A/N: Um, so like, would any of you guys believe me if I suddenly realized something about the dude's name? I don't think you'll get the unintended joke unless your fans of a certain manga which involves pirates, but I just wanna say I didn't really intend on it because I had been searching for names which paralleled things like other names from a different language. You'll know what I mean as you read along the story. Anyway, have fun with the newest chapter update!

Disclaimer: Boku no/My Hero Academia belongs to Kohei Horikoshi, my only claim is my own original character(s)!

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prologue

Origin Story: Part II

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It was a painfully slow process for a baby to learn how to crawl, eventually walk, and finally prove themselves capable of enough independence that they didn't have to be carried around as if they were a block of wood.

Being a baby was maddening. Everything that I had lived up to went down the fucking drain because my stupid dorm mate killed me with his equally stupid baseball he'd thrown in a panic when I barged in while he and his girlfriend were having sex. In the beginning there was several black outs, allowing me to vaguely make out shapes of giant aliens hovering over me. It was terrifying at first, my body wouldn't move and I was in their absolute mercy; then as time went by, my blurry vision slowly began to clear up that my original assumption on alien abduction couldn't be further off the mark. Oh no, my fate was much more bizarre.

I was a baby sitting in the arms of my new parents.

Another mental freak out promptly followed afterwards.

Because really?! One moment I was dead and the next I was goddamn baby?! Like really, what the fuck?

The bitter ho routine slowly ran its course, weeks where I tried to stubbornly refuse the two strangers that were my new mother and father drained me enough that I ended up waking up at odd hours in the night. I was angry, I was in denial, and I was so so scared—but there was not a thing I could do. I couldn't get out of this new body of mine, I couldn't close my eyes and enter back into the abyss, I could swim back towards the last dark space where I first ended up.

In short, there was no scenario where I could simply return to my original body, my soft around the middle frame, my scruffy hair that went wild with the curls, my glasses I was always wearing because I was blind as a bat, not to mention my significantly taller frame that surpassed this physical form I was trapped inside of. But from the memories and the freaky situation, it was safe to assume that my body was probably already buried six feet under (death by baseball, unbelievable).

I was here, and I was here to stay.

Like my old man used to tell me every time he found me lamenting about my regrets and mistakes: "Suck it up, buttercup!"

Well, I thought as I watched the woman and man who were nearby, as might as well try to make the best of it. My unbalanced body then flopped down when I leaned a little too far backwards, thankfully I was sitting in the middle of a blanket so I didn't thump my head too bad. Soft footsteps joined me in the living room, and I stared up and up to find the giant that was my new dad (dude was as tall as James Comey).

"Silly Kuzan," the big man chuckled as he crouched down to pick me up from the floor. "Hungry?"

The language barrier was a little difficult to navigate, but thankfully I wasn't totally deprived of the English language. The new mom was Caucasian-looking but her language spoke North European (I couldn't figure if she was German or Scandinavian, they sounded kind of similar to me) while my other parent was all Japanese. They communicated mostly through either English or whatever her language was since she could barely speak Japanese.

That was fine with me, I always wanted to learn a new language anyway.

My stomach gave a little growl which caused the two adults to giggle like a pair of idiots. I glared at them, but this only made them laugh more as my appearance amped up the cutie bar as most angry-looking babies did with their chubby cheeks and pouty lips.

The father passed me to his wife, and I was left in the care of a woman who sometimes made me stop and stare like I was caught in a trance.

Her eyes were unnatural.

I had never seen eyes like that. They were orange with small flecks of gold when brought close enough to the light, and the way they watched everything made me feel like she could see anything and everything. It was totally creepy that I had to avoid her eyes, but sometimes I would end up staring at them like they were drawing me in.

And suddenly the woman was gesturing towards something behind me, turning herself so that I could see what she was pointing at whatever "papa" was doing.

My eyes went wide like saucers as I watched the man's long reach suddenly get a whole lot longer when his arm stretched itself across the kitchen counter to grab something he didn't want to walk all the way over to pick up.

I puked on the woman's shirt, appetite totally forgotten.

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It took awhile, but eventually I learned to suck it up and deal with it. Mom and dad weren't normal people—but that was normal.

First trip I took outside and I was met with more stranger things.

There was a neighbor that was all blue, like somebody threw him in a pot of blue paint, who waved at my mom like he wasn't some stunt double that walked off the set of Arrested Development. Mom didn't even pause or stare weirdly after the neighbor, just happily called out a greeting and then exited out of the front yard to walk along the streets.

An old lady who was walking her dog had floppy dog ears and a tail strode past us. A man with long-ass legs that could easily tower over my pops paused to pull out mail from his satchel and drop it in some mailbox before moving along to the next house. There was a group of teenagers who were waving their hands, making junk food float in the air before somebody shoo'd them away for blocking thr walkway. Overhead, somebody was flying and they were carrying a briefcase while frantically looking at their phone.

Everywhere I turned my head towards, I saw more and more bizarre things that I was absolutely gobsmacked that nobody was even bothered by it. It was like this was considered a normal thing to the average citizen.

Maybe I was abducted by aliens...

A soft tap on the nose brought me back to attention to my mother as she giggled at my quick reaction. I gave a tiny grunt when she gave me a peck on the cheek, making her giggle some more. She continued to tease me as we walked alongside the streets, and I struggled to fight her off as best as I could with my hands, but she kept breaking through my defenses and tapping me on my dot of a nose.

At one point I even let out a shrill cry of anger, but mom only threw her head back and laughed.

We ended up somewhere that looked like a park. Without mom picking on me as she tried to calm herself from laughing herself to near death, my eyes wandered around to spot a few jungle gyms and little club houses scattered around the area.

"Grete!"

The familiar name I heard around the house had me turning in time with mom, finding a woman who looked eerily similar to mom. Platinum blond hair and ominous orange eyes, the lady waved at us as she closed the distance. I also noticed the small brood of children that stuck close to the woman's legs.

"Sissel," mom returned the greeting, pulling the woman in a one-armed hug when she was close enough.

Looking down, three pairs of creepy eyes stared right back at me. Thoroughly creeped out, I turned tail and ducked under mom's chin, hoping to pass the entire meeting and go back home where I can try to pretend I don't freak out when pops did his weird thing with his body. They were talking about me, I can hear it with how many times I hear my name being tossed around above my head as the adults conversed (it's Norwegian, by the way, I saw the country's flag when we passed some police station).

I'm pulled away from my hiding spot, forced to face the other woman and her Children of the Corn squad.

Mom was pointing at the woman Sissel before lowering herself so that I was within reaching distance for the creepy kids to come up to me. I started to get fussy, nervous of the spotlight forced on me, but mom held me still in her lap.

"Ingunn," she pointed at the first child who looked to be the oldest of the three. She had short hair that was cut into a bob, but her clothes told me she was more tomboyish than her other two sisters.

If Ingunn went looking like that, there was going to be a lot of people mistaking her for a boy. But hey, whether that was the idea or not, it was her choice. I was forced to redirect my attention once again when the other kids came up to face me.

"Sigrid, Ingrid," mom pointed at the two girls (twins which hyped up their creep factor they got going). Both girls had long hair, yet their hair color was so pale that I could have easily mistaken it as white from the distance. Had they been born with purple eyes, I would've thought them to be Targaryen cosplayers. What was funny was the twin cowlicks sticking up out of their heads like antennas, it was kind of cute.

But these kids were still creepy in my opinion.

Mom then pushed me in Ingunn's arms, leaving me to suffer their poking and prodding and squealing while she and aunt Sissel took a seat in a nearby bench to talk. Their expressions took a somber turn, and it was too bad I couldn't understand a lick of what they were saying because it did appear to be something serious. My attention however was disrupted when the three girls started singing songs and trying to get me to follow along.

I just wanted to go home and take another nap or something.

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"Wow, Kuzan!" mom gasped in surprise. "You did that all by yourself?"

It was such a dumb thing, but that didn't stop me from preening a little at the fact that I could now tie my own shoes.

Fun fact: I was born on the same date of the beginning of the Yuletide festivities (the old Germanic version of Christmas). My grandmother, when she was able to visit, would gather me and the other girls around the fire to tell stories about the Wild Hunt that went on when the cold was coldest and the night was darkest. Ghost stories were laughable, like the Goat Man and Chupacabra, but when the old woman wove her tales, it was like something ancient would enter the warm confines of the house and settle heavily over our heads. The fact that I was an adult trapped inside the body of a toddler made me rethink of what I knew of the world.

Granny sometimes wondered out loud what sort of omen it meant for me, her only grandson, to be born on the day of Yuletide (aka The Wild Hunt). Mom waved away her superstitions, pulling me away to sit me on the kitchen counter so I could play the role of taste tester for whatever delicious plates the women were cooking up.

The daylight hours grew shorter, and the winter didn't waste time in blanketing everything in heavy snow which meant I got to create an army of snowmen. My other aunt, Vigrid, also showed up to my birthday alongside her husband and two daughters.

Jorunn and Ida also shared the same creepy eyes like the rest of the family did. Their hair was more like uncle Jørgen, who was more of a strawberry blond than he was a Weasley ginger. Ingunn expressed so much jealousy on her other two cousins, staring at their cascading locks while glaring at her own boring hair color that appeared to be the more dominate feature of the family (excluding me).

"Hiya, Kuzan!" Jørgen greeted me, plucking me from my seat on the couch so he could lift me high in the air like I was the lion king. "You've gotten so big! Look at you!"

"'Sup," I returned the greeting while keeping a straight face. It was kind of fun to see the adults pause at the bland tone before they quickly caught on that I was messing with them.

Two years of listening gradually helped me to finally keep up with their language. I was able to speak Norwegian like the rest of my relatives, but Japanese was something I was still working on. Dad was teaching mom and I whenever he had the time, but he had a lot of work to do so that sometimes left me and mom to ourselves which resulted in me learning Norwegian a lot faster than Japanese.

Another fun fact: since the Scandinavian countries (Norway, Denmark, and Sweden) were kind of tied together, their language was very similar. Norway was the best at understanding the other two languages, Sweden was good with Norway but not so much with Denmark, and Denmark was treated as the odd man out (it had something to do with their dialect). Anyway, the point was that I was able, in a small way, to understand some Swedish and Danish. It wouldn't be for another few years until I got the other languages down, but the fact that I could earn myself additional languages to tie on my belt made me feel a tad bit giddy with excitement.

My birthday was still missing one important person.

Dad sadly couldn't make it back in time, no thanks to the stupid winter storms that froze all planes to the ground. The only thing he could do was wait out the storms in some hotel and call mom's phone so he could wish me a happy birthday.

"Daddy's gonna bring you back lots of presents," he promised. "Be a good boy for mommy, okay?"

"I love you daddy." I told him.

And surprisingly, I meant it.

I would always love my parents from before, they were the one who had to deal with me and my siblings even when were complete shits at the worst times, but we eventually got to adulthood and learned to appreciate all they had done for us. These new parents of mine started out as strangers, even briefly seen as monsters because of the weird things they did, but they did their best to make me happy, and for that I was grateful to them.

And gratefulness turned to fondness which then turned to love.

Even with their creepy eyes, I loved my cousins, too (they snuck me some candies and treated me like a king).

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I saw myself for the first time.

Somehow, by some unknown means that still escapes me, I was not able to catch a glimpse of my reflection. I could see my own arms, feet, my tummy, and if I tried hard enough, maybe my nose. But even tracing my own face with my pudgy, sticky hands was never enough. All I knew was that I mostly took after dad, with his dark hair and more genetically dominate features as most Asians would with their children.

But then one day, after bath time, I finally saw myself.

Like I thought, I was more like my father's son with his dark hair and features—but my eyes were exactly like that of my mother, aunts, and cousins.

Those eyes which saw everything and anything were staring right back at me. Meanwhile, mom was drying off the rest of my body before moving to ruffle my hair like I was some wet dog which made me voice some protest against her treatment. Like always when I made angry eyes at her, she'd laugh at how cute it made me when I puffed my cheeks and furrowed my brows.

"You know, I've always wondered," mom started to say as she pulled out a hairbrush to comb my wild hair into submission, yet every time she failed to subdue the strands that refused to obey. "What kind of quirk you would end up getting? But I suppose that was a silly thing to think about now."

I froze.

"Quirk?"

"Oh, you know," mom shrugged as she brushed my hair. "The powers you get. Your daddy can stretch and I can sense things better than most people. That's why mommy's eyes are like this, so they could help me see things from far away like the spyglass your uncle Nils has in his office."

Quirks, powers, dad's stretching arms and mom's weird eyes.

"Kuzan?" mom picked me up from the sink's counter, her face alarmed as she took in my shocked features. "Darling, you look sick!"

She thankfully lifted the toilet seat up just in time when I just about puked my guts out.

'Oh my God!'

Born in a world where people with superpowers could take up the mantle of becoming heroes, I mentally cursed and kicked myself because how the fuck did I not see this?! How the fucking hell did I not connect the dots?! A society that didn't bat an eyelash at people with physical mutations, this was far worse than dying and becoming a baby!

I had to die, become a baby, and live in a world that was fictional!

God did I wish I could somehow warp myself into another reality that was close to my old world so I could find my dorm mate and deck him across the face because this was not my favorite fandom to be reborn in!