superpierce: since you used the term trump for a quirk user who can do things like copy power or "erase them" I assume you will be using the Worm power classifications? ignoring the slight confusion with breaker and changer powers (though I don't find it confusing for the record) it's prettly well established power system ignoring the PRT threat ratings.

Re: Not as such. Any knowledge of Worm I have is second-hand, and I don't write stuff into stories I can't write about faithfully. It's why you'll never see me write for stuff like Game of Thrones or... some other random franchise I know nothing about. I could try, look up stuff on the wiki to brush up on it, but since I'm not impassioned about it, the lack of enthusiasm would show in my work.

MountainBookSage25: Awww
MC didn't get his hero moment
Now time to wait for a long time again for the next
Or maybe that's just for the other fics

Re: And just what kind of "hero moment" would an eleven-year-old with a functionally useless power have against a nutball like that?
Just because you Reincarnate into Another World doesn't mean you're entitled to anything; the darker/satirical trend of Isekai manga are evidence of that.
As for the update time, well, I am trying to keep everything in rotation instead of letting one work or another sit on the "backburner" for an entire, literal, year...

LoamyCoffee: Good to know the current limits of power for him. Oh god damn it, now I'm thinking about that stupid Tide Pod nonsense.
Glad you're including more Hitomi Sensei characters. Hmm, to be fair the guy's name immediately made me think he was connected to All For One. I can understand why he's reacting like that, I'd be paranoid and fearful of a repeat of that.
I'm just loving Hitomi's family. And Hawks shows! I quite love his power set and I feel for him, seeing his background.
I still feel sadness that Twice had to die simply due to his potential danger.

Re: It's functionally useless, but yes, the SI's [Tactical Time Dilation] has its limits, as well as a lack of motivation to attempt "Quirk Reinforcement" since, without any sub-powers like [Accelerated Motion] or any idea of how-superhuman Humans can get without their Quirks, why would he be motivated to? As for the Tide Pod thing... I can TOTALLY see people STILL being stupid-enough, two-hundred years in the future, to do shit like that. Unless stupid people all die OUT in the future because of aforementioned stupidity like the "Darwin Awards".
Yeah, I started reading Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary just-before writing this story, and she and all the other characters just seem like such a good fit for the world of My Hero Academia. And yeah, compared to All Might and Endeavors, Hawks' Quirk is actually interesting because it isn't one of those dime-in-a-dozen powers like "Super-Everything" and "Super-Fire".
For Twice... Hey, the guy was an "S-Class" Criminal (that's Canon by the way), and Hawks did try to convert him as I recall. Honestly, I feel like if Jin Bubaigawara had just been instilled with a sense of "work ethic" when he was younger, none of that bad shit would've happened to him; it all started going downhill for him when his Quirk started using him, instead of the other way around. I mean, sure, in Naruto when aforementioned character's [Shadow Clones] went on strike it was played up for laughs, but when your own doppelgangers turn on you, something is seriously wrong with how you're using your power...
The whole "Am I a clone?" existential crisis Clone Saga nonsense... probably didn't help matters either...

*AHA*

Good News: I managed to make it through last night's little… episode, physically unscathed.

Bad News: Last's night's little episode disturbed enough "silt" in Takehiko's brain that now I was starting to suffer from his past traumas. Losing his parents to a Villain attack, getting attacked by another Villain in an orphanage a year later, getting attacked by yet another the year after that…!

Honestly, I'd hate to see the kid that isn't rattled by shit like that.

As it stood however, even though it wasn't explicitly "my" trauma, the fact remained that all of Takehiko's past incidents were starting to hurt me as-badly as if they were my own traumas. This could probably be taken as a sign that I was "settling in" to this new body, though thankfully my past memories weren't being "overwritten"; a fate worse than death in certain cases.

Back to the matter at hand. While "I" was technically only present for the most recent of traumas, that I'd been able to seriously consider self-immolation so that HItomi and her family could get away from a botched and hastily-planned rescue attempt, it was proooobably an indicator of how-cracked I was.

I thought that with my adult mind, I'd be able to get over this incident, put it all behind me.

As it turned out, I could not.

At least, not without a lot of therapy from an accredited psychiatrist specializing in PVSD, otherwise known as Post-Villain Stress Disorder.

It's somewhat telling that this world is so-obsessed with 'Cops vs Robbers-I mean, 'Heroes vs Villains', that they'd even make a designation like "PVSD" instead of lumping it in with the pre-existing PTSD like any sane person would.

*AHA*

It was also somewhat telling that I woke up screaming the following morning.

As one would expect, the previous night I had recurring nightmares about myself in various forms of vivisection, and that shit followed me into my waking hours.

What sucked about it even more was that Hitomi had been waking up alongside me all night to serenade me back to sleep with one of her mother's lullabies whenever I had a fit of night terrors, to the point that in the morning she didn't have a bag under her eye; she had a whole handbag under her eye. That and every time the officers stationed outside my room kicked the door in whenever I started screaming bloody murder, Hitomi nearly had a heart attack.

I mean sure, I couldn't exactly control how my trauma-addled mind affected those around me, but it really sucked that I had to drag such a nice woman into my own brand of suffering…

"No, no, it's okay. It's a nurse's job to look after her patient. Don't' worry about me, you just focus on getting well." -she'd always tell me in that sweet, motherly voice.

She was so-angelic, too pure for this world, that it utterly disgusted me to find out she was still single.

Why and/or how do I know she doesn't want to stay single?

Let's just say her mono-eye is really expressive whenever married couples or married couple-adjacent topics come up on TV, and leave it at that…

"I'm really sorry…"

"There, there. You have nothing to be sorry for~" Hitomi said sweetly stroking my hair, even as hers stuck out in all directions.

" . . . "

I don't really know what possessed me to do what I did next, or even in what language, but a moment later the lyrics for "Silent Night" spilled out of my mouth like word vomit, and I started to serenade her to sleep. I don't know if Takehiko was a naturally-gifted singer or if Hitomi was just dead tired from looking after me all night, but three quarters of the way through Hitomi laid her head down on the pillow I laid out for her, and she was out like a light.

I wasn't completely sure if it was something my mother sung to me or if it was something from Takehiko's memories, but at the very least it did the trick.

Hitomi really was too good for this world…

*AHA*

Now, I don't know how word of my incident spread or who-all was told or even how-much was allowed to be told, but Kaminaga was nice-enough to come in and pamper me even though there was nothing wrong with my hair, nor was Hitomi present to fondle.

"Really… You didn't have to do this for me…"

-is what "the adult in me" said when presented with a "So-Much-Sugar-You'll-Get-Diabetes-Just-From-Looking-At-It" Strawberry Shortcake in a neat confectionary box.

Not that it would stop the kid (whose body) I was in from eating aforementioned cake.

"Nonsense! After everything you've been through, you deserve more than that yucky hospital food!" Kaminaga replied fervently, cheeks puffed out cutely.

"You do make a good argument," I conceded as I looked back into the box.

Seriously, this looked like the sort of thing Erza Scarlet would commit homicide over!

Well, moreso than in the Canon at least.

"Mmmmmm! Sugoiiii!" the child I-was-in blurted out, eyes twinkling as it hit my taste buds.

"I thought you'd like it~ What child your age doesn't like cake~?"

At least she didn't bring me American fast food. After putting that slurry into my original body for close to three decades, I wasn't exactly eager to put any of that chemical laced crap into this body. There's no telling what went into it now.

Cake on the other hand was an exception.

And it seemed like Kaminaga thought much the same, because she had one for herself as well.

It'd have been rude of me to bring up that her portion was bigger than mine, so I wisely chose not to.

Kaminaga and I then spent the next hour eating cake and watching Hero TV recordings on the new TV the HPSC had installed across from my bed. It had obviously been done in some attempt to placate me over what had happened right under their own noses, but given most-everything in this new world was largely transactional, I had zero problems reaping the rewards from other people's sense of guilt.

Even if I did have to suffer from a mind-scarring tertiary villain attack for me to get this kind of image resolution…

"Oh! Before I go, I got you something!" Kaminaga said as the Hero TV timeslot came to an end. Skipping over to the door and grabbing something she'd set down upon arrival, she rounded on her stylish high heels and deposited a large shopping bag topped with pink tissue paper into my arms with gratuitous use of her Quirk. "Happy early birthday!"

Ah, that's right. About the only thing I had in common with Takehiko Tokei was our date of birth. I never cared to memorize the exact minute I was considered "born" on that day, but I guess at present that was no longer important.

Setting the tissue paper aside and removing the bag's contents, I was both surprised and amazed to see a chibi-style "Hitomi-Sensei" plushie, clad in a pink blouse, black skirt, and white lab coat. Its limbs were stumpy and its head bigger than the body, so it looked like a Powerpuff Girl plushie all things considered. The reflective dark-blue hair and yellow ribbon were all done to incredible detail, but what amazed me in quality the most was the gem-like mono-eye set in the plushie's face atop a cute smile and rosy cheeks.

"This… This is…"

"It's cute, huh~" Kaminaga winked, and I swear to god a little five-pointed star jumped out at me. "I made her myself~"

"V-Very cute…" I found myself stammering, looking into the plushi's mono-eye before I hugged it to my chest, a nostalgic feeling washing over me before my eyes went wide.

"Noticed it, did you~?" Kaminaga winked. "That's right! Chibi-Manaka smells like the real thing too~"

"URK!" I lurched in shock was what I now knew to be the scent of Hitomi's lavender shampoo washed over me.

If this were an anime, this would be the part where the background went black and white cracks like a broken window spread out behind me in a halo.

"Honestly, getting Chibi-chan to smell just right was the hardest part. Compared to that, everything else was easy~!" the woman beamed ecstatically.

"But… This means a lot to you, doesn't it?" I asked trying to give it back.

The kid in me wanted to hug it and never let go, but I bulled through this body's immature hardware with my mature software.

"Oh don't worry, that one's my spare. The original Chibi Manaka-chan is waiting for me at home~"

Seeing the flushed expression on this busty woman's face, the way she was hugging herself and writhing in front of who, for all intents and purposes, was a prepubescent child, I couldn't help but ponder what sorts of depraved things Kaminaga did with her Hitomi-sensei plushie.

Come to think of it, what sorts of depraved things had she done with this one…?!

" . . . "

" . . . "

" . . . "

Aaaand like that, I'm scarred for life.

Again.

God I need friends my own age…

*AHA*

The following day, I learned what happened to that crazed nutball who tried cutting me open like a science lab frog.

Due to the somewhat sensitive nature of what my biomass was being studied for, Dr. Shiga had been shipped off to Tartarus, one of the most-secure super-criminal containment facilities in the world.

Now, from the comic book side of things I was getting some Arkham Asylum/Strykers Island/Belle Reve vibes after learning about it. The reason supervillains weren't just killed off for everyone's convenience there was because a Publication running out of antagonists had no real future, aside from spin-offs where the Villains and/or Heroes did all get killed off like Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe, Deadpool Kills the Marvel Universe Again, The Marvel Universe Kills Deadpool, etc. etc.

In the real world, where real people could turn into super-criminals at any given moment from a population pool of over 5,000,000,000 with as many possible Quirks or Quirk combinations…

The ability to capture super-criminals alive and incarcerate them long-term was both a show of the country's military might, as well as the strength of its Heroes. Now that I was here, in such a world where superpowers were quite literally a "dime in a dozen", the societal importance of being able to contain super-criminals in such a fashion actually made sense. After all, if every Quirk-related criminal were to be killed on sight or otherwise executed summarily, the world would probably turn into an oppressive regime like Superman's from the Injustice series where everyone feared their government; and if a people truly fears its government, then that country has no future.

Probably why countries like North Korea and China no longer exist in their original forms in "22XX", but that's a story for another day…

Getting back to the original point, this model for judicial incarceration only made logical sense in a world dominated by SPBs. In comic book worlds where SPBs were microscopically in the minority, it made non-literary sense to just kill them off if they were serial murderers.

But that's neither here nor there.

Sure, I'm pissed that Dr. Shiga isn't getting the axe for what he did, or if he is I just haven't been made aware, but even if I don't like that he's just being carted away instead of getting the chair or the needle or the gas or the firing squad, it's not like the government will take an 11-year-old's thoughts into consideration anyway…

But hey, no-one had broken out of Tartarus or any of its branch facilities yet in the world's history, so they must've been doing something right.

Still, that left me in a very precarious position; at least from the perspective of the grownups around me.

Here in this hospital adjacent to the Hero Public Safety Commission, I was supposed to be in a "safe space". But, being blatantly attacked by a Villain in this capacity, one who had been working under their own noses for over a year while being pathologically insane, it only made sense that I would 'demand answers'. 'Cause after all, the moment I stopped feeling "safe" here, was the moment I started making their lives a living hell by trying to escape. Thanks to my rehab and my slightly-abnormal recovery speed, it would only be a matter of time before I could act on any "hypothetical" threat of flying the coop.

Sure, I could make a break for the elevators, but this being a world of superheroes, I found myself in a very unique position to be able to carry out certain "power fantasies" I had back home when I thought about writing stories.

If I couldn't make a break for the lobby, I could always smash out a window and scream to some nearby Hero that I'm being held "against my will" at the top of my lungs, and in a world where Heroes are beholden to their adoring public like politicians are to their constituents, they might very well have to take my pleas seriously.

*AHA*

As it turned out however, I would not need to break any expensive windows. After Dr. Shiga's attack on my person, the powers that be were being very upfront about what the hell was going on.

Sure, the possibility existed they were only offering this courtesy so I'd have no "reason" to become a Villain or Villain Sympathizer in the future, but I'd take my "lumps of sugar" where I could find them.

At the moment I found myself back in a familiar interrogation room-like space, only in more fair company than Tsukauchi Naomasa.

Her name was Smith Kuroko, or "Kuroko Smith" from a Western perspective. She was a tall leggy woman with fair skin, brown eyes, jet-black hair cascading like water, and dressed in the attire of a typical government agent; white dress shirt, black tie, black blazer, matching professional skirt, black pantyhose, matching heels, and a pair of black sunglasses to complete the look.

Smith… Smith… Smith… That name sounded familiar, and I'd definitely seen her somewhere before in my previous life, but my reincarnation-addled brain was drawing up blanks, or rather, "fog", whenever I looked at her. It was like peering down into a bargain bin of DVDs at the mall and you could only see part of the cover art of a DVD you recognized at the bottom through all the others.

Maybe she was a Men in Black character I'd forgotten about? Agent S? She certainly dressed for it, and…

Shit! Was Men in Black actually fact in this universe instead of fiction?

With the proliferation of Mutant/Heteromorphic Quirks out there, it was certainly feasible for extraterrestrial life to hide out on this Earth as refugees… No one would ever know the difference, if that were the case and I weren't just making correlations where there weren't any…

It of course once-again dawned on me that I had literally forgotten more first-hand knowledge about the multiverse than anyone else here could possibly ever hope to learn…

"So… I should probably start by saying that this isn't an ordinary hospital," Ms. Smith hummed, breaking me from my internal thoughts.

*AHA*

"Oh really? No shit, what gave it away? The fact that there's no-one else on this floor but me?" Takehiko asked, his voice oozing with sarcasm.

"Couldn't pull one over on you, could we?" I asked with a raised brow.

"Not on your best day."

Which was fair, since Dr. Shiga had been far from subtle when he finally went off the deep end.

"So… You finally going to tell me why I'm HPSC HQ-adjacent?"

"Tell me… How much do you know about 'All for One'?"

"Other than being an old wive's tale like the Boogeyman to keep uppity little shits in line, I know that, 'hypothetically'," he said making air-quotes, "if he were real, his is the most-dangerous sort of power in a world where 'powers' are everything. After all, what sort of Hero would risk losing their paycheck and the lifestyle to which they'd become accustomed over a Villain who could steal their Quirks with a love tap?"

"Well you sound pretty jaded," I hummed idly, crossing one leg over the other to break the tension.

It would later occur to me, retrospectively, that if he actually had hormones to rile up and there weren't a table between the two of us, that tactic would've worked much better…

"I've been attacked by Villains three times over in just as many years. What do you think?"

"Fair point," I conceded. "I'll probably catch all sorts of hell for this later, but Hitomi's a friend-of-a-friend so I'll be straight with you."

Why was I being so-upfront with this kid? Simple. Because I couldn't even begin to count the number of children, teenagers, and young adults who grew up to become Villains because some government asshole in a black suit screwed them over and disenfranchised them to the system. Sure, it wasn't a perfect system, but it was the only one we had and if-anything, it "worked.

"This All for One guy who might've attacked you, if not just someone with a 'Cloned Quirk'… Something about your Quirk Factor didn't really agree with him-"

"So you people think my DNA is the 'magic bullet' that can kill this All for One guy?" the kid interrupted. "Assuming he's actually real, at least."

"More like… incapacitate… There's nothing inherently toxic about your DNA when introduced to a secondary body," I answered, wondering where a boy his age learned the term 'magic bullet'. People had stopped believing in magic anything when Quirks started manifesting.

"Don't you have some kind of Quirk-suppressant to keep this guy in line? Or does Tartarus rely on nano-explosives implanted in their spinal columns for that?"

"Where the hell did you come up with that idea?!"

"Sounds to me like you're deflecting."

"What? No! We don't do that!"

"Maybe not in this country. I'm sure human rights violations happen somewhere in the world."

Christ, this kid was jaded as fuck…!

"No, suffice it to say, All for One isn't exactly the sort to sit still for… that sort of thing…"

"Aaand you can't just take him out with a drone strike because he either has a Healing Quirk, or a 'Drone Control' Quirk?"

"Technically speaking… All for One was declared dead three years ago…"

"Aaand you're still planning for him making a comeback because no-one found a body?"

Geez, what kind of orphanage did they put this kid in…? What kind of eleven-year-old thinks this way?

"Something like that…"

"Well, at the very least you don't have to worry about me narking on you to anyone for telling me all this."

"Geez, how considerate of you."

"Still not sure how I feel about you guys harvesting me for meat, though. I mean, yeah, I was in a coma so you probably used a loophole, but I'm not sure how I feel about it now…"

"Hey, to be fair, the only reason that shit flew for the last year was because Dr. Shiga's Quirk let him make it so there weren't any marks on you after we got our samples."

"And you couldn't just clone the tissue samples you needed instead?" he asked skeptically with a raised eyebrow. "I'm not saying you should've made anything smart-enough to do algebra, but…"

"There's… still a great deal about the Quirk Factor we don't understand. To put it as simply as I can, 'freshness counts'. You can't just clone a Quirk Factor and cram it into someone else."

"And yet! You think the guy from the orphanage was a cheap knockoff instead of the real McCoy."

Okay, seriously, was the kid a history buff before coming in here or what? "Real McCoy"? Who talks like that anymore? Is he some sort of time traveler?

"That's a very strong possibility," I stated, lest he catch me spacing out.

"Well, I mean… If it's that important to you, can't you just find someone else with a Quirk like that nutty professor? Not that I wanna get carved up, but if you just put me under for a bit, and actually pay me this time-"

"We would… but 'Healing Quirks' are incredibly rare, even with such a wide pool to draw from," I answered. "Government agencies and criminal organizations alike scoop them up as soon as rumors of 'miracles' start floating about, and even with Mandatory Quirk Registration in this country, people can still slip through the cracks or have their records 'misplaced'," I continued. "There is a faculty member at Yuuei with a Healing Quirk, but she can only accelerate the body's own healing ability, so hers would leave behind scars; and even then I doubt she'd ever consent to harvesting biomass from a living person, no matter how noble the purpose."

"Well, figured I might as well try…" the kid sighed. " . . . Do you need blood? I can probably give that away. The only other fluid I think you'd find useful won't be ready until my, ahem, male genitalia fully descend from my abdominal cavity," he phrased carefully.

"Kid, I deal with Villains all the time. You're allowed to say 'until my balls drop' to this lady."

Seriously, though, what kid talks like this? It's like talking to a grown man in a kid's body.

Heh, maybe he was an "Isekai Yuusha" who happened to wake up in a comatose body~

*AHA*

"So how did things with Smith-san go?" Hitomi asked the next time she came around.

"Okay… ish…" I replied. "I'm not really sure what's going to happen with me now," I said running a hand up my arm. It was faint, but I could feel very slight changes in texture from where Dr. Shiga had cut bits of me away before using his Quirk to, allegedly, re-grow the lost tissue.

It still disgusted me that Dr. Shiga's various psychoses flew under the radar so long…

"Oh…" Hitomi hummed, looking at her shoes somberly before raising her eye to meet mine. " . . . I was against it the entire time, you know. After I found out, I mean. But when they told me about all the lives you could save, I…"

"Don't go thinking you're a sell-out. This is on 'them', not you," I said as she became downcast. "I'm just happy you stuck around long-enough to wake me up from that coma."

"T… Takei-chan…~" Hitomi whimpered, her hands going to her mouth and tears falling from her eye before she reached over and embraced me. "You're too good for this world~!"

'I'm not even from this world…'

I wasn't 100% sure if I should feel guilty over this whole reincarnation thing, but it still gnawed at me like rats.

"Hitomi-sensei…"

"Hm?"

"I…"

" . . . ?"

"Um…"

" . . . ?"

" . . . I'll tell you later," I sighed, chickening out at the last moment.

I'll tell her someday.

Someday…

*AHA*

. . .

Don't judge me. This is a very delicate issue.

On the one hand, Hitomi might think I went into my "Chuuni phase" early which would completely undermine any attempt of mine to get the truth out. I'd seen enough anime and read enough manga to know, even as an American, that the whole "reincarnation" angle is a done-to-death favorite among those with "Middle School Syndrome".

On the other, she might feel completely betrayed that it wasn't her patient that woke up, but a late-20-something man from another universe who reincarnated into the body she'd been taking care of for a year straight.

No matter what I do, it'll change the dynamic of our relationship when I tell her, so my only real choice is to hold off on doing so until I'm one-hundred percent sure what kind of "Reincarnation" it was. The Devil is in the details, after all. Unfortunately, with my PVSD the way it is, I'll have to put up with some rando bugging me for however many days a week the higher-ups in the HPSC are willing to pay him and/or her for to assuage their guilty conscience of failing to properly screen that complete and total nutbar.

Honestly, though, I'm surprised they were so forthcoming with psychological aid. From what I vaguely recall, going to a shrink for anything in 21st century Japan was highly frowned upon since "the nail that stands up gets hammered down". Of course, with the proliferation of Meta Abilities and the various psychoses/complexes that came about from having or not having them, I guess it made sense that the stigma against shrinks in Japan would change over time.

I was thankful for the opportunity, at least. If I let this fester like a mental illness, I really might become a Villain someday. And even if I didn't have a Quirk, the "Meta Knowledge" I brought here with me from my original world could be very dangerous. Bruce Wayne/Batman might not have a "Meta Ability", but his ideas were what made him truly dangerous; so-dangerous in fact he could topple literal gods in most of his comic book runs!

At the very least, the present world I reincarnated into wasn't based on an anime I'd been familiar with, otherwise who knows the kind of damage I could've caused.

Still, something's been nagging on my mind. It's been on the tip of my nose, but I just can't grasp it.

Ah well. If it were "important", I would've remembered it upon Reincarnating.

Tomorrow's problems for tomorrow's me.

*AHA*

The "problem" that I found waiting for yesterday's me the day after was my child psychiatrist, who also had a minor in treating PVSD. Her name was Dr. Wong, and she was completely ordinary; at least in physical appearance. She had smile lines around her lips, square glasses with thick frames, parted black hair, and drab clothing over a yellow blouse. For all intents and purposes she was an average middle-aged Japanese woman you could've found anywhere in pre-Paranormality Japan.

"By the way, racist name."

-is what I had enough tact not to say out loud after finding out her name.

Not only would it be wildly racist to say so, possibly, but the reference would fly right over her head assuming Rick & Morty is also a thing here.

As for the room itself, it wasn't Dr. Wong's dedicated office, and was thus sparsely furnished with the bare essentials. The only thing that really stood out to me was the stereotypical "therapy couch" upholstered in dark brown leather, which I was currently laying down upon.

"Now then, Takehiko-kun, tell me how you're feeling," Dr. Wong began, adjusting her glasses. "About the Villain attack, I mean."

Really? That tired old line?

Fine, whatever. Might as well lay it all out on the table.

"It made me feel hurt… It made me feel inadequate… Like I'm not good-enough."

"Oh, well… That's a very mature response for someone your age," Dr. Wong hummed as she scrutinized me; I assume all the rest of her child patients denied they were scared in any fashion until the cows came home, and that she had to work a lot harder to break this much ground. "Is it wrong of me to assume your past experiences with Villains has somehow galvanized you against the real world?" she continued.

"I mean… It matured me to the point I feel like a late-20-something in a body too-young for it, so you tell me."

Feels good to get some of that off my chest.

"Hm, yes, that's a common result of surviving a Villain attack during your formative years," the woman mused. "Which brings me to my next question; how do you feel about Heroes, since it was completely ordinary people who saved you? I'm not counting Hawks because he only appeared at the very end and you were succinctly traumatized before his arrival."

"I mean… My opinion of Heroes is still pretty neutral. I don't worship the ground they walk on, but I don't hate them either, and I'm not delusional-enough to think that Heroes 'create' the Villains they fight simply by existing, or that if Heroes disappeared people would stop being complete assholes to one another and Villains would stop popping up every five minutes," I returned, a little bitterly. "If anything, I'm honestly more-interested in the Corporate Heroes because their true colors as a Hero shine when it's more-literally their paycheck on the line and they could be dismissed at any moment."

"So your interest lies in the progenitor of the current Heroic Age…" Dr. Wong said holding her chin. "I can't say I'm not surprised. People try to pretend that things have changed from back then, but fights between Heroes and Villains are still largely treated as stage shows for excitable children, or inconveniences for working adults because they're made late for work."

"That is what it feels like, yes," I nodded.

Fact of the matter was, Quirk-related crimes were so woefully common whenever they occurred, that thanks to cellphone cameras and social media, there really wasn't any profit to be made in Hero TV-style programming anymore. The closest you got were the high-profile chases the Ingenium Agency sometimes resolved, or the "Hero Chasers" who put their lives on the line to get in-your-face footage of Hero vs Villain fights.

"Onto the next topic," Dr. Wong said taking notes. "From what I understand, while your nurse's father was fighting that Villain-"

For some reason, I hated how that word seemed to elevate the mentally ill…

"-you asked her younger sister to… douse you in medical ethanol and set you on fire so they could escape while Dr. Shiga was, hypothetically, scrambling to put you out," she said reading what must've been an incident report.

'Shiiiiiiit…!'

"Now, altruism isn't completely dead in this day and age, but what you suggested be done to you… That speaks of a much deeper self-loath-"

"Before you go off thinking I entertain thoughts of self-immolation on a recreational basis or that I have a deathwish, let me make something abundantly clear to you," I said cutting her off, leaning on my elbow and looking her dead in the eye. "Those restraints weren't coming off any time soon, and with Dr. Shiga hopped up on super-steroids, I wasn't exactly swimming in options. I tried stalling, but all that did was buy enough time for ordinary people to show up and put themselves in danger. Hitomi-sensei's dad almost got killed, and if Hawks hadn't come in when he did, I don't know who would've won. Way I saw it, if I was going to die horribly while strapped to an operating table anyway, I might as well die quickly. At least if I burned to death it'd be over quickly, as opposed to the alternative which was basically me roleplaying as Ikezukuri!"

Fucked-up thing about that was, the first time I saw that happen wasn't on a YouTube video; it was in a tragedy manga called trash where some poor woman got prepared like live sushi in front of a bunch of yakuza…

And I didn't even have to go to the Darkweb to find it. That shit was on the regular old internet for everyone to see!

"You do realize in either scenario, you'd have still wound up dead, right?"

"Dead is still dead; it's just a matter of how-long the universe drags it out for," I said flatly. "And at least if my plan panned out, Hitomi and the others could've gotten away with their own lives. I'd rather my last moments not be guilt-ridden with thoughts of how I got other people killed alongside me."

My last death didn't jar me all that much since, as far as I can remember, it was basically instantaneous. If I'd been fatally hit by "Truck-kun" like every other "every other Isekai hero", assuming the hit didn't kill me on-impact, my death would've drug out for however-long it took my body to give up from its injuries and just croak. In the latter case, the trauma similarly would've been more impactful.

In a way, it made sense as to why I was as-callous about self-immolation as I had been; knowing with a glut of certainty that "reincarnating into another world", while-unlikely, was at-the-least possible, did that to you. It was either that, or some sort of brain abnormality the CT Scan hadn't picked up.

Either way, I was pretty sure I was "cracked", which I guess was no big secret after what I'd told Mitsumi to do to me…

"Takehiko-kun… You can't honestly expect to be able to defend yourself from a grown Villain as a child, do you?" Dr. Wong asked sympathetically.

"Doesn't matter whether or not I could've defended myself. Doesn't matter how-close I came to getting turned into Ikezukuri. That guy got a one-way trip to Tartarus and he's never coming up for air again, so the way I see it, I don't need to give that guy a second thought anymore."

"Normally I'd say that isn't a healthy way of handling things… but you are right in a way I suppose. In most circumstances, getting sentenced to Tartarus is a one-way trip."

"Isn't it normal for people to stop thinking of 'Villains' after they get caught and sent to jail?"

"I'm sensing air quotes in your dialogue. Would you care to explain why?"

" . . . It's so stupid. People just arbitrarily… elevating criminals into 'Villains' just because they have a gimmick," I said bitterly, speaking my mind. "Everyone treats it like a spectator sport, never once giving thought to how-easily they could get dragged into a fight, how-quickly something could go horribly wrong. They never stop to think about all the people that aren't saved by Heroes, or even how some of the Heroes they idolize so-much only care for the prestige and couldn't give a rat's ass about saving people when the cameras aren't rolling."

Sure, I thought a real-life world of Heroes and Villains was cool, but that didn't mean I wasn't still critical of it. Hell, I only got more critical of the current system the longer I lived inside of it as an unwilling participant.

In Sternbild, Albert Maverick had orchestrated crimes for one of the earliest-licensed Meta Ability users, Mr. Legend, to stop so that-way those with Meta Abilities would have a future in a world then-dominated by those without Quirks. Without his machinations in the timeline I'd observed paving the way for those with Quirks to find acceptance by the general population, even going as far as to lay down the groundwork for what legally constituted a 'Villain' in this brave new world to give those with and without Quirks a common enemy, the schism between those without Quirks and those that had them, would've only continued to grow until the world reached its breaking point. So basically, if he hadn't done what he did when he did, there's no way the then-current law-abiding society would've even lasted long-enough for Quirk-users to eclipse the Quirkless. Some might see it as evil, but whether he knew it or not, he and Ouroboros had laid down the groundwork for the longest uninterrupted period of peace the world had ever known. To paraphrase Robert Downey Jr. in his role as Tony Stark, Maverick had "successfully privatized world peace" without even realizing it.

Nowadays… With all their posturing and grandstanding and self-aggrandizing, most of the 'Heroes' I saw on TV came off as being no-different than Red Nose from One Punch Man. And trust me, that was a LOWWWWWW bar to straddle and-then-bust-your-nuts-on.

The longer I observed this world and all the issues that went ignored, the more this system's flaws showed through the veneer.

People think that "peace" is something they're entitled to, a paid-for house they get to live in rent-free, but that isn't true in the slightest. This world's current society, which seems so-sturdily-built on the backs of Heroes and Sidekicks and Support Companies, and even on the backs of the Villains the aforementioned fought, is just a temporary resting place; a hotel we checked into for vacation that we must one day check out of. No matter how we cling to it, the moment we stop fighting for it, is the moment the check comes due…

I could only pray that this world didn't wear me down until the point I became so-disenfranchised with it, that I did something monumentally stupid like 'joining the Dark Side'…

*AHA*

After that, while she scribbled the session's observation on her notepad, Dr. Wong gave me what sounded like a canned speech meant for survivors of Villain attacks geared toward soliciting future sessions while glazing over the exorbitant fees.

However, since it wasn't me paying the tab, I just decided to tell her that future sessions were still on the table, and went on my way.

"All for One…"

Come to think of it, Naomasa almost shat a brick when I placed "one for all" and "all for one" together in a sentence. But if "All for One" was basically the "Demon Lord" in a world of Heroes and not just a line from a dead Frenchman's book from hundreds of years ago, what the hell was "One for All" supposed to be? Some kind of horrifying weapon like the Soul Cannon? Something that inexorably exhausted the life of the user for the sake of others?

I suppose in a way comic book heroism itself was like the Soul Cannon, with guys like Peter Parker/Spider-Man putting so much of themselves into their "work" they neglected their real lives and suffered for it. Sure, it was meant to be "inspiring", a man giving of himself for the greater good no-matter how much it set them back, but you could only watch a chronically-miserable guy wallow about in a shitty apartment with no girlfriend for so-long before you got sick of it.

Unfortunately, it seems like that particular brand of heroism died with Kotetsu Kaburagi's generation… True, the commercialization and privatization of super-powered law enforcement made the world the safest it had ever been, with Japan having a world-record low of 6% compared to the rest of the world's 20%. But at the same time, what it meant to actually be a Hero had all but vanished from the public eye thanks to a system that actively rewarded selfishness and punished altruism.

"Well, it's not like there's anything I can do about it."

Ideals without power are a joke, but power without ideals are hollow. Problem for me was I had no power, and thus nothing to weigh in on things.

Hopefully this world had some kind of "chosen one" to save it, because I've read enough comics to know that this right here, it won't last. And knowing my shitty luck, I'll live juuuuust long-enough for the next Civil War, Secret War, Identity Crisis, or Superman Theory to cause this whole house of cards to come tumbling down.

Christ, I really am cracked, aren't I?

"Takei-kun~!"

"Hm~"

"How was today's therapy? Did everything turn out okay?" Hitomi asked sweetly as she walked up to me, a cherubic smile on her face.

" . . . "

Well… I suppose there's some good to be found in this world.

"Yeah. I think I'm going to be okay."

*AHA*

AN:
A fair chunk of the dialogue in the therapy section of this chapter was actually inspired by the criticism of a Reviewer who, unfortunately, after reading the previous chapter completely gave up on this story for some reason.

Weird.

Anyway, a little longer than I intended, but tell me what you think!