Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

I was four when the migraines started. At first, we just thought it was a reaction to something, but when it persisted for a week was when my mother started to consider that it might be a mental Quirk coming in. Unfortunately, the night before the examination was scheduled, was also when we got that confirmed in what may have been the worst way possible- I dreamt about how I’d died. I felt how I died, and then woke up with no idea how to process the pain of having six submachine guns blowing me apart in full automatic. Gotta say, that was a particularly hellish sensation, almost enough to make me go cyberpsycho without any chrome in me if that were possible. I woke up screaming my poor little head off, scaring the shit out of my mom and dad. I sat there, patting myself down for almost half an hour in a panic, wondering why I didn’t have bullet holes in me before I’d even fully processed what a bullet was. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad were equally groggy and panicked from the adrenaline that comes with hearing their child screaming their lungs out, babbling about things that no four-year-old had any business knowing and sobbing, great big ugly sobs with snot running down their pajamas, their parents’ pajamas, and their face. It probably didn’t help that at least half of what I babbled out was in English, which my parents were fluent in but had no idea in their helpless, panicky state how to sort out from the Japanese- especially when one factored in that they made sure not to speak the language around me in order to make sure I at least knew Japanese first.

Thankfully, the appointment had been scheduled first thing in the morning, so Mom and Dad didn’t have too long to worry. Not quite as good, while we figured out at least the basics of my Quirk it didn’t change that, surprise surprise, I was a thoroughly traumatized four year old who was apparently going to only get more traumatized from there, if my death was anything to judge by. Logically you’d think that after literally snuffing it, it couldn’t get more traumatic than that, but my parents knew that logic and trauma didn’t really get along that well. Human brains are funny that way, I'd find out as I got older, as the memories became both clearer and more frequent. This took about a decade as my brain matured enough to process the several years’ worth of living I'd gone through. Well, decades more like- three and a half of them. That particular bombshell didn't really hit for the next two or three years though. By that point, I was already in therapy, in elementary school, and starting to get a better grasp of how my Quirk worked. It seemed fairly simple, it gave me the memories from my previous life with contextual knowledge to make sense of it, but not the emotional processing that would normally accompany such a Quirk. In exchange, the theoretical skills and related knowledge from my past life came naturally. As soon as I could read and write in kanji, I was looking for engineering books to start figuring out how best to replicate cyberware. Initially it was with the idea of selling it to the masses, but as I began to remember my various experiences with cyberpsychosis victims that began to change to merely an exercise in learning more about my Quirk.

All of that though, would be years away for now. For now, I was a blubbering mess of a four year old, with no real interest in anything beyond my toys, the latest Pro Hero anime, and the secure knowledge that my parents were the best parents ever by fact that they were mine. You know, usual toddler stuff, with a side of trauma that was already beginning to stack upon itself, as I not only regained my memories backwards, but my mind decided to replay the same dream night after night after night until I’d fully processed every little detail about it. I ran around the neighborhood, laughing as my parents worried about the risk of traffic, mean dogs, and meaner kids. Yeah, sure, my limbs weren’t what I was used to, they weren’t strong yet, but they were mine, and my parents trusted me enough to let me run wild where they could see me. My spatial awareness was always high for my age according to what my father’s since told me, but my Quirk brought it to new heights. I grasped things quicker, recognizing patterns much easier than my classmates at pre-school. I would say I was smarter than my peers, but not only was it more that I had a greater wealth of experience to draw from, but also there were a pair of twins with two variations of the same intelligence-type Quirk. Looking back, I’m pretty close to certain that they graduated high school before puberty in an attempt to escape the hell that was the Japanese school system; now I just have to wonder how that worked out for them.

Over the next three years, I began learning more about this new world about me, free of chrome or Corpos, but not without its own dangers and evils. Common criminals were bad enough, but the real menaces were the Villians- some of them, at least. I’d met more than a few, although I didn’t know them for such at the time, due to the nature of my parents’ work. Mom and Dad ran a so-called ‘Black Clinic’ in the Hosu precinct, one of several throughout Japan. They helped ensure that combat scenarios between heroes, villains, and vigilantes were non-lethal in a world where it was all too easy for someone to accidentally drop half a building on someone with a single missed strike with their Quirk. Thing was, several of those same villains genuinely wanted better. As one of our regulars had put it, “I was young, dumb, and proud when I got started. Now I’m older, ashamed, and too stupid to figure out how to get out of this racket and do legitimate work.” No one wanted to hire a convicted Villain, even if they’d been assigned gen-pop instead of Tartarus. My folks weren’t money-driven mercenaries, however, being quick to turn down even the most well paying of patients if they were a particularly monstrous motherfucker. This wasn't apparently the norm for the Black Clinics, as I'd come to find out, but it was far from unheard of either- a large minority, if you could forgive the oxymoron. As I’d heard Mom say when someone asked, they were there to minimize body counts, not enable psychopaths.

Considering that in my previous life, I wasn't really in a position to make even that distinction, it was nice to know that the Black Clinics were more protected than ripperdocs were, in Night City at least- I'd heard before I died that in Seattle the cops gave a similar level of protection in exchange for access to their clientele databases. It helped that while a large chunk of our clientele were criminals, we had enough representation of Underground Heroes that we weren’t considered an illegal resource

But still, it was nice, being around medical professionals again. As I got older, I began to help around the clinic where I could, effectively serving as a nurse or orderly from the age of seven. My parents stressed repeatedly that I didn't have to, but I don't think they fully realized how helpful it actually was. Sure, the work was stressful, but more often than not it was a welcome, familiar type of stress, distracting me from whatever nightmare or flashback ailed me that night until my underdeveloped mind was properly ready to process it. It was worth mentioning that since I didn't get the emotional feedback from the memories themselves, it was up to my still growing emotional maturity to fill in the blanks. Suffice to say, it didn't go well. Frequently I would lash out in rage at a city, hell a world that I'd never actually seen but that was hellbent on ripping itself apart, a dead world that refused to let itself rest in my mind. My room got trashed so many times that my parents would joke that it was my way of redecorating. In fairness, when I would put stuff back together it frequently would result in my stuff not being in the same position that I left it, so they may have been onto something about that. I would occasionally ask my dad to help me move furniture around as the years went by, things that were too heavy for me to move myself or just too tall for me to safely lever around the room the way I wanted.

My therapist, one Dr. Seishin Taisuke, had suggested to my parents that this was a common way of asserting control over one’s surroundings after traumatic experiences, as well as a reassurance that they were in a different place in life. Personally, I didn’t know about all of that, but I did know that things would feel less claustrophobic and less pressing when I did this, so I would just shrug my tiny shoulders and trust the expert. I’d also found that a good way of working through it was just to work out, and so I began to put on muscle much faster than the first time around- probably due to constantly being stressed and thus working out much more frequently than before, as well as having easier access to food than I had in Night City. I hadn’t really begun bulking up in that life until after a few years of living with the Aldecado Nation, traveling the Badlands. I did, however, get to find out what all the hubbub about school was, and found that I almost preferred the ignorance of Night City, where the system was in such shambles that you had to be someone to achieve any actual formal education. School was a constant struggle, not just socially but academically as well, constantly struggling to make things click. It wasn’t like I had anything from my previous life to draw back on, either- life in the Badlands didn’t really allow for a formal education, and my education in Night City was pretty specialized, as a result of only coming back when I was twenty. It would come in handy in high school, I thought, but until then I was stuck trying to figure out how to rough it out the old fashioned way.

Curiously enough, I had also gotten a diagnosis for ADHD while we were at the psychologist’s office. They wanted to test me for autism, but they decided that it would be best to give me ADHD meds, let me adjust, and then test for that. Mom, however, had a slightly different plan. She didn't have me take the ADHD meds, citing her own experience with them and their zombie-like side effects. Instead she taught me little tricks and coping mechanisms that she employed, like keeping a fidget on me at all times, or having certain programs in my phone to put down any creative ideas or notes that I had so that I could work on them throughout the day. As she put it when I asked her why this was, “Our country has such a stigma about mental health, that we’re even worse about it than America is. But that doesn’t change that you apparently died, kiddo. And from what you’ve told us, it wasn’t pleasant either. That’s going to leave its own mark, by itself. But the way you died, darling? That doesn’t come from a peaceful life, which means that there’s only going to be more to weigh you down, more to scar you and give you nightmares, even if there was hopefully some good in there. It’s best to help you get a handle of it now before it weighs you down enough that you attempt to hurt or kill yourself because you cannot carry your Quirk’s burden.”

Burden. That word stuck with me, for years really. It seemed a good way to describe this Quirk of mine, honestly. For the first year or so, that’s all that it seemed to be, a burden upon myself. There was nothing good about my Quirk, it wasn’t a power that let me do anything. It hadn’t shown me anything of value, nor that brought joy. It was just memories of a mercenary’s final hours. Memories of someone else’s life, a violent life that I was forced to relive night after night after night, until I’d more than memorized every detail. The first indication that it could be more than that didn’t come to me until a month before my sixth birthday. For the first time in a year and a half, my dreams weren’t nightmares. Even without my Quirk forcing me to eidetically memorize every aspect of my predecessor’s life, I think this would have stuck with me for that alone: I dreamed and it wasn't a nightmare. It wasn’t a fight, it wasn't tense, it left me with no sense of dread. As my toddler mind processed what I was going through, I instinctively knew that I wasn't in danger, I was surrounded by people who knew and loved the me who'd experienced this. It was the first time I woke up without panicking, the first time I didn't wake up in a cold sweat. It was the first time my dreams laughed.

It was a simple dream, really. It was not calm, it was not quiet, but there was a joy to the chaotic storm of bodies and sounds and lights, a sense of belonging and comradery as the stars sparkled above and the bonfire roared at the center of a ring of dusty trucks, armored cars, and rugged bikes. This was also notable for something else, an emotional understanding that most of my previous self’s memories had lacked up to this point. This was home to them, this was their family. As the night ended, their head resting on their surrogate sister's shoulder, I came to understand something about them: they suffered, they cried, they raged, because they had something worth fighting for, worth living for. This was their community, their pack, and they wore their pack leathers with pride, the giant emblem denoting them as a member of the Aldecados. I didn't know what they were celebrating that night, although the next night I would notice a birthday banner in a corner that provided the answer, but I did know that in that night, life was good, and that was enough for me. That memory was something of an eye opener, showing me that I'd been overlooking something vital about these dreams: yes, they were traumatic. But they came with the memories of how I had done things, teaching me. They'd also given me flashes as to why, attempting to make the world better in my own little ways.

I was only five years old, yet I remembered how to stitch and suture wounds, how to reset bones, and, though I had yet to figure out how useful it would be, I remembered how to properly install and repair cyberware. I even remembered a few of the principles on how to design it, although not enough to even think about what I would need to build it yet. I wasn't even sure that I would want to. Sure, I could make a career out of it, but by this point I'd gotten a few glimpses of hunting cyberpsychos for extra cash, turning them over to an experimental treatment facility through a Fixer in Watson. I wasn't sure if I wanted to risk that. But that knowledge brought me to a crossroads. Did I want to prioritize profit, or did I want to prioritize something else, and if so, what? I also remembered how to fight and how to make basic grenades- a skill I’d picked up from a Techie in Night City around the time my crew began working for Rogue as an extraction specialist asset- and could probably adapt that knowledge to the new technological levels easily enough, if I wanted to go down a more violent route. The problem with having multiple skills but not enough knowledge to decide which to discard and which to use, I decided, was that none of the old experiences that gave me those skills and provided context for them were truly applicable. As I was pondering this with all the thunderous might possible to a five year old, my Quirk decided to give me the answer that night.

The old ripperdoc before me didn’t really look the part, with his tattooed, muscular arms, a mullet that belonged to a bygone century, and more piercings in his ears and eyebrows than I could count without getting blinded by the desert sun glinting off. But a ripperdoc he was, and had been since long before I was born, long before he even earned the leather jacket that proudly claimed his ties to the Aldecado Nomad Nation. He was my mentor, and I his apprentice, I knew instinctively through my Quirk’s proclivity towards providing context. He smiled kindly at me, before kneeling a bit so that we were eye to eye. “Listen, Mist. I know you don’t aim to be a fulltime ripper’ like me, and that’s fine- we all got our lots in life, our own roads to drive. You’re set on yours, and if that look in yer eye is any indication than you’ll make a legend of yourself. But listen, young’un. If you’re going to walk the road of an edgerunner, you need to understand one simple fact: the system ain’t right. It’s designed to only benefit the Corpos who made it, and break everyone else. So don’t play by their rules. Define your own, and stick to ‘em no matter what anyone else gotta say.” He smiled. “That means you decide if you kill or not. You decide if you heal someone or not. You decide who you run with. You decide what you run for, and what you run from. No one else. It’s your life, not theirs, kiddo. And hey, you’re going to be breaking half the laws in the books anyways, why should you care what anyone else has to say about it either?” He patted my shoulder, gently squeezing it reassuringly. “Now,” he said, standing up with a grunt, reaching for his medkit and retrieving a pair of gloves that he passed off to me. “Let’s see about teachin’ you the basics, yeah?”

I let a feral grin stretch my face as I looked up at the old man then, brushing dark curls away from my face long enough to push them back for a while with a bandana tied around my temples. I snarled as much as I cheered an echo of his words, reaching to my wrist for a hairband that I used to keep my hair to my back in a short rat’s tail. I stopped when Old Man Jacobson put his hand on my shoulder, making me look up at him yet again. His weathered face, beaten by the elements and time, still radiated a kindness that let someone take on a kid they barely knew as an apprentice, welcoming that child into their home and into their family. Mom had always said that if anything were to happen, the Aldecados would do right by anyone who did right by them, and I'd spent a long time playing with the Nomad children after school as they passed through Night City, a city where most avoided and shunned them if not spitting on them or worse. As he spoke, I studied his face, memorizing the crow’s feet, the laugh lines, the stress wrinkles. But mostly, I studied his eyes, natural despite his age, and so gentle yet tired, kind yet with a hidden layer of steel to them. So much like my mother’s. “Remember kid. Action without kindness is cruel, but empathy without action is meaningless. If you’ve got the power and the will to act, then do it. That’s what separates the good doctors, from the Medtechs of legend.”

It was so simple that I felt like I’d overlooked how to breathe, just because I’d been doing it without thinking for so long. It was my life, which meant it was my rules. But before I could determine them, I had to figure out what was different from this world and the world I knew. So, that meant that I needed to ask questions. I needed to go out and see for myself, but that would be a tad difficult due to my smaller size and younger nature. But, I was still able to tag along with my parents when they went out into town, and upon request they were willing to bring me along to meet some of their suppliers, as well as some of their more child-friendly clients. Looking back I can only imagine how it must have looked to some of them the first couple of times throughout the years, seeing a little kid with pale skin, long black hair with dark blue highlights, and a curious gleam in their amber eyes as they took in everything seemingly at once, mentally and audibly breaking down what each thing was and how to use it. More than that, I was studying the people we met, the suppliers, the Heroes and Vigilantes who helped protect us from any rowdy Villains. Learning the basics of society, I’d found, was a lot like learning the basics of medicine: sure it seemed easy, until it came time to learn the exact mechanics and natures that created the ecosystem in front of you. So I began to watch the news, to learn more about that aspect if I could.

And boy, did I learn a lot. I learned that the world around me ran on comic book logic, but less “black and white” compared to the pre-Datakrash comics from my old world, or even their still-ongoing equivalents in my new life. I learned that I lived in a world where 80% of the global census had Quirks, some weird power or ability or otherwise superhuman trait, with mine being my memories. I learned of Heroes, fighting to protect civilians because few others would stand against the Villains and their propensity towards general mayhem. I learned of the Villains who stood for something, using their Quirks to enact a often violent change, changes which would frequently benefit themselves at the cost of everyone else’s wellbeing. I learned of the other type of Villain, madmen hellbent on rampaging through society for no reason other than they thought they could. I learned of Vigilantes, who for whatever reason fought Villains and criminals using their Quirks without the License necessary to become a Hero. usually adrenaline seekers or just those who had heroic leanings but found they didn’t make the cut for Heroics Academies. I learned of the more small-scale villains and criminals, simply forced to operate outside of the system because of racism or prejudice, yet still protected by it when they were arrested for their crimes. A protection of which the Black Clinics like that run by my family were but a single layer. In short, I learned that decency, morality, safety, and human lives actually mattered here. As someone who was slowly coming to realize that their entire previous life had been spent fighting for that, it was novel, it was groundbreaking, it was- it was a little bit scary, to be honest. What if, as I got older, something were to happen, and the Corpos of my old world, or those similar enough not to matter, found a way to gain traction here? The more I examined this trail of thought, the more it scared me. But fear and me were old friends at this point, so I used it to figure out my next move.

So that's how I found myself, at ten years old with a lifetime of trauma and joy that I was still processing enough to use instead of merely compartmentalize, staring at a mirror as I spat out blood into the sink. Some asshole had been giving a kid shit for having a Quirk that “merely” let him glow in the UV spectrum, and I had decided to step in. Guess my tendency to jump in, even if it wasn't my fight, transcended lifetimes. If there was an Afterlife other than Rogue's bar, then the old man was probably either pulling his hair out in worry, or smiling wide with pride. Most likely it was both. Everything I’d ever fought for, raged and bled and healed and ultimately died fighting for, was at my fingertips, in this new world. Free information, the value of human life, accountability across the board instead of the poor masses bearing all of the weight of the system’s failings, all here and present, but if the system wasn’t already cracking and starting to fail, then my parents would have less patients. Heroes, for all that even the good ones were sanctimonious dicks, fought to protect and in some cases attempted to fix the system, drawing attention to issues while ensuring that it didn’t fall into anarchy amongst the lower echelons of society. Sure, most Heroes were depicted as paragons of Japanese culture and society, but not all of them- Underground Heroics was a thing that I could get behind as a concept, and even if I went into the limelight, well... “Hell, maybe this country could use a Cyberpunk to shake things up a bit,” I mused aloud, an oddly familiar, feral grin that was at least 50% snarl splitting my face.

Plan set in motion, I then decided that a change was in order in my own life first. So I rushed to rummage through my closet, sorting clothes into piles that grew haphazardly over the course of the next few hours. At one point my mom came in, probably wondering why I’d missed lunch, but between the piles of clothes and the manic gleam in my eye, she merely smiled, and nodded in that self-satisfied way parents do that their children will never understand until they have their own kids. I didn't think about it, too busy sorting through shirts, tossing a few aside- simple was good, but not when it came at the cost of durability. A couple of formal clothes for occasions when my usual attire would be insufficient, my uniforms for school, a few plain white undershirts, a handful of button-ups that I could wear over those under shirts, the number of piles grew, but one grew more. Anything that felt ingenuine, a concession to society’s demands instead of my own nature, was something I wanted, no I needed out of my closet. A couple of hoodies would do until I could get a leather jacket, and besides Japan got colder than California really was capable of getting. A couple of pairs of torn jeans, or else jeans durable and baggy and practical for movement on rough terrain. Sneakers got tossed to the side, in favor of heavy boots that I’d gotten for winter. By the time I was done, my floor was littered with neat little piles of clothes that I would fold later, and my closet and dresser had been reduced in occupancy by perhaps a third, but I had a satisfied smile on my face. This world, I'd decided, didn't need an Edgerunner- God certainly knew my fellow mercenaries created as many problems as we solved. But a certain level of attitude, and a whole lotta empathy, would go a long way into fixing the cracks that Hero Society left behind, and lifting up the marginalized. That would be my goal, and Heroics would be my method. As I processed that thought, I felt my lips stretching into a grin, and, with a flair for the dramatic found only in theater kids and those too young to restrain themselves, spoke softly to myself. “Look out, Japan. Kaito Iouta’s comin’ to flip the table.”