Chapter One
Origin
I've always found Tokoyami a fascinating work among the other underdeveloped characters of BNHA – he's pretty much me if I'd had either money or my own room at 13. Naturally, he won't be the only character I put the spotlight on, but he's certainly the main one, and I hope I can do Horikoshi's designs some justice.
"Mother, may I please leave the light on?"
"Why's that, Fumichan?"
"I, ah, um, I don't like the dark very much."
"Sweetie, there's nothing in the dark."
"But, Father…"
"I'm not picking up anything suspicious, don't worry. You'll be fine, Fumichan. We'll see you in the morning, okay? If it's that bad, though, we'll leave our door open just in case, alright?"
"…Okay. Goodnight."
"Goodnight, sweetie!"
"Night!"
Tokoyami Fumikage. Shogun of Eternal Darkness.
An incredibly – for lack of a better term – edgy name for a child of his age. A happy-go-lucky three-year-old just waiting for his Quirk to manifest and take its place in their superhuman society.
His mother's Quirk was simply called "Bird", a heteromorphic Quirk that to nobody's surprise gave her many of the attributes one would commonly associate with birds. Feathers, light weight and easily broken bones, exceptionally keen vision and hearing, heightened agility. No wings, but as she liked to say - or had, until everything went to hell - you can't have everything in life.
His father's was something else entirely: "Seventh Sense". Tokoyami's grandfather had been a practical man, and he'd acknowledged proprioception, the body's ability to know its location relative to itself even without other sensory input, to be the sixth sense. Seventh Sense, on the other hand, allowed his father to view the spirits of not only the dead but of the begrudged – entities borne not of mortal passing but of overwhelming negative emotion.
Sadly, the one spirit he was unable to see before it was too late was Dark Shadow.
It had manifested as Tokoyami's Quirk at the age of four, like every other child in his class, and that first day, he'd been thrilled; the spirit had been small, friendly, happy.
That first night, he'd been terrified.
The screams had reached his parents' bedroom immediately, and both of them had come rushing to their son's aid only to find his own Quirk having taken control of his entire body, the spirit many times larger than it had been earlier that day when he'd so gleefully showed it off and its entire demeanor much, much different.
That was how Tokoyami Menimieru lost two fingers on his right hand.
For Fumikage, it was a terrifying night, and a very sudden awakening to the world his father worked in, operating as a sort of scout for a paranormal group that had sprung up with the appearance of Quirks – essentially, a real-life Ghostbusters, though Fumikage wouldn't be allowed to watch that film until he was much, much older. The name Menimieru even meant sighted – Tokoyami Menimieru, "darkness sighted".
His mother's first name, simply Tori, meant "avian" or "bird" – it wasn't a stretch there. Her maiden name had been Jiyū ("freedom"), from a family with a history of patriotism and service to Japan, but she'd deviated considerably from their expectations by marrying a man whose job was mainly to look for murder-ghosts.
So, to his parents, it seemed clear that Dark Shadow was a result of their two Quirks combining and mutating, on top of Fumikage having the head of a bird (though human teeth underneath the bill, and an otherwise human physiology).
To Fumikage, Dark Shadow wasn't a Quirk.
Dark Shadow was a nightmare.
For as long as he could remember, he'd felt strangely trapped by darkness, like there was something enveloping his whole body every time he so much as stepped into it, something struggling to wrest away his control of his own limbs. He'd never outright heard or experienced anything that pointed to an outside source, and he'd always figured his father would see it if he had been possessed by some spirit of malintent…but ever since that first night with Dark Shadow, his father had admitted that there was the possibility of Dark Shadow being an incredibly powerful spirit with the ability to hide itself from his vision and present physical manifestations…
Despite its deadly, violent behavior that night, however, Dark Shadow was far from unfeeling. After extensive experimentation, the spirit (whether or not it was actually a Quirk) showed an incredible sensitivity to Fumikage's own emotions, displaying exaggerated versions of anything he felt: during the day, if he was happy, it was cheerful and outgoing, and if he let it free, it was more than happy to chat up his classmates, although they rarely understood what it was talking about. (Kindergarteners tend not to understand jokes about taxes.) On the other hand, if he was upset at night, Dark Shadow would appear exponentially larger than its host, consuming Fumikage's entire being in shadow and unleashing a destructive rampage that the Tokoyami family would only see get worse as Fumikage grew older.
He had avoided his own Quirk until he was six.
It was a beautiful autumn day, neither too hot nor too cold, when Fumikage discovered that Dark Shadow's tether to him also served as a sort of spectral muscle, allowing him to use Dark Shadow for leverage and to pull himself to its location. Despite himself, he had called out to it when he'd slipped down a riverbank, as his only company, and Dark Shadow…it had saved his life, anchoring itself to a tree and pulling the young boy back up.
As afraid as he was of the entity, it had never displayed outright hostility to him, even during the worst of its nightly rampages. It had even told him it understood perfectly fine when he started sleeping with a night light. According to Dark Shadow, it itself didn't enjoy the way it would change in darkness. Didn't enjoy its total personality shift.
"Then why don't you try to stop it?" he'd implored it, and it had simply shaken its head.
The idea that his Quirk could be more than just a source of fear, however, didn't leave the boy's head, and he began training it in his backyard after school, to the mixed joy and terror of his parents. By age ten, he'd managed to figure out Dark Shadow's general strengths and weaknesses, as well as formulate a general style of combat – one that involved him remaining at range and using the indestructible entity to fight instead. Dark Shadow also enabled him to perform parkour moves that no ordinary ten-year-old could, and he took to using this as a means of escape when life got a little too rough, ascending to the tops of buildings and perching birdlike upon them as he gazed out over Shizuoka prefecture.
The night after his father was killed, he scaled the highest building in the city and stood unwavering upon its edge, staring two hundred meters down its sheer concrete face at the hazy weave of lights and sounds, at all of those who neither knew nor care that Tokoyami Menimieru was dead, had been killed in the line of duty – not by one of the begrudgéd, but by a criminal who'd lured in his father's entire crew for the sheer joy of murder.
They'd been found partially cannibalized.
The very next day, the black rolled into his room - a typical ten-year-old's abode vanished into an abyss of black drapes, black bedsheets, skull-shaped candle holders with purple candles and musty incense burning on the mahogany dresser; the overhead light made its exit, and the windows remained covered at all hours.
"That's awfully edgy," Dark Shadow commented, studying the redecoration.
"Shut up," the response had been, from behind a book of Lovecraft stories.
The villain who'd killed his father was apprehended and put on death row almost immediately.
"That should bring you some closure."
"There are still more out there like him."
Dark Shadow's words didn't matter anyway. The villain escaped within the week due to an administrative oversight that had allowed him to use his Quirk.
He'd originally wanted to be a writer, but as he aged, Fumikage's plans took a darker turn. Until he turned thirteen, he'd aimed to become a vigilante, working from the shadows to take down villains outside the reach of the law, but by the end of his second-to-last year of junior high, it had occurred to him that vigilantes did not just happen – every successful one had been, at one point or another, licensed as a professional hero, meaning that they'd gone through training and exams and schooling and –
"I'm going to Yuuei," he informed his mother, at age fourteen.
It had been years since Fumikage had confided anything in her at all; their relationship had fallen apart entirely after his father's death, their grief wholly identical at its roots and entirely different in the expression. The dichotomy and Tokoyami Tori's inability to overcome it for her son's sake had planted a bitter seed in him, and he clung to it like a lifeline in a sea of his own pain.
No more greeting when he got home from school.
No more walks in the woods.
No more ride-alongs on weekend nights to see his father's crew take care of the less dangerous spirits. It was a little strange to think that the people who'd seen him grow from a child were all dead, had been dead for years.
No more family dinners. He wasn't sure when they'd stopped, but he usually ate in his room, in silence. Feeding Dark Shadow a bite here and there, or more accurately, letting him take food; the nutrients ended up going to Fumikage anyway, considering they were symbiotes, for better or for worse, and the teen figured the spirit simply liked the sensation of eating.
No more love.
No more affection.
No more family.
No more anything.
He was alone.
His friends stopped visiting, didn't reach out when he went silent. He took this to mean they didn't care.
His grades slipped. He remained in higher-level courses, but more than once, he'd had to deal with teachers visiting his home for conferences.
They'd understood immediately what had happened.
Ambitions faded. Hopes died. Tokoyami Fumikage existed in a void that made its silent way through time to a light he wasn't sure was there. He'd gone blind a long time ago.
He dropped, sank, had sunken.
When the opportunity to attend Yuuei presented itself, then, he seized upon it, pulling himself up – clawing his way back to the surface, to light; his mother, shocked by both the way he approached her and the sudden resurgence of ambition in her son, could only stare blankly at him. He was certain if she hadn't had the metabolism she did, she'd have put on quite a bit of weight since his father's – her husband's – death, and –
Perhaps he'd been insensitive.
No, Dark Shadow argued in his head. It's her job as a parent to help you deal with it! You were ten years old!
But, he mused, it was my job as family to help her through it, and I went off on my own instead.
At the same time – yeah, but– the past is the past, and – are you just going to let this go!?– perhaps it's time to – she failed you! – move on.
Sometimes life wasn't fair. Sometimes people didn't do what you needed them to, no matter what happened.
Sometimes, even when it hurt, you had to be the stronger one. You had to move on yourself, and you had to help the people who'd failed to help you.
No matter how much it hurt. Because…that's what a hero does.
…Right?
What happened to taking vengeance upon villains!?
He wasn't sure what he wanted anymore.
"Yuuei…?" came the rasp of her voice, and Fumikage dipped his head.
"Yuuei. I want to become a hero."
"Fumichan – " and he hadn't heard that name in years, and his eyes widened with the shock and the pain of it " – Fumichan, I don't…what if you…?"
A shake of the head. "Mother, I understand your concerns. But after Father's death – after Father's murder – " and he had to spit that one out, ignoring the pang of guilt that struck him as his mother's face fell " – I simply do not see what else I can do. Writing won't help this world. If I can stop what happened to him from happening again…that will be my contribution. Is this acceptable to you?"
"Fumichan…"
"Please."
The loudest silence he'd ever heard fell between them as he bowed, down to a flat sixty degrees, hands at his sides, arms straight, waiting; then:
"…I'll let you take the entrance exams, but if it's too hard on you, or it puts you in danger – "
"Nothing a school can throw at me will ever cast me into greater shadow than the past four years, and no darkness will take me. I will not let it."
They watched one another carefully a moment, Fumikage keeping his cool composure, his mother torn between joy and terror and sorrow and rage all at once, but then it passed, and his wandering hours turned to study, to practice.
He wasn't nervous when the entrance exams rolled around.
The written portion wasn't particularly difficult; he knew he hadn't been the top scorer, but he felt confident he'd at least passed. The practical was next, and though the day was bright, he stuck to the shadows of alleys, using the strength he'd trained in both himself and Dark Shadow to launch himself across the sunlit streets to shade, striking every robot he came across with unerring, lethal precision. A couple of times, spotting another examinee in trouble, he sent Dark Shadow into the path of a steel limb or missile, using the spirit's indestructible body to save his fellow considerable injury – but most of the time, they were just pissed that he'd intervened, even if he didn't directly damage or destroy the robot.
"The most important thing to remember is, don't get a big head!" Tokoyami Menimieru waggled a finger at his son as the van pulled up to the job site. "Letting your ego get the better of you can cause you some serious problems both in decision-making and cooperation. Know your limits, Fumikage. That's the best way to grow as a person, in any respect. Never take help for granted, either.
"Sometimes you might not even know you need it."
He was admitted into Yuuei's heroics course as ninth on the total rankings board, out of countless applicants, just below the kid who'd blown up the zero-point robot that appeared toward the end of the exam with a single punch. His name hadn't been released, but it didn't take a lot to put the pieces together: zero villain points, sixty rescue points, compared to Tokoyami's own forty-seven villain points and a feeble ten rescue points.
The night he received his acceptance letter, he ate dinner with his mother for the first time in years.
The atmosphere was decidedly awkward, and even though he'd gotten through the worst of the grief, it still pained him to see his father's empty place at the table; his mother had stopped setting it for him, at some point, but even though there was nothing there but a chair tucked neatly under the tablecloth, the thought that his father wasn't there to see him enter Yuuei and come into his own…it hurt.
He kept Dark Shadow dormant through that meal. Eventually, one of them spoke, and a shaky conversation maintained itself; they even laughed a few times, did the dishes together like they used to. But when dinner was over, something inside him faltered, and he bowed his head, retreating to the darkness of his room.
The spirit didn't rampage that night. Fumikage had eventually grown strong enough to rein Dark Shadow in under candlelight, but he didn't dare sleep in total darkness, lest his nightmares tear a hole in the side of his house. The one time Dark Shadow had rampaged in recent years, it had been far, far more dangerous than Fumikage could ever remember it being as a child, and far larger – it would definitely fill his room and then some. Couldn't let that happen.
The next morning, he purchased the necessary school supplies; Yuuei would be mailing its accepted students their uniform orders (with a trademarked Yuuei design, clearly just a money sink), but he'd still need a bag and books, and he came home that evening laden with his purchases, spending the rest of the day in his room sorting them out and making sure he had everything in order.
The first day rolled around.
Somehow, actually being a student at Yuuei was far more intimidating than simply visiting for the exam – suddenly, the school's rules, restrictions, and expectations were all squarely upon his slender shoulders, and Dark Shadow, snoozing on one of them, didn't exactly help to shoulder this burden.
"Considering your survival and emotions are tied to mine, I would have hoped you'd be a little more supportive," he jabbed, dryly, and Dark Shadow opened one neon yellow eye.
"Have you considered that maybe your survival and your emotions are tied to mine?" the spirit drawled.
Fumikage ignored its games. He'd grown used to these comments over the years. As far as he was concerned, Dark Shadow was part of him and not the other way around.
Even if some of his father's last musings had been correct – even if Dark Shadow wasn't a Quirk at all, and rather some sort of spirit beyond the reach of Seventh Sense – it was far too tangled up with Fumikage to break free on its own now. He'd seen cases of attached spirits before, on ride-alongs; they'd developed a sort of symbiotic relationship with their hosts, giving them information or abilities in exchange for a tether to the mortal realm.
Dark Shadow fell somewhere in between symbiote and parasite.
Their relationship was complicated, to say the least, but to its credit, the spirit had always cooperated perfectly with him where it counted, such as the entrance exam, or saving Fumikage's life. He'd grown strong enough now to where it could no longer sow self-doubt into him, could no longer manipulate his emotions.
Once or twice, his mother had mentioned what a pure child he'd been before Dark Shadow.
Once or twice, he'd shrugged and pushed the thoughts out of his mind.
But they never left. He wondered, sometimes, what exactly the thing attached to him was.
Regardless, it had helped him, it had supported him (when it wasn't trying to mess with his head, of course), it had enabled him to do things that he'd never have been able to do without it, Quirk or not, and he supposed he was grateful for what it had done, no matter the intent.
"Wonder if there are any cute girls? I still don't know what a kiss feels like."
"And you probably won't. In case you haven't noticed, I have a beak." He'd long since figured that Dark Shadow could feel some semblance of whatever physical sensations he did. It had made using the restroom very awkward indeed, though the spirit at least had the decency to go dormant whenever he did so.
"You're a real downer, you know that?"
"And you are a fool."
Dark Shadow stuck out its tongue.
And so, bickering all the way, Tokoyami Fumikage and the enigmatic spirit hanging off his shoulder made their way to classroom 1-A, into an uncertain future, and for a moment, Fumikage thought he saw a glimmer of light from the surface far, far above.