-Enrico Pucci-
Enrico Pucci was dying. There was no doubt about it, even if most of his senses had failed him at this point and he had already emptied his lungs with his last words. He couldn't see anymore, the capillaries inside his eyes having burst like fractured pipelines, nor could he feel his hands or feet. Yet he knew that only a few feet away from him was the child, Emporio, standing over him, accompanied by a very old acquaintance. Pucci's skull yielded under the immense pressure of Weather Report's fist, the studded knuckles grinding the bone into shards and the shards into dust and pulping precious brain matter like an overripe peach.
He had failed. He had been killed before returning to the Kennedy Space Centre. It was over.
Time seemed to slow down in that millionth of a second between earthly existence and oblivion. Ironic, considering the nature of his newborn power, but Pucci was willing to put aside a moment for some self-reflection. It was the last moment he would ever have on Earth, after all, so why not put it to use doing something that never failed to make him feel clearer, purer, more in tune with his faith? Perhaps it would quell the wild emotions within him a spell.
His first thoughts were, unsurprisingly, of the material world. This had always been somewhat embarrassing for the priest, for who should be better suited for turning to the spiritual, especially in a time like this, than a clergyman? Ah, well, it didn't matter. He'd get there eventually. Like he always did.
Thoughts of what was happening to his body assailed his mind like the locusts that plagued Egypt, buzzing obnoxiously and drowning out everything else in a sea of chirping, rasping noise. It hurt, easily more than any other physical pain he had experienced in his thirty nine years. And while Pucci never claimed to be a gambling man, he was willing to wager that the cocktail of humiliation and impotent rage surging through him didn't help the situation either.
The priest was fortunate, then, that the oxygen had already numbed his brain so. Or perhaps Weather's fist finally smashed something important. Even the searing pain in his lungs from inhaling so much of the poisonous gas, much like his life, was fading. Perhaps his last moments would at least be spent out of agony. A parting gift from fate, one might call it.
Fate. He never did manage to overcome it, did he? In the end he had only ever managed to rail hopelessly against it, and the notion swiftly converted much of his anger into sorrow, or perhaps disappointment. He had sacrificed so much to get to where he had been scant moments ago, a hair's width from his ultimate goal, when everything had been snatched away from him by the stone grip of that cruel, indomitable Titan named Destiny, just as DIO had before him. Just as Perla had. Defeat welled within him in a great geyser, though not specifically towards the blond child crushing his head. Instead it was more of a general feeling inspired by a lifetime of personal failures.
Would DIO forgive him for the failure of botching his most important plan, the heaven he had wanted Pucci to inherit? The ageless immortal had told Pucci of his long confinement beneath the rolling waves of the Atlantic, of the epiphanies he had had and the discoveries he had made. All of that had gone to waste the second Pucci entered the ghost room, allowing Emporio to spring his final gambit and reduce the heaven for humanity that had been so close to a mere pipe dream that would now never come to fruition. Would he even get to see DIO in the afterlife, at that? It was no secret to any who associated themselves with the vampire that his way of life and a fair few of his philosophies could not be said to align with God's teachings, so could his dear friend be paying penance in hell? Pucci would have shuddered at the notion. If that were true, what would become of his own afterlife after a lifetime of being the man DIO was closest to, the man who had decided to cut corners in his worship and commit sins even if they were for a greater good?
Had God's house and its residents even survived the reset?
Pucci had a theory - the more extraordinary you were, the crueller destiny was likely to be to you. An excellent example, he always felt, was Jesus Christ himself. When Jesus was nailed upon the cross he bore the burden of fate, as did Mother Mary when she lost her son. They were incredible people who touched the lives of many, even two thousand years after their time, and so were victim to a most gruesome set of challenges. By contrast, though there were various exceptions, the average person would probably experience nothing of the sort. How many revolutionaries and visionaries could claim to have had quiet, peaceful lives?
How wonderful it would have been to be one of the lucky ones, perhaps a few crimson fibres caught around their bodies here or there. Unfortunately for him, he and those around him seemed to be completely bound by them as gnats in a cobweb, the very nature of their lives demanding a story equal parts extraordinary and tragic. Wes' kidnapping, Perla's suicide, DIO's murder, could all be attributed to the unbreakable red strings that guided everyone in the world to some extent or another. The red strings he had devoted his life to defeating, and help others defeat their own in the process, had become his noose after all. How sickeningly poetic.
'If this is my fate, if this is gravity… then I curse it.'
And then the world was still.
…
For a while, at least. Then the world was red.
Red, everywhere. Reds of every imaginable shade bled from the surroundings, flooding his eyes with offensive scarlet hues. The onslaught of colour resurrected all of his senses and infiltrated them, painting them with bizarre, eldritch sensations that culminated as a redness that could not possibly be imagined by mortal men. He tried to squeeze his eyelids shut and push on them with his fingers, to rip his very eyes from their sockets, to do anything that would stop the assault on his vision. Alas, his body - or rather, his corpse - refused to move even the slightest bit. There was nothing he could do to escape, Pucci realised. He was powerless, a mere slave to this torture, doomed to a fate of descending deeper and deeper into the crimson nightmare. Surely, he had gone to Hell.
After a time that Pucci wasn't sure was more like a few seconds or a hundred lifespans over, the swimming shades began to disperse slightly. While scarlet, vermillion and various other shades of red were still the dominant colour of the environment, making up the entirety of the vast, swirling vortex of a sky above him, different colours had started to pierce through the monochromatic veil and take various forms around him. Had he not been sent to Hell? Where was he?
He appeared to be staring up at a cheaply painted ceiling with visibly sloppy brush marks, in the centre of which was a lampshade decorated with the impossibly wide smile of a blond man with a face made of sharp angles. For whatever reason, looking at it for too long evoked the strangest feeling of disturbance.
Slowly sitting up as the last vestiges of redness faded, Pucci found that the rest of the small space was decorated with similar images of the same character. Through the darkness surrounding him he could see other faces here and there, but this grinning visage was definitely the most popular by a mile. Posters, figurines and every other imaginable breed of memorabilia were crammed wherever they would fit. There was even a full-body cardboard cutout poking out of a closet that fully displayed the man's inhumanly muscular figure and ridiculous costume. He knew that athleticism was an important factor in maintaining a healthy psyche and he could appreciate a good physique, but this was borderline insane. Whoever owned this room obviously had a very unhealthy obsession.
Before he could inspect anything further, the door a few feet in front of him swung open with a crash and revealed a short, stocky woman wearing a plain-looking red cardigan and long, green hair pulled in a ponytail. Panic was written over her face in the form of pouring sweat and wide eyes.
She rushed to his side and, to Pucci's boundless disbelief, snatched his hands up in a clammy grip that managed to be simultaneously vice-like and gentle and launched a torrent of foreign foreign words directly into his face. Despite his best efforts, the confused Father understood only the basics and got a mangled string of words for his trouble.
"Honey! I hear shouting! Okay? Hurt bad you, need hospital?!"
Pucci sat dumbfounded at the stout lady, unable to form even a basic sentence through his bafflement. Who was this woman, and why was she holding him and shouting in a barely understandable tongue? He had never met her in his life! Yet she was acting so peculiarly, treating Enrico like her own child that had just been grievously injured. A watery, salty film of anxiety brimmed at the corners of her eyes, threatening to spill over, and her chest heaved in and out as hyperventilation took control of her lungs.
More than unnerved at the bizarre events unfolding before his eyes, Pucci snatched his hand away and summoned Made In Heaven, the platinum-coloured Stand hovering over his shoulder in a defensive position. The disconcertion in him was traded for determination as he decided that this middle-aged woman would be the one to tell him where he was and why he wasn't dead.
At least, he tried to. In reality he couldn't bring the limbs before him to move even the smallest amount no matter how desperately he tried, nor would his Stand appear. He couldn't feel the familiar sensation that tugged at his soul whenever he used Made In Heaven or the feeling of absolute holy power that surged through his being in when he brought it out. No, what actually happened was that he leaned forward against his own accord and wrapped his arms around the short woman in a tender hug and responded in a voice that wasn't his.
"Worry too much you, have bad dream no hurt," soothed the voice. It was young, shockingly so after spending decades used to the smooth, bassy tones of his adulthood. The tone was gentle and caring, and the love it held was obvious. At these words the woman's agitation visibly faded as the startled expression relaxed into more of a relieved one, though not completely.
"Tell truth you do? Lie not for make me calm?" she asked, her grip slightly tightening in response to her uncertainty.
"What son I would be, lie to you?" he smiled while pulling away. "Back sleep now, tired I. Please, fine I, promise."
At this the woman turned, shuffled out of the doorway and, with one last uneasy look, closed the door, leaving the yellow glow coming from the gap beneath it and a dim night light in the corner as the only sources of illumination.
Now left with only his thoughts and bereft of distractions, the full force of Pucci's panic was finally allowed to hit him like a freight train. What was going on?! Why couldn't he move?! More importantly, why couldn't he feel his Stand? He considered for a few terrifying moments the possibility that he had somehow lost it forever with his earlier demise, but quickly dashed the thought. Made In Heaven was a part of his soul, the all-important part of any person that made them truly alive and was imperative for existence as humans understood it, so the notion of it disappearing was laughable. He could still think and was undoubtedly self aware, so he hadn't lost his soul and thus he still had his Stand. Hadn't Whitesnake's ability proved as much in the past?
Still, that left the matter of his inability to move his body, or rather his inability to control it. It wasn't that he couldn't feel his body, far from it; every flex of a muscle, every brush of the bedding against his skin was as rich and vivid as if he was the one commanding them, going about his daily duties to the Lord and the various flavours of felon that would visit him back when he still worked at Green Dolphin Street. He could even feel the faint coldness, no doubt due to the sudden change from the warm embrace of gradually-heated bedsheets to the rest of the room. No, his concern was that while he could feel everything just fine, not one bit of it was under his control. From moving limbs or eyes right down to tensing a few muscle fibres, some force was barring him from any measure of authority as if under lock and key.
Reincarnation, the process in which a living soul was recycled into another physical vessel to start earthly life anew. It was a concept found in many of the world's religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, though the Bible preached the concept of permanent afterlife.
So many thoughts raced through Pucci's mind. Was that what this was? Did reincarnation, contrary to the Bible's teachings, exist after all, resulting in his imprisonment in a body that for all the world felt like his, but wasn't? He was aware that the Good Book sometimes contradicted itself and even held misinformation at points, no doubt a product of the materialistic greed of man corrupting the pure, so was it not possible that this important detail had been lost somewhere in history, never again to be read by Christian eyes?
But if this was reincarnation, then why was he unable to move what should have been his own body? This vessel was definitely being controlled by another person, another real soul that shouldn't have been where it was, an intruder in his realm. As far as he could tell they didn't suspect a thing, having made no attempt to communicate. Then again, it was possible that this young man knew exactly what was going on but was merely playing the fool for whatever end, wasn't it? Food for thought, and more than enough to put Enrico even more on his toes.
Pucci would have hummed in contemplation. Thinking about it, he didn't even have confirmation that this was the present he was in. For all he knew he was reliving the memories of some unimportant child across the Pacific from years ago, or even decades into the future. God worked in mysterious ways, after all, as did time.
What would he do with this information? More to the point, what could he do with this information? It was obvious now that he couldn't control his body, at least not yet. And what of the consciousness that could? What fate would await him?
At least he recognised the dialect, though: Japanese. As a child his parents had constantly encouraged him to take every opportunity to learn something new, and during his time training in the clergy there was certainly no shortage of educational material. His expeditions into the wide world of verbal communication had started with Italian on account of his Sicilian heritage, but why stop there? Eventually he had learned the basics of a fair few languages, Japanese included among them.
Once the sound of the short woman's footsteps against the aged wooden floorboards vanished, the pair of arms attached to him reached out into the darkness and flipped a switch somewhere on the wall. New light flooded the room, the sudden brightness burning his eyes and forcing him to squint. The body pushed itself up and walked over to a small mirror on a shelf Pucci hadn't noticed until now. What he saw within, had he retained control of his body, would have made him double-take.
Looking back at him was not the handsome, angular visage of dark Sicilian skin framed with neatly-trimmed white hair and sideburns, but the frail and meek-looking face of a young teenager, every bit as flimsy and defenceless as a newborn deer born to an emaciated doe. Gone were his thin cheeks, sharp nose and captivating stare, replaced with juvenile features such as a smooth jaw and anxious eyes so wide that looked like they belonged in a cupboard of dinner plates rather than on any human. Dark green hair - how very odd - flowed in every direction in an unchecked mass of curls and patchy freckles dotted both cheeks.
'How embarrassing.'
Pucci could only observe as the person in the mirror proceeded to give themselves a full facial examination, stretching the skin to every possible angle as if looking for some type of disease. He would have found the entire process insufferably dull were it not for the fact that he noticed something lurking just beneath the collar of the red, white and blue pyjamas he wore. A bruise, dark and ugly and greenish around the edges, blemished the otherwise pale skin of the boy's neck like a blot of ink spilled onto a blank canvas, seeping deep into the fibres and spreading its black influence wherever its many tendrils could reach.
The ritual continued on for about five more minutes by Pucci's reckon, during which the green-haired teenager had examined every part of his face right down to the roof of his mouth. It appeared to be for naught, however, as the boy promptly let out a sigh of resignation before trudging back to his bed and flopping down on top of it. Pucci's last thoughts were of curiosity before he felt the new body sink into the sheets, succumbing to slumber's sultry seductions and dragging him into a world of darkness.
But, just like before, it didn't stay dark for long. The infinite depths of the void quickly receded and gave way to one of the most concurrently captivating and baffling things the ancient undead had ever laid eyes upon. He stood on a flat plane beneath a shifting sky of muted, misty rainbow hues that melted in and out of shapes in a manner not dissimilar to a stained glass window in a chapel, except constructed entirely out of oysters' pearls that had been animated with vital energy of their own. The ground he found himself on was perfectly level to the most precise measurement and looked to be constructed of smooth, pale marble plastered with dappled patterns, though these ones were considerably more stationary than the enigmatic ceiling above. Off in the distance was a horizon that stretched off further than he could see, blurring off into nothingness long before he could get anywhere near to seeing where it ended, if it did at all.
But wait, something felt profoundly different about himself. His eyes were drawn downwards and, to no small amount of rapture, Pucci found that he was back in his own body once again. Barely believing his fortunate turn, he went to verify it, and nearly burst out in joyful laughter when his arms raised at his command. The extremities that greeted him were not the bone-thin arms of a meek teenager wrapped in the sun-deprived skin of a shut-in, but toned, powerful limbs clothed in rich purple fabric and ending in a pair of hands dark with the familiar shade of Sicily. Further down his body was the beginning of a broad cross of golden fabric that shone in whatever mysterious illumination found him, as wide and well-muscled as he remembered, and moving even further led him onto the lower body, legs and feet that were definitely there but all hidden beneath his priestly gown.
His hands moved up to his head and ran over soft, short patches occasionally separated with grooves that he knew made up his unique hairstyle. Enrico smiled. It was good to be home.
To Pucci it felt almost like reuniting with an old friend. After the initial euphoria wore off enough to allow rational thought, however, he noticed that his hair had actually changed since he'd last seen it. After fusing himself with the baby born from DIO's bone his hair had inexplicably changed designs, with the grooves moving to an entirely different position, his eyelashes thickening and his facial hair growing into a star shape on his forehead. Now, though, he could feel none of that. It was gone. Everything had returned to how it had been before. A quick pat on the back of his neck verified that even the long ponytails he had developed were no longer there either.
"WAH! W-Who are you?! Where am I?!"
Before Pucci's growing concern could mature any further a shrill voice yanked him from his train of thought. He spun around, adopting a combat stance and a stony expression in preparation for the combat to be. However, both faded instantly after he realised exactly who was standing across from him. After all, just those few minutes meant that he'd recognise the unruly mop of green hair, wide eyes and scrawny figure anywhere. Staring back from a mere few feet away, his face suffused with fear, was the boy in the mirror.
-Izuku Midoriya-
Somewhere in the sprawling city of Musutafu a young man glanced at the time on his phone and sighed. The sun was getting ready to sink down behind the city skyline, its deep orange glow seeping into the surrounding clouds and casting long shadows over the metropolis. Many individual noises intermingled to form an urban ambience and the familiar scents of exhaust fumes, cooking and about a hundred other olfactory flavours tickled his nostrils. There was a chill to the wind characteristic of this time of year which nipped at his nose and cheeks like a child seeking constant attention.
Midoriya sighed again as he continued his steady slog home. He hadn't expected to take this long, but like most things in his life, it was what it was. He'd been attending cram school to try and boost his grades - not to say they were particularly bad, but his mother always said that every little helps - and had then been roped into helping clean up. Well, he said helping, but his 'teammates' had promptly abandoned him to take care of work fit for three people on his own. To top it all off, Kacchan and his friends had cornered him after finally walking out and… well, the ever-present throb of his neck intensified at the memory. So, here he was, red sneakers plodding forth one after the other over the uneven asphalt-
"Gah!"
A car flew by barely a metre away from the plucky fifteen year old's face, the artificial wind sending his hair into a frenzy and the pure fright knocking him flat onto his rear. The automobile's horn blared angrily as the driver stuck their arm out of the window and flipped him a rather rude hand signal. "Watch the road, you damn kid!" they yelled over the sound of their vehicle before they turned a corner and disappeared for good.
Izuku went to apologise like always, but his voice trailed off once the futility of calling after a driver that had already vanished from sight dawned on him. "Oh, what's the point?" he mumbled dejectedly as he dusted himself off and crossed the road, this time keeping a cautious eye out for any speeding boxes of metal and crass drivers.
He counted himself lucky as the car drove away - a second earlier and it would've reduced him to a red smear on the road. Ah, well, at least the towering apartment block before him meant he was home now. Maybe his mom wouldn't be too worried this time.
One climb of a concrete stairwell later and Izuku was standing in front of his apartment door, the veneer surface sun-bleached from overlong exposure. A silvery key was clutched between his fingers and glinted in the overhead light, trembling slightly. Taking a deep breath, the greenette mentally prepared himself for the oncoming storm as he slid the metal tool into the lock and turned.
The moment he put the key in the door it swung inwards, very nearly carrying the short student with it, and revealed an extremely worried-looking Inko Midoriya. Her face was pale and dripping with sweat, and her hands were clasped at her chest in a white-knuckled death grip.
"IZUKU! Oh, thank the lord you're home! You weren't back for dinner and I started getting worried but you didn't return any of my calls and then it started to get dark out and I started thinking maybe I should call the police-"
For the second time in five minutes, Izuku Midoriya sighed. It had been a long day, and from how things were shaping up it wasn't going to end any time soon.
Dinner was a fairly normal affair. A hearty meal of rice, fish and vegetables had been lovingly prepared by his mom, which the two of them polished off in short order what with Izuku having not eaten since lunch and Inko being unable to eat while as worried as she had been. The older woman had peppered her son with question after question in an odd sort of manner, showing concern but trying to rein herself in so as to not smother her child.
Did he tell her the truth? How today had been one pitfall after another? How Kacchan had added to his collection of bruises and welts for the mere fact that he was Quirkless? No, of course not. She didn't deserve that. She'd just end up worrying even more and running herself ragged as though she didn't already do that every day at work just to keep a roof over their heads. To her, he'd had another average day at school where he behaved, learned and didn't get walked over by just about every Quirked kid in the school. A difficult lie to tell, but a necessary one.
As of now, the duo of mother and son were about finished with the cleanup. They stood near the sink with their forearms submerged in soapy water, suds falling off of both them and the dishes they scrubbed in chubby white clumps.
Izuku pushed the final cleaned plate away from himself. "Uh, Mom? May I be excused?" He didn't usually just leave after doing the bare minimum like this and would instead stay and take over his mother's work while waving off her protests about fairness, but after the disaster of a day he'd just endured the only thing he wanted was to sleep.
Inko, who had been daydreaming into her own pile of dishes, started and looked up. "What? Oh, yes, that's fine. Go ahead, sweetie."
Izuku frowned as he dried himself off with the nearest towel. His mother had a sort of depressed look on her face, the sort a person gets when something bad's happening but there's not a thing they can do about it. He set down the towel and moved over to his mother. Sleep could wait just a bit longer.
"I love you, Mom," he said, and wrapped his arms around her in a loving embrace. He poured every bit of his affection into it, and secretly half-hoping that it would convey the emotions he so desperately wanted to voice but couldn't find the courage for.
Inko looked shocked for a split second before softly smiling and returning the squeeze. "I love you too, honey. Now go on, you look tired and I can handle the rest myself."
The younger Midoriya nodded, planted one last kiss on her cheek and headed off towards his room. The door closed behind him and a light switch flicked on, dousing the darkness and revealing the sacred safe haven that was his room.
And what a room it was. Well over a decade of unhalted hoarding of hero-themed memorabilia crammed wall to wall with all sorts of hero merchandise. From every inch of every space the always-jovial face of All Might stared back at him with his trademark impossibly wide grin, radiating pure confidence from each scattered sheet of paper and plastic toy. Practically speaking, however, it was a more simple affair. A single computer, quite the dinosaur by modern standards, sat on a desk against the wall. A modest wardrobe had been crammed into the corner next to a bed, the latter of which was decorated with yet more All Might. Reaching into the closet's interior, the green-haired boy's hand found what he was looking for and tugged it out to behold in all the yellow-tinted light's glory: his limited edition All Might pyjamas. Slipping his school uniform off and exchanging it for the red, white and blue bedclothes, Izuku could feel the urge to strike a heroic pose coursing red-hot through his veins.
Unfortunately, the urge to sleep was stronger still.
Izuku flopped down onto the mattress with all of the grace and beauty of a dead sloth, making it squeak in protest as it adapted to his weight. He just happened to collide face-first with the Top Hero's grinning visage, the contrast of his shaded eyes and incandescent smile the only thing he could see.
'Don't listen to what anyone else says, keep your chin up and keep charging ahead, was it…?' he mused as he blinked away some uninvited tears. 'This is the path I've chosen, so I guess I'll just do like the Pro Heroes do, and tough it out!' With one last muffled "ha, ha ha," into the bedsheets, Izuku's consciousness faded and he nodded off.
…
Pain!
Painpainpainpainpainpain!
PAIN!
Izuku writhed and howled in agony as his vision turned a bright shade of red and sent scarlet waves of pain through his being. Red, red, red was the only thing he could see, the only think he could hear, taste, smell, think about. All of the muscles in his body tightened like coiled wires as he tried to claw at his face when even squeezing them tightly enough to hurt did naught to halt the crimson onslaught. Alas, the sensory overload made it nigh impossible to think, let alone force his paralysed limbs to obey him. The agony was far greater than anything else he had ever experienced in his life; it was as if he had been thrust into a pool of boiling blood.
What was this? When would it stop? Would it stop? Izuku could only barely comprehend these concepts as he was ravaged from the inside by the redness that grasped and clutched and cut and scraped and stabbed him from the inside. The only thing left of his mind at that moment was one of the most basic instincts humankind possessed - flight. The need to run, to call for help, to do anything to escape the torture he was in! Anything! Anyone!
Help!
HELP!
"Emporio! Don't let him do this! My ability that I've finally gained…!"
"YOU INSIGNIFICANT BRAT!"
But then, as quickly as it had appeared, the agonising redness vanished without a trace. There was no residual soreness, he could see things other than that terrifying crimson veil and his body was no longer locked in one position. Daring to sit up in spite of the fear that he'd just incite another fit, Izuku took a brief moment to check that he hadn't died and gone to the afterlife or something. Yep, there was the cardboard All Might peeking out of the closet - had he dislodged that when he fetched his pyjamas? - a poster of Hawks the Wing Hero, a few Endeavours scattered amongst their fellow Pro Hero figurines… Yes, this was definitely his room, the comforting constant where nothing ever changed and there were no unpleasant surprises.
Beads of cold sweat rolled down his face. Raising his hand to his chest, he gave the stylised sleep shirt a pat test and groaned at the results. Sodden. Still, though, that problem was considerably lower on his list of priorities than the top two questions currently running rampant through his head: what was that redness, and who was that talking at the very end? If he remembered rightly, they had been pleading with someone, their name was… Emporio?
He almost jumped out of his skin when his door flew open with a resounding crash as it hit the corner of the computer desk and almost dislodged a tiny All Might from his perch, ripping him away from his thoughts in a flash. With speed unseen from the stocky woman since she was about twenty kilos lighter, she rushed over to her son and snatched up his hands in her own.
"Honey! I heard you shouting! Are you okay?! Are you hurt anywhere?! Do you need the hospital?!"
Izuku immediately moved in for a gentle and comforting hug, stopping his mother's breathless ramble in its tracks when he enclosed her short body in an embrace.
"I'm fine, Mom. I just had a bad dream, it's okay," he soothed, patting her softly on the back and looking into her green eyes that shone with tears ready to fall at a moment's notice. It wasn't a lie, either. No matter how vivid it had been, that suffocating red veil had to have been a dream, otherwise he would've been left with at least some fleeting ghost of a pain as unbearably horrific as that, surely.
"You really mean that, Izuku? You're not just lying for my sake or anything, are you? You can tell me anything, you know," she prompted, waiting for her son to respond with baited breath.
"What kind of son would lie to their mom?" he joked, hoping to dilute the tension somewhat. "I'm gonna try and go back to sleep now since I'm pretty tired. Trust me, please. I'm fine, I promise."
She looked like she was about to protest, but seemed to decide against it as she shut the door behind her and left Izuku alone in the darkness. Once her footsteps disappeared back towards the kitchen, the teenager stood from his bed, flicked on the light and walked over to his mirror. There were a few things that he needed to check.
It sounded weird, but behind all the pain there had been something more, distinctly of substance that the swimming splotches of crimson didn't have. The closest thing Izuku could compare it to was seeing, say, a plastic cube amongst a pile of paper squares, which was admittedly a pretty crappy metaphor but the best that his shaken-up mind could formulate at that time. For a brief moment he'd been lucid enough to notice it, and for that brief moment it was as if he'd transformed. And it had all felt so real. His toothpick arms had been replaced with those of a man clad in powerful muscle, his curly mop discarded in favour of a hairstyle so short it felt skintight, and he could have sworn he'd had facial hair. And the emotions, the pure, undiluted, raw feelings of defiance and power… In that second, he'd gone from a skinny weakling to a god.
Obviously he couldn't trust what was most likely some sort of unnaturally vivid nightmare, and he certainly didn't, but something at the back of his mind just would let up nagging until he gave it the time of day and looked in the mirror. At the very least, doing it would mean one less distraction from a nice eight hours of sleep.
Just as he expected, the five minutes of searching turned up absolutely zilch. No built muscles, no short hair and certainly no wounded right eyes were to be found. He was, without a doubt, the same old short, weak, Quirkless Izuku Midoriya he'd been for fourteen years. He let out a disappointed huff as he walked back to bed and clambered under the quilt, too miffed to pay any mind to his sweaty clothing. If anything good came from that fit of his, it would have been the sadly temporary sensation of power it had given him. He'd actually dared to dream that it was some sort of extremely late sign of his Quirk blooming. How stupid. But it was okay to dream, wasn't it? Of course, he'd been dreaming constantly ever since that fateful day at the doctor's office ten years ago.
And speaking of dreams, this was shaping up to be a particularly pretty one. At some point he'd fallen asleep without noticing and was now standing on a flat plane of pure white stone under a multicoloured sky that was like viewing a rainbow through ten camera filters.
'This is sort of odd, but nice,' thought Izuku, 'I guess I can enjoy this for a while.'
At least, that's what he thought until he pivoted around and saw a man clad in a long, purple coat with his back turned to him. As soon as Izuku laid eyes on him the dreamlike atmosphere faded and was replaced by a cool chill that permeated down to his very soul. He didn't know why, but some primal instinct began to activate in the form of a crescendo of alarm bells going off all through his mind. This man… Something about him wasn't right. Thinking about it, something about this whole place wasn't right. The crystal-clear images, the lucidity, the sharpness of every sensation… This felt far too real to be just a normal dream!
"WAH! W-Who are you?! Where am I?!" Izuku yelled before thinking, an action he immediately regretted when the man whipped around to face him.
The first thing he noticed was the man's skin, darker than the ethnic Japanese Izuku commonly saw on the streets. He was tall, much more so than average as he likely neared the two metre mark. Hair whiter than freshly fallen snow clung to his scalp in a bizarre design with clearly artificial canyons shaved in between individual islands of hair and thin sideburns leading to his jaw, while the ankle-length garb, now exposed as an expensive-looking priest's robe, covered everything above his plain leather shoes with a slightly elevated heel. Glossy black irises bored directly into Izuku's own with a strength that glued the young man in place, the pale brows above them furrowed into a tight, contemplative crease that ended up coming off to one fear-addled mind as malevolent, as if weighing whether it would be better to observe Izuku further or simply tear him to shreds.
A pang of pure, undiluted terror passed through him. This wasn't like the comparatively tame fear of simple bodily harm he felt when he was confronted by Kacchan, either. No, this was completely different. For the first time ever, Izuku Midoriya truly feared for his life.
Hello readers old and new, and welcome to my new story! Many of you may remember The Furthest Thing From A Hero, the JoJo/MHA story that I abandoned in favour of this one. I believe that this reboot of that will turn out better than the original ever could, and I'm excited to finally share this version of the story. By the way, I've decided Pucci's dark skin tone is due to his canonical Sicilian heritage in this story, which I'd say is most likely anyway given Araki's boner for all things Italian. You wouldn't believe how vague actual information on Pucci's descent is.
I want to make it clear that this won't be a ripoff of the popular JoJo/MHA story Filthy Acts Done At A Reasonable Price. It may not be finished, but from what's already published I can safely say I'm going down a different route. Nevertheless, if anyone knows about any other similar stories to this one then I would ask them to please inform me so I don't accidentally end up making a carbon copy.
Thanks for reading, and please don't hesitate to leave any criticism. It's the only way I'll improve, after all.