Everlong (MHA/Celestial Mutation)

[InterdimensionalBigfoot]

John Doe

Want to know a special life hack? Wake up as an amnesiac in a hospital and all your problems will sort themselves out, guaranteed. No paperwork? No family? Not even a single blurry Polaroid of you checking your mailbox in your pajamas?

Don't worry, the government will just assume you were a trafficking victim and sort that all out for you. Honestly, I should be mad at the lack of blurry Polaroids. Would've helped sell the fable.

Not that it really needed selling. Telling someone my quirk was liking country music was a pretty quick way to let everyone in hearing distance know my brain is soup.

Well, it's actually a piece of gum on the underside of a truck tire, but even I'm not cracked enough to tell people that think I have brain damage that I'm a truck-kun victim. They probably would've sent me to a mental institution.

Instead of 24/7 professional care provided by trained psychologists I get a State-assigned Dommy Mommy, and It only took half an hour of me acting like the chimpanzee from 28 Days Later for them to convince me I wasn't getting Epsteined.

I'm basically getting out on good behavior.

Why am I getting adopted by a dominatrix? Apparently she's the one that found me and she's a hero. Neither of those reasons explained a single thing to me, but to everyone else it was 1+1=2. She found me, she is a hero, therefore she is now my foster mom.

Peanut butter plus jelly equals sandwich. It's basic math, don't you know?

It was around this point I kind of checked out of reality and just counted my blessings that I wasn't living in a wooden hut with Grelod the Kind.

I'm glad I decided to check out of reality around that point, because I found out about a little later that this world has actual sci-fi tech despite everything being built like the dot com bubble hasn't burst yet. How good is this tech? Good enough to make non euclidean storage spaces.

Instead of using this technology for shipping or transportation they use it to make really compact pogo sticks. Lasers? Gauss rifles? A middle schooler could probably make both while tripping their ass off on a bottle of expired nyquil.

The police still use the New Nambu N60. They call it the Old Nambu N60.

There's a pretty good chance my brain is still just a modern art piece on hot asphalt and this is all a split second fever dream on my way out the door.

Only reason I'm not convinced is because I suddenly look like a Tokyo Ghoul reject. Pale skin, white hair, dull gray eyes. Only thing I'm missing is the weird cannibalistic gimp mask. And the cannibalism.

If this was a fever dream I would've settled for psychedelic, not chromatic. I always enjoyed vibrant colors so looking in a mirror a little after I woke up just to see I went from 'Warm Autumn' to 'Prozac Commercial' in terms of color palette did a bit of a number on me.

And then I realized I was experiencing body dysphoria over being monochrome in a world where some people are born as sentient traffic cones and started compartmentalizing like a boss.

I mean, I can probably go find someone with a palette swap power somewhere down the line. It's not like being a borderline albino is going to give me any issues beyond sunburns.

I'm pretty sure I spent a bit too long making the founding fathers proud by worrying about guns and skin color. Not really sure what made me think that.

Could be the fact that the shadows on the walls are in completely different spots. Could be the neon purple nurse in clown vomit scrubs clicking and clacking away at a thick laptop on top of that stupid little wheelie cart that three centuries and an apocalypse couldn't get rid of.

Probably a little of column A, little of column B.

I should probably be more familiar with her since I've been here for over a month, but it took about one interaction between us before I stopped seeing her for a majority of my stay at the hospital for some reason.

It probably has nothing to do with the FNAF meme I belted out the second I woke up and took a look at her. That got me another round of questioning from the doctors and detectives working on my case.

The first detective realized the lore was dogshit about half an hour into the lore drop and tagged out with another detective that dressed up like Inspector Gadget. They made the right call to send in the token nerd, he was on the edge of his seat from start to finish.

The look on his face when he found out there were TWO bites? Priceless.

"Ara ara, looks like Snow White is finally awake." Ain't no way she said 'Ara ara'.

"Ain't no way you said 'Ara ara'." What's that, a complete lack of verbal filter? Nah, that's just my mind and body being completely in harmony after my mind got smushed into my body.

The Purple Gal just rolls her eyes at me and smiles like I'm an annoying bird that bounces off her window the same time every day. "You know it's a regular phrase in Japan, right?"

"Well yeah." I had no clue.

Purple Gal flicked my forehead at that. I didn't even notice her cross the room. Either her power is teleportation, or I'm clinically scatterbrained at the moment.

… It's probably her quirk.

"It's a regular thing for older woman to say." Says the purple alien that looks like she's barely older than a college sophomore.

Whatever face I was making probably tipped her off to what I was thinking because she suddenly burst out laughing and started waving her hand in front of her face after I thought that.

"Ahh, what a charmer! You know, having a mutant quirk is almost cheating when it comes to aging. Dogs don't get wrinkles, and all that."

I'm not really sure what to say to any of that. Is Mutant even an official term or did this madwoman just drop a hard M in the middle of her day job?

"You know I actually have a daughter that's around your exact age. She even looks just like me!"

Two Purple Gals? That ain't good.

I'm pretty sure she misinterpreted my expression because she was already digging through her purse so she could show a complete stranger pictures of her teenage daughter just so she can brag about her family at work.

I didn't need to see any pictures, I could believe she was a middle aged mom just from that alone.

"There she is, My little Pinkie! You know we used to call her that because she was so small, and then her quirk came in and well… you know how it goes!" I do not know how it goes.

And I never will, because instead of unpacking that box she dropped in my lap she just keeps going on about how her daughter is the best one, like every other parent on the planet. To be fair, most kids can't shoot out waves of acid. Or break dance.

If she was born a few centuries earlier she probably would've been able to conquer a medium sized country by herself, too bad she was born in the era where toddlers are reality manipulators.

Talk about being born in the wrong generation. All she needs now is a pair of bell bottoms and a Queen vinyl.

Purple Gal continued her obligatory parental spiel while I dissociated zoned out. "My daughter can destroy a truck in five seconds, my daughter is strong enough to powderize cinder blocks with her kicks, my daughter is training to join super soldier high school."

You know, average horse girl things.

And then she started dropping red flags.

"Yeah, your new mom is actually a teacher there. Maybe if you bat your doe eyes at her she'll show you around the campus after she picks you up today." First off, no teen should ever care about getting to tour a high school campus. Second off-

"I'm meeting the dominatrix today?"

Purple Gal doesn't skip a chance to do a bobble head impression. "Well you probably shouldn't call your new mom that, but yup!"

"I thought she was just a Foster?"

Somehow, this is the first thing I've said to Purple Gal to actually make her look at me like I just said something stupid. "Foster? Pretty sure her surname is Kayama."

I can't take the bait, no matter how much I want to.

"When you say I'm getting picked up, do you mean she's just taking me out to Denny's for an hour or do you mean she's taking me on a one way flight to Epstein Island?"

Something about that question makes Purple Gal's entire face scrunch up like she just scraped her two front teeth across a lemon peel.

I watch her visibly swallow whatever she was about to say before she continues to speak. "Well, uh, you're not going home with her today. That'd be a bit much."

Guess the hospital doesn't do same day delivery.

"But you'll probably start living with her by the end of the week!" She adds with a smile.

I stare at her. She stares back and throws in a spare smile. I don't give it back.

Purple Gal starts to let out an awkward chuckle, like she just got caught smoking in a court room. "I'll uh, go and check with the floor reception and see when she's scheduled to swing through and pick you up."

On one hand, I could call her out for just straight up fleeing a conversation. On the other hand, I could just watch watch the news and try turning my brain off for another week.

Meh, might as well watch TV. And by watch it I mean stare at the ceiling and pretend it's a really hammy radio show like War of The Worlds.

Honestly, it's actually really easy to just pretend this world is exactly the same as my old one when I'm not looking at anything in particular. Same old brick buildings. Same exact tech, even if everything under the hood is completely different.

Brand new crime statistics though, but they're out of sight so I try to keep them out of mind.

20% Crime rate in America. 6% in Japan, and that's only because this world's version of Captain Superlander is a workaholic that haunts every major city.

I said I try to keep them out of mind, not that I do a good job at it.

I can't even imagine what South America or South Africa must be like. Those guys had a genocide at least three times a century and that was before Glowstick Jesus was born and kicked off this world's third impact.

Well, I can't imagine how fucked they are. And I have no way to find out, so there's no real reason to even try. I wonder what's on today's broadcast.

"Breaking News! A new victim of the infamous villain killer Stain has been found dead in the Gifu Prefecture!"

Oh look, a rerun.

---

Nemuri Kayama (Midnight)


If someone told Nemuri three months ago she was going to be a mom... heh, she probably would have believed it.

If they told her it was going to be because she adopted a buck wild bonkers trafficking victim because the alternative was sending the kid that's definitely insane, possibly quirkless, and maybe being hunted by a freak Villain into the public system… she probably would've still believed it.

Hey, she's a hero. You don't reach a decade in the industry without experiencing a few things.

Oh, it was a regular story at first. She found a human trafficking ring full of naughty goons, made them realize the importance of safe words, gassed an entire building unconscious. Regular Wednesday at the office.

And then she found John Doe, half dead and withered on a cheap folding table she wouldn't even see used at a flea market, and there's a good chance the only reason those villains still had teeth is because she used her quirk on them before she could discipline them.

And then they told the interrogators that the kid was already like that when they found them, honest! Where did they find the half-dead human trafficking victim? Right outside their headquarters.

What's that, the kid even has zero paperwork or identification and is a complete blank slate? 'Well, damn, that's odd. I wish our cleaner was that good.'

It's unfortunate for Nemuri that she wasn't the one that got to kick the shit out of them. It's unfortunate for the villains that Mirko was the hero overseeing their interrogation. It's unfortunate for Mirko that her agency got billed for a shredded interrogation room.

Nobody walks away from a human trafficking case better off. It's just a fact.

Nemuri saw an image of the kid about a week after they were taken to the hospital from a few days before they woke up. It was honestly a little unsettling how quickly they recovered from being an actual husk.

And then the kid woke up and the story went back to being seven shades of typically tragic. A partial amnesiac, extremely selective knowledge of… pretty much anything besides pre-quirk pop culture that somehow stumps even the experts.

Everyone just thought they were raised in some remote cult that worshiped pre-quirk society that got raided by villains. Pretty rare but still in the realm of possibility.

And then the kid took one look at a purple heteromorph on duty and started yelling about "The Purple Guy" and suddenly the entire precinct is worked up.

Whatever the kid said was bad enough that they had to send Tsukauchi in to cut through it. Usually when they send him to talk to a kid, it's to make sure they aren't fibbing or speaking in hyperbole.

It's rare for the lie detector to stick around for more than one or two questions before he's rushed off to the next room.

From the gossip floating around HPSC, people would think he was talking to the kid for an hour straight.

Since Nemuri's still one of the primary heroes assigned to the kids case, she knows it was two. An insane amount of time for Tsukauchi to be talking to one kid. And then you read the redacted version and you get why.

Tsukauchi: "I need to ask, first off, is The Purple Man actually real?"

John: "Nah, the current version of him is currently a ████████ of a ██████████ pretending to be the Purple Guy that went insane and █████ some blonde security guard that was testing out a ████████ that was ████████████."

[TRUTH]

T: "We… will get back to that later. Are you able to talk about the original's Purple Man's quirk? You've made some disturbing implications about it with the previous detective."

J: I guess it's kind like Big Mom's devil fruit."

[TRUTH]
T: "I'm sorry, I don't believe I understand the reference. It's a few centuries before… any of our times. Can you clarify?"

J: "Right, my bad. I guess his 'quirk' would be the fact that he figured out how to ████████ from ██████████. I'm pretty sure he only used it to █████ █████ to ██████ the ████████ that he ████████ to ████ them."

[TRUTH] [LIE]

T: "How… how many children did he ████ and ███████?"

J: "At least ██."

[TRUTH]

T: "I... In your previous statement you say he only used his quirk to force his victims to █████ the ████ of their ██████████. My quirk detected that statement as a lie. Are there any details you might have forgotten about that statement that would have caused it to trigger as false?"
J: "Oh yeah, he used it once on █████ to ████ a ██████████ he was ████. It ████ him. He got better. It became a whole thing."

[TRUTH][TRUTH][TRUTH][TRUTH]

T: "He… ████ a ██████?"

J: "Yeah, it was some sort of ████████ that was filled with jagged wires and nails. The ██████████ and █████ ███ from the ████ out while ██ ███ ████ ██████ and he got trapped in it for a while. By the time people found him his ███ had ████ through ███ ███████ and were wrapped around his ████."

[TRUTH][TRUTH][TRUTH]

T: "And he came back from that?"

J: "He always comes back."

[TRUTH]​

Click to shrink...

Reading the redacted version was enough to make even her feel sick.

Oh, Nemuri knows better than to make assumptions on a redacted file. But she had seen enough to know there's only one reason a serial killer would go after kids, and it isn't political philosophy.

Letting the kid drift through the system was already out of the question even before he revealed… all of that.

Mentally ill kids have it tough. The quirkless have it worse. A mentally ill quirkless kid with amnesia?

Nemuri is sadistic, not sociopathic. Public school is also out of the question, no way around it. Either the kid is going to UA or he's getting home schooled.

Meh, Nezu owes her a few times over for doing some undercover work for him. That little rat can brute force a diploma for her kid even he spends the next four years counting how many dots on are on the ceiling tiles.

Not that she's going to let the kid rot in bed and go mute. He's mentally ill, not mentally impaired. She knows what stupid looks like, and whatever is up with the kid ain't it.

He'll get a diploma even if she has to tie him to a desk and bring out the yardstick.

...She definitely needs to tone down her Hero Persona before she goes off to meet the kid for the first time.

---

Zen Shigaraki (All for One)


All for One was not a man that felt regret. He refused the emotion on a fundamental level. To regret something would be to believe you made a mistake. That you traveled a lesser path.

All for One did not make mistakes. Every path he walked was the highest road. Anything less would be beneath the Demon Lord. Regret was a feeling meant for lesser men that let themselves be dragged down by imperfection.

The closest he would ever come to feeling regret was when he was lying on the operating table after his fight with All Might, that damn invincible brick. Finding out he lost his eyes, and all the quirks contained within them was an annoyance, but an insightful one.

It made him realize he had made a miscalculation. He had over-relied on too many specific quirks. The next decade after was not a recovery period, merely a reorganization of priorities.

Camera vision, heat sensory, quirk detection from forced quirk activation, airwave, cerebral sonar, these were but a few of the countless gems he had found after All Might ripped off his eyelids and showed him just how much he was missing out on with his old, crude methods.

Each quirk the best in what they do, and each one combined capable of letting him see far more than the human is could ever hope to, no matter how many sensory quirks they carried.

His only limitation was an inability to see fine details, such as small word print and Polaroid photographs. He never had any reason to care for such a minor limitation, and so he never bothered searching for a quirk to surmount that obstacle.

He regretted that thought. He regretted it more than he regret letting that bastard All Might get a lucky shot off on his head.

Who would have thought that a single heavily redacted police report sitting on his bloody desk and a fresh Polaroid attached to the corner of it with a paper clip would be all it took to make him feel more regret than All Might could ever hope to inflict.

Doctor Garaki had sent in the Nomu he used to deliver him bad news, the one that can only repeat given information and regenerate flesh. The thing was basically a glorified punching bag and a test dummy rolled into one.

The first thing the Punching Bag told him was that he should use his preservation quirks on the police report and the Polaroid, and refused to give the second message until he did.

All for One used several preservation quirks on the paper clip as well and contemplated force feeding it to Garaki for daring to give him a command, and through a third party nontheless.

The second message was that his brother, Yoichi Shigaraki, was alive. All for One impressed himself with his self control at that point. A lesser creature would have lashed out.

The third message was a police transcript of an interview with Yoichi. All for One did not get to hear the entirety of the police report before his impeccable control slipped.

The Punching Bag saying "Like Big Mom's devil fruit if it only worked on [blank]." wasn't enough to make his control slip.

"TRUTH." Was what made him snap.

The Punching Bag never got to finish delivering it's third message before it exploded into a wave of blood that overtook his entire office.

It didn't need to, he understood the reference. That garbage cartoon was being aired weekly before that infernal glowstick was born and the entire world caved in on itself. His brother was alive.

Someone with a soul manipulation quirk had brought him back from the dead.

His office was ruined. His entire front was caked in blood. All he had was a Polaroid he couldn't see, a paper he couldn't read, and seven ruined cameras he couldn't even see through anymore due to the thick layer of blood and offal covering every lens.

Zen didn't even notice his office looked like a hellpipe had just burst in the middle of it. For the second time in his life, all his thoughts were focused on a person other than himself.

Yoichi. His brother. His twin. His lesser half. He was alive.

All Might as already a forgotten thought. One for all no longer even qualified as a bronze trophy. All his plans would need to be rearranged, scorched, discarded, and revamped.

Zen had underestimated his worthless little brother. He had always thought of him as nothing but an annoying little duck, nipping at his heels while mindlessly running behind him. It turns out Yoichi wasn't a duck, he was a phoenix. One with a soul that apparently burnt bright enough to survive a villain he would freely compare to a Yonko.

A heavenly emperor. An ironic name to give to such a craven villain.

Zen approved and would continue to call this mystery villain as such, even if they turned out to be worthless fodder.

Not that Zen expected this mystery villain to be mere fodder. With a quirk as powerful as soul manipulation they were most likely quite the fiend in whatever stomping ground they had settled on tormenting for who knows how long.

And then they brought back a young Yoichi, and that was the last mistake the Yonko would ever make.

Zen slowly stood up from his wheelchair and walked out of his bloody swamp of an office, the pristine report and Polaroid floating after him and into his hands as he stalked towards Garaki's current domain.

It's bad form to make plans with a lack of information. All Might and Yoichi had taught him that lesson too many times by now.

Zen needed more information. He needed to expedite finding a solution for all the deficiencies the past decade had revealed to him. And he needed to hunt down some construction quirks.

His office was a wreck. All his homes were blacksite bases. And his direct subordinates could be counted on two hands with fingers to spare.

He had nothing that would qualify as a gilded cage fit a phoenix. Yet another mistake he needed to rectify.

Would he even need to cage this phoenix? The only reason he had to the first time was because that little bird kept trying to fly away. There's a good chance cutting his teeth against the Yonko finally taught Yoichi the value of staying by his side. Maybe after Zen found him he'll give them a pruned version of the Yonko's quirk as a memento. The worthless brat didn't appreciate the last gift he tried giving him, but maybe this time he'll enjoy it because he earned it?

Meat always did taste best when you hunted it yourself, after all. Maybe he should send some fodder his brother's way? Let him finally cut his teeth on some easy prey now that he's finally grown a taste for it?

An amusing idea, one that might have some merit. He will have to gather more information before making a decision.

First, find out more about his worthless little phoenix. After that, he has a Yonko to slay.

Hmm, what's stronger than a Yonko? What were the final villains in One Piece called? Celestial... Dragons? An interesting thought, but he is rather fond of his Demon Lord epithet.

Although... ruling the world does sound rather trite when the heavens themselves are ripe for the plucking. Why, it's basically free real estate!

---

John Doe

I'm pretty sure I passed out while listening to the TV blast my ears with the usual doom and gloom. Sentient volcano melts half a block, hundreds of people possibly disfigured by molten slag, millions of dollars worth of property damage, the whole works.

And then Captain Superlander showed up and punched him hard enough to get rid of all the clouds for the next week, so the day is saved and all is well.

Just don't tell that to your dehydrated flower bed. Or the mountain of disfigured bodies. Or the guy that has to scrape bubbling obsidian off of the side of a seven story building.

But hey, the bad guy got beat down bad, so it's all cool. He's probably already getting tortured while strapped to a bed in Azkatraz so why be upset?

Shit, Azkatraz is actually a cool name. Better just stick to calling it Superjail.

How could I pass out while listening to a news reporter break into tears while an entire block got the Krakatoa treatment? Probably the same reason Chinese kids fall asleep in history class while their teacher reads Dynasty Warriors fanfiction.

A mentally ill despot lashes out and killed a hundred trillion fodder peasants because they served him unrustled jimmies. Some Chad worth a trillion bucks walks in and shoves a boot so far up their ass they have to walk home together. The jimmies stay unrustled, and all is well.

And then all the dead peasants start rotting and everyone catches the plague, but that parts boring so who cares.

It gets old after a day. I've been listening on and off for a week. It's been happening for three centuries.

So yeah, it's pretty easy to fall asleep when that's the alternative.

At least, I'm pretty sure I'm asleep. Usually when I pass out I just open my eyelids to find out the sun is in a completely different spot and all my surroundings feeling slightly off, like a ghost blew through and moved all my furniture a quarter of an inch.

Except, this time, instead of experiencing old reliable, I'm standing in a black void with two basket ball sized suns locked in orbit around each other.

One's mint green, the other is lavender. I can tell neither one is actually warm, otherwise I would've instantly caught on fire like the dozen schmucks that thought pulling out a phone and taking pics of a sentient volcano was a good idea.

I'm pretty sure this is the part where I'm supposed to start stammering and flapping my hands like an autist at a Minecon Live Panel, but that'd just be performative bullshit so why even bother. I'm obviously asleep and I'm in a generic black void with two strobe lights. It really isn't interesting enough to be worth getting worked up over.

I'm... pretty sure this is my power? Quirk? Whatever. Either that or someone snuck into a hospital and used a Sherlock headspace gaslighting power on me while I was dozing off.

The latter isn't even worth entertaining as a joke so I might as well practice Occam's razor and accept the former.

Honestly? Kind of lame, but it could be worse. I could've woken up after the nap and been a sentient roll of toilet paper. Or fart poison gas. Or been a giant slug.

80% of the world world has powers. Out of that 80%, I'd say over half of them are worthless and a third of them are an active detriment in daily life. If anything I'm being too generous with those numbers.

When I figured out the average powers in this world ran closer to Dogwelder than Martian Manhunter I almost cried from how happy I was at dodging a car sized bullet.

And now here I am, stuck in an isolation chamber with two ugly lamps. It sounds like a nightmare, but it's actually rather comfy. Like being wedged between two warm mattresses on a cold winter night.

I suck at metaphors.

I'm not sure how long I spent just… standing in a black void, staring directly at the sun like an idiot before I decided to let my inner Einstein out and practice some science.

And by that I mean I walked up to the green sun and shoved my fist in it. What, was I supposed to pace back and forth and worry about interacting with it? The sun was as warm as a lukewarm bath. I was 80% sure it was just ornamental.

It wasn't. The second I touched it I got a really passive version of the Mass Effect beacon treatment. Just an instant beam of information into my head with no chance to dodge it, not that I had any reason to.

It was basically just the mental version of a text box. Like how you can just think "1+1" and the number 2 instantly bursts into your head. Not like I had a literal text box just floating in front of my face like a VR headset, that would have been retarded.

Diagnosis
200 CP

This Quirk can be used to give the user incredible amounts of varied and specific knowledge on the body of those visually observed. With this power, the user is able to get precise measurements of all kinds, age, medical conditions, broken bones, birth marks and more. The longer the user continues to observe a target, the more details they are able to learn, almost endlessly. Useful for locating enemy weaknesses or applying medical treatment in equal parts. The user must continue observing for additional details and observe a target in person. Collected details through this Quirk can be remembered incredibly well.

Source: My Hero Academia, Category: mutation​

Click to shrink...

I have to admit, I was starting to regret dissociating for a week straight whenever they talked about powers and quirks and the birds and the bees with me. I have no idea if this was normal for quirks or not.

I'm going to assume it probably isn't. If my subconscious was going to name such a weird ass quirk it probably would've called it "Stalker". I'm also not sure what the hell "200 CP" is.

Not exactly an abbreviation I want floating around my head, but oh well. I also know my current CP is 0! Which is good. Probably.

And what the actual fuck is My Hero Academia? My Hero Academy? Did Charles Xavier enroll me in Ms. Frizzle's Suicide Squad and forget to send me an invitation in the mail?

I'm not sure how long I spiraled while wrist deep in a miniature Shamrock Sun, but eventually I realized I was just mentally stalling and took a few steps back, pulling my wrist out of the Mint Menance. Maybe not touching it would return the power?

It didn't, it's still there in the back of my mind. [Diagnosis], except it's my quirk so I'm calling it [Stalker]. I can learn everything about anyone I stare at, and I will never forget ANY of the details.

What a fucking nightmare of a power. I want a refund. The only thing that power says that I recognize is "Mutation", except I'm pretty sure mutation means the quirk changes your appearance?

I better not wake up as a traffic cone slug.

I took a look at the Lilac Sun. I look back at the Mint Sun.

I'm pretty sure I remember the nurses saying that you can't have two quirks. Maybe. That Endeavor guy says he just has fire creation and manipulation because he's too extra to just call it pyrokinesis.

Except the guy gets thrown through brick walls on the daily and gets treated like a pachinko ball by people that can juggle busses on the weekly, so that's obviously completely bullshit.

Whatever. Multiple quirks are probably common enough.

So, first quirk is [Stalker]. Makes it so I can have the TMI treatment all day, every day.

If I wasn't in an imaginary void I would get on my hands and knees and pray that the Lilac Sun is just information on how to disable this weird ass quirk. Maybe a toggle? One sun is "Hey, here's how you use your power" and the other sun is "now here's how you don't use it"?

That makes sense. A lot of sense. In fact this is probably exactly how it goes for everyone when they get their quirks, they just don't remember it because it happens when they're little babies.

Right. All I need to do is walk up to the Lilac Sun and it'll tell me how to disable this freaky ass power so I can go back to being quirkless.

Somnambulist
200 CP

The quirk user is able to produce a highly potent, sleep-inducing aroma from their body on command that can quickly propagate through an area. Even highly aggressive individuals may soon lose consciousness upon getting a wiff of it. The sleep inducing aroma does have the weakness of enemies needing to actually breath it in for it to work, meaning those who can avoid doing so will remain unaffected. The aroma is more effective against the opposite gender compared to the same gender of the quirk user.

Source: My Hero Academia, Category: mutation​

Click to shrink...

I… I don't know if this is better or worse. I want to say it's better than [Stalker]? On one hand, I really don't want to be known as the guy with Roofie gas powers. Roofie gas that explicitly works better on women.

I don't enjoy the fact that my power went out of it's way to tell me that.

And what the hell is that name? [Somnambulist]? Absolutely terrible name for a power. Way too long and clinical.

I'm renaming it to [Roofie]. It isn't like I'm ever telling anyone what I call it in my own head and Somnambulist sounds like something you'd buy over the counter at Walgreens. No thanks.

And it's 200CP again. I'm pretty sure it stands for Creep Points. And that weird ass "My Hero Academia" source is back again.

Am I an escaped lab monkey? Did some evil organization that calls itself the Hero Academy shove a bunch of creepy sex pest powers in me and let me loose to see what I get up to?

Is that why this world is such a shitshow? Some secret organization is running around shoving evil coded quirks in mentally ill people so there's more villains for heroes to farm for extra XP?

That sounds dumb as hell. Almost as dumb as a 20% crime rate.

Wait, isn't that school Purple Gal was yapping about sending her kid to called Hero Academy?

… I think it was just 'a' hero academy? I'm also pretty sure it was called UA and it's just a high school, which is kind of lame. The way people talk about the place I'd assume it was an Ivy league university.

I'm going to say it's probably not the "Hero Academia", which is probably just an ironic villain organization name.

...You know what? I quit thinking for the day. I woke up, had a social interaction, listened to a few hours of MCU Liveleak, and fell asleep and found out I've been blessed with [Stalker] and [Roofie]. This day is already a wash and it isn't even 1PM yet.

Well, guess I'll have to get used to never directly staring at people. Ever. At least I don't need to worry about [Roofie]. That one is toggleable, which means I just need to keep it set to OFF and I should be good. Maybe it'll make me immune to sleeping gas? That sounds like it'd be at least accidentally useful.

Would help me no-sell the Dominatrix's weird ass sleeping gas power if she ever failed the vibe check and tried using it on me.

… Her sleeping gas power that sounds exactly the same as [Roofie].

… Didn't Purple Gal say she works at UA? A Hero Academy?

Hmm. I might be fucked.

---

AN: Cross posting this to different sites to see alternate interaction and discussion. I tried posting it on SV and I can't lie, there is something about that site that is already making a vein in my head throb. For some reason I remembered SB having the worse reputation but posting this fic there first was infinitely easier, more pleasant, and less grating than posting the fic on SV. If I tried posting this fic on SV first instead of SB I probably would've canned it out of exasperation. I can't explain it, something about it was just a thousand paper cuts of irritation.

 

[jef13123]

Seeing All for One taking direct action is going to different.

 

[InterdimensionalBigfoot]

Nemuri Kayama


Nemuri knew "John Doe" was staying at one of the better hospitals in Shizuoka. She knew this because she had stayed in that same exact hospital after getting he ass beat seven ways to Sunday a few dozen times since she graduated UA.

No healing kisses from Recovery Girl when school isn't in session. The most a rough girl can hope for on a warm August night are scrapes and bruises.
Nemuri slapped her face-cheeks several times with both hands and shook her face like a wet dog, almost sending her glasses flying off her face.

Need to remember to keep it PG13! No R-Rated heroine today! That's probably the last thing the kid wants to hear after the month he's had. Especially after dealing with such a disgusting no good villainous bas-

Nemuri had to take another few seconds to calm herself down in the elevator before her control on her quirk could slip. Again.

She had been in the elevator for five minutes. She hasn't had control this sloppy since she was a student in UA.

Her quirk was absolutely amazing and she would never trade it for anything, but having a quirk that starts 'leaking' if she gets too nervous or angry is always a pain.

Nothing ruins a mood quite like some accidental disc-

She quickly just gave up and blindly slapped the elevator buttons before she could distract herself a dozenth time in a row. She'd probably get his floor eventually.

*Ding*

*Ding*

*Ding*

*Ding

*Ding*

Nemuri got out and just took the stairs. No, she was not steaming mad! That was just her quirk leaking! Yes, she knows that's even worse!

Five flights of stairs while wearing civvie heels later and she got to the kid's floor just in time to watch her elevator open.

Nemuri hoped the kid wanted some new shoes because the first place they were going was a shoe store so she could buy some flats and throw her civvie heels in the nearest dumpster.

If she wants some good heels she'll just ask Power Loader for some. The man should've been a cobbler instead of a hero. He probably would've saved more lives from preventing women from falling down stairs.

Ugh. She's been a single mother for two seconds and she's already done with fashion. She's been a hero for over a decade and here she is, getting taken down by a pair of shitty heels.

Screw it, she needed to just rush the first impression and get the kid out of here before she accidentally gasses an entire floor of a private hospital.

Yeah first impressions are good, but want to know what's even better? The second impression when she gives the kid a bunch of expensive shit in a single afternoon.

Yay consumerism.

Taking a look around on her way to the kid's room, Nemuri had to admit that this part of the hospital was pretty swanky. Dark wooden walls, dark faux-granite flooring that looked two digits more expensive than it probably was. The highest quality clown-vomit scrubs on some very pretty nurses pretending not to laugh at her.

Nice floor. Next time she gets her brakes beat off during a school break she'll have to stay on this floor.

Let's see. Walk down five hallways, ask for directions, walk down five hallways, ask for direction, walk down two hallways, more directions, aaaaaaaand she's at the kid's room.

She didn't need any directions, she just wanted to talk to cute nurses in ugly scrubs.

She's also pretty sure a head nurse is supposed to make first introductions but screw it, Nurse Ashido isn't anywhere nearby and her quirk has been firing off randomly for about a dozen hallways straight.

Sometimes a gal just needs to rush things.

"Heeeey! Hope you aren't doing anything naughty in here!" She only knows how to give one type of introduction, so sue her.

She calmly bursts the door open, swaggers right on in, and immediately has to catch herself before she tramples straight into Nurse Ashido, who is just standing in the middle of the kid's room stiff as a board.

Something about the way the nurse is just standing there pricks at the back of Nemuri's mind and she is already casing the room before the nurse even realizes she walked in behind her.

Honestly? Really nice room. The center walls are both painted a soft vanilla white, other two walls are really fancy fake wood. Center wall across the bed has a hanging plasma TV that's muted and playing some particularly rough footage of a villain tearing up the hillside in Hokkaido.

Classic warm minimalism. Although there are two cuck chairs instead of one, so the room's not as minimal as it could be.

Hmm, what do you call two cucks sitting together? Friends-with-no-benefits. Heh. That joke sucked so she'll tell it to Shota. Only Hizashi gets the good jokes.

And then she locked eyes with the kid sitting cross legged on his messy hospital bed and it took every ounce of self-control to not gas the room right then and there.

There was no way in hell that kid was quirkless.

Nemuri is pretty sure just about everyone in Japan has seen the ocean, and a good chunk of them have probably seen it at least once at every point in the day. Know what it looks like when the afternoon sun catches it on a cloudless day. The way it becomes an endless stream of burning white-gold parted on either side by dancing glitter.

Take that, replace the azure blue ocean with an endless abyss of boiling mercury, and then replace the white-gold sunspots with a sharp electric-mint that's a few shades too light to be uranium green.

And then replace the sun-blindness you'd get from staring at the center of the ocean with chemical burns instead. Except instead of burning your eyes they just skip straight to your central nervous system.

Somehow it doesn't actually hurt! It just feels like when you're about to fall asleep and your leg kicks to make sure you aren't dead, except every part of your body is trying to do it at once.

She said it didn't hurt, not that it was pleasant.

The chance the kid was quirkless was as high as the chance she'd ever call him "John Doe", which was a fucked reference she was gonna need to talk to him about sooner rather than later.

Nemuri had no idea what exactly his quirk was but if she had to put money on it she'd say it's a scanner quirk. An in-depth one at that.

There is no way in hell the hospital and police could've missed a quirk this blatant. Best case scenario would be the staff are criminally incompetent. Worst case scenario?

She has no clue, but it's probably worse than anything she can think up so there's no point in trying.

She's also glad her bursting in startled Nurse Ashido into taking a step back, because nothing helps soothe the soul quite like a cute nurse bouncing off your front.

She's given up on the PG13 act. It was a noble front, but that kid's eyes are NC-17. Viewer discretion is highly advised.

"Hello there!" Nemuri had to give it to the nurse, she managed to rebound from her funk faster than Nemuri's been able to. Nice to see at least someone isn't feeling like they're being dissected over hot coals just from a glance.

Seriously, someone order that kid a pair of sunglassses with yesterday shipping. He needs it.

"John, this is Nemuri Kayama! I bet you're excited to finally meet face to face instead of face to mask. Wait, no, you were unconscious when you first met…"

Nevermind, the woman's brain is completely fried. Oh, and there comes the realization she just said something awkward.

Alright, she needed to save this woman before she got her hero license revoked for letting this nurse die of embarrassment.

"Hey there kiddo! Just like Nurse Ashido says, I'm Nemuri! Also known as the R-Rated hero: Midnight! But you can call me mommy!" Nemuri says this, walks past the nurse, and then one of her heels breaks and she almost bounces her head off the corner of the kids bed.

Instead she catches herself by just falling on the floor. It's probably softer than a hospital bed frame.

She should've just paid an actor with a shapeshifting quirk to pretend to be her for a day and taken all the credit after the fact. This is the kind of first introduction that you need to bribe a kid with a puppy to make them forget.

She finally looks back at the kid and she can't help but wince. He looked exhausted in a way that just doesn't belong on someone his age.

Not in the sleepy "I stayed up too late being a weird nerd" way but in a "I just got in a car crash and I have no insurance, just got fired, and my ceiling is leaking" way.

"Hey." Wow, great talk.

She stares at the kid and waits for him to say something else. She can already see his attention disintegrating as he stops looking at… anything in particular, honestly.

Did this kid seriously just enter low battery mode from saying one syllable?

Apparently even the kid realized that was just depressing because he suddenly blinks and twitches slightly before hyper-focusing right back on the present. She swears she can see his pupils dilate and constrict like a shutter count.

"Right, we need to go shopping. Hit up a mall. Take bets on whether or not the store we're in gets robbed in broad daylight."

Kid. Please. Are you seriously just going to pretend that didn't happen and hope she just… goes along with it?

The worst part is that she actually has to go along with it so she can get outside sooner rather than later. It's not forgotten, there's just a bit of a small queue at the moment.

Something tells her it's not going to stay small.

She also needed to figure out what kinds of drinks help sore throats and give this kid a lifetime supply. The kid's throat sounded like a granite door hinge. And not in the sexy whiskey voice way, but in a concerning "this person hasn't had a conversation in a decade" kind of way.

The queue grows bigger.

"You don't watch the news much, huh kiddo? Musutafu has been All Might's playground for about a month now. No villains left. Sucker's bet."

"Because all the smart villains packed up and moved west to the understaffed Aichi prefecture to go shake down dumb college kids on vacation." She does not add.

The kid just gives her a look like she said something stupid before slowly standing up. Jeez, he's a decade too young to have his bones start making those noises.

"Always more meat for the grinder." If the kid keeps talking like that she's going to legally change his name to Sunny. Also add that to the list of things to… not address. Keep in mind?

Whatever. She really needs to go outside sooner rather than later.

"Anyways! We should probably get going! Don't want to miss the train!" She's pretty sure Musutafu could be obliterated by a meteor and there would still be fifty trains a minute coming and going from Tatooin station.

They also don't need a train to get to the shopping district. In fact it's easily within walking distance.

The kid instead just nods at her like she said something reasonable. She didn't. "American transportation. Amirite?"

Wrong country kid. Also wrong era. America's transportation system has been world standard since the end of the Vigilante era.

Nemuri knows, objectively, that it's a miracle the kid is not only verbal but willing to leave the hospital and interact with other humans a mere month after waking up from a kidnapping coma. Actual super trooper behavior.

That doesn't mean the kid isn't an absolute mess. Just means he's on step 0 of "How to be a functional member of society" instead of step -500.

Oh well, time to take step 1. Not dressing like you live in a hospital. On second thought, the kid is probably on step… -25? Still pretty good!

"Well, say goodbye to Nurse Ashido, kiddo! It's time to get you some threads." Should Nemuri have brought the kid some street clothes to go buy street clothes?

That sounds a bit redundant but she can't imagine any teens would want to run around Tatooin in baby blue sweatpants, slides, and a wrinkled white shirt.

The kid finally makes a facial expression and finally looks at her face instead of a foot above her head. She's a little embarrassed that she held her breath for a moment in case the feeling came back. It didn't.

"Ashido?" Oh my God. Kid, what?

Nemuri just mechanically unfolds one of her arms and extends it in Nurse Ashido's direction. "The woman that's been your primary Nurse for over a month."

Give or take the few weeks she was free floating through the other floors because they thought the kid had terror induced quirkism, but it's probably best not to mention that.

The kid just blinks at her.

"Kid, I'm not a psychic. Your poker face is killing me here. Are you messing with me or did you seriously not know your head nurse's name after interacting with them for a few weeks?"

Nemuri is glad that the kid still has enough self-awareness to look at least a little embarrassed over their complete lack of a short term memory.

"I've just been calling her the Purple Gal."

Nemuri was going to explode like a giant moldy puffball the second they reached the parking lot.

And Nurse Ashido just *giggles* at that. There is no way in hell that poor woman knows what the origin of that nickname is. She probably just thinks the kid is bad at nicknames.

Which he is. But that's not the reason the nickname sucks.

"Don't worry, I know he doesn't mean anything by it. Alrightie John, I hope you enjoy your first day out with Kayama-san! I know you've been looking towards it for a while!"

Damn. Could've fooled Nemuri. She'd say the kid has a wicked resting bitch face but that'd imply there's some attitude to it. Resting nap face?

No, that sounds stupid.

Nurse Ashido just keeps talking, because people don't wait for internal monologues.

"Tatooin Market is right around the block, so you'll be able to get back quick in case you forget anything or feel like dropping off your new stuff instead of lugging it around all day with Nemuri."

That's definitely not the real reason the nurse is reminding the kid he can bail and come back at any time but the kid looks half-asleep so Nemuri doubts he notices the subtext.

"And if you aren't back by sunset I'll form a giant mob with torches and pitchforks and we'll go find you." And that bit's probably directed more are Nemuri than anyone else.

The kid just shrugs at that. "Eh, I'd be happy just to get an Amber alert."

Nemuri has no idea what an Amber alert is.

It's also pretty clear by now that the brat has no idea just how many hornets nests he's been dancing on just by existing.

Mirko's lawyers are *still* fighting for their lives over what Mirko did to that interrogation room.

Nemuri wraps up the well wishing and all but drags the kid to the nearest elevator and out the first door she sees before she causes an incident.

Turning around to let the kid know she's about to release her quirk's stress buildup and that he should scoot back a few dozen meters, she gets about three words out before she's so shocked stupid that her quirk stops rolling under her skin for a second.

First off, the kid finally has an active emotion plastered across his face for once, and it's a 50/50 mix of spooked and creeped that makes Nemuri realize that quickly dragging the kid to an abandoned parking lot within thirty seconds of getting her hands on him is a really, really, really bad look.

Second off, and what made her so shocked stupid in the first place, is the kid's quirk. Oh no, not his creepy supernova eyes. She got used to that after the first few minutes of feeling like a peeled grape.

Nah, she's talking about the other quirk the kid apparently has. Apparently, it's a smoke quirk. That looks and drifts and smells exactly like her own.

Even works like hers too, considering the bee that just flew through a stray cloud just to hit the pavement. Only thing different about his quirk is it's a darker purple. Closer to actual lilac than her own quirk's slightly brighter pink hue.

What in the actual fu-

Nemuri proceeds to explode like a giant moldy puffball.

Good news, the kid's immune to her quirk. Bad news, the flock of birds flying overheard weren't.

---

(still) Nemuri Kayama

Nemuri wants to believe the kid's eyes are actually a power copying quirk on full blast and that zappy feeling was just them snatching up their quirk. Power copying quirks are rare, but they do exist.

The problem is it's really hard to believe that when she asks the kid about being a power copier and their immediate response is "Oh, so multiple quirks are common?"

Nemuri already feels a migraine bouncing off her skull. She knew the had was genuinely missing at least some memories but she didn't realize it was this bad.

"Kid… you can't have two quirks. The closest thing is dual quirks."

Kiddo just shrugs again. "Then I guess I have a dual quirk. One part lets me look at people real good, and the other part lets me make roofie gas."

That isn't how dual quirks work and she tells him as much. Kiddo just quirks his eyebrow up at her and says-

"Well, what's Endeavor's excuse?"

When did Endeavor get invited to this clusterfuck??? Her poker face must've been failing her because the kid immediately provides his ironclad argument after looking at whatever expression even is.

"He has pyrokinesis but he's also super durable."

Midnight's brainstem just snaps in half at this comment. The kid didn't know what body conditioning was. Was this kid's health education so bad that he just thought people used chi like in a cartoon?

"Kid… he conditions his body with physical training. This is basic stuff."

And then the kid just launches a bullet punch at her with "If people can become more durable by working out then how do people die from accidents like slipping in the shower. Or car crashes."

Because old ladies don't bench press 800kg and run 40 miles on a treadmill every day. She doesn't say that because she knows the kid will just ask why they don't.

She doesn't like the thought that the most honest answer is "They're kind of already halfway out the door so why bother".

"Alright kid. Kiddo. Rugrat. You're killing me here. We really ne-" Nemuri can't even say her entire sentence before the kid interrupts her.

"Why do you keep calling me Kid." Shit. The Kid asks it with the same levity someone would ask for a 500 yen coin, but she can tell the kid is actually locked into the conversation for once.

Mostly because his eyes are now burning two holes right through her own.

Fuck it, she was planning on having this conversation later but if it's going to swing her way all on it's own…

"John Doe ain't a name, Kid. It's just gallows humor from pre-quirk era America. And maybe Europe. Point is I'm not calling you a name that places yourself as the punchline." This wasn't something she was budging on. She was an art teacher, she knew the value of symbolism. She wasn't going to call the kid Unknown Corpse for the rest of his life.

The kid just lets out a chuckle at that. The kind you let out when you watch someone run a red light and instantly get pulled over.

"Shit. I can tell you're serious. I didn't think anyone would actually care that much."

If she ever met the villain that caused this kid's complete lack of self-care she was gonna put them in a bitchsuit and dogwalk them all the way across the collapsible bridge straight to Tartarus.

Nemuri's forced to drop her thoughts for FCC-restricted retribution as the kid continues to speak.

"Fuck. What a wash. Not even out of the parking lot and I'm already getting the Foster Deluxe treatment. Can't stand my freaky ass eyes, can't stand my shitty meme name, can't go five feet without spewing poison gas…"

Lilac smoke is already back to billowing out of the kid's neck and shoulders as he continues to rant at the brick wall beside her. She honestly can't tell if the kid's speaking to her and refusing to look or if he's just ranting directly towards the wall for himself.

"You know what? Fuck the name. Name changes are only like, a few hundred bucks." Why would you have to pay money to submit basic paperwork like a name change form? "But the eyes? Fuck the eyes."

Nemuri's seen a lot of car crashes over the years as a hero. Most of them literal instead of metaphorical, so it's a bit impressive that the car crash happening right in front of her is one of the worse ones she'd been a direct witness for.

The kid, with absolutely zero prompting about his quirk, just goes feral at the very idea of his own quirk. How he can't even stare at people without getting the TMI treatment, how fucked everything looks, how he can't even forget the information if he wanted to.

It's a lot. It's probably one of the worst breakdowns this parking lot has ever seen, which is impressive since they're standing outside an Ambulance entrance to an ER unit.

It's even worse that the kid is barely even heated while systematically tearing apart his own birth quirk, as if he's just venting over a terrible shoes he just spent an hour walking in.

Instead of, you know, a core part of his existence he's had to deal with since day one.

"How long has this rant been building up?" Nemuri wonders but doesn't ask. That's not really the kind of question you can ask a dozen bullet points in on someone's dysphoria rant.

Should she stop this? It's not like anyone else is around at the moment, and this sounds like something the kid's been keeping close to his chest for about a decade and some spare change.

It's not like Nemuri has a choice on the matter since the kid finishes his passive breakdown before she can intervene and (probably) make it worse.

"So yeah, fuck the eyes." The kid says with a final shrug and the tone of someone calmly explaining why you shouldn't buy shoes from the same place you buy groceries. "Shitty cursed eyes. Don't think I haven't noticed everyone jumping every time I glance at them, as if I'm about to drop them in a Tsukuyomi every time we make eye contact."

She opens her mouth to say something- she isn't even sure what at this point- before the kid quickly snaps his fingers and pointing both index fingers towards her.

"You know what, you're right. Screw John Doe. It's a terrible name. It's not even from the right continent." Should she tell the kid that you don't need a Japanese name just because you live in Japan?

No. He might keep that shitty name if she does…

"Fine. Screw John Doe, and screw my cursed eyes. You might as well call me… I don't even know. Itachi Gojo?"

...What the fuck kind of name is Weasel Fifth Street???

Nemuri's not sure what's worse, the fact that the kind's only ideas for names are "Unknown Corpse" and "Weasel Fifth Street" or the fact that the kid actually seems to like the name. She knows it's a reference to something awful.

She's not even done with her first interaction with the kid and she already knows it's a reference. It's always a pop culture reference, except when it's a mental breakdown.

If UA wasn't an international school she'd assume this is all from the kid's situation, but she's interacted with enough Americans to know better. This is just how they exist. Like those jungle birds that can make chainsaw revving and other deforestation noises.

Listening to two American teens interact is like watching two drunks play a game of chicken except the loser gets reported to a suicide hotline instead of hit by a train.

"Are you sure you want Itachi Gojo as a name?"

She really didn't want to name her first kid "Weasel Fifth Street".

It doesn't help that the kid actually looks happy at the thought of the dumb name. He's barely even smiling, and it's more of an amused smirk than anything else, but she'll take literally anything at this point.

Shit. This is why kids aren't allowed to name themselves. Everyone would be named nonsense like "Fighter Jet" and "Broad Sword".

Double shit. She's actually considering it. She can't think of anything terrible the new (dumb) name is referencing, which is already more than she can say about "Unknown Corpse". The kid actually seems to like it. And worst of all… the name doesn't actually sound that bad. Itachi Gojo even rolls off the tongue a bit.

Screw it. The kid said it himself. Name changes are cheap, because they're free. She still has no clue why the kid thought they'd cost money. If she can't think of anything terrible about the name, and it makes the kid happy...

Wait a second. She's adopting the kid.

"Why don't you just take my last name if I'm adopting you?"

The kid just tilts his head at her at that, as if looking at her sideways will straighten out whatever she just said. "You're adopting me?"

She knows the kid was told about it. Multiple times. Either his Amnesia is a repeating issue or the kid's still in a coma and is just dreamwalking. He takes one look at her face as she opens her mouth to ask the kid if he needs a CAT scan and he's already defending his (total lack of) logic.

"Hey, c'mon. Don't give me the stink eye at that. I just thought you were gonna foster me." She has no idea what that means. "You know, like you were just gonna give me an empty bedroom with a sleeping bag as the government sends you monthly checks to buy me cereal and socks and then you pocket the extra money to buy scratch off tickets."

Nemuri still has no idea what exactly Fostering someone means but she's starting to think it's just pre-quirk slang for "abuse and traumatize".

She doesn't even bother saying anything at that point. She just bends down slightly and pulls the kid in for a hug. One of those borderline violent ones exclusively named after large violent animals.

The kid doesn't really respond to the hug besides getting a little tense and awkwardly fidgeting in place for a bit, but she'll consider no response to be a positive response at this point.

"What's your last name mean again?" Nemuri has to take a second to wrack her own brain before she answers, still hugging the kid.

"Kayama can mean a few things depending on the kanji, but mine translates into Fragrance." The kid just hums at that.

"And your first name translates into…?" She's going to pretend she doesn't know he's just fishing for her first name because he's already forgotten it.

"Nemuri means sleep. So my full name roughly translates into Sleep Smell." That finally gets a reaction from the kid, which is pulling away from her just enough to give her a deadpan stare, which hits like a beanbag shotgun when given by those eyes point blank.

"Wait, your name is a direct reference to your quirk but you didn't get your quirk until you were four. How the hell did your parents pull that off?"

She… she doesn't actually know the answer to that. How DID they pull that off?

The kid continues to look more and more confused as he continues to speak "Is this like My Little Pony?"

What?

"You know." The kid continues to speak. And also no, she doesn't know. "Everyone has a name that's related to their special talent slash quirk, and when they reach a certain age their talent that's suspiciously similar to their name gets revealed and they spend the rest of their life being a one note stereotype."

Wasn't this kid JUST having the world's most stoic dysphoria breakdown over his quirk? And now he's talking about old children cartoons and fate? She can't even blame the kid's weirdness on this one. In fact that's probably the most expected back-to-back topic swing he's had so far.

She wants to ask the kid what the hell he's even talking about before she thinks about her coworkers names and the kanji they're written with. And then she tries thinking of someone with a name not directly related to their quirk.

The only person she can think of is Hizashi Yamada. Who she knows for a fact was named after a famous radio personality from the pre-quirk era. A man known for his voice.

Fuck.

"I think it might actually be like My Little Pony." Nemuri admits, finally dropping the hug and giving the kid a little space as he stares off into space for a moment.

"Damn. All we're missing now is a special super-pony that'll groom a neurotic nerd to take it's place at the top of the world while also setting them up to battle their equally powerful super-nemesis who is also their immediate sibling."

Alright, she's pretty sure it's not THAT close to My Little Pony. Probably. She's never heard of the… show? The show or even heard about it till now so she'll take the kid's word on it.

"Any other villains the pony gets set up to beat besides the secret family member?" This is the first time the kid's actually spoken multiple sentences consistently, she's going to milk the conversation.

"Eh, I never actually watched the show. I just read fanfiction." Fair. "I think the actual big bad was a power-absorbing demon that escaped a prison called Tartarus?"

Well there are no power absorbing demons currently trapped in Tartarus so they should be good.

"Why does the super-pony groom a neurotic nerd to take it's place?"

The kid doesn't even hesitate with the answer. "They're old as fuck. The retirement home beckons."

Also fair.

"Also I don't want your surname. Itachi Kayama would translate into smelly weasel, and that's not a name I can live with."

Nemuri's eye starts to twitch at that. "Just choose a better first name than Itachi." The kid just rolls his eyes at her, like she just said something unreasonable.

"I can't. There's no better first name than Itachi." There are many. "And I can't call myself Satoru or else I'd be placed on Fraudwatch." She's just going to move past that.

Nemuri sighs and shakes her head at the kid's antics. "Listen, I can't keep calling you Kiddo in my head and I refuse to call you any variation of John or Doe."

The kid just strokes his chin at that. "How about Toji? Toji Kayama?"

"It's perfect!" Nemuri blurts out with glee. It isn't that good, but after "Unknown Corpse" and "Weasel Fifth Street" she'd take that Toji Kayama any day of the week.

She's pretty sure she can even mess with the kanji a little and give the kid's version of Kayama an alternate meaning besides Fragrance if he's really deadset on it.

The kid just sticks his pinkie, index, and thumb out and curl the other two fingers into his palm before limply holding his arm out and… lightly waggles his hand back and forth at her words.

Alrightie then. That probably means something positive.

Well, they haven't even left the parking lot and Nemuri would already call this outing a win. Kiddo- Toji has a new name that doesn't suck and was immediately willing to take her own surname, which felt way better than she was expecting it to.

On the other hand, they're still in an empty parking lot. And Nemuri's starting to realize she might need to leave the kid here for a few minutes so she can run off to a gas station around the corner and buy the kid some cheap shades.

She might've been underestimating how hard the kid's scanner quirk hits people from the first time he uses it, because him just staring at the birds they dropped earlier was enough to send them packing.

Along with the half dozen people that tried approaching their area that the kid accidentally glanced at.

And that's not even counting that car that parked, got glanced at, and immediately hit a reverse and sped out of the parking lot with shrieking rubber. Yeah she knows they're standing in the ER parking zone. Apparently the kid's eyes are still a bigger emergency.

"Hey Toji, I need to get you some glasses from the gas station right around the corner so you don't-" Cause a stampede of panicked civvies that think their nervous system is being hijacked. "-spook anyone with your quirk."

The kid just gives her a thumbs up at that. "Yeah, I'll just sit in the shade and take five to myself. It's not like anyone is going to approach me."

Depressing, but true. She knows she shouldn't leave the kid by himself, but she also knows the kid barely even moves when actively being dragged to an entire shopping district to buy whatever he wants from his rich mom, so the chances of him wandering off are… slim.

The kid can also give people mini-seizures by looking at them and expel knockout gas, so good luck committing a crime on him.

"Right. I'll be right around that corner at the gas station. You can literally see it from here. If you need me for anything you can just shout and I'll hear you." The kid just gives her a thumbs up and shuffles off to the shadiest spot of the parking lot.

She should probably be at least a little worried about leaving the kid for a bit, but everything she said was objectively true. There's nothing she can think of that'd cause the kid issues in the five minutes she's gone.

---

Toru Hagakure


Toru would never admit it, but she was a bit of a voyeur. Yeah haha, invisible girl uses her powers to stare at people, better lock your windows and put salt lines around your bathrooms!

Not that kind of voyeur! Nah, she loved watching people in NATURAL environments. You know… like shopping districts.

She was pretty bad at explaining her hobbies. Maybe that's why nobody wants to hang out with her for hours on end at Tatooin? Meh, she'd show them! She's going to get into UA and make twenty friends and force them all to go terrorize malls together.

Sounds like an awesome time. Yup.

What was she thinking about? Oh yeah! She loved being a voyeur!

People always act super interesting when they think nobody's looking, and since she's invisible she can just wear a tank top (and shorts!), plop down on a bench, and rubber neck as much as she wants.

Of course, Toru's also a hero! Well, planning on being a hero. So she likes to think of this less as a hobby and more of a lifestyle. She's "building a footpath" so to speak. Getting her patrol routes down. Familiarizing herself with the lay of the land.

An animal must always know where the watering hole is. The shopping district is her watering hole.

But she doesn't just hit up the shopping centers. A true hero must understand every part of the human condition if they're going to truly protect them. That's why she makes sure to hit up every other gossip-rich location on her way to her main objectives.

Parks. Morgues. Gas stations. Beach fronts. Hospitals. If it's a place she's likely to see laughter or tears then you bet she'll be there! Barely out of sight, definitely out of mind, watching… waiting… learning…

How to be the Stealth Hero: Invisible Girl!

Well, she's currently Hobby Hero: Voyeur Girl! As long as her epithet says hobby and not lifestyle she should be good.

Something people don't really know about Toru is that she has a pretty keen eye. Just because she's always got her head in the clouds doesn't mean she can't see the ground! She's figured out how to spot pick pockets, people carrying weapons, people that are under quirks, the whole nine yards!

Being a voyeur sure is useful! And not at all a creepy waste of time!

In fact, her keen eyes manage to actually spot some prime drama a citizen in need while she's passing by the ER parking lot on her way to Tatooin Shopping District!

He's sitting by himself in the shade a bit away from the hospital itself, butt plopped on one of those concrete blocks they put in front of parking spaces so old ladies don't accidentally run over joggers, with his head in his hands.

This guy is already the saddest sight she's seen that entire month, and that's before she notices he's wearing the cheap clothes they give long-term residents of the upper units. Yeah, someone definitely needed some social interaction to help distract them from their own existence for a bit.

So of course Toru immediately forgets about the shopping mall and instead jogs across the street and right towards him. She at least remembers to check for traffic because she knows a bit too well that traffic won't check for her.

Haha, being invisible sure is fun!

...Anyways! She manages to cross the road, not get hit by any drunk drivers, and closes in on her prey- the sad civvie in emotional peril when he looks up at her and-

WOAH! H̴͕̜̅͆̀͗o̵̱͛̅̋͠ḻ̸̈́̽̆̓y̴̨̻̼͍̍̓ ̷͙̭̱̐̆̾ş̴̲͕̳̄h̸̞͋̈́̐͝i̶̘͆t̷͕͆̂̓̓!̵̮͌͗ ̸͖̯̠͂́͗͠Ì̵̙s̵̬͈̅͛͆͒ ̵͙̍̊͘t̷̃ͅh̴̺̐̀̉į̷͈̯̗̋́͆š̷̢̗͔̪̋̾̚ ̸̼̃h̷̖̕o̷̮͗͗̚w̴̢̨̠̎̂̌ ̷̧̞̀͘f̶̜̌̉̕r̷͉͖͕̮͐͛͘͝o̸̜̅g̷͕̗̩̀͜s̸̛͇̗̅̈́͘ ̵̧̧̮̖́i̴̭̓͒̓n̴̼̲̰̚ͅ ̵̢̗͉̤̅̎b̸̫̱̠̳̍i̷͇̇̓̆͝ò̵̢l̷̯̭̅̓̑o̸̯̔̅͘ǵ̵̯̻͍̒̈́͑ÿ̶̯͉͈̳́ ̸̧̭̙̖͒̃͘c̷̤̻̜̈ḽ̴̈́ạ̸̼́̀s̶͇͆̀s̶͎̱͘é̶̛̞̺̺ͅs̸͕̗̘̈́̑͆̚ ̷̛̜̌̈́̚f̷̡͒̆ḙ̸̬͔̗̏̐̍ȩ̸̮̀̑͘ĺ̶̙̣̔̓͜͜?̵͍̃!̸̡̜̣̋

… Welp. If she ever wondered how it felt to have a skeleton made up entirely out of funny bones, she just found the answer. Honestly? Not that bad… eventually.

But damn, talk about one potent scanner quirk. This kid needed some glasses like, yesterday!

Toru noticed the guy flinch a little at whatever expression must be on her face and she immediately feels a little guilty for it, even if it's entirely his creepy quirk's fault she just had a two second spirit-seizure.

It doesn't help her conscious that Toru knows firsthand how rough having a constant emitter quirk could be. Rough enough that her parents had to lie on her quirk paperwork so it'd be considered a mutant type just so she couldn't get arrested for public quirk use.

She thought she had it rough! But this guy? Holy fuck! His family must need a team of lawyers on standby just so he isn't arrested for assault with a quirk just for looking at people.

And then she realizes that the guy just reacted to her reaction. That the guy is looking at her. Straight in the eyes from across the parking lot with his head lightly cocked to the side, like a dog that just found an entire hive full of squirrels.

Well squirrels don't live in hives, but still!

Toru immediately bends her head as far to the side as she can without moving her shoulders, makes the most idiotic expression she can possibly manage. Eyes crossed, tongue sticking out, forehead more wrinkled than a pug, the whole doofus shebang.

The guy's creepy burny eyes keep tracking hers except now he looks confused as all hell.

…...HOLY SHIT!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

He can see her! What??? What the hell?!?! Wait, his creepy scanner quirk worked on an invisible person! How can he- wha- wahhhhhhhhhhhh?!

Toru takes a deep breath. She holds it. She releases. Nice slow steady exhale.

……

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Toru notices the guy slowly stand up, shrug like it's her fault he just broke her brain with a single glance, and quickly begin walking towards the Hospital entrance.

The entrance! He's walking away! She scared him away! Her white whale! NOOOOOOO!!! Toru immediately rushes to body block Moby Dick from leaving, not even caring how bad she looks right now. Screw first impressions! She needs answers!

"You can see me!" She doesn't even bother saying it like it's a question.

The guy takes a little step back as if he's concerned to be near her. "Am I not supposed to?"

"No! Nobody's supposed to see me!" That's the entire point of being invisible!

The guy's face suddenly hardens at her words, as if he was gearing up to go fist fight a Kodiak bear. "Are you with the Hero Academy?"

…… Was this guy trying to LARP with her? Now? After frying her nervous system and her brain?!

"No! Because I'm invisible!"

The guy just stares at her after she says that, like she remembered her wallet but forgot her brain before leaving the house that morning.

Toru looks down at herself just to make sure. Yup, still invisible. She looks back up. Good news, he's still there. Awkwardly staring at her. At least his eyes stopped feeling so weird after the first time looking.

"I… have a diagnosis quirk?" That isn't a type of quirk, but close enough.

"You have a scanner quirk?" Moby Dick tilts his head a little and then nods.

"A quirk that activates based off of eyesight?" Moby Dick nods again.

Toru starts huffing at that. "How can your scanner quirk scan me if it can't see me to scan me?"

That right there is Toru's biggest obstacle. Her silver bullet. Her garlic. If you can't see someone, you can't activate your vision-based quirk on them. She's heard it a hundred times before.

So what the hell makes this guy so different?!

The guy takes one look at the face she's making (someone can see the stupid expressions she's never bothered hiding! Amazing!) and almost lets out a weak chuckle before he (probably) remembers she's a crazy woman body blocking him in a parking lot.

"Well, quirks are a part of the body. My quirk lets me see the body. Completely. So as long as I can see your quirk I can scan you." And then the guy just starts waving his hands like he's tossing an invisible salad.

"Even if your quirk is outside of your body its still a body part, ya know? It's just grabbing the light around you and kind of twisting it like this-" And then he starts pretending to flick away invisible bullets.

Toru stares at him.

Moby Dick has to realize he isn't getting through to her because he quickly changes tactics. "You know, instead of "swhoo-swhiish you just gotta stare straight on and... Foom-Foosh!"

And then he starts pretending to fold an invisible brochure while making shuttle noises.

...What the fuck?? She's gone through a few dozen quirk specialists and not a single one knew how to foom-foosh correctly?!

Where the fuck did they even get their licenses? This sounds super easy! Well Toru had no chance in hell of doing it, but if Moby Dick can figure it out then so should a private practice in Downtown Tokyo!

Yeah, that's it. Toru was befriending this guy. And honestly? She wasn't even going to pretend it was for anything besides self-serving interests. She wanted the bare minimum from human on human interaction and she hung out alone at malls as a hobby. Sue her.

"Hi! I'm Toru Hagakure! What's your name?" Should Toru demand personal information while body blocking someone in public?

Probably not, but she's past that point. Also she gave him her name first so now he's obligated to respond. Them the rules.

"Oh! I'm Toji Kayama!" He gets way too happy at introducing himself considering how he was a 50/50 mix of emotionless and weirded out a second ago, but she'll take any ice breaker by now. She needed to secure this friendship.

"Also, can you fuck off? I'm kind of losing my mind at the moment." Oh wow, it's been a few months since she's heard anyone say that to her!

"Amazing, we already found something we have in common! Because I'm kind of having a mental breakdown right now! Don't worry, it's the good kind!" She says with a giant smile that makes the guy take another step back. He can see her smile! EEEEEEEeeeeee!

Now listen, Toru isn't autistic. Well, she isn't diagnosed. She knows starting up a friendship is a delicate act that requires careful social maneuvering and a whole lot of circumstances. But at the same time, she has a lot of questions and little self control, so...

"AHHHHhhhhhhh!! What do I look like?! What color is my hair? What color is my skin?! Do I have any freckles? What do my eyes look like? Am I pretty? Am I ugly? Be honest! I NEED to know how I look!!!"

The guy seems like he at least has an idea at how hard this had been eating at her because he actually calms down a little and actually takes a few moments to look her over instead of just blurting something out.

"You're completely wrapped in this funky iridescent aura. That's your quirk." Toru has no clue what that word means and has to immediately pause the face reveal to search it up on her phone.

The guy doesn't even try running away while she looks it up, which is nice of him! Maybe he realized this had been tearing at her soul since she could form permanent memories? Maybe he knows he wouldn't get too far? Who knows!

Also she finished looking up iridescent and yeah, alright. That looks pretty sick. "What else?!"

"Your hair is yellow and green." She blinks a little at that one.

"Like lemon-lime?"

The guy nods at that, like he didn't just start off with "prismatic opal forcefield' and then segway into "dollar store candy flavor".

"Yeah, banana yellow and bright mint green. With light pink highlights that keep disappearing. Also your eyelashes are pink as well. And super thick. As in, they're surrounding over half of your eye."

She already knew about her eyelashes since she could feel them but she's not gonna lie, the more he talks the more she sounds like a visual mess.

"What about my eyes on their own?"

The guy has to lean in a little to check on that one. "Regular sclera, electric blue iris, and really giant bright yellow pupils. They're a different color than your hair. I have no idea why I'm surprised at that."

Toru had spent a lot of time over the years trying to imagine how she looks. She's imagined herself as everything from a literal Jade Skinned beauty to an actual hobgoblin.

Psychedelic Easter themed strobe light was never on her bingo card.

But hey, it's still amazing to hear! She loved the questions! She loved the answers! What's her skin color? Pale-generic? How vague! Why yes, she knows she has giant yaoi hands with blocky fingers for some reason! Any freckles? None? Do you mean none that you can see or- oh! Literally none. Anywhere. Hmm.

Oh well! Turnabout's fair play! You can't voyeur up the neighborhood for a decade and clutch pearls when the refrigerators start running.

She gets so invested in interrogating her new bestie that she doesn't even notice anyone getting closer to them until she hears a woman loudly laugh right behind them. She turns around to tell the woman to buzz off and- WOAH! Midnight in street clothes!

She knows you're supposed to politely pretend you don't recognize heroes on the street when they aren't in uniform, but she's the one that approached first so all social obligations are canceled.

"Well damn kiddo, I leave you alone for two seconds and you already have a girl fawning all over you! You're doing the Kayama name proud!" Should Toru correct the woman or just take the positive first impression and run with it?

Thankfully her new bestie is already putting that title to good use and goes to bat for her. Kind of. "Nah, it ain't like that. She's just tweeking because I'm the first person that can see her, and that's counting herself."

He then scratches at his neck for a second and follows it up with "Also I'm pretty sure she's gay. As in, literally covered in rainbows levels of gay."

On one hand, way to fucking out her to a stranger, bestie. woof. On the other hand, way to fucking out her to Midnight, bestie! Woof!

Midnight just chortles at that. "Oh, what makes you say that?" Actually yeah, what makes him say that? Can his quirk… see how gay she is?!

"She's been staring at you like a construction worker from the 1950s since she made eye contact with you. As in, she's been eyeing you so hard her necks been moving."

Oh right. Woops. She forgot her bestie can see her. Uhhh, should she say something? What would she even say? "Sorry I eye-fucked your mother in an ER parking lot"?

… Nah. She's a voyeur, not a liar.

She's glad she doesn't take accountability because Midnight just loses it laughing at her kid's words, which Toru is going to take as positive reinforcement to justify not growing as a person.

"Wonderful! It's always good to have friends with excellent tastes. Speaking of excellent tastes, here are your new sunglasses. They should block your quirk from activating on people, and they're big enough to block your eyes. Well, from most angles at least."

And Toru knows from first hand experience with his quirk that if someone gets blasted with it from the side that he can just power-walk away before they snap out of their system shock and figure out who did it.

Toji just slowly takes giant pair of teashades from her and stares down at them with a completely blank face. "I should've just gone for broke and settled on Satoru Gojo."

Toru has no idea what that means, but apparently Midnight does because she just laughs and says- "Too late, I already texted Nezu your new name and told him to get started on the paperwork."

What? New name? Is her bestie in witness protection?

Toji just stares at Midnight in disgusted confusion after she finishes speaking. "You're letting your boss do your adoption paperwork for you?"

Midnight nods with zero shame, like the girlboss Toru wishes she could be. "Yep! He has, like, a 200IQ and loves paperwork. He'll have everything sorted out before I could even finish the first page."

Toji looks like he has a lot more he wants to say about that (Toru's not sure why, the logic adds up in her own mind) before he visibly stops giving a fuck and slides the glasses over his face.

Honestly? Not a bad look. In fact if Toji got his hair cut a bit he'd look like the fourth member of an idol group. You know, the one that raps and plays all the fringe instruments they only bother using for one song in the album.

"Alright. Guess your boss now knows all my personal information. Oh wait, I have none. Heh." Toru's not really sure how that statement's supposed to be interpreted.

Midnight just gives him a thumbs up. "Yep! Nothing's personal when Nezu's involved!" Wait, then why did she- "Well, enough standing in this parking lot! Time for a boring shopping montage!"

Woah, a boring shopping montage? That's literally Toru's second favorite hobby right after voyeurism!

Sometimes she'll even combine the two and slowly drift around stores and peer into other people's carts and judge their entire lives based entirely on how many name-brand products they have in their carts!

Toru waves her hand at Midnight before remembering she's still invisible to 99.9999% of the human population and reverts back to speaking. The horror.

"Oh, can I come along? I'm great at fashion! And I've only interacted with Toji for a few minutes but I can tell he doesn't know how to dress himself."

She hears Toji call her rude at that, as if he didn't just clock her and out her in a single breath. She's not mad but she's gotta take at least one pot shot for that kind of thing. Momma Hagakure didn't raise no doormat!

If she did then Toru probably wouldn't be voyeur. Oh well!

She readies her silver bullet and aims it at Toji. "What colors are you planning on dressing in?"

Toji looks off at nothing as he thinks for a moment before responding. "Oranges. Dark purples. Maybe darker reds, like brick?"

Why the hell is a guy with a light summer complexion about to dress like they're a Deep Autumn?

Despite being unable to see her face Midnight still manages to make eye contact with her, and they immediately reach a mutual understanding.

They cannot let Toji dress his own ass or else they were finished!

On the bright side, Toji being unable to understand why a borderline albino dressing in Thanksgiving colors was bad gave her a free pass to tag along with him and his mom.

Even better, she got to be the first number in her bestie's new phone. Apparently he didn't even have one before they went out shopping, which just adds to Toru's theory that he was in witness protection and just got adopted. It'd explain why Toji looks absolutely nothing like his mom.

… Wait, did she just crash their first shopping trip together?

Uh. Woops?

---

Toji Kayama (formerly John Doe)


Fuck. What a nightmare of a day. Where does he even begin? Should he start with the FIVE suns that are now in his dumb Sherlock head palace instead of the two he left with?

Nah, screw that. That's for later.

Well first off, he's adopted. As in, actual adoption. Not just a foster. He isn't sure why that's getting to him so much. He doesn't remember all that much but he clearly remembers having a twin, so he knows he had at least SOME family.

Meh, oh well. Best not to think about the past. That's dead and crushed.

Anyways! He got adopted via shit naming conventions. Apparently his pop culture references are so bad his new mom would rather just give him her own name than let him try and name himself something dumb like Gojo or Uchiha.

Jokes on her, he still got his pop culture reference in. He's always been told you need to pretend to be who you want to be, so he named himself after the undisputed GOAT.

That's right, his new name is Toji. Toji Kayama. He is now named after a mentally ill child-murdering assassin with a gambling addiction and a dominatrix that erupts into clouds of roofie-gas.

Two negatives equal a positive, and with a name like that his life is bound to be amazing.

He also talked about My Little Pony in public. And admitted to reading fanfiction of it. To his mom. While making eye contact with a mini-van full of people that immediately screamed and drove out of the lot.

With a power level that high, he was bound to reach heavenly restriction status. Mostly because he'd be restricted from heaven by the time he became an adult.

Toji's pretty sure Nemuri isn't a part of that Hero Academy bullshit. Mostly because she seemed to get pretty worked up at the idea of him being hurt or upset, so the chance of her being a spotter for Charles Xavier is pretty low.

He also made a new friend just by existing outside unattended for thirty seconds. Apparently.

One moment he's rubbing that sandy crud out of his eyes he got from that nap, next second some manic pixie girl with a gasoline aura is jogging through the streets right towards him.

Her name is Toru Hagakure. He can already tell she's an S-Ranked threat on his brain and probably his privacy to boot. If she didn't start shaking like a chihuahua in a blizzard the moment she realized he could actually see her he would've booked it from her right back into the hospital and hidden behind the first nurse he could find.

But c'mon. He's not a monster. He can recognize when someone's brain is getting spilled along the pavement and stuck around to answer her questions. Even if they almost immediately became invasive as all hell.

And then his brand new mom shows up, takes one look at the invisible girl going buck wild bonkers on him in the parking lot, and then makes eye contact with him and they have a full conversation with just gestures and shrugs while the manic invisi-gal continued to obliviously play 20 questions with him.

Yeah she's weird. Nah she's harmless. Yeah she's losing her marbles. Nah it's a personal thing. Yeah I need you to step in. Yeah I'm fine with keeping her around.

And then Toru turned around, took one look at Nemuri, and almost buried her face in his mom's tits and suddenly his goodwill experienced a bank run and it was too late to gesture "Actually this bitch is an evil villain, take her down!".

Not that Nemuri would've. He could tell she adored Toru. Nemuri must've had a thing for autistic rizz. Or maybe it was the fact that the girl looked like a wreck even through the invisibility field. Who knows.

And that's how the rest of his day post-nap went. He went clothes shopping with two sex pests and absolutely nothing bad happened or was even insinuated. An actual goddamn miracle.

Nemuri tried flustering him by asking if he needed to buy any condoms. He just laughed in her face at that. Nemuri tried the same thing on Toru. Toru looked like she was about to turn Nemuri into the condom.

He needed new friends. Quality doesn't even matter at this point. He'll take anything.

He's not going to list all the shit he bought because that'd be a dumb and tedious waste of time, so he will list the top five most important things he bought:

A laptop. A large bag of salt. A motion detector. Another motion detector. Yet another motion detector.

When your only friend is Toru, your only enemy… is also Toru. He's glad he kept the list to top five things he bought instead of top ten, otherwise he would've had to name out the other five motion detectors he bought.

They aren't actually motion detectors since they detect just about anything, but motion detector sounds less idiotic than "Life Detector" so whatever.

He bought all the other essential shit, obviously. Clothes, shoes, more sunglasses when he inevitably eats shit and breaks his first pair, etc.

He also got a new phone. Toru set it up and put her own number in it while he was trying on new clothes. And set his background photo to a picture of herself.

In any other circumstance that'd weird him out, but she's still invisible in photos so instead it's just a picture of her posing in front of an Endeavor cutout so it looks like he's dressed like a valley girl.

It was funny. He kept it as-is.

This is probably the part where he goes on about his new clothes and he describes his wardrobe as the most melodramatic edgelord fit Neo-Japan has ever seen. Fingerless gloves, hoodie-jackets with a tailcoat, steel toed dress shoes. Maybe even an Amon mask?

Ha, nah. Fuck that. Toji bought regular human clothing. Who the hell wakes up in a new world and goes "Oh damn, it's finally my chance to dress up like an elite bandit from Dishonored!"

Psychopaths that don't know how to dress themselves and still try anyways. That's who. Unlike himself. He just gave up and let two borderline strangers treat him like a doll for an hour or so.

Surrender was the only winning move on that front.

What else? Oh yeah, Nemuri quickly swung by the hospital, dropped all his new shit off, and then dragged both him and Toru out for sushi. He didn't even get a choice on the restaurant, or on inviting Toru. She just kind of followed them from point A to point B to point C.

Was Nemuri planning on adopting Toru because they were both degenerates? Toji didn't know, and that was a spooky thought. He didn't have enough sensors to Toru-proof an entire house.

After they got done draining Nemuri's wallet Toru pretended to be shocked at how late it was and just booked it. Gave him a quick hug before he could escape melee range, gave Nemuri a longer hug that wasn't fooling anyone, and then just hauled ass straight to Tatooin Station.

She even let up a giant dust trail as she ran as if she had a Road Runner quirk. This fucking world, man. It's like he's living in a cartoon.

And then Nemuri walked him home, they chatted for a bit, she made him promise about half a dozen times to never call anyone any variation of "Purple Person" as a nickname or an insult, and then let after giving him a Toru-length hug. Which is good because anything longer would've been diabolical.

And then he went to sleep and woke back up in the not-so-empty void. Except now instead of two suns, there's FIVE. Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?!

He didn't need more sex-pest powers. He can't even handle the first two he got! And by the way, the power descriptions aren't even accurate. His brand new eyes apparently make everyone he looks at have a mini-stroke, and every time he starts getting a bit emotional his entire body turns into a drugged up fog machine.

At least two of them were exactly the same, so that means he only has three new powers instead of five fully randomized ones. Joy.

Can he reject them? Should he reject them? They're already here, he's already here… might as well make it happen? Knowing his luck they'll just randomly activate while he's awake if he doesn't do it now.

Let's see… should he check the creepy black one, the disgustingly neon purple one, or the dull metal one?

All in on black, baby. He's already got two F-tier quirks, there's no way they can get any worse.

Forced Activation
200 CP
This Quirk gives the user the ability to manifest branching black spears with a circuit pattern from their body to harmlessly jack in to a target's body. Once connected, the user is able to forcefully activate and control the victim's Quirk as desired. This can be used to turn enemies on their allies, gain the aid of unconscious allies of your own or directing the quirk of another in a way beneficial to the user such as forcing a captive with a unique Quirk to go along with demands. The branching spears of this Quirk aren't the most powerful, durable or fast things around and as such it's highly difficult to make use of them on a resisting target. If the user has no idea what the target's Quirk is or how it works, they can't use their Quirk nearly as well.
Source: My Hero Academia, Category: mutation​

Click to shrink...

Ahhhh, another sex-pest quirk. This will make a fine addition to Toji's collection. But seriously, why the hell does he keep getting these creepy ass quirks?! This sounds objectively worse than the roofie gas. How can the roofie gas be the least terrible quirk in his lineup? Can he refund them? No? Fuck.

He need a normal power. No, not even that. He needs a power that won't actively screw him over the second he activates it.

What about the disgustingly neon purple sun? Maybe that'll not be an active detriment on his life? The last purple sun ended up being the only quirk he can tolerate so maybe?

He already knows he's fallen off entirely into cope. Screw it, time to spin the wheel.

The Purple
300 CP
The Quirk user is able to spread a bizarre electromagnetic field through inanimate objects that alters their physical properties. Objects affected become a vibrant purple color as long as the Quirk's effect is ongoing. The visual representation of the Quirk's effects transmits signals into the brains of living creatures observing affected objects, making the object hard to ignore or shift attention off of. Objects and materials affected also gain a kind of super-tangibility that causes them to express themselves on their surroundings to a greater extent. A playing card under this Quirk's effects would behave as if stronger than steel, as one example. The Quirk user is able to interact with affected objects as normal, leaving gloves to remain flexible on their hands, for instance. The Quirk user may passively leave objects affected, but may only spread this field out to so much at any given time. This Quirk will automatically spread to any inanimate object in contact with the Quirk user over prolonged periods of time, if applicable, such as clothing worn throughout the day.
Source: My Hero Academia, Category: mutation​

Click to shrink...

This… doesn't sound terrible. It doesn't sound useful, but it doesn't sound terrible. In fact it sounds like the only quirk he's gotten so far that isn't an immediate and active detriment on his life or his mental health.

Toji obviously doesn't trust that shit for one second. He rereads it three times before he figures out what the catch is.

"The visual representation of the Quirk's effects transmits signals into the brains of living creatures observing affected objects, making the object hard to ignore or shift attention off of."

And:

"This Quirk will automatically spread to any inanimate object in contact with the Quirk user over prolonged periods of time, if applicable, such as clothing worn throughout the day."

He's actually fucked. And not in the "Oh jeez, I sure look like a hentai baka" goofball way from earlier. He is actually, indisputably, undeniably fucked over a barrel by this quirk.

His only option is finding out how long it takes to spread and making sure he always changes clothes before that point. Otherwise he's actually finished.

…… Oh well! That's life! Sometimes you go all in on black and you become a tentacle monster. Sometimes you go all in on Purple and become a walking flashbang.

Well, might as well see what the final disappointment of the night is. He wants to say it can't be worse than The Purple, but at this point he doesn't think it can get better than Roofie. And the dull metal sun is:

Programming and Computer Science
200 CP
Supercomputers are your bread and butter, and Artificial Intelligence is your idea of a PDA. Data, programs, and digital devices are your playthings, not to mention that your understanding of such systems mean you can hack anything that could possibly be hacked. There isn't really any limit on the extent you could push computing hardware, and any kind of software you can imagine is within your grasp. Please do note that flaunting this is likely to attract some attention from a few major players in particular. Then again that might not be a bad thing depending on your disposition and plans.
Source: Worm, Category: mutation​

Click to shrink...

This superpower… is just autism. And not even the fun kind that lets you get a job being a train conductor. This is the kind that makes you feel the need to make a five hour essay on whether Yandere Dev or Toby Fox is a shittier coder.

Shittiest code developer in history versus the shittiest code developer of today. If and Else, but never will.

Wait, make Toby Fox the Sukuna proxy. Andrew Hussie can be Mahoraga.

Yeah sure he's making light work of the quirk but honestly? Good fucking quirk. He doesn't buy any of that melodramatic nonsense about being an AI coding God that can give Neo malware, but still! An actual talent! Something he can use in real life and not earn jail time for! And it won't randomly turn him into a smurf! Or make him give someone a seizure, or randomly drug people he walks too close to, or any other weird shit!

Who cares if his power is just knowing how to make mobile phone apps? He finally found a power that won't net him prison time just for existing!

There's no way he can actually make AI with it though. That'd be ridiculous. And also cost more resources than he even has. Toji's pretty sure he remembers those shitty AI farms from his first life that'd require an entire warehouse worth of tech just to scrape together enough neurons to generate an image of a frog.

Yeah, good luck making an AI on nothing but a laptop and a phone. The power sounds good, but not that good.

...... Wait, what the fuck is Worm?

 

[jef13123]

Man, nexus is going to love him, isnt he?

 

[CodeJerry]

The japanese version of John Doe is Taro Yamada

 

[trashtaker]

The japanese version of John Doe is Taro Yamada

Click to shrink...

Why do that when he can be brainrot?

 

[materialalternative7]

I love this Toru, and I love how she, the MC, and Nemuri bounce off eachother (however briefly). Nominative quirk determinism? MLP plot parallels? Excellent bits.

Looking forward to more.

 

[Phantom Thief Of Hearts]

Toru (the best waifu in BNHA) meets the MC (who's so high he's sane).

Shut up and take my money .

And what series will you use to get the powers, or will they only be powers from BNHA and Worm?

 

[St3f]

This looks very very promising, if a bit too fast. Given how much power was earned, in how little time frame, this can cause problems later on. The interaction between characters and monologue is amazing, so i am bookmarking this.

 

[InterdimensionalBigfoot]

Toji Kayama


It's been about two weeks since Toji had finished up at the hospital and moved into his new mom's place. So far? It's been pretty good. The apartment is one of those luxury "I can afford a house but just don't feel like it" places he only ever saw sociopathic e-celebs rent.

Felt weird actually living in one and treating it like a regular home instead of a doll house to film apology videos in.

His bedroom was fucking massive, full stop. Toji's pretty sure he could use it as a garage for a small bus if it was on the ground floor. And then his mom shoved a freaking massive bed in the center of it and obliterated the floor space.

Seriously, who the hell puts a bed in the direct center of a room? Oh what's that, just push the bed against a wall?

The floor was shag carpeting.

There are entire countries that people forgot existed due to the quirkpocalypse. Complete island chains drowned beneath the oceans. Entire cultures buried beneath centuries of rubble. Countless works of art, inventions, concepts, beliefs… all gone...

And shag carpeting is stronger than ever!

That's all fine and dandy on a cold winter night when he has to walk his ass to the pisstank at 3AM, but it's less enjoyable when he has to shuffle-nudge a truck sized bed across his barren ass room.

He spent a majority of his time "moving in" just moving the bed. Everything else took maybe half an hour to put together, tops.

First day was spent moving in, but every other day of the next two weeks after that? Coding. Nothing but coding.

Holy shit he can't believe he slept on the coding. What's that, mobile phone apps? Try simulator games for PC. Yeah that's right, Germany is still a country that exists. And the quirkpocalypse set them back in more ways than they'd ever know.

All their precious simulator games they hoarded over the years? Obliterated. He has no clue what could have destroyed Germany's most beloved luxury resource, but he's sure it was a villain trying to strike at the very heart of Germany itself.

But that's fine by him! The people, they yearn for Forklift Simulator. They yearn for Truck Simulator. They even yearn for Ice Rink Simulator.

But most importantly, they yearn for Power Wash Simulator.

Don't ask Toji how to code, he doesn't actually know the how it works. Shit's magic. The hyper-specific kind where if you slightly mispronounce a spell you'll summon a lit bomb and just become an ash-stain on the wall.

He tried renaming one misspelled asset from "Mediumboox" to "Mediumbox" and you would've thought he just deleted system32 from his laptop with how hard everything crashed and went to shit.

Coding a game is like trying to make a maximum security prison for pit bulls while also running a daycare in the center of it. You need to make sure the pit bulls stay in their cells, they only interact with their assigned handlers, they only eat kibble, and that the babies never escape from the daycare and seek out the pit bulls all on their own.

Sounds dumb but doable, and then the code starts playing fun tautology rules like "what do you consider the pit bull's cell" and "what exactly is a baby".

So then you get shit like pit bulls escaping because you deleted a single painting and, since it was connected to their cell, the code no longer believes the cells exist and just auto-places the pit bulls in the daycare entryway because the code thinks it's the only available space to place NPCs and it isn't technically the daycare.

Or maybe the code starts placing newborn pit bulls in the daycare because it's definition of baby was something along the lines of "NPC with an age lower than three".

Maybe one of the pit bull handlers just drops a baby straight in a pit bull's cell because the handler was assigned to take care of "Flower" and you forgot to separate the name pools for the pit bulls and the humans.

Or maybe there's no code to prevent pit bulls from just opening doors. Or maybe there's no hitbox for the babies so the pit bulls just endlessly attack an unhittable target until they starve to death. Maybe the pit bulls start mauling their own kids because they were only coded to attack NPCs with a low age rating.

Oh what's that, you added an automatic chime sound when the sun rises just for ambiance? Sorry, apparently you forgot to make that a one way street. Hope you don't use that sound effect for anything else or else the sun will reset it's position every time the noise is played.

And here's hoping you don't have any code tied to the sun rising, like babies needing to wake up or dogs growing hungry so they eat breakfast. What's that? What happens when an NPC needs to wake up but they're already awake?

That's for the code to know and for you to find out!

Eventually Toji figured out the ultimate lifehack for coding. Don't let shit interact. Ever. Compartmentalize everything and then compartmentalize the compartments. If you have something depend on another thing's existence to function just stop expecting it to function.

But enough about black magic, time to talk about Power Wash Simulator. Toji's precious cash cow. Why Power Wash Simulator? Simple. It's basic.

No NPCs. No "movable" objects. No time cycles, or reflections that are secretly NPCs coded to mirror the player behind a see-through wall. No hunger or thirst or anything mechanics.

Just a big empty sandbox you can't actually interact with and all "objects" you need to clean covered in a secondary dirty shader. Just make the washers shoot out an invisible cone that'll "delete" the part of the shader when it touches it.

Voila, instant Pressure Washing experience.

Toji's still skipping a lot of important details and his explanation is missing a lot of important information and special terminology because it turns out knowing how to do something doesn't give you the common lexicon associated with that thing, but whatever.

So, if these kinds of games are so easy compared to "Pit Bull Prison Daycare Simulator", why don't people make asset flips of cleaning games instead of store management sims?

It took about two days of coding the game before Toji learned this lesson the hard way. They don't play well with custom textures. At all.

Coding isn't logical. You can't just slap a coat of shader paint on an asset you bought and call it good. Maybe the asset has five quintillion polygons because the modeler was a motherfucker so just hitting it with the hose in one spot clears enough texture to call the level done.

Maybe the assets are a geometrical nightmare and have so many angles and impossible to reach places that it's impossible to clean the entire thing, making the level impossible.

Maybe the asset just looks like shit with your mess shader over it. Maybe it just doesn't work well with your shader. Maybe this, maybe that, maybe everything. Point is trying to asset flip a cleaning game is somehow more tedious than just making a regular slop trough game.

What's that? Just make the assets myself? Ha… haha…. Hahahahahahaha! Fuck no!

It'll be a cold day in hell when Toji uses so much as a crumb of talent and creativity to make a video game. Make the assets himself? Fuck that! That'd require time, and effort, and patience, and his own merits! Why use all those things when he can just spend a few hundred on random assets and then brutally crowbar them into place with patched up code?

Unfortunately, Power Wash Simulator is on the backburner until Toji can find a way to cheese the whole "have to make the assets himself" bit. Until then it's nothing but cheap asset flips.

What's the asset flip he's going to make now that he gave up on Power Wash Simulator? He already talked about it. It's Pit Bull Prison Daycare Simulator.

Thank God the game engine he made, Worm Engine, was basically a digital lego that let him plug in and out random chunks of code. Made flipping a cleaning simulator to a cannibal prison management game a very smooth process, all things considered.

Yeah the pit bulls sometimes start flying because he forgot to add gravity and weight as a mechanic. Yeah they sometimes die of dehydration because they tried drinking raindrops for a week straight instead of their water bowl because the rain counts as a closer water source. Yeah he forgot to add aging mechanics so now all the pit bull Handlers are 37 year old toddlers.

Endlessly detangling his shitty code is still preferable to learning how to use blender. Toji's sure this is a universal opinion.

And best of all, since it's been a few hundred years and all the record companies got genocided during the global apocalypse all the music from the pre-quirk era is now in the public commons!

Apparently Lil Wayne's grandson got a quirk factor that turned him into a Chainsaw Man. The guy snapped while in a concentration camp and went on a one man crusade against the entire industry for what they did to his grandfather. Shit was wild.

Anyways!

Currently the soundtrack is just every The Strokes song he could find online on a shuffle playlist. He'll probably change it to something more fitting before he releases the game. Probably.

Unfortunately the dialogue is a bit rough. And by that Toji means there's no text in the game. At all. It turns out society regressed so hard there's no longer any free language translation models online. Google Translate got done in by the quirkpocalypse and tribalism went so hard nobody ever got around to making a new one.

Vocaloids still exist though. Somehow. Fucking Japan, man…

So Toji figured out he'd kill two birds with one stone and just dumped every free vocaloid synthesizer he could find in his game and then hooked it up to a list of random nouns from every language on Earth he copy-pasted from a few digital dictionaries.

Viola! Voice acting and dialogue are finished!

He admits, it's a little disconcerting to hear a pit bull calmly say "Bagel" in Teto's voice after mauling half a daycare. Not disconcerting enough to make him go back and re-code it, but still. Enough to at least acknowledge it.

For the tutorial, UI, and basically everything he'd be obligated to translate… he just gave up and used hieroglyphics. The game design seems pretty intuitive, and he knows Germans always loved figuring things out themselves.

Toji's positive they'll figure it out eventually. It's like Minecraft. Half the fun comes from the discovery.

His coding power might be complete bullshit, but it's still taking him at least a little bit of time to put together his first magnum opus. He spent about two days on Power Wash Simulator before giving up, and he was able to port a lot more code than he thought to Pit Bull Prison Daycare Simulator, so it's been a pretty productive almost two weeks.

At the rate he's going he should have it out and on the market by the beginning of June. Yes he knows his power is nonsensical bullshit, and for once he loves it for that.

He hasn't just been coding though. He's been doing other things while also coding. Very important to multi-task in a world ruled by ADHD.

Toru spams his phone 24/7, and occasionally he remembers to look away from his laptop and actually message back.

This is usually because the pit bulls broke containment and he needed to take a break from wrangling them, but Toru doesn't need to know that.

He also spends a few hours with Nemuri almost every day. Since she's a teacher at UA she almost never goes on patrols so she usually comes home right after school and watches objectively terrible telenovelas while he sits on the far end of the couch and smashes his keyboard into submission.

Toji's pretty sure he can judge how much progress he's made in a coding session based off how many times Nemuri tells him to stop being so loud. The day he worked on the VA system she almost threw his laptop out the window like a frisbee, so he knows that day was the most productive one.

She mostly talks to him about that wacky-stacks school she teaches at. Always going on about how good it is, how nice the students are, how amazing their general and support courses are, how they have top of the line their social services are. Pro hero therapists and cooks, etc.

Still follows the Japanese school calendar of six days a week. Toji will probably get over having his head explode via truck-tire faster than he'll get over that fact.

Toji's pretty sure his mom is planning on enrolling him at the school, despite it supposedly being some pillar of meritocracy where you need to prove you deserve a spot in it.

If Nemuri expects him to beat ten thousand Japanese kids on a high school-university placement test she's in for one hell of a shock.

Is UA a high school or a university? The age range says high school, but the fact that people live in co-ed dorms while attending and get specialist jobs right after graduation screams university.

Not that it actually matters. Toji's pretty sure he's never going to have to work an honest day in his life thanks to the coding quirk. That thing has been carrying him on it's back since he got it.

Unlike The Purple. Fuck The Purple. He spent the first day in his room with a mirror against a wall trying to figure out how long it takes for the quirk to start leaking into his surroundings. It's about five hours, give or take half an hour.

It's tedious, but still easily manageable. He just needs to change clothes three times a day and carry about a few extra pairs of sunglasses in protective cases so they won't be the first thing hit by his quirk.

He hasn't slipped up yet, and that's mostly because of the self-help app he made day one to help him keep track of… basically everything.

He even coded it to respond to Toru. Toji's pretty sure she's starting to notice the AI is nicer than he is and knows he's up to something.

Oh well. He'll tell her about it in-person when they hang out next. Self-help app invited Toru over to his house this Sunday while he was busy coding blood-thirst mechanics so he has to hang out now. It's too early in his life to earn a spot on Fraudwatch.

Maybe he can see if Forceful Activation can turn her shitty quirk off and let her see herself? The quirk said it's only good for activating and controlling quirks and nothing about disabling them, but the pages also insisted he could make God-AI and nothing about leaking roofie gas so who even knows.

*bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt* *bzzzzzt*

Speaking of God-AI, that must be his Self-Help app giving him a heads up on something. Toji set it up to buzz three times if it was an important message. Man, if Pit Bull Prison Daycare Simulator worked half as well as Self-Help does he would be a millionaire already.

Toji pulls out his phone, checks the message, and his afternoon is instantly ruined with a few lines of text.

Self-Help: Don't forget, Nemuri is taking you on a tour of UA after school today!
Self-Help: You'll only be seeing the main building and taking a quick test to see what your general knowledge is, so don't be too grumpy!
Self-Help: Nemuri is approximately 10 minutes away from the apartment, stuck at the red light at Phoenix Crossing.
Self-Help: Be sure to change both your clothes and your glasses! It has been three hours and twelve minutes since you last changed clothing.

Click to shrink...

Damn. Toji was pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen for a few days, but he's also pretty sure Nemuri told him all that a few days ago when he was still tinkering on Pitbull Prison Daycare Simulator so the math checks out.

Toji: Thx for heads up, will wear my fancy sweats
Self-Help:

Click to shrink...

Goddamn that Self-Help app really is the best thing he ever made. Thank god it's a learning algorithm so he doesn't have to keep messing with it like everything else he codes. Only problem is it keeps picking up weird habits, like randomly calling Nemuri it's grandmother.

Oh well. It's probably just a glitch or something. Toru hasn't been hit by a self-driving car yet so he's pretty sure the app isn't sentient.

---

Nemuri Kayama


Nemuri was pretty sure the kid had some sort of coding quirk, despite coding quirks not being a thing that even exist. She was honestly a little surprised at that fact but both Recovery Girl and Power Loader had the same thing to say.

There are a lot of quirks that can affect how you process information. Some of them just give you more neuroplasticity, some make it so you think faster while consuming certain food, some make you "more intelligent" in the present but dumber after they wear off, etc.

The universal consensus is quirks can help you learn new things or process information quickly, but you can't just wake up one day and just *know* new information. Otherwise every field of science would just be ruled by people that spun the wheel and got lucky.

Well she's pretty sure her kid bet it all on green and won the pot, because she doesn't really have any other explanation for how he managed to code so much of that freaky dog game.

Oh, she's not going to pretend she figured it out immediately. Or even very quickly. She knows almost nothing about coding. But she knows enough to know it takes a few years to get a game up and running.

Not… what, two weeks? And a third of that time was spent working on the first game he scrapped and that "Self-Help" app of his. The app that's way too savvy to just be a self-help app. But it's also the only thing keeping her kid from turning into an escaped zoo animal so she's been willfully ignorant of it so far.

The game he's coding is beyond the pale though. And the entire reason she set up this "placement test" with Nezu and Power Loader so quickly. She was planning on easing him back into mainstream schooling.

And then he made… sigh… Pit Bull Prison Daycare Simulator.

She knows this because the kid spent about $600 on random 3D assets with her card. He didn't do it behind her back, in fact he was pretty blunt about exactly how much it cost and what he was using it for.

She paid for it and kept track of his little project. It was important to be supportive of your kids hobbies. Nemuri was beginning to realize it was less of a hobby and more of a quirk-induced mental illness.

Nemuri knows just about nothing about video games. She's only played a few arcade cabinets while hanging out with others back in High School. But she knows art, and she knows history.

Video game genres got slaughtered during the vigilante era. She doesn't know the specifics but she knows the broad strokes. A bunch of mutant type villains started appearing around that point, and a lot of them shared a lot of physical characteristics with video game characters. Specifically from horror games.

Some people destroyed the games because they thought they were memetic hazards, some destroyed them out of political beliefs that were around since pre-quirk era, some just hated the games…

Point is everyone had a bone to pick with the industry and unlike music and movies it wasn't nearly as entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist to be protected. Between malware, physical destruction, websites getting nuked, and actual mass murder, basically everything that wasn't a physical arcade cabinet or mainstream enough to get a thousand tv episodes got erased from existence.

Nintendo games are still around though. Those fanboys would drink a jerry can of diesel and jump on a bonfire if it meant protecting a Pikachu plushie.

So Nemuri doesn't know anything about games, but she knows what the state of them is and what they should be like. And Pitbull Prison Daycare Simulator is not a video game.

She wants to say it's an art piece you interact with. She knows it isn't. The game is a fucking mess, plain and simple. She's watched the kid code it occasionally over the last two weeks while unwinding after work and she still isn't sure what the games about.

First off, the game currently has zero text. It uses pictographs. She has no clue what any of them mean, but if Toji is to be believed they tell the player the controls of the game and the objective.

They don't. They're complete and utter gibberish.

The graphics are a visual nightmare by the way. The kid just bought a bunch of wildly different assets and keeps recoloring them as needed so that means all the liquids are from the same "Hyper Realistic jello" texture pack he bought so now every liquid moves like maple syrup. Even the rain.

The babies are scaled down humans from a body anatomy pack that she's pretty sure was meant to be used for a medical machinery UI. He just shrunk down their models and increased the head size a bit to "give them that baby look".

All of the adult models are from something called a "Low Poly Medieval" pack even though he already had the body anatomy pack, and the pitbulls? He just searched "pitbull" in the store and bought the first row that popped up so his game would have "variety".

There is regular pitbull, hyper realistic pitbull, cartoonish pitbull, Scifi Pitbull Medium Antigrav Tank, yellow pitbull, and pitbull XL.

And she can't forget about the sound design. The music is just a few albums they ripped off some pre-quirk site because "all their lawyers are dead" and all the sound effects are just vocaloids making the sound effect out loud.

And yes, this applies to the animals as well. Except instead of saying "Bark" they just say random nonsense like "Lava lamp" and "candle wax". He insisted the chance of them speaking was low so she'd only hear them speak occasionally. And maybe that'd be true if there were only a few pitbulls in the game.

Too bad the build he's testing with has a few hundred pitbulls instead of a few dozen, so now she gets to hear an Anti-grav tank birth a litter of neon yellow pitbull puppies before turning a middle-aged baby into a bright orange puddle with a victorious cry of "Water Bottle".

The puppies all died afterwords. Apparently the dogs are born with a high thirst rate so they try drinking milk, except the blood pool was a closer water source. Toji forgot to code blood so it would refresh their thirst meter.

Why was the baby's blood orange? Because apparently Toji set the blood color to be randomized and trying to set it back to the default red also makes the rain turn into blood.

He insists the game will be revolutionary.

By the time she gets through the traffic jam and gets back home the kid is already at the front door in a new set of clothes and a spare set of teashades in either pocket. That's another thing, the constant clothes shifting.

She's pretty sure he has yet another quirk that activates if he touches something for too long, but every time she's tried asking about it the kid has either been in some sort of coding fugue and completely ignored her or just dodged the question entirely.

She can't just rip the info out of the kid's skull and they're still in that "you're legally my mom but I don't know you" stage so she's trying to take it slow. She's not really sure what the protocol is for your brand new adopted son when he hides half a dozen secret quirks from you.

Meh. She'll deal with it when it comes up.

"So!" Nemuri begins with a smile as they climb out of her car and onto the faculty parking space. "Are you excited to get a private tour of UA High?"

If she asked that to any other kid this would be an easy slam dunk interaction. A private hero giving them a personal tour of the greatest hero school in the world? By a pro hero?

Dream material right there.

But instead of getting excited Toji just tilts his head to the side like a bird and stares at her, which took Nemuri about a day of living with the kid to learn means not only is he not excited, but he's confused at the very concept of being excited.

If he even bothered saying anything he'd probably tell her six-day school weeks are villainous and then ask her if he can keep being a "neat". Whatever that means.

That's another thing about Toji. He does not care about heroes. At all. Despite constantly watching news footage of them as "background noise" while working on his game when she isn't hogging the TV.

The last time she told the kid he has an amazing quirk and could be a great hero he just chuckled like she told him he'd make a great virgin sacrifice at the Autumn festival and just went back to coding.

So the kid doesn't care about heroics. That's alright. His original quirk still means he never has to worry about finding a job and this new coding quirk he has is shaping up to be a similar cash cow for himself.

The important thing is that her kid is happy and that he's successful. Well, eventually. The former's a work in progress and the latter's a bit much to expect from a kid.

"Doesn't this place have more acreage than a medium sized town? Am I touring the entire place or…" Right. That's actually a fair question.

"Aww, is my lazy lump on a log of a son scared of walking a few dozen miles?" Nemura asked while giving her kid a noogie. Toji didn't even bother trying to escape from it.

"Because you should be! I don't think I've seen you pick up anything heavier than a box since you moved in. But don't you worry, because UA has world class, state of the art gyms free for all attending students!"

Kiddo better take the hint. What's that? There seems to be a mistake? He planned on being a neurodivergent video game developer? She will love and support him every step of the way.

To the gym, that is! Success ain't worth much if you die from sitting in one spot for so long that you turn into a moldy potato.

She'll also support all the other stuff, but there's a hierarchy of importance to this sort of thing.

Toji actually looks interested, so maybe he's actually getting the hint? "I've never seen a "modern" gym before. I bet the heteromorph equipment looks like something Dr. Seuss would draw."

Nemuri has no clue who Dr. Seuss is, but he sounds like he specializes in physical fitness equipment? She never really thought there were doctors that specialized in that sort of thing, which is kind of dumb in hindsight.

"If you want to see heteromorph gym equipment you'd have to go check out Gym Beta. Just remember to check out the gym equipment and not the gym members!" Nemura said with a wink.

"Gym Omega is where the regular equipment is, gym Gamma is less of a gym and more of an empty warehouse you can throw your quirk around in, and gym Alpha still needs to be rebuilt."

Toji just nodded as if an entire gym getting erased from existence was expected. That attitude was a good one to have at UA, because it is absolutely expected that at least half a dozen buildings get totaled every semester.

"Anywhere else besides Gym Beta that's worth checking out, or is everything else just a regular school?" Well, guess Gym Beta is being added to the tour now.

Nemuri had to think about that for a second. Just kidding, this entire interaction was plotted out in her head on the car ride over.

"Well there's the Sports Festival Stadium which is currently empty and closed. And there's the Unforeseen Simulation Joint," Why yes Toji, that is a stupid name! "which is technically open but would get Thirteen mad at me for dragging my kid into for fun."

She ignores Toji asking what happened to Twelve and just keeps talking. "And there are the Heights Alliance, which are the luxury dorms that come free with enrollment!" Wait, why is she talking up how free everything is to the kid? She's the one that'd be paying for it and she's a staff member. "Which is a good thing because otherwise quality this high would cost more than a five star inn!"

Yeah, saved it.

"I'm guessing they're the giant ivy league looking buildings right across from the school?" Toji asks while nodding in the direction her back is facing. Nemuri turns around to see the dozen Heights Alliance buildings facing the faculty parking lot.

There also isn't a single speck of ivy on any of them. And they're brick red, not green. She will never understand Toji's Americanisms.

"That's correct!" Nemuri says with a gigawatt smile. "Each Heights Alliance building has 32 dorms, and each class gets their own Heights Alliance dormitory to help build camaraderie."

And to smother the inner-class rivalries that haunt the school.

Nemuri was about to tell the kid that each room comes with it's own mini-fridge, balcony, and toilet (but no shower. Don't ask her why that's communal,) when Toji raises up both hands to stop her secret sales pitch in it's tracks.

"Wait. Just hold up for a second." She is holding. "So UA goes on for three years, and each class gets it's own dorm. There's two hero courses so that makes what, 60 kids?" Well most of them get culled by the second year like baby sea turtles, but yeah.

"So that's half a dozen dorm buildings required just to to fit every heroics year on campus."

The math checks out so far.

"But there's only twenty kids in every class, right?" Toji doesn't even wait for her nod before he continues to talk. "But six dorms of 32 have a max occupancy of 192. And the max amount of hero students you can have is 120."

It's usually lower than that due to the common expulsion and the rare death, but yeah...

"So that means just from the hero students alone you're wasting 72 dorms. That's over two dorms worth of space you're just… obliterating."

The… the math checks out…

"And I remember you saying there's three general classes and three support classes, so is that three classes in total or…"

Nemuri runs the numbers through her own head and hates the fact that she never thought about how much of a logistical nightmare this setup was until now. "Uh, it's actually three Gen-Ed classes and three Support classes per year…"

Toji tears his bright purple teashades off to paw at his nuclear eyes that somehow glow in a sunny parking lot as he runs more numbers through his head. "Then it'd be 18 dorms just to handle all those classes? Nemuri, that's-" Nemuri would hate to interrupt her kid actually being active in a conversation, but-

"Accccctually, I forgot to mention the business courses. They would be the I, J, and K classes."

Toji pockets his purple teashades and goes from pawing at his eyes to running his hands along his temples and through his shoulder length hair as he stares at the dorms.

"Holy shit. So what, 33 Heights Alliance buildings in total? Not hiding a Medical class anywhere?" Nemuri just numbly shakes her head at him as she blitzes through the math herself while her kid talks.

"Right. So there are about 1,056 available dorms at UA. Which means the current dorm setup is wasting about 396 dorms. Nemuri, that's over twelve dorms worth of space you guys are wasting. On camaraderie."

Toji slides his hands all the way to the back of his neck as he stares up at the bright azure sky above the dorms. "This is the part where you tell me you misspoke and only meant the heroes get their own dorms. Which is still dumb, but not that dumb."

Nemuri really wants to throw a pie in his face and tell him he just got punked. She really, really wants to be able to do that.

Except. The math checks out.

Her silence tells her kid everything she doesn't want to say, because he stops staring at the sky and turns to look at her, purple smoke beginning to curl out of his shoulders. "What the hell, mom? Are you really trying to tell me none of the hall directors brought this up in a staff meeting?"

"What's a hall director?" Nemuri blurts out, happy to momentarily change the topic from the numerical nightmare her son just dropped on her head.

Toji just looks at her like she's goofy. "You know. The people the school hires to take care of the dorms? They handle the cleaning staff, the repairs, keep track of the students, make sure none of them are fucking or doing meth in the rec room."

This must be another one of Toji's American things, because Nemuri has never heard of that kind of staff member before.

Toji continues to stare at her, purple smoke still flowing out of his neck. "Who… who keeps track of the students in the dorms?"

She has a feeling she shouldn't just tell him the students keep track of the students.

"Well, this is UA. Plus Ultra is our motto, and all that jazz. We're training the best and brightest! Flowers can't bloom when smothered. Gotta let them learn how to be self-sufficient in a controlled environment."

Toji slowly turns to stare at the sky above the dorms. She watches him open his mouth to say something and then immediately close it before any sound could escape. She can feel a warm spring breeze twist across her hair and through Toji's lilac smoke, sending it up and into the air, already lost against the clear blue sky.

After a moment he just shakes his head and laughs softly, turning to face her as he slides a pair silver teashades onto his face.

"What the hell am I even getting worked up over? I'm literally just a teen. Who cares if the Brain wants to be extra with the architecture. It's not my problem."

Right. Instead it's hers now, because she's pretty sure nobody has double checked with Nezu that he knows the first floor of every Heights Alliance is a rec room and not another 8 dorms.

Because 32 dorms is an awfully weird number to settle on when your classes are made up of 20 students.

And having them all live together would probably help camaraderie if they actually… you know… lived together. Instead of segregated like cows.

Shit. Is this a mistake? Or is this intentional? She doesn't know which option is more idiotic. This is shit no matter how she thinks on it.

She is so glad she has nothing to do with campus construction otherwise she would be looking over her shoulder in fear of Nezu going at her ass with a belt. One with a thick buckle.

Oh well! Not her problem.

"So, are we expected for those placement tests immediately or do we have a bit of time to blow beforehand?" Well the test was with Power Loader, who always needed an extra hour to deal with insane support students blowing up his lab, so-

"We've got some time to check out gym Beta."

---

Still Nemuri


"This is the most anti-climactic thing I've seen in my life." Toji said with a deadpan stare as he looked at the gym equipment in front of them.

Nemuri had no idea what he was so upset about. It was a really high quality gym. "Were you expecting it to look different?"

Toji nodded with a scowling grimace as he looked at the row of treadmills and exercise bikes in front of them. "When you said heteromorph gym I expected something wacky. Like bikes with a thousand little pedals for a millipede morph, or some shit. I dunno..."

Nemuri tried very hard not to laugh at her son. "What, were you expecting a hamster heteromorph to be running in a giant wheel?"

Her kid at least had the decency to blush a little at that.

"Woah, hey Midnight! What'cha doin' in the student gyms?" Nemuri didn't even need to turn around to know who was approaching them. She still did anyways, mostly because it's rude to just keep your back facing someone that just called out to you.

And there they were, the three misfits of the hero course. Nejire in the front chewing on what looked like an entire fistful of gum, with Mirio and Tamaki trailing right behind her.

"Oh fuck off." Toji muttered from her side as he stared at Nejire as she quickly rushed towards them, loudly chewing on the gum before swallowing it whole.

Aww, her kid must be getting territorial.

"Hi'ya, are you a new student? I'm guessing you're a transfer because you're-" Toji held up his hand, and Nejire immediately froze in place as she stared at him with a glassy smile.

"Give me a few seconds. I didn't realize I'd be talking to an extrovert today."

Nemuri watched Mirio lightly nudge Tamaki's side and nod his head between him and Toji's direction with a laugh. Tamaki looked about as amused as Toji currently did.

"… It's been four seconds, you braced yet?" Nejire asked, still not breaking her pose as she stared at her kid.

"… Yeah." Toji said with a sigh, going to rub his eyes before remembering his glasses and moving to rub at his hair instead.

"Hello, my name's Nejire. This is my friend, Tamaki. We're both in class 2-A. And this is Mirio, he's in class 2-B." Nejire said in an even but warm tone of voice, smoothing gesturing to both Tamaki and Mirio before clasping her hands behind her back with a soft smile.

"Damn, only gonna introduce Tamaki as your friend?" Toji said with a dry chuckle, but Nemuri still noticed his shoulders were far less tense than they were when Nejire first walked up to them.

Mirio just waved his hand back and forth and fully laughed at that, although his laugh far less rowdy than Nemuri knew it could be.

"Aww, it goes without saying! You can't be friends with Tamaki without being friends with me! And you can't be friends with Nejire without being friends with either of us!" Mirio said with another string of softened but still energetic laughter before flashing Toji a thumbs up.

Toji slowly turned to stare at her for a moment before tilting his sunglasses down and making eye contact with her. He slowly nodded his head sideways towards while wiggling his eyebrows.

Nemuri just nodded. Toji nodded back at her and put his teashades back over his eyes before turning back to the three musketeers.

They were all staring at the two of them, beet red in the face with steam practically coming out of their ears.

"You guys know we can still see you, right?" Tamaki asked sullenly, his bright red face not at all matching his tone of voice.

"We're not- I mean I wouldn't, well I would but- Uhh-" Nejire stuttered out like a lagging chainsaw before putting her face in her hands and letting out a low groan. "Ugggggggh, you completely nuked my brain. I had a really good setup locked and ready."

Her kid just looked at Nejire with the same expression a drunk uncle has when talking to his niece. "Might as well say it."

"Speaking of things that go without saying, whats your name?" Nejire fumbled out with a wide smile, her voice a pale imitation of the smooth confidence she had earlier.

Toji just rubbed the back of his neck, crushing the purple smoke that began wafting up from it. "Toji. Toji Kayama. She's my mom." Toji doesn't even bother to point at her and instead just limply tossed his hand her way before returning to smothering the back of his neck.

Mirio looked at him, shocked. "Woah, Miss Midnight has a kid? Talk about a curve ball!" Yeah she was definitely going to bully Mirio later for suddenly adding a "Miss" to the front of her name the second he meets her kid.

Toji stared at Mirio like he just stuck a 5 yen brass coin in his mouth and tried sticking his tongue through the center hole on it.

"Dude. Procreating is her entire brand."

Tamaki immediately barked like a dolphin at that. Nemuri had never heard the kid laugh before so she hoped that was his natural laugh and not the alternative.

Nemuri was actually really proud to see the kid express some bloom instead of gloom for once, even if he immediately cut himself off with a look of anguished horror as Nejire and Mirio turned towards him with beaming smiles.

"Ah- Sorry Miss Midnight. I uh…umm…." Nemuri watched, bemused, as the gloomy kid did his usual bit and slowly wandered off to the nearest wall to hide his face away from everyone. She could still see the bright red glow emanating off his face.

Nejire just pouted at Toji, who was still staring after Tamaki with a look of mild bafflement spread across his face. "Aww, you made him sad! If you didn't also make him happy I would be awfully miffed right now. And maybe a little violent."

Toji just muttered something under his breath about tap water and kept rubbing the back of his neck.

"Ah, I'm sorry that we've made an awful mess of a first impression. I swear we're usually more charming than this. We took classes on it and everything!"

Her kid just sighed at that and moved his hand up to ruffle the back of his head. "Don't worry, you don't need to worry about being charming."

Oh jeez, she could fry an egg on Mirio's face. Wait, should she even be here for this? This must be how kids feel when their parents start chatting with the cashier at the checkout.

Wait, should they even be here for this? On one hand this is the first time her kid's interacted with a stranger without getting jumped in a parking lot. On the other hand, her kid looks like he's about to blast them with his quirk and leg it and they've already made Power Loader wait 40 minutes.

Decisions, decisions…

"As much as I love watching young love blossom," Oof, she is glad she already built up an immunity from her kiddo's stare. That gaze was brutal. "It's about time I drag him along to Power Loader. He needs to do a placement test on something real quick."

Two curls suddenly bounced up from Nejire's head as she turned to stare at Midnight in shock. "Power Loader? Is he getting set up for some support gear, or is he…?" Nejire trailed off in confusion as she looked Toji up and down, trying to find what on him needed support gear.

"I dunno," Nemuri thought to herself. "Maybe the giant teashades practically glued to the kid's face."

"I'm getting a coding quirk tested." Her kid just blathers out instead. Not exactly how she would have liked to word it, but oh well.

Nejire leaned forward slightly at his words. "Oooooh, that sounds useful. I didn't know you could get knowledge quirks like that. It must've been weird to wake up one day and just know what C++ is."

Nemuri had no idea what Sea Plus Plus was. Nemuri could hear her kid mutter "Ain't no way we're still at C," under his breath.

Nemuri personally prefers D, but she would also take Z at this point. She needed a friggin' nap, is what she was trying to say. The other letter went without saying.

Tamaki stopped staring at the wall and turned to look towards the two of them. "I'm pretty sure coding quirks aren't a thing."

"Oh, is all that purple smoke billowing out of you exhaust from your coding quirk? Are you overheating?!" Mirio asked with a wide grin, not looking scared in the slightest at the thought of her kid exploding like an overcharged laptop.

Freaking hero students. Wait, she's the one that teaches them.

"Nah, that's just my second quirk. I got it from her." Toji said while pointing a thumb her direction. Kid. Buddy. Son. Please shut the heck up immediately. You've just said two things that make you sound like an escaped lab monkey.

"A second quirk?!" Nejire called out with open fascination, sounding like someone that wanted to shock said monkey.

"Don't you mean a dual quirk?" Tamaki asked, finally wandering back over to the herd from his self-exile.

Her kid just shook his head. She was watching a car crash in slow motion. "Nah, sometimes I just wake up and have new quirks. I haven't even tried all of them yet. Most of them suck."

Nejire began hovering in the air as she lost fine control of her quirk as she stared at Toji in open fascination. "Oh, oh! Try using one of your new quirks on Mirio!"

Mirio didn't even object to being offered up as a test dummy and just spread his arms in a T-pose while facing Toji. "My body is ready!"

Woof. Alright kid, calm down. Wait shit, she needs to sto-

Before she could, she doesn't even know, swat Toji upside the head? Tackle him? Yell "Noooooo! And slow dive towards him? Before she can even do any of those things Toji just lazily extends his arm towards Mirio, says "Forced Activation", and-

His arm splinters apart as a wave of purple tentacles covered in pitch black circuitry begin lashing through the air and towards Mirio, violently piercing through him and holding him up midair like a distorted effigy.

"Huh, neat. It can disable quirks as well. Guess there was an extra emphasis on activate and control." Toji says casually, like he didn't just stab a student with twenty tentacle daggers in the middle of campus.

The only reason she isn't freaking the fuck out is because Mirio is currently trying very hard not to giggle as he hovers midair surrounded by purple and black circuitry.

Her son just rolls his eyes at Mirio's stifled laughter as he paws at the side of his head. "Can you try fighting for control and try activating your quirk while I smother it? I want to see how good it is."

"Ah-haha! Y-yes! I'll try my b-best!" Mirio belts out, finally losing the war against giggling as he begins flickering in and out of existence while laughing.

Nemuri is just glad her kid's quirks are 100% scary and 0% lethal. And that Mirio's gym uniform is now quirk-resistant and goes intangible alongside him.

Would've been nice to have that clothing be ready for the sports festival that happened last week, but oh well. Only a few million people saw him naked on live TV. Nemuri was just glad the kid was as casual about public nudity as she was, otherwise their business course would've had sudden coursework on indecency lawsuits.

It takes Mirio less than ten seconds before he's able to wrestle control away from Toji's quirk, but that's still about ten seconds he spent suspended and out of a fight. Damn. Yet another superstar quirk that her kid will never use in a fight.

Nejire and Tamaki just look shocked and awed at what they just witnessed. To be fair, so is Nemuri.

"Woooooooooooah!" Nejire belts out, stars literally shining in her eyes as she looks at the tentacles sprouting from her kid. Except now that the shocks worn off and they aren't getting moved around by Mirio, she realizes they aren't tentacles at all.

They're spears. Dark purple ones. What did the kid call this quirk? Forced Activation? What a creepy name for a creepy quirk. At least it went to her lazy kid and not a villain.

"I didn't know you could have multiple quirks! Are you like the next step in human evolution? Does that make me a neanderthal? How many spears can you make?!" Nejire suddenly turned towards Tamaki, her long hair almost slapping Toji from how close she had gotten to him.

"Tamaki, try eating one of the pieces Mirio broke off! Maybe they're edible like candy glass. Try turning into a circuit man! C'mooooooon!"

Right, Nemuri needed to stop whatever this was. And also needed to get to Power Loader before he conked her over the head.

"Alright! No spearing each other in public! And definitely no eating said spears!" Nemuri shouted out with a forced laugh as she quickly pulled the chunk of circuitry from Nejire's hand and tossed it over her shoulder.

She grabbed her kid and started dragging him out the door before he could pull another quirk out of a top hat. "It's way past time me and the kiddo got going! Still have that testing with Power Loader! It's bad to leave a man waiting."

Toji just chuckled as she dragged him out of the gym. "Oh don't start laughing, we can have a conversation about public quirk use along the way. Maybe even fit in a lecture about hiding new quirks from your beloved mom."

Toji's laughter quickly stopped.

"Byyyyyeeeeeee! It waaaas niiiiice meeeeeeting yooooooooooou!" Nejire called out, cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting as if she was trying to talk to someone on the other end of a mountain range.

They were maybe fifteen feet away from each other.

Toji just held out a hand, extended his pinkie, index, and thumb, curled the two center fingers inwards, and wiggled his hand in the air as she dragged him away.

---

Still Nemuri


"Oh. You're finally here." Power Loader muttered out towards her before turning back to the computer he had perched on a folding table in the center of the room.

"It's a good thing you took so long. A few of the third year brats tried making a thorium reactor. Again." Ah, classic Power Loader. Never change. Seriously. Never change.

"Me and the kiddo were just taking a quick little tour of the facilities. And then we had to have a… personal chat while I gave him a brief tour of the school interior. Grabbed a quick bite from Lunch Rush."

Power Loader looked at her empty hands, and then looked at her son's equally empty hands. "Didn't get me a bite to eat? Good. No food allowed in the workshop."

Power Loader hooked up a few cords to the back of the computer, and then pulled a second, larger keyboard from the side of the table towards him as he began putting something together on the monitor.

"I'm almost done getting the test PC set up. Off the grid, custom hardware, no electrical input, scanner-proof monitor. A few other bells and whistles that I don't feel like saying."

Toji glanced at Power Loader's hands, just now noticing his blocky fingers. "Any chance you have an invisible daughter named Toru?"

"If I do I've never seen her. Why'd you ask?" Power Loader muttered as he typed away at the wide keyboard in front of him.

"Her fingers are super blocky and square, just like yours. Just remove the extra orange bit that curves outwards and they'd be the exact same shape." Toji said with a light grin, spreading his own fingers out in an exaggerated gesture.

Power Loader hummed as he continued to type. "A bit rude to comment on someone's appearance. But also neat. Hands don't usually get vestige quirks. That's usually reserved for the neck up."

Toji looked forward a bit at that. "You mean like eyes, teeth, hair… that sort of thing?"

Power Loader nodded once, continuing to click-clack away at his giant keyboard. "Yup. Hair's the most common. Followed by eyes. Teeth are usually third. Skin pigmentation is also a common one, but that usually only shows if you have a few other traits as well."

Toji just hummed at that and went back to watching Power Loader set up the test. The conversation naturally faded out after that as Toji just idly swayed back and forth and watched Power Loader set up.

"Right. This test should be quick. Just code me a video editing software in Malbolge. Don't try and finish it. We'd be here all year if you tried."

Toji just nodded and began typing. If Nemuri thought the code for the kid's game looked like a mess, whatever she was looking at Toji bash out looked like an entire sewer.

Power Loader nodded after her kid filled up an entire screen with Malbolge code. "Alright, test is finished. You passed. Congrats on the coding quirk. Lucky duck. You're in my class next year starting April."

Toji, like usual, looked offended at falling upwards yet again. "Seriously? Not gonna at least give me a choice before you make that call?"

Power Loader just nodded at that as he walked over to the wall and grabbed a sledgehammer with a rocket welded to the back of it. "True. Everyone's got a choice. You can choose to run away. And my support students can choose to shackle you to a radiator."

Walking up to the custom PC Toji had already stepped away from, Power Loader waved the sledgehammer across the workshop before turning toward Toji. "Like it or not, you're a software boy living in a hardware world. Everyone wants to build an android. Nobody wants to teach the android how to walk up a staircase."

Power Loader lifted the sledgehammer skyward before sending it plummeting towards the PC with a thin stream of blue fire propelling it through the tower, through the table, and through the floor beneath both.

"And almost everyone wants to be the one that smashes it. Welcome to UA, kid. I have over a hundred and eighty kids. Not a single one of them knows a damn thing about coding. Hope you're an extrovert, 'cuz you're gonna be quite the social butterfly."

Toji looked like he wanted to go back in his cocoon.

Power Loader idly tossed the rocket sledge back towards the spot he picked it up from and started walking back towards his office. "And don't look so offended over the computer. I said it was custom. I never said it was good."

Nemuri was pretty sure Toji couldn't care less about the PC getting totaled.

---

Mirai Sasaki (Sir Nighteye)


It had been less than a month since he had personally scouted out Mirio right after the sports festival, and he could already tell he had struck a gold vein. The kid was amazing. Completely, utterly amazing. His quirk was quite the finnicky little thing, but he had coached for worse quirks with a far lower ceiling. He could already tell Mirio's ceiling was as high as the moon.

Every piece of advice was immediately applied to the next attempt. No failure was ever the same, or even similar. In the short amount of time he had worked with Mirio he had gone from being near the bottom of the pack of class 1-B to being near the middle, and he would be shocked if he wasn't at the top of them all by the time winter hit.

How high will your ceiling go, Mirio? His quirk let him see the future, and even he couldn't say. Even with just his base-quirk he could easily become a top 10 hero. How high would his ceiling be if he were to be the next wielder of One for All?

Mirai didn't even bother imagining it. He knew reality would surpass his dreams.

But power is worthless in the hands of a savage. Thankfully for both this world and the next one, Mirio was as far from savage as a human could get. He had yet to see Mirio have a bad interaction with another living being, and he doubted he would see one until Mirio's internship offically started and he went out on patrol.

There was a good chance he would still walk away from the villains smiling. He truly was the next All Might. The next symbol of peace.

Mirai was lucky to be allowed to start his mentorship with Mirio earliar than usual. It was only his years of spotless work and Mirio's poor class performance that made it all possible.

If only UA knew just how much potential they had let fester...

Mirai looked up from his computer monitor as he heard the door to his office open. Ahh, and here comes the legend of the hour himself.

"Hello Nighteye Sir, I brought some sandwiches from that new place that opened up down the street! Tamaki says they're decent, so they must be great!" Mirai had told Mirio multiple times that he didn't have to get them food, but the boy would always refuse and insist on repaying his generosity.

Mirai felt like he was the one that should be paying it back. It's not often you get to be so early to a legend that you watch the ink dry.

"Why thank you Mirio, you're too kind. I say that both figuratively and literally. Come, tell me about your day while we eat. I just need to finish up this report and then we can resume training on cross-lateral movement." Mirai said not unkindly as he rushed to finish up his report so he could share a meal instead of eating solo. He tried not to eat while actively training. It felt rude to act lazy while others go plus ultra.

Mirio just nodded as he walked towards his desk, food in hand. "Righto! Classes were pretty boring since today was just a class day instead of a tech day, but I did meet a guy after school that reminded me of Tamaki. They were totally on the same wavelength."

Mirai just hummed in response as he continued furiously typing out words, already at the end of his report.

"His name is Toji Kayama. Apparently he's Miss Midnight's kid! Had the same exact quirk as her, which is good because I would've never guessed he was related to her if he didn't show it off."

Mirai felt his typing begin to slow as he processed Mirio's words. Midnight... has a kid? That... didn't sound right. Despite her reputation Midnight was not known for being capricious, and heroes loved to gossip. If Midnight had a kid Mirio's age, he would have-

"And get this! He has multiple quirks! At first I thought he just had Midnight's quirk, and then he showed off this really cool quirk he called Forced Activation!

Mirai felt his fingers lose the ability to move as he stared at his unfinished report, the screen so bright he could see it reflected on the interior of his glasses.

"He stabbed me with a bunch of these cool spears that looked like tentacles covered in circuitry, and he could control my quirk with them! How awesome is that?!"

Was a villain attacking his agency? Why was the room tilting back and forth? Did someone drug him?

"And I think he had some sort of quirk vision, because his glasses slipped down his face at one point and when we made eye contact it felt like my quirk was trying to rip itself out of my skin. It felt super creepy! But Toji was chill, so I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it."

Oh. Oh it's just a panic attack. Yes... yes that makes sense... more sense than...

"I hope he liked what he saw, because he was sorta cute. Nejire's words, not mine. Well, not just mine. Hey, do you think I can get him and Tamaki to wear one of those big 'Get Along' sweaters?"

Feeling himself begin to pant, Mirai tried getting up before he could pass out. All that accomplished was him stumbling out of his chair and onto the floor as his vision finally faded to black.

The last thing he saw before he passed out was Mirio dropping his food in shock and rushing towards him. What a wonderful kid. He hopes he'll live long enough to see the ceiling, now that a demonlitionist is at their door......

---

Toji Kayama


Toji stared at the new lilac sun that had appeared in his dreams after he got home from UA. It had been about two weeks since he had seen another one pop up in his head and he was starting to hope he was past waking up with new quirks haunting himself.

Oh well. Might as well see what new nightmare he had to deal with this time. He was hoping that it was just a double pull since it was the same exact shade as his mom quirk. Please don't be another sex-pest quirk...

Boogie Manimal
200 CP
You are able to produce a strange fog like substance which you can then shape into creatures, their natures being limited only by your imagination and how you craft them. These are under your mental control, and you can sense everything they do. The more of the fog you invest into a creature, and the longer you take in its creation, the stronger and more powerful it will be. Creatures may have certain abilities of their own based on how you've made them, and at any time you may invest more fog into them to modify or strengthen them further, with no (in theory if maybe not so much in practice) upper limit. Creatures default to a completely loyal if predatory mentality unless you make them otherwise. The fog itself is mostly transparent to you and your creations until used in a creation, and can be pumped out to cover large areas.
Source: Worm, Category: mutation​

Click to shrink...

Oh. Oh! This quirk actually looked... fun? Useful? Both?! He still had no clue what the hell Worm was or what it had to do with coding, and this looked equally disconnected from Worms, but he didn't care! It was official. Relationship ended with My Hero Academia. Worm is his true love.

My Hero Academia just gives him weird sex pest quirks like Roofie Gas and Body-Jack spears, meanwhile Worm is giving him "six figure salary office career" and "magic cloud pets". Yeah, it's clear which source was the more enjoyable one.

Toji has no clue what kind of source Worm is, but he's positive it must be an awesome one if these are the kinds of powers they're handing out.

---

AN: Once you've been to UA, you'll never stop wanting to beat Nezu to death with your bare hands. Also I keep writing scenes where wild shit happens in front of an adult within arms reach and go "There's no way that would just be allowed to fly!" before remembering some of the wild shit that the adults let happen in canon MHA without so much as raising an eyebrow.

Which makes sense, since the entire manga is a love letter to silver age comic books which have some of the most insane leaps of logic you'll see in any form of media. Hey, I'm not gonna complain. Helps me maintain my crackhead agenda.

 

[CantFocusOneThing]

"… It's been four seconds, you braced yet?" Nejire asked, still not breaking her pose as she stared at her kid.

Click to shrink...

Man this line feels like Nejire is about to take his extrovert virginity lmao. Then he proceed to consensually penetrate Mirio with his spears and Nejire wanted to create an abomination by Tamaki eating Toji's spears.
Also as being part of the Victims of Toji's thoughts while creating the pitbull simulator im pretty sure he is Mentally Challengue not in the fact that he is retarded but in the sense that his mind is challengue by him so that only the strongest and crackiest thoughts survive.

 

[pandada14]

Very interesting looking

 

[Phantom Thief Of Hearts]

Pit Bull Prison Daycare Simulator

Click to shrink...

Well, I laughed when our guy lost his mind over the stupid dormitories—dormitories without adult supervision (even Yu-Gi-Oh! GX had supervisors in the student dormitories).

...Don't tell our MC about the super-realistic fake cities the school has, cities that are only used for school activities (the taxes must be a rip-off) .

I'm curious to know what Expy will be that AI called Self-Help because there are some AI waifus.

But that's fine by him! The people, they yearn for Forklift Simulator. They yearn for Truck Simulator. They even yearn for Ice Rink Simulator.

But most importantly, they yearn for Power Wash Simulator.

Click to shrink...

It recreates the Digimon games and my money was well spent.

 

[John123456789]

Endlessly detangling his shitty code is still preferable to learning how to use blender. Toji's sure this is a universal opinion.

Click to shrink...

Look if I wanted to use Blender I would have taken a "How to use Blender class" not a "How to code class".