So, to my fans from other fandoms, this here is something that assaulted me last week, and has not left me alone since. There'll be no update to Master of the Tomb Raider this month, but I hope that this can make up for it somewhat. So, enjoy it! And to new people who have never seen my work before, I hope you enjoy this foray into a new fandom that I just got into. Please take care of me!

I awoke when my Quirk did. Seeing as how it awoke when I was born, that's not really a good thing. The world was bright and dark and bright, and oftentimes, far too colorful for me to bear.

Being an orphan, I was given my name by the Shizuoka Prefecture Hospital due to the fact that said woman died giving birth to me. Or so they told me. I knew the truth, though. The activation of my Quirk killed her. There's no two ways about it.

My name is Nirnasha Kira. And this is my story.

.

Growing up, I was shunned. My childhood in the orphanage wasn't anywhere near the best, but that didn't matter to me. I was left alone, and that was just fine with me. After all, I was trying to figure out how I'd ended up where I was. Being reborn as a Japanese child after having grown up in America was jarring. The differing language was only the most obvious difference. The difference in cultures was the next jarring thing, but probably the most jarring thing, was the time I now lived in. I was actually born in 2285.

Given the time I was in, I expected technology to be far more advanced than what I had grown up with. Instead, everything was fairly similar to what I had had access to in the early twenty first century.

Why was this?

The simple answer, was Quirks.

Or, as everyone in my time would call them, super powers.

Super heroes, super villains.

I lived in a future where pretty much everyone had a super power, though very few people actually became super heroes. Some powers just weren't cut out for someone to be a hero. Others were clearly only usable if you were a villain. Given human greed, I honestly wasn't surprised that villains were a thing, and that heroes were an integral part of society.

What did surprise me though, was the fact that the death sentence was not on the books for those villains that committed mass killing or serious crimes that endangered multiple people's lives or caused mass destruction. It was one of those things I'd always wondered about in my previous life, and it didn't seem like I would be getting any answers in this one either.

My childhood was fairly normal, though I did get made fun of until I was about eight years old, due to my lisp and stutter that came from already having a language in my head that I intuitively understood.

My childhood was rough. Not because the orphanage I lived in was in a bad area, or anything like that. No, it was because of who I was normally in a class with.

Bakugo Katsuki was a violent, ill-tempered, and all around bad kid. His Quirk certainly didn't help, given the fact that he literally sweated nitroglycerin from his hands that he could set off in an explosion at will. And his favorite victim was a so-called friend, Midoriya Izuku. A Quirkless boy who seemed to look up to him for some reason.

Once I met them, I realized where I had ended up in this new life.

My Hero Academia.

That was… not good. I'd had suspicions, once I heard someone calling a super power a Quirk, but it's kind of hard to deny where you are when you end up in the same class as two of the main characters of a series.

It wasn't as bad as if I'd been born to the Marvel Universe, or the DC Universe, or hell, literally any battle anime/manga, but MHA was definitely not a world that I would call peaceful, or safe.

It didn't help that my Quirk could only really be called villainous.

Soul Manipulation.

That was the official diagnoses of my Quirk. Originally, it had been called a Weapon Manifestation Quirk, due to the fact that I would oftentimes manifest weapons from my body. The most common of which seemed to be scythe blades. Though sometimes there'd be sword blades, axe blades, spear tips, hammer heads, arrow heads… anything that was a weapon, could sprout out of my body at any time. I could even eject a fully usable weapon from my body and use them.

However, me being me, meant that I wasn't satisfied with this, especially since there were laws in place ensuring that people didn't use their Quirks in public spaces. That didn't stop some kids with more low-key Quirks, but kids are kids.

I practiced using my Quirk though. In secret, of course.

I didn't sleep much because of it, but that was okay. Dreaming about Death himself every night gets… terrifying. Especially when he starts calling you his tool, or weapon.

Most of my nights were spent outside of the orphanage, practicing my Soul Manipulation. I started when I was five, just barely able to safely get myself down to the ground from my window on the second story. Even before I took my Quirk into account, I seemed to be far stronger and hardier than I had been in my past life. There were plenty of times where I got caught either leaving, or coming back into my room, but I didn't care, and eventually the orphanage's caretakers gave up trying to scold me when they caught me. Eventually, they even gave up trying to catch me, resigning themselves to the fact that I would be doing whatever I wanted.

The fact that I was acing all of my classes probably helped, though some of the teachers were fairly concerned by the bags under my eyes until I learned how to balance my work and sleep. It wasn't perfect, but that was fine with me.

I had a goal in mind.

The hero society that I now found myself in, was one that was over two hundred years old. Not an insignificant number by any means. Which also meant that superheroes were, generally speaking, far older than just about any other hero society I'd read about in my previous life.

The problem, was that they ranked their heroes. And they reported on everything the heroes did in public. Heroes built legends for themselves. Built up followings, agencies where professional side-kicks helped them police districts, cities, provinces… Heroes had become the first responders in the event of a villain attack, or just regular natural disasters.

And at the top of the ranked heroes?

All Might.

A super strong, ultra-charismatic hero whose mere presence was enough to deter criminals in an entire country.

Even if Japan was pretty small in comparison to America, that was an impressive feat no matter what way you swing it.

The problem is that the entire hero society was held up by All Might. Every hero looked up to him, every villain feared him. He debuted by saving over a thousand people by himself in a few hours' time, inspired the police and paramedics, and rallied dozens of other heroes to fight back against the villains that had taken advantage of a horrendously destructive earthquake. It was literally one of the worst possible villain attacks in history, and All Might almost single-handedly reversed it and ended the threat.

And it was an incredibly brittle image. I knew, vaguely, that All Might was the eighth holder of a Quirk that was passed down from one person to another. I knew that he put the world on his shoulders. Some people viewed him as a god. Others viewed him as the nearest thing to. He was a polarizing element in an already volatile society. He was ruthless in his pursuit of justice, and uncompromising in his ideals.

He really was too much.

Society saw him as the Pillar of Justice. And he kept living up to that moniker. And more responsibility and worship was layered onto him.

All Might was the ultimate hero. Nobody could topple him.

I knew better though.

All Might was on a ticking clock. And he was running out of time.

But I was the only one who knew that.

.

When I was nine, the amount of time All Might spent in public dropped drastically. Most people didn't care. He was still at important functions. Went to interviews, stopped the bad guys. But the time he spent patrolling or loitering in the streets, simply helping people out, dwindled to almost nothing. In contrast, other heroes began picking up the slack. Slowly, subtly, almost without notice. Some did, but after a few comments on the news here and there, people forgot about such matters, and everybody went back to their day to day lives.

But now, there was an underlying tension. Alleyways were given second glances by people, the nights were treated more cautiously, and criminals seemed to be biding their time. The smarter ones, at least. The dumb ones still got caught on a regular basis.

I knew something was going to break soon, but I was surprised when nothing happened. Year, after year, as I moved from elementary school into middle school, the balance of the world didn't shift catastrophically towards a messy end.

All the while, I trained my Quirk, intent on mastering it. I made immense strides, constantly practicing, constantly exerting control in new and inventive ways. Whenever I wasn't practicing using my Quirk, I was either completing classwork, or being out on the streets, doing my best to learn all the nuances of this new society I found myself in. Besides the obvious language and history differences Japan had in comparison to the USA. And the extra couple hundred years between when I'd died, and when I'd been reborn.

I took to pickpocketing to supplement the stipend I received as an orphan. Some time after Quirks and the resulting waves they'd made had settled into everyday life, the Japanese government had finally tackled their issue with "throw away" children. Infants and small children thrown into the orphanage system because parents couldn't support said child, or simply didn't want to.

Due to the fact that my Quirk was so volatile, I'd been put in a special orphanage specifically for children with harmful or unpredictable Quirks.

There was one kid with allergies that made him sneeze uncontrollably. The fact that the sneezes manifested as explosions that crisped his own skin was what made him a danger to other people, and especially himself. Another… kid? another kid was someone with multiple personalities, each one with a minorly different Quirk. Unfortunately, the personalities all hated each other. And would often try to harm "the body" before the next personality took over. There was even a kid who could turn whatever he touched into paper. The downside was that his skin was made up of paper, and just as fragile.

Our caretaker was a woman with a Quirk Nullification Field Quirk. Anyone within five meters of her lost their Quirk once she turned it on. My earliest memories of her showed her with huge bags under her eyes, and a pitying look in those large, liquid black eyes. Apparently, as I overheard one time, she was spending her nights awake and with her Quirk activated in order to keep me from exploding into dozens of blades. Lots of the orphanage's budget had gone into repairing my room and replacing ruined furniture after various weapons' blades ejected themselves from random points all over my body.

Once I'd gained control over my Quirk enough to not threaten everyone's lives due to a moment of inattention, I was visited by a governmental agent who presented me with an opportunity. I'd be given a modest stipend to save up with if I did well in school and, at the very least, attempted to become a hero.

I'd accepted immediately, of course. I was a nobody now, with not a cent to my name. Maybe I did, thanks to my late mother, and father, whoever they had been, but for right now? I had no money to my name, and unfortunately, money made the world go 'round.

So, soon enough, after a couple dozen signatures, I was the recipient of two million four hundred thousand yen a year, or two hundred thousand a month. I'd be given limited access to those funds at ten, in an effort to teach me fiscal responsibility, and ensure I didn't exploit the system. A significant portion of Japan's annual budget was set aside for damages incurred by villain attacks, and ensuring all the hero schools were fully funded to continue churning out top notch heroes to replace the ones that either fell in the line of duty, or managed to happily retire at a beat up, "old" age only in their forties. Some lasted into their fifties. But those ones were rare.

After the government agent came by, I started applying myself in classes, and watched as I climbed to the first rank in class. It made me question the validity of ranking students like this, and supposedly the reason was so that people would know what to expect when they entered the work place as adults, but honestly? It was a lot of pressure to put on small children who'd never had any kind of responsibility before. I was only going to a regular school because I'd gotten so good at controlling my Quirk without help.

It was a good thing I had such good control of it too, or else I might've accidentally killed Bakugo Katsuki on our first day of school. He was an unmitigated bully, and convinced of his superiority over everyone else. His Quirk, Explosive Sweat, was rather impressive. But everyone gushing over how "amazing" his Quirk was, even the teachers, just gave him a swelled head that fueled his superiority complex.

A complex that he emphasized on the only Quirkless person around, a smaller, thinner, and overall weaker boy named Midoriya Izuku. Izuku seemed to think that Katsuki was his friend. Katsuki had absolutely no problem throwing his proverbial weight around, threatening people, and claiming that he was "the most amazing person ever" to anyone and everyone that would listen, and even those who didn't want to listen. And Izuku ate it up. At first, I pitied Izuku. Continually following around your own bully in the hopes of one day being accepted by him in spite of lacking the one thing that was now seen as "normal"… I had to give him my respect. He never gave up, and he always kept getting back up. He even tried to defend others from Katsuki.

He was stronger than me. If it were me, in his place, I would've retaliated and lashed out long before him. I knew, vaguely, that Izuku was destined for great things. I knew that he would scrape by with the skin of his teeth. But I'd only ever seen the anime, not read the manga. I didn't know what else there was to be up against. I knew about the League of Villains. I knew about All for One, and One for All. I knew about their histories, if only vaguely. I knew that Izuku would one day have the weight of the world settled on his completely unprepared shoulders. His weak shoulders. Strong of mind and conviction he may be, but his body was weak. Even by the standards of Before, where nobody had Quirks, he was weak.

I didn't know what was coming in the future, beyond the Provisional Hero's License. I didn't know what happened after that. All I knew, was that, by anime/manga logic, everyone up to that point would be veritable chumps in comparison to what came after.

And I didn't know who or what we'd be up against.

I spent a couple of weeks contemplating when I'd decided I'd try getting into U.A., but ultimately, it came down to the fact that my paranoia had followed me to my new life, and been slowly fed by my dreams of Death every night. And my paranoia insisted I was the only one I could trust to keep everything from going all to shit.

So, I took it upon myself to mentor Izuku.

.

"You're an idiot." I drawled, looking down at Izuku as he lay, curled in a ball on the ground, after Bakugo had finished beating him up during recess. Despite his brash attitude, superiority complex, anger management issues, and seeming enjoyment of bullying and abusing those he deemed "lesser"… I forgot where I was going. He was second in the class. Only behind me. He'd tried bullying me into letting him have the number one position, but holding a hand transformed into a double-sided axe-head went a long ways towards convincing someone I was not to be messed with.

Unfortunately, this meant he doubled down on his bullying and abuse of Izuku.

"No, I'm not." Izuku sobbed slightly. "My mommy said I'm smart!"

"You are." I acknowledged. He is the third best student, despite his Quirklessness. "But you're also an idiot. You seem to be under the impression that if you just try hard enough, Bakugo will be your friend. Unfortunately, that's not how it works."

"How do you know?" Izuku asked, curiosity creeping into his voice as he gritted his teeth and pushed himself into a sitting position. There were several scratches, abrasions, and a few burns on his face, hands, and arms, and even his shins. He was in rough shape.

"Experience." I said, crossing my arms as I simply looked down at him, no judgement in his eyes or expression on my face. "The same experience as what you just experienced. But you want to know what I did?"

"What?"

"I decided to get stronger."

"But I don't have a Quirk." Izuku huffed, turning his head away from me as he gingerly wrapped his arms around his legs, knees tucked up to his chin.

"Did I say anything about a Quirk?" I retorted.

His head snapped up so fast, I was surprised he didn't get whiplash.

"But… but you have a Quirk?"

"I do." I nodded. "But I don't rely on it, like literally everyone else. Do you want to be stronger?"

"I want to be Bakugo's friend!"

"And Bakugo will kill you."

Izuku recoiled like I'd just struck him. I sighed.

"Izuku, Bakugo is not your friend." I told him. "He's your bully that you're stupid enough to follow around. He doesn't have to go looking for you in order to bully you. He's not your friend. He doesn't view you as a friend. You're just a convenient punching bag."

Izuku looked heartbroken.

"Look." I sighed, sticking my hand out to my fellow five year old. "You wanna be a hero, right?"

"Yeah!" there was the enthusiasm I expected of this punk. "I'm going to be better than All Might himself!"

I couldn't help but smirk.

"You'll have to beat me for that spot."

The green haired kid looked startled. Then the excitement in his eyes turned into a brightly burning fire of determination.

"What do you say, Izuku?" I asked, leaning forward slightly to put my out for him to grasp. "Wanna train with me to be the very best?"

Izuku blinked at me, and then grinned, slapping his hand into my own, and gripping it as tightly as he could as I hauled him to his feet.

"Yeah!" Izuku exclaimed.

I grinned back at him. He has no idea what he just signed himself up for.

.

Izuku joined me for training when we were seven. At that time, he was physically the weakest, slowest, and had the worst reflexes out of everyone in our grade level.

But, oh, was he smart.

The only thing holding him back from taking first place in the class rankings from me, was his fear of Bakugo blowing him up in retaliation.

I was content to let that be. Right now, I was only worried about getting him up to snuff physically. I met up with him before and after school. I met his mother, since he often invited me over for when we worked on our homework. She was happy that her son had a friend, though she did worry (and rightly so) a bit when I told her what my Quirk was. After a while, her worries seemed to fade away, and I was a welcomed guest. I never told her or Izuku that I was an orphan. I didn't want to see any pity in their faces. It would mean I would probably be drowned in their tears.

Literally.

Time flew by. First year ended, and second year began. Second year ended, and third year began. Third year ended, and fourth year began. It wasn't a one sided mentorship. Izuku taught me a lot about Quirks. His notebooks full of information on various heroes, their Quirks, strengths, weaknesses, and strategies were all contained within their pages. He was brilliant, with a fantastic mind that worked a hundred times better than I thought possible for someone without some sort of brain enhancement. He lacked common sense though. He was so very technical with his observations, almost scientific about it. He missed the obvious. Like the more obvious weaknesses. He liked the elaborate, the flashy.

He was the ultimate All Might fan.

When we were ten, I finally admitted to him that I was basically training him to be a hero without a Quirk.

I literally had to wring out my shirt after that.

.

Izuku redoubled his efforts in the training regime I'd set up for him, and I was actually forced to up my own as well. That was kind of difficult for me, given the fact that I also had to practice using my Quirk safely and effectively as well.

When we were twelve, Izuku asked me to teach him how to fight with a weapon. I ended up acquiescing, and I brought him a couple dozen books on the various forms of bojutsu, or bo staff techniques, which he tore through with a fury. We tested each other using bo staves that I generated using my Quirk, and it was clear to me that my green haired friend certainly had a genius level intellect.

By the time we were fourteen, and entering our final year of middle school, Izuku sat comfortably at the top of our regular physical fitness exams, and was second only to me in academics. This pissed Bakugo off to no end, but after getting the shit beaten out of him by me, and brushed off as inconsequential by "The Quirkless bastard", he was both quieter, and more volatile than I remembered. He still bragged. Claimed he had the best Quirk. That he was meant to be the next Number One Hero, once All Might stepped down. I'd been forced to sit Izuku down.

That was one good thing about my friendship with the main character of the drama to come. He wasn't caught up in trying to be Bakugo's friend. He'd dropped that weird nickname of Kacchan long ago. I might've helped speed that along. Maybe.

Then, the fated day came.

The day where our homeroom teacher of our final year of middle school made the statement that of course everyone was going to try and be heroes. Bakugo seemed to work up the courage to tell us all that he was going to be the best thing ever at U.A., and that our teacher shouldn't lump him in with the rest of "these extras". Then the teacher noted that Izuku and I had both also expressed interest in going to U.A. Bakugo ignored me, in favor of going after Izuku. I had stopped defending Izuku a few years ago, not that the violent blond seemed to notice, since we hung out so much still.

It was an interesting difference, seeing this Izuku evade and retaliated against Bakugo. It entertained me, seeing this Izuku snatch his twenty first notebook out of the way of Bakugo's explosive slap on his desk. The quick, efficient dodges and deflections I'd practically beaten into the freckled teen. The fact that he managed to slap Bakugo in the cheek with his notebook was even more hilarious to me. The face that blond made this expression of mixed, confusion, frustration, and sheer, unimaginable fury only made it funnier. Then the teach used his own Quirk to chop Bakugo on the head, and commanded him to go back to his seat so that classes could start.

He did, reluctantly. I smiled at Izuku, nodding at him with approval. His returning smile was wobbly, and his thumbs up shaky, but it was the first time he'd stood up to Bakugo on his own.

.

Classes passed, as they were wont to do. I paid the bare minimum of attention, in case our teacher asked me a question, but for the most part, I was contemplating what would happen today. If everything went as it was supposed to… Izuku would meet All Might, learn his secret, and try to save Bakugo from that sludge villain that almost killed him…

When classes ended, I made my excuses to Izuku, and then ducked away from the school, expanding my Soul Perception in order to keep an idle eye on my friend.

In the end, I ended up jumping on a train, and running over to a nearby prefecture. Aichi prefecture was kind of on the ritzy side of things, but that was okay. Even during all the training I'd been doing myself, as well as what I'd been giving to Izuku, I'd been planning things out.

As soon as I had been given access to my funds, I had begun investing in the stock market. Small amounts, here and there. Learning the tricks of the trade. Investing small, doubling my cash, and pulling it out. I opened some trust funds, and even handed over money to professional stock brokers to make long term decisions for me, which, while it surprised my advisor because of my maturity, he was happy to help me.

As a result of my wise investments, I had quite a bit of liquidity in a second bank account that was not connected to my government funded one. My government case worker was both impressed and exasperated by my antics, but he admitted that I hadn't done anything illegal, since I was still gunning for U.A. He was just worried that I was using my Quirk to achieve a small fortune in a short amount of time. I assured him that my Quirk in no way allowed me to see the future of the stock market, even if it did let me see people's sins in the future.

Due to my status as a ward of the state, and my status as someone in an orphanage specifically for people with exceptionally dangerous Quirks, I was required to regularly update information about my Quirk. I had no problem doing so, but sometimes it was really annoying.

"Now arriving at, Tsurumai Station."

I blinked and looked up at the speakers, knowing that there wasn't anything interesting up there, but still surprised that I'd wiled away so much time just by thinking about my recent history.

I got off the subway when it stopped, I was near enough to a rather nice park, and I felt like relaxing. There's not much that gets to me nowadays, something that I was rather relishing as the U.A. entrance exams loomed closer and closer. I wasn't worried about getting in. I was top of the class academically, and physically, I was the best. I just had to, at the very least, maintain.

Exiting the subway station, and entering the loud rush of humanity, I idly wandered my way towards Tsurumai Park, wondering how long it would be before Izuku and All Might met. I checked my phone, noted that there were no texts or missed calls from the nerdy boy, and contented myself with simply strolling down the paths of the park, taking in the cultivated beauty. I stopped, here and there, to take in the various gardens full of flowers of different kinds, content in waiting. Periodic checks of my news app showed that there had been a sludge monster stealing money from a store before he disappeared with All Might in hot pursuit.

As I walked, I noticed that there were fewer people nearby. I was apparently entering one of the more remote areas of the park, near a part of the river where you couldn't just go to the water's edge without climbing down a really steep embankment. There were some benches here and there along the path, and though a couple of them were occupied, I didn't really pay much attention to who was on them.

That was, at least, until I saw a girl, about my own age, reclining rather gracefully on one bench, legs crossed elegantly as she read a book whose title I was quite familiar with. She was a bit of a beauty, one of those girls that could be either my age, or ten years older, and you wouldn't know, due to her quietly confident, self-assured aura. She wore some brown, knee high boots over some black leggings, and she wore a very nice looking green plaid skirt. There was one of those fashionably wide belts around her waist, and had a frilly, flowing and loose shirt on, with her bountiful black hair done up in a bun, save for one bang that half-way covered her right eye. In a word, she was beautiful. But the simple fact was that her beauty was merely an excellent cover for the sheer intelligence and cunning in her eyes.

Therefore, it was a bit of a surprise when I saw what she was reading.

"Bojutsu for the Intermediate Practicioner, huh?" I said loudly, still quite a few feet away from her.

She looked up, startled, and caught sight of me quite easily, since I was pretty much the only person near her.

"Ah… yes…?" she trailed off, both surprised and wary of me.

"Oh, my apologies." I said, bowing slightly. "Nirnasha Kira. Yes, that's what my name means. No, I'm not at all like what my name implies."

Translated to English, my name meant "Deathless Killer", and it was, as far as I was aware, my true surname, with a given name that was given to me by the hospital I'd been born in.

"Ah…" She still looked slightly wary. "I'm Yaoyorozu Momo. It's… nice to meet you?"

I smiled as genially as I could, which seemed to do the trick in getting her to relax slightly.

"I picked up that book a few years ago." I said, gesturing towards her current reading material. "I'm already into Mastering Bojutsu. I have to say though, I prefer the Intermediate book. The author managed to inject so many more anecdotes and funny stories and jokes to his writing in it than the other books."

The dark haired girl blinked in surprise, glancing down at her book before looking back up at me, intrigue glimmering in those dark eyes of hers.

"You must be quite proficient at Bojutsu then!"

I shrugged, hitching my backpack up on my shoulders as I did so.

"I practice, and I'd like to think I'm good, but I wouldn't know unless I had someone to spar against." I admitted. "I help my friend train so he can get into U.A. with me, even if he is Quirkless, but he's mostly focused on hand to hand combat."

Her mouth opened and closed, gaping at my casual admission of having, not only a Quirkless friend, but one who was trying to make it into the number one hero academy in Japan, possibly even the world.

"Anyways." I continued, unable to not enjoy the gobsmacked expression on her face. I gestured to the space beside her on the bench, which she nodded to, still surprised by the bomb I'd dropped on her right off the bat.

I sat without issue, slightly ignoring the stare the girl was leveling at me.

"So, what chapter are you on?" I asked, pointing to her book once again.

"Hmm? Oh!" she shook herself slightly to pull herself together. "I'm currently working my way through takedown maneuvers."

"Oh! That chapter was fun!" I exclaimed gleefully. "My friend let me practice that chapter on him when we were eleven. He hated me for a month."

Yaoyorozu-san giggled a bit, though she quickly clamped a hand over her mouth to try and stifle it.

"Don't worry, it's funny." I assured her. "Izuku admits that he'll probably never get taken down by a bo user, and I'm inclined to agree with him."

She giggled a bit more.

"What do you think of the deflection techniques? I find them both intriguing, yet difficult to pull off."

"Ah, those." I nodded. "Are just going through the motions right now?"

"Yes."

"Have you tried actually deflecting anything yet?"

"No."

"There's your problem." I nodded sagely. "I practiced the forms for the longest time, probably a couple of months, before I took advantage of having a training partner, and had him start throwing baseballs at me as hard as he could."

Yaoyorozu-san blinked in surprise, glancing back and forth between me and her book.

"It took me nearly a year to get that form down, and I have a tutor once a week." She admitted. "You must be a genius!"

My smile turned slightly brittle, something she saw quite easily.

"I-I-I'm sorry, if it's-"

"No, no, you're fine." I waved her off. "It's just that, well… I have an unfair advantage, when it comes to weapon handling."

"… Your Quirk?" she inquired, leaning closer to me and shutting her book completely as she did so.

I looked around, trying to see if anyone was around and paying attention to us. There was one couple, nearly a hundred meters away, and an old man across the path, throwing bread into a swarm of ducks down on the river, but other than that, we were alone.

"I won't tell if you won't." I said.

And then I transformed my hand into a scythe blade in a flash of blue light and a slight 'clang' noise. It was about two feet long, eight inches from edge to spine, and curved rather wickedly. It was red, with white triangles, and a gleaming silver edge that was visibly sharp.

Yaoyorozu-san stared at my "new" limb, and then up into my eyes. Then she stared at my hand again.

"That is… exceptionally similar to what my Quirk is." She admitted.

Then she held her hound out, and a metal bo staff, about six feet long, was ejected from the palm of her hand rather forcefully. It leapt almost a foot into the air, before coming back down, where she let it slide through her grip until the end impacted the ground in front of the bench.

And oh, wasn't that interesting. Seeing her Quirk in action finally jogged my memory.

Yaoyorozu Momo, Quirk, Creation, able to create any non-living substance or object from her skin utilizing her body fat as a fuel source. Incredibly intelligent, fantastic tactical mind, and fairly cunning when she needed to be.

It was just my luck. I now know three students in Class 1-A of U.A. Academy. All of them fairly high up on the totem pole, too.

I smiled at her.

"Oh, that's neat!" I gushed. "What's your Quirk, if you don't mind me asking?"

"It's Creation." She said with a bright smile on her face. "I can make any non-living material from my skin via molecular manipulation of the lipids in my body. I just have to know the molecular structure of what I'm making, and the complete design of what I'm making."

"Sounds complicated, and I'm amazed you can do something so complicated, so quickly." I chuckled.

"What's your Quirk."

'She's rather cute.'

I stuffed that little voice deep in the back of my mind, doing my best to avoid mentally agreeing as she tilted her head as she asked that question.

"It's… well, it doesn't sound that great, but it's… immensely versatile, much like your own, I'd imagine." I said, transforming my hand back into a hand to scratch my head with. "My Quirk is Soul Manipulation… And that comes with… a lot of stuff that I've spent most of my life learning to control and call on at will."

The future hero-in-training stared at me, narrow eyes suddenly very wide.

"Eh, heh." I chuckled awkwardly. "Yeah, that's about the reaction I'm used to."

"I'm sorry!" She blurted out, waving her hands frantically. "I just… I don't see how a Quirk labeled 'Soul Manipulation' enables you to change parts of your body into weapons!"

"Ah."

Now it was my turn to be wide-eyed with surprise. Most people freaked out and left me alone as much as possible, once I told them what my Quirk was.

"Honestly, I'm intrigued."

"Um…" I swallowed. "Well, um… to be honest… My Quirk attracted the attention of Death Himself. And he's… quite keen on having a hand in the physical world. So, he's… kind of forced knowledge about my Quirk into my head. Except, the stuff he's given me… It's rather terrifying."

I looked up, and the girl next to me was now very pale, dark eyes a stark contrast as they were made exceptionally wide by her shock.

"Sorry." I muttered. "Probably way too much right off the bat, huh?"

"… No! No! Not at all!" she exclaimed, shaking her hands side to side in between us. "It's just. Death Himself? Like…"

"The Death of legends?" I filled in for her.

She nodded.

"… Yeah." I admitted. "He forces himself into my dreams every night. Talks to me. Advises me. Gives me… well, visions, I suppose. Of people being evil."

I peeked up to see the worried look on Yaoyorozu-san's face. Looked away again.

"Anyways." I said, forcing my tone into something lighter. "I decided, if he's going to be telling me how to use a Quirk never seen before, I may as well take advantage of it, and try to be a hero, right?"

The silence was telling, and I was afraid that I'd driven away another potential friend.

"… That is quite admirable of you, Nirnasha-san."

I raised my head to look at the black-haired beauty.

"Most people would deem your Quirk quite villainous, especially with such an entity invading your mind every day. The fact that you seek to surpass it… that you seek to become a hero in spite of that… it is, incredibly motivating, and even more admirable."

I stared at her. Searching for any signs of deceit. A hint of a lie. But there was none. She just accepted me for me, Quirk and all.

First person since Izuku did.

I smiled.

I knew it was shaky. Knew that it showed a bit of vulnerability I hadn't been able to afford showing anyone in years. But. Well. All humans crave acceptance. Just because I'm used to one thing, doesn't lessen the impact of another. If anything, it increases it.

"… So, what can you tell me about take down techniques?"

.

The rest of the afternoon was spent discussing the pro's and con's of using a bo staff in a fight, the effectiveness of Quirks, and going a bit more in depth on various facets of the hero community we lived in. Most of them were suppositions, of course. Theories. But that didn't stop us from discussing them.

We were interrupted though, by my phone ringing. The sun was setting, and Yaoyorozu-san and I were simply taking in the beautiful colors painted against the horizon, idly exchanging our favorite foods and colors, and other such inanities.

It was nice.

However, when I got a text from Izuku, with an attached news article complete with a fifteen minute video. I read the article, and then clicked into the video, leaning over so that Yaoyorozu-san could read and watch it with me. We were privy to the sight of my green haired friend, still in his school uniform, sprinting rapidly towards an enormous, liquid-looking creature, surrounded on all sides by fire and rubble. We watched as he threw his backpack at the villain, which recoiled in pain and anger and shock when said backpack impacts with one of his oversized, crazed-looking eyes. Watched as my friend snatched up a stop sign, and wielded it with incredible dexterity and competence, using the sign itself to bat away the liquid-looking attacks, and the pole itself to try and cleave into the villain's body.

Then the explosion rocked the cameraman, and I realized with a start that there was only one person who could possibly do that.

The Sludge Villain. Bakugo. Memories cleaned themselves off, and I realized that I was looking at the moment that would tell All Might that Izuku was to be his successor.

And just like that, All Might zoomed in from nowhere, snatched Bakugo and Izuku away from the villain, and then proceeded to throw a single punch that whipped up an entire freaking tornado, scattering the villain, and changing the local weather pattern.

"… Was that… your friend?" Yaoyorozu-san asked, voice weak as we both stared at the darkened screen when the video ended.

"… Yeah… Yeah, it was." I replied. To be honest, I was a little shocked as well. "And he just freaking tried to save his life long bully."

"But he's Quirkless?"

"Yeah."

"He needs to go to U.A."

I blinked, forced myself to look at my newest friend.

"… I mean… I've been trying to help him be able to, but…"

"But nothing." The girl snapped. "Give me your number. Meet up with him, and then we're setting up a meeting somewhere, some time."

I couldn't help but blink again as Yaoyorozu-san pulled her skirt up enough to show that she had a phone pocket in her tights. She pulled out her phone, smoothing her skirt back out to where it should be to be considered proper, and then immediately went for the contacts app. I went to the same app on my phone, and then we exchanged information, including email and addresses. We texted each other to confirm we had it right, and then she told me she expected to see me at this bench in two days, on Sunday.

I acquiesced.

Who was I to say no to a wonderfully intelligent girl, who also happened to be rather beautiful?

Nirnasha: One who can never die; deathless

Kira: Killer