Disclaimer: Roses are red, violets are blue. I don't own Boku no Hero Academia, and neither do you.

Well... unless you're Kōhei Horikoshi. Then you definitely own it.

Warnings: Existential crisis, divine intervention (finally), stages of grief finally over with, baby fight (p.2), nose boops, and bath time (oh no)

Edited as of 3-8-18

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Text Key:

Italics = Emphasized thoughts/text/dialogue

"Dialogue" = Japanese dialogue (For organizational purposes)

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About twenty whole minutes had passed since our breakfast and I was still traumatized from Oka-san's "spoon miracle". Any sane person would have ran away screaming at the sight of that.

Unfortunately for me, I was no longer sane (Honestly, what did you expect? I've been stuck living as a fucking infant for five months.) nor did I have the ability to run away. Curse my underdeveloped jelly-legs...

It was after bringing Izuku and I new spoons that she decided to switch from the fish purée to a less disgusting food, mushed up peas. It wasn't much better, but it definitely ranked higher than that fish slop on my 'the best foods in existence' list.

Not like it mattered what it tasted like, I was too shaken by Oka-san's witchcraft to even think about food. She ended up force feeding me the pea concoction while I basically stared into the void. Obviously, Izuku didn't know that normal people weren't able to magically levitate spoons to them, so he ate happily, unaware of the absolute horror that I was experiencing. Ignorance is bliss, as they always say.

Oka-san then hoisted us out of our high chairs after Izuku finished eating (and I finished having pea-mush forcibly shoved down my throat) and brought us to the family room. She plopped up into our child pen and turned on the TV. After putting it on the children's channel, she promptly walked away and started doing her own business.

Great parenting, Oka-san. We can all tell that you made a great effort.

Izuku was immediately entranced by the figures on the screen while I tried to escape our child prison. As far as I was concerned, I was unwilling to let Oka-san off the hook for this incident. Language barrier or not, I needed answers.

The pen was about three feet in height, not too large for me to escape from, but it would take all my hand-eye coordination and energy to climb over it. Actually, on second thought, it might just be easier to make the whole structure topple over. It could work, especially since it was made of plastic and wasn't attached to the floor.

I just needed Izuku to play along for it to work.

I masterfully squiggled towards my brother and started shaking him vigorously with my chubby arms. Sheesh, it seemed like I was kind of fat thinking about it right now. Hopefully, it'll burn off when I'm older...

Izuku's brain finally phased back into reality as he recovered from the enticing call of the television. He finally turned around to face me and looked at me with a hint of disdain. Damn, whatever was on TV must have really been good. Too bad I had too many brain cells to enjoy that stuff.

It took me a few seconds to realize that I had absolutely no means to communicate with him other than physical actions. Fuck.

I tried to point to the wall of the rectangular pen and make a pushing motion, but Izuku didn't understand what I meant and turned back to watch the TV through the gridded wall of the child pen.

I just sighed in response and then attempted to topple over the pen with brute force. Obviously, a small five-month-old child did not have the physical capability to overturn a three-foot-tall structure on their own, but I continued to do so against my better judgment. After making more fruitless efforts, I just decided to scoot to the middle of the pen and lay down.

Maybe after some rest, I could convince Izuku to play along with my plans. My small body was at its rope's end, so I wound up falling asleep.

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It was dark, too dark.

I found myself standing in what seemed to be a pitch black void. I reached forward to feel for a solid object and was met with surprise.

First off, I could see my hand clearly even though the room seemed too dark to see in. Second, this was my hand. Not my small baby hand, but my old hand from my previous life.

I was in my old body.

Was this... a dream? This felt too convenient to be my reality.

"So," an echoing voice boomed. The sound of the voice bounced off of the invisible walls.

I flinched at the sound of such a loud and ominous voice, but I swallowed my intense amount of fear and tried to respond to the omnipotent voice.

"So?" I questioned, finally able to use my voice for the first time in months. I bit back a cry for joy over the fact that I could speak again and kept my inquisitive face on. I wasn't going to let my happiness get the best of me.

"You're dead," the voice declared, sounding rather uninterested at the moment. After a short period of silence, the voice continued on, "You understand why you're here, don't you?"

I wanted so badly to slap the person who was talking. Why the hell would I know!? What did he expect? Did he want me to just instantly understand the meaning of my new life in an instant? Sorry bucko, that's not how the world works.

"Like hell I know," I said sharply, holding back the massive slew of curse words that I wanted to release on this guy.

The voice only chuckled in response, silently mocking my ignorance. The chortling continued for a few moments longer until the voice suddenly stopped.

"Soon."

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I woke up with a massive jolt, my nerves tingling and my heart racing from the absolute nightmare of a dream I had.

My eyes darted from side to side as I tried to calm my frayed nerves. I was heaving and my heart beat refused to settle down at the moment.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths, trying to regulate my out-of-control organs. I felt shivers go down my spine, the tingling sensation starting to ebb away.

Soon.

The short word kept repeating itself in my mind, the nightmarish experience still leaving me in a sort of shock. After a few minutes of heavy breathing, I realized that Izuku was staring at me. He looked absolutely terrified at the sight of me.

Fuck. I hope, I really hope, that he wouldn't remember this. The last thing he needed was to be traumatized over my brush with death. If anything, I should be the one that's traumatized. I just had a goddamn panic attack and meeting with the Grim Reaper for God's sake.

With a high-pitched baby groan, I'll never get used to having such a lofty voice, I hoisted myself back onto my buttocks and acted as if nothing had just happened. Maybe if I brush off what just happened, Izuku would stop thinking about it.

Maybe. Probably. Hopefully? Goddamnit, I'm just lying to myself now.

Welp, looks like I have to fix up the mistakes I had managed to make so early in my life.

I scuttled on over to Izuku's secluded corner of the child-pen and collapsed onto him. Yep, you heard me right.

I collapsed onto him.

I then succeeded in pinning him to the ground in the sudden baby-wresting match that I had initiated. When he finally realized that we were grappling, his mood did a complete one-eighty and he started fighting back against my hold. Although, it was too late. I had gotten my hold earlier and Izuku couldn't think of a way out of it.

Hah, baby squabbles are the best. Especially when I'm the one winning.

Aaaand before I knew it, I was the one on the ground. While I was mentally gloating about my small victory, Izuku must have found a hole in my defenses and acted upon it. Sneaky that strategic brother of mine...

So there I was, laying down underneath my twin who had a toothy smile on his face and his chubby arms gripped around my own pair. Still being face to face, Izuku carefully maneuvered his right arm and sent it towards my face. Right about when I thought his palm would make collision with my small, delicate face, his finger landed right on my nose.

He poked my nose...

He just poked my goddamn nose... damn, he must have picked that up from Otou-san.

Otou-san had an affinity for poking both of our noses with his index finger. It was basically routine in our household.

Izuku's laugh of victory brought me back to awareness once more, the gloating tone of his chortles becoming infectious. Soon enough, we were a pile of laughing five-month-old babies that didn't seem to have an off button.

My maturity had absolutely nothing on childhood fun. In fact, I'm pretty sure the 'adult' in me died a little.

Heh, who needs that anyway?

The giggles faded away and were replaced with a calming silence. Izuku and I lay next to each other, only the hushed voices of the TV filling the room.

I liked this... it was nice. Nostalgic almost. I hope that it can stay this way, at least for a while.

This time, I reached out for Izuku's hand, all the tension from my supposed 'seizure' had fully melted away. He cordially gripped his own around my fingers, the connection giving me a bit of joy. It seems like we both liked this.

For the moment, it didn't matter that I wasn't supposed to be here. It didn't matter that I was old or young, Japanese or American. None of it mattered because I–

–I was alive. I was breathing and laughing, I was enjoying life again.

I had everything anyone could ask for, and I wouldn't change a moment of it.

Not one moment.

"Oi!" a female voice blurted out, snapping me out of my reverie. A small shift in my eyes and I realized that Oka-san had been spying on us from the doorway to our her and Otou-san's bedroom. She moved out into the hallway and put her hands on her hips, a cunning smile gracing her porcelain face, "Ima wa itsudesuka?"

Oh dear lord, I know that tone she's using. I don't like it, not one bit. I turned my head to the side and noticed that Izuku had the same look of disdain on his face. I guess he had recognized the tone too.

The tone she was using was none other than what I had deemed the "bath time rallying cry". Or "war cry". That worked too.

I started to inch away from Oka-san, my tiny body bumping into the edges of our fenced-in play area. Shit.

"Soreha," Oka-san started, putting an accent on the "h" as she dove towards our cornered bodies. She swooped both of us up in one scoop, ignoring the intense amount of struggling and wiggling we were doing. While we continued to whine and squirm, Oka-san declared quite cheekily, "Basu taimu!"

Well... damn.

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I felt as if my scalp were on fire. Oka-san had taken to giving us 'thorough' baths even though we didn't even get dirty during the day.

Of course, Oka-san's standards of clean were far, far different from mine. Any normal person would consider one shampoo, conditioning, and body wash enough.

Oka-san thought it was good to do that three times. And one more scrub to be safe.

Cause, of course, you can never be too careful about germs after you've already killed them a few thousand times over. Note the sarcasm there, just pointing it out.

At the moment, I was in the middle of having shampoo number two while Izuku was on the home-stretch, only having to do shampoo number three, a conditioning, and another full-body scrub-down. The decent amount of hair that I had growing on my head was suffering at the hands of Oka-san, her fingers mercilessly weaving in and out of the tangled mess of short, inky strands.

Suddenly, her fingers pulled against a large tangle of hair, the abrupt movement causing an intense amount of pain in my already distressed scalp. I whined weakly in response, the lack of communication coming back to frustrate me once more.

"Gomen'nasai, Ichido. Anata wa sono yōna yasei no kami o motte iru!" Oka-san subsequently apologized and complained choppily, the words coming out in sharp syllables with each attempt at straightening my bird's nest of hair. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity and a half, Oka-san untangled my hair.

Once both of us were done being cleaned (excessively), Oka-san pulled us out of the bathtub and toweled us dry, being careful to keep both of our hair as straight as possible. If it wasn't obvious, Izuku and I definitely inherited Otou-san's untamable hair. I didn't mind it, but it was rather unfortunate for our caretakers.

Finally free from the torturous bathroom, Oka-san dressed us up in onesies, which against my better judgment, I had grown to love. They were so damn comfortable.

And adorable.

Oka-san had decided to dress me in a ducky onesie, which seemed to be a reoccurring theme in our odd household, and Izuku in what seemed to be a onesie with the colors of the United States flag on it. Odd choice of style, but I decided to overlook it.

Since that bath took the daylights out of the both of us, and seemingly Oka-san too, we were carted off to our shared habitat. I didn't protest as I was lowered into my own crib, drowsiness overtaking me even though I had taken a nap only an hour earlier. My fragile body demanded that I rest, an I was forced to comply.

"Ima sugu yasumu," Oka-san whispered into my ear as she tucked me in, leaning farther in to give me a peck on the cheek. I just smiled fondly in response.

I was being sucked into the realm of dreams once more, my conscience beginning to fade. As I sunk deeper and deeper into my own mind, a faint voice spoke.

Soon.

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Translations:

"Oi" = "Hey"

"Ima wa itsudesuka?" = "Do you know what time it is?"

"Soreha" = "It's"

"Basu taimu" = "Bathtime"

"Gomen'nasai, Ichido. Anata wa sono yōna yasei no kami o motte iru!" = "Sorry, Ichido. You just have such wild hair!"

"Ima sugu yasumu" = "Rest now"