Chapter Text
Reincarnation is just re-entering the game.
~Bert McCoy
He is four years, fours months, and seventeen days old when his Quirk activates, and with it comes the memories of another lifetime. It was nearly crushing, and he found that he not only remembered the life he actually bothered to live, but also glimpses of countless other lifetimes he discarded in favor of seeing even more. When the memories finished slamming into him, he found himself sprawled out on the floor of his family home, drenched in sweat as his head throbbed with pain.
Yasu, once Oshiro Shin, better known as Experiment 13, disregarded the pain and immediately closed his eyes and used his Quirk to visualize the future.
To search for her.
“Ow~!”
Or rather, he tried. Unfortunately, despite being mentally older, his new four-year-old body had none of his previous pain tolerance, and he ended up crying out.
“Yasu?”
His elder sister appeared, six years old and always watching out for him (trying to spoil him, babying him, deeply attached to him). Her name was Tori, and she had brown hair she wore in a braid. Through his pain, he noticed something new about her, something he’d seen on both their parents. She noticed him noticing, and she grinned brightly, reaching up to adjust it.
“Yep. I’m a kunoichi now!”
(he retreats to the back of his head, seeing her probable future even without the use of his quirk)
There is a war going on, and Tori was left in charge of the house and her four-year-old brother.
A literal six-year-old was responsible for both herself and a toddler barely two years younger. Sure, now and then an actual adult would check in on them, but for the most part, they were left on their own. And it’s not as though every adult who checked in on them did it purely for their sake; no, more than one adult had checked in on him specifically while Tori was at the academy so they could steal food or water from them. What could a four-year-old do, even if he understood what was going on? Nothing, which was basically true up until his memories came back, although it hadn’t been even a day since his memories came back, so no one had checked in on them.
Tori was fretting over him now that the excitement of her graduating to genin had passed. She’d been assigned to a platoon and they were leaving tomorrow. Literally, they just graduated a year of students not even ten-years-old and they were shipping them off to war.
‘What the fuck’, as most people in a first-world, modern age might say.
“I’ll put this box here, and you can climb up and get water, okay, Yasu?”
Tori made a worried hum as she stared at the box she put in front of their water barrel. She was being forced to leave her little brother behind, so she was trying to make things reachable for him. Thirteen (or should he call himself Yasu?) could already picture himself falling into the barrel and drowning, or getting stuck and dying in it.
He distantly watched his sister flit around the house, trying to prepare him to be alone for an undetermined amount of time.
(he’d had siblings Before, but he hadn’t cared much about them when visions of the future with them in his life were boring, boring, boring)
Thirteen (yeah, he can’t picture calling himself Yasu) hadn’t been particularly attached to his family after living through many iterations of the future with them and quickly finding himself bored of their boring lives, but on the other hand, he’d never had to be overly concerned for their safety. Yes, a few times he scared off a stalker or purposely ruined his brother’s relationship with a girlfriend who would have murdered him and their daughter, but that was a far cry from having to worry about them being shipped off to the frontline of a war.
Shinobi wars were different from modern-day warfare, but wars were terrible, period. He didn’t care for war himself. It was too chaotic, and his Quirk worked best when he could take his time.
“Yasu, would you like to get lizard kabobs? I saved some money for a treat.”
He blinked slowly. He’s not entirely Yasu anymore; that four-year-old boy has died to make room for this thirty-plus-year-old self.
Still, she was leaving, most likely to die in a war she had no business being in.
No matter what the core of the gang and the other researchers thought of him, he was not a complete asshole.
He smiled at her, almost exactly like Yasu would have.
“Yes, big sis.”
He briefly woke up to his sister kissing his face, but when he properly woke up later, she was long gone.
Left to his own devices, Thirteen sat on the floor and stared at nothing as he thought of his last moments in Before. It was… unclear, exactly, what he’d done, or even how Damsel had ended up in such dire straits. All he could really get was the vague impression that he’d had a plan of some sort, a way to keep Damsel.
…He gets the impression… of being… tied… together…?
He frowned slightly, cocking his head.
…Yeah, he’s not getting more than that.
Huffing, he closed his eyes and activated his Quirk.
If I never become a shinobi, what is the outcome of my life?
He doesn’t dwell on his parents or on Tori.
He doesn’t get far enough to in the future to find Damsel’s whereabouts before his vision is derailed. If he doesn’t become a shinobi, he dies of dehydration. His parents are against his decision to be anything other than a shinobi, but they’re not the ones who cause his death. They are a shinobi and kunoichi and they are gone more often than they are home. Tori is also a kunoichi, and she isn’t in his vision either. The village won’t waste precious resources to raise a non-combatant, and without support, Thirteen can’t get water. Curse his stupid four-year-old body. Attempts to get water end in failure because his body can’t keep up with his visions.
His visions in that series of related events all end in darkness (in his death).
Sighing, Thirteen got up and attended to the needs of his body. He would try a different line of thought next time.
Four days later, Thirteen’s face hurt as he smiled widely.
Damsel was in Konohagakure.
She was also four years younger than him, barely a baby at this very moment. In fact, was she even born yet?
In hindsight, he could now surmise that the sudden end to the Third War was almost certainly something to do with her. The severe level of ‘quarantine’ in Sunagakure had her fingerprints all over it.
Ah, he wants to see more, but the him in that vision was infected by his mother, and that particular vision ended in blackness. Still, there’s got to be a way to avoid getting infected, to see what else she does. He has time before she’s four and the end of the war, so why not?
Rubbing his aching face, Thirteen laid out on the floor and tried again.
Later, his vision was interrupted as he got stabbed by a scorpion, and he ruefully reminded himself not to lie on the floor.
It was his father who brought home news of Tori. Apparently she and her platoon (of mostly children) ended up where he was stationed near the border of the Land of Rain. He couldn’t keep watch of her, not when their assigned duties were different, and her platoon, down to the last member (down to the last child), was wiped out. He couldn’t even bring her body home, because he couldn’t find it.
Thirteen’s Quirk isn’t post-cognition, nor was it anything that could immediately identify his sister’s killer (killers?). There was nothing he could do to avenge her. All that was left was the knowledge that he’d never see her again, no matter how many times he visualized the future.
Standing alone in the room they’d shared, he stared at her half and murmured under his breath.
“Goodbye, big sis.”
(even he has a heart, although he would be the first to admit that it is a small and selfish thing)
“Damsel. Damsel, Damsel, Damsel…”
In the four years before she came across the trigger for activating her Quirk, Thirteen foresaw many different ways her future could go. Often, she was the architect of her own unhappiness and demise.
Of course, pointing that out would be pointless and would only get her angry at him.
He sighed as he caught up to her in his current vision only to watch her die as she bled out from… exploded seals? He’s been staying back thus far, letting her live as though she was the only person in this world with a Quirk. He’d heard of her death in the vision previous to this one and had used this one to come find her, but he was too late. She died in the arms of some stranger, and said stranger turned out to be a former employee of her kidnapper, who turned out to be Orochimaru (well, without a protector and/or the common sense to lay low, she often became the target of large predators).
The thrall was reluctant to give up more information but Thirteen eventually learned that they didn’t actually know much else about how she was kidnapped. After coming out of that vision, Thirteen was at a crossroads; on one hand, he could use more visions to find out more and foil her kidnapping, but on the other…
Well, if the stars were out of reach in this lifetime, then he can indulge himself and see what else happens if she lives longer.
Thirteen is five years old, and they’ve shoved him into the local academy. He dislikes it, because attending means drastically cutting into the time for his visions. Unfortunately, if he wants to keep living, it is unavoidable.
Which seems… ironic, considering that graduating means being sent to war where his life could be cut short at any moment.
Given that the village needs bodies to hold weapons and to throw at the enemy, Thirteen—Yasu—didn’t need to stand out. This village was going to send him out whether or not he was prepared. ‘Madness’, a sensible person might call it.
Since he needs to be alive in order to see what other entertaining messes Damsel could potentially get into or make, he alternates between using his visions to see her and to see his own future. Keeping himself alive is, of course, vital. This, sadly, means putting in effort towards his own training.
While he uses his visions to find the optimal path to improving various skills, he made sure to stay under the radar. To everyone else, he is just an average child; quieter than his peers, but not exceptional in any way. He is just another pitiable, faceless child, one among many that will be sent to die.
(Like Tori.)
Damsel helps put an end to the war because she unleashes plagues, but if it gets to that point, her Quirk will be suspected as either a new bloodline limit or a mutation of her hive, and in either case, she comes under scrutiny. Well, considering what her life is—or could be—there is almost no escaping any level of scrutiny. His goal was keeping her safe and as under wrap as possible, in order to keep her alive for longer in order to see more potential futures.
…Although… now that he thinks of it, the futures he’s been seeing are fairly similar to each other, mostly because of the distance between them and his relative lack of ability to easily change her course and therefore alter the future.
Hm.
Alright, somewhere, somehow, he has to get near her and stay there. Noted.
At barely six years old, Thirteen finds himself wearing a metal headband identical to his sister’s; well, and mother’s and father’s, technically, but whatever. He is among his classmates, and they are travelling under the blistering sun towards the border between the Land of Wind and the Land of Rivers. He can sand-walk, but he deliberately doesn’t excel at it. He pretends to struggle like the majority of his classmates as their feet sinks into and slides among the sand.
Still, their commander pushes them on. Eventually, sweating and exhausted, they leave the desert behind and travel into greenery. Part of him appreciates the change of scenery, but Thirteen knows there is an ambush up ahead.
Sure enough, when the shinobi from Konoha attack, the two replacement squads are decimated. Luckily for the survivors, the Suna jonin are superior to the Konoha team, despite the disadvantage of being outnumbered. When two Konoha shinobi lay dead and the rest driven off, five of his classmates lay dead, two from his squad and three from the other.
The jonin burn their bodies before moving on.
Thirteen doesn’t look back.
Thirteen continues to survive, as well as keeping up the charade that he is unremarkable; lucky to survive where most of his classmates didn’t, but barely an average genin. His Quirk has saved his life more times than he can count, and on one occasion, saved Suna from a disastrous defeat. It’s not that Thirteen cared about the state of his country or village, just that if the situation had turned out any other way, he would have died. Dying is the last thing he wants.
Thankfully, the point where Damsel awakens to her Quirk and memories hasn’t changed. He knows what awaits him isn’t a happy reunion by any stretch of imagination, but that does not deter him.
He is only seven years old now, but when he is eight and she is four, they will meet again.
Oh, how will they change the course of history?
Meddling is what we do. It’s what defines us. Meddling gave us fire and tools and civilisation and the keys to the universe. Fingers will get burnt along the way, yes. That’s the way of it.
~Alastair Reynolds, On the Steel Breeze