knowledge comes but wisdom lingers
Ywena
Summary:
If that was a normal fanfiction, she would have been reincarnated fifteen years before the beginning of the Plot, so she could join class 1-A (hopefully taking Mineta Minoru's spot) and save the world side by side with her friends. She would have been on the Good Guys' side from birth, because everyone loved heroes and every child aspired to be one. Right? Well, someone in the Reincarnation's Administration must have screwed up. Because not only was she born a good seven years in advance, but she had been reincarnated in a family with enough issues to put the Todoroki to shame.
But hey, she could teleport. She wasn't exactly going tocomplainabout it, right?
(Self-Insert born a few years before Izuku Midoriya's generation. Let's explore this world, sort out some drama, and try to become a hero in the meantime. What could go wrong?)
ON HIATUS UNTIL SUMMER 2025
Notes:
Hello ! I've been cursed with Self-Insert ideas. In English, even ! That plot-bunny has plagued me for WEEKS and i finaly decided to write it. Since a few people have been interested in it, I also decided to post it.
Please be indulgent for my English mistakes, it's not my first langage and I'm doing my best =)
Chapter 1: Intro
Summary:
[...] And that's how she discovered that she had been reborn into the world of My Hero Academia, and suddenly remembered reading three-hundred and four chapters of the manga, from the very beginning up to the war and Midoriya leaving school.
So. That was…. That was a thing, apparently.
Chapter Text
INTRO
She… She had lived before. It was a distant certainty, but a certainty nonetheless. She didn't remember her name fromBefore, or her job, or if she liked some things and hated others, or even if she had a family. But she had lived. She had learned, and laughed, and cried, and then she had died. But it hadn't been the end. She had drifted in the dark, and then, she had ended up…Here. It wasn't hell, it certainly wasn't heaven: but it wasn't her world, either.
Her name was Toki. But she hadn't always been Toki, had she? She had been… She didn't remember. But someone. Someone else. Someone who didn't belong here. It was weird, that strange feeling of dissociation. As if her soul was homesick for some better place she couldn't even remember properly.
Tentatively, she would say she had been reincarnated. Why, thought? She wasn't anyone special. She hadn't done miracles deserving of a new chance at life, nor she had committed sins that needed atonement beyond death. She was just… a normal person. Well. She had been a normal person. She wasn't one anymore so much, eh? Even in this world… having lived twice wasn't common. Probably.
Toki wasn't against the concept of reincarnation, mostly because if she hadn't been reincarnated she would be dead and she liked being alive, thank you very much. But for such a used fanfiction trope, you would have thought thewaking uppart was pretty straightforward. New body, insert soul, and go. But it was more like… Being in that state of not-quite-awake, not-quite-asleep, where reality blurs with dreams. Oscillating between two states, without even understanding what those states were.
Obviously it was all very confusing. Babies don't have any concept of time, object permanence, reality, or their own bodies. Their brains are brand new. It's not like they're empty, just waiting to be filled with knowledge. They're not finished. The construction is still ongoing. So mixing that with an enormous bundle of disorganized memories spanning twenty-five years is bound to be messy. Sure, the brain develops faster. Neural circuits span into place easily, comprehension is more fluid, and synapses align themselves without the child needing to learn because they already remember. But it's a long process. And… a very baffling one, for a young mind such as hers.
I mean, yeah, having a twenty-five head start on other children her age was great. She was smarter than kids her age, more confident, more mature and more curious. But she was still a child. A mature, confident and curious baby was still a baby: a pint-sized person with a tiny toddler brain and zero handle on her emotions. She was confused, uncoordinated and clumsy, cried a lot and… She probably was an exhausting baby. Hell,shewas exhausted and she was the baby.
Also… Toki had apparently been reincarnated, not just in a parallel-universe, but in afictionalworld. Which was another shock. People with surrealist mutations hadn't been commonplaces in her original life. But here, there were lizard-men, seven-foot tall hairy dudes with bull horns and flaming eyes, people with feathers for hair. The vast majority was normal people, with two arms and two legs and whatever, but some had enormous eyes or ears, or really impossible hair color. And everyone has a superpower. Not only the superheroes on TV (which is also a thing apparently) but literaryeveryone. Extra-long limbs, durability, pyrotechnic, being able to spit rocks, becoming a puddle of degusting mucus in the middle of the kindergarten… It was insane. Great, awesome even, and wow she was so glad to be reborn in a world as cool as that… But it was still insane. What the hell?!
And that's how she discovered that she had been reborn into the world ofMy Hero Academia,and suddenly remembered reading three-hundred and four chapters of the manga, from the very beginning up to the war and Midoriya leaving school.
So. That was…. That was a thing, apparently.
She had been reborn in a shōnen manga. With superheroes and an overpowered mastermind hellbent on society's destruction. Cool cool cool.
Oh well. It could have been worse. Sure, it could have been better, too. It would have been great to be reincarnated in theHarry Potteruniverse! She would have been a Ravenclaw for sure. OrNarnia! Being a queen sure sounded nice. Of Middle Earth! She would have been a hobbit and traveled around the world! But well, that was reincarnation roulette for you. Beggars couldn't be choosers. At least it wasn'tGame Of Thrones. Toki was going to roll with the punches. There wasn't much else she could do, in any case. The simple fact of being reincarnated still left her a little shell-shocked.
Anyway.
She was reborn in what she dubbed the Boku-No-Hero-Academia-Universe, also called the BNHA-Verse for the sake of brevity. Long story short? Eighty percent of the population had a superpower, called a Quirk. It could be cool like super-strength, or lame like having glowing-in-the-dark skin, or terrifying like stopping someone's heart with one touch. Nobody knew why Quirks appeared about two hundred years ago, but it changed the world. Technologies started to evolve differently, trying to compete with inhuman superpowers. Armies lost their meaning when people were born with the firepower of a tank. International power dynamics changed, each country scrambling for stability in this new word. And off course, when Quirks first appeared, criminality rose with the abundance of people using their power for evil… But society adapted and the profession of superheroes (or pro heroes) was created. They were people allowed to use their Quirk to maintain the law. And they were often in the spotlight. Sometime they were more like pop-stars than like civil servants, and the over-consumerism of the thing was absolutely unsustainable… But that's a story for another day. Let's take it one step at the time. Getting her bearings first, launching indignant tirades against the State later.
It took about four years for Toki to completely… wake up. Well, not really wake up. She was still the same person. It was just that the day her Quirk appeared, her past-knowledge finally settled in. And even then, she wasn't an adult mind in a child body. She was still herself. Sure, she was smarter than everyone in her age group: but that wasn't hard, they were toddlers. And Toki herself was still a child. Carefree. Careless, even. She knew about All For One and One For All, about death, about all the horrible things that were going to happen, but it Seemed… Distant. Like old dreams.
It was probably for the best. Her toddler brain couldn't handle trauma and complex memories the way an adult brain could, after all. And she didn't just remember the manga, but also snippet of her old life, too. Sometime she would see a TV commercial and had a flash about using a similar product. She instinctively knew how planes flew, or how babies were made, or what were taxes, or silly things like that that every adult knew, without even knowing where or when she had learned it. It was odd. Not bad, not good, just… very strange.
She worried a bit about it. She was afraid of All For One, and Tomura Shigaraki, and the League Of Villains, and the Nomu, and Gigantomachia tearing through her city. But that fear, too, was kind of abstract. She knew the memories, the danger, were real. She wanted to do something about it, but in a kind of detached, vaguely unconcerned way. It wasn'treally real, for her toddler-self. It felt too distant, like a movie she had watched in the past, not something she had experienced. Maybe because it was too huge. She couldn't really wrap her mind about immortal villains devastating the country because of a century-old grudge between brothers. Nope. Too much.
But she was here. How, why, it didn't matter. She… She hadn't always been Toki, but she was Tokinow. That life was hers. Maybe reincarnation was common, and most people forgot their past lives, and it was only by mistake that she remembered living Before, but… It wasn't really important, was it? She was here now. She was Toki now. She had no other self to cling to. Even her past-knowledge was… distant, cold, like something behind a glass wall in her mind. It was there, but it wasn't reallyhers.
She was… She was just Toki.
Sometimes she felt special. Sometimes, though, she mostly felt scared. It was like a tiny voice in her head, sayingyou're not supposed to be here, you're an imposter, they'll know, they will hate you, you don't belong. With time, it became easier to ignore it. After all, she was carving her place in this world. Her birth may have been a cosmic mistake, some weird unreal lag in the universe's program, but what came after… Her actions, her choices, the memories she was making, the impact she had on people… It was real. She was real. For better or for worse, she existed in the world of Quirk, superheroes, and megalomaniac villains.
And she had… no idea of what to do with that information.
There was, deep inside her, the very human and normal desire to help others. There was also the absolute certitude she was completely over her head. She wasn't some Chosen One guided by a prophecy. Little Toki had absolutely nothing to do with the Plot. The protagonist was already hand-picked by All Might… Or well, he would be soon.
Where was she on the timeline, anyway? She tried to collect clues, but it wasn't easy. She still couldn't read (because hello, she still remembered English, but she had never learned Japanese in her old life so she had to start from scratch like everyone else). She couldn't exactly go looking for future events on Internet. She didn't even have access to a computer. She could watch the news, but sometime the people on TV used big words and she didn't understand all of it. All Might looked kind of young, thought. Like mid-twenties or something.
So Toki was more than ten years away from the canon. Maybe even twenty years away, actually. Ok, cool. Cool cool cool cool. Well at least she wouldn't have to deal with villain's attack at her school if she decided to attend Yuhei's Heroic Course. Well, if she was even allowed to.
Ah. This was the second abnormal thing about Toki.
If that was a normal fanfiction, she would have been reincarnated fifteen years before the beginning of the Plot, so she could join class 1-A (hopefully taking Mineta Minoru's spot) and save the world side by side with her friends. She would have been on the Good Guys' side from birth, because everyone loved heroes and every child aspired to be one. Right? Well, someone in the Reincarnation's Administration must have screwed up. Because not only was she born a good seven years in advance, but she had been reincarnated in a family with enough issues to put the Todoroki to shame. She wouldn't find out right away, of course. Everything looked normal at first. But by age ten, Toki would have definitely cursed at the Reincarnation Administration more than once for saddling her with all this drama.
Yeepee.
Chapter 2: Welcome to the world
Summary:
First chapter ! Where Toki is born, is cute, get a super-power, has a revelation, start writing in notebooks Midoriya-style, and learn a harsh lesson.
Notes:
For those of you who already know my SI Castia, you'll notice how they both like poetry and space x) Althought Castia want to go to space as an escape, because she live in a hell-like universe, and Toki is just a dreamer x) But the poetry com from me, unfortunatly. I've been collecting prose in notebook myself for while, so... there.
Anyway. Hope you enjoy it !
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
WELCOME TO THE WORLD
Let's start at the beginning. Toki was born in Halloween's Eve, which was already a bad omen. Well, the superstition was Anglo-American, but Japanese were superstitious, and Toki's soul came from a heavily American-influenced culture, so… Anyway. Toki was born on October the 31st, she was a Scorpio, her blood type was B, and her mother gave her a unisex name (written with a needlessly complicated kanji meaning "Time") because she had thought she was expecting a boy. Toki was a tiny baby with amber-colored eyes and a tuff of chestnut hair on her head, small for her age, but perfectly healthy. She bawled constantly at first, then started gabbling gibberish as soon as she realized her vocal cords could make sounds. Her first word was 'why'. Her second was 'book'.
At the beginning she thought she had a pretty average family. No sibling, a single mother… Small family, but normal all the same. Her mom was named Sayuri (but people called her Aratani-san, so that meant that Toki's family was probably Aratani too). She was a beautiful, energic woman with long pale brown hair, and deep purple eyes. Toki had her hair, although a bit darker, but not her striking eyes. Too bad. It would have been so pretty. Toki was in awe of her mother, so beautiful, so kind, so funny, so loving, who read her stories every night and never raised her voice. For a baby without any other connection to the outside world… Her mother was her whole universe.
Sayuri raised Toki alone. There was no husband in the picture. But there were adults who came and went in their apartment. Colleagues? Friends? Sometimes they shut themselves with Sayuri in her study, sometimes they just whispered in the doorway. They never introduced themselves. The more Toki grew, the less she saw of them, however: as if they were wary of interacting with her. They were never mean, though. Toki didn't really know what to do with that.
Sayuri… Mom… She didn't seem to have a job, because sometimes she stayed home with Toki for days, and took her shopping for groceries or strolling in parks as if she had all the time in the world. Like an impromptu vacation. But she also had enough money to have a nice apartment, never lack anything, and buy pretty clothes whenever she wanted. Maybe she was divorced from Toki's dad and had a wealthy pension? Or maybe she was a widow and had a big inheritance.
But Sayuri wasn't completely idle, either. Every month or so, she left for two or three days straight, leaving her daughter to spend the night with a young woman that worked in the daycare where Toki spend most of her days. The babysitter never asked questions. When Toki did ask, Sayuri always laughed and told her it wasn't anything interesting. Barely more than a toddler, Toki lost interest quickly. So maybe her mom had a part-time job, or something.
It wasn't very important, in the grand scheme of things. Sayuri loved her daughter. Sometimes she was a bit at loss about what to do with a toddler, but she was kind and patient and she did her best. Sure, she spent more time with her work-friends than with Toki, but she always took several days off in a month to spend time with her, play silly games, watch TV, read her books, buy her toys, tell her fantastical stories of adventurers roaming the world. Sayuri was young, maybe twenty-five? It wasn't easy to be a single mom without any family or close friends. But Sayuri loved Toki, she did her best to be a good mom, and that was enough.
When Toki childishly asked what her job was, Sayuri just patted her hair with a soft smile and told her she was a consultant. It was a big word and it sounded serious, so Toki nodded and dutifully bragged about it the next day in daycare. But afterward, her conscience from Before pointed out that it had been an extremely vague answer. Most adults told kids what theydidto explain their jobs. A garage owner said they fixed cars. A doctor told they healed people. A cashier explained they sold stuff.
What did her momdoexactly?
Well, it wasn't really important to Toki. As all kids were, she was pretty self-centered. She was happy, her mom doted on her, and that was enough. The Aratani family lived in a nice neighborhood, not rich but not poor either. Normal, even. Toki had a comfortable live. Home, daycare (then, later, kindergarten) friends, mom, games, adventures. Everything was fine. Her troubles were those of a normal child. She got her hair pulled at the daycare and cried, hoarded all the colored crayons and draw on the walls, befriended little kids and forgot about them when it was time to go home. She loved stories: fantastic stories about travel in distant lands, but also instructive stories, like those children's books that explain things about dinosaurs or planes or storms. Toki didn't play much with dolls, but she had plenty of animal figures. She liked paint, but wasn't very interested with playing with make-up or hair-do. Actually, she hated people touching her hair, but she didn't like having her falling in her eyes either, so her mother taught her to style it in two little macaron-like buns. It was cute, adorable, but most of all it was unique, and Toki kept the same hairstyle through, well, almost her whole life. She didn't care very much about being the prettiest princess. Although she did have some childish vanity, she wasn't very interested by her appearance. She loved learning new things: solving puzzle, digging into small mysteries. She wasn't a very adventurous child, though. She was more contemplative, constantly dreaming about imaginary plots or fantastical questions.
And at age four, she got her Quirk, like everyone.
She had wondered what her Quirk would be since she had been old enough to know what they were. Some part of her was terrified of being Quirkless and to endure the discrimination that Midoriya had faced in canon (bullying, suicide-baiting, and of course no All-Might to give her his Quirk at the end!). For all of her energic and happy nature, Toki was soft-hearted and sensitive. But more than worried, she was eager. After all, she was an optimist! And what child wouldn't be super-excited at the prospect of having a cool power? Toki could barely wait. Everyone around her was getting their Quirk, or already had them. There was her teacher at the kindergarten, who could make pretty lights during nap time… Or her friends that were already four and could change hair's color or crack the floor or eat gravel or even bounce on the walls like a rubber ball. Or better, maybe she would have a power like her mom's!
Sayuri's Quirk was Swap-Space. She could swap places with any object of height and/or weight roughly equivalent to hers, as long as she knew where that object was. Done correctly, it was a bit like teleportation. In the appartement, there was always huge canister filled with water to weight exactly sixty-three kilos so Sayuri could swap places with it and come home from…. well, basically anywhere.
Sayuri was very proud of her Quirk, but she didn't flaunt it. On the contrary, she almost hid it. It was utterly baffling to Toki.
Because, duh. Superpower of teleportation, anyone?! It was awesome! Toki would have bragged about it to everyone! She was a bubbly kid, easily joining in the ramblings of her little classmates in the kindergarten. But her mom very sternly said that the details of her Quirk were private and that Toki wasn't allowed to tell her classmates, which was so… weird? When asked about it, Toki just said that her mom could swap places between stuff, but not that she teleported with it.
Keeping a secret made her feel all grow up and trustworthy, but she couldn't shake the nagging feeling that there was something else going on. Odd.
In this world, people were defined by their Quirk. Or more specifically, children were. The first manifestation of their power could drastically change a life. A water Quirk? Immediately the kid was oriented toward a job like firefighting, or art, or even agriculture. Healing Quirk? You could have a scholarship for any medical school. The mindset of the adults was pretty much "how is that Quick going to benefit society?" and… From there, it wasn't hard for a child to be modeled into thinking that their Quirk was the cornerstone of their future. Which was highly ironic, since onlyheroeswere allowed to use their Quirk for their jobs! How frustrating could it be, to have a Quirk perfectly suited to make your work easier, and to be forbidden to use it?
Like removing gravity from object, but not being allowed to use it to help in the construction company your parents owned. Just as an example.
But anyway. Being a hero was of course being the best of the best, but even outside of this career, your power was a fundamental part of your future, of your perspectives. When people introduced themselves, they told their names, their age, their job, their Quirk, in that order. It was so significantly connected to their sense of identity. And as a result, being Quirkless was a shame.
In Japan, at least, it was the kind of thing that was discussed in hushed whispers, awkwardly or with a patronizing tone. A bit like normal people would talk about the mentally ill or the disabled. There was pity, but also a hint of smugness.
The human race had always been prone to discrimination. Race, gender, social standing, accent, physical appearance, disability… People never missed excuses to judge others as lesser. But in a world filled with superpowers, it was logical to see Quirks as a way to define the superiority or inferiority of an individual. Honestly, Toki thought it was unfair and mean. People should be judged on their merits, on what they worked to achieve, and not on what they were born with… Right?
But she was still a child and she didn't really have the words to articulate that feeling of injustice. It was still distant, and besides, she wasn't personally concerned. Because, fortunately for her, she had a badass Quirk.
Well she got it when sheaccidentally apparated in a treewhile climbing it with her classmates, which was less badass. She panicked and didn't know how to go back, so they had to call the firemen to get her back on the ground, but hey! It was still cool! And it made for a great story!
"Well, congratulation", smiled the Quirk specialist they went to see afterward. "Considering what happened, I think it's a teleportation Quirk!"
Toki clapped, delighted:
"Awesome! … What does that mean?"
Sayuri sniggered. Ever since being told what had happened by the teacher, Sayuri couldn't seem to be able to stop smiling. Like Toki's Quirk was such a good new that she was going to burst from pride and happiness. It made Toki feel very important, and she couldn't help but smile in return.
"It means," her mom laughed, "that you can disappear from a place and reappear somewhere else, Toki-chan."
Toki opened her mouth to blurt out 'like you!' with excitation, then remembered it was a secret, paused, and said very seriously:
"Neat."
The doctor chuckled, then grew serious: "Teleportation is very rare, and if often subjected to a certain set of rules unique to each Quirk. Some people can't teleport too far, or other can only teleport a few times a day. Each Quirk has its drawback. Aratani-san, you can swap places with object of a certain height that you can see, isn't it? Your daughter's Quirk is probably limited by her field of vision, like yours. What is her father's Quirk, if I may ask?"
Toki turned to her mom with curiosity, because hey, she was interested in the answer too. Also she had no idea why the nice doctor thought her mom's Quirk was limited by the height of things, or by her field of vision. What a ridiculous notion! Her mom was so much stronger than that! If she hadn't been obligated to keep the secret, Toki would have berated the doctor for his thoughtless words!
Sayuri didn't even blink, and serenely answered: "Her father has Minor Telekinesis. Not limited by his field of vision, only by the weight of things he picked up."
Telekinesis… He could move stuff with his mind? Wicked. Toki grinned, elated. That power was at least as cool as teleportation! She wouldn't have minded having that kind of Quirk, either. Of course, her mom was the best, but her dad wasn't far behind.
The doctor seemed impressed, too:
"Well with two Quirks as amazing as yours, it's no wonder you had such a talented daughter. She could even be a pro hero one day!"
And at that, her mother's smile took on a slightly fixed quality. Her hand, resting on Toki's shoulder like a comforting presence, tightened.
"It's a dangerous job, doctor," she laughed softly. "I would be happier if she joined my business later."
Ah, pro heroes. It was a thorny subject in the Aratani's household.
In Toki's kindergarten, it was a classic. They had toys, figures, cards, drawing about heroes. Children talked excitedly about the news and the fights their idols had been in. But it wasn't just some passing interest, like their cartoons on Saturday, because… Well, they loved heroes, butbig kidsloved heroes too. It wasn't just a kids' thing, it wasa grown-upthing too, and children knew it. They gravitated towards Pro Heroes not just because of the flashy colors, but also because it was something that adults loved, and kids always tried to emulate grown-ups.
Being a hero wasn't just about cool powers and flashy costumes but also about goals, about strength, about doing things worthy of admiration. Everybody wanted to be a pro heroes in the way that in her old life, everybody wanted to be President or astronaut or actress.
But Sayuri wasn't really a fan of heroes. She was reluctant to buy merch, even when Toki begged for it. It wasn't just the merch, though. When watching the news, Sayuri didn't fawn over the pictures of fights, while Toki's classmates reported that all of their parents did it. Sayuri bought storybooks with magicians and adventurers likeThe Wizard of OzorHarry Potter(or learning books about the sea, dinosaurs, or samurais, because Toki was a nerd even at four years old): she didn't buy All Might's or Endeavor's comics. She liked old movies with romance and comedy, where nobody wore tights to fight crime. And, well, Toki did too, but she wondered if it was because she had liked that stuff Before, of because of her mother's influence. Toki was aware that she wasn't as hero-crazy as most kids her age. Teachers thought it made her mature and curious, but wasn't it mostly a product of her education?
And… What did her mother have against heroes? It could be nothing, of course. Sometimes the hyper-mediatized guys in leotards weren't your cup of tea. But still.
It was the first clue that something didn't add up. Or maybe the first clue that Tokinoticed.
Kids learned by osmosis, and so, imitating her mother, Toki wasn't really interested by heroes. Well, she was, a little bit, because it was a big part of her classmates' games and all, but… She didn't have a favorite. She didn't collect cards. She had some figures, but nothing more, while her classmates bragged about having a lot of merch. Toki didn't really see the point. She would rather play with magicians, dragons, knight, hobbits and adventurers. So Toki hadn't really paid attention to her mother's dislike. Until now, that is. Because now, well. A doctor had said that Toki could be a hero, which was the best part to play in any game at her daycare, and even if Toki wasn't really into heroes she would never turn down an invitation like that.
But her mother had said no. And that was… intriguing.
But anyway. Afterward, Toki had a few sessions with a Quirk counselor, like every kid who awakened their power. Those sessions were mandatory, once a year, from age four to twelve, for every Quirked child. It was more of a medical follow-up to make sure they didn't hurt themselves (or hurt others) than a class about how to use their Quirk. After all, it was theirs, and the kids were the only ones who could learn how it worked. So during Toki's sessions, the counselor stuck to basic questions. What did her Quirk do? Was it scary? What did she think about it? It was part of her and she needed to accept it completely in order to control it. How far could she go? Was it painful? No? Great! You're good to go, see you next year.
(Really, you would have thought that in a world where children had superpowers, the child-safety measures would be a little more advanced. Seriously.)
At the kindergarten, Toki was showered with praises by her peers and the teachers. Having a superpower didn't change much. Well, she was gently scowled when she used Teleportation to leave the classroom, but that was it. She wasn't a disobedient child, anyway. Actually, that was a good thing for the teachers. She realized a few years later that if she had been as unruly as… say…Bakugou Katsuki…. It would have made her teachers' lives miserable. A teleporting kid! They had really dodged a bullet here.
Anyway, Toki had others things on her mind. Learning about her dad had opened a barrage of questions. Before, well, even if she had been aware she had a genitor somewhere, it hadn't really registered as having a father who was a real person, who had a telekinetic Quirk, who had existed. Now, though… Well, she was curious. What was his name? What did he look like? Was he nice? Where was he? How did he and Mom meet?
And patiently, a bit cautiously, Mom started answering. Toki was a grown-up now that she had her Quirk, and so her mom told her that she was allowed to know even bigger secrets that those that Mom had already shared with her. After all, she had done good, hadn't she? She had never told anyone that her mother could teleport with her power. Nobody knew how strong Sayuri was, because it was a secret, and Toki had done such a good job at keeping it! So surely, she was ready to learn more. She wouldn't tell anyone, would she? No, of course no!
So Mom made her swear to never tell a soul (which was the second clue that that there was something fishy)… And she started telling her about her dad.
Her father was named Ryūsei Taiyōme. His name was written with the kanji for "meteor", and his surname was spelled like "sun-eyes". Sayuri smiled wishfully when she talked about him. He was tall, and handsome, and brave. He had brown hair, darker than Toki's, but with reddish accents like a sunset. He had almost the same coppery-colored eyes as Toki, but his were brighter, luminous, like embers. He was hard-working and intelligent. His Quirk wasn't exactly Minor Telekinesis, butPsychokinesis: he could move things with his mind, but it was enhanced by his emotions. He was powerful, sure, but he also used his Quirk smartly. He didn't try to move a whole building if taking away a beam was enough to make the thing collapse, for example.
But hecouldmake a building collapse if he wanted, Sayuri said with a grin. Nobody was as strong as Ryūsei Taiyōme.
He and Sayuri had met at work. They had started at the same time, both teenage underlings doing odds jobs to make ends meet. Sayuri had been fourteen, then, and Ryūsei a little older, maybe seventeen. They had quickly become friends. But they had drifted in and out of touch for a few years. Ryūsei had started his own business, while Sayuri kept to herself, and occasionally did consultant work for various groups…
But they had stayed in touch, and after a while they had seriously reconnected: and then, they had started dating. Sayuri was barely nineteen, but she felt ready for a life-long commitment. They started their adventure… And they had such a wonderful time of it! They went where the wind carried them, with a band of loyal friends that helped them do the job right. The thrill of adventure! Risking their lives together! The rush of victory afterward!
(By that time, engrossed in her mother's tale, Toki belatedly aligned the clues with a mounting feeling of dread. Not, surely not…)
Ryūsei and Sayuri decided to get married after a few months, and they never regretted it. For years, they roamed the country. Sometimes they stayed only a few weeks in the same place, but sometimes it was eight months, a year, more. They were thriving on success. Oh, sometimes there were close calls. Their job was risky. Sometimes the people they dealt with were aggressive or violent. Sometimes it was scary. Sometimes people got hurt. But Ryūsei and Sayuri always got away. When they were together, nothing could stop them.
Then Sayuri had gotten pregnant. She had been trying for a baby almost since the beginning, so it was a very good thing. But Sayuri couldn't do her job while carrying a child (and her mother didn't go into details, but Toki abruptly wondered what teleportation would have done to the fetus in her belly, especially if it had been a non-teleporting fetus: that mental image was not pretty). She couldn't do her job while raising a child, either. So they bought a nice apartment, they made sure everything was ready, and they decided to go their separate ways for a while. Not long! Because each time Mom was gone, in fact she joined Dad at their secret meeting place. Often to work, but sometimes just to catch up.
(And Toki really hoped she was wrong, but… She knew what it looked like. In this world, 'free-spirited adventurer' wasn't a job. At least not a legal one, which meant)
"Can't Dad come here instead?" she asked naively.
Sayuri ruffled her hair:
"No, sweetie. Dad has… Well, he has enemies, so he can't attract attention to us or we could be in trouble. It's simpler if I go to him. I can go there without being tracked."
Yeah. That was what Toki had figured. She took a big breath.
"Mom… Is Dad a villain or something?"
Sayuri smiled softly:
"Or something, yes."
"… Oh."
Sayuri hesitated. She had let herself been carried away by her tale, apparently: and maybe she hadn't planned on spilling the beans today. She looked a little anxious now. Toki didn't know what to say.
Kids were taught at a very young age that villains were bad. Toki had a more nuanced understanding of the world and was trying really had to have all the data before judging, but still, her mother could probably see on her face that she wasn't exactly thrilled with this answer. Sayuri wringed her hands, an unconscious gesture of nervousness, before crouching down to Toki's eyes level and saying softly:
"Toki-chan, sweetie. Your Dad and I, we… When we were young, we didn't have a good live. We had no family, no access to a better education. So we did bad jobs, because we didn't have the option to do good ones. But once you start a job with bad people, then… You find out it's not that bad, really. You can help your friends and have a reward at the end. And afterward, those bad people… Well, they continue to give you jobs and be nice to you, while the good people continue to ignore you. And it go on and on, and after a while you don't have the option to work with good people anymore, because you're in too deep. You understand?"
Toki nodded, reluctantly. She didn't really have the vocabulary for it but yeah, she was aware of the socioeconomic context that surrounded most criminal activities. Well, she knew that from Before: she didn't actually know if that world was the same, but she could extrapolate. Considering how violent was this world (superheroes needed to stop disasters daily, that was a huge red flag), and how strong was the discrimination (she hadn't experienced any, but she remembered Midoriya's backstory)…. Well, it wouldn't be surprising if it was similar here.
"It's just a job," continued her mother, stroking her hair. "Everyone needs money to buy food and to have a house. Right?"
"… Right," Toki said, hesitantly, when it became clear that her mother expected an answer.
"Right." Sayuri looked pleased. "Some people can have nice, legal jobs where they make money counting numbers. But others have to start somewhere else and see where it leads them, and… They end up robbing banks. It's risky, and we have to hide. But it's not so bad."
"Villains hurt people, though," Toki said in a small voice.
She had trouble imagining her mother hurting anyone. Sayuri had never even raised her voice at her. Sometimes she was snappish or irritable, but it was because Toki was a little too rowdy, not because Sayuri was mean. Sayuri was so kind, so patient! Toki felt bad every time she annoyed her.
Her mother tilted her head:
"Well, not all villains, and not all the time. Your father and I are very careful to avoid it as much as we can. Don't believe everything they say on the news. Heroes hurt people too."
Well, yeah, but there was a difference between a police officer arresting a murderer by breaking his arm, and a robber breaking a victim's arm to steal their money. Toki frowned, dissatisfied. Her mom took her by the shoulders, and shook her gently:
"It's complicated, sweetie. But I'm still me, your Mom. And your Dad is still your Dad, and we both love you very much. So you'll keep your promise, won't you? You'll keep my secret?"
She had tightened her grip. It almost hurt. Toki held back a wince, and nodded quickly:
"Yes, Mom. I promise."
Because what else could she say? It was hermother.
Sayuri released her, looking relieved, and a little sad, and almost proud. She patted her head and offered to make her a hot chocolate to get over all those emotions, and Toki took the easy way out, hastily redirecting the conversation towards chocolate and the fact that they were almost out of candies.
So. Her parents were villains. Not terrible villains, not monsters like the League, or terrorists like the Army of Liberation: but villains. And even if they didn't commit senseless violence, her mom had basically admitted that they had gotten people hurt… And that it didn't keep her up at night at all. What was Toki supposed to do with that information?
She couldn't tell people, obviously. She didn't want her mother arrested. But was she going to do, talk to her and try to change her mind? Her, little Toki, at four years old? Yeah, right.
Damn it. Ignorance might not actually be bliss, but it certainly would have been less work.
oOoOoOo
Toki's life didn't really change afterward, but… more than getting her Quirk, that revelation was a good wake-up call. It was time to grow up and think about the future. She loved her mom, really, but being against the law scared her. Not because she felt particularly reverent of society's order but because it was dangerous. Her mom could go to jail. She could get hurt. She could getkilled. And where would Toki be, then? It was her mom, but it was also her life.
She wanted options. She wanted data. She wanted…. Possibilities, hypotheses, to have a clear view of the road in front of her. And for that, well, she had to take a little more proactive role. She needed to know everything. Not just about her parents, but about this country, its history, and the world at large. What was out there? What could the universe offer her? How could she use it?
And once she opened her eyes to all the possibilities, once she tried to look beyond the simple routine of kindergarten-home-play-sleep-repeat… Well. It was like a damn had been opened. Toki had always been a curious child after all, and once her intellect started aiming for higher pursuits, there was no stopping her. Toki wasn't really sure she could stop herself. There was so much to learn!
Toki had always been one of the smartest kids in her class, but the cranked up the switch a notch. She had already learned to read hiragana and most katakana and some kanji, but she threw herself into more reading than ever. She started to peruse through books about heroes, to know what all of that stuff was about. It wasn't bad, but her favorites stories stayed the ones with fantasy elements and without superheroes in leotard.
Her question in class started to be more pointed: why was it like that? Who paid for the damages made by heroes? Where did Quirks come from? How were they studied? Where? How did people become doctors? Where was the line between police work, military work, and hero work? Why had there been wars in the past? Why had wars stopped? Could there be another war in the future? Who owned the ocean between countries? Or the sky? Or the space? Did people go to space? There had been space exploration in the past, why had people abandoned that? Could people live on Mars or the Moon? Could people make Mars or the Moon livable?
The teachers had their hands full. Oh, they liked her, but sometimes her pointed questions needed complex answers that they couldn't quite give to a child. They praised her cleverness, but once or twice Toki was well-aware that she left them a bit bewildered.
Like all kids, Toki had been obsessed with shiny toys, but with her eyes opened to the world her fascination shifted to weirder (or maybe, more complex) topics. The ocean. The sky. Dolphins. Stars. Storms. Lightning. Puzzles and riddles. History. Quirks. It wasn't that weird, all kids had a nerdy phase during childhood: but Toki was a true nerd since birth, and so she was especially precocious.
"My smart little girl", said Mom with fondness.
Sayuri didn't discourage her newfound interest, far from it. She was delighted by it. She encouraged Toki to read, and even dragged her to museums. Toki hadn't even thought about it, but it was fascinating. They didn't have museums in the city of Hinohara, where they lived. Because why focus on the past when the present was much more interesting? So Sayuri and Toki always had to take the train and go to a bigger city. But it was so worth it! Museums were filled with treasures of knowledge. Pre-Quirk history wasn't studied a lot, since the power dynamics and legacies of that time weren't really relevant anymore, but still, it was good to know!
Apparently the BNHA-Verse was the same world that Toki remembered from Before, or at least the History was the same. It started to diverge toward… Well, Toki-from-before had died somewhere in the 2020',probably, so she didn't know what had happened next. Her memories from Before were still a bit fuzzy, incomplete. She remembered very well the BNHA manga, but the details of her own world had been blurred with time. In any case… Climate change had been the focus of the world for a few decades, starting from the 2000', until the first Quirked person (a glowing baby born in China) appeared in the late 2060.
Then afterward Quirks had multiplied around the globe, armies had been disbanded, power dynamics had changed, economy had risen in some places and collapsed in others, and well, the very structure of society had been changed forever in less than thirty years. There had been a lot of Coup d'états.A lot.Seriously, in Asia there had been unrest or flat-outwarfor decades.
It also explained why manga characters had names that were so on the nose. LikeMidoriyafor a green-haired character. OrTaiyōmefor someone with luminous eyes.
If you have had decades of war, then there's no way you had any kind of census data happening. People lost a lot of their identity: for protection, but also because sometimes they just couldn't keep track of it. It went to the point where, for several generations, people just had names that were identifying features, or were only able to keep their given name.
By the time orders was reestablished, and you could have government documentation with both a given name and a family name, what exactly would people use to identify themselves and their family? What would the government use?Quirks. It's the equivalent of people having the last name Smith because they were a family of smiths, or having a last name that was the town/village that their family lived in generations ago. People with 'regular' last names from the pre-Quirk-era, like Sayuri Aratani, only made a little under half the population.
This world was very different from the one she had left.
Science had leaped forward in some domains (prosthetics and robotics, mostly) while regressing drastically in some other (artificial intelligence, space exploration…). Every country was a democracy now, with the last monarchies disintegrating in less than a decade after the Dawn of Quirks. The medias had an enormous influence. International relationships were both stronger and warier. States had lost power. Religious cults had risen and fallen every decade like clockwork. It was like several hundred years of historical events had tried to cram themselves in a single century.
Present time was the year 2212. It was so weird to think about that. About one hundred and ninety-two (ninety-one?) years had passed since what Toki remembered from Before. It was… It was the same lapse of time separating her death in 2020 from, fuck, the creation of Belgium in Europe, or the July Monarchy in France, or the election of the seventh president of the barely-created United States. It waswild.
The History museum was instructive, but wasn't enough to soothe Toki's thirst for knowledge. Besides, she felt a bit unsatisfied by what she learned. Even a century and half of research hadn't managed to find out why Quirks had appeared. There were weird, gigantic and uncontrollable genetic mutations who gave people animal features or physically impossible superpowers (like freakingteleportation) and nobody had managed to find out why? It was maddening. Or maybe people were less interest in thewhyit happened and more of thehowto deal with it?
Anyway. Toki still had questions about the world. For a few months, her new passion became the ocean. Had people explored the depth of the sea? What was down there? How did sharks breathe? Did dolphins really speak in regional languages? How smart were they?
So sue her, loving dolphins was a perfectly normal thing to do for a four years-old girl. Well, five now. Time had fled. For her birthday, her mom took her to a neighboring city where there was an aquarium. Holding captive cetaceans was forbidden now (there was a world-wide ban on the enslavement of intelligent species, and wasn't that mind-blowing? People with empathy Quirk and other animal-communication skills had basically rioted to make it happen, but it had happened!), but it was still amazing. There were so many fish! And books about the sea! And they had a building where they healed rescued animals, and there were otters. So cute!
What? Toki was smart and curious, but she was also five. She was allowed to fawn in front of cute things.
Time passed, slowly.
Her mother continued to go for three days each month. But now, she told Toki about her dad when she came back. It wasn't much, just "oh, he said hello" or "he bought this coloring book for you" or "I showed him that drawing you did and he said you're very talented" but it made Ryūsei Taiyōme weirdly real. It was a person, out there, that had a life and a connection to her mom, and it was… strange.
It was a complicated situation. Toki knew that villainy was dangerous, and she didn't want her parents (either of them) to be involved in it because they could be hurt. It was easier, safer, to be on the good side of the law. And, well, it was also morally better most of the time, but the problem wasn't one of morality. It was just about feelings, and realism, and opportunities. Toki was safe, and she wanted her parents safe too. She wanted hermomsafe especially. Her father was maybe, probably, the main thing tying her mom to her villain's past. But he wasn't a distant, immaterial figure. She hadn't met him but she knew he was a real person, with likes and dislikes. She knew her mom loved him, and that he probably loved her mom. And Toki didn't… She didn't even really hate him? Or even dislike him? She didn't know him. She didn't like what he stood for, but as a person, he seemed nice. The discrepancy was jarring.
And how was she supposed to stop her parents from being villains, if she didn't even know herself enough to sort her complicated mass of feelings on the subject?
Even at five years old and full of confidence, Toki felt small when she thought about how she was supposed to inspire that kind of change. She was… She was nothing out of the ordinary. She had a powerful Quirk but it didn't make her exceptional. She had the potential to be a hero, sure, but she didn't even know if she wanted to. She wasn't a canon character destined to great things. Sure, she had been reincarnated, but that didn't make her better. She had been given no higher purpose, no lady had come out of a lake to throw a big shiny sword at her, and she hadn't found a flaming bush or some carved tablets. She was a child in a big, complicated world, and she had to carve her own path in it.
"You and Dad became villains because you had no choice," she timidly asked one day. "But you could stop if you wanted, right?"
Her mom stayed silent a few seconds. Sayuri never tried to baby her or sugarcoat the truth. Sometimes she had to pick her worlds carefully, but she always treated her daughter like a tiny adult able to understand complex ideas. It was something that Toki could appreciate.
"We started down this path because it was easier than fighting to get out," she answered slowly. "But no, I don't think we could stop."
Alright, Toki appreciated the honesty. But that was theonlything she appreciated in that answer. What the hell, mom?! News flash: crime wasbad!
"W-what? But why?"
"Because… Toki-chan, sweetie, we don't know anything else. And we are wanted by the law. If we stop, even if we hide our tracks, they will find us."
Toki blinked, and pointed logically:
"Yeah, but you stopped. You live here, with me, and people know your name and your face but nobody has tried to arrest you."
"My face isn't known to the public," admitted Sayuri. "But I'm using my maiden name, and I modified my data in the Quirk registry, and even with all that I'm constantly ready to grab you and run. Once you start a life of crime, it doesn't matter if you change your ways later. They always want to catch you."
Well, not if you waited long enough. There was a prescription for most crimes. Like, five, ten years? Something like that. Toki wasn't really up to date on the subtilities of Japanese penal code.
Unaware of her daughter little mental freak-out, Sayuri sighed:
"And besides… You father's name and face are known. If I stopped, I would have to leave him. And I can't do that. But more importantly, I don't want to."
"Leave him?" Toki said hopefully.
"Stop," her mother corrected. "I don't want to stop. I like that life. I like the friendship, the danger, the reward, being good at what I do."
Crap. Toki bit her lips. Yeah, she had suspected as much, but it still filled her with dread. If her mother had been tied to a life of crime by her husband, that would have been one thing. Everything could be blamed on the very bad man who had led an innocent woman on the path to perdition, yadda yadda. But if Sayuri had chosen it… If it had been her decision, taken with a full understanding of what it implied… Well. Let's just say that thing had just gotten way more complicated.
"But it's dangerous," she whined. "I don't want you to be in danger!"
Sayuri stoked her hair softly:
"It's alright. I'm always careful."
"But what if it isn't enough? What can't you choose another way?"
Her mom sighed, then playfully pinched her nose:
"Because, sweetie, it's the way life is. Some people can afford to pay others to fight in their place, and so they have cops and heroes. Some others don't, and they live by a separate set of rules. It's a good life. We are so much more free than other people, you know? At least we know how the real world works, and we're not chained by laws like others are."
Yeah, Toki could get it: the good old argument that society was a prison and laws were shackles that the masses traded for the fake comfort of belonging to the pack. Of course, in that metaphor, the free spirits were villainized when they were in reality the only good guys. Classic.
But her mom wasn't a bad person. She was kind, patient, loving, clever. She just happened to also be ruthless and have a flexible morale code. It didn't necessarily make her a bad mother. It didn't even make her a bad person.
Urgh, it was so complicated.
Anyway. Time passed. Sayuri didn't change her ways. She continued to talk to Toki about her dad. They never met, though: apparently Sayuri's teleportation was the only safe way to join him, and he couldn't even pass a phone call. And since Toki had no idea where he was, she couldn't teleport to him. One of the limits of her Quirk was that she had to know her destination to jump somewhere.
Toki's Quirk was… Well, making it part of her had been surprisingly easy. It was just an extension of her will, after all. She thought about a place, and she clenched some invisible muscle somewhere in her chest, her skin tingled, and poof! She was there.
Sayuri was fascinated by her Quirk, and constantly encouraged her to use it. Even though it was technically illegal. Not that Sayuri cared about things like that, but still. She always gave Toki treats when she managed an especially long jump from one location to another. She made Toki perform little experiments about her range and her stamina, all the while wearing a watch that counted her heartbeats. Toki submitted happily to those tests (the results interested her, too!) but she couldn't help but feel a little disquieted by her mother's fascination. Sometimes it felt as if Sayuri was more interested in Toki's Quirk than in Toki.
Which was, of course, ridiculous.
Anyway. Toki's teleportation was great! She could go from home to her kindergarten in a blink. She could go from the park to the museum in a blink, too. She had managed to go to the aquarium and back one day, so she knew that she could easily cover forty kilometers. It had been tiring, though: she had weak knees and short breath as if she had run for hours after that stun. Sayuri had been very anxious about it. She hadn't tried to make her do any more long-distance jumps afterward. But shorter teleportations were totally okay. For exemple, teleporting all day from upstairs to downstairs or from the couch to the carpet didn't tire Toki at all.
Toki was also endlessly curious, so of course she experimented with her Quirk. Nottoorecklessly, though. It was teleportation, after all, and some morbid part of her mind always thought about what would happen if she got stuck in a jump, or if she left an arm or an organ behind. It was chilling. But hey, apparently, she had innate control over teleportation of her own body, so she never left any bloody part behind, or stuck between time and space. Success!
Basically, Toki could teleport herself anywhere as long as she could picture her destination in her mind. She still kept her clothes on when jumping, she realized: but as soon as she paid attention to that detail she started teleporting without her clothes,which wasn't in her plans at all. It made her mother laugh, at least! But it took Toki a few days of tests to understand that she teleported everything she wanted to bring with herself. If she wanted to go with her clothes on, great. But if she wanted to jump home without her coat, she could do it too. It was a pretty fun experiment.
Toki could also teleport with thing she touched, like a book in her hand, or a trash bag to put outside. She didn't manage to teleport with the couch when she tried the three first times, under Sayuri's watchful eyes. But when she tried a fourth time a few days later after a frustrating day of trying to teleport parts of things (like only a slice of the whole apple she was holding), she succeeded. So maybe her teleportation's powers were enhanced by frustration, or her emotion in general, like her dad's psychokinesis? Or maybe it was just a matter of training?
She completely forgot to tell her mom about it. Later, when she remembered, she sheepishly decided that she didn't want to tell Sayuri that she had forgotten, so… that particular experiment wasn't repeated.
Besides, it felt very grown-up to keep a secret of her own!
Sayuri and Toki continued analyzing her Quirk. Some tests were boring. Some others interesting. Toki tried teleporting in quick succession, like a run around the room, jump-jump-jump one meter at the time. She tried to teleport while moving. She tried to teleport upside-down, or to appear facing away from the direction where she had disappeared. She tried to teleport carrying stuff. She tried to teleport with her eyes closed. She tried to teleport thing she touched with both hands, then one hand, then a few fingers, then one single finger tips. She tried to teleport with a thing that she touched and another thing that toucher that first thing (like two books stacked on top of each other, while she was only holding the bottom one).
Toki had… varying amount of success. Her main obstacle was her sense of equilibrium. Jumping in crazy position was doing interesting thing to her internal ears and she ended up dizzy if she tried to make too much teleporting-backflip in quick succession. She could teleport with anything she touched, but teleporting things she didn't touch was hit-and-miss. She could teleport with two books, be she couldn't teleport with the blanket and the mattress, somehow?
Experimenting on her Quirk never felt like training, somehow. Toki wasn't trying to strengthen her skills. She was just exploring her abilities, like Mom said. Sayuri thought that Toki had all the time of the world to become stronger later. But for now, why not focus on creativity and versatility?
You could augment your power, but you always hit a limit. But if you were smart and adaptable… Then there were no real limits to what you could do, what you could become. The best example was Sayuri's own Quirk: Swap-Space wasn't powerful, but it wasversatile. She could swap with anything. Not necessarily solid or inorganic objects! So Sayuri had learned to swap with people, so she could teleport other people where she wanted, for example. But she had also learned to swap with the water put in a canister. Not with the full canister itself, just the water. That way, she escaped and ended up standing upright in the open container… and the only thing left at the scene of the crime wassixty-three liters of tap water, that immediately splashed everywhere upon materializing without a container.
Talk about contaminating the evidence!
And yeah, Toki still thought that robbing banks and stuff was wrong, but wow, she had to applaud that stratagem. Sayuri didn't swap with a solid thing, only with a certainmass of matter. It was incredibly clever. And… no wonder that she managed to escape the police for so long. People found water on the scene, so they probably thought the villain used a water Quirk, right?
(Toki had to reassess herself, and realize that maybe her cleverness didn't come from her past-life, but from winning the genetic lottery. In addition to a teleportation Quirk, she had inherited her parent's brains. Damn. It was humbling, in a way. And scary.)
Toki aligned that with the others clues and tried to look, on the news, for reports about villains using a water Quirk. Aaaand there it was, the Meteor Crew, led by the villain Meteor.
Really, he had picked the English translation of his first name as his villainous pseudonym? It wasn't very imaginative! Still, Toki carefully noted the name in her head. The gang's members were mostly unknow, but they often left a huge quantity of water in the safe of banks they robbed. Ten against one that it was her mom.
Maybe Toki should ask for some notebooks to write that down. Oh, and learn code to hide her notes. She had so many things she wanted to know; she was afraid to forget some of them.
Well, in any case, experimenting with her Quirk took her mind off things. And… it was pretty fun. Toki asked her mom for a notebook: she knew her mom made notes of her own during their little tests, buts he wanted to write down things, too!
Of course Sayuri, who never said no to her, indulgently bought whatever she wanted. Toki started to write down all of her observations. Writing her progress made her feel more confident, more grown-up. After all, the difference between science and messing around was just the act of taking notes.
A first notebook quickly became two, then three, because she didn't want to mix topic and she also wanted to write about all her other questions. After the ocean, her new passion was the sky. How did clouds fly? Why was there rain? How high could people go before running out of air? Could we go to the moon? She started drawing planets with funky colors and asked her mom for glowing-in-the-dark stars to stick to her ceiling. She scared her caretakers half to death by teleporting herself ten meter in the airs to see if she could fly (and okay, maybe it wasn't her smartest decision). She didn't fly, but she managed to teleport herself to the ground before crashing like an idiot, so it was fine.
Space exploration had never really taken off in the BNHA-verse. Shame. It was one field of science that had been abandoned when Quirks had appeared. Mankind had to focus on the Earth, where power and danger both came from. It was a pity. If Quirks hadn't apparated and reshaped people's understanding of the world and their priorities, well… Today, humanity could have had space travel, and even started terraforming of distant planets!
She babbled excitingly about it to her mom, like always. And Sayuri smiled, nodded, and offered her stickers or new notebooks or even a trip to the museum. There was no planetarium in their town, but there was one in Tokyo, and a trip there would take a few days. It was a full vacation, not a simple week-end, but Sayuri was ready to make the trip.
"Really?!"
"Of course Toki-chan! You know, your father love astronomy too. I think you get that from him."
It left Toki felt oddly off-balance. She had thought that this new passion was all hers, because nobody in this world really cared about space. But… Her father's villain name wasMeteor, wasn't it?
It left her to wonder. What had she brought back from Before, actually? She had memories, but…. Her passions, the things that interested her, her feelings… None of them really came from Before, did they? All of it… All of her… It was a product of this world. It came from here, from her parents. It wasn't necessarily bad, but… What did it mean, for her?
What did it mean, for a little girl who had so much questions about the world, and whose parents were villains? What kind of answers would she get?
oOoOoOo
At six years old, Toki started writing poetry.
It wasn't original poetry. It was just prose from Before. Sometime, she had a flash of insight: a quote, a few words, a verse from a song, a rhyme from a poem, a scene from a movie. But it was just a fragment, adrift. Toki wrote them anyway. She didn't want to forget. And… If felt nice, to put those words on paper, to make them more real than a single whisper in her mind.
Those words weren't hers but at the same time, they were. The old world she remembered only existed in her mind, now. What she could bring back with her, even if it was her clumsy prose mixed with others' poetry, was something only her could create. She was like a whole universe, trapped in a person, and fading a little bit every day. Was she going to forget her old life? Sometimes it seemed already so far away. She was Toki, now. She didn't need any other name. She didn't even remember her old one.
And so she wrote. Sometimes the words came easily, sometimes they didn't. She didn't let her mom read her notebooks, and Sayuri didn't try to snoop (or if she did, Toki never caught her). Besides, if she had read her daughter's writing, would she have understood?
We understand so much, but the sky
behind those lights,
mostly void, partially stars,
that sky reminds us
we don't understand even more.
Most of her little poems were astronomy-themed. Maybe that passion would go with time, like the others. Or maybe it would stay, and that would be something to share with the father she had never met. Maybe. But still, it was an endless source of questions, wasn't it? What was out there? Mankind had barely scratched the surface of the ocean's mysteries. The sky was so much bigger. There were stars, and comets, and black holes, and planets. It was so humbling and fascinating to think that the same rules governed the fall of an apple on earth and the symphony of celestial bodies' movements.
Toki wrote. She had barely filled five pages: she still had plenty of space. It was a big notebook. She put stickers and drawn little stars next to the words, and wondered if she could make a scrapbook. Nah, too much work. The aesthetic of the page didn't really matter. The point of writing wasn't to put the words somewhere specific, just to get them out. Or they would stick in her chest, filling it with too many emotions she couldn't name.
One day you will be face to face
with whatever saw fit to let you exist in the universe,
and you will have to justify the space
you have filled.
At six years old, she also left kindergarten to join an elementary school. Sayuri told her that she was a big girl now, so she would leave more often for work. Toki wasn't stupid, she had seen that her mom was getting restless. She was a wild spirit, after all. A bank robber, a villain, a fugitive from the law. Settling down for six years, even with the frequent reunions with her gang and subsequent heists… That was a lot. Sayuri was still young (twenty-eight, maybe?). She still wanted to enjoy her life. And even if she loved Toki, her true happiness came from the life she had with the Meteor Crew.
Did… Did that made Toki a bad daughter, because she couldn't convince her mom to made her the priority in her life? Of did that made Sayuri a bad mother, who didn't love her daughter enough?
Anyway. Elementary school. It was… Well, it was fine. In Japan, it was pretty normal for children to walk alone to their school even if it was half an hour away, so Toki started going to school by herself. It was a thirty minutes walk…. Or a split-second of teleportation. But it was that much time that she didn't spend with her mom, who used to walk with her to the kindergarten each day. It was strange. A bit lonely, too.
Actually, it was at the time that Toki's life started to get a bit lonely.
Before, it hadn't really registered. She had been too little to need anyone besides her mom and her classmates in kindergarten. Then she had been distracted by her Quirk, and then by her sudden opening to the real world and all the questions that came with it. But the frenzy of questions-answers-discoveries-experiments had slowed down after two years, and it left Toki with more time to think… And more time that she had no one to share with.
She did try to make friend in school, but it wasn't easy. Sure, they eat together, and played together, and told each other stories, but… In class, the teacher constantly praised Toki (her grade, her intellect, herQuirk, as if it mattered in her academic performance somehow), and it set her a little apart. She was bit uncomfortable with that open admiration, actually. And the teacher did her best to answer her questions, but most of the time it was too complicated, and she sidestepped neatly, telling her 'it's something you'll learn later'or something like that.
And alright, wondering if an anti-gravity Quirk could launch stuff in space or how fast was the Earth rotating…. It probably wasn't the best conversation-starter in a class of six years-old kids whose eyes were firmly rived on the ground instead of toward the sky. But Toki just couldn't turn off her mind like that. She was always asking why, how, where, when? Every little game of make-believe needed to have a huge backstory, just as every little drawing devolved into what could be giant fresco if Toki had more paper (and crayons, and talent… and attention-span).
There were also times where she was bored to tears. Toki already knew almost all her kanji, while her classmates were just beginning. She hadn't had math lessons before, and but simple addition or subtractions were so simple she could do them with her eyes closed.
And mostly… There wasn't anyone she could share with what she really thought. Things like 'what to do to protect my mother?", or 'I'm not sure what I will do with my life', or even 'Is that weird that looking at the sky make me hopeful, and does that mean that I've already given up on what's on Earth?'. She was an odd child, she knew. It wasn't her fault.
Her teachers started to give her more complicated work, but it still wasn't really challenging. Only when they hit middle-school level physics (what was mass, and gravity, and what was a wavelength) Toki started learning new thing and became invested in her work. She also joined two club, the English one (she didn't know if she was learning or relearning, but speaking English came to her easier than to most students), and the gymnastic one. Both were middle-school clubs, so she hung around older kids. It was harder to bond with them, so Toki didn't really make friends there. Not that she was here to make friends. Especially withchildren. There was a large gap of cultural difference and she didn't know how to cross it, or even if she wanted to. For so long it had just been her and her Mom. It felt weird to think about opening to other people. Besides, she wasn't exactly isolated: she had her Mom, and that was the most important thing!
But sport was good: it forced her to stop thinking, to stretch her muscles and focus, and went home feeling a good kind of tired. But it wasn't enough. She was still bored in class, and lonely, and distracted, and people noticed. After a few weeks, her teachers started talking about moving her up a grade or maybe two. Sayuri was so proud she looked like she was walking on cloud nine.
"My little prodigy," she giggled. "Smarted than both your father and me put together."
"Moooom!"
"It's true, sweetie! You're so smart. You could do anything you set your mind to!"
And… Toki considered it. Sure, she had almost perfect grades. The only class where she didn't have a huge advantage was Japanese, and even then she had a good level, whether it was hiragana, katanaka, or even kanji. As for the rest… She didn'tremembermath from Before, but she probably had something left in her head, because multiplication and addiction slid easily in place in her mind. She could do in her head any elementary-school-level mathematic operation. They didn't teach much science, but learning about the cycle of water or the food chain was old news for her. The physics homework that the teachers gave to her was two or three years ahead of her peers: and even if she had to make an actual effort to solve it, she found it engaging, instead of insurmountable. So yeah, she was pretty advanced. She didn't know if her advance would last (maybe she wouldn't feel so smart by the time she joined high school or even middle school!), but for now… Yeah. She could do pretty much anything.
And wasn't that another problem? Toki didn't know what she wanted to do with her life. She hadn't even thought about it until now, but since her mother had told her about being a villain, Toki couldn't help but turn the thought over and over in her head. What if her parents pressured her into joining their gang? For Toki, it had never been in question that she would not become a villain. It had been a complete certitude from day one. But…She didn't know if her parents knew that, she realized with a jolt.
What if, for them, it was the opposite? What if the thought… What if mom thought that of course Toki would join them?! Hell, she was already involved, she was keeping their secrets. Then would come the next step, meeting them… Then sharing the loot… Then learning more about who they were… Then do something small, like providing food for an attack, or filling up the tank of their car… And then it would turn into carrying message or things for them… Playing lookout… And finally, actively joining in and attack.
But Toki didn't want to rob banks. She didn't want to run from the police. She didn't want to be against the whole world. It had never been in her plans. She just wanted to ask questions and find answers. Was it too much to ask?
"I want to go to college," she impulsively said.
Her mom froze, and blinked at her. Toki squared her shoulders. In for a penny, in for a pound, right?
"I want to become… an astrophysicist."
She had just decided that. It was a toss between astrophysicist or astronaut, and considering that this world wasn't really interested into sending people to space, well, studying the stars it was. Also, the word sounded pretty cool. Toki nodded to herself. Yeah, astrophysicist was a good career path. She raised her voice, feeling a little more confident:
"I want to study science and stuff. So I want to go to college."
I don't want to join you, was the implied message, but Toki knew her mom heard it loud and clear.I don't want to join your life, with you and Dad. I won't become a villain.
"You… You're young," Sayuri smiled weakly. "It's okay to not be sure."
"ButI'm sure!"
"Toki… It's…". She sighed, then shook her head: "I hear you, Toki-chan, but it's still years away. A lot of things can happen."
The young girl stubbornly crossed her arms. Yeah, a lot could happen, but that wouldn't change her mind. She didn't want to live on the run, she didn't want to be a villain. End of the story.
Shit. She had been right, she realized with a sinking feeling. For Toki, becoming a villain had never been an option. But her mom… All that time, when she had encouraged to learn about her interest… When she had helped her experiment with her Quirk… Her mom had always thought that there was no option for Toki besides villainy. They both had had two very different conversations, each time, for the very start.
And now… It looked like they were both realizing it, right now, out of the blue. Toki barely dared to breathe. She felt petrified, incredulous. Like, it couldn't really be happening, right? Her mom was going to tell her that her choice was fine, right? But no. Sayuri didn't say anything for a long time. Then, she tried to smile:
"I would be hard to keep in touch if you become a famous doctorate in star-stuff, you know."
Don't go where I can't follow. But Toki balled her little fists, and when she answered, her voice barely shook at all:
"It wouldn't be, if you changed your job."
It's you who is leaving, not me. You could stay if you chose. It wouldn't be hard. You could stay by my side if you decided.
But you've already made your choice, didn't you?
Neither Toki nor Sayuri managed to reach a compromise this evening, nor the following day. The atmosphere was oddly tense and subdued. After a while, Sayuri left 'for work' and didn't came back for a whole week. There was food in the fridge like every time Sayuri had to leave, and by now Toki knew how to use the microwave and even the stove safely, so it wasn't bad, but… She had never left so long before.
When Toki had been younger, Sayuri had arranged for a worker at her daycare to take her home for the night so she wouldn't be alone. Now, for a two or three days absence, her mother didn't bother anymore because she knew that Toki could handle herself. But for a wholeweek? It was so long.
Also, Toki didn't know if it was normal for parents to leave their children unattended for several days like this. She didn't really have a frame of reference, though. Maybe two days alone was normal? Or maybe a week wasn't so bad, because Toki was unusually capable for a kid. She was six years old but she had the maturity of a child twice her age. Actually, mentally speaking, she was probably closer to teenagerhood than childhood. After all, she had even started her teenage rebellion!
After the third day home alone, Toki started to worry, afraid that her mom wouldn't come back. Maybe she had run in trouble? Maybe she had been hurt or arrested? Or maybe she was disappointed in Toki and had decided to abandon her?
Or maybe it was some elaborate kind of emotional blackmail, some sort of punishment for Toki's rebellion? If that was the case, it was working wonderfully. The guilt and self-recrimination were eating her up. Why couldn't she have been kinder to her mom? Sure, she was a villain, but she was hermom. She loved her, she took care of her. She was the most important person in her life. Didn't Toki owe her a little gratitude? Or even more than that? Sayuri was the only person who really knew her, the only person Toki could really talk to, the only person Toki could trust. So of course Sayuri was angry, because Toki had told her she didn't trust her back, and it had hurt her feelings! It was all Toki's fault. Even if she didn't want to be a villain, she shouldn't have told her that, or at least not that way. She should have waited. Why did she had to ruin their peaceful life?
But after the self-blame came anger. She wassix years old. Alright, she was strong and clever for her age, but she was a child! It wasn't her job to coddle her mom. Especially about that! It was her life. She wanted to have a safe life, and it was wrong of Sayuri to be mad at her for that. Her mom was… Her mom was a bank-robbing villain, a criminal who had absolutely no intention to leave her criminal life. It was bad, but it was her choice.Herchoice! Sayuri had picked this life willingly and now at the gall to be pissed about her daughter wanting to do the same for herself? Especially if the path Toki wanted to follow was a better one?! What the hell?! It wasn't wrong for Toki to have her own dream! It wasn't wrong for her to be smart and to want to pursue an academic career. It wasn't selfish of her! It was selfish of hermomto make her feel like she was the selfish one!
Then the circle of worry and guilt began again, eating her anger. Sayuri shouldn't have left like that but what if something had happened to her? What if Toki's last conversation with her mother was an argument? It was a terrifying thought. Toki was smart but she was still a child, with no other support system than her mother who had just abandoned her. The loneliness was getting to her. Children were not made for prolonged period of solitude. Toki teleported to class every day, sure, but... she didn't have friends there. She didn't know these people, she didn't trust them. It made her feel claustrophobic.
The secrecy felt like a physical weight squeezing her chest. She wanted to scream at people "Mom isn't home, I don't know if she's coming back, I'm scared, help me!" but shecouldn't. The unarticulated fear of betraying Sayuri's trust (and to really making her leave) was stronger. If Toki had had others friends… Or even another authority figure she could trust… It would have been easier. She would have opened up to then and, well, even if that person couldn't solve her problem, the simple fact of sharing her burden, or not being alone, would have helped tremendously.
But she had no one else. No one else could be trusted. No one could help her, and Toki was on her own.
She walked around the house, pacing frantically like a worried housewife. She picked things up and put them down, she compulsively checked at the door or the windows (even knowing her mom would come back by switching with the water in the big container hidden in the hallway behind a curtain). She wanted to go out and do something, but she was scared that if she left, her mother would come back during her absence. Besides, even if she went out, where would she go? Toki had never been outside the house without her mother. She didn't even know her own neighborhood. She never had a sleepover with friends and didn't know anyone or anything outside the school. She had no one to call for help.
In what could either be a fit of paranoia or a flash of lucidity, Toki wondered if her isolation had been voluntary or not. There wasn't even a computer in the house: Mom had taken her laptop with her, and in any case Toki had never been allowed to touch it… so Toki had zero contact with the outside world outside her school. She had been to museums and parks, she had taken the train and ridden the buss… But always with her mother to hold her hand. She had zero autonomy. And of course, at six years old, she had no money. Did parents usually give their children an allowance? Well, probably not at such a young age. What would Toki have done with a few coins? She had never even been alone at the store.
She was only allowed out of the house with her mom. Sayuri always hammered that Toki had to stay home when her mother couldn't watch her (so: when she was gone, or shut in her office with her friends). Otherwise, Sayuri never let her out of her sight. Toki had been happy to be the center of her mother's attention, but… Well, had she become dependent of it? When she had teleported alone to the park, once, Toki had been consumed by guilt as if she had done something horrible. Even though if Sayuri had never found out!
And after all, Toki was six! In Japan, it was an important milestone. Children that age started to do stuff on their own, like going to school, ride the bus, even buy ice-cream on their own. Toki's classmates did that all the time. Toki…. Never.
She hadn't really cared, because she hadn't seen the point, but what hadn't her mom cared? Toki knew that she could be a tiring child, with her restless energy and her unceasing questions. Why hadn't her mom let her leave the house to spend her energy elsewhere?
Maybe Sayuri was just worried. Maybe she didn't want Toki to get any idea about how great heroes were (after all, their face and exploits were plastered everywhere). But… It was already damning, right? Because it would mean that Sayuri had always intended for Toki to join Meteor's Crew. In a distant way, Toki had been aware that it was a possibility. But… But it was hermom. Only bad people raised children to made them fight in their war, and her mom wasn't a bad person. She loved Toki. She wanted what was best for her, right?
Right?
(But Toki, who always had questions and always looked for answers, knew that her mother didn't. Her mother wanted her to be happy, but not at the cost of her own happiness. The plan had always been to bring Toki in the family business. Cutting her from the outside world and stopping her from having other options may not have been deliberately planned, but it had been voluntary.)
Sayuri came home after a week.
By that time, Toki had yelled, cried, shut down, then got up again, calmed down, and… more or less accepted the facts. Her mom looked briefly surprised by her calm… then immediately started begging forgiveness for a long absence. She was so genuinely sorry, too! She pleaded that the job had gotten longer than she had though, that she was sorry, that it wouldn't happen again, that she had worried so much… She regretted it and she was sincere. There were tears in her eyes. Seeing her mother so sad made Toki cry, and in less than five minutes they were both sobbing in each other's arms.
Of course, Toki forgave her mom. She was angry but more than that, she was scared and felt guilty. And in exchange, their argument was forgotten. Tacitly, they never spoke of going to college or becoming astrophysicist. Sayuri never left her so long alone again.
It was as if nothing had happened. Toki was moved up a grade, according to her teachers' recommendation. Her mother gushed about her cleverness and told her she would get far. Neither villainy nor astrophysics were discussed in relation to Toki's future, though. In fact, her future wasn't discussed at all. It was only the present that mattered: her good grades, how challenging she found her homework, how smartly she used her Quirk, how well-behaved she was. Her mother was proud of how smart Toki was, and no other argument occurred about what her daughter would do with that clever mind of hers.
But Toki would never forget the lesson.
Notes:
Poor Toki.
Anyway, don't hesitate to check-out the fanarts in "Snapshots of Wisdom" to see little Toki learning about space exploration =)
EDIT 12/08/2022
Spelling mistakes were corrected. I also put emphasis on why involved Sayuri is in Toki's life, how she help her experiment with her Quirk, and how interested she's in Toki's teleportation.
Also added that small paragraph about "why do the anime chacracter have names so on the nose" xD Someone gifted me that headcanon in a comment, sorry, i don't rememeber your name. But as you see, i made good on my promise and put it in the story!
Chapter 3: Blood is thicker than water
Summary:
Toki turns seven and has a nasty surprise. But hey, she really should have seen it coming.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter fornotes.)
Chapter Text
BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER
Weeks passed, then months. Toki was getting ready. Ready towhat, she had no idea, but she wouldn't be taken by surprise by the unpleasant reality ever again.
(Oh, how naïve she was!)
Her mom and her never spoke of their quarrel again, but it didn't make thing better. Something had been irreparably shattered. Would a normal child forget and move on? Toki didn't know. She wasn't a normal child anyway. She was the daughter of Ryūsei and Sayuri Taiyōme, a little prodigy who loved math and stars, a fan of fantasy books, small and smart andfucking pissed off. She still loved her mom, of course she did, but there was a wound that would never heal. Now Toki watched her every word. She didn't dare to ask for things like outings to the museums. Their trip to the planetarium in Tokyo was forgotten (real oversight from her mom, or a punishment?). Sayuri didn't talk anymore about the gang or their activity. She didn't spoke about Dad, either. She still told Toki when she had to go and see him, but she never brought back a kind word from him like before. It felt stupid, but Toki missed it. It was like a subtle indication that her father was mad at her. But Toki wasn't allowed to apologize or even explain herself, just to live with it.
Sayuri never left more than three days straight, but she was gone more and more often. Their little tests on Toki's Quirk slowed down, as if Sayuri had lost interest. More than anything, the loss of this little mother-daughter bonding activityhurt. It was one of the few thing that made Sayuri genuinely interested, that made Toki felt like she gave something important to her mom. It made her feel smart, it made her feel grown-up, like they were partner on a project. And now it was just… gone.
Like Sayuri had found something better to do.
Toki managed. She did her homework, she read her books, she played with her figures. She cried sometimes, because she was sad, of course she was sad, her mom was mad at her and she didn't know how to fix it. But was there even something to fix? It was the most terrifying thought of all. There was no going back. Her mom was a villain and Toki wouldn't be one. The fact that they both avoided the subject didn't change reality. And one day, it would come back to bite them in the ass. The only question waswhen.
At school, Toki managed to get her hands on a computer. Usually, the access was restricted to the older kids, but Toki still tried her luck. After all, she was her teachers' favorites! So she used her best puppy-eyes and asked nicely if she could read about orcas. What? Dolphins were still one of her favorite animals, and in class the teacher had made them watch a movie about orcas to keep them quiet during a rainy afternoon, so everyone at school was fascinated by those animals. Nothing was suspicious about her request… and Toki was granted access to a computer for the afternoon.Success. Using old memories from Before and a good deal of intuitively, she managed to find the navigator… and she googled a few things. Like a city map showing the police station. A few articles about children's emotional needs (turn out leaving your six years old for a week alone was child neglect). Some dietary recommendation. A training regimen for young gymnasts. What happened to villains' children if their parents were arrested. What was foster care. How to leave foster care.
And what was the Meteor Crew.
She hadn't had much information about them before. The news had given her a name and some clues, so, not much. But like most villains, Meteor had a Wikipedia page. It was mostly conjecture but there was also a lot of relevant information. Meteor's real name wasn't here… But there was a blurry picture of him. A tall man with dark hair and vivid ember-like eyes. He had split pupils, Toki noted with a slight shock. It gave him a somewhat feral look, like a starving wolf.
Meteor's power was Psychokinesis. The angrier he got, the more powerful his Quirk. He was feared for his strength and ruthlessness. With his Quirk, he picked up heavy objects and made them rain on heroes and civilians alike, in what he called a "Meteor Shower" (oh, that's what his name came from!). He was classified as A-ranked threat, meaning that only heroes of a certain level were allowed to engage him. Because he was so strong, but also smart. His plans were clever and flawless, with several escape routes perfectly planned from the start. He had always evaded capture. Not a single one of his accomplices had been caught, either. The whole gang counted four people, maybe five or six, the police wasn't sure. Toki didn't recognize any of the three names listed.
Her mom wasn't there. A little note indicated that one of Meteor's accomplices surely had a water-based Quirk, but the picture above the note was a grey icon with a white inscription:Unknown.
Their first bank robbery had happened a little over eight years ago, which checked out with what Toki knew. Even before, Meteor and several of his presumed accomplices had had arrest warrants for assault and theft. They were relentless. Since their debut eight years ago, they had robbed twenty-seven banks. Toki didn't need to check the date to know that most of those attacks coincided with the days her mother had been 'absent for work'. Shit.
Even after birthing Toki and settling down to raise her, Sayuri had never stopped being a villain.
And the Crew's member were real villains. About a fourth of these attacks had been non-violent, in the night, with limited collateral damage. But the rest… They had also severely injured seventy-five persons and killed about twenty. Meteor was credited with most of the charges.
Shit.
Toki didn't bother erasing her navigation history when she left the computer room. Some small and vindictive part of her wanted to be found out, wanted to get her mom in trouble. This unresolved argument… This uncertainty about the future… This stalemate they were both locked in… It needed to stop, one way of another. It terrified her. It broke her heart. But Toki couldn't live like this, with that sword of Damocles hanging above her head. Shecouldn't.
She ran away from home, once. She waited until night, when her mom had put her to bed, then she got dressed, took a backpack with her clothes, and teleported to the park. She wandered aimlessly for maybe an hour. But she was too cold and too scared, so she went home. She appeared in her bedroom, changed back in her pajamas, hid under her covers to cry, and fell asleep.
Her mother never noticed. If Toki hadn't caught a cold afterward, it would have been as if it had never happened.
Did she evenwantto run away from home? Maybe. Probably not. She would miss her mom something terrible, but at the same time, she would be relieved. The problem was… Where would she go? She knew no one else. If she tried to seek refuge with the police and told them everything, they would arrest her mom, and she didn't want that. Same thing if she tried to appeal to a pro hero. And if she didn't tell them her mom was a villain, well, they would think she was missing and try to find her parents. Mom would come and collect her (probably), and it would all have been for nothing. Not, it was useless. Running only worked if you knew where you were going.
Oscar Wilde, serval centuries ago, had written: "we are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars". Some days Toki felt this quote like something alive in her chest. She had her eyes wide open and looked for beauty in the future, but all around her were darkness and danger. She couldn't stop seeing what was happening, in all of its terrible clarity. The world, the danger, the beautiful possibilities and the dark reality. And oh, how she wanted to reach for something else, something more, and it was like her mother and everybody else was blind to not see it!
She knew her time was counted. How long would Meteor allow her mother to stay away? How long would Sayuri herself accept to stay on the sidelines, raising her daughter alone when her dearest wish was to be reunited with her husband? One day, this life (it was cage, Toki had finally understood, but it was comforting and familiar nevertheless) would end. Sayuri would bring her to the Meteor Crew. She would stop hiding behind the Aratani name, and take back the Taiyōme one. The criminal one. And Toki didn't want that, but what could she do? What could she do?!
She waited. She prepared. She had no idea where all of this would lead.
She asked for a fourth notebook, to practice drawing. She doodled in the margins of her notebooks but she was running out of space. Also, it left her less space to fill with words and that was completely unacceptable.
Her notebooks were her most precious possessions. She had a dark blue one with little glimmering stars, where she wrote poetry; a purple and pink one with pale seashells, filled with questions and idea about random subjects, from dolphins' intelligence to headcanons about her favorite cartoon; and a white one with gold and silver geometrical pattern, that she reserved for her Quirk's analysis. She continued to experiment with Teleportation, but it was going slower without her mom's careful supervision.
She wondered if it was paranoid to assume that Meteor was interested in her Quirk. Probably not. A lot of his robberies had gone without a hitch because there seemed to be an invisible accomplice (obviously Sayuri) opening doors from the inside. Since Teleportation was more reliable than Swap-Space… And that Toki could bring stuff with her when she jumped from one place to another… How wouldn't that interest Meteor?
(In her head, she had switched from calling him 'Dad' to 'Meteor'. It was easier to compartmentalize that way. Her mother was still 'Mom', though. Toki knew she couldn't trust her to have her best interest at heart, but she loved her. How could things be so complicated?)
But Teleportation was hers, not Meteor. So Toki tested, experimented, took notes, and only talked with her mother about inconsequential things like her goods grades or her classmates. Her results were for her eyes only.
Sayuri didn't even care about Teleportation anyway. Not anymore. She sometimes told Toki to be careful or not strain herself, but it was like she had lost all interest into finding Toki's limits, into helping her grow.
It doesn't matter,Toki thought furiously, blinking back tears.It's my Quirk. It's my life.
Toki continued experimenting. She was tired if she jumped several kilometers, but not if she made several smaller jumps in quick succession. She could appear in the same position she had disappeared, but she could also change position (disappear standing up, reappear sitting down). She usually appeared one centimeter above the ground, as if it was really ajumpand she had to complete some sort of landing. If she jumped with an object in her hand, she could reappear with that object elsewhere (like, in her other hand, or perched on her head). She couldn't teleport things from a distance. It was easier to teleport somewhere in her line of sight. She wondered if she could teleport with another person. She had never tried. And now… Well, who would she ask? Certainly not her mom. She didn't want her involved in her Quirk training. A classmate? No, they would babble. Same thing for the teachers. Sadly, Toki had… absolutely zero friends.
She was nearly seven years old.
That last year (well, the last four months at least: since her big non-argument with Sayuri) had been tiring. Not physically, although Toki always give her all in her gym club or when Quirk training, to sleep like the dead in the night. But emotionally. Toki hadn't lost her Mom, Sayuri was still there, and she still loved her, but… Toki had lost her confident. Her best friend. That person she could trust to have her back wasn't there anymore. Sometimes Toki wondered if she had even existed. Sayuri hadn't changed, hadn't suddenly betrayed her. She had always been the same. It was Toki who had deluded herself into thinking they had similar goals and hopes: it was Toki who had pushed her mother away. Still, it didn't make it hurt any less.
She loved her Mom and it hurts to think that after what happened… After what had been said… Sayuri might love her less.
But it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her responsibility! Toki tried to whisper to herself, every night:I did the right thing. I'm honest about what I want, and I don't want to be a villain. It wasn't her fault if Sayuri had a problem with that. Toki shouldn't have to renounce her moral code to earn her mother's love. It wasn't… People couldn'tdeservea person's love. She would drive herself crazy thinking like that. Her mom, Meteor, everybody… People either loved her, or they didn't. Simple as that. It didn't mean Toki wasn't good enough for them to love her, because love wasn't something you earned by beinggood enough. Love wasn't something that could be quantified or doled out. She shouldn't blame herself for not being loved how she need to. She just had to look for love elsewhere.
The problem was… She had no one else.
Gods. Fuck you, Reincarnation Administration. Couldn't she have landed in a nice, problem-free family? Hell, she would even have taken the Todoroki over this. At least with power-hungry Endeavor, you knew where you stood. The fact that he was a douche helped, too. I mean, yeah, he would start on the road to redemption later in life (much, much later in life, and with incredible awkwardness): but for most of his live he had been a completely unlikable father. Toki would have felt no remorse in telling him to fuck off. But she couldn't do that to her mom, because her mom wasn't a violent, abusive asshole. She was a normal person who loved her daughter very much, but who also happened to be a criminal and refused to entertain the idea that Toki wouldn't want to join her later.
What a mess.
Sayuri made efforts, though. She didn't speak of it. She was waiting for Toki to forget the argument before trying to convince her, but she did try to regain their lost closeness. She never confronted the problem head-on, or whine that her daughter was too distant, which was… a good thing, because Toki was completely helpless in the face of emotional blackmail. But maybe Sayuri was as afraid as her to reopen that wound, knowing that neither of them had changed their mind about it. So she tried to be nice, to be helpful, to start anew.
"We could go to the planetarium for your birthday, what do you think?" she offered an evening.
Toki raised her head, startled. Her birthday was still a week away. They hadn't talked about it, but…
"Really?" she said hopefully. "In Tokyo?"
"Yes. We would have to take the train early in the morning to get there, but we can both teleport to come back, so the trip back shouldn't be a problem. Would you like that?"
"Yeah! Of course!"
Toki didn't know if it was a peace offering or simply her mother doing her best, but she would gladly accept it. She had never been to a planetarium in this life, and damn it if she didn't want to make it count§
For the remainder of the week, she felt like she had wings, and she could barely stay in one place. She bragged about the upcoming trip to her classmates, who were suitably impressed. Since moving up a grade, Toki had become even more of a loner: she hadn't really had friends in her old class, but she had known these children for years, so she had no problem teaming up in sport or finding a group to eat lunch with. It was a bit harder in her new class. Toki managed to find people to chat with her or work with her, but she felt more like an awkward tagalong than an equal. Which was ironical, considering she was smarter than these kids! Well, better at math at least!
But oh, she liked her classmates well enough, all things considered. People were nice. Her classmates didn't like her showing them up in class but Toki wasn't really interested in hoarding the glory, so she refrained from raising her hand in lessons, and eagerly shared her work during groups projects. She was the baby of the class (smaller, younger, lonelier) so the others kids were in turn protective and condescending, but never mean. Some of them even were appreciative of her good grades.
Toki was friendly with a few of them, but they weren'treally friends. Or maybe those kids thought that she was their friends, but… Toki couldn't honestly call them hers. After all, a friend was someone you could trust, someone you could talk to and share your problem with. Toki… Toki couldn't inflict her burden on her classmates. They weren't close enough. Or rather: they were too young. Toki wasn't an adult or even a teenager, but she wasn't quite a normal child, or maybe she didn't have quite normal problems. She would have needed an adult friend to help her.
Well, good luck with that. The only adults that Toki knew besides her mom were her teachers, and they all loved Sayuri. Obviously, Toki couldn't tell them the truth. What if they decided that her mother (who would deny everything) was the more trustworthy one? Toki would have played her hand for nothing.
But back to the point. Toki eagerly awaited their trip. Her mom was very busy this week, making a lot of phones calls and packing her bags for her next trip with Meteor in a few days, but Toki didn't pay much attention. She was too excited about her incoming birthday present. If her mom took her to a planetarium, Toki could absolutely forgive her for going to Meteor afterward!
The big day came. In the morning of her seventh birthday, Toki felt on the top of the world. Well, not a six in the morning when she had to get dressed half-asleep, or when she drank a brick of apple juice as breakfast in the bus on the way to the station, and definitively not when she had to enter the train station and found herself in the most crowded place she had ever been to. She clutched her mother's hand like a lifeline. But man, she was going to Tokyo to see a planetarium! She had put on her favorite shoes, little orange sneakers with white soles, and had tied her buns with her prettiest elastics. She had packed her backpack herself, with all of her notebooks, her crayons and pens, a few snacks, a sweater, a book to read on the train, and a map of Tokyo's subway that made her feel like a real grown-up.
As a first travel experience, it wasn't great. Toki had never been around so much people in the same time. She lived in a quiet little town, but here… They had to change stations twice, and each train was more crowded than the first. Internally, Toki knew nothing could happen to her (she could teleport!), but it was still intimidating. And very long. The whole train ride took about two hours. For a child, it was a small eternity.
But they finally arrived and wow, it was huge. Tokyo was agigantic city. It wasn't Japan's capital anymore (it was now Kyoto, as it had been before the Edo period: the change had happened after the last emperor died and his government collapsed, about twenty years after Quirks appeared), but it was still a massive metropole. The Planetarium was in the cultural district, filled with museums, guided tours, souvenir shops, and various expos: it was bursting with activity, and Toki was torn between running from one thing to the next, or sticking to her mother like glue. In that crowd, if she let go of her hand, she would be lost for sure!
They started, of course, with the planetarium. There were actually two planetariums in Tokyo (in the past, there had been at least five: mankind had really turned away from the stars…), one in Shibuya and one in Nakano. They were barely ten minutes away from one another using the train, so Toki and her mom started by the one in Shibuya, the biggest one.
Toki went from one exhibit to the other, entranced by the holograms of asteroids or the solar system. There were little nooks with seats where an audio-guide talked about one galaxy or another, with pictures projected on a large screen with vivid colors. There was a long showcase with fragment of meteorites. There was a room where a movie about the Big Bang was on a loop, and another room where an interactive movie summarized how artificial satellites were made, what they did, and how they were launched. You could get star-themed snacks from the cafeteria. There was a small library with numeric books and podcasts about space exploration in the pre-Quirk era. A children's cartoon explained what astronomy was to the younger visitors.
But the main even was the dome. The cosmos was projected onto a gigantic domed screen, above reclining and individually rotating seats, with earphones to listen to an explicative podcast. Surrounded by stars and nebulas, Toki could almost believe she was in space.
Alright, Toki was in love.
When they got out, it was mid-afternoon and she was exhausted, but also beaming. Her little feet were aching. She had bought a new pin to put on her backpack, and a bunch of stars-themed stickers for her notebooks. Her mom had quickly been bored and had spent most of her time on her phone, texting or calling, but never very far away, always keeping an eye on her daughter.
Sayuri offered to go home, but Toki insisted on seeing the second planetarium and her mother obliged good-naturally.
This one had a dome too, but smaller. Most of the space was taken by a long exhibit about the history of space exploration. It began with Spoutnik in 1947 and ended up with the launch of a rocket whose crew was tasked with repairing and inspecting several satellites, in the year 2199. It was fascinating. No satellites had been sent in deep space since the year 2040, though: no rover send on Mars or the Moon, no space telescope, nothing. It was such a shame. If Quirks hadn't appeared and shifted mankind's focus, well, people would be terraforming Jupiter right now! And there would even be light-speed space travel! Like inStar Wars!
(Star Warsnow had seven trilogies and eighteen spinoff movies, by the way.Why. And meanwhile, not a singleHarry Potterremake!)
When they got out of this planetarium, it was nearly evening. Toki had brought a t-shirt that said 'Astronaut In Training'and another pin for her backpack. She felt ecstatic and completely exhausted. When her mom dragged her to a fast-food to eat something, Toki nearly nodded off in her seat while they waited for their order. The smell of fries and grilled chicken was enough to remind her she was famished, and she wolfed down her food in a matter of minutes… But then, the exhaustion came back tenfold. When she yawned, she could almost hear her jaw crack.
"Can we go home now?" she whined to her mom.
Sayuri looked to her phone. Then she breathed deeply, put it in her pocket, and reached above the table to take both Toki's hands in her own.
"Not yet, sweetie. Mom had something to do first. Do you want to come with me? You can sleep on the train."
Toki squinted. She was tired, but even then, the sudden change of plan rang alarm bells in her head. It wasn't her mother's style.
"Is it about him?"
There was only onehimshe could refer to. Sayuri didn't look happy with the wariness in her daughter's tone.
"It's aboutyour father, yes," she said, stressing the word. "It shouldn't be long. Are you coming?"
And what stupid question was that? It wasn't as if Toki was going to run off on her own. She could have teleported home alone, true, but she still remembered vividly the week-long absence of her mom after their argument. What if Toki went home, but Sayuri didn't? If Toki left, and her mother walked away from here… Toki would never find her again. She teleported to places, not to people. If she didn't want to be abandoned, she had to follow.
So Toki didn't answer, but when her mother got up, she followed grumpily. She didn't dare to lag too far behind. She even gripped her mother's hand when it was time to enter the train station. In the dark, and without the promise of a planetarium at the end of the journey, riding the train was suddenly much scarier.
The train went. Toki nodded off. She didn't remember the exact length of travel, or even how many stations they had passed. It could have been thirty minutes or three hours. She only woke up with a jolt when Sayuri shook her softly, whispering they were here. Rubbing her eyes blearily, Toki mechanically took her mother's hand and followed her outside. They were outside Tokyo, probably, or in a poorer part of the city: it was all tall, dingy buildings, more like HLM than like shiny skyscrapers. Sayuri looked like she knew the place, though, walking fast and at a determined pace. Toki, still holding her hand, was dragged behind with great reticence.
She yawned again. It was way past her bedtime and she was really starting to be sleepy. The unarticulated fear of leaving her mother was starting to look more and more inconsequential compared to her real need to lay down in her own bed. But it wasn't very long until Sayuri murmured 'we're here', and softly pushed her daughter with her in the backdoor of a convenience store. Distantly, Toki wondered why Sayuri hadn't brought her back home, then teleported here by herself. It would have cut a lot of travel time. Unless they had nothing there for her to switch place with? It would be weird. Sayuri had always used her switch-teleportation to go to Meteor and back, so why change now?
It was only when Sayuri opened a door and entered in a brightly lit room filled with people, that Toki realizedwhy. The sudden clarity was like a bucket of cold water. Sayuri hadn't teleported here like always… Because until now, Sayuri had never brought her daughter with her.
There were three people in the room, sitting on wooden chairs around a wobbly table where they were apparently playing cards. When Sayuri entered, they all straightened slightly: but only one got up, smiling. He walked to where Toki stood frozen, and kneeled to her height. He was so tall. He wasn't massive, built like a runner more than like a body-builder… But in the room's harsh lighting, sitting to close, he towered above her, intimidating. His hair was dark with blood-red accents, and he had exactly the same eyes' color as hers: something between gold and orange, like frozen amber, with a touch of fire. He had slit pupils and his gaze was intense, burning like smoldering embers.
"Hello Toki-chan," smiled her father. "I'm so happy to finally met you."
oOoOoOo
The convenience store was the front of Meteor's hideout and money-laundering business. There was an apartment upstairs that his Crew used as headquarters. Toki had her own room, which was little more than a cupboard with a futon. They would stay here only a few days, Meteor had explained with a kind smile. Just a little family reunion. It was long overdue, wasn't it?
Fuck no, it wasn't. Absolutely not. She wanted to go home and be done with it.
But there was no home to run to. While Toki had been wandering around in Tokyo, a moving company had packed all their belongings and brought them to their new home, somewhere downtown. Sayuri would take Toki there later, after their vacation was over.
It was Meteor who told her that too: and when Toki turned to her mom, betrayed, Sayuri was looking at her phone and pretending to not notice. She had planned to give her up to Meteor from the start.Her own mother had cut off her exit, and led her right into the lion's den! It was like being stabbed in the heart. Toki had known where her mom's loyalties lied, but she had thought… She had thought… She had believed that her mom would just avoid choosing, avoid confrontation like she always did. She hadn't realized that her mother had already made her choice, that there wasn't even a choice to make. Sayuri had always been on Meteor's side, on their Crew's side. Toki's rebellion had been seen as cute and a bit awkward, but ultimately inconsequential. Sayuri wouldn't take Toki's side because Toki didn't have a side to defend, she wasn't even a player in that game,her opinion didn't matter.
The feeling of betrayal was so strong Toki almost felt numb. Part shock, part defiance, she refused to say a word. Her father didn't really need her to: he talked enough for two, cheerfully detailing how their meeting had been planned, introducing his friends (all wanted criminals), and earnestly telling her how they were destined to be one big happy family. Toki's muteness drew a reproachful pinch from her mother. Then one of Meteor's associate pointed that it was a bit late for a kid, and Toki was sent to bed without further ado.
She hated it. She hated their paternalistic voices, and how they smugly talked about how they had manipulated her without ever drawing suspicion. She hated how totally in control they were, while she was powerless and alone. She hated how those criminals were friendly with her mom, how her mom was friendly with them, as if they were all one big family and Toki was the outsider, excluded from their private jokes and their community while being utterly at their mercy. And she hated how unaggressive they were: she hated how they pretended to begladshe was here, she hated how they smiled earnestly and tried to tell her she was one of them.She wasn't.She was Sayuri's and Meteor's daughter and they thought that she owed them because of that. Well, screw them. She was Toki the Teleporter, she was her own person, she wasn't going to join their second-rate villains' club, andshe hated them.
The room where she slept (she refused to call it 'her bedroom') was so small it looked more like a cell. It was entirely filled by a futon and a colorful sleeping bag probably bought just for her. There was no pillow: Toki used her backpack, that she had clutched in her arms during the whole ordeal. They closed the door behind her, but didn't lock it. Why would they bother? She had nowhere to run to.
I want to go home,she wanted to plead. Buthomehad been her mother, and she couldn't trust her anymore.Homewas gone. She huddled under the covers, feeling the sadness and despair clamp her throat like something physical. There it was, the belayed realization of what was happening, of what she had lost, of what her mother had done.
On an impulse, she squeezed her eyes shut and teleported in her real bedroom.
The landing was rough. It had been a long distance: she felt the aftermath immediately, her knees bucking with sudden weakness, as if she had run a marathon. Her chest hurt, as if her heart had a spasm or something like that. She fell on her ass on the parquet, because the push carpet was gone. In fact, when she opened her eyes and took in her surroundings, she realized with horror that Meteor hadn't lied: there wasnothing left. The whole room was clean and bare. Even the glow-in-the-dark stars stickers on her ceiling had been removed. It was chilly: the heating wasn't turned on. It was dark, too, and pressing the switch didn't do anything. The power had been cut… Heart in her throat, Toki got up and ran in every room of the apartment, frantically looking of a sign that all of it had been a joke. But the living room was empty, as was the kitchen, and her mother's bedroom. There was nothing in the cupboards. It was just an empty house.
This time there was no shock to dull the pain, no numb incredulity to shield her from the truth. Her home was gone. Toki's lip wobbled, and then, she burst into tears. She was all alone and her mother was here but she had also abandoned her,betrayedher, and the apartment was empty and it hurt,it hurt! Toki couldn't breathe with the pain of it, like all of her emotions were bursting from her body at once, like she was too small to contain them.
She wailed and cried until she had no tears anymore. It was just huge, racking sobs that shook her whole body, making her gasp for breath. It was her first taste of real pain in this life. She fest socrushedby it, so lonely and sad and helpless, like a child weathering the full awfulness of the real world all at one.
She cried until she was spent, feeling oddly dazed and empty, drained by the tears. Between the tiring day, the emotional roller-coaster, the long-distance jump, and the waterworks, she was knackered. Her head felt like it was stuffed full of cotton. She almost considered sleeping here, on the cold hard floor, away from her mother. But she had left her backpack there, with her notebook full of poetry and the one with her Quirk-analysis and the other filled with math equations and scientific questions. It was her most prized possessions. So she gathered her remaining energy, and jumped back to her flimsy bedroom.
She was out like a light as soon as her body hit the futon.
She slept like the dead and woke up a full turn of the clock later, near midday. Waking up in her tiny, cell-like bedroom was disorienting at first. But when she got up, she felt… well. Not ready, but rested. As if all of her negative emotions had been drained by that good cry. She felt a bit numb, empty, but it was a good emptiness, the kind that was just waiting to be replaced with anger or determination, not the kind that left you weary at the simple idea of getting out of bed.
Toki rolled out of her futon, and went to find the kitchen to face the music. Well, first to the toilet (and gods, clearly it was only men that lived here, had nobody ever heard of lowering the toilet lit?!). Then, the kitchen.
As expected, there were… people. Sayuri wasn't here (and Toki's heart gave a little panicked jump at that). Meteor was, though. Him, one of the guys from last night, and another woman. When they saw her, they all beamed, and Toki nearly took a step back. They were criminals and they all acted like counselors in a summer camp: it creeped her out.
"Hello, Munchkin!" smiled her father, and Toki instantly hated the nickname. "Yesterday was tiring, wasn't it? You slept all morning! Want some breakfast?"
Toki tilted her head and considered her answer. But she was hungry and telling him to fuck off right away seemed like a spectacularly bad plan. She had no real idea of what she was going to do in the short-term future. Talk with them? Run away? Run away where? To who? Resist, then? Resist how, and resist what? She knew what shewasn'tgoing to do (go along with their criminal scheme and get arrested), but you can't plan stuff around negative space. She needed more data.
And first of all, she needed a full stomach. So in end, she nodded slowly.
"Yes. Please," she added reluctantly.
"Aw, she speaks!" laughed the other man in the kitchen.
Toki shoot him a poisonous glare, and he raised his hands in feigned fright: "Oooh, and she scowls just like her daddy, too."
Meteor sniggered, and Toki reflexively scowled harder before forcing herself to smooth her features. Breakfast was surprisingly nice: toast, an egg sunny-side up, a glass of apple juice, and a small mug of hot cocoa. Sayuri had probably told them what she ate every morning. One more little betrayal. Still, Toki rationalized, it was food. She wasn't going to complain because they had made her good food that she liked. She begrudgingly thanked her father for the meal and ate. Having three gangsters stare at her while she chewed her food was kind of unsettling, though.
"Do I have something on my face?" she finally snarled.
The woman snorted, and turned to Meteor: "She had some spunk. I thought you said she was kind of meek?"
Toki bared her teeth. Her father laughed (Toki couldn't help but tense), and interceded smoothly:
"She was exhausted yesterday, I didn't even get to hear her voice. But she is my and Sayuri's daughter, of course she has some spine! Oh, by the way, Toki-chan, this is Nono. You already met Homura yesterday."
The woman, Nono, had mousy grey hair with bright blue streaks, black eyes behind rectangular glasses, and skin so pale she looked like a corpse. The man, Homura, was a giant with massive shoulders. He had neon-green hair, and wore a Hawaii shirt that seemed almost incongruitous. Both of them seemed sincere enough when they smiled to Toki, but whatever. She didn't trust them. She couldn't trust any of them.
"Where is my mom?" she asked suddenly.
It shouldn't matter. Her mother had clearly shown where her priorities lied, where herloyaltylied. Still, she was the only person here that Toki knew. The only person she loved, that she could talk to… No, she couldn't even talk to her mom anymore, could she? When she had tried, it had backfired pretty spectacular. The week-long absence had been bad enough, but this… pseudo-kidnapping… it had probably been prompted by their arguments too, as a way to fix Toki's rebellious attitude by forcibly involving her in the family business.
"She's working," calmly said her father, is molten gaze never leaving her.
Toki's heart rate picked up.Working. Doing what, scouting a bank? Robbing people? Laundering money? Doing illegal things, in any case. Dangerous things, things that hurt people and could get her arrested… Toki shouldn't be surprised (after all, her mom had been 'working' each time she joined Meteor) but she still felt her stomach drop out. She squeezed her little fists, and didn't say anything.
Shit. She couldn't even count on her mother, could she? It was a dead-end. Toki felt her heart twist painfully at the reminder, and for a second the betrayal was as raw and horrible as yesterday. Her mom was as well as gone, too, like their home. She wasn't an ally anymore.
What was she going to do? She couldn't stay here. There was no future here. The longer she stayed the riskier it became. But could she just leave? Just… abandon her mother, just like that? And to go where? Even if she went to the police, Meteor wouldn't take it lying down. He had killed people before. What if he killed her too?
What if he killed her mom, to hurt her even more?
"Whatever," she muttered, avoiding his eyes. But her heart was beating rabbit-fast against her ribs.
Her father hummed pensively, then leaned towards her. Toki stiffened reflexively.
"So," Meteor smiled. "Sayuri says you're very smart for your age."
She tensed her jaw, but meet his eyes without backing off: "Yeah, I am."
He laughed, softly, looking delighted with her aplomb: "Of course! She also said you wanted to go to college, with that big brain of your."
Oh boy, that was his aim from the beginning. Toki didn't know if she felt petrified about confronting Meteor so fast about their opposing ambitions, or if she was just pissed off in general and wanted to yell at him for putting her in that situation to begin with. A bit of both, probably.
"I am," she reiterated tersely.
"What unwavering confidence!" Meteor said admiringly. "But you know, college is expensive. Where is the money going to come from?"
Toki narrowed her eyes.
"Well, if I can't count on my parents to support my education, I figured I would just get a part-time job."
Meteor blinked, apparently not expecting her to be insolent. Homura let out a whistle:
"Wow, shots fired!"
Meteor looked briefly annoyed, then rolled his eyes: "Fine, you'll get a job. Will it be enough? Most jobs offered to youngsters are cheap."
"A lot of students do it with no problem."
"I will take your word for it," her father said patronizingly.
"Oh, don't," she snipped back. "There are really useful statistics online. Want me to show you how to Google them?"
Homura laughed. Nono didn't. She was watching Toki unblinkingly, like a snake. Creepy. Meteor sighed deeply, as if his daughter was being irrational… Then he asked in a reasonable voice:
"You are scared of villains, aren't you?"
Toki inhaled. Careful, she had to be careful, she didn't know this man, she couldn't piss him off too much…
"Some of them. I'm more scared of prison."
"Why?" her father wondered. "You could teleport away in a blink."
"Modern prisons are too secure and tailored to their prisoners' Quirks," Toki refuted. "Besides, I could think of three ways to stop me from teleporting."
"Oh? Like what?"
Toki sneered, and it came from the heart: "As if I would tellyou."
Putting her into a medically-induced coma. Drugging her too much for her to remember places where she could teleport. Injuring her and putting her in some kind of life-support, so she couldn't get out of the room without sustaining deadly injuries. And all of that would be, of course, state-sanctioned. Japan didn't have much in the way of human rights for prisoners.
"You don't trust me," her father sighed. "But you know, I only have your best interests at heart. I'm your father."
"That doesn't mean much."
Homura wasn't laughing anymore. Both him and Nono looked a bit uncomfortable, although fascinated. Meteor narrowed his eyes thoughtfully:
"Because I'm a villain."
"Among other things."
"You mother is a villain too, and you trust her," he pointed out (and Toki repressed a twitch, but judging by the glint of satisfaction in her father's eyes, he knew he had touched a nerve). "Villains aren't inherently bad people, you know. You shouldn't believe all the lies society feeds you. Being labelled villain doesn't change you and turn you into an immoral brute."
"But you hurt people."
"I steal money," he corrected her. "Sometimes people get hurt defending the cash of billionaires who don't need it, and sometimes people get hurt when they try to hurt me: but inflicting harm on other people had never been the goal."
And his voice was sincere, his arguments logical. Meteor was a charismatic man. His eyes almost seemed to glow like embers, Toki realized: when the hell had they started doing that?! His irises were more gold than brown now, with a subtle luminescence. It was both hypnotic and scary. Ah, Meteor didn't have a visible mutation that could have ostracized him, but with eyes likethatand a penchant for violence, Toki could totally get why he had embraced a villain's path. Toki's eyes were the same color as Meteor, but at least she had normal pupils and they didn'tglowlike that. Those eyes, with those slit pupils and their reddish glint… They gave the heebie-jeebies. He looked like a dragon straight out of Middle Earth.
Considering his greed, that was a pretty apt comparison. Hello, Smaug.
"But youdohurt people," she finally muttered.
"It happens," he conceded reluctantly. "But only enemies or strangers, and they get hurt because I protect my own. Being a villain doesn't make people monsters. Your mother, myself… We have friends, we have family, and we care about them. I care about you."
He was leaning toward her again, almost crowding her, voice low, eyes never leaving her. Toki's heart was beating loudly. She was angry, but she was afraid, too. Like a bunny face to face with a wolf. He was too fucking close. She bit back:
"Right until I manifest an independent thought, you mean?"
"Of course not. Munchkin, I'm not against you going to college, you know."
It threw her for a loop, and she blinked owlishly:
"What, really?"
"I love astronomy too," her father smiled wistfully. "So of course, I encourage you to chase your dream. My only problem with you going to college is the financial cost. It's a lot of money, you know. And I'm not rich. Sure, we cash millions when a heist goes smoothly, but the spoils are distributed evenly between us, and then there are supplies to buy, guards to bribe, bills to pay, brokers to reward."
Toki wondered what he was after with that argument. Then she squinted. Wait, he had said that the loot was distributed. He didn't mean… he couldn't want to…
"So if you want a part of the haul, you need to do part of the work," concluded her father.
She was so taken aback that she almost forgot to be scared for a second.
"You're… blackmailing me with college money?" Toki blurted out.
"Not really. Think of it as working in the family business to fund your schooling."
Well, you couldn't say that Meteor wasn't logical. Guess that Ravenclaw side of hers really came from him, uh. Toki frowned, annoyed with how he had outmaneuvered her.
"What if I say no?"
"Why would you say no?" countered her father. "It's financially safer than being a cashier: at least you know you won't be fired. It's faster, too: a good heist, and you can get enough to fund eight years of doctorate. There are some tussles, sure… But as you're aware, we protect our own and no one in our family has ever been hurt or arrested. Sayuri and Nono aren't even identified by the police. If you stay behind the scenes, people would be none the wiser about your involvement, and you can reap the benefits without any of the risks."
Shit. He was really selling it, wasn't it? And the worse was that Toki was tempted. Very much so. It was an easy way out of this conversation. A very primitive part of her brain told her to bend, to submit, to show her belly to the larger predator. It was a compromise, wasn't it? In the short term, it would mean that Meteor would back off. In the long term, well… Her participation could be rationalized. She helped them out, and they helped her chase her dream. She would end up an astrophysicist, not a villain. She would just have some skeletons in her closet, but who didn't? It would just be some youthful error, buried behind her veneer of respectability and the weight of her personal achievements…
But Toki had lived before, and wisdom lingered.Deals with the devil were never without strings attached.If you showed your belly to the larger predator once, it was one thing, but if you handed him your leash… Once you wereinwith bad people, you could never get out: or at least, not without paying a terrible price. A price that most people weren't willing to pay. It was easier to stay settled in your ways. Wasn't it how her mom had justified her involvement with Meteor's Crew, almost a year earlier? Once you did something bad and got a reward, you did it again, then again, then you realized it had become your life and that the other paths were closed to you.
"Stealing is bad," Toki tried lamely.
What a flimsy excuse. That last counter-argument that didn't even count as a denial. Meteor saw it, and his cat-like eyes glinted ominously.
"You can't have such a strong moral objection, or you would have raised that argument earlier. Your main problem with our line of work, if I remember correctly, was the danger of being arrested, not the inherent evil of stealing."
Toki flushed. He wasn't wrong, and it pissed her off. Or maybe what pissed her off was the fact that she didn't have any more logical arguments to oppose him, besides not trusting him and being scared to fall in too deep: and she couldn't say that, could she? It would be an admittance of weakness, as good as saying that joining them for good was ineluctable because she would feel like she owed them. She was stuck. She had lost and she wasn't used to losing. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.
And he was still so close, looming over her, with his glowing eyes: how could she think rationally when his fuckingfaceactivated her fight-or-flight response?!
"People often like to say that villains are evil," her father said gently. "But you know, people… heroes… they are only good because they compare themselves to us. They were born luckier, on the right side of justice, but the only reason that right side exist is because we're here to make it real. You can't define this society without villainy, just as you can't define good without evil. The key is to find the right balance."
Toki stayed silent: but somewhere in her heart, she clutched this answer like a lifeline.This, she disagreed with. It was such a fatalistic outlook on life, at the opposite of what her infinite thirst of knowledge stood for. She rejected it. Toki had never given this trope of 'balance between good and evil' any credit. Good and evil weren't concepts that could balance each other out. Light and darkness were often used as metaphors for each, but while that was some fairly potent symbolic imagery, it wasn't the reality of the situation. Light and darkness weren't opposites: they werepresenceandabsence. Darkness was the absence of light, just as the cold was the absence of heat, or loneliness the absence of companionship. One wasn't necessary for the other to exist. Balance? What a joke.
To Toki, the more accurate comparison would be that evil was a disease that warped people's nature. It infects them, poisoning what should be simple parts of human nature into something horrible. Unless you treated the body, the disease ate away at you, corrupting everything until there was nothing worth saving. You started by killing some people by accident, then you argued it was justified, then it became inevitable collateral damage, then… What next? You couldn't compromise with something that would either destroy or consume you.
You couldn't live in balance with evil. You could only fight or submit.
And Toki was still a fighter at heart.
oOoOoOo
Toki stayed in the hideout for ten days. She counted them. Afterward, her mother kept her word and took her to their new home, a bigger apartment in a totally different part of the city. Too close to Meteor's Crew, still. But it wasn't as if Toki had a choice in it…
Anyway. During ten days, Toki stayed at the hideout. She met the gang, that Meteor (who insisted she called him Dad, which Toki still refused to do) calledhis Crewor, when he was in a sentimental mood,our family. There was Meteor, of course, their leader, strategist, and main firepower. Then there was Homura, who had a fire Quirk and was their muscle for the heists. Nono had a mediocre electronic Quirk, but she was talented hacker as well as an incredible driver. Then there was the guy Toki had saw at her arrival, named Fujio: a lanky man with white hair and a sharp grin, who was a professional conman as well as ruthless fighter. He was Meteor's second in command.
Toki didn't really want to get to know them, but both logic and curiosity dictated that she learned as much as she could about them. So she did. At the beginning, she held herself back, tense and nervous. She didn't dare to ask questions. She was snappish and defensive. Laughing, Homura even called her 'a little bit feral'. But everybody was so nice and so open. It gave her whiplash. Even if she knew they were the bad guys, it made her feel like a rude and inconsiderate asshole. They were all trying so hard to make friends with her…
Homura told great jokes and was always thrilled to demonstrate fire tricks, like twirling a candle's flame or turning sparks into dancing silhouettes. His flames were green, too, like will-o'-the-wisp! It was so pretty, almost magical. He earnestly told her about his family, too. He had two children, both a little older than Toki, but he was divorced and his ex-wife had custody. He only saw his kids during holidays. Nobody in his family knew he was the villain codenamed "Blaze" that fought alongside Meteor, because his villain persona was fully masked and wore a coat that hid how muscular he was. Homura liked the freedom of not having his face plastered on wanted posters (yes, apparently it was a thing), but he was also sad to not be able to be wholly who he was with his children. The only people who knew him for real was Meteor's crew. And now, Toki!
Homura had known Meteor the longest: they were childhood friends, apparently. He had even been best man at his and Sayuri's wedding. Homura also offhandedly mentioned gifting Sayuri a stuffed animal when Toki had been born, a big pink and purple dolphin, and Toki suddenly realized that she still owned that damn thing.
Nono wasn't as energic and chatty as Homura, but she had a dry sense of humor, and she was soft and patient, once you got used to her creepily unblinking eyes. She had a sad childhood: orphan at a young age, she had spent years in foster care because no one wanted to adopt a kid that looked like a reanimated corpse. Nono had learned how to steal, hack, and fight all alone. She had often gone hungry. It was with Meteor's crew that she finally had some financial stability. She used her part of the spoils to pay for evening classes to learn more advanced coding. Nono wasn't very effusive but she was undoubtedly proud of the path travelled, and considered herself a self-made woman.
Fujio was the less friendly, but he was welcoming all the same. He was a bit rough and didn't soften his words. He openly talked about shooting people, taking hostages, and all the stuff that Meteor had apparently glossed over. Still, he grunted approvingly when Toki was well-behaved, and obligingly explained to her what he was doing when she asked. Well, usually Toki regretted asking shortly after, because even when she saw him on Instagram, it turned out he was stalking bank's staff members thought their social media!
Fujio didn't have a sad backstory like Homura and Nono: he had been born in a reputable family, but had started scamming people to make some easy money in high school, and had slid into crime one step at the time. First scams, then thefts, then armed robberies, then murders… It had come to him easily, like second-nature. He had met Meteor a few years before his grand debut, and they had quickly become friends. They also had a weird rivalry going on, often playing very intense strategy games, and butting heads when a debate turned heated.
Also they were all persuaded that Meteor was the best thing since sliced bread or something. He was strong, he was smart, he farted flowers and shat gold. And apparently, he was unbelievably lucky. Seriously, was he the protagonist of a shōnen manga or something? Meteor could pickpocket someone in a second: he had seeped up more security passes and credit cards that he could count. He had escaped heroes and cops by the skin of his teeth twice, and had even outmaneuvered All Might in an unrelated car chase. Oh, and he had once jumped from a roof and survived by cushioning his fall with his Quirk and a well-placed advertising banner.
"Meteor doesn't cheat death," Nono nodded very seriously. "He wins fair and square."
"Yep," Homura grinned. "I heard he once played Russian roulette with a fully-loaded sniper rifle and won."
Fujio just snorted in amusement. Toki threw her hands up in exasperation and stormed out of the kitchen. There was too much hero worship in here for her tastes.
Meteor was the friendliest of the bunch, of course. He was smart, too. His grins were unsettling, and Toki never knew when his over-friendliness would turn into cold, evaluating looks… And long story short, he was unpredictable and she stayed on her guard with him.
But when you live with someone 24/24H fordays, you end up getting used to them. Meteor wasn't even that bad. He encouraged Toki to ask questions, he gifted her as many pens and notebooks she wanted, and he even let her access his computer. Toki was sure he checked her search history afterward, though, so she didn't dare to google the address or phone number of the closest police station. She did read a lot of Wikipedia articles, however. What? It was free knowledge. She wasn't going to pass the opportunity. She could ask her question directly to Meteor, he would have gladly answered her, but he had a way to give leading answers to push Toki's reasoning into the direction he wanted. At least the Internet offered different point of views.
Time passed.
Without realizing it, Toki started being less tense the more she became familiar with that place and its inhabitants. Children adapted quickly, after all. It made her feel both guilty, angry, and worried. Yes, she remembered they were villains and they were trying to manipulate her into joining them, but… It was hard to constantly keep it in mind, alright? When she learned stuff, when she listened to their stories or their explanations, when she gave them her whole attention… She cared. She opened herself to them and it made her vulnerable. Before she knew it, she was giggling at a stupid joke or sayingthank youwhen they passed the salt, and she clamped up again, terrified of starting to care, to slip up. She couldn't let her brain being tricked into considering those peoplehers, into thinking she was one of them. That was Stockholm syndrome. She needed to keep things clearly compartmented in her brain, or she would be lost. Feelings were messy and complicated, and Meteor's goal was to use her emotions to tie her to his crew for life. She couldn't let him do it.
It was really hard, though. Toki had no friends, no support outside of this gang, and it was difficult to hate them when everyone welcomed her with open harms. If Toki hadn't been reborn… If she hadn't had this past-knowledge fromBefore, about how easily isolated children are manipulated into joining gangs or cults that gave them a sense of belonging… She would have fallen for it hook, line and sinker. Hell, even now, knowing what she did, she was beginning to fall for it. She was opening up. Her mom, Meteor, Homura, Nono, even Fujio… They were there, they were friendly, they were familiar, and some primitive part of her brain that was desperately seeking some sense of safety and belonging was happy with it. Humans were not meant to be alone.
And Toki, in a way, was so, so alone.
She wrote in her notebooks. At first, she only did in her tiny room, but after a while, she ended up sitting in the hallway, where the light was better and she could hear what was going on. Nobody tried to take her stuff or paged through it, which she could appreciate. Once, Homura asked to read what she was writing about his Quirk, and corrected a mistake in her kanjis, but then he only congratulated her on her penmanship. He didn't even touch the paper. Begrudgingly, Toki gave him point for the effort. He respected her stuff.
Maybe it was paranoid of her, but she was a bit protective of her notebooks. The poetry one, with her soul spilled on the pages. Her Teleportation-analysis one, with all of her skills and talents (she had stopped experimenting at the hideout, not wanting to share her Quirk with the Crew). The one filled with questions, notes and theories, and all the ramblings she didn't dare to utter out loud. The one with analysis of others peoples' Quirk, too: what had been simple curiosity had become almost obsessive. Sayuri's Quirk, Homura's Meteor's… They were all so powerful. Toki didn't just study them because they were interesting, but because she wanted to dissect them and find their weaknesses. Because she was preparing to run, or to fight, or to do something.
And for now, she wrote. She didn't have any other weapons but ink, paper, and her mind.
For a star to be born
A gaseous nebula must collapse
So collapse
Crumble
This is not your destruction
This is your birth
It was liberating to write. Sometimes she wished she could send her words to someone, in a letter or maybe just by email, to know that it would be read and understood. But she had no one to send this stuff to. She didn't know anyone but the people that she needed to escape.
So yeah. She guarded her notebooks quite ferociously.
Ironically, while Toki was making friend with the whole Crew… She and her mom hadn't patched up. It wasn't really feasible, anyway.Sayuri wasn't sorry. She was glad that things had turned out okay and that Toki had found common ground with her father, but she didn't feel any regret for betraying her daughter's trust and locking her in this situation where she had no choice but befriend Meteor, even though Toki had already said that she didn't want to. Sayuri didn't even knew where the problem was, because in the end, Toki had done what was expected of her, right? She had met her dad. But the problem was she shouldn't have been forced to do it!
Sayuri had knowingly manipulated her and trapped her in that situation, and she didn't even see that it was wrong, because her daughter was a child and obviously her mom knew better. That kind of reasoning left a bitter taste in Toki's mouth. So what, Sayuri praised her intelligence and maturity, right until that intelligence and maturity went against what Sayuri wanted? Urgh. When Toki had accused her father ofonly caring as long as his daughter didn't manifest an independent thought, maybe she should have aimed that claim to her mother instead.
But hey. Their family vacation ended. Toki discovered her new home. And of course, she went there with her mom, and it was once again only the two of them.
Awkward.
The thing was: if one of them had tried to confront it, the issues would have been solved. It would have burst open like an abscess and the poison would have been drained. But Toki refused to broach the subject first, since she wasn't the one in the wrong. And well… She quickly realized her mother wasn't just non-confrontational. She had selective blindness. Or maybe she… she had never cared about her bond with Toki in the first place, hadn't valued her trust and her admiration, and so she hadn't even noticed those things were gone? It hurt. It actually hurt even more than the betrayal in the first place, because it was a complete admission that what Toki had felt from the very beginning didn't matter. Or maybe it was some kind of elaborated plot to make her closer to her father?
Because, since they were only a few kilometers away from the hideout and that Toki knew the place, now Sayuri never hesitated to ask the crew to do some babysitting.
"You know, I never needed babysitting in the first place,", Toki flatly said to Nono.
The woman patted her head with affection:
"I know, you're a smart cookie. But your mom is back to working fulltime, now, so of course she's going to have less time for you."
"So? She once left me to fend for myself a week. I managed just fine. I even made noodles, and I was even younger than I was now."
Nono narrowed her eyes: "Really? When was that?"
"I dunno, I was maybe six?"
Nono hummed pensively, but her eyes were cold. Toki secretly hoped that Sayuri got her ass whopped. If she could sow some discord in the Crew, even better.
She never saw the Crew members argue (except Meteor and Fujio, but it was play-fighting more than anything). Not in the hideout, anyway. But hey, they were all allowed to go outside. Toki, of course, wasn't allowed to go out unsupervised.Not yet, had said her dad, which was radically different from thenot everthat her mom used to say. But Sayuri didn't care anymore.
"Want to learn how to sew?" Nono offered to distract her.
Toki shrugged: "Sure, why not."
So Nono taught her how to sew a button, how to fix a hole in a coat, how to repair a rip in jeans. A few days later she taught her how to put patches on a leather jacket. Then how to remove blood stains from a shirt (it was fine, it was from a mishap with a knife while cooking dinner). Then she told her how to keep her feet dry in her shoes were getting wet. Then before Toki knew it, she had learned a bunch of useful hacks like the fact that pairing several layers of silk with a leather jacket acted like armor and protected from most knife wounds, or the fact that if you trained enough you could run in heels faster than a cop, or how to make bandages with old shirts, or how to tie a tourniquet…
And from there it devolved into first aid training.
It didn't happen all at once. Weeks, then months passed. But learning funny anecdotes and everyday tricks from a hardened criminal tended to be, well… kind of leaning in a certain direction. Nono never had to made embroidery but she taught Toki the exact kind of needle point used to sew back people as well as clothes, for example. After six months, she would be freely talking about underground doctors and the danger of drug overdose, and Toki would stay unfazed because, well, it had been so gradual that she wasn't shocked.
But it didn't happen all at once.
Toki and Sayuri settled in their new home. There was a new school. It was poorer than her old one, with barren walls, older desks, teachers who were more tired. The lessons were boring. This time, the teachers had no time to waste printing specials physics lessons for one advanced student. They still praised her good grades and her great Quirk, but they brushed off her in-depth questions. When she insisted, they scowled and told her not to be disruptive. Toki quickly learned that if she wanted to do something productive during class, she had better bring a book to read. Problem: she didn't own much books. She settled for printing page after page of Wikipedia articles or online quizzes, and doing that instead.
During recess, she missed her old friends. Even if having a good Quirk automatically put her in people's good graces (in the grade above hers, there was a Quirkless boy who was treated like a pariah or something), it wasn't enough to stop being an outsider. She was picked last in tag-games. When Toki brought some toys from home to play with the others kids, a few boys tried to steal them. She did keep the toy, but she had to hit the boys to make them go. It wasn't a serious scuffle, and teleporting gave Toki and edge, but still. She took a punch to the chin and bawled like a baby. Her mother was called to pick her up. And afterward, of course, Sayuri told Meteor's Crew all about it.
"So much crying for such a little punch!" cooed Homura.
Toki tried to set him ablaze by the force of her glare, to no avail. Her mother, that traitor, had the gall to laugh:
"It was a bad moment, that was for sure. But you're alright now, right, sweetie?"
That didn't even warrant an answer. Meteor snorted:
"At least you won you first real fight."
Fujio raised his brow: "It was her first fight?"
"Yes, and she won against three! I'm so proud."
"Hopefully she won't cry the next time," said Nono, cynical.
"There won't be a next time!" Toki blurted out. "I don't want to fight people!"
"You would rather let them steal your toys?" smiled Meteor.
Toki rounded on him, and fired back:
"What, you want me to believe you're not on thethieves'side?"
Her father looked indignant:
"Of course not! Thieves, not-thieves, heroes, villains, they're just labels. I care about individual people. Those kids, I don't give a crap about them. I care about you, so I want you to win, no matter the circumstances or the context of the fight."
Toki didn't like the direction this conversation was taking. She crossed her arms defensively.
"I'm faster."
"It doesn't really matter, though," Sayuri said gently. "Running away doesn't work if you have to come back to class every day. You should be ready to make a stand and defend yourself."
That was why theteacherswere here. But Toki didn't say it. She had seen the teachers turn a blind eye when the bullies pushed around the younger kids, or when someone got their lunch stolen, or even when Toki and the boys had fought. It wasn't like her old school, where she was the favored child, protected and listened to. She was on her own.
"You have to prove you're not afraid of them and they will leave you alone," Nono said wisely.
Meteor nodded approvingly:
"Yes. Fear is the weakling's power."
"More like power is the weakling's ambition," Toki muttered.
Her father laid an appraising look on her, and she turned away, uncomfortable. No matter how nice he was, how familiar she became with him, or how similar they were sometimes… Toki couldn't quite shake the unease his amber gaze awoke in her.
There was a short silence. It was Fujio who broke it, saying gruffy:
"Well, you better learn how to throw a punch."
Sayuri offered to teach her, but just to spit her, Toki turned toward Meteor. She didn't really want to learn hand-to-hand combat fromhimof all people. Sometimes it slipped her mind, because he was her father (and also a guy she had seen absentmindedly put salt in his coffee instead of sugar and then nearly choke to death): but he was amurderer, he had killeddozensof people. But hey, at least she could trust that he knew what he was doing… And she would have no qualms about fighting back.
But Meteor wasn't brutal in his teaching. On the contrary, he was patient, and calm. He didn't push. He didn't mock. He teased her when she didn't get it right, but never meanly. Toki wanted him to be an asshole: it would have been simpler to hate him if he had been a total dickhead, Endeavor-style! But no. He didn't swear at her, he didn't hit her, he didn't even disdain her. He loved her, he treated her like she was something precious.
He loved her. It was so unfair. Why couldn't he hate her? Then Toki would have been able to hate him back. Instead… instead…
But Meteor loved her, he loved all his Crew. He loved Sayuri, especially. When they were in the same room, their faces softened, and the way they looked at each other with such tenderness… You could never doubt of their respect and their devotion toward each other. Sure, their Quirks had mixed up to make a Teleporter, and they were proud of that… But Toki was certainly not the product of a Quirk-marriage. She was the inconvenient baggage that came in the middle of a true love story, Bonnie-and-Clyde-style, and they had generously made her a place in their world. They had given her a good life because they loved her, and it just happened that this life was outside the law: if she refused their gift,shewas the ungrateful one! It was infuriating.
Anyway. Meteor taught her how to brace for a punch, how to roll to cushion a fall. Later, after a few more scuffles with different boys (older ones, and after her lunch rather than her toys: but still too cocky, and still defeated by her speed) he would teach her how to hit back. Toki learned how to close her fist to make a good punch, how to kick high to aim for a guy's balls, how to go for the face or behind the knees.
When she got a punch right or learned a new trick, Meteor always praised her, his eyes warm and proud.Good job, he said, andI knew you could do it. And Toki basked in the praise like a flower growing towards the sun.
He was a killer but he waskindto her. He was her dad, andhe cared. He cared about her, with no conditions, and Toki was… Toki started loving him, too. It would have been impossible not to. Meteor was always so intense and honest in everything he did, even opening his heart to his estranged daughter.
Toki didn't want to learn to fight. But she had never been able to saynoto knowledge, especially useful knowledge. So, just as she had learned how to give first aid and wash the blood from clothes with Nono, just as she had learned how to lie and misdirect from her mom, she learned how to defend herself with her father. She lived with villains, ate their food, and accepted their teachings. What the hell did that made her? She had sworn to never follow them, but the more time passed, the harder it was to keep her distance. Her life was so intertwined with theirs that she couldn't even isolate a part of her world that was fully hers, and not influenced one way or another by Meteor's Crew.
Well, there was her poetry, maybe. But these days, everything in her notebook carried the gang's taint. She had started analyzing Nono's Quirk, then Meteor's. Her notes were filled with theories about how to get around them, what weakness to exploit. How to kill them, of necessary. Toki felt awful just thinking about it. She wouldn't kill anyone, though. She wasn't a bad person. Not yet, anyway.
You don't get to die
and be reborn the same
You come back
but you come back wrong.
This is the price you pay
for resurrection.
(Who had she been, in the Before? She couldn't remember. Her memories from the BNHA-Verse were as crisp and complete as the day she had woken up at age four, but for the rest… Her knowledge of literature had faded. She could barely remember how to do equations: that was why physics were so engaging, she was relearning. She had completely lost her level in English, and her intuitive understanding of the syntax didn't help much with her lack of vocabulary. Who she had been was gone, like an old CD overwritten with Toki's personality, memories, dreams, ambitions, and desires. She didn't miss it. How could you miss something you don't remember? But she wondered if she had a softer life, before. If she had more options. If she had been happier.)
(She wasn't happy here. Well, sometimes she laughed and relaxed and was carefree for a day or two, but it wasn't happiness. It was habit. It was her animal brain feeling safe and loosening up her stress. Then reality caught up with her, and Toki felt guilty about it. It ate her inside like a parasite. She didn't want to be here. She felt trapped. Did circus animals learn to love their cage? Or did they just learn to fear what was outside, what was unknown?)
Toki knew she wasn't a villain. She lived with them and liked them and all of that stuff, sure, but… She hadn't changed that much. It wasn't too late. But weeks and then months were passing, and… She liked those people. Even Meteor who unsettled her, even Fujio who barely talked. They were familiar: she had no one else. And… They liked her. They trusted her, and in some twisted way she trusted them, because she had no one else to trust. But she also knew, in a very fundamental way, that they were going to do evil and destroy people's lives, and she didn't want to be part of that. It made her want to sob just like that day, in the empty apartment, when her mother had brought her to Meteor. It wasn't who she wanted to be.
And she was scared of what she would become, if things continued like this.
Notes:
Hope you liked it !
Here are some pictures of the characters, if you want a quick look...
A picture of Ryūsei and Sayuri before Toki's birth(i love how grumpy Meteor looks!)
A picture of Meteor's Crew (from right to left: Homura, Nono, and Fujio).
A picture of Meteor looking sinister. The original artist is BayBay on Tumblr!
I'm rather desesperatly looking for a Beta, if anyone is interested ! =D
EDIT 12/08/2022
Some spelling mistakes corrected. I added some details about the Crew (Homura's fire is green, Fujio and Meteor have a weirdly intense rivalry about startegy games). Emphasis put on how Sayuri distance herself from Toki, and at the same time how Toki starts to like the Crew and especially Meteor.
Chapter 4: Expect the unexpected
Summary:
Things acceletare, and the irreparable happens. No matter how smart you think you are, you can't control anything in life when you're eight... and all alone.
Notes:
You can all thanks my Beta for fixing all of my grammatical mistakes, this chapter is way better since the correction =)
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED
Weeks passed. Toki started experimenting with her teleportation again, quietly, when she was sure no one from the Crew watched her. It wasn't something she shared with her mom anymore, but it was stillhers. Her teleportation-analysis notebook was slowly filling up.
She could teleport as much as she wanted if the distance covered was in her field of vision or less than ten meters away from her. More, and she needed a little effort. And if she tried to cover several kilometers in one jump, it was abigeffort. The jump from here to her old home was reaching her limits. If she tried to do it thrice in a single day, she would drop from exhaustion.
Toki could teleport with objects if she touched them. She could use her hands, her feet, her belly, her forehead, even her hair. As soon as it was in contact with her body, it could teleport with her. The lighter they were, the easier it was, especially if she had a lot of skin contact with it. Toki didn't even have to think about teleporting with her clothes, for example. She could also teleport several object touching each other, like a pile of books, even if she was only touching one. She couldn't teleport an object she wasn't touching, even if she was technically touching the air that was also in contact with that object. She didn't know yet if it was a limit to her power or simply a blockage in her mind that was consequently limiting her use of her Quirk. Maybe once she managed to study physics a little more, she could persuade her brain that air was just a bunch of atoms, just like a physical object, and therefore her hand was indirectly in contact with the book… Well. She would see.
Toki couldn't teleportpartof one thing. She could teleport with a cushion from the couch, but she couldn't teleport with the cushion split in half. Again, she didn't know if it was a limit of her power or just the way her brain worked, considering the couch an object but having trouble conceptualizing a half-cushion as one whole object she was trying to jump with while leaving the rest in place.
She could move while teleporting: disappearing upright and appearing sitting down, for example. But she could also disappear while holding something (she tested it with a stuffed bear) and reappear without it, letting the toy fall to her feet from… Well, sometimes in front of her, sometimes behind, sometimes to her left, something straight above her. It was tricky to control both her place of apparition and the object's. Still, it always materialized in a range of three meters around her. She should test if she could reappear after throwing it, to add some velocity and direction to the plushie's fall. Huh. That was something to consider.
And finally: adrenaline enhanced her abilities. That one had been tricky to figure out. Sometimes her test results were wildly different: her range changed, her strength differed along with the effort she had to do… But after eliminating a bunch of variables (the time, the food she'd eaten, the weather, even the phase of the moon!), Toki realized thatshewas the variable. Her father's Quirk was strengthened by his emotions, so what if it was the same for her? Toki tested it and even if she didn't notice a real difference when she was sad of happy, she did find out that adrenaline, whether provoked by long training, stress, or a fit of anger against bullies, always got her better results. In normal conditions, Toki could teleport things that didn't weight much more than herself. When she was pissed, she could teleportthe fucking couch in the living room.
Oh gods she had a berserker power, didn't she?
Well at least she didn't lose her mind. Fortunately, adrenaline didn't make her go crazy, she was just… highly emotional. But still! In that state, people threw plates and yelled hurtful things. Having the potential to hurl heavy projectiles when angry was not a good thing. And sometimes it was highly tempting to use it against the boys at school, or against her mother, or against her father, and… she couldn't do that.
No matter how much she gritted her teeth, Toki swore to herself: she wouldneverlet her parents find out that facet of her power. She didn't even dare to write about it in her notebook, in case they read it. Teleportation could easily be used as a weapon, and they all knew that. Toki was already sitting on a time-bomb, waiting tensely for the day her parents would want to use her Quirk for a robbery. There was no need to add to how dangerous she was!
Anyway. Toki was opening up more and more to Meteor's crew, but she never told them about the details of her Quirk. It was her only little defiance, in a way, the only thing where she had some power against the crew.
Once, at the end of winter, Meteor sat her down and asked her about her Quirk, and Toki had felt her stomach drop out. But she had stuck to the facts, incomplete facts but real nonetheless, and it had… probably worked.
"So you need to know your destination. You can carry small objects with you, like a pile of books. And your range is…?" He trailed off, staring at her.
"I dunno. The further it is, the harder it's for me. I once tried to teleport forty kilometers away and I nearly passed out. But if I jump somewhere close, it barely takes any effort at all, I don't even notice."
"So, a less than ten kilometers away should be fine?"
She considered it, then nodded: "Yes. It would be tiring but okay." She hesitated, then asked: "Why do you want to know?"
"Can't a father be invested in his daughter's growth?" Meteor said with a wry smile.
Toki looked unimpressed. Her father snorted:
"I am interested in your growth, believe it or not. I want to know if your Quirk is going to evolve like mine, or like your mother."
Alright, that was interesting. Toki frowned, her interest immediately perking up.
"Like, in terms of limits? Like mom has a limited range?"
"A hundred kilometers isn't very limited," laughed Meteor.
"Yeah, but mom had to knowexactlywhere's the thing she's switching with, and she can't switch place with only part of something… Like me, actually."
"Tue," hummed her father. "But I was thinking more in terms of what you could bring with you. Your mother, for example, can only switch places with things that are roughly her height and weight. The bigger the difference, the greater the effort she had to expend."
Toki nodded. That was why Sayuri had a container of water at home so she could switch places with le liquid as needed. Each day, she weighed herself, and adjusted the quantity of water in the container in consequence. Sayuri couldn't swap with things too heavy, or too light, or too tall, or too small.
"She could probably switch places with Nono-san or Fujio-san," Toki thought out loud. "But not with you or Homura-san. Not without a big effort."
"How many times have they told you to drop the '-san'? But you're correct. That's why before any of our operations, we all follow a strict diet to have the perfect weight. It's in case we are arrested and Sayuri has to bail us out."
Shit. Toki's eyes widened but tried she to not react further. Sayuri was their escape route!
She should have seen it coming. That meant that even if the Crew was arrested, they wouldn't stay in jail very long. Sayuri only had to find out in what police station they were held, and… she would swap places with them, and then swap with water. Of course, it'd be more difficult to pull off if the crew was in a huge prison (where they frequently moved from their cells to the cafeteria and so on, and when it was difficult to know where each room was without obtaining the plans beforehand), but criminals weren't sent to prisons immediately upon their arrest. They first would be held in a police station, then transferred by car, and… it left a window of opportunity of almosta dayfor Sayuri to strike. That was more than enough.
Toki had always considered Meteor the most dangerous of the Crew. But now… she found herself mentally revaluating her mother, so calm and unassuming. Sayuri was a key element of the Crew. She was the uncatchable member, the untouchable partner. If Toki wanted out, one day, Sayuri had to become her priority.
And that… that complicated things, didn't it? Because even if their relationship was tense… Sayuri was still her mom. Her caretaker. Toki's first real parental figure. Even knowing Sayuri was a criminal who hurt people and had no qualms about sentencing her daughter to the same life, Toki couldn't just get rid of her feelings for her own mother. Emotions didn't work that way.
So Toki had to protect her mother, but also protect herself. That wasn't going to be easy. But both goals were important. Toki wasn't the kind of person to make sacrifices. She planned, she calculated, she contemplated, she plotted. Sometimes it felt stifling to stay here and do nothing about her situation, but Toki wasn't doingnothing: she was preparing. Even now, this new information was being added to her existing data, and her plans were shifting in response.
"So how did your Quirk evolve?" she asked quickly in order to change the subject. "Mom has height, weight and range limitations. What about you?"
Meteor grinned, looking pleased by her interest:
"Well, I can pick up an entire boat, so I don't really have a weight limit. There is a limit to my range, though. I actually need toseesomething to hold it in my Psychokinesis, but once that's done, I can turn away without dropping it. The better my vision, the better my grip."
Toki briefly struggled with herself, then gave up and quickly opened her Quirk-analysis notebook. Notes filled the pages, but it was full of doodles too, taking a lot of spaces between her scrawls. Those doodles were actually concealing the place where Toki had written compromising information with invisible ink, like how to subdue Meteor from a distance (sleeping gas, sniper with sedating darts, drugged food… and now she could add flashbangs to that, to reduce his vision…), or what were Homura's weaknesses (his family, the name of his wife and kids, where they lived…). Honestly, even without the invisible notes, her notebook was very compromising. She had analyzed in depth everyone's Quirk, but also their strength and weakness. If anyone managed to read that, they would be impressed… and slightly suspicious.
But the invisible notes made this book switch from 'slightly suspicious' to 'incredibly incriminating'. If Meteor found out Toki was writing about the way to take down his crew, he would kill her.
But Toki had his trust, and she knew that was her best weapon. Her father liked her, he wanted her to like him too. He'd noticed that the fastest way to his daughter's heart was knowledge. So he let her take notes about everything, respected her boundaries and didn't touch her stuff, and… honestly, it had earned him some good point, from her perspective.
But for all his positive traits, he was still a Villain and a murderer, so. She still took invisible notes and pried apart his weaknesses.No hard feelings, dad.
Still, she felt a pinch of something like guilt when she saw his delighted smile. Meteor was so kind with her, so charming and funny and interesting. He loved her. And she loved him, as stupid and as unreasonable as it was. She loved him maybe even ore than her mom, becausenot onceMeteor had ever lied to her about who he was and what he wanted.
"How much can you move away from an object before it slip from your grip?"
"Depends," he grinned. "If it's still in my field of vision, as far as I can go. If I turn behind a building or something else limit my view… My range spans about two kilometers. And when I go in psycho-mode, it gets bigger."
"Psycho-mode?!" she repeated incredulously.
He shrugged: "It's not called Psychokinesis for nothing. I don't just use my mind, I use my emotions. Anger, fear, joy, delight. Most of the time, there are side-effects. My grip became stronger and less controlled. Sometimes I don't even grip things and my Quick smash them."
"Wait, what? It changes the effects of your powers? I thought anger only made you stronger."
"It can be seen that way," he admitted. "But Psychokinesis is not the act of griping an object with invisible hands: it's the power of the mind over matter. The angrier I get the more powerful I am, yes, but my Quirk also become more versatile and volatile. I can crush a garbage container like an empty soda can without gripping it with my Quirk, provoke tremors in the ground around me…"
Oh gods that soundedterrifying. It was like a natural disaster that could be unleashed in a matter ofsecondsin the middle of a crowded city. Toki pretended to be absorbed in her writing to hide the way her eyes had widened.
"I'm actually not quite sure of my limits," Meteor confessed. "When I go into psycho-mode, I have less control. I don't think I will ever learn the full scope of my Quirk, because it would mean understanding and controlling the full scope of my emotions, which is impossible. The human mind is too vast and complex. I would need to study psychology and neuroscience and, well, no offense to your scientific mind, but reading articles all day would bore me to tears."
"Maybe because they aren't good enough," Toki protested halfheartedly. "Science isn't boring, it's great, the key is just to get the right balance between something you understand and something you discover to keep you engaged."
"Hm. Well, I was a terrible student at school, so maybe I never managed to find that balance."
Toki frowned: "Why? You're smart."
Her father looked flattered. "Oh? You think so?"
Toki shrugged. Obviously Meteor was intelligent. He was a master criminal who robbed highly secured banks for a living and he had never been arrested. He had managed to outsmart the police and tons of heroes for years. No dumbass could pull that off.
"I was a brat," her father smiled ruefully. "The teachers bored me. I liked math and physics because it was loosely connected to astronomy, and… well, when I was child I always hung out near the Planetarium in Fukuoka."
"You're from Fukuoka?! Where is that?"
It was news to Toki. She had never imagined her father as a child coming from somewhere. For her, he had always beenhere, and since his hideout was in Tokyo, it seemed logical that his roots were here. But Meteor grimaced:
"Yes, it's in the South. It's a very lively city. Maybe I'll take you there someday."
No you won't, Toki thought sadly, but she stayed silent. Without prompting, her father went back to his story:
"In middle school teachers briefly talked about the solar system and that kind of thing, but by the time high school came nobody cared about astronomy at all, so I lost interest. I didn't like learning very much to begin with. Also, my math teacher was an asshole… oh, sorry."
Toki blinked, then realized he was apologizing for swearing, and couldn't help but laugh. She had been here for months. If Meteor thought his men refined their language in her honor, he was in for a big surprise. She had learned so many curses from Homura she could probably scandalize even the most vulgar bullies at school. They had nothing on Meteor's Crew.
"I've heard worse, you know."
Her father let out his own chuckle: "Well, as long as I don't catch you saying those things, I don't want to know. Anyway, I dropped out during high school. I educated myself in other ways. Museums, the internet…. Sayuri told me you liked going on exhibitions too."
"Yeah, but…" Toki frowned, "we haven't been to one in a while."
Sayuri hadn't been very available. Or maybe Toki had stopped asking for mother-daughter outings at the nearest museum after their spat. Or both, probably.
"That's a shame," her father frowned. "You need to nurture your mind, it's your greatest tool. I'll speak to Sayuri about it."
"There's no need! Besides, I can go by myself now. I'm grown up, I don't need her to hold my hand! I'm going to be allowed to go outside anyway, right?"
There was a hint of challenge in that declaration. Meteor raised an eyebrow:
"Right, I forgot. You're better than the best and the smartest girl in the world and good at everything."
Toki crossed her arms.
"I am," she said, without even a tinge of defensiveness, "all of those things, yes."
Meteor laughed and tried to ruffle her hair. Toki playfully batted his hand away, and for a moment it was nice, it was normal: they were just a father and a daughter goofing around and bonding over playful banter. Then Fujio called Meteor to speak about something, and reality came crashing back. Toki schooled her features in a neutral mask, and turned away. Her father went to speak with his second in command, closing the door behind him. Toki tried to turn back to her notes, but she had lost her motivation.
She was getting too comfortable here. She spent most of her free time in the hideout, because it was better than being home alone and shestillwasn't allowed outside unsupervised: but it was a den of criminals, not a daycare filled with friendly faces. No matter how friendly said criminals were!
(The very next day, her mother offered to take her to a big aquarium in Tokyo, with hundreds of fish and even an exposition about the evolution of cetaceans. Meteor had kept his word.)
Toki wrote, wrote, and kept writing. Her notebooks were her only confidantes. No matter how much the crew wanted to be her friends, she couldn't let them. She repeated it to herself again and again at night, as if it could make it real. But the truth was: wasn't it with them that she spent most of her time? Wasn't it with them that she spoke the most? Wasn't it with them that she opened up, asked her questions, pondered her answers, laughed, shared food, relaxed?
She had none of that outside. Sayuri had made her join a gym club and an English club, to keep her busy, but both were filled with older kids and Toki didn't socialize much. They didn't want to hang out with 'the baby'. Well, too bad for them. Toki was still in the middle ranking of her gym group, but she was one of the best in the English club. School wasn't so different. She had jumped a grade in her old school so now she was in a class where she already knew most of the material: but teachers didn't really care if she was bored, as long as she wasn't disruptive, so Toki mostly kept to herself and read stuff to pass the time. As for the other kids… They left her alone. Sure, Toki had acquaintances at school, kids who hung up with her without being mean. But there were also kids who constantly picked fights with her to try and prove who was the top dog.
At the beginning, it had freaked her out. It had made her angry and afraid. She had always been such a well-behaved child, she had never been in a fight! But this neighborhood was rougher than her previous one. Kids pushed and pulled, the tested each other. They weren't coddled or even comforted by the teachers, so they had learned that most social interactions were about establishing dominance rather than offering help. Kids absorbed and reflected what adults showed them, after all. And Toki was softer than those children, so of course she had made for a very tempting target…
But Toki wasn't a delicate baby. She was smart as hell and she knew words hurt. Physical fights had scared her, and even after her father's lessons she was still clumsy and reluctant to hit: but she had never beenhesitant. Toki had always been quick to analyze, to change plans and adapt, so that she would always land on her feet no matter how many times they tried to knock her down.
After school, it was either gym or English, and then home. Sometimes Sayuri was here, working on spreadsheets, examining buildings' blueprints, or making phone calls. But most of the time, she was out (either at the hideout, or somewhere else, Toki didn't know). Toki could stay here all alone, or leave. She was forbidden to go alone to the park or in the streets, because it was 'too dangerous' apparently: but since her conversation with Meteor Toki now had permission to go to any museum she liked. As long as she either paid her own ticket or sneaked in and didn't get caught by security, Meteor thought it was fine.
Wow, really A parenting here. But well, what could you expect from criminals?
Anyway. Toki spent most of her evenings in the hideout. She did her homework on the kitchen's table. She asked Nono to print some articles to read the next day. Sometimes Fujio dropped next to her some middle-school textbooks and left without a word, and Toki read them avidly. Middle-school level stuff wasn't impossible, but it was engaging and often slightly difficult to understand, so she loved the challenge. Math, especially. Equations with unknown numbers made her head spins. What? She was only seven (and half), she was allowed to be a bit confused by 'x' and 'y' mixing in with good old solid numbers!
The Crew's members weren't often all here at the same time. They were all part of Meteor's Crew but they all led different lives. Nono was a taxi-driver. She also sometimes played lookout for small-time crimes (robbing convenience and grocery stores, that kind of thing) in exchange for a share of the loot. Homura was a thug, and sold his services to the highest bidder. Sometimes he played bodyguard, sometimes he committed arson, sometimes he roughed up guys who had pissed off the wrong person. Fujio was a conman, and he mostly went gambling, but he also set up elaborate scams. Sometimes assurance fraud, sometimes a fake mugging. It… It went fine, for the most part. But it could also turn violent. And when it did, Fujio usually had no qualm burying evidence of his involvement… typically with the body of the victim.
(Toki wasn't supposed to know that. But in March she saw him make a fake police file, with a guy's picture and name and all that kind of stuff, and he asked her to fetch some paper because the printer was empty. That guy was his mark. Fujio didn't talk much about his scams, but sometimes at dinner he said 'it's going well'or 'he's getting suspicious'. At the end of April, Fujio came back with a bullet wound in his leg and blood on his hands, Nono fussed over him, and Toki was sent home. Nobody told her what happened, of course, beside the fact that Fujio was fine and that the crew wasn't in any danger, but…. but… During the following weeks, on the news, there was a report about a guy's disappearance. Toki recognized his face. It didn't take much to put two and two together.)
(It should have shocked and horrified her to realize that Fujio had killed someone, but it didn't. She was surprised and there was a sick weight in her stomach, but she wasn't… shattered by that revelation. Probably because it wasn't a revelation. She had known that Fujio was a killer from the very beginning. And it scared her, how rational she was about it. Was she becoming numb to what was happening? Was she becoming like them?)
Meteor sometimes helped out Fujio, but mostly he did 'boss' things' like running around in the underground, cultivating contacts, buying supplies, and listening to rumors. He was an information broker in his spare time. He enjoyed it, apparently: the challenge, the little mysteries, the thrill of casting a net and see what would get caught. He was the one who made this operation run smoothly, Toki realized: without him, the crew wouldn't be able to stay organized. Meteor gave them plans, motives, weapons, equipment, and information.
Sayuri was the only one who didn't explain her role to Toki, but she found out anyway. Apparently her mom was a spy. She scouted possible targets' locations. She was an expert at disguising herself with make-up, wigs, baggy clothes or designer's suits, changing her behavior, her gait, her posture, even her voice. Her Quirk was the Crew's most treasured tool, their secret weapons, the ace hidden up their sleeves: but they only had to use it twice in their whole career (which spanned now nine years!) because they hadn't had any need to. When they attacked, Sayuri was usually miles away, with a perfect alibi, because she had already given them all the relevant intel. Where were the exits, how many guards, what safe was filled with diamonds, everything.
… No wonder Toki had never realized how good of her liar her mother was, right until the moment she had been brought to the hideout. Sayuri was a born-chameleon, able to blend in any situation to be the most overlooked person around. She was, essentially, the perfect spy.
Great. Now Toki had a good idea of how strong they all were, which was a lot. But as for their weakness? Well, she could find some. But to go from observing the Crew to a plan to escape villainy… Well. That was a whole other story…
oOoOoO
Time passed and Toki celebrated her eighth birthday. She was almost surprised. The date had sneaked up on her. Time flew, right? It seemed that it had only been yesterday that she had been to Tokyo's planetarium… and that her mother had used that distraction to uproot her from her old life, trap her with criminals, and cut off her escape route so she would have no choice but accept her fate.
Yes, Toki was still salty about that. Even if she had gotten used to her poorer and rougher school, even if she didn't hate Meteor's crew, even if it wasn't that bad: yes, she was pissed about being tricked and used and lied to, and she was right to be. And really, why her mother was so surprised when Toki reacted with bitterness at the thought of another trip to the planetarium?
"You're mad at me?" Sayuri stuttered.
"Had been for the past year, thank you for noticing."
"Be nice to your mom, Munchkins," her father said absent-mindedly from where he was typing on his laptop.
Toki crossed her arms. Sayuri looked at a loss for words:
"Why are you mad at me? I love you, sweetie. I was just trying to make you see reason. All I was doing was helping."
Toki gritted her teeth. She felt like she was talking to a wall. But yelling wouldn't help, would it? She paused. She held her breath and tried to make the bubbling mix of emotions in her belly calm again, so she could find the right words, the simpler ones, blunt and to the point, without any detours.
"I didn't want that from you," she finally said. "I know why you did it, Mom. I know you love me. But you need to think about my loves, too, my wants. You did it because you love me, but that was still about you."
Sayuri bit her lip and looked to Meteor for help. He raised his hands defensively, as if to say 'hey, don't look at me, I'm not in the wrong here'. Which was pretty rich coming from the only person in the room who was a wanted criminal, but well, not completely false either. So finally, she turned back to Toki, and said hesitantly:
"Well, I will… take in consideration your wants from now on. I'm your mother so sometimes I know best, but I will always talk to you in advance about important things, alright? I should have told you about meeting your father. Hum… Sorry," she said, after an awkward pause.
Toki pinched her lips. "I accept your apology."
She had gotten into the habit of saying that instead of "it's okay" at school, when teachers made kids apologize for fighting, because she had noticed that she often wanted to accept apologies for things that were not really okay. For instance, when one of the kids had stolen her Teleportation-analysis notebook from her bag and ripped five pages of it. Granted, Toki had fixed it with tape so now it looked fine, but she had beenpissed.
"So…" her mom smiled tentatively. "What do you want to do for your birthday?"
Asking for enrollment at university would be a little premature, so Toki wisely didn't suggest that. Instead, she thought about it.
"Books."
"Books?" Sayuri echoed.
"Lot of books. Also changing schools, or moving up a grade, because I hate it."
Meteor and Sayuri looked at each other, and the man winced: "Changing school is expensive. And it stands out. Not recommended if we want to say below the radar."
Toki inhaled, indignation bubbling up, and Sayuri pleaded quickly:
"More books? And online classes if you want?"
Toki held her breath a second, then deflated: "Alright."
"Perfect! To the library it is!"
So Toki had… a lot of books for her anniversary. Like, a lot. Middle-school or even high-school-level textbooks, stories about wizards and stuff, a few novels, illustrated books about space and stars, a huge volume about the evolution of Quirks thought time, some educational comics about the ocean, a book about cats… Her purchases weighted a ton. She was very proud of it.
Well, before that, she also had gifts from the whole Crew. She stammered it wasn't necessary, really, but even Fujio had brought something! Homura delightedly informed her that they had eight birthdays to make up for. After all, she was part of the family, wasn't she?
Faced with the truth so boldly stated, Toki froze and was forced to concede. It was bittersweet. All this time she had refused to become one of them, but she had only focused on the fast that she didn't want to be part of their criminal activities. It scared her. It blocked her from achieving her dream.
But… They weren't just criminals.
Oh, it was the primary purpose of their group. It was visible at first glance. The whole Crew was a perfectly oiled machine, each of them perfectly covering the others' weaknesses. Sayuri and Nono were discreet when the others were too flashy, Meteor was calculating when the others were lost, Homura brought fire and unpredictability to the group, Fujio was their precision hitter… They were the perfect hit force. But more than that, they were all friends.Family, Meteor had called them. He had been right. Toki had been there for months and she would have had to be blind to miss how much they loved and trusted each other. Her heart arched because she wanted friends like that, too. And they had all opened their heart to her…. Toki had tried to be cold and aloof, but she was just a lonely kid, and the people she spend time loved her: how could she not love them in return?
You can disapprove of what someone is doing without closing your heart to them. You couldn't control your love. It grew on its own accord, like a tree putting roots into your whole being. So yeah. Toki loved them and hated them and was scared of them and pitied them, all at one. What a mess.
Anyway. She got a funny beanie with two holes for her macaron-like buns, a nightlight that projected the starry sky on her ceiling, a stuffed otter in her favorite color (orange), and pens with glittery ink that came with pretty stickers. She loved all of it, thanked the guys profusely, and almost teared up. They laughed it off, saying it was emotion, but Toki knew better.
It was guilt. Because those people loved her, cared for her, but all she wanted was to be free of them, even if it meant getting them arrested. How horribly selfish was she? What kind of monster could love people and still le to them, plot against them, plan to betray them? What kind of person do that to their family? What kind of person do that to themselves, turning against their own, knowingly breaking their own heart?
(Yeah, that birthday didn't start great.)
In any case, once Toki dried her tears, her mother and her set off to the library. They bought a tremendous number of books, as promised. But her beginning-of-reconciliation, her guilty tears, and her fifteen new books… None of that was the most striking event of Toki's eighth birthday. After shopping, her mother bought her ice-cream, then they sat down on a bench and Sayuri took a big breath. She seemed unusually nervous. Toki nibbled on her ice-cream, looking blankly straight at her. She swore that if her mom announced they were moving again, Toki was going to throw a fit. This past year spent with criminals had made her a lot more belligerent. If her mom wanted a nice, well-behaved daughter, she should have let her in her old school with posh teachers and soft-hearted kids, instead of exposing her to the rougher reality of the world.
"I said I would tell you about important stuff, didn't I?" Sayuri smiled self-depreciatingly. "Well, I should start now, I think."
Toki continued eating. Her mother took a big breath:
"You're going to be a big sister, sweetie."
Toki would have liked to say that she took the news with stoicism, but well… She let out an incredulous squeak, and she dropped her ice-cream right in her lap. It could have gone better.
"W-w-what?!"
What the actual fuck?!
Her mother breather in deeply, and put joined hands on the tables. Her hands were trembling, suddenly saw Toki. Her jointures were white with how tight she was pressing her hands, and her eyes were shiny with tears. She abruptly realized that her mother was scared, and it terrified her. She had never saw her mother afraid of anything.
"I found out yesterday," the words tumbled out in a rush, as if Sayuri had barely held them back. "I'm already nine weeks along. I couldn't believe it. After you were born, my doctor had told me I couldn't get pregnant again, and that my health would never be as strong as before, and your birth was already difficult enough, so I… I didn't think it was possible… Oh, Toki, I'm happy, I want you to have a baby brother or sister. Your Quirk is amazing, so your sibling's will, too. But it's so complicated! I haven't even told Ryūsei yet…"
Sayuri took a hiccupping breath. She looked on the verge of crying. Toki jolted out of her daze, and tentatively reached out to pat her mother's hands:
"Well, er, congratulations? And you should tell him. If he's not supportive of your decision, tell me and I will beat him up."
Sayuri hid her face in her hands and let out a wet little giggle, discreetly wiping her eyes. Toki stood there, awkward. She had a hard time wrapping her head around this. She already had enough on her plate trying to know her place here and plan for an escape route (even if, in all logic, she wouldn't be able to really leave until her majority)… And now, she was going to have a little brother or sister? That was huge.
"So…" she hesitated, before blurting out: "You want to keep it, right?"
"Where did you learn about…? Never mind. Yes, Toki-chan, I want very much to keep it. He. Or she, if it's a she."
"You don't know yet?"
Her mother laughed. It was a steadier sound, without tears, and Toki only realized how tense she had been when she relaxed her shoulder at hearing it.
"Not yet. I will know in about two weeks."
"Oh." Toki mulled that over for a few second, then she looked back up, frowning: "You said your health was bad? Is having a baby dangerous for you?"
"I should have expected you to ask the hard questions right away," her mother sighed. "I… It's more dangerous for me than for most mothers. For now, it's mostly risky for the baby. When I had you, it had been difficult, there were complications. Long story short, there's some scarring inside of me that could make my pregnancy difficult in the last months. The baby could get sick, get hurt, or… die. And if that happen, it could hurt me too."
Her birth had been difficult? Toki had no idea. And it had left scarring? Scarring that put her mother's health in danger?
"I'm sorry," Toki said, aghast.
"Oh, sweetie, no, it's absolutely not your fault. And it's not that bad! If I'm careful, it will all go smoothly."
"Careful how? Do you have to eat certain food? Or do some sport? Or not to do any sport at all? Ah! We walked so long to get here! Are you alright?"
Toki started fretting, hovering around her mother protectively, hands fluttering everywhere without daring to touch anything, especially her belly. Oh gods there was a baby in there. Fuck, did that meant that her parents hadsex?! Gross! She would never be able to look Meteor in the eyes now. He had fucked her mom!Twice, at the very least! Ugh! Quick, she needed bleach for her brain.
"Calm down, calm down!" her mother sniggered. "For now, everything is fine. But in a few months, yes, maybe I will need to lay down a lot and be watched by doctors every day. And of that happen…" She hesitated, then soldiered on: "If that happened, Toki, I will go a hospital, to live here until the baby is born. It will be the best hospital in Japan and I will be totally safe, but that meant you will have to live with your dad for a little while."
Toki had not anticipated that. She frowned reflexively and got ready to protest… then she shut her mouth.
What were her options? Even if she said no, it would happen. Nobody else could watch over her. And no matter how good Toki was, there was no way her mom would let her live alone formonths. Besides, it wouldn't change much from what she was used to, would it? Toki would go to school, then go the hideout. The only difference would be that she would sleep here instead of going back to her bedroom at home. Ugh. She hated the tiny, cell-like bedroom that was hers in the hideout. But oh well, worse came to worse, she could always teleport in her own bed and go back there in the morning. She could get pretty sneaky when she wanted to. Especially because she couldfucking teleport.
It would also allow her to go visit her mom to the hospital pretty often. That last thought placated her a lot. So she shrugged:
"He'll do. When are you going to tell him?"
"Next week," Sayuri promised. "I have… I have an appointment to the doctor Saturday. I want to make sure everything is okay before I tell him."
Toki nodded, and that was the end of conversation.
But holy shit, a baby! A whole other human being, dragged into this mess. Well, that mess wasn't that bad. Toki was well aware she could have had worse. She could have been poor and go hungry for days. She could have had abusive parents that belittled her and hurt her. She could have had a bad Quirk that made her hated by her peers and bullied at school. So yeah, she had lucked out compared to others. She thought about canon characters like Shouto Todoroki or Tenko Shimura or even Izuku Midoriya, and yikes. Talk about a tragic backstory.
But it could have been so much better. She thought about Katsuki Bakugou, who had it so good and so easy from the beginning, showered with praised, rich, beloved by all, even by his scapegoat at school. She thought about Ochako Uraraka, whose parents had financial troubles but who never put their daughter in harm's way, who loved and supported her whatever path she chose. She thought about Momo Yaoyorozu who was filthy rich, or Mirio Togata who struggled to control his Quirk but had the support of his whole family and had been hand-picked to succeed All-Might. Yes, it could have gone so much better.
Toki didn't hate Meteor's Crew. Sure, she hated that they hurt people and saw nothing wrong with it: but she hadn't seen them hurt or kill anyone with her own two eyes, so it was only a clinical and impersonal knowledge. She was afraid of it, she hated it, she didn't want it to continue, and she hated that they choose to keep at it… But she didn't hate the Crew.
She loved them, actually.
What she hated… What she rejected… was the idea that it was inevitable. That they lived on the fringe of society and it was normal, that it allowed them to do whatever they wanted, and that it would be Toki's life too because she owed them that much.No she didn't!She didn't owe them shit. Toki had her own dreams and desires! She didn't want to spend her life feeling the guilt of having hurt or killed another human being. She didn't want to be afraid of being arrested and thrown in jail. She didn't want a life built on shifting sands, that could destroy her very existence in a blink without anybody caring. Toki wanted tobuildthings.Rockets. Spaceships. Submarines. Maps. Theories.She wanted to reach out to something greater and beautiful, something that called her, and they all told her to look at the ground instead. They all believed that hunt and being hunted was the only path that awaited her, and they were fine with it.
Toki wasn't fine with it. She wasn't a prey or even a predator: she was a human being, a sentient creature that understood how vast and terrible life was, and how fucking fruitless it was to be a criminal when you could have other, better options.
Yes, she wanted to be safe from heroes, but that was like, the very base of the pyramid of needs. Toki wasn't a coward, she could live with danger if it was useful or if she chose it. There was no reward without a little risk: space exploration had come with its own cost, and she was very much aware of it. It didn't scare her. Well, it did, but in good, exciting way. The question had never been 'how to live a life safe from harm', it was 'how to live a life worth the harm', and the life of a villain wasn't worth much. Villains were barred from joining society and contributing to it, and… Tokiwantedthat, she craved it like hunger. To build things, learn things, teach things, in the open, with lots of people to talk to and exchange information and knowledge. She couldn't bear a life on the fringe of society, in the shadows.
So yeah. She loved her family. She had to accept it. But she hated what they did, she hated how they refused to change, and she hated what they wished her to become. And those two things were sometimes difficult to reconcile, but it didn't make them less true.
Toki loved them but she had to leave. And to leave she had to break their heart. Either but escaping so totally they could never find her (and that would only happen when she reached eighteen)… Or by making them unable to catch up to her. Which would mean getting them arrested.
But that was a problem for another day. Right now it was still her birthday, and she was allowed to have a little fun at dinner. For example, wait for a lull in conversation and say…
"Where do babies come from?"
Nailed it. Everyone froze. It was hilarious. Suddenly, there wasn't even the click of wooden sticks and bowls, or even a single noise of mastication. Everyone was exchanging wide-eyed, horrified looks. Toki blinked with candor, the picture of innocence. Meteor looked at Sayuri, but her mother had hidden her face in her hands and was sniggering helplessly.
"W-well," her father stammered. "You see… Well…"
"It's fine," Toki snorted, taking pity on him. "I already know about how mammal reproduce."
Sayuri made a little choked-up noise, her shoulders shaking with laughter. The rest of the table looked split between relief and alarm.
"Where did you learn that?" cautiously asked Meteor.
He looked like he was dreading the answer. Toki took another mouthful of rice and chewed thoroughly, pondering her answer. On one hand, she could say it was taught at school, and that would be it. On the other… Their faces! Oh gods, who knew such an innocent question could have this effect? That idea had been great. She had to milk it for all its worth.
"In books laying around."
There was a new level of alarm in the adults' faces, now. The 'oh gods, have I let porn laying around in the house where an overly curious child wanders daily' kind of alarm. Toki wanted to take a picture of this moment and frame it.
"Science books," she finally smiled. "Relax." She waited a beat, then added: "What did you think I meant?"
Yeah, she though while watching the adults flounder and try to change the subject. She could hate some things here, even most things. But she didn't hate those people. In a sad, twisted way, they were really her family. It made things harder, didn't it? It was a good thing she didn't really have a plan to have them arrested, since she had never found a weakness in their organization.
But… That night, however, as she was drifting off to sleep, she suddenly realized that shehadthis weakness. The ace in Meteor's sleeve was Sayuri and her Quirk, the perfect escape plan, the joker that made them impossible to catch. But Sayuri had told Toki, years ago, just after she had manifested her teleportation, that her own Quirk had a weakness.
She couldn't use it when she was pregnant.
And so, she had handed Toki the key to put every single member of their family behind bars… If, of course, she could live with the guilt afterward.
Happy birthday.
(Toki hadn't realized she had made her decision until she had to rush to the toilet to throw up.)
oOoOoOo
Sayuri fretted after Toki had been sick, but the girl smiled weakly and pretended to have eaten too much cake. She went back to bed and hid under the covers, shaking, feeling angry, guilty, elated, and terrified out of her wits. Sayuri was sidelined for months. If someone wanted to take out Meteor's Crew, it was now or never. It could be quick and painless. Mom wouldn't even know about until too late. And since there was no way for them to escape, maybe they would surrender. Especially if the difference of power was overwhelming, and that the police used their weakness against them. Using Homura's family… Attacking Fujio from a distance… Using sleeping gas against Meteor… Subduing Nono before she jammed communications… It could be done. The police only needed to know. The police only needed Toki's notebook.
The notebook she had specifically filled with information to take out the Crew, and now looked like a weapon.
It was some kind of cosmic joke. For a year now (well, more than that, since the first entry was her analysis of Sayuri's Quirk), Toki had dutifully written everything needed to capture the Crew. How their Quirks worked. Their strengths. Their weaknesses. How to take them by surprise. How good they were at hand-to-hand combat, how agile, how physically fit, how quick… She had analyzed them as enemies, even as she had grown close to them. She had dissected Homura's power and his psychologic profile even as she had begun to love his jokes, his carefulness, the way his voice went soft when he talked about his children. She had pondered over Fujio's experience and how to best disable him, while she had delighted in the textbooks he brought her. She loved those people, but taking them apart in her little notebook had never registered as something wrong, because it hadn't been real, you know? She was only protecting herself. It was just planning. She hadn't decided to act, not yet.
But Tokihaddecided to act. All this time… she was just deluding herself into thinking she was only waiting for the right opportunity. And now the perfect opportunity had landed on her lap… So what was she going to do?
It wasn't a question of right of wrong, because that was too easy. Toki was very cartesian in her approach to morality. She could figure out what the right thing to do was through logic and reason. Without having read much philosophical books (which she mentally added to her to-do-list, before scolding herself because hey! Priorities! Moral dilemmanow, shopping listlater!), Toki was fond of ethical thought experiments.
The logical thing to do was to weight her two options and pick the ethical one. Saving the few or the many. Helping the heroes or helping the villains. Protecting the Crew's future victims or protecting the Crew's members. She knew what was the right option, what was the morally acceptable answer, what she was expected to pick as a dutiful member of society.
It wasright. But oh, how could it be right and be so painful? So frightening? She would have to live with it. No amount of'it was for the greater good'would make disappear the fact that she was selling out her family. But how could she live with herself, if she didn't do anything? Because if she kept quiet… Every single person that the Crew would kill or hurt later on would be on her conscience. She would have their blood on her hand, as someone who could have saved them and choose not to. Wasn't that a heavier burden to carry?
So Toki took her notebook. She always left a few blank pages after her analysis of each people's Quirk, so she could add notes later on. She had written so much about Sayuri's Swap-Space that she only had one sheet left. One page to give away her greatest weakness. One page to reveal how Meteor's Crew could be caught helpless. She smoother the paper, then carefully stated writing.
The countdown had begun.
She thought that her decision would change something in her life, but it didn't. Everybody continued to live unaware. After a week, Sayuri told Meteor about her pregnancy. Understandably, he freaked out. But he was also happy. He told every single member of his crew with a huge smile on his face, and Toki suddenly wondered if he loved this baby already. If he had loved her like that too. Had he been thrilled to become a father? She always had thought no, it can't be, because Sayuri had pretty much been sent away to raise her, but… When she saw how delighted he was, how proud, how doting…
She wondered. That was all.
Of course it wasn't all happiness and rainbows. Sayuri's doctor was categoric: her pregnancy was going to be complicated. There was a fifty-percent chance that either the mother or the baby wouldn't make it. It would be for the best if, in one month or maybe two, she went to the hospital and stayed here. Something about the baby not being hung up right inside? Toki wasn't obstetrician, but if someone told her mom to lay down for five months because there were malfunctioning fixations in her uterus, she was going to take his word for it. Anyway, Sayuri (and Meteor) immediately started looking for the best hospital the country has to offer. Obviously it wasn't the closest, since they lived in the poorer neighborhood of Tokyo. They finally decided on the Central Hospital in Musutafu. They had a lot of health-specialized heroes in the city, like Recovery Girl.
(And wasn't that another example of how heroism was twisted? Those people were doctors and nurses, and they had healing powers. But in order to use them, they had to be pro heroes. They had to have a military instruction, and they were only granted a license after a combat-centered exam. What a ridiculous idea! That meant that the others healers, the one who didn't know how to fight, were forbidden to use their powers to saves lives? When she would be done with her astrophysics doctorate and had launched one or two spaceships, Toki would roll up her sleeves and fix that stupid excuse for a society. Really, people were so illogical.)
But back to the point. For most of her parents' conversations about Musutafu, Toki was politely sent home, or distracted by another member of the crew. At the beginning, she felt a bit miffed. Sure, she was a kid, but she wasn't immature. She could handle talk about illness and hospital. Yes it was scary to think about the danger to her mother's health, but Toki could be rational about it. Ignorance didn't make the problem go away! Then, after a few weeks and finally one big tantrum, Toki was sat down by her mother how calmly explained her that hospitals were expensive and that the Crew was also planning on robbing one bank before Sayuri was hospitalized. The two topics were overlapping because they wanted to rob a bank in the same city as the hospital, because in some twisted way, it would increase the security there and make Sayuri safer.
Oh.
So the crew wanted to rob a bank in Musutafu. Right next to Yūei. Whereplenty of others heroes lived. Cool cool cool. Toki wasn't freaked out about this at all. Ok, maybe she was, but just a tiny bit. Because hello?! Danger?! She also had a moment of blind panic: should she move up her timeline and give the notebook to the police now? She didn't know when the robbery was going to happen! If she wanted to stop it, she should actnow. But suddenly, even after accumulating so much knowledge, Toki felt like she was flying blind… Or more exactly, she was frozen in indecision.
Where to begin? Who should she give the notebook to? The Tokyo police? The Musutafu one? A hero? But how to approach them? She couldn't be seen. It would be a catastrophe. But she couldn't exactly teleport in the police station. She had never been there, and she needed to know her destination to jump somewhere.
And the time flew, days then weeks slipping between her fingers like water.
Her mother was rarely home. She had gone to Musutafu by train to check out the place. Officially she was preparing her arrival at the hospital, but unofficially… Well, she was probably doing her job as a spy, scouting out the bank, spotting the guards patrols' routes, analyzing the patterns. The rest of the Crew was preparing. Nono was talking all day long about cars, trucks, false trails and hidden outposts to switch vehicles. Homura was tinkering with flamethrowers and pondering over buildings' blueprints. Fujio was more taciturn than usual, and some cupboards started sporting child-proof locks.
When Toki glimpsed what was inside one day where Fujio was rummaging around, she saw dark metal that looked like the barrel of an automatic weapon. She didn't say a word, and tiptoed back out of the room, biting her tongue so hard she tasted blood. Her heart was pounding. Those weapons werereal. They made the whole thing very tangible, suddenly: those were real guns that fired real bullets and were going to be used on real people. She had a hard time reconciling that with the people she knew, the one who made her laugh and brought her books, even if she had already been aware they all had blood on their hands. She hadknown, for fuck's sake, sowhywas it so heart-wrenching?!
Meteor was often gone, but when he was home, he seemed much more animated than usual. Toki had never thought her father subdued or peaceful before, but now that the imminent assault filled him with nervous energy, he was almostmanic. His smiles were toothy grins that reminded Toki of a tiger spotting a gazelle. He talked more loudly, laughed more often. His amber eyes flashed gold or orange at the oddest time, like some kind of ominous mood-stones.
Toki was now too familiar with him to be actually freaked out, but she found the change unsettling.
Her notebook was filled to the brim with sensitive information. Everybody's Quirk, everybody's weaknesses. Homura and Meteor were the only ones using their Quirks during their robberies (which was why they had villains' names), while Nono and Fujio fought mostly Quirkless. Still, they were powerful. Fujio had a low radar Quirk and could pinpoint the position of people around him (very handy when he had a sniper gun…. Toki tried not to think about it), and Nono's Quirk allowed her to jam low-frequency radio signals, which she used in addition to the Crew's high-tech jammers. They were all individually dangerous, but together, they were unstoppable. That was why they had to be stopped. That was why Toki needed to get her shit together andact.
Especially, she realized, since she was soon going to be forced to work with the Crew.
It wasn't obvious. But… Her father started asking more and more pointed questions about her Quirk. Then questions weren't enough and he started testing her. Jumping to her old house, jumping in the planetarium in Tokyo, jumping alone, jumping with a bag filled with heavy books… Just like Sayuri used to do, once upon a time.
But Toki felt petrified, her adrenaline spiked, and even if she tried to downplay her power, she knew that it wasn't enough. Even with half her strength, she would be an invaluable asset to a band of bank-robbers. For example, Toki pretended not being able to carry more than ten kilos, although her max was probably around twenty (her own weight). And even if she fumbled around in her anxiety, she hadn't been able to dodge all of his tests… She had jumped twenty kilometers (the distance between here, and the planetarium) and she had overplayed her exhaustion afterward, but the damage was done. Her father knew how big her range was.
Besides, Toki's power had never stopped getting stronger. She was less supervised since the adults were all busy, so she tried to put her newfound freedom to good use. She roamed the neighborhood, sometimes walking but more often than not jumping from streets to streets… Then, after accidentally finding out how great the view was, from rooftop to rooftop. She probably gave a heart attack to a few residents but hey, she was allowed to have some fun, wasn't she?
(Technically she had never gotten a formal authorization to go outside, but she was pretty sure that Meteor knew what she was doing anyway.)
And so she started getting quicker, more reactive, Sometimes trying to jump in the air then jump again before gravity reasserted itself and she went into freefall. It was exhilarating. It was likeflying.
If she wanted to be a criminal, she would be virtually unstoppable. Same thing if she wanted to be a hero, actually, but Toki had never really considered the idea.
The countdown was getting shorter. It was now December. Toki still hadn't given her notebook to the police. She wanted to wait until her mother was safe in the hospital, where nurses and doctors would watch over her. This self-assigned deadline reassured her a little bit, but it couldn't stop her bad feeling about the incoming robbery… And what her father planned for her.
"I don't want to rob banks," she abruptly said one day to her mother. "You know that hadn't changed, right?"
She had waited evening, when she and her mom were home alone, away from the hideout. It would have sent a stronger message to have this conversation with her father, but Toki had never claimed to be brave. Theses day, Meteor was… unpredictable.
"Oh, sweetie," Sayuri smiled softly. "You're only eight. Nobody is going to ask you to break into a safe and shoot people."
It was a chilling reminder that Meteor and his crew would do that. Toki stiffened.
"But I don't want to do anything," she argued. "I don't want to help them hurt or kill people in any way, or be their mule… And yes, I guessed what Dad intend to do with my Quirk, it wasn't hard, please give me some credit."
Her mom didn't even deny it. It was infuriating.
"Your father's plan keeps your involvement to a minimum and it's only if they don't manage it all on their own," Sayuri said in a reasonable tone that made Toki want to scream. "You won't be in any danger. You will just go somewhere, pick something up, and come home. It will be over in a blink. It's all for your little brother or sister. Don't you want to help me take care of my health?"
"Are you emotionally blackmailing me?"
Her mother shrugged: "Is it working?"
"No! Yes! Maybe!"
Her mom snorted, then went back to being serious.
"It's our livehood, Toki. Even if you don't like it."
"But you don't need me for it!"
"Maybe not. But even as strong as your father is… He can't reach his success without help. It takes a village."
Oh, gods, after the emotional blackmail, there was the altruistic wisdom. Toki grit her teeth, fuming. Her mother saw it wasn't working, and changed her angle:
"I know you don't like the idea of breaking the law, but it's going to happen anyway. Wouldn't you prefer that all of what's going to happen have a purpose? Otherwise, it will all be for nothing."
Well, logic was better than trying to guilt her into helping, but still.
"It shouldn't happen at all!"
"But it's going to. You can either turn it into something useful, like help for my hospital bills, or you can let all those efforts go to waste."
Toki waved her arms, sputtering helplessly: "Don't speak of that like it's inevitable! It's not some sort of natural disaster, it's a crime, it's done by rational human beings who decided to execute a specific action. It's completely preventable, and it shouldn't happen!"
Her mother smiled, softly: "Ah. But it's not up to you, is it?"
And she was right. Only Meteor's Crew could decide to not act. Toki had no control over them. Toki only had control over her own actions, and even then, that was relative. Because if she decided to do a sitting and not participate, what would she change? The robbery would still happen. The only difference would be that the money may be lost and the risks would have been taken for nothing. Toki would probably receive a good trashing (none of the adults had ever been violent towards her, but she had never made them angry, either…). They would have to prepare a new robbery, because Sayuri would still be pregnant and would still need the hospital.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuckfuck. There was no way out of this mess, was it?
The countdown was still ticking. Nobody told Toki the date of the assault. She wasn't sure if she wanted to know. It would probably happen after her mother was in the hospital, so she would have the perfect alibi. But days passed and nothing happened.
Then came the day of her mother's check-in at the hospital, on Christmas' eve, the 24th of December. Sayuri went back to Musutafu… And this time, she bought Toki with her. They stopped in a few stations to walk a little. Toki didn't miss the fact that every stop was between ten and forty kilometers from each other. She didn't even feel betrayed. Simply scared, and resigned. It was going to happen anyway. Once her mother was in the hospital, Toki would give her notebook to the police. Maybe it would be read and used fast enough to prevent the attack. Maybe not. But in any case… Toki could do nothing more.
Once in Musutafu, Sayuri wandered a little in the subway, changing stations twice and getting lost in the financial district although Toki had seen the map and knew they were going the wrong way. She didn't say anything, though. She obediently followed her mother and, on her instructions, memorized discreet places to teleport. Even when they snuck in a corridor for 'authorized personal only', walked in a maze of hallways until they found a bathroom, and Sayuri showed Toki how to open the water tank of the second toilet to the right. It was there that money would be stored.
It felt a little surreal, as if it was really happening to someone else. For fuck's sake, it wasChristmas. She wasn't actually doing that, right? Toki was a smart girl. She was in control of her life. She had big dreams. She wasn't actually rummaging around men's toilets to prepare to transport a lot of cash, right? Right?
She followed her mother out in a daze. They went to the hospital. Sayuri was put in a big, comfortable room, and Toki was allowed to go with her. Sayuri chatted with the nurse, telling her (highly-edited) life-story to pass the time. Apparently Sayuri was a modest widow, she had no family, nobody could watch her daughter until tonight when a professional sitter would come and take her home (yeah, fat chance of that), and her job was in journalism. The nurse was easily drawn into conversation, while Toki nervously played with her pens and didn't dare to open her notebooks. Her stomach was tying itself into knots, she wouldn't be able to write anything.
Then, two hours after their arrival, there was an alarm. Because she was watching for it, Toki was the only one to see the flash of relief on her mother's face.
Toki felt her heart sink.
They wouldn't have dared… Would they? Not so soon. Sayuri hadn't even been here for a day.
But it was perfect, Toki realized with horror. Not only because it was Christmas, and the city was busting with activity… But also becausebothSayuri and Toki were safe. The hospital was well protected. And in the chaos… Nobody would check on one, lonely kid. One kid who could teleport, and who was conveniently sitting at jumping distance from the place where Meteor's Crew was going to hide their spoils.
They had all planned it out. Toki had been stupid to believe their plan was going to revolve around her mother.Toki herselfwas a key-player. It wasToki'sarrival in Mustafu that set the plan in motion, not her mother's!
And what could she do?! Nothing! She sat frozen for the whole hour the alarm rang. Apparently the robbery was done in less than five minutes, but the whole area was frantically searched for the criminals. Every hero was on the streets, cursing the villains who had given them the slip.
Toki felt like her tongue was stuck in her mouth.
If she spoke, if she said 'they are using the subway tunnels', she could end it. But she didn't. Like a coward, she stayed silent. She waited. She felt numb. Cold and distant and fuzzy, as if breathing was happening into someone else body. She had to hid in the bathroom to wipe her tears of fear and anger. Her anxiety was like a ball of lead in her stomach. A nurse offered her something to eat, but she had to shake her head, her throat too closed up to even speak. If she ate, she would be sick.
It took an eternity for things to calm down. Then, Sayuri patted her head and told her: "You know what you have to do."
Toki nodded, and went. She still felt numb. The so-called professional sitter was a teenager that had come only to reassure the adults (in case they wouldn't let a kid leave the hospital alone) and who ditched her as soon as they crossed the road. Toki realized her hands were shaking. She wanted to throw up.
She teleported in the subway. The bathroom was deserted. Feeling like a puppet whose strings were pulled by someone else's hand, Toki mechanically opened the water tank in the second toilet to the right. There was a backpack wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from the water. Toki took it. It weighted exactly ten kilograms, she could tell. Meteor had done his job well. Toki closed her eyes, and even if she felt sick, she jumped. First the dingy corner outside the train station, then the dustbin near Mishima's station, then the shadowed nook in the streets of Oyama… and so on. Until she teleported right in the hideout's kitchen.
There was no one. Of course. They were all busy planting false trails and running away. None of them could teleport, so it would be while before they came back here. A day, maybe two. Most likely three.
Toki was shaking like a leaf. She let the bag on the table, dripping wet and cold like a dead body, then she had to run away to the bathroom and heave. She only vomited bile but she sobbed uncontrollably, trembling all over, tears and snot running on her face.
Gods, she was so scared. She was disgusted and guilty and scared and she wanted it tostop. She wanted it to never have happened. She wanted someone to hold her and tell her that everything would be alright, but there was no one, was it?! Her family was all in it. And none of them were here. Her mom was in the hospital, her father and his friends were running around somewhere. They had all left her. They had used her and pressured her and now they had left her to deal with the aftermath, not even having the human decency to pat her head or just to bethere, and she was so scared, she didn't want to be alone,please, don't leave me alone!
She was supposed to go home and sleep. Her mom had told her there would be leftovers in the fridge, and Toki was expected to take care of herself until the Crew came back. But well, her mother had expected her to be exhausted after her teleportation. Toki was tired, true, but she hadn't exhausted all of her energy. And the idea of going home, in an empty apartment, in the dark, to go to sleep all alone… It felt horrible.
Toki didn't want to be alone. She couldn't bear to be alone. She wanted someone to cry with, someone to comfort her, someone to help… Someone,anyone. But every single person who loved her was gone, busy doing the very thing that was breaking her heart, so Toki sneaked in her old cell-like bedroom, and cried herself to sleep while hugging the orange stuffed otter that her father had bought her for her birthday.
The next morning, when she would turn on the news, she would learn that the robbery had been a success and that her family was safe. The three criminals and their driver were on the run. Nobody knew where they were headed. Toki hated that she felt a wave of relief. A little part of her had been worried for them. Nono who taught her to sew, Homura and his little fire tricks, Fujio and his gruff acknowledgments. Even her dad.Especiallyher dad: kind and clever and ruthless and so charismatic.
Then the news anchor continued speaking, and Toki's relief was chased by crushing dread.
Their assault had made three dead and six wounded.
The very next day, she put a few more info in her notebook. On the cover, she wroteMETEOR'S CREW. Then, to hide her tracks, she went to the one of the stations she had stopped on the road to Musutafu. She walked to the post office from there, and send her notebook to All Might's agency. She addressed it to Sir Nighteye, who as a canon character was known for his efficiency, but who in real life was also relatively unknow, which ensured her letter wouldn't be lost in a pile of fanmail.
There. It was done. It wouldn't fix anything, true, but every action, even futile, was better than passive acceptance.
(If she didn't tell someone, then all the blood Meteor spilled would be on her hands.)
Notes:
Aaaaaaand now the fun part is going to begin ! Toki has taken the first step towards her freedom...
EDIT 12/08/2022
Fixed some spelling mistakes. Slight edits done to Toki and Meteor's conversation where he mention his limitations and the fact that he comes from Fukuoka. Mention made of Meteor being an information broker in his spare time. When Meteor tests Toki's range with her Quirk, the atmosphere between them is less antagonistic than in the first draft.
Chapter 5: Not all those who wander are lost
Summary:
Toki is eight years old and has sold out her parents to All Might. Now is time to paid the price.
Also, funny thing: she hadn't thought at all of what was going to happen to her afterward. Really, you would expect her to be better at this "planning ahead of disaster" thing, right?
Notes:
Sooooo there it is ! Toki has sent her notebook to the police... and now, the consequences!
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST
Toki didn't speak much the following days. She was digesting what had happened. Her part in the theft. Her anonymous letter. She was also bracing for impact. Nobody knew it was coming, but Toki did. She had sold them out. It would all be over soon.
Was it bad? Was it good?Rightorwrongwas so difficult to determine… Morality was always so personal, and Toki's feelings were definitively compromised here. She could only comfort herself by knowing she had taken the logical decision. Humans were fallible. Logic was not. And logic dictated that she saves Meteor's future victims.
She tried to pour her feelings in her poetry notebook, because it had helped in the past. But it suddenly seemed futile. There was no turn of phrase, no clear assemblage of words that could translate how she felt. The choking guilt. The determination. The rage, the hatred, the sadness. The love. The pain. The feeling of betrayal. She wrote and erased and wrote again. The words built up, but they didn't come out right. Toki may have been smart but she was no real poet: the little quotes and verses that littered her notebooks were memories of books and songs from another time. There was no poem that could capture the heartbreak of pulling out corrupted roots, or the impotent anger that burned your chest, or the crushing feeling of sobs and wails that stayed stuck in your throat. There were no words to tell howstupidshe felt, because she had known, she had fuckingknow from the start, and yet… ! So Toki wrote, frantically, furiously, until her fingers cramped up and her jaw wasn't clenched so tight. And yet it wasn't enough.
This is the house that built me
and I'm going to burn it down
This is the river I crawled from
and I refuse to drown here
You've got to bite the hand that starve you
What is a home if not the first place
you learn to run from?
She wrote verses and songs' lyrics and furious flood of nonsensical prose, and maybe something in her chest unclenched a little, but it wasn't nearly enough. What Toki felt couldn't be fixed by writing or talking about it. Some situations cannot be resolved by understanding but only by action. Toki needed to dosomethingto fix it. And maybe the action felt bad, because who wouldn't hurt at cutting ties with their loved ones? But the alternative was to do nothing, and it was killing her inside.
So yeah. Toki had posted her letter, and now, she wrote. Wasn't it all she could do? She was only a child. Even if she was a little prodigy, a teleporter, and a future astrophysicist, Toki was only just Toki.
Nono was the first to come home, two days later. Then Fujio, the day after. Then, two days after that, Homura and Meteor, congratulating each other on a job well-done. Just in time for the New Year. They all rejoined and laughed in delight when sharing their part of the loot. Now that the heist was done, they had no problem bragging about their plans. They had taken the bank hostage, entered the safe, and stolen several billions, but their real genius came during their escape plan. Escaping was always the tricky part: heroes weren't often fast enough to stop the crime, but they alllovedchasing criminals once their bad deeds was committed and justice had to be given. Heroes had the advantage: they knew the city. Hence the false trails. The real money and jewels had been hidden in the subway, but Homura and Meteor had each taken big duffel bags (similar to what the hostage had seen them leave the bank with) filled with newspaper clippings. From a distance it looked as if they were each carrying half their loot. And so, when they accidentally lost their bags… Heroes, police and avid onlookers alike chased the bag rather than the criminal, creating chaos and confusion. Nobody has expected it, because Meteor's Crew was famed for their violence and their disappearing acts, but they had never used decoys before.
They shared the money. It was one billion each (the equivalent of ten million dollars). Andeach, it meant there was a part forToki. Her part was actually a bit smaller (apparently Sayuri was taking a cut) but it was still hers, and it made her stomach twist unpleasantly.
"It's for your university's enrolment!" laughed Homura. "You can get as many doctorates as you like now!"
"Happy New Year," Fujio added dryly, tossing notes in the air like confetti.
She wanted to punch them. Or maybe break down and cry. Or maybe just scream. She wasn't sure. She settled for a glare. How could they joke about that? People had died for that money. Toki didn't want it.
"I will keep it safe for you," promised Meteor. "You'll use it when you feel ready."
Toki wanted to toss the bag of cash to his face. Or maybe yell at him that he should send that money to the victims. But it wouldn't make her hands any cleaner. The thought finally untied her tongue, and she snapped angrily:
"People are dead. I saw it on TV."
Meteor's face darkened slightly, but he didn't seems otherwise bothered. None of them were. It only incensed Toki further, especially when her father shrugged:
"We always give them the option to run away. Those guys tried to play heroes. It's a job that come with a risk."
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes," snorted Nono.
Toki threw her a horrified glance, disgusted by her carelessness. Nono had always been so kind and patient: it was jarring to see her so indifferent to other people's pain and grief. But the woman only raised an eyebrow, unrepentant. She wouldn't lose any sleep over it, Toki realized. None of them would.
She left, slamming the door behind her. She heard her father sigh, and Homura said in a comforting tone:
"She'll come around, you'll see."
No, she wouldn't come around. And no, he wouldn't see, either. Toki took a some vindictive pleasure at that. It was going to stop, and she would be the one responsible. They would all go to jail…
Well, maybe Sayuri wouldn't. Japanese people were very protective of children, even unborn ones. So the most hardened criminal could have the best medical treatment if she turned out to be pregnant, because gods forbid thebabywas harmed. Japan didn't have a high birth-rate and children were a precious resource after all. Especially pure-blooded Japanese. Especially pureblooded Japanese whose parents had powerful Quirk. Yep, Japan was a little bit eugenicist. Nothing new. Toki vaguely remembered it had been like this even Before, in the twenty-first century.
As for Toki… Well.
What would be her fate, once the police arrested everyone? She was an accomplice. But also a child… and a little bit of a coward. She didn't want to get imprisoned. Ironical, considering she was the party responsible for everybody else's arrests. But if she was caught, her role in the robbery would come to light. Of course the law would want her punished… and she would also have to testify to the Crew's trial. No way.
She would have to run away. Where? She wasn't sure yet. But hey, if everybody was arrested, there would be no one left to claim her if she turned up one day at the police station with a fake name. No one would know who she was. Nobody knew Meteor had a daughter, after all. She just had to disappear some weeks and then reappear somewhere else. Easy, right?
Well. All she had to do was wait. She had no idea if the police were going to arrest the Crew right here at the hideout (she had noted its address, though, because Meteor had once mentioned this place had been theirs for almost ten years and they had no intention to move anywhere else). Or maybe they would pick them off one by one. Or maybe they would ignore her notebook entirely… It made Toki felt both sickly relieved and churning with powerless anger. She wanted to make things right.
She continued to go out more and more. The adults weren't so busy anymore, and they paid more attention to her disappearances, but when Toki tersely told them she was practicing her Quirk, they backed off. They didn't quite tell her it was good training for the future, but she could see their approval. Urgh. Her father fussed a little, telling her she should have adult supervision and try not been seen in the neighborhood, but even he let her run away when she wanted. Toki had already proven how independent she was, after all. If she had managed just fine during the weeks while they were planning their robbery, why change things now?
So Toki was allowed the kind of freedom that was usually associated with Pokemon trainers. At eight years old, she wandered the city alone, going from street to street and (more often than not) from roof to roof. It was the dead of winter but she had warm clothes, so it didn't bother her. She explored as much as she could, using the most of daylight. She didn't have to have visited a place to teleport here: if she could see it, she could jump here, so she just had to land eyes on a window ledge five stories-high and hop, she was there. And alright, it was very high, and she had a couple of freak-out: but she was getting used to heights. And besides… if she started falling, she just teleported to the ground, and stopped her fall before she gained any momentum.
Momentum. Another funny thing to play with. She had the idea one day, and played around the whole week, until she had a hang of it. Momentum was simply movement: if she could direct it, well…. It could be like flying. Well, Toki already know how to fly, in theory: she just had to teleport a few meters high in the sky, then higher, then higher, then chose her direction and continue to teleport up in the air… But the problem was the landing. Because jumping in the sky meantfalling. And once you're falling, well, stopping was hard.
Once when she had been a kid… or well, a younger kid… Toki had tried to teleport ten meters high to see if she could fly. Obviously it hadn't worked. She had freaked out and teleported right back on the ground. But now she was more confident, and she tried it again. Teleporting high, falling, then teleportingupagain, fall, teleport again… And each time, she kept her momentum, falling faster and faster. It was like a very long free-fall… But Toki could shift position during her jumps. So to stop that momentum…. Instead of teleporting falling toward the earth, she teleported upside-down, the speed from her fall propelling herupinstead.Her momentum versus gravity. Inevitably, gravity won, and Toki's speed crawled to a stop. And when she was immobile, suspended in midair just before she started falling down again, bam! She teleported on the ground again.
Her legs were a little unsteady but at least she didn't gosplat. Success.
So. A week passed, and Toki learned how to fly. Well, how to use her controlled falls to cross long distances. Which was kind of a useless move, since she could teleport anywhere, but hey. It helped her get a bird's view from the city and find new places to teleport. From ground-level, she could only see so much. With her jumps, she had managed to see kilometers away. She had even seen a McDonald! She hadn't been aware they had them in Japan. Or well, that this brand had survived the centuries.
She stopped a purse-snatcher, too. It was such a small and easy thing, it should have been anectodical. She saw the guy running and heard the woman yelling at him, teleported just in front of the thief, grasped the bag and teleported away in a blink just as the man tripped on her and started falling down. Toki reappeared in front of the screaming woman (who was so surprised she shut up), gave her the purse with a grin, then disappeared. It all happened in less than three seconds. Really, it was nothing: but Toki couldn't help but feel a thrill of elation all day long. She had fun, but more than that, she had felt strong and useful.
If that astrophysicist thing didn't work out, she could always be a hero.
But well. Days crawled by. Two weeks, then three passed. Toki was offered to go and see her mother, but she saidno. She didn't want to see Sayuri again so soon. She couldn't forget how casually dismissive her mother had been of her feelings, how her last words to her had been 'you know what to do'. She was angry, and she was allowed to be. Meteor probably thought it was just a childish tantrum, or maybe jealousy towards her unborn baby brother… but at least he didn't force her to go.
Yes, it was going to be a brother. Sayuri was apparently in contact with the Crew via email. Was it surer than the phone? Who knew. In any case, she sent coded messages with regularity. Most of her emails had a kind word for Toki, but they were all obviously for Meteor, because it was about her health, the baby, her stay at the hospital. Private stuff, not Crew stuff. Meteor always stared longingly at his screen when he received her mails. He was a ruthless murderer, but no one could deny he was also a loving husband. It made Toki feel weird. Why couldn't Meteor feel towards others people the same empathy and compassion he held for his family?
Anyway. In her latest email, Sayuri had sent ultrasound pictures as well as a bunch of baby names. Apparently she liked the nameHikari. What was that with Sayuri and giving her kids unisex names that somehow would have fit the opposite gender better?Tokiwould have been better as a boy name, andHikariwas better for a girl! Really, mom…
Days passed.
Four weeks after the robbery, the police raided the hideout.
It was midday. It was the week-end, so they were all here. They were eating in the kitchen. Toki was munching on a part of lemon pie while reading a book on her lap (living with criminals made for poor table manners) and the adults were chatting, making plans about summer, arguing half-heartedly about which car was the best. Nono was talking about quitting her taxi job, because while Sayuri was gone, it was Nono who played the role of the responsible adult in Toki's life for her teachers and so she had to pick her up at school. Fujio was discreetly stealing the pie part in Homura's plate, and he hadn't noticed, engulfed into a heated recounting of a car chase during his teenage years. Meteor was quietly laughing at him while scrolling on his phone. It was calm, it was normal.
"Can you pass me the water, Munchkin?" her father asked, not looking up from his phone.
"What about the magic word?" Toki grumbled.
"Give it, or else?"
Toki rolled her eyes, and passed him the bottle: "Screw you."
"Sayuri is going to murder us when she finds out what kind of things we taught her baby," laughed Homura.
"Fujio is the one who taught her swear words!" protested Nono.
Fujio only smirked: "It's educational."
"Fuck," deadpanned Toki.
Nono raised her arms to the sky as if asking it to witness how much she was surrounded by idiots. Meteor and Homura both laughed. Even Fujio cracked a smile. Toki snorted, trying to stay distant but still finding it funny.
Then something smashed through the window and landed on the table. Toki looked at it in a split-second of wide-eyed shock, saw it was a smoking canister, thought 'oh shit', and then the thingexploded.
It was probably only a flashbang grenade, but Toki still teleported shrieking in pain.
She landed blindly on a roof she knew well about half a kilometer away, the first place that had popped in her mind when thinking of an escape. The landing was rough, and she fell on her knees. Her eyes, her eyes! She was blind! Toki desperately clutched at her head, her eyes burning, her ears ringing so strongly it drowned everything around her. She blinked hopelessly, feeling something hot running on her face. Tears?Blood? Her whole head hurt, she had no idea if she had been hit by shrapnel. She frantically wiped her face, blinking and blinking until, to her great relief, she started seeing light again. Everything was blurry, but she wasn't blind anymore. She staggered to her feet. Her ears were still ringing, but not so loudly anymore, and she could hear… Gunfire? Screaming?
No, those were explosions… And roars of rage. A familiar voice. Toki's stomach sank. Meteor.Dad.
She crawled to the edge of the roof. Her vision was still fuzzy but she could see that the hideout's building was smoking, partially blown up, and that the place was crawling with heroes. Several pieces of rubbles floated in the air before violently raining down on the heroes. Then there was a roar of green fire and a hero who was climbing the building fell down screaming. Gunfire thundered. Frozen in place, Toki could only watch how everything descended into hell. Explosion, pieces of wreckage flying like guided missiles, fire spreading on the upper floor, screaming, gunfire, people calling for help, yelling…
Then All Might appeared. Toki recognized him by his ridiculous hair and by his billowing cape. He smashed into the building like a wrecking ball, and the gunfire stopped. Seconds later, so did the fire. All Might jumped back in the streets, deftly avoiding the projectiles controlled by Meteor, and tossed the two people under his arms (Fujio and Homura, Toki guessed with a shiver) to the police, before going back to the half-destroyed floor in one powerful jump. Toki gripped the edge of the roof, frantically trying to see what was happening. Fujio had been responsible for the gunfire, and Homura for the fire, and they had been caught: but what about the others? Had Nono escaped? Toki hoped she had, then suddenly felt awfully guilty about it.
And what about Meteor? Rubble was still raining down on the streets, pieces of the building exploding outward to harpoon everyone in sight…. Then, with an end-of-world groan of tortured metal and breaking concrete, the structure started leaning toward the right. It was fuckingcollapsing, the torn apart building unable to support its own weight.
Toki opened her mouth on a soundless, horrified cry. The fifty-five meters of concrete werefalling, the whole thing rumbling and groaning so loudly that she could hear it from her roof. It was leaning out of balance, like a slowed-down scene in a horror movie, slowly collapsing on the side like a massive cut tree. The fall seemed to never end. There were people screaming in terror. One hero dressed in bright yellow darted in and out of any open windows, using what looked like a speed Quirk to get people out as fast as he could: but then, a flying block of cement and twisted pipes hit him like a cannonball, snatching him from the air and slamming him against a wall that from gray became red. There was more yelling. The yellow hero didn't get up. Toki realized she had raised her hands to her face and was biting her fist hard enough to draw blood. Her head was pounding, and she didn't know if it was the flash-grenade from earlier or the sheer horror of what was happening.She hadn't wanted this. She hadn't wanted any of this!
The huge building fell.
The impact shook the whole neighborhood: Toki could feel the tremor in the roof she was standing on. An enormous cloud of dust rose, drowning the whole place, rushing through the streets like a shockwave. From her perch, Toki could still see rubble flying in all directions.
There was a lone silhouette levitating above the chaos, raining devastation on his enemies, and Toki's belly twisted. From here, covered in dust and blood, surrounded by flying rubble like a meteor shower, her father looked like a vengeful god. She had never witnessed the full extent of his power. It was fucking terrifying. Huge block of concrete, cars, furniture, pipes, everything flew around him as if he was the sun of his own solar system made of deadly wreckage, surrounded by devastation. The whole building had collapsed, torn into pieces just like that.The whole building…!And now it was a field of broken ruins and her father was floating, screaming like a demon and pushing waves after wave of projectiles towards heroes like it was nothing. He lookeduntouchableandmonstrous. His long dark hair was like a wild mane floating behind him, and Toki could imagine his ember-like eyes flashing wildly in feral anger.
Toki had never been scared of her father, not really. He had always been nice to her. She had been scared of what he could do, what he had done, but not of him as a person. But now, she saw him, wreaking havoc on this post-apocalyptic scene, she felt petrified.
The fight was absolutely one-sided. Could it even be called a fight? It was amassacre. Toki couldn't see well with the smoke and the dust but thescreams…! The way the heroes tried to rise above the dust cloud to attack and were ruthlessly crushed with rubble, speared with pipes, tossed around like ragdolls…! Toki couldn't close her eyes, couldn't breathe. It was like in a nightmare when you can't move, when you can only watch as the monster is closing up on you, teeth bared. It looked like war. It looked like hell. How could a single man wreck so much destruction? How could human beings be so easily torn to bloody shreds, and bleed and scream so much,and how come nobody could stop it?!
Then All Might emerged from the rubble where he had been buried, and launched himself at Meteor, roaring. The villain roared back, directing a giant mass of rubble toward him… and the two titans collided in a deafening explosion of dust and flying pieces of wreckage. One little chunk of metal whizzed past Toki's head, so chose she felt the wind sting her cheeks. She jerked away, abruptly released from her petrified trance. All Might and Meteor were still fighting.
Toki closed her eyes as strongly as she could, and teleported away.
oOoOoOo
She hid in a cupboard in her school for a while. Some animal part of her brain needed the tiny space and the comforting darkness of a small place to process what had happened. But Toki didn't feel like she was processing anything. She just sat there, hugging herself, her brain filled with white noise. There was a big blank space where her thought process should be. She was just… sitting there. Breathing. Breathing was fine.
When she finally unfolded herself from her hiding place, she felt as if a small eternity had passed. Her legs had cramped up. Her eyes didn't hurt anymore, though. She didn't know where to go, so she teleported home. The address had been in her notebook, but since it was Sayuri's place and she was at the hospital, the police shouldn't have invaded the place. And just as she thought, the apartment was deserted.
She wandered around, aimless. Then she shook herself out of her daze and went to pack a bag of essentials. She didn't know when the police would come to ransack Sayuri's apartment, after all, and she should be prepared to make herself scarce when it happened.
Toki didn't own a bag (beside her cute backpack for school) so she went to her mother's room to borrow a big duffel bag. She put in a bunch of clothes, and some toiletries. She wasn't sure of what was important. Urgh, if only she had had the foresight to look online 'what to pack when you're about to be homeless' on her father's computer! But nooo, she had looked up stars' names and how deep could cachalots hunt and what was highest an human could go without needing an oxygen tank (about eight kilometers high, although you only left the troposphere at ten kilometers high, which was the altitude planes flew by)…. But not if she should pack shampoo and pajamas. Oh well. She intended to sleep at school so she didn't know how warm it would be at night. It was January, after all. Winter clothes would do as sleepwear. And, well, better to have shampoo than to be missing it, right?
Toki also remembered where her mother hid her cash (there were nine hiding places in the apartment, each containing one or two envelopes filled with bank notes), so she took that too. All on one, there were maybe a billion yens in here. She should find some place to hide part of that ill-earned treasure… It wasn't wise to carry that much cash on her person. But well, she would see about it tomorrow. For now Toki finished packing her bag.
Then she turned on the TV, and switched channels until she found what she was looking for. It wasn't hard: after all, a villain's fight of that scope would be all over the news, especially the local ones.
"… The rescues efforts are still ongoing,"a dog-eared presenter was saying gravely."There are still nearly thirty people missing. The number of victims hadn't been confirmed. Still, everyone is on agreement that without All Might to stop the main villain, the death count would have been higher…"
The screen shifted, showing the mugshots of the Crew's members. Toki's heart jerked, and she leaned toward the TV, eyes wide. They were… They were all there… Nono's mugshot was all fresh, she had the same shirt and lipstick that this morning. Homura's mugshot was older, and showed him with his villain's mask. Fujio's and Meteor's looked to be a few years old. Sayuri's wasn't really a mugshot, but a cropped photograph that showed her in a wide-brimmed hat that shadowed part of her face. To protect her anonymity, maybe?
Under each mugshot was their villains' names. Neither Fujio, Nono or Sayuri had any prior to this day, and Toki blinked when she realized that the police had usedhercodenames, the ones she had noted in the margins of her little notebook. It was not even related to their Quirks, it was just stupid pseudonyms she had thought would fit the whole 'Meteor' theme. Sayuri wasEclipse, Nono wasSmoke, and Fujio wasSkyshooter.
The presenter reappeared on one half of the screen, continuing his story:
"Their leader, Meteor, is singlehandedly responsible for the destruction of the residential building this afternoon, as well as the death of pro heroes Stinger, Narrow-spin, and sidekick Opal. The hero Moonlight and the sidekicks Tempo and Collider are still in critical conditions, as are several police officers and victims. Meteor will be held in Tartarus awaiting his trial."
So they had captured him. Toki breathed more freely. Somehow, she hadn't really thought it possible. Her father was so strong. Even now, watching the news, she had trouble believing it was real.Meteor was arrested.Should she feel guilty? All she felt was tired. Maybe a little relieved, but if wasn't the righteous relief of the hero who had accomplished their task. It was the kind of relief you felt when you put down a heavy burden, when you left the room after an exam you had been dreading for weeks, when you confessed some awful lie that had been eating you.It's done. It's done, finally, I can breathe a little easier.
"His accomplices have all been caught,"the presenter continued."The villains Blaze, Smoke and Skyshooter all incur a life-sentence in prison. Police had reported that Eclipse was currently suffering from severe health problems and leniency could be granted as a result."
Severe health problems. Ah. Yeah, pregnancy could be categorized like that. Especially a risky one. What a convenient way to explain that Sayuri was stuck in a hospital for months and powerless to escape.
Toki turned off the news. She was hungry and it was getting late, so she went in search of something to eat. Thankfully there were some instant noodles in the cupboard, and Toki ate ramens while watching children's cartons, as if she was a normal child having a normal evening.
When she went to sleep, she hid under the covers and hugged her stuffed otter with all her strength, but it didn't make her feel less lonely.
The next day was a Monday. Toki woke up groggily and was halfway to dressing up when she realized she didn't have to go at school anymore. But staying in the house made her feel claustrophobic. So she took her coat, and decided to go for a teleporting-augmented walk to clear her head. She tried to stay as clear from yesterday's battlefield as she could, though. She felt squeamish about what happened, about the people who had died there.
Toki wandered the city. She walked, at first, but being all alone among adults made her nervous, especially because a lot of people threw her side-looks. After all, it was a school day: a lonely child attracted attention. She picked a quiet street then teleported from window ledges to higher window ledges until she could see the top of the building and then just appear there. Then she walked through rooftops. It was pretty fun. In the weeks preceding Meteor's robbery, Toki had wandered there so much that it was second nature now. She wasn't afraid to fall. She was actually kind of desensitized to height. She teleported mid-step from one building to the over, she climbed fences because it was funnier that way, she played games by trying to sneak up on pigeons and making cartwheels on narrow edges…
Later, she found a corner sheltered from the wind and took out her notebooks for a while.
It had been a while since Toki had completed her Teleportation-analysis notebook because she had wanted to keep her true strength a secret from her father, but now it was in need of a serious update. Who much she could carry, how far she could jump, how adrenaline augmented her abilities… She could probably have a more accurate analysis if she could get her hands on some medical equipment to measure her heart rate and the adrenaline in her blood, but well, practical observations would do.
(She didn't want to think about the Crew. She didn't want to think about her dad, or her mom. She didn't know what she was feeling anymore.)
Afterward, she perused through her other notebooks. She went back to some of her sciences questions and happily wrote answers next to them, scribed some more ramblings about the city's buildings or the outdated parabolas she saw on the roofs. She wondered if she could teleport with something that didn't have a shape, the way her mom could switch place with water.
Turned out Toki could teleport with water cupped in her hands, but not with the content of a puddle if she just touched its surface. Weird. Maybe it was because she couldn't properly visualize what she was teleporting that way?
Her Quirk wasn't vision-based, but it heavily relied on it. She had tovisualizea place to be able to appear there. She could of course teleport with her eyes closed, but it was easier not to. Same thing for long distance jumps. It was easier to teleport in her visual range than outside of it, even if that outside point was actually closer. It didn't tire her, of course, not for short distances, but teleporting in a place she couldn't see required a split-second of thinking, reflecting, deciding… while teleporting where she could see was as instinctive as breathing.
"No," she suddenly muttered, erasing her last sentence. "It's a too hasty conclusion, my sample of experiments is too small…"
The sound of her own voice, alone on the roof, sounded almost strange. Toki suspended her gesture, pen immobile a few centimeters above the page.
When she had been younger… Well, younger than she was now… She was used to speaking out loud when she thought about her Quirk or noted her observations. She didn't quite mumble, Deku-style, but she hadn't been a silent child. It had only changed when… When she had started living with the Crew? No, later, because it had been her mumbling that had attracted Homura's attention the day he had corrected her Quirk-analysis… Toki frowned. She couldn't quite pinpoint the moment when she had started to keep her ramblings to herself, but it had probably been when she had started hiding her true skills. She hadn't yet decided to send her notebook to the police, at that time, but… Unconsciously, she had already picked her side, hadn't she?
With a sight, she closed this notebook and opened another one. The poetry one. It was starting to be pretty well-filled. Almost half the pages were scribbled on, with sometimes a few colorful stickers around her poems. Toki leafed through the pages, then picked up her pen and started writing. Poetry didn't clear the mind, not really, but it was always easier to thing when you had gotten the words out.
You deserve to celebrate who you've become
But also who you could've become
and fought not to.
She wondered if, one day, someone else would read this page and find those words resonating with them the same way they had resonated within Toki. She didn't really like the idea of someone reading those lines, in her childish chicken scrawl: it was too raw, too honest. But maybe one day she could quote them. Or maybe try to put into song. Hey, that was an idea. Some of these lines were song lyrics after all. Of course, Toki didn't intent to sing herself (she was tone-deaf and couldn't even whistle a tune), but it was still worth considering.
Anyway. Back to the point. Or rather, the reason why Toki had needed to go out and clear her head in the first place…
What the fuck was she going to do, now?
It would have been nice to think about that before sending your parents and main providers to jail, a little voice in her head said snidely. Toki mentally flipped it the bird.
Well, alright, the mean voice was kind right. But Toki had been so stuck on the fact that she had to act and then that her family was going to be arrested, that… it hadn't really left any space in her brain to think aboutafter. And now she was here. The cops hadn't raided her apartment yet, which was nice, but they would. The address was on Sayuri's papers and they had her. Besides, even if they overlooked the place for some mysterious reason… Toki was eventually going to run low on food, and then what would she do? Rob a store? Yeah, right. She could probably survive on food banks and shelters for a while, but a homeless kid attracted attention. Good attention, like social workers and concerned citizens, and bad attention, like pedophiles, human traffickers and the like.
And of course, if word of her Quirk got around, some villains would want to use it like Meteor's Crew had. Although Toki hadn't seen any other villains around, besides some lowly purse-snatchers. Well, probably because it had been Meteor's territory. Now that the big fish was gone, other predators were going to try their luck. Although none of them would be as… strong… as…
Fuck.
No. That wasn't right. HOLY MOTHERFUCKING SHIT.
She had forgotten about All for One.
"Motherfucker!" she swore.
Then she jumped to her feet and paced down the length of the roof, unable to stay in one place. Several pigeons, scarred by her brusque gesture, flew away a few feet: Toki ignored them. Gods, how could she have been sostupid?!All For One hadn't been defeated yet! He was beaten six years before the start of canon, and Toki was waaaaaay before that. Holy shit, All Might and Sir Nighteye separated because of that fight, andit hadn't happened yet, and Toki should have realized that immediately when she had seen Sir Nighteye still worked for All Might! Merlin, Gandalf, Naruto and all gods above, she had sent her notebook to that damn sidekick and she hadn't even thought about the fact that he was still a sidekick!
Her canon-knowledge was relatively extensive (well, she couldn't remember everyone's Quirk and their specifics, but she mostly remembered the names and pasts of the main characters, as well as most of the Plot). But in the canon-timeline, AFO had been defeated and it was a given, nobody even questioned it. The main threat was the League of Villains and it hadn't been formed yet. Japan was at peace. And it hadn't looked different from Toki's usual so yeah, she… she just hadn't thought about it.At all.It hadn't even been a blip on her radar. All Might was here, people called him the Symbol of Peace, so yeah, cool, no danger until the league appeared, right? Right?! AH AHAH.
She wasso screwed. She was a teleporter, like Kurogiri but faster.Kurogiri, one of AFO's favored plaything, aNomumade with the dead body of Aizawa's childhood friend if Toki remembered correctly: and wasn't that fucked up?! AFO had wanted a teleporting buddy so badly. Ohshit, was Shirakumo (the dead body in question) dead already? Or was Toki at risk to literally replace him if she was caught by that psychopath?!
Fuck, fuck,fuck! As long as she had been under Meteor's protection, of course it had been safe: who would dare challenge a villain like him for some kid that most people didn't even know existed? But now, that was different. Because Meteor was gone. Toki was homeless. Her only advantage to survive in this world was… well, her brain… but unfortunately, you can't beat up people or run from your problem with brainpower only. So she was going to use her Quirk. She had to. Hell, she hadalready used itin plain view of people. Of course people were going to know there was a teleporter up for grabs in Meteor's former territory, if they didn't already. And first arrived first served, right?
It hadn't worried Toki, before, or rather she hadn't thought about it because she had mistakenly believed that this neighborhood was safe, and that her Quirk would allow her to run away from her problems. But right now, she could already think of eight nightmare-scenarios, seven of them ending up with her death. What if she ran out of hideouts? What if she was attacked in her sleep? Her brain was running a mile a minute in a sort of horrified clarity. Oh gods she was going to die.
"I'm so dumb," she moaned. "I'm an insult to the chain of evolution. I'm surprised I can walk straight with a brain so small. Somewhere there is a tree, tirelessly producing oxygen so I can breathe, and I think I owe it an apology. I should toss myself off that roof."
The sarcasm helped to ease the weight on her chest. A pigeon let out an interrogative coo, and Toki rolled her eyes:
"Of course I'm not serious. Chill."
The pigeon tilted its head. Toki rubbed her forehead, wincing. She was talking to a pigeon. Come on. Alright morbid jokes apart, what was she going to do?!
Well. Step one: leave this place as if she had AFO on her heels. Maybe she didn't (he probably hadn't heard about her yet), but she really didn't want to find out. So: leaving. Right the fuck now.
Toki teleported back to her apartment to make one last check of the place. Still empty. She took some granola bars and a bottle of water, and left her stuffed otter on the couch. She was too big for toys anyway. She cut electricity, turned off the hot water, closed off the shutters, and put her dirty bowl from yesterday's ramen in the sink. She stood in the living room for a second, trying to summon some grave thought for this solemn moment, but her head was empty. How were you supposed to feel when you ran away from home, if it wasn't even a real home anymore?
Then she thought she heard a key turning in the door, and teleported without waiting. Too late, now. There would be no tearful goodbye for the apartment.
Toki teleported to the first place that crossed her mind… the park near her old school, where she and her mom had lived before moving to Tokyo. She had to take a breather afterward, her heart beating almost painfully in her chest, and her legs a little weak. But she sat down, breather, drank water, and after five minutes she was fine. Maybe her long-distance jumps were getting better. Last time, that jump had exhausted her. How far away from Tokyo was she, anyway? It was way more than forty kilometer. Fifty? Sixty? She needed a map. And she needed to know where she was! Ironically, Toki didn't even remember the name of the park: she was even fuzzy on the name of the city. It only came back to her after walking a while and seeing the city name on bus stops. It was Hinohara. She wandered around until she found a station where you could have some maps, took a few (one for all of Japan, and one for each prefecture between Tokyo and Musutafu where her mom was hospitalized), then found a quiet place to ponder about the distance. Hinohana was exactly seventy-eight kilometer from her neighborhood in Tokyo.
Holy. Shit.That was almost eighty kilometers, double her previous forty-kilometers limit! Well that made her seriously reevaluate her range. If she could jump almost eighty kilometers, it would help greatly her escape plan. In case, you know, she had to escape.
Well. Step one of her plan, get away from Tokyo, was complete. Now, it was time for step two… Figure out where to go. Because running was all fine and good, but in only worked if you had a destination in mind. Flying aimlessly was the best way to get corralled and trapped. Or, most likely, to getlostand then trapped.
"So,", Toki muttered, trying to get used again to the sound of her own voice. "Where to, o fearless astrophysicist?"
She could go South, or North, or just… as far away as she could. Then she would wander into a police station, open wide fawn-like eyes and say something about being lost and not remembering her name, until she managed to sneak anonymously into foster care.
But there were two flaws with that plans… One, she didn't trust the system very much. Hadn't AFO's doctor, the one responsible for the Nomu, also been a pediatrist to keep an eye on interesting Quirks? You could never know who worked for AFO and who didn't. Second flaw: how to travel there. Toki didn't know many places in those directions and so she wouldn't be able to teleport too much. She could use her flight to see far away and travel partly by air, but cold wind, constant vigilance and frequent jumps were bound to be tiring. Toki would also most likely get a cold, at best, because her clothes were warm but seriously not made for high-altitude.
So no for North or South. She had to stick with places she knew.
Second plan: stay here. She was already kinda familiar with the area. There were mountains and a forest not far, so she could go and explore, and it would made for a great hiding place in case of pursuit… As well as a good training ground. People were nice and didn't ask many questions. They also already knew about her, or well, about the cover version her mom had given them for the seven years they had lived here. Toki could say that her mom was back in town, stay vague, and since people had actually known her mom and her busy schedule, they wouldn't think she was lying. Those were some solid pros.
Cons: people knew her. They knew she was a teleporter, and it was even in this very town that Toki had awakened her Quirk. If AFO started digging for intel about a teleporter, his research would lead him here, inevitably. Another cons: Sayuri had been a mother-hen and people here knew that, so they would immediately sniff out the lie when Sayuri failed to shadow her daughter everywhere. Actually, they would sniff it even earlier, when they realized Toki wasn't at school. It wasn't a big city, there were only two primary school after all.
So, no staying at Hinohana.
Third plan: go somewhere else that she knew, like Musutafu. And then… and then, well, it opened other options.
(Also, apparently All Might's agency wasn't in Musutafu, which was a coastal city between Shizuoka and Fuji. There was an office there, where Toki had sent her notebook. But the main building, Might Tower, was infucking Tokyo. Meteor had been living right under his nose! But All Might wasn't often here. He had local offices in the whole country, including one in Musutafu where Toki had sent her notebook. Apparently the Number One Hero liked to travel and to have anchor points in the whole country. Well. At least there was nowhere truly out of his reach? Toki almost considered staying to the city of his real agency, then shrugged it off. Musutafu was big, it had Nedzu and Yūei and a lot of kind-hearted canon-charactesr. Also, if there was a fight, well… Endeavor was based here, he was nothing to scoff at. Besides… It was where her mother was hospitalized. If she was still there, then… then… maybe Toki could try to see her, and…)
So. Musutafu. What were her options?
Toki could live homeless for a bit before turning to the foster system, but that plan wasn't actually safer in Musutafu that it would have been away from here. Doctor Sociopath had been, after all, based in Musutafu. So Toki could also go to the police, admit her connection to Ryūsei Taiyōme and Sayuri Aratani, codenames Meteor and Eclipse, and hope for the best. She would end up in the foster system, in a good family and with the law enforcement watching over her, but her anonymity would be shot to hell. If AFO (or any villain!) came looking, she may as well be gift-wrapped for him. Last option: go to All Might himself and ask for his protection. He knew about AFO (unlike the police) and the danger he represented. Even if Toki pretended to not know about the Quirk-stealing business, All Might would know. He would realize how precious a teleporting Quirk was. Maybe he would help Toki disappear…
Or maybe he wouldn't, Toki thought with a scowl. All Might wasn't the sharpest spoon in the drawler. Especially when it came to children.
Let's be real: All Might was pretty irresponsible in canon. Of course, it was expected because the Plot had to jumpstart somehow, but.Well. He promised one of the most powerful Quirks in the world to an emotionally unstable fourteen years-oldthe day he met himafter seeing himcharge into dangerwith no regard for his well-being, then gave it to himwithout his guardian's knowledge or consent. Plus it was only hours prior to the entrance exam, which didn't give him enough time to test it out beforehand, and All Might's 'warning' about the repercussions it would have on his body was minimal.YesAll Might didn't know how badly Midoriya was going to be hurt, but still! When handling such a powerful thing, you should be just atiny bit cautious, you know? All Might even said that had an idea that this kid would break his goddamn bones using OFA, but didn't do anything about it, because he… hadn't thought about it? Sure his heart was in the right place, he was an incredible fighter and a devoted person, but really, he was either an airhead or wildly irresponsible. Or both.
And it wasn't the only time All Might had proved himself to be reckless with other people's wellbeing! Later in canon, during combat training, he didn't stop Midoriya and Bakugou from wrecking each other, even though he knew that he should have. Then during the Sports Festival, Endeavor basically said to his face that Shouto was only a tool to him. Then there was the entirety of the practical exam which had Midoriya and Bakugou fight All Might... yeah that was super fucked up. None of the other exams got that violent.
ANYWAY. All Might had done a ton of bad stuff, not because he had bad intentions, but because he was just incredibly oblivious or negligent at times. His scale of 'thing that are too violent' was probably a bit screwed. He did try his best, but sometimes it was okay,good even, to take a step back and admit you can't help, you're untrained or unsuited to help, and that the situation would be better handled bysomeone else.
Also, to get back to the real problem… Did All Might have any connection to help get a child to safety? The only canon-comparison Toki had was Eri's situation, and All Might had been utterly uninvolved in that. If Toki came knocking, All Might would probably foster off the problem on the only children's expert he knew: Nedzu, the headmaster of Yūei. Except that Nedzu probably didn't know about AFO yet! Toki wasn't sure about it, but she thought that in canon All Might had only told him because he had been looking for a successor. Which he didn't yet. Back to square one.
Well at least she had options in Musutafu. Worse came to worse she would sneak into Yūei and see how long she could live into the fake ceilings undetected. Yeah, that idea was pretty tempting. So, Musutafu it was!
And so, the adventure began.
oOoOoOo
Adventure was a bit less glamorous that what she had pictured. It was tiring and cold and lonely. But Toki managed. Homelessness wasn't pleasant, but teleporting was really useful to teleport inside of locked building and flying overly curious eyes.
The first days were the worst, because she was constantly second-guessing herself. How to go to Musutafu? Could she afford to dawdle during the trip? Should she hurry, or locate more anchor-points to teleport to? Where to eat? Was this guy watching her too closely? Where to sleep? Where to shower?
Fuck, she would never take a home from granted ever again. Not having a safe haven was hell.
Anyway. Toki's road trip. She still remembered the way by trains, so she decided to jump from station to station and explore the surrounding cities as much as she could. It would give her more 'anchor points' to jump to. So she teleported to the first station, took her duffel bag, and wandered all day long, trying to go as far as possible. She sneaked on a bus once, then teleported to rooftops later. Toki also draw little dots and cross on her maps to know where exactly her new anchors points were. She found some restaurants, a supermarket, a hotel, a park, a library, a school… And of course, she found a few secluded roofs that would make for great escape points.
She walked and walked and walked some more. At midday, she brought some food with her mother's cash, then continued her journey. She brought a map and, on an impulse, a compass. What? It helped her to orient herself. Also, it was a pretty brass compass with a Quirk-enhanced needle that wasn't disturbed by all the magnetic Quirks out there. It could come in handy.
Toki wandered all day long. Then she tried to find a place to rest, and finally decided on the library she had passed. She liked libraries: they had internet access, heating, and most importantly, books and comfortable places to read. Also, if she scouted the place during the day, she could teleport herself there to sleep the night if needed. So, after an early dinner, she went back to said library, waited around until it was closed, then teleported inside. The place was scarier in the dark, and the air was a little chilly, but it wasn't bad.
Toki slept on a little couch, wrapped in her blanket. She jerked awake several times during the night, terrified at the idea of finding a dark figure looming over her. In the morning, she took off an hour before opening time, which was dreadfully early and left her tired and cranky. She brought breakfast at a nearby bakery, then went back to the library (which was now open) to nod off a little. She only left when she felt a little more rested and when the librarian's concerned look started to turn really suspicious.
Then she jumped to the next station, in the next city. Then the next, the day after that. Rinse, then repeat.
She avoided stealing. She brought her own food. She couldn't exactly pay for a place to sleep, but she tried to find a place where she wouldn't bother people. A library was best, of course, but there were also furniture's retailers (their beds were the comfiest). Toki had to be crafty sometime. She had to keep an eye out for people who paid too much attention, who could have bad intentions or simply wanted to report a homeless child to the police. She had to be careful with her clothes, as she didn't know where to wash them, and didn't have the means to mend them. When she was tired during the day, she had to find a safe place to rest, but keep an eye open. She showered at night, in the showers' room of deserted gyms or swimming pools. She had to be careful to dry off and stay warm, because if she caught a cold, there would be no mom or dad to bring her medicine… and it was one thing for a kid to buy food or clothes, but medicine? That was the adults' job. The pharmacist would immediately be suspicious.
So Toki was careful, and stayed under the radar. She avoided cops. Heroes, too, were to be watched out for.
Not that they were particularly noisy, but there were always two or three patrolling the area and unlike most people, they didn't just stick to ground level. Once Toki jumped on a roof and ended up eyes-to-eyes with a big, hairy gorilla-dude in a black and red jumpsuit and it nearly took out ten years of her life. Toki had managed to teleport away before the gorilla-dude could even open his mouth (although in the split-second before her jump, she had saw him flail around enough to guess he had been as taken aback as her!). But that surprise wasn't an experience she was eager to repeat.
Rooftops, telephonic poles, secluded ledges and all those places that Toki had unconsciously categorized ashers, because no one was there normally, were actually on most heroes' patrol routes. In her old neighborhood, she had never seen heroes there, but… The area where Meteor's Crew had lived had been avoided by both the heroes and the police. So yeah, it had been the idea playground for a young teleporter. But now, she had to scramble to change strategies, and get used to the fact that she didn't have the monopole of high-perched hiding places anymore.
She still used the rooftops, of course. The air, too, jumping in the void and teleporting higher or further away, like some kind of disjointed flight. It was her turf, there was no way she was going to give it up. Besides, she loved the thrill of being able to jump impossible distances between building, or the feeling of defying gravity. She was just a little more careful about her surroundings, that was all.
So that was Toki's new routine. Jump, explore, find a place to sleep, a place to wash, a place to eat, some places to hide. Make small talk with cashiers if they initiated, but never volunteer any relevant information. Look happy and innocent. Make up lies about a dad at the hardware store, a mom busy with a baby brother, a cousin at school who had forgot his lunch, a train to catch, whatever. Stay alert. If someone followed her, turn into an empty street and teleport on the closest roof.
Nine time out of ten, it was a false alarm, but once Toki leaned over the edge of the roof and saw the guy who had been following her look in the empty alley, swear, look behind the trashcans, and leave looking really displeased.
Maybe it was just a nice passerby who was concerned about a kid alone on a school day. Or a police officer who took his duty very seriously and intended to give her a serous dressing down for skipping classes. But there were others, worse options… And the whole scene had given her chills.
Toki reached Mustafu in a week. Eight day, eight jumps, eight stations and their neighborhoods thoughtfully explored. Then it was time to settle in Musutafu, and… map the area.
There were a lot more heroes than in the cities she had crossed. She had to be extra-careful in her exploration of the rooftops. Fortunately, most heroes stuck to ground level to greet fans, talk with patrolling policemen, or just keep a closer eye on what happened in the streets. After all, most crimes didn't happen on roofs, but on the ground! On her first day in Mustafu, Toki witnessed two villain chases! Nobody was hurt and there wasn't even propriety damage, so Toki wondered if most of it wasn't for show. The heroes needed the publicity, and the villains didn't face big sanctions if nobody was hurt. They also had their moment of glory, with their pictures taken and even a journalist recognizing them and screaming their pseudonym with excitement.
Musutafu was an exciting city to live into, but Toki started her adventure carefully. She looked around. She found libraries to sleep in, and parks to hang around, and fast-food to eat, and gyms to sneak in to shower. She stayed on her guard. The first night, she picked the wrong library: she triggered an alarm during the night, and had to flee in catastrophe to avoid heroes. It wasn't her only close brush with them. She ran at least four times into an acrobat dressed like a ballerina, who used the roofs as much as she did.
She mostly ate on-the-go food from streets vendors, but sometimes it was better to eat sitting down in a warm place and Toki hung out in cafés or fast-food for a while, and there were always sidekicks or heroes taking a break nearby. Seriously, the first days were nerve-wracking. Then… Well, after a week, Toki got used to it. She adapted. She didn't tense so much when she saw a bright uniform from the corner of her eye. She learned which heroes frequented which parts of the city.
Once or twice, she was even bold enough to approach one of them, playing the wide-eyed child and asking as many questions as she dared.
It had been a while since she had analyzed Quirks, after all! Well, it wasn't hard to find a nice roof and watch heroes and villains, and to guess what their powers were. The ballerina hero had either surreal ninja-training or had a Quirk related to her weight, allowing her to jump high and land either very softly or with all the force of a pneumatic hammer. Two heroes had a water Quirk and worked with another one who had an earth-bending ability. Then there was a guy with super-speed… A girl who controlled projectiles (although it didn't seems to be quite telekinesis, more like the ability to control the trajectory of any object already in movement)…
Some heroes didn't have time for a child. But most sidekicks were very pleased with her interest. They all talked feely about their Quirk, bragging almost.
"Yeah, I can affect the vectors. Augment the velocity of stuff, change its direction… It only works with object of a certain weight, though. That's why I use kunai and shurikens! It's light enough…"
"And it also makes you look like a cool ninja?" Toki guessed, her pen hovering above the page.
Sharpeyes, a heroine with long flowing silver hair and a black outfit that vaguely resembled both a ninja costume and a swimsuit, laughed:
"That too! We all like ninjas in the family. I have a cousin that just graduated, and his hero costume is ninja and samurai themed. He like a walking advertisement for Japan's medieval history."
Toki snorted. The other sidekick sitting at the table leaned forward, interested:
"He joined Accuracy's agency in Yokohama, didn't he? Think one day you'll join forces and make a ninja-themed agency?"
Toki nodded enthusiastically. What? Ninjas werecool. They had shurikens andswords. Toki was a calm, collected, mature kid but Sometimesshe saw heroes fight and she wanted a sword more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.
Sharpeyes made a face: "Ugh, no, I'm perfectly happy staying in Musha-san agency. But Shinya… I mean, Edgeshot will probably fund his own agency one day. He wants to make it into the top ten heroes!"
Toki carefully didn't choke on her saliva, although she was absolutelysurethat Edgeshot had been a canon character. And since his aesthetic was ninja-and-samurai… Yeah, she could see which hero it was. One of those who fought in the Kamino arc? Wow. Well, it looked like in a decade or so, Sharpeyes' cousin would have his wish. Because Edgeshot had been one of the top ten heroes if Toki remembered correctly! Wow, what were the odd of running in his cousin? Although, Sharpeyes wasn't a canon character so maybe she would be retired by the time the canon-storyline would begin…
Anyway. Toki's main interlocuters began to be sidekicks. It was a good thing. Social interactions were important to the human brain's development, or so Toki had read. She loved her notebooks, but really, they weren't a substitute for real company. She wrote less poetry these days. Maybe she had used it as a coping mechanism, to live with her loneliness. Ah! It would be ironical to be less lonely now, homeless in a strange city filled with potential enemies, that she had been home surrounded by her family! But well, it was apparently the case. Toki still wrote in her poetry notebook, but not as often. Her prose was also shorter, somehow both hopeful and strangely bitter.
What part of yourself did you have to destroy
in order to survive in the world this year?
But most importantly:
what have you found to be unkillable?
And so, it was her life. Going from hero fights to cafés, from libraries to parks. Toki looked for parks after schools' hours and tried to mingle with others children, because it felt good to play tag or join crazy contests of climbing the highest tree, but she didn't really make friends there. She also stalked library and frantically read everything she could get her hands on. She started with sciences books because… well…astrophysicist. But it was really too easy to be sidetracked and to read about the cold war, or the rainforest, or anything really. Toki only realized how far she had been sidetracked when she found herself reading an introduction to the Enlightening's philosophies and ideals. Because pre-French revolution doctrine had little to do with what she had been looking for in the first place, which was the history of space and teleportation-related Quirk.
But most of her meaningful conversations happened in fast-foods or cafés with hopeful sidekicks that liked the attention. Toki couldn't help but feel like it was a little overconfident of them (what if she was a villain's spy?), but hey, she wasn't going to complain.
Besides… Living like this, homeless, even with the relative comfort of knowing she had money to eat, and could always find a place to sleep… It was lonely. Toki liked talking with people. She liked asking questions and receiving answers, share her excitement about something, get laughs to her jokes, receive warm smiles and sincere interest in her thought process. She liked being heard, and sometimes she almost slipped and told them about her own Quirk, or about the fact that she didn't exactly have a place to live, or how she avoided getting too deep in thought because the loneliness and lack of permanent safety scared her.
Back to the point. After a week in Musutafu, Toki accidentally watched the news in a coffee shop… And felt a jolt of horror when there was a short advertisement for a missing child…with her picture in it.
Shit.
The picture was one taken at school six months ago (neither her mom or her dad had been fan of photographs…), where she had her hair down, but she was clearly recognizable. Also, her name was apparentlyToki Taiyōme. She had a moment of wild perplexity before remembering it was her father's name, and probably her legal name. She was so used toToki Aratanithat it had skipped her mind. Still, that report was bad news. Toki was listed as being missing in Tokyo, and her Quirk wasn't mentioned, but… Well. It was bad news nonetheless.
The good thing was that absolutely nobody had recognized her so far. Probably because Toki stood tall and with a confidence better suited to a pre-teen than to a child, or maybe because of her twin buns (people tended to focus on such a distinctive hairstyle), or because it was winter and Toki hid most of her face with a beanie and a scarf… Or maybe just because people weren't very observant. None of the sidekicks Toki spend time with (and there was nearly twenty of them!) had never remarqued she was homeless!
Toki didn't know if she should be appalled at their lack of observational skills or proud of her own talent. After all, she went to great pains to hide her… predicament.
She was clean and casually dressed. She ate a (moderately) balanced diet. She washed her clothes once a week in a laundromat that didn't ask questions (especially since she went early in the morning, when there was nobody else). She had acquired a workbook and two middle-school level manuals (one for math, the other for general science) and made a show of working on them when she stayed in cafés, to look like she was busy. Also, her hairstyle with twin buns was kind of recognizable, but it also hid what her disaster her hair was. It had been a year since she had her hair cut. When she didn't braid and pin it in buns, it was a wild mane that would have well-suited a feral child raised by lions. Badly groomed lions.
But back to the point. Toki was extra-careful, but she was confident in her strengths. She had mapped the place. She had hideouts. She was blending in.
So, thirteen days after her arrival in Musutafu, she tried to sneak in the hospital where she had last seen her mother.
"It's a bad idea," she told a friendly pigeon on her favorite roof. "I know it's a bad idea. Even if the police hadn't guessed that it was me who send them the notebook… Well, the moment the wordsnotebookandQuirk-analysiswere pronounced, Mom has probably guessed it. She is going to be spitting mad. She loved Dad more than anything."
More than Toki, at least. And yeah, it hurt a little bit. But the fact that her mother had loved her less than Meteor didn't mean that she hadn't loved her at all. Just like the fact that Toki had valued Meteor's victims didn't mean that she hadn't valued her family. It was just that… She had prioritized. They all had.
"But I should try, shouldn't I?" she asked the pigeon. "I mean, she's just here. I should at least try to make sure she's alright."
The pigeon cooed, and went on to peck at the roof, trying to eat the last crumbles of Toki's sandwich. The young girl raised her eyebrows:
"Thank you for the vote of confidence."
She would have liked a real person to bounce off ideas. But well, she could hardly talk to the sidekicks about it. Most of them didn't even know her name (and to those who asked, Toki had introduced herself as 'Toki Hinohara' because she didn't dare use her real surname). They all thought she was an overly curious, above-average intelligent child, but not much more. Which was good, because the least thing Toki needed was to attract their attention. Being noticed by the sidekicks would mean being noticed by the heroes, then the police, then the foster system, then All For One. Yeah, nope, not happening.
"Still, I need to stop talking to pigeons," Toki sighed. "It's not really an indicator of great mental health. No offense to you, pal."
The pigeon flapped away, looking offended. Pfff. Some birds really had sensitive egos!
So. Toki started elaborating a plan to sneak into the hospital. Good thing she had already been here before. She waited for the evening, a few minutes before the end of visiting's hours. She changed her clothes, changed her hairstyle (a high ponytail), put a cloth mask (very common, and also useful to hide your identity), then teleported on the floor where she had last seen her mother. The hallway was deserted. Good. Toki mentally congratulated herself on her timing… Then she started to explore.
She didn't remember exactly which room was her mother's, because her memories of that day were kind of… faded. Yes, she should have been paying more attention, she knew! But hey, she had been shaken. That kind of thing happened, right? And she still remembered enough to get inside the hospital, so there was that. Now, she only had to find the right room… She was sure it had been left… Three, maybe four doors after the stairs? Hummmm…
She knocked on one door, then stuck her head in the opening, trying to look innocent: "Mom?"
Empty room. Crap. She closed the door, then tried another. This time there was a middle-aged woman, who gently told her she had the wrong room. Toki meekly apologized, then continued her search. Another door… Another…
When she opened the seventh, she froze. It was the right one, she recognized the windows and everything. But her mom wasn't here. Instead, there was a young police officer, sitting on a chair and holding her black notebook in his hands.
"Wait!" he exclaimed in a rush when he saw her. "Please don't go, I know where your mother is!"
If he knew where Sayuri was, then he also knewwhoshe was, and whoTokiwas. The young girl narrowed her eyes without answering, but she didn't leave. She stayed unmoving in the doorway.
"You're Toki Taiyōme, aren't you?" the man said in an encouraging tone. "I'm Naomasa Tsukauchi. I know you're the one who send the notebook to All Might so he could save you."
Toki was immediately pissed off. By his presence or his phrasing, she didn't know, but it ranked. Saver her?! Nobody had saved her. Who did that man think he was, smiling at her condescendingly like that, like she was a victim to be pitied?!
"What," Toki sneered, "you expect me to fall to my knees in gratitude because some himbo who look like America vomited on him usedmyintel to boosthisreputation and still managed to make a building collapse in the process?"
Yeah she knew she was a bit hypocritical about it, All Might hadn't acted for fame and he certainly hadn't wanted all those victims. The casualties were Meteor's fault, not his. Still, everyone thought that All Might was perfect but what had happenedwasn'tperfect, and Toki needed to be pissed with something, sothere. She was a homeless, lonely child and she wanted her mom and she wanted things to not have ended up here, so yeah, she was bitter about it. And if Tsukauchi wasn't happy about it he could go suck a dick.
"All Might didn't save me," she added defiantly, while the policeman was gaping like a fish. "I saved myself. I don't owe him shit."
Tsukauchi raised his hands in a placating gesture: "All right. Ok. You don't owe him. But people are still worried about you."
Toki shrugged. Her heart was beating wildly. It was scary to face down a police officer, but not that scary since she could always escape. And it was also freeing, in a way. With the kids in parks, the sidekicks in cafés, the cashiers or the people in the laundromat, Toki always presented a front. Now she could drop the mask and talk about what had happened to her, and it felt both frightening and exhilarating at the same time. Because she was angry, and lost, and grieving, andfurious, and she could say it now. She was allowed to.
"Who? My mom?"
"For starters, yes."
"Even though I sold her out? She has to know it was me. Where is she?"
"In a different hospital," Tsukauchi answered levelly. "She was very upset after what happened, and it made her a little unwell. Her pregnancy is difficult, but you already know that. The best doctors are taking care of her. She should recover in no time."
It was a relief. Or it could be a total lie. Toki ruminated it a few second, and Tsukauchi used this opportunity to continue, in a softer voice:
"She still cares about you. But there's also others people. Me, for example. Children aren't meant to fend for themselves. Where are you living?"
"Here and here."
"You're homeless? Since the arrests, three weeks ago?"
Gods, had it been three weeks already? It couldn't be right. But Toki mentally did the math and yes, it had been a Sunday when Meteor had been caught, and she had been exploring the last train station before Musutafu on the following Sunday, so that was one week, and after that she had arrived Musutafu, then wandered in the city, and spent the following Sunday in the library, so that was two weeks, and there had been another Saturday two days ago, so yeah, it was three weeks. Wow.
"I managed."
"It isn't safe," Tsukauchi tried. "There are institutions that exist to help children like you who can't stay with their parents. Foster families that will take care of you while you grow up. You will have you own place to stay, you could go back to school, live a normal life. I know you're very clever. Don't you want to cultivate this intelligence, go to college, instead of having to fight for survival?"
Toki hesitated. He was right. But… it still didn't feel safe. It was too soon. The wound was too raw, her paranoia too high. There was All For One. The danger. And the fact that Toki didn't feel confident letting her fate rest in the hands of strangers. That guy probably wasn't working for the bad guys, and he only wanted to help her, but… he didn't have all the information.
"I'm not ready," she said truthfully. "If you have a card or something, I'll come back to you when I am. Or well, when I've got a phone."
"I can get you one," offered Tsukauchi.
"Yeah, with a GPS in it? No thanks. I'll get my own."
Tsukauchi sighed, and held out to her a small printed card: "You're really distrustful, aren't you?"
Toki eyed him warily, then walked slowly in the room, before stopping a reasonable distance away. The police officer waited a few second, then put the card on the bed, as far away from him as he could, before stepping back. Quickly, Toki grabbed the piece of paper, then retreated a few steps. She probably looked ridiculous, trying her hardest to stay out of his reach when she could literally teleport away, but hey. Better to be overly cautious then to be caught.
"Your mother would probably love to see you," Tsukauchi tried.
"Did she say that verbatim?"
He hesitated: "Not really. But she loves you."
She did. Just as Toki loved her. But love didn't negate anger, and both Sayuri and Toki had plenty of reasons to resent the other. Maybe they would be reunited again later, but for now they were… drifting away. And the rift between them would not be so easily bridged.
Love doesn't make your hands clean. It just makes them warm.
"I know," Toki said softly. "But she can't keep me safe, and you can't either."
But when Tsukauchi tried to open his mouth to speak, she didn't wait to listen. He had nothing to say that she didn't already know. She teleported away, and didn't look back.
(She kept the card. But she knew she wouldn't call him for help. Toki was too used to rely on herself.)
Notes:
So ! I really enjoyed writing this chapter. Meteor's last fight was great to write. Also Toki being on her own!
To anwser some questions...
Was Meteor really strong enough to stand against AFO and keep him out of his territory?
Oh no ! He was one of the strongest around, true, but more importantly: he didn't start gang wars. Nobody had beef with Meteor. Not even AFO. Meteor is extremely smart but not ambitious, which is one of the main reasons he stayed out of AFO's machinations. He never tried to encroach on his empire. Meteor fucked up some heroes and showered the underground with money, so AFO approved and never tried to interfere.
Like most big names villains, Meteor knew AFO existed. But they mostly dealt into separate business, so their paths never crossed.
Which is a good thing, because I don't think Meteor would have survived the encounter.
There was a police officier whose job was to sit in Sayuri's hospital room to try and catch her runaway daughter? And is that who I think it is?
Yes and yes! Toki is a runaway who can to teleport (and so, can't get caught unwillingly) but who also happen to be a key-witness in Meteor's case. They don't knowfor sureshe is the source that allowed All Might to catch that villain, but considering they ransacked Sayuri's appartement and found writing samples that matched the black notebook, they strongly suspect. Also Sayuri's breakdown upon hearing it was an anonymously delivered notebook that allowed them to catch her must have clued them ina little.
So Tsukauchi as been tasked with waiting for a kid to sneak in the hospital looking for her arrested mother. Fun.
Anyway. In canon i think Tsukauchi is around twenty-five here, he's just starting as a detective, and he doesn't know All Might yet. He isn't a key-player. He just got the lowly job of trying to catch the teleporting kid because at this time, he's a convenient underling and using him mean that I don't have to make an OC! xD
Also : Toki absolutely didn't reconize him (or his name) so she doesn't know he's a canon-character of some importance... which has some comedic potential if she met him again later.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter ! The next one should be here in two or three weeks ! =)
EDIT 12/08/2022
Lots of spelling mistakes were corrected. A few weird sentences were untangled. Correction about how All Might's headquarters aren't in Musutafu (that's just Yūei). Toki sneak in the hospital thirteen days after her arrival in Musutafu instead of eleven (detail, i know).
Chapter 6: A stroke of luck
Summary:
Toki's fate takes a sharp turn right. Or wrong, depending how you see it.
Notes:
Well, this is it. Everyone who guessed it from the tags or just the fact that Toki is actually a small child with a powerful Quirk... Congrat! Toki is getting off the streets!
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
A STROKE OF LUCK
Days passed. Toki had now been on the run for five weeks. It was March. The whole adventure was starting to really be draining.
No physically, not really. Toki never slept in the cold, since she broke in various places as needed. She never went hungry either. But to always be on the move, to constantly watch her surrounding, to never really be able to talk to people… it was exhausting. Sometimes she cried herself to sleep without knowing how to make it stop.
She missed her mom. She missed her dad. She had no right to miss them, and yet… and yet… They werehers, and she missed them.
She tried not to think about it.
Anyway. Maybe it was so hard because being on the run seemed sopointless. She had seen neither hide or hair from All For One and his minions.
Maybe because it was she stuck to the good parts of Musutafu and not the poor areas. The poor areas weren't reallydingyeither (no area in Japan really was, since misery had been all but eradicated in this part of the world), but… it was the kind of place where there were actual homeless people huddling in the corners and no cops on patrol: the kind of place where villains were more likely to plan a kidnapping. At least by sticking to the popular areas and taking the risk of being seen by heroes, Toki was afforded said heroes' protection.
But maybe it had nothing to do with her smart choices. Maybe she had been jumping at shadows when she had decided to run? But again, maybe not. And she wouldn't have been safe in Tokyo either, as the daughter of a notorious murderer. Actually, Toki wasn't sure she could be safe anywhere outside of witness protection. Did Japan give new identities to children of villains? She couldn't recall.
Then Toki got caught in an accident.
It happened while she was wandering thought the city, walking along a bridge. A car honked, there was a scream of metal and then Toki flung herself backward acting on pure instinct, narrowing avoiding the two cars that fell into the river below. One vehicle passed so close to her that Toki could see the horror on the face of the woman behind the wheel. It was over in a blink: the two cars fell into the river with an exploding splash of water, and started sinking. Toki hadn't even had time to yelp.
In the bridge, there was a second of shocked silence, then people started screaming.
"Shit, have you seen that?!"
"There were people in those cars!"
"Where are the heroes? Call for help!"
Toki stayed petrified, her eyes glued to the river. She could see the trunk of the second car (the blue one, with the woman behind the wheel) completely fading from view. The river was deep, but the car was heavy, and it wouldn't be long until it touched the bottom. The cabin would fill with water, and if the passenger couldn't get out, they would drown, and Toki's brainreallydidn't want to get there but that woman had lookedso scared…
"Where are the heroes?!" screamed someone right next to her. "Someone do something!"
Toki's mind was blank. No one was doing anything. She realized she was gripping her duffel bag too tightly. She turned away, and saw a young woman right next to her, with cat's ears and a tortoise-shell colored hair (orange, black, and white, like a cat), who had her eyes closed as if she was praying. Without thinking, Toki trusted her duffel bag in the woman's arms, making her stumble back and opening her eyes in surprise. Green eyes, Toki absentmindedly noted. Jade eyes.
"Can you keep an eye on that for me? Thanks."
Without waiting for a reply, Toki focused on the image of the car (the inside of it, where the wide-eyed woman was), and teleported.
She had no idea if it was going to work. She hadn't thought about it, she wasn't actually thinking, she had just wanted, or maybe reacted, and then, in a blink, she appeared in the car. She immediately bumped her head and fell backward against the door: the woman, who was half-out of her seat, scrambled back with a shocked cry. Water splashed andfuckit was cold, and it was dark, andshe was inside the car.
"Wow, it worked," Toki's mouth said without any input from her brain.
"What?" the woman said weakly.
Toki actually tried to get some thought process online, came up empty-handed, and improvised:
"Er, hi? I'm here to help."
And that's when water splashed some more, there was a shrill cry, and Toki realizedthere was a baby.
It was actually an infant, maybe six month old or something. Small, kind of squishy, a puff of dark hair that stood almost upright on its head, in a blue onesie, safely strapped in a car seat. It was dark underwater so Toki couldn't see clearly, but there was a baby here, and that suddenly explained why the woman was half-out of her seat instead of being half-out of her car. Shit,there was a baby in there. Toki froze, looking at the kid in something akin to horror, and the mom begged her:
"Take him, please take him. I can't get the seatbelt off, I'm trapped, please take him…"
The car was almost vertical and there was water nearly to the edge of the backseat. It reached higher than to the woman's waist, so half the car, it wasn't touching the baby yet but it was dripping from the car's doors' grooves, and it was filling the cabin quickly, and Toki had never tried to teleport with someone before. Her brain felt like it was spinning out of control, too many thoughts at the same time but nothing coherent, nothing useful. There was math to calculate the volume of water that would fill the car, and how long did she have, and how long could humans hold their breath, and when would hypothermia set in, andcould she teleport out with the kid? Could she teleport out with the mom?She didn't know if she could do it, but she wasn't actually thinking straight, she was soaked and cold and her heart was pounding harder than any time before. She gripped the baby by its armpits, closed her eyes, jumped…!
She reappeared right next to the calico-cat-lady, who startled at her arrival. Toki blinked down at the toddler in her arms (holy shit, she had done it), and absurdly realized he was quite heavy. She hadn't thought he would weight anything. But it was a real person, screaming and kicking, the feet of his little onesie soaking wet. His hair was purple in daylight. He was heavy, and loud, andalive.
Toki took a big breath, then blindly trusted the toddler in calico-lady's arms.
"Please hold him. His mom is still there."
She hadleftthe mom here, and it was unacceptable.
When Toki reappeared in the car, the woman was yanking at her seatbelt. The outside air had kicked Toki's brain back online, and her memory helpfully coughed up some half-remembered advice about how to get out of rubble after an earthquake, how to stay safe during a flood, how to survive a plane crash, and… how to exit a car sinking.
Step one, get seatbelt off. Step two, not panic. Step three: wait until the water filled the cabin so the water pressure inside was equivalent to the pressure outside the car's door. Step four: open the door and swim up.
"Stop yanking!" Toki stammered. "Hold still so the seatbelt isn't tense, and then just click it open!"
She shoved the woman's shoulders down, and (maybe because she was in shock) the mom let her do it. The water was now reaching past her waist. It was so fucking cold. The woman and Toki both fumbled for the seatbelt buckle in the water and it took several long, agonizing seconds until one finger managed to press the button at the right angle. The belt loosened. The water was now reaching to the woman's chest.
"Alright," Toki faltered. "The water is pushing the doors closed so we need the car to be full to open the doors. And we need to not panic."
The woman looked at her. She wasn't crying, but her eyes (purple, bright purple, so much like Sayuri's that Toki's stomach dropped) were wide and shiny. Her voice trembled:
"I can't swim. Please, you should… You got Hicchan out, didn't you? My son?"
Toki nodded dumbly. The tears started running down the woman's face. The freezing water was now reaching past her chest, and lapping at Toki's tights on the backseat. It was so dark. How deep was that damn river?!
"Can you get me out the same way?!"
"I don't know," Toki said, feeling like her whole body was numb. "I don't know, my limit is around twenty kilos but adrenaline may help, I don't know…"
She was going to cry, she realized. She must have looked terrified, because the woman took her by the shoulders, gently, and shook her.
"Please save yourself," the woman whispered. "You can teleport, but… I can't swim. I can't swim, I can'tswim."
But she looked so scared, and all Toki could hear wasI don't want to die. The water was now up to her neck, up to Toki's waist. There wasn't much air left in the car.
Too many thoughts were spinning wildly in Toki's head. How much air, how much time, what had possessed her to go teleport inside a sinking car, she needed to run, she couldn't leave that woman here, she was going to die, she didn't want to die, she didn't want to watch anyone die…
And then, in the middle of her panic, there was a spark of fire, something that snarledno. She thought about the way her mom had avoided her eyes after bringing her to Meteor, the way the evening news had flashed with the number of casualties after the robbery, how Nono had sneered 'play stupid games, win stupid prizes', how the stun grenade had exploded on their kitchen's table, how Homura's fire had caught a hero climbing up to their apartment, how Fujio's gunfire had cut out, how Meteor had roared as the building came crashing down, and the spark became a roaring fire.NO.
She didn't ever want to feel this small and scared and powerless again, and she wanted to cry, she wanted to scream,no, NO, she rejected it!
"Your eyes…!" started the woman, jerking back.
Toki gritted her teeth, grabbed the woman with both arms like the world's most ferocious hug, andjumped.
The woman and her fell in a tangle of limbs on the sidewalk, right in front of calico-lady.
"Ow."
"Hicchan!" gasped the woman, scrambling upright to take back her son.
Toki got back up a little bit slower. The jump hadn't been as tiring as a seventy-kilometers one. More physical, but not as exhausting. Maybe the distance and the weight used different 'muscles' of her Quirk?
She looked back at the river. There were… people getting out of the water. The second car's occupants had managed to escape. A few second later, an amphibian-looking hero in a blue costume dived in the river. A bit further away sounded the sirens of an ambulance. Toki breathed deeply, relieved. It was over. Help was here.
Everything would be fine.
The passersby were starting to notice the soaking and crying woman, though, and quickly a crowd formed, full of worried (and curious) people. One of them gave a blanket to the woman. Another did the same with Toki, who suddenly realized she was drenched in cold water too, and was shivering pretty violently. She hesitated, but accepted the blanket. She really didn't want to catch a cold… Although, she had been in a freezing river for several minutes, so unless she took a warm bath right now, she wouldn't be spared. Gods, she hadn't had a warm bath in weeks.
"Here," the calico-woman said softly, giving her back her duffel bag, before turning to the onlooker. "Please, give her some space, you can see she's overwhelmed!"
Toki almost retorted that she wasn't overwhelmed but… Well, she didn't really like being the center of attention. Also, now that the adrenaline rush had passed, she felt a bit weak. She had teleported in an unknow space, then had teleported out with a passenger. It was a miracle that any ofthathad worked. A little part of her was scolding herself, because that had been reckless and dangerous, but the other part of her brain was like… What else could she have done? She couldn't just walk away and pretend she hadn't seen that woman fall.
Paramedics started arriving. Toki reluctantly got up. But before she could leave, the woman she had saved rushed to her, and bowed almost formally:
"I can't thank you enough! Without you… We would have both died."
Toki smiled awkwardly. She couldn't imagine that it was right. Saving someone life seemed so surreal. She had just… acted without thinking.
"It's nothing. I'm glad you're both okay."
"It's not nothing!" the woman insisted. "Please, is there anything I can do to thank you? At least let me pay to have your clothes dry-cleaned."
God, she was right. Toki was going to have to wash those or they would small like pond for weeks and contaminate the rest of her duffel bag! Urgh. Toki tried to think of an excuse, but her mind came up blank.
"Hum… Alright. I don't live here, so I need to find a place to change, but I'm swinging by the laundromat nearby that afternoon…"
"Nonsense! I live three streets away. Wait, let me give you my address."
The woman reached to her hip, then apparently realized she didn't have her purse. They both laughed, as if the absurdity of the situation was just hitting them. Toki reached in her duffel bag side-pocket, where she kept her notebooks. She took one of them, flipped to the last page and gave it with to the woman with the first pen she found. It was a bright pink and glittery, very girly. The woman giggled, then started writing. It was a bit awkward, since she still held her son in her arms. When she gave back the notebook, Toki saw that she had written her name, address, but also her phone number and an email.
"I'm Mihoko Shinsō," she introduced herself. "And this is Hitoshi." She gestured to her son.
Hitoshi had bright purple hair that stuck upright, unlike his mother's long and wavy lavender hair. But he had her eyes, big and purple. Curiously, he didn't have black pupils but white ones, reflecting the light like a cat's. Toki blinked.Wait. The kid had purple hair and eyes. His full name wasHitoshi Shinsō.No way… It couldn't bethatShinsō, right?
"I'm… Toki Hinohara."
Mihoko-san smiled so brightly it hurt, her eyes shining: "I'm very pleased to meet you, Toki-chan. You're a miracle!"
It was the first time Toki had been called anything like that. She couldn't help but feel oddly touched.
Then the paramedics showed up and Toki was ushered to an ambulance. She didn't teleport away because duh, where else was she going to get medical care anyway? So she let them pat her down for injuries, offer her a better blanket, and give her a warm drink. She said she had clothes in her bag, and they were all too happy to give some privacy to change. Her shoes were a lost cause, though, too wet and cold to be put on again. Toki had back-up shoes in her bag, but they were flat slippers. She was going to be so cold… Well, it would only be until her shoes dried off. She but on the slippers. At least she wasn't in danger of getting hypothermia anymore.
Gods, she suddenly felt exhausted. She wasn't used to so much stress! Alright, she lived a stressful life, but in general her anxiety stayed at a manageable level. She was familiar with her life and its risks. What had just happened was definitelynotpart of her routine and she really hadn't been prepared to handle that. She had teleported in a river! In a freezing cold river, in a sinking car that was filling with water! Thank gods she wasn't claustrophobic, because it was the stuff of nightmares. And she had really though she was going to watch someone die! That was way different from watching a building crumble from half a kilometer away. It was closer, more personal. More awful.
And she had saved someone. Wow. It was hard to digest it. It seemed so unbelievably ridiculous that her,Toki, could have such power. She had saved a human life. Well, actually, two human lives.
It felt… surreal. But good, too. A bit like the satisfaction of stopping a purse-snatcher and seeing the relief on their victim's face when their bag was given back to them, but deeper. More reverential. Toki had never saved anyone but herself, sometimes at the detriment of others. And now… She had helped. She had done something that mattered. Two unique, irreplaceable human beings were alive today because of Toki.She had done that.
Wow.
When the paramedics were done, they offered her a ride (which Toki declined). Mihoko insisted on bringing her home to thank her, and Toki decided to go along with it. Honestly, she was exhausted. If she could sit down in a warm place to drink tea an hour, that would be really great. No library would let her in if she looked like she had just crawled from a swamp, and she couldn't take a shower until gyms closed.
But just as the woman started showing her the way, the calico-lady appeared next to them. She looked a bit hesitant, but her eyes were shining with curiosity:
"I'm sorry to bother you. May I walk with you a few moments? I would like to talk with Toki-san."
Toki wasn't used to being called '-san', so she blinked incredulously. On second thought, that cat-woman was really young. Eighteen, nineteen max. She looked like she was barely out of high-school and used a lot of eyeshadow to seems older.
Oh, why the hell not. The cat-lady (cat-girl?) had kept her duffel bag safe after all. So Toki nodded: "Sure."
"Thank you," smiled the cat-lady. "I'm Kameko Sabira. Nice to meet you."
She really looked like a cat, with rounded triangular ears, big eyes that closed when she smiled, and even pointy canines. She wore a crisp white shirt and a dark pencil skirt, like a normal office worker, but she also had a few necklaces: two delicate silver chains, a gold one, and a neckerchief of sort with a fake bell as a pendant. Like a cat. Also, she was really cute.
Toki and Mihiko-san automatically introduced themselves, and they started walking. The accident was over but the place was crawling with curious people, drawn to the noise and the idea of a good story. They only needed to turn in the next street to be free of the crowd, though.
"What did you want to ask, Sabira-san?" Toki asked after a few seconds of silence.
The young woman smiled: "Your Quirk is astonishing. Have you ever thought of becoming a hero?"
Mihiko gasped: "It's true. You would be a fantastic hero, Toki-chan!"
The young girl laughed a little nervously. Becoming a hero? Toki's mind was drawing a blank. She hadn't thought about it since… Gods, since that day in the doctor's office when he had told her how amazing her power was. Then immediately Toki had been focused on finding the reasons behind Sayuri's refusal, and then… Well, with villains has parents, the idea of becoming a hero had simply never crossed her mind again.
"I want to become an astrophysicist," she finally said.
"The two aren't mutually exclusive," the calico-girl pointed out. "Heroes are also doctors and inventors, after all."
Were they? Well, Recovery Girl was a healer but also a doctor, so it made sense. Toki considered it, then shrugged: "Then I suppose I'm not opposed to the idea."
Sabira's smile made her eyes spark, like a kitten seeing Christmas' lights for the first time. She gave Toki a calling card, and the young girl took it, curious.
Kameko Sabira, Junior Assistant H. R.
Hero Public Safety Commission
It was like a jolt of lightning down her spine. Toki jerked her head up, searching Sabira's face for a sign, a clue, something: and when the young woman smiled meaningfully, Toki realized that sheknew. She had probably known from the moment Toki had used her Quirk in front of her.
"The Commission sometimes sponsors gifted children," said Sabira softly. "It's in no way an obligation. But the program can offer may things. Tuition, guardianship, a new identity, protection. And of course, a better future."
And Toki stood frozen, while the full weight of this plan's perfection fell in her mind.
The Commission. Of course. She hadn't thought of them at all, but they werethere. They had power. And they had formedHawks, hadn't they? Hawks, trained from a young age. Hawks, whose father was a criminal, just like Meteor, and who had used this program to hide his true name. Hawks, recruited because he had a powerful Quirk.Of coursethe Hero Commission would be interested in a teleporter. But unlike the guys Toki was running from… They were on the side of good guys.
Well, mostly. Shadowy organization were never good, and they had sent Hawks to spy on the Leagues of Villains even if it meant getting his hands dirty and maybe getting killed, but that was a topic for another time… The point was: they wouldn't sell Toki to All For One, in any case. They were against him. And unlike the foster care system, theycouldprotect her. The HPSC didn't know who or what Toki was running from, but anyone with half a brain could guess that she was running fromsomething. Maybe villains, maybe enemies of her father, maybe the weight of his name. But… The HPSC offered her what the administration couldn't: a fresh start. Andthey knew it. Sabira knew who Toki was and that waspreciselywhy she was making that offer, because she knew the offer could interest her, because that offer was no more and no less than a way out.
For a price, of course. No favor came free. Especially from shadowy organization.
Toki breathed in. Breathed out. She smoothed the paper with her thumb, then put the card in jeans' pocket. She didn't look away from Sabira. The young woman looked like an eager cat, with big round eyes shining with enthusiasm, and yes she was adorable, but Toki was also understandably wary.
"Can I get back to you in a few days with my answer?"
"Sure!" Sabira chirped happily. "Where do you want to meet? There's a cat café a few blocks away, Cats' Cappuccino, that's pretty nice."
Toki knew the place, although she had never entered it. She had actually never been in a cat café, since unaccompanied kids weren't really welcome there. But she loved cats. Just for that, the idea appealed to her. She nodded, trying to think quickly.
"Alright, so… Friday, at midday, if you agree to buy me lunch."
"Alright, Toki-san! See you on Friday, then."
Sabira cheerfully said her goodbyes to Mihoko, then bowed to Toki, before turning back and walking away, a skip in her steps. Toki couldn't help but let her thumb brush the paper in her pocket.
Gods, what was she getting herself into?
oOoOoOo
The last half-hour had been so surreal that when Mihoko wondered if Toki shouldn't be in school, the young girl barely took time to weigh her options before throwing caution to the wind and telling her she had ran away from home weeks ago. After all, she would have a hard time explaining her duffel bag filled with clothes, money, and books. But Mihoko didn't fret like Toki would have expected her to fret, which meant calling the police to inform them about the whereabouts of a runaway child. No, Mihoko started fretting about Toki. Apparently she was 'skin and bones' and 'could catch her death' and 'wasn't taking care of her health'. And she didn't brush her teeth right. Ok, Toki admitted skipping the teeth-brushing sometimes, but she didn't eat much candy, so that canceled each other out, right?
Well, wrong, and Toki was strong-armed into brushing her teeth beforeandafter eating. It made her a little nostalgic. Nobody had cared about that since… Since Mom, actually, before she started becoming distracted by her pregnancy, the robbery, and all the rest.
Anyway. Mihoko gave her tea, and biscuits, and asked how she keep up with her education while on the run, and if she needed help, and that was all. She didn't pry, and more importantly, she didn't lecture her. Maybe she just wanted to avoid spooking her. But it was till a relief.
Toki hated adults lecturing her, and she would have hated it even more if it had been about her homelessness. She felt relieved by Mihoko's tacit avoidance of the subject. Well, part of her wanted to talk about it, but it would also mean talking about Meteor and the robbery, and Toki couldn't bring herself to admit out loudall of thatto a woman who wasn't aware of that awfulness in the first place.
Mihoko was nice. She was chatty and always smiling, filling the whole room with her cheerful presence. She was an artist: she drew, painted, danced. She was also a part-time nurse working in the elderly care, but she had stopped after having her son. As a college student, her passion had been street art and graffiti, and she shared a lot of funny anecdotes about climbing building to tag their roofs and find the best place to paint a fresco. Now she tried to have a calmer and more orderly life, but she still enjoyed art expos, and had recently taken to rollerblading. She was a very active mom.
The apartment didn't bear much signs of a partner, though. Sure, there were pictures of Mihoko-san with a man, but no coat was thrown over the back of a chair, no pairs of slippers waited near the door. Toki enquired as delicately as possible… But Mihoko answered easily. No, she wasn't a single mom. She was happily married to her husband Hajime, who was a surgeon in Musutafu Central Hospital, but he basically lived here. His Quirk was "No Sleep" and, as he didn't tire or require breaks, he pulled hundred-hours shifts without any problem. He loved his work, and he wasn't often home. Maybe once a week, at most. That was why his shoes and slippers were out of the way, and why there was none of his stuff scattered around. But he and Mihoko loved each other very much, and apparently Hajime doted on their son.
Ah, Hitoshi… He was apparently nine months old: he had been born on the first of July. He mostly ate and sleep and crawled around, but he was cute, didn't cry much, and burbled happily when Toki held him. He didn't really speak yet, but he blabbed in incomprehensible baby-language as if wanting to participate in conversation.
Unwillingly, Toki felt herself soften. He was a cute baby. And he smiled at her with a big, gummy smile that light up his whole face, his big purple eyes shining with pure delight. How could someone look at this adorable expression and not felt their heart melt?
Well, if he was the canon Hitoshi Shinsō, it was a shame to know that he would grow up to have a grumpy face and terrible eyebags. But hey, if he was the canon Hitoshi Shinsō, that meant that Toki now knew where she was on the timeline! She was eight years old (and half). Since Hitoshi was roughly a year old, that meant Toki was going to be about seven years older than the protagonists-to-be, the class 1-A of Midoriya and Bakugou and Todoroki and all their gang. When the canon would begin, the students of class 1-A would be fifteen years old so Toki would be twenty-two.
It was enough time to obtain a Bachelor's degreeat least. Or enough time be an established hero, if she took Sabira's offer. She hadn't decided yet.
Mihoko didn't try to speak about it, but she did mention that whatever path Toki ended up following, she would always be welcome here. Actually, the Shinsō apartment was big enough to have a spare room, that was currently used as a study. But Mihoko started talking about how easy it would be to put a bed there, and that she had always wanted to furnish a guest's room…
"I wouldn't want to impose," Toki stammered. "I can handle myself!"
"I don't doubt it," Mihoko replied very seriously. "You are more level-headed, competent and mature than a lot of adults. But there are burdens you shouldn't have to bear, and I would like to ease them a little. It's the least I can do for the person who saved both mine and my son's lives. Besides, it would… it would make me happy to know you're safe."
Well, Toki couldn't exactly argue withthat. She tried to change the subject, and finally settled on:
"I will think about jumping by some time."
Mihoko snorted: "Yes, that is a convenient Quirk you have. But please, ring the doorbell first? I may have a heart attack if I walk in a room and you're already here."
"Of course!" Toki said indignantly. "I have manners!" a pause, then she amended: "Well, most of the time."
They shared a smile. A comfortable silence fell on the room. Toki drank some more tea, liking how the drink warmed her to her core. After a while, she impulsively asked:
"What is your Quirk, Mihoko-san?"
Judging by the way the woman stiffened slightly, it hadn't been a good choice of topic. Toki wavered. "Besides, hum, making very good tea and being exceedingly nice to strange children…"
"It's Brainwashing," Mihoko smiled bitterly. "I can take control of a person by touching them. I had a lot of trouble controlling it when I was young, but I don't, anymore. I haven't used it in years."
Well, that definitely confirmed it: her son Hitoshi would be the Brainwashing Hitoshi Shinsō from the canon. Toki mentally digested that. Mihoko threw a furtive look in her direction, then relaxed. Maybe she had expected scorn or mistrust (like Hitoshi would later on). Toki smiled awkwardly:
"Well, no Quirk is inherently bad or good. What matter is what we do with them."
"Well said," ginned Mihoko. "What about your Quirk? You can teleport?"
Toki hesitated, but she had already revealed a lot when she had jumped with Mihoko during her rescue. In for a pound…
"Yeah. I can carry stuff with me, but I have a weight limit. Adrenaline change those limits, though. That's why I was able to carry you."
"Yes, you said so," Mihoko said thoughtfully. "Is that an evolution or maybe a second level of your Quirk? Just before teleporting with me, your eyes flashed gold."
"My eyes didwhat?!"
"Not gold-gold," Mihoko corrected herself pensively. "More orange-gold, and luminous, like fire. You have very pretty eyes, like amber… And for a second if was like they were light up from the inside."
Toki didn't move, but her stomach twisted unpleasantly. She couldn't help but remember how Meteor's eyes had glowed like embers in the dark. She already had the adrenaline thing from him… Apparently, it wasn't the only aspect of her power that came from her father. Damn him.
But wasn't it unfair to blame him, was it? Like Toki had just said… No Quirk was inherently good or bad. It was only a tool. The morality of its use rested in the hand of the person it had been gifted to. Toki's Quirk came more from her mom (jumping from one space to another), but its power came from her father, and it wasn't good or bad, it simplywas. Besides, Meteor hadn't done anything to Toki. He had been a brute, a thief, a murderer, but he'd only hurt other people. Not his own. Toki… Sayuri, and the other members of his Crew… He had never been anything but kind with them. Toki's grievances were in the name of the countless people Meteor had hurt, against the general fact that he had thought acceptable to inflict pain on other human beings, but Toki hadn't been the one wronged. So why would she blame her Quirk for resembling her father's? It was like blaming herself for being related to him. It was just plain illogical.
"I wonder if that means my Quirk is evolving," she wondered.
"Oh, you still have plenty of time for that, Toki-chan. Quirk start evolving during teenagerhood, and you're… eleven?"
"Eight."
Mihoko did a double-take: "Eight?!"
Toki shrugged sheepishly. She was tall for a child her age (she had been the tallest girl in her class) so she was probably on the short side for a pre-teen, but it didn't seem impossible. The way she talked and carried herself also helped her to pass for older that she was. Mihoko did not dwell on the subject, but when Toki left a few hours later (when her clothes were done being washed then dried), she did insist even more vehemently about the fact that Toki would always be welcome here. Toki nodded, smiled, but didn't make any promise.
She jumped on a roof, and considered that episode of her life over and done with.
Now what?
Now, she had forty-eight hours until her meeting with Sabira in the cat café, and she needed to cross-examine her options. Well, for starters… What did she know about the HPSC? Not much. It was the Hero Public Safety Commission and, as it was written on the tin, their goal was to make sure the heroes kept people safe. Safe from villains but also from bad heroes, too. Toki suddenly realized that stumbling upon a few Wikipedia articles a year ago while researching Quirks' evolution wasn't going to cut it, so she teleported a few blocks away to go to a library she knew. Then she took a computer and started digging.
The Hero Public Safety Commission was a law enforcement agency responsible for managing the interactions between heroes and society as a whole and for investigating the most dangerous cases of criminality. Basically they regulated the rules pro-heroes had to follow, a bit like the Chamber of Pharmacist or the Department of Archeological Studies regulated what happened in the professional orders they headed. But the HPSC had a bigger role because in Japan, heroes were public servants, privateers, cops, andmilitary.
Japan didn't have a formal military beside the Self-Defense Forces: their army had been disbanded after World War Two and had never been reformed. In others countries, the military had slowly lost power and had become more of a National Guard than anything, while in Japan there had not been a military to start with, so the heroes hadn't had any concurrence in the 'big guns that people cheered on' department. Which actually was very tied to the hero-mania there was in Japanaaaaaand Toki had already verged off topic, so she grumpily abandoned this subject.
Back to the point. The HPSC was staffed by pro-heroes, retired pro-heroes, but mostly non-heroes. The goal was to improve the balance between heroes and regular member of society. Fair enough. The HPSC also had its fingers in a lot of pies. Just looking at the organization chart made Toki's head hurt. There was an ethic committee, a committee controlling merchandizing and fair competition, liaisons with insurances compagnies… The Commission was responsible for many hero-related matters, including the Hero License Exam. The HPSC also closely with the Police Force to coordinate hero teams, and also had the authority as a criminal investigative organization. Toki hadn't known that. But apparently it was kind of like the FBI, maybe? In any case, it allowed the HPSC to handle missions to heroes individually, to investigate and solve dangerous cases.
Like how Hawks had been ordered to infiltrate the League of Villains… Hum.
Toki's memories from that part of canon were fuzzy. Which was normal, after all it had been what, one page in a manga she had read in another life years ago? Well, Toki had mostly thought that this mission had been given somehow coercively, because the HPSC shouldn't have the authority to issue those orders. But apparently it wasn't? Or, well, it wouldn't. It was the Commission'sjobto give missions and instructions to heroes. Theydidhave the authority. Heroes could comply but also reject those assignments. Few would turn down that kind of mission, to be honest, and Toki didn't need a Wikipedia article to see it. Bringing down a criminal organization would save lives, and what heroes would turn away from this task, even if the cost was their own soul?
So Toki read, and read, and read. Two and half hours later, her eyes hurt and she had learned a lot about the HPSC, but she had seen no mention anywhere of children's sponsorship. Oh, the organization itself had goals that completely aligned with it. The Commission was, broadly, the part of the government that merged with the pro-heroes and controlled them. It would make sense for them to scout for children with powerful Quirks to nudge them in the right direction. Especially children living in poverty, or abused, or from villains' families: children who were at risk of turning to villainy. The nice and moral option would of course be to give these kids to the foster system so they could heal, and later on freely pick a path, buthey. Toki was avoiding the foster care system because it wasn't safe enough to protect her from villains, so maybe she shouldn't be judgmental here.
Well… Anyway. When Toki left, she had learned a lot. She still had questions, of course. But she realized that, in a sense, her decision had already been made.
Because, the important thing was: she was tired of running. She was tired of not having a place to call home, of only owning what she could carry in a bag, of being alone all the time. It was exhausting. And this sponsorship program was a way out. It was the only real plan towards a long-term future Toki had. If she stayed on the streets, then what? She couldn't go to school. She would eventually run out of her ill-acquired money. What would happen then? Running away had been a short-term plan. It had been a little over five weeks now, and that was already too long. Toki couldn't live like this forever. Sure, she could decide that enough time had passed and turn herself to the police and then foster care, hoping that her trail had gone cold… But if Toki ended up in the foster system, she would always look above her shoulder in fear of being tracked down by All For One's minions, or her father's enemies, or whatever.
The Commission was giving her a way out. A new identity, protection, tuition. And of course, Toki could always ditch them once she reached her majority. But their offer was really tempting. Even without knowing the price.
So yeah. Toki's decision had been made. She only had to ask Sabira a couple of questions to soothe her last reservations, and then… Well, she would embark on her new adventure.
oOoOoOo
Friday came. Toki packed her bag. It was lighter now. She had bought camouflaged little plastic containers and put money in then, before hiding them all across the city. In holes on the top of brick walls, on roofs, taped to the inside of fake ceiling in some libraries… If Toki ended up going to the HPSC, she didn't want to have all her money confiscated. Yes it was her mother's money, her mother'sstolenmoney, but still. She was well aware how worse her life on the streets could have been if she hadn't had the meant to pay for her food, but also to wash her clothes, buy library cards, and stuff like that.
Anyway. When Toki walked in the café, she saw that Sabira was sitting next an unknown guy in a suit, and narrowed her eyes suspiciously. But the young cat-woman light up at her arrival and literally waved at her, so it was too late to turn back. Toki joined them.
"Nice to meet you," smiled the man in a suit. "I'm Yokumiru Mera, from the Hero Public Safety Commission."
He was tall but lanky, with dark eyes, an angular face, and messy blondish hair. Toki nodded without saying anything. Her eyes flickered to Sabira, and the cat-girl smiled apologetically:
"I'm only a junior assistant who's been working at the Commission for less than a year. I had to bring up my superior, because… Toki-san, you're kind of too important for me to handle."
Toki couldn't help but snigger at the dramatic way Sabira had say it. Mera playfully rolled his eyes, then turned to Toki and smiled gently:
"Toki Taiyōme. What did Sabira-kun tell you, to begin with?"
Toki side-eyed the cat-girl, and answered slowly: "That the Commission sponsor gifted children and it's not dissimilar to witness protection. For that and from a quick google search about the Hero Public Safety Commission, I inferred that you're on the lookout for villains' children or otherwise kids with powerful Quirks that could easily turn to villainy, and you recruit them. It deprives the villains of their potential and turn them to the good side. I suppose training and tuition and the new identity are part of a deal, and the counterpart to it is that the kids become heroes, otherwise you take back what you've given."
Mera and Sabira both took a few second to get over their shock, and Toki mentally attributed herself a mental point. It had been a while since she had completely taken aback people.
"No!" the cat-girl protested. "You say that like wetargetkids and if they're not enough we just toss them away, and… No!"
"That's a very dark outlook on our institution," slowly said Mera. "Do you think you've been spotted by Sabira-kun here because she recognized you?"
Was that a trick question? Toki nodded mutely, and Sabira leaned forward, her big cat's eyes shining with fervor:
"No! It wasn't like that! I didn't realize who you were until afterward. I didn't approach you because you're Toki Taiyōme, or because you can teleport. I approached youbecause you were heroic. Because you saw people hurting, people in danger, and you jumped to save them even though you were scarred, and yousucceededin saving them! And not by with sheer dumb luck! Yes, you used your Quirk, but what made me notice you wasn't just its power. It was your skills, your determination, your compassion, your cleverness. I approached you because you acted like a hero would, and if I hadn't recognized you I would still have given you that card, because a child with so much potentialhasto become a hero!"
She cut herself off, panting slightly after her impassioned speech. Her cheeks colored a little, and she quickly lowered herself back in her seat after realizing she had risen up to lean toward Toki. Mera looked amused by her outburst. And Toki… Well Toki felt a little stupid, now. There was such a thing as beingtooparanoid.
"Well," she said after an awkward pause. "I'm sorry for making assumptions. But in my defense, I don't know either of you, and you're the one trying to recruit me for some shadowy program that would make me disappear."
"Fair," Mera admitted. "Do you want to know a little more about us, then?"
Why not. Toki nodded. Mera weighted his words for a moment, then started:
"Very well. My name is Yokumiru Mera, as I said. I'm twenty-five and the youngest director in the Commission's Human Resources Department. My Quirk is Weather Prediction: I can predict the weather up to a week. I'm also Sabira's mentor."
Sabira almost bounced in her seat: "I'm Kameko Sabira! I'm nineteen, I've been working with the Commission since I graduated high school. My Quirk is Lucky Cat, it allows me to create a stroke of luck in a short radius around me. I used it when we met!"
Toki suddenly remembered the way Sabira had looked when she had first laid her eyes on her: eyes closed, face scrunched in concentration, as if focusing on a fervent prayer.
"So that's what you were doing!" she realized.
"You noticed?" Sabira looked flattered. "I can only use it once a day, and it doesn't affect me, only the people around me. It's not a very useful Quirk for combat, since it targets everyone equally. But on that bridge… Even if the cars were too far away to be touched by my lucks, the witnesses wouldn't be, and so they would have the luck to not witness a deadly accident that day."
"Wait," Toki blinked, disturbed. "Your Quirk made me jump in that car?"
But Sabira shook her head.
"No. Sadly, my Quirk can't make people act a certain way, or change a pattern of behavior. Maybe my Quirk made you notice your own ability to act. But the decision to go and save that family was entirely your own."
It was reassuring, in a way. Mind you, Toki was still aware that Sabira could be lying, but hey, trust had to start somewhere. Besides, the thing that had made Toki's body move that day hadn't been Sabira, or the passerby's screams. It had been how wide and scared Mihoko's eyes had been.
Purple eyes, just like her own mother's.
There was a pause. Around then, the café was filled with chatter, cats' noises, and cutlery clicking. It was peaceful, although the cats had probably noticed the tension around them, and no feline had tried to join them. Too bad. Toki liked cats. Well, probably. She had never even petted one, but she thought they were cute.
Then Sabira's stomach rumbled. She turned crimson. Toki couldn't help but snigger. Mera's lips twitched, and he offered:
"Let's begin with lunch. My treat."
It was a café, not a restaurant, so they mostly had snacks. No matter. Toki chose the most gigantic waffle on the menu, with syrup, ice cream, caramel, nuts, and diced strawberries. Sabira took a milkshake and Mera a gourmet coffee with macarons. Then, while they were all eating (or rather, while Toki was wolfing down her waffle at a truly impressive speed), Mera explained:
"The HPSC has neither the means or the time to scout the whole country for potential heroes. But all of our agents have strict instructions to encourage gifted children to pursue that path. Some are receptive, some aren't. We don't push. Not everyone wants to walk down that road, and an unmotivated hero is not what we're looking for. When we find someone interested, we usually don't do much more than point them in the right direction. Sponsorship is extremely rare, it happens maybe one time out of ten."
"How rare?" Toki asked. "Give me numbers. Names, if you can."
Mera raised his eyebrow but obeyed: "We sponsor about one child every year. When that child has parents, our support come in the form of a scholarship to attend a hero course in high-school, and a recommendation afterward when they're looking for an agency. It happens in eighty percent of our cases. When that child doesn't have a legal guardian fit to care for him, the HPSC takes custody and provide training."
"Can the Commission do that? Have custody?"
"Of course. We have administrative forms and everything. A judge gives the Commission temporary custody just as if it was a foster parent. That meant we have the same obligations of care, protection, and education. But we can keep your identity under wraps better than your usual foster family, since your training with us fall under the Heroic Identity Protection Act."
This, Toki knew about. It was the bill that had allowed Heroes to completely separate their heroic personas from their private names. It allowed them to keep their surnames a secret, and to protect their family. Some heroes didn't care very much for it, but others kept the two completely distinct (like All Might). Toki took a mouthful of ice-cream, considering. It did seem attractive…
"Is it like, contractual?" she suddenly asked. "If I agree, what do I owe you?"
"You're a child," Mera replied calmly. "You don't owe us anything, and besides, your signature isn't legally binding."
"I'm not talking about the paper trail, but about what you expect of me to repay your help. Like… Do I have to follow your training and them become a hero at eighteen and then work until I die? What if I decide to go into medicine or engineering, or, I don't know, even baking? Can you legally stop me from going to the high-school I want? Do I get tossed on the streets at eighteen with nothing but the clothes on my back?"
Sabira looked offended and horrified at the same time. Mera narrowed his eyes, staring at Toki for a few seconds before saying softly:
"You're very cautious."
"I've been planning to make Meteor stop killing since I was six," the girl retorted flatly. "I started becoming paranoid very early on."
"But you do want to become a hero, don't you?" Sabira asked hopefully.
And that was a good question. Toki didn'tnotwant to become a hero, more like. It wasn't a vocation, a dream. She had never wanted to have a livehood of fighting and bureaucracy. It just didn't seem intellectually challenging enough. Also, it was fuckingdangerous. Most heroes retired at age thirty, forty max, and chose a more lucrative career afterward, using their hero license to use their Quirk in their new job. Fighting villains all the damn time was exhausting. There wasn't a lot of old heroes. At least it wasn't because they all died young anymore (thank you All Might and the area of peace he had brought Japan), but it was still a risky job.
Besides, heroism also had a lot of serious problems that Toki really didn't feel like tackling right now: like the over-publicized fights, the encouragement of reckless behavior, the wrongs of famous heroes swept under the rug… So yeah. It was far from being the dream-job.
But even with all of that, heroes had an appeal. It meant beingstrong, having the backing of powerful allies, the implicit protection of the same society that Toki had been so scared of when she had realized her parents were criminals. It meantfreedom, because then she would be allowed to use her Quirk (and Toki loved her Quirk), and nothing felt more liberating than jumping from place to place. It meantpower: money, publicity, alliances. But more than all of that it meanthelping people. It meant seeing victims like Mihoko-san, scared and helpless, and having the means todosomething about it. It meant changing the world. And wasn't it mind-blowing to think that she could saves people? Her father had killed and destroyed, but she could protect, preserve, help. Evenonelife saved, it was enormous. It meant one life that would continue its course and change others, thanks to her.
It was bit like changing the whole world. One step at the time… It was a bit like touching the stars, making the whole universe a little brighter with one word, one action, one step at the time.
So yeah. Toki wasn't blinded by the hero-mania but even then, she was attracted to the concept. Who wouldn't? Even with the hyper-capitalization of it, heroism was still, at its core, the act ofDoing Good.
"I do," Toki answered hesitantly.
"Sure?" Mera-san insisted. "I want you to think about it seriously. It's a big decision."
"Worried about my happiness?" she snorted.
"Happiness is fleeting," he said seriously "I'm worried about you being content."
It was surprisingly solemn. Toki blinked, considering. She would have thought that a shady organization would pressure her more. But Mera-san encouraged her to reflect on her choices: mentally, Toki reevaluated him.
She heeded his advice, though. She paused, she thought. Then, finally, she nodded.
"I am. I would like it, I think. But I also have other dreams. I don't want to have my hopes crushed because you closed all doors but one."
Toki didn't really know what she wanted to do with her life, besides learning things and eventually launching satellites into space. She wanted to be an astrophysicist, but that wasn't incompatible with doing others things she liked, like traveling, fighting, exploring… Being a hero was a true option, sure, but she didn't want it to be all of her life. What about her other passions? Would she have to give them up to do a job that, no matter how fulfilling, she would grow to resent because she had been coerced into it?
It was Mera who finally answered, slowly:
"You don't have to worry. If you accept… The training we offer won't create any legal, contractual or financial debt to the Commission. We will provide you with housing, education, training, a new identity. In exchange you have to obtain your heroic license and swear to never turn to villainy, but that's the extend of it. At age eighteen, once you have your license… It will be your choice to either continue to work with us, as a fully-fledged hero, or to break ties and follow another path. It's rare but it happens. The education and training provided will be heroic in nature, of course, but it can come in many shapes and forms. The oldest active hero trained by the Commission is Recovery Girl…"
Toki boggled.Recovery Girl!She was a canon-character, and she wasancient. How old was this program?
"… And she went to medical school for seven years on a full scholarship, and only decided to become a hero at twenty-five years old. The point of this program is not tomakeheroes but to push gifted children towards heroism or support of heroism… But more importantly, away from villainy. Especially if they find themselves in a vulnerable position. Recovery Girl came from a very poor family. Her parents had started making money on the black market by offering her services to people who didn't want to risk going to a hospital. You can guess what kind of injuries those people had."
Injuries from fight with heroes, gangs' conflict, less than legal stuff. Yes, she could imagine. Toki frowned, a bit hesitant. Did Recovery Girl know that Mera discussed her past with strangers? Well… Maybe it wasn't a secret. After all, Recovery Girl didn't hide her civilian identity, and she even had a Wikipedia page. Maybe her past was in there. Toki hadn't read it recently, though, so she couldn't be sure.
But well, surely the HPSC wouldn't discuss confidential information with random strangers. They were all about secrecy…
"Can you give me the names of heroes you sponsored?" she suddenly asked.
"You don't trust us?" asked Sabira, looking almost hurt.
Mera touched her arm lightly: "No, it's a valid question. For all she knows, we could be making that stuff up." He turned back to Toki: "There are currently four active pro-heroes who've been fully sponsored by the Commission, including having custody when their guardians were unsuitable. Recovery Girl, Snatch, Lady Nagant, and Shirayuki who had just made her debut last year. The pro heroes Takeshita and Crust have been sponsored too, but only via scholarship and letters of recommendation, as their family supported them. A few sidekicks, too, around ten… although I don't know their hero names. There are also around thirty persons who have been sponsored by the Commission, but who quitted being heroes after a few years to pursue more attractive career."
Toki knew a few of the heroes mentioned. Again, maybe Mera was lying. But at least now she had data she could check. She doubted that kind of info would be on their Wikipedia page, but at least she knowswhocould answer her questions.
The tension at their table was gone, and so a few cats approached, interested in their melting ice-cream. A calico cat jumped on Sabira's knees, and Toki inwardly grinned at how similar their colorings were. Orange, black and white, just like a tricolored maneki-neko…. a lucky cat. Ah. Sabira's Quirk really had been aptly named!
Then Toki turned back to the subject of their conversation, thought for a few seconds, than asked: "Are you sponsoring anyone right now?"
"Two children. The first one is attending his last year at Shiketsu on a scholarship. The second one is younger, and fully sponsored."
Toki mulled it over. She liked the idea of being able to walk away if she didn't want to be a hero after all. Sure, she didn't want to rely on anyone, but she was also aware that she was eight years old, and living alone was hard. She needed an adult, and the Commission was willing to step in… and would be more pragmatic about it than the normal foster care system. Besides, they were willing to go above and beyond in terms of education, if they had paid for Recovery Girl's medical school. That was certainly a point in their favor.
"Do you have any more questions?" asked Mera.
A few. Like where was she going to be staying. Would she be home-schooled or go to class with others children? Would the police be notified that they could stop looking for her? Would her mother? Toki hesitated briefly. Sabira sniggered:
"Come on, you can ask. I'm starting to think it would be for the best."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
The young woman grinned: "You are smart, you have a tendency to question things, and it's physically impossible to stop you from walking away if you don't like something. So it's going to be a very short cohabitation if you enter this deal without having the full picture."
Well, she wasn't wrong. Toki held back a smile. Kameko Sabira was so young and eager, especially next to cool-and-collected Mera, that it was easy to forget she was actually sharp and clever.
"Alright, I have questions," Toki admitted. "But I also made my decision, and most of what I want to ask may be skirting the edge of confidentiality. So if you want, we can talk on the way to your super-secret lair."
Sabira's eyes lit up and she mouthed the words 'super-secret lair' with delight, before quickly turning to her boss. Mera didn't even look at her.
"No, we're not renaming it that."
"Killjoy," muttered Sabira so quietly that Toki barely head her.
Mera ignored her, and turned to Toki with a smile: "Then… Welcome aboard. Do you want a dessert before we leave?"
Well, if people she sold her soul to were always that nice, Toki would have no problem get used to it.
Toki got dessert. She petted a few cats. Then they left. Mera and Sabira had come with a car, and Toki realized with a slight shock that she had never been in a car before. Why the hell would she have? She had always lived within walking (or teleporting) distance of school and shops. When they couldn't walk somewhere, there was public transportation. But a car, or maybe specificallythatcar, was wayyyyy fancier than a train. The cushions were soft leather, the cabin was wide and comfortable, and there were heated seats. Mera was driving, but Sabira sat in the back with Toki, and both adults continued answering her questions (and providing her unprompted with more information). Sabira for example talked a lot about her family, her friends, her favorite food, how she had tried to get in the hero course at Yūei but failed the entrance test and ended up in the business course of another heroic high-school. She was kind of funny.
The rational and paranoid part of Toki's mind knew that Sabira was trying to make her feel comfortable to integrate herself, but… Well, it was working. Sabira was nice to talk to. After a while, she even insisted Toki call her by her first name, Kameko.
Anyway. Mera warned them they had a long road to their destination. They drove… And they talked about what was going to happen.
The HPSC would make the police close Toki's case, and keep all the rest secret. Unless she wished to keep contact with her parents (which Toki emphatically didn't), then it would look like the case was closed because she was presumed dead. Morbid, but efficient.
The place where Toki would live was where all the fully-sponsored kids lived until they reached eighteen (or left the program, because it was still an option). Officially it was a small factory, with big labs for supports items, and residential apartments for their staff. Unofficially, behind the labs, there was also a training ground, and the residential area housed their potential students. It was located on Shikoku, the second smallest island of the five that made Japan, and it was five hours away from Mustafu. More exactly, it was on the easter side of Shikoku,at the edge of a city called Naruto. Toki absolutely loved the idea. What? She was a nerd.
The children who got full sponsorship (and who were in the Commission's custody because their parents were unsuitable) usually had villains on their heels. And even if they didn't… As a rule, their presence in the Naruto labs was to be hidden. The Commission had the right to take in children but it wasn't a fact the HPSC wanted to be publicized. So the kids were usually homeschooled until high-school, and more importantly, they had to give up their surname. When they mingled with the outside world on holidays, or received their homework from their online classes, they usually used a fake name. Inside the labs, between themselves or with the staff, the students used their hero names.
So Toki would have to pick a hero name because that would become her open identity, whileToki Taiyōmewould be her secret identity. Ugh. She was left scrambling for a good idea. Something related to jumping? Or light? Since her parents were codenamed Meteor and Eclipse respectively, there was no way Toki could take a name like Shooting Star or Comet or even Satellite. Damn it!
Anyway. Toki had all the time she needed to pick a name, right? They were still hours away from Naruto…
Absented-mindedly, she thought that she had never been that far away from her parents. Actually, she had never been so South of Japan. It was both exciting and oppressing. To pass the time, Toki reported her attention on Sabira… OnKameko's chatter.
Sabira worked in Musutafu, as did Mera. However, to help Toki settle in, they would both drive her there and introduce her to the staff. It made sense. They were the only ones who knew her and had established a rapport of trust. Considering that the HPSC couldn't physically stop Toki if she decided to leave, it was in their best interest to make her want to stay… and for that, she needed to have a friendly bond with her new tutors.
Sabira… no,Kamekohoped to be transferred in a nearby city. Her parents lived nearer from Naruto than from Musutafu anyway, and it would be nice to see them more often. Besides, Kameko was hoping to be promoted soon. She had only worked in the Commission for a year, but if Toki turned out to be a good pupil, then Kameko (as the one to bring her in) would be rewarded. In some way, Toki's work would be reflected on her. And later, maybe, when Kameko would be a mature an experimented official, and when Toki would be a hero… Then maybe Kameko would work with her agency. Most heroes had a specific contact at the HPSC, because each hero was unique and so it was easier to have a handler assigned to a particular agency to know the specifics of their mission.
Endeavor's agency, for example, worked with one specific guy who knew by heart how which fire codes could and could not apply in certain situation, or how to decode Endeavor's blunt statements to the press as something a little softer. One of the most sought-after posting was in All Might's agency, but the guy holding the post for the last ten years had no intention of going anywhere. Besides, even if he left, he would leave big shoes to fill. Kameko sure didn't feel like taking his job. She would rather work with young and dynamics people like her!
Bemusedly, Toki wondered what Kameko had done in canon. She hoped she had found her perfect dream job. She was so enthusiastic, she would be wasted in a boring hero agency!
But wasn't that a funny idea to imagine? Her, Toki, having her own agency. Being a hero. Bossing around sidekicks, and having Kameko read her reports and make jokes. It was a surprisingly idyllic vision. Maybe because Toki had always imagined her future as some sort of ongoing battle, but this picture… It was a picture of having reached success. And it was kind of nice to think about.
Anyway. Between Kameko's chatter, Toki's questions, and all the thoughts that rolled around her head… Well, the five hours of road passed quicker than Toki had expected. The sun was already touching the horizon.
"We're almost here," said Mera.
Naruto was small city, but very active, with touristic spots, traditional houses, but also modern buildings and several high-tech structure that ranged from high-school to factories to theater. They drove across, and Mero took a smaller road that ran through woods. Barely ten minutes later, they crossed an open gate with two men in black suits, and Toki saw a big sign saying "NARUTO LABORATORIES – PRIVATE PROPRIETY".
From the road, itdidlook like a laboratory. A tall administrative building, then lower and longer structures, like hangars, and then, behind it, a dense forest to surround the place and keep away prying eyes. Mera stopped the car in front of the administrative building. Toki couldn't help but feel herself tense a little.
"Well this is it," Kameko smiled encouragingly. "Have you decided on a hero name?"
Because that what she was signing up to. Become a hero. She could become something else, to, but right now, to take her future in her hands, she needed to become a hero. She couldn't stay in Meteor's shadow forever. Toki exhaled, slowly, then squared her shoulders.
"Yes. I think my name will be… Quantum."
She needed to start somewhere. So why not here?
Notes:
Wow the Commission seems nice, doesn't it ? Here is the plot-twist : they really are. Yep, I read a ton of fanfic where the HSPC was manipulative and downright abusive to Hawks, for exemple, but i like turning tropes upsides down so there we go. Also making the Commission some sort of puppetmaster removes Hawks' agency in all the shit he's done, and it makes his character too shallow. The Commission can have both HawksandLady Nagant (manga spoilers!), and have no overlap into their characters/missions/objectives.
The Commission is not all good, obviously. They deal in black ops and stuff like that. But they try to be good and do good. For example : saving children without blackmailing them afterward. Anyway. This is a "moraly grey HPSC" story, but leaning on the lighter side with a few dark spots, instead of being all dark and evil.
Also : Mera is canon-character, but Toki didn't reconize him. Kameko Sabira is an OC. Here is what she look like :
Click for a bigger pic! Or go check out Snapshots of Wisdom (the next fic in this series) to see the full picture =)
I like to imagine that in canon, she's the one liaising the HSC with Miruko, the Rabbit Hero (notorious for refusing to have an agency or a team). You can't get more dynamic than that !
Anyway, small addendum about the Shinso family :
A popular idea in the fandom is that Hitoshi Shinso lives in foster care and is either an orphan or abandonned by his parents. So... I imagine that in canon, the car accidentdidhappen, and his mother Mihokodiddie in it. The amphibian-hero that Toki saw managed to open a window and get baby-Hitoshi out, and he nearly drowned but survived. His mother didn't. Hitoshi's custody fell to his dad, who was super-busy and neglecting him, and also grieving his wife and coping pretty badly. Hitoshi awakening Brainwashing was the last straw. His father put in in the foster care system a few years later because he was too overwhelmed, and several of his coworkers had threatened to have him charged for child neglect. So that's how canon!Hitoshi ended up in foster care.
But in the Wisdom-verse, Mihoko didn't die. A butterfly flapped its wings and everything changed. What? I just want Hitoshi to have a better childhood, okay?
Stay tuned for the next chapter !
EDIT 12/08/2022
Spelling mistakes corrected. Mention was made of Toki missing her parents, instead of being in constant denial about it. Slight edits were also made to the conversation between Toki, Mera and Kameko: Toki trusts Mera a little more, because he didn't push her.
Chapter 7: Choosing a different path
Summary:
Toki joins the Commission's sponsorship program. She makes a friend, then destiny decides to screw her up some more. Not that Toki wasn't expecting it, but still.
Notes:
Hello people ! Here is the new chapter !
Congrats everyone who looked at the timeline and immediatly realized who Toki was going to meet xD Althought i bet the tags helped a little!
Also, quick question:who is up to date with the manga?'cause i am ! And i have an annoncement to make !
Soooo i've decided that this fic would be canon-compliant until chapter 315. For those who don't remember exactly, it's the one where Hawks call himself Lady Nagant's "successor". Well, i won't do that, because i've already written Nagant's successor and it's not Hawks. It's an OC and... well, imagine the love-child of Bakugo and cold-blooded alligator, add a few pouds of trauma to that, and voila! The funny thing is, he wasn't supposed to exist, but i accidentally introduced him as the romantic partner of another sponsored hero, and it snowballed from there.
Anyway. Just to say: i'm still reading the manga, and i will maybe collect little bit and pieces of canon to expand the Wisdom-verse, but... from chapter 315 and on, i won't try to make Wisdom stick close to canon.
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
CHOOSING A DIFFERENT PATH
There was a tiny detail Toki had overlooked in her plans. She should have paid better attention when Mera had talked about that sponsorship. Because then, she would have remembered him saying that there was another kid here, in the same situation as hers.
And if she had paid better attention to the timeline, she would even have guessedwhoit was exactly…
But let's start at the beginning. Upon arrival, she was introduced to a bunch of people, who all smiled and bowed politely when Mera said: "this is Quantum", as if she was already a hero on a tour. It was both a bit surreal and very flattering. She didn't want to let it go to her head, but hey, she was only human. She was given a bedroom, bigger than the one she had in her mother's apartment in Tokyo, with a bathroom and even a tiny dressing room. There was a bed, a chair, a desk with a few middle-school manuals already set up, and some manga on shelves. The door had a lock, and Toki was given the key. It was a show of trust. Sure, the staff probably had another key, but the gesture was appreciated. She could have privacy.
The caretaker, a short man with a frazzled air, took her clothing size and said he would give her a new outfit tomorrow, but Toki was allowed to keep her duffel bag and all of her stuff. Then it was dinner, in a large cafeteria where everyone ate together. Toki was introduced to some more people, she ate two serving of food; then she was escorted back to her room, took a shower, put on her pajamas, and slept like the dead.
On the second day, she woke up early. She had a brief moment of disorientation, then remembered the previous day. She dressed with her normal clothes, brushed her teeth, hesitated a moment, then opened her door to try and find her way to the cafeteria. If she got lost, well, she could always teleport there.
She had barely made two steps in the hallway when there was an exited cry from a few meters away. Toki turned… and then she was nearly bowled over by a flurry of crimson feathers. She went down with an undignified squawk then reflectively teleported back upright: her forehead collided with her would-be assailant's, and they both jerked back with a muffled 'ouch!'… Then Toki raised her eyes enough to see a short blond boy, looking mortified, frantically moving his arms:
"I'm sorry! I heard there was another kid and I wanted to meet you but I didn't mean to scare you and I'm sorry! Did you hurt your head? How did you do that, did you teleport?"
But Toki's eyes were glued to what was behind the blond kid, which was a pair of red wings. Child-sized, but still very large, probably able to support his weight and fly.Wings! Oh, by Gandalf, Merlin, Madara, and all nerdy deities. Her brain suddenly connected the missing dots. A child sponsored by the Commission… Red wings… Around fifteen years before the canon started… Oh for fuck's sake,she was so dumb! Mera had basically told her to her face, andshe should have guessed who it was. Because it was… It was…
"I'm Hawks!" the boy smiled brightly, his golden eyes shining.
I know, Toki nearly said. She barely held back a hysterical laugh. This time it wasn't like Hitoshi Shinsō, where she hadn't been sure, and it had been a baby, and it some way his canon-self hadn't seemed so present. ButHawks? Oh, Hawks looked just likeHawks. He had adorable round cheeks, his eyes were wide with childish enthusiasm, but it washim, with his unruly blond hair, the tiny markings that looked like eyeliner, his wings…! Shit, it almost gave her vertigo. It was a real person but he looked so much like his future, canon-self that it was disorienting, like seeing double.
She couldn't help but grin, feeling giddy and in shock and elated all at once. Holy shit, it was baby-Hawks. She was in amanga world, with canon-characters, and she was going to be a hero. Holy freaking shit, she was in! It was really sinking in, all at once. And weirdly, it managed to be more exhilarating than panic-inducing. Probably because she was facing an adorable version of what had been one of her favorite characters, instead of a crushed building, a scared woman, or a guy in police uniform. It was a kid, like her,just like her, in the same place and on the same path and suddenly she wasn't alone. She was in a fucked-up and wonderful and terrifying world, but she wasn't alone.
"I'm Quantum!" she beamed. "But you can call me Toki when no one's around."
Hawks' eyes widened. "Then you can call me Keigo when no one's around, too!"
Oh gods he was adorable. So round, so soft! Toki wanted to squish his little cheeks. And he was so small! He was like, half a hand shorter than her! Sure Toki was tall for her age, but he lookedtiny!
"How old are you?" she blurted out just as Hawks avidly asked: "So you can teleport?!"
Then they both tried to answer at the same time, cut themselves, and there was an awkward pause until they both snorted. Toki gestured at him to start. Immediately, there was a barrage of questions:
"What's your Quirk? Where are you from? How old are you? Are you gonna stay? Are you training to be a hero? What does Quantum mean? Did you pick it yourself? Where is your training uniform? Are you going to train with me?"
Toki blinked, taken a bit aback by the rapid-fire onslaught of questions, but the she answered eagerly. Her Quirk was teleportation, she was from Hinohara but she had lived in Tokyo then Mustafu afterward, Quantum was a name she had picked herself because her Quirk fucked with quantum mechanics (Hawks looked elated at hearing her swear and Toki was absurdly reminded of how young he was, and made a split-second decision to tone down the swearing), she didn't have a training uniform yet, and she had no idea if they were going to train together but gods she hoped so, she hadn't been around kids her own age she could talk to in ages. Well, her whole life, actually.
Then it was her turn to ask questions, and of course the first one was: where was the cafeteria?
While Hawks lead her there, they chatted excitingly, taking turn asking questions and sharing enthusiastic rambles. Apparently Hawks was eight years old, too! He was born in December, so Toki was older by a few months. Hawks had been here for a year and half. The Commission had offered him a spot after he rescued several people from a car accident (the parallels with Toki's circumstances were amusing). His Quirk was Red Wings! He could fly but also move his feathers telepathically, to throw them at targets or carry stuff around. He liked it here a lot! At first he hadn't lived here but in the city, to socialize or something, but he had moved to Naruto Labs six months ago and it had been great so far! The food was awesome, and the training was really fun. There were rules to follow, though, and a training uniform to wear. It was a tight black shirt and wide khaki pants: Toki couldn't help but think it looked a lot like what would be Hawks' hero costume. They could wear casual clothes if they wanted, but the training clothes were made to be dirty. And training could get rough! But at least it was exciting. And it would be even better with a partner! Hawks was barely holding still, almost vibrating with excitement, his wings fluttering behind him. He was training to be a hero and one day, he would stand on the same podium as the best of the best!
When they arrived at the cafeteria, a few people were already here, including Mera and Kameko. A stocky woman in a designer suit was talking with them. When she saw the two children, she beckoned them forward. Toki hesitated, but Hawks was sauntering toward the woman without fear, so she followed.
"Hello, Mrs. Vice-President!" chirped Hawks.
"Hello Hawks," the woman smiled benevolently, before turning to Toki. "And hello, Quantum. We haven't been introduced yet. I am Asahi Genmei, the Commission's Vice-President. I'm glad you joined our program."
Toki nodded, eying her warily. Her silence didn't seem to bother Genmei, who made a little speech about the high hopes she had for Toki, and how much this program could offer her. In the end, it just a way for the big boss to make herself known to their newest recruit. The Vice-President then enquired about Hawks, asking if he had any trouble, how his training was going, that sort of thing. Afterward, they had breakfast, then Kameko and Mera said their goodbyes to Toki. It was a short affair. Kameko gave Toki her phone number, and promised to be in touch, but they each had to follow their own path.
Anyway. Toki finished her breakfast with Hawks, and although the adults' intervention then departure had left her a little unsettled, she slowly relaxed. Hawks wasn't stressed at all, and his confidence helped her to feel more at ease.
Besides, he was a real chatterbox. He was smarter than the average kid, too: quick-thinking, curious, smart. Toki was more knowledgeable in most areas (because she had devoured more books and articles that she could count) but Hawks was easily able to keep up with her, and it was great, it was fantastic, Toki couldn't help but feel both excited and riled up, because that was achallengeandshe loved it. They actually chatter and bickered for nearly an hour in the cafeteria before a teacher came to fetch them for lessons.
And that's how Toki's new life started.
She settled in quicker than she would have thought. She had gotten used to never sleep more than a few days in the same place, to be always moving, to pay attention to her clothes, to keep an eye out for heroes or cops or just curious people. Being allowed to relax left her feeling off-balance and paranoid for a few days, as if being complacent was the beginning of the end. But she had a lot of things to direct her newly feed attention to. Lessons. Training.Hawks.
She was given training clothes: a black shirt, loose brown pants that stopped at her calves, black socks, and black sneakers. She was also given new casual clothes if she asked for them, because her pants were starting to be a little short. An appointment with the local doctor was made, to poke and prod at her until he declared her a little underweight but otherwise healthy.
Then she was given schoolbooks (and she had never been so happy to have homework again!) and her level was assessed by a few tests. No surprise, she was good in Japanese,verygood in math, pretty advanced in physics, average in chemistry, excellent in English, abyssal in literature, bad in geography, andunconventionalin both History and sciences, which meant that she had high-school level comprehension on some subjects while being also wildly ignorant of others. The teacher didn't quite scratch his head when looking at her results, but it was a near thing.
Anyway. Toki was back to school, andshe loved it. Granted, they only had one small classroom, but it was good enough for only two students. The curriculum was tailored to their progress, based on online classes and standardized tests, and they had a rotating set of three teachers to supplement those classes.
Those teachers were actually researchers working in Naruto Labs, and they only taught part-time. At least they were all dedicated to their task. They never brushed away Toki when she asked a weird question. They actually quickly realized how she latched on some topics and investigated them, and used it at their advantage by integrating those topics into their lessons. Quirk analysis became a regular feature in their History lessons, math problems using astronauts and quantity of fuel needed for a rocket became more and more frequent, and fantasy books started appearing in their Japanese or English lessons.
They also had "Strategy Lessons", which was basically a class where they played with riddles and creative problem-solving. Sometimes the teacher gave them an imaginary scenario with a villain, a set of obstacles, and a hero, and they had to figure how the civilians could escape. Or they were given logic puzzles to solve with mental arithmetic and general culture. It was Hawks' favorite class, and soon it started to become Toki's too. They weren't asked to memorize things but rather to go wild with their imagination, and the Ravenclaw in her was rubbing its hands in delight. That was the good stuff!
The teachers also let her read whatever she wanted. The lessons ended pretty early in the afternoon, and after that Hawks and Toki were free to roam around. They had some video games, but also access to their classroom's computer, and they sometimes played football with the off-duty researchers. But Toki also read, read andread. The Naruto Labs' library didn't have as much fantasy as the libraries in Musutafu, but the researchers certainly thought they were smart, and so there was a ton of books on different subjects. And most of them had educational purposes! Toki foundHe, She And They: An Exploration of Gender Through The Ages, which was not the kind of book she had imagined to find in a lab for support items. There were others titles that held her attention, likeMankind and Mutantismthat talked about how mutant Quirk had evolved and the discrimination they faced, orThe Powers That Shapes Our Minds, which was a compendium of several decades of debate about how much a person's Quirk shaped them compared to socialization.
(Toki's opinion was that it depended from people to people, and conducting a global study was a bit pointless considering how unique each Quirk was. Yes, sometimes a person's Quirk shaped them, she was the perfect example: she was well aware that her reckless streak came from the fact that she could always disengage from any situation. But it had shaped the way she interacted with the world rather than shaping herself, so you could say that her Quirk had impacted how she was socialized, and then socialization had shaped Toki. Hawks' personality hadn't been affected by his wings: but his future, his perspective, the way people saw him… That was what his Quirk had changed.)
(It was fake causality. In canon, Bakugou's teachers had thought his Quirk made him explosively violent, for example, but were willing to ignore it because he had such a promising future. In fact, his Quirk had no impact on his personality whatsoever. Bakugou was violent becausepeoplelet him be violent, even encouraged him. A Quirk didn't change you: but it changed how people perceived you and how they treated you. And even then, that changed from person to person, with how much the Quirk was visible, how much of it was passive or needed intent to active, what kind of social class the subject lived in…)
But anyway…
Lessons were four days a week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesday was for Quirk training. On Saturday they had extra-curricular activities, which meant that Hawks was learning sword-fighting. Toki signed up for boxing, because punching people was cool. Then she also signed up for judo, because the instructor begged her to take a martial art where the goal was to restrain the opponent. It was true that Toki's Quirk easily allowed her to slither out of any grasp and run. Boxing would help her be more offensive, but a hero also needed to learn how to capture bad guys without knocking them out cold…. Although, Toki could probably knock out people by teleporting with them ten-meters high and then dropping them… Oh well.
But back to the point. They had one hour of conditioning every day to keep in shape, but Wednesdays were always the most intense. They did push-ups, sit-ups, but mostly a fuck-ton of stretches. Apparently, strength training was a bad idea for kids because having too much muscles could stun their skeletons' grow (Toki hadn't known that!). But that didn't mean their instructor was going to let them stay idle. They had to work on their flexibility, their dexterity, their speed… And most of all, their Quirk.
Some part of Toki was still waiting for a proof that the Commission was abusing their power. Because, morally, training eight years old to fight was wrong. So really, Toki would only need a reason to fly of the handle, to yell vindictively'Gotcha, this is child abuse!'and then run away. But the Commission didn't train them like, said, Endeavor had trained his son (or would, because Shouto was less than two years old right now). There was no beating, no disparaging, no military-like rigidity. It was tough, sure, but it wasn't very different from what Toki remembered from Aizawa's classes in the manga.
Hawks flew, jumped through hoops, chased flying drones or was chased by flying drones. He multitasked, doing one thing while several feathers did something else, like trying to catch a multitude of soft toys thrown in all directions. So far his record was using ten different feathers for different tasks. Toki couldn't help but think about the canon-Plot, where Hawks had been able to find and evacuate several dozens of civilians in a crumbling buildingin less than a minutewith his feathers,whilein free-fall, watching a Nomu fight Endeavor, and… yeah. Hawks no doubt had the potential to be this efficient, but right now he was still a kid, and he had a long way ahead of him.
Toki trained with him. Sometimes they had the same exercises, like searching and collecting a bunch of hidden objects (usually brightly colored balloons) as fast as possible. They also were together in some lessons like first-aid training, sparing, or team tag.
Their instructor was a speedster, called Hayasa-sensei. He was about thirty, strict but fair, and never held back when there was a race to be won. Between him, Hawks, and Toki, it made for crazy games of tag.
Toki's Quirk training was tailored to her. She was made to jump higher, further, at several points in succession. She had to teleport at one point, spot several targets in a split second, then manage to teleport to them one after the others with her eyes closed. She was made to jump through the same flying hoops as Hawks, but since she didn't fly, she had to teleport high and then use her momentum. She learned to teleport while sparring without losing track of her adversary's movements. She played hide-and-seek with drones and surveillance cameras. She learned parkour and free-running, with and without teleportation. It was hard, sometime. But it was also challenging and entertaining. They had brightly-colored targets, rewards for their success, quiz-tests in the middle of their races, breaks as often as needed. It was… It was kind of the same type of training the protagonists had at Yūei in the manga, with crazy scenarios, risks, and fights, but in a controlled setting, and with lot of care afterward.
They had a reward system with candies. Toki was even allowed to take double her part of lemons candies, since they were her favorites.
Anyway, the whole training thing was calqued on Yūei… But it was child-sized, made for eight years-old instead of fifteen years old. Most of it looked like games. Intense and challenging, but still fun and interesting to do. Yes, they hit each other, and sometimes they broke bones, and they were sometimes put in stressful situation. But at no point they were in real danger… And at no point Toki thought'oh this is pushing it too far'. Which was saying a lot, considering that she was still waiting for the other shoe to drop!
I mean, in some way training children for a future of violence was wrong no matter how good your intentions were. But Toki and Keigo weren't trained to mindlessly follow orders, or to become stronger no matter the cost. They were trained in how to best use the tools they had at their disposal. Yes, those tools would be used in a violent ways, but it was inescapable because they were destined to live in a very violent world. Did that make sense?
Toki wanted to be indignant, but her teachers and trainer were awfully reasonable. She had to begrudgingly admit that maybe the guys policing ultra-dangerous super-powered people who beat up bad guys for a living… knew what they were doing. Go figures.
So… A week passed, then another, then a month. Spring came and settled down. Toki started getting used to this place quicker that she had expected, and she started to appreciate it sooner than she would have thought.
She liked not having to worry about her next meal or about where to sleep, or if she could find a place to shower. She liked that the adults were friendly, but gave her space. She liked being able to read as much as she wanted. She liked having a place to put her stuff, and being able to own more than a duffel bag of clothes. Toki especially liked having classes, being able to asks questions and get answers, to be seen, pushed and encouraged in her curiosity. She liked having teachers to give her directions and guidance. She liked that they were nice, too. They clearly cared about her, respected her boundaries, applauded her intellect, and Toki basked in it like a flower under the sun.
But the best thing in Naruto Labs? It was Hawks.
Toki had never really had a friend before. She had had her mom, then her dad and his gang. Yeah, she had loved them, they had been family, but she hadn'ttrustedthem… And besides, they had never been equals. She was all too aware of the fact that they were adults in control of her life. In school, in her gym club, or in the parks she passed during her weeks of homelessness, Toki had met a few kids, but she had never made friends with them either. Same problem: she couldn't trust them, and they weren't equal. Toki was almost always stronger and smarter, and it bred either admiration or resentment. Toki had always found peers that wanted to have lunch with her, or join her in class for group projects, but she had never hadfriends. Neither of her own age, neither among adults. She had been aware of how lonely it was, but she hadn't really minded. She didn't know anything else.
But now there was Hawks. He wasn't as well-read as her and he didn't have twenty-five years of memories crammed in a corner of his head, sure. But for the rest?He got her. They were both thrill-seekers, curious and reckless and bright-eyes with wonder. Hawks loved logic puzzles and riddles, like her. Although he didn't have Toki's thirst for knowledge and books, he loved to learn, and each time Toki showed him up with some obscure knowledge, he met the challenge head on. He was as smart as her, but often quicker on his feet, unlike Toki who constantly overthought things. Hawks was delighted by challenges and enigmas, and he wasn't a sore looser or a bratty winner. It was the game that mattered, not who won or lost.
Hawks was also unafraid of heights, like her, and he loved using his Quirk to climb, jump, or soar through the sky. They stood on equal footing: in class, in autonomy, in the social hierarchy, in term of strength and cleverness and age and experience, and wasn'tthata novel experience? For the both of them! Toki had been lonely her whole life, but Hawks too. But now, they had found each other, and they weren't alone anymore. They liked each other, they trusted each other, they fought and trained and learned together, and it was even better than not having to worry about being homeless. Toki had never raced on the rooftops with someone but there was somethingexhilaratingabout sharing something you loved with someone you trusted, and realizing that person loved it as much as you did.
Toki didn't write as much as before in her notebooks, anymore. When she had questions, she could ask them to real people. Sometimes she still wrote the answers down, but it didn't seem as important now. Her poetry notebook was still regularly opened, but she wrote less and less. Before, it had been like a valve to let out her bottled-up feelings, but now it was less necessary. Ironic, wasn't it? She felt less pressure than she had when living at home with her family.
When you're born in a burning house
You think the whole world is on fire
But it's not
It's not.
Was it a betrayal, to think so quickly of this place ashome? She felt more at ease here than she had felt since… Well, since Meteor. Or maybe earlier. Since that first argument with her mom, when Sayuri had left her alone a whole week. How old had Toki been? Five? No, probably six, because it had been on her following birthday that her mom had betrayed her trust and moved to Tokyo. Gods, she was eight now. Eight and half. That event was basically a quarter of her life away. That was twenty-five percent of her whole existence spent being jumpy and refusing to trust anyone. No wonder she was paranoid.
But here… There wasn't a threat constantly hanging above her head. There was freedom, opportunities, protection, and friendship. And yes, for the first time in a very long time, Toki felt safe. Toki felt home.
It was good. Because a few days later, the last remnant of what had been her home crumbled forever.
oOoOoOo
Toki had been in Naruto Labs for a little over a month when the news came. A worried-looking man in a suit sat down Toki after her class, and told her that her mother's pregnancy had suffered complications. Toki felt her stomach drop out. She had honestly forgotten about it. Well, she hadn't forgotten about her mom, her hospitalization, the baby, but she hadn't realized so much time had passed. Sayuri had been three months along in October to now, it was time for the birth, wasn't it?
"No quite," the man coughed nervously. "Your brother is two weeks early. But the doctor saw a problem, and both the baby and your mother would suffer if we wait longer. They have decided to trigger the birth this morning. It… It isn't going well. You may already know it, but it was a very risky pregnancy. There is… The doctors are doing what they can, but there is a big risk that the baby won't make it. And your mother… She is at risk too."
Toki felt like throwing up. The man awkwardly patted her hand and told her he would tell her if there was any change, but nothing more. The hospital Sayuri was in was highly secure and they couldn't allow visitors. They didn't even tell Toki where it was, probably worried that she would sneak there. They were worried for nothing: Toki wouldn't have. She remembered too vividly the way her mother had patted her head and told her 'you know what to do'with a smile, she remembered the weight of the back notebook in her hands as she sent it in the mail to the heroes, she remembered Meteor's roar of rage as the building came down, and how bright the TV screen had been that evening, showing the names and faces of all the criminals arrested. It had been her fault. She had ruined her parents' lives, and she was terrified to face them again.
Toki was excused from physical training that afternoon, and since Hawks was restless and distracted, he was quickly excused too. They both hid on Toki's room, and waited. And waited some more.
"Is it bad that I'm relieved that they forbid I go see her?" Toki whispered. "She could die, and I still don't want to see her. Is it selfish?"
Hawks considered.
"Yeah, a little? But it's not a bad thing. I don't want to see my mother either."
Toki side-eyed him, because Hawks never talked about his family. Just as Toki never talked about hers, come to think of it. She shouldn't use double-standard here.
"But she could die," she gulped. "Maybe she is scared and hurt and in pain. I'm prioritizing my fear of being rightly accused of ruining her live, over her fear of dying. It's wrong. I know it's wrong. If I was braver, I would have sneaked out to go and look for here, because maybe she needs me here."
"Did you really ruin her life?" Hawks asked.
Toki threw him a dark look. Here she was, opening her heart, and that dumb pigeon had to put his foot in his mouth. He raised in hands in a placating gesture:
"I'm just saying, maybe she doesn't blame you."
"Non, no, she does," Toki muttered. "I'm the one that send the police the info they needed to arrest her, my dad, and all their gang. She had hidden her identity from the cops for ten years. And she couldn't even run, since I waited until she was in the hospital."
"… Okay, that's… yeah that's pretty bad."
Toki's shoulders sagged. She knew that, of course, but it still stung to heard it. Hawks didn't say anything for a few seconds, then leaned sideway to knock his shoulder against her.
"Hey. You did your best. It shouldn't… Parents shouldn't ask bad things from their children. You looked out for yourself because no one else would, right?"
Toki smiled weakly: "Yeah, in a way."
"Then you did good," Hawks insisted with ferocity. "And there's nothing wrong with being selfish sometimes. If you give and give and give, then at the end you will end up all empty and dried up."
There was a quote like that, in one of Toki's fantasy book. A story about a witch who raised a princess without telling her she wasn't her real daughter, and Toki didn't really remember the morale of the story, but she did remember the quote.It is alright to be selfish. Bleeding for others is a gift. It is valued, but it is up to you to give it.
"I should be braver," she still said in a small voice.I should have more to give, she thought, but she didn't dare voice it.
In Japan, there was this whole culture devoted to self-sacrifice. You gave yourself to your job, to your duty, to the point where it became a cornerstone of your identity. It played on the hero-mania, too. Heroes were expected to be infallible, to be more than mere mortal, because if they didn't give everything to their job (even their lives) then they had betrayed the trust people had given them. But even without being a hero, you felt the pressure, the internalized social expectation that you had to giveallof you. That keeping something for yourself was selfish.
It was normal to be selfish, it was human. But Toki feel ashamed and small, and still she couldn't make herself change her mind. Confronting her mother scared her. She was afraid that it would turn ugly. She was afraid, so afraid, that the ugliness would consume everything good she still kept of Sayuri in her heart.
So she waited. Hawks leaned on her side, warm and comforting, and waited with her. The man in a suit had said that the birth had been triggered this morning, but when he had pulled Toki out of her class, it had been mid-afternoon. Now it was night. How long did it take for a mother to birth a child? How long did it take for a person to pass out from exhaustion and pain? How long for a baby to suffocate, to hurt, to die? How long for a mother to bleed out? Toki didn't know, and it ate her up inside, but she didn't dare voice her questions out loud. She was terrified of the answers.
She had tried to never think of her mother… or of her whole past and her whole family, actually… but Toki still had a lot of complicated feelings about them. She had loved them and feared them and despaired of them. She had wanted to stop them, but talking and reasoning with Meteor or his crew was like yelling at a wall. So she had taken a page of her mother's book and simply acted as she felt right, to trap them with stronger people that would solve the problem for her. Just as her mother had brought her to Meteor when Toki had started rebelling. It was logical, it was the Right Things To Do, it was an action born out of love and despair at their miscommunication.
But it had been cruel. It had been a betrayal. Toki had felt betrayed when it had happened to her, andshehadn't been sent to jail. Of course her family hated her, now. They must feel dismayed, horrified, furious. They were right. Toki felt awful for causing them pain… But for the life of her she couldn't regret sending that notebook to the heroes. She couldn't have lived with herself if she had stayed their accomplice in thief and violence andmurder.
But Sayuri… Mom… She hadn't actually killed anyone, and yet she was the one who suffered the worst, wasn't she? She had been weak and helpless when she had been arrested. She must have felt so afraid: for her friends she couldn't protect, for her baby who was so fragile, and for herself, too. And she had been alone, so alone, away from her husband and friends, abandoned by her daughter. Sayuri had devoted years of her life to Toki, she had restructured her life of crime to raise her child in the most normal life she could, she had protected her and spoiled her, and even if Toki and her mom hadn't always seen eye-to-eye, they had loved each other. They had loved each other but that hadn't stopped them from hurting and betraying one another, hadn't it? Just as Sayuri had once betrayed Toki's trust by bringing her in the Crew's life and cutting off any escape, Toki had betrayed her mom by selling her to the police.
But Toki had forgiven her mother, she realized. Maybe not fully, and of course she would never forget, but the pain had healed. Toki had bounced back from what happened to her (because after all, there were worse things that being dropped in a friendly family that sincerely cared about her, even if they were criminals). But Sayuri… Sayuri would maybe never forgive Toki for this. There was a difference between being forced in a family of criminals that tried their best to be nice, and being held prisoner by law-enforcement while helpless and pregnant with a baby who could die any day. No, Sayuri would maybe never forgive Toki for this. And… It would be unfair to ask it of her.
I just wanted to stop Dad from killing more people,Toki wanted to say.I didn't mean to hurt you, but to stop him I had to stop you. I'm a teleporter just like you, I know how dangerous we are. But Mom, I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.
She would never say those words to her mother, now. A little after midnight, another worried-looking man in a suit came. His face was grave and drawn, and Toki knew what he was going to tell her before he even opened his mouth.
Sayuri was dead.
She had been brave, she had done her best, but the pregnancy had been too dangerous from the start. She should never had risked it. Her body had been too weak, and carrying a child had weakened it further. The birth had been bloody and messy. Some muscles didn't stretch right, others tore open, and the baby had been too big, dead weight ripping her apart from the inside. It had taken nearly sixteen hours to deliver. After that Sayuri had been rushed in intensive care and they had tried for two more hours to save her… But she had died.
The baby was dead too. Sayuri hadn't even had time to name him. Toki remembered, vaguely, that her mom had wanted to call him Hikari. A gender-neutral name, but more suited to a girl, just as Toki was a gender-neutral name but more suited to a boy. It was so absurd. All of it seemed so pointless, so surreal. Toki felt empty and numb. Not like hollow box, but like a fruit whose flesh would have been scrapped off.
If Toki hadn't warned the heroes, would Sayuri still be alive? She wouldn't have been imprisoned. She would have stayed in Musutafu hospital, were she could have the best care and where Recovery Girl was only a half-hour away or so. But Toki had warned the heroes, and Sayuri had been arrested. She had been moved to a more secure hospital, and the doctors had probably been less talented, less patient, less attentive, less concerned. They had done their best, the man said, but maybe they hadn't, because Sayuri had only been a prisoner, and not a rich patient who paid well. Or maybe they had done their best, but it hadn't been enough. What difference did it make? Sayuri was dead. She had been Toki's mother… and they had hurt each other so much, and never apologized… and now she was dead.
The man said he was sorry for her loss, but the words were meaningless.Sorrywouldn't fix it. Toki would have liked to say that it seemed impossible, that she couldn't believe it, but she didn't have the luxury of denial. Not when living in this world. Her mom was dead. She had trouble wrapping her brain around it, but she could feel the truth of it in her bones. Sayuri was gone. Her mom would never hold her in her arms again. She would never have the chance to yell at Toki or to forgive her.
"Do you want to go to the funeral?" the man asked gently.
And Toki nodded, because she felt sick to her stomach with shock and grief and guilt, and she owed her mother at least that much.
"Can Hawks come with me?"
Hawks, who had been small and silent the all time, briefly tightened his hold on her hand. The man looked at him, surprised, but he agreed readily.
The following week was kind of fuzzy.
The next day, there was a funeral, short and to the point, in a cemetery near Mustafu. Toki and Hawks went there by car, and the five-hour trip seemed to last twice as long. They didn't talk, they just held hands. Or well, Toki was holding Hawks' hand like a lifeline. Everything was so solemn, and depressing, not at all like Sayuri had been. But well, Sayuri wasn't there, was she? And funerals were for the living, not the dead. Besides… The ceremony didn't attract a lot of people. Maybe Sayuri still had friends in Tokyo or Hinohara, but nobody knew who they were so nobody could contact them. Meteor's Crew was in prison, and they had been the closest thing Sayuri had to a family. Apparently, she had been an only child, and an orphan. Toki was her only relative present.
There were two coffins, because there would be a tombstone for Hikari Taiyōme too. Toki hadn't realized it until that very moment, and it felt like a punch to the stomach. She had lost a brother, too. The coffins were lowered in the ground in solemn silence, but Toki didn't feel closure or relief. Just that gaping wound in her chest that hadn't began to heal.
Kameko had come to support her. Hawks hadn't left her side. It helped, not to be alone, but it didn't help enough. Sayuri was dead. What was Toki supposed to do? What was she supposed to feel? She was sad, and grieving, but she also felt guilt and anger and rage and fear, a confusing whirlwind of emotions she couldn't made sense of. She felt numb and empty, and raw like an exposed nerve. She didn't cry at the funeral, but on the road home, huddled on the backseat with Hawks asleep next to her, Toki sniffed and sobbed quietly until exhaustion.
Once back in Naruto' Labs, her teachers tried to give her space… But they were all a bit awkward, not knowing how to tiptoes around the subject.
Still, life went on. Toki had a full week without classes, but then she had to go back to training.
She went back to class and, the first day, she missed about half of what the teachers said. During training, she was either too distracted or too ferocious, trying to drown the universe in the pounding of blood in her ears, taking risks and jumping always higher and higher, until Hayasa-sensei yelled at her for her recklessness. She felt angry, and sad, and desperate, and empty. Her mom was gone, there would never be closure, and she didn't know how she was supposed to deal with that.
But she didn't collapse. It hurt like a knife wound, so violent that it cut off her breath with the shock: but Toki continued living. She went on, one day after another. She ate, she slept, she studied, she trained, she talked. She smiled less and didn't laugh as often, but she was still here, whole and alive. Her mother was dead but Toki wasn't, and she was bouncing back from the tragedy. She almost felt guilty about it. Sayuri had been the pillar of her existence for so long: shouldn't losing her wreck her life? Did that mean that her love hadn't been so strong after all? Because Toki had had complicated feelings about her mom, but she had loved her. She still did. Betraying her then losing her was terrible, and it broke her heart… but life went on.
Days passed and, little by little, the pain faded.
Some days Sayuri's death didn't seem real. She had been alive the last time Toki had seen her. Pale, tired, but also calm and focused. Sometimes Toki just plain forgot that her mother was dead. She hadn't been with her for weeks now, so Toki was used to her absence. Sayuri had been a distant idea, out of reach, but that nothing really bad could touch. And now… She was gone for good, wasn't she.
Parts of me died
in the house I grew up in
and I visit them in my dreams.
Toki had always been a dreamer, easily lost in her own head, so she threw herself in training and studying and other distractions. She had books, she had computers, she had challenges and ideas and games, and she had Hawks.
It was clear that he had no idea how to deal with her grief, no idea how to help her untangle the complicated feelings she had towards her mother, but he always tried earnestly. He asked her if she wanted to talk about it (sometimes she did, but most of the time she didn't). He never made fun of her when she snapped or teared up, even in the awkward way that ill-at-ease children used defensively. Hawks was eight, but just like her, he had mostly grown up isolated and surrounded by adults who expected maturity from him. He could be childish, but when it came to the important stuff, he was always sensitive. Toki felt a little pathetic with her tears next to a kid who was technically her age, but so much more emotionally intelligent.
They were both lonely kids, though, and maybe Toki's pain was distressing to Hawks too, because he clung to her as much as she clung to him. At night, they often snuck in each other's rooms to make pillow-forts and whisper until late. Toki told him the full story about how she had turned Meteor's Crew to the police. Hawks told her about his own family, too. His father the thief and murderer, who had been arrested by Endeavor for stealing a stupid car, and who was rotting his jail. His apathic mother who only cared about money and safety, and who had given her son to the HPSC without a second of hesitation as soon as the men in suit mentioned money. Hawks hadn't been luckier than Toki in the family's department.
They shared secrets. They shared dreams. Somewhere in the middle of that, they started making up names for their future agency, then designing their costumes. It was easier to talk about the future than to dwell on the past.
It was somewhere during that time that in Toki's mind, her friend shifted fromHawkstoKeigo. He was still Hawks, butKeigowas something more personal. She was the only one who called him that, just like Keigo was the only one to call her Toki. After all, there was no one else now who would remember who she was before taking the name of Quantum. Her mother was dead, her father in prison, her family scattered. Disappearing had been the goal, had been safe, but it hurt to leave the past behind. So it was comforting, in a way, to know that before being Quantum and Hawks, they were Toki and Keigo.
Here, now, in her new home, grieving her mom and grieving all the possible futures where they could have made up and forgiven each other, Toki felt both very alone and, maybe for the first time in her life, not alone at all. Having a friend, a best friend, really changed everything.
Without Keigo… It would have been so much worse. Sure, it was rough patch, but company made it bearable. Toki had never had someone to share her crazy ideas with. Someone to sneak off in the kitchen with, to eat the last part of cake at midnight. Someone that worried she didn't have a favorite plushy, and offered to loan her his Endeavor doll if she had nightmares. There was something so simple and stupid and pure in it, that some nights, dumbly, Toki had tears burning in her eyes.
"Are you crying?!" Keigo whispered in a horrified tone.
"No, I'm not!"
They were both in his room, in a makeshift fort made of pillows, chairs and both their duvets. There was a storm outside and they both had trouble sleeping, for different reasons. Keigo had nightmares. Toki remembered how loud the storms were when she slept in library, and how worried she always was about the roof being torn off.
"Come on, take Endeavor," Keigo insisted, and Toki took it.
The plushy was worn and well-loved. It made her feel nostalgic. She confessed in a whisper: "I had an otter plushy at home, before. My dad gave it to me."
"Not a hero?" Keigo blinked.
Toki shrugged: "Nah. My parents didn't like heroes, so I never paid much attention to them."
"That's too bad. Who's your favorite hero, then?"
Toki pouted, considering. She didn't like All Might. No matter how good he was, she remembered his numerous flaws from canon… And he would forever be associated, for her, with the roar of the building collapsing, her father screaming in rage as he made rubble rain on the heroes. She didn't like Endeavor much either, no matter how cool Hawks though he was. In canon, he had been a dickhead and an abuser, and even if he was going to redeem himself later, it hadn't happened yet. Then… which other heroes did she know? Not much. She was mostly aware of their sidekicks, since she had talked to several of them in Musutafu. But none of them warmed her heart, none of them made her feel protected.
Well, Toki thought, her eyes stopping on Hawks who was still waiting for her answer. That wasn't really true, was it?
"You," she finally said. "The hero you're going to be."
Keigo flushed, his little wings puffing up in pride and embarrassment. But Toki was being truthful.
"You'll be a great hero, too, Toki. Shining as brightly as Endeavor!"
Toki mechanically hugged the plushy. Damn, she missed her stupid otter.
"I dunno. It feels so far away. Besides, I don't think I want to be like Endeavor or All Might or anything like that."
"Really?" Keigo blinked. "That make sense, I think. You will be a hero like you. Not as bright as Endeavor, not as strong as All Might, but someone…"
He struggled, trying to find the right words. Toki looked at the window, to the storm who was still raging.
"Someone smart," she decided. "But someone kind, too."
She wasn't sure about what kind of hero she wanted to be, and she wasn't sure it was the right answer. But that was why she was here, wasn't she? To learn. She still had time.
oOoOoOo
The terrible thing with life is that it doesn't slow down for you when you need it. You have to keep moving. Losing her mom, especially this way, without any chance of reconciliation or closure, and with the nagging certitude that her death could have been avoided if Toki hadn't got her arrested… Well. It was a hard blow.
But children bounce back. They were resilient creatures, with sharp mind and lifelong supply of determination. So Toki bounced back.
It was spring. Their lessons switched from third-grade level to fourth-grade level. Toki asked for more books about Quirk studies, and the library was quietly supplied with a dozen of heavy volumes. In History class, they started focusing on world history, instead of only learning about Japan. In science, their teacher offered to build a miniature volcano to study how tectonic plaques produced volcano chains, and a dozen of adult researchers joined their project with childish excitement. Toki got a hair-cut. She tried a bunch of different hairstyles for the day, but nothing felt right aside from her usual macaron-buns. Then Keigo wanted to get a hair-cut, too, and Toki gleefully played hairdresser. The result was kind of shorter on one side than on the other but at least she had fun.
The days were longer, so their lessons were a little shorter, and they used the free time to train. Well, it wasn't really training: their physical conditioning was extended half an hour, and they spent that time playing various games. Toki was only now noticing how good all those stretches had been for her. She had always been flexible thanks to her gymnastics club, but this was a whole other level. She was learning to do backflips. Her reaction time had become better, too, as did her reflexes. Playing ferocious games of tag with Hayasa-sensei had paid off. When faced with a threat, Toki's instinct had always been to flee… but now she felt more confident, and she could reflexively attack instead of retreating. Of course, when she spared with Hawks, she still lost two times out of three. He didn't know how to throw a punch but he was quick on his feet and he used his feathers, the cheat.
Still. Hayasa-sensei, their trainer, was very proud of their progress. He had spreadsheets about how they were supposed to evolve and what level of skills they should reach, it was all very impressive. Hayasa-sensei was also really fucking lucky that Keigo and Toki were both very energic children, because he had high expectations for them. They did an hour and half of physical training each day, then five hours of Quirk training every Wednesday, then three hours of various sports on Saturday. That kind of schedule wasn't crazy (especially in Japan where gifted kids had great expectations trust upon them) but it was still very ambitious.
"Now you have reached a solid level of combat reflexes and self-awareness of your bodies," Hayasa-sensei said, nodding approvingly. "But what you must now focus on is speed. You'll be both quick fighters, not heavy-hitters. You need to learn how to dodge and run circles around your enemy. So if you agree, I would like you to quit boxing and sword fighting for something that will teach you gracefulness, control, accuracy, and speed. You will have to practice this discipline until you're at least eleven. Three years should be enough for the movements to be second nature to you. Afterward, you can drop it if you want."
Keigo and Toki looked at each other. The boy shrugged:
"I don't mind."
"Me neither," Toki added. "But I like boxing. Can I drop judo instead? We're going to learn a martial art anyway. Right?"
There was a fleeing smile on Hayasa-sensei's face:
"You can drop both if you want. You have reached an acceptable level: the goal wasn't to make you an expert, just to teach you about your limits and your potential. And… No, it's not a martial art. I was talking about ballet."
"WHAT?!" the kids both schrieked.
"What?" repeated Hayasa-sensei, blinking. "Have you never considered it?"
"No!"
"It's a girl's thing!" Keigo added indignantly.
Toki rounded on him, menacing: "Oh yeah? Can you elaborate on that?"
"Er…"
Hayasa-sensei sniggered. "Don't pretend you don't stereotype ballet dancers either, Quantum. Come on, let's talk about how wonderful and difficult dancing is…"
Turned out ballet helped with coordination, balance, and agility. It made them use as much flexibility as their usual gymnastics, but it was also a lot more physical. Toki and Keigo were both a little dubious, so Hayasa-sensei had made them practice a few exercises. Some jumps, some twirls and chassé and battement and arabesque. They were spared the pointe shoes, but even then Toki felt about as graceful as a drunk donkey, and even Keigo (who used his wings to balance himself) didn't fare much better.
So… Yeah. Ballet it was.
Ballet meant going to town, because Hayasa-sensei was not a qualified teacher for this. There was a dance studio in Naruto, and a club taught by a quiet middle-aged woman. Both Toki and Keigo were signed up. Two hours a day, every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday evening. They would have lessons with a bunch of other children, which was a daunting prospect… But, as Hayasa-sensei wisely put it, they needed to socialize. Homeschooling was all fine and good, but they would end up too sheltered if they continued like that. Besides, learning with more experienced children would help them catch up faster. They would have a range of different partners to work with.
(They were signed up under the names of Toki and Keigo Hayasa, and instructed to say that Hayasa-sensei was their cousin, and to keep quiet about the rest. In any case, the teacher's absolute lack of curiosity about them clearly showed that she had been somewhat briefed. Hey, maybe Toki and Keigo weren't her first students to come from the Naruto Labs…)
So. Life went on.
And Toki made peace with her mother's death.
It still hurt. It hurt, but less than before, the pain fading in the background. Toki healed. It wasn't a story: the world didn't stop because she had lost a loved one. Actually, the proof it wasn't a story was right here, because if it had been a manga, Toki would have been allowed to have closure. She and her mother would have had one last argument, or maybe a tearful reconciliation. But now, Toki would never know how her mother had lived her betrayal, what she had thought of her, if she had been angry or devastated, if she had hated her, if she had wanted to forgive her.
There had been questions Toki had wanted to ask her, and now she never would.Why did you have me? Why did you choose Meteor over me? What did you plan if I ran away and refused to be a villain? Would you have still loved me, if I stopped supporting you? If I stopped being potentially useful?
Toki knew she hadn't been born from a Quirk marriage, like Shouto Todoroki. Her parents had loved each other. But still, she wondered if they would have wanted a baby, if that baby didn't have the potential for an awesome Quirk. There were little clues pointing in that direction… Like how Sayuri had let it slip that she wanted Hikari because Toki's Quirk had been strong. It was only a single phrase, told in a rush when Sayuri had revealed her pregnancy, but Toki couldn't get it out of her head.
There were other things, too. Meteor had been incredibly uninvolved in her live until it became necessary. Toki's future as a part of their Crew had always been made very clear to her. It was difficult to explain, but there had been an element of…duty, in the way Sayuri had raised her with the expectation that she would join the Crew.
Maybe Toki was paranoid. But still, it nagged at her.
(And if her parents had decided to keep the baby, keepher, because they thought about her Quirk… Maybe Sayuri had decided to keep theotherbaby, Hikari, because Toki's mulishness about villainy had been disappointing. Hikari would have been the better version, raised with villains from the beginning. Wasn't that a chilling thought?)
Anyway. Sayuri was dead. Toki was not. She would never have her answers now, but that was fine: life was full of others questions. And it washerlife, hers alone. Sometimes Toki randomly thought about Sayuri (and this whole mess, and how any chance of making peace or amends had vanished with her death, because the whole Crew had loved Sayuri and if they didn't already hate Toki for babbling… they were now certainly hating her for robbing Sayuri of the medical care that could have saved her life). Some days Toki had to hold back tears. But most of the time she just forgot and worked, studied, talked, laughed, trained, played.
For a while, she hadn't touched her notebooks. But now she wrote in it almost frenetically. Mostly the poetry one, which was slowly filling up. Words were bubbling in her brain but died on her lips: words of love, loss, resentment, grief, fear, guilt, shame, despair, anger, and she needed to put them on paper. Some days she didn't even touch her pen, and her head was empty. Those days, Keigo needled her to do their homework together, or said dumb puns to make her laugh. It worked, most of the time. But still, writing felt liberating in the way spoken words couldn't be.
Cruel mothers are still mothers
They make us war
They make us revolution
They teach us the truth, early
Mothers are humans
who sometimes give birth to their pain
instead of children.
Sayuri hadn't been violent, abusive or neglectful. But she had been a bad mother. She had hurt and betrayed Toki. She had punished her by faking abandon. She had ignored her wants and her fears. She had seen her as something she owned, something she could give and share with others. She had loved Toki, she had cherished her and protected her, but sometimes you can hurt people even if you love them dearly, even if you think you're doing what's best.
Sayuri hadn't been a good mother. She had tried. But she had other dreams, other priorities… And no matter how softly she tried to push her daughter in what she thought was the right direction, what she had wanted to do with her life had been frightening and harmful. So yeah. Sayuri had been a bad mother.
It was ironic that Toki had asked herself that question for the first time years ago, when she had just learned that her mom was a villain, and that she hadn't dared to find an answer. And now that she had found it, it was too late to fix it. Sayuri would never have the chance to be good mother. But Toki would never have the chance to be a good daughter, either. She wouldn't have the chance to ear forgiveness, to obey, to understand, to ask the right questions and accept her parent's way of life. She could never amend. Even if Sayuri had lived, Toki wasn't sure she would have been able to. There were screw-ups you couldn't come back from.
She could never go back to being Toki Aratani. She could never go back to being Toki Taiyōme, either. She wasn't sure she wanted to.
But maybe it wasn't a bad thing. She didn't know who she was now, not yet, but it wasn't bad. She had teachers, and books, and well-meaning adults. She had a future, a promise tailored to the name ofQuantum. She had the sky, and science, and astrophysics. She had Keigo, most of all. Her first friend, her best friend, a future hero named Hawks. And, worse came to worse, she still had poetry.
Thought my soul may set in darkness,
it will rise in perfect light:
I have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night.
Sayuri… the villain Eclipse… She hadn't deserved to die. But she had chosen to carry a pregnancy with a fifty percent chance of fatality. She had chosen to help her husband rob banks. She had chosen to blackmail, threaten and manipulate her own daughter. She had made her how choices, just like Toki had.
And just like neither Meteor nor Sayuri were responsible for Toki's choices, well, their daughter wasn't responsible for their bad decisions.
So days passed, then weeks. Toki learned to dance, and slowly, the raw wound caused by her mother's death became a scar. There would still be guilt, and shame, and grief. But broken hearts always mended in the end.
Spring ended slowly, and summer began. The weather was hot and heavy, with frequent rain storms. In June the Vice-President (Genmei-san) came down to Naruto Labs, officially to inspect the researchers' new projects, and unofficially to have an update on Toki's and Keigo's progress. The researchers worked on real stuff, Toki had seen them: Naruto Labs wasn't a front for a secret training facility, it was a real lab that happened to be large and active enough to hide a secret training facility.
Anyway, the Vice-President came. She talked to Toki's and Keigo's teachers and trainers, and apparently they had glowing reports from everyone. Well Toki would have hardly expected otherwise. Not only were they talented and adorable, but they also worked hard! Training together pushed them to do better. It wasn't exactly competitive (the goal wasn't to leave the other in the dust) but they wanted to impress each other more than they wanted to impress their teachers.
Talking with Genmei-san felt weirdly like a parent-teacher meeting. Sayuri had always been here for parent-teachers interviews when Toki and her lived in Hinohara, but she had been less present after they had moved in Tokyo. Of course: she was busy running recon and missions for Meteor. Still, it did bring back memories, and Toki wasn't sure about how she was feeling about it. The Vice-President smiled, all nice and motherly, and it gave her the creeps. She preferred when adults where honest, even if it meant being rude and condescending, thank you very much. Hawks apparently picked up her reluctance because he was cold to her, too.
It was still a very informative conversation. Toki hadn't been here for a full year, so she had no idea if the Commission's training program followed the same timeline as a standard curriculum, with holidays and all that. The answer was: more or less. There would be holidays, but Toki and Keigo would still have to be supervised. They were offered to go to a summer camp in July or in August, for example.
Genmei-san also talked about their options for their school-work. Unsurprisingly, Keigo was better at multitasking and strategy, so he was offered to join an online chess club. He said no, but at least he had the possibility. Toki was better in math, science, and English, so she was offered to join an online class for once of these subjects. She picked English, because why not. Also, if that class made her watch no subtitled English movies, she would invite Keigo and it would be like going to the cinema. Toki had never been to a cinema before, and she was pretty sure that Keigo hadn't either.
Most school offered their students little trips, to museums or games or hero agencies. In the past, Toki had never done that. Hinohara's school had once made a trip to the only hero agency in town, but Sayuri hadn't signed Toki's permission slip that day, and so Toki had spent the afternoon at home reading books and playing with her mom, without feeling bumped out about it in the least. In Tokyo, the school had sent them to an History museum once, and Toki had been allowed to go… but her class had been unruly and loud so she hadn't really enjoyed it. Anyway, the point was: going outside and learning through cultural and educational outings was part of the usual curriculum, so Keigo and Toki would go somewhere. Thewhere, though, was still undecided, and the Vice-President wanted to have their opinion. Privately, Toki wondered why she was bringing it up herself: wasn't it the role of their teachers? Unless Genmei-san just wanted a safe topic of conversation. Or maybe she wanted to give them the implicit understanding that any semblance of freedom would come from her. Or maybe she wanted to endear herself to them by offering this outing as a treat. Or all of the above.
(It didn't occur to Toki that maybe the Commission wanted to play nice because they feared that their prized teleporting student would run away. After all, Toki was quite the rebellious child, and to make her a hero, the Commission had first to tame her like a skittish feral stray. But no, the thought didn't occur to Toki… Because leaving would mean leaving Keigo, and that hadn't crossed her mind either.)
Genmei-san asked them what museum or hero agencies they wanted to see. Keigo eagerly asked if they could go to Endeavor's agency, but the woman sadly declined. The Flame Hero didn't open his agency to the public. So Toki asked if they could visit a hero sponsored by the Commission. Recovery Girl was working at Yūei but there were still Snatch, Lady Nagant, and the new heroine Shirayuki. The Vice-President looked evaluative for a moment, then agreed. As for the museums, well… Keigo wanted to see a museum about planes, but Toki wanted to see a planetarium. It had been nearly two years. She didn't want her memories of looking at stars and listening to a recounting of space exploration to be forever spoiled with the memories of her mom's betrayal.
Feeling a little bold, Toki also asked if they could visit an observatory. Not a planetarium, made to be toured and seen by visitors, but a real observatory where researchers looked at stars, received reports from satellites, watched out for asteroid, and pondered over supernovas and black holes that were hundreds of light-years away.
"Ah, yes," smiled the Vice-president. "You wanted to study stars, didn't you, Quantum?"
Toki frowned:
"I haven't given up. I will be an astrophysicist. Maybe I won't go beyond a master degree, or maybe I will pursue a doctorate. But I'm not going to give it up just because I also study to punch villains in the face."
Genmei-san blinked, then nodded: "It's a worthy goal. It's always smart to have a back-up job to help pay the bills."
Astrophysicists didn't pay well, actually, or at least Toki didn't think so. In her memories of Before, internships had been filled with starving students and most of them had worked part-times jobs to support their studies. Still, she blinked, because it was an interesting point:
"Pay the bills?"
"Heroes don't get paid?" exclaimed Keigo, looking faintly horrified.
The Vice-president laughed:
"They do, don't worry. But… Well. I don't suppose you had economic classes yet, especially about how heroic economic works?"
They both shook their head. The woman took a moment to think, then exposed slowly:
"The state can't afford to pay heroes that much. The typical hero's base salary is actually lower than a police officer's. Of course, that salary varies. Heroes have a certain number of service hours they have to account for, and a quota of incidents they have to resolve each year, and they have bonuses if they exceed those numbers. They also have better wages after years of service, usually a two percent increase every year… And of course when a villain has a bounty on their head, the heroes who arrest them can collect it."
It made sense so far, so Toki nodded. Although that 'bounty' thing seemed a bit barbaric. She knew that some villain had a price on their head, but who fixed it? The HPSC? The prosecution?
"But heroics is expensive," Genmei continued. "If you have your own agency, you have rent, funding your sidekicks, and paying for your own costume repairs and redesigns. Supports costs are enormous, since you need weapons, armor, restrains, vehicles, and communications devices. And that's not even talking about what can happen if you're found to be negligent at an incident. Of course, heroes have to be insured. But if you or your team are found to be at fault for damage beyond what was necessary to resolve the situation, you'll end up having to foot the bill."
Uh. Toki hadn't considered that. Unbiddenly, the image of a building collapsing on screaming civilians popped in her head, and she nearly shivered. Who had footed the bill for that, she wondered. Was it All Might agency? Or had Meteor been deemed the only responsible, and sentenced to compensate the victims' families?
"So: where to get the money?" the Vice-President carried on. "The government doesn't have infinite resources, and the HPSC neither. So the heroes found other alternatives. About seventy percent of the active heroes are only part-time, and have another job. Some are doctors, some nurses, some lawyers, some painters, some drivers, some work in businesses, in sports, or in engineering. I never met an astrophysicist hero, but there's a first for everything."
Keigo avidly leaned forward: "But what about full-time heroes? Those who don't have a side-job, like Endeavor?"
There was a short, fleeting smile on Genmei's lips, and she bowed her head approvingly:
"Yes. Those are the stronger and more efficient heroes, and as such, they are the more popular. That's how they make money, too, with their popularity."
Toki and Keigo looked at each other, a bit confused. Genmei smiled:
"When the Golden Age of Heroes began, with the heroic profession really taking off the ground, and heroes realizing their salary wasn't sustainable, they looked for another source of income. And they discovered an incredible ally: the media."
Toki opened her eyes in sudden realization. Of my freaking gods, of course. The popularity pools, the ranking, all of that had been capitalized on…
"People loved watching their fights, and by extension loved them," Genmei explained. "It started with selling signed photographs and maybe t-shirts, and it snowballed from there until advertising and merch became a legitimate source of income and the Commission started to regulate it. Heroes are now allowed to spend some of their required duty hours doing advertising. Merchandise has a specific tax on it that goes to the State Heroic Assurance Funds, while a portion of the sales goes directly to the hero or heroes featured on the products. So when you'll be heroes, you will be expected to smile prettily for the cameras, too."
They both pondered that for a while. Toki honestly didn't imagine herself doing that kind of thing… Or even having merch about her. It seemed ridiculous. Keigo on the other hand, well, she could see it. Hawks, the Winged Hero! Featuring in adds, magazines, and photoshoots! Yes, she could totally see it.
He was an adorable child, but give him fifteen years and he would be unbearably awesome.
The Vice-President chatted a bit more with them, then left. She still had given them a lot to think about. All the hero-mania was more easily explained if it was supported by capitalism. Everyone wanted to make money out of it, and so they spoon-fed the public with tales of how great the heroes were, of how they could do no wrong, until the average consumer wanted nothing more than an All Might keychain to proudly affirm how much of a good person he was, because they supported the Symbol of Peace.Urgh. Thinking about it made Toki a little cynical. But well, who wouldn't be cynical when contemplating capitalism? It was a cruel system. It worked, but Toki was of the opinion that people could do better.
Maybe she was too hopeful. But when you look too long at the sky, mankind's squabbles seemed so unimportant. Astronauts always reported that seeing the planet from afar, a small blue marble in the pitch-black sky of the empty universe, gripped their heart with raw emotion. Tenderness, protectiveness, awe, love. All those human beings were worth protecting, all of them were unique and so alone in the universe, so how could Toki not love them? Want something better for them?
Granted, she had no idea what that 'something better' was, but… She wanted to make that word a little kinder, maybe. She didn't want to be a hero for the fame, the money, or the power… Although she was a pragmatic and she wanted those things too, let's get real… But her motivation wasn't…
"I don't want to be a hero for the money," suddenly said Keigo, looking by the window.
He had probably followed the same path of thought. Well, probably not exactly the same (Keigo was unfortunately completely uninterested by space exploration), but close. Toki put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands:
"I know. You want to help people, right?"
"Yeah," he muttered. "I want to save them and give them hope, just as I've been saved. I don't… It kind of doesn't matter if famous heroes famous are also rich, but it feels weird to think about that."
There was a short silence. Then Keigo turned towards her:
"For you either, heroism isn't about money."
It wasn't a question. Still, Toki considered her answer carefully. Because… What was heroism, for her? Why that path? It took her a few second to find the right words.
"No, it's not, but it's not some calling I have, either. I think… For the perfect hero, it's supposed to be an instinct thing. They just can't help themselves from helping others, they see injustice in the world, and they react before their brains tell them all the ways it can go wrong. I like to think of it more as a choice. I choose to do heroics because it needs doing, and because doing it feels right. I wouldn't be lesser for not doing it, but it would be achoice. Whether heroics or academia, or both, at the end I'm choosing my own path."
Because neither Meteor or Sayuri had been interested in giving her choice, hadn't they? But Toki had. The Commission had given her option, but they also had toconvinceher to join them. They hadn't forced her (probably because they hadn't been able to). But Toki had picked their side, and… It was her life now, as Quantum, and she was allowed to choose. It was a luxury that neither Toki Aratani or Toki Taiyōme had had.
So Toki chose. Now she had committed to something, and she had to follow through.
Notes:
Hope you liked it !
I'm going to update "Snapshots of Wisdom" to add some more art with Toki and Hawks. Or rather, Toki and Keigo. Calling him Keigo also help me distance Keigo-the-young-child-who's-basically-an-OC-at-that-point from, well, Hawks-the-canon-character.
Are we getting close to the canon-timeline?
We still have a few years, jeez, calm down x) I'm not going to skip all of Toki's formative years with the HPSC ! I also have several plot-twists planned...
Anyway, this chapter was both a transition and a strating point. The" childhood arc"is over, and we're now strating the"training arc". I'm going to spend more time on worldbuilding, for example, and monitor Toki's progress along the chapters.
The headcanon about heroes' salaries and the importance of merch isn't from me. Like a magpie, i built my nest of headcanons and ideas from shiny posts and meta found in various place. So this whole idea of heroic paying less that police work, and the ramification? i basically stole it from another fic who explored this in detail. I don't remember the title, unfortunatly. I will get back to you once i remember it x)
Is the HPSC going to stay nice?
What a loaded question x) Because well, Lady Nagant exists, hellooooo ! But the sponsorship program is going to stay good, yeah.
Yes the Commission trains children, no they do not make child-soldiers. According to Horikoshi's publisher, Hawks' story was canonically inspired by Lionel Messi's (a football player recruited as a child by a club because he was incredibly talented). So I'm basing myself on this, too. The Commission is looking out for its interests, but it's also in its interest to care for their proteges' well-being. So they train kids young, but more in a Eraserhead kind of way than in an Endeavour kind of way. They are shady, because goverments always are. But they are not evil. This is a grey-area.
Also, in the Wisdom-verse, the Commission may be a tiny bit nicer than in the canon-verse... Because they have Toki. Unlike Hawks who is, right now, shy and obediant, Toki is willful, mouthy, and independant. She knows how to live homeless, she's smart, and most of all she can't be locked up in a training facility. They can't just give her orders and expect her to obey: they have to win her to their cause. So they play nice. And by extension, they play nice with Hawks too (because of course allowing her to have a buddy is part of their plan to convince her to stay).
So, long story short: the Commission's goals and mentality are the same than in canon (and please take in account the fact that in my canon, the HSC isn't evil, only callous), but they actively try to be more gentle with kids because they have a flight-risk in their program. Mera knows that and acts accordingly. Kameko a little less so, because she whole-heartedly believe that being super-kind and helpful is the Commission's default mode. But they all want Toki to stay and be a hero, because as they rightfully said : teleportation is rare and incredibly sought-after.
It's better if the Commision has it, than if the Villains have it. Ressources have to be jealously guarded.
Are Meteor and his gang canon and what would have happened to them in the canon-timeline?
Nope, Meteor and his gang aren't canon. But they could be! I imagine that in the canon-verse, Toki was never born. But a few years later Meteor and Sayuri did have a child, and just like what happened here, the pregnancy was very difficult and the birth went badly, so Sayuri died. Meteor spiraled into self-destruction and was eventually killed in a raid gone wrong. As for the child, well, maybe he died too, or maybe he lived and was adopted by a kind family who gave him plenty of love and a very average life. You decide =)
Anyway. Next chapter will be in three weeks, not two. Because in two weeks i'm going LARPing, so i will be in the middle of the forest with no reception, hitting people with fake swords and screaming incantations. French people of AO3, do you know Kandorya ? Because if you don't, i recommand it!
See you later !
EDIT 12/08/2022
Spelling mistakes corrected (again). Slight edit made to Hawks' timeline: he was recruited at six and half, that doesn't change... but for the first year or so he didn't live at Naruto Labs but "in the city" at an undisclosed location. Sligth edit to Toki's training too (i forgot she was in a gymnatics club for two years before strating training). Correction done about villains having 'bounties' on their head (instead of 'private bounties' in the first draft) because those bounties are actually placed by the State.
Chapter 8: The future isn't so far
Summary:
Time passes. Toki grieves, then heals. After so many years living on the edge, isn't refreshing to stop, breath, and think about your own future, your own wishes for once ?
Notes:
It's been a while since i updated. I was LARPing, then on holidays, and my schedule had been a little... weird. But don't worry, the story is still going strong !
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
THE FUTURE ISN'T SO FAR
Summer camp wasan experience. Toki and Keigo were sent to different ones for three weeks in July, because their teachers wanted them to socialize with different persons. As if they didn't have already plenty of contact with children their age at the dance studio! Tch'. Anyway, it wasn't bad, but Toki missed her best friend terribly. At least her summer camp was entertaining. It was a sort of Girls Scout club for teen and pre-teen. Toki was the youngest, but her papers had been tampered with to age her a little. She was now Tsuki Nagareboshi (at least she appreciated how thoughtful was the guy who had picked the name, because "shooting star" was very good fake name), ten years old, with a minor teleportation Quirk that only allowed her to jump a few meters. She played her part well, didn't show-off, and even befriended a few others girls. She learned how to make a fire, how to build a shelter, how to apply first aid in the middle of nowhere, what berries to eat and what mushrooms to avoid, how to catch a rabbit, how to skin and cook it…
(It shouldn't have come as a surprise that even the summer camps selected by the HPSC were educational and taught useful skills for heroes.)
Anyway. Then it was back at Naruto Labs for a few days, with no class, but full freedom to roam around in the neighborhood. Of course Toki and Keigo took the definition ofneighborhooda bit loosely, and they started tracing the river. The town of Naruto was built where the Yoshino stream met the sea, but the spring was in the mountains, nearly fifty kilometers away. In any case, they had loads of fun. The mostly traveled in the sky, Keigo flying and Toki jumping, only getting back to the ground when they wanted to explore a forest or stop for lunch. It took themdays. At the beginning it was easy, the river clearly visible even from the sky, but the last ten kilometers were deep into the forest and they had to walk. At least it was an adventure! They usually went home in the evening, after placing a marker so Toki could teleport them back there the next day, but they could have camped there no problem. Keigo had been in Boy Scouts camp too, so both children now boasted incredible survival skills in the uncivilized wild!
In August, they were sent together to another summer camp, on a beach. They were to learn how to swim, sail a boat, use naval code, and plays with kids their age. It was less interesting that the survival skills taught in the Girl Scout camps, but Keigo's presence easily made up for that. In Naruto Labs, Toki and Keigo already got up to all sort of mischief, but they stayed reasonable. They were always limited by their time, their homework, the setting. Now, let wild with a bunch of others ultra-energetic kids, many of them could be considered bad examples? They went wild.
They learned how to make Cola bottles explode with mentos, which was innocent enough, butthenthey got their hands ongasolineand one kid taught them how to make a Molotov cocktail, and Toki showed them how to make a fire with dry foam and a few sticks, and they nearly started a wildfire. A few days later Toki learned how to attract seagulls with chips to play pranks on teachers, and lured about ten murderous birds in a guy's room before locking the window. It was pandemonium. The seagulls tried to return for days, hungry for more chips and destruction. Then Keigo learned how to shot birds with only a rubber band and a bottle of nail polish, which considerable raised his social status among the kids. There was a short prank war that escalated to the point where they used all the duct tape in the camp to stick furniture to the ceiling. A fussy teacher always went to the bathroom to pee late because he drank all day, so Toki sneaked in the teachers' bathroom so she could let out a blood-curling scream in the middle of the night (it was very entertaining). For totally unrelated reasons, several kids were banned from taking a swim the next day and had to clean the beach on the other side of the small creek, which devolved into a trash-battle. An unfortunate jellyfish was used as a throwing weapon. It was awesome.
Toki and Keigo came back from summer camp three weeks later with a tan, bright grins, loads of fun ideas, and a propensity for sneaking out of the Labs' perimeter. Now they had tasted freedom, and the forest wasn't big enough for them!
The first time they went 'missing', their teachers pitched a fit. Especially Hayasa-sensei. But he couldn't actually stop them, could they? Toki could teleport and Keigo could fly. And sure, the yelling about villains, and the berating about worrying the adults, and the disappointed speech in general… It did make them scared and ashamed for maybe half an hour.
But the very next day they were at it again.
So after three day, one of the researchers gave them wristwatches with GPS, and told them to be back in time for dinner. Otherwise, they were free to do as they wanted. It was a victory in appearance, but about ten hours later Toki grasped she had justpassively accepted a tracking device on her person at all times.
And the truth was, even after realizing that, she didn't take it off, because she understood why she had to carry it, and she thought the Commission was right. She didn't like it, but she accepted it… So, really, whose victory was it?
Anyway. Days passed, then weeks. Summer came to an end. The weather turned cold, and classes resumed. The highlight of the month was a short visit of a hero who had his leg amputated, and who needed a prosthetic that could withstand his Quirk (he changed his mass to get as light as a feather or as heavy as a truck). So the hero hung out here while the researchers studied him, studied his Quirk, and tinkered with prosthetics and technological gadgets. Toki and Keigo were instructed to not bother the guy, but they did have a cover-story ready if they were seen, which was that they were children of the staff and homeschooled here. They sadly didn't have the chance to crowd the hero and pester him with question, but tailing him around the place made for an entertaining game. For a guy with a fake leg, he was surprisingly quick!
Then it was October. Toki breezed through her English tests to the point where she switched to more advanced online classes, which was a bit flattering. Sure, she really lacked vocabulary, but it wasn't hard to learn. The syntax came to her almost naturally, with the subject-verb-complement order that didn't make sense in Japanese but was necessary in English. Her accent was awful, but her writing was pretty good. Still, she didn't want to leave Keigo behind. He was smart, he would have effortlessly been at the top of a normal class, but he didn't have Toki's passion for academia. He got bored faster. Endless equations, English movies without subtitles, little drawing of how a soundwave broke on a soundproof barrier… It didn't fascinate him. He really made an effort to share Toki's enthusiasm, but he would rather read something good or play outside. Unlike Toki, Keigo wasn't a nerd!
But it was how the world worked. Toki was better with long, complicated written stuff. Keigo could juggle more tasks and do faster mental calculations. There was nothing to be jealous of: they played their respective strengths and covered each other weaknesses, and that was all. They were still thick as thieves. They were a team, why would they compete?
At the end of October, Toki celebrated her ninth birthday. At dinner, there was a huge cake and the whole staff of Naruto Labs sang 'Happy Birthday to you', before showering her with small gifts. It was mostly candy, chocolates, hair ties, glittery pens (Toki loved glittery pens!), little toys. Keigo gave her a notebook, secretly bought during one of their outing along the Yoshino river. It was kind of plain but there were stars and nebulas on the cover, a swirling galaxy that moved if the light it the paper just at the right angle. Toki was losing track of how many notebooks she had (at least six, but maybe eight or nine) and what they were for. She should invest in labels.
She got new clothes, too, although it was less of a birthday gift and more of an automated process each time a child aged a year. Her measurements were taken and although most of her clothes were some kind of standard uniform, she was allowed to pick some motifs and colors from the online store the Labs used to buy kids' clothes. Toki picked everything she could in orange and yellow. It was going to be smashing.
What? She liked bright colors!
So. October, then November, then December. Christmas, Keigo's birthday on the 28th, then New Year. Kameko Sabira dropped by to give them some late birthday/Christmas/new year gift, and cheerfully informed them she had been promoted. She was barely twenty. Really, either Kameko was wildly successful, or Toki's grades reflected well on her resume. Probably a bit of both.
Time flew by.
Toki didn't think much about Sayuri. Maybe it made her a bad daughter, but she thought about her mother less and less. Broken hearts mend, wounds heal: even the bad ones. She missed her mother, but she missed what could have been rather than the real thing. Just like, on the streets, she had missed home without really missing anyone at all. The pain faded in the background, until it became almost unnoticeable. Toki Taiyōme was gone, just as was her past, and her history with her parents. There was now only Quantum, the Commission's protégée.
It was cold as fuck outside so Toki and Keigo didn't sneak out as much. Instead, they started exploring hidden places in the building. There weren't much, and Keigo knew almost all of them (he had been here longer than Toki, and he had explored plenty) but they were still small enough to slither in the vents or climb in the fake ceilings. But in their free time, they would rather buddle in a sweater or two, put on a warm coat, and go crazy outside. It even snowed, which led to a good old snowball fight with a few bored researchers.
Winter passed, slowly. Toki was bored in math class, so the teachers upped her level. Her lessons were still with Keigo, always, but now they had different manuals and different exercises to complete. They also had separate English homework, since Keigo learned better by hearing it and Toki by reading it. They still trained together, but they had more join exercises now, working on coordination and teamwork.
And as time passed, and Toki quietly settled in her new life, she started thinking about the future.
Once upon a time, in the twentieth century, there had been a guy named Abraham Harold Maslow, an American psychologist who theorized that human needs were ordered in a prepotent hierarchy. A pressing need would have to be mostly satisfied before someone would give their attention to the next highest need. His theory had been popularized and calledpyramid of needs, the lowest levels of the pyramid being made up of the most basic needs, while the most complex needs were at the top of the pyramid. So at the bottom of the pyramid would be the basic physical requirements: the need for food, water, sleep, and warmth. Then there was the next level, safety and security. Then came the social needs: friendship, love, family. The fourth level was the need to be competent and recognized, the need for esteem, for status and levels of success. Then there was the need of cognitive challenges: discovery, learning, intellectual stimulation. After that were the need for harmony and beauty, and lastly, on the very top of the pyramid, the need for self-actualization: the realization of one's full potential.
According to Maslow's theory, one individual could not focus on one need until a more pressing, basic need was left neglected. And it made sense, of course. How could someone focus on creating bonds and friendship when they were constantly hungry, or felt unsafe? Their focus was on meeting their more basic needs, the more necessary for survival, before moving up the pyramid. Not matter how important socialization was, not starving to death was more urgent. Same thing for the social needs. You couldn't really focus on status or aesthetic appreciation if you felt lost and adrift, surrounded by indifferent strangers, because your focus was on seeking a place to belong.
Toki had never gone hungry or slept in the cold. In that, she supposed she was lucky. Not every child who ended up on the streets was blessed with the ability to break into warm places at night, or had a frankly disturbing amount of cash money to pay for meals. But… ever since she had been six and her mother had briefly abandoner her to teach her a lesson… or maybe even before that, when Sayuri had told her about Meteor's Crew… Toki had been worried. She had felt… not unsafe, butisolated. So no matter how good her grades were, no matter how interesting her analysis and her books were, how praised she was by her teachers, how pretty she became (she was a plain-looking kid, but her big doe-like eyes could be considered cute), Toki was still missing a step in the pyramid. It had felt like a gaping pit in her stomach, that unarticulated lack of something… An aching loneliness that she couldn't put in words, especially considering that she was constantly surrounded by the very people who made her feel both loved and isolated.
But now she was here and… it was different. She wasn't cold or hungry, she was provided for, she felt safe, she had a friend and a sense of belonging, she was intellectually simulated, she was praised and recognized for her talent: and so she could relax. It didn't feel like there was anything missing from her life. She could stop focus on how to make it through the present, or the very short-term future, and think about… Well. The long-term future. Intellectual challenge, harmony, self-actualization…
And what was her place in the canon-Verse.
Because, let's be honest: just because she was born, it wasn't the canon-verse anymore. Well, it could be. Maybe in canon there had been a villain named Meteor who had been arrested, and a teleporting girl named Toki who had been friend with Hawks, but sincerely? Toki doubted it. Maybe that canon-Toki had existed, but had been killed before the beginning of the Plot. But the way things were progressing in this universe… Toki was going to be a hero, and Keigo and her were going to be glued at the hip. Of course, Toki could still chicken out and decide to protect canon, and leave everything to go live as a hermit in Norway, but… She didn't want to.
Because being a hero would be cool, and came with free tuition to be an astrophysicist. Did Toki want the world to follow the safest course, to be saved from the big bad All For One? Sure. But would she thrown the sacrosanct-canon-verse by the window, if it allowed her to get her hands on a chance to study stars and launch satellites?You bet.
So. The situation was as followed: Toki knew things about the future. She didn't have the power to something about it, for now. But one day, she would. The question was: should she act? Or should she stand back and watch how things unfolded? Because if Izuku Midoriya was destined to meet All Might and inherit his power, it would happen wherever Toki stepped in to stop his bullying or not. Such was the power of the shōnen protagonist. But! What if there was no such thing as fate? What if everything was just luck and circumstances, what if the butterfly effect could stop the canon even before it gained any momentum? Then stopping the bullying could be disastrous. What if it meant that Midoriya changed schools, or just left school a little earlier on that fateful day, and so wasn't attacked by the Sludge Villain that made him met All Might?
Not everything happened in a vacuum. Even if Toki didn't stop the bullying, what if others things changed? She would be a hero. What if she stopped the Sludge Villain before he attacked Midoriya? Or, if she came across him, should she just let him go, and risk him kill people just so canon could proceed? And… even if Toki didn't do anything, what if the simple fact that she was born, that she lived and existed in the same space as canon-characters, had already destroyed anything she thought fixed?
The canon-verse had been unchanging and unmoving. It had been linear and clear. But even without touching the main character, things could change… if their circumstances were altered.
It could be as simple as losing a job, or having a different favorite movie and choosing to go to the cinema a certain day. Things were constantly moving. What if… What if somebody meet Nono in prison, and upon being released a few years later decided to become a taxi driver like her, while in canon they would have tried for a job in a fast-food? And what if that person was supposed to save, let's say, Eraserhead while he choked on a chicken nugget, because that lowly fast-food employee was the only one to know the Heimlich maneuver? What if, by putting Nono in prison, Toki had already doomed Eraserhead?! Then he wouldn't be a teacher at Yūei, and he couldn't protect students when they were attacked by the League, and he wouldn't try and teach Hitoshi Shinsō to transfer in the hero course, andoh my gods she had killed Eraserhead!
Then she realized, with a shock not unlike an electricity jolt, that no, she hadn't killed Eraserhead, but she had already changed a main characters' lives. And not just Keigo.
She had changed Hitoshi Shinsō's life,because she had saved his mother.
Maybe, in the canon-verse, a hero would have been quick enough to reach the car. But Toki remembered… The amphibian-looking hero on scene had only dived in the riverafterToki had saved both Hitoshi and Mihoko. By that time, the car had been two-third filled. And Mihoko had been struggling with her safety belt. Hitoshi had obviously been saved, in canon, but he'd been at the back of the car, where there was more air… And of course, the hero would have prioritized the baby… And… Fuck. The more she thought about it…
Well, in any case, it hadn't happened. So there was no use thinking about it.
Back to her starting point, then. Should she change canon? Or rather: should she actively try to interfere, instead of living her life and considering it interference enough?
The thing was: Toki didn't really have an end goal. Sure, making the world better would be great, but Toki wasn't an ambitious Slytherin or a righteous Gryffindor. She didn't have avisionof what a better world would look like. There were things that were cooler than Before, like better healthcare, no war, no army. There were things that sucked, like the hero-mania and All For One. It was just life. It was a world, her world, with all its beauty and its imperfections.
So… should Toki just… do what a hero does, and try and act where she could? But that would mean acting on her memories from Before, and soon that would wreck the Plot. Knowledge prompted change, yet change negated knowledge. Toki liked knowing things. It would be like erasing data! Losing intel! For someone as knowledge-hungry as her, it was a crime!
"Aaaaarghh," she moaned, hiding her head in her hands.
Keigo sniggered:
"What are you doing?"
"Having a moral crisis."
"That late in the evening? You couldn't wait until tomorrow?"
They were in Toki's room, doing their homework. Or well, Keigo was done and playing Nintendo, while Toki was supposed to write about tectonics plaques and had let her thoughts wander. She sighed, letting her pencil fall on her desk. Her friend raised his gaze from his game, and asked curiously:
"Why are you having a moral crisis?"
"Because I'm wondering what would be my duty of care in a very vague and specific situation that may happen but could also not happen."
"Like what?"
Toki considered.
"Well. Let's say I learn there's a kid bullied in Tokyo. That's super-far away, I have no connection to that kid, but I know heexistsand considering nobody give a rat's ass about him, I'm the only one who would be willing to do something. But first question: do I have to power to act? Second question: do I have legitimacy to act? Third question: do I have opportunity? And finally, and that's the hardest one, fourth question: what if by acting I deprive him of better opportunities? Like, for example, in a few years he will meet a hero who will notice him because he's bullied, and that kid will save the hero's life in a very specific event, because it turns out his useless Quirk was perfectly suited to saving this specific hero in that specific catastrophe?"
Keigo blinked: "That's a lot of specifics."
Toki shrugged. Maybe, but hey, the canon-story was specific too. Several people were saved because Izuku Midoriya had been here, had been powerful, had befriended the right people and made the right choice. Would Tenya Iida be saved if Midoriya wasn't in Hosu when Iida would go to look for Stain? Would Eri be saved if Midoriya wasn't here to fight Overhaul? Would Koda be saved if Midoriya hadn't noticed the kid was missing in the middle of a villain's attack? Maybe, but maybe not. There were a lot of situations where it was specificallyMidoriya'sskillet and self-sacrifice that had allowed the good guys to win.
There was also the matter of One For All, All Might's power. Because… Apparently All Might's Quirk was too strong to be passed on a normal person. An individual wasn't meant to have several Quirks. So a Quirkless person could live forty or fifty years with One For All, while the past holders had slowly been killed inside. Wasn't there a past older who received the power at twenty then died of old age atforty? Anyway, One For All, the legendary Quirk, should only be passed on to a Quirkless person, and the Quirkless were fewer with each generation. They made up about twenty percent of the general population but it wasn't a worldwide statistic (there was more Quirkless people in Europe than in Asia for example)… Or a generational one. Most Quirkless people were old. In Toki's generation, or Midoriya's, the Quirkless represented maybe 3% of births, not 20%.
So if All Might didn't pass on his power to Izuku, who was both heroic and Quirkless, good luck finding another like him. And if he passed on his power to someone who already had a Quirk, like Mirio, well… All Might didn't know, nobody knew but Toki (and eventually, the poor sap who would have seven ghosts in his head), but it was a death sentence. It wouldn't be immediate, but Mirio's body would start deteriorating, and he would die before hitting forty.
So yeah. What was Toki's duty of care in that situation? Make sure Midoriya got the Quirk? Make sure the bullying stopped? What was the logical thing, the one where the cost-benefit analysis was the more positive?
"I think my problem is really more one of personal responsibility," Toki thought out loud. "If I take action to stop one small problem that could ultimately play a role into a larger event, is it my responsibility to step in to make sure I don't disturb that large chain of event?"
Keigo closed his game, looking thoughtful.
"Isn't that kind of self-centered? Like, that chain of event doesn't exist in a vacuum. If you stop a car accident and that car accident could have made people realize that an intersection was dangerous, it's not your job to go and plant warning signs, or to assemble the mayor and stuff so the signalization change, right?"
"Yeah, but…" Toki struggled with her words. "What if I know what's going to happen for sure, and I change things. For a small good thing, I could do start a chain reaction of bad things."
Like getting Bakugou blacklisted from heroic schools because he was an ass, and making him even more furious than in canon, which turned him into a villain, which of course ended up changing the kidnapping arc and making the League of Villains kidnap little Shouto who was way more vulnerable psychologically… andwowthat was a scary scenario now that she thought about it, wasn't it?
"We're going to be heroes, Toki," Keigo said very seriously. "We can't be scared to act because we could make thing worse, because then we will never be able to make things better."
That was… a very good point. But Toki frowned:
"It's not about being scared. It's about… corrupting data and fucking up experiments by adding extra-variables."
"Then you need to adapt on the fly. Deal with the consequences!"
Toki made a face. Keigo snorted, then flopped on the bed, letting his Nintendo fall somewhere on the floor.
"Honestly, you're making a too big deal of it. Letting something bad happen today for an uncertain better tomorrow still meant that you let something bad happen today, and for what? Even if it all play out perfectly, I know you, you will never be fine with what went wrong. So just…Don't let the bad thing happen today."
"You said it like it's so simple…"
"It is. Even if you think you know how a situation is going to play out, there's to many factors you don't control, it's always a gamble. You solve the more urgent problem, then the next, then the next, and you collect data and you anticipate the next on, just like in Hayasa-sensei's treasure hunts. If you change the circumstances then maybe the one scenario you had predicted won't happen: so what, can't you predict another and adapt to it? Everyone does it all the time.Youalready do it all the time!"
Toki blinked. Good point, too. If she changed canon… Well, more than what she had already… She would still have huge amount of data to extrapolate from, because she knew the characters' personalities and motivations. And… Seriously, did she even need that canon-knowledge information to make her way in this universe?
She had already changed canon. She hadn't even hesitated before arresting Meteor's Crew or befriending Hawks, because… it had been her life, not a story. Later on, would she calibrate how to live her existence in a way that would leave undisturbed All Might and Co? No, absolutely not. Why the fuck would she do that? It was her life.Shewas the main character of the story.
It was an eye-opener. As if she had struggled to reconcile two points of view, and only now finally merged them. Sure, the canon-story was important, but it wasn'tfixed. Changing it a little wouldn't bring the end of the world. It wasn't the beginning and ending of all! The canon had had battles and drama, but good guys had won because they had done their best. Would they stop trying, thinking, fighting, helping, if some tiny circumstances changed? No. And even if they did, it wasn't Toki's job to hold their hand, to make the main characters into functional people. All Might mattered, Midoriya mattered, butToki mattered too. She didn't have to get out of her way to protect them, especially if it put her at risk. She would help if she could, but she was also allowed to focus on herself first.
Yeah, they were important. Yeah, Toki knew more about them than most. So what? There were future-seeing Quirks out there. It didn't give their owners a god-like responsibility to preserve the future. It only gave them an edge into navigating their own life.
And Keigo was right. Normal people lived with a constant changing world, they didn't have a picture of 'what the future is going to look like for a certain person in a certain universe if no variable deviate from its trajectory'. And even if they had, they certainly wouldn't mold their existence to follow this picture… Especially if said picture was full of fuck-ups. Like, Toki didn't know Ingenium personally but being paralyzed from the waist down by a violent lunatic sounded pretty traumatic. Sure it was a good plot point. Was it inevitable? No. Could she avoid it? Maybe. Would she lose sleep if she changed it? No. She would fret a bit about what could go wrong and all, but you couldn't always control everything, all the time. Sometimes people got hurt. And sometimes you had to power to stop them from getting hurt, and you had to make a choice to act or to stay a passive observer.
"You're right,", she said slowly. "I mean… I'm training to be a hero and I want to go to space. Mediocrity is not an option. I will act. I could fuck up things that could have been, but I also could not."
"That's the spirit!" her friend cheered. "So, moral crisis solved?"
Toki grinned.
"Yeah, for now. I will let you know if I have a melt-down about great power meaning great responsibility and the fact that being super-smart meant that I have decided to be god."
(And she was only half-joking.)
oOoOoOo
Every single person in Naruto Labs knew that Toki was a space nerd. When bored researchers made trivia games and a space question came up, they all looked at her with expectant smiles. What were the names of Jupiter's moons? Was Pluton a planet? What was the closest galaxy? What was a nebula? A black hole? A supernova?
It wasn't like it was hard. There had been no new major discovery since the twenty-first century, which was a crying shame. Space exploration had been shut down and abandoned in favor of Quirks, despite the leaps and changes in technology in the last two hundred years. Toki loved ranting about it. They had discovered so much! Advanced fabrication, creative and exoteric materials, better fuel and environmental studies and solutions: all of which were steps towards sustainable space flight... But none of it was hooked together, pushed to the conclusion. Ititchedat Toki, like she was suffering from OCD and seeing all those loose threads made her twitch with the suppressed need to tie them together neatly.
So. When Toki started outpacing her lessons plans in mathagain, this time her teachers stopped giving more advanced homework and switched to a different idea altogether. Her math lessons were reduced by half and the rest was reserved for a new module: engineering.
Toki was a little ashamed to admit she had never thought about it, like, at all.
Engineering was cool, but it was… kind of in the background? Real scientists were writing equations of paper and playing with cool schematics, but they didn't actually put their hands in sludge. Ah! Terrible mistake. And an arrogant one, at that. Powerful minds could gargle themselves all they wanted with their knowledge, they would create nothing if they only spat on the people who did the actual work. So Toki was introduced to the workshop of Naruto Labs, and she started painstakingly learning what was a wrench and how electrical boards worked. It was both engaging and terribly frustrating, because she was used to be good at stuff right of the bat, and here she just… wasn't.
She was a normal kid learning how to tinker with mechanics. But hey, as a researcher sternly said to her: 'if you want to make a spaceship, you're going to have to do more than daydream about math', so here Toki was, learning how to make the laws of physics her bitch.
If she wanted to go to space, she was going to need a spaceship. Something that could hold, with insulators, conductors, reinforcements, aesthetic plating… And a power source. Technology had progressed by leaps and bounds in the last century, so it was possible (and probably even easy). There were a few cities power plants in Europe that used something called an Ion Drive, an electromagnetic field generator, but justhowthat thing worked was still a bit too complicated for Toki. Still, one researcher had mentioned in an off-end manner that it could be used as an actual propulsion drive engine since it didn't need any other fuel that electrons from the environment, and Toki had latched on that single-mindedly.
But she still had a few years ahead of her before getting her hands on the equivalent of a nuclear warhead power generator with an infinite source of energy, so there was no rush.
Anyway. Toki started learning engineering. She was good at it, her teacher said so, but for someone used to prodigy-level of success in basically anything mathematical she touched, it was sometimes difficult to accept struggles and failed experiments. It was also startling to do something alone, without Keigo. They were usually together almost all the time. Even when they had lessons of different difficulty levels, they were still in the same room, sharing some exercises, talking to the same teachers. It was strange.
Unsettling, but not bad. Toki was aware that even if both her and Keigo were very intelligent and independent children, they tended to rely a lot on each other. They were rarely apart. Intellectually, she knew it was a good thing that they each had their own interest and skillset, completely separate from the other. Emotionally, well, that was another story.
But at least, they still had all their other training together. The ballet lessons, for example. Or their training with Hayasa-sensei. He made them spar together more often these days. At the beginning they were still the same level, but Keigo was slowly starting to win more matches than not. Most of Toki's take-downs relied on her being able to surprise her adversary by appearing behind or above them, but Keigo was very hard to take by surprise.
"It's my feathers," Keigo explained with a bit of wonder. "They're getting more sensitive. Like, I feel when you appear somewhere."
"Like a cat's whiskers?" Toki wondered with curiosity, poking a few feathers with her index finger.
"More than that," her friend said, scrunching his face in thought. "Maybe like a bat's radar?"
"Fascinating," muttered Hayasa-sensei, pushing his glasses up his nose. "Is it some kind of psychic awareness, some passive telepathy? Or are they picking up vibrations?"
"Hum. I think vibrations?"
"Well. Let's test it."
They played hide-and-seek for a while, then Hayasa-sensei brought Keigo to the doctor, then to their Quirk counselor. Bemusedly, Toki wondered if that was that big of deal. In canon, Hawks had been able to do much more. He could locate civilians in a crumbling building and spy on conversations behind closed doors thanks to the air vibrations his feathers picked up.
She had naively thought that he always had had this ability. But of course, he didn't… It would have been overwhelming, to be so sensitive, so constantly exposed right of the bat to so much stimulus since age four.
Which begged an interesting question. How much could a Quirk develop during childhood? In the canon-verse, the story had followed Izuku Midoriya who had received his Quirk at fifteen. So it was hard to guess how Quirks evolved during childhood. There had been Dabi's back-story flashback, still… Apparently Touya Todoroki's hair had slowly turned from red to white while his body changed with his Quirk, but it was impossible to say when it had started, and when it had stopped. Was it related to age? To power?
Turned it was both, and neither. Quirks evolved constantly with their user's body. From age four (when the Quirk appeared) to fourteen, Quirk strengthened and grew. They started stabilizing when the user was about fifteen, and stopped changing completely during early adulthood. After that, they very rarely evolved. The rare cases recorded were calledAwakening. The right catalyst could cause the Quirk to evolve on the spot, gaining a new level of strength and/or new aspects to its nature that were previously not possible.
Toki and Keigo were still kids, so their Quirks were still gaining strength. Keigo could flight higher, carry heavier burdens. Toki could teleport quicker, and carry heavier things too. It was normal. But Keigo's feathers becoming more sensitive in addition to becoming stronger was unexpected, so of course their teachers were all very interested. Toki felt almost jealous. No, scratch that, shewasjealous. What? She liked being the best. She almost always did better than Keigo, academically! She was faster! And she was better at close-combat!
Still, Toki knew better than to voice her childish tantrum aloud. She growled at her homework more than usual and even rambled a bit about having a bad day to one of her teachers in the workshop, but she didn't want to direct her negative feelings towards her best friend. He was better than her, so what?! In canon, he was the Number Three… No, the Number Two hero. She had known it, and she had also known that she had no hope to top that. She wasn't as dedicated, as good at multitasking, or as physically strong. She was good, but notthatgood. And it was fine!
Still, not being the best annoyed her a bit. For so long, Keigo had been her equal. Toki had even surpassed him in the classroom. But now, Keigo's Quirk was becoming more refined, more polyvalent than hers, and ultimately it would made him a more powerful hero than her.
Toki's Quirk was evolving too. But she had already explored all its versatility (how to teleport with things, inside clothes, carrying things in her arms, while throwing or dropping things, while changing position to attack from low or high…), and now it was only strengthening things that existed before. So yeah, there was no big surprise in store for her. Shame.
Well, there was one, but it wasn't in the manifestation of her power. Only in itsdefinition.
"Rename my Quirk?" Toki parroted dumbly. "For what?"
"Hawks is going to do it, and it would be convenient to edit both your entries at the same time, that's all," answered the guy in a suit.
Keigo was almost vibrating with excitement:
"I'm renaming it Fierce Wings!"
Yes, it was more logical thanRed Wings. Still, Toki frowned:
"I'm still just a teleporter…"
"Not exactly," argued the man. "You have discovered that you can do more with your Quirk than merely teleporting yourself, right?"
Toki nodded. She could teleport stuff, she knew. The guy in suit looked satisfied.
"It's the President's opinion that your Quirk isn't simply teleportation, but warping."
"What, really?"
The President had never come down to Naruto Labs. From his Wikipedia page, Toki knew it was an old man, with an Intelligence-type Quirk, and that he hated publicity. Toki had no idea he had analyzed her Quirk… But yeah, it made sense. She had only seen the Vice-President, but the woman must have given their files to her boss, right?
"Really," the man acquiesced. "The difference between a warper and a teleporter is that a warper creates a portal. The portal either push whatever is in the way or allow the warper to at least feel the obstacle. A teleporter doesn't have this luxury. If they teleport to a space that is already occupied by something solid, their molecules fuse."
Ouch. Sounded kind of deadly. Hey, wait a minute…
"So that meant…" Toki realized with a horrified look. "… That if I had been a teleporter, and that I had tried to teleport in my coat…"
"Indeed," the guy said dryly. "You would have fused with said coat, instead of slipping it on. Our theory is that you are generating a portal around yourself. In practice, it is no different from teleportation."
But it made sense, Toki thought, frenetically re-evaluating her past analysis of her Quirk. How she managed to transport objects… She pulled them through a portal, or rather she widened an existing portal to make them go through. And how she could reappear without holding those objects, too! She didn't teleport her and the object to two different locations, she justwidened her portalto include herself and the object's location! Which explained why she couldn't teleport stuff very far away from her. The size of her portal had to be limited by the size of her body…
"Oh, I need to run some more experimentsright now," she grinned.
"Can you at least pick a new name for your Quirk before that?" the man asked with amusement.
Toki considered it.Self-Warpdidn't quite fit, since she warped stuff too.Transportseemed a bit lame.Portalwas misleading. Then the perfect name came to mind. As a knee-jerking reaction, she thought about rejecting it. It sounded too much like her mother. But, on second thought, wasn't it what made it perfect? Maybe her raw power came from her father, but the ability to tear through space came from Sayuri's Quirk. She didn't have the limitation of Swap-Space but she had its core. It was her mother who had been the first teleporter in the family.
"Warp-Space."
"Nice!" Keigo chimed in.
And that's how Toki became a warper instead of a teleporter.
She also learned, later on, that changing her Quirk's name had a hidden advantage. It made her harder to find in the national database. Admittedly, only the police could search people by their Quirk, but a truly determined criminal could always have contacts willing to do a quick search for them. If, one day, someone looked for a Quirk named "Teleportation"… They wouldn't find it. And so, they wouldn't find Toki. After all, she had already given up her birth name, so why not the name of her power?
Anyway. Time passed. Toki and Keigo kept training. Learning about the warping didn't change Toki's power, but itdidchange her outlook on it. A lot of her analysis had to be reexamined and reworded. Like, if she teleported holding a teddy bear in her arms, and reappeared in one place and the teddy bear away from her, she had a limited range, right? Well, that range wasn't random, it was the maximum size of her self-generated portal. The epicenter was her body, but… the portal was like a thin film covering her whole body and she could stretch it to englobe more, and change shape to extend in one direction (to make the teddy bear reappear two meters left, for example). It did clarify a lot of her experiments. For example, adrenaline thickened that film and so her warping was more powerful, could expand further, stretch longer, carry heavier stuff. It also had the weird side-effect of making her eyes glow a little, but that wasn't important. Anyway, warping instead of teleporting didn't bring her more strength or more versatility, so yeah, Keigo still had the superior Quirk. Damn it.
But back to the point. In spring, Toki and Keigo joined a group of children who were invited to visit Shirayuki's agency. It was the first time they had left Shikoku's island since summer camps.
Being part of a group helped them blend him (only two kids visiting would have raised questions), but of course the Commission couldn't merge Keigo and Toki with a visiting class from a random school. So their group was kind of an exclusive group having received invitations on behalf of Shirayuki herself… who had probably done so on the advice of the Commission.
Almost of the children were 'legacy kids' one way or another. Legacy kids came from heroes' families, or were connected to the industry via support or business. The more they were involved in this world, the more they were sought after when being selected for hero course in high-school. So no one was surprised to have a bunch of privileged kids were selected to tour a hero agency.
In this group, a few children were sponsored by the Commission from a distance, still living with their parents but having a scholarship in exchange for the promise they would join a hero course later on. Some others were children of sidekicks who had received an invitation. There were nine kids in total, and Keigo and Toki were (once again) the youngest.
Shirayuki was one of the younger heroes: she was barely twenty-two. She had been a freelancer from age eighteen to twenty-one, which meant she hadn't had an agency or even a real base of operations. She had wandered from city to city to run after criminals, like some sort of bounty hunter. After all, starting an agency cost money (and not everyone could afford a loan that large), needed a good administration (with qualified staff and experimented secretaries), and several heroes (at least four sidekicks were needed so the agency could have one active operative at all time). So most licensed heroes didn't start right off the bat with a full agency. They either worked as freelancer or preferably as sidekick for a few years, to gain some experience, before making their own debut.
The agency was in Fukuoka. It was a few hours drive away from Naruto Labs. In the future… Well, in the canon-verse… Toki was pretty sure that Hawks' hero agency would be in that city. It was also Meteor's birthplace, although Toki would rather forget that. Still, she looked around with curiosity. It was, well, a city. Not as big and busy as Musutafu, but still huge and bustling with people of all shapes and forms, heroes running around in brightly colored spangled outfit, and all the usual fanfare of a Japanese metropole.
Shirayuki herself was a young woman, tall and cool, with long white hair and crystal-clear blue eyes. Her hero costume was a traditional long-style kimono, specially tailored so she could run and fight in it, but that also gave her an air or regal dignity. She had a powerful ice Quirk and could create animated ice construct (usually in the shape of various animals) and had a telepathic connection with them. It made her able to use those constructs to stand guard, attack, or accomplish multiple tasks. She surveilled the streets thanks to ice-made birds, for example. It was a fascinating Quirk. As a person, Shirayuki was kind of cold (pun intended) but she did make a valiant effort to briefly introduce herself, then answers the kids' questions. What was the purpose of an agency? How did it work? Who made their support items? How many people worked here?
But Toki's questions were a bit more personal, so she had to wait impatiently until the group was led away by a sidekick, while Shirayuki went away for patrol. She teleported to the heroine's side in a blink (and promptly dodged a reflexive punch for her trouble) before asking cheerfully:
"So, I've been told you've been sponsored by the Commission, is that true?"
Shirayuki narrowed her eyes: "Who told you that?"
"The Commission. I'm Quantum, by the way."
"Ah," the woman understood, frowning. "You are a sponsored child, too. And why, exactly, are you bothering me?"
"Because I have questions!" Toki exclaimed, waving her arms. "I haven't met any other sponsored heroes. And, according to the guys who recruited me, there are only four of them who are currently active. Which actually beg the question of inactive heroes, either retired or dead…"
"Fascinating," the heroine deadpanned. "Now, I have a very busy schedule…"
She sidestepped Toki very neatly. Without missing a beat, the young girl teleported herself right in her path again. One of Shirayuki's eyes twitched in annoyance. Ah ah, too bad for her. Faced with a potential source of knowledge, Toki was like a dog with a bone.
"Can you answer my questions first?" she chirped eagerly. "It won't take long. Also, us sponsored kid have to stick together, right?"
Shirayuki briefly closed her eyes. "Fine. You have three minutes."
"Perfect! So, how old were you when you've been scouted by the Commission, what event made them notice you, and why were your guardians deemed unsuitable?"
Shirayuki looked thunderous. Yeah, maybe Toki shouldn't have started with the hard questions right from the start. Still, the woman gritted her teeth and answered tersely:
"I was ten. I had been placed in foster care a year ago, after the death of my father, as my mother had been gone for years and was impossible to find. I iced over my school in a fight. And you only have two minutes and ten seconds left."
Lies and slander! Toki resolved to buy a chronometer. She knew she still had at least thirty seconds more. Shirayuki was so uncooperative! But hey, better to make the most of it. Undeterred by the heroine's glare, Toki continued:
"Do you have a special relationship with them because they sponsored you, or are you allowed the same freedom as normal hero?"
"There is no special allowance made because they happened to place me on that path," Shirayuki gritted. "I have the same level of autonomy as any other hero. The Commission is more liable to turn to me for confidential or high-risk missions, but it's because of mycompetence, not because I hold a preferential status."
Yeah, keep telling yourself that. In the canon-verse, the Commission had ordered Hawks to infiltrate the League of Villain, and yes it may have been because he was popular and a good liar… But maybe they had picked him because they knew he was least likely to refuse.
"Did they help you set up your agency?"
"No."
Toki stayed unruffled: "Did they offer?"
"Yes," Shirayuki admitted reluctantly. "But if the Commission gives financial help to open an agency, they also have a say in how it's run and where it is set. Using them as a springboard has its cost… And my goal was to prove myself, not to climb ranks as fast as possible. I opted for starting as a hero on my own merits."
Toki could respect that. For some people the end justified the means, but for some other the way you attained your goal was as important as the goal itself.
"Are you proud of having been a sponsored child? Or do you feel like you owe them something?"
"Proud?" Shirayuki looked, for the first time, a little taken aback. Then her expression became scornful: "There's no need for pride. My worth is my own. As for owing them… I am thankful for the opportunity they have given me, but our relationship was one of mutually beneficial business. I am no more indebted to them that they are to me, for my services as a hero who protect this city."
"Do you have regrets?"
"None."
Toki blinked. Well, that was fast. But then, Shirayuki had a second of hesitation, watching Toki was if mentally measuring her, and she added reluctantly: "It was a lonely childhood. But no, I don't regret taking that path. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to realize my full potential."
Lonely. Toki wondered, suddenly, how lucky she had been to be Keigo's age. How lucky she was to have him. Because who else was there for her, and for him?
The Commission taught them, guided them and helped them, but they didn'tparentthem. There was a difference between being a teacher and raising a child. Well, Keigo and Toki pretty much raised themselves, but… If Toki hadn't had Keigo… Or if Keigo hadn't had Toki, as it should have been in the canon-verse… Life at Naruto Labs would have been wildly different. The hallways would be serious and silent instead of being filled with laughter and games. Their free time would have been spent training, because there wouldn't have been another child to play with. Maybe Keigo (or Toki) would have tried harder to please the adults, seeking some substitute for friendship or family.
Yeah. Toki had thought that life at Naruto Labs was pretty good. But if she had been alone there… It would have been so much depressing, especially in the long run. It made her heart squeeze almost painfully, because… Had it been Keigo's fate, in canon? What a sad childhood it would have been.
"I see," Toki said after a beat of silence. "Any advice for someone in the sponsorship program?"
Shirayuki gave her a long, hard look.
"You are an investment," she finally said. "Heroes all are. All we can hope, is being worth to be gambled on."
Well. That didn't sound ominous at all.
Then there was a distant call in the hallways, and Toki realized that Keigo was probably looking for her. She tossed a quick look above her shoulder, trying to spot the rest of the group. When she turned back toward Shirayuki to thank her for her patience, the young woman had already pivoted on her heels to go back to her work.
"Best of luck to you, Quantum."
Toki hesitated a small second to return the words, because Shirayuki didn't look like the kind of person who needed luck. But she was also a character who didn't appear in canon. While it didn't necessarily mean anything… It could also be a bad sign.
Too late. Shirayuki had already turned the corner and disappeared from view. Toki sighed, and her shoulder dropped. Well, at least she hoped that when Keigo and her would be a grown-up hero, they wouldn't be as cold as her!
oOoOoOo
Their visit to Shirayuki's agency was informative. Toki hadn't learned anything new concerning the HPSC, but she had now confirmation that neither Mera or Kameko had lied about sponsored children being a regular (if rather sporadic) occurrence. Good to know. But heroic kids with powerful Quirks were pretty rare, so it made sense that the Commission didn't have a boarding school, only a bedroom and a few part-time teachers grafted on one of its facilities.
But back to the point. The goal of their visit of Shirayuki's agency was to learn how a real heroic agency was run, and they did just that. What were the eployees' jobs, what did secretaries do, how the sidekicks organized their scheduels, how the agency coordinated with others heroes, how they decided patrols routes, how they looked for villains… But also how their administration worked. Who paid for damages, where the money came from, how to manage merch and advertising, what permit they had to obtain, how sidekicks were selected… It all sounded very complicated. That was why most heroes started as sidekicks, to learn the ropes before starting their own agency.
It gave Keigo and Toki a lot to talk about, in any case. They hadn't made a formal plan or anything: but since the beginning, when they talked about the future, they absentmindedly spoke about how they would work together. It had never been in question. They were a duo, a package deal.
Ah! So much for canon-Hawks who was a known loner, too fast to be followed, and who only deigned to slow down for Endeavor.
Keigo absolutely loved Endeavor. Toki didn't share his enthusiasm, but well, she guessed she understood his feelings. Okay, Endeavor had a garbage personality, but he was the most brutally honest example of what being a hero was about. Not victory, butstruggle. Heroes were usually perfectly happy with All Might's legend, and so they never bothered to try and surpass him, easy in the knowledge that they would never become more than what was set for them to be… But not Endeavor. He had pushed upwards, fought bitterly, and worked harder than all of them put together. Yeah, he was a dickhead and Toki didn't like him, and she would continue not liking him until he put his head out of his ass and started his redemption arc, but there was something that inspiredrespectin how ferocious and driven Endeavor was.
Keigo also admired Endeavor because he had saved him from his piece of shit of a father, and once, he had wondered if Toki felt the same thing toward All Might, who had arrested Meteor. But Toki didn't have any particular feelings towards the Number One. He hadn't saved her. Toki had saved herself. All Might had just beenthere. He hadn't helped. In fact, some spiteful part of Toki thought he had actively made things worse.
Everyone expected All Might to magically fix everything but… He hadn't. He didn't. When he had arrested Meteor and granted an interview afterward claiming 'everything is fine now because I am here': it had felt grating. Like a lie. All Might was all smiles and sweetness, reassurance and false hope. He was a good hero, but he wasn't a Messiah, only a placebo that promised no one would go unsaved, some kind of security blanket for the wide-eyed public that didn't realized the all-powerful savior was just a guy in a jumpsuit doing his job.
Was Toki bitter? Probably. She was also rational enough to know that the root of her disillusionment was the fact that All Might had been the one to arrest Meteor. To arrest him so brutally, to wreck their home, to sent Toki's lifre crashing down. If it had been Endeavor or Best Jeanist instead… Toki would have felt the same ressentiment toward them. Because stopping Meteor was supposed to make her feel safe, and all she felt about it was wariness and a deep, sick feeling of guilt.
She didn't think about it. She didn't want to think about any of it: the crumbling building, Meteor screaming, the barren stone of Sayuri's grave.It wasn't my fault, I didn't mean to, I didn't want to
It wasn't my fault
Anyway. She should think about the future, not the past.
Keigo and Toki started talking again about their future agency, and it offered Toki a new insight on how canon-Hawks had ended up so tight with the Commission. Because Keigo wanted to climb ranks as fast as possible, to stand on the same podium as Endeavor as soon as he could. He did'nt care about the cost.
By age twenty-one, Endeavor had been the Number Two, and had never been dethroned. Keigo burned to break his record, to stand as his hero's side and be able to talk to him like an equal. So the idea of starting his own agency at eighteen was very appealing to him, even though the Commission would have a foot in the door. Actually, Keigo didn't mind inviting the Commission even more in his work, basically giving them a lot of control over his business, if that meant they gave him the meant to fly closer to his goal.
"You don't get it," Keigo explained excitingly, waving his arms. "Who care if the money came from a Commission's loan or from merch? At least the loan is quicker. And it's safer to have the Commission as a direct backer, instead of relying on sales and advertising and stuff. That way, even if our rankings aren't the best in the beginning, we'll still have massive amount of money! That meant a super-big agency, billboard with our faces plastered on them, good support gear, and enough to pay a lot of sidekicks to do the boring parts of the jobs!"
Yeah, that explainedso muchabout canon-Hawks. Alarmingly so.
"Yeah but," Toki floundered a little, "they don't give money for free! They're already training us so we become heroes, if we continue leeching off them afterward, then we give them a say in what kind of hero we're going to be, and what if it's something we don't like?"
Keigo made a face:
"You're having a moral crisis again, aren't you."
"I'm not, I'm just asking!"
"You are. Yousoare. Come on, lay it on me, what's the deal?"
Toki couldn't very well ask him how he would feel if he was ordered to infiltrated a super-villain gang and ended up killing one and being maimed by another. So she waved her arms:
"Well, imagine! What if they try to make you have a specific kind of brand? Like, pretending to be edgy and dark? Or pretending you hate chocolate and only eat hard-boiled eggs with asparagus? Or push you to make commercials with their friends' compagnies, even if those compagnies use child labor?"
Keigo didn't brush her worries aside. He did consider them for at least three seconds. But, as Toki expected… He shrugged.
"It comes with the job, doesn't it? Besides, come on! I told you I would be ready to pay the price to end up Number Three hero!"
Toki briefly thought about Keigo-who-would-be-Hawks, about Dabi, about Twice, about blue fire eating red wings until there wasn't even a stub left. Would Keigo still think that price worth it?
Then again… It wasn't the Commission who had asked Keigo… no,Hawks… to kill Twice or to fight Dabi. Hawks' job had been tospy, and to try and stop them. He had gone above and beyond, but it had been hischoice. To try and blame the Commission for it would be removing Hawks' agency in what had happened. He had fought and killed and bled, yes: but he hadn't done it because some sick need to please the Commission, or because he had been brainwashed to do so. He had done it because he had believed it would save people, and that was his duty.
So yeah, how could Toki even begin to stand in the way of that? She didn't even disagree with him. If it had been her, if it had been her place, she would probably have done the same thing. Keigo and her were sometimes so similar it hurt. Except for a few key-differences of course. Like how they viewed Endeavor. Or…
"I don't like people telling me what to do," she said instead, mulishly.
Keigo's eyes softened. He didn't mind when people gave him orders. It would continue in canon.Hawks, despite his namesake, acted much like a domesticated parrot, gladly accepting to be feed by hand and repeating what its owner wanted him to learn. He didn't see the point of fighting it, and considered it a small price to pay for comfort and success.
Oh, Keigo wasn't a mindless sycophant, far from it. He disliked formalities, often acting in an unpredictable way, while being cocky and taunting. But he was good at following orders. There was a reason he would be a better hero than her, after all. Keigo sometimes replied with sarcasm or subliminal cynicism, but he listened and strategized… Meanwhile, Toki bristled and overthought things, like a feral stray that hadn't been properly tamed.
"I guess we'll have to find a way around that," he smiled.
And that was why Keigo was such a fucking treasure. He was already planning how to find a way around the problem, already ready to compromise, already starting to strategize, because Toki's feelings mattered as much as his dream to equal Endeavor.
"Well I guess I could be your sidekick," Toki grinned. "That would leave me some time to work in an astrophysics lab…"
"But you'll be part of the agency, doesn't that count?"
"Crap, you're right. Hum. Maybe I should start in another agency as a sidekick, you know, for one or two years, until you're high-ranked? Or better, work as a freelancer so I'm not officially affiliated with you, except I would use your agency as unofficial headquarters so we wouldn't really be separated…"
"Oooh! I like that one!"
"Do you think we can pull it off, though?"
"No idea. But hey, if we don't and you have to be a sidekick somewhere, can you pick Endeavor Agency and bring me a signed picture?"
"… I will see what I can do."
The chances of actually becoming Endeavor's sidekick were pretty low, so Toki wouldn't hold her breath for it. Besides, Endeavor favored fire Quirks. His agency was famous for it. But hey, warp Quirks were rare and coveted, so maybe Toki would have a chance. She was kind of curious, too. Being a sidekick was the best way to learn how to be a hero in the field, according to studies online, but what kind of boss would Endeavor be?
Well, one thing at the time. Toki wasn't even ten years old yet. She still almost had a decade to go before applying for a job at Endeavor's agency!
Still, this conversation had given Toki a really illuminating view of canon-Hawks. At the beginning she would have thought that the Commission was a shady hooker and Hawks had been (would be?) the idiot who fell in love with her. But turned out that actually the Commission was more like a vat of nitromethane and Hawks had been trying to balance it on his head, on one foot, on top of a unicycle, on top of a moving, burning cart. Funny image, that.
Also Toki had no idea how much her influence would change how Keigo saw the Commission or decided to deal with it. Sure, maybe the 'would readily sell his soul to the devil' was part of Keigo's nature, but Toki was a firm believer in the inherent superiority of education and self-enlightenment, in thatNature VS Nurturedeal. So maybe Hawks wouldn't be as self-destructive as in canon. Who knew. In any case, Toki would be here to keep an eye on him, that was for sure. No way she was going to let this self-sacrificing chicken nugget all alone in the real world.
But anyway… They went back to their normal lives. Learning, playing, eating, training, sleeping, training again. They were getting better in their ballet lessons. Toki especially. Keigo was plenty graceful, especially considering his wingspan, but it was Toki who twirled and bounced in all directions. While Keigo could use his feathers to attack from a distance, Toki had to touch people to teleport with them, and so her fighting style relied on getting close and personal. She didn't punch and kick like a boxer, though: as Hayasa-sensei liked to said, she was too tiny and too low on the food chain to try to win a fight with brute force. Besides, taking a blow from an adversary was no joke. So Toki mixed ballet with gymnastic and hand-to-hand combat to avoid her opponents' strikes. She sidestepped and jumped and twirled, bouncing like a facetious ping-pong ball and dancing circles around her enemy without taking any hit, until a window of opportunity opened and she could strike.
The spars between Toki and Keigo were always very entertaining to watch. Of course Keigo had the advantage at long-range with his feathers, but Toki could disappear and reappear right in his personal space. It made for a quick-fire game of cat-and-mouse. They both advanced then sidestepped, striking and avoiding, absolutely no hit connecting because they both evaded their opponents at the very last second. They each had their own advantages and handicaps. Keigo had hollow bones, fragile and easily broken, that made him unable to fight brutally. But his feathers made him hyperaware of anything that happened around him, and taking him by surprise was virtually impossible, as if he had eyes behind his skull. Toki wasn't fragile and she didn't hesitate to be vicious, but she was limited to close-range combat, and she was also kind of short. Well, she was tall for a kid, but Keigo was slowly starting to be of even height… And his feathers were damn strong. If one of them caught Toki's collar and tried to drag her away, the young girl could dig her heels in all she wanted, it wouldn't make a difference. Those feathers could drag an adult man as if he weighted nothing more than a couple of grapes. So unfair.
It was funnier when they fought together against someone else. Their teamwork was seamless. They had spent nearly two years training everyday together, with and without Quirk, discovering new techniques and exploring new idea. They understood each other perfectly. Hayasa-sensei sometimes said with a tingle of pride that it was almost as if they could read each other's mind.
Their opponent was usually Hayasa-sensei himself. As a speedster, he could keep up with both Toki's teleportation and Keigo's multiple attacks. Hayasa-sensei was a patient teacher, nice and a bit rigid, but when it was fighting-time it was like a switch had been flipped. He was direct and brutal. He punched hard, and he didn't hesitate to barks orders and criticisms, while he never raised his voice when he was on the sidelines. Toki wondered if he had been a hero before, and if fighting (even with them!) activated some reflexive veteran instincts.
But they also fought (sometimes) other people. There were a few researchers in Naruto Labs who had hero training. Other just practiced combat sports. They weren't trained instructors, but once in a while Hayasa-sensei dragged one or two of them in the training ground to play tag, or hide-and-seek, or dodgeball. More often than not, Toki and Keigo won, because they were slippery little things and trained in evasion to boot, while the adults were a bit out of their depth, which made them slow and clumsy. Some adults tried to be exceedingly careful, but after one training session with the kids (who threw themselves into the exercise like there was no tomorrow) they didn't make that mistake twice. The play-fighting became real combat. There was something a bit scary at fighting grown men that weren'' playing around. It never became violent enough to send either of them to the infirmary, but Toki was pushed to her limits more than once.
She was getting stronger. Faster, more agile. She never froze when an opponent came at her, now. She planned, and acted, andwon. When she had joined the program, being a hero had seemed so far away, almost unreachable. It had been a good idea, a good excuse to find protection with the HPSC, but it hadn't seemed real. Now, however… Now Toki could see it. How she would jump and catch people in free-falling, how she would run circles around villains or teleport civilians away from danger.
She hadn't given up her dream of being an astrophysicist, of course not. But well… Now, being a hero was also something that could make her dream, too.
Toki was a science nerd and a hero in training. She was a dreamer and a realist, an optimist and a poet, occasionally. She had almost fully filled her poetry notebook. She still had plenty of blank ones to use, but she had a particular attachment to that one. It held her first pieces of prose, her childish scrawling. It had supported her in so many key-moments in her life. Discovering Meteor, living with Sayuri's betrayal, loving and hating the Crew, going on the run, meeting the HPSC, meeting Keigo. She could turn the pages and guess who she was, who she had been, just by looking at her poetry.
It felt weird. These words were hers, but they also were not. And… Still, without being able to put them on paper, Toki didn't know how she would have gone through all the emotions that seemed to choke her from time to time.
Some days I am afraid to write
Because sometimes the honestly kills me.
There were pages and pages of prose, half-forgotten songs' lyrics and small verses and authorless quotes. It feels more disjoined but more intimate than a diary. It was her soul, barred to the world. Her questions, her emotions, all the stuff she couldn't quite said out loud. She never let anyone read it. Well, she would have let Keigo read it, if he asked. But he never did. He was curious, she knew he was, because sometimes she saw him watch her write, but he never asked.
That was alright. She didn't mind if it was Keigo. She trusted him. There were days where he felt more like family than Sayuri or Meteor ever did. Keigo was her age, but even if Toki had about twenty-five years of mental experience locked somewhere in her brain, she wasn't really more mature than him. She was smart, but she wasn't a prodigy. Keigo and her… They were equal. They wereclose. Toki hadn't realized how much she had needed a friend until he appeared in her life. It was sad, somehow, that she had taken what she had with her parents for the norm. Toki had liked them, loved them, but she hadn't trusted them. They hadn't made her feel safe. Or valued. Or maybe they had made her feel valued, but as a prize, as a mascot maybe, not as a person with her wills and desires.
Maybe some part of Toki had believed that they would stop loving her sooner of later, and that she should cut her loss first. She wondered, sometimes. It felt so alien, to try and divine what had crossed her mind in that moment. Like it was somebody else's action, somebody else's decisions.
But the truth was: she hadn't thought, at all, at that moment. She had just wanted it to stop. If she had had a weapon, she would have pointed it at them to make themlisten, make themstop; but Toki hadn't had a gun, all she had were her notebook, so she had used that instead, and…
And she had sold them out.
She still had complicated feelings about what had happened as a result. Guilt and horror and regret and vindictiveness and defensiveness and shame and pride and fury and sadness, so intertangled that she couldn'te ven begin to make sense of it.
People had died in the arrest. And now… Her father was in prison, and her mother was dead. It wasn't Toki's fault, she hadn't been the one making them murderers or deciding they had to keep the baby who endangered Sayuri's health! It wasn't her fault.It wasn't.
Was it? If Toki had stayed quiet and obedient, it would have never come to this. And she had to ask herself sometimes… Had she acted for the better? Or for the worse? Had her action saved more people than Meteor had killed that day? Were those people's lives more important than Sayuri's?Was the trade worth it?
It was an unanswerable question. Toki didn't know the future. Or, ironically, she did: but not the right kind of future. The only thing she could knew for sure was… She had loved her parents, but she had still destroyed them. And now she had to live with that.
Tell me father
Which to ask forgiveness for:
What I am, or what I'm not?
Tell me mother,
Which should I regret:
What I became, or what I didn't?
It would get easier with time. It was already getting better. The wound wasn't so raw and painful anymore. Like a scratch already starting to scar over. It itched and burned when Toki pocked at it, but it didn't paralyze her anymore. All she could do was run forward now.
Toki had chosen, but there had been no good option. It was like the trolley problem in the philosophy books. A runaway trolley was barreling down the railway tracks, there were five people tied up and unable to move in its path; but if you pulled a lever the trolley would switch to a different set of tracks, where there was only one person tied up. Choosing nothing was to accept the greater number of victims, but acting meant becoming an active participant in a single person's demise. There was no ethical option, no right path, but still Toki had made her choice, and she stood by it.
She had to stand by it, or else… or else it would mean admitting she had been wrong. It would mean that it shouldn't have happened, that it had all been for nothing, and she couldn't… she could'nt live like that; it had to be worth it.It had to.
She wasn't Toki Aratani or Toki Taiyōme anymore. She was only Quantum, and she was going to be a hero. She had sold her freedom to the Commission for a fresh start, protection, and friendship… And Toki couldn't bring herself to regret. If she regretted it, then she was lost.
Yep, she had given up her freedom: but ironically, she felt freer than she had ever been with her blood-family. The oppressive anxiety that plaged her days was gone. She felt safer, too. Besides, with how things had turned up, with her learning progresses, meeting Keigo, finally being able to think of her future… She honestly had gotten a good deal. It could be so much worse.
Here, she had a future. Safety, trust, love. She had Keigo. It was home, now.
"Want to sneak out to the river?"
She turned her head toward Keigo, who was beaming, upside down by her window. Toki knew better than how to ask how he had gotten here. Instead, she slapped her notebook shut with a grin, and grabbed her shoes.
"Meet you on the roof in five?"
"Fiiine. How can you be soslowwhen you're the one who can teleport?"
Toki opened her mouth to respond indignantly, but Keigo didn't let her time to do it. Laughing, he kicked off the windowsill and shoot upward, his crimson wings spread wide. Toki huffed, and put on her shoes with a smile.
Yeah. The world was still hard and complicated, but… She was okay. It had taken sometimes, but she was here. She was okay.
And she was allowed to be hopeful.
Notes:
Hope you liked it !
So Shirayuki is an OC, and yes, because I'm a nerd I modeled her after Sode No Shirayuki in the manga Bleach. I also gave her ice powers and a missing mother because I had the idea of her while thinking about Geten. You remember Geten from the Meta-Liberation Army arc ? Yes, that guy.
So Shirayuki's mother left when her daughter was a child, leaving her father to raise her. Then the father died and Shirayuki was poached by the Commission (not because she saved people, but because such a power shouldn't be left uncheked: it was better to direct Shirayuki towards heroism than to let her risk become a villain).
Meanwhile, after running away, the mother joined a cult. Yep, the Meta Liberation Army, you guessed right ! And a few years later, she had another kid, Geten. We do not have a canon-age for Geten but I imagine him being younger than Dabi and older than a high-schooler, so i'm going to said that Geten has been born and is actually about four years old.
Of course, neither Shirayuki nor Geten are aware of their relation and i don't think I will make them meet. But it's nice to give an origin story for that massively over-powered villain. And the irony of having a heroic sister is just too nice to pass up !
EDIT 21/08/2022
Some mistakes were corrected. One or two sentences added on the fact that Toki, despites missing her parents, has now fully embraced her new life.
Chapter 9: The President's masterpiece
Summary:
Toki and Keigo go to Musutafu, stumble upon a new mystery, and think about what it mean for them. Also, they met the HSPC's current President.
(Yes, the one who, in canon, gave kill-orders to Lady Nagant.)
Notes:
Soooooo i'm back ! Here is the next chapter ! Toki and Keigo are now ten years old. They grow up so fast...
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
THE PRESIDENT'S MASTERPIECE
In the winter after Toki's tenth birthday, Japan suffered a terrible snowstorm.
The sea iced over, then rose and flooded the coast. Telephonic poles were torn away. Whole cities lost power. Houses were destroyed, streets flooded, roofs torn apart. That storm was the lovechild of a cyclone and an ice age. There were several conspiracy theories online saying it was probably the result of several ice-Quirks banding together to attack Japan (which was obviously bullshit) but it didn't change the facts: it was strong, it was cold, and small coastal towns had to be ready to be severely fucked.
Even if the city of Naruto wasn't on the storm's direct path, it was close enough that the Commission cautiously decided to evacuate as much as possible. In the days before the storm hit, all non-essential projects were shut down. The labs were closed, the windows reinforced, and a steady line of staff members and researchers tricked down to board the train and wait the storm in inland, either with family or in shelters.
Toki and Keigo cheerfully helped to barricade the place, carrying furniture and hopping to the rooftops to help dismantle fragile parabolic antennas. They had a blast. But hey, since the whole place was being locked down and bracing for impact, they had to leave too. The storm was expected to last at least a week: they had to settle down somewhere else.
How exciting!
It was far from the first time they had left Naruto Labs on an organized trip. Each summer, now, they went to various camps. They hadn't gone back to the one where they had terrified their teachers with seagulls and late-night screaming, which was too bad. But that summer, Toki had been to another Girl Scout Camp and then one in the mountains, while Keigo had been in a birdwatching one for four whole weeks. So, they did get out. But it was the first time they were forced to evacuate the building, and it felt a little thrilling, like some risky adventure.
They would have liked to follow Hayasa-sensei, who was the adult they were closest to. But it wasn't to be. Instead, they went to the President's home. After all, since the Commission had custody of them, their guardianship in time of need fell to the man who was leading this institution, right? So they went.
And that's how they met the Commission's current President, Genryusai-sama, who was seventy years old, relatively unknown from the public, and probably one of the most powerful men in Japan.
The house was big and traditional: a bit like Toki imagined the Todoroki estate being in canon. It was often full of people because the President had a wife, two adult daughters, and a middle-aged son. There was also a staff who helped cleaning and cooking… but somehow, everyone tried to be invisible. Everyone made sure to stay out of everyone's way. It was virtually impossible to make small talk with them: they just waited politely to see if you wanted something, then politely excused themselves. It was creepy. Neither Toki or Keigo were used to that… or to the silence. In Naruto Labs, it was always busy: people talking, machines wiring in the lower levels, computers beeping in the offices, researcher arguing in the breakroom. But in the President's home; it was so quiet. Voices were muffled. People moved silently. There was no music or no noises from the TV.
It was only upon meeting Genryusai that Toki understood why.
The President wasn't a very imposing man. Medium-heigh, lanky, sagging eyelids, big glasses. He moved without making noise, so everyone in the house had to watch out for when he returned. No one wanted to notice him when it was too late, because he only looked like a grey and unassuming man until he didn't. There was something cold and scary in his eyes, something sharp that reminded Toki that this man had guessed the true nature of her Quirk before everyone else, beforeherself, and he hadn't even needed tomeether for that. He was short, old, and myopic, but he stood straight and there was something inherently threatening in the way he watched you, as if already mentally vivisecting you. So yeah, the house was silent, and Toki didn't need much time to realize why. It was like the whole place was holding its breath when he was here.
"It's a pleasure to have you here," the President said unsmilingly, eyes cold and evaluating. "It is only until the storm pass and Naruto Labs reopen, but in the meantime, I will ask you to continue studying quietly, as to not disturb those of us who will be working from home."
His eyes were grey, not red, but suddenly Toki remember how cold Fujio's eyes had been when he had prepared the rifles before the bank robbery. She didn't shudder, but it was a near thing.
"Of course." Keigo smiled like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "We will be perfectly behaved."
And they were. For about twelve hours. Just the time to run a quick recon of this place. After all, they needed to know where they stood. Where everyone worked (every single adult had their office), what they could hear, if their doors were closed, if they left Toki and Keigo work alone (they did), if someone was going to check on them (they didn't)… Then, once that was done, Toki and Keigo got bored. So they both dressed in their warmest clothes, and decided to take a quick walk outside.
(Honestly, they had no problem running away from the Labs, where they had felt safe: how had their caretakers not thought that they wouldn't pull it off here, in a place that creeped them out? Because there was a little snow?! Ah! As if!)
Alright there was ashit ton of snow. And wind. Toki had never been in a real storm like that, even when she had been homeless. She usually waited out the bad weather in a library. But hey, staying under the President's roof was even chillier than the howling wind, so… Storm it was. At least the visibility wasn't that bad yet. You could still see most of the street. Even if there were no car (the roads were quickly turning white with snow), most shops had stayed open, and there was a lot of pedestrians. Musutafu wasn't close enough to the storm to be in a state of emergency.
Toki teleported them in the inner city, because fuck if she was letting Keigo fly in that weather: and then they were free.
They were in Musutafu, andwow. Being here now, nearly two years after joining the program, gave Toki a strange feeling of almost-dissociation. As if she was Toki Taiyōme once again. It was odd. Odd, but not bad. She quickly recovered and started showing Keigo around with excitement, leading her wide-eyed friend in her favorite streets. Usually she travelled by rooftops but considering the wind, well, she would pass this time.
Keigo had never been in Musutafu, so Toki really enjoyed being a tour guide. She showed him her favorites places to break in and sleep, retrieved some money from one of her old caches (nobody had found the plastic container filled with bank notes and hidden in the shop's fake ceiling), bought them food from a street vendor who was closing up, and they wandered around until they were tired. Considering how energetic they were, it took a long time. Afterward, they went to an internet café and looked online where they could see some heroes at work… And, lo and behold, a lot of heroes had gone where the storm would hit the hardest so they could help with rescues effort. After all, a hero's work wasn't just to punch villains in the face, it was to protect civilians. All Might, Best Jeanist, Crust, Shishido, Endeavor, Gang Orca… Hundreds of heroes had coordinated. Toki could admit it: it was impressive. And a little humbling. She couldn't fantom being part of an operation of this scale.
Anyway. Heroes or not, Keigo and Toki still had plenty of ways to entertain themselves. They stayed as long as they could in the internet café, then went right back to exploring. Walking and chatting kept them warm, even with the snow and the biting wind. They had plenty of things to talk about. How were the other staff members doing, the storm, how the heroes were preparing, if they could sneak in the headquarters…
Toki wondered if Kameko Sabira was in the city. Maybe. Or Mera, or the Vice-President. Honestly, they would all have been a better option than Genryusai. No matter how smart and powerful he was, there was something in him that put Toki ill-at-ease. He wasn't exactlyfrightening, but his presence was… threatening. Like being watched by a snake, or a crocodile. There was a small, animal part of Toki's brain that identified him as a larger predator, a cold-blooded one, and she didn't like it. The last person she had found that intimidating had been Meteor. And he had been towering tall, with ember-like eyes and a smile full of teeth. It was unnerving to think that short, soft-spoken Genryusai could project the same level of threat.
Besides, Meteor had been dangerous, but he had not been a danger to Toki. He had never hit her, or demeaned her, or even raised his voice at her. He had loved her. He had loved all of their small and dysfunctional family.
Not all toxic people were cruel and uncaring. Some of them loved dearly. Many of them had good intentions, like Sayuri did. But those people were still toxic, because their needs and way of existing in the world forced others to compromise themselves and their happiness. Toki wondered if Genryusai was that kind of person. His wife, his children, his staff… They weren't cowering in front of him but they all held themselves so straight and tense, as if afraid to draw breath. Was he kind to them, even a little bit? He seemed so cold and controlled, but was he violent, abusive? The house's atmosphere creeped her out. There was something going on, that was sure.
"Had you met the President before?" she asked Keigo out of the blue.
"No", he frowned. "I would have told you. I only met the Vice-President."
"Can't imagine why," Toki muttered.
But Keigo heard her, and he winced: "I know, right? He doesn't seem super-friendly. If he had been the one to offer the sponsorship to my mom, I think she would have bailed, money or not."
"Nobody in their right mind would want to give their children to that guy. He looks like he would eat them for breakfast."
"You think we should worry?" Keigo joked.
"I don't know," Toki replied with a grin. "He does look like a snake, and you do have pigeon's wings…"
"Said the girl who froze like a mouse."
"I didn't freeze!"
"Yes you did! And even right now, you have you worried face on!"
"I don't have a worried face," Toki protested with as much dignity as she could manage, "because I don't worry."
"Bullshit," Keigo snorted.
"I strategize," Toki said. "I make contingency plans. Occasionally I indulge the tiniest amount of tactical… fretting."
Oh gods that was so lame, why had she said that. Keigo waited until Toki has winced before he repeated, agonizingly slowly: "Tactical fretting."
"It's a technical term," Toki said haughtily. She sniffed for good measure. "It has a dignified military history."
"Like goddamn hell it does," Keigo said, but his eyes were sparking in delight. "So what are you tactically fretting about?"
Toki opened her mouth. Closed it. She actually wasn't sure. So she shrugged and said:
"I don't like the guy. He gives me the heebie-jeebies… but he also makes people afraid in his house, and that's never a good sign."
Something cold and bitter passed in Keigo's eyes. He knew what that meant. His parents had made him afraid in their home, too. It made Toki feel sick inside, because no one should have to live with that. She hadn't felt safe at home either, but it had been a different fear, less immediate, less consuming. Nobody in her family had wanted to harm her just because they could. That, had least, she had been spared.
"You think…" Keigo didn't finish his phrase. Toki shrugged helplessly.
"I don't know. I can't know. What doyouthink?"
Because the President's family still lived with him, but if he was abusive, they would leave, right? Maybe Toki was imagining things. Besides, evenifGenryusai was violent, or abusive, or something worse than just cold and threatening (which was a very bigif,considering the only clue Toki had was a gut-feeling!), there wasn't much that Toki or Keigo could do. He was the President, while they were only kids. Worse, they were kids sponsored by the Commission. The very institution that gave Genryusai his power owned them… And it also owned the heroes, so trying to turn to them for help would be fruitless.
Technically the President was on the Good Guys' side. But you could be on the side of justice and law, and still be inherentlyfrightening. Or an asshole. Case in point: Endeavor.
It would have been simpler is good guys were always nice and bad guys always hateful. But Meteor had been kind to her, cared for her, and still he had killed innocent people. Genryusai frightened her but he stood in the way of villains like AFO… Well, maybe. He looked like the kind of person who would rather hang out with AFO and his evil potato face than with All Might and his sunny smiles.
"Well since we're in his home, we could investigate!" Keigo suddenly grinned.
Toki stared.
"Hum, isn't that risky?"
"Oh, are you scared? And here I thought I was the bird guy, youchicken."
"I'm not scared!"
Then Toki realized she had backed herself in a corner, and groaned. Keigo grinned triumphantly. Well now she had to hope that the President wasn't secretly evil…
They went back to his house. Of course, nobody tried to draw attention to their absence. Genryusai's wife severely asked where they had been when she had checked on them: but Keigo replied, all wide-eyed innocence, that they had been in the garden. Said garden was maybe half the size of the house and would have been a pretty lawn with flowers if it wasn't covered in snow. There were no way two children could have hidden there for four hours without being noticed. Keigo kept smiling, and the wife dropped it.
Of course being stuck in a snow storm with several other people, including the one you're investigating, didn't really help to search the house secretly. But Toki and Keigo took the task of detectives with the same relentless enthusiasm they did with any aspect of their training. Maybe even more. That game had a thrilling 'secret agents' vibe. And well, what else could they do? After all, their schoolwork didn't take much time… And nobody bothered to check on them, as long as they didn't disturb the house's quiet.
So, between Toki's teleportation and Keigo's feathers, they managed to thoughtfully map the house (no secret passages, what a disappointment!), discover everybody's schedule, and from there they tried to spy on the President. Which was not as interesting as Toki would have thought. He mostly made long phone calls, and studied reports and budgets on his computer. The phone calls came from various heroes' agencies, so it allowed Keigo and Toki to know what was going on with the storm and the heroes' work, but it was nothing really compromising.
Endeavor was handling the villains in Tokyo while all the others heroes more suited to rescue were running around evacuating people from collapsed buildings, searching for victims dragged by floods, or helped fix damaged dams. All Might was in the South, rescuing ships and planes willy-nilly. Shirayuki's ice constructs were helping clear her city of snow to allow ambulances and police cars to continue circulating. The President didn't usually talk much in those calls, but he sometimes gave a clipped order, and in the next hour, it would be done. He didn't coordinate all the heroes but he played a role in the direction they were all taking… and in the way they would appear in various media.
On the evening news (that the whole family watched in utter silence each evening, which was disturbing), Toki and Keigo sometimes recognized a turn of phrase or a statistic that Genryusai had said in his daily phone calls. That man sure had a lot of clout.
The President was so busy that he rarely spoke to his family. He actually barely interacted with them. They were all looking for him from the corner of their eyes, as if anxiously expecting judgement, but he barely saw them. He was always completely focused on his work. And, well, Toki could guess how his family would feel, living with a man who seemed to stare straight into your soul, then turned away, finding you too insignificant. That kind of thing would have made her feel small, too.
But at least Genryusai wasn't violent or cruel. Cold, maybe. Not that it was an excuse. Coldness could hurt as much as blows: it just hurt differently, more insidiously.
After two days, as the storm was still raging, Toki and Keigo got bored of their on-site investigation, and left the house again to explore the city. They went to an internet café and googled everything they could about the president. Still, they were easily derailed and Toki ended up looking up Quirk-theories while Keigo watched with rapt attention video footage of fight between a jumping hero and a flying villain last week. When they reluctantly went back to their search, they didn't find much, beside the fact that the President had headed the Commission for now forty years, which was afucking long time. He was apparently an All Might fan because there were pictures of him with the Symbol of Peace, while he usually never met others heroes in a public setting. But the Commission wasn't really a close ally to All Might (they worked together, but minded their own business), so maybe it was personal relationship? I mean, All Might seemed like the type to befriend anyone… And Genryusai was cold as fuck but he surely saw the usefulness of having the Symbol of Peace in his corner…
Anyway. Toki and Keigo spent a few hours at that. Then, to pass time, they had the brilliant idea to go the mall. They didn't need to buy anything! But it was funny to hide in the crowd, to gaggle at pretty storefronts, to ostensibly criticize the shops that didn't account for customer with mutantism like wings, or to try on stupid hats. There was photo booth, and Keigo had the bright idea to takes a few pictures. It would make for a nice souvenir! They never took photos in Naruto Labs. So they took a bunch of pictures together, then shared them.
On a whim, Toki also bought a cute envelope and some pens in a nearby shop. Later on, while they took refuge in a cat café (the staff had been reluctant at letting two unsupervised kids enter, but they had sworn they were going to behave, and Toki flashing them a fistful of cash had certainly helped), she ripped a page from a notebook, and started writing. Keigo took a few minutes to notice, entranced by the cat purring on his knees and the three kittens chasing his feathers around. Apparently he had never snuggled with a cat before, which was a crying shame.
"Whacha doing? A top-secret spy's report?"
"Nah. It's a letter."
"A letter?" Keigo blinked. "To who?"
Because, as far as he knew, Toki didn't have anyone who cared for her outside of the Commission. Which wasn't exactly false but… Unlike Keigo, who had been basically sold by his mom, Toki had run from home. She was registered asmissing. She was plenty strong, but still, there had been people out there who had been concerned. People who had been worried for her. There was that detective, Tsuki-something. But there had also been…
"Being in Musutafu remined me," she said softly. "I wandered in this city for weeks without anyone really seeing me. The shopkeepers, the librarians, the sidekicks I grilled about their Quirks… They liked me but they didn'tseeme. I was hiding, after all. But there was one person I didn't hide from, because I was tired and vulnerable. And that person was worried for me, but they still respected my choices. They cared, and they didn't care because I was a Taiyōme or a teleporter, but just because it was me. Because I needed some warm tea, and they were a decent human being."
She stopped writing for a few seconds. In the very last picture Keigo and her had taken at the photo booth, Keigo had moved, and you could only see his fluffy hair, while Toki was grinning like a lunatic front and center. Toki had considered throwing that picture away (she had no interest in keeping it) but hey, it could make for a good proof of her identity.
"Mind if I take that photo?"
"Go ahead. Want me to cut it apart from the others?"
"You can do that? Thanks!"
Keigo gleefully took two feathers like scissors and started snipping, before asking lightly:
"So! Who's your mysterious pen-pal?"
"Not really a pen-pal," Toki frowned. "You know how the Commission recruited me because I saved someone in a car accident, right? Well the person I saved was a woman, Mihoko-san. She said… She said it would make her happy to know I was safe. I considered going back to her afterward. But two days later I took the Commission's deal, so I never kept my promise. And I realized… What if I worried for a kid one day, a kid living on the streets, who promised to come back, and who never did?"
Keigo stayed silent a few second. Then he said softly: "You want to reassure her?"
"I dunno. It would make me feel better if I was sure that she wasn't worrying."
Or maybe Toki just wanted to reassure myself that she still had a place in the world outside the Commission A way to prove to herself that if Quantum disappeared, there would still be people who would remember Toki. But she couldn't say that out loud. It would be cruel to Keigo: he would mourn if she was gone. She had him. But Keigoonlyhad her. IfHawksdisappeared, then no one outside of the Commission would notice. Maybe not even his own mother.
Toki signed the letter, then folded the paper and put it with the picture in the envelope. On the front, she wroteMihoko Shinsō, and briefly regretted leaving her notebooks in Naruto Labs. She had only taken one normal notebook and her poetry one, but she had left the one with Mihoko's name and address back there. Oh, well. It didn't matter very much. She remembered the location: she only had to drop it in the letterbox.
"Want to drop it off with me?" she offered impulsively.
Keigo looked at her a second, something soft in his eyes, before shaking his head:
"No, you go ahead. It's your origin story. Just come back quick, alright?"
Toki hadn't considered doing otherwise. She grinned, then teleported away. One jump in another street, then near the infamous bridge where everything had begun, then right in the hallway of Mihoko's building. There were several letterboxes on the wall, and Toki carefully looked at each name until she recognized the right one. There!Shinsō, with the kanji for "heart, mind" and the kanji for "manipulating, operating". For a wild moment, she thought about climbing the stairs, ringing the doorbell…
But Keigo was waiting, and he would always be her priority. So Toki stuffed the letter in the letterbox, then teleported away.
She didn't look back.
oOoOoOo
Dear Mihoko-san,
Hello! I don't know if you remember me. It has been two years already. I hope you're doing well, and little Hitoshi too!
I know I promised to swing by sometimes, and I hope this letter is enough. I just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you. I hadn't been able to come because I live away from Musutafu, now. I got off the streets! Everything is going a lot better than the last time you saw me. I'm training to be a hero. It's a difficult sometimes, but I love what I'm doing. I also made a friend!
Thank you for being kind to me that one time. It meant more than you think. It's a bit thanks to you that I decided to stop running.
Sincerely,
Toki the Teleporter.
oOoOoOo
The storm lasted three more days. In the meantime, Toki and Keigo continued snooping around Genryusai's house. They didn't find anything incriminating. The President was only a very, very powerful man, who worked with heroes and also happened to be very cold and scary. Nothing more. He didn't beat his wife or kids, he simply ignored them. Yes, that was mean, but honestly he didn't even notice. They were so far beneath him they didn't warrant interest, good or bad. Nothing more. Toki thought it made him an asshole, but not an abusive bastard. Keigo thought it made him way more bearable that his own father had been. And there wasn't much to argue with that.
Anyway. They looked around, they sneaked out, they entertained themselves. Then the storm abated. They were told that they would be sent back to Naruto Labs shortly. Toki and Keigo were very proud to have played at being spies for a week without getting caught, so of course, the evening before their departure, Genryusai flatly said at dinner:
"Have you found what you were snooping around for, Hawks, Quantum?"
Toki froze. Keigo froze. Every single person at the table stopped breathing. In retrospect, it was probably very funny, from an outside point of view.
"W-What do you mean?" Toki tried to play dumb.
"Don't waste my time, child. I mean your little… espionage. Your recreative outings will stay unmentioned."
Keigo and Toki exchanged a wide-eyed look. The jig was up. The President didn't blink. His cold gaze was still resting on them both, unmoving. He wasn't angry, or amused, or impatient. Only emotionless. Waiting for their reply, as if the thought of not having his questions answered was unfathomable, as if rebellion or insolence were so far from possible that it didn't even register as an eventuality. And, Toki thought with an uncomfortable swallow, he wasn't even wrong.
"We found it," said Keigo with a blank smile. "You're not secretly evil. All is good."
The joke fell flat. Keigo's smile wavered. Finally, the President lowered his head a fraction. Not a quite nod, but something that could almost be considered one, if you felt wildly imaginative and optimistic.
"I see. How… childish. I do hope that in the future, you will refrain from such pointless endeavors."
Toki and Keigo both squeaked out something like 'yes sir!', but the President still continued staring at them, as if he was mentally measuring them to some invisible blueprint and finding them lacking. It was unnerving.
"You have the potential to one day replace my masterpiece. So far, no young hero had been up to the task. I hope that you won't disappoint me."
Toki and Keigo didn't share a glance this time, but there was like a lightning-quick communication between them. Masterpiece? Was it a clue? What did it mean? And of course Keigo couldn't know, but Toki's mind flashed back to canon-Endeavor and all his talk of Shouto as his masterpiece, and what if the President meant it in the same sense, what if he was talking about aperson, not a project…
"Who is your masterpiece?" she dared to ask.
The president looked at her. There was not smugness or disdain in his voice, only a cold, matter-of-fact tone.
"The Symbol of Peace, obviously."
Keigo and Toki both boggled at him, completely floored, and Keigo sputtered:
"All Might was sponsored?"
The President only raised an eyebrow, and simply said:
"No, he wasn't."
And he went right back to eating, signaling the conversation was closed. The rest of his family subtly relaxed. Keigo and Toki exchanged a bewildered glance, but neither of them had the guts to insist.
Well, at least they had learned something new… And that cleared up exactly nothing.
Still, it was a new mystery, and Toki eagerly started to write about it in her notebook. Keigo, too, was intrigued. Alright, the last night they spend at the house, they didn't dare speak about it… But once they were back in Naruto Labs, they excitingly held a top-secret meeting to talk about it. And to recount with thrilled horror how freaking terrifying it had been when the President had casually revealed he knew absolutely everything. That had been a stomach-dropping moment, that was for sure.
But then, what Genryusai had revealed…. it was surely important. All Might had something to do with the President after all! Or maybe not All Might as person, but maybe his growing myth, what he had become? Because (as Keigo rightfully pointed out) the President wasn't one to twist his words or boast about his successes, but he had saidthe Symbol of Peaceinstead of using All Might's name. It was kind of contradicting what they had observed of him so far. Had the President been the one to coin the term? Or maybe the fact that All Might had become the Symbol in the first place had something to do with the President, like, maybe he had helped him become Number One by running his agency's PR departement? That warranted more investigation!
But even with that new mystery, Keigo and Toki were both relieved to be far away from the President. He wasscary. In canon, he hadn't headed the Commission, right? So maybe he was going to retire. Or drop dead, considering how old he was. Toki could only hope!
Anyway, their normal lives resumed. Classes, training, going to the dance studio, spending their free time chasing each other around the forest, playing video games (for Keigo) or reading (for Toki).
They had to be more discreet than usual. The Labs had sustained some damages in the storm, with torn antennas, broken window, and a flooded basement, so repairs needed to be made. Of course the Commission's contractors weren't the kind to go babble around about what they saw in a secret lab, but better safe than sorry. This time, Toki and Keigo obeyed. It wasn't hard to stay away from the repairing crew if they sneaked outside to play in the forest or went to eat fried food in the nearby town, right?
The weather was still cold, but the storm was over. Toki and Keigo played snowball fights almost every day, preying on unsuspecting staff members or, more often than not, on Hayasa-sensei. Their trainer was hard to take by surprise, and he gave as good as he got. Training kicked up a notch, though, and often left them too tired to play cat-and-mouse with their teacher. Not that he would refuse if offered… Hayasa-sensei wasn't exactly the kind of person you would callplayful(he was kind of a stick in the mud sometimes, and there were days where he reminded Toki of the canon-character of Tenya Iida), but he did have a sense of humor. And he was fair-play. Any game that could also double as a training exercise was good in his book. He never saidnoto hide-and-seek or tag, which was more than could be said of their others teachers. Besides, he was the adult with whom Toki and Keigo spent the most time, so of course they had a bond.
Their other teachers were nice enough, but they didn't spend almost three day a week with them, exclusively focusing on them. Their others teachers were, first and foremost, researchers of Naruto Labs. They had a degree in other field (like literature, for example) and they had a teaching license. They did good work and planned their lessons with care. But they also had a career and researches to lead. Keigo and Toki's education was a part-time job, not something they were wholly dedicated to.
Not that Toki had any right to complain. She wasn't wholly dedicated to them, either. She had her priorities.
Like reading. And playing. And training. And fucking up things in the workshop.
So, after a lot of small experiments and big explosions, Toki learned to fix a watch, to disassemble a computer (but not to put it back together), and to use a blowtorch without immediately having to use the extinctor afterward. But one thing was sure, Toki would not be the next Tony Stark, creating technological miracles from nothing. Computer code was frustratingly difficult, and nanotechnologies completely flew over her head.
But Toki did have one thing in common with Tony Stark… She liked robots. Not how to program them, or how to teach them, or how to calculate how they were going to stand staring without falling and all the boring details like that. Just the building part. Making a sketch and then making a three-dimensional replica. Like, cutting pieces of metal, bending them under intense heat, weld the edges together, polish them… It had a sort of beauty to it. Bland and boring pieces of metal or wood, slowly turning in something other. Like a miniature plane (Toki first attempt at making a model). Then, later on, several ideas of futuristic spaceship, whose form were inspired by various movies ranging fromStar WarstoDoctor Who.
Toki could see that several of her teachers were a bit disappointed. They had expected her to take to code or mechanics like a duck to water, with the same ease she manipulated numbers in class. But even if math was the root of all science… Well, most science anyway… Being good with numbers didn't automatically made you a prodigy in others fields! It gave Toki a good understanding of the basics, but she didn't have a gift for all that super-advanced stuff. She was ten. It wasn't her fault if coding left her a bit floored. It was like a different language; one she had no basis for. And mechanics were hard! Sure, it all made sense on paper when she did physics exercises, but in reality, there were variables and failed tests and… It was just too advanced for her!
But making models,that, she learned quickly. Metalwork wasn't that hard, when you had 3D-printers and computers and huge machines at your disposal. So Toki didn't create new gadgets, but she did learn how to use most of the machineries in the workshop. If she helped out the engineers with their work, she was allowed to go and play around with the equipment, and she used that time to make models of imaginary spaceship, or abstract sculptures of twisted metal and brightly-colored glass.
It wasn't intellectual. But she liked it. Besides, she was still learning. How to operate a workshop, how the machines worked, what were the safety measures, what were the requirement for such and such piece of equipment, and so on. She also could make small, useful things. Like miniature claws for a glove that one of the researchers worked on, and so th researcher could focus on making the hidden mechanism in said gloves. But Toki didn't stay here because she wanted to make herself useful: she stayed because she liked it. So what if she sucked at code or at creating pieces of complex machineries? Her models were pretty. Metalwork took focus and patience, and she liked being absorbed in her creations, to see a new thing be shaped from nothing in her hands. It was… a bit like pottery, or carving, or painting.
Maybe Toki was a little bit of an artist, too.
Anyway. Time passed but neither Toki or Keigo had forgotten about the President, and all the mysteries around him. Somehow, even if they were far away and had no others interest, learning the truth about the Commission's boss was even more alluring than before. It was still a game but it was with real people, real stakes! That made it even more thrilling.
They looked for info online, not about the President but about All Might and the Symbol of Peace. The wording was important. Where did the hero end and the Messiah begin?
Retracing All Might's history was a great big mess, because a lot of articles were heavily biased. The earliest ones constantly contradicted each other. Besides, All Might had made his debut in America, so the articles and the video footages were in English. Toki was good, alright, but she wasn't bilingual. And some journalists' accents were so thick it didn't sound like English at all!
But little by little, as weeks passed and they dug deeper and deeper, some things started coming to light. All Might had started his heroic work at eighteen, as a freelancer in the USA. He had stayed here for five years before coming back to Japan. There, he had started to make a name for himself as a good hero, but not as an incredible one. He was good, very good, but not legendary. The thing that had blown up his career sky-high was a famous video of him rescuing thirty people from an exploded building (the same video that tiny-Midoriya would watch over and over in canon). All Might had been, like, twenty-six? He had reached the Number One spot in the Billboard Chart the same year. And suddenly he had shot up in popularity. It wasn't connected to his ranking: at this time, rankings were important but not as much as they were now. It was All Might that had made the rankings significant, not the other way around.
So All Might had suddenly started ascending to Godhood in the year following his nomination as the Number One, and had never been dethroned. If Toki had been cynical she would have said that he had gotten a very good publicist, but… It was more than that.
It wasn't just show. Well, there was a part of it that was show, but it wasn't artificial. What All Might did wasreal, it just garnered a lot more of attention that before, as if everybody was watching! And the attention it attracted was overwhelmingly positive, as if nobody could find anything to dislike in the hero. Which, alright, fair, some people werethatlikeable. But usually the public liked to nitpick. This sudden approval spoke of a coordinated effort in the medias, not of the miraculous job of a very good publicist.
Which was a clue that the President had intervened, by the way. All Might was beloved by the masses but he had no people-managing talents. The canon-story had at least taught Toki that much. So Genryusai had, probably, used his considerable clout to direct the journalists' attention toward the Number One, and advise them to show him in a positive light.
Neopotiiiiiiiism!
But whatever. The adoration directed toward All Might wasn't unwarranted. Toki read article after article and she could feel a sudden respect bloom in her chest, because… Before Toki was born, there had been villains of Meteor's caliber inevery city. Monsters, killers, serial robbers, murderers, unbeatable mob bosses… It was'nt rare to have a small death toll every day. There were dozens of villains so powerful that heroes were unable to take them down. ButAll Might did. He was too strong to be stopped. He took one, then another, then the next, and suddenly it was like a tidal wave sweeping the whole country. All Might was in the path of all the famous and dangerous villains, one after the other. All those people whose names were only uttered with fear… He had sought them out and defeated them, breaking their hold over Japan, breaking the fear the citizens lived in.
All Might had taken on all the fig fishes in Japan as if he was on the warpath. But he hadn't acted like a mindless brute. He had also comforted victims, he had given hopeful speech on TV, he had been awkward but always polite with journalists who harassed him, he had dived headfirst into every single disaster site so he could help with recues… And soon, he was called perfect, unbeatable, a beacon of strength and hope. The perfect hero. He was lauded online and praised at every apparition. The crime rate of Japan declined steadily. Even if part of it was probably the job of the police and others heroes, most of it was due to All Might tearing apart the big gangs. No villain really wanted to replaced their boss when said boss had been a gigantic invulnerable shark-man and that a guy in spandex had just punted him into space like it was nothing, before loudly announcing that was barely a warm-up.
Fuck. All Might really was that strong, wasn't he? No wonder the President considered him his greatest success, if he had participated into All Might's ascension to godhood.
Which actually made Toki wonder if Keigo and her were expected toreplaceAll Might one day. Sure, he was still at his peak but he wasn't getting any younger. It would be hard to replace him once he retired (or… died), because no one was quite that strong But if it was aboutmaking a new Symbol, then it was different. The public needed someone likeable. Someone strong, impressive, how could make them dream and home and feel safe. Someone impressive.
Which explained why the Commission was so intent on scouting promising children… They had to have young heroes in the wings for when their champion would falter. Or else, the country would descend into panic. Like it had happened in canon.
Well, if that happen, it's still years away, Toki reasoned.I'm not going to drive myself crazy predicting the future. Any certainties have already been shot to hell when I started fucking up the timeline.
She still had time.Theystill had time. Time to learn, to prepare… To train.
Because training hadn't stopped. Keigo and Toki were now both quite good at ballet. Their spars noticeably looked like dances, if dances had punches and flying feathers soaring in all directions. Hayasa-sensei had filmed them and showed them the footage later to analyze it, and Toki always felt a flicker of incredulity at watching herself move. She was fast, her steps were quick and sure… She moved so confidently. Was it possible to feel jealous of yourself? Because Toki didn't feel half as in control as the girl on screen, that was for sure!
But hey, she did the job done and it was the most important part. She was betting better. Stronger, too. Her Quirk was evolving, and Keigo's too. His feathers could reach further, and the edges were sharper. When he had been eight, one of his exercises had been to shoot a few feathers while blindfolded, to become more aware of them. He had hated it. Now he could do it with half of his wingspan, flying upside-down, and laughing all the while. He could attack and restrain multiple villains while fighting another bad guy, swinging his primaries like swords and bouncing around too fast to be hit.
He was going to be such a fantastic fighter. He already was!
Toki wasn't quite there yet. Sure, she was great in close combat, and she felt confident in her abilities. But she didn't have an ultimate move like multiple-bladed-feathers-with-incredible-precision. Her Quirk was evolving, sure, but it would never be as versatile as Keigo's.
Still, Warp-Space was pretty neat. Since she had figured out that her teleportation was a constant portal around her body, she had practiced stretching it to its limits. She could now disappear with an object in her hands and reappear with that object in a three to four meters radius around her, which could be awesome to cuff unsuspecting villains without even having to touch them. She had also worked out that she could teleport stuff from one point of her body to another. Like, and apple in her right and could teleport in her left and without Toki herself teleporting. Well, actually she did teleport, since she activated Warp-Space and all, but she didn't move her body, she just… flexed that invisible muscle only in her hands. Oh, on paper, that didn't mean much. But in hand-to-hand combat, it did make for a nasty surprise when her opponent was gripped in her left hand then suddenly found himself in the air, being slammed in the ground by her right hand.
On a completely unrelated subject, Hayasa-sensei made her practice judo throws a lot. Since Keigo was consideredfragile(and had better things to do with his time than getting smashed against a tatami all day), their unlucky guinea pig was usually whatever researcher was lazing around.
"How can a midget like you pack such a punch?" wheezed miserably her latest victim.
"I eat all my vegetables."
"Thank you for your help Sato-san," Hayasa-sensei said politely, scribing on a notepad. "Any remarks?"
"Your tatami lack padding."
"Anyotherremarks?"
The poor scientist sighed, but shook his head. On the side, sitting on a bench, Keigo sniggered. The scientist gave him the stink eye, and started raising a hand to flip him the bird, but then he crossed Hayasa-sensei's eyes and slowly lowered his hand to the ground.
Smart choice. Hayasa-sensei looked like a paper-pushed and he was stick in the mud but he was a sticker for good manners, and he really didn't like when people were mean to his kids. He would eat any nerdy researcher for dinner. Sato-san got up, grumbling unhappily, and hobbled toward the exit, muttering something about the cafeteria better having donuts to make up for this shit.
"I thought you could only teleport with weight close to your own weight?" Keigo asked curiously, swingling his legs back and forth.
Toki thought about it, flexing that invisible muscle somewhere near her heart. The muscle analogy was pretty accurate, actually. When she used it wrong, or too long, or with too much strength, she could feel it ache, a sharp pain like a twisted ankle. For now, it was fine, but they were days where she pushed herself too much and she had to take a moment to breathe afterward, because it was like a particularly vicious side stich.
"I think it's only when I teleport myself with someone else? When I don't move, it takes more control but less strength. My weight limit is probably double what I can usually carry."
"Closer to triple," Hayasa-sensei corrected her, checking his numbers. "Your weight is thirty-one kilograms, and you can teleport with charges up to ninety kilos on a good day. But when you stay put, you can teleport charges weighting up to two hundred kilos."
"It still feels weird," Toki frowned.
"But you're getting the hang of it very quickly. And since you're good in close-combat, I think it will be easily integrated in your style."
Toki didn't really consider she had a style. Keigo had one: he flew, send feathers, all that jazz. Toki was just a normal person, fighting basically Quirkless, but she also happened to travel super-fast and to be able to slip from anyone's grip. She would never be able to take on super-powered opponent (fire-users, dinosaur-like giants, slime villains, etc.) and she wouldn't quite reach Keigo's strength either, but she was fast, she hit hard, and she could make an enemy's world turn upside-down with a touch. Quite literally. It was hard to hit someone when you were suddenly twenty meters high and didn't know which way was up, right?
Ah ah, Toki could already imagine it. Quantum, the untouchable hero!
"Actually, do you have a name for that new move?" Hayasa-sensei asked, bursting her bubble. "It's shaping up to be a real technique."
There was only was name that would be fitting, but even if that move was way too similar to Sayuri's power, there was no way Toki was naming her attacks something likeSwap-Space. So she considered it several seconds, before biting out:
"Switch."
Keigo send her a sharp look but didn't say anything. Hayasa-sensei simply nodded, taking note without looking up at her:
"That works. Well now! What if we did some dodgeball to finish this session? Then we can cool down and stretch, and it will just be time for dinner!"
Toki and Keigo looked at each other, looked at Hayasa-sensei, then shared an evil grin. Peltering their teacher with balls was their favorite sport. Of course, he usually won, but if they teamed up, they had a chance. So… Game on!
oOoOoOo
Because real life was distracting, it wasn't until nearly summer that Toki and Keigo finally uncovered what the President had meant when he had said that the Symbol of Peace was his greatest success.
What? They had plenty of other things to do! Like learn, train, play, learn again. Toki joined an online math club and won two online competitions. Since Keigo and her were already learning middle-school level math (it wasn't that big of a deal, they had simply learned fast enough to now have about a year of advance on others kids their age), their teachers decided to introduce them to trigonometry. Toki loved it. Keigo hated it. For him, shapes were just supposed to make senses. Geometry was something natural, simple, and splitting hairs about it was just nonsensical. But Toki liked how numbers could fit with how space was occupied: the geometry, the predictability of it.
So yeah. Trigonometry. Sine, cosine, tangent, cosecant, secant, and cotangent. Fun times!
Keigo and Toki were now ten and half, and (even if they weren't supposed to know) there was talk about signing them up to a normal middle school. When Toki had been recruited, Mera had told her that sponsored children were usually home-schooled until high-school… But apparently almost all sponsored children had been of middle-school age when they had been scouted. So they didn't spend more than three years hidden in Naruto Labs. Toki had already been here two years, and Keigo three. The Commission didn't want them to be under-socialized or too codependent… But they also absolutely refused to slow down their training, too.
In the end, they decided to keep them home-schooled until high-school, but to enroll them in another club outside the Labs. Maybe two clubs, if they dropped ballet (which Toki and Keigo fully intended to do). They also talked about specialized tutors instead of part-time teachers to help with their online classes… But by that point Keigo didn't manage to listen to the rest of the conversation. Bah, whatever. Toki was fine with it. The online classes were good. If she had to go back to normal classes, she was pretty sure that the others kids would just slow her down.
Arrogant? Yes. But not inaccurate. Toki was an average student in most subjects (like Japanese, History, Geography, all that useless stuff), but she was good at math. Really good at math. If she had to follow the rhythm of unenthusiastic preteens, she would explode. It was bad enough that Keigo whined and struggled in trigonometry!
But back to the point.
They remembered the President and his mystery a little randomly, because the Vice-President visited. She never spoke about the President, but she did mention All Might latest feat right before complaining that the man was 'unmanageable'. Apparently he gladly took any mission thrown his way but he wasn't one for strategy. Or rather, he disliked strategies that didn't involve him charging headfirst into danger at one point of an another. He was willing to way for the right moment to strike, as long as he got to fight. But he refused to stay on the sidelines, even if the others heroes had it handled and were actually more efficient (and more subtle). The President complained, but she also praised how invested All Might was, to the point where staying idle during a fight was unfathomable to him, and… Well.
Toki wondered if that was the reason that the task-force who had arrested Meteor had been filled with heroes, and not with snipers and sleeping-gas grenades, like she had written in her notebook. It would have been less brutal that way. And maybe… maybe it wouldn't have ended the same way. Maybe it would have gone better, and wouldn't have left her feeling so torn about it.
Anyway.
The Vice-President went, chatted a little with them, and in doing so she accidentally reminded them of their big, unsolved mystery. So the very next day, by unspoken agreement, Toki and Keigo resumed their search.
All Might. Started in America. Went back to Japan. Was strong, but not legendary. Until he made it to the Number One spot in his twenties. Then, suddenly, a spotlight was constantly directed at him, and he didn't disappoint, fueling public admiration that only enhanced the media coverage, like an ouroboros of popularity and successes. By extraordinary luck, all the scary bad guys ended up in his path. Sometimes it was with team-up with others heroes, others times it was All Might's decision to go hunt down the villain who was terrorizing some little town showed in the evening news. But he always won. There wasn't a single failure to criticize, not a single misstep to complain about, and it went on and on for months, thenyears, always stroking the flames of public's adoration… Until All Might was considered to be more than mere mortal.
So when All Might was about thirty, the termSymbol of Peacewas coined. When Toki looked up the origin of the word, to see who had this brilliant idea, well, thing got confusing. All Might himself had said in several interview that he wanted to be asymboland givehopeto people, so a non-official title of his had been 'Symbol of hope'. But when he had been thirty, at the height if glory, with a national crime rate about 7% (while most of the other countries had between 10% or 20%), there was an online newspaper who had called him Symbol of Peace. The term had then been swiftly popularized, because the heroes had seemed to like it and had started using it too.
The Commission was involved in that online newspaper. Almost every single staff member here had a subscription, and when Keigo thought to google the owners of said newspaper, it turned out that it was one of the guys Genryusai had sometimes spoken to on the phone. He recognized the name.
The Symbol of Peace wasn't an imposture, that was for sure (even if they were conspiracy theories about it, which Toki read with great amusement). But media coverage had played a big part in creating his legend. And so… the President certainly had a hand into making All Might the Symbol of Peace.
And wasn't that clever? In many ways, the Commission's hands were tied. They had a good reputation but people were wary, and rightly so, of governmental organizations having super-powered individuals at their beck and call. That was why armies were pretty much inexistant, and that was why pro-heroes were public servants with a lot of agency. Sure, they earned a salary from the State but they didn't receive orders from above. They were beholden to the public, not some shadowy leader. They had their licenses from the Commission but they didn'tobeyto it. If they did, then the Commission had to create adebtto justify it… Like all that stuff Toki and Keigo had talked about, about having a loan in exchange for handling the Commission control over their agency.
What it meant was that the Commission couldn't take direct action against villains. They could only support heroes who did so. But they had too wildly benefited from All Might's success to not have invested in it! So when you looked for it, and when youknewthere was something to look for… You could find the little pushes the President had given All Might. Keeping him at arm's length, but slowing paving his road to success.
"It does make sense thought!" Toki said excitingly. "Most heroes use informants or the police to search for villains. If All Might had the Commission's network working for him, dropping anonymous tips or asking other heroes to request back up…"
"… He had no trouble always being in the right place at the right time to fight the biggest and baddest villain of the week, with cameras at the ready to flood the evening news," Keigo completed. "Yeah, it makes sense. And the Symbol of Peace stuff… It's really more in-brand for the Commission than Symbol of Hope, too."
"What do you mean?"
"Well,peaceimplies finality, yanno? The fight is over, we won. Whilehopewould imply that the fight is still ongoing, that we're hoping to achieve victory, not that it has been done."
"Mmmmh. Do you think he knows?"
Keigo blinked: "That who know what?"
"All Might." Toki paused, thoughtful. She didn't really know why, but it bothered her. "Do you think he know that it's the Commission that made him the Symbol of Peace? He's always saying that he's self-made and all that jazz. Of course he could be lying, but… That doesn't seem in-character."
They lapsed into silence, thinking about it. Toki was also trying to fit what she knew from canon in what she had learned. In the story, All Might had been… pretty uninvolved with the HPSC. His only contact with the authorities was a lowly cop whose name Toki didn't remember, the guy with a truth-Quirk. All Might was basically never seen interacting with the Commission, even after retiring. When the kids passed the Provisional License, All Might sat with Endeavor away from the others, and there had been at least one Commission's guy… Actually that Commission guy in canon had beenMera, holy shit,Mera was a canon-character and Toki hadn't realized before, wow. No, bad Toki, back to the point! She was supposed to analyze All Might, not Mera!
"He could," Keigo frowned. "But that doesn't seem likely. He is kind of a loner. He only has one sidekick and he almost never work with the police. Making the Commission build some PR brand to boost his image… That's not his style."
Interesting how Keigo's main argument was that All Might didn't wanthelp, rather than the fact he didn't want thepublicity. But… Toki agreed.
"I think so too," she said slowly. "He doesn't do anything fake, you know? He just does his hero job, but the results are framed just in the right way to make his victories go from impressive to spectacular. I'm not sure it makes sense but he probably didn't evennoticehe was put up on a fabricated pedestal…"
"Well, that pedestal isn't totally fake. Also, are you kidding? He must at least suspect he got handled resources that others heroes don't have. He can't be that dense."
You would be surprised, Toki thought with a fleeting smile, remembering how clueless Toshinori Yagi could be in the canon-story.
"It isn't very noticeable," she pointed out. "Speedsters are not given the same missions or the same resources as tanks. So yeah, the Commission gave All Might all the super-difficult missions, instead of giving a little to several heros. So what? All Might could have fucked up, and died because he had bitten more than he could chew. But he did the job quicker than the others would have, and with better press. It was high risk, high reward."
"But he must have at least noticed!"
"Well, maybe, but would he have cared, or thought they had secondary motives?" Toki reasoned. "He's a pretty straightforward guy. He saw a random string of good luck shoving villains at him, he took it. We are the ones who looked for a conspiracy under it, and we only found one because the President told us what to look for exactly."
"Mmmh. It doesn't feel right."
Toki blinked:
"Why? He did his best. He just happened to be watched by people who threw big enemies at him and then attracted attention to his victories to boost his image, because having a Symbol also served their interests, and said interests happen to be a peaceful country. I say it was a masterful move on the President's part."
It was still kind of far-fetched and Toki wondered if she was reading too much in what she had found. But hey, everything fit perfectly! The President had seen how All Might was wrecking Japan's criminal underground, and had probably thought 'hum, I can use this'and then had subtly pointed the unbeatable superman towards enemies of the state. All Might was already shaping up to be extremely powerful. It didn't take much effort to turn him into a weaponized Messiah aimed right at Japan's criminals.
The President didn't even have to do it directly! Anonymous tips dropped at his agency, a word of advice given to a trustworthy hero who then passed the message along, some push to make a villain appear more and more in the evening news… All of that created a distance between All Might and the HPSC. And it was smart! Because so much was gambled on All Might that if he failed (whenhe would fail) it would be disastrous to be sucked in his fall. Also, if people learned that one pro-hero, especially as powerful as this one, took orders from a shadowy organization… The Commission could kiss its good reputation goodbye. They were trusted because they were a neutral watcher of heroes. If they were revealed to favor some heroes over others, and to pull strings to manipulate said heroes… the blow would cripple them.
So yeah, the way the President had handled it was a good move. All Might was perfect for that job. Also, if there was one person besides All Might who knew about AFO (super-big-bad-villain dominating the criminal network), it had to be the President. Maybe he didn't know AFO's Quirk or his history with All Might, but… He certainly was aware that the big bad existed, and that it was a threat. A threat that the President wanted gone like the rest of the criminals riddling Japan. If All Might had managed to find and defeat AFO in canon (had it happened yet? Probably not, considering how active All Might was… He didn't have a time limit yet…), it was very likely that the resources put at his disposal by the Commission had played a part in that.
"It's unfair to the other heroes," Keigo insisted.
"Well it's not like Endeavor could have done it," Toki reasonably pointed out.
Keigo tossed a pen at her. Yeah, he was an Endeavor fanboy, and proud of it. He sighed dramatically, collapsing on his desk.
"I guess you're right. Unfair doesn't meant it's wrong."
Toki smirked: "The end justifies the means, is that it?"
"Pretty much. I have no problem with, like, the President being a manipulative dickhead for the greater good. I'm just sad for Endeavor. The deck was stacked against him from the beginning."
"That's his own fault for not being as strong as Mister America-Vomited-On-Me."
"Don't disparage my idol! I can accept shadowy organization puppeteering All Might, but I refuse to accept criticism against my hero! Come on, there arelimits."
"I feel like you're having a hard time knowing the difference between right and wrong."
Keigo stuck his tongue at her:
"I discovered at a very early age that if I talk long enough, I can make anything right or wrong. So either I'm a god or truth is relative. And in either case, boo-ya."
"… The average person has a much harder time saying 'boo-ya' to moral relativism."
"Suck for them."
They exchanged a shit-eating grin. Then their teacher voice could be heard in the hallway, and they both rushed to the computer to erase their search history and anything that could betray their snooping. When the man entered, Toki and Keigo were both at their seat, the picture of innocence.
Life as usual.
And so, the mystery of the connection between All Might and the President was solved.Boo-ya, indeed.
Which, coincidentally, reminded Toki that the canon-story was approaching, that All Might played a big part in it, and that in a few years he would get janked up by an immortal, evil potato-face with megalomanic tendencies, and that, hummmmm,maybe she should do something about that.
Not that she planned to drop into the fight to support All Might, gods, no! If Toki had her say in it she wouldneverapproach AFO at all! But like, maybe she could anticipate the shit-show to try and protect herself at the best of her abilities? And try to predict how the Commission was going to react, so she could prepare herself if they suddenly became tyrannical and power-hungry when faced with the weakening of their Symbol? Like, if they tried to coerce Keigo into a suicide mission? Because if that happened, Toki would have to grab Keigo and run to become astrophysicist far away from all that madness. She was okay with being a hero: but she didn't like the idea of being a cog in the machine, or letting Keigo become one. And with his stupidly self-sacrificing tendencies, he could easily become one. Oh, he would walk in the trap fully aware of what it meant, but that was Keigo for you. He was the essence of what a hero should be. Brave, selfless, but also smart, ruthless, willing to do the dirty work and walk to his death with his eyes wide open. One who had the wisdom to know what had to be done, and the courage to do it.
You have the potential to one day replace my masterpiece, had said the President. And maybe he had meant both of them, but Toki knew who was the real candidate between her and Keigo.
He was strong, stronger than her, but he was also clever and likeable. He would rise fast in the rankings, but without being consumed by ambition like Endeavor, or being obsessed by the idea of being an infallible icon, like All Might. Keigo didn't care about glory or his image, he only cared about getting the job done. About saving people, reassuring them, thinking two steps ahead. He dreamed of a world without villains because he dreamed of success and safety, and he was willing to burn out his wings to achieve it.
It wasn't a coincidence if, in canon, the Commission had asked him to be their spy in the League. Keigo was perfect for it. He had the heart of a hero, but he was far from a naïve idiot. He knew sometimes sacrifices had to be made. Hell, he knew that since the day his mother had sold him out, and he had given up his name to become Hawks.
So yeah, canon was approaching. AFO and the League were going to be a threat. No just in the abstract sense, at large, but a threat to her personally, because they would be a threat to Keigo. And… Toki wasn't anything special, in the Plot. She was only a teleporter. She would be squashed like a pancake if she faced tanks like Shigaraki or Dabi or Twice or (Gandalf and Merlin, she hoped it would never come to that), All For One. But could she run away and leave Keigo behind? Nope.
Fuck.
So, for starter, Toki had to know where she was on the timeline. She was the same age as Keigo, and she was seven years older than Hitoshi Shinsō, so she could use their age in canon to estimate her position. So… Hitoshi had been fifteen when canon started, and Keigo had been famous for being super-young for a Number Two hero, so he had ben twenty-two or twenty-three… So yeah, basically Toki had twelve years until canon began. Well, twelve years until Izuku Midoriya entered Yūei, at least. Canon started a little earlier, when Midoriya met All Might, but whatever. Let's say twelve years.
All Might's fight with AFO had happened six years before that. So Toki would be sixteen. Yeah, so, there was absolutely no way that she meddled with that kind of fight, at sixteen years old. She wouldn't even have completed her hero training!
But still, canon was going to happen. Evil potato-face was going to go down in six years, then make his comeback six years later, and Toki had to be ready. She didn't feel some divine calling to save the world, but shit, she lived there too; if Japan turned into some post-apocalyptic dystopia it would sucks.
Also, the government would certainly use that to push space travel at the bottom of their priority.
So, plan for the future: chill for the next six years, then keep an eye out for AFO and the League. Stomp them if she could, maybe buy a gun just in case she found Shigaraki in shooting range: and for the love of all that was sacred, not get caught in All Might's drama. Also keep an eye on Keigo so he didn't try to go too fast and burn himself out, or find himself trapped in awful infiltration missions. And if hedid, well, Toki would have to fucking microchip him so she could swoop in and punch Dabi's ugly mug before he tried to transform her best friend into a rotisserie chicken.
Yeah, that was a solid strategy. Toki was very proud of her strategizing skills.
The funny things was: she had no real plan to deal with the canon. She didn't have a vision to make come true (except for the space travel stuff). If the Reincarnation Administration had done its job right, well, surely it would have been an altruistic and driven person who would have been reincarnated in this world, right? Someone who could plan for the future, who had clear and defined objectives, like How-To-Stop-The-League-In-Forty-Seven-Steps. But nooo, this world had Toki, and Toki's priority was very much to save her own skin. She couldn't stay idle if people were getting hurt, that was why she was becoming a hero after all, but she also knew she was way over her head with the Plot. She wasn't special. She could only try her best.
To be a hero. To become an astrophysicist and make space travel come true again. To protect Keigo. To protect herself… And to see what the future had in store for her.
Notes:
I shoved a lot of my headcanons in this chapter. Because yeah, there is no way the HPSC isn't dealing with back ops, especially since they were around BEFORE All Might, when AFO was basically king of Japan's villains. But i still want to write a morally grey HPSC, not a corrupt one! So I headcanon that until the canon-President (the woman who is, in this fic, Vice-President), the HPSC was headed by someone who... had the necessarily ruthlessness to deal with it.
Enter Genryusai, the President. I gave him a personnality halfay between Nedzu and Lucius Malefoy, and from there it escalated. Yeah, he's on the side of the Good Guys, but his moral compass is basically a russian roulette. And from there, i wondered: wait, what would be this cold-hearted bastard's opinion of All Might, who's radiating optimist and farting sunshine? Then it hit me. Genryusai sees heroes astools. So of course he would have a good opinion of All Might, because the man is an excellent weapon. His only fault is that he doesn't deal well with direct orders. But it's easily solved, especially if Genryusai doesn't need All Might to be part of precise operations. All Might is a nuclear warhead. You aim it to things (ennemies, gangs, cities) you want destroyed: nothing less and nothing more. You use him as a detterent for villainy, as a symbol of what the villains have to fear if they dare disturb the peace.
And considering it wasAll Might's own goal, it was even easier.
It played out perfectly. It would never have worked with anyone else, because nobody had the raw power, the conviction, but also the pure motivation of All Might. He was perfect. He made heroism great again.
And now the HPSC expects Toki and Keigo to follow in his footsteps, which is... less fun.
EDIT : Chapter edited because Ryukyu couldn't possibly be a pro-hero yet ! So her name has been replaced by Gang Orca
Chapter 10: Having a blast
Summary:
Toki from age ten to thirteen and some. Shit happens: some good, some bad, and some surprising.
Notes:
Here i come again ! It's been nearly a month, but i didn't forget you =)
I'm not very happy with this chapter because it goes in every direction. We met a new Oc, we talk about Toki's Quirk, and we talk about friendship, romance, and activism. Every single of there things would have deserved its own chapter. But hey... that's life.
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
HAVING A BLAST
Days, weeks, months and thenyearspassed. Toki had been a child when she had joined this training program. Slowly, she was becoming a teenager. How strange, to think she had been here longer than she had lived with her father and his crew.
Growing up in a secret training facility wasn't a normal childhood. The Commission tried its best to not traumatize their kids, but they still made they train a lot and heavily restricted their contact with the outside world. At least Keigo and Toki had each other, and with their respective Quirk, it wasn't hard to sneak out to play in the forest, explore the island, or laze around in the nearby towns. But in canon, Keigo had been alone, and… Toki did her best to not think about it.
ShelikedNaruto Labs, the staff and the researchers, Hayasa-sensei, her training… She even liked the Commission. They were fair and helpful. But they weren't kind. They weren't gentle. Toki was tough: but she was only a child. There were emotional needs that teachers and trainers couldn't fulfill. Sometimes the adults worried that her and Keigo were too close, that they would be too codependent later, but they should worry about what they would have become if they had never met. Howmiserablethey would have been. How they would have thrown themselves into training to try and fill that gaping emptiness in their heart, how they would have tried so very hard to feel useful without realizing that what they really needed was to feel loved.
Toki didn't doubt that the people at Naruto Labs loved them, but it was in the distant way absent-minded teachers loved good-working students. They liked them, but they moved on easily. Some staff members left, others came, but no relationship of value was lost because nobody bothered to really befriend the kids. Even Hayasa-sensei, who had the closest bond with them, was careful to maintain a professional distance. They were all just doing their job, after all. But it was hard to live like this for a kid, who didn't need a job but a family. Toki pitied Shirayuki and the other sponsored children who had to stay here without friends their age.
But Toki wasn't alone. She had Keigo.
They were apart for some lessons but they were usually glued to each other's side. It was habit by now. They trained and talked and played together, but they also shared long, comfortable silences. They were always aware of where the other was in the room, without even exchanging a glance. They didn't bat an eyelash when the other invaded their personal space. They were the same size so they also shared clothes, and it wasn't rare for them to fall asleep in the same bed after whispering stories way past midnight. Toki had gotten used to waking up with a mouthful of feathers because that dumb bird flapped his wings in his sleep, and Keigo had gotten used to have a spare duvet because Toki was a vicious blanket thief. They talked about their dreams, about silly ramblings, about everything. They liked to compete right until the pressure become unfriendly, and then they both gave up at the same time, because no competition could ever matter more than their friend's feelings.
They didn't argue much. Almost never, actually. They poked, prodded, mocked, bantered, but it was never mean. When they argued for real, it always came as a surprise. Once, when they were nine, they had an argument about some stupid thing, a ball thrown too hard or something, and voices rose until Keigo spat out something about Toki being a backstabbing traitor, and then there had been a shocked silence before Toki had burst into tears, then Keigo had burst into tears too, and well, it had been an emotional evening… but the very next day it was over. A few months later, after summer camps, they had a spat about where they wanted to go next year, and they didn't speak for three days before making up. Toki didn't even remember how the argument had started out. Still, they bickered a lot, but real arguments were so rare Toki could probably count them on one hand. At twelve, they had an argument about how Endeavor was a good or a bad hero, and at thirteen they had a gigantic row about heroes' costumes, of all things, but hey, that was life.
It was healthy to fight. Or rather, it was healthy to have conflict, like a safety valve releasing pressure in an otherwise harmonious relationship.
What exactly was her relationship with Keigo, Toki had no clue. He was her best friend but he was alsomore. He was her confident and her hero and her protégé, all in one. He wasKeigobut he was alsoHawks, and a million things in between. No definition really fit. They lived in each other's pockets and most of their personal boundaries merged. For now, they were kids, so Toki had trouble putting a label other thanfamilyon their bond, but… She was reincarnated, so she knew what was in the near future, and she wondered with a vague sense of dread how it was gonna change when teenagerhood would be added to the mix. She wasn't a jealous person: but how would she feel if Keigo started dating someone in their dance club, for example? Or started to talk to her about girls? Or boys, actually. Maybe Keigo was gay. Or bi. Hell, maybe Toki was bi. She had no idea: she had never thought about it, but she had the same feelings for boys and girls. Said feelings being usually indifference but yeah, it counted. She didn't frequent many kids her age besides Keigo, anyway.
Oh shit, wouldshewant to date Keigo? When hormones would start rearing up their ugly heads, maybe he would turn out to be her type. If she even had a type. She had trouble wrapping her head around the idea… It would be a little strange, but at the same time, she couldn't really imagine being close to anyone else. Was it weird?
So. Teenagerhood.
It didn't happen all at once. Months passed. They went to summer camp. Once again they were the youngest in the bunch. Preteens tried very hard to act like actual teens, so Toki was left feeling faintly befuddled by the giggling girls wearing make-up to laze around the pool, and horrified by the ones who said they were already dieting. Keigo wasn't quite as perplexed by his peers, because twelve years old boys weren't as weird as twelve years old girls apparently, but he did tell Toki in an honestly bewildered tone that the others kids really spend way too much time talking about girls instead of heroes.
Anyway. After Toki and Keigo's eleventh birthday, their schedule changed. As Keigo and Toki had overheard, the Commission had decided to make them socialize more, without making them join a normal middle-school.
They still had Quirk training on Wednesday, two hours of physical conditioning each day, and ballet on Saturday. Good, because it was already a demanding schedule! Toki had noticed that none of their peers in the ballet club were as physically fit as her and Hawks. And they were only eleven! Anyway, they still had their online classes, but only three days a week now (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday). But their three part-time teachers had gone back to their respective researches in the labs. Keigo and Toki were expected to work on their own for now on.
Instead of their extra-projects or their Strategy Lessons that had previously filled their weekdays, they now had a full Friday dedicated to Heroic Class with a special tutor, a short and somber man named Okamoto. He didn't exactly have a curriculum. His role was to teach them the behind-the-scene of heroics. They already had learned bits here and here, like when they had visited Shirayuki's agency, but Okamoto was going to teach them the real stuff. How to make a balanced hero team. What were the rescue protocols. How to run an agency. How to negotiate contracts. How to deal with journalists. How to deal with hostage situations. Heroes school taught these skills (well, some of them) in high-school. But Okamoto said that if they started learning now, it would leave them more time to train their Quirks. Toki couldn't argue with that logic.
"What is your actual job?" asked Keigo with interest.
"I work for the Commission."
"We figured," Toki drawled, chin in her hands. "But what do you actuallydo? Marketing? Legal counsel? Ninja-training?"
Okamoto stayed stoically silent. Keigo leaned forward, his eyes gleaming mischievously.
"If you don't tell us we're just going to assume you're a janitor."
"Not that being a janitor is wrong!" Toki piped up.
"Of course! Just, washing up windows, picking up trash cans…"
"It's not that dissimilar to legal counsel when you think about it, Hawks!"
"Really?"
"Yeah. In both case you're dealing with lot of bullshit!"
They both grinned at the pun. Okamoto let out a great sigh, pinching his nose in exasperation, before growling:
"Fine. I'm a public relation advisor, working with the Commission and various hero agencies. What I do is a mix of marketing, legal counsel, but also… lessons in acting, stealth, recon."
"Really?!"
"Of course. It's good to tell the public that you will keep them safe, but it's better to have the skills to back it up."
"So you're a ninja?" Toki said dubiously.
Okamoto was short, with a big belly and a double-chin. He was maybe in his fifties, with a receding hairline and a severe face, and his skin had a purplish tint to it. He looked like a cranky banker who liked donuts too much, not a ninja.
"I refer people to… ninja-trainers," corrected Okamoto as if the wordninjaphysically pained him. "In my job, I make a lot of contacts. It will be very useful in your career."
Toki and Keigo looked at each other, then shrugged:
"Sure. Let's become ninja!"
Okamoto looked exasperated, but let it slide. It would soon become a trend in their relationship…
Anyway.
Okamoto was never given the honorific ofsensei, although Keigo always take care to use -san(either because he was polite or because he was sarcastic: honestly, sometimes the lines blurred). Okamoto wasn't invested in them like Hayasa-sensei was. He was professional, and clever, and good at his job, but he was also prissy, rigid, easy to rile up, and sometimes straight-upmean. That made him a perfect target for Keigo and Toki's early teenage rebellion. So, no honorific.
What he taught was interesting, though. He brought books about heroic History. He taught them technical terms. He explained how to control their tells when bluffing. He made them go around the Labs and try to learn five things about each researcher they passed by. He encouraged them to use their Quirk in every situation. For example, one day Toki wasn't allowed to make more than three consecutive steps before teleporting, and Keigo wasn't allowed to put his feet on the floor at all.
But Okamoto mostly focused on theirpeople skills. He gave them memorization exercises. He brought back their strategies lessons, but instead of a make-believe scenario, he gave them real fight between heroes and villains, and made them analyze that. There were lessons about ethics, with moral dilemmas to solve, like: do you let the villain take a hostage, knowing he's going to hurt them, if it allows you to get reinforcement to attack his main base? Or do you take your chances with an immediate fight?
During winter, Okamoto made them go to an improv group in a city two hours away, every Friday for threemonths, so they could get better at inventing stories on the fly. He wanted them to be able to jump in a conversation seamlessly, to never freeze when asked a compromising question, to reassess and adapt even in front of a crowd. Some heroes had stage fright, but Keigo and Toki weren't allowed to be one of them. They had to be perfect.
Lucky for Okamoto, both children were both fairly confident (and sassy). So they managed to find their footing quickly enough. Keigo, especially, since he was a real chatterbox. Toki was more easily caught by surprise, so she learned to deflect with unbelievable excuses. Better to muddy the water than to let her interlocutor get the upper hand. Like when she was late, instead of telling she had been sneaking out, she started an improbable tale of crossing paths with a black cat and then having to take the long way around a propped-up ladder. Yes, Kakashi-style. It was fitting, for someone living in Naruto Labs, right?
Then came spring. Okamoto made them see a speech specialist to get rid of their regional accent (Toki hadn't even noticed she had one!) and learn how to disguise their voice. It took nearly six months. Then, unexpectedly, Okamoto told them they were done with it, and taught them to play a bunch of cards games. Poker, blackjack, Sixty-Three, Go-Fish, Red Dog. And, okay, that part was fun. For about a month, they saw Okamoto fleece every single researcher dumb enough to play against him in the cafeteria. It was the first time their chubby and grumpy tutor looked cool.
After a month, Okamoto was done with the cards games, though. Instead, he made them go a ninja-trainer (or rather, a stealth specialist) for four months. It was a two-hour drive to the city where that guy worked, and they had to get up at six, and go back home only at eight, after a day filled with exhausting exercises.
They learned how to walk without a sound, how to attack someone from the back quickly enough to incapacitate them, how to pickpocket bystanders, how to use your environment to escape, how to tie various knots to restrain people… The stealth-teacher was polite, but Okamoto was there, and cranky enough for two. Asshole! And after that, boom, no time to relax: he made learn how to tail someone withanotherstealth expert, this one specializing into disguises and evasion. It lasted four other months, every single Friday.
During the long train ride or car rides, Okamoto stayed with them and quizzed them relentlessly about heroes, their agencies, their Quirk. He pretended to be a journalist grilling them about their last mission. He could be in turn cool and collected, or downright dismissive and insulting. It wasn't pleasant like Quirk training, but it was its own kind of challenge. It was training, too. How to lie, how to look confident, how to lead a conversation, how to avoid questions, how to project empathy. He made them read a lot of self-help books.
You have to be in control, he hammered.Not only in control of your Quirk and of your fights, but also in control of your emotions, of your facial expressions, of your reactions. The media is the heroes' judge and jury. Do not, under any circumstance, let them smell any weakness, or they will also be your executionner.
Chilling.
Every week was the same except it was never the same at all. Sure, their online lessons changed, but it was still classwork. Quirk training varied but it mostly stayed predictable. It was Okamoto who was the wild card. Every Friday, Keigo and Toki went to meet him without knowing what he had in store. Would they get in a car for two or three hours filled with questions and tests, or with a podcast to listen because they would be quizzed about it upon arrival? Or would they be let loose in the gym to talk about strategy? Or maybe they would start a role-play to see who lied the best? Would they go to the same club they had been going for weeks, or would Okamoto suddenly change his mind and bring them to a totally different city, for a completely different activity?
It wasn't bad. Not knowing things in advance was sometimes annoying and stressing, but it never feltunsafe, you know? Toki remembered how tension had knotted her stomach when her mother left and she wasn't sure Sayuri would come back. It wasn't that kind of stress she felt when Okamoto dangled incertitude in front of them. It was different. Okamoto wasn't a friend, fuck no, but he was an ally. He was… He was giving themmissions. Unknow missions. And it was a little scary, but in a good way, in a challenging way.
Toki still didn't like his fat purple face, though. The improv club, the stealth training, it was all good and fine. But gods Tokihatedthose long car rides. Even in a limousine, with Okamoto sitting face to them and quizzing them, criticizing their posture and poking holes in their composures, the whole car feltclaustrophobic. Keigo took it with better grace than Toki. He had a way to smile with a hint of mockery, pretending to be self-depreciating with a knowing look in his eyes, as if criticism only made him laugh. But Toki didn't have his lay-back attitude. She could fake-smile for a while, but at the end she snapped and she brooded. Okamoto wasn't cruel… but he was strict and snappish. He sneered at their failures, and his wry comments rubbed her the wrong way. It pissed her off.
Maybe Okamoto was too haughty, or Toki too wild: but they always clashed. He didn't like her because she was rude, because she snapped and sneered like a wild cat, because she was immature. And she didn't like him because he was too cold, too bossy, too dismissive. He was an ass, plain and simple.
Later that year, Okamoto was also the one who picked their summer camp. It went badly. He chose theater groups, then Scout's training, then beach camp… And Keigo and Toki were always sent to different camps. So they spent eight consecutive weeks apart, and as a result they were especially pissed at Okamoto when they came back. They constantly bitched at him, talked back, stole his keys when he wasn't looking, all that kind of stuff. Toki had been a sassy student, but she cranked it up until she was downright insolent. Keigo was barely better. Things didn't calm down until Okamoto (probably prompted by Hayasa-sensei, who was the kids' unofficial wrangler) stiffly promised to not separate them again. Especially during their holidays.
"You won't be able to always be together," he warned them. "If you can't handle working separately, you will never be proper, functional heroes. If you're too compromised, maybe you should be sent to separate facilities…"
Keigo didn't quite snarl, but it was close, his wings flaring up like a bird of prey trying to make himself look bigger. Toki gritted her teeth, and she didn't need a mirror to know her eyes were suddenly glowing like Meteor's when he was pissed.
"We can work separately," she growled. "We do that every single time we have separate classes, or separate Quirk training, or separate summer camps!"
"We're not invalids," growled Keigo.
"Yeah. So while I'm sure you had good intentions, it was unnecessary. Fucking up our free time is a dick move, and the only thing it has accomplished was to make us pissed at you."
"Language, Quantum!"
"I will shove up my foot up your…"
"Fine!" Okamoto exploded. "You won't be sent to separate camps all summer long,fine. But in the real world, you will be away from each other longer than four weeks."
"Yeah, if we decide to," Keigo pointed out with a vindictive glare. "And wehaven'tdecided that, so shove it."
"You should be ready for it," the man scowled. "Your bond is… touching, but in the real world, a hero is always alone. Connections, alliances, friendship will only take you so far. When push comes to shove… We are all born alone, and die alone. It's a sad reality, but I don't want it to break you when you will have to face it."
Toki reared back, indignant. Oh gods, not that dramatic bullshit again! What was with people and being dark and edgy about how the universe was out to make them miserable?!
"That's rubbish!" she snapped at him. "We were born alone and we die alone, are you freaking serious?! You delivered yourself during birth? Built all the roofs that have ever given you shelter? Sown the wheat in your bread? Weaved the clothes on your back? Wrote all the books you've ever read and the music you've ever listened to? Who made the literal bed you're going to die in, you, all alone?!"
Okamoto looked honestly taken aback, which was very satisfying. Toki turned on her heels and marched out, dragging Keigo behind her, feeling still pissed but also kind of proud at having the last word. Behind her, she slammed the door as hard as she could.
Neither Okamoto or her mentioned that conversation again next Friday. Toki counted it as a win. She so rarely had an occasion to shut up an adult these times!
But seriously, why did adults have to be this dramatic?Life is unfair… We're all doomed to be lonely and miserable… Existence is a prison… The universe is dark and terrible…So what? Yes, the universe didn't care about people, the Sun didn't care, the Stars didn't care, but people did! There was light in the universe, and it was them! Thousands of thousands of human beings, with hopes and dreams and the innate instinct to help each other, to work together to achieve their goals. How many persons had it taken to send the first rocket to the moon? How many researchers had worked tirelessly to build one single satellite? How many people had watched, heart in their throat and tears in their eyes, the moon landing footage? Didn'tthatfill you with hope?! Or maybe it was just Toki. Maybe she had internalized too muchLord Of The Ringsas a kid, to actually believed there was good in the world. Or maybe too much Discworld, to believe there was good in people.
Being smart in a universe filled with idiots was really exhausting, sometimes. It was a good thing Toki was an optimist.
But anyway, back to the point. Life continued. Normal classes weren't harder as usual, but since Toki and Keigo had the equivalent of five schooldays crammed into three, it managed to keep them busy. It was a good thing they didn't have a lot of homework. Quirk training was still kicking their asses, but it was the kind of challenge they loved. Always being faster, stronger, better. They were now past eleven, so they both dropped their ballet classes to take up others sports. Keigo took up swimming, to strengthen his back and work on his breathing. Toki took Thai boxing for a few months, didn't like it, then switched to Krav Maga. It was the most violent self-defense sport that existed: and since Toki was going to be a close-combat hero, well, she needed all the tools she could get. She also started training with various weapons: mostly batons, but also short throwing knifes. It led to crazy games of accuracy with Keigo and his feathers, and it was a small miracle they didn't accidentally stab someone in the hallways.
But hey, most of the staff was used to their antics by now. Sometimes a researcher passed them perched on a cart propelled by a makeshift flamethrower, and the poor guy only took a step back to let them pass in the hallway, his face not even twitching in surprise.
Quirk training started being mixed with various sports. Hayasa-sensei brought them to deserted places in the nearby city to learn parkour and free running, mixing it up with good old games of tag to spice up the exercises. Keigo and Toki were both comfortable with flying, but less so with jumping from rooftops from rooftops, swinging from telephones poles to balconies, landing and rolling. Keigo had to shred most of his feathers so his wingspan didn't hinder him, making his wings ridiculously tiny. Still, it was fun. Toki realized that even without using her Quirk, she had become pretty athletic. She could do impressive acrobatics at very dangerous heights without breaking a sweat! Wow, she felt like Spiderman!
And then the month passed, then the next, and suddenly Toki was twelve. And that year, she made online friends.
oOoOoOo
Winter had come and go, with birthdays and presents and parties and snowballs fight, as usual. It was now the year 2220. Canon would start in exactly ten years. Hurray.
At twelve, Toki was hit full force by a dreaded enemy: puberty. She grew up taller than Keigo, who had been (until then) more or less of height with her. She started having hairs. Having boobs. Having her period. Having to receiveThe Talkfrom the labs' resident doctor, which was awkward and horrifying, because even if Toki argued that she already knew that stuff, they wanted to be sure she didn't skip an important lesson. Good for them, but really, the talk about safe sex (especially withKeigoas an example of a male partner, holy shit she was going to die of mortification) was so embarrassing! Really, she had to live through that once Before, it was just plain mean to have a do-over. Well, at least, in this universe, the pain medications for period-cramps were pretty amazing.
But well. Besides puberty, Toki had others adventures. Okamoto started to teach them how to negotiate with villains or civilians or journalist, how to empathize with your interlocutor to create a personal connection, how to redirect the conversation smoothly, and all the bullshit that made a person popular with the medias. He also allowed them to have an email (which they hadn't until that day) and a social media account. They weren't allowed to post anything compromising, of course. No selfies, nothing about the HPSC or their training, no political opinions… basically: nothing but cat pictures. But they were allowed to subscribe to various heroes' social media to observe how they managed that aspect of their relationship with the public. Endeavor's twitter account was maned by his sidekicks, and only gave brisk announcement in the third-person. All Might typed in all caps. Shirayuki used her social media to promote her merch. Death Arms rarely posted any texts, but he always sent picture of him or his sidekicks.
Of course, this new lesson required Toki and Keigo to have their own phones. They had managed twelve years without smartphone, so at the beginning, they didn't use it much. Then Keigo discovered Youtube and the analysis channels, and Toki, wandering from forums to forums, discovered people who contested the system.
Alright, some of them were nutcases. There was Stain's rhetoric thrown around (although it wasn'tStain'srhetoric yet), about heroes being fame-hungry assholes instead of being devoted civils servants. There were people hating on Endeavor because he was rude, people hating on Present Mic because he was loud, people hating on The Wild Wild Pussycat because one of them was trans, people hating on heroes in general because they were rich…
But there were also people who had good points. Like those who protested because heroes were the only ones allowed to use their Quirk freely. Of course, it made sense for there to be some oversight and control over Quirks. Especially when they had started appearing and threw the world in chaos. But by now everyone had a Quirk. And people weren't allowed to use them unless it was to beat up bad guys? It was unfair. Wouldn't it make sense for you to be able to apply for a license, similarly to a hero license, and then be able to use your quirk in a mundane job, like construction?
Which led to Toki creating an account on that website (with the usernameShootForTheStars) and posting a reply. She argued that to deliver such license, there would need to be an infrastructure like the Hero Commission (a 'Quirk Commission' maybe?) which would require a huge amount of capital. And money didn't grow on trees, so to fund it, it would be the easiest to charge a fee for the license itself… Aaaaaand that would create an undesirable wealth gap between those who can use quirks and those who can. Toki was completely in favor of that 'license to use a Quirk for something else than hero work', though. If Uraraka could use her Quirk to help her parent's company… If Toki could freely use her Quirk to avoid taking the train… Damn, if he didn't have his hero license, Keigo wouldn't even be allowed tofly! How unfair was that?
Soon the conversation was blowing up. Because having it so that all people who wanted to use their quirk needed to be combat-ready and trained was, not only unfair, but bad. As a nice user namedPinkIsPunkRockpointed out, that basically made the only portion of the quirk-capable populace a militia. Which… Good point.
Well. Space-travel was still Toki's priorities. But maybe that idea of more freedom to use Quirk was a worthy hill to die on. Of course, Toki didn't want to go as extreme as the Meta-Liberation Army or whatever their names was, because they were eugenicist pieces of crap who valued individuals by their powers instead of their own merits (a Quirkless astrophysicist was worth way more than a psychokinesist bank robber, for example!), and they had a cult-like mentally to boot. But restricting Quirk-use to the hero was… kind of unfair. And sad. And unpractical. And it bothered her. So Toki was going to look into it, and well, if she could fix it, she was sure it would help her space-travels projects in the long run. And her hero career, too! If people could use their Quirk to find jobs, that meant they were less likely to turn to villainy because of poverty. And that meant that the Meta-Liberation of whatever was going to lose credibility and be weaker than in canon, so: all the better.
So, ShootForTheStars started to wander online looking for constructive criticism of the hero society, for how it was done in others countries, and how reform usually happened in Japan. It kept her busy for a while. Turned out that legislation could pass very quickly if famous heroes advocated for it. All Might avoided supporting any politician, but he had argued once in favor of clemency for vigilantes, it had blown up online, and the law had been amended in the following years, after months of online petitions and campaigns. Pretty cool.
Toki continued digging. Internet was such a fascinating place. Soon she joined Tumblr, then a Discord server, then another. She found a Youtube channel about Quirk analysis, then she dug deeper and found blogs about pre-Quirk history, and… Well. Once you were in, it was hard to get out. Besides, for someone as isolated from the real world as her, it was a goldmine! Keigo loved to read tweets and move from one hero's account to another, but Toki dug herself a tiny place on some Quirk-Analysis Discord server, and she made friends. Well, they would never be as close to her as Keigo, but still. She talked to real people, argued, shared her opinion, was introduced to silly memes, and so… friends. Online friends. She tried to bring Keigo in her things but that wasn't his cup of tea. He did join the server, but their animated debates weren't his scene. Toki was the one with a wild enough imagination to picture hundreds of imaginary scenarios. Keigo was more down-to-Earth.
Still. Meeting new people online was refreshing. They all had their worries, their ambitions, their problems, their joys, their lives and their jobs. They didn't get Toki like Keigo did, but they still caught her puns, made her laugh, and talked excitingly about stuff that Toki couldn't tell anyone else. Some of them recommended comics and manga to her, and Toki started avidly reading those series when she sneaked out in the city's library.
She downloaded the Discord application on her phone. She spent more and more time on it. Not a lot, compared to the others members, because she wanted to keep her involvement a secret from Hayasa-sensei and Okamoto, but still, it was enough that Keigo noticed. He wasn't exactly annoyed, but he was… definitively pouting.
ShootForTheStars:I think my best friend is feeling neglected
PinkIsPunkRock:why
ShootForTheStars:I've been hanging out here a lot lately
NotOnFire:what kind of shut-in are you irl, we barely see you one hour in the evening?!
ShootForTheStars:Well i didn't have a phone before…
EndeavorSucks:YOU DidN'T HAvE A PhONE?!
PikaPika:Who doesn't have a phone?! INFANTS?!
NotOnFire:or old grandmas
ThisIsFluffy:Stars. STARS. How old are you?!
ShootForTheStars:chill guys, i'm twelve!
ShootForTheStars:my caretakers (and me) are just super-focused on my studies
PinkIsPunkRock:? you don't live with your parents
ShootForTheStars:Nope. Foster care.
ThisIsFluffy:oh
ThisIsFluffy:well not having a phone at 12 is still sad
PikaPika:invite your friend in the chat!
ShootForTheStars:Already done, he is *ChickenNuggets. He doesn't come often, tho.
EndeavorSucks:THAT BASTARD
EndeavorSucks:HE SPAMMED ME WITH ENDEAVOR PICTURES FOR A WEEK!
ThisIsFluffy:ah ahaha lol
ThisIsFluffy:but your username is begging for pain *EndeavorSucks
EndeavorSucks:fuck off
PinkIsPunkRock:Hey have you seen the new All Might interview?
PikaPika:did he say something
PikaPika:something interesting I mean
PikaPika:if this is just his usual pep-talk i'm going back to bed
PinkIsPunkRock:He said he's doesn't intend to retire 'until the job is done', but he's getting old, right?
ThisIsFluffy:isn't he only 46?
ShootForTheStars:he has a few years before kicking the bucket
NotOnFire:Wow
NotOnFire:Stars is BRUTAL today
ThisIsFluffy:Maybe AllMigh will retire to knit or some shit yanno
ShootForTheStars:Or maybe he will refuse to retire because he has no life outside of work, and continue his hero work until he's too weak and get killed on national tv, leading to a national panic and the rise of organized crime
EndeavorSucks:…
PinkIsPunkRock:…
PikaPika:holy shit
ThisIsFluffy:you would think with her username Stars would be nice
ThisIsFluffy:in my days 12 yo weren't savage like that
ShootForTheStars:what does my username has to do with my level of cynicism
ThisIsFluffy:Because the saying? 'shoot for the moon, if you miss you'll land in the stars' or something
ShootForTheStars:well that's a stupid saying. if you miss the moon, the vacuum of space will sucks out your eyeballs so…
PikaPika:Alright Stars, this past your bedtime, go watch a fluffy cartoon or something
Joke was on him. Toki didn't watch fluffy cartoons. All she had was science books and existential dread. Ah ah. She sent a bunch of emojis instead, then disconnected and went to ask Keigo if he wanted to try and go with her to see if they could steal some pie before the staff locked up the kitchen. Peace was restored.
(Still, the next day she spent a good half-hour arguing with PinkIsPunkRock and NotOnFire about All Might's eventual retirement. Toki happened to find the whole Symbol of Peace business far overrated. It was dangerous to shoulder a single person with something likethe well-being of society. Besides, All Might hadn't managed such a good job of it anyway! Oh, on the surface it had been a golden age, but he had left behind himself a warped idea what Goodness and Heroism meant. It had exacerbated violence in the name of heroism (just look at Bakugou and his twisted view of what a hero was!), but also discrimination. Not to mention situations like what happened in the Todoroki family… Abuse was swept under the rug to keep up a perfect picture of Heroism. So yeah. Things weren't as perfect as the advertising would want to make you believe. There was no such thing as a perfect society. Even in a utopia, there would always be people falling through the cracks, Toki was well aware of it. It was time for things to change. All Might couldn't keep the status quo eternally.)
Anyway… Toki really liked to vent her ideas and contestations on the Discord server. It felt liberating to talk about it, to bounce ideas back and forth with likewise-minded people. She talked about it with Keigo sometimes too, but it wasn't the same. He wasn't as involved as her.
Keigo had his own interests online. He mostly watched YouTube videos. He sometimes got new ideas for aerial maneuvers, or appreciated a good critic of a tense hero fight, and of course he watched avidly anything to do with Endeavor. But he didn't try and look for society's contesters. Keigo… he had his dreams and ambitions. He wanted a safe world, without villains. That was as simple as that. Oh, Toki and him sometimes debated about stuff she had found online, and they had similar point of views on most things. How Quirks' use should be freer, how All Might couldn't carry the weight of society on his own shoulder eternally, how heroes were growing more and more violent. But even if Keigo agreed with those things, they didn't light a fire in him. It was a problem and he wanted it to be solved, but he didn't feel like it washisto solve. He had others priorities.
Toki wasn't fascinated by the idea of being a hero like him, so maybe that was why could more easily take a step back and imagine herself in the shoes of those who weren't heroes, who would never be heroes, and were just powerless bystanders while supermen threw buildings at each other, while the normal people risked heavy fines if they dared to use their own Quirk to make their lives a little easier.
Toki wondered if the Commission knew what she was doing. Probably not. They had others things to do than monito a twelve years old Discord account. Still, just to be sure, she looked online how to tinker with a phone, and learned how to look for bugs and other stuff. She still wouldn't make a half-decent hacker, but she was really getting the hang of the cryptic coding jargon.
She was writing less and less in her poetry notebook, these days. She was too busy. She never had so many people to talk to, about so many different things. There was Keigo, there was Hayasa-sensei, but now there was also Okamoto who insisted on constantly making conversation during their lessons, the various teachers Okamoto drove them too (the stealth-expert, the theater groups), the friends in her Discord server, but also some online blog that answered her comments: one about her grad students complaining about her studies in astrophysics and who was amused by Toki's enthusiasm, one who posted poetry and encouraged Toki to post her own poems, another who posted hero fight analysis and liked to debate…
But Toki was still attached to her notebook. There were barely fifteen pages left to fill now. It was crazy. She had that thing for year. She had poured her soul in from age five to now. Those poems had given her strength and hope when she had needed it the most.
We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins,
Carbon in our souls, and nitrogen in our brains,
93 percent stardust, with souls made of flames
We are all just stars
that have people names
Maybe, when she will be done with this notebook, she would close it shut and never open it again, closing that chapter of her life forever. Or maybe she would keep it somewhere in a corner of her bedroom, like a dairy she didn't dare show others. She hadn't even let Keigo read those lines, and he was the only person Toki could consider bare her soul to.
Why was she even thinking about that? She always thought about a thousand things at once but now she was being emotional about it. What bullshit. Urgh, being a teenager sucked!
It was now the end of spring. Okamoto signed them up to work in a journal, as lowly coffee-fetchers and printed-copies carriers. Their goal was to learn a maximum of information about everyone in the office, how their worked, what angle they looked for in their articles, and so on. So every Friday, they went there and played the role of middle-school students trying to be useful. Okamoto hadn't presented that as a test, only as a lesson just like the one they had with the improv group or the stealth specialist: but Toki and Keigo weren't stupid. It was a test. It was a way to put everything they had learned in practice. It was aspying game!
And even thought a small, logical part of Toki brain protested it was immoral to train kids to spy on people, well… It was a fun test, and she was good at it, so: game on. Keigo and her started investigating the shit out of the office, with the kind of exuberant energy they couldn't let out when doing the same at Genryusai's house. They chatted with all the employees, got into their good graces by bringing them coffee and remembering their kids' birthdays, discretely memorized passwords, and sneaked into locked rooms to look at records. They worked great as a team, but they also did very well on their own. Keigo better than Toki, even, because he could use his feathers to listen to conversations behind closed doors, or to steal papers while standing in another room talking loudly to make diversion.
Long story short, it was a success, but they didn't discover anything more compromising than the fact that several employees were cheating on their respective spouses and that the secretary was stealing candies from the vending machine. Oh well. They had fun, that was the important part.
Hayasa-sensei told them they were now old enough to start with some strength training. They would start slow, but he fully intended for them to be able to bench-press each other by next year. He made them join each another sport club, so Keigo selected a music club (probably just to be provocative) and Toki went with a breakdancing club. She knew ballet, gymnastics, parkour, and a few martial arts, so she already had some solid basis. But it was also lots of fun. And it helped her with her balance and agility, so… Hayasa-sensei couldn't complain.
Besides, Hayasa-sensei cared for their extra-curricular activities, but his main interest was their Quirk training. On a day-to-day basis, Toki didn't really feel an amelioration, but when she looked back a few years, she had to admit she had progressed by leaps and bounds. Her reaction-time was lightning-fast compared to those first games of tag she had played with Keigo. She could teleport quicker, further, with more complicated landings, while enchaining successive tasks. She could integrate teleportation in a fight or a chase. Keigo was the better fight, more polyvalent and better at long-range, but Toki was the uncontested queen of the swift take-down. It made her feel all powerful!
Well, she was still kind of a normal, baseline human, so she was limited. She had a bit of choc and pressure-resistance, as if the warp-portal on her skin acted like a shield (Hayasa-sensei had theorized that maybe teleporting created a vacuum, so Toki was actually vacuum-resistant, and wasn't that a thrilling thought?!)… But she was still soft and squishy, so getting a building dropped on her was a big no-no.
She learned that the hard way at the end of spring, when a particularly violent spar had seen her tossed by a window. She had teleported before falling the two-stories of the empty building they were in, but her foot had caught on the balcony's railing and it had hurt like a bitch. Turned out she had broken her ankle. Keigo was horrified, and he wasn't even the one who had tossed her by the window.
Hayasa-sensei was stiff as a board, but even with his total professionalism, he seemed a little apologetic.
"It's better to deal with your first broken bone in a controlled setting," he tried to offer.
Toki groaned. She had her foot in a cast for six weeks, and had been given enough painkillers to feel faintly floaty.
"Geez, sensei, you're really trying to see a ray of light in that shitshow?"
"Language, Quantum," her teacher coughed, looking uncomfortable. "But… Yes, I suppose I am. I will adjust your training so you won't have to use your ankle at all for the next six weeks, and of course, after that, we will have to take in account your loss of muscles."
"Sweet. Can I have the day off?"
There was a fleeting smile on her teacher's face, maybe because of her slightly slurred voice.
"Yes. I'll warn Okamoto. Afterwards… You'll still have your online classes, but no Quirk training. You can think about what you will do with your Quirk when training resume. I expect you to have at least one idea for a new special move."
"Aw man," she whined. "Do I have to?"
"Yes, Quantum. Now, I'm sending Hawks back in. So, be good."
So Hayasa-sensei left, Keigo was let in her room, and he spend the rest of the day hovering worryingly next to her. Toki couldn't blame him. When Keigo had broken bones in the past, she had done the same. Although Keigo had a somewhat accelerated healing: he was more fragile than a normal human because he had hollow bones, like a bird, but he also healed a lot faster (about three weeks). But when he healed a broken bone, his plucked-out feathers didn't grow back, so it wasn't an accelerated healing as much as his body redirecting resources…
"I should have at least one long-ranged attack," she groaned. "It hurts like a bitch."
"Yeah," winced her friend. "What about using a long weapon, like a staff? Or, you know, going to the rational route and taking a tranq rifle."
That made Toki laugh: "So what, you think I should be a sniper?"
"Well, that would take you of the line of fire, at least. Besides, your Quirk require contact. You can't exactly start blasting people with nothing but air."
It was meant as a joke, but Toki narrowed her eyes in thought.
"You… You may have something here."
Because, well. Air is something which was easy to forget that it even exists. But it was here. Sure, air practically weighed nothing… But in the end, air had mass… And after a quick google search, Toki learned that air had an approximate mass of 1, 2 grams per liter of air at sea level.
So if air had a mass, it was something.Atmosphere was an object, everywhere, and it was in contact with Toki's skin. At a rate of 1.2 grams per liter, the density of air was so low that teleporting small amounts of air wouldn't even register into Toki's Quirk, who could teleport grow ass men like it was nothing. And if she managed to use Switch with air, to teleport a mass of hair from one hand to another… Not only could she create an air blast, but also a vacuum…
Yeah. Those six weeks could be productive, after all.
oOoOoOo
Teleporting air turned out to be a great idea in theory, but abitchin practice.
Until then, Toki had only been able to Switch objects from one hand to another. But air wasn't a full object. It was a bunch of particles floating freely. To rationalize it, Toki needed to see it as part of the atmosphere. And of course she didn't want to teleport the entirety of Earth's atmosphere, she wasn't an idiot, but… If she could scope out some of that atmosphere, then it would make perfect air-blast coupled with vacuum. Shit, she could probably Switch air by sourcing it at the top of her head, so she would be aspired upward! Or better yet, teleport small pockets of air around her to manipulate air pressure… Damn, she needed a book about air currents and atmospheric phenomena, right now.
Toki started small. She asked for a big cub of jelly, about thirty centimeters tall (it was a testament to the cook's mental fortitude that he didn't ask any questions) and then tried to teleport a small ball of it from one hand to the other. She knew she could do it. She had teleported bigger and heavier things, there no reason why her Quirk couldn't do that. In the past, she had tried to teleport half a cushion and failed: but she knew it wasn't a problem with her strength, it was just that her brain hadn't been able to correctly direct her Quirk, to correctly visualize the limit she wanted to give to that half-cushion. So now, that block of jelly was going down. Because… It had to be a conceptual limitation, not a real one. To bypass it, Toki could trick her brain into not seeing the whole block, only the part she wanted to Switch!
Game on.
Things were made of atoms, and every atom was a tiny separate thing. Atoms were held together by a quantum mist of shared electrons, or sometimes just magnetism at close range. If it came down to that, the protons and neutrons inside the nuclei were tiny separate things. The quarks inside the protons and neutrons were tiny separate things! There simply wasn't anything in reality, the world-out-there, that corresponded to people's conceit ofsolid objects. It was all just little dots. Toki had to make her brain stop seeing the big block of dots that wasthe plate of jelly, and make it carve out a smaller block of dots that was justa spoonful of jelly.
Her activation of Warp-Space was all in the mind to begin with. She hadn't been able to teleport parts of things, could only touch what her mind perceived as wholes, because she hadn't known in her bones that it was all just atoms deep down. But she knew that now, and so… Toki focused on that knowledge as hard as she could, the true fact that the jelly was just a collection of atoms, everything was just collections of atoms, and the atoms of the little patch she was trying to teleport formed just as valid a collection as any other collection she cared to think about.
And it didn't work. She read more books, tried some optical illusions, even tried to self-hypnotize, to no avail. She tried for weeks and it didn't work.
This. Was. Ridiculous.
Her ankle healed. Training resumed. She told of her idea to Hayasa-sensei and he was enthusiastic, but his eagerness was quickly quenched by Toki's repeated failures. The block of jelly didn't move. And if she failed with the jelly, how could she manage to teleport air? Still, the idea had potential, and he told her to keep it. Maybe, later they could try with support items. Likes googles that could display shapes to help her visualize what she wanted to teleport from a whole. But it was expensive technology, and the Commission's resources weren't' unlimited. Especially for a pet project like the idea of a special move that Toki couldn't quite conceptualize yet.
Anyway. Summer came. Toki and Keigo were sent to different summer camps in July (a dance group for her, a music group for him), and then they were both sent to the same bleach summer camp in August. It was as awesome as ever. A little more awkward sometimes, because there were boys looking at Toki now, and girls looking at Keigo. Oh, they were both trained to brush off uncomfortable questions and deflect people's interest, but it still made them flounder a little. It wasn't bad, exactly. Toki felt a little flattered. But she felt also… at loss. What was she supposed to do? She didn't even know what shewantedto do. She could appreciate the boys' interest but it also made her feel uncomfortably, on display and self-conscious. She was only twelve! Well, nearly thirteen, but still. There was fine line between what made her feel pretty and what made her feel objectified. One of the older boys once commented out loud on her boobs and Toki was so taken aback that she didn't say anything, just blushed with mortification.
(Keigo offered to push that guy from the balcony. Toki thanked him, but she could handle it. She had regained her composure by then, and so, at the following meal, she calmly poured burning coffee on his lap. It wasn't hot enough to seriously injure him, but it hurt, and afterward that boy gave Toki a wide berth.Good.)
At the end of summer, Keigo hit a growth spurt and shoot five centimeters in a month. His back hurt and all his shoes were too small. He was also unusually clumsy, lanky limbs flailing like he wasn't quite sure where his legs and arms ended anymore. It was very funny to watch. Keigo never hesitated to clown around during training, but now it was a whole new level. He even got stuck in a tree once. Toki was laughing too hard to help him, so Hayasa-sensei had to fetch aladder. It. Was. Hilarious.
"I have to take vitamins now," Keigo said in an extremely offended tone that night. "I'm fine! I don't have an iron deficiency or an equilibrium problem!"
"You smacked in a window last week. I think the tree was the last straw."
"It's all those things!" Keigo wailed, flailing his wings and arms around. "How tall am I going to be? It's going to hinder my maneuverability!"
That was a serious concern. Toki raised her eyebrows:
"If it's that's serious, then the new diet should help, right?"
"They want to take the meat out of my lunch!" he screeched. "My chicken, Toki! MY CHICKEN!"
"Hey, veganism is a total legit diet…"
"Then eat spinach if you want! Because in my humble but obviously extremely correct opinion, humans are the top of the food chain, and Nature isn't vegan. You gonna tell a hyena that zebras have a right to life? You gonna look a hyena in the eye and tell it to drink a fucking kale smoothie? No! So I have a right to my chicken!"
Toki started giggling hysterically, a dangerous glint in the eyes:
"Hey, remember the farm a few kilometers up the river? What if went there and kidnapped the chicken to release them in the kitchen? As an incentive?"
"You just want to create chaos," Keigo accused her with a large grin. "You don't care about my diet at all!"
"… So you don't want to?"
"Are youkidding, I'm in. Let's go steal some chicks! Oooh, and some eggs, too, I have a brilliant idea…"
Toki had no idea what kind of childhood she and Keigo would have had if they had never met each other. But it would surely had been way calmer for the poor staff of Naruto Labs.
And if someone egged Okamoto's car, well, nobody has any proof it was them.
Anyway. Life went on. Keigo's growth spurt stopped, or at least slowed down. The doctor said that he would probably be of medium height once adult, but he should expect to shoot up a few centimeters in the following years. In Toki's memories of canon, Hawks had been on the short side, though… But hey, that was because she mostly remembered him standing next to Endeavor who was a mountain of a man. Whatever. Keigo spent more time in the air than standing on his feet anyway.
He was plenty athletic, but most of his fighting style relied on his telekinetic control over his feathers. His hand-to-hand was passable, and his sword-fighting with his primaries was pretty good, but he would never be a heavy hitter. With his skillet, it wasn't suited to him anyway. He could be a sneaky fighter, be a spy, be an informant, run surveillance, attack plenty of small fry at the same time, even stop a low-powered Nomu… But to face the kind of monster that needed All Might's strength to be brought down, well, Keigo would not be the best choice.
And that was where Toki appeared on the scene. Because she didn't have the raw power of All Might, nor the versatility of Hawks. But if she managed to pull off her air manipulation slash vacuum slash teleporting part of stuff… Shit, she could be deadly.Her thing was swift take-down. But was if instead of teleporting the bad guy in handcuffs in a prison cell, she touched his hair and teleported with only his head?! Bam, no more bad guy. That would be so fucking useful to deal with the Nomu. No, really, Tokineededthat new move. And she would get it right, gods fucking damnit.
She continued practicing. She still went online to chat with her friends, but after nearly a year, the novelty had worn of. Sure, she still got fired up over their debates about hero society: but she couldn't really talk about personal stuff to her online friends, and it built a barrier. She told them she was in foster care, homeschooled, with only one friend, but she couldn't tell more. She always deflected, and well, it was just easier to talk with Keigo. She didn't feel as if she had to hide, with him.
In the fall, after Toki's birthday (she was thirteen! It was so strange to think she had been with the Commission for nearly five years now!), Okamoto brought them to visit another training facility. It was where the Provisional Heroes License Exam was held, and also the License Renewal Exam for the heroes who had stopped their activities for more than a year, leading to their License being temporary suspended.
The Provisional Hero Exam was held in August, usually, but it was hard to justify letting two kids watch it. But there was a do-over November, and that other exam allowed observers to come and watch. As long as Toki and Keigo were discreet, they could sneak in the bleachers and watch the processing.
The exam was a mock-fight, with a handful of pro-heroes playing the roles of the villains. Dismayed, Toki realized that most of the competitorsweren't that good. They didn't work together, they were either too reckless or too timid… One guy even injured himself with his own porcupine Quirk. Sure, the top twenty gave a good showing, but the rest? Gods, two guys slammed into each other while chasing the same guy, like morons! In a real battle, with real enemies, they could get killed like that!
So, when Okamoto came back to fetch them (after rubbing elbows with the bosses and the pro-heroes, probably), and asked their opinions… Toki and Keigo looked at each other in askance, then looked back at him, and Keigo declared with a hint of a mocking smile:
"They aren't that good, are they?"
"Well, this is the do-over exam," Toki reasoned. "Maybe in the real exam, they were better, and now we're only watching the losers."
Keigo sniggered. Okamoto frowned:
"Crudely and immaturely said, but not incorrect. The ones who passed the exam in their first try were better… But only marginally better.This," and he swept out his arm, as if to encompass the wreckage that was the arena where the last contestants were strutting, apparently very proud of their barely-acceptable performance, "is the state of heroics today. Make no mistake: we have some exceptional heroes. But the overwhelming majority of them are average. They just aren't good enough. So we're relying on quantity over quality."
Subtle message here:you are quality. So you better raise the level that these poor saps have brought us to.
No pressure.
Still. For the next months, Okamoto started making them studies economics, or more accuratelyheroic economics. How insurance worked, how much money went into repairing damages made during fights, what was merchandizing, what qualified or not as a support item, who owned what in the support item business, and all that jazz. It was mostly reading articles and being quizzed on numbers. At least they didn't have to travel two hours each morning and each evening anymore (which was good, because the weather was beginning to be super-cold, and Toki liked to stay in her warm, toasty classroom, thank you very much). But it was sodense. Some of it was interesting, sure, but it was all so tightly packed that it became boring!
But it was kind of a necessary step to become a hero, wasn't it? Not just jumping and punching things, but also knowing the structure inside out. It was that stuff that people learned as sidekicks or as freelancers, and it took time. It took dedication, patience, luck, having the right teachers. Now that Keigo and Toki had seen the level of those newbie heroes, well, they couldn't slack off. Those people couldn't do the job right. Toki and Keigo couldn't let themselves slide to those poor contestants' level. That would just be too sad, too insulting.
Toki continued trying to get her new move right.
Just focusing was useless, she needed to know what she was focusing on. She read a lot about atoms, molecules, neutrons and electrons. Molecular science was complicated, but that was alright. She didn't need to learn by heart the chemical composition of something, just to have a good grasp on the theory. Then she tried to read on psychology and cognitive science, because maybe what blocked her was in herbrain. How did people perceive things? What were their unconscious bias? What part of the brain dealt with understanding what space was, what shapes were?
In December, the kitchen stopped making her blocks of jelly for her tests. She had been working on that for six months without any breakthrough, and every time, the jelly came back intact, so they had to eat it or throw it away. No matter. Toki decided to try it directly with air. After all, jelly was easier to see, but since air was invisible, she shouldn't start training with a visual aid as a crutch. So, air it was. And, each day, after classes, she started training her brain to visualize what she was going to do.
She hadn't succeeded when she had thought about small little dots making up collections. Maybe the fact that some part of her mind was still thinking in terms ofobjectswas stopping the teleportation from going through. She had thought of a collection of atoms that was a block of jelly. She had thought of a collection that was a little patch of jelly.
Time to kick it up a notch.
So Toki changed her angle. She tried to see through the illusion that nonscientists thought was reality, the world of desks and chairs, air and jelly and people.
It was a bit of a mindfuck but, picture this… When you walked through a park, the immersive world that surrounded you was something that existedinside your own brainas a pattern of neurons firing. The trees weren't things in front of you, they were something in your visual cortex, and your visual cortex was in the back of your brain. All the sensations of that bright world were really happeningin your skull, the place where you lived and never, ever left. And the picture of the park that you thought you were walking through was something that was visualized inside your brain as it processed the signals sent down from your eyes and retina. The thing you were watching, the things you were touching, they weren'tthingsfor you outside of what your neurons relayed. Nothing was real for your brain besides the information it processed.
It wasn't like the world was a lie, like the Buddhists thought. What lay beyond the illusion of the park was just the actual park, but it was all still illusion, because the way the park appeared was the only facet of reality your brain could interact with…
Yeah, Toki had to take a break approximately at this moment.
Just trying to wrap her mind aroundthatwas giving her a massive headache. She tried to explain what she was doing to Keigo and Hayasa-sensei but they both looked at her as if she was nuts. And I mean, OKAY, it sounded batshit crazy, because she was actually trying to rewrite the reality as her brain was processing it in order to teleport Earth's atmosphere around her own body. Oh, Keigo absolutely thought she could do it. His unwavering faith was kind of touching. But he still thought she was crazy and that her brain was going to be as twisted as a pretzel. He actually told her in a very impressed tone that she just had to think aboutthatwhen a telepath tried to attack her, and that the villain would just be left babbling like a lunatic and ripple for a mental asylum. Hayasa-sensei made a face, but didn't contradict him. He was convinced she was biting more than she could chew, and seemed to wait for her failure to gently guide her towards another idea of technique.
When Okamoto asked what she was working, Toki just told him it was too complicated for him in the exact same condescending tone Okamoto would use to say that to her. Seeing him grit his teeth brought her disproportionate joy. What? She was a brat. She was allowed.
Anyway. Whole things didn't exist.Thingsdidn't exist. Air, atmosphere, it didn't exist. Toki wasn't sitting at her desk looking at the nothing that was filled with air molecules. She was inside her own skull, and experiencing a processed picture her brain had decoded from the signals sent down by her retina.
The real air was somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't the picture.
And the real air wasn't like the picture Toki's brain had of it. The idea of the air as a non-solid object was something that existed only inside her own brain, inside the parietal cortex that processed his sense of shape and space. The real air was a collection of atoms held together by electromagnetic forces and shared covalent electrons, dust and oxygen and dihydrogen and plenty of other atoms… It was a full whole, it was athing, but what she saw or didn't see was just an illusion…. There was a ball of air in her hand, it was there, it was real, but her own brain was projecting an illusion of nothingness…
The real air was far away, and Toki, inside her own skull, could never quite touch it, could only imagine ideas about it. But she had her Quirk, and her Quirk had the power to touch it. It was only Toki's preconceptions that were limiting it. The concept of Swap-Space could touch the concept of a ball or a book, so was absolutely no reason why it couldn't change the other collection of atoms too...
It was there. IT. WAS.THERE.
AND SHE WANTED TOTELEPORT IT.
So Toki closed her eyes, grabbing in her mind thisconcept of the ball of air, full and whole because mental pictures didn't matter, only concepts did, because concepts and power were how she could interact with reality: she grabbed this ball of air in her Quirk andyanked.
BANG!
With a noise like an explosion, Toki was thrown forward. The desk split in two where her hands were resting, and collapsed under her weight. The lamp just above her shattered as if someone had shot it, glass and pieces of lampshade flying everywhere: the resulting shockwave of pressurized hair exploded in the whole room, making papers fly everywhere. With a startled cry, Toki instinctively dodged, teleporting in the nearest hallway. She could hear doors open, and curious or exasperated voices asking what was going on: but she just stood frozen in a half-crouch, blood pounding in her heard. She was pretty sure a shrapnel from the lamp had struck her, because her scalp was tingling painfully. But she couldn't move, because holy shit.She had done it. She had teleported air! She had created avacuum-generated air-blast.
Her head was pounding with how much she had concentrated, and she slid down in a sitting position. Ouch. Also, her chest was kind of painful, like your legs burned when you ran a sprint without properly warming up. If that was going to become a combat-ready move, she had her work cut for her. It worked, but it was still way too uncontrolled! Because… Holy shit. Air. Vacuum. She had created theemptiness of space in her hands. Wow, it was a good thing she was sitting down.
"What did you do this time?" cheerfully asked Keigo, appearing seemingly from nowhere.
"… I think I just became God."
Her friend looked spectacularly unimpressed:
"Congratulation. Was the lamp an unavoidable casualty in your ascension to godhood?"
"To be completely honest, I'm not sure exactly what happened. But I think… It worked?"
"Your air-blast things? Cool! I knew you could do it!"
Toki smiled weakly. It felt good to hear it. She had never struggled so much with an aspect of her Quirk before. She should have been overjoyed by her success, but she mostly felt stunned… and a bit exhausted.
"Thanks. It was ridiculously complicated."
"Your thing to trick your own brain was crazy," Keigo acquiesced, snorting. "But don't feel too bad about it. The first time I used by Quirk I flew straight into a ceiling fan."
Taken aback, Toki couldn't help but guffaw: "No! Is that true?!"
"You will never know," he winked, before holding out a hand to her. "Come on, let's go and see the damage… Toki, you're bleeding!"
With a wince, Toki palped her skull. Sure thing, there was blood in her hair, running down her ear and neck, and… and that was a piece of glass stuck vertically in her scalp. Fuck, it hurt. It was probably big. Andrammedin her skull…!
"Did I get trepanned by a lamp?" Toki started freaking out. "Is there a lot of blood? I have to see. No, actually, I retract that statement, I absolutely don't want to see, shit, let's go to the infirmary."
"Good call. Wait! Don't teleport with a headwound! I will carry you!"
"Don't you dare bridal-carry me!"
Too late. He scooped her up with a shit-eating grin, and started flying at high speed while Toki was gripping his shoulders for balance, screeching like a banshee.
So. Long story short, the shard of glass wasn't that big. Barely the size of her pinky finger. It had maybe touched the bone but not transpierced it, so it didn't count as trepanation, even if that small scratch was deep and bleed a lot. Toki was healed, bandaged, and then thoughtfully chewed out by like five different people because she had wrecked the classroom.
Apparently, her new move was quite destructive.Nature hated vacuum. A vacuum created just above the desk's surface meant that the desk had been aspired toward this vacuum, undergoing a violent torsion that had broken it almost in half. Toki slamming into it had been the last straw and now the piece of furniture was good for firewood and nothing else. But it was the other part of Switch that had fucked up the place. Because when you materialized air from nowhere, it took space, a space that was previously occupied by other air molecules, so… Highly pressurized air-blast ensued. It was what had taken out the lamp. And then broke against the ceiling full force, creating a shockwave. The room wasn't too damaged but papers were ripped, the lightbulb had exploded, that kind of thing.
As a punishment, Toki was ordered to clean up the room all by herself. Considering there was chalk dust everywhere because nobody had bothered to put away the blackboard their old teachers had used, it was going to be a long task.
On the plus-side… Well. Now, she had a long-ranged attack. Okay, it was wild, but she knew she could teleport air, now. She had the ability to use it. She just had to master this new move… And then, well. Canon could come.
Toki would be ready.
Notes:
The ideas of seing "part of something" a a whole something because "things are an illusion" if a concept taken from "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality". Great fic. Gave me a sprained brain, but great fic.
Okamoto is an OC. I actually modelled him after most "evil HPSC handlers" in some fanfics !
He doesn't hate kids but he doesn't like them either. He treats them like adults, expect adultness, and is exasperated when they fall short of his expectations, which should be expected because they are children. He isn't allowed to punish them harshly,wich is the only reason he doesn'tbut he would totally slap them around if he was allowed to. He isn't a kind teacher. He has incredible self-control and restrain, though, so he never even raise his voice.
Still, he's extremely good at his job of being... well, some sort of bureaucratic black ops. So Keigo and Toki respect his skills. But they feel his disdain and it get their hackles up. Especially Toki who overcompensate her unease with agressiveness instead of de-escalating.
Here is what he looks like ! There's a bigger picture in "Snapshots of wisdom", too
Chapter 11: How to fight dirty
Summary:
In wich training goes well until it doesn't, and Toki learn how to take a hit. Or several. Good thing she's a feral little shit and can hit back.
(THIS IS A RE-WORKED CHAPTER, NOT AN UPDATE)
Notes:
WARNING !
This chapter is the first part of the chapter that was previously titled"the accident". There were too many things in that chapter, and none of them were expanded enough.
Hobo-san wasn't introduced correctly. He should have a whole chapter to explain why Toki felt such a strange mix of respect and sheer dislike for him. For the same reason, it wasn't clearly shonw why it's so creepy to imagine it's... a certain canon-character. And it didn't illustrate enough how fucked-up that character was in the past.
Besides, cutting"The accident"in two and then expanding each half allows me to write more about things that Okamoto taught the kids. ABout the heroes ranking, for exemple. Also, i headcanon that Endeavor has several times the workload of All Might and you can't change my mind. A warrior may decimate more ennemy soldiers but a general gets more done.
Also, All Might sucks at paperwork, it's the whole reason why he meet Tsukauchi in the first place xD
So, besides worldbuilding, other additions to that chapter include: more poems, and another Discord conversation that i cackled like crazy when i wrote it. I hope you'll enjoy it !
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
HOW TO FIGHT DIRTY
Toki's new attack (her brand new Ultimate Move!) was named Warp-Blast. Not very imaginative, maybe, but accurate, and it sounded more mysterious and Quirk-specific than "air blast". But it would still be a long time before she would be allowed to use in combat… or even during friendly sparing!
Vacuum was powerful. Pressurized air too. It could fracture walls, transpierce targets like a bullet… and it was invisible! It made it even harder to defend against. Hayasa-sensei was suitably impressed by Toki's success, but he was also extremely strict in his admonitions. Toki was playing with forces she didn't fully control. She could injure someone. She couldkillsomeone. It was good that she had figured out how to make this attack work, but now she had to break it down to its simplest components so she could use it at manageable level.
So Toki was handled precisions exercises, like peeling or cutting an apple by teleporting only part of it. She needed to learn tofeelher Quirk better, to know exactly what mass of air she was teleporting, instead of just yanking like a barbarian. So, precisions exercises. It wasn't a great success. Sure, Toki knew how to teleportpart of thingsnow, but it required a lot of focus. She had to do all the steps of her reasoning, one by one, like writing an equation manually inside her brain. First to only see the concept, then only wrap her Quirk around what she wanted to teleport and not the rest, and warp it. She usually lacked precision.
Her half-apple was a bit wonky, for example. Hayasa-sensei told her she only needed some practice, but… In the meantime, the cafeteria started to make compote a recurrent dessert.
So what? She didn't have anything to be ashamed of. She had found her ultimate attack at age thirteen! Sure, it needed polishing, but she still had five whole years before having to take her Hero License Exam. She had time. Besides, considering the other contestants' level, Toki could probably pass the exam without using any special moves, and with one hand tied in her back.Keigocould pass the exam without special moves, too, and with both hands in his back, andblindfolded. Or maybe even in his sleep. That was how good they were.
But well, if for the next three months Hayasa-sensei wanted to make her peel fruits and cut various object with her Quirk, she wasn't going to complain too much. It was good practice. It could make for a different special move, too. Something she could callScalpel. She could probably cut a person in half if she used it right. Not that sheintendedto cut a person in half, but well, she liked to contemplate all the possibilities, just in case.
Okamoto was ecstatic about her new idea, and that was what annoyed her the most. He was praising her intellect, and criticizing her lack of control at the same time. She wanted to bask in the praise but also tell him to stuff his unwanted commentary where the sun didn't shine, so that was a dilemma. Keigo found it endlessly funny, but then, Keigo managed to find humor in pretty much everything.
Her breakthrough didn't change much in their training, in any case. Oh, it did enthuse the Vice-President at her next visit, and she even brought Kameko Sabira with her. The young cat-woman was still as bouncy and energetic as ever. Even if Toki hadn't seen her in at least two years, Kameko was still surprisingly easy to talk to. She had brought gifts and chocolate, but also a lot of pictures of her neighbor's cat, whose antics ranged from sneaking in her kitchen to steal her omelet, to get stuck in a window and scare the crap out of a neighbor. Toki had to admit, it was hilarious. And Kameko was such an exuberant story-teller! The young woman was now, what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? But even with a suit, a pretty wristwatch, and a good job, she still radiated the same playful energy, like she would never quite grow past her youthful exuberance.
Toki felt vaguely envious of her evident self-confidence, of how happy and comfortable in her own skin she was.
Not that Toki felt uncomfortable in her own skin. She was just, you know. Short, and young, and awkward. Filled with mood-swings and existential moodiness like all middle-schoolers contemplating their own existence. Wondering about her future and her feelings. And also… She was kind of plain. Kameko was so radiant, so bright and bouncy and pretty! Toki was energetic too, but she felt more like a tomboy than like a sophisticated and yet cute woman, like Kameko was.
But anyway. Teenage drama apart… Things were good.
The new year started quietly. Okamoto was still teaching boring stuff. Hayasa-sensei still made them run ragged. Online classes were fine. Toki was starting to have fun in her breakdancing club. The students were putting together a whole show, and Toki was one of the four main dancers. She felt a little hurt when she realized that she wouldn't be able to brag about it, though. All of her peers were inviting friends and family, and Toki… couldn't. Keigo had his club at the same time, and there was no way he would be allowed to ditch it. And besides him, Toki had no real family. Sure, Hayasa-sensei was important, but he was a mentor, and… He didn't care like Toki wanted him to care. He liked her and was proud of her because she was Toki the Teleporter, but there was no value in Toki the dancer.
Well at least she had her online friends to commiserate with. They always brightened her day. She wasn't constantly online with them, but… it was nice, every evening, to log in and read their hilarious stories, or to share some ramblings about hero society, or just to laugh about their favorite shows.
Toki and her Discord friends… They were all leading different lives, but it was crazy how they had managed to stick together on that Discord server for more than a year. You would think that teenage girls, art college students, small time journalists, electricians, and bartenders would have nothing in common: andyet.
EndeavorSucks:So. Guess who has been fucked over by karma today.
ThisIsFluffy:You?
PikaPika:If that's you, you probably had it coming.
ShootForTheStars:I bet it was youuuuu
EndeavorSucks:you fuckers
EndeavorSucks: you have no compassion
EndeavorSucks:Something terrible has happened
EndeavorSucks:y'all know how i live in Yokohama?
PikaPika:i didn't but my inner stalker thank you for this private information
ShootForTheStars:shut up Pika i want the story!
PinkIsPunkRock:yeah so?
EndeavorSucks:so there was a villain attacks in the business district and I was there
PikaPika:?!
NotOnFire:shit man are you okay?!
ShootForTheStars:What happened?!
PinkIsPunkRock:are you okay?!
EndeavorSucks:yeah
EndeavorSucks:some douche attacked the place right next to me and the building nearly collapsed on me but, well
EndeavorSucks:a hero got there in time and rescued me before trashing the bad guy
EndeavorSucks:so i'm okay
ShootForTheStars:that's a relief
ThisIsFluffy:if you need anything, we're here!
PinkIsPunkRock:holy shit, talk about karma
EndeavorSucks:oh the villain's attack wasn't the karma-thing
PikaPika:?
ShootForTheStars:what do you mean
EndeavorSucks:WELL
EndeavorSucks:guess which hero rescued me.
NotOnFire:…
ThisIsFluff:… no…
ShootForTheStars:OMG AHAHAHAHAHA
PikaPika:you've been saved byENDEAVOR?!
EndeavorSucks: YES
EndeavorSucks:and he was like, competent and stuff
EndeavorSucks:very hero-like. Tall and scary and IMPRESSIVE as hell, and he carried me like i weighted nothing, like, bridal-style, with flames everywhere
EndeavorSucks:it was hot
ThisIsFluffy:… omg
ShootForThe Stars:well he's on fire, right? so of course it was warm
PikaPika:oh sweet summer child
NotOnFire:lol lol lol i am literally on the floor, endeavor rescued you and IN ADDITION TO THAT he was your gay awakening
ShootForTheStars:WHAT
ShootForTheStars:… oh that's what you meant byhot
EndeavorSucks:Hey I've been gay before that! Or at least bi
ThisIsFluffy:XD XD XD XD
PinkIsPunkRock:this is the best day of my life
- PikaPikahas changedEndeavorSucks's username toHotForEndeavor
HotForEndeavor:PIKA NO
NotOnFire:PIKA YES
- HotForEndeavorhas changed their username toEndeavorSucks
-PikaPikahas changedEndeavorSucks's username toSucksEndeavor
ThisIsFluffy:uuuuuh not to be that guy but there are minors here
ThisIsFluffy:Stars and Pinky are definitely underage
PinkIsPunkRock:aw come on
ShootForTheStars:i believe that*SucksEndeavorshould be free to sucks whoever he wants
NotOnFire:xD
PikaPika:nah that's fair, the chat rules are not to be horny on main so… please take a username not referencing to fellatio
SucksEndeavor:I hate all of you, and Endeavor's flaming tits most of all
-SucksEndeavorhas changed their username toGayCrisis
NotOnFire:omg AH AHAHA
PikaPika:i will allow it
GayCrisis:karma hate me
ShootForTheStars:i'm screenshotting this conversation for posterity y'all
She sometimes told Keigo what was going on in the chatroom, but well, it was different when you weren't there to read it happen in real time. Besides, it felt a little weird to talk about leering jokes and dirty talk to her best friend.
Not that Keigo was a pure cinnamon roll. He was athirteen years old boy. He and Toki were hormonal and nervous teenagers stuck in a building full of frigid grown-up, so there wasn't really anyone else to talk about this stuff. So they spoke about girls, boys, hairs, periods, and morning wood. Keigo's voice was starting to break, too, and that was another hilarious thing that Toki eagerly recorded on her phone. But anyway, they talked a lot about stuff (Toki would be hesitant to call it 'sexy stuff': it didn't feelsexy… just weird and awkward and yet fascinating… but not sexy). Some personal, some not. But they never talked aboutfeelings, or at least not aboutattractionin general.
Toki wasn't attracted to anything besides books. Well, that was what she would tell, if someone asked her about it. But the truth was that maybe…maybeshe was attracted to Keigo.
She wasn't even surprised about it.
What? He was, objectively, handsome. She liked to look at him. When she tried to imagine kissing someone, it was intriguing and awkward, but she could imagine it being pleasant when she pictured him. No other boy or girl from her dance club or her martial art club had caught her eyes, no matter how intently she stared at them. Maybe blond and carefree was her type? Keigo was getting taller and prettier, after all… And Toki could confess that she had written a few poems while thinking about his honey-bright eyes, or his disheveled blond hair, or his smile that seemed to light up the room.
But she wasn't sure if it was teenage physical attraction or if it was just that they had always been so emotionally close that the lines were blurring. Maybe the feelings had always been there and were simply evolving with hormones and general teenage anxiety.
Besides, it wasn't like she would tell him. She didn't know if it would make him uncomfortable. In some way, Toki's feelings felt both inconsequential (because she had accepted them, liked them, even) and terrible (because what if saying it out loud changed things, made things awkward, damaged their closeness?).
So yeah, she wasn't telling him. Maybe it would pass. Keigo didn't speak to her about being attracted to anyone, but he had been fawning over Endeavor for so long that Toki was half-sure that the man would be his gay awakening. Which, to get back to her earlier point, made it awkward to tell him about what was going on with her Discord server. Keigo and Toki talked without complex about sex but, like, from ascientificpoint of view. Joking about being turned on by someone was, well, different. More personal. They were mature, alright, but they were still awkward and inexperienced teenagers, alright?
Damn, puberty sucked.
But still. Weeks passed quietly, filled with training and thinking and learning. They were settling in a comfortable rhythmic, demanding but manageable, with challenges and progress and a satisfying kind of exhaustion each day. They worked on their Quirks, on their lessons, on their physical condition.
On the week-end, they didn't sneak out as often as before. For starters, the weather was awful (spring was coming late). And it felt good to laze around all day sometimes. They played Nintendo, or they watched movies, or they laid on their beds like starfish, remaking the worlds with impassioned speeches. They talked about traveling to far-away places and building chocolate factories, or about cracking down on child-labor and completely changing the educational system to promote art and creativity. Toki waved her hands around with enthusiasm, and Keigo's wings fluffed up, his golden eyes bright excitement.
The future seemed still very far away, but they were already making grand, deliriously optimistic plans. Their agency would be a skyscraper! It would have six balconies with French doors! They would have a toboggan inside to go from the top level to the bottom one. And they would teach take sidekicks as students to make them as strong and kind and confident as they could! And they would turn on corrupt heroes and make sure nobody abused their power! And they would speak in favor of marginalized groups, unlike the mainstream heroes who were so scared of dirtying their squeaky-clean image! Like… Quirk discrimination. Or even Quirklessness!
Because let's be honest, they had it rough. Most Quirkless people lived in rural areas, far from all the villains and heroes agglutinated in big cities, hiding from this world that didn't want to acknowledge their existence. And when they didn't have this luxury, well… They lived in bad neighborhoods. Areas populated with, well, not villains, but people with villainous Quirks, mutant-Quirks, family ties to villains… Poor people. Unemployed people. Society's rejects. Long story short: it was considered the perfect place for villains to recruit, because it carried a stigma. It was the kind of place where heroes didn't patrol much. They would rather wander in pretty neighborhood where journalist had a camera at the ready! So when things went south in those places, which happened more often than in a non-super-powered society… Well, collateral damage was just a fact of life, and that only reinforced the vicious circle of poverty: leading to villainy, leading to discrimination, leading to even more poverty
Society often liked to forgot those inconveniencing truths. Like they would like to forget Quirkless people, if they could. Technically, twenty percent of the population was Quirkless, but it was a world-wide statistic. In some parts of the world, like Northern Europe, Central America, and parts of Africa, the majority of people were Quirkless. In fact, in Sweden, the most Quirkless country, only twenty percent of the population had powers! In Asia, where Quirks first developed, it was the opposite. Only about five percent of the population was Quirkless. And in Japan, this number shrank to three percent. Most of them were alsoold. Toki had looked it up. Those people were basically treated like they were disabled and they had to work twice as hard to prove themselves. A Quirkless child was regarded as an oddity, a congenital defect. Fucking bullshit. No wonder Midoriya's self-esteem was shot…
Well. They lived in a strange word, wonderful and surreal and almost manic, but people were still people, always finding reason to hate each other. Beauty, money, family, religion, race, power… Quirks.
So much was revolving around Quirks.
"What would you be, if you couldn't be a hero?" Toki one day wondered while they were cooling down after sparing.
Keigo blinked, and let himself fall ungraciously on the bench next to her. Feathers fluttered everywhere.
"I dunno. Why do you ask?"
Toki shrugged. "I was just wondering. I talk a lot about how I'm going to study astrophysics, but you never said what you wanted to do instead ofthis."
She emphasized the last word with a sweep of her arm encompassing the gym, its fancy equipment, the park with its run track, and Hayasa-sensei who was comparing spreadsheets near the locker room.
"I never thought about it," Keigo said slowly, considering. "I never had a chance to be anything else."
That was just sad. Her friend bumped his shoulder against her, smiling:
"Aw, come on, don't make that face. I don't regret it. I think I would have ended there anyway, Commission or not."
I wish you would have a safer passion,Toki thought.Something that make you happy without putting you in danger.But it would be selfish of her. Not everyone was a dreamer like she was.
She didn't say anything. But she thought of how brightly Keigo shone, how hopeful and enthusiastic and optimistic he was, how great he could be, how great he was already. She thought about lies and poison and corruption and betrayal, about burned wings and shattered dreams, about blood on the ground and a sky without stars.
She would change the course of the story, of course. This wasn't the canon-universe. Nothing was set in stone, especially not Keigo's future. And yet, she worried. She knew what were the risks that he would face, personally. She couldn't even tell anyone. She could only put her melancholy and her fear to paper, late at night, in her poetry notebook: and hope it was enough.
I think you will set yourself aflame
before you realize
that even you
cannot conquer the sun.
Rebellion sits well on you;
like a red coat
or the gilt gold of youth.
Oh, my love,
I do not believe we shall ever see
how old age look on you.
Wasn't she allowed to be afraid? She had never ignored that the path they walked was a dangerous one. But she had chosen this. She had made her decision with her eyes wide open, but it had been a choice, she had hadoptions. Keigo… Keigo had never been given the possibility to pick another road.
But he was happy, there. He belonged. And Toki had no right to wish that he would walk a different path. Keigo wasn't someone meant to be stuck on the ground. Forbidding him to spread his wings just because flying was dangerous would be cruel. Staying safely put, away from the fight… It wasn't who Keigo was. It wasn't whoHawkswas. He yearned for a wilder fate, for the thrill of danger or maybe the abandon of free-fall.
A ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
oOoOoOo
Spring came early. In March, Hayasa-sensei decided that, now that Keigo and Toki were nearly fourteen, they weren't as fragile as before: and he shifted the focus of their training from flexibility and speed to strength and endurance.
They would never be massive beefcakes like All Might and Endeavor, of course! The goal wasn't to make them into bodybuilders. They both relied on speed more than on brute strength. But even short and lithe heroes like them had to be as physically fit as possible, and that meant doing push-ups, sit-ups, weight-lifting, cardio, skipping rope, and a bunch of things that Toki quickly grew to hate.
At least gym was fun. It was tiring, it made her sore and sweaty, but she felt strong and capable afterward. Weight-lifting and all that strength-training bullshit just made her feel gross and exhausted.
Keigo didn't hate it as much as she did, but maybe it was because Hayasa-sensei was more careful in his training. Strength training couldn't be done with young kids because kids' bones needed to grow long rather than thick. Having heavy muscles could damage their skeleton. Now that Toki was taller, she didn't have to worry about stunning her growth with her muscles. But Keigo had hollow bones: it limited how much his skeleton could endure. Hayasa-sensei was tailoring his training in consequence. For example, while he shared all of Toki's sit-ups, push-ups and cardio exercises, he was exempted from weight-lifting. So unfair! It was the most boring and harsh exercise of the whole list!
Of course, they still had Quirk training. And their extra-curricular sports clubs. That was the good stuff.
Unfortunately, they also hadbad stuff. Hayasa-sensei freed them earlier on Friday, and Okamoto brought them to another trainer. Someone to teach them real life. Someone to teach them how to really fight dirty, how to fight someone stronger. Someone who, in Okamoto's terms, wouldn't coddle them. Hayasa-sensei wasn't the only one who believed that fourteen years old was the right age to remove the kid gloves.
And so begin one of themiserabletimes of Toki's life.
"This will be your new teacher," Okamoto introduced them stiffly. "Pay attention to what he says."
The man in question didn't offer a name. He was tall, scruffy, dressed in dirty baggy clothes that made him look like a scarecrow dressed in garbage bags. His hair was unevenly cut at the shoulders, and he wore a medical cloth mask. The only things visible were his eyebrows, his blood-shot eyes, and his massive eyebags. His hair, his eyes, his mask, his clothes, even his shoes: it was all black, tired, and dirty. And it smelled like roadkill.Gross.
Toki was polite, but she still had had hold back an incredulous grimace. Thathobowas going to be their teacher?
"I'll be back in two hours," Okamoto said to the homeless guy. "Don't damage them irreparably. And don't hit them in the face."
"Cash first," the guy rasped.
He sounded like he had been chewing gravel. Okamoto's jaw twitched, like a repressed grimace of disgust, but he still slid a hand in a pocket to retrieve a few bank notes. Keigo and Toki exchanged a wide-eyed look.
"Half now, half when you're done." He gave the money to the hobo, carefully to avoid touching him. "And remember, I want them tolearnhow to fight, not just get hit. Use your words. This is a lesson for you too."
"Yes," snapped the hobo, snatching the money and counting it. "And I'm so verygrateful."
His tone was straight-up venomous. Oh, boy, he really didn't like Okamoto. Or their deal. It didn't seem to bother Okamoto, though. He shrugged, gave Keigo and Toki a last disdainful look, then turned back and disappeared from the alley.
Yes, because this introduction had happened in a dirty alley behind an abandoned supermarket. It like the background of a post-apocalyptic movie: dark, muddy and deserted. Absolutely everything about this was giving Toki the heebie-jeebies.
"So!" Keigo cheerfully asked, once Okamoto was gone. "I'm Hawks. This is Quantum. What's your name?"
"I don't care, I don't care, and not your business," the man answered tersely.
His black eyes were bloodshot and mistrustful as he watched them coldly. Hands in his pockets, slouched against the wall, he looked like a drug addict trying to decide if he was going to mug them. How old was he? The height and built pointed towards someone young, maybe early twenties, but his general tiredness made him seems much older.
"Well we can't call you 'that guy' forever," Toki grinned to hide her unease. "No name means a nickname!"
"Like Hobo-san," helpfully added Keigo.
Hobo-san sighed.
"Whatever."
He took his hands out of his pockets. Then, without warning, his exhausted slouch turned into a lightning-quick attack, his fist crashing into Toki's solar plexus at full strength.
It was like being hit by a fucking truck.
She flew back and opened her eyes on the ground, huddled around her stomach that radiated pain, retching. Her ears were ringing, she couldn't breathe. Out of pure, animal instinct, she warped herself five meters away before raising her head, still heaving, desperately looking for Keigo… He was on the ground, too, cradling his arm, teeth bared in a cry of pain and defiance both: all of his feathers were raining down on the hobo, and for a second Toki was one hundred percent sure he was going to pin him down. But their opponent somehow somersaulted and avoided all the feathersin a crazy feat of agility, retreating a few meters away, before returning to his casual slouch. As if they weren't hurt, angry, frightened, in pain.
Behind his mask, he looked like he was sneering.
"Pathetic."
"What thefuck?!" yelled Keigo, furious.
Toki would have yelled, too, if she could get her breath back. She threw up bile and heaved again, acid burning her throat. Oh, gods, it was disgusting. Swaying, she got back on her feet, because staying down face to an enemy was stupid, then warped next to Keigo.
If they had to run, she needed to be close enough to grab him: and if it devolved into a fight, well, she certainly wasn't going to let him face that dickhead alone.
"You didn't evade, you didn't block," the hobo said, his tone cold and cutting. "And you immediately fell back on your Quirks to run away. Clearly you're worthless as fighters."
"We didn't know you were going to attack!" spat Toki.
The hobo snorted, derisive. The sound made Toki's blood boil in anger.
"So? You thought that we were just going to talk? Maybe braid each other's hair? What a joke. Go somewhere else if you want to play at being friends. You're supposed to train to be heroes. Life won't pull any punches."
"Geez, thank you for the philosophy lesson," snarked Keigo. "Is that what you're supposed to teach us?"
The hobo didn't blink. "Among other things."
"Like what?"
His dark eyes glinted dangerously.
"How to survive someone stronger than you."
And that's how Toki and Keigo were introduced to Hobo-san's brutal brand of teaching. This man had issues, clearly. Each lesson was closer to a cage match than to an actual class.
The ground rules were simple. Hobo-san wouldn't use his Quirk (Toki didn't even know what it was). Keigo would remove all his feathers, except two that he was allowed to use as knifes or swords. Toki wasn't allowed to teleport more than once every five minutes. That was it. The match started when Hobo-san attacked; it ended when he had enough.
In Hobo-san's language, it usually meant 'when everything hurts and you have hurled at least once'.
And then they did it again, and again, andagain. It was only after a small eternity that Hobo-san arbitrarily decided on a break. Abreak, for him, meant dissecting their performance and tearing it apart, pointing all the flaws, all the times they hadn't been strong enough, all the times they had attacked left instead of right, how they should have gone after a vulnerable joint rather than try to strike his face, and so on. He wasn't insulting about it, only clinical and cold, and somehow it made it worse. Okamoto hated them, they knew it, they knew how to deal with that. Hobo-san just… didn't care. He didn't care about their flaws, about their progress, if they were in pain. He was apathic, always tethering between total indifference and cynical disdain. It was chilling.
He had two hours to kill and for those two hours, he just wanted to see how many hits they were able to take without crying uncle.
Not that he would have stopped. Toki was pretty sure he wouldn't have. It was a gut-feeling. Hobo-san looked like the type of person to go on full-attack mode and to not back out until the other guy had stopped moving. He moved fast, he was ruthless and didn't hesitate to punch kids like they were enemy. Shit, Toki had never felt as small as she did when a tall adult man wrestled her on the ground and half-strangled her. That had been a terrifying experience.
She knew, now, why Hayasa-sensei had been so insistent on sparring with them when they were young, until the reflex to freeze upon danger completely left their system. When you were afraid, that reflex came back. And freezing, when facing Hobo-san, was a terrible idea.
He never pulled his punches.
The first fight barely lasted two minutes. Then, when Toki and Keigo were both on the ground, aching all over and panting in exhaustion, Hobo-san shrugged, when back to his place near the wall, and cocked his head.
"Again. Do better."
The next fight lasted a little longer, and the next, too: but it always ended the same way. That evening, Keigo and Toki went home limping. Their whole body felt like a giant bruise. Okamoto ushered them in the doctor's office, and they go ice, bandages, and even a brace for Keigo's wrist: but the next day, they were purple and blue and black all over.
Hayasa-sensei didn't say anything. But when he saw them, his eyes went wide, then narrowed in the most terrifying expression of fury Toki had seen on his face. He coldly told them that training was suspended today, and left. Apparently he called Okamoto and yelled at him so loudly that the researchers all fled the building.
Not that it made a great difference. The next week, Toki and Keigo met Hobo-san again.
And again, and again, every Friday.
Hobo-san became a fixature of their week. Most of the time, he looked annoyed. Toki privately thought that he had to channel part of his frustration in their lessons. Maybe he just really disliked children? He didn't like Okamoto (and Okamoto hated him right back), but Hobo-san showed him more courtesy than he had shown to Toki or Keigo.
Toki had a knot of anxiety like barbed wire in her stomach before climbing in Okamoto's car to go to those lessons, but they still went. They had to.
They progressed. They were good at what they did, after all. Yeah, Hobo-san was taller and stronger and meaner and just plainbetter, but Toki and Keigo were fast and scrappy too. Keigo learned not to flinch at a hit, and to slash at vulnerable tendons. Toki learned how to roll and fall without getting hurt, and to get up even when she was shaking and heaving after a violent kick to the belly. They learned how to keep their face neutral even when everything hurt. They learned not to panic when they were strangled. They learned how to move despites the bruises and the pain, as if it was real fight and their lives depended on it.
They started landing a few hits on their opponent, too. A few kicks there, a punch or two, some scratches. Once, during their fourth lesson, Keigo slashed their enemy's forehead to viciously that Hobo-san was blinded by the blood, allowing them to pummel him. At this point they were both snarling like two feral cats: Toki almost gouged out an eye. It was the first match they won.
It would stay the only one.
After that fourth lesson, Hobo-san slowed down. They still fought, vicious and harsh: like Hobo-san needed a punching-balls and they had just volunteered. But before or after the fights, and sometimes even in the middle, Hobo-san paused and started explaining things to them. Most of the time it was to criticize their performance. But he also gave them brief instructions, and very often demonstrations, on how to fight dirty. How real thugs fought, and how Quantum and Hawks would have to fight to defeat them.
They knew how to fight, all right. They both had martial art training, some boxing knowledge, and their spars with Hayasa-sensei had taught them how to think fast and strike without hesitation against a bigger opponent. But, as Hobo-san quickly demonstrated… they were no match for someone how fought dirty.
Meteor had taught Toki some tricks, like how to aim for the throat. But it was so long ago. She had mostly forgotten. It wasn't instinctive. Hobo-sanmade itinstinctive.
He knew what he was talking about, at least. He taught them how to gouge out eyes, how to grip the enemy's hair, how to use their elbows and their knees, how to not hesitate before hurting the other. Villains didn't fight fair. Yes, it was good to have a clean win, but sometimes you just had to settle for awin, period. Especially if you were short and fast instead of being big and strong, because you would almost never triumph in a pure contest of strength. You had to go not with the intent to gracefully subdue, but tohurt, to make the other go down and stay down, because if he got back up, you would die or at the very lastsuffer.
So they learned how to fight dirty. All the nifty tricks and sneaky attacks that were straight-up banned in sports were to be learned by heart. Like how to strangle someone with their tie. How to impede someone's moves by pulling his clothes, like handcuffing them with their own jacket, or how to pants them to make them fall flat on their face. How to garrote someone with their own belt. How to pull hair until it came out bloody. How to slap ears so hard you damaged the eardrum. How to kick someone in the balls. Or worse, gripping their balls andtwisting. It was the ultimate attack, apparently. Yes, it was gross to grab someone's junk, but it was also a guaranteed win.
See, there was a thing in sports. Even in violent combats, guys always politely pretended that balls just… weren't there. Because it was pretty much an instant kill-switch. They punched teeth out, they bit, they broke bones, they plummeted each other until they had internal bleeding. But a kick in the balls? It was a big no. They knew a simple hitherewas game-over. Even a bulky man built like a weightlifter would turn the color of wet cement and pass out if you punched his junk. In self-defense, it was perfect for an immediate take-down.
"Don't use it in front of cameras," reluctantly said Hobo-san. "It's bad press. But if you're trapped and your life depend on it, you better be able to remember that. If you die because fighting dirty is beyond you, well, that doesn't make you noble, it only made you a cretin. Adeadone."
"Jeez, you're so inspirational, sensei."
"Don't call me sensei."
"Don't tell me what to do," childishly protested Toki.
Hobo-san raised an eyebrow, and it still managed to be intimidating enough that Toki shut her mouth. Her heartbeat picked up. Trying to provoke him usually led to a fighting lesson. You know, as ademonstration, since they clearly had enough energy to spare.
"What kind of hero are you to know that stuff?" Keigo interjected with feinted annoyance.
Hobo-san's glare left Toki, and she breathed a little easier. That, too, was part of the lesson, although it was probably an unintended side-effect. How to use diversion, protect each other from their teacher's focus.
"I don't have a license," Hobo-san retorted.
It may be an impression, but Toki had a feeling he was grinning nastily behind his mask. Like it was a joke of some kind.
"You don't have a heroic license?!" sputtered Keigo. "Are you even qualified to be a teacher?"
"I don't have a teaching license either."
Keigo made an outraged noise. It seemed to amuse Hobo-san greatly. Then he shook his head, and added in a bored tone:
"Why, do you have criticisms about my class?"
"So many," muttered Toki.
"Too bad. Take it or leave it. I'm supposed to teach you how to not die, not to implant some survival instincts in your defective brains."
"Will do!" Keigo chirped, bouncing on the ball of his feet. "We're smarter than you think, yanno!"
"Whatever. I hope I haven't wasted my time."
"You had something better to do?" Keigo asked with a grin.
Hobo-san ostensibly checked the time on his phone. It was an old bulky model, with a cracked screen and a chipped case that depicted either a cat or a garbage bag: hard to see with how scratched it was.
"Look at that," he said flatly, putting his phone back in his pocket. "Lesson is over. See you next week. Anddo better."
"See you next week, Hobo-san!" the kids chorused.
Okamoto was approaching to give Hobo-san his cash, and he rolled his eyes, but he didn't protest the nickname. Considering that Okamoto was a real stick in the mud, always criticizing Keigo's table manners or Toki's foul language, it spoke volume of how he disliked their instructor. Still, he had picked him, and Hobo-san was extremely competent.
Maybe Okamoto disliked Hobo-san because he had a criminal background. That would explain why their mysterious instructor knew how to fight like that… And also why he accepted to teach brats how to gouge eyes out, no questions asked.
Honestly Toki would have expected a lecture from the guy on the first day. Something like 'it's a dangerous move, so only use it on villains' or 'never try that attack unless you really need to hurt the other'. Most of their instructors had done so. But well, most of their instructors had seen two rambunctious children and had expected them to use their new moves recklessly, like any untrained child would. But Toki and Keigo didn't live normal lives, and so they knew how to restrain themselves. Civilians were fragile. They could be hurt. They had to be protected. It was a lesson that had been drilled in their skull by Hayasa-sensei since day one.
Anyway. Hobo-san never lectured them on how they had to restrain themselves and not use those dirty-tricks willy-nilly. Maybe he knew that they trained to be heroes and could be reasonable. Or maybe he didn't care if they hurt someone. It was hard to tell.
Hayasa-sensei hated it. He never said it, but when he saw the dark purpling bruises all over their arms and legs, his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed in fury. He was livid. Once, Toki had overheard him and Okamoto yelling at each other. The words 'gratuitous violence'and 'child abuse' were pronounced. Toki tried to not examine that thought too closely.
It was… very violent, true. But Hobo-san didn't damage them. Not too much, anyway. No lesson had been as brutal as the first one: but then it was maybe because, for the first lesson, they hadn't expected it. Nobody had ever come to Toki with the sole intent to hurt her as violently as possible.
Before meeting Hobo-san, Toki's worst injury had been a broken ankle and she had immediately been healed and pampered. Hobo-san didn't believe in pampering. Hobo-san hit them hard and fast again andagain, and it wasn't rare for them to leave the lesson black and blue from neck to toes. The only place he sparred was their face. It would have attracted too much attention.
Toki guessed that she had lived a sheltered life, when you thought about it.
That was why Hobo-san's lesson were so necessary. Because all her life, Toki had had it easy. Her parent hadn't beat her, her teachers had been loving, the physical violence she had encountered had always been tightly contained in warm dojo and short lessons where a teacher would coddle her afterward. She had been pushed, she had even been hurt, sometimes, like when Hayasa-sensei had accidentally broken her ankle. But she had never been pushedpast her limits, past her comfort zone or her learning zone, straight into the too-much zone. That's when you knew your limits were: their beginning, and their end.
And Hobo-san was… unfortunately, very good at that.
I mean, any adult man deciding to beat the shit out of a fourteen years old girl would be good at it, obviously. But said fourteen years old girl was also a little bit feral, and had training in various martial arts. It took a delicate balance between hurting and not damaging. For example, Hobo-san was careful to never break any bones.
Well. Almost never. Because he did snap Toki's fingers, once.
It was mostly accidental: he had grabbed her hand, she had jerked away, he had twisted and…Crack. It hurt like amotherfucker. But Hobo-san didn't even flinch. Like he heard fingers break like twigs every day. He didn't even bat an eyelash when faced with a screaming girl and a boy hissing like an overprotective mother-hawk. He looked at the injury without a word, showed her how to bandage it with ice to keep the swelling down, and made hercontinue traininguntil the end of their lesson.
Toki cried the rest of the lesson, of pain and fright and just plain old exhaustion, but Hobo-san didn't stop. Didn't even slow down. He just told her to keep up, or he would give her a real reason to cry: and Toki was too scared to disobey.
That was a lesson, too.
oOoOoOo
Lessons with Hobo-san lasted several months. During this time, the rest of their physical training was slowed down as much as possible, or even completely halted. Hayasa-sensei was visibly simmering in rage each time he saw evidence on their body of Hobo-san's teaching. Hell, Toki couldn't go to her usual sports club. If she took her shirt of, someone was going to call social services. Some weeks, there were bruises that were too clearly in the shape of a boot's sole to pretend she had fallen down the stairs.
It was mostly bruising, but there was also a few scratches and road burns, too. They didn't train on tatami, but in deserted alleys or empty parking lots. When they fell, they fell on the concrete. Jeans and jackets helped to protect them, but only to a certain point. Toki's right knee had been scrapped raw after a bad fall, and she had limped for days. Even afterwards, there was still a faint but large discoloration there, where it had healed but left a scar.
They had to continue Quirk-training, still, but Hayasa-sensei took great pains to make it as soft as possible. Their strength training turned mostly to lifting weights and boring stuff like that, instead of interesting chases across the park. Toki was forbidden to do any gymnastics, but encouraged to practice her stretches as much as possible.
(They grumbled a little, of course. They didn't want to be coddled. Okamoto's cutting remarks, each time he picked them up, clearly showed his opinions: Hayasa-sensei was too soft, Keigo and Toki were just too weak to take it, it was a waste of time. But thinking back… Thinking back on it, years later, Toki would wonder if she could have kept going. Because it had never been question to stop.The training hadn't stopped. Hayasa-sensei hadslowed it downto a normal middle-school level, instead of pushing them like athletes training for the Olympic games: and considering how much their bodies were pushed and abused every Friday, it had been perfectly reasonable. Hayasa-sensei had to keep training them, or else he would probably be fired: but he also knew where to draw the line before breaking them.)
(Yes, when Toki would look back on this time, years later, she would feel very grateful to Hayasa-sensei indeed.)
Anyway. Okamoto also kept training them into… various Okamoto-stuff, actually. He taught them about team observational skills, about what to look in for a sidekick, who to pick a partner when several heroes were working together on an incident, how to communicate with others so you didn't step on each other's toes during a fight. He talked about Quirk analysis, public interaction, healthcare, resource management.
Shame that he was such a bastard. Sometimes he had very interesting stuff to say.
"Heroes rankings are a sham," he explained with a sneer. "Can you tell me why?"
"It's a popularity contest more than a grade of their efficiency," Toki tried.
"Poorly worded. Hawks?"
"The criteria are bad and the evaluation method is unbalanced."
"Not good enough. But it will do. There are three pieces of data used to rank heroes. The first one is their social contribution. It's a fancy word to saynumber of people saved: and that number is very unreliable, because most bystanders go forwards and tell they were saved just to share a bit of their favorites hero's spotlight. But it can also cover a hero's involvement in current events. Appearances to charities, or taking a stance on a social issue that the public approve of, give you a bonus in this category. Brutality complaints and lawsuits, even hidden from the public, give you a malus in this category."
He paused, giving them a second to absorb all that. Toki inwardly wondered how the bonus and malus worked, and how you could mix that with the number of people saved. She liked math, but there wasmathand there wasjust messing around with numbers.
"The second piece of data," continued Okamoto, "is thenumber of cases solved. How many villains they arrested, how much help they gave to the police, how critical were they to ongoing investigations, how many people they protected with their own hands… That data only exists to favor combat heroes in the ranking. As rescue heroes prioritize saving people instead of chasing the glam of the fight, they usually get a zero in that category."
"Endeavor is in the lead in that category, isn't it?" Keigo piped up.
Okamoto frowned, annoyed by the interruption, but agreed: "He is."
Toki blinked:
"He is? Not All Might?"
"That's a common misconception. But no, All Might may be the strongest hero, but Endeavor gets between three and five times his workload depending on the time of the year…"
"Three to five times?" Toki gaped. "How is it even possible, physically?!"
Okamoto glared at her, not appreciating the constant interruptions. Toki raised her hands placatingly and mimed zipping her lips. Okamoto looked at her for a second, then condescended to answer:
"Endeavor works every day, all day, and get a considerable amount of work done. All Might has inconstant hours. He works all day but doesn't close most of his cases. About half of the villains he arrests get back on the streets within the day, because the proper paperwork hasn't be filled. He doesn't participate in any investigations. The majority of the villains he arrests are usually already involved in a fight with other heroes: All Might end the fight, but since he didn't do anything but swop in at the very end, the credit is shared and he's not the one getting most of it… well, on his paperwork at least. The media," and there, Okamoto's lip curled in annoyance, "usually spin another kind of story."
Toki raised a hand. Okamoto sighed: "What?"
"So the Number One is one big joke, is that what you're telling us?"
"Are you stupid?"
Toki clenched her jaw. She hated when he took that condescending tone. The implicit insult, the sneer, gods, there were days where she wanted to strangle him. She saw Keigo glare at Okamoto, indignant on her behalf, but at least he had to good sense to keep quiet. Okamoto didn't allow himself to be distracted by one kid mouthing off like Hobo-san did: their usual diversion tactics wouldn't work here.
"No," she forced herself to said evenly.
"You sure pretend to be," Okamoto sniffed. "No, All Might isn't ajoke. He's on another level. He's an unstoppable force. He doesn't fit in this category because he doesn't play by the rules, and because it's been at least ten years since there was enough super-villains around for him to be entertained. Car thieves and arsonists and drug smugglers aresmall fryto him. He will give a hand, eagerly, if he sees something like that happening: but he won't look for it. All Might's focus is on people like Toxic Chainsaw, who makes whole cities tremble. And yet, it's onlyonevillain. One fight. Onepoint, while people like Endeavor arrest fifty more, and get the investigations done, and ties up loose ends, and in the end collect about one hundred points in the same amount of time. Is it clear enough, now?"
"Yes," said Toki through gritted teeth. "It is."
Asshole.
But well, you couldn't deny it was instructive. Toki had no idea that the gulf between All Might's statistics and Endeavor's statistics was so wide. And All Might hadn't even fought All For One yet! He didn't even limit his time!
"Where was I?" mused Okamoto. "Ah, yes. And finally, the biggest criteria of all:popularity. How much merch did you sold, how high does the public rank you in term of likeability, how much do you uphold the values of a heroes, how often are you solicited by journalists, how many followers do you have on your social media? It sounds shallow.It is not.It's how much people trust you. And it's the role of heroes to be trusted. Not to arrest villains, but to keep the peace by assuring people that they are protected."
So far it made sense, and Toki and Keigo both found themselves nodding along. That's why limelight heroics existed in the first place: so heroes could beseen, so people knew that there were individuals looking out for them. After all, the main purpose of heroes was to make the public feel safe. It didn't actually matter if they saved people, as long as the population as a whole felt reassured by their presence, and the villains didn't get too cocky.
It was the difference between having a police officer in full uniform standing watch near a parking meter, and having a detective in civies looking for people who tried to park without paying. The detective may catch someone. But the police officer acted as a deterrent.
"Popularity is evaluated by more criteria than the two other variables combined," Okamoto scowled. "It's ridiculously complicated. Breaking the law or otherwise dishonoring the image of heroism automatically give you a malus. Being very visible, with publicity stunts and TV commercials, automatically give you a bonus… But the weight of popularity in the rankings is just plainridiculous. It's almost two third of the note. And of course, people who are already popular have an easier time having visibility and promoting their work, while the others are left struggling at the bottom."
Logical.
Then Toki frowned, thinking about All Might's unbroken streak as the Number One. If popularity weighted more in the ranking than the two other criteria, and that being already at the top gave you an advantage, then someone who was topping the charts wouldn't be easily dislodged, even if his overall work wasn't as good as other heroes…
"So," Okamoto continued. "These three variables give each hero a number of points, with a max of a hundred, and that's how the heroes are ranked. Look online the Top Ten Heroes from last year, with all their statistics. Their overall grade is at the bottom of each column, in red. You'll notice that All Might has the perfect score, one hundred. He's the only one is all heroic history. The others heroes never went past eighty-seven points."
He paused.
"But if you compare each individual grade, you will notice something. Endeavor had the most powerful villains arrested, and the most people saved. Crust had the most involvement with the police, right after Endeavor… Best Jeanist had the most patrol time… Gang Orca had done the most community work… And so on.All Might worked less, fought less, and saved less people than any of the other Top Ten heroes. Either in number of cases solved or in number of people saved, his stats drop him from the top ten to the top twenty. Now that you know that: do you know why he's still Number One?"
Keigo and Toki looked at each other, then Toki took a guess:
"Popularity."
"Yes. See, you can do an acceptable job it if you think for a second."
She ground her teeth. He couldn't even give a compliment without being an ass, apparently. Ignoring her death glare, Okamoto continued:
"He scores a perfect popularity note, one hundred percent, thanks to atwenty-points bonusbecause he had kept that score for twenty years. Wild, isn't it? No other hero goes past the thirty percent. They just aren't universal enough, there's always a local hero people feel closer to. But All Might is a national icon, so he doesn't even have to appear on TV to be beloved by all. Look at the detail of his popularity score! He didn't go on any TV show this year. He did two commercials, that's it. He didn't involve himself in any charity event, or visit children's hospitals, or even put on the slightest of work to make himself marketable. The public opinion has built him a pedestal and he can't physically step down from it."
It was kind of sad, when you thought about it. None of All Might's exploits were valued anymore, because it was always old news. Exploits were expected. All Might was an icon, a public good instead of a hero doing his job, and… it almost dehumanized him.
Toki wondered if he took pleasure in doing his job anyway. Or if he was too obsessed in finding and killing All For One. It shouldn't be too far away. A year, two? Three, maybe, if Toki's calculations were off.
She wondered if All Might liked what he did. But then she remembered a crushed building, and her father screaming, and something she couldn't name twisted her stomach. Some days, she didn't know if she liked All Might because he represented heroism and because he had stopped Meteor: or of she hated him for those exact reasons. Besides, didn't make her a hypocrite? She had been the one to sell out Meteor in the first place.
She had known that her parents were going to stop loving her at one point, that they were going to crash and implode. It had seemed… simpler, to burn her bridges first. To do it now, to protect as many people as possible. To save the people her parents would kill, but also to save herself from the inevitable fallout.
It had been years, now. Why couldn't she forget and move on?
Then Okamoto glared at her, and she focused on the lesson. The past should stay in the past. She already had her hands full with the present.
ShootForTheStars: did you know that Endeavor does FOUR TIMES more stuff than All Might (investigations, arrests, rescues, everything)? And he's still stuck as Number Two?
ShootForTheStars:just learned it and I am in shock. I had no idea that he did THAT MUCH.
ShootForTheStars:now I feel a little bad for him
ShootForTheStars:I mean I get that popularity is important, and that All Might is more popular because people feel safer with him and his big smile than with Endeavor's perpetual scowl, and trust is important!
ShootForTheStars:but at that point it's just ridiculous.
EndeavorSucks:yeah tell me about it
EndeavorSucks:All Might is a goof, too. Having good intentions is great but come on people LOOK AT THE FACTS! The numbers!
PinkIsPunkRock:oh are we dishing on All Might today?
PikaPika:looks like it
PikaPika:I approve the goof part, too
PikaPika:he always seems a little surprised by other heroes' standoffish attitude, like he doesn't get that maybe people don't enjoy when he shows up and steal their thunder?
PikaPika:All Might doesn't act arrogant but sometimes he looks like he's taken aback by the lack of praise
NotOnFire:I would rather say that he's like a big dog that just can't understand why not everyone wants him to jump up on them all the time
PikaPika:xD
ThisIsFluffy:I'm persuaded that part of the reason All Might is Number One is the costume
EndeavorSucks:I know, right?!
EndeavorSucks:it's so TIGHT
ShootForTheStars:they both have skintight costumes? what's the difference?
NotOnFire:? seriously?!
PinkIsPunkRock:STARS
PinkIsPunkRock:evenIsee it!
EndeavorSucks:are you joking Stars?!
ThisIsFluffy:[mentally make a tally in the column 'Stars is ace']
PikaPika:[mentally make a tally in the column 'everyone on this server is a pervert']
PinkIsPunkRock:
EndeavorSucks:so
EndeavorSucks:Endeavor's costume is tight, alright (gods, it's SO TIGHT), but it's an outfit. It has texture, different materials, there are folds and creases, there's stillsome thingsleft to the imagination
EndeavorSucks:but ALL MIGHT's
EndeavorSucks:that thing is painted on!
EndeavorSucks:I mean, we would see if he had a third nipple! It's that bad!
ShootForTheStars:I never noticed
NotOnFire:you never noticed?! Stars. You can see his ass crack.
ShootForTheStars:
ThisIsFluffy:hence the popularity
PinkIsPunkRock:you're so right
PinkIsPunkRock:you know what it means? To beat All Might… to finally become Number One… there is only solution for Endeavor…
EndeavorSucks:… omg
PikaPika:of course!
PikaPika:the obvious solution is for him to dress like a pinup!
ShootForTheStars:AFHJAKAKAG
ThisIsFluffy:I would pay good money to see that
EndeavorSucks:oh, me too
ShootForTheStars:I'm traumatized.
The days passed.
Each time their bruises yellowed and started healing, they got a new collection. Hayasa-sensei refused to amp the difficulty of their Quirk training, despites Okamoto's snippy comments. Tension were high at Naruto Labs. Hayasa-sensei and Okamoto were at each other's throat, constantly, and everyone knew it. Keigo and Toki were well-aware that they were the source of this argument, or rather: Hobo-san was.
Most of the researchers sided with Hayasa-sensei. They were civilians, violence made them uncomfortable. And even if they didn't see the training, didn't see the progress, didn't see how hard Toki and Keigo fought back and how much better they were than at the beginning… They saw the marks left on them, and it made them squeamish. Violence against children always made people ill-at-ease.
Toki didn't have the right words to explain that they weren't exactly children anymore, and that they weren't victims, either. It wasn't child abuse. It was training.Brutal training, with a grown man repeatedly hitting them until they threw up and sometimes even cried (mostly Toki: she had never seen Keigo cry, not even once): but training all the same.
And they learned, and that was the main thing, right? How to roll with the punches, how to keep standing even when they were wrung out, how to resist mentally to pain and exhaustion. As a side-effect, and maybe not an unintended one, they learned how to stay cocky and confident even when the most pressing thing on their mind was the fear of incoming pain.
It didn't help that their teacher understood psychological warfare on an intuitive level. (Which was a nice way of saying that he was scary as hell.)
But still. The researchers didn't like it. They glared at Okamoto, and it was pretty obvious that he was on his own in this. But Okamoto wouldn't be Okamoto if he bowed in front of adversity. He continued to bring Keigo and Toki to training every Friday.
Toki had overheard some researchers make bets on how long Hayasa-sensei would help until he snapped and did something rash to put an end to this farce. It made her a little morbidly curious to see what Hayasa-sensei would considersomething rash.
"I can't wait for Hobo-san to get ran over by a car," groaned Keigo.
It was so out of character that Toki, laying on her back on his bed, twisted her neck to look at him with a raised eyebrow:
"Woah, homicidal much?"
"Maybe a little," he confessed. "I hate this, you know? He's always harder on you."
It was true, Toki realized. They both got hit, but Keigo… Keigo had hollow bones. Bird's bones. Hobo-san grappled him, threw him away, gripped him, rather than punch and kick. Keigo always went home with just as many bruises as Toki, but from an external point of view, Toki took more damage, because she took more direct hits.
"And we can't do anything," Keigo continued mulishly. We can only wait until Okamoto decide we're done with this lesson. It's been four months! Maybe he will make us do it for the whole year."
Toki sighed, and crossed her arms: "Counterargument. We could wait until Okamoto get tired of that game, or we could act. The fact is, we have two options. One of them is safe, legal, and healthy, and will have lasting long-term benefits. The other one is fun."
"… Tell me about the fun one."
"Simple." Toki smiled, wide a slightly feral. "I'm gonna need a knife."
So, in July, instead of just cowering at taking it, Toki and Keigo escalated.
Once again, thinking back on that moment, Toki wondered how they had survived that long. It clearly hadn't been a good plan, from start to finish. They had learned about knife-fighting from Hobo-san already. His advice had pretty much boiled down to:'A knife fight is like chess. Chess with pain. So think three moves ahead and stab them in the stomach.'
Great advice. Would 100% not recommend.
The fights started as usual. One round, two rounds, three. Each time, Toki and Keigo were flung away like ragdolls, slammed against the ground or against a wall, kicked and punched. They gave as good as they got, but it was infuriating, to unleash all of their fury on someone and see that guy just brush it off. They were strong! They knew they were strong, and agile, and fast, and dangerous! And yet Hobo-san was physically stronger, faster, had a longer reach.
But this time,Toki had brought a knife.
It wasn't exactly allowed. It had just- never been specified in the rules. So she hid a knife in her sleeve, and during the fourth round, without having to coordinate, Keigo and her attacked from two sides. Keigo slashed, Hobo-san kicked, Toki went high… there was a split second where she had a shot, and she slashed at his face like she wanted the knife to sink a foot in his skull andrip half his face.
He wore some kind of protective gear around his throat: the neck of his jacket was cut but the blade ripped on the protective clothes wrapped there, and deviated enough that Hobo-san didn't lose an eye. The blade still cut through his cloth mask, his cheek, his eyebrow. Blood splattered on Toki: and yet Hobo-san had already gripped her wrist andtwisted, and when she brought her other hand to scratch at his face,rip and claw and hurt, his other hand closed around her neck and slammed her against the wall with bruising strength.
For a single second, they stayed immobile, gaze locked. The cloth mask, cut in two but vaguely held in place by Hobo-san's high collar, fell enough to reveal the unamused twist of his mouth. The cut on his cheek was bleeding abundantly. His eyes were as dark and cold as the first day. Unimpressed.
"Do better," said Hobo-san.
For an instant, between one breath and the next, Toki hated him from the deepest part of her soul.
Then Keigo attacked, gold eyes murderous, and Hobo-san had to dodge. His hand on her neck released his grip, and Toki's feet feel back on the ground. She wheezed, then bared her teeth. Blood was splattered all over her face like crimson freckles, and her ember-like eyes blazed with anger. If she had any breath left, she would have told him to go fuck himself.
If I had been the kind of child my parent wanted, you would be dead, she thought wildly.
They didn't win that match. Maybe it was for the best. It was becoming increasingly brutal, and now that Toki had introduced weapons to the game, it was only a question of time before Hobo-san brought his own. He already did enough damage like that.
When they went back to Naruto Labs that evening, Toki had a purpling necklace of bruise all around her throat, in the shape of Hobo-san's fingers. She looked like someone had tried to strangle her. For days afterwards, her voice was the croak of an asthmatic frog.
It wasn't her face, as per Okamoto's instruction, but it was close enough. Maybe Okamoto decided it was time to call it quit before irreparable damage was done. Or maybe Hayasa-sensei reached his breaking point and went above Okamoto's head, making the President intervene. Or maybe someone had enough, and ran over Hobo-san with their car. Toki didn't know.
But it was their last lesson with Hobo-san.
(And Toki breathed a little more easily.)
Notes:
And this is the end for our acquaintance of Hobo-san! For now, at least.
But yeah, you can see more clearly why Tokidoes not like him. And you can ask yourself, "hum, i wonder what was happening in canon around the same time?"
The next chapter has also been reworked and expanded, so you should go and check it out =)
Chapter 12: The accident
Summary:
Toki, aged fourteen, discover puberty. Teenage drama. Having a crush. Having dreams. And also : what it mean to massively fuck up.
Notes:
I'm back ! With a new chapter. Ending with a cliffhanger even !
EDIT 15/08/2022
So, too many things happened in this chapter. Hobo-san; the tension between Okamoto and Hayasa-sensei; the lessons with Okamoto at various places to make Toki understand the importance of the civilians behind the scene; her compassion and feeling of inadequacy when confronted with the people in the homeless shelter... I wanted to develop too many things, and as a result, i didn't develop them enough !
So. This chapter is still called"The accident"but it's actually the second half of the chapter that was previously"The accident". It's more complete, there are additionnal dialogues, additionnal scenes... Even additionnal poems, too =)
The first half is in the previous chapter, that had been reworked too, and reposted under the name "How to fight dirty". It's the part about Hobo-san, mostly. So read that chapter first!
Anyway. Good reading =)
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
THE ACCIDENT
Their lessons with Hobo-san had lasted a little over four months, and yet, it felt like a small eternity. It was July when they saw him for the last time. As soon as they were done with him, it was like a weight had been lifted from everyone's shoulders at Naruto Labs. The researchers were more cheerful and Hayasa-sensei even had a spring in his step.
He left them some time to recover, but soon enough, he upped their strength training. He made them run and jump and fly all day long. Toki didn't suffer much chest pains anymore, but in the rare occasions where it happened, it felt even more stabbing and painful than before. It was always unpredictable, seemingly randomly.
Toki tried to find a common denominator but she couldn't quite manage. Maybe it was the total distance she jumped in one day? The days where she used her Quirk the longest usually ended up with a feeling like a cramp near her heart… But there were evenings where it got worse, so much worse it felt like have a knife trust between her ribs. It never lasted more than five minutes, but gods, it fucking hurt. Should she… talk about the doctor about it? But to say what?It hurt sometimes, but not right now?It didn't stop her from functioning. Toki would feel a little ridiculous, complaining about that. Maybe it was just some of the bruises left by Hobo-san that took longer to fade.
She would live with it. She didn't want to be a baby about it. You had to sacrifice some comfort to reach the top.
You had to sacrifice thingsconstantlyto reach the top.
Toki tried not to think about it too often, of the things she had lost. Thepeopleshe had lost. It had been her fault. She had no right to complain. She had lost her parents, but she had lost also part of herself, that day. The knowledge she was a good daughter, that she was worthy of her family's love. Her safety. And later, she had lost her freedom, too. The possibility to create strong, meaningful bonds with strangers. Oh, she didn't regret it. It had been a fair trade. She had gotten strength and power, in exchange. She had gotten Keigo.
And yet. Sometimes, she thought about it. That was all.
we're all killers.
we've all killed parts of ourselves
to survive; we've all got blood on our hands.
something somewhere had to die
so we could stay alive.
Anyway. Life went on. Soon after, they were off to summer camps.
That year, Toki went to a traditional Japanese temple for two weeks in July. She couldn't even begin to guess why Okamoto had thought it was a good idea. Sure, it was interesting. But seriously, learning about traditional kimono, flower-pressing, and tea ceremony?! What use would it be for her as a hero? Geta were impractical to walk in, kimonos were stiff and restricting, and Toki hissed like a feral animal if anybody tried to touch her hair. Really, the Girls Scouts had been so much better!
Was it some sort of infiltration training? If that was the case, Toki clearly didn't have the temper for it!
At least, in August, she was with Keigo. In July, while Toki had been playing dress-up in traditional clothes, Keigo had been sent to volunteer at a rehabilitation center for young villains. Honestly Okamoto should have switched their assignment! Keigo was so much better than Toki had playing pretend. And Toki was interested in social issues!
Anyway, what was done was done, too late to worry about it. At least their other summer camp, in August, was better. They didn't go to a beach camp this time (too bad!) but camping in the forest. It was fun. They couldn't play at being arsonists, though. But hey, they made a few friends, they explored, they grilled marshmallow, they hiked up a mountain, they swam in streams, and all in one, they had a pretty good time.
Summer camp with fourteen years-old of both genders was still a wild experience. Most of the time, they were normal people. They hiked, complained, had wildly bad ideas to climb high rocks, played in the mud, laughed loudly, talked about favorites movies. But there were moments where they were just so… high-strung? Maybe they were horny, or emotionally tense, but sometimes things justsnapped.
Honestly, it gave Toki whiplash.
And all that tension between boys and girls or, occasionally, girls and girls or boys and boys! Seriously. It was mind-blowing. There were less swimsuits than on the beach, so you would have expected less giggling, but still, boys teased girls and girls snickered at boys.
Even if Toki and Keigo weren't as baffled by those behaviors as before, they still couldn't quite get into it. Toki was starting to wonder if maybe she was asexual. She liked Keigo, but most of her attraction was platonic… Probably. She was a hormonal teenager, so yeah, she knew what it meant to be horny. By there was a difference betweenattraction(when your body said 'I want that one!') andlibido(when your body said 'I want it right now!'). Toki looked at all those pretty strangers her age and yes, even if they were pleasant to look at, even if she could imagine kissing or cuddling… There was nobody that turned her on.
Maybe it was because she just was a late bloomer. She was more developed intellectually than physically. And besides, fourteen was a little young to have the irresistible urge to climb someone like a tree!
She didn't dare to ask Keigo if he was in the same place, but she did notice he didn't state any preference when questioned about his taste in girls by his peers. Oh, Keigo wasn't a prude. He joined in the laughter and the jokes easily. Toki did, took. But a lot of girls picked a boy to fawn over, and boys seemed to unanimously declare one girl to be the prettiest one… and neither Keigo nor Toki could really see the point.
Why was it so important to know people found you attractive? Why was it so important to have a crush and have it be a cornerstone of your identity? Why was it so important tovocalize it, to advertise it? Especially if being emotionally exposed made you feel terrified, inadequate, as if everybody around you was going to point and laugh? As if social disproval was the end of the world, crushing you by the throat, making you feel cornered and worthless?
It was a weird mix of self-esteem issues and identity issues, mixed with existential angst and a lot of social anxiety. Toki felt a lot of kindship with those teenagers, because she felt like that, too… But it was safely locked up behind her self-control, and made less scary because of a practiced self-awareness. She was more aware of what was going on in her head… And more confident in her own worth, independently from the others' gazes. But normal preteens who hadn't grow up as fast as Toki and Keigo, and they probably didn't have those coping mechanism. Toki and Keigo always felt a bit apart. More grounded than their peers, who were so easily swept away by a flurry of emotions.
That didn't mean they were always mature. They were just mature in different ways.
"I'm pretty sure that girl was flirting with you," Toki grinned at Keigo while they were assembling a tent.
He made a face:
"I wasn't sure. She just asked questions about birds with a very weird intensity, sitting so close that I could smell miso soup on her breath. It was awkward more than anything."
Toki swallowed back laughter. Keigo had a great poker-face, effortlessly relaxed and charming, but when his gaze had caught hers, his expression had briefly shifted into a wide-eyed cry for help. That was Toki had pretexted she needed his help assembling her tent, actually.
"I could tell. What did you tell her about birds anyway? We're in the mountains. If she wants an ornithology lesson, she should ask one of the camps counselors."
"Hey, we were talking about city birds!"
"Like pigeons? Gods, she must really like you to listen to you talk about it for fifteen minutes."
"Hey, don't badmouth pigeons. They're actually nice. People are always mean to pigeons and call them flying rats, but it's not their fault that humans domesticated them and they lost their use for them, you know?
"I know," Toki admitted. "The pigeon was once a dove, and then we built our filthy empire up around it, came to hate it for simply thriving in the midst our decay, came to hate it for not dying."
Keigo blinked once, owlishly. Toki turned crimson. She hadn't meant to go all poetic on him. But he didn't laugh. Instead, he cocked his head, a small smile on his lips.
"Yeah," he said softly. "Pretty much."
Toki turned away, her cheeks warm, and cleared her throat. She desperately looked for a way to change the subject, and settled on:
"I used to talk to pigeons when I was a kid."
Keigo snorted. "For real?"
"Yeah. What, do I seem weird to you?"
"Since the day I met you."
"Rude! And to say that I was happy to have found another pigeon to talk to." She gestured at him.
"I resent that," Keigo said cheerfully in a tone that was anything but resentful. "But to get back to our earlier point, no, we weren't talking about pigeons. I'll have you know that there are plenty of birds in the city. Even hawks!"
"That's because humans encroach on their territories. Everyone knows that birds would rather live in mountain habitats or in forests, where it's calm and remote. Where else can a murder of birds—"
"That's a crow-exclusive term," Keigo sniffed with disdain.
"Fine, fine: where else can a large flock of flying pillows filled with hatred gather together and hone their hunting skills? In the city they might get hit by a police helicopter or strung up in an electric line at any moment."
"Only if they're bad at flying," retorted Keigo.
"You're right. Birds bad at flying can also getstuck in treeslike you."
"That happened once, how dare you."
Toki cracked up, laughing so hard she barely managed to correctly tie to last cord in place. The tent was up, and she took a step back to admire her work. Keigo huffed, and they wordlessly went to install the second tent (his) next to hers. After a few seconds of silence, Keigo seamlessly resumed their conversation:
"Smart birds can spot a trap. It's not hard to see an obstacle from a distance, and the great thing about the urban habitat is that if one option doesn't work out, just nest in another chimney! To say nothing of the convenience. I mean, the calories saved on commuting. Much-needed nutrients that the baby birds could use, instead of fueling flights to and from the nest."
"It's called migration, with animals. Not commuting."
Keigo waved a hand, engrossed in his passionate defense of the city habitat:
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Consider the urban jungle! The unexplored heights, just begging to be lived in! A diversity of prey, exciting hunting grounds, soaring above the heads of all the mindless drones confined to the ground below!"
"So you're a city bird," she said mildly.
"And you're not?" he challenged her.
Toki took a moment to consider it. Yeah, she liked their escape during summer camp. The beach, the mountains, the forest, the remote monasteries, the open space, the calm. But it was in the city she felt the most at home.
Tall buildings, high rooftops, busy streets, a dense crowd, the sheer concentration of shops and hobbies gathered close together. The proximity meant nothing to someone who could warp at will, but there was something nice in having it all clustered together: in not just being close to what you wanted, but also having the things you wanted all close together, influencing one another.
"Yeah, I suppose I am."
"Damn straight." He paused, and blinked, looking down at his half-installed tent. "Wait, why am I missing a sardine?"
"Because city birds suck at foraging in the mountains?"
"Hey!"
They both turned to see one of the guys from the camp wave at them from a curve in the path, leading from their campsite to the nearby stream.
"We're going bathing! You're coming or what, lovebirds?"
Keigo and Keigo exchanged a lightning-quick glance. It wasn't the first time they were teased about dating, and they had quickly found out that refuting the accusation only made people more eager snigger and laugh about it.
It was another thing that didn't really talk about, either.
"Yeah, we're coming!" Toki yelled back. "Keep your hair on!"
It hadn't escaped Toki's notice that they had a harder time mingling with their peers. They always stayed together, even when they were in a group. They just didn't have as much to say to strangers, while together they never ran out of conversation. Lovebirds indeed.
She knew she loved Keigo. She just wasn't sure if she wasin lovewith him. He was her best friend, her family, her home. She adored him. She wanted to spend her life with him, and the idea of losing him made her want to burst into tears.
But that didn't mean she was in love. She didn't know if her feelings were romantic in nature. They didn't have to be.
Whatwas romantic love, even? Maybe Toki was aromantic. Her only reference for romance was her parents' relationship, and… they had been happy together, true, but that was also the problem. They had been so happy together that they had been callous and selfish. If romance turned Toki into them, she wasn't sure she wanted it.
Whatever. It was a problem for later. She wasn't even fourteen. She had all the time in the world to figure that out.
So.
Summer camp was nice. They had fun. But they didn't made friends like they used to, the previous years. Not that they had ever kept the phone numbers or the postal address that their summer acquaintances gave them: it was nice to have such a good relationship with the other kids that they gave them a way to keep contact, but neither Keigo or Toki were allowed to actually keep contact with these civilians. Would they even want to? They lived in too different worlds.
Those civilians had never had to train until their legs trembled and their breath wheezed. They never had to endure Okamoto's insults or Hobo-san's beatings. They didn't study situational recon and tactical awareness, they didn't immediately calculate the dangers and catalogue all the exit when they entered a building. Maybe some of those civilian kids dreamed of being heroes: but they didn't know what itmeant, not really. The training, the hardships, the secrecy, the loneliness, the struggle. Limelight heroics, even the most glamourous parts of it, were always anchored in a grittier reality.
Toki didn't use to think so much about it. But as a side-effect of seeing her peers grow up, giggle and enjoy their teenagerhood, she couldn't help but think about her own maturity.
Anyway. Both heroes-in-training came back from their summer camps thoughtful and solemn. They had fun, yeah, but they felt more like grown-ups now, and it seemed that they couldn't quite grasp their childhood's carelessness anymore.
Even when they enjoyed their vacation, they noticed problems, they asked themselves questions… The part of their brain used to be pessimistic didn't turn off anymore.
Gods above, being an adult was like that, all the time? It probably sucked ass. Toki wanted a refund! She didn't remember that from the Before. Granted, she didn't remember anything concrete from Before, but still! Adulthood was a scam and she should have been fucking warned!
Well at the very last one good thing came from that summer: she finished her poetry notebook. It was now filled to the very last page. She almost felt something like melancholy when she wrote the final word of her last poem.
"what is grief if not love persevering"
But what about when the grief and love
are happening at the same time?
how do you grieve
something that's still alive?
how do you love
something that has always been dead?
and the answer is just:
intensely.
She was thinking about Meteor when she wrote it. She usually thought about her parents, when she wrote about grief. Her mom, who was dead: and her dad, who wasn't but may as well be, and the fact that he wasn't made it so more painful. There would be no closure, here.
How strange… Almost six years had passed. So much had happened, Toki herself had become a completely different person: but it was still that man that haunted her wayward thoughts, as if he was still just a room away.
She had only known him for a little over a year. But still, she couldn't forget him. She had spent so much time with him at the hideout, hopelessly pulled in his gravity, orbiting around him like every member of the Crew. His big feral smiles, his tall frame, his glowing eyes. How he filled the room with his presence. How he stood so strong, so solid and reassuring, sometimes; and how he laughed, a crazed glint in his eyes, at the prospect of violence. How he softened for the people he loved, always. How he made himself quieter, still sharp, but sharp like a razor blade instead of like a knife, not as good at killing but just as capable of wounding.
He had scared her, he had made her angry, but he also made her feel safe and loved. It was sounfairthat he could have such an important place in her life when Toki wanted nothing to do with him. She wasn't Toki Taiyōme anymore. Why was she still haunted by her father?
She shut the notebook. She put it away in her bookcase, near her astronomy illustrated book and herHarry Pottersaga (which had stayed untouched for the past four years, but that she couldn't resolve to give away). She took a spare, blank notebook she was keeping in store just for that, a blue and sliver one with tiny wisps of color treading on the cover, and started with another poem.
The terrible things that happened to you
didn't make you you.
You always were.
It isn't the storm
that makes the ocean dangerous.
It was only a notebook. She had plenty of others. Maybe this one would take ten years to be filled, like the first. Maybe it would take longer, because Toki would have less emotions to put on paper. Or maybe it would be faster, because she would have lots to write. Who knew? Who cared? In the end, it was only a notebook, and her poetry didn't concern anyone but Toki herself.
oOoOoOo
In the winter of the year 2222, after Toki's birthday but before Keigo's, there was a terrible villain attack on Fukuoka. It was a villain with a flame Quirk, and the media nicknamed himHellmaker. Fire rained down and flames devoured whole buildings like a scene straight from a nightmare. Endeavor was called in as soon as it began, while All Might kept away, raging about not being fire-resistant. Dozens of people were burned alive, dozen more suffocated in the smoke or crushed by damaged building, and hundreds were wounded.
Shirayuki, the strongest hero in Fukuoka, fought valiantly. But in the end, she was killed.
It was a gigantic blow to the public's morale. Shirayuki had been cold but beloved, with her powerful Quirk and angelic face. And now, she was gone, just like that. All Might hadn't come and saved them, and one of the most adored heroines out there had been murdered. Endeavor's public approval skyrocketed following his swift response and how he had been the one managing to subdue the villain in the end (five heroes and seven sidekicks had been injured before his arrival), but it was the only positive thing coming out of this mess.
Toki and Keigo read about it online, grave and silent. So many people dead. The pictures of the city on fire looked like they had been taken from a post-apocalyptic movie. The sky had been blood-red, smoke reducing visibility, flames twisting as if having a life of their own. Where Endeavor had managed to corner and defeat Hellmaker, the road had melted, and there was only a charred crater left.
This disaster meant that Okamoto suddenly left their side for two full months, because he was busy doing damage control in Fukuoka. Toki wasn't going to complain. Without Okamoto's lessons, they could catch up on their homework, train, or just hang out on the rooftop.
They talked about the future, about heroes, about villains, about death and dreams and hopes and pointless questions. Endeavor's popularity was on the rise, but he had no hope of surpassing All Might. It looked like he did, right now, but Toki knew better. All Might was too idolized. No mere mortal could compare. It was a hard pill to swallow for some, but it didn't make it less true… Nor less dangerous.
Toki talked about it with Keigo, and with her online friends more often than not, but All Might wasn't eternal. One day he would be just a little too slow, or too tired, and it would be then end. Maybe he would die, maybe he would be forced to retire, but the end-result would be the same… The Symbol of Peace would be gone, just as Shirayuki was. The public wouldn't have the comfort of this idealized security blanket anymore. The criminals would feel emboldened, and the people more scared. It was the inherent danger of putting faith in the system with the rise and fall of a single person. Besides, in a general sense… It was dangerous to put the well-being of people on the shoulders of those desiring fame, and that was why heroes as a whole had to be watched carefully.
Toki tried to not think about Shirayuki.
She had met the heroine barely five years ago. They had talked, they had understood each other. And now Shirayuki was dead. Just like Sayuri. Alive one moment, gone the next, while Toki was miles away.
In the grand scheme of things, maybe it didn't matter, maybe Shirayuki hadn't been a relevant character… But she had been a real person. Someone with hopes and dreams. She hadn't been kind, but she had been honest with Toki. She had told her 'best of luck to you' before walking away. She had seemed so strong and confident. It was hard to believe she was dead.
Hard, andscary, too, because Shirayuki had been so grown-up and capable. She had refused a loan from the Commission and fought tooth and nail to earn her place as a hero, to fund her agency with her own merits, and now… Barely a few years later, it was all turned to ashes.
Dead. Gone, forever. It was so unfair. Shirayuki didn't deserve that. Toki had seen herself in her, just a little. A child sponsored by the Commission, orphaned (or close enough) at a young age, a bristling demeanor, a powerful Quirk, the way she refused to owe anything to anyone. Yes, Shirayuki had been what Toki could become.And she had been killed. She had been so strong, but still, she had found her match. It was a chilling thought. No matter how good you were, as a hero, there was always the risk of not coming home one day. Of fighting the wrong villain, facing the wrong Quirk, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then you died. Just like that.
(Maybe Toki could have befriended Shirayuki later in life, if they had more time. They had had a lot in common when you thought about it. But Toki would never know, now. Shirayuki was gone. And inexplicably, Toki felt almost guilty about it. About now having known her better, about not having enough to remember. About not trying to learn more. About not trying to make her life easier. It was ridiculous, wasn't it?)
Grieving for her mother had been hard. Grieving for Shirayuki felt different. Odd. Maybe it was part of growing up. It was like a weird, belated understanding that everything was fragile. Toki felt like she had touched the end of the world with her hands but then realized there was no true end: forever caged in an endless wishy-washy of emotions and events that affected her deeply, but ultimately have no acknowledgment of her, nor of her being. Thinking of herself as the main character now felt pretentious, self-centered at most. The world justwas. Nothing lasted. Not even people. Toki, Keigo, Hayasa-sensei, the Commission, they could live and fight and try as hard as they could, but they were just existing in the same storm, powerless to do anything but steer their boat in the same direction, against the raging waves. The Sun, the Stars, the Moon, the vast emptiness of the universe… It didn't care. It never had.
Life went on.
Christmas passed, then Keigo's birthday, then the New Year. Kameko Sabira dropped by to say hello, and give them some updates on how things were going on in the outside world. Okamoto was still away. The anguish around Shirayuki's death and Fukuoka's attack was starting to calm down. But it had been a rough blow for the Commission. Shirayuki had been one of their best, and Fukuoka was notably difficult to manage. It had had a history of housing big gangs and once every three years or so, a big villain tried his luck a becoming the new face of Fukuoka's organized crime.
(Another thing that Toki liked about Kameko-san: she always provided context, and in doing so she talked openly about the hidden stakes and secret agendas. Compared to Okamoto's usual brand of secrecy, it was refreshing.)
"After you get your license, one of you will probably be stationed in Fukuoka," Kameko told them bluntly while slipping her drink. "This city is a nightmare! There are plenty of heroes, but none of them are strong enough to be the unofficial protector of the city."
"Is having an unofficial protector so important?" Toki frowned.
"Of course! It's the face of heroism in a specific place. Japan as a whole has All Might, for example. Most city have a prominent hero to represent them, too. Endeavor in Shizuoka, Wash in Sendai, Yoroi Musha in Fukushima… It gives heroes a presence, a feeling of being more real, of being closer to the public. It's how people are reassured. It's what discourage the villains from acting out in the first place!"
Toki pouted, unconvinced, but Keigo was nodding approvingly:
"Yeah, that's why popular approval is the most important metric for measuring a pro hero's rank! Because it's a hero's task is to put citizens at ease!"
Kameko nodded very seriously, before finishing her cup and putting it on the table. She used a coffee mug, but Toki had seen her fill it to the brim with milk. This woman was really a cat.
"Yeah, but there is a shortage of strong heroes willing to move here. All Might is probably going to hang out in the city for a few months, to reassure people…"
Oh boy, Endeavor was not going to like that. Fukuoka washistriumph… But he had to go back to his agency, to control his territory. And as soon as he was forced to leave, All Might was going to swoop in and win's people's hearts immediately? That had toburn. Pun intended.
"… but it's not a long-term solution," Kameko continued, nodding. "All the strong heroes already have an agency, so if they moved to Fukoda, they would leave a vacuum, and if something happened, it would mean bad press for them. So, lower public approval…"
"… which mean lower ranking, lower pay, and lower price for their merch," Toki completed.
Kameko-san raised her mug as if silently toasting her, grinning from ear to ear:
"Exactly! A few unattached heroes or glory-seeking sidekicks will probably try their luck in Fukuoka, but the Commission isn't willing to bet on them."
"And they are willing to bet on us," guessed Keigo.
"Yup! You're cool like that."
Toki grimaced: "Doesn't seem like much of a gift if super-powered villains show up regularly…"
"Don't be a killjoy," Keigo playfully nudged her. "Someone has to do the job, so why not us, since we will be good at it? Besides, high risk meant high reward! Pretty pictures, good public approval, climbing the rankings, and so on!"
Toki pretended to think about it: "Does Fukuoka has a planetarium?"
She immediately regretted her question, because she suddenly remembered her father telling her in a conspiring tone how he had grown up in Fukuoka, hanging out at the planetarium when he skipped school.
Her father had been born in that damn city. She had forgotten that.
"It has!" Kameko said delightedly. "I checked!"
She had? Aw, that was sweet. Toki sighed, feigning reluctance:
"Then I guess we can go there."
In canon, hadn't Hawks been based in that very city? It was basically fate. Toki didn't know how she felt about making hers the city where her father had been born, but hey, it would be a fresh start. She didn't associate Fukuoka with Meteor the same way she did with Tokyo or even Musutafu.
And just like that, their future affectation had been decided. It felt a bit bitter. But hey, it wasn't as if Toki had any better ideas.
Anyway. Kameko left the following day, and a week later, Okamoto was back. He had eyebags bigger than his suitcase and his purplish skin now had a grey tint, and Keigo even told him he looked tired, which was nice-person talk forhow many hours did you spend studying the inside of a toilet bowl. Keigo was an angel. Toki just pointed out that he looked like shit.
Nobody had ever accused her of being polite.
Still, she hadn't expected Okamoto to glare at her and reply with a scathing comment about how difficult it was to manage the brutal murder of a young heroine he had known personally, whose death had been so horrific that there wasn't even much left to identify her, and whose funeral had been turned into a media circus so other heroes could pat themselves on the back.
Toki was left frozen in horror, red with shame. She stuttered something like 'sorry', but Okamoto had already turned away, and she didn't dare to speak up. In that instant, he seemed much taller and scarier than in reality. Even Keigo was rendered mute with shock.
Afterward, Okamoto didn't mention it, and neither kid dared to bring it up again. But there was a stiff coldness in their conversations that lasted for weeks.
It wasn't often that Toki put her foot in her mouth that badly.
Life went on. Toki was asked to ditch one of her clubs to play a team sport. Apparently, she didn't pay enough attention to people who weren't Keigo or Hayasa-sensei. Which, firstly,rude. Also, not true! She paid attention, she just did the job better with teammates she was familiar with! But whatever. Hayasa-sensei was the boss. So Toki gave up Krav Maga (she was violent enough) and took up baseball. It didn't passion her, sure. But it wasn't bad. Her teammates let her have her space.
And she got to have a baseball bat, so that was super-cool.
Not that she intended to hit people with it, but… She had learned how to use blunt weapons. Baton, staff, and a bunch of other stuff. She could easily twirl the bat in her hands to posture like a threatening delinquent. It was a thrill.
She was better with knives, actually. Not that she was allowed to use actually knives, but Hayasa-sensei taught her to use blunted ones. It was pretty cool. Hobo-san's lesson about knives fight had been pretty blunt and boiled down at 'if you're in a knife fight, knife them first and then run the fuck away', but it was nice to have some technique.
Not that there was much technique to be had. It was aknife fight. You would not have fine motor control. It was big movements and holy fuck and that's it. But yeah, practicing dodging was a good skill to have at least.
Hayasa-sensei still followed his usual lessons' plan, but Shirayuki's death had apparently shifted Okamoto's focus to heroic care. So during the following months, he taught them safety protocols again. He made them re-take first aids classes, then made them volunteer to animal shelters so they could see firsthand some blood and injuries (nobody in their right mind would allow kids to treat adult's wounds, but animal shelters weren't so strict). Once assured that they wouldn't froze when faced with a mangled paw, a bloodied cat attacked by dog, or even a horse giving birth… And that had been an experience, honestly Toki hadneverexpected to facethatin her hero training… Okamoto made them visit a private clinic, then a police station, then a fire station, then a hospital. He made them memorize how they worked, how fast they could respond, how hero agencies optimized communication with them.
He made them volunteers almost every week in a different place. The first place was a morgue. Keigo and Toki weren't volunteer there, but interns, working under the relative care of a disabused legist. It wasn't awful, but it was… it was depressing. They saw dead bodies. The legist made them get out when he had to do autopsies, so at least they were sparred that: but they still had to move the corpses, fill out impersonal paperwork about the age and cause of death, clean up the scalpels that would be used to cut up these people.
The first day, Toki had to hide in the bathroom for a little while to just focus on calming her breathing and stop her hands from shaking.
But she could understand Okamoto's reasoning. It was better for them to be confronted to death in that kind of setting, when it was over and done, instead of… an accident later on. A failure of their hero work. At least, now, they knew what a dead body looked like. How heavy it was, how it smelled. How it could be carved up in car accident, or ripped apart by gunfire, or badly burned by a fire Quirk.
How, sometimes, they looked like they were just sleeping, too. In Toki's opinion, that was the worst time. The line between saved and not-saved was so much thinner here.
They spent less than a week at the morgue, cleaning and helping quietly after the legist two hours every evening until they silently climbed back in Okamoto's car. Then Okamoto decided that the lesson had been learned, and they moved on.
The volunteered to other place, places filled with living, breathing people. A library that needed someone to do community service and clean the place: Okamoto used that time to make them run recon on all the visitors. Then there was a soup kitchen who needed help. Then a beach that needed cleaning. A supermarket that needed interns to do unpaid labor (a way to know who it felt to work in retail). Later, it was a triage center for donations related to Fukuoka.
And once it was a homeless shelter.
It wasn't like the morgue, not at all, but it was one of the few times that Toki felt viscerally uncomfortable there. Keigo felt the same, she knew. They were… out of place, in their nice clothes, with their cushy lives, helping people who had reached rock bottom: because their help didn't feel like enough. It was homework, and they would leave the next week. Oh, Toki and Keigo didn't complain, but they didn't like it.
She could see it in her friend's eyes, how he burned to do more. Maybe she had the same look. In the homeless shelter especially, she had her heart in her throat and her hands were clenching sporadically, burning with the need to dosomething. She felt so useless. Unlike the work done in the triage center or at the beach or even at the library, it felt like she wasn't helping at all. She carried stuff, gave supplies, but it felt so inadequate, like a drop of water in the ocean.
Several people in the shelter were fleeing domestic abuse, and Toki had wanted to go near them, talk to them, help them especially… But some part of her animal brain had slammed on the brakes and made her avoid them instead. Toki didn't even know why. What she had lived couldn't be calleddomestic abuse. It wasn't evenabuse. Just an unhappy homelife.
It was in those shelters that you saw the impact of discrimination the more clearly. People there had bad Quirks, villainous Quirks, dangerous Quirks. Some of them were also Quirkless. Older people, mostly. Often unemployed, often bitter.
Everyone knew that Quirkless people didn't amount to much in society: but people didn't ask themselveswhy. The answer was right there, staring them in the face. Of course they gave less to the economy in taxes: because employers were allowed to blatantly discriminate against them.
Worth was measured by what you can give back to society. Those with an inconsequential Quirk or no Quirk at all could only give back less, since what they could do, anyone else could too. A Quirkless individual in a career with a high earning potential could even be regarded asstealingthe job from someone who is more able to specialize in that profession.
Toki had known it was bad. But there was something especially disheartening in seeing it up close, because… Most of the times, the evil that those people faced (Quirkless people, but also most of the other Quirked people in the shelter) wasn't something Toki could fight. It was just the public looking elsewhere. Toki could fistfight a ninja, but she couldn't halt the progression of a rot that ate at society like a cancer.
She felt at loss. She rarely dared speaking to the victims beyond what was necessary: she felt awkward, a stranger butting in their business, unable to help. A hero could only meddle because he could help. Someone who butted in just to gawk at strangers' miseries was no hero.
Was it the lesson that Okamoto wanted them to learn? That no matter how hard they worked, they wouldn't be able to help everyone? That even if they put criminals in prison, there would always be people slipping through the cracks? That they wouldn't be enough?
That villains sometimes came from those very same shelters, and that what had pushed them on that path was the fact that nobody had reached out to them?
"You hate it too, don't you?" she said to Keigo one evening, after getting back to the Labs.
He didn't have to ask what she was talking about.
"Yeah," he confessed. "I guess that I never thought about this facet of heroism, you know? How sometimes being a shining light isn't enough. There are people deep underground that you can't reach."
"It's not the fact that they are underground that's the problem," Toki countered hotly. "I knew those people existed before. My problem is that someone put them here, many someone, and it's an evil I can't punch in the face."
Keigo made a pensive noise.
"You know, not every villain shows up on the street firing a homemade laser gun into the air. Most of them have normal faces and normal lives. You wouldn't know them on the street if you passed by them. The worst of them think they're just doing their job. They think that if someone, or even a lot of people, get hurt… it's not really their problem."
"Then what can we do?" Toki said, a little helplessly.
He shrugged. Keigo was the same height as her, but his massive wings shrugged him with too, making him seem bigger. Massive. Looming. Toki had always found it reassuring, the place that those large wings took: but right now they seemed more dejected than anything.
"Help those we can help. Give to others the means to reach those we can't reach. Work until rankings and competition because meaningless, and people focus on being kind to each other instead of tearing each other down."
A world where heroes would have time to relax, Toki thought. That was a definition she could get behind, actually.
"It seems hopeless, sometimes," she confessed.
She hated it. She hated feeling so useless and inadequate. She hated that this shelter had to exist in the first place.
She thought about Meteor and the trail of bodies he had left behind him, about Sayuri and the way she had patted her head before sending her to play mule for the stolen money, about Homura and the way fire had rained on the heroes, about Fujio and the sound of his guns, about Nono and her mocking tone when talking about casualties, about All Might and a building crumbling, about Shirayuki and the way Okamoto's face had twisted in rage and grief, andwhy, why did people have to do such horrible things to each other?!
"I know," said Keigo. His golden eyes were warm and soft, reflecting the setting sun, and Toki thought of molten gold and shiny amber. "But I'll be right beside you, every step of the way."
Toki took his hand. Wordlessly, their fingers intertwined. Her heart was beating too loudly, and she had a lump in her throat.
"Promise?" she whispered.
Keigo squeezed her hand back.
"Promise."
oOoOoOo
Spring passed slowly.
In a few months, they would be fifteen. It meant that it was their last year of homeschooling. The Commission needed them to be adequately socialized. They should be capable of hanging out with their peers all day, of being subjected to teachers who didn't tailor their lessons to them but expected them to adapt instead. Of course, Toki and Keigo would have reduced classwork, to keep up with their training outside of school; but they would be expected to join a normal high school and blend in.
It would be a reputable high-school in Okayama: Koraku High School. The teachers were excellent, the students were all subjected to background check. It wasn't a heroic school, but it catered to children of the elite. The education was top notch. It was on Japan's mainland, almost two hours away from Naruto Labs. Koraku High School was a boarding school, so they would stay here all week, and go back to Naruto Labs for the week-end to train. They were expected to join at least one extra-curricular club. Toki had already decided to take up boxing. She would miss breakdancing, but hitting people in the face could be fun. Keigo was already going to attract way too much attention with his crimson wings, so taking a combat sport was pretty much out. He decided to take up chess or something like that, to be challenged intellectually.
Toki was, objectively, smarter than Keigo, if you looked to their grades and what they read. But funnily, in most strategy games, Keigo won. He was a sneaky bastard like that. Toki usually got lost pondering theoretical ramifications of such or such move instead of moving her damn pawn.
Maybe Toki should join the chess club, too. She would need to strategize more when she would be a hero.
Both of them were more intelligent than average, in any case. Hayasa-sensei once told them that they probably both had more neural connections than most people: it was a very common secondary mutation for people with telekinesis Quirk. Telekinesis was like a fifth limb that wasn't controlled by your muscles but directly by yourmind, after all. Those kinds of Quirks required a secondary adaptation that increased the number of neural connections in the user's brain, so it could handle the added stress. Keigo had it for sure, to use his feathers… But Toki probably had it. After all, it was amutation, not part of the telekinesis Quirk. Which meant that it could be passed down to children separately from the telekinesis Quirk. There had been study about it, showing that children of telekinesists usually had higher cognitive functions.
Toki hadn't inherited Meteor's Psychokinesis: but it was thanks to him that she had additional brain power.
She looked like Sayuri, physically, but when Toki looked at her reflection in the mirror, she couldn't forget that she was Meteor's daughter, too. Sayuri's face, Meteor's eyes. Sayuri's Quirk, with Meteor's power. Sayuri's laugh; Meteor's feral grin, Meteor's thirst for the thrill of battle, Meteor's all-compassing loyalty.
She was her parents' daughter.
Then she squared her shoulders, always, and turned from the mirror, because what did it matter? What looked back at her wasn't a patchwork of her parents' identity, it was her. Her own person. The one who had saved Mihoko Shinsō, so long ago, by diving headfirst in a freezing cold river. The one who had fought Hobo-san, snarked at Okamoto, got beaten but got back up again and again. The one who had become Hayasa-sensei's student, training and learning. The one who walked besides Keigo, the one who would become a hero by his side.
What if sometimes, when she wrote poems about her family, she made herself sad? There was so much more waiting for her.
So you didn't have the love you needed.
Big deal.
Let me tell you
about all the love you will have.
It will be bigger than the anger
and it will grow around the sadness.
It will drown you.
You will become it.
Her mother was dead. Her father, locked up in prison, had long stopped loved her. Toki was more than the memory of them. She was her own person, and she knew her own worth. She had paid dearly for every ounce of it.
Weeks then months passed. Okamoto dragged them to one emergency center to the next, teaching them what was going behind the heroic scene, what happened to victims after the heroes were done with them, how many people had to work together to make this society turn round. With time, with meeting different people and contributing to different things, Toki learned to accept that she couldn't solve every issue. Sometimes her help was inconsequential, but it was helping all the same. It was humbling.
It was comforting, also, in a sense. Well, maybecomfortingwasn't the right word. Horrible things still happened. But people went on. They helped each other. They cared. They always extended their hand to offer help to those who needed it.
And in the end we are only atoms
drifting alone
desperate for something
to cling to.
It felt awful, to acknowledge how terrible the world could be. To realize that people kept hurting each other, again and again, as if they delighted in cruelty. But it was reassuring to see that it wasn't the end. Mankind was also capable of kindness. People were empathic and good at heart. When they saw someone down, their first instinct was to reach with a helpful hand. And they worked together, they organized, they built things to be better at helping each other… Wasn't that mind-blowing?
Toki found it humbling, to be part of something bigger than herself. Like the realization that everything they had, everything they saw has been made by other people for them, and in turn, they got to give back something. She may be Meteor's daughter, but she was more than that. She helped, and the good she could do in the world compensated part of the bad he had done in the past.
But it wasn't just about balancing scales.
It was about feeling small and grateful. It wasn't something that Meteor or Sayuri would have understood. It wasn't something that Toki would have known how to explain to them, either. Those nurses, social workers, firemen, they weren't the only one whose lives interconnected with Toki's. They were the realization, but they weren't the whole thing. Someone had designed the logo of her favorite tea bags and someone had decided which paintings should go in the calendar hanging on her wall. Someone had built the roof above her head and someone had paved the street outside her dance club. Someone made this pair of shoes for her, someone picked the pear she ate with her lunch, and someone designed her favorite sweater. Every book she read, every song she listened to, every movie she watched… Tens, if not hundreds of people had to be there to make it happen. Even if she was alone, she was always surrounded by other human beings. It's a fact that made her heart squeeze in on itself every time she remembered it.
(Was it how astronauts felt, looking at their small blue planet, so beautiful and fragile, suspended in the vast emptiness of space? Nine billions individuals, all interconnected. All one people.)
Time passed.
Toki spend more time with her Discord friends. EndeavorSucks posted pictures of the stray cat that came every morning on his balcony to meow at full volume until EndeavorSucks caved in and gave him food. PinkIsPunkRock was stressing about her exams, and that's how Toki learned that her friend was a general education student at Yūei! PikaPika had had a raise at his job. NotOnFire was thinking about signing up for online dating. ThisIfFluffy had a boyfriend and was slowly drifting away from their Discord, having found others friends and interests. Everything was going well in their lives.
All Might established a small office in Fukuoka, proudly claiming he was going to defend this city until a worthy protector came along. But no matter his proclamations, All Might couldn't focus on a single place. He was all over the country, chasing the more dangerous criminals. Toki knew he was probably tracking All For One. The general public didn't know that, though: they only saw him doing his jobin additionto what should have been Shirayuki's job, and they applauded him for it. It was a little disheartening to read the online comments. The amount of adoration that rained on All Might was borderline creepy, because… Sure, those people loved him, but they loved the image he projected. The man behind the legend was probably running ragged.
There were comment saying excitingly 'wow, five villains in four days, three rescues, one interview, and two inaugurations? The productivity! Life's goals!' but never once people wondered 'geez, when does he sleeps?'. Or if he did the proper paperwork, instead of letting the job half done! Honestly, Toki was a little pissed at All Might for pretending to be strong and perfect when he wasn't… but mostly, she felt uncomfortable. Or maybe something like pity. Or fear. Or all the above.
That pace wasn't sustainable. Working like that, without any support… Was that what was expected of a hero? It would kill her. It would kill Keigo. Fuck, it was probably killing All Might.
No matter how much Toki saw his beefy silhouette and his smiling face on TV, she couldn't forget his true form from canon. Soon, that man would be a skeleton spitting blood. How could she not worry about it? At least Endeavor relied on sidekicks, and was very firm about respecting his limits, instead of burning himself out to please the crowd. Not All Might. The path he followed… The path people were encouraged to idolize and try to walk, too… It wasn't healthy.
All Might claimed that he would always be there, protecting them, that he was ready to give his life to protect people. But he was already doing it. That… self-sacrificing outlook on life… was All Might even aware of it? No wonder that Izuku Midoriya had been so reckless, no wonder he wrecked his body to the point of nearly losing his arms at age fifteen, if he thought that you had to destroy yourself in order to have value as a hero. If you mixed that with how people had told him over and over that he had no value as a human being because he was Quirkless, well, it made for a very unhealthy mentality.
This society had so many issues. Oh, this world was, in many ways, better than the one Toki had known Before. No wars, no pandemics, and poverty was almost inextant. But… Shit. There were still so many fucked up things with people. Starting with how they had turned away from space exploration (yes, Toki was NEVER letting that go), they also had twisted values about human life. What a mess.
Toki had no idea how to even begun to untangle it. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to. Just because some people had been fucked over by the system or fallen through the cracks didn't mean the whole system was useless. You can't fix what isn't broken…
But yeah. Some things could get better. At least, no matter how Okamoto was unpleasant, he had taught a lot to Keigo and Toki about how the world worked. About where to start to make things more efficient. Being an astrophysicist was still high on Toki's list of priorities, but… She didn't regret taking the path of heroism.
She wanted to help. She wanted to feel useful.
She had to start somewhere. Here was as good as a place as any.
So. Weeks and months passed. This spring was heavy in training and classwork. Toki and Keigo barely had anytime to themselves. Not that they minded: as long as the lessons were engaging, they were no slackers. They worked hard. In a few months now they would leave this place to go to high school, and there was some pressure to leave on a good note. They couldn't just be average, they had to be impressive. So they worked, they trained…
And in May, Hayasa-sensei decided to up their Quirk training to find their limits.
That's when things went wrong.
They wentoh so terribly wrong.
The first day, they tested their weight limit. Keigo flew while carrying bags filled with sand, then carrying people, then carrying struggling people, until his arms were trembling and his whole back was aching. His wings didn't exactly tire (they moved using his telekinetic connection to his feathers, not with bones and muscles), but he had a splitting headache and looked like death warmed over. Toki had the same task, trying to find how much she could carry, how far, how long. She jumped from one extremity of Naruto Labs to the other with a block of lead the size of a small car: then two, thenthree. She jumped on the rooftops, in specific locations in the gym or in the park, all the while carrying a mass of metal that weighted roughly five tons. At the end of the day, she was covered in sweat, taking big gulping breaths, blood pounding in her ears, hands trembling. The pain in her chest had started near the end of the exercise but she had refused to take a break, because there was only five minutes left, and… Gods, teleporting while her chest was burning in pain was horrible. The first time, she nearly let out a gasp of pain.
When the exercises ended, she didn't even see straight anymore: she collapsed to her knees, and it took her five whole minutes to get back up.
It had never been so bad. For the very first time, Toki felt a stab of fear.Something was wrong.Her chest wasn't supposed to hurt like that. Hurt meaninjury, and if she had some internal wound… It was probably Quirk-related, and her Quirk played around with vacuum and portals. To have that near her heart… It was bad.
Something bad was happening, and she should tell someone, right?
Toki went to the Labs' doctor the very next day, hesitantly explaining what had happened. But the pain was completely gone by that time. The doctor was concerned, listened to her heartbeat and took her blood pressure, but in the end, he found nothing. Her blood pressure was even a little low. It made her feel dizzy, tired. She was pretty sure she was going to flunk Hayasa-sensei's next test.
Reluctantly, the doctor prescribed her a very low dose of midodrine, a drug used to raise standing blood pressure levels in people with chronic hypotension. It worked by restricting the ability of your blood vessels to expand, which raised blood pressure. The doctor gave her enough for a week, but ordered her to come back in a seven days exactly to see if anything had changed. Toki thanked him and went back to class, feeling a little relieved.
She didn't tell Keigo. She didn't tell Hayasa-sensei either.
She told herself it was to avoid worrying them, but it was more complicated than that. Keigo was soflawlessin heroic training. He was better than her. Toki wasn't jealous, but she did feel a little overshadowed. It made her reluctant to attract attention to her weakness. The gap of abilities between her and Keigo wasn't that large yet, but it was here. He was faster, stronger, more adaptable, more likable. The only edge Toki had over him was that she was more physically resistant. She could take more damage. If she revealed that she was fragile, if she lost that… Well, it would be a harsh blow.
Toki wasgood. She knew that. Hell, she was a warper: obviously she was good. That was, like, prime Mary-Sue material here. But power was nothing without control, technique, experience and intelligence. Toki and Keigo were pretty much evenly matched in all that… But he had more control and more technique. It came with his Quirk. Keigo could telepathically control almost a hundred feathers so they could each carry out separate task, like lifting up heavy objects, putting away rubble to rescue a fragile training dummy, or even spy on someone's conversation by picking up vibrations that Keigo would later convert into words. It was justmind-blowing, and there was no way that warping could compete with that. Toki could move fast from one location to another, but Keigo could simultaneously act in all those different location at once.
So yeah, Toki didn't tell Keigo, and she didn't tell Hayasa-sensei. She didn't want them to worry. She didn't want to pass for weak. She didn't want to be left behind, simply put.
Days passed. And of course, the day before Toki's appointment with the doctor wasQuirk training day. This time, Hayasa-sensei didn't want to test how much they could carry, but how far they could go.
They took a car and crossed the whole island, making regular stops so Toki could go out, get her bearings and memorize the landscape. She felt anxiety like a knot in her belly, but she kept her mouth shut. Shikoku island was two hundred and fifty kilometer long. Toki wasn't sure how much her limit was, now. When she had been eight, it had been seventy kilometers, and it had only made her chest hurt a little. But now… She was taller and stronger, and all the other limitations of her Quirk had been pushed back.
But the chest pains had also been worse and worse. Last week, it had been so bad that Toki had literally been incapacitated for five minutes! It had never been so awful before. And she had only done weight training, which didn't trigger the worst spasms. It was always distance training that made her chest clench in pain in the evening.
So… If she tried tofind her limit, she feared the stabbing agony that would come with it.
Fuck. She wouldn't know until she tried it, right?
So they went to the very end of the island, to the city of Tosashimizu. Then, they had lunch (bantering with Keigo and stealing the shrimps in his bowl made Toki feel a little better), and Haya-sensei explained the rules.
"Right, so we're testing your range and speed today. Hawks, you will try to fly in a straight line from here to Kure's train station, you remember? It's about seventy-four kilometer in a straight line. I want you to go as fast as you can. You'll be wearing that wristwatch to measure your altitude at all time, and here is your earpiece so we keep in contact."
Keigo gave him a lazy military salute after taking both objects, and Toki sniggered. Then Hayasa-sensei turned towards her, and she straightened reflexively.
"Quantum, you will jump several distances to find when you're blocked. First you will jump to Kure's train station. Seventy kilometers was your limit when you were eight, so you should be able to do it no problem. You will come back here, then, and I will have you make successive jumps to further and further points. From here to Suzaki, so eighty kilometers, then from here to Tōsa, so ninety kilometers, and so on. Considering the way your Quirk as improved over time, I expect your limit to be between around two hundred kilometers. Do you have your phone? Good. Each time you jump, I want you to send me a pin of your location on the map's app, so I can run the calculation about the exact distance you can cover."
Toki nodded. There was a sick feeling in her stomach. She tried to blame it on the shrimps. Hayasa-sensei gave the signal, and Keigo took off in a great whoosh of displaced air and fluttering red feathers, ascending straight up in the sky before rocketing towards his goal.
Toki took a big breath, focused on her goal, and jumped.
She got to her first destination, Kure's train station, with no problem. She waited a full second but there was no real pain, only apprehension, and an unpleasant twinge near her heart. Nothing serious yet. She fished her phone out of her pocket and sent a pin to Hayasa-sensei using the map's app.
Then she jumped back to her starting point. Still no pain, but the twinge was slowly becoming more pronounced, like a burn. She refrained from gripping her aching chest. Come on, it was only the beginning! She couldn't start weakening now! Thankfully, Hayasa-sensei hadn't seen her hesitation: he was watching his phone, having apparently received her notification. He nodded approvingly, then said out loud:
"Seventy-three kilometers. Good. Now, to Suzaki. Aim for that place where we stopped, with the convenience store."
"Aye aye," she muttered.
She jumped again. When she landed in front of the convenience store, she cringed. Ah, there was the pain. It wasn't quite like a stitch, but almost. Gods, and it was only eighty kilometers?! Her eight-years old self would be ashamed. Toki took a deep breath, sent her location to Hayasa-sensei, then jumped back. This time, she had to smooth her features to hide the stab of agony that flashed in her entire chest. Her teacher didn't notice, and simply ordered her to jump to the next point.
Toki obeyed. Ninety kilometers, it really became a stitch that hurt at each heartbeat. Ninety kilometers, back to Hayasa-sensei. Fuck, it burned. She gritted her teeth and didn't say anything. She wasn't a weakling. She was going to be hero, for gods' sake! She couldn't… She couldn't give up now.
It was the last day of test. After that, they would go to high school, and things would calm down. She just had to get thought this last test. It wasn't so hard.
Giving up never crossed her mind.
Giving up as a concept didn't come naturally to her. Maybe it was because of her upbringing with the HPSC, the constant training, but she doubted it. It probably came from her old homelife. Of knowing that if she slipped up, she would be consumed by Meteor's crew, she would become one of them. Or maybe it came from even earlier. From her mom. Toki hadn't felt like she had to fight, back then, but… Her whole life had been a sort of tug-war for her mother's love and attention. Sayuri was kind, and loving, and tender. But if Toki stepped out of line, she would be abandoned like garbage. It had never been said, but it was one of these things that Toki had known for sure, like the fact that the sky was blue. It was one thing to know that love shouldn't have to be earned. It was another to feel like she had to prove herself to her mother, day after day.
Toki was good at bargaining. Bargaining with her mom to be loved, with her dad to be left alone, with the Crew to be safe, with school's teachers to be taught interesting things. Bargaining with fate to escape her family, bargaining with her skills to live in the streets, bargaining with the Commission for a future. It was the first time that she had to bargain with her own traitorous stitch, though. Her own body had never let her down before, and it was a frightening thought.
She pushed on.
Ninety-five kilometers. The blood was rushing in her ears. She took short and carefully measured breaths, as if afraid of jostling the invisible knife lodged between her ribs. When she sent her location to Hayasa-sensei, her hands were clumsy and uncoordinated. Her fingers were trembling. She felt almost sick. No nausea, but an overwhelming sense ofsomething is wrong with my body, it's not right, I don't feel well.
Toki's resolve wavered. The pain felt like that one time Hobo-san had snapped her fingers, but spread out to her whole torso.
She mentally scowled herself. Come one, just a little more… She jumped. One hundred kilometers back to Hayasa-sensei. This time, her teacher frowned, looking her over, but he didn't say anything. Toki wiped sweat on her brow, then realized her hands were trembling, and hid her fists in her pockets. Next jump… One hundred kilometers.
This time, she could almost hear something in her muscles pop, as if some invisible security valve had snapped. She fell on her knees, then laboriously sat down. It wasn't even voluntary. Her head was spinning and she couldn't hear anything beside the blood pounding in her veins.Fuck. Without realizing it, she had gripped her sweater so hard the fabric was straining. She felt like there was a hot iron shoved between her ribs, she couldn't breathe. It hurt like a motherfucker.
Okay, no matter how much she wanted to be able to walk by Keigo's side, it was time to admit she had hit her limit. She needed a break. With trembling hands, she sent her location to Hayasa-sensei.
She realized that her fingers were numb. The pain in her chest was dragging out in her arm and in her clenched jaw.
Oh.
Fuck.
That was… That wasn't a stitch, was it.
Her hands were unsteady and shaking, but she still managed to call Hayasa-sensei. He picked up at the first ring. She didn't let him talk. She said flatly, her voice only faintly trembling:
"Sensei, I'm… I'm having a heart attack."
To his credit, Hayasa-sensei didn't hesitate. He didn't ask if she was sure, if she was exaggerating, if she just needed a breather. He exhaled, once, and said in a steady tone:
"Alright. Tell someone, several people if you can. Then you have to cough as strongly as possible, to send up blood from your chest up to your brain. Listen, Quantum. Stay where you are, get help from bystanders, then cough, alright? I'm sending a helicopter to you. I'm coming, Quantum."
Toki blinked. Her head felt fuzzy. Was Hayasa-sensei still speaking? The phone was falling from her numb fingers. Everything hurt. She couldn't think clearly. Were there people here? She tried to look around wildly, but her vision was darkening. Her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
"Help!" she yelled. "HELP! Help me, I'm… I'm having a heart attack!"
There were people rushing toward her. Toki belatedly remembered to cough, and she did it as forcefully as she could, but everything hurt. She couldn't think, everything was too dark, no, too bright and confusing, like the world was spinning, random thoughts didn't connect to one another. Were people speaking to her?
Someone was touching her, helping her turn on the side. When had she fallen down?! She didn't remember. Where was she, where was Keigo?
Toki felt like she was drowning, grasping as strongly as she could at the strands of consciousness but feeling it slipping from her fingers, the current trying to drag her away, drag herunder. Her vision was blurry. She was… There was… It was too fast, too fast, her brain couldn't follow what was happening. She felt her eyes roll in her head, her hands spamming where they gripped her sweater, and gods her chest hurt so much…! Everything was dizzying and confusing.
What was happening?! She couldn't speak, her mouth wasn't working… People were trying to speak to her but she couldn't hear anything beside a growl like a waterfall, and she wasalone, so alone, and she didn't want to die, she didn't want to-
She didn't want to—
Notes:
... ah ah ah. Don't kill me ?
Next chapter in october =)
EDIT 15/08/22
The part where Toki and Keigo speak about birds living in the city comes from a fic i can't find again, where Shouto stalks Dabi because he immediatly guessed that he was Touya. But nobody else know that. And Hawks is baffled and vaguely horrified at having to play buffer betwwen the villain who pretend to be civilian, and the Yūei student who obviously doesn't know who's talking too. I cried of laughter reading this, and i thought that this chapter deserved a little levity xD
Chapter 13: And the world shattered
Summary:
Toki doesn't die. But her Quirk does.
Of course, the HPSC can fix anything. They are reliable like that. But they always ask a price. Now Toki has to decide if she's willing to pay it...
Notes:
Hello ! Here i am again. Still buried into work, but since i've decided to join another mass-larp next summer (and started creating my character, my costume, organizing parties with my fellow adventurers...), i feel way less stressed.
Which is good, because i've got my Big Exam coming at the begining of november.
Also i've a tendency to skip meals when stressed, and i once... nearly passed out at work and proceeded to freak out the entire office, so, not fun x)
ANYWAY ! I left you with quite the cliffhanger last chapter. Let's remedy that !
Enjoy !
(See the end of the chapter formore notes.)
Chapter Text
AND THE WORLD SHATTERED
Consciousness came and went. There were flashes of light, bubbles of noises, then blessed silence. Pain, awful pain, them numbness, as if she was floating away from her own body. Time flew strangely. Sometimes it was so fast her brain felt sluggish and too slow to understand what was going on, and sometimes the seconds were crawling. A breath took a small eternity. A heartbeat dragged on like a seizure. Toki didn't know what was going on, she didn't remember what had happened, she just knew she was. She existed. Not quite awake, not quite asleep. She was drifting in and out of consciousness.
She was alive. Somehow, she remembered… It was important. She was alive.
She couldn't quite hear her heartbeat anymore, though. Thethud-thudof her pulse didn't pound in her head anymore, and some distant part of her mind remembered it was a good thing, but… It was so quiet. She should at least feel it pulsing in her chest, right? But… It didn't hurt. She actually didn't feel anything at all, not even a twinge of pain. Not anything. It felt… empty.
That thought was so disturbing it woke her up.
It was a gradual process. Toki felt like she had been steamrolled and turned into a pancake: her thoughts were mushy, disjoined. Her mouth felt dry, as if stuffed with cotton, and her whole body was floating on a cloud somewhere. Urgh. She was probably drugged to the gills. At least the floaty feeling was nice. Kind of nauseating when you focused on it, but pretty nice. Comfy. There was no worry here, just pretty cloud. And a dry mouth. And uuuh, hadn't she been thinking about something else, just a second before?
Oh yeah. Waking up.
It took a few minutes to open her eyes. She had to squint for the blinding white around her to turn to something resembling real surroundings, and finally make sense of what she was seeing. White ceiling. A bed. Big screen with blinking lights. An IV drip. Right: she was in a hospital. She had… She had been…
She had been training and then… her heart… Oh. Yeah. She remembered now. The agony, the fear… the feeling of powerlessness… She had had a heart attack. She had called for help and then— she couldn't remember. But Hayasa-sensei had gotten there in time, apparently. She was safe and sound.
She lowered her eyes, paused a second, then amended that statement. Alright, mostly sound, because there was a lot of tubes and wiringconnected to her chest. Her hospital scrubs were open in the front, hiding her breasts but revealing her sternum, andyikes. Some tubes and wires were attached to patches stuck to her skin, but some seemed tofusewith her sternum. Toki squeezed her eyes shut. That was such a disturbing visual.
A nurse entered the room and let out a small gasp at seeing her awake. Toki wanted to raise a hand and wave sarcastically, but her limbs were too heavy. She settled for croaking:
"Did I get run over by a bus?"
The joke didn't make the nurse laugh. Too bad.
Instead, there was a flurry of activity as other nurses and a doctor rushed here, taking Toki's vitals, asking her how she felt, what she remembered. It turned out she had been in a coma for nearly a week. That explained why she felt as weak as a newborn kitten. She was in Tokushima's hospital, the best of the island. All the tubes and things in her chest were here to keep her heart beating, so, no touchie.
She wasn't going to die but it had been… a close call.
She had been incredibly lucky to have time to call for help. She had also been incredibly lucky that some of the bystanders attracted by her cry had been a baseball team. The nine guys had relayed to give her CPR forfifteen minutes,keeping her heart beating until the ambulance reached them. By all right, she should be dead. She had given everyone quite a scare. Hayasa-sensei had rushed to get to her so fast he had apparently injured his legs.
She asked if she could see him, and Keigo. The nurse gently told her that they would pass along the message. But the doctor hemmed and hummed and said that maybe they should wait until things settled, whatever that meant. In other circumstances, Toki would have been indignant and boldly reclaimed answers, but— She felt so tired.
She would get angry later.
She went back to sleep. Sleep was nice. You weren't dead but you weren't awake either. Win-win situation. Yeaaaaaah.
The next day was easier. Her mind felt clearer. With the help of the nurses, she managed to sit up in the bed, careful to not jostle any of thethingsstuffed in her chest. She still didn't feel anything. Her heart was beating, she knew that, otherwise she would be dead… But when she tried to take her pulse, it was barely there. It freaked her out a little. Apparently the muscle couldn't contract properly anymore. So instead of pumping blood in her veins with rhythmic contractions, her heart (and the wiring attached to it) made it flow continuously, like a stream. The heart was still beating, but it was more from force of habit than anything, and without the machines' support, it wouldn't be enough to keep her brain oxygenated.
Toki was silently freaked out, and couldn't help but think that it wasn't a viable solution long-term. The doctors didn't tell her much. Apparently, they were waiting for her legal guardian.
Considering Toki's legal guardian was the Commission, she had to wonder who was supposed to show up. Not the President, right? It would send her right into another stroke if he passed that door. Then, who? Maybe Hayasa-sensei… No, he was hurt. They wouldn't sent him. Okamoto? Oh, it better not be, she would punch his teeth in. Not that she had any reason to blame him, but he was so grating, he would find a way to piss her off in ten seconds flat with his off-handed criticism. Maybe Kameko-san…? Ah, no way. She was too young.
She got her answer quickly enough. The door opened, and three familiar people walked in. The Vice-President, the Naruto Labs doctor (Soko-sensei or something like that?), and… Toki jerked upright, just in time to get and harmful of wailing teenager.
"Toki!"
"Keigo?!"
The Vice-President coughed, Toki realized her mistake, and quickly backpedaled: "I mean, Hawks! Are you alright?"
Keigo straightened, indignant: "Am I alright?! Am I?! You're the one who had a heart attack! You could have died!"
Toki laughed nervously, scratching her head: "Ah ah, sorry about this…"
Keigo smacked her upside the head: "You fucking better!"
"Hawks," scowled the doctor. "Language." Then he turned towards Toki, and readjusted his glasses, the gesture strangely nervous. "Quantum… We need to talk."
Toki looked at the Vice-President, then at Keigo and his distressed face (Keigo, who had no place in an official meeting except for moral support or emotional blackmail), and she felt her heart sink.
"Yeah," she said slowly. "I figured."
They sat around her bed, the plastic hospital chairs squeaking on the tile floor. Keigo was fidgeting with his feathers, but when he realized what he was doing, he straightened and blanked out his expression. There was a short silence. The doctor spoke first:
"Your heart attack was very serious. It turns out that your Quirk relies heavily on your heartbeat. That's why your stats are better with adrenaline spikes. In your earliest health assessment, you reported feeling like you were using an invisible muscle in your chest when you activated your Quirk, which led me to believe Warp-Space is activated by your heartbeat. Your mother's medical records confirmed it. As you already guessed… using your Quirk too much… put a strain on your heart."
He paused, and readjusted his glasses again. He looked almost worried. Then Keigo interjected aggressively:
"Hayasa-sensei's Quirk-assessment pushed you too far, because that guy had given you medicine to make your heart beat faster!"
What? Toki turned swiftly toward the doctor, who hunched back in his chair, wincing, before straightening resolutely.
"In essence, yes. Your heart was already tired from the previous week's exercise. And I gave you a vasoconstrictor, not accounting for the fact that you would be passing another taxing test while taking that drug. Separately, those events may not have triggered the heart attack, but together… the worst happened. For this, I am deeply sorry and intend to submit my resignation from Naruto Labs."
He paused. Toki didn't say anything, feeling a little shell-shocked. Keigo was pretending to fidget nonchalantly with a feather, but anyone who knew him could read the tension in his shoulders and the hostility in his gaze. The only reason he wasn't glaring daggers at the doctor was because he had better self-control than that.
"But you probably felt some chest pain before that!" blurted out the doctor. "Your heart presented signs of damage; it must have been aching for a while after Quirk training! I wouldn't have given you midodrine if I had more information about it, and…"
"Enough," calmly said the Vice-President. "Our cardiologist expert informed us that those pains probably registered as a simple stitch. Nothing that a hero in training would have bothered you about. Quantum's pain tolerance is no excuse for your criminal forgetfulness." She paused. "Now that's out of the way, you may leave."
The doctor cowered, trying to make himself as small as possible. The Vice-President looked at him coldly for a few seconds, unmoved. So he got up from his chair, dragging himself to the door and leaving without a word, looking like a kicked puppy.
Genmei-san waited until the door was closed again. Then, she turned to Toki.
"Nevertheless… Those lesions on your heart are a problem. The muscle has been weakened, its resistance stretched to its limit. This attack had damaged it irreparably. Your heart is now only beating because of support equipment."
She waved toward the wire and tubes stuck in Toki's chest, and the girl winced:
"Yeah, I've been told. My heart can't beat strongly enough anymore."
"Yes. The artificial current created in your circulatory system is keeping your blood flowing. But it's a temporary solution. You can't stay hooked to machines forever… So, you have two options."
Toki had a feeling she wasn't going to like it. She gulped, bracing for impact. It wasn't hard to guess where this was going. Nobody had ever heard of a hero with a heart condition.
"The first option is to live with a pacemaker," the Vice-President started. "The implant is small, the surgery minimal. It will keep your heart beating and you will live a normal life…"
"… But I will never be able to be a hero," Toki concluded, her throat closing up.
"No," the Vice-President said mercilessly. "The pacemaker can give you a semblance to a normal heart, but not take the strain of Warp-Space like your real heart is supposed to. You will be able to use your Quirk, probably, but only in a very limited capacity. Being a hero will be out of the question."
There was a heavy silence. Toki sneaked a look at Keigo, but he was grave and silent, looking straight ahead. He had probably been warned in advance. Toki took a long, trembling breath. Dread was heavy in her stomach.
Most people defined themselves by their Quirk. Toki had always thought she was above that. She was so much more than a teleporter, after all! She was a poet, a dreamer, a good student, Keigo's friend, an aspiring astrophysicist. But it was different to think of it in abstract terms, and to be faced with the very real possibility of losing Warp-Space. It was such a huge part of her! Toki basically teleported everywhere. Living with restricted Quirk-use would be like living Quirkless. It wasn't insurmountable but fuck, being powerless for her whole life, after having tasted what it meant to be so strong?! It would be so awful.
Yes, it was better than to be dead. But it would still mean losing something terribly important to her, it would still feel like missing a limb. Toki gritted her teeth. She had been too reckless. And now she was paying the price.
"What's the other option?" she finally rasped.
The Vice-President explained carefully:
"There is a procedure to clone damaged organs, to create stronger replacements. It's mostly used with cancer patients. It can be tweaked a little to create a heart able to handle Warp-Space. You will even be able to increase your precision and your weight limit. You probably have hit your limit in term of range, since it's what was the most difficult thing to handle for your heart… But one hundred kilometers is nothing to scoff at."
"Sound good… What's the downside?"
Genmei-san looked at her several seconds in silence. She looked like she was weighting her words. Then leaned forwards, resting her chin on her crossed hands.
"The procedure can only happen in Mustafu Central Hospital. You will have to live in Musutafu until it's completed. No visits to Naruto Labs will be permitted, although we will keep in touch."
It still meant leaving Keigo…! For months, maybeyears…!
"The procedure will be long," Genmei-san continued. "It will take a little over a year for surgeons and specialists to map your heart, and take enough samples to grow a replacement one. It will be a long time, interspaced with surgeries, and where you will have to live with a pacemaker unable to handle your Quirk. Then, after the replacement heart is grown, you will go undergo a heart transplant. The recovery period will, once again, take about a year. You'll have to follow a heavy medical treatment, and at least two additional corrective surgeries. During that time, you won't be allowed to use your Quirk either. It's only after being given the all-clear from the doctors that you will be able to train again… And even then, you will have to take it slowly. No heroic training for months, only soft Quirk-training. You will also be heavily monitored. All in one, you will be functionally Quirkless for nearly three years. Since you are nearly fifteen… You won't have a lot of time to train before taking the Hero License Exam at eighteen."
She paused, then, just as Toki was opening her mouth to speak (three years? In Mustafu?! Away from her only friend?! Basically Quirkless?!), she added in a lower voice:
"This procedure is also extremely expensive."
Toki shut her mouth, her eyes widening. If she had a normal heartbeat, it would have skipped a beat. Oh. That wasn't good, at all.
"The sponsorship program aims to guide talented children away from villainy and give them hero licenses so they can serve the public," the Vice-President told her, slowly. "The Commission invest in you, and in return you invest in making society better. As Mera-san told you… Your commitment ceases once you reach eighteen and get your hero license. If you decide to be only a part-time hero, or a freelancer, or to retire in a few years later to become something else, it's up to you. Passing the license, swearing to defend the public, it's enough for us to get our money's worth. But if the Commission is paying for a human heart, then… Our investment become way bigger. We won't be giving you a necessary medical procedure, but something that is essentially an organic support item."
Toki felt like her face was carved from stone. If her heart hadn't been hooked to so many tubes and wires, it would have been beating wildly, like a caged animal. She made eye contact with Keigo, and even without speaking a single word, she knew he remembered their conversation aboutthatas well as she did.
They don't give money for free! They're already training us so we become hero, if we continue leeching off them afterward, then we give them a say in what kind of hero we're going to be, and what if it's something we don't like?
"How much money this operation will cost?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.
The Vice-President didn't flinch:
"About two hundred million yens for the heart. The whole medical procedure, with the follow-up and corrective surgeries, will be about three hundred millions yens."
Toki's eyes nearly budged out. That wasa lot. The money she had left from her mother's stash didn't cover a quarter of that sum, and Sayuri had had alotof money.
"What do you want?" she asked warily.
The Vice-President raised an eyebrow:
"We don't know. That's the problem. How can we know what kind of threat will be there in three years? What need will we have of your skills?"
Toki stayed quiet a few seconds, feeling a bit stunned. She hadn't anticipated that. The Vice-President nodded, as if her silent was an admission of some sort.
"If you choose the transplant, the Commission will pay for it. We will also pay for housing and tuition…" The Vice-President's eyes narrowed, and she stressed her following words: "But you will own us aconsiderable debt, equivaling to the sum we will have spent on your care. Maybe you will repay us by reversing an important part of your salary to the Commission. Or maybe by granting the Commission more control over your missions. It doesn't matter. But betting on you is a gamble, Quantum, and you understand we have to protect our interests."
You are an investment, Shirayuki had said, once, a lifetime ago.Heroes all are. All we can hope, is being worth to be gambled on.
Toki breathed in, breathed out. She tried to think how she could handle that much money. Maybe if she worked her ass off… If she turned commercials and versed all her profits to the Commission… If she didn't go to college… If she lived on the streets and never had to pay rent or grocery money…
No, even with all that, she wouldn't be able to win hundreds of millions of yens with no string attached. Maybe a quarter or a third of this sum, nothing more. She would have to take the missions they gave her, and she would have to do so foryears.
For a brief second, she tried considering it objectively her other option. She could walk away and go back to her oldest dream, being an astrophysicist. It would be hard, but she could do it. With a Quirk that destroyed the user's heart, AFO wouldn't bother her… probably. She would be safe.
But the truth was… It wasn't equivalent. Giving up heroism would meangiving up Keigo. He would keep following his path, and they would become strangers, and she wouldlose him. And the thought was enough to make Toki's throat close up, to make her eyes burn with tears, to make her hands clammy and feel panic rising in her chest.
She couldn't give him up. She wasn't ready. Keigo was… He was her friend. Herfamily. There was only one of him in the whole universe. A boy, with one life as short and blinding as a shooting star. Toki had already given up her family once, and it had broken her heart to do it, but it had been her choice. Now… Now, it wasn't even one.
No, there wasn't any choice at al. Was there?
Debt or not, she knew her decision had already been made. She had known since the moment they had told her she had two options, and one of them was to walk away. It would mean forfeiting their protection, their wealth, the guaranteed quality of her education. It would mean forfeiting any future as a hero, any meaningful place by Keigo's side. It would mean giving up her Quirk, her power, her strength, what she had spent so many years cultivating with care and pride.
She couldn't do that. Maybe it was cowardly. But she couldn't give it up. Her future, Keigo, her Quirk, she loved them. She couldn't imagine leaving.
"I will take it," she whispered. "I will take the heart transplant."
Something like satisfaction passed on the Vice-President's face.
"Very well, Quantum. You won't regret it."
From the corner of her eye, Toki could see Keigo collapse in relief, his wings getting everywhere. Her jaw twitched in irritation, or amusement, she wasn't sure: and she turned to slap him on his fluffy head, breaking the tension.
"What, you thought I was going to give up?!"
"Ow! No, I had total faith in you! I was just a tiny bit concerned, yanno!"
"Concerned about me giving up?!"
"Well, you are kind of an airhead with no impulse control, so I couldn't be sure…"
"I'm not!"
"Oh, you sooooooo are."
"I'm not! Come here so I can hit you!"
Keigo dodged her half-hearted punch, laughing, and for a second everything was normal again. Then the Vice-President cleared her throat, looking faintly amused. She turned to Toki again:
"Hawks has offered to pay back your heart transplant after starting his own agency, on the condition you became his partner. Of course, you had to accept it first…"
"What?" Toki yelped. "Hawks, you can't…!"
"I told you before," her friend shrugged. "I don't mind. Besides, you would do the same for me, if our positions were reversed."
At that, Toki had nothing to say. He was right. If it had been Keigo's health… Keigo's freedom, or something that he valued as much as Toki valued hers… Then she would have made the same deal with no hesitation.
"You don't have to accept," Genmei-san pointed out.
"That's good, because I don't," Toki said stubbornly. "My injuries, my responsibility."
"When we become partners, all our debts will be merged anyway!" chirped Keigo. "It will be fifty-fifty!"
Toki squinted: "Isn't that for marriage?"
He leaned forward with a shit-eating grin: "Oh, Quantum, are youproposingto me?"
Toki was so taken aback she only managed to sputter helplessly, which seemed to delight Keigo to no end. The Vice-President snorted wryly, before saying more seriously:
"You can share the debt, if you want. What matter is that the Commission doesn't invest in you in vain. But, from a personal standpoint… I believe that this investment is worth it. Yes, it's beyond our duty of care as your guardians, but you deserve it."
Genmei-san was not, by any consideration, someone that Toki could have considered as soft. She had a round face but hard, cold eyes the color of iron, and she never smiled. But at that moment, for the first time, her face softened a little.
"I'm very much aware that you two are a package deal. You are a good team, and it would be a waste to separate you. Hayasa and Okamoto both advised against it. I will make sure you can keep in touch and that you still go to the same summer camps in August, if you wish. Become heroes, and I will support both of you in your endeavors."
She stared at the both of them, and suddenly her face was deadly serious. There was a cold glint in her eyes that reminded Toki of steel and fire.
"I'm betting on you."
And Toki knew the Commission's big names weren't gamblers. If Genmei-san was betting on them, it wasn't on a whim. It was just like Genryusai, the Commission's President, had once betted on All Might.
oOoOoOo
Leaving Naruto Labs felt a little surreal. This place had been her home for years. It was actually the place where she had stayed the longest since… Well, since Hinohara, her birth village, where she didn't have many memories because she had been so young. So yeah, it felt surreal… And a little heart-wrenching, to be honest.
Not that Toki had much of a heart actually,ah. Two weeks had passed since her awakening. She had gone under surgery and she now had a small scar under her clavicle, where the surgeon had implanted the pacemaker. Her heart was now beating normally, with a reassuringthud-thud, as if nothing had happened. The pacemaker was so small she couldn't even feel the bump of the metal battery in her chest. She tried not to think about it much. But hey, she couldn't exactly help it.
Unbiddenly, she thought about her parents. What would they think of it? What would they think of her, now, so weak and helpless? Would they laugh and say she deserved it? Toki felt like she did.
Her leave was scheduled for the end of the month. They had to find her a place to stay, buy shit like a computer for her online classes, scramble to find a competent caretaker to keep an eye on her, cancel her inscription to her baseball club and her breakdancing club (she was banned from all sports for at least four months, to let her heart rest). In the meantime, Toki wandered aimlessly in the Labs. She wasn't allowed to train… or to go to the workshop… or to climb on the roof… or anything, really. And she had towalknow, like aplebeian, because she couldn't teleport anywhere. Gods, had the park always been so big?
Some of the researchers and staff members came to say goodbye, a little awkwardly. It was a nice attention, and Toki felt touched. Those people had no obligation towards her. As a kid, Toki had sometimes been a brat. She had crashed into their stuff more than once with her teleportation. But hey, you can't live six years with someone and not start caring a little about what happened to them, right?
She spoke with Hayasa-sensei. He was in a wheelchair, which came as such a shock Toki's knees almost buckled under her. Her brain came to a screeching halt. She had known he was injured but this was…!
"It's temporary," Hayasa-sensei reassured her. "I have artificial ligaments and they couldn't handle the strain. I'm getting replacements soon."
It would have been difficult to quantify the relief that flooded through Toki's body other than to say it was significantly more than a scooch.
"Artificial ligaments?" she parroted.
"Yes. I suffered a career-ending injury fifteen years ago. Just like you, my body couldn't handle how fast I could go. Artificial ligaments are good enough for training… but they need long cool-down period and are absolutely unsuited to the kind of speed needed for a full-time hero."
Toki frowned, and her hand mechanically went to the tiny scar above her heart, where they had put the pacemaker.
"Did the Commission pay for your prothesis? Is that why you ended up teaching here?"
Hayasa-sensei sent her a piercing glance, but shook his head:
"No. My insurance covered it. After my accident, I worked as a private trainer affiliated with my brother-in-law's agency in Tokyo until the Commission offered me a job to train Hawks… and you, afterward."
Uh. Maybe Toki should look into getting insurance later on. That sounded safer than relying on the HPSC's generosity.
"You're from Tokyo, sensei? You never said!"
Hayasa-sensei huffed quietly, amused: "I don't. I moved there to join with my brother-in-law's agency after I graduated. I wasn't close with him, though, and my relationship with my sister's family became strained after my injury. It was no hardship to move."
"What's the agency's name?" Toki couldn't help but ask, suddenly curious.
"You may have heard of them, they're quite successful… It's the Idaten Agency. My sister married Tetsuya Iida."
Toki nearly chocked.Idaten Agencythat was the Engine Hero agency, she remembered that from her lessons with Okamoto. But more importantly, it was the Iida agency! Iida, from canon!
Was Hayasa-sensei married to someone in future-Ingenium's family? Was he Tenya Iida's uncle?! She scrutinized him with attention, and yes, Hayasa-senseididhave a square jaw like Iida, didn't he? And he wore glasses, so he probably had the same bad vision… The hair, skin tone and eyebrows were different, but Hayasa-sensei could very well be a canon-character's uncle! Holy shit!
Why did Toki keep meeting relatives of canon-characters,without ever recognizing them? She had lived with Hayasa-sensei for six years now! And sheknewhis Quirk was to run fast, which was basically Ingenium's specialty! Was she that inobservant? Crap, she had probably met canon-characters without recognizing them, if that was the case…
"I know about it," she said in a slightly strangled voice. "Hey, out of curiosity, if I ever go back to Tokyo and want to say hello… Can you tell me about them?"
Hayasa-sensei squinted at her, but didn't comment her strange reaction.
"There isn't much to say. My sister is named Tomomi. Her husband Tetsuya Iida is Fugeo, the Engine Hero. They have a son, Tensei who must be in high school… No, he probably graduated by now. I don't really keep in touch." He paused. "But maybe I will go and try to reconnect, once my contract with the HPSC come to its term in a few years."
Toki nodded, suddenly serious. She didn't have the guts to say it to her teacher's face, but he should reconnect with his family, because a family willing to love and support you (which they had apparently done in the past, since he had joined their agency) was something precious. Not everyone had garbage relatives like Toki or Keigo.
There was a short silence, then Hayasa-sensei sighed, a wishful smile on his face.
"It may be unprofessional as your teacher to say this, Quantum, but I am going to miss you. It won't be the same without the Terrible Twins."
Toki was already tearing up at his confession and was ready to tell him she was going to miss him to, but the second sentence made her let out a startled laugh:
"Thewhatnow?"
"Ah, damn. Oh, well, you're leaving, so there's no use keeping it a secret anymore. It's how the staff call you and Hawks. Since you're always joined at the hip…"
"This is awesome, why didn't I know that before?!" Toki grinned, bouncing on the balls of her feet in excitement.
Hayasa-sensei shrugged, but there was a small smile on his lips: "It annoys Okamoto-san."
"I'm pretty surebreathingannoys Okamoto. He's prissy like that."
"Language, Quantum," her teacher reprimanded her. But his eyes were laughing.
Toki gave him a cheeky grin:
"You know, I'm going to be undercover as a civilian for the next three years. I'm going to have to swear like a normal teenager. It's a mission requirement!"
"Keep telling yourself that, Quantum."
So. Toki was saying goodbye to everyone. Even Okamoto found a moment to stiffly said to her that he hoped she wouldn't forget his lessons. Toki generously tried not to be a dick to him, and nodded politely. Honestly, she didn't hate the guy, but he was so annoying. Did he had to be condescendingall the time?
Okamoto, Hayasa-sensei, the staff, the researchers in the workshop… Keigo, especially Keigo… Toki was saying farewell to everyone. It wasn't easy, but it could have been worse. She was leaving forever, but she had always been destined to do that anyway. She was only leaving a little over three years in advance. The real heartbreak here (ah!) was that she was leaving alone, while Keigo was staying.
But her options had been either to say goodbye for three years, with regular contact and whatever, or to say goodbyeforever. So, really, it wasn't that bad. Still, it was going to be their longer separation yet, and they both were worried, sad, grieving, anxious, frustrated. Keigo was hovering constantly, never leaving her side for long (unless he was pulled aside by Hayasa-sensei for Quirk-training, or Okamoto for their lessons, neither of them having stopped for him). Toki was fretting, constantly checking that Keigo remembered the name of her Discord server, or making elaborate plans to reach each other's if for one reason or another the HPSC cut contact.
The Discord server… She had warned them, too. Well, as much as she could, which wasn't much.
ShootForTheStars:Yo
PinkIsPunkRock:SHE LIVEEEEEES
NotOnFire:Stars! been a while!
ShootForTheStars:yeah sorry I was in a coma
PikaPika:… you're joking
PinkIsPunkRock:i'm sorry you were WHAT
EndeavorSucks:uh what
ChickenNuggets:she was
PikaPika:!
ThisIsFluffy:a ghost!
EndeavorSucks: ! you're the endeavor fanboy!
ChickenNuggets:sup
ChickenNuggets:fanboy and proud
NotOnFire:Oh you'll get along GREAT ah ah
ChickNuggets:I sense sarcasm
PikaPika:no Chicken, you don't get it… EndeavorSucks' name isn't what he thinks but what he want to happen to him (͡ ͜ʖ ͡)
ChickenNuggets:oooooh
EndeavorSucks:fuck all of you
NotOnFire:you don't mean that buddy
EndeavorSucks:yeah you're right, I'm saving myself for a beefcake with flaming tiddies
ChickenNuggets:lol lol lol
ThisIsFluff:is nobody going to talk about Stars being in a godamnn COMA?!
ChickenNuggets:she's typing her answer, wait for a wall of text
ShootForTheStars: Sorry. Long story short: I have a heart condition, which nobody knew about (not even me) until I had a freaking heart attack in the middle of training. My heart stopped and it's basically a miracle there were enough people to give me CPR for nearly an hour (first in the park where I dropped, then in the ambulance, then at the hospital) because it didn't want to start back! Anyway I have a pacemaker now. But it's not a long-term solution so my caretakers are offering me a brand new artificial heart. I have multiple surgeries planned so I'm moving to Musutafu to live near the hospital. PinkIsPunkRockmaybe we will see each other! Also be nice with ChickenNuggets, i brought him back here because I'm going to miss him a lot and we're going to keep in touch via discord
PikaPika: …
EndeavorSucks:…
NotOnFire:… shit
ThisIsFluffy:damn, Stars. i don't know what to say
PinkIsPunkRock:it would be great to meet you, Stars! Although the circumstances suck
ThisIsFluffy:are you alright?
ShootForTheStars:A bit shaken up right now.
ShootForTheStars:but I will be.
Keigo quickly befriended the rest of the group chat, and soon he was making a habit to log in every evening to read their messages, tease EndeavorSucks, add fuel to the current debates, or just lighten the atmosphere with jokes. It was reassuring. At least the server couldn't be monitored by the HPSC like their phone calls or their email. No matter what happened, nobody could take that away from them.
Fuck. Toki wanted to cry. She did cry a few times, in secret, in the shower. She didn't want to leave. She was going to miss Keigo so much.
They had never been apart for more than a few months, and now… It was going to be sohard. Toki had known loneliness before, but that was different: she hadn't known anything else. But now, she had a friend, family, and she was going to leave him behind.
She would wake up without the prospect of taking her breakfast with Keigo and laugh over their toasts about the pranks they planned to pull. She wouldn't have him at her side anymore, to share a knowing glance in class, pass notes, snigger at their private jokes. There would be no one to train with her, challenge her to play super-accelerated tag, or climb rooftops. Actually, she wouldn't be able to doany of these things anymore, but sharing them had been half the pleasure. She wouldn't be able to whisper with him until midnight about changing the world, about hero costumes, about what was a black hole, and how to fight Quirk discrimination. Nobody would come to her in the middle of the night to snuggle after a nightmare. Nobody would go to her to share crazy conspiracy theories, or tell embarrassing secrets, or bare their soul in a hushed voice.
Keigo had been half her world for years, and in a few days he would begone. Well, hundred kilometers away, at least, which amounted to the same things when you couldn't teleport. Toki could feel her poor little heart wrinkle like a piece of paper just thinking about it.
So if in those last few days, Toki and Keigo clung to each other even more so than before, nobody said anything. If they spent all their night in each other's room, nobody batted an eyelash. If Toki shred a few tears against Keigo's shoulder when they slept snuggled up in his bed, he didn't mention it; and if Keigo's eyes were a little red-rimmed, she didn't mention it either.
They were allowed their farewell. They were allowed their heartbreak. Toki was leaving. They knew it wouldn't be easy. After all, weren't they nicknamed the Terrible Twins? Ah, Keigo had had a good laugh when Toki had told him that.
Gods, she was going to miss him like a limb.
It was… the end of an era.
It would have been simpler if that heart attack hadn't happened. It would have been safer, also, if she had taken the other option, the pacemaker one, and given up on being a hero entirely. But hell, she had trained six years to become a hero, she wasn't going to give up now. Yes, it would be long… It would be painful… But you sometimes had to take a leap of faith to be able to fly. The bird metaphors would be better suited to Keigo, maybe, but Toki was starting to think she wasn't so reasonable as she liked to think herself to be. It wasn't Keigo who had hidden a heart defect for years because he was a stubborn ass, after all. When it came to ambition and risk-taking, Toki was as bad as him. They were both Icarus, flying on wings made of wax.
Maybe the Icarus comparison was more apt she had had thought, Toki mused. After all… The original myth had two parts. Daedalus had said to his son, 'don't fly too high, or the sun will melt the wax, but don't fly too low, or the water and the waves will surely weigh down the wings, and you will die.' It wasn't well known. Most people only learned about the first part. They repeated the tale with only half the lesson, until the essence of it became lost. It was a shame that all people did was use this as a cautionary tale against the dangers of hubris, and never the dangers of apathy. As if to constantly sneer at themhow dare you.
Well, Toki dared.
Toki dared. She wasn't afraid of impossible goals: challenges delighted her. She would reach the stars, even if nobody had turned their eyes to the sky in more than a century. She would be a hero, even if it took her years of pain and having her chest cut open, her heart ripped out and new one stuck in its place.
Space and heroism were both fantastical dreams. Reaching one was already ambitious, but two? It was verging on the ridiculous. Sometimes Toki wanted to laugh incredulously at how she had willingly barred herself from so many easier paths. But you can't help your dreams, after all.
What was the point of being alive, if you didn't chase them?
Because Toki had nearly died, and it made her heartrate skyrocket better than any pacemaker in the world.She could have died.Wasn't that wild? It was the same 'holy shit, that happened?!' feeling she had had after rescuing Mihoko Shinsō from her car, after watching the building crumble during her father's and All Might's battle. Shock, incredulity, terror, all mixed in one. She could have ceased to exist, just like that, a little muscle stopping and her brain shutting down, her soul gone, her mind reduced to nothing! Seriously, the fact that she could be killed… The fact that human beings in general could be killed through physical means was so ridiculous.
A person,any personwas such an infinitely complicated web of thoughts and feelings and beliefs, and such an unbelievably huge amount of knowledge, and the idea that you coulddestroythat when a muscle weighting half a pound said 'nah man, that's enough for me', it was absolutely surreal. The idea that you could remove knowledge and emotion and memory from the world with a physical object was literally unbelievable. People were huge and complex and the fact that you could kill the person, kill their mind, kill theirsoul, by killing the body was wild. Just… Imagine throwing a brick at the Tokyo Tower and it just fucking crumbled?!
(Yes, Toki was having a tiny-weeny existential crisis. She had a near-death experience. She was allowed. Or maybe it wasn't an existential crisis, but just an existential realization. Was there a term to tell how enormous and overwhelming it was to realized that you were only one person, mortal and fragile, and that your life could disappear as easily as a snuffed-out candle? Probably. Toki was probably too young at fourteen to call it amid-life crisis, but hey, who knew, maybe she would die at twenty-eight.)
Anyway. The day of her departure, there wasn't a crowd to see her off. There was no need to make a big show of it. After all, last words were for fools who hadn't said enough, to quote a famous socialist. Okamoto hadn't sought her out, all the researchers had said goodbye, Hayasa-sensei had given her an awkward hair-ruffle. Even Kameko-san had called to fret about her health, then tearfully tell her that she was going to swing by Musutafu one day, so Toki better hang on, they would see each other soon!
So on that sunny Tuesday morning, as she loaded her bags in the car's trunk and the driver was politely pretending to chat with the security guard to let her have some privacy, there was only Keigo to see her off.
They had already told each other's everything there was to say. Toki breathed in, then out. Why did she feel so nervous? And Keigo didn't look much better. He was standing right next to her, hands nervously shoved in his pockets, wings held tight against his back.
"You'll call, right?" he fretted.
"Of course. And you will write and text, right?"
"Yeah, obviously."
There was a short silent. Toki swallowed. Her throat felt tight, suddenly, and her eyes were burning. She lowered her gaze.
"I'm going to," she whispered weakly, "miss you so damn much."
Keigo sniffed. Toki's eyes snapped back up, alarmed, and she let out a panicked squeak when she saw his eyes were filling with tears, his lips trembling. She waved her arms frantically:
"Don't cry! Or I'm going to cry to, and then we'll never stop!"
Keigo let out a wet little laugh, then stumbled a step forward, grabbing her by the shoulders and letting his head fell forward. Their foreheads knocked together lightly, and Toki froze. They didn't move. Their faces were so close… Toki could count Keigo's eyelashes, see the tremble in his smile, the way his golden eyes were half-open and staring at her as if hoping to carve her face in his memories. Her heart squeezed in her chest.
I love you, she thought belatedly, but the words stayed frozen on her lips.
"It's not forever," he whispered. "You will come back."
It was too raw and honest. Toki felt like she was seeing something too intimate, almost. Blood rushed to her head, and she let out a nervous laugh that ended up in a strangled sound almost reminiscing of a sob, emotion winning over embarrassment.Don't cry, she scowled herself.Don't you fucking dare to cry, you choose this, you have to see it through.
Toki closed her eyes, pressing his forehead against his. She moved her right hand just enough to grip his wrist and squeeze it a little.
She loved Keigo. He was her best friend, her family, maybe something more. It wasn't something she would dare to utter out loud, and Keigo neither. It felt too obvious and too personal at the same time. But she knew… And it was in that kind of moment, however how rare, that they knew. They didn't need words to see they felt the same.
"Yeah," she breathed, a little chocked up. "I will come back, I promise."
oOoOoOo
That evening, the very first she would spend in the studio the Commission had given her in an apartment building they owned… the first thing Toki would do would be to have a good cry.
And then, afterward, would open her poetry notebook and start writing.
When she'd been packing her bags, she had put her old notebook, the full one, in Keigo's room. Maybe he would read it, maybe he wouldn't. It was easier to leave the choice to him once she would be gone. But the new notebook, with its crispy white pages and barely a few poems already written, she would open it and start filling page after page, because her heart felt ready to burst with so many feelings she couldn't quite put into words.
Then she took her Quirk analysis book, the old one where she had written her notes on her teleportation since she had been old enough to think about it. It had laid untouched for five years now. After joining the sponsorship program, Toki had continued updating it for a few months. Maybe she didn't trust Hayasa-sensei to share his observations with her, or maybe it was just habit, she didn't remember. But she had written less and less, and at nine years old, she had shelved the notebook one evening and just… forgot to open it later. Toki snorted, turning the pages covered with her childish scrawl. There was no order in her observations. It was astonishedly well done for a child, but as a teenager Toki has higher standards. Also, five years without notes meant that this was ridiculously out of date. Oh, well… She had no training to fill her days anymore. She should buy a new notebook and copy her old note, updated of course.
It was now June. Toki still had online classes to finish the middle-school curriculum. She had finished the cursus in math, and was halfway to finish it thehigh-school onein physics, too, but she was still average in literature, geography, History and all that stuff. Now that she didn't have training, she Toki was confident she could get ahead in her studies. Unless all the medical crap tired her out and slowed her down… Well. She would cross that bridge when she would get to it.
In the following days, Toki slowly settled in. It… It wasn't bad. Just weird.
Her new accommodations were good, in any case. She lived alone but since it was an HPSC-owned building, almost all of her neighborhood worked for the Commission and had been warned by their respective superiors to keep an eye on Toki. Considering how polite and sympathetic they had been, Toki suspected the Vice-President of having spun a truly tragic tale. Maybe they all thought she was the orphaned niece of a very important guy, or that she was part of a scandal? Meh. No matter. They were nice and they were keeping an eye out to make sure she was safe, and that was all that mattered.
As an added layer of security, she had a new name. The Commission hadn't wanted her to go back under the Aratani or the Taiyōme surname, for which Toki was secretly grateful. But maybe the Vice-President was only looking for her own interests: it would be hard to keep her identity under wraps if any of her well-meaning neighbors remembered those names and started digging. Taiyōme wasn't exactly a common name, after all.
Anyway, it was in the past, now. Her new ID now said her name wasToki Hoshizora. Just reading it made her grin. With the HPSC, each time she had to go to a summer camp or any place that required a fake name printed on some sort of ID, the guy in charge of making those papers had given her a stars or sky-themed name, just as Keigo had fire-themed or red-themed names. It was good to know that this guy was still at it. A name meaning "starry sky"…
That was a nice parting gift from Naruto Labs. Thank you, fake ID guy, whoever you were.
The only person to know the truth and all its details was Mera. Yes,theYokumiru Mera that had recruited her six years ago! It had been a shock to see him again after all these years. Turned out he lived on the floor below her apartment. He would check on her basically every day, either in person or with a phone call. He would also be in charge of accompanying her to the hospital for the surgeries. But he let her have her space, as long as she was reasonable. She was allowed to go out (if she kept her GPS wristwatch on her) and to explore if she wanted.
The apartment building was well-situated. It was barely twenty minutes away from the hospital and there was a direct subway line. Her neighborhood was calm but still lively, with plenty of shops and café. Lot of heroes patrolled here. Not that there were villains to catch: this place was pretty safe. It wasn't exactly right next door to Yūei, but it was barely thirty minutes away, so it was on the teachers' turf. If Toki decided to go to Yūei (and why the hell not? She couldn't take the hero course, sure, but it was the best high school out there. The name only was enough to open a lot of doors. If she wanted to study astrophysics, it would help a lot!), she was already in the right place.
But well, she hadn't gone to see it with her own two eyes. Actually, Toki hadn't explored much yet. She had to admit, it was scary to go out there on her own, being basically Quirkless. Without Warp-Space, she felt naked. And she didn't have Keigo to reassure her. She hadn't realized how emboldened she had been by the knowledge she had him at her back until he wasn't there anymore.
She had lived on her own before, but well, it had been a while. So she looked online how to clean her apartment, what kind of schedule to keep, how to organize the tiny place. It wasn't much: she had a living room with a small kitchenette, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a small balcony. It was kind of spartan, too. Toki hadn't brought any decorative trinkets with her besides an Endeavor poster given by Keigo as a joke a few years back, and it was just plain sad. This place looked empty and unlived in! Toki was going to live here for three years, she kind of wanted to make it comfier. But well, she was broke. She had an allowance each month… but it was tiny. She could ask Mera-san for more, but she didn't dare yet.
It was a good thing that the Commission took care of her rent, and of her meals. Since apparently they didn't trust her to not survive on junk-food, they delivered most of her groceries, and even gave her prepared meals thrice a week.
The first month or so, Toki didn't dare venture too far. She stayed in her apartment most of the time. She followed her online classes. She caught up some reading. She discovered new mangas and animes. She constantly kept open a tab on her laptop with the Discord server open.
She also had a fit of paranoia and swept the place for mics and hidden cameras, because excuse me, nice or not the HPSC wasstill a shadowy organizationand spying into people's home wasexactlythe kind of shit that a shadowy organization would pull. But to her chagrin, she came up empty-handed. She found a camera above her doorstep, outside, but nothing else. Maybe the HPSC had better things to spend their money on than spying on a Quirkless teenager, after all.
She had her first appointment at the Musutafu Central Hospital at the end of June. It was where she had last seen her mom, and she dreaded the memories this place would drag up. But to her great surprise, it was fine. The hospital had been more intimidating in her memories. Now it was just a building. Her exam wasn't even on the same floor as the maternity ward. She went with Mera-san and he kept the conversation light, looking entirely unconcerned and at ease, and it helped reassure her.
Anyway, the whole exam barely lasted an hour. The doctors poked and prodded at her, scanned her chest a lot, took several blood samples, told her to exercise regularly but without pushing her body too much, then let her go. All in one, not so bad. She was glad to be back home, though.
Toki didn't leave her computer much since she had no more training or clubs to go to, and she was concerned about becoming a shut-in… But she quickly realized she didn't have to worry about that. She did go out at least once a day, sometimes for several hours. Come on, after six years of daily training, she felt like she was suffocating if she tried to stay cooped up all day! But well, restless or not, she still hadn't gathered all her courage, and so she never went very far. She circled her building's block, then the next, but that was pretty much it. She didn't really have a destination, anyway. She just walked around, trying to befriend stray cats and to take picture of patrolling heroes.
Then it was summer and she was too bored to keep sticking to her safe little routine. She didn't dare to meet with PinkIsPunkRock yet, but… She started venture further and further. She was waiting for the moment where Mera (or another 'handler') showed up to tell her to stop, but it never happened.
When it came up almost two weeks later, during Mera-san's daily visit, the man only shrugged:
"You have hero training, don't you? I saw your records. Pacemaker or not, you are blue belt level in Krav Maga and you have experience with parkour, street fighting, and high-stakes strategizing. You're aware of your limits, you have good judgement, and you're the kind of person to be careful rather than overconfident when confronted with an unfamiliar environment. So I trust you not to take unnecessary risks… And if someone try to attack you, well. Too bad for them."
"Jeez, shouldn't you tell me not to be violent?" Toki snorted.
"It's a violent world," Mera-san replied, deadpan. "As long as you don't use your Quirk, you're good."
"I'll keep it in mind. Hey, can I have a taser, just in case?"
"No."
"A knife, then. A small one!"
"Seriously? What if you stab someone?"
Toki gasped, looking indignant: "Hey, it's a very versatile tool! And if I'm kidnapped in the streets, I can't escape bonds by teleporting anymore, so I would need to find a way to cut of the zip-ties…"
"How are you that knowledgeable about how kidnappers operate?" Mera squinted.
"Blame Okamoto and the maybe-vigilante-or-reformed-villain he took us to so we could learn to fight dirty. Hobo-san had a tendency to paint the bleakest scenario possible before starting beating us black and blue. Also, regarding the stabbing, I can assure you that anyone I stab was rather desperately asking for it."
There was a silence. Then Mera dragged his hand over his face, and sighed:
"…. I'll see what I can do."
In the end, Toki was allowed a small knife, but also two flash-grenades and a pepper-spray. She had to wonder if Mera was anticipating her to turn vigilante. Not that sheintendedto do that, but well, if she came across a mugging, she knew exactly who was going to run away screaming, and that wouldn't be her.
And Mera was a surprisingly agreeable handler. Seriously, anyone who let her have a knife was good in her books.
Anyway. She started exploring, going further into the city each day. Soon, she managed to reach the part of Musutafu where she had wandered for month as a homeless runaway. She went back to her favorite libraries, feeling a bit nostalgic. Then, because she was pragmatic, she started looking for the different boxes full of cash she had hidden everywhere. Some were on rooftops, where she couldn't go anymore without her teleportation, so she had to give up those ones. And about three boxes were missing in the others hiding places… They had probably been discovered by cleaning staff or repairmen. But at mid-July, after weeks of research, she had managed to find about half of what was left of Sayuri's money.
It wasn't enough to cover the cost of a heart transplant, sure. But it was reassuring to have a few hundred thousand yens in handy. It made her feel safer. Just in case.
Not that she feltunsafe. But well… The only person she really trusted to have her back was Keigo. Other than that, there was no one that knew her enough, who was strong enough… Who was aware of all the stakes… And wholoved herenough to go to extreme length in her behalf.
She didn't want to run away from the Commission. She liked them… she trusted them, too, weirdly enough. They had made a deal and they were keeping their word. But you know the saying:trust, but verify.She knew how easy it was to be trapped with an authority figure you trusted. She knew how easy it was for someone with complete control over you to start seeing you as a possession instead of a person.
It wouldn't mean bad words, disdain or violence. Meteor and Sayuri hadn't been cruel or violent, either. They had sincerely believed they were doing their best, and it probably hadn't even occurred to them that they were tearing her apart. That was how toxic relationships began. It wasn't loud. It wasn't obvious. The poison didn't hit like a gunshot. It seeped in quietly, slowly, and you didn't know it was ever there until months after.
At least if it came to that, Toki would know the signs. Toki's parents had wanted her love, and the Commission wanted her trust, but in the end, both had been after the same thing: her loyalty.
Toki still remembered the warning signs. The feeling on being on edge. The paranoia, the constant low thrum of anxiety, the self-directed anger at her own passivity. Love, trust… Loyalty… It was something you were supposed to give wholeheartedly. It wasn't supposed to be draining. It wasn't supposed to be tiring. It wasn't supposed to make you blame yourself. Toki had loved her parents, but it wasn't how love was supposed to be. It wasn't supposed to choke you with self-hatred and anxiety.
Gods, it had been years, why were her thoughts cycling back to her parents again?
Sure, the Commission had taken her in and took the place of the authority figure in her life, but they weren't exactlyparental. Even Hayasa-sensei, the adult she was the closest to, didn't fit the bill. And she didn't even want to bring up Mera. He was treating her like an intern in need of off-handed guidance, and that was fine with her. Honestly, Toki really didn't need a parent. Especially not a dad. She had issues with her mom (she had never visited her grave after the funeral, not even asking to: she wasn't sure she could gather enough courage)… But the issues with her dad weren't to be touched with a ten-foot pole. She had put him inprisonfor gods' sake.
She didn't regret her choice. It was okay to be selfish and leave. There was never any crime in putting yourself first. When people said otherwise, when her mother and father told her that she only belonged here, she had refused to believe them. They had only wanted to knock her off her feet so that they could keep her on the ground. Maybe they loved her, but it didn't change how they had hurt her, frightened her, chained her down. She hadn't been wrong for wanting toescape. It wasn't her fault. She couldn't have changed them.She shouldn't have to. It wasn't Toki's responsibility to reform her parents. This was how they were, how they always had been, and she couldn't blame herself for whattheyhad chosen to do.
But she had hurt them, too. Escaping had been her right, but denouncing them, arresting them, that hadn't been for the sake of her survival. That had been… for her conscience, for the greater good, for revenge maybe: she wasn't sure. But the point was that even if it'd beenright, it'd felt wrong.
Toki regretted it, and at the same time, she didn't. She would do it again. It would hurt and she would cry and she would rather do anything else, but she would do it again. She wouldn't be able to live with herself if she just turned away from the harm they did to innocent people. Even if that meant harming them.
Did that make her cruel? She was sorry about how it had happened, and all the pain that had ensued from the arrest: but you can be sorry about something and still not regret it. She hated the way the heroes had handled it, with so much violence and collateral damage… But well, she couldn't have done it by herself, so it had been her choice to give them the tips, hadn't it?
Still, Toki regretted, not what had happened, buthowit'd happened. The way everything had gone down. She regretted the way that building crumbled, and how her father had howled with rage while raining down rubbles on people. She regretted how her mother had learned the truth, and how alone she had been, and how she had died. Toki had done that, done that to people who loved her. She felt so ashamed.
She had never been able to visit her mother's grave. Some part of her wanted to shrivel up and die when she thought about it. Toki had led to her own mother's dead. She didn't deserve to visit her grave. It was her fault. Her sin. Her origin story, her mistake.
Yes, Toki had blood on her hands. Like father like daughter, apparently.
And still… Toki couldn't regret deciding to step up and stop them. Did that make her a hypocrite? So many people had died because of Meteor's Crew. Toki bear the thought of becoming a bystander, of letting more death happen. Ironical, that by trying to stop the violence, Toki had enacted violence on her own family.
She wondered if her parents had had regrets, too. If Sayuri had been sorry for lying and trapping her. If Meteor had been sorry for using her.
But no apologies would fix what had happened, anyway. Toki's betrayal, Meteor's murder, Sayuri's death, nothing was forgivable. With stuff like that… Apologies were like band-aids, when what you really needed was stitches.
(Her parents would never forgive Tok for what she had done, but that was alright. She would never forgive herself, either.)
Once upon a time, she would have talked to Keigo about it, just to get it off her chest. But it was harder to write it, or to say it on the phone. They talked constantly, either on the general Discord server, or in PM, or by phone. Some night they felt asleep with the call still ongoing, their conversation trailing off in whispers, then in distant, slow breathing. But it just wasn't the same.
Weird, uh? Toki was now in one of the biggest cities of the country, with at least six neighbors who passed by her apartment each day to give her food or just check on her, and a gigantic city where she wandered for hours each day, passing hundreds of people… But she felt way lonelier than on the tiny Shikoku island, in the secluded labs where she lived with her best friend and a handful of researchers.
July came.
Kameko-san dropped by. It had been a while since Toki had seen her. But the cat-lady seemed as energetic as ever. She was there for two weeks, for work (she was hoping to have a promotion again!), and she absolutely insisted on visiting Toki. Weren't they friends, after all? So she invited her to a fancy restaurant the first day and, after Toki had inadvertently complained her apartment was threadbare, she started covering her in gifts for her home. She texted her pictures of colorful rugs or pretty framed pictures, and if Toki replied with any positive comment, the thing was delivered in her mail in the following days. Toki didn't really have the heart to refuse, because one, shewantedthat stuff, and two… because how could she said no to Kameko obvious enthusiasm? For a cat-lady, she had the biggest puppy eyes that Toki had ever seen. And she seemed to delight into showering the young girl with gifts, like an exuberant fairy godmother granting fifty wishes at once to make up for several years of absence.
Also, the Toki bemusedly noted that most of those presents were cat-themed. Not all, but certainly over half. Kameko was really taking her whole aesthetic seriously, uh?
But it was good to see the young woman again. Toki hadn't forgotten that Kameko had been the one to give her a way out, and how passionate she had been about the fact that Toki had a pure heart, deserved better, and all that stuff. Toki didn't remember the exact wording. She remembered that Kameko had bought her waffles, still. And, either by nostalgia or as a wink to their first meeting, the cat-lady also brought her to her cat-café the next week-end.
"So, what' that promotion exactly, Kameko-san?"
"A great one!" Kameko exclaimed enthusiastically. "I'm currently handling HPSC's relation with a small hero agency in Osaka. It's my first solo job! I usually have a sempai, but now, I'm ready to work alone! It's though, journalist are sharks sometimes… But I like it! Even if sometimes it's so crazy I feel like a wedding planned dealing with a bridezilla and her stepmom at the same time…"
Toki let out an ugly snort of laughter, then pulled herself together:
"So, what do you actually do?"
"Basically? Page through the mission roster and submit the most relevant ones to the agency, keep in touch with the Commission for updates, look into the mission reports so I can warn them if there's something fishy, report and evaluate the heroes or sidekicks who fuck up, work with the public relation guy before releasing a statement, read his accountant's report so I can make sure he doesn't play with the price range of his merch, walks in the city and check online to listen to what people says about heroes, do some private investigator's stuff if the hero need something checked quickly… I'm a manager, a secretary, occasionally a spy, and some sort of supervisor babysitter, who supervise all the other babysitters like the accountant or the lawyer or the publicist."
Toki whistled: "That's a lot of supervision for a single hero."
Kameko shrugged:
"Well, the hero is in charge of kicking ass. We fill the relevant paperwork and if he steps on any toes, we deal with it. Yeah, it's a team effort… But considering heroes use superpowers to step on people toes, or sometimes theirhouse, it's better to be safe than sorry."
She had a point. Toki couldn't even begin to imagine the caution needed to handle heroism when heroes used super-strength or unleashed flames hot enough to melt buildings! That was a nightmare wrapped in red tape.
"You're kind of young to have that much responsibility, aren't you?" she mused.
Kameko winked: "Thank you! But I'm twenty-five now. Remember, Mera-san was the same age when he led a critical mission for the HPSC."
"Uh? Which mission?"
"Recruiting you, dummy."
Toki opened her mouth to say it wasn't that big of a deal, then closed it.Warp Quirks were rare.Her Quirk was anextremelyprecious resource, the kind of thing that could make a villain unstoppable… And that power it had been between the hands of a feral kid related to known criminals. Of course recruiting her had been a big deal. It wasn't about educating Toki, aspiring astrophysicist, but about acquiring the young Taiyōme girl, a villains' child with an unstoppable power… And Mera-san had actually succeeded at it. So. Fair point.
"But alright, let's say you're right," she said. "You kind of climbed the career ladder pretty fast. When I met you, you were barely out of high school."
"I will have you know I was a very promising high-schooler!" she laughed. "But more seriously, I have a good contact with people. I've an eye for detail, I'm willing to compromise, and I'm not a suck-up like most bureaucrats, so heroes like me. It helps a lot."
The server brought them their snacks, and several cats started wandering close, looking at their plates. Toki began demolishing her waffles, Kameko started on her cake with a squeak of delight, and of a short while there a lull in conversation.
"What about you?" Kameko asked after a while. "You said your first exam went well, but other than that… Are you really okay? It can be hard to live alone. It's a big change."
A big change? Toki smiled bitterly. That didn't even begin to cover it.
Her whole world had turned upside-down. Her body had betrayed her. Her Quirk was virtually useless. She was going to undergo several surgeries and it terrified her, because who wouldn't be scared at the thought of being cut open on an operation table? And the worst of it… The worst of it was that she had to leave Naruto Labs. She had to leave the familiar hallways, the green park, the friendly researchers, the cook who made her cake for her birthdays, the staff who smiled at her, the workshop and its scraps she could turn into sculptures. She had to leave behind Keigo, her best friend, her family, the one who had never left her side for six years. Her whole world was… shattered. Because of that stupid heart-attack, everything was broken.
And now… She had to pick up the pieces. Nothing could go back to what it was before, she knew that. But she could make something out of what was left. It would be a lot of work. But it was that, or give up.
"I'm good, Kameko-san," she smiled. "I'm not going to lie, it's hard. But I'm not done. I'm far from done."
Aratani, Taiyōme, Hoshizora, it didn't matter the surname she carried. She was still Toki. And she was a fighter at heart.
Notes:
And it's the end of the training arc ! Next will be the high-school arc =) Guess which high-school she's going to go ? =D
I'll be updating "Snapshots of Wisdom" too, so don't forget to get a quick look !
Anyway, this chapter was BRUTAL. It's actually almost worse than the ACTUAL heart attack lol
It's also the whole point. Toki's injuries aren't minors. It's kind of like Midoriya's arms in canon. It's not a sprain that will heal: it'sirreparable damage that will cripple her even when healed, because she insisted on overusing her Quirk beyond what her body could handle. Exactly like Midoriya did to himself. How many of us read that chapter (or watched that episode) and thought "holy shit, he couldlose his arms?!" with horror? Well, that the same scenario.
Children are reckless and Toki even more so, because she has something to prove. She's arrogant and overconfident in her ability to handle her own problems. She made a bad decision in the spur of the moment, or rather, several bad decisions: not telling anyone about her chest pains, not telling Hayasa-sensei she had taken medecine, not stopping when the pain got worse. She's fourteen, she's allowed to be stupid. But mistakes have consequences.
And, now she's paying the price. She needs to learn to deal with the consequences of her own actions. The HPSC gave her a rough training, yeah, but it's Toki who went too far... not the Commission.
(Also healing Quirks are really rare and i headcanon that Recovery Girl is the best Japan has to offer. So unfortunately Toki is beyond what Quirk healing can do. Make no mistake, the HPSC is pissed about losing Toki as an asset. They only had two crappy options: letting her go, or make a huge investment. You know how in canon Mera works overtime because the HPSC is streched too thin? They don't have the mean to hire more people. They have good connections but they're not rich. This cloned heart is going to make a big dent in their budget, so when the Vice-President is sayng that she's investing in Toki, she means every word.)
Also ! The cloned organs are and idea i got from "You and What Army" by The Feels Whale (miscellea). A great fic based on a MHA/Star Wars fusion, i 100% recommend.
I'll see you next month ! =)
EDIT 22/08/2022
So i recently found out that Quirk-suppressing cuffs are a fanon creation, and aren't canon at all! So i removed them from the story. It doesn't really change anything to this chapter, though
Chapter 14: Old and new friends