Chapter 1: A Brand New Sekai

~o~ ONE MONTH AFTER BIRTH ~o~

Able to see for the first time in what felt like forever, Kemuri Sekai stared up at his mother in horror.

Is that thing even a human? he couldn't help but wonder as his eyes locked on what looked like a lion furry staring lovingly down at his all-too-small form. She was tall and lithe, with reddish-orange fur, beautiful and soft as velvet, running all over her body. She had a bright yellow mane in place of hair, and two fuzzy ears sticking out the top of her head. The only part that looked human at all was her face, which lacked any fur.

He shuddered as she reached out to pick him up—why am I able to be picked up, how come I have to have such a small body, whyyy—and since he did not have the muscles to properly shout his disapproval, he instead cried his lungs off.

His mom flinched back in surprise. Words he could not fucking understand whatsoever flowed out of her mouth, but they sounded disappointed and sad. He didn't care. The big lion furry was not picking him up if he had anything to say about it. What kind of crazy, messed up world straight from some weird Japanese dude's mind had he been reborn in? He didn't know and frankly, he didn't care.
He missed Earth.

He missed America, even with its shitty politics.

He missed being Evan and actually knowing what his name was.

~o~ FOUR MONTHS AFTER BIRTH ~o~

Okay. Well. At least Sekai knew what his name was now.

Mainly because his annoying mother would not stop repeating it.

Honestly, you'd think he was a baby or something. Oh, wait, he actually was a baby despite having been fourteen just… four months prior? Five? It was hard to keep track of time, stuck in a crib for most of the time while your parents worked. That was pretty much Sekai's life. He lazed around in a crib for most of the day, dully shaking the maracas the really wonderful babysitter had brought him as a present. She seemed not to like it when he shook them non-stop. He liked it when she didn't like something he did. Her eyes would flash red with annoyance.

Oh, yeah. Other things he'd learned since he'd regained his eyesight, blurry as it still was—almost everybody in this weird world had some sort of power. It wasn't always a physical oddity like his mother. Sometimes it was a transformative ability, like his dad's. Sekai had nearly died a second death of shock when he witnessed wisps of smoke flow through the air behind his mother's back and then quite suddenly turn into his tall, handsome father, jumpscaring the poor woman, who'd shrieked something fierce. Sekai had (blurrily) seen his own reflection in the bathroom mirror and in the water whenever his mother and father decided he needed a bath, and he didn't have any lion fur or shit. He himself was just a normal baby with blue hair, like his dad.

Did he forget to mention that hair could apparently be any color? When Sekai had been taken out grocery shopping and meeting family members/family friends, he'd noticed a wide range of hues on people's heads.

That had been a bit of a shock, too.

This world is never going to stop surprising me, he deadpanned to himself. At least his own world had been predictable and followed the laws of physics. This one he just didn't know how to deal with.

~o~ TEN MONTHS AFTER BIRTH ~o~

Sekai regarded the other baby in front of him with suspicion.

This thing couldn't be a baby. It had to be at least one or two. Maybe three. A midget, maybe, but definitely not a baby.

It had too much hair. Too much green hair.

They were at what appeared to be a family reunion. (God, Sekai hated family reunions, and no, it wasn't because he was an edgy teenager. Babies couldn't be teenagers, so suck it, internet.) All around them were people he somewhat recognized from 'field trips' prior, and people he absolutely did not recognize at all. There were all sorts; a whole litter of lion people, clearly his mother's side of the family, and then more normal people, and several, like the baby who currently sat gleefully in front of him, who had long, green hair. Hair that looked suspiciously like vines.

Okay, seriously, what was up with this world?

And were those actual vines sprouting up from this button-cute fellow baby's (possibly secret toddler's) head?

He poked the baby, who was obviously a girl, in the head. She blinked cutely at him. He blinked back. She didn't react. He poked her again. She garbled.

She was weird, he decided. And not just because yes, that was definitely vines she had for hair.

Seriously, what the hell. Sekai almost wished he was back in his mother's womb. That had been the most boring time of his life, but at least it didn't have vine-haired girls and lion-bodied people. What, did the world want him to start believing in God again or something? He'd be willing to do that if it made all the weirdness go away.

Please?

Please?

The vine baby poked him square in the eye in obvious retaliation for his earlier prodding.

...He was so done with this second life.

~o~ ONE AND A HALF YEARS OLD ~o~

Heroes.

Heroes existed in this world. Actual, honest-to-the-God-Kemuri-didn't-believe-in, superheroes. Sekai didn't know whether to be ecstatic or terrified for his life.

Please don't let this be some weird version of Worm, please don't let this be some weird version of Worm! Well, actually, looking back on it, only a handful of people actually had superpowers in that series if he remembered correctly. Not that he'd ever actually read much of it, but at the very least, the general public didn't have superpowers. Here, while there appeared to be some normal people, they were absolutely not the majority.

Oh, also, he had his own ability now, too. Furry powers hadn't activated, thank god; no, instead he'd apparently inherited his dad's ability to turn into smoke. He was literally Smoker from One Piece. He'd only discovered it when the vine-haired baby (Ibara, he reminded himself, that was what her name was) had started poking him again on a mutual vacation their families had taken together, and he'd refused to be poked any longer, and then suddenly her finger was inside his forehead.

She'd screamed in surprise and cried for a half hour straight.

Served her right.

...Of course, she hadn't stopped poking him the next day, the little shit.

Still, she was fun to be around when her finger wasn't in Sekai's face all the time. She loved to play with anything she could get her hands on. They fiddled with those really simple jigsaw puzzles that Sekai's babysitter occasionally got him; they built big toy block towers and then knocked them the fuck down; they messed about with LEGOs that Sekai's father accidentally stepped on afterward. Fun times! About as much fun as a one-year-old midget could have, anyway. (Sekai missed video games.)

They were both slowly starting to learn how to talk. Ibara picked up on the language, which Sekai guessed was Japanese from the sound of it, faster than he did. The blue-haired boy supposed this was because his mind was hard-wired for English. Japanese and English didn't really mix well. He was struggling, and he could tell his parents were getting concerned. He'd already said his first word, but that had been SHIT! by accident after stubbing his toe on the side of his crib. (Don't ask.) That had earned him a strange look from his parents, and he had been exceedingly careful not to say anything in English around them after that.

...What had he been talking about before?

Oh, right. Heroes.

The first time he realized heroes existed in this strange world had been during TV time with Ibara, whose parents now brought her over to the Kemuri household twice a week. At first, he'd thought he'd been watching some kind of really-well done movie. The action sequences didn't even look planned, and that train wreck looked really real. But then he realized the TV screen looked like it was a news report. And his mother and father looked genuinely concerned. They kept glancing nervously at each other as, on screen, a masked and caped guy with extending arms and fingers rushed into and out of the burning vehicle, five people grasped in each hand. Frantic shouting came from the other side of the TV. He could only pick up some of the words, but the tone of the speakers' voices sounded genuinely afraid and concerned.

He caught the English words, "pro heroes" coming from his parents' lips.

It was the first clue Sekai had of where he was, but he didn't recognize it as such until some time from then still.

~o~ ONE YEAR AND NINE MONTHS OLD ~o~

His father, Kemuri Irori, taught him the word Quirk.

And quite suddenly, Sekai's entire world changed.