.

When I imagined my heroic debut, I had something a bit more... heroic... in mind.

"Halt, evildoer!" I shout, making sure to sound as Silver Agey as I possibly can. I only hope that my half-balaclava mask is dark enough to hide my radiant blush. "Cease your villainous actions at once, or you will be stopped by the Lucky Hero, Black Cat!"

The guy in a hoodie- the nefarious villain pulls his smoking fist out of the ATM machine he just shoved it in, a stream of yen spilling out of the sparking hole. "It's just a kid..." He turns towards me slightly, but his own, much nicer-looking mask hides his identity from my yellow eyes. Foiled! "Scram, brat. You're out past your bedtime."

"It's never too late to be dispensing justice!"

Despite my killer line, he doesn't look all that impressed. "I'm not going to default on my credit card because some Cheshire-looking motherfucker wanted to cosplay at two o' clock in the morning. I won't be warning you again, kid. Go home to your parents and leave the heroism to the professionals."

"Gasp!" I carefully enunciate, throwing my head back in the way I know will make the fake cat ears on my headband look like they're twitching. Just like I practiced! "How did you know Miss Cheshire was my inspiration!? Does your Quirk allow you to read minds, nya?!"

His hands are literally spinning on their wrists, like automatic screwdrivers. "I don't have time for this..." he murmurs, and then the rest of him starts rapidly rotating, too. A breeze kicks up in front of the corner store, scattering yen around like leaves in the wind. My cat's eyes catch his knees bending, and he looks ready to pounce.

Considering how heavily ATMs are reinforced in a world of superhumans, and that he casually punctured one with a single hand, that much force at that fast a velocity will probably fucking maim me. Either he's more desperate than he sounds, he's both stupid and callous, or he thinks I'm either more experienced than I am or hiding a truly impressive Quirk. It's the last one, but there's no way he could know for sure.

I resent his immediate jump to lethality. Doesn't he know the proper rules of engagement between a hero and a villain begins with gratuitous monologuing, escalates to some light martial arts and bantering, and only climaxes with the full force of our respective Quirks? This is one of those assholes who skips to the end of a novel, isn't he?

I hate people like that. "Behold! The might of the Lucky Hero, Black-"

He blurs, and a human twister tears across the concrete, keening like a missile and then exploding like one. Shards of brick and earth burst, all the nearby windows shattering from the percussive force of his initial assault. The villain himself skids and tumbles across the ground for several meters until a spinning knife-hand embeds itself in the concrete and he pulls himself to a halt, leaving black scuff marks in his wake.

I, having only a heartbeat to prepare for his attack, consumed all of my stored good luck in a single instant. I then immediately tripped over thin air halfway through transitioning into my Heroic Pose #4. Luckily – as was the entire point – my fall contorted my body just so that I narrowly avoided being pulped by his lunge, and my free hand, having reached out instinctively for something to latch on to, snagged the cloth of his face mask.

When the ATM thief – I decide to call him Corkscrew – when Corkscrew sees it in my hand, his own jumps up to his freshly-bared face. He growls, surprisingly pretty features twisted in an enraged scowl. "I warned you, kid," he tells me, emitting a sharp whirring noise as his fingers start revolving in their sockets. "Now that you've seen my face, I'll have to kill you."

"Nya~" I say, reflexively being sarcastic to hide my sudden fear as I stumble back to a stable stance as gracefully as I can manage. It's not very graceful at all, but that's half my gig. When the villain just growls deeper, though, I start to wonder if I should have chosen a different gig.

I mean – what the fuck, right? As if his last attack wasn't already going to put me in the hospital, now he wants to make it a morgue? That's fucked up, right? I'm a twelve year old girl- thirteen, now, I suppose. You can't just kill kids like that. What the fuck is the matter with this guy? Now I absolutely have to put him behind bars. What a drag.

"You were supposed to shout the name of your attack first, you know?" I try to sound confident. I don't know how successful I am. "Don't tell me you're one of those losers who don't name their attacks. That's not a very cool trait in a nemesis."

Corkscrew grits his teeth, bending his knees in the exact same way he did last time. He's going to pounce again, and I don't have any good luck left to protect myself with.

Thank God that good luck was never really my thing. I snap my hand at him, throwing an immense ball of eerie violet light through the torn concrete by his boots, and then immediately dive for cover.

Just as Corkscrew's feet leave the ground, the street erupts, an actual plume of flame bursting from the fissure and eating its way towards the sky. Corkscrew howls, agony clear in his voice when his body breaks itself on the closest building, as if haphazardly flung by a petulant god. Concrete propulsed skyward by the explosion then falls to the earth like a meteor shower in miniature, landing to a sound like gunfire.

I, not being an idiot, took refuge under a dumpster in the nearest alley. I wasn't even scratched! It seems I'm pretty good at this hero thing. Well, of course I am! After all, I'm the Lucky Hero, Black Cat! I take a moment to preen, and to catch my breath because holy fuck, I didn't think the explosion would be so big. I easily could've died there, God damn. I'm shaking, why am I shaking? I exhale, counting to three, and break out into a fit of hysterical laughter halfway there.

My moment is destroyed when a powerful hand clutches my ankle and drags me out into the world. I kick and struggle on reflex, but there's not enough space under the dumpster for me to mime a throwing motion at my assailant and I'm not about to imbue myself with bad luck to get out of a sticky situation. I'd channel my Quirk through my ankle and into this foul villain's hands, but I don't actually know how to do that.

"Naughty kitty, scratching at a hero~" the owner of the hand purrs, and I freeze. The voice – it's so familiar. "It's going to take me forever to teach you manners. Oh, I can't wait!"

A dark mist then wafts directly into my face, and I heroically pass out.

.

…

.

When I wake up, the blindfold over my eyes is soft but the cuff around my wrist is cold and hard. This must be the work of a truly despicable villain! I try to work myself up to a heroic mood, but the cuff chafes against my delicate skin, feeling somehow more real than the spinning hands of the villain I defeated, and it's hard to draw on that familiar optimism.

"Good morning, my sweet sidekick~" a feminine voice coos, and I feel the fabric over my face being lifted off of me. I open my slit, amber eyes, and the first thing I see is the blindfold – but it's not a blindfold at all, it's a sleep mask, like the one Momma used to wear. The room is still too dark to be comfortable, but my cat's eyes aren't just for show. "Sweet dreams, I hope?"

"...You're Miss Midnight," I say instead, voice awed, taking in the sight of one of the three heroes to have their picture taped to my wall. Her mane of dark hair is as iconic as her skimpy leotard! I've lost track of all the times the matron has confiscated my pictures of her. The only sound I can make for several long seconds is a delighted squeal. "Oh my God! Oh my God! Can I have your autograph? Please! I've been good, I totally deserve it! Please, please, please please please-"

She taps her elegant cheekbone, face scrunched in a moue of confusion. "Have you been good, though?" she asks, and I fall awkwardly silent. "Last I saw, you exploded a storefront, and a street, and several windows, and that poor, innocent villain-"

"Lies and slander! That gas main exploded on its own!" The excuses are basically a reflex, by this point. "Gas leaks happen all the time! You have no proof!"

She smiles more catlike than I've ever managed. "I don't remember mentioning a gas main, though?"

"U-um..." I look to the side shiftily.

"It's all well and good to capture a dangerous villain, Manami," Miss Midnight says, suddenly sounding less playful and more serious. She meets my eyes, and I can't tear them away. "But the repairs for the collateral damage you caused in a single minute vastly exceeded the amount of yen he stole throughout his entire life. More importantly, he's never hurt anyone before, and though he was the one to escalate the situation, it was your explosion that very nearly could have caught innocent bystanders in the crossfire. If it weren't for eyewitnesses claiming he jumped straight from dialogue to murder and your own youth, you could be in serious trouble, right now."

I finally break away from her steely gaze, tears burning in my eyes. There's a part of me that wants to get furious and defend my actions, but considering those pointed words come from a personal idol of mine, I just can't. She's right; people gather to watch heroes and villains duke it out all the time, and I didn't think to check for any before I detonated the gas main. I hadn't even noticed the eyewitnesses she claimed stood up for me. If I had gotten one of them hurt with my dumbass recklessness... I don't think I could have ever forgiven myself.

"However... you did have the best of intentions, and you were prepared enough to capture a dangerous villain without being harmed yourself. That's a tremendous accomplishment." She smiles at me, and it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. "You've been let off without so much as a black mark on your record, on the stipulation that you never attempt hero work alone again. Okay? Okay. Okay? Okay!"

She pats my thigh, then gets up and lazily walks out of the room. I stare after her in bewildered amazement.

Then I realize that she didn't uncuff me. Why the fuck did she cuff me in the first place? Did she think it would be funny?! It's not!

"M- Miss Midnight! Wait, come back!"

.

…

.

It takes me three years – more like three minutes, but it feels like three years – to realize I can just pump bad luck into the handcuffs. Then, it's a matter of shaking it until it pops open. Not for the first time, I realize that my powers would make me an amazing villain. Japan should be so grateful I all-but ooze moral fiber!

At least, that's the kind of thought I want bouncing around my skull right now. The actual thoughts I can't seem to help but have are of a much darker, and more sobering, nature. They're the kind of thoughts I've devoted my entire life to ridding myself of, through the power of overwhelming cheeriness and atonement... and I will atone, even if the nature of my Quirk would make returning to the life of sin I once lived so sickeningly easy.

I'm not religious, but I pray every night before bed. I don't ask for anything, not even the basic health and safety that my mother used to pray for, because I don't really deserve it. No, my prayers are little more than whispered thanks, words that fail to convey the enormity of the gratitude I feel for whatever being gave me this second chance.

That's what this is, of course. This second life. My second chance. How could it not be? The only difference between this world and my last is that shining baby, and all the heroes and villains that came in its wake. Good and Evil are so much easier to discern, in this world.

Time and time again, I was offered opportunities to return to that life of endlessly chasing money, sex, and blood. With this Quirk, it would be so easy; with the power to give all of my competitors a little bad luck, I would dominate the underground. But... I can't.

Back then, I was a wealthy inheritor of a family fortune. I immediately squandered it. I was a human who had a little taste of the devil's sin, and dear God, I wanted more... so I sought it, and I found it. I reveled in it. I took loans to pay off loans, and took even more to pay off those. I danced from sin to sin until I reached the end of the line, and my debtors choked me to death with it.

Shot my mother, shot my father, shot my brother, shot my cat, shot my neighbors and shot my fiance-

They needed hostages. They thought I still had money to give them, thought I just needed a little push. But there wasn't any money left. I'd spent it all, on sex and drink and lottery tickets. I made my own bad luck, ruined my own family. I ruined my world.

And then I was given another. Another world, another chance.

I wasn't given another family. It hurts, but I can't say I'm surprised. I don't deserve another family; not then, not now, maybe not ever. I brought ruin and death to my last one. God couldn't trust me with another, shouldn't trust me with another. He gave me this Quirk, this dreadful ability to spread bad luck wherever I go, as a constant reminder of my sins, my failures. I understand.

That's why I chose the name I did. Manami. It means 'beautiful love.' A constant reminder that I can do better than Mary ever did. I can be better. I can spread love and kindness the way I will forever spread bad luck. That's why I chose to be a hero; what better way would there be to atone? And... why would I be reborn here, in a world distinguished from my last by its heroes and villains, than to be part of that eternal war between the good and the evil within every person's heart? If I was meant to atone by being a doctor or a police officer, I wouldn't have been reborn in a world of actual heroes.

I can't tell Miss Midnight any of this. As far as this world is concerned, I'm just a thirteen-year-old girl with an unfortunate Quirk and the eyes of an unlucky black cat. That's the way it has to be. I couldn't bear the shame of admitting all of my failures, especially not to one of my personal heroes.

And- who knows? It might even be true. I have the soul of a twenty-four-year-old sinner, yes, but this mind and this heart are that of a young child. I remember being this age, once upon a time, and I know that the way I act now is not the way I acted as an adult, even before I inherited my fortune and swan-dived off the cliff of reason and good judgment. I am, for all intents and purposes, a young girl...

...but I'm a young girl with karma so steeped in black, I can literally throw sickly-purple waves of bad luck at things to make them catastrophically fail. I have a lot of work to do.

I sigh. That work will begin with speaking to Miss Midnight and begging her to take me on. I'm not dim; the way she spoke of teaching me last night and the way she called me her sidekick this morning, I know that she's already planning on it. I can't, won't, take that for granted, though. I... I need to communicate to her, clearly and maturely, exactly how much I need her tutelage. I could have killed someone last night; if those eyewitnesses had been close enough to the gas main, I would have. I am... leagues out of my depth, but I don't have it in me to keep putting off hero work.

I only started remembering my past life when I turned seven, and it only really fleshed itself out when I was a little over ten, but I'm thirteen now and I couldn't wait another day. I just... don't have that kind of patience in me. I know the path to atonement will be a long road, but that's all the more reason to start walking it now. And, if I'm lucky... maybe there'll be a family at the end. Maybe I'll be worthy of one, at the end. I can hope.

What was it the Martian Manhunter said?

"The future is worth it. All the pain. All the tears. The future is worth the fight."

I pool good luck into the pillow under my head and throw it in a random direction. The switch is flipped with a muffled click, and a sparsely-furnished guest bedroom is illuminated with soft light.

"I am so cool," I say, just to put myself back in that cheery, thoughtlessly adorable state of mind. And, because – well, having superpowers is pretty rad. "Now, to convince the R-Rated Hero to accept a thirteen-year-old sidekick."

This might be difficult.

.

…

.

"Please accept me as your sidekick!" Running heedlessly into the living room of Miss Midnight's home, I immediately prostrate myself before her. "I will do all of your chores!"

"You're hired!" she says immediately.

Huh. That was easy.

"But first, we have some paperwork to fill out," she adds, and I can feel myself wilt. "Follow me to my office, okay, sweetie?"

I push myself up to a kneel, and Miss Midnight grabs my hand to pull me the rest of the way to my feet. Standing this close, she feels larger than life; part of it is that she's a solid nine inches taller than me, but the rest is her Aura of Heroism. Or maybe my little crush. I'm going to go with Aura of Heroism.

She looks just like in my pictures of her, which sounds creepy now that I've actually met her and slept in her guest bedroom. Her wild mane of ink-black hair, darker than my own violet-tinted strands, seems somehow more full pinned up in a loose bun. She's swapped out her infamous red mask for a casual pair of glasses, but the thin layer does little to dull the brilliance of her blue eyes. Most surprising, however, is that even in the privacy of her own home, she's not showing any skin; the hem of her vivid red turtleneck is pulled down to her thighs, and her black leggings are tucked into a pair of fluffy-looking slippers. With the sole exception of her hands and face, no part of her is exposed to the air.

I read a theory on CapeNet about her, once, that basically boiled down to 'Midnight's Quirk doesn't have an off switch.' Few people believed it, and I wasn't one of them. It's true that most Quirks are facets of their owner's biology, but I refused to believe that my favorite hero isn't able to stop emitting her sleepy-time gas. To have had such a Quirk since she turned four, and to be unable to turn it off... the thought is too depressing to consider. So I didn't consider it.

I'm very carefully not considering it now. I decide to look around her home instead, since she seems content to drag me to her office in silence and I'm not ashamed to admit to a little curiosity. I'm being given rare behind-the-scenes access to Miss Midnight's home! Who, when given such an amazing opportunity, would not pull back the curtain just a little bit?

Unfortunately, even with all the obsessive interest of a self-admitted fangirl, Miss Midnight's home just isn't that intriguing. It's... a home. It's a lot nicer than the church, and it might even be bigger – there are a lot of doors Miss Midnight is pulling me past – but I was once raised in a multi-million-dollar penthouse. This just looks like she bought three middle-class apartments all in a row, knocked down some walls, built a few more, and painted it all varying shades of red and violet. It actually looks, kind of... bare. Either she doesn't spend much time here, doesn't care to decorate, or she took most of it down when a minor crashed in a guest bedroom. Honestly, it could be any of the three.

"Smile for your thoughts?" Miss Midnight asks, and when I blink up at her in confusion, she blesses me with a radiant smile. I try not to swoon. I fail. "Talk to me, please? That's what I'm here for." She bumps my hip. "What do you have going on in that pretty little head of yours?"

I sigh exaggeratedly, resting the back of the hand she's not holding against my flushed cheek. "Miss Midnight thinks my head is pretty..."

She laughs. "I'll take it- and here we are."

Beyond the door marked NOT A DUNGEON is a simple wooden desk, a fancy-looking office chair, a large flat-screen television on one side and a wall of windows on the other. We must be at least ten floors up, but I can just barely see the alley I blew up through the glass, now surrounded by construction workers. Jeez. No wonder she was the first hero on the scene. I'd blame the improbability of Corkscrew's little scheme literally taking place outside my idol's apartment, but I'd verified that my luck manipulation doesn't work on outside factors like that... but I had been blessing myself with good luck while I was searching for a crime to stop- oh my God my Quirk led me to Miss Midnight. I try not to squeal in joy.

"What are you smiling about this time?" she asks me, seeing me make goofy faces at random walls again. I'd flush in embarrassment if I wasn't already burning up.

"I'm so lucky~" I breathe, and the explanation escapes my lips in a torrent. "While I was running around looking to make my debut, I was using up some of my good luck so I could actually, you know, accomplish something, right? My Quirk works by drastically spiking the odds of singular, low-probability events, and I was focusing on finding a crime to stop that would help me become a worthy hero. And it bee-lined me straight to the ATM guy being all villainy outside of your apartment! I totally lucked out! I mean, that was kind of the point and all, but-"

Miss Midnight silences me by way of pats to the head. "That's impressive," she says, and there's a note of honesty to her voice that makes me smile. "Don't tell anyone about your Quirk. Ever. Okay, sweetheart?"

"What- um?" The smile falls off my face, but I nod. My Quirk could be fucking dangerous in a determined villain's hands, as I was just thinking about earlier. A lot of people would try to use and abuse it. Hell, I would have, in my past life. "Yeah, I... I get it. You knew my name, so you had to look me up on the Registry, right? So you saw that my Quirk is just listed as 'Bad Luck.' I never told anybody more about it. Well... except for you, just now, but that's okay, right?"

"Yes." She smiles, and walks over behind the desk to sit down in her soft-looking chair. She gestures for me to sit on the desk itself and, awkwardly, I do. Perks to being tiny, I guess; I'm just shy of five foot. "Now... how does it work, exactly?"

I blink. "I don't... really know what words to use? It's like a sixth sense, y' know? I have these two batteries inside of me, and the little one very slowly fills with good luck, while the big one recharges really fast with bad luck. It takes about a week to fill the good luck battery, and about a day to fill the bad luck battery. If both of them run out, my luck turns sour and I'll trip down a flight of stairs or something, and the same thing happens if I lose control of a hex – that's, um, that's what I call it when I throw bad luck at something. If they're full, I lose control of my Quirk and start firing off whatever luck I have too much of at random. I've only let that happen a few times, and it's always been bizarre."

"Sounds interesting," she muses, before lazily pointing a finger at me. "No bad luck inside Siren Place, alright? I don't need a wire to snap or a termite to get in or something. That's just good manners."

I raise my hands a little defensively. "It's a bit more controlled than that... I get to choose what odds I want to spike. Not the how, but the what. I have no idea how that gas main exploded... but I did decide that it would explode."

"Still." She puffs out her cheeks a little bit, and starts pulling paperwork out of a drawer. "We're not the only ones who live here, it's only right to show a little common courtesy."

"I'm moving in?" I say, cat's eyes widening. Then they dilate. "Other people live here?"

She waves a hand around the room lazily. "You don't think I have all this space just for myself, do you? I split rent with a few other teachers at U.A. It's only logical."

"It's only logical," I echo, a little numb.

"And of course you're moving in! What kind of hero would I be, if I let my sidekick live in a box out on the streets when I have four guest bedrooms going criminally unslept in?"

"I don't live in a box-"

"Well, not anymore. I just gave you a bedroom. Keep up, Manami." She clicks her tongue at me, and slides a pen and a small mountain of her paperwork across the desk.

After scrawling my stylized (read: barely legible) kanji for Manami three times across as many pages, I still and frown at it. "What am I signing?"

"The adoption papers, of course."

.

…

.

"Manami?" Miss Midnight's voice drips with concern. "Are you alright, sweetheart?"

"You're adopting me," I state. Can she hear the full impact of the disbelief I'm feeling? I somehow doubt it. "Me. You. Adopting."

"That's what I just said, yes," she affirms.

"Why?"

Her hands clasp over mine. I hadn't realized that they had become fists. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Why the fuck would you?" I tear my hands away, but my cowardly eyes burn a hole in the floor. I don't know when I jumped off of the desk. "You just met me last night. You took me in, made me your sidekick, and now you're adopting me? I- please, tell me why. I don't understand."

She takes a long moment to respond. "Do you know why I became a hero, Manami?"

"I-" I reel at the apparent non-sequitur, but I respect her too much to snap at her. "No, I don't. I've watched all your interviews, but you always deflect."

"That's because I'm ashamed of the answer," she says bluntly, and I swallow. "I didn't become a hero to stop villains or inspire hope or help people. I became a hero because I saw that heroes were respected, that they were admired, and I'd spent all my life being shunned because of my indiscriminate, uncontrollable Quirk, and I wanted that. I wanted that more than anything. So I put on a skintight bodysuit and a little red mask, and I walked out of my apartment at two o' clock in the morning, and I knocked out the first group of suspicious characters I saw with my Somna. They were just homeless people, they weren't hurting anybody, but Manami, tell me, do you know the thrill I felt?"

Yes. I want to say it, but the word catches in my throat and it makes me feel sick.

"Eventually, I got better at it," she continues in that same calm, infuriating tone of voice, as she tears all my starry-eyed misconceptions of her to shreds. "Eventually, a teacher at U.A., an actual hero, found me not making a complete fool of myself, and he offered me a recommendation. He doctored my records, made me fifteen instead of seventeen, and the next thing I know I'm dressed in a fancy uniform and going to school, looking to actually make something of myself. It took me another seven years and losing a fight to Shouta to finally get it through my thick head that, yes, being a hero isn't about the hero, it's about all the people we help, but I made it there eventually."

My palms are slick with blood. My nails... I didn't even notice. "What are you getting at, Miss Midnight?"

"None of that 'Miss' bullshit," she says. "My name is Nemuri."

"Miss Nemuri," I try.

"Good enough." She snorts. It's the most inelegant thing I've seen her do. "What I'm getting at, is that I was on the rooftop of this very building when I saw that villain stick his hand in the ATM."

My mouth makes a perfect 'O.' The actual sound doesn't escape my lips.

"I was about to interfere, when I saw you. You were just this scrawny kid, couldn't be older than twelve, and you were spitting out all these terrible lines like you just stepped off the pages of a comic book. I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought you were insane. I almost stepped in then."

"Why... why didn't you?"

"I was curious," she admits without shame. "Can you blame me? I had to know: were you really so blind that you didn't recognize the danger you were in, or was it all part of a master plan to infuriate him into making a mistake? And then he lunged at you, and I saw the fear in your eyes, and I was sure it was the former. I didn't step in then because I wanted to watch you get roughed up a little; I can be that kind of nasty person, sometimes. Then you popped off another quip, and I realized I was wrong; it was option three. You were honestly buying what you were selling."

"I thought it would be funny," I interject weakly.

"You're the kind of person who is in the hero gig not for the money or the power or to have your name strewn in shining lights," she goes on, ignoring me. "You're in it because you want to help people. This little girl, seeing what I couldn't see when I was twice her age. I knew I wanted you as a sidekick long before you made that street explode."

You're wrong. My desire to be a hero is entirely selfish. "And... and the adoption?"

"I researched you while you slept, of course. I had to know what I was dealing with. And, every word I read... it reminded me of myself, and I knew I had so much to teach you, and you me. It's what the hero thing is all about, sweetheart. It wasn't a matter of 'should I do this?' and 'but what if I do that?' My heart made the decision before my mind first realized the possibility. I've learned long ago not to argue when my heart runs off and does things like that."

Tears are streaming from my eyes. I don't... I haven't reached atonement yet. I haven't washed my soul clean, yet. I still produce... so much more bad karma than I do good. That's how my Quirk works; I realized it ages ago. When I've atoned, when I become worthy of things like family again, I'll be making so much more good luck than I will bad. I'm not... I'm not anywhere close, and some days it feels like I'll never make it.

"Will you sign it? Will you join my family, become Kayama Manami instead of just Manami?" Her voice, earlier so very calm, now seems impossibly fragile. I could shatter it with a word. "If you don't, I'll understand. You can still live here and you'll still be my sidekick, but I think-"

"Miss Nemuri, I, I'm so grateful, really I am, but I-" refuse, I want to say, need to say, but the word catches in my throat. I try to spit it out, the world's ugliest hairball, but I can't. I just can't.

Because I want this. I want this so bad. This, this moment, is what I had dedicated my entire life to earning. Family. I thought it would come at the end of a long, painful road, full of selfless good deeds and slow atonement, but it's here, a bare handful of hours after the very first time I snuck out of my window at half past midnight to beat up criminals. And, I – I feel like I haven't earned it yet, feel like I don't deserve it yet.

Is this a test from God? To see if I'll back out of my chosen path at the very first opportunity? But, no, it can't be; if it was, she wouldn't have asked me to be her sidekick before asking me to be her daughter. There wouldn't be this implicit assumption that she would teach me to be a hero. If this was to tempt me away from my quest for atonement, Miss Nemuri would be a lawyer or a baker or a florist, or literally anything except for one of the most famous and well-respected heroes in the nation.

Unless that's the catch. I've thought a lot about how hard it would be to wash my soul clean, but never once did I think I would be given help, given guidance. Does God expect me to do this alone? If He does, then I need to turn Miss Nemuri down and go back to that lonely orphanage, and do this alone. She told me that I'm forbidden by the local law enforcement to do hero work alone, though, and if that isn't a clear-cut sign from God that I should get a partner, than I don't know what is.

Or... or, maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I may have used my Quirk, but I just don't believe that I could be so insanely lucky as to be asked to be adopted by someone like Miss Nemuri, regardless of her sadism and less-than-stellar past; that actually makes me more able to empathize with her, not less. This has to be the work of God. There's no other explanation.

I thought a family would be waiting for me at the end of the road, but it looks like they're spread out all across it. I took the first step, and found Miss Nemuri. I found a mother. She may not be mine now, legal papers aside, but the potential is there.

Now, I have something to lose. The thought makes me shiver.

"I understand-"

I swallow. "You don't. I... I would love to join your family. I'm just not sure I'm worth it."

"Stupid girl," she says, and my eyes jerk up to hers in surprise and hurt – and she musses my dark violet hair, a fond but slightly sad smile twisting her lips. "Everyone is worthy of love, of being saved by a hero. That's what it means to be human. Okay? So stop looking so pathetic, put on a smile, and let's go eat pancakes. The paperwork can wait a few hours."

"Pancakes," I drawl, and for the first time in years I let my American accent thicken the word, the dark culture of my first home dripping from my tongue like acid. I hiccup, and laugh – though whether it's at the sound or my newly adoptive mother's kindness, I have no idea. "Pancakes sound good."

.

…

.

So we ditch the paperwork and go across the street to an American cafe, and Miss Nemuri talks shit about her colleagues for an hour while I help her plan creative pranks that are sure to annoy or embarrass them. More than a few feature random yet precise spikes of bad luck, which obviously can't be traced back to us, because we'd have rock-solid alibis.

Not once did she mention my obvious inadequacy issues, which I'm thankful for. In fact, she doesn't mention the adoption at all. I'm grateful for this. For a woman famous for her talent to get under people's skins and push their buttons, she's – perhaps unsurprisingly – rather tactful when she wants to be. She knows that family is a bit of a sore subject for me, so she lets me get used to the idea before bringing it up again. This lets me freak out about signing adoption papers in relative peace, and quietly scream at myself for tearing apart the script and not remaining a sad little orphan.

But I am so, so glad I did. I feel better; I feel lighter, somehow. Before I was Atlas, holding on my shoulders the weight of the sky; now I have someone in my corner, and it doesn't feel so heavy.

Miss Nemuri is talking, weaving some story about U.A. again. She tells a lot of stories, I've discovered, and almost all of them are set in U.A. It's clear in the fond twist to her voice that she really, genuinely cares about the place, and for a moment between heartbeats all I want to do is reach a hand into her brain and change her everything so that she'll talk about me in the same way. I bury the desire immediately. She may have given me a sense of family that I really don't deserve, and I'll always love her for that, but there's no need to try and make that feeling mutual – if she ever looks at me with more than mild affection in her brilliant blue eyes, I think I'll run away. I don't think there's any other way I'd know how to respond.

"You really like working there, don't you?" I ask when she slows down. I like listening to her talk, even if I don't recognize any of the names she says and don't understand any of the implied backstory that she doesn't. "Is it just the people, or...?"

She hums, tapping the back of a chopstick to her cheek. "U.A. turned my life around, sweetheart," she eventually explains. "The people are what's really important, of course, but it's useless to deny that almost all of my most precious memories took place there. It's where I met my closest friends, and it's where I continue to find fulfillment even now."

I cock my head. "You live there, don't you? The apartment is just for when school's not in session."

"Aah." She smiles. "We teachers have dorms there, you see. At first, it was just convenient – but it eventually became home. Maybe it always was."

A little worry seeps into my expression. She interprets it long before I have the opportunity to shove it back into its little box in my mind.

"I won't leave you in Siren Place all alone, Manami," she says. "Actually, I was wondering... I may have snuck a look at your grades, and you're quite the little over-achiever, aren't you? Maybe you should think about attending U.A., next semester."

I blink at her. "...By next semester, you mean, what, in five weeks?"

"What?" Her smile turns a bit sly. "Can't you do it?"

"I have to skip another grade and qualify for the most prestigious hero school in the country... in five weeks."

"You've skipped one before and still maintain an A-average. What's the problem? Are you saying... you can't do it?"

I take a moment to think about it. In my past life, I was a medical student at the University of Chicago and heiress to a family fortune that's been building for the greater part of a hundred years – so, yes, I used that little leg-up to skip past second grade. In my defense, it was really, really boring.

She is wildly overestimating my educational capacity, though. To be fair, it's only logical to assume someone who skipped a grade, maintained straight A's, and moonlighted as a vigilante would have a truly impressive capacity for learning, and thus would be able to stomp all over baseline tests meant to examine the lowest common denominator of fifteen-year-olds. There are a few things Miss Nemuri is failing to take into account, though, through no fault of her own.

For one, this is Japan and not America, and for two, this isn't even the same planet as the one I was originally educated in. A lot of the science I learned growing up the last time around has been updated as new discoveries and technological innovations rewrite our understanding of reality. Even more starkly, the history I was raised with and the one I'm being tested on have a lot of weird little inconsistencies, as it turns out the shining baby isn't the divergence point, just the most obvious difference; that's not even going into all the ways heroes and villains have changed society since then. Even if that wasn't the case, it's not like I learned a lot of Japanese history in my Illinois social studies classes. The further into the educational system I go, the less of an advantage I have.

Then there's the fact that all of the tests are, you know, in Japanese.

Japanese is hard, man.

If it weren't for me basically auto-passing most of mathematics, English, and huge swathes of random other classes that happen to align with early 2000s America's, I just... wouldn't be able to do this. I will still have to dedicate almost the entirety of the five weeks before the Entrance Exams obsessively smashing my head against my textbooks until I, I don't know, passively absorb its knowledge through psychic osmosis or something. That's a thing, right? I'm sure it's a thing.

Miss Nemuri quirks an eyebrow, and I sniff haughtily. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I think I can do it or not. What matters is that Miss Nemuri wants this to happen, and if she wants the moon, I'll build a rocket and get it for her.

"Of course I can do it."

.

…

.

I pass by the skin of my teeth.

…

…

…

A few things.

This story is rated T for graphic language, canon-typical violence, and Manami's tragic fucking backstory. There will be no explicit sex and it is very, very unlikely that Manami's romantic development will ever advance past the 'puppy love' stage, because she's only thirteen god dammit.

That's also half the premise – the idea behind this story can basically be summed up as, "What if the SI didn't reincarnate with their mental maturity and development, but still got all the sad memories?" In other words, Manami is indeed a thirteen-year-old girl, but one traumatized by the memories of her past life all throughout her formative years. This is why she can be so calculating and curse like a sailor one moment, then ramble on about heroes and pancakes and kittens the next. She's a thirteen-year-old who thinks she's a twenty-four-year-old criminal sex trafficker. Throw in some malformed ideas about God, and you get one fucked up little girl.

And, no, Midnight doesn't love her. Maybe one day, but that's a long way off.

Lastly, because I don't care to rehash the source material in my fan stories, you can consider all of the stations of canon thrown out the window. Manami never read HeroAca, because HeroAca never existed. Next chapter is the Entrance Exams, and you'll see that it's almost entirely different. A lot of story arcs will be completely re-imagined like that – recognizable on the surface, but otherwise completely new. I think it's more fun, that way.

Oh- one last thing. This story will be almost entirely romanized. 'Sama' and 'san' is replaced by 'Miss,' 'Yuuei' by 'U.A.,' etc. A few things will stick because I feel it loses something in translation, like putting family names before given names, but I think that including honorifics will detract from the story and I've always placed importance on consistency in things like this.