Sultan Asil Arslan: Ok this was awesome. I can see our MC becoming BNHA Samuel L Jackson now. Swearing more than Bakugo but being cool while doing it. And the famous media we know, is it simply gone or did Tsukauchi have no knowledge about them because they were popular before quirks?
Re: Any time-related questions are bound to be answered this-chapter.
Trux-Killer: Hm, I wonder if this'll be in the beginning and where he bunks with a pro hero or something. But soon we'll see wuts about to happen in due time.
Re: It'll be a while before he leaves the HPSC HQ wholesale.
Harleking31: Oh damn
I wonder if he is going to turn out Quirkless
Or have a really broken quirk
Re: It's an Isekai-esque story.
What do you think~?
Vandenbz: Interesting to see Takei wake up, perfectly understandable that he panicked when hooked up like that. Tsukauchi's early appearance was nice too, even if he was being rather obtuse about Takei's amnesia. A possible link to AfO is intriguing, wonder what'll become of that.
Okay, so no Lombax Takei. Is he Quirkless, using tech to become a hero? Might make for interesting interactions with his classmates, particularly Izuku and All Might since he aims to accomplish what both of them considered impossible.
As for the screwdriver, it could easily be used as a bat since other than the tip its blunt, making it ideal for keeping people alive. As for the tip itself, a simple sheath renders that safe too. I'm particularly inclined towards a straight edge due to more versatility (used as a lever, hitting someone with the flat surface, etc). If you want a phillips head that's fine too.
Will Takei's hero name follow the theme of Ratchet and Rivet? The only idea I have so far is Bolt, with a possible AI in a robot body being Nut. Taking the Cave Johnson approach to names, throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Re: It was fun writing Tsukauchi in, and he really does make me think of Inspector Gadget with that getup of his.
I don't recall saying Takei even wants to become a Hero. All he's committed to so far was working out so when the shit hit the fan, he could run like the wind and not get any on him. And he certainly doesn't have the start-up funds to enter the halls of legend that other "Quirkless" Heroes have like Batman or Iron Man.
What use would he have for a giant Philips Head screwdriver? As long as it's a flathead, at least he can use it as a Prybar.
"Bolt & Nut" sounds a little... phallic for a Hero name.
Loamy Coffee: I'm intrigued.
Hitomi-Sensei, one of my fav mangas and Takei is interesting so far. I've been wondering if classic books were still around in BNHA or not considering like Takei said, it's Hero this or Hero that.
I admit that I'm understandably nervous of where Takei is currently, considering that I am up to date with the manga.
Re: I recently started re-reading Nurse Hitomi's Infirmary, and fell in love with the idea of incorporating her since I was going with the "waking up from a coma" angle for this strain of the Light Novel Virus. Time-wise, it's taken a significant amount of time for Quirk Saturation to reach the 80% threshold, so Takehiko/me knows of a lot of out-of-date books. And yes, Takei's current location is meant to inspire some amount of dread, showing that his case is unique and somewhat ominous in nature.
*AHA*
After most of the shock of waking up in a hospital bed in an unfamiliar body blew over, I finally had the leeway to just stop and think; take stock of my surroundings and what the hell had happened.
Given I had two sets of memories in my head, spotty as my recollection of them was, and aforementioned sets of memory wildly contradicted one another, stated calendar years being the least of what I found contradictory, there were only two scenarios that could've made any amount of sense.
The first scenario was that the life I'd lived as Al… Allll… Al-something, the life that felt so utterly and completely real, was a complete and total fabrication like the "Coma Theory" from Pokemon.
Of course, that scenario was quickly disproven when I found out that my… this body's brainwaves during the one year it'd spend in the coma ward, were effectively those of a vegetable. If I had been living a life at more than two-dozen-times speed in that time period, that level of brain activity would've shown.
That, and, in dreams you couldn't read or tell what time it was, so that was another nail in the coffin.
The second scenario, the scenario I dreaded and the one I was forced to begrudgingly accept as reality after some time, was that I'd died and somehow… reincarnated into another world like something from the Isekai sub-genre!
DAMN YOU ANIME POPE! DAMN YOU AND YOUR LIGHT NOVEL VIRUS!!
World-shattering existential crisis notwithstanding, all things considered, I suppose I could've wound up in worse "Another World"s than a world where "the MCU had become the U".
I could've woken up in a world under threat by a "Demon Lord", or into the body of a malnourished child of an impoverished family in a medieval-style hierarchy, or one of those "Hero" situations where the Hero gets betrayed by his party at the end and "starts over" to pursue a pre-emptive revenge after dying… "not well".
Albeit, the jury was still up on that one…
Taking everything I know about some of the sub-genre into account, I can count myself lucky so-far that I didn't wake up in a war-torn world like in The Saga of Tanya the Evil, find myself trapped in a video game where respawns permanently strip away memories of the real world like Log Horizon, being reincarnated as a freakin' baby and being reduced to a dirty diaper factory, or possibly worse than all that…! Being reincarnated as Yamcha.
Naw, that's just mean. Within the context of other anime worlds, Yamcha is pretty damn strong. It isn't so much that Yamcha is "weak", but rather, everyone else is just "Your powers are bullshit!" -levels of strong.
Where was I? Oh, right…
Reincarnation into a strange place in a strange body aside, I was thankful I didn't wake up as one of those "black-haired, black-eyed, blank slate" type of characters that the Isekai sub-genre has been, had… been… dominated by as of late. And given the world was filled with professional Heroes, literally hundreds of thousands if not millions globally, it was highly unlikely that the fate of the world would rest on my shoulders.
Sure, having that kind of "grand destiny" sounded good on paper! But wind up on a lonely road where literally no-one could bail you out of that bind you're in against the world's "Final Boss", and, well…
That sort of mind-fuckery turned Andrew "Ender" Wiggin "The Xenocide" into a very mentally-unstable person, and that guy was infinitely smarter than I was… am…
Whatever. Fuck you, pronouns…!
Getting back to the topic at hand, since most Isekai series are largely close-ended regarding any sort of "return trip", with the only one of that nature I really recall being the anime ending of Familiar of Zero, I think it was safe to assume that I would not be going back home. Especially since according to my first set of memories and most of the Isekai sub-genre in general, you couldn't exactly go back to your own world if you died in it.
And even if I did find a way back, what the hell would I even say to my family? "Hey mom! Hey dad! Sorry about dying before you did, but it's all good now because I reincarnated in another world and then came back to this one!" …!?
So yeah, I'm in this world to stay, whether I like it or not. And while I have a very strong feeling that not having a "Quirk" in a world where 80% of the population has a Quirk is a raw deal, aforementioned feeling is burbling up from one of the many "holes" in my first set of memories from where I died as a late-late-20-something.
Assuming I completely and utterly ignore the Isekai facet of this situation, and instead choose to focus on the Super Hero genre, not having powers in a world like this, doubly-so in a world with this much saturation and sheer staggering diversity, is bound to be a death sentence when one of the major world-ending "story arcs" comes about. Sure, I could maybe pray and hope for an outcome like X-Men: Future Past where the "normies" win, but doing so made me both mentally and physically ill because the people who typically benefited from those sorts of regimes tended to be complete and utter assholes.
Like the Nazis.
So, barring any miraculous "Call to Adventure" protagonist bullshit where this body re-awakens its original or a different Quirk, the concept of which I'm still trying to wrap my head around, the best way to ensure my short-to-long-term survival is to get Swole so that when the fecal matter hits the oscillating blades, when/if I'm running in the opposite direction from aforementioned "Crisis", I can do so quickly!
And god it's cringy to think about this… but I know just the workout menu I want to try…
May the lord have mercy on my soul.
*AHA*
When it came to my physical therapy, for a guy who'd been in the coma ward for a year, my body was surprisingly fit; or at least that's what everyone around me has been saying. Either that muscle-zapping rig under my bed did wonders while this body was out of commission, someone injected me with "Essence of Wolverine" without turning my face into "a testicle with teeth", or something else just-as-if-not-more, ludicrous.
That said, even though technically this body was at over 50%, the issue wasn't so-much my body as it was my proportions.
Well, it was my body too, but that's beside the point.
In my first life I'd died in my late-late 20s, a year or two shy of 30, and while I was no Harlem Globe Trotter, I wasn't short by any stretch of the imagination.
The problem with my "second" life was that this body was so small, its limbs so short, and my center of gravity so-close to the ground, that it threw me off whenever I tried to do… well… anything.
Imagine you've spent your whole life driving a truck. It's big, bulky, you're used to it. Now imagine suddenly getting downgraded to a golf cart. The turning is weird, the steering wheel feels funny in your hands, and a strong breeze can bowl you over.
Slap that golf cart being left in the garage unattended to for a long time on top of all that, and you'd understand why, in this situation, I wasn't exactly comfortable in my own skin.
So suffice it to say, that- "100 push-ups. 100 sit-ups. 100 squats. Then a ten kilometer run. Every single day!" -goal might be a bit out of my grasp for the time being.
Still, once I put on a little more muscle, it couldn't hurt to try and get in shape again.
Though it might be more-accurate to say "again" with big quotation marks.
Like most Isekai protagonists, I was a shut-in and not exactly the epitome of physical fitness. I was no NEET, like the Japanese have, I did hang out with my family and went out whenever I could, quarantine be damned, but I was never 100% satisfied with the way my body "turned out" once I became a working man. So being reborn into a younger body in a new world, offered a rare opportunity for me to "get it right".
Hopefully I wouldn't run into any more Villains who might cut those plans short, because so-far, this body's luck really SUCKED in that department!
*AHA*
"Come on, Takei-kun! You can do it!" Hitomi cheered as I stood between two waist-level bars, trying to get used to walking in this much-younger body. If it were this body's original occupant behind the driver's seat, he'd only be staggering about like a newborn foal because of partially-atrophied muscles. For me on the other hand, well…
I think I've covered several paragraphs for that.
Not that it'd be impossible for me to get used to the new legs, it was just like learning to ride a bike, finding my sea legs, and how to drive stick all at once. Those are things you don't forget, even if you do need a refresher course once in a while.
Of course, right now only half my focus was on my wobbly knees and skinny legs; something I was steadily learning to overcome.
The other half of my focus was on Hitomi as she stood in front of me, arms open and beckoning, ready to catch me in case I fell on my face.
Again.
More-specifically, as a formerly-healthy late-late-20s-something male, this beautiful curvy woman's presence should've elicited certain reactions and feelings; while in my mind I found her attractive, the cyclopean eye shocking at first but beautiful when viewed through a new lens, apparently my body wasn't so quick to get the memo.
Yeah, apparently something that gets brushed over a lot in the Isekai genre, or at least as-much-into-it I'd delved, is that when a grown man or woman gets "reincarnated" into the body of a child, having to repeat puberty really, REALLY sucks! I didn't really pay attention to it the first time I consciously went to the bathroom in this body given I was too weak to stand up by my own power, but when I remembered what age I currently was, it only made sense that certain parts of my anatomy had yet to reach their "final form".
Sure, the mind in this body was that of an adult who had a healthy-yet-respectful appreciation for the female form, but given it was a prepubescent brain between my ears, and it's basically like I'm trying to run Windows 11 on an old PC. Though the memories I have in this body are "spiritual" in nature, or somesuch, that's only software; the hardware is still the chemical bonds between neurons that hold this body's knowledge, and those chemical bonds only had 11 years to cultivate, 10 if you exclude the year-long coma.
Not that I'd be able to even act on this attraction, even if my brain could supply the chemical cocktail needed to ready this body into a state of arousal, because Hitomi was an adult, and I was a child, and since this isn't a harem anime like Mahou Sensei Negima or "{Insert Harem Anime Where Grown Women Fall in Love with Prepubescent Child Here}"…
Besides, she had a life outside taking care of me, so not only did she potentially have a guy in her own age bracket to go home to, but I was young-enough to be her child, if not her nephew. Unless there was something very wrong with this woman, anything between the two of us would not work out.
Though that was just the Sigmund Freudian part of me talking… I as I know it was completely unconscious that whole year, so maybe this body latched onto the sound of her voice and that's why "I" was experiencing these feelings.
So… with the mindset in place that this body's hardware wouldn't be in any shape to reliably promote higher thought until after puberty more or less ran its course, I dedicated myself in double to walking the length of this physical therapy lane without tripping on my own feet.
"Don't worry! I've got you!"
Though as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day… and neither was my hand-eye (or foot-eye) coordination.
-thought I to myself as my two trick knees gave out from under me and I wound up falling face-first into Hitomi's bountiful bosom.
If I actually had hormones, I'd enjoy the tripping and falling a lot more.
*AHA*
"I'd say I was going to miss this old room, but then I'd be lying," I said a few days later following many physical examinations, poking, and prodding, as I was moved out of the coma ward and into a more-generalized room.
"Well, that is understandable. You were asleep for most of the time," Hitomi said pushing my wheelchair, which was the only way I could get around in a timely fashion without landing on my face.
Apart from Inspector Gadget's business card and my hospital scrubs, "Takehiko" didn't have any belongings on-hand to pack.
Apparently when "I" was orphaned, "I" had no extended family to take care of me, and because I'd been incapacitated in a Villain attack, I'd become a ward of the state. Beyond the fiscal and material possessions ceded to "me" by "my" parents for when I came of age, which were in storage right now, and the few toys that got left behind in the orphanage following that Villain attack, "I" didn't presently have anything else to my name.
Not that it would've made much difference. A late-late-20s-something would typically not find what toys a ten-year-old played with entertaining.
Unless it was a smartphone or a tablet or a laptop, but only if I still had internet. Internet was universal.
Not that I'd be typing fanfiction any time soon with how-often my fingers spazzed out…
"Also, your Japanese is coming along very well," Hitomi smiled brightly, seemingly unaware of my inner turmoil.
"Yeah… I guess…" I replied, feeling the foreign-sounding words roll off my tongue.
While the mind that had now taken up residence in this body only spoke English with a less-than-rudimentary understanding of interpreting high school Spanish, this body did still possess the capacity to express thoughts in the Japanese language. While the original soul may have been gone, the knowledge was actually in the hardware, not the software; it's just that since this brain is working with a new Operating System…
Imagine a textbook with the table of contents taken out. You can still find what you're looking for in it, but without aforementioned table of contents, finding the "Japanese section" of this brain involved a lot of manual page-turning. Though to me, it felt more like kicking up silt so I could find stuff at the bottom of a lakebed.
Of course, it didn't really help that this adult-leveled mind was trying to function in a body substantially lacking in the hormone cocktails it had grown accustomed to. I could still have "adult thoughts" about the opposite gender, but without the hormones necessary to hold onto that train of thought, in that regard I basically had the attention span of a goldfish. Or more-literally, an eleven-year-old.
I still had no idea what'd become of me once I left the hospital; I couldn't very well stay here forever. Hopefully, I could take some much-needed time to recover in body, mind, and spirit to "put myself back together" before they booted me out of here.
It wasn't like I could do much else. With any hormonal thoughts slipping through my fingers like water out of a sieve, all I really could do was "work on myself". And though this body might be shackled, in my mind, I am free.
Or at least as free as whatever books or internet access I could get my hands on would allow.
*AHA*
The room I've been moved into from out of the coma ward is pretty nice all things considered. I have a space to myself I could actually see, a reclining bed, a TV, a view of the city, and a closet for all my… hospital gowns… I could also have food brought to me whenever I got hungry, though the more-mature part of me opted not to abuse that liberty.
Which was good because when I was eleven the first time around, I would've had the nurses bring me ice cream until I was sick; had I been in this exact situation.
By and large, outside of physical therapy, I was tasked with simply resting and recovering so as to not backslide. With a body as frail as this one, that meant reclining in my bed and watching TV whenever Hitomi wasn't around to break up the monotony.
Watching the TV didn't only give me a chance to practice my Japanese reading and articulation. It also helped drive home the fact that I was in a world of legit Superheroes. Sure, it was one thing to be told about it in an insular place, but seeing it, even if only on TV, was another thing altogether.
Instead of the "Mystery Men" you'd find in The Incredibles or the corporate "human Nascar" you'd find in Tiger & Bunny, in this world, becoming a superhero, or "Hero" as the common vernacular penned it, was no longer a matter of skirting the law for altruistic purposes or having a rich sponsor that had you put company logos on your costume. Instead, all it came down to was going to a specialized high school or technical college and basically becoming over-specialized in law enforcement to make use of your superpower/Quirk.
Don't get me wrong, there were definitely Heroes out there who got endorsement deals from things like coffee to shampoo to clothes to, well, just about everything. However, Heroes by their own merit could become successful without slapping corporate logos on their arms and legs and across their torsos. In fact, similar to Tiger & Bunny, Heroes were more often than not rated on their popularity and/or the number of crimes they solved; just without the reality TV angle.
Though there was still an awards ceremony every year to re-establish the pecking order; the "Hero Billboard Chart JP" if I remember correctly.
A little research on a tablet I was given revealed that in the early days of Paranormality, there had been a "Hero TV" back when demand was high and supply was low. Nowadays, the feats of Heroes were no longer covered live barring any disaster relief, but were instead treated like any other news story. Fights between Heroes and Villains were still interesting, assuming the camera man didn't get killed by debris or a stray laser or something else equally undignified; it was just that they happened so wearily often, people in this world were perfectly capable of walking by them without batting an eye because that shit had become the new "normal".
At the very beginning of Paranormality, everyone thought it was a sham. As Quirks began to proliferate, a bit of an X-Men vibe came about where "Freaks" were hunted by those frightened by their gifts, forcing them to band together or submit themselves to the will of their countries to receive protection in exchange for furthering national agenda. As Quirks began to proliferate even further, governments quickly lost the ability to police what were essentially thousands of living weapons doing whatever the hell they wanted, since many Quirks were more-dangerous than police-issued sidearms and many more could level city blocks in the blink of an eye if they happened to get a really good draw from the Superpower Raffle.
It was only when the actions of a superhero could be commercialized, that there was the upswing in public opinion necessary to effectively fight off the chaos that'd enveloped the world for so long. Allegedly, if Quirks had never manifested, we would have interplanetary travel by now, but at the very least, tech companies all over the world were making up for lost time as advancements in hologram and robotics technology were well on their way to becoming a part of everyday life.
I only prayed some damn fool in the UN didn't decide to use giant robot fights to influence global policy. Like in Mobile Fighter G Gundam.
As a matter of fact, in the heart of the 23rd century, the country of Japan, my country I guess, was experiencing an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity not seen since before the beginning of Paranormality over two-hundred years ago. Amazingly enough, Japan's crime rate was down to a minimal of 6%, the rest of the world possessing a crime rate into the double-digits at 20%.
Though Japan was heavily restrictive in how they allowed Quirks to be used by its citizenry, given everywhere else was like the Wild West with people using Quirks however they damn well pleased, all things considered, I guess I'd "picked" a good time and place to be reincarnated.
*AHA*
It took me a few more days to notice between bouts of physical therapy and refresher courses in Japanese language and history, but something quite shocking about the new brain my "software" was currently running on, was that I no longer had the "bug" that had plagued me for the majority of my (previous) adolescent life.
I wasn't Autistic anymore!
For those that aren't Autistic themselves or don't have a family member who is, Autism is basically… "A serious developmental disorder that impairs the ability to communicate and interact. Autism spectrum disorder impacts the nervous system. The range and severity of symptoms can vary widely. Common symptoms include difficult with communication, difficulty with social interactions, obsessive interests, and repetitive behaviors. Early recognition, as well as behavioral, educational, and family therapies may reduce symptoms and support development and learning."
From a guy who actually has… had autism, the key word is "reduce", not "cure".
You can take Special Ed classes until you're blue in the face, or pop Autism medication like Tic-Tacs, but no matter how long you do it for, take it from a guy who is able to quote/unquote "get over it"; that Autism will still be there, you're just able to pass yourself off as buzzwords like "quirky" or "eccentric".
And that's just if you land on the "Lite" side of the spectrum; if you're on the short-bus helmet-wearing end of the spectrum…
To suddenly not have it anymore, that certain "something" that's always been there for good or ill… It's one part sobering, another part disquieting. All your life you have this little quirk, this tick in how your mind works that sets you apart from everyone else, and to suddenly have it gone…
In a way it's like having a favorite "Ugly Christmas Sweater" that you can't wear anymore or have taken away. Sure, it's itchy as hell and the design on the front is mortifyingly humiliating to the point you'd rather slit your own wrists than wear the damn thing to school if you "aren't Autistic enough" and can still care what other people think about you… but dammit, that was your sweater that your own mother made for you, with love tucked into every stitch! The thing might not be pleasant, but it. Is. Still. Yours!
One would think that mental disabilities like Autism would "carry over" if you were reborn into another world, but scientifically, that only applied if you still kept your original body; or more specifically, your original brain.
And God don't I feel stupid for using the word "scientifically" in the same sentence as "reborn into another world".
You see, when it comes to autistic people, there isn't technically anything wrong with the software; at least not in full. Part of the issue lies in the hardware, which the software runs on. If you think of it like having a bunch of video game consoles hooked up to the same TV, non-Autistic/"regular" people would "have all their ducks in a row" with the wiring for each console separate and tidy; for the Autistic people in this metaphor, the game console wires would still go where they all need to go, but behind the entertainment system it's just a big ol' mess like a tangle of Christmas lights. The mouse still gets through the maze, but sometimes it has to backtrack, bumps into the walls, and/or forgets to grab the cheese at the end for a few seconds.
It's too early to say what I'll even do with a brain that isn't addled with a Pervasive Developmental Disorder, since while I was still Autistic, a life without that disorder was literally impossible to imagine; like a person born blind imagining color or a person born deaf imagining sound. But I figure getting literally "cured" of my quote/unquote "affliction" can only be good for me in the long-term.
I just hope that along the way, I don't lose everything that made me… well… me.
*AHA*
Twists and turns of the Isekai sub-genre aside, assuming I'm not crazy for thinking I was reborn into this world from a late-late-20-something and I really was reborn into another world like in all the light novels and/or manga, there are a great many lessons one can learn and take from different kinds of Isekai adventures and how their protagonists are thusly shaped by the world around them. Albeit, "genre awareness" is a boon only-awarded to the spectators, not the players, so all I could really do, like the earliest scientist/alchemist, is try a little bit of everything, see what works, see what doesn't, and then learn from it if I'm still alive by the end.
You see, there are people who believe that their obsession with fantasy genre or niche skillset means they can handle any world, but in actuality, they'd probably be scared to death of medieval farm equipment.
There are people who wouldn't care if they got reincarnated as a monster, believing as "the main character" they'd be able to become something great; even a simple Goblin or Slime could become a great king with "the right mind" behind the body. In truth… they'd be more-likely to get killed by the world's real heroes, since a clever mind can only get you so far in the face of overwhelming strength.
There are fools that dream of being reborn as a Demon Lord from their favorite video games, not realizing that real life isn't a game, and barring some Deus Ex Machina bullshit or some convoluted nonsense like in Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World, you don't get "Extra Lives".
There might even be those who think they are "the main character" and would actually be excited to have the fate of an entire world and/or civilization resting on their shoulders. But surprise, surprise! Someone else already called dibs on that role, and all you are is a worthless schlep doomed to a life of obscurity and inadequacy.
I even wonder about those stories of kids being transported into digital worlds; at least with the guy I used to write fanfiction with before I, you know… died.
According to him, the Internet's data-holding limit is one million exabytes. An exabyte is one billion billion bytes for a total of 18 zeros; yet, despite that seemingly-incredible volume, roughly 30 percent of the Internet is porn.
Fucking Rule 34 fucking bullshit…!
If I really have been reborn into another world, then that means all the fiction in my original world, Isekai sub-genre included, is actually fact in others somewhere out there in the multiverse. That in turn means the lessons I learn from that fiction can impact real-life fact.
Only time will tell if I'll be able to make the most of this opportunity, because all honesty…
I'm scared out of my fucking mind. And do you know why?
Because like Superman, I'm a stranger in a strange land.
Like Samurai Jack, I'm a man out of time.
Like Andrew Wiggin… I can never go home again.
*AHA*
AN:
My Self-Insert might not be Autistic in the world of My Hero Academia, but in this one, I'm still anal about my detail work whether it's in writing or metalworking, so I apologize if all of these metaphors and analogies make this chapter a dry read. But I just feel like this is the kind of "Isekai" story I want to write.
Not everyone is a hopeless loser who wants to go to another world where their niche skills and talents are hot commodities where supply is low and demand is high. Some people are perfectly capable of finding dignity, in humility.
Part of the reason why my Self-Insert isn't treating this as his "big break" like Natsuki Subaru, Kazuma Sato, or others.
Anyway, tell me what you think, and I'll see you next time!