Takuma elected to move to the hangar, with every single electronic left behind and one of Mei's machines running high to make enough noise that any would-be voyeur would have a hard time listening to what he was about to say. His paranoia was well-earned, and he wasn't willing to leave anything to chance; the risk of being spied upon was low but never zero.
"Strong stance, slow walk, join the hands, and point toward your audience. Strong statement," Takuma listed as he did those exact things toward Mei. "Quirks are bullshit."
Mei snorted and raised an eyebrow at him, inviting him to continue. He turned toward the whiteboard, grabbed a pen, and then turned back to look at her.
"There are many Quirks in the world, all with their own rules. Mental Quirks are no different, and note that I'm talking about Mental Quirks and not Empathy Quirks because Empathy belongs to the broad category of Mental Quirks, which follow the same general rules," he explained as he noticed Mei's entire focus directed toward him. "My Quirk, as problematic as it is to deal with, makes me one of the single most powerful people in the world in the realm of Mental Quirks. Why, you may ask? Welp, it's simple really. Mental Quirks, as a general rule, use emotion to interact with their target, and given that I can feel and bend emotion..."
"That's how you stopped Mousey's Quirk from triggering?!" Mei excitedly let out, bouncing on her chair with her arm raised as if she were in class.
It was the cutest thing he'd seen today.
"Exactly," he confirmed.
"But wait, didn't you tell me she had a reality-bending Quirk?" Mei wondered, recalling their previous conversation.
"She does. Reality-Bending Quirks are another can of worms altogether, but for now, just remember Reality-Bending Quirks are adjacent enough to Mental Quirks that they can be considered close cousins."
Mei nodded with the same expression of intense focus.
"Now that you know this part, let me explain my Quirk in more detail," he told her as he drew a circle on the whiteboard. "This is the human mind, with all its complexity. There are three elements that I can reach by listening to someone's emotions: Physical Sensation, Thought, and, lastly, Memory. Those are the three most important elements that I deal with on my day-to-day. For the first element, pain is what I feel the most—a child scraping their knee, a jogger running on a sprained ankle, a housewife breaking a toe on the coffee table. I can feel all of that, and when there's a thousand people around me, those little problems aren't so little. Of course, I can feel other sensations, like pleasure from sex or a simple coffee, discomfort from a shoe size too small, or excitement from any source really. To put it simply, the more people there are around me, the more I feel, and being overstimulated is a constant fact of life for me."
"Is there any way you know to... lessen the amount of Physical Sensation you can feel?" Mei asked slowly, as if she was afraid her question would irk him.
"There's no stupid question," he reassured her with a wink that made her grin. "But yes, that was one of the first subjects I dug into when I started to learn about my ability. Of course, there was the whole... insane kid-eating-rat part, which wasn't fun, but at some point, I got the hang of it and could focus on the subject," he told her as she closed her fists in horror and anger. "Quirk suppressants used to work; they could lessen the effects, but like any drug, they stopped working at some point. I never could get my hands on Quirk Suppressant Cuffs, given how prized they are by the government—so much so that you won't find any on the black market. The only real way I found to suppress my ability is through the Quirks of others. Even Quirks that have no mental impact can work. When I was like... nine, I met a little girl who could block any emotion coming from someone behind her. It was like a wall between me and everything else in one direction. Her Quirk wasn't even strong; she just had a weird algae-like substance that moved on her skin—imagine a bioluminescent worm, and you get the idea," he recalled, unsure of where he had even met that girl. "Of course, there are other Quirks that can impact me. Some kid who could make small illusions could entirely warp my perception of my surroundings to the point I could only see pink elephants. Some old gal could literally rip away my mind by speaking too loudly... It's a shit-show, but I'll explain that in more detail later."
Mei nodded again, now bouncing on her chair, unable to contain herself any longer as she needed to move a lot in general.
"Now let's talk about intent," Takuma declared as he drew another circle inside the first, then another inside the second. "Thought," he said as he wrote the word in the outermost layer. "Intent," he added as he wrote it down between the two layers. "Memory," he finally said as he wrote the word in the innermost layer. "Intent is what I use to fight. I read my opponent's body language, thoughts, and memories to build an image of their intent—what they are about to do, what they want to do, what goal they are trying to accomplish, and how. This is what gives me an advantage in a fight. What you need to understand is that emotions are the vehicle through which all of this information comes to me. In a fight, I have to connect myself to the mind of my opponent to turn that vehicle from an old moped to a luxury sports car ready to break a speed record on an interstate. I can connect to multiple opponents, read them, and counter their every move before they even have time to make them because I taught myself how to read every single element that drives the way they act. I learned how to detect the 'Intent to Harm' to protect myself. It's how I fight, how I do everything. But it has its own flaws. For example, if someone comes from behind me to punch, I could see it coming from a kilometer away, but punch me by mistake, and I won't even react because there's no intent behind it. That's why I was struggling so much against Midoriya yesterday."
"Oh, oh! Because he hasn't trained in martial arts and doesn't really know how to move, you can't read him as well as you're used to, so that's why you kicked him hard!" Mei realized, and he grinned, pleased to have her so focused on his issues.
"Exactly. Midoriya still has trouble making up his mind about hurting someone else, and it makes reading him harder than usual. Of course, I can still do it, but when he started wailing on me yesterday, I nearly got overwhelmed. The second I had an opening, I struck back with everything I had. If I hadn't caught myself in time to avoid going full strength with that kick, I would have broken multiple ribs," he recalled, a bit sheepish. "The 'Intent to Harm,' built from memory and thought, is a more specific use of my Quirk. While I can use it to do a lot or learn a lot about specific subjects naturally, like showing my girlfriend a good time," he added, winking at Mei.
To his surprise, she didn't blush but simply looked at him with a wider grin. "Oh, don't worry, I know."
Takuma then had a realization: 'Confident Mei is incredibly sexy.'
"S-So now that I've explained what I can see, let me explain what I can change," he said, hearing Mei giggle at making him stutter. "I can act on the Emotional Spectrum, allowing me to make someone feel emotions more or less, add other emotions to the mix, or even deaden them. On its own, it can't do much besides giving someone a headache or pushing them into a meltdown," he explained as Mei nodded, already aware of this part of his Quirk.
"But again, emotions are a vehicle to many things. If I bombard an opponent with fear while focusing, for example, on a weapon I hold, then they will perceive it as being afraid of my weapon. I can force-feed information and lead them to a conclusion of my own choosing with a little groundwork, very easily," he revealed. "And that's not even mentioning how I can then wield memory and intent to mess with someone's mind and make them go into shock. I can provoke a heart attack or any number of other mental breakdowns just by hammering someone—pretty much like Midoriya did yesterday. Quantity has a strength of its own, and most minds aren't trained to deal with attacks like that."
Mei hummed as she thought about what he had told her. "Then why don't you always do that? Like against the scorpion girl who attacked you?"
"Some people are harder to manipulate than others. In her case, she showed signs of mental manipulation and abuse. Her psyche was a battlefield that would have taken me too much time to shape the way I wanted, and, as you can imagine, it's hard to work on someone's mind while dodging claws that could pop me open like an overripe grape," he explained.
"Then how do you reinforce your mind without... going through all of that?" Mei asked, a bit saddened by the overall conversation.
"If you don't want to go through mental abuse or trauma, there are only two other ways that I know of," he listed, writing something on the whiteboard next to the concentric circles. "Meditation. This is what I do every day to the point it became second nature to me. It helps me deal with my surroundings and reinforces my mind against mental attacks. Since I've done this my whole life, ever since the day I turned my Quirk inside out to get used to it, I'm not going to lie. I'm probably the closest equivalent to All Might in the Mental Quirk world. No one has ever managed to take me down. Ever," he told her, loving the twinkle in her eyes. "And then the second option that I know of is simply to live next to me long enough," he added with a dramatic pause.
"What do you mean?" Mei demanded, unable to contain herself.
"My Quirk is always feeling around for the emotions of others. If it were once or twice, nothing would come of it. But if you live around me long enough, one thing that's going to happen is that your mind will slowly learn how to defend itself from Mental Quirks," he explained, drawing a stick figure flexing its arm. "Imagine it like someone constantly poking you. The mind doesn't like that and is always ready to defend itself. If someone keeps poking, at some point, it will grow the 'muscles' necessary to stop them."
"People who've lived around me for years, like Nova and Danny, both possess formidable mental defenses that few could break through. And it will happen to you. The longer we stay close, the stronger you'll become, until not even an S-Rank Villain could get into your head."
"So the friction between your mind and those around you makes them stronger," Mei muttered, a habit she had picked up from Izuku. "Then I can see how that would make you strong, Mister Mini-Might."
Takuma groaned. "Please don't call me that," he begged.
"In that case, why don't you get to the point where people are after you?" she asked with a determined expression.
"Well, you remember how I used my Quirk to clean away brainwashing and hypnosis from someone's mind?" he asked as Mei nodded energetically. "Well, villains don't like their toys being out of their control. And in much the same way I can see and feel them, they can see me too. When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back and all that."
"So some villains can see your Quirk acting around," Mei said as she started to bounce lightly on her chair again. "How bad are we talking?"
"Years ago, when I was starting, I only caught the attention of small-time villains wondering what the hell was going on. But after a few years of freeing people from brainwashing and the like, it wouldn't be a stretch to say I had most of the S-Ranked Brainwashing Villains on my tail," he revealed to Mei's growing horror. "And that's not even mentioning the worst part of that little interaction," he added with a dry chuckle as he took a breath. "Do you know what Trigger is?"
"It's the weird liquid that makes Quirks stronger for a short time, right?" Mei replied.
"It's a drug, but yes, you got the gist of it," he confirmed as he took another breath. "My Quirk can be used like Trigger to exponentially enhance the Quirks of other Mental Type Quirks," he told her as he saw the confusion grow on her features. "My Quirk allows me to reach a hundred meters around me, give or take fifty or so meters depending on the day. Now imagine if someone with an active mental Quirk piggybacked on mine and used it to, for example, puppet the bodies of everyone inside my range."
Mei's eyes grew wide. "You would act like a transmitter."
"Exactly," he confirmed again. "SS Villain: Dictator. He's been in Tartarus for life since five years ago. Crust got him, but he was one of the worst of the villains who hunted me down like a dog for years. He can control twenty people naturally... with me, that number could reach two thousand."
"It's exponential," Mei let out in horror.
"Yep. To say this guy did everything to get me would be the understatement of the century," he chuckled dryly as somehow his breath kept speeding up. "When Crust went after him and caught him... man, I could have kissed him full on the mouth for that," he added with a wet chuckle as he started to rub at his face to try and calm down.
"Nope, you aren't doing that," Mei stated as she grabbed his hand and led him to the chair. "Sit," she ordered, and he complied. As soon as he was seated, she simply bear-hugged him with everything she had.
He buried his head in the crook of her neck as he focused on her heartbeat. It gave him something to follow as he fought to keep his breath under control. Mei lessened the strength of her hug and started to rub his back with one hand. This seemed to do the trick, as even though he missed the strength of her arms around him, it felt nice, comforting. He could have stayed like this all his life, but he hadn't even gone into the meat of those that were after him.
"Villains who aren't big fans of me were the first to be after me, but there are others," he told her slowly. "I don't feel like I'm doing a good job of explaining my Quirk."
"That's because you need practice," she said with a grin he could hear. "I'm sure you'll figure it out soon, and I'm always willing to listen."
He nodded in the crook of her neck as he took a breath and freed himself from her embrace.
"Most brainwashers in Japan have been dealt with over the years, specifically by me. Some came from overseas once or twice, but they didn't stay long after they realized they needed more than just a Quirk to get me," he continued to explain, finding himself less overwhelmed by his stupid feelings when he held her hands and she stayed close to him. "Japan is more or less a safe haven from any villain with a Brainwashing Quirk. It took a while, but I haven't had to deal with any of them since Dictator got caught. Still, there are some who haven't been captured, and they know who I am and what I can do for them."
"You don't do anything halfway," she said as she touched her forehead to his. "I have the feeling you're the thing hiding in the dark for more than one villain."
He chuckled with humor. "You'd be right. I have a reputation—hidden behind many names, some of which were created to scare the living daylights out of terrible people," he told her as he focused back on his thoughts. "You know about the gang. It's kind of a new development, but I'm being hunted by the Quirkists for what happened with the Etheromorph. They can't afford to let anyone think they can do more than their Quirk allows, so they put a bounty on me, like the Human and Mutant Supremacists did until they backed off. The Quirkists are a problem, but as long as I keep a low profile, they should forget about me soon enough," he told her, to her relief. "And then there's the Creature Rejection Clan, who, last time I checked, put a bounty on one of my old aliases that reached five hundred million dollars USD."
Mei's mouth fell open. "Holy shit."
"Yeah, but if I add everything together across all my aliases, it's closer to six hundred and twenty-five million. Danny's close at six hundred, and Nova never got higher than fifty," he listed, watching her growing horror. "We... got around. The C.R.C. took a lot from us, and we were never afraid to get it back in blood," he explained, unable to quite meet her eyes. "I did a lot of fucked-up things to those people. Things that would have me thrown into the deepest pits of Tartarus with the worst villains that have ever existed," he revealed, failing to see any disgust or horror in her expression through his mental fog.
"You were awfully casual about cutting that girl's fingers," Mei commented.
"I'm either terrible at explaining that I used the Geneva Conventions—both of them, I might add—as a checklist, or you're just too casual about me being not much better than some villains out there," he said, barely above a whisper as he met her eyes.
There was understanding in her gaze. It felt almost too much to bear.
"Heh, I trust you. Even if you're not quite so sure about your reasons for doing what you did," she said as she gave him a quick kiss. "You didn't do any of those things to innocent people. As much as I don't like it, if it's a bunch of sadistic fucks slaughtering innocent people for their stupid ideals, I can live with it."
"I'd rather not stay on this subject. I could talk for hours, and we wouldn't be any closer to addressing the biggest issues I'll probably have to deal with," he offered, and Mei nodded, willing to follow along. "So... reality-bending... bullshit."
"I have an idea why," Mei giggled as she sat on his lap, her legs hanging to the side as he wrapped an arm around her hips to make sure she wouldn't fall.
"You remember the Warpzone Collective?"
"The group of terrorists that tried to blow up a reality bomb in Tokyo, right?" she half-asked, half-answered.
"Yes, those guys," he confirmed as he prepared himself for what was about to follow. "Well, it turned out they were using some kind of Quirk that allowed them to hide themselves from ninety-nine percent of the world population. Besides France, which possesses the highest number of Heroes with reality-bending abilities, the rest of the world had either civilians, low-ranked Heroes, or nothing to deal with them when they struck in most countries around the world," he explained again as Mei listened, riveted. "The United States had Star and Stripe to deal with the incursion, and Europe had France, but the rest of the world was left to handle the situation on their own until they could send help. Japan wasn't different," he added with a sigh. "They hid themselves from the police, the Heroes, and anyone trained to deal with terrorists. The Collective had free rein all over Japan, and they did what they needed to do to keep their hold on the country—by hunting down anyone who could see through their reality-bending ability and see them."
"You were one of those people," Mei realized, putting two and two together.
"I was," he confirmed as he swallowed thickly. "Things happened, the world fought back and won. But there's something you need to know and understand. When we witnessed a member of the Warpzone Collective, we entered the sphere of influence that hid them from the world. And one of the side effects that made us unable to ask for help is that as long as we were under that influence, no one who knew us would be able to remember us—they wouldn't even be able to miss us."
Mei let out a squeaky breath full of horror. "Wait... so if they come back... I will forget you even existed?!"
Takuma laid a kiss against her cheek. "Only until they are dealt with... but until then... sorry... there's nothing I can do."
Fear—there wasn't any word he could use to describe the utter terror that bloomed in her mind at the knowledge of what he had just told her.
"I-I don't want to forget you. There must be a way, right?! Right?!" she begged as panic set in, gripping his hand in fright. "I don't—can't—how—"
He kissed her, making sure it lasted a while before he let go and spoke again. "Remember the friction."
Her panic lessened as she wrapped one arm around his shoulder. "Will that work? I thought you said—"
"It might," he cut her off gently as he held her closer to him. "I was barely ten when the Warpzone Collective struck the world. I didn't have my Quirk entirely under control. But even then, I think my friends—those who had been with me the longest—showed signs of maybe being able to push through," he reassured her with a quick kiss to her shoulder. "I'm not a ten-year-old child anymore, and I have more Quirk training than most retired Heroes. I don't have anyone to test it with, but you might be able to bypass the memory loss if we stay together long enough."
Mei let go of his hand and grabbed both sides of his face. "You are never leaving my side from now on."
"Besides my excursions with Midoriya, don't I already do that?"
"Nope, not even that. You're going to stay right here where none of those guys can find you," Mei reiterated with a surge of protectiveness.
"Am I under curfew, then?" he asked, pushing on the subject in a way that forced Mei to actually consider what she was saying.
"Wh—what? No!" she denied, then was about to open her mouth to continue before she stopped herself. "You're not... stuck here, just... don't put yourself at risk."
"Well, I'm glad your first instinct wasn't to chain me up to the kitchen table," he joked as Mei blushed in embarrassment and some shame.
"I'm not telling you what to do. Just stay safe," she added, just to be sure her earlier emotional behavior didn't leave him with the wrong idea.
"I can try, but you know me. Trouble always finds me," he sighed as he kissed her on the side of the mouth. "Now comes the hard part."
Mei's frown deepened. "Because what you already told me wasn't the hard part?"
He didn't quite dare to look her in the eyes.
"I'm not quite sure of the timeline; there are too many events that I don't remember, or that don't make any sense," he said, bracing himself. "But... after the Warpzone Collective, Mousey being taken and coming back to Japan, the Shibuya Massacre happened," he listed, still unsure if those events had actually occurred in that order. "We lost Shimana that night, and I nearly didn't make it... got shot three times," he revealed as Mei's grip on his clothes grew tighter. "After that, Nova couldn't take it anymore—the loss, the fear... everything. She joined a well-established gang. Since she was our big hitter back then, she didn't have trouble getting accepted. That left only Danny, Thakatraa, and me. All of the younger kids were either dead or had been placed with people we could trust. Not every kid out there was stuck on the streets... we helped those we could."
He took longer to speak this time, drawing every ounce of strength he could from Mei. "But the years spent surviving, fighting, and keeping our people safe made us some pretty strong enemies. We were just kids, but they didn't care. That's why they went after us in the first place. When they realized we weren't such easy prey, they hated us. You can't even imagine how much they hated us for fighting back—Quirk traffickers, pedophiles, Heroes, and Villains alike. But we made it. Even after Nova left, we kept going. She had the protection of her gang, but we didn't have that safety net," he said, squeezing Mei in his arms for a long moment before continuing.
"So we struck back. We didn't have kids around us anymore—no one to stop us from going after them. If they were so dead set on finding us, then why run... when you can deal with the problem? So we did. We fought, we hunted them down. The Creature Rejection Clan was the worst; they took more of our kids from us than anyone. We hit them, hard. We made them pay for every single one. Then there were the gangs. We used Heroes and Villains alike—even the cops—to burn them down, clear their ranks to the last man," he recalled, wondering if he could have done better. "We cut a bloody path through the underground. We weren't the prey anymore.
"But that wasn't entirely what was happening," he added, taking one final breath before reaching the one subject he truly wished he never had to deal with again. "We wanted out too, but we wanted a clean break. So when we weren't getting caught up in whatever the hell this world had to throw at us, we tried other things. Danny worked at a sex hotline—he was pretty good at it. Thakatraa got a job as a seamstress. She had a spider mutation and was damn good with a sewing machine. And me? I didn't have jack shit. I could fight thugs in a back alley, get stabbed and shot, but I couldn't deal with one woman who wanted my dick," he spat, barely able to contain himself as tears threatened to spill.
"Itori Satsuo. She's the one who started the whole thing about Empathy Quirks going into sex work. The Hero Public Safety Commission gave her a list of everyone in Japan with that type of Quirk, and she just... went shopping," he sighed, unsure if he could finish. "She had everything—money, status, power. Everything anyone could want. So when she came for me with an offer to be her little boy toy, I said no. I just wanted to be with my friends," he managed to say without releasing the whimper threatening to escape his chest. "But she wasn't one to take no for an answer. Afterward, every measly job I managed to land fell through. Sometimes she sent thugs to try and scare me into joining her little harem. Given what we'd been through... she stopped after we sent back the first set of fingers," he chuckled humorlessly at the memory.
"She didn't need to go that far in the first place. Just stopping me from holding onto a job was more than enough to mess with me. I became rash. I slipped and failed to make sure we were safe from the many people after us. A Villain—one of the Brainwashers—attacked our apartment, and we nearly died. So we had to move. Thakatraa lost her job, Danny got caught being underage at his, so he got kicked out. And all of that was on me. So I thought, maybe if I gave her what she wanted, she'd just... leave us alone," he recalled with a deep sense of hollowness.
"But that Villain had messed with my head hard, and when I next opened my eyes, I had a nice little collar around my neck with my name on it. I'd spent a month with her, and I didn't even remember a second of it," he said, the many emotions coursing through him leaving him numb. "I escaped, went into hiding, and rejoined my friends. But Thakatraa was gone. She got caught by a Templar when they were looking for me, and she didn't make it," he whimpered as Mei held him with everything she had.
"I... couldn't take it. Danny stayed—for a while. He helped me get my head on straight after the brainwashing. But he wanted revenge, so he left to take the fight to them. I've been alone since then—two years ago. I couldn't deal with it. I couldn't... handle anything. Everything was just too much. I was so tired. So when I could earn a place to sleep easily, I just went for it. Letting someone ride me for fun seemed easier than sleeping in the cold... I fucking hate the cold," he said as Mei kissed the crown of his head.
"The days blurred together. I did... things..." he whispered, taking a deep breath. "Then... you happened. You and everything," he said softly, raising his eyes to look at her.
Tears were raining on his cheeks, and yet he didn't feel like hiding, running, or being afraid. "I still don't think I'm doing a good job of explaining what happened to me... but here it is. The one person I see in my nightmares never even laid a hand on me," he chuckled dryly as he caught Mei's deeply horrified and saddened expression.
With the slow build of WRATH behind it.
"I'm not... normal. I don't even feel like a person most of the time. I hide from everyone because I'm scared to hurt them like I did the people I loved," he finally said. "And if I had my head on straight when you told me you loved me, then I would've turned you down there and then. You don't deserve what my past can do to you."
Mei took a long breath. "You don't get to take it back now," she told him with tears in her own eyes. "You're stuck with me, and I don't intend to lose my boyfriend before we're both old and gray," she declared with a burning fire in her blood. "I'm sorry for what happened, for your friend, and for everyone you lost. You deserved better."
This simple sentence nearly made him bawl as he hid his tears in the crook of her neck.
"But I'm here now, and even if I didn't know how bad things truly were, I'm not leaving. I'm not going anywhere, and if they want to get you... I'm not a fighter... but I can build what's going to haunt their every nightmare," she told him with an amount of anger that only fueled the WRATH consuming her. "I'm not fucking leaving. Never," she told him before she kissed him.
It was all the more meaningful as neither was willing to let go.