Chapter Text
You remember the exact moment your reincarnation happens.
It's during one morning, around ten or so, when an older looking woman sits in front of you.
There are kids of all ages around the nursery room, but her attention is only on yours: the way she holds you, the way she raises you up by your stubby arms, and the way she holds your stare in hers.
She doesn't have a clear face in your memory, but if you could find a way to describe her, you would say that she is... pink. Pink, bright, and beautiful.
"Let's try again, okay?" She lets go of your arms and scoots away. "Come here to me, sweetheart."
She smiles so warmly, and if luck would have had it, you would have done what she said. You would have wobbled her way like the oblivious baby you're supposed to be, and stayed that way: an oblivious baby whose biggest achievement is wobbling in her first steps.
When you stand on your stubby and unbalanced legs, the woman's dark eyes light up. "That's it! Just a couple more steps and you'll reach me, sweetheart! Just a couple more!"
Then you plop back down on the ground, and she sighs for the fifth time that day, her shoulders slumping.
While she is lamenting in her mind for the lack of progress your one-year-old self had in your motor skills, luck—pure, abyssal luck—had made you move to sit properly on your ankles. Then with a hand raising, you point a finger at a poster behind the woman and say:
“All... Might?”
And that was the first achievement a miracle child like you had done in this new world of yours.
• ♕ • ♕ • ♕ •
Amidst all the cartoon-like advertisements of the nursery room, one buff yellow-haired man stands victorious in catching your gaze.
He looks too much: big hands resting on his hips, giant grin taking up half of his shadow-casted face, and muscles bulging out of his suit.
He's too buff. Too animated. Too everything all at once.
But for some reason, it doesn't feel overwhelming. It's familiar instead—and that feeling of familiarity unwinds the things no toddler of one year old would have ever unwind: a life across your eyelids.
You're feeling a timelapse of growth play in your mind.
The life doesn't have anything you can vividly see, but you know they're there, that a smile had plastered on your lips before; that tears had stained your pillows before. You know what laughter and sickness are, and you just know you had grown up, but you can't get a full grasp on how and who you are in this life.
Then you feel another story slithering into the life, and now you are back in reality: where you're seeing the poster of the victorious, muscly man on the nursery wall.
Holy shit, thinks the baby you, as one strong story resurfaces stronger than the other. This place is full of All Might posters.
The name comes like second nature. And the rest?
Is this... an anime convention? That's weird. What kind of convention focuses on All Might though? Izuku, Katsuki, and Shoto are more popular than him. Even the League of Villains get more attention in the fandom...
It doesn't take long for you to realize why All Might—and other random heroes you know nothing about—dominate the walls.
Let's just say it's a good thing your current tongue couldn’t accidentally speak your exclamations out loud just yet. If you could, you have a feeling the woman in front of you would be terrified at the influx of curse words suddenly coming out of you.
Speaking of her, the woman isn’t even your mother or any other relative either. She is just a childcare worker who has been hired by the orphanage you’re in, with the government job of helping kids like you kickstart their motor and social skills on their formative years.
She was immediately fired after your situation rose in popularity. After all, what kind of news outlet wouldn't eat up the story of a child's first words being 'All Might'?
You don't know if you suddenly gaining popularity is the entire reason for her being fired, but regardless, she is out of your life. That's probably a good summary of how you'll live in this reincarnation of yours: a life without any prevalent adults around you.
But you don't need any adults. You are a reincarnated soul. It's only right that you can take care of yourself.
• ♕ • ♕ • ♕ •
At least, that's what you tried to believe.
The reality of being reincarnated is that: there's only so much self-sufficiency you can do as a one-year-old baby.
Had you reincarnated with loving parents who strolls you around town for accidental meetings with certain characters, maybe things would be a lot tolerable better. But no—you just had to be an orphan. And you just had to learn how to walk all by yourself because your big mouth had caused someone to be fired.
With this kind of fate, organic encounters with any character outside the orphanage is nigh impossible. And that's the strength of any reincarnation stories, isn't it? To encounter characters by chance and use that to change the world?
Sure, you can wait for the day you get adopted by a caring family who will love you enough to leave you be with canon, but what's your reassurance that they'll even come at the right moment?
And if the right timing did come, what makes you so sure that you had been adopted by the right person? For all you knew, your future parents might want you to be an heir to their business that has nothing to do with heroics. So really, should you be depending on the chance of being adopted in the first place?
Yes, you want to be a hero. Even if you don't know how to walk just yet without stumbling and faceplanting on the ground, you're already thinking far ahead into your future.
Everyone in the orphanage seems to think highly of you too. After your first words, they'd dubbed and treated you as the "child born to be an All Might fan," and as embarrassingly big as they make it out to be, you can't dispute that; you do like All Might…
Just not in the way they think.
From the moment you became conscious again, the world already kept you in their grip. You recalled your attachments to certain characters, their ideals, their stories not limited to just All Might but rather to all the people that lived in this place. You recalled how all of it has combined together to form the messy mosaic that you call yourself.
So yes; you do like All Might. You are born liking him as much as you are born loving this world.
Now that you’re here, watching the real All Might do interviews and guest shows on your television, with a real All Might toy in your hand that the orphanage bought for everyone to share during playtime—it isn't a matter of asking how much you can do in this world as much as it is a matter of determination.
Do you have the guts to save the people you've watched over for so long?
Do you have the patience to change the world, the way this world changed the you in your memory?
Do you believe, can you believe, that mere love and passion be enough to turn everything into a happy ending?
You don't know.
You are just a one-year-old child right now. You don't know the future.
You do know, however, that you are reborn with thoughts of idealism and imperfection. And that these simple flaws will make you grow up as the most awkward, if not the worst, reincarnated person to have ever graced this luck of reincarnation.
And for some weird, lucky reason: that would be enough.