Junichi is an ordinary child. Perhaps too ordinary for the world he has been born into. There is nothing special about the three-year-old boy. His black hair is average, his pale skin as average, his face structure is average. He has no glowing limbs, or spikes growing out of his arms, or claws, or horns, or wings-
Junichi is no one special. The child has been alive for barely three years and one could already tell that he would grow up unseen, only to perish in Tokyo's masses when he reached adulthood. He would become one of the many necessary little gears that keep society going as a whole but are utterly replaceable on their own.
There is no hope for little Junichi to become something great in this world, to leave a stamp on it; not with the lot he has been handed.
The boy's destiny is to become average, his future is already prewritten in his genes. Half of which come from an apathetic mother, who tolerates him for the sole reason that getting rid of him would be a bigger hassle, and the other half were given to him by a father he hasn't seen once. A John, they say, who visited their brothel a few times and was later killed in a bank heist.
A tragic casualty they say. Couldn't have been saved they say. The people of Tokyo stopped to mourn the seven victims of the armed robber for exactly four minutes, for that was the duration of the news report, then the many little gears were turning again, to forever forget about the seven corpses buried in grandiose tombs and nameless graves.
Junichi never knew his father and he never would, but that is not the root of his tragedy. The boy's misfortune lies in the heritage he has been given by his parents, or rather the lack thereof.
His mother's quirk is straightforward. She has pointed ears. That's it. Utterly useless, apart from fulfilling some of her clients' peculiar fantasies. Still, better than no quirk at all. The boy, however, was born with round ears, so clearly, he must have inherited his father's quirk, right? Only, his old man had blue spots on his skin, and poor Junichi was born with a clear, pale complexion.
Possibly quirkless they say.
Now, it would be possible for the boy's quirk-gen to have mutated, thus developing into something entirely new, but how likely was that? His mother and father already had subtle, barely present body modifications; quirklessness was by far the likelier outcome than a new gen variation from weak source material.
Junichi was three and his life would end when he turned four, when he would not develop a quirk. That is what they say. That is what his mother says, that is what the other women and men in the brothel say, and that is what everyone says.
The world seems to agree one thing: Junichi will grow up to be no one.
If only they had bothered to look closer, if only they had stopped for one moment and glanced into the boy's eyes. Then maybe they would have realized that his eyes are not his mother's shade of black. That there is nothing ordinary about them at all.
No one had bothered to notice that Junichi's eyes are not simply dark, but pits of an endless void. They are not black due to a high concentration of melanin, but because they swallow light like black holes. They don't reflect sunrays and they don't glisten when the light falls in at the right angle. They are black, always black. And if one had bothered to look even closer, one might have caught a glance at the blazing black flames in them.
But no one did and no one saw, because little Junichi's destiny was to be no one.
That is what they say.
.
.
.
On the night of Junichi's fourth birthday the moon bleeds. It shines in an entrancing red light for the whole of Tokyo to see, but only to curse bless one boy.
Said boy wakes screaming on his futon, yet he makes no sound. His mouth won't open, despite the agony clogging his throat, desperate to escape.
Tears and blood run down his temples. He can't wipe them away; his limbs lie numb by his side. He can't feel them, all he can feel is the blinding pain radiating from his eyeballs through his entire head and down his back.
Every heartbeat stretches to an eternity and brings a new wave of pain. The mere action of blinking is too much, so his eyes remain wide open, but his gaze is far away. In another land, in another time. Memories play before his eyes, sear themselves into his mind. Dozens of years, one after another and all at once.
He can smell iron and ash, he can taste death and decay, he can feel his bones breaking and snaping bones in return. It's grief, and love, and madness indistinguishable mashed together. He is a child and a soldier and a leader, a friend and a brother and an enemy, he is hope and destruction and death and saving, he is a comrade and then not anymore, a traitor and the bane of a nation, he is a god and a slave, he touched the sky and wandered in hell, he is a child, he is older than a century, he is no one, he is a legend, he is a child and he is dead and alive.
He remembers death and rebirth. He was born and killed, then alive again and dead again, and raised from the dead and revived and dead and born again.
Junichi knows only agony, he wants it to stop, he wants to scream, he wants his eyes gone as long as they take the pain with them.
The noise is ear-splitting. Voices are talking over each other, yelling, whispering, pleading. High and shrill, deep and raspy. The sound of metal on metal, fire roaring, crying and rejoicing. It all blurs together in a static rumble.
Junichi can't take it anymore, he thinks he is dying -again, I'm dying again- but he is not, because he knows what dying feels like, and this is not it. But Junichi never died, that was someone else and yet also Junichi. There is no you and I, only me. Junichi is him, he always was, he just hadn't remembered.
Junichi doesn't want to remember.
Madara wants it to stop stop stop.
.
.
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The sun rises the next morning like it does every day and the brothel is slow to wake up. The last Johns slink out into the morning shadows as most of the staff is still fast asleep. The handful of children inhabiting the building are awake though, silently running through the empty corridors, or eating a sparse breakfast in the kitchen.
This morning Junichi is not among them, he hasn't left the children's bedroom at all, and he will not for the rest of the day. Some of the older children check up on him every few hours, but when they see the blankets rise and fall with his breath, they are quick to duck out of the room again. The kind old man helping out in the kitchen brings him a plate of leftovers and a piece of chocolate for his birthday, when he doesn't show up for dinner either.
His mother doesn't come to wish him a happy birthday, neither does anyone else. Not when the boy's fate has been sealed today, not when this is as much of Junichi's death day as it is his birthday.
And they are not wrong, if for the wrong reason.
No one bothers Junichi on that day. He needs time to grieve, they say and seem to forget that the mourner is a boy of four years. The world is harsh and harsher for the unlucky, for people like Junichi. It's just how it is. Junichi is unlucky to be born lacking, but he was born, and the poor thing needs to deal with it. It's just how it is, they say.
So, the day goes by as usual. It's calm for the most of it, only once it gets dark outside, old and new customers arrive and buy their first of many drinks down at the bar. A bouncer herds the children into their room when the establishment gets fuller. They are not allowed anywhere else during the night, to not disturb business.
One by one the children fall asleep like they do every day, while their mothers and fathers are starting their shifts.
No one notices that Junichi is awake, no one notices his blood smeared face, and no one notices his even redder eyes or the spinning black tomoe in them.
The moon rises clad in its usual silver shimmer and vanishes again when the sun climbs over the horizon.
The children wake first, like their always do and run to the kitchen. This morning Junichi is back among them, same as always.
He is quieter that morning, and every morning that follows; who wouldn't be after not awakening a quirk? Everything is as it should, everything is back to normal. So, no one notices how Junichi's steps have become quieter than a whisper and yet more powerful, how his pitch-black eyes became piercingly sharp, or how his posture is that of a predator about to pounce.
No one noticed when Junichi stopped being Junichi.
