Hello, fellow Fanfiction readers! For anyone interested in the concept or just kind of a bit bored right now, do continue reading!
This is mainly a story I just had to write after watching a Tom Scott video about teleportation. Him saying that 'heroes have no creativity' just kinda stuck, and that all culminated into this!
Now, as the title suggests, the main focus is for the main character, Sora, who's a reincarnated scientist from another world, who's goal it is to reach for space. I'm a massive space and astrophysics geek myself, so this is kinda the way I'm spreading my love for it.
Anyways, final note. I'm currently writing [A Gamer's fate] as my main story, so the schedule of upload might be a bit skewed, but oh well. For those who arrived from that story, welcome!
Enough from me, enjoy!
Childhood - [1]
Heroism.
Villainy.
Two opposing, yet similar concepts. They're the two sides to one coin, one can't exist without the other. And in this world dominated by quirks, filled with people having powers that were once only present in ancient tales, those two sides had grown to dominate most of the world.
Not a day would go by without the news being taken over by a coverage of a battle between a hero and a villain. Children from their early days are taught of the wondrous world they live in, to grow and become heroes, to use their quirks for good. But what does 'good' mean anyway? What does it mean to be a hero?
And what of the quirkless, those born without a special power to call their own? They're cast aside by society, deemed the failures of the world, the remaining 20% to rest of the world.
To Sora, it was stupid. Just because one doesn't have a quirk doesn't mean they're worthless. The men of the age before quirks are just as influential. Old scientists that built the foundations of today didn't have a quirk to boost their intelligence or help in their scientific endeavours.
To dismiss someone just because they lacked something was foolish, a sign of what the society of today had done.
But that was a different world, a world where quirks didn't exist, a world where quirks are a part of the supernatural.
Even so, he'll just have to make that world a reality here as well, to break past the mold humanity had placed on themselves and reach for the sky, much like the name his mother had given him upon birth.
That is a task for the future however, for now,
"Almost...almost…!"
Sora was busy levitating a leaf off the ground, counteracting against the forces of the planet's gravity. It wasn't as easy as it looked, especially so for a boy at the ripe age of 4. It'd only been a week or so since he awakened his quirk, and he wasn't going to waste any time.
Telekinesis. A simple, if somewhat crude quirk. The power to take hold and control something using an energy none could visibly see.
For how strong it could be, it was but an infant of a quirk, and its strength is nothing compared to what others might have. That was fine for the boy however. He had time and patience, and a previous graduate education in the field of physics in a life before this one. He could make due with simply training.
Not to become a hero though, well, perhaps. He wasn't so sure about that. What he was sure of however was the desire to use his new quirk to advance science, and maybe, just maybe, help kickstart the building of an intergalactic civilisation. He'd always been a fan of outer space after all.
"Gah!" But alas, he finally ran out of energy, and his hold over the leaf broke, leaving it to gently float down onto the grass. Sweat poured down his face as he panted for breath, before he stood back up and tried once again, picking up the fallen leaf and levitating it just inches of the ground, holding it in position for as long as he could.
And so continued this routine, his control and power gradually increasing.
His past life wasn't anything special. He was a graduate with a bachelor in physics and general science. He worked as a scientist and practical engineer. He had a deep liking and fascination for space and what it holds in that seemingly infinite expanse. He enjoyed his work, but he also enjoyed the comforts of the weekends spent in his house, lazing as time went by.
He also enjoyed snacking on pudding, milk chocolate ones were his favorite.
There wasn't anything noteworthy from his old life. That was fine.
A month had passed since Sora first awakened his quirk, and his parents were getting worried over his anti-social habits. He had no friends to talk to, conversed with none of the other kindergarten students in his time at the school.
It was an understandable worry. They are, after all, just normal parents, working normal jobs, worrying over their daily lives. They had no idea that their son was a reincarnation of a man from a world past.
But it was just so incredibly hard to try and converse with children. Unlike adults, though they may not understand words, they were much more perceptive. They knew he was different, that he was strange, and they stayed away. Sora himself was fine with that, instead focusing most of his time levitating a pencil away from everyone's eyes.
He'd assured them that he was fine, that there was simply no one he could connect with in the kindergarten, but his parents remained unconvinced and worried.
So, with a sigh, he reluctantly agreed to find someone, to find another child he could call a friend.
It was not easy. Most kids were as he expected. Young, naive, yet sharply intuitive. It took him days of wandering through the town they lived in, looking through play areas and parks to find someone, anyone.
Then, one day, in a park fairly close to his house, he heard two people chatting, one an older male and the other a young, cheery girl.
It was not their voices that interested him, but the topic of their conversation.
Electric circuitry.
He swiftly approached, and he soon saw an old man explaining the in and outs of circuitry to a young pink haired girl, her yellow eyes shaped as scopes. Her quirk? He idly wondered, but he quickly approached, hope of finding a like-minded individual gradually building as he approached.
Then, the elderly man noticed, and asked him what a child like him was doing here. Sora explained that he was intrigued at what he was explaining about, and immediately,
"You find it cool too!?" The girl asked as she jumped him, her scope-like eyes twinkling with excitement.
With a smile of his own, he nodded, and the elderly man chuckled, before scooping them both up and continuing his explanation, this time with Sora listening in as well.
It was on that day that his parents' worries were dissuaded, the day he'd found a like-minded friend, and the day when his family and the Hatsume family became close friends.
"Ooh, what're you doing?" Mei called out, and Sora winced as his control slips, causing the basketball he was levitating above his head to fall and bonk him.
"Just practicing my quirk." The boy said simply, rubbing the ache on his head.
It'd been another month since he and Mei became friends. Just as they grew closer, so did their families, and it'd become quite common to see both families coming together on the weekends, chatting together as their child played with one another. Today was no different, with both families situated within the Mikado household.
It wasn't a large house, but it didn't need to be. They were simply a fairly average family, with a child who was perhaps a tad too quiet and intelligent.
"Ooh~" Mei cood, watching in interest as the basketball was lifted off the ground once again, her scoped eyes twirling back and forth as it took in every detail. Her quirk, Zoom, was simple. It turned her eyes into scopes, and she was able to zoom in and out to view an object with better resolution.
Or that was what it was for now at the least.
That was the thing about quirks. Train them enough, and they might change, evolve, adapt. Quirk physiology was still barely understood (how that was despite the hundred of years since quirks first came to be he wasn't sure), but quirk evolution was a definite possibility. There were many noted cases where a quirk had grown to become stronger, more diverse, or even create a new effect entirely.
The reasons and ways to enact as such were still fairly unknown, but the general consensus was that a person must be placed under great stress for it to occur.
Zoom might only be able to change the eyes' resolution, but with enough training, who knows what it could change into. There were far too many possibilities to consider, but the mere idea of it made the scientist within him bounce in excitement.
For now however, he'd instructed her to simply get used to the feeling of using her quirk, discover what it could do and find the current limit of her quirk. Then, when they'd found enough to work from, he'd begin creating small exercises for her to go through to improve her quirk. Hopefully. He wasn't a quirk scientist after all.
They continued to spend their time in silence, or some semblance of it at least. It would never truly be silent whenever Hatsume Mei is present.
Another month later, and he woke up to find himself in a hospital bed. Sora blinked, confused on why he was even here, but then the door to his room opened, his parents saw him, and they rushed in and hugged him with all their might, crying and asking him why he'd been such a fool.
Sora blinked again, confused, before he slowly began to remember.
Oh. He realized and slapped himself in the face, worrying his family even more.
Last he recalled, he had the bright idea to try and use his quirk to meddle with his brain, maybe to open something, or to improve something, he didn't quite remember. But the result was as expected. He reached within, pulled something, and pain blossomed in his every being before he fell unconscious.
He was an idiot. Who in their right mind would think tampering with a 4 year old child's brain was a good idea? Or anyone's mind for that matter?
A minute later, the Hatsume family arrived, and they too engulfed him in a tearful hug, with Mei crying to his side, her worries finally opened and let free. Realising his mistake, he berated himself and hugged Mei back.
What a fool.
But it's fools that create the biggest waves, right?
A week had passed since he last awoke. He'd been allowed to leave and return, and he was forcefully placed to bed to rest.
He didn't, of course. Something had been bugging him this entire time, and it was only in the silence of his room did he find out.
Everything was too loud, too crisp, and he realised that his senses had somehow become sharper. Did he alter something to cause his brain to interpret the signals it got better? His curiosity rising, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
His throat prickled as the air flowed down. That...was not normal. Not at all. Frowning, he reached out and hugged one of the dolls his mother had bought for him. The result was similar. Instead of it feeling soft, he felt the individual hairs sticking out from the hairy doll, feeling almost like feathers.
Something had changed.
And he was proven right when his neighbours suddenly began playing loud music. The sound blasted into his ears, and he'd frozen up, the spoon he'd been holding falling from his hands as he too fell. Thankfully, the floor under him had been covered by a soft carpet, but the fact remained that he suddenly froze from the influx of noise.
He was admitted into the hospital again, and it was there that he was warned about his overly sensitive senses. He was warned of the future sensory overloads he might experience.
His parents had worried. The Hatsume family had worried. Mei had cried and worried.
But he took it as a challenge. Everything might be louder now, but he was going to control that sensitivity. He was going to conquer it, and make that sensory overload his own.
Aside from that however, if he could cause his brain to become sensitive to the information coming from his five senses, then what else could he do.
So, as he busied with training his quirk, he also surfed through the internet to look for information about the human brain (which somehow has more information than quirks). He gained knowledge on which part did what, learnt what possible thing the world currently knew about the most complex natural computer the world has.
He didn't immediately begin exploring his brain of course, especially not after his idiotic stunt. Instead, he spent most of his time refining his control over his quirk, getting a feel of how it all felt, and even using it as a sixth sense of sorts to feel things beyond what his limbs could reach. He did all this with Mei by his side, just as how it'd been since they first met.
This time however, Mei wasn't simply getting used to how her quirk felt. No. She'd gone past that stage now.
Instead, he'd instructed her to watch a tipped glass a fairly large distance away, and he'd asked to count how many marbles fell from the glass. This was to see how accurate her quirk made her eyesight over a changing set of distances.
Over weeks, he'd documented his findings. Her eyes remained just as accurate over roughly 15 metres in distance, but it quickly began to degrade in accuracy as it went past that. Her eyes also had the tendency to get dry as well, which made sense as she mostly kept them open as she watched the glass of marbles.
So, to train that, he borrowed a camera from his father and made her observe it.
Why a camera?
Because her quirk worked roughly the same way. When it needed to view something farther, her scoped eyes narrowed. My hope was that she'd be able to implement what the camera does and use it to improve her quirk's accuracy.
Well, only time could tell.
"Not bad…" Sora smiled as he watched the two floating metal tubes he'd picked up with his quirk. It's been...three months? He was pretty sure it's three months. Either way, it's been three months since he first awoke his quirk of Telekinesis, and he's fairly satisfied with the progress he's made. Going from struggling to lift a single leaf, to lifting a pair of metal tubes with relative ease.
The tubes were only about the size of a baseball bat, but it was still an incredible improvement from where he started.
Of course, he had the knowledge of a past life backing him, so he knew what the most efficient path to take to lift something. He didn't need to coat the entire tube with his Telekinesis and lift it. No, all he needed to do was apply force on certain parts of the tube, and it'd lift itself. A simple application of lifts and levers.
Aside from his quirk's increase in power, sensory overload had become less of a problem now, with him gaining some slight control over how sensitive he could make his five senses. He'd still occasionally feel the sudden kicks from something that was too loud, but it'd need to be something incredibly loud.
Just as he was more susceptible to loud noises, so had his hearing to low frequency noises. He had become able to pick up noises most people wouldn't be able to pick up on, and he'd found it an incredible boon.
But, it was time to change gears.
He'd trained his quirk's strength to an acceptable level, for now. It's time to begin increasing his overall precision. Pure, brute strength was nothing without the precision to aim it. Well, that, and he was itching to begin his journey into his own fleshy brain.
So he shifted what his training consisted of. Instead of simply lifting, he'd now lift the object and fire them at a target, somewhat like a firearm, just without the need for gunpowder to create the initial blast. Dropping the two metal tubes onto the dirt, Sora sighed and lifted one of the needles he'd secretly stolen from his mother.
Keeping the needle in place, he aimed it at the makeshift target he'd created from a stack of books a distance away. His aim was the black dot he'd drawn on the opened book at the top. He grit his teeth, squinted his eyes, and with a heart full of hope, he fired the needle forward.
It missed completely.
Sora stared at it, shocked, before he laughed. He should've expected it really. He was no marksman, and he certainly didn't have the best control over his Telekinesis, but the suddenness of the entire thing still drew a chuckle from him.
His mother came out the door and looked at him strangely, and he simply told her that he'd done something funny and laughed.
She didn't look quite convinced, so he showed what he just did to her. Just like last time, the needle he shot missed his target completely.
They both laughed.
He was later scolded for stealing the needles. He could only demurely apologize, not really taking what he said to heart.
His mother seemed to have caught on however, and she pinched his cheeks.
Kindergarten was boring as always, but it didn't matter. It never mattered.
Slowly, as weeks went on, his accuracy increased. What was once a complete miss soon turned into hitting the boom by the edge, then to missing it by an inch or so, then half an inch, then just barely missing it.
Then, on a Thursday night, with Mei not far off practicing her own quirk, he fired off a needle, and it struck true, sticking right into the centre of the black dot he'd drawn on the note hole-riddled book. "Yes!" He cried out, and everyone immediately went to him to see what happened. With a wide smile, he pointed to the needle stuck in the centre of the black dot.
They all congratulated him, and soon they retired for the night with a large satisfying dinner.
He received lots and lots of milky chocolate pudding, and his tongue ascended to heaven, his increased sensitivity making the taste hundred times better than it had ever been.
But that night was special for a different reason as well. He'd become sensitive to his quirk enough to be able to pick information up from it. It'd become his sixth sense, his 'Telekinetic Touch' as he called it, and with it, he was going to start reaching into his brain.
As the Hatsume family left, and as his parents fell asleep, he sat awake on his bed, ready to dive into his own mind for the second time. With a deep breath, he closed his eyes and activated his quirk.
Slowly, he began reaching in, knowledge of brain structure guiding him as he journeyed through the neurons.
It was a dangerous endeavour. He bumped against things here and there, caused his body to jerk several times through the night, and he nearly lost control once, something he was sure would've landed him in the hospital.
He learned a lot that night, so much so that when he came back to the real world, sunlight had begun peaking through his still open window, left open from the night before. Blinking, he hopped off the bed and stretched, ready to go through this new day that'd come.
Distantly, he realised that he didn't sleep at all, and that his body was sorely tired.
Joy.
He still went to kindergarten that day, as much as he internally wished for the day to just end already. Thankfully, it seemed his exhaustion made him even more unapproachable than before, and he was barely bothered at all through the day.
When he kindergarten finished, he swiftly met up with Mei, and as he walked back to her house to enjoy the rest of his afternoon, he discussed their progress.
"I can see even further now!" Mei proclaimed pridefully. Obviously, he asked the specifics, and she pointed to a small billboard in the distance, saying that she could easily read the entire thing without breaking a sweat.
My eyes widened in surprise.
That billboard was over 25 miles away!
And not just far away, it was small as well! In awe and surprise, he turned to her. She looked to him with a bright smile. "You improved a lot, so I need to catch up!" She said, a fire burning in her eyes.
He couldn't help the excited grin that crept up my face at that moment.
That evening was spent mostly learning, with me teaching her the basics of static electricity, seeing as it tied fairly easily with the topic of electric circuitry. Of course, he taught her with a book he levitated with my quirk to train my quirk, and standing a distance away and walking back and forth to train Mei's quirk.
After all, if there's even a single chance to train their quirks, might as well make use of it.
That night, he slept with her for the first time.
Sleeping together would soon become a habit, one that would carry on for years to come.
Early in the morning, while everyone else was still asleep, he woke up and trained his quirk again, this time focusing once again on strength. He went outside, found the empty trash bin at Mei's house, and lifted it off the ground.
It was far easier than he expected.
Why? He asked, before swiftly coming to the conclusion that his increased precision was most likely making the specific amount of force he was exerting with his quirk more efficient, wasting less energy. With that knowledge, he smiled and returned back into the house. He searched around, found a fairly heavy bag filled with books, and lifted it.
He could lift it up as well.
By the time he did so, Mei's mother had woken up, so he quickly escaped and greeted the still sleepy woman. Thankfully, she wasn't a morning person and didn't notice the fact that he'd most likely woke up earlier than she did.
Every soon woke, and he spent the rest of the day training and playing with Mei.
Five months had passed since he first woke his quirk, and...well, he wasn't doing anything strenuous right now. In fact, he was riding atop a roller coaster, enjoying the winds as people cried and shouted all around him, fearing the slowly approaching drop.
Mei was right beside him, enjoying the ride as well. He was enjoying it as well, but for a slightly different reason.
Whereas everyone was high on adrenaline, he was busy configuring my senses' sensitivity, tweaking it by using the wind and everyone's scream as the basis. It was both an exercise to increase my control, and also to make sure he experienced this entire theme park as comfortably as he could make it.
So he did, and they had a great time. He and Mei rode around most of the theme park's offerings, while their parents watched on with interest and amusement at this 'playdate' they'd assigned for the two.
Of course, they were but mere children. The concept of dates and love wasn't something that really mattered on that moment.
Oh how he wished he hadn't tempted fate back then.
Kindergarten was still boring. Thankfully, break had come around, and he had a few months without the annoying need to go to an education he'd already learned a lifetime ago.
So he spent his time refining his quirk, training and playing with Mei, teaching her about physics, deepening his relationship with everyone that'd become involved in this second life of his.
Six months passed since he first woke his quirk, and December had come. Snow had begun piling all around his house, and so he was forced to stay inside, bringing his training back into his room. That was fine however, as it gave him more time to explore the complex maze that was his brain.
He discovered many wondrous things, most he didn't really understand, all he documented in a notebook. Of course, he also wrote it down digitally, but as file corruption was a thing, he also wrote it down on paper to make sure he had two sources to look from.
Somehow, he could hear the curses coming from distant scientists, wishing to see what he'd gathered.
A knock sounded from his doors, and he quickly blinked, snapping out from his adventure through his brain and back into the real world. He stood from his bed and opened the door to see Mei standing there, smiling. "Mei? What're you doing here?" It was snowing a bit too heavily for her to come here, then why-
Before he could ask so, she'd latched onto his arm and dragged him away, down the stairs and into a darkened room. He looked at her in confusion, and though in complete darkness, he could make out the excited smile she had.
Then,
""Happy birthday, Sora!"" A chorus of cheers sounds, and as the lights flip on, he's greeted to the sight of the combined Mikado and Hatsume families, wishing for him as a colorful cake sat atop the dinner table. His eyes widened in surprise.
T-Today's my birthday?
He combed through his memory, and sure enough, today was his birthday. He'd simply forgotten that in the business that'd happened throughout the past months. His mother quickly pulled out a plate and cut a piece of the cake for him. With the shock slowly wearing off, he took the plate and broke a piece of the cake off.
He took a bite, tasting the wonderful enhanced chocolaty taste, and all he could do was smile.
He truly was blessed, wasn't he?
Mikado Sachi was a normal woman. She worked in a nearby hospital, had a wonderful husband and an intelligent child. Her family had enough money to live comfortably, and they had a wonderful friend in the Hatsume family, with their daughter being an amazing friend for the son she'd given birth to.
Except Mikado Sora was smart, too smart.
She'd known something was off about the boy. She knew it. Akira knew it. Mei knew it. Her parents knew it.
When he was still a baby, he was incredibly quiet and well-mannered. He gained the ability to walk in three months, and to speak in a year. He could read in two years. He was a genius, smart and talented.
Then kindergarten came around, and he was silent. He made no friends. He didn't even attempt to. Any question the teachers asked him was answered immediately, with no mistakes. She and Akira had become worried for the boy, and even with him trying to reason his way out of it, she didn't allow him.
That day he met Mei Hatsume and her father, and their lives changed forever.
The Hatsume family had become a constant presence for them, and she delighted herself in the many comfortable moments they shared as they watched their children play and train their quirks. There she saw him train with the patience and determination rarely found in children of his age, and his progress was startlingly fast.
Then he used his quirk on his own brain, and he fell into a short coma.
She'd almost broken, nearly shouted at him to stop himself, but she knew he wouldn't. Whatever she said wouldn't stop him from developing his abilities, nor did she want to do that. So instead, she promised him to be careful, to remember that there were other people that cared for him as well.
He agreed.
Months swiftly flew by, and the children grew. The Hatsumes had joked that they'd make most of the heroes look sad by the speed of their progress, and she'd laughed along, knowing that it was true. Yet, somehow, she knew that being a hero wasn't something Sora would do. He was destined for more, destined to do something bigger.
She'd seen him sit outside, simply staring at the night sky with sheer unadulterated joy and curiosity. She'd asked him what his dream was, of what he dreamt to become, and at that night, he'd answered her.
"To reach for the stars."
It was such a profound answer, such a pure one, that she found herself entranced, taken in.
On that very night, and onwards until the end of her life, she'd decided that she'll support him. She'll help him to reach the skies and go beyond, to grasp the stars that hung high above in the night sky.
She'll help him reach for the stars, no matter what.