call it nostalgia," the old man hummed as he hobbled over to me, tapping at my calves with his cane. "Your footwork's shoddy too. Self-teaching only works for Quirks, unless you happen by someone with the exact same ability who's been using it longer. You wanna learn how to fight with your fists, how to do it the right way, that takes effort."
"Why're you still here anyway?"
"Eh… Higher-ups want to keep me around for a while, so they're paying for the whole nine yards. Bloodwork, CT Scan, the kit and kaboodle," he shrugged as he walked around me, eyeing my stance.
" . . . Was this student of yours really such a big deal?"
"Would you care even if I told you?"
"Honestly… No," I shrugged. "Wild Tiger… Now that was a Hero worth idolizing."
"Wild Tiger… That's an old name I haven't heard in a long time…"
"What, you a history buff too?"
"Something like that. Toshi was a bit of a muscle-head with a lot of talent, but little else, so I used the old Hero TV recordings as a baseline for how he should, and shouldn't use his ability. Production quality back then was way better than what Hero Chasers can get with their phones and the like."
Well, at least one other person could see what I saw in Wild Tiger. On the off-chance I ever did become a Hero, I'd have to make that name mean something again.
Of course, I only envisioned that happening if I stumbled into the sort of "Isekai bullshit" that grants me some awesome power that's either OP from the get-go, or has the potential to become OP after a lot of work. And I didn't count my TTD because its "mechanical limits" were already firmly established.
"Music was nice too."
Won't argue with him there.
"I won't be a proper fighter. If anything I'll just learn to fight dirty."
"Well, don't think of it as 'cheating'. Think of it as 'winning'. Don't be afraid of throwing mud in their eye, even if you have'ta get your hands dirty."
"Is that really something you should be telling an impressionable child?"
"Why should I care? I'm not your grandparent."
" . . . Fair point," I shrugged. "So, what other pieces of wisdom do you got for me?"
*AHA*
"Takehiko-kun?" Hitomi asked, stepping into my room that evening.
"Hm?" I hummed, looking up from my refresher materials to see her smiling broadly. "What's got you in such a good mood?"
"I have something for you! Something… left for you by your parents…" she said hauling in a heavy trunk on a dolly. It looked like an old steamer covered in faded red leather and metal trimmings that'd desaturated with age.
'Your parents.'
'My', parents…?
No, not mine. 'His'.
"You know, I've been meaning to ask…" I hummed awkwardly, wondering how to bring this particular subject up. "Do I have any sort of… inheritance, waiting for me when I leave?"
"Most of it… Most of it was sold in an estate sale after they were killed by that Villain so you wouldn't inherit their debts," Hitomi answered. "This, the stuff that was yours, was earmarked and set aside for when you left… left the orphanage," she finished awkwardly, setting the trunk down with a grunt.
"Hmmm…" I hummed as I looked at the trunk, the gears in my head turning.
In a way, what had happened to his parents' material assets and estate following that Villain attack made sense. If a Villain kills a kid's parents but that kid inherited the parents' debts (in the absence of any extended family that could help shoulder aforementioned burden), then they're more-likely to become a Villain later on in the future; on account of the system fucking them over. Since Villains were as much a product of "society" as they were the poor decision making of "the individual", then it made sense why government relief such as this had become so-important, since a child couldn't really be expected to square away their own parents' tab.
Or at least that was my speculation on it. In a world where anyone from 80% of the populous could become a dangerous super-criminal with a wildly unpredictable Meta Ability, it only made sense to stem the tide as much as possible; even if the current government policies were nothing more than a 'Dutch Boy' patching up the real problems that went on being ignored.
The me that was, well me, had no real attachment to anything that belonged to my host body. However, the innate curiosity of myself, and something much deeper than that, compelled me to walk over to the old steamer. Seeing that there was a lock on the front, Hitomi frantically scrambled in her coat before withdrawing an old key and offering it to me, the lock opening a moment later with little fuss.
The left half of the steamer trunk was dominated by a large wooden block like Mahogany with a handle on top and brass case locks, the interior of the steamer trunk padded to hold it snugly in place. The right half of the steamer trunk, separated by a dividing wall, was filled with a number of personal effects, though the wooden block on the left interested me more.
Pulling the case free and setting it on the nearby table, I blinked in nostalgia as I beheld something that strongly reminded me of the scene in Toy Story 2 where the old man who played chess with himself for was called in to repair Woody after his arm finally came off; the dimensions weren't 100% identical, but the form and the function were. Opening it up revealed an array of tools and supplies not dedicated to the playing of chess or the repair of collectible toys, but timepieces as an array of clockwork parts revealed themselves to me. Mainsprings, wheel trains, escapements, oscillators, and so-on in numerous shapes, sizes, colors, and materials arrayed themselves before me, as well as a clamp dedicated to holding a watch casing down as the inner workings were meticulously assembled.
"Whoaaaa! So many tools and moving parts!" Hitomi awed, a lance of pain shooting me between the eyes like a carpentry nail as silt gave way to old, now-currently new, memories.
'That's right, my-I mean, Takehiko's parents… They were Horologists… They made, maintained, and fixed watches and clocks for everyone from the working man to the wealthy…' I thought as flashes of formerly-lost memories came to the surface.
The only thing that stopped me from accepting them as my own memories, was that my-I mean Takehiko's parents, looked completely different from the parents that reared and raised me before I "reincarnated".
As long as I could pick Heteromorphs out of the crowd in the memories swirling around upstairs, it was easy to differentiate between my original, and 'new' memories.
I idly wondered if this is what the Flash felt like after the first Flashpoint, having to juggle between memories from different timelines.
Turning toward the personal effects in the other side of the trunk, the first thing that caught my eye was a wooden case with a glass lid, the name Tokei etched in the top and stylized like a brand name, hovering over two rows a half-dozen long of various watches, the circular unadorned watch faces giving way to more intricate watch casings of more-varying shapes and themes as it went from left to right.
The next item was a fine crystalline trophy resembling a grandfather clock with gold adornments, an actual timepiece encased within and dutifully ticking away. Accompanying it was a framed picture of a younger-looking Takehiko Tokei accepting aforementioned award from an elderly man with white hair and beard, a line of competition-grade watches and timepieces on display across the table in the background. Off to the side were a collection of disgruntled-looking Horologists twice Takehiko's age who tried, and failed, to hide that they utterly hated being upstaged in such a way by someone so young.
Huh. 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.'
"I did a bit of digging. Back before the orphanage, you were on the path to become a prodigal Horologist like your parents," Hitomi spoke up. "Even won that big contest right… right before…" she trailed off. "I thought if I had this brought to you, it'd help you feel more like yourself."
This… It was a touching gesture, truly! But… All it did was make my heart sink.
Hitomi thought that by doing this she was giving me back a piece of my past… but all it did was hammer home the fact that by "reincarnating", I'd in fact stolen a future from someone else. Someone else that could've just-as-easily or even not-so-easily, woken up on their own if I hadn't pre-empted them.
Something most of the Isekai sub-genre gleefully ignored…
"Huhn…?" I blinked as I 'felt' the silt in my head giving way, something new-to-me, technically-old, bubbling to the surface. "What…?"
"Ah, Takei-kun, are you okay!" Hitomi cried running up to me as I wavered.
"Y-Yeah… I'm… fine…" I murmured, feeling something tugging at my attention that hadn't before. "Hitomi… that watch…" I said feeling my eyes drift.
"What, this?" she blinked holding up a slender wrist, a watch with a triangular casing and a pink leather strap hanging upon it. "Oh, Mitsumi-chan gave it to me as a gift a while back. I've been meaning to get it fixed, but-"
Without even realizing what I was doing, my palm turned up to her, what I assumed to be an expectant look upon my face as I eyed the tiny watch hands; delicate, but inert.
" . . . Oh! I see!" she blinked her mono-eye widely, delicate fingers undoing the tiny buckle and setting the small timepiece free. "Here."
Like I were a passenger in my own body, it seemed to move with a mind of its own, taking hold of the timepiece and walking toward the toolbox I'd set on the table a minute before. Undoing the brass case locks and unfurling the multi-tier trays once more, flipping the clamp into position from the case's interior I set the timepiece firmly into place with a practiced hand. The phantom pain continuing as practiced hands that only recently became my own got to work, I could only spectate as I got to work on the little piece of finery, the delicate clockmaker tools like an extension of my fingers.
Popping the back of the watch casing free, disassembling the parts from their places, after coming upon a piece that wasn't where it belonged, rattling against the opposite of the watch face with a tooth missing, I set it to the side and fished for a replacement in the compartmentalized trays above the work station. An equivalent replacement found a few moments later, with machine-like precision my body began to reassemble the timepiece in earnest. Winding the final spring and affixing the back of the casing in place, pressing it to my ear, a relieved sigh left my lips from some deeply-forgotten place as the minute *tick*tick*tick* of a timepiece freshly repaired met my ears.
And if anyone ever accused me of humming "The Cleaner" by Randy Newman while I was working, I'd call them a big fat liar.
"Whoa! That was so fast!" Hitomi awed as my body held the timepiece out for her to take, the tiny hands in sync with its bigger relative hanging on the wall. "You really are a champion clock-maker!"
"Not me… Not anymore…" I returned somberly as I carefully put the tools I'd used away, closing up my work station and returning it to its innocuous block-like state. "I'm… I'm not that person… anymore…"
"But you can be again!" she insisted. "If I took this to a shop, they might make me wait a week, or charge me more than the watch was worth. But you… You did something amazing today."
"Not that amazing…" I muttered. 'And it certainly wasn't 'me' who did it…' I thought as my hands ached with a phantom pain, even though they were still attached to my body.
" . . . Even if you don't remember everything about your past, your body still remembers," Hitomi said as she went through my-Takehiko's effects, drawing something forth from it. "More than that, the love your parents have for you… it isn't gone. It's still here. Right, here," she said pressing a finger to my chest, before laying in my palms another framed picture.
This one was a family portrait. A man, a woman, their child. They were finely dressed, but not in clothes more-expensive 'than most people's apartments'. There was love there, a moment frozen in time… yet none of it belonged to me.
It belonged to the little boy who would never wake up. Whose body I wore, even now, like an ill-fitting suit I couldn't quite get comfortable in…
"If you don't want to become a clock-maker again, if you want to do something new with this 'second lease' you've gotten… That's fine too," she said reassuringly. "But… don't act like your past, like your origin, is lost to you. When I look in your eyes with my own, I see more than most do; I like to think that by giving up my depth perception, what I got in return was the power to see into people's hearts. When you first woke up, I saw someone that was lost, panicked, confused… As I continued to care for you, I saw someone who wanted to make the most of the life they'd taken back for themselves. What I'll see in the future… Maybe it isn't what you would've wanted before, but it doesn't mean it's any lesser. No matter what, as long as you're alive, you can always make new memories; for yourself, and for those that aren't with us anymore."
It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out she was talking about her own mother as a way of making me feel better about my own. And all that talk about gaining something 'in exchange' for the depth perception she lacked… It made me realize that not having something everyone else took for granted, literally and metaphorically… it had a way of creating something new. Something different. If Hitomi grew up with two eyes instead of one, would she have still become the person she is today?
I never took her as one to spout philosophy, yet… her words rung true somehow. Resonated with something deep down inside.
Turning to a stack of papers among Takehiko's effects, leafing through them to find a complex watch schematic and then turning back to the tool case set out on the table, I realized something.
Just because I'd reincarnated into someone else's body, didn't mean I had to let the past die. Even if it wasn't mine, it was still a past I could make my own. Like I remember Shirou Emiya saying to Gilgamesh…
"Everything here is a fake. However, there's nothing that says a fake can't rival the real thing."
In doing this, in doing what he had been good at…
It was the only way to keep the original Takehiko Tokei alive. And there wasn't any rule saying I couldn't adopt that origin story as my own origin.
Even if the future I strode toward wasn't as originally intended.