SO! Its been a while since I have uploaded anything but I have come back!
Actually I stopped using FFN to update or post my stories and I mostly moved to Ao3. I actually posted this story over there and I'm gonna start crosspoting here now. If you want to get ahead in the story head over to Ao3! The story name is still the same but my user name is SilverWinterMoon. I just wanted to see how this story will do over here XD
Please review and tell me what you think of this story! If you like it I will continue it here alongside on Ao3! Enjoy!
Death is an end.
It is the last breath you take, the last beat of the heart, the last sight as the light leaves your eyes.
Death is the end.
A continue would have been the impossible; the improbable chance that no one expects to have.
So for Saki, as she faced her unexpected end, she closed her eyes expecting her last.
However, it was not meant to be.
When her mouth opened once more, taking in a second breathe - she screamed. She wailed at it all, at her fortune and misfortune, at her fading memories, at the unfairness that is life. She cried and cried and mourned at life she had and the life she lost.
A second chance is a blessing but as she flailed her tiny weak arms, Saki considered it a curse.
Saki did not clearly remember the times long gone, her memories fragmenting as time passed by - but she did understand something very intimately. It was that in the life of before, she was happy, content and fulfilled. She did not need to have all that ripped away from her and told to restart in a new reality.
Her recollection slowly became lost in the mist, but she could faintly grasp onto the fragments even now.
Gruff words and tender hands.
They were now just wisps in smoke that she could no longer grasp in her hand.
Hours in the darkness of the night, comforted by a single light and huddled over papers and empty cups of coffee.
Falling through her fingers like sand as it all began to blur.
A reflection in the mirror, no longer clear and defined. A name so intimate down to her very soul but one she could no longer recall. A dying memento of a long gone past.
It was gone in the abyss and now she had been blanked out like a white canvas for others to fulfill.
Saki abhorred her new beginning with a vengeance that she did not think she had the capacity for.
For many weeks, her new parents blustered around and worried frantically as their newborn wailed, rejecting a reality she did not need. Mourning for a tragic tale that will never leave the child's lips.
But the world never wants for the sake of one person, so life moved on.
It was when the last of Sakura petals fell that she had chosen. With trembling chubby fingers, Saki grasped onto what was left. She locked them all under lock and key and left the remains in the far reaches of her mind. She left it all and moved on to this brand-new world.
She reflected upon her actions, she spent time pondering as she lied in her crib. Her new parents were harried and weary and held her with gentle hands and comforting lullabies. Saki's eyes closed and her complexion flushed red upon realizing how troubled her new parents were with her. With clenched chubby fingers, a resolution was formed on that quiet dark night.
Her parents must have wondered at the abrupt change of their child. Obedient and gentle, their child turned herself overnight. Saki had mused that she did so out of guilt as her new mother combed through her slowly growing locks.
I stole the life of the child you should have had. It is the very least I should do.
The girl tried to love and fell to love. She adored her kind and comforting new family and life slowly fell into place for the old soul. Saki adapted and watched as seasons passed and the blossoms bloomed.
It was on a bright spring day that Life decided to kick her into the curb again.
Saki vaguely remembered that the Sakura flowers had begun to bud that day. She was a tiny three-year-old sitting in front of the television and absentmindedly watching the children's anime playing across the scene. Squishing the soft plush bunny between her hands, she had decided to practice playing with her fingers in order to improve their coordination. Listening to the anime, the girl scrunched her nose as she tried to make sense of the Kanji being used.
The surprising sound of broken ceramic and yelp of pain broke the child out of her musing.
"Mama?!"
She had scrambled to her feet, stumbling over her legs to reach the source of the noise and when she reached the kitchen her jaw dropped. The floor was littered with jagged porcelain and her mother's fingers cut and bleeding profusely.
"Ara? Saki if you come closer you will get hurt." Saki's mom had a serene smile as she clutched her fingers close to her chest. Saki's faced had pinched at how air-headed her mother had to be to wave off her bloody red fingers.
"But!"
"No buts! besides this is nothing."
The older woman had gently admonished the child, but it did nothing to soothe her child's distress. The older woman giggled before she held out her hands and to the toddler's astonishment the wounds slowly but surely closed up on their own.
…Wounds do not heal that quickly.
Saki's head tilted to the side and she mimed a fish, mouth gaping open and close. She tried to make sense of the phenomenon that she just witnessed but nothing was connecting and her mind frayed. Dumbfounded at what she witnessed she stood stock still, long enough for her father who had come down from the second floor to see what had caused the ruckus and chuckle at his child's reaction.
"What's shocked you so much my little flower?" Saki's father had a wry grin on his lips as he bundled her up in his warm arms.
"I was showing her my Quirk. I think this is the first time she has ever seen it Dear."
A sense of foreboding, a jogged fragment from her fogged recollections.
"That's because there hasn't been a need for her to see your Quirk Honey."
Recognition from a past long gone. Children in a school gifted with the supernatural.
"True, minor regeneration isn't something I can show so easily. But anyway, Dear could you please?"
A forest ablaze in blue flames. Children collapsed on the floor as a pink gas embraced their forms. Their peers bleeding as they braced themselves against the darkness.
"Of course, Honey!"
The porcelain pieces started to float and was lifted gently before displaced into the trash. The child paling as the pieces in her memory clicked into place. She vaguely remembered her mother giggling as she poked her cheek to snap her out of her shock.
Two boys anxiously watching the large Television screen. The Symbol of Peace, weary and injured but standing tall. Fulfilled in his duty and pointing to the camera.
"You're next."
The evidence was standing in front of her and yet the child could only remember her stomach dropping. The puzzle pieces snapping together. Her foreboding realization of where she was reborn into. A world only thought to be fiction but was now her reality.
A world where the supernatural was the absolute normal.
Unknown to her parents, Saki broke into a cold sweat at the revelation but her heart beat slowed after she considered the facts.
Her parents had very minor quirks, her mother had a minor regeneration quirk while her father had a minor telekinesis quirk. Given that, it was likely that she would manifest a minor version of either of their quirks or a minor combined version of their quirk.
Which meant that Saki would not be legible to stand under the glamorous and dangerous world that was heroics.
At that, Saki sighed in relief.
She had no want or need for society to force her hand. To risk her life day in and day out for others when she did not have the mental or physical strength to do so. The chilly reminder of death still made Saki shiver uncontrollably and she was glad she did not have to face that dark abyss for a long time yet.
The tiny girl was content to be the norm, the pea in the pod, in the world of the diamonds and stars shined brightly in the skies.
But Life does not cater to the whims of a single person, moving upon the tracks it had set upon long ago.
Come her fourth birthday, and Saki was slow to show any signs of a quirk. When she fell, she bruised her arms. When she focused on an object, it did not levitate.
Nothing out of the ordinary changed.
As expected, despite how lighthearted her parents usually are, they worried when they realized how late their child's quirk was coming in. So, hand in hand, Saki was taken to the hospital for a checkup.
Saki learned two things that day.
She did not have double joint, so she did have a quirk.
Just… not quite a visible one.
The doctors had considered that she might have a dormant quirk. A quirk that required some specific form of stimulation to activate. She was put through testing and physical activities, anything to jumpstart her unique ability.
Nothing worked.
The tests came to the conclusion that Saki did not have a dormant quirk but instead an invisible quirk.
An invisible quirk was as its name implied, a passive quirk that was constantly active but is so minor that it basically doesn't seem to be visible.
After the results were presented and her parents reassured, they brought her back home, back to her safe haven. Saki was still loved and cared for the same as before and her home life remained the warm heaven that it was.
However, outside those walls were a completely different story. Life never goes that smoothly.
Her return to kindergarten marked the beginning of a change that would be her new constant. In the tiny social construct where quirks were the currency to success, no quirk meant you were nothing and thus Saki fell to poverty.
The children assumed if she could not show a quirk, it simply meant that she was Quirkless. Overnight, Saki became someone who was not 'good enough' to the general public. Saki had not changed, and in a world where everyone was unique, normality was the odd duck out. You were punished for having nothing and soon isolation and bullying became Saki's new norm.
Children were innocent. They had no concept of what was right and what was wrong. They acted according to what others said was 'right'. The product of a society molding them to their image.
It was childlike. It was pure. It was cruel.
The Manga did not elaborate on how cruel a quirk obsessed society could be. Often, Saki was tugged in two extremes, either bullied for being 'useless' or treated with the kid gloves for being too 'fragile'.
In the quiet night and hidden underneath the covers, Saki had hummed a lullaby underneath her breathe. She wondered how amazing Midoriya was. To endure when society deemed his dream just a dream. To still reach for what was considered the impossible.
Midoriya had determination in spades. And Saki had none in contrast.
However, life was not 'bad'. While Saki could not escape the stigma that was being considered 'Quirkless' she could avoid some of the problems that came her way.
She never responded to taunts-the sharp barbs thrown her way to bring her down for the short enjoyment of the few-and soon enough she was considered not even worthy enough for their black tongue. Her belongings finally remained untouched from the grubby hands of children who did not understand enough.
No one bothered her, but at the same time she had no one outside her family.
Her parents worried, her kind parents fretting over their child in the darkness of the night. They whispered their fears of their sole child left with no companions. All the while the old soul hid behind the door and her gaze was trained to the floor before slowly walking back to her room.
Saki dealt with things the best way she could. It helped that she was an introvert. She tired of social interaction quickly and retired to herself. In a sense, Saki was free of responsibility and pressure. Free of society who judged for Quirk and not the person behind it.
Free to choose whatever path she may walk.
She ignored the nagging whispers of her mind. The voices who spoke that this was wrong, that she did not deserve this. The heavy weight in her chest, weighing down upon her shoulders.
She ignored the pitiful looks surrounding her neighborhood. The awful whispers of condolences to her parents for bearing a 'Quirkless' child. Her parents' tight smiles and clenched fists.
She ignored the malicious giggles in her school halls. The teachers glancing at her once before looking away. The obvious boundary between her and everyone else.
She welcomed the warm hugs, the cheerful laughter, the kind words inside her home. She was safe and sound inside and that was enough.
But life was not fair nor was it kind, throwing her a curveball on her way.
In the beginning of her third year of middle school, when the Sakura petals fluttered in the wind, Saki had picked up a glass of milk and sipped on it as she turned on the news.
What greeted her was the amazing video of a blonde being strangled by sludge and a green haired boy running to save him.
She had choked on her milk and immediately spat it out.
Saki was aware of what era she was in. While she was unclear of where in the timeline she stood she knew she was in the era before All Might's retirement. She was reminded of that often as her eyes landed on the latest rescue, the latest gossip, the latest of All Might upon her television screen.
She had hoped that she was a decade before the plot started. She had hoped, she could avoid the chaos that was coming her way. Unfortunately, she was not that lucky and with the news showcasing the Protagonist and his Rival she was given a clear indication of when exactly she was in the Timeline.
It was with vengeance that she decidedly tried to avoid any interaction of the plot.
She immediately trashed any high school application that had hero courses, settling for an average school that was within walking distance of her home. Her finger tapping for the newest news and her feet scampering away from where hero and villain fought.
Cowardly? Perhaps.
But Saki was well aware of her position in this society. She had no ability, no backing and was not prepared mentally or physically to face any type danger and deal with the consequences.
Lives were at stake; this was a reality she lived for more than a decade now. This was no fantasy, no stage play where she was casted as the Hero destined to save the day. One wrong step and the whole structure would crumble like a stack of cards.
She refused to be involved and destroy the carefully scripted events that was fate. Soon, High school began and she was situated in an average non-hero school safe from the events from the story she read so long ago.
However, she did not, could not, completely ignore the turn of events. The petite girl obsessively kept up with the news, taking stock of current state of events. She saw report of the USJ incident, and her eyes landed on the infamous Class A for the first time outside of ink and paper. It was but a brief debut, so it came and passed but not before leaving Saki with a sense of dread
She watched class during the airing of the UA Sports festival and witnessing the events made Saki breath heavily as things began to sink in.
Young.
So young and the world is going to throw them the gauntlet.
How cruel is the world, to throw the fate of the future into their hands?
The revelation made Saki's stomach turn and she had to physically resist the urge to grab the remote and close the tv. She refused to hide under her sheets, and she stood riveted to the screen.
Her nails dug into the palm of her hands, taking it all in.
Shinsou's, eyes shadowed and posture slouched, a determination lined his mouth as he spat poisonous guilty words in hopes of victory. Uraraka, littered with bruises and burns, yet she stood tall in the face of adversity. Midoriya, fingers snapping one after the other, risking it all to save the boy standing in front of him.
At the end of it all Saki could not control her trembles. Her mother, her kind and gentle mother glanced at her state and that night she was handed her favorite food.
That night, Saki laid under the covers. Fingers clutched onto the fabric of her old and worn plushy, she contemplated the future. In the same year as the children who would one day shape the future of Japan. She wondered if she could ever escape the dread in her stomach.
But Life does not wait for one person and the world moves on.
Time passed, and the blooming of flowers was replaced with the burning rays of the sun. She viewed the Hero Killer on the news, huffing in amusement at the white lie provided for the incident. The disgruntled look of the Pro Hero Endeavor as he reported the incident on the news was something she would remember for a while. The viral video had floated on the web for a while. The blurry but unmistakable figure of Stain who declared his intent against the UA kids and heroes.
The clock was ticking, and Saki was so very aware of the impending end of an era. The end of All Might's days as a Symbol of Peace was coming to its dramatic end.
The chirping of the crickets announced the arrival of summer and alongside the heat waves was the rising dread of what is to come.
It was with those emotions that Life decided to stop giving Saki the illusion that she had a choice in her life and threw her head first into the chaos.
On a night like any other, where the streets were filled with buzz and life, Saki had been given an errand from her parents and was walking on the crowded streets. Opening the news on her phone, she froze as she saw the iconic news conference being aired.
Murphy's Law: When things can go wrong, it will go wrong.
There was no warning.
A loud sound, the cacophony of screams.
The concrete building, large enough to dwarf her overshadowed her form.
nononoNONONO NONONONO!
Idon'twANTTODIE AGA-
…
…
…
When a pebble is dropped, it needs not to take any action. Just being dropped into the water will cause ripples to roll.
