Miss me? ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

My hiatus was too long, I know. But I can't help it, the burn-out was real x\. But anywho, the good news is I'm baaaaack.

Enjoy

The multitudes of wires strapped to his body used to tickle him every time they wanted to test his quirk. Today they wanted to see the quirk's reactions when in contact with other people, so Takato also had to wear this weird headgear that supposedly could read his brain activity. Dolphin, the one in charge of this part of the study, took every chance to start a conversation while they wathched a movie.

"What am I feeling right now?" Dolphin asked as he held Takato's hand. He was sure they didn't need to project Digimon movies onto the wall for this to work, but he appreciated the man's effort to make him comfortable nonetheless.

"Curious," Takato said. They were currently on an emotional scene that had the main character, a purple dinosaur Digimon, fighting off against a herd of enemies. "Wait, uh, excited. Happy. Amazed," he listed off every emotion the man was feeling in the last few seconds.

"Well, amazed I am." Dolphin let go of his hand and smiled. "I think your quirk is too much sometimes. Swap people's souls, read their mind, read their emotions–"

"And kill them if I'm not careful." Takato supplied in a matter of fact way. "My best friend is only alive because I kept holding onto his soul when I pushed it out of his body."

Dolphin shook his head in an affectionate sort of way. "You've been hanging around Yamaki too much, kid. Pessimism doesn't suit you."

"But he's right, isn't he?" Takato shrugged. "My quirk is dangerous, so I got to master it."

"Something tells me that's not only reason." Dolphin pulled his lips into a knowing grin.

Takato fiddled with the wires, blushing. "Well, I'm thinking of helping other people too, like I did with the puppy the other day. But..."

"But it's just as dangerous if words get out about what you can do," Dolphin said in understanding.

Takato nodded, frowning.

"Say, Dolphin," he said, looking at the wall where the movie had shifted into another scene.

"Yes?"

"If... if you had my quirk, would you have used it to save your granddaughter?"

He saw Dolphin frown from the corner of his eyes. "...hundred times over, I would do it a heartbeat."

And then he flicked Takato's ear. Not hard enough to hurt and the man looked amused more than anything.

"Don't read other people's thoughts without permission. It's rude."

Takato had the decency to look embarrassed at least. "Sorry. Your thoughts were leaking too much."

"Well, whatever. I think we can end this early today. Go on."

"Okay."

Dolphin helped take off the helmet while Takato plucked off every single foreign object that was tacked onto his body. Despite the man's smile, there was a forlorn look in his eyes when Takato closed the door behind him.

"Midoriya-san," Takato said to the sky, his back leaning against the bench. With how loud the local park was at this hour, nobody would hear him clearly enough to pay a boy talking to himself any mind.

"I told you to call me Izuku," his companion's monotone voice replied. It must be a strange sight, a plush with a not-so-stealthy camera attached to its head. Takato liked to think Impmon was cute, so this kinda ruined his image of his favorite toy. Mi– Izuku raised a brow at the back of his mind. "This whole plan was your idea, you know?"

"I know, I know. It's just... you look so ugly." He pouted at the plush beside him.

"It's only temporary. You'll get your Impmon back once we make my new body. So cheer up." Izuku made a sound resembling a chuckle. There was an amused "kids" comment leaking out from the older's boy thought that only made Takato pout more.

"Well, I guess. Anyway, I wanted to ask." Takato returned to the topic, not wanting to give the boy more chance to laugh at him. "What will you do when you do get that body?"

"Other than meet my parents, I guess I'll have to figure out how to fit in society again."

"How so?"

Takato felt something lighting up after he asked, usually a sign that Izuku was entering his lecture mode.

"Well, for one, artificial intelligence hasn't reached the level where robots could acquire sentience– or at least something resembling it. Being a sentient and sapient inorganic being would throw a lot of people of. The world will hail you kids as some kind of genius once words get out you're involved."

The only reason Takato was able to follow Izuku's line of thought was due to their mental connection. And there was the mention of people finding out about Takato's quirk.

Officially, his quirk was simply telepathy by virtue of his quirk letting him mentally connect with the souls he touched. If this Project Digimon of theirs panned out well, that meant the Wild Bunch would know about it too sooner or later. Aaand his parents would probably ground him as well for using his quirk without supervision, but that was beside the point.

"But I still can't help more people even when my quirk isn't classified anymore, huh." He said absentmindedly, feeling grumpy at the reminder.

"I'm sorry, Takato. It's too dangerous."

The government having a say on how he used his quirk was a constant debate the two of them usually argued and agreed on, but Izuku had made very good points on why he shouldn't use it willy nilly. Crossing the boundary of life and death wasn't an issue for the most parts, per Izuku's words, but it would spell trouble if people targeted him just to make use of his quirk.

Izuku gave him the mental equivalent of squeezing his shoulder. "I'm going to sound like a hypocrite for saying this, but the dead should stay dead. Let's stick to animals for now, alright?"

"Yeah, I know..." Takato relented to the argument, even if he didn't like it. He sighed. "Say, Izuku."

"Yeah?"

"That dog over there looks healthy, doesn't it?"

"...please stop bringing that up."

Takato laughed.

When the sun was halfway up the sky, Takato picked Izuku up to get back home. The walk back to the bakery was silent as his companion had returned to study his quirk inside their mindscape.

On the sidewalk leading into a crossing, Takato fell in line behind a girl his age who kept glaring at the red light. Her loathing towards it seemed to do her good though, seeing as the light turned green not long after. He followed her onto the road, his eyes straight forward.

That was when he saw it. A woman in her thirties, short and leaning on the chubby side, with hair the same shade of green he'd been seeing in his mindscape.

Takato saw it. Izuku saw it. Neither of them saw the truck coming their way. When Takato finally realized it, the headache was already splitting his head open.

"Don't just stand there! Move!" The girl in front of him pulled him away before the truck could run them over. They fell onto the ground, tiny asphalt stones pricking into their skin. The truck never did stop, but the police car chasing it halted its pursuit to check on them.

"You kids okay?!"

Takato held his head in pain, only sighing in relief when it subsided somewhat. With the crowd gathering and blocking his vision, he couldn't see the woman from earlier anymore to confirm if he wasn't seeing things. The girl who saved him waved to get his attention.

"This yours?" She held up a messed up Impmon with its cotton filling breaking out through its ruined seams. The camera likewise was broken.

"Oh no..." Takato's shoulders sagged looking at the state of his favorite toy.

'It's okay, Takato. We can fix it.' Izuku assured, his guilt leaking over onto Takato. No monotone voice was coming from the plush either, meaning the speaker inside was broken as

well. 'Don't worry about that. You almost got hurt. Now let's go home, okay?'

'But your mom–'

'We must've mistaken her for someone else," Izuku cut him off. "I mean, why would my mom be in Shinjuku of all places? Now let's go. Everyone's looking at you weird.'

'...alright.'

At the suggestion of the police officer who mistakenly assumed they were friends, Ruki ended up accompanying the strange boy home. He was really out of it, even muttering to himself when he thought she wasn't looking.

"Hey, which way is your home?" She repeated for the umphteen time as they encountered another fork in the road. She rolled her eyes when he didn't reply and turned around to get his attention, only to see him looking curiously at something by an alley. And then he was off. "H-hey! Where are you going?"

The boy crouched down to pick up an injured bird. Its tiny wings were bloody and broken, the culprit lying prone on the ground.

"Hold this," he said and handed her the bird with no explanation whatsoever. Ruki made her annoyance known when she accepted the half-dead animal. He didn't seem to care whether she grunted or gave him pointed looks, too focused on the unmoving kitten.

"The cat's dead," the boy said his verdict, like it wasn't already obvious.

"Probably was hunting this guy here." Ruki looked down at her palm. "Couldn't even eat its prey before it died from hunger. That's nature for you."

The boy ignored her and instead raised the kitten above his face to study it. Something lit up in his eyes, though she couldn't even begin to guess what made him look so determined. His words was what confused her the most.

"The body is healthy. It's warm too. It hadn't died for long."

Ruki blinked, not expecting that.

"I need to find someone with an electric quirk. Or at least something similar." The boy carefully cradled the dead kitten and turned to her. "Do you know anyone like that?"

"Um, no, but–"

"Okay. I'll ask around," he said and turned around the corner towards the main street.

Ruki grabbed his windbreaker before he could run away. The boy was making less and less sense the more he talked. But she could hazard a guess on what he wanted to do.

"You can't save the cat. It's dead."

He frowned. "I know. But I can save the bird."

"How so?" Ruki glanced down at the weakly chirping bird in her hand. "Even if you save it, it won't fly again."

"No... No it won't. But I can give it something better."

Ruki rolled her eyes, getting frustrated with the lack of explanation. "Okay, then. Suppose you can manage that, you still won't find the person with that quirk. Not in time anyway."

"Well, I will if you let me–"

"Say that you find them, what will you have them do? Shock the cat to life? Kill the bird quickly? You're not making any sense."

The boy seemed to have a war inside his head, one that eventually led to him dropping his tense shoulder in defeat. "Fine, this I can tell you. I do need to shock the cat. Let's say I'm reviving it."

Ruki ignored the part about saving the bird and pointed at herself. "Then my quirk might help. You just need it to waks up again, right? As long as it's alive and has a will to live, I can make anything move."

"Really? That– That's great!" The boy beamed at her, smiling for the first time today and ushered her further into the alley. "Okay, put the bird down. I'll do the rest."

Ruki did as told and watched in wonder when the boy stroked the bird's head, curious what he was planning to do.

"I'm sorry you can't fly again. But maybe living as a cat won't be so bad, huh?" That was the last thing he said before death claimed its soul through its last breath... except something unnatural was going on.

Like carrying water in his palms, the boy shakily moved his hands until they hovered over the kitten's body. He lowered his hands, cupping the kitten's head and stroking it afterward. He smiled.

"Okay, your turn." The boy pulled himself up and held the kitten towards her.

Ruki wasn't sure what she was doing when she grabbed the kitten's paw, not that she was expecting anything to happen. Her quirk didn't work on inanimate objects. But then she felt it, her quirk bouncing against something that shouldn't be there. She pulled her hand back in surprise and slight horror. Was the kitten alive this whole time? No, that couldn't be.

Before she could even process it, something even stranger happened. The kitten's paw moved first, then its tail, then its eyes fluttered open. Ruki chanced touching it again to feel its chest. She didn't know how to react when she felt the faint pulsing behind it.

Somehow, someway, this boy had brought the dead back to life.

"Quick, we need to find it food before the body shuts down again," he said and dashed away.

"H-hey! Wait up!"

Takato stroked the not-quite-kitten in his laps, smiling as he fed it the sweet potato they bought. Beside him, the girl watched him with suspicion. And dared he say, fear. Though he'd aleady expected that. No one should have the power to revive the dead, yet here he was, dictating the course of Life itself.

"What's your name?" The girl asked tentatively. "Also, are you human? Answer honestly."

"Takato. And yeah, I'm human. As far as I know anyway." He shrugged, feeling Izuku's amusement at the conversation. The other boy had calmed down after what happened earlier, enough to playfully chastise Takato for his quip.

'Takato, be serious. She's gonna kill you if you keep messing with her.'

There was truth in his words somewhat. The girl was throwing him scary looks that'd make anyone else scoot away and run. Why Takato wasn't doing that right now was a wonder.

"I'm Ruki. I'm paralyzed neck down and can only walk because of my quirk. Now explain yourself." She glared. "What exactly did you do with that cat?"

'Rule one of negotation, Takato. When somebody else provides information, you provide one back. Whether it's the one they're looking for or not.'

Takato almost nodded at the advice before realizing he had an audience. He coughed to cover his slip and focused on just playing with the kitten's fur.

"I can't tell you much, just that it's classified. Literally. The government will have my neck if I told you." He said to a flabbergasted Ruki. She opened her mouth, closed it, and repeated the process until she probably gave up on understanding what he just said.

"So what can you tell me? I know you can bring animals back to life. I saw it," she said with challenging look.

'Wow, she's good, using what she knows as a blackmail– Wait, Takato. You're not gonna...' Izuku mentally gaped at him when the boy read his thought.

"Not just animals." Takato ignored the boy. "And I can do it the other way around too." He grinned.

As expected, Ruki's eyes widened as if she saw a ghost. A ghost in the form of Matsuda Takato.

'Takato! Stop scaring her!'

"Sorry, I couldn't help it," Takato abashedly said aloud for both Izuku and the girl. He smiled at her. "I'm not gonna hurt you or anything. You helped me after all."

When she didn't seem like bolting away from her seat, she pursed her lips. She raised his ruined Impmon plush.

"Does this have anything to do with your ability? I mean, who puts a camera on a stuffed toy?"

Takato froze, not expecting her guess to be that accurate. 'Uh, Izuku. A little help here.'

'Tell her it's for the science fair.'

"That's for my school project. We're having a science fair in a couple weeks," he bluffed, hoping he didn't sound too stiff. But it wasn't far from the truth either.

Thankfully it seemed like he managed to convince her if her sigh was any indication.

"Tell me this at least. You said something about a fresh body. Does that mean you can't bring back someone who's dead for a long time?"

"...no, I can't. Sorry," Takato answered truthfully much to the girl's disappointment. He adjusted the kitten on his laps, trying to think of ways to comfort the grieving girl.

"You know, a friend asked me that too," he said with a sad smile, image of Katou-san– well, Juri as she insisted him call her– popping up in his mind. "She lost her mother four years ago. Awhile back, she found out about this my secret. Then she asked if she could bring her mother back, but I told her it was impossible. You don't know how much I wished I could've answered otherwise..."

"I see... That sucks." Ruki sighed.

"Yeah..."

The two of them sat in silence, listening to the purrs of the now satied kitten.

It was on Hisashi's suggestion that Inko agreed on the trip to Tokyo. To make one last good memory, he said, of the country she'd be leaving for good in a couple weeks.

The two-hour long train ride from Musutafu to Shinjuku had given the two of them plenty of time to plan their itinerary.

There were some hitches, like the almost-accident they saw this morning. They immediately left seeing as no one was hurt. Otherwise however, the day went smoothly.

"Here's your change," the woman behind the counter handed her a handful of coins. The bread Inko had picked were neatly packaged into several paper bags, some of which she had to rely on Hisashi to carry.

"You bought too much," he said simply before walking outside, struggling to keep the paper bag balanced in his arms. Inko followed close behind him, offering him an abashed grin.

"They all look too delicious to be left alone you know?" She giggled, looking up at the signboard when they exited from the entrance. "Matsuda Bakery, huh. Maybe we should come here before we leave for America, how about that?"

"Sure, sure. Now come on. We don't wanna miss the train," her husband said, eyeing around to see if they could order a cab.

"There, good as news."

Izuku watched through Takato's eyes as the young boy admired his handiwork. Impmon wasn't good as news as claimed, especially not with the unremovable tire marks on its fabric. But after restuffing it with cotton the boy strangled out of his pillow, the plush was ready to be hugged like normal again. Which was what Takato did right after biting off the excess yarn.

It was disorienting watching himself being smushed under the boy's weight from said boy's point of view. Izuku wondered if not having a brain actually helped with handling the multiple perspectives.

"Good night, Izuku. We'll get you a new speaker later. I'm sleepy."

Izuku sent the boy an image of himself smiling. 'Good night, Takato.'

With the boy asleep, Izuku excused himself and returned to their shared mindscape. It seemed he was going to be alone tonight with how tired Takato was. Not that he minded. He could spend the whole night studying the boy's quirk instead.

Another thing being a disembodied soul allowed him to do was ignore his need for sleep and rest. He could stay awake forever if he wanted to–

No, no, no. Focus!

Right, there was one memory that struck him the most. He only saw flashes of it when Takato recalled it throughout today, likely due to the significance it had on him. The boy was adamant on using his quirk to help others, but this one memory seemed to ground and stop him from doing anything reckless.

And now that Izuku was watching it in full, he understood why.

"They're old, right?" Takato pointed at the rats lined up in front of him. There were three of them, all looking too frail to even move about on the table.

Dolphin nodded. "Just as you requested. Old rats, don't have a lot in them. Might not survive this week."

Izuku flashed the memory forward, scrolling the floating screen in front of him up until that specific moment that had been popping up in Takato's mind the whole day.

Takato "flicked" the soul out of the first rat, watching as its weak body collapsed with a sharp gasp of air. When he tried to reach around the rat with his quirk, he felt nothing. The same went for the whole room. His quirk never touched anything in the vicinity other than the other two rats, Dolphin, and Takato himself.

Izuku watched Takato replicate the experiment on the two rats, this time "flicking" them differently. However, the results were the exact same.

"I think our hypothesis was correct," Dolphin said to Takato who ignored him to stare at the dead rats that he'd just killed. Dolphin patted his head to comfort him. "Souls are not meant to exist outside a vessel. Upon leaving it, they shatter and cease to exist unless when in constant contact with our quirk. We know this now thanks to you."

Takato nodded absentmindedly.

Izuku frowned. This was what bothered him when he saw it ealier. The experiment was flawed, that much was unavoidable with Takato unwilling to kill healthy rats. Who was to say that souls, in fact, didn't shatter if not bound to a vessel? Ghosts were a constant topic among the supernatural enthusiasts after all.

And that brought him to the issue at hand. Ghosts.

Perhaps being bound to a vessel, in this case Takato's plush, blocked him from seeing any other soul other than himself. It was only when Jeri, the so-called living quirk Takato's crush had, barged into their mindscape that Izuku learned to distinguish it.

He wasn't alone.

When Takato went to school, when he played at the park, when he helped out at the bakery... he'd never noticed them before, but he swore he felt the presence of other souls around him.

But Takato didn't feel it, likely because he had an animate vessel. But Izuku's was inanimate, meaning he was half dead, i.e. half ghost; a ghost that haunted a boy's beloved toy. With consent of course.

And that was the funny thing wasn't it? If Izuku counted as a ghost... then what about the presence that had been following Takato these last few days? Was it a friend, or was it an imminent danger?

...yeah, he was probably overthinking it.

Even if there was a ghost haunting Takato, what harm could it do without a body? Yeah. He was scared for nothing. With that comforting thought, Izuku sent the memory away and returned to analyzing Takato's quirk for its potential applications.

If the presence at the corner of Takato's room bothered him, he heeded it no mind.

Does it feel like horror yet?

Don't worry, this story won't deal with supernaturals, at least not like in the horror movies. I am very much inspired by Yesterday under the Stairs however, so I've been thinking of ways to incorporate ghosts in this fic as well while I was away. If souls exist, why can't ghosts, right?

Scary stuff aside, I hope the sudden jump from "I'm gonna help you" to "it's the ciiiiircle of lifeeee" isn't too jarring. The first 5 chapters were technically a full arc, and the themes presented there are pretty much closed off neatly with a ribbon, so I don't wanna disturb that.

We'll have 4 more chapters in this new arc, and if I follow my outline faithfully, then Izuku will have a new body by the end of these 4 chapters.