Chapter Text
I died of a heart attack at the ripe old age of eighty-three.
Maybe my heart just wheezed and took a breather and forgot it was supposed to be, you know, keeping me alive. Either way, it was sudden, and more panic on my part than pain. One moment I was fine, and the next, I was gone.
Poof.
The next thing I know, I’ve woken up in the body of a four-year-old child, sitting in a playground of all places, with a kind old lady speaking to me in rapid Japanese.
Huh. That didn’t happen every day.
But I was just gonna roll with it.
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Finding out you’ve been reincarnated is like, ok, fine, interesting concept. Finding out you’ve traveled hundreds of years into the future is less ok, fine, and more this is fine.
This is fine.
It isn’t, but I was gonna roll with it.
And, a couple weeks later, when the old grandma — whose name, I’ve finally found, wasn’t Oba-san, and instead Hayashi, Kaede — finally deigned to bring me outside, I was quite literally smacked in the face with Quirks.
Some kid — I think he lives a few floors down in the apartment with the weird green door — races across the sidewalk, one of his wings appearing in view from where it had previously been hidden by his large hoodie flying out and whacking me across the forehead.
“Ow,” because what else were you supposed to say in this situation? Oba-san — Kaede — smiled her grandmotherly smile at me, and reassuredly patted my head, which still felt tiny in her large and wrinkly hands.
She said nothing, so I didn’t, either.
-
I figured out what Kaede’s quirk was pretty quickly.
It was pretty hard not to notice when there was a sentient fireball flying about the house — going by the name of Moe, of all names — that liked to nestle in my decidedly not fireproof hair.
Oba-san was quick to shoo it — him? — away after the third, or maybe fourth, incident of flaming hair. I’ve learned to keep my few short strands of unnaturally bright orange hair — because why the hell not, I guess — into a short ponytail. It burned slower that way.
When Moe wasn’t zooming around the house and making quick work of the plastic potted plants on our windowsills, he was huddled in the oven, where he could lounge safely on the large metal racks. Over the years, or so Oba-san tells me, since I only had a few years in the first place, she’d purchased small, fireproof trinkets for Moe’s unofficial bedroom. However, it was quite inconvenient to do any baking because you’d first have to remove Moe and all twenty-seven of his fireproof nesting dolls cluttered around the small space before you could do anything else.
Small inconveniences. I couldn’t bake, anyway.
-
My quirk appeared, rather spontaneously, on a random Tuesday afternoon.
Oba-san had taken me out on one of our frequent walks through the city. She’d taken her walking stick — which I knew for a fact she didn’t need and only carried it around for the small knife hidden in the handle — and her favorite neon pink hat.
We’d been waiting, quite patiently, I might add, at one of those crosswalks, when one of the impatient youngsters Oba-san always complained about when she was knitting — his name might have been Riko — shoved his way past us, sending the bag I was carrying tumbling to the floor.
Tomatoes scattered through the streets, rolling every which way, the majority of them getting squashed underfoot or obliterated under motorcycle treads.
“Hey,” I called out, because I couldn’t just let him destroy some perfectly good tomatoes and not say anything about it, “aren’t you the kid that believes in unicorns?”
Riko freezes and turns back around.
It was a well-known fact in the community that when he’d been younger, and by younger I mean three months ago, had steadfastly believed that aliens existed. His mother did nothing to debunk his beliefs and frequently indulged in his alien-hunting expeditions.
Then his father found out, and he’d announced, quite loudly, at one of their bi-annual public family reunions, that his boy believed in myths, and he probably thought unicorns were real as well.
The whole fiasco was quite a sore spot for the kid, one I couldn’t resist poking since I now had a sound reason to annoy him. Senselessly annoying people had been my favorite pastimes in my past life — and isn’t that weird to say? — but it wasn’t exactly polite and did nothing for my reputation. I needed some friends, or Oba-san would worry herself to death.
“Don’t you though?” I challenged. “Unicorns, aliens — they’re all real to you, aren’t they? I don’t suppose you believe they’ll come charging down at Earth to take over all seven continents, or something? Maybe whack a few presidents across the face with a dead fish while they’re at it?”
Riko opened his mouth to protest, or maybe scream at me, which I wouldn’t be surprised at, given his IQ level, and the strangest expression crossed across his face. Then, as though he couldn’t quite understand why, he began to speak.
“They… are real. Aliens are real! They’re gonna ride their unicorns down to Earth and take over the world with pixie dust and rainbows! We’re doomed!” And with that, Riko charged in the direction he’d come from, wailing incoherently about an alleged alien invasion and how they’re all doomed, dammit!
I blink at Oba-san, and she blinks back.
“Let’s go home,” she decides, and I don’t disagree.
-
Allure, my quirk is called. Anything I say, anyone within earshot will believe, and the illusion stays until someone verbally challenges the illusion, or it wears off on its own. It does not apply to anyone who doesn’t hear my words, and overuse causes a fierce migraine.
Very useful. And then, I should become a con artist.
-
I stare up at the All Might poster plastered at the arcade’s front door.
The hero’s outfit screams America, and I wonder where the country pride went, cause it clearly didn’t flow to this idiot.
And idiot he was, because Toshinori Yagi was about to do some stupid stuff in the future, like hand his quirk off to the (presumably) first quirkless kid he comes across with a tragic story to tell, and decide to become a teacher, among other failures.
I can feel the headache already, and I say nope to my plans of destroying some children at racing games and head home, where Oba-san is making her famous what the fuck did you put in this soup.
Oba-san makes some killer soup.
And, after a long and tedious planning session — which consisted of three bowls of soup and exactly ten seconds of actually thinking — I said goodbye and good luck to the plot and its characters and promptly declared my intentions of becoming a con artist to Oba-san.
She smiled, patting my head, and saying nothing to my undoubtedly outrageous statement.
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I can’t believe I never asked, but…
“What the hell is my name!?”
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