Chapter 1. Part II.
So, then.
Yes — first of all, this was definitely the world of *Academia*.
Quirks, professional heroes, villains. All Might (I still can't figure out how I didn't recognize him immediately from all the posters and books). The greatest educational institution in the world, U.A. High School.
Second, I really was living in Japan. Shizuoka Prefecture, to be exact — the city of Hamamatsu. U.A. itself was in the same general area, in the neighboring city of Musutafu, where the anime's protagonist apparently also lived.
Third… in this world, my name was Nirengeki Shoda.
Who was that? Had there been such a character in the original? What was his quirk?
I had no idea.
My quirk hadn't manifested yet, and I couldn't remember anyone by that name from the series. My appearance wasn't much help either — just a regular kid, not even particularly Asian-looking, with wide-open eyes and hair of an unusual gray-blue shade.
The one real clue was the name itself. Not in the sense that I was the son of Endeavor — though that thought honestly did flicker through my mind for a moment, I'll admit — no: "Shota" was a first name, while my "Shoda" was a surname. Getting used to navigating the thickets of a new language with multiple writing systems, where individual characters could carry a dozen different meanings, was deeply disorienting. But eventually I worked out that my new given name, "Nirengeki," meant something roughly like "double strike" or "two-hit combo."
Thinking back to the anime… I'd clocked the mangaka's love of references back during the Tatooine metro station and Dagobah beach moments in the first season. And characters like Manga from U.A.'s Class 1-B had shown that meaningful names were also part of his toolkit. So my name wasn't an accident.
But did any of that actually help me? No. Did I remember a character with a matching quirk — close-range combat, some kind of combo ability? No. I vaguely remembered that Class B had a few students who could fight up close, but that was about it.
And who said the original "Nirengeki" had even made it into U.A.?
I still didn't even know whether I had a quirk.
Moving on… my parents were Takeda and Sakura Shoda. Both had quirks, but nothing remotely powerful or heroic.
My father — I never quite managed to make myself call them "Mom" and "Dad" in those first few years — was an ordinary, lean, short man with chestnut-brown hair. Calm, quiet, tidy, but a fairly positive person overall. Nothing about him screamed hero.
He worked as a firefighter and rescue worker, for which he absolutely earned my respect. His job was due in no small part to his quirk, "Influence" — a sort of ersatz telekinesis. He couldn't pull objects toward himself or throw things at people, but he could perform ordinary actions at a range of about ten steps without making contact — open a door, turn off a light, that sort of thing. Influence, at a distance.
From what he told me — he obviously never took me on actual calls — the quirk was genuinely useful on the job. And unlike my mother, he was a fan of heroes and had wanted to be one himself as a kid. It just hadn't worked out.
I felt a kinship with him, and we got along well because of it. That said, I never got a clear answer about why they'd given me my name. Something about an ancestor with the same name, maybe, or a fortune-teller's recommendation, or they'd just found it in a list of Japanese names and decided it sounded nice.
Blue-haired little me disagreed, and issued an ultimatum: shorten it to "Niren." My parents laughed and complied — and I became simply Ni-ren, 二連 in written Japanese. Niren Shoda. Which, translated literally, meant "double palm strike." To the face, presumably.
My mother was a beautiful and fairly young woman. A little anxious, though. Despite her "pink" name, she had a gorgeous mane of blue hair the same shade as mine. She took careful care of herself, as well as the household and me — though after I turned one, there wasn't much to take care of, really. In short, she was a typical modern housewife.
Her quirk was "Timer": completely useless in a fight, but genuinely practical around the house. She could project a kind of illusory clock display directly onto the surface of any object, which would count down the set time and then start flashing bright red when it went off. That was the whole thing. On the bright side, she never burned anything.
It wasn't surprising that, even with a quirk, my mother — no fighter at all — was afraid of villains and robbers and did her best to go outside as rarely as possible, and only during daylight hours. And understandably so: even during the height of All Might's reign, crime in this Japan still made itself known on a regular basis, and street incidents happened every single day. Which was logical — power, especially superhuman power, can't help but go to people's heads. The ones who have it.
You're just walking to the store for bread and a bottle of kefir — pardon, cold tea, kefir wasn't really a thing here — and suddenly a superhero and a supervillain come crashing past you, locked in a brawl. Explosions, smoke, people scattering. Someone from the crowd, instead of running, throws themselves into the fight.
That was nearly every day. Can you imagine? And bystanders could get caught in the crossfire too. Sure, heroes almost always arrived in time, almost always handled it, the police response here was fast, and the muscular blond with the rabbit-ear hairstyle could drop out of the sky at any moment. Even so…
Which brought me to a single conclusion: I needed to get strong. There was the obligation to help whoever the mysterious benefactor was who'd given me a second chance — though help with what, exactly, I still didn't know. There was the simple desire to live normally, without my mother's constant fear hovering over everything. And there was the old dream, breathing again with renewed force.
But above all, there was a simple chain of logic: I needed to be strong enough to get into U.A. Why? Because I knew the plot of the anime, even if only approximately. With a high — not certain, but high — probability, events in this world would unfold the same way. Which meant the only place where my life would be relatively safe was U.A. High. Specifically in the class with Midoriya, Bakugo, and the rest. Why that specific class?
Because the anime's story revolved around them. Which meant their future was the only one I had any real knowledge of.
And even that only up to a point — I'd watched the fourth and fifth seasons in a complete haze, and the sixth hadn't even aired yet. God only knew where, how, and when the original story was going to end.
So I needed to be ready for anything. Even the absolute worst.
That phrase was probably going to become my personal motto.
And beyond that… the sheer possibility of influencing future events — saving someone from death, for instance, like All Might's sidekick — required me to be close to those events when they happened.
Still, I was sensible enough not to go charging headfirst into anything. Not to try saving Tomura — or was it Shimura? — or Shoto and his brothers from the things that happened to them in the original's backstory. What could I do, with no quirk, not knowing the exact addresses and timelines?
Especially since I wasn't even four years old yet. And still no quirk. Damn it, children my age usually had theirs by now. Mine wasn't showing any signs of life. I was starting to sound like a broken record.
Actually… thinking about it calmly and twice over, interfering with the established canon might not be such a great idea to begin with — for my personal wellbeing or for the fate of my entire new home country. Knowledge of the future, even approximate knowledge, was an incredibly powerful tool. But it required brains to use properly. Help someone or save a key character, and I might break the original chain of events, make everything considerably worse, and lose my own advantage in the process.
That was setting aside the fact that the protagonist and future all-surpassing strongest — Midoriya — spent his early years so lacking in self-confidence that he literally needed those first victories, for the good of all of us, including the ones he won alone and on his last breath. So hands off, Niren.
And furthermore: the way I understood the anime's plot, if Tomura Shigaraki — revolutionary, anarchist — didn't become the future threat to everything, someone else would. It was like Tolstoy wrote in *War and Peace*: history isn't shaped by individual people but by nations and societies. The blow is thrown by the spear; whoever the tip is doesn't particularly matter.
Though to be fair, in the Napoleonic conflict that Tolstoy analyzed, there was no All Might. No All For One either. Here there were.
And here there was me. Without a quirk! Damn it, I was wasting time. Physical training at my age was at best neutral and at worst harmful, but if I had a superpower I could be building it, should be building it! If I was even understanding correctly how any of this worked. Not to mention developing the specific combat technique suited to my quirk. But how could I do that when I didn't know what to develop or how?
In short, I was slowly sliding into depression — which must have looked pretty comical from the outside. To keep from sinking completely into misery, I threw myself into anything that seemed sufficiently superhero-adjacent. Just like last time, just earlier. Running, self-defense, theories of quirk development and the not-especially-useful guides to countering them that were floating around freely online. Also: quirk legislation and the government's regulatory system for professional heroes.
I even started studying regular school subjects ahead of schedule, despite the fact that in my previous life you could not have paid me to pick up a textbook. Here I was doing it at three years old.
Either way… when I finally turned four, I practically dragged my parents to the hospital at a run for the standard quirk screening. Fingers crossed.
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***
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My parents were comfortably middle-class in financial terms, so we went to a perfectly ordinary hospital. In an equally ordinary, nearly empty examination room with no special equipment, a doctor received us — one of those lucky enough to have a diagnostic quirk.
Little me climbed crab-style onto the examination table and sat up straight, fists clenched, bracing for the worst, ignoring the hollow reassurances my parents were murmuring.
Even if there was no quirk… I'd still become a hero. A vigilante in that case. My combat skills from my previous life seemed to still be with me. There was a manga spin-off of the *Academia* series about people like that, and at least one of them had definitely had no powers…
The room flashed blue for a moment. Then the doctor — a large, good-natured, bearded man in square glasses — smiled, and both parents exhaled with identical relief.
"You can relax, young man." The doctor took off his glasses and polished them, still smiling. Apparently the grave, military-grade seriousness with which the child had been bracing for bad news had amused him. "You definitely have a quirk, and quite a powerful one at that."
I let myself close my eyes and breathe out. That was good. My dream was finally a little closer… but it was still too early to relax.
"Thank God," my mother sniffled, wiped her eyes, and smiled. "Poor Niri was climbing the walls, and then we started worrying too. But is it normal that the quirk hasn't appeared yet? Obviously I hope he hasn't got something dangerous waking up in him…"
"There's no need to worry. Quirks frequently manifest after age four, and sometimes not until six — and not all of them manifest in visible ways. As for danger, please set your minds at ease. Our government, and the world community as a whole, closely monitors all potentially dangerous quirks, and their young owners receive immediate assistance. I recall a case in my practice once…"
Right, right. Did you help Tomura too?
Fine. He'd said "quite powerful." But what if my quirk was something like total silence or farsight — things that could be potent in the right context but completely useless in a fight?
Keep it in mind: I need to get into U.A. Class 1-A.
I addressed the bearded man politely, by the book, exactly as was appropriate:
"Sensei, would it be possible for you to determine what, specifically, my quirk does?"
"Well, as you may know," the doctor said, settling his glasses back on his nose with an air of authority, "there is no official classification system for quirks. It would be impossible — they're simply too varied."
"I know," I nodded automatically. "I read it on Wikipedia."
The doctor raised his eyebrows. After a brief pause, he continued.
"I can't say anything definitive — it will need to manifest. However…" He narrowed his eyes and went still for a few seconds, as if looking directly through me. His eyes were glowing blue at that moment, and his irises were slowly rotating clockwise. Unsettling to witness. "Your son's… forgive me, your quirk, Niren-kun… is quite a powerful ability related to telekinesis… something like remote transmission of kinetic force… and, mm, it appears to involve time manipulation as well…"
*There it is. There it is.*
I broke into a wide smile.
Takeda and Sakura exchanged a surprised look. My father carefully asked: "And nothing related to… intellect?"
The doctor's eyes slid to my face — which had gone serious again — and I held his gaze steadily as his iris began rotating faster.
"N-no, nothing I can see. That's all I can tell you — phew —" The man slumped back against his chair, eyes dimming, suddenly deflated.
"Many thanks, esteemed sensei." I stood, bowed, and expressed my gratitude before my parents could. I might have tacked on an even more elaborate honorific at the end — the flattery would have been warranted — but doctors in Japan were addressed as "sensei," full stop, and there was no higher register available.
No matter. I was genuinely grateful. There was plenty to be grateful for.
I thought I finally knew who I was.
Or rather — I remembered.
The bearded man, hearing the thanks delivered in that particular form, gave a surprised sort of grunt and looked at my parents with understanding, smiling.
"Well, now I understand why you were surprised. You don't often meet such a… self-possessed young man at this age. Yes, the results of the encephalogram do indicate that Niren-kun's brain is exceptionally developed for someone his age — atypical, to say the least. My opinion, however, is that this is entirely a function of his quirk itself — a secondary adaptation of the boy's body to his ability. Hm… this looks very much like a clear example of parental quirks fusing into something new and more powerful. You, Takeda-san, have the ability to influence objects at a distance? And you, Sakura-san, if I'm remembering correctly…"
Having lost interest in a discussion of things I already knew, I drifted into my own thoughts.
So. There had been, in U.A.'s Class 1-B, a harmless blue-haired chubby kid.
I had absolutely no idea how someone with that profile had gotten into U.A. in the first place, let alone scored any points during the entrance exam's robot brawl. But then again, Mineta — that repulsive little gremlin — had somehow gotten in too, so maybe it wasn't worth overthinking.
The chubby kid had also declined to compete in the sports festival, if I was remembering right. Which, from my perspective, a real fighter would only have welcomed — a chance to showcase yourself, test your limits, go one-on-one with a worthy opponent. Maybe that was what my mysterious "benefactor" had meant when he called him "not a fighter." It would make sense.
But regardless: the donut's quirk had definitely been the ability to double the effect of a previous action. Rephrased: at the point of any initial strike or impact, he could repeat that strike. Let's count on our fingers. He could do it remotely. He could do it on command. And moreover, if I was remembering right, the repeated effect was even stronger than the original.
I could feel a predatory grin spreading across my face and couldn't do anything about it.
This was even better than I'd hoped. I could fight at close range using my existing skills, and then repeat the effect of every strike — simultaneously disrupting my opponent's rhythm and punching straight through any guard. And given time to prepare the battlefield — walls, trees, asphalt, lampposts that had such an unfortunate tendency to fall on villains — I could take down not just classmates but professionals.
Of course, I didn't know what limitations the quirk had. But limitations, just like ordinary muscles, could be trained. Every article online said so unanimously. And training was something I knew something about.
In fact, what I remembered about the chubby kid — the alternate me — was precisely that despite possessing an ability that had immediately struck me as incredibly powerful, he used it in the most completely ineffective way possible. And he was a clumsy, awkward chubby kid on top of it.
The mangaka had probably understood perfectly well that this power, in capable hands — Bakugo's hands, say — would be absurdly broken, and so had deliberately made the character a bumbler. As if to say: U.A. had enough young geniuses who were already stronger than Pro Heroes by their first year, thank you very much.
Well. As for "enough" — we'd see about that.
…God, it was strange to be thinking this way about a real, living world. Some random mangaka was, by all appearances, its god?
Fine. The one thing I genuinely couldn't remember was the name of this marvel of a quirk — my quirk. But that didn't matter. What mattered was the fact itself: only in this unhinged superhero world could a wild ability like this exist, one that shattered every law of physics without apology.
Although… maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Yes, the power was promising. But neither my analysis of it nor what the pudgy kid had demonstrated in the anime came anywhere close to what Bakugo, Midoriya, or Shota had shown at the sports festival — just first-years — let alone Nomu, Endeavor, or All Might. And I needed to close that gap. I needed to reach their level. I didn't even know whether that was possible.
Syndrome from *The Incredibles* had been dead wrong. Completely and utterly wrong. When almost everyone is "super," there are still plenty of people who are a whole lot more super.
I only realized we'd said goodbye to the doctor and left the examination room when I was already sitting in the car. I'd really gotten lost in my head.
Some time later, back home, I just sat at the kitchen table and stared at a fork. I'd tossed it onto the table a couple of minutes earlier. My superhero training had officially begun. I wanted to repeat the throw without repeating it.
The quirk refused to activate, and nobody had given me a tutorial.
And time was passing.
Maybe if I visualized it vividly — the exact moment I threw it? What I was feeling, how I'd held it, the way the kitchen and my own scowling face had been reflected in the metal?
No. That wasn't working.
I stopped boring holes through the helpless piece of cutlery with my stare and sighed, tilting back on the chair, involuntarily reminding myself of the bearded doctor. Maybe I was overcomplicating it.
What about words?
"Repeat! Effect! Double effect! Impact! Wingardium bloody Leviosa!"
I groaned and started massaging my eyeballs with my fingers. I was definitely swishing my wand wrong.
Swishing?
I tried a series of gestures after that. Even the obscene ones produced no miraculous results.
What was I doing wrong?! It wasn't like I could even remember exactly what the guy in the anime had done!
In the end, in pure frustration, I hauled back and slapped the tabletop as hard as my small hand could manage — which the table, naturally, did not feel at all. Unlike me. The fork didn't even rattle on the surface, but my whole palm was burning. Infuriating. The weakness was infuriating. Everything was infuriating.
I stared in irritation at the exact spot where I'd struck a moment ago…
And then the table gave a satisfying crack, lurched sideways, and the fork went ringing off onto the floor.
Oh.
*So that's how it works.*
You just had to concentrate not on the action itself, but on the specific point where you hit. And when there were many such points — which there would be in a fight, once there was more than one — you'd need to remember every single one. Which would be genuinely difficult in the field. There was something with that character, wasn't there — some kind of visor that helped him keep track of all the points he'd marked?
My mother — er, my mother — came sprinting into the kitchen, alarmed.
"Are you all right?! Did you fall? Are you hurt?"
"Everything is more than fine," I said, grinning. "I know kung fu now."
"…o_O"