AN: Another chapter that nobody asked for! Enjoy!
(Aeschylus: The Father of Tragedy)
…
"If I am not here tomorrow, then remember me today."
Somebody on the internet obviously wrote this in case somebody died, but for me, a part of me was dying every day.
A lot of authors nowadays on the internet get flak for having a character's quirk be the only aspect of their personality that is memorable. After that, it's just a generic shounen archetype copy pasted across generations.
The willingness to sacrifice. Being dense to romantic advances (even if I didn't understand the appeal. I was just in fifth grade!). Having some sort of secret power.
If there really was a bad author narrating my life on a random website, then they could bypass this criticism immediately.
After all, my quirk was me. It was the embodiment of myself in other people's minds.
I learnt, with horror, that it wasn't just my ability that was influenced by other people's expectations. It was everything.
My brother (Miyasaki Tenshin), again, with a thought copying quirk, told me that there would always be this subconscious stream of thoughts coming from nowhere that whispered into my mind, dictating my actions.
Even without me noticing them. Subconsciously, I was mimicking the expectations of others even in my actions.
Of course, me, being the almost-middle schooler I was, accessed the place that was filled the most with character identities. After all, if I was going to become a character, I might as well know what archetypes to fulfill so I didn't end up as a typical loner in an anime.
After all, to be a loner is to suffer.
But then again, it would be a blissful existence. To have the little voices in my head turn to nothing and the thoughts of everybody that thought of "Yohaku Tenshin" be "who?".
Still, if that really happened, who knows if the expectations of everybody for me to "not exist" actually make me not exist.
I sighed. If only I could… not have this specific quirk.
I opened my notebook and stared out into the sky.
Wait, why was I doing that? I wasn't an anime character. I don't have to be dramatic. I shook my head and tried to be as much of a loser as possible, slouching and hunching forward in my desk, messing up my hair and uniform.
My expectations of myself slowly decreased, and I could feel the secondary driving force of what my quirk thought I could do (my own beliefs) calm down a bit.
The primary force, was, of course, the expectations of my classmate and teachers, along with my parents and my brother.
What was the tertiary force, then? Miyasaki had picked up a lot – and he meant a lot – of indecipherable thoughts tricking in, and I deduced that it was from the damn cats.
Yes. The cats had started an official cat-church. Miyasaki was mentally scarred after learning that there was an actual church: A particularly clean trash can in a back alley with a crude image of my face scratched onto it. There were piles of offerings in front of it, and I had glared at the cat that started it all – "High Priestess".
She licked her paws innocently, and I knew that she understood human emotions, so understandably, I was mildly annoyed.
"Developing anime character syndrome." I wrote in my journal. "Tendency to monologue about stuff I already know in my head."
…
Fifth grade graduation came and went, and then, the accursed topic of Heroes came.
I did not want to be a hero. There were many reasons.
Number one: It was way too risky and way too much work.
Okay, and if anybody were to ask me "so you're this lazy, huh?", I would shrug and then … nod in agreement. Being a hero, doing stuff for the good of the public, and the other things that came with it would be exhausting.
Not to mention: What if I actually became famous?
What would happen then? The voices in my head from the expectations previous and current classmates, along with the cats were already sometimes screaming in my head when I defied their expectations. If a whole country somehow noticed a complete fraud like me…
I would literally be in hell.
I guess that would be the second reason.
Still, if I wasn't flamboyant enough and people just thought of me as a random teenager, without any guesses of what my quirk was or what it did, I might not have a quirk in the eyes of the potential villains I have to stop.
And I doubt that the expectations of kindergartener friends (who's memories of me were already fading, don't ask me how I know.), thousands of cats, and whatever classmates I would have in a hero school would overcome the expectations of everybody else who saw me.
So a result would be an early career death.
Thus, the only way I was going to survive being a hero or stop myself from being forgotten by everybody was to become, as many other otakus would say, a total riajuu.
It was terrifying.
…
"It's nothing to wonder about. You all want to be heroes, right?" Our teacher said, a tired but hopeful smile on his face.
I would know. I was the best actor in the room. So good, that during my entire middle school journey, my entire behavior had been propped up by their false expectations since day one.
Now, in eight grade, I had become what everybody thought I was: a riajuu.
I may have miscalculated my life choices, though. By acting too much like a shounen protagonist (who potential readers would obvious be bored of if the author were to describe it in full length), I was automatically assumed to have a good quirk and wanted to be a hero.
Of course, in the simple, one track minds of students who have been indoctrinated in this rigid system since the beginning of the hero industry, riajuu = somebody that wants to be a hero.
There were always those edgy "self insert" stories where degenerates behind the safety of the screen of their computers would write crappy fiction where a kid suddenly got a really overpowered quirk, went to some sort of hero high school, and then began steamrolling everybody and having an equally steamy relationship with some sort of vigilante or villain.
(Also called power fantasies).
Of course, being the clear-headed individual that I was, I analyzed my previous entries of my "personality report", some crappy fiction, and then decided that if I didn't want to be a hero, I might suffer the first stage of fading out of existence due to the expectations of other people to think that I "didn't exist".
"Tenshin-san, I noticed you haven't submitted an application to UA or any hero school. Is that just a mistake on your part?
I began sweating. I hoped that nobody would notice.
"No way, Tenshin-kun! With your quirk, you'd be an awesome hero!"
"I know right? Even if I want to be a hero myself, it would be a shame if you didn't at least try! I can't believe that I said that, considering you're definitely more competition."
The "side characters" began talking, and I had to oblige the masses. After all, my refusal now would be even more memorable than me just trying to be a hero.
"O-oh. I just forgot. I'll fill it out tomorrow." I stuttered, fidgeting in the pockets of my black pants.
My "quirk" was supposed to be "Moonlit gap", an area where mythological influences would arise with my "incantation".
It wasn't that much of a quirk, but people apparently deduced that because I was very confident, my quirk could literally embody an element, have clairvoyance, and promote my physical ability to some degree as long as I "created territory" in the area beforehand.
Which was convenient and painful at the same time. Because I could do a dramatic chant before using my quirk, and if somebody already knew what my quirk was beforehand, they would infer that something would happen, and if somebody that was confused would ask them about what was happening, the explanation would induce the expectations of the people to cause my quirk to do what it was supposed to do.
I sighed and rubbed my face once I was out of sight of my "clique" and depressingly staggered towards my home, pockets in hands.
Still, I could just not show up to the hero school exam, right?
Easy solution.
…
My brain was screaming at me.
I felt like I was going insane as I dressed up in a casual t-shirt and planned to watch youtube or something all day. And then studying.
Normally, only my thought copying brother could catch the suggestions. Now, it was giving me an aneurism.
"Alright, fine! I'll go!" I muttered, putting down my spoon in my still half-eaten cereal. My parents gave me strange looks and my brother gave me a concerned one as I pulled on my old school's uniform jacket, black pants, and some tennis shoes.
"Who are you talking to?" My mom yelled after my retreating figure. Behind the open door, High Priestess slunk out and jumped off the balcony.
"He's talking to the voices in his head." My brother said, taking a sip out of his canned coffee.
"But-"
"Yes. That is unhealthy. Still, it's a side effect of his quirk."
My father sighed, and put his hands on his face.
"If only we didn't have so many copy quirks in the family…"
…
My brother, Miyasaki, was a special case of tragic.
Even if he really was seventeen, his real age was closer to 34. Ever since birth, he had the ability to read exactly what other people thought and think the exact same thing. As a result, even when he was supposed to be in his "innocent child" phase, his inadvertent copying of my parent's thoughts through what he described to be a midlife crisis really left a mark.
If I was forced to be a riajuu by my quirk, then his forced him to be a loner. If he was completely by himself, and exactly 8.4 meters away from any living creature, then he could finally stop thinking the strange thoughts of other people or the random ideas of flies and cockroaches.
But who's quirk was a bigger curse?
That wasn't up to either of us to decide. I didn't understand yet, either, still too engrossed in my own suffering, but everybody suffered. Just in their own way. We wore a mask to hide it, either by being silent, being distant, or being sociable.
The truth was, there was no perfect person. Maybe even All Might has some sort of insecurity he was hiding.
Because in the farce that is the world, the greatest liar… is me.
(Why am I suddenly quoting animes? That's another one to add to the list.)
…
I leaned my bike down against a lamppost near UA, chained it up, and then walked to the entrance of the school.
Which was blocked by an array of stray cats. Immediately, I facepalmed. Of course High Priestess had to do something like this.
One boy who's face looked kind of like a turtle wore a terrified expression, looking at me with fear… and reverence?
The cats swarmed my vision. It was arguably worse than when I first got chased by these critters, but at least they didn't invade my personal space anymore. They laid down bits of cat food, and two dragged an entire unopened package of wet cat feed towards me. Then, with a rehearsed movement, the cats bowed down and then filtered away, disturbing other pedestrians greatly.
Other people began giving me strange looks, so I quickly shuffled into the exam hall.
The written exam was first, and I had to get some pencils from the exam administrator, a pro hero that I didn't know about, who interpreted my sleepless look as somebody who studied really hard for these exams.
The truth is, I did study. But not for a hero course exam. It was more of a science-math oriented high school, and even if the UA exam was tough, it didn't hold a candle to the difficulty of the practice tests I had been doing.
The essay really made me pause. For a while, as many other people scribbled in paragraphs about what I presumed to be tragic childhood experiences that lead to a cliché character growth curve that disproportionately arced towards altruism, I was thinking of a way to fail the exam without my quirk thinking that I was purposefully fail the exam, and then not going onto the painful course of action that was being a hero.
I looked at the clock, and then realized I only had five minutes left.
Then, a wicked thought was born in my head. My fellow classmates expected me to be a hero, right? And heroes helped people, right?
I wrote exactly three words on that essay.
Why do you want to be a hero?
To help people.
...
It was time for the practical exam. Examinees staggered out of the grueling exam, nursing sore hands and cramped legs. Many people gravitated towards their friends, and I did spot a couple of people in the same school that I was. Still, I wisely ignored them (to quell another building headache), and made it to my assigned seat.
Some people were really outspoken about a fourth type of villian, but I was thinking of using whatever my "quirk", my Moonlit Gap, to try and not defeat any robots while creating an awe-inspiring spectacle that was worthy of a riajuu.
The answers was shadows. Because there were bound to be one or two people who had heard about my "quirk" in my exam area, I could just channel shadows and act shocked when the darkness failed to defeat any robots.
(Obviously it wouldn't. What would shadows do to robots?)
…
"Darkness in our souls, darkness in their hearts! Darkness upon this cage of an arena! Heed my call, and destroy our foes!"
I chanted these words as other examinees rushed forth hot-headedly, searching for the villain robots. Still, they heard my words, and through the ingrained neural connection that was dramatic anime chants, they deduced that something mystical must have happened.
Instantly, the arena fell pitch black, and shadows crawled out from underneath everybody to seek out and destroy robots.
Now, all I had to do was nothing. Because these "shadows" created by the construct of my quirk should not be strong enough in their minds to destroy robots. After all, these were macho, competitive hero student hopefuls. They would refuse to believe that mere shadows could defeat-
A gigantic beast rose from the shadow of a bird-headed student. It laughed crazily, roared, and then proceeded to rampage across the city block.
…
I ended up tied for first in that exam, with ninety villain points. The bird-headed student, Fumikage Tokoyami, had gotten an equal amount. Apparently the teachers decided to split the points of the robots that his quirk destroyed among us, since my quirk was the reason that his quirk gained so much power.
Somehow, just somehow, despite trying my best to fail the exam, my quirk had inadvertently tried to make me pass it in a roundabout way.
What a cruel illusion my quirk was. To present an opportunity for failiure right in front of me, only to take it away and replace it with a path to the top. My family mourned that day as my quirk forced me to send a confirmation email to UA for my acceptance of their admissions offer.
Still, what kind of school would accept an essay that just said "To help people?"
And so, I unwillingly entered a hero school. This could only end well.
…
AN: My monthly installation of this series is complete! YES!
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This is just a small side project, and I take breaks from my main fic (which hit 100k words last chapter!) to write this just so I can rest my brain from repeatedly grinding out fight scenes and character interactions.
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