Takuma was not amused. If it weren't for the fact that he was pretty sure it wasn't his original name, it was because he very much doubted being Japanese in his past life. Isekai wasn't his cup of tea, and if he had a choice, he wouldn't have chosen the universe of My Hero Academia to enjoy his new lease on life. Sure, Japan in the year twenty-something wasn't a bad place to live in; Quirks were cool, and he enjoyed the novelty of it. But Holy shit was this world screwed.
He came to this world with the first season of the show seared in his mind, and he, for sure, knew the immortal villain was still prowling around, snatching Quirks and people alike for his messed-up experiments. All Might was still running around, so it meant his arrival in this world hadn't yet thrown the timeline on its head.
Because Takuma had been in this world for sixteen years and, from his own deduction, assumed he was probably seventeen or eighteen, without much of anything to back up his hypothesis. Well, to be fair, waking up as a toddler in a shattered home with sharp stones cutting his skin as he crawled out of the destroyed building that he supposed should have been his home was pretty traumatic. And it also didn't leave much to work with.
It was his first realization of how dependent normal people were on heroes. Nobody had done anything to help the bleeding child in the middle of the street. Everyone had expected a hero to take care of him, and none had shown up. He didn't receive any help until he walked into a police station just before passing out from blood loss. Good times.
The foster system had been a mess, but at least he had a more or less stable place to learn Japanese and get himself acquainted with the rules of this world. It was a good deal until his Quirk showed up.
Because, of course, his Quirk had to be something completely broken that would undoubtedly make All Might quiver in his boots and All For One stain his boxers in envy. But, unluckily for him, his Quirk was nothing of the sort. In fact, if Takuma had one thing to say about his Quirk, it was that it sucked massive balls.
Empathy Manipulation.
In short, he could feel and manipulate the emotions of those around him. It wouldn't be too bad if it weren't for two things. First, he couldn't turn it off. Never. He had spent his entire life looking for an off button and had found nothing to stop the emotions of hundreds or thousands of people from flooding in. Secondly, a by-product of his Quirk was the discovery that brainwashing Quirks work through emotion. And Takuma had probably the strongest one out there. He could modify, create, and delete someone's memories, sometimes by mistake. This was why he never used that part of his Quirk. He sometimes wished he was Quirkless; at least he would have less of a hard time just existing.
It was a terrifying power in itself, and Takuma thought he had done a good job of not abusing it over the years. Yet, he hated it with a passion. Because he could never turn it off.
He sensed the emotions of every thinking being around him every second of every day. It was hell.
This was why Takuma woke up inside a rusty van under a bridge. It was far enough from anyone he wouldn't be woken up by a couple fucking or someone dying. The latter happened too many times to be discounted, and the former, well, he couldn't go to someone's house and ask them to stop fucking. Newlyweds were the worst of them all.
So Takuma started his morning routine. Staying clean was a challenge without running water, and wet wipes could only help so much, so it seemed he was bound to go to the gym today. He wasn't in dire need yet, but another day or two in this living condition would be unwise. He had worked hard to make the inside of the van livable, and he would rather keep it that way.
Grabbing a bag with another set of clothes inside, Takuma made sure his home was locked. Even after more than a decade living here, he didn't have much to his name, but he hoped his token security would stop people from messing with what little he had.
It was still early in the morning, so he had some time before the maelstrom of human emotion became a strain to deal with. So he took his time to enjoy the morning. The usual cocktail of annoyance and exhaustion was still there around him but much more manageable than it would be in a few hours.
The road brought him to Mrs. Saneya's shop. The old woman was a delight to be around, and she was nice to him, so obviously Takuma would fight anyone but AFO or OFA to protect her shop. She lived in the bad part of town and had been paying a gang for protection for years until he showed up and started gently telling them to leave the old lady alone. Gently meaning he had broken some bones and mentally tortured their leader with fear until they truly and fully fucked off far away from her home.
He rarely used his Quirk actively, but it didn't mean he was unwilling to use it in such a way if the stakes were high enough. And the security and peace of mind of a grandma who broadcasted joy in strong enough waves he could feel it push away the fear and rage of the surrounding area was priceless for his sanity.
"Takuma, right on time as always," Mrs. Saneya greeted him with a bright smile. "The usual?"
"If you would be so kind," he said, giving an affirmative nod.
"It's already ready. Try something new for once; you're still young and should experiment a little," she chided him gently while handing him his breakfast, while he did the same with the small amount of money he had left.
"Thank you, see you soon," he waved her goodbye and left her shop.
Barely two steps outside, he was slamming back a cup of the blackest coffee he had ever found in this life, and he had to admit it was everything he needed. Starting when he was six was probably not the best idea he ever had, but he had coffee, life was right again.
Munching on a donut, he kept his pace steady. Starving for some part of his early life made him appreciate good food, and he never missed the chance to enjoy a bite. He knew his lack of money was going to rear its ugly head soon, so he made sure to enjoy it twice as much out of pure spite.
The gym was next, and with it, his much-needed shower. Now that he thought about it, he realized he never actually used the gym for its intended purpose. Being clean was more important than being built; he wouldn't be able to afford enough food if he worked out more than he already did, and he didn't want to rip a muscle without a good reason behind it.
As far as he was concerned, anything more than he already had would be a net loss. His fighting style was built around counter-attack by reading his opponent's mind and intent to take him down. It was a nice little move he had developed over the years and it had helped him survive to this day.
"Takuma, here for a good sweat, I hope," Amarissa greeted him with a hungry look he didn't need mind-reading ability to understand.
"You know me," he answered dryly, walking past her and straight to the men's locker room.
He quickly checked that she hadn't had another stupid idea of trying to jump him in the shower. He had the displeasure of having to stop her once with his Quirk to send a hint of fear and disgust in her mind, which had been very much needed at the time. That girl was crazy, and he wanted none of that anywhere near him more than he needed to.
The shower was quick, and after changing into a hoodie and a pair of blue jeans, he was quick to make his escape. He didn't have a shirt to wear; his last one had more or less self-destructed on him, leaving him with nothing to wear under his green hoodie with the design of an apple on it.
He reminded himself to make a quick detour to the laundromat to clean his last change of clothes before they had the time to simmer in his sports bag. The next stop was a run-down bar where a few people with relatively shifty backgrounds gathered. Takuma looked around in the dimly lit place, not for any sort of ambiance but because whoever was in charge didn't care enough to change the lightbulb. It took Takuma a few seconds to find the person he was looking for.
"Giran," Takuma greeted the broker as he sat at the table.
"If it's not my favorite enigma," chuckled warmly the man who always seemed to have a cigarette in his lips. "Looks like it's our lucky day for both of us; I've got work for you."
Takuma was relieved to hear the news, not that he showed it. Giran was the closest thing to a villain he had to interact with, and it was only a relationship born from necessity on his part. "Who and when?"
"Sir Nighteye and in an hour," informed him the broker while pushing a folded piece of paper in the middle of the table. "I've got to say, little buddy, I don't know what you do to get on the radar of a heavy hitter like Nighteye, but I'm too scared to ask."
The tone was humorous, but the eternal question was still there. What did Takuma do with the heroes, and why did he need a broker to play the middleman? Giran was known to the heroes, not that they could find anything to prosecute him for, of course. The crook had been in the game long enough; he wouldn't be taken out so easily. He was a well-oiled machine Takuma had taken advantage of when he had first decided to screw off far away from the story of the world he was living in. Keeping a low profile was easy when he had an expert on his side like Giran, and brainwashing him wasn't in the cards. He didn't know if he was in contact with AFO, but he sure as hell wouldn't try to brainwash the broker unless he didn't have a choice. The monolithic horror that was this world's Big Bad Evil Guy still kept him up at night, and he wanted nothing to do with him.
"Good, same time next week for the payment," Takuma said, using a neutral tone he kept for people he really didn't want to deal with.
He grabbed the sheet of paper and gave it a quick read to check the details before ripping it apart and throwing part of the total in different trash cans along the way.
Today his target was Bubble Girl and Centipeder. Both of them were sidekicks for the Nighteye agency, and the hero in charge had reached out to him for a deep cleaning.
Quirks could be terrifying, and Takuma's own was one of the worst. If one valued his own sense of self, he could feel someone's emotion, change them. If he concentrated hard enough, he could change memories, destroy them, or create new ones. But the most surprising and the most useful way Takuma had found to use his Quirk was by making himself into some sort of a cleaner.
He could detect the stain of manipulation on someone's psyche. As a rule, brainwashing used emotion as a medium to act on a target, so when he felt another set of emotions coming from a person, to him, it felt like someone waving a flag toward him while screaming "I'm being manipulated!" Something he'd learned soon after figuring out the trick of how not to get flayed by the roaring emotions of people living their lives around him was that brainwashing was more common than someone would think. Of course, he wasn't talking about memory erasing or tweaking or anything of the sort. It was more in the sense of low-impact Quirks. A salesman could make himself memorable by heightening his presence in people's minds; it was brainwashing, annoying but safe. A cashier could make shoppers more willing to impulsively buy some snacks when it was time to pay at the checkout counter. Also brainwashing, also not a life-altering Quirk.
In fact, Takuma thought brainwashing Quirks had a pretty bad reputation compared to the number of them that were actually able to harm or be used in nefarious ways. His was absolutely capable of harming a lot of people. He was glad he'd taken those Quirk Ethic classes because his Quirk should have come with a manual on what to do in case of unintentional Quirk use and how to diminish its impact. His formative years had been cruel to more than just himself, sadly. And that was with the mind of a not four-year-old behind the wheel; he didn't even dare to think of how many people would have been mind-wiped by mistake if he had actually been a child. My Hero Academia's future generations were messed up; they just didn't know it yet.
Takuma wasn't in a rush for once; the Nighteye agency was less than half an hour away on foot, and he had ample time to enjoy the morning air while going for a casual stroll through the city. Being homeless came with the difficult task of having either nothing or too much to do at times, so he enjoyed the little wins in his life as much as he could. Unless his side gig as a P.I. landed him a job during the week, he would probably have to starve until Giran validated his payment and obviously took his share for handling the deal. It was nearly half of what he earned, but it was a price he was willing to pay to stay far away from the heroes' and villains' interests alike.
By now, most people were awake, and Takuma started to feel the strain of so many minds in his vicinity. His Quirk worked through walls, so even those still in their apartments were giving him an idea of their surface thoughts and feelings. He did his best to ignore everyone in his daily life, but there was no way he would ever be able to stop everything from coming through. He was glad Japanese weren't much into morning sex because it was probably the single most overwhelming fury of emotion he ever had to deal with. The red-light district was his personal hell, funnily enough.
So as always, Takuma took a deep breath and hunkered down in his own mind. He kept grounding himself with breathing exercises and by naming things he could see, hear, or smell. It helped lessen the burden and allowed him to still be able to think and do his job.
He felt them before he could see them; the Nighteye agency's patrol route was easy to find on the web, and even if he didn't have access to it, he'd lived long enough around this part to know where most heroes patrolled. He even saw Lemillion a few times, which he knew for some reason. Was he from the show? He didn't know; his knowledge came and went sometimes at random, but as a good rule of thumb, he always kept his distance from anyone from the anime. So that meant his cleaning session would have to be short and sweet.
Willingly leaving his comfort zone and pushing his Quirk to search for anyone marked with the stain of manipulation, Takuma was soon greeted by the feeling and the sight of Bubble Girl and Centipeder. The two sidekicks were patrolling together, lacking their usual charm; they were moving like they had the weight of the world on their shoulders, and he could already tell he would earn his fee before even diving into their minds.
Centipeder was still prim and proper even if his thoughts were muddled by multiple layers of hypnosis. Someone had done a very bad job at hiding his identity from the sidekick's mind. He doubted the villain had actually escaped the duo, seeing as he didn't seem to know what he was doing with his Quirk. Breaking the hypnosis was like taking a hammer to a pebble, quick and easy, just the way he liked his job.
Bubble Girl was much the same; the difference was that where Centipeder had barely five or six layers of badly used hypnosis to mess with his mind, the heroine had a dozen with some more brainwashing layered inside, coming from another source. He could feel something more complex hidden in her mind; it was the most pressing concern since it could be triggered at any moment. For a second, Takuma shaped Bubble Girl's emotions away from the exhausted state she was in and brought her closer to what she broadcasted when he'd crossed paths with her in the past, a mix of nervous anxiety and excitement. The stain shivered at the sudden change, and Bubble Girl herself had to steady herself with Centipeder's help to weather the wave of nausea that assaulted her. The shiver revealed its shape and how it held onto the sidekick—two strong emotions were used to stick to the blue-skinned girl: disgust and lust.
Takuma rubbed a hand over his face. The brainwasher had used Bubble Girl's feeling of disgust toward him as a bonding agent to act on her with his own emotion, lust, which, of course, meant it was another case of some horny person trying to get an easy lay. Typical. Or maybe the villain had chosen to seed her mind with some layer of intent to use the next time they fought. Either way, Takuma was going to rip that thing out; he just needed to keep prodding around until he could find a way to extract the piece without leaving the sidekick with a bleeding nose, a splitting headache, and brain damage. Quirks are bullshit.
At some point, he had to turn around and follow them. Working on a complex task in someone's mind could be done from a distance, but he preferred to keep sight of his target until he could be sure the tumor was out of them. So he was more or less following the duo as their pace slowed to a crawl. As Bubble Girl felt every bit of the intense prodding he needed to use to find the root of the stain, he felt a pinch of sadness as the heroine strained and fought to keep her composure to the crowd while he worked. It was intense and violating even if he did his best not to touch her memory. Some still spilled through, but he disregarded the flash of her life to concentrate on his work. He was getting closer to the source and could smell the rancid smoke the stain emitted, a feeling that was deeply linked with its creator.
If working on Centipeder had been like taking a hammer to a pebble, working on Bubble Girl was more similar to an open-heart surgery without anesthetic. He felt her whimper under his mental touch, and he used the surge of rage he felt to cut around the stain. It shrieked and fought to get him to back off, but the righteous cruelty that filled him was more than happy to meet the challenge. He struck again with more force, still with the dexterity to leave its host unharmed—or as unharmed as he could manage. The parasite twisted and shivered as it tried to escape deeper into her mind. Takuma gripped it and started to pull. The cut weakened the bond; the layer of hypnosis didn't even matter under the titanic struggle, and for a single second, the parasite held its ground, then its last link to Bubble Girl gave under the strain, and the stain faded into nothingness.
Takuma dove into the first alleyway he could find. He was covered in sweat and more nauseous than he ever remembered being in this life, but the work was done. He let himself fall along the wall until his ass hit the ground. He could feel Bubble Girl slowly come out of her state of stupor; he could still feel confusion and a small amount of fear, then relief. Hope, joy, happiness—it was a strong rush, and he allowed himself to feel it for just a second before he retreated into his mind. After one last check to make sure everything was as it should be, he was glad all she would need to recover was a good night's sleep to deal with the aftermath of his touch.
Some yen hit the ground at his feet, and he looked at the money in confusion for a second before looking at the elderly man who'd just thrown him some change. "Have a nice day."
Takuma glared at the money for a second before collecting it; it would probably do for a meal, and he certainly wasn't proud enough to pass up the opportunity.