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It's easy to live in the now.
Maybe it makes Mina a bad person with the ease in which she lets the present bury the past. Maybe it doesn't, but.
But, there are soft smiles dimming in her memories, slowly being replaced with the blue, blue earth sky and the movie nights in the dorm and the sweat on her brow as Sensei says, "Again," and she pulls herself up from the ground even as her muscles tremble with exhaustion. Does it make her a bad person? To recognize what she's slowly losing to time and fear and what feels like an age-old ache now? But to not… hurt, for that loss? To not hurt enough as she forgets and lives when… when…
Does this make me a bad person? Mina thinks, brow wrinkling, and swallows against the tight knot wound in her throat. She can barely hear the movie anymore over the swarming locusts of her thoughts. It doesn't, right?
Then, why does she feel so bad…?
With a mullish grumble, Mina snuggles further into Tooru's lap. The fingers carding gently through Mina’s hair falter for a moment before brushing the base of a horn. "Feeling any better?" Tooru asks, and pokes a finger into Mina's cheek when she flops her head over. "Wanna talk about it?"
Shaking her head, Mina screws her eyes shut, darkness swallowing up the brilliant rainbows and caged light brighter than even the television screen in the gloom. "No," she mumbles, and fingers trail along her scalp. "Sorry… it's just one of those days."
A sort of day that's happening more often than not now. It's good though, right? It used to be so hard, but now… now, how could Mina even begin to explain that she's starting to forget what her own Mother's face looked like?
That too many things about her are a lie?
"Well," Tooru chirps playfully, "we could go see if any of Bakugou's curry is left in the fridge? I like to think it'd be for a good cause."
A smile tugs at the corners of Mina's lips, and she wants to hate it but she can't . "He'll blow us up," she whispers, but she skipped lunch, stomach pulling into knots at the realization of her loss. "But it's so good, isn't it…"
Tooru laughs. "I love when my face melts."
Mina’s just about to push herself up when there comes the rush of footsteps; chatter fills the otherwise quiet lounge, and then a sly, "Oya? What do we have here? Are you guys smooching in the dark, huh?"
With a groan, Mina flops back over onto Tooru's lap and throws an arm over her eyes. "Shut up, Kaminari!" she says, swallowing back her hurt, and too many people giggle. Groaning again, Mina rises, freeing Tooru, and squints over the back of the couch. "What're you guys doing anyway?"
It's quite a herd of pillows and blankets and coats over what look like pajamas, but it's not dorm movie night, just Tooru and Mina movie night. Kouda waves, and Dark Shadow follows suit from behind Tokoyami as Mina’s eyes rake over them, Satou and Shouji and Midoriya and Ochako and Momo. Kaminari saunters closer from where they're heading for the door.
"Well, not to interrupt this”—and he wiggles his eyebrows here—"buuuut, there's a meteor shower tonight! Wanna come smooch under the stars instead of… is that Trolls Three? Worst date movie ever; I thought you guys had better taste!"
In a strange way, everything muffles a little. Mina can just hear Tooru say something, wiggling excitedly, and she's excited herself, for all of a moment—
A meteor shower. Clear skies and a full moon. Just the width of a finger from the moon's left side, an expanse of space filled with far off celestial bodies, except. Except, one.
One that's gone, the fading light the only thing left… besides Mina.
It's dumb, but her eyes burn. She can almost hear their screams, just barely hear the electric crackle of the atmosphere eating itself up and feel the phantom tremors under her feet as the ground tore itself apart. It's so faint, so weak, and that scares Mina more than the memory ever did.
Someone's tugging on her hand, and as if through a fog, she hears, " I, I can't ," leave her mouth.
Tooru folds their hands together. "It's okay, we can finish the movie another time," she says, her smile luminous and wide and just so pretty . "Or, well, we can finish the movie, no worries, Mina-chan!"
She doesn't know. Mina's never told her. She's never told her about the kaleidoscope of colors that make up her skin and body, her gleaming hair, and the way she bites her lip when she's nervous, the way she gives everyone bunny ears in every photo, so sure that no one can see but Mina can see .
It's just one of those days, but. But.
With a frustrated sob, Mina untangles their fingers. "No!" she says, not a shout, but sharp and louder than she means it to be and they all blink at her, stunned. This isn’t like her, and she’s worrying them but— "No, I…"
I'm a fraud, she wants to tell them, but she's scared, all of her tucked away fears squirming free.
Mina's seen the movies, read the books, historical and fictional because a part of her that isn’t her wanted to know and now she does. She knows what would be waiting for her if it ever got out, if just one wrong person knew the truth about her. Humans pull their own apart like pinned insects, and Mina knows what happened to Principal Nedzu, knows how much flack Shouji catches just for his mutant appearance, and knows... that she can only expect worse. It could only be worse, and she knows this, how could she not?
But. But.
I’m forgetting them, she thinks, tears welling up, standing up. I’m losing them.
"—na, wait!" someone calls, but Mina is already all but running away, her two hearts thumping painfully behind her ribs. "Mina, what— "
She darts past a startled Kaminari, brushes roughly by an unprepared Jiro, and disappears down the hall. Up the stairs she goes, her hearts a thunderous roar in her ears, and down the dark hall to her room. Mina's gasping for breath by the time she slams her door shut, back braced against the cool wood.
If… If she lost her friends, her parents, Mina doesn't know if she could take it, if she wouldn't buckle and shatter into so many pieces.
A sob wiggles free, and Mina struggles with her next breath through the tears, sliding down the door and onto the floor. She scrubs hard at her eyes, sniffling, and the tears refuse to stop. Finding the will to stand flees to better pastures, and so Mina sits there, working through the tears until they're spent. Her legs grow cold and nearly numb from the awkward curl, her head pounding with the strain of a headache. She sniffs, eyes unfocused on the middle distance of her soft bed, before shaking with a tingle up her spine.
Faint tapping on the other side of her door startles her, and Mina can't help the way her voice trembles. "Y-Yeah?" she says, trying for brave, but ultimately ballparking weepy, she's sure.
"... Can I come in?" Tooru whispers, soft. "I brought your favorite sports drinks… or I can leave it here if you want?"
Mina bites her lip, and sucks back on snot. Ugh. "... Do you want to come in?" she asks back, uncurling with a wince. "I'm… pretty gross right now."
There's a small laugh. "Not as gross as that sewer chase, though, right?"
Oh, no, now that was gross. "No, not… that bad," she allows, and flexes her hands before slowly pushing herself upright.
She almost doesn't want to open the door, and wishes she was on the roof with everyone else, that she wasn’t like this. That the thought of the wide, glittering sky didn’t bring more tears to her eyes. Sniffling, Mina rubs harshly at her eyes, and flings the door open a little faster than she means to, like ripping off a bandaid.
Tooru smiles up at her from the floor, the drink curled in hand, and Mina tries to hold onto the wobbly smile she’s drawn up. She flinches when Tooru’s light flickers, when for a singular moment, she goes dark, as invisible as she is for everyone else to Mina’s eyes for the very first time.
“... Mina?” she asks, standing, teetering on the edge of the threshold, and it feels like a lifetime before Mina can see that her smile’s slipped into a concerned frown, that she can even breathe. Again, Tooru flickers, like a lightbulb finally going dim. “Mina… you can talk to me, you know that, right?”
I know, Mina thinks, the thought carefully curtailed, and it scares her, the sincerity and worry radiating softly from the very edges of Tooru’s mind.
That’s what settles it, though. Being scared… is okay, right? Mina’s been scared before, and she shouldn’t… let it stop her, not if she can help it, and not if someone wants to help. With a shaky exhale, she musters up what she can of the courage she relies on nearly everyday. It’s not much, but it’s enough.
“I k-know,” she murmurs, and reaches out a hand. Tooru takes it, and lets Mina guide her into the room before shutting the door softly behind her. “I know.”
Tooru’s frown softens as they meander over to her bed. “But only if you want to,” she says, firm, even as Mina draws up on top her unmade and wrinkled sheets. Tooru curls up beside her, not touching, and offers the drink. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine too.”
“I want to,” Mina insists, and sniffs before taking the drink. She cracks the seal after a moment of hesitation, and gulps down half of it before she can change her mind. Tooru merely waits. “I-I want to but…”
I don’t want you to look at me differently.
“But?”
The words are there, roiling and scrambling at the back of her throat, all the things she could say, all the things she wants to say, all she’s ever wanted to say and never even told her parents. The things she’s kept to herself and in her heart. Like the way she remembers more than she’d ever liked to admit, knew more than she’d ever like to share. The way it’s all fading so gently like the sky going to sleep for the night.
“I don’t want you to look at me differently, but I know you will,” she admits, and Tooru barely stills, but the way her thoughts stumble, Mina knows it throws her off, how serious this sounds. “You’ll have to.”
There’s a long pause. “I think that’s a given,” Tooru says, and Mina tries to not let it hurt. “But, not… not completely? If you know what I mean? You’ll still be Mina, the Mina that you’ve shown me before this moment, just… more? Does this make sense…?”
It does. It’s just Mina can’t help but worry it will be too much. Or, rather, the parts of her that are more than just her are more shrewd and jaded and fading, and not wrong to worry. Mina knows this—it just doesn’t make it any easier.
“What if I told you I wasn’t human?” she blurts in a rush, and can’t help but giggle nervously in the startled silence that follows. “What would you do if I told you I was an alien and not from this planet?”
Tooru doesn’t outwardly budge, and Mina didn’t expect her to; it must sound like a joke or the exaggeration it must be. “I’d say you tell awful jokes, Alien Queen,” she returns easily, definitely deserved, and Mina winces. “... Unless it isn’t a joke?”
The thing about being invisible means not being easy to read. If no one can see you, then what’s the point in hiding how you really feel from your face? It’s another thing that Mina likes about Tooru; that she’s an open book despite her tone. She’s not a bad liar, but for all that she’s putting on a brave face anyway when she doesn’t even know Mina can see it, the worry prickles sharply against Mina’s own thoughts.
"What if… I told you that humans get a lot of things right about the Universe," Mina says, the words catching in her teeth. She tightens her grip on the top of knees, arms curling in, and Tooru leans further into her side, a warm and bright weight, grounding in the still darkness. "Or… that at least they used to."
They don't care much anymore about the light that glitters beyond their reach, not when life on Earth has become something straight out of their wildest dreams and it's all right there—right within their reach.
Tooru shifts, again. "I… think I heard about that. It's why original comics aren't as popular as they used to be. Kinda hard to sell the extraordinary when it's everyday life, right?"
Mina nods, and worries at her bottom lip, glancing at Tooru out of the corner of her eye. “Right… I’m… not so good with words, at least about this…” she murmurs, knots twisting in the pit of her stomach, and turns fully to face Tooru, so that Mina can see her face and Tooru hers, their knees brushing.
I… I almost don’t know where to start.
Her eyebrows furrow, and Mina can see the realization hit, a ripple of white surprise blooming across her cheeks. “M-Mina?” she says, eyes wide and luminous. “You... your quirk—”
I don’t have one, Mina says, and fills the thought with sincerity and guilt. I never have.
Tooru gapes, and there’s the faintest stirring of genuine amusement behind the swirling fear and apprehension, nausea and brittle nerves. Mina feels just the tiniest bit lighter, and it’s go big or go home, right?
“You should see your face,” Mina teases, and looks away briefly to lace her hand with Tooru’s, the beat of her hearts picking up.
The grip goes stiff. “Mina,” she repeats, a warning, and curls their hands together tighter. “I almost don’t—this isn’t a joke, r-right?”
It isn’t, Mina whispers, smiling weakly at the wonder draping Tooru like glittering stars even as parts of her shift with restless anxiety. She leans forward to press her forehead to Tooru’s, and a kaleidoscope of nameless colors radiate from where they touch. This story doesn't have a happy ending, so... Don't look at me any different, okay?
“Okay, I trust you,” she whispers back.
Mina closes her eyes.
Be good, my starlight, echoes an old voice, odd and breathy, and much like falling, the memories surge forward.
I promise.
. ⟟ ⌿⍀ ⍜ ⋔ ⟟ ⌇ ⟒
The memory opens like the reflection of a mirror. There's a degree of separation to the connection, and Mina knows it's dangerously thin, knows just how easy it would be to lose themselves to it. She curls her toes, and swallows, looks upon the void of swirling memories and inherited knowledge and life.
Is this okay? Tooru asks, and her words buzz around them, loud and unsure. Mina?
Yes, Mina replies, as the space around their shared conscious thought solidifies, and the environment starts to build itself up from three different perspectives, three different memories.
She tugs it toward what little she remembers and the second most vibrant, and—
It's a nameless color that makes up the sky. Humans don't have a word for it, and it's the first thing Mina ever sees.
Wisps of a lurid green swirl across the expanse, and with existence beings the sudden surety of knowledge and love. She is barely able to swing tiny, pudgy arms, and the joy of this nearly buried memory dims with sudden grief.
Mina…?
A face leans into view, a deep red with wild hair and gnarled horns, but fuzzy around the edges. Small yellow eyes squint down at her, and Mina reaches for them, humming, and the laugh that fills her mind startles her. Two more faces appear, both smaller, and their piercing curiosity is enough to turn Mina shy.
Tiny fingers reach out and tug on the soft flesh of Mina's cheek, rub uncomfortably at the velvety fur of her baby skin. She draws up in discomfort as her thoughts waver, whimper, and the other children panic.
"Shoo, children!" commands a voice, and the faces scatter, flailing thin limbs and cries of surprise.
The old wonder feels raw, like touching a live wire, and Mina nearly loses hold of the memory when a new face appears.
Much like the others, they shine a vivid crimson, speckled with glittering freckles, but the facial muscles are more defined, the cheekbones stark and rounded. Their small, near vestigial-like mouth curves with a smile, and they tilt their head. The long, shaggy hair immediately dazzles Mina, and she snatches a handful between her three fingers, her discomfort fleeing in the wake of something, someone, new but… not.
"Fear not, my starlight, " they chirp, and even though Mina knows, the revelation comes to her child self with the swiftness of a breeze.
"Pama! " she thinks back, and the tips of their hair curl with surprise and joy around her hand.
Mina would live forever in this moment if she could, but as quickly as the memory built itself up, it quickly falls apart. The colors dull and then run and swirl together; much like the one painting Mina's only ever been able to remember much to Midnight-sensei's bemusement.
A Starry Night? Tooru thinks as the red pools back together and reforms into the same figure.
Pama is kneeling not too far away, but now they are somewhere else entirely. Mina can only guess what the room looks like to Tooru, indistinct and mostly another color without a human name, but it's clearly her home. There are grass like rugs and reclining chairs, but too many of the finer details are lost to the age of this memory, out of focus and dizzying.
Yeah, that's the one, Mina whispers back, and her child self strains forward all of a sudden, the hands curled just under her arms holding her steady.
"Ready?" they ask, and Mina wiggles, arms flung out and grasping. They offer their hands, and kneel closer. "To me, ⌰⎍⋏⎍."
The grip on her falls away, and Mina stumbles the first two steps, arms swinging. She steadies as the world around her tunnels down to Pama and nothing else. These first steps shake Mina's entire world, and her skin crawls with change as courage and determination sprinkled with awe well up from behind her.
"Do you see…? " another voice asks, and Mina wobbles on her next step as her vision doubles, the skin of her neck crawling with a sudden itch.
Suddenly, she can see behind her, and Tooru makes a soft noise of surprise.
Nini, supplies an old thought, and they look a lot like Pama, just a little broader, and shorter but with twisted horns, wrinkled red skin and so many eyes trained solely on Mina.
Startled, Mina's legs slip out from under her, and she falls with a verbal squeak. Pama catches her, and kisses away the frightened tears as she turns her head around, the double vision making her squirm, the new set of eyes on the back of herneck squeezing shut.
Nini is torn between joy and regret, and even now, Mina isn't sure why.
Why were they sad? Mina whispers, and Tooru's thoughts shiver as the scene shifts, bleeding away.
This time, the other children are back. Mina is a little older, steady on her two feet, and the tallest of the other kids, ⏃⌇⍜⟟ — Asoi — has their shoulder braced against hers in a grappled hug.
"No fair, no fair!" they shriek, straining, and Mina squeals with laughter, tiny hands grabbing playfully at their wild hair. "Move, Lunu! "
Mina does not move, her toes curled into the grass. "No you! " she giggles back, and twists to an odd, helpful thought, throwing them over with a soft thump. There's a pause, and then she buzzes with cheer. "I win!"
Asoi groans, spindly limbs falling askew as they glare up at her. Mina crouchs, and smiles at them with pin needle teeth.
Tooru prods the memory in clear question as the next child steps up. Do you really have so many… powers?
Just two now, Mina replies slowly, and tosses the next child with the ease of throwing a pillow. The grief twists it's blade deeper into her heart. They're fading. The only one that's gotten stronger is my… quirk.
She's too far from their sun. If it's still even there. It's her best guess, anyway, with what little she can still drum up from what those before her knew.
Nini and Pama were the same but not, she continues, and goes down playfully when all of the others pile on her. Nini was a shapeshifter, and I took after them the most. Otherwise I'd look pretty freaky like Shouji, huh?
Don't be rude, Tooru huffs, disapproving for all of a heartbeat before it turns somber. Mina tries to reel in the blue of her sorrow and bury it beneath the poor joke, but it's too late. They're… all gone, aren't they?
I… don't want to show you that, Mina whispers, and forces the memory away before Tooru can see the looming storm approaching in the distance, dust and debris and blue lightning.
Everything quickly goes dark and still. The muffled silence weighs heavy on Mina's ears, and she can feel Tooru's rising panic at the lack of sensation. Immediate regret taints the space, and she tries to think of just one more happy memory, just one more thing—
—that can go wrong.
⏚⏃⌇⟟ sighs, and flops back against their chair. Above them, the holographic lights of their workstation glitters a looming blue.
They watch as the diagram of their star flares, the throbbing ripple of its frequency stretching further and further. With a bitten off snarl, they reign in the numb despair, and slam a thin fist onto the desk. The lights scatter before reforming, looping and replaying what was always going to happen.
"Knowledge for knowledge's sake, " they think, flexing their hand before running it along their tight braid of hair.
It's too late. The signs were there, the danger evident, and yet.
"Basi?" comes a tentative thought, and the background noise of heat to metal fades just a little with a rush of pointed concern.
‘Basi’ grimaces, and sends a soothing brush of tired love back. The sounds pick back up after a handful of heartbeats, and they wave the hologram away. The thin veneer of calm pulls taut, but they exhale with a flutter, let it fade into a bone deep exhaustion.
“I was such a fool,” they whisper, and—
—Lunu is so young, too young, and so, so curious. She is only six light years old when she truly learns about Earth.
"See this here?" Basi says, and tries to not let the thought waver. "See, they sent it out into the stars, and we found it drifting far, far outside of their solar system. They seem to have forgotten about it."
Indignant, Lunu presses their fingers along the page, staring intently at the picture. A silvery cone with little antenna, it doesn't look like much, but slowly the wonder unfolds careful hands along the starling's mind and brushes away the tingling unease. It’s so pretty, and a wonder unto itself. The technical jargon that wells up in parallel is confusing and uninteresting, so Basi is not surprised when Lunu pushes it aside for the memories of the stars blurring outside a circular window and the joy on Nindi's face.
"How could they forget about it?" the child grumbles, and splays a hand over the next picture as the page is turned.
Outside, the air hisses, and Basi curls tighter around Lunu. "Evolution," they say, and the slow image of change blooms — from wriggling fish to staggering humanoid with no giggles to nearly backwards but forwards in sudden mutation. Lunu wrinkles their nose, and the child doesn’t really understand even as the inherited parts of them do. “It was extraordinary.”
What's happening? Tooru whispers, breaking in like garbled static, and Mina is lost to the sudden howl of a world eating itself alive.
Everything wavers, ripples like heat rising from asphalt, and Lunu — Mina, my name is Mina now, how could I forget that my name used to be — looks up, yellow eyes wide—
—as the sky cracks open, the ground trembling beneath her feet. The air buzzes with abject terror and fear, and it’s all Nindi can do not to trip, tears muddying the edges of her eyes as she pulls Asoi behind her.
Light flashes over head, and Lunu cries out, curling tighter into her neck. Nindi stumbles, desperate to hold on to the two, but the atmosphere is getting so thin, the carbonic acid in the air disappearing, fleeing into open space or eaten by the volatile lightning arcing across the sky. It’s so harder to breathe, the world growing so bright it nearly hurts to even see.
So many voices are disappearing, the atmosphere eating itself up, and this is not new, not a surprise; it’s the expected consequences of a people that cannot leave well enough alone, and it breaks Nindi’s hearts.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't , but it's too late. The psychic flare of their heritage star is full of dissonant rage and grief, and a million lifetimes of knowledge bearing down its full weight on their planet. It heaves the soil and tears the land apart, and it's their end.
Not everyone will escape because there was no time and there wouldn't ever have been enough stellar rails to evacuate them all. Basi knew this. Nindi knew this.
Just not that the cyclical pulses would accelerate so fast and so quickly. Too quickly for everyone to escape—
There’s an audible crack, and the memory splinters. The fissure spider webs out like clawing, desperate hands, and each sliver suddenly throbs with an angry and blistering pain.
"Shh, Lunu, it's okay, I promise."
Mina cries out—
" —stop!"
And, everything stops. Mina gasps, folded over on her knees and elbows. Her tear stained reflection stares back up at her, the blue of the space above her glittering with a trillion and one stars.
Those memories were… not hers.
A sob claws at the back of her throat, and the face looking back up at her shimmers into what in another life she would have been. With long, red hair and downy wrinkled red skin, and twisted horns, she is a perfect blend of both Pama and Nini. Scared yellow eyes meet her own, and Lunu's face twists, lips pulling back on useless sharp teeth.
"I'm sorry," Mina whispers, tears dripping off her cheeks. "I… I didn't mean to forget. I was so s-scared."
A solid presence appears behind her, and Mina shudders as Tooru drapes herself over her back. Her arms wrap lightly over her shoulders, and the love is warm, like spindly spider webs and dandelion seeds on the wind. It's enough.
Mina sits back on her knees and just. Just sobs, and cries, gasps through all the memories she let herself hide away. She lets it all out, for as long as she can muster, and her reflection distorts and fades back to the face that she wears. Tear stained and blotchy, but the face she's come to appreciate in the only way that she can.
"... Feel better?" Tooru asks, and rubs a circle between Mina's shoulders. "You've… never really grieved for them have you?"
With a hiccup, Mina turns around in the embrace, and makes it a full on hug. "I-I did, once, I thought, but I'd… forgotten, what happened right before I ended up here. On Earth. I was too scared to remember it all. They're all gone."
Either lost to the dark expanse of space and the ruins of her home planet or somewhere safe but too far from Mina's reach. It hurts to imagine, and she gently banishes the thought before it can manifest in distorted reflections and an empty sky.
Tooru hugs her tighter. "I know saying sorry cannot even begin to cover the half of it but I am sorry, Mina. I'm so, so sorry you had to go through this," she murmurs into her hair. "I just want you to know it's okay if you're sad about it, if you never get over it. And… I know you didn't want me to look at you different but how could I not? You're so strong, stronger than I ever knew."
A fresh wave of tears muddies the edge of Mina's vision, and she trembles, inhales shakily. "W-Would the L word be too strong to say right now?" she jokes, and Tooru exhales with a small laugh. "Thank you, Tooru."
"I love you too, dummy."
Mina squeezes her eyes shut, the mental aches fading just a little, and wills another memory to form around them because it's right to finish this, for herself as much as she wants to share it all with Tooru.
It comes together much slower, weaker even, but turns into a much familiar setting for them both. The room is clearly one that would be found on Earth, full of named colors and old pop culture.
Mina blinks bleary eyed as everything slowly falls into focus. Then, nothing is familiar, least of all the two bipedal creatures before her.
"W-Who are you?"
There is a bright, yellow light streaming in through a window near where she lies, the cloth draping them soft between her aching fingers. Each breath still hurts, a raw and blistering feeling as her lungs expand with a inhale, and then deflate with an exhale.
One has two eyes, a long face with tense lips and expressive muscles framed by fluffy white fur, but just two limbs that Mina can see. The other is furless except on their head, a handful of eyes on a face and body that is similar enough except for the four hands that are wringing themselves together. Gingerly, Mina reaches out with another weak subsonic hum because. Because these are not the strangest forms Nini and Pama have taken, cajoling Mina and her siblings on festive nights with stories of their travel amongst the stars.
The two speak, a gargled sound that grates on her external ears, and Mina's breath trembles.
"What are you?" she try again, and still their mouths move.
The taller one takes a step forward, a three digit hand reaching for her, and Mina tenses, drawing up. They stop. Again, their mouths move, the air vibrating so sharply that Mina can't catch it before they stop. She doesn't know these creatures. These… are not her parents
Mina's hearts thump painfully, and she throws a wild-eyed look around, the world tilting dangerously as she jerks upright from her nest of soft pillows.
Where is everyone? Why… Why is she alone? Everything hurts so, so much.
Like a dial, Mina picks at another wavelength, another frequency, tries again: "What are you? Where am I? I want to go home!"
The two creatures share a look, their facial muscles pulling with a weird look before it falls away.
Mina doesn't like that, and peels back her upper lip to bare pin needle teeth. They step back with clear fright, and Mina… Mina can't remember how she got here. Where is everyone?
Why can't Mina hear them?
"What are you?" she demands again, plucking at another cord, another higher string. "Who—"
Her throat tingles, her very being burns and Mina gasps, the physical noise loud and jarring. The air scalds her mouth, pain blooming in her chest with each extra breath. It hurts.
It hurts!
There's a shrill cry, and just through her sticky tears, Mina sees the two creatures flinch and cower, hands over their ears. Shame pools underneath the fear and uncertainty, but she can barely choke back the sob that threatens to send her spiralling because she knows what this is, her inherited knowledge drawing up in response.
Too much dioxygen .
But. But that can't be right? She was just… was just…
"I can't remember," she whimpers. "Why can't I—"
"—go home?" Mina thinks, broadcasting the thought loud and mean.
They offer her the bowl of thick soup again, baring their teeth gently. She bares her teeth in return and shoves the bowl away. Some of the soup spills across the blanket.
"No!" she shouts, chest heaving, and they wince, ears folding flat. " I want to go home!"
The days here are strange. She doesn't understand how time passes, and the light wavers strangely when she looks at it too hard. Mina just wants to go home, and these unknown creatures won't let her.
Again, Mina reaches for the fluffy creature's mind, pulling less than carefully another wavelength, and screams, "I want my Pama and my Nini! I hate you!"
With a startled bleat, the creature jumps off the bed. "W-What?" they think, dropping the bowl completely; it shatters against the floor.
"What? " Mina echoes, shocked.
They stare at each other, stunned into silence for all of a heartbeat, and then the creature has to ruin it. They open their mouth, and it's like nails on metal to Mina's ears.
"Stop! " she cries, clamping her hands over her ears. "Stop it, that sounds horrible!"
With a click of teeth, they stop. Mina waits a breath before peeking one eye open to see them just looking at her. The expression is weird, and not one Mina can understand, not yet, but the determined thoughts are.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't realize… were telepathic," they think, and the voice breathy and uneven. "We were so worried when you wouldn't talk. Will… please eat? You've been ill... so long…"
Mina looks at the spilt food, brow furrowing. "I want to go home," she repeats instead, and swallows dryly. "Please let me go home."
Their face… sours, maybe. It seems sad. Or, confused. The thoughts certainty feel that way, and it makes all of Mina's aches and pains flare with a vengeance. The atmosphere here is so, so heavy; breathing is hard.
"I'm sorry little one, I don't... where that is, or where they are, could… tell me?"
She trembles. "Take a slingshot around the third most brightest star, and coast barely a blink past the fields of ten broken giants," Mina recites, her stomach twisting with sudden nausea as her new teeth tingle. Just in case she ever got lost when the day came for traveling. Just in case. " Is that far from here?"
It can't be that far. Can it? She doesn't think it should be. Mina just wants to—
"—eat it?" Mina demands, brow wrinkling as the insect — allomyrina dichotoma septentrionalis — crawls along her arm. The mental flip of her inherited knowledge plucks another too long word from the book she read the day before, and she dismisses the memory with a hum. It’s curved horn looks especially tasty, and her other thoughts waver at the idea. "Looks crunchy"
There are looks traded amongst her friends, and Chie makes a disgusted noise. "People don't eat bugs!" she says, and pauses. Amends, "Okay, some people do but you shouldn't just eat some random bug! Especially a good one!"
With a frown, Mina eyes the bug as it ruffles its wings, crouches, and then takes flight. The others shriek with delight and surprise, everyone but Chie scattering, but Mina just wishes she could have had a taste.
“I wish I had a wing quirk,” Chie huffs into the summer quiet, and presses her fingers together. The skin sticks to itself and then peels apart like tape as she pulls them from each other. “Or, really anything else; my quirk sucks.”
Wish I had a quirk, Mina thinks in turn, and the lie twists a knot in her stomach, her thoughts growing quiet. “No it doesn’t,” she rebuffs, and rises from her crouch, crosses her arms. “If you had a wing quirk, imagine all the, the… special clothes you’d have to get! I can’t even wear a hat.”
Chie smiles unsurely, eyes darting up toward Mina’s horns. “My mommy said I shouldn’t get my hopes up to be a Pro Hero,” she says, and reaches for her bug net. Chie fiddles with it for a moment before continuing, “Yours is way better, you could, like, melt stuff to free people in danger; I just get stuck to stuff and stuff to me.”
Mina frowns, and wrinkles her nose. “W-Well, if you really want to be one, we can do it together! We can be, um, whatever those are.”
“You don’t know what a pro hero is?” Chie gasps, like Mina did something bad.
“I know what superheroes are!” Mina insists, looking away as she scratches her chin. “Like, um, Superman or Starfire…”
Chie gives her a dubious look. “I don’t know those guys, are they Japanese…? But like All Might! Or Best Jeanist or Gang Orca!” she lists, prying a hand free from her net handle to count them out. “They stop villains from hurting people, and rescue people hurt by the weather and stuff!”
“O-Oh, yeah those guys, I thought you said… something else.” Mina smiles through the lie. “Who’s your favorite? Mine’s, uh… Gang Orca!”
It’s then that the memory muffles, the sound trailing off on Chie brightening, and Mina stands neatly from the echo of her younger self. Tooru is a warm weight by her shoulder as they watch her past self and her childhood friend.
This was my first year of school, Mina thinks. I’m seven? And my parents hadn’t… really talked to me about Pro Heroes. I knew what they were, but they didn’t have anything to go off of except the wild imaginations of old comic books so I knew more about them than anything else."
I don’t think I ever asked… why do you want to be a pro hero? Tooru murmurs.
It's… childish, Mina admits, and lets the scene fall away. They breathe into the empty black as she drums up the small but angry memory.
It opens on Mina stomping her foot, and the whole room shakes with her wrath, the floorboards creaking with the strain. "I, I want to be—" she starts, and stammers over the words, her frustration stealing the focus she needs to hold onto her vocal cords. "I needed to save Chie!"
Mama splays her hands, kneeling just in front of her but not touching, clearly afraid of her monstrous strength. It saps the righteous fury fueled by the left behind impressions of Nini and Pama at the thought of this miserable creature trying to punish Mina for, for—
"Mina, you nearly broke Teashi-kun's arm," Mama thinks, gently. "Violence is not always the answer."
"He was hurting her," she sobs back, and scrubs at her eyes, the shape trembling under her fingers, threatening to shrink and film over like they should be but can't be. "He wouldn't stop!"
"He shouldn't have been bullying Chie-chan, but that doesn't mean what you did was right either," Mama says, and Mina wants to flinch away from the verbal words. "Why didn't you go get a teacher?"
With a gasp, Mina sobs even harder. I, I couldn't help it! I didn't want Chie to feel that way, I don't want anyone to feel that way, and the teachers don't always come when the quirk isn't nice enough and I had to help her—
"—like we did for you," Papa finishes, coming to sit beside Mama. His multiple eyes crinkle with understanding.
She nods, nearly blinded by the tears, and doesn't fight when they both pull her into a hug. "Sometimes I'm just so sad, and Chie was so sad too but no one was coming, everyone was looking away and I couldn't… I can't —"
If I could do something, why shouldn't I? Mina murmurs, and Tooru hums. I did almost break his arm but I… wanted to save her. She was right there. Why shouldn't I?
"—believe my eyes," Mina exclaims, stallibg mid stirde. "What are you guys doing to Harizumi-kun?"
The three boys startle, and blink at her. Huffing, she points at the shorter of the two, her hearts fluttering dangerously at his pained and anxious face.
"O-Oh, nothing, we just were having a disagreement is all!" Iwauku says, adjusting his glasses as he releases Harizumi's shoulders. "Right, guys?"
"Yeah, just a disagreement!" Yamada echoes. "Right, Zumi-kun?"
The hedgehog-like boy grimaces, but before he can nod or do whatever else to try and get Mina to drop this, she huffs again before pumping a fist. "This must be quite the disagreement," she says, "and as your senior, it's my duty to help you all come to agreement!"
"Huh?" they say, and Mina twirls before striking a pose.
"Let's dance!" she laughs. "Whoever does the best was clearly right, right? Or do I have to show all three of you up and decide for you?"
Is that Kirishima? Tooru asks as the three boys rile at the challenge. Over there, with the black hair?
We went to the same middle school, Mina confirms, and laughs again as she twists, her hands catching herself as she dips toward the ground and—
—it’s unconscious thought before conscious action.
Her skin crawls, and the promise of violence skitters across her mind. Mina jerks, turns, and the crosswalk in front of her turns green in the corner of her eye. All at once, too many thoughts fight for dominance as the scene before her registers completely. For a single heartbeat, she hesitates, thoughts swarming. So many solutions cross her mind’s eye, but only one throbs with a bleeding urgency and threatens to drown her.
Run, insists the parts of her that aren’t just her. Run, do not engage, run, run, run!
But, Mina does, and doesn't.
Mina finds herself sliding to a stop in front of her friends. Up this close, her mind recoils with abject fear. The man oozes with barely contained wrath — something is wrong, wrong, wrong — and looms closer.
More dust flies, his fingers crumbling the wall of the building behind them, and Mina throws her arms wide. "Turn at the corner!" she yells, and she doesn't know what she's saying, she just has to save them. "Then left at the avenue, the agency should only be a little over a mile away!"
There's a pause. "... Thanks," he says, and turns away.
Her legs go weak, tears springing to her eyes. Chie and Tomoe grab Mina as she goes down, crying, and she… she did it.
Mina saved them.
Saving people scares me so much, she whispers, but I'll smile through the fear if it means one less person won't feel trapped and alone knowing I will be there.
… So All Might is your favorite pro, then? Tooru teases, and Mina can't help the giggle that slips out.
Maybe, she says, have you seen his arms?
Tooru gasps with mock offense, and the mental swat is enough that Mina lets the memory move on. There's not a lot more she wants to share but… these will be more fun, more silly, and the crux of the matter. All the memories and knowledge that were given to her are dark around the edges, tattered and drifting away. Soon, there will probably never be another chance for her to share this with anyone else ever again.
With a soft sigh, Mina opens her eyes to their first day at Yuuei, and. And, while it may be cliché, the first time Mina sees Tooru, she takes her breath away.
The class isn't settled yet, and the boy with glasses is engaging precariously with the spikey blonde; Mina's of half a mind to aggressively befriend them both, when in sneaks light given life.
Mina is a moth, and she is drawn in immediately and completely. The swell of sudden infatuation startles her, and she doesn't get a word in edgewise before the rest of the class finds their way in, and the girl chooses a seat by the opposite wall and by the windows. No one seems to pay her much mind, and Mina makes an effort not to stare too much, glancing furtively out of the corner of her eye even as the boy next to her draws her into conversation.
I'm so gay, she thinks, and then immediately panics, praying beyond all hope she didn't think that too loudly.
Kaminari, as she's come to learn, seems to hiccup, falter, and then he squints at her. She smiles, wide and at a loss for what he was even saying, but—
Shhhhush! Don't laugh at me...
Mina, I can't, oh my god.
—let it be known that Mina can be smart most of the time all on her own.
Just the image of ratting herself out to be able to see the invisible girl feels awkward. Would it be awkward? Quirks are odd, and it could be easily swept into her file and that be the end of it. But. But, it has definitely been more than a few weeks now, and the more time that passes chips steadying away at the desire to let Hagakure know.
It feels like a funny little secret that Mina's the only one privy too. Hagakure thinks she's so slick, and on more than one occasion Mina has had to stifle a laugh when she does something like give Tokoyami bunny ears.
The crush will go away, she tells herself, and it's true enough.
Rare they might be, they tend to just fizzle out when she befriends the object of her fleeting affection. A relationship would be… weird. Probably. Mina's determined to never have one. She's carrying too much baggage, if she's brutally honest, and she's got to be.
Instead, Mina will take undue pleasure from connecting two barely connectable dots.
"Hm, Jirou seems to be cozying up to Yaomomo quite a bit," Mina says, and Tooru hums with interest as Kaminari whips his head around. She tries not to let the dazzle of colors that make up Tooru in her entirely distract her. "I mean, did you see her share a pencil with the vice prez the other day?"
Tooru scoffs, and scribbles a crude caricature of Present Mic along the edges of her English notebook. "That all? Thought you'd have seen something juicer."
Mina sucks back on her teeth, and pushes at her playfully. "Where's your sense of imagination? It all starts with a pencil," she says, pretending as if that's some sort of wiseman's keen observation. "Soon enough, Aizawa-sensei will stumble across them in pursuit of a closet to sleep in."
Kaminari guffaws, tears coming to his eyes, and—
—when Mina first sees Unbreakable, Nindi thinks, Petro Colossi.
Kirishima's skin resembles the quiet giants of a long gone planetary system. All sharp, smooth, but jagged planes; a stark silhouette against a green and misty sky as the miniature mountains crossed arid plains. Calm and curious beings that humored the interstellar explorers, let them crawl along their uneven bodies. Mina can feel the phantom heat through the gloves of the protective suit, the inherited knowledge drawing up like a bedtime story she's nearly forgotten. It's getting easier to forget it's there.
“It’s sooo cool!” she cheers, and the apprehension she can see in his eyes fades, the grin growing brighter.
He high fives Mina, the rough texture feeling barely abrasive at all, and she wonders if she can—
—remember this? Mina thinks, and chews on the cap of her pen.
She taps the nib on the edges of her notes, glances up at Ectoplasm briefly, and then curls her arms around her notebook.
It's just math, numbers and formulas, but the knowledge just isn't coming to her. It usually does, a whispered thought of shared and inherited information. Usually pretty good at math and science, not so much at English or Japanese, but usually pretty good once Mina parses the similarities.
Totally not cheating, she thinks to herself, and flexes her hand as Sato clears his throat from the back of the room.
She still studies, takes notes and does her best, but sometimes she skates by with the knowledge of two life times she's never lived. No one's really going to know, so no harm no foul, right? It's almost like they're here with her, helping her do her best.
Mina sniffs, and brushes at her nose. Yeah, just like that. Like when she would go home and Mom would help her get her English pronunciation right; it's just like that.
Some of it's a little over her head though. If all she needs is the curve of a sine function, she doesn't need to know how that applies to an interstellar craft and pinching the fabric of space and time to cross five lifetimes in the blink of an eye, or how to coax the heritage star into revealing a long gone past. It's unfortunate, but that isn't something she thinks is all that interesting, but it's nice to have anyway.
It lets her feel close to them, Nini and Pama. Which, even now, feels a little silly to think. All of them are her parents, not real or fake, and she likes that they’re smarter than her in different ways. She’s written some of the really advanced stuff down, but not recently, because it’ll always be there for her to come back to. She has time.
But why can’t I remember this?
It’s new material, but off hand, Ectoplasm had asked if anyone knew it last week for bonus points. Mina might have given the right answer then, but now it escapes her, a curious spot of emptiness that feels like a lost tooth. Which, she knows all about. She shivers at the thought, and runs her tongue over the back of her teeth, reaffirming that, yes, they’re still there. Gah. She doesn't know what’d she’d do if she lost them all again.
With a hum, she glances to her left, and eyes Midoriya’s hunched form, his arms folded around his own scribbling notes. His thoughts have always been easier to hear then most, though by now she knows it gets harder to hear them once someone grows older, less malleable and more firm, less an excited shout into the telepathic void. It’s always taken more effort than she generally likes to spend spying on people, because she knows it’s not very nice but sometimes it’s not even spying when she can barely hear her own thoughts over those of twenty other children.
She focuses on him, just wanting to glean a direction, not the answer, because she knows this, or at least, the parts that are more than just her should but if she can't jumpstart it, it won't come to her.
Which.
Which has been getting harder and harder to do, but nothing's wrong. There isn't. They'll always be there for Mina when she needs it and maybe she just doesn't need them as much as she used to.
Right?
Mina furrows her brow, and looks a little harder at Midoriya. Nothing buzzes to the surface, because his thoughts have always been best described as a swarm of busy bees, and the most she can hear is his soft, indistinct murmurs as he works through the problem in the otherwise quiet classroom.
A low whine fills her mind, and Mina shakes it away before hunching back over her notebook.
I know this, she thinks, and the thought trembles. I did this last week. Was it cosine or tangent?
Nothing answers her except the vague idea of writing it down with her red pen, and, all of a sudden, Mina feels terribly alone.
With a sigh, Mina sits back. Her shoulder ache, and her eyes peel apart, stuck with spent tears. Tooru blinks back at her, there, and then not. The light does not return for a very long moment.
"What's happening?" she asks, reaching for Mina's hand.
"Do you… remember that bit from science class about how light travels?" Mina says, looking away, twining their fingers together. "That by the time we see it the star that it came from may actually already be g-gone?"
"Oh."
Time and space are weird. For Mina, it's only been about a decade, but who knows how long it really has been out there, where the fabric of space wrinkles and travelers pinch it to skip faster than light between the stars. Did Mina end up here immediately after, or did she… drift for longer than she'll ever know?
"Our star died," Mina continues, and Pama and Nini are soft and indistinct. She cannot hear them. "It absorbed all of the knowledge that ever was and would be of my people and let us share our lives with each other, and I think… they just wanted to know too much. To know what our own history had forgotten… I'm sorry. I did say it wouldn't have a h-happy ending, huh?"
Tooru gentles the hold she has on Mina's hands, and presses her forehead back to Mina's. "Well, I think you're wrong on that point, if I'm honest," she whispers, and Mina looks up through the glittering tears stuck to her lashes, brilliant with Tooru's inner light in the night. "This story hasn't ended yet, so how could it not have a happy ending? Because… because you are happy, right? Happy with your life here on this too loud planet?"
Happy with your parents, with your friends and… with me? continues a warm thought, and a fresh wave of tears muddies the edges of Mina's eyes.
The story was sad, is still a little sad, but Tooru's right. Mina is happy, somewhere under the burrowing guilt and the crying shame. It's hard to put into words the nebulous ground that Mina stands, but maybe she doesn't have to.
I am, she thinks back, a light and airy feeling swelling at the rapid dance of colors that make up Tooru's barely contained existence in response, and says, "Can I have a hug?"
Tooru giggles, and slips her forehead from against Mina's to her shoulder, a solid and warm weight. Mina doesn’t like to press more than surface thoughts, but just this once, she thinks looking a little closer isn’t unwarranted, and the annoyance that flares at what she finds is silly.
“I’m not a late onset chuunibyou,” Mina hisses, honestly a little offended, and Tooru laughs. It chases away some of the grief.
Stop peeping on my thoughts! she giggles, and with a playful gasp, Mina drags her over. Tooru squirms as she's squished against the bed. Hey!
Mina kisses her, and Tooru hums with indignation for all of a heartbeat before kissing Mina back.
She's right. Mina is happy, mostly, and when she isn't, she will be.
I love you, Mina whispers, and broadcasts the thought as loud as she can, as strong and fierce as she can manage, and hopes it can reach even the edge of space and time.
I love you.
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