Chapter Text
Prologue
The last thing I remembered was a bright flash of light, and a really loud… well, I guess FUMP is the way to put it. What other word is there for a massive release of concussive force, but one that you weren’t around to see the eventual explosion from. It wasn’t even the biggest surprise either; I worked on Capitol Hill, and the current administration, well... it spawned protests like rabbits.
And I’d forgotten one very important thing: some protesters are violent, and those same people would try to arrive nice and early so everything was 'in place', which is why we received warnings on the days of scheduled protests to arrive early, and use the alternate entrance. I’d forgotten to go in the ‘hidden’ employee entrance at the building where I worked (it’s not really hidden, it’s just really hard to notice), and had gone in the front.
I guess that’s how I got caught in the blast of… whatever it was. My last though wasn’t anything profound. I didn’t hope for an afterlife, or pray that maybe Buddhism was right and I’d gotten enough good karma.
My last thought was quite simply: “Damn it, I forgot to take out the trash last night, didn’t I?”
* * * * *
[???]
When awareness returned, I’ll admit, I was surprised. I was fairly certain I had just… well, you know. Bought the farm. Moved upstate. Kicked the bucket. Stood before the pearly gates. Had my time come. Okay, how many euphemisms for died can I use before I run out?... oh, I’m out. Never mind that.
What does matter is that everything is too damn bright, my head is too damn heavy, and oh dear lord no why am I moving something’s holding me put me down put me down put me dow—
“Congratulations!” I heard a voice say. Or actually no, it wasn’t exactly that. That’s what I understood it to be. What was actually said was much more along the lines of… hang on, that was Japanese, wasn’t it? My skill with the language was rusty, but I still recognized it when I heard it. That was… oh no. Please don’t say it. Please tell me it isn’t true.
God, Allah, YHWH, Ahura Mazda, Buddha, C’thulhu, whatever deity may be listening, please don’t say I need to go through all this again. I had a decent enough life. One was fine. I don’t need to—
“It’s a girl!”
God. Fucking. DAMN IT!
That was it. This was too much. This was all just… just… I couldn’t help it. I cried like the baby that I was.
* * * * *
[AGE THREE]
Did you know time slips by in really weird ways when you can’t even stay awake for more than a couple hours at a time? Or just how frustrating it is to understand everything that’s going on around you, but not be able to communicate at all beyond some very vague gestures?
Well firstly, time is a funny thing. As you get older, lengths of time start to become much more relative to how much life you’ve already lived. For a ten-year-old, an hour seems like an impossibly long period of time. For a senior citizen, on the other hand, waiting an hour is probably relatively simple. They’ve lived so many hours and years that one hour is child’s play for them. Well, I was in a particularly… alright, there’s no way to get around this. I was in a bizarre situation as far as my perception of time went. I was just shy of—damn it I died just before my 25th birthday too didn’t I!?—alright, sorry, that was… that was uncalled for. I need to relax.
Anyway. I died (yeah, we’re not putting window dressing on that anymore) just before my 25th birthday. And now I was a baby again. But while my age may have reset itself, my mental maturity, my understanding, and for the purposes of this explanation, my perception of time? Those hadn’t changed. I still felt an hour like I would have when I was older, more patient, and needing to wait outside the courtroom on door duty for the hour (occasionally longer) of the argument. I could read the clocks and know time was passing, and I think my new parents had already picked up that something about me was special. Oh wait, no, they already knew that. Turns out I ended up in a world I knew next to nothing about.
If this was Naruto, or Bleach, or even one of the crapsack worlds like Evangelion, I would be perfectly fine. I knew just about anything there was to know about what was going to happen. But here? Nope.
I’d seen maybe three episodes of My Hero Academia. I had no idea how these ‘quirk’ things worked. What I did know was that there was some measure of inheritance involved, and that mine had bred true.
First, let’s go with my mother. Yaseiki Kimiko. The Japanese propensity for photo albums seriously paid off here, because while she didn’t realize I understood everything (or at least enough to figure out the rest), my new mother had taught me all I needed to know about her and what she was capable of. Formerly a pro hero by the name of Wildling, Kimiko had a Quirk that she called Skinwalker. She was a shapeshifter, capable of taking on anatomy and scaled-up physical abilities from the entire animal kingdom. She couldn’t transform her entire body, at least some part of her had to remain human, but I’d spent enough time in what had to be a kangaroo’s pouch to understand the sheer utility and versatility of this power.
While she wasn’t a pro hero anymore, Kimiko still helped society in an incredibly important way, thanks to her Quirk. See, what I would’ve overlooked had it not been pointed out was that being able to take on the biological abilities of the entire animal kingdom meant my new mom had a particular capacity for chemistry that was far beyond even the most effective molecular assemblers that could exist. Kimiko was an experimental disease specialist. When you have access to every single organic compound that ever has existed or ever will exist, suddenly cures that would seem out of reach are within the realm of possibility. She’s renowned enough in Japan that any time a major poison user appears, the local hero groups keep modes of transport ready to fly her out, wherever and whenever.
All that said, it’s very hard for me to take my new mom seriously when she, and I cannot repeat this enough, grows a kangaroo pouch to carry me around in.
And then there’s my new dad.
Dad 2.0 is a Pro Hero by the name of Native. When I first learned his hero name and, even worse, saw a photo of his costume, I choked. I mean, there was also a spark of recognition cause I’m fairly certain I saw some mentions of a character named Native on one of my many wikiwalks when bored at work, but it was mostly choking. Thankfully, I was only a toddler at the time, and my new mother is a trained medical professional, so there was no risk to me at the time.
But seriously, the idea of a Japanese man dressing like he was wearing cosplay straight out of Disney’s Pocahontas and calling himself Native was enough to send me into a literal conniption. Then I found out that Native, real name Yaseiki Kenta, actually is part Native American. Navajo, to be precise. A few generations back a Navajo soldier stationed at Okinawa met a girl, fell in love, they had a kid, and then it turned out that he had a fiancé back stateside so great grandma kicked him far, far to the curb and ignored his existence. It took two generations for my father to track down his roots, and he spent at least half a decade learning from the Navajo, getting in touch with that part of his heritage. Upon his return to Japan, he took on a new name and costume, calling himself Native in honor of his heritage.
See? What is appropriation on the surface may not always be. Plus, the idea of a Native American spiritualist fits perfectly with his powers. Almost too perfectly, honestly... then again, this is a superhero universe. Overly fitting backgrounds and names are just part and parcel of it. But I'm getting off topic, aren't I?
Native named his Quirk Shamanic Totem. He can take on the aspects of a wild spirit, usually an animal, and can use the full range of that animal’s natural abilities. It also creates a sort of spiritual “shroud” around him in the vague shape of the animal he’s using as his totem, and it can be the shape of the animal itself or adapted to human. His favorite offensive is using grizzly bears, because everything is more awesome with bears involved. That said, he seems to be limited to air-breathers. When teaching me to swim at the age of three (wait, how old am I now!?), he tried to call on a shark. It fizzled hilariously, and instead he went with a dolphin.
And then, there was the time I used my Quirk for the first time… let me tell you, that was a shock. I mean, intellectually I knew I most likely hadone, but to actually experience what it means to have superpowers? Well…
It is both less awesome than it sounds… and so, so much more.
-------
The first time I used my Quirk was the day before my fourth birthday. Mom had made taiyaki with chocolate in the center to have at my party the next day, but I really, really wanted one while they were fresh. The problem? She knew this just as well as I did, and had put the baking sheets with taiyaki on the table… and pulled all the chairs away. I was still a wee tyke, and there was no way I had the upper body strength to pull myself up to that table.
That being said, I had a sweet tooth a mile long, both in my past life and in this one. If there were sweets nearby I would find them, I would eat them, and then I would find more. People can’t sugarcoat things for me because I’d eat that too. So I figured, eh, I’m a toddler again, nobody will think it’s weird that I’m doing something so silly.
Our house was, well, standard Japanese really, minus the Navajo decorations everywhere. Two story, kitchen and combined living/dining room on the bottom, along with what used to be a master suite converted into a pair of offices for mom and dad; the bedrooms and bathrooms were on the top floor. We only had one real ‘bathroom’, with a full shower and bath set; the rest were just water closets with a toilet and sink, or what we in the United States (during my previous life anyway) would have called a ‘powder room’. With the taiyaki cooling on the counter for a decent bit of time, mom would probably be up in her office-cum-lab, analyzing samples and experimenting to see if she could finagle anything new. This meant she wouldn’t be paying any attention to the kitchen, or any strange noises coming from it.
And so I tried jumping up onto the table. I jumped, and failed. I jumped, and failed again. And again. And again. And again! And again, and again, and again, and eventually, while jumping, I wondered to myself whether cats ever felt frustrated when they went to make a jump and failed. You know, like that old George Carlin skit, where the cat failed the jump, but they meant to do that, they totally meant to do that… fucking meow!
And the next thing I knew, I was suddenly above the table, and falling back down towards it. I flailed a bit… or at least I tried to. My arms and legs just sort of righted themselves in midair, getting perfectly into position to land with minimal shock or stress to my limbs.
That’s when I noticed they were glowing. And the glowing, well, aura looked a little bit like… well, like paws. I’d just used my Quirk for the first time. It was similar to my dad’s, but with the ability to do it piecemeal like my mom’s transformation.
And by golly did that taiyaki taste ever so sweet.
* * * * *
[AGE FIVE]
More time passed, as it was wont to do. The pace of it was rather surprising though, I’ll say that much, and soon enough I was five years old. Again. I could walk, I could talk, Native had already gotten me well underway with learning English, and I’d had to fake becoming fluent really quickly over a period of a year. That was… not easy. I’d nearly slipped up many times, specifically because I was still a stickler for grammar, but I think I managed to pass it off as just being a case of that mental plasticity little kids have.
As for my Quirk, I’d gotten plenty of practice in with it. It was the kind of thing that kids our age just tended to use. Quirks showed up by the age of four if they were going to at all, and you know how kids are with toys; once they get a new toy, they are going to spend the whole damn day playing with it. And a Quirk is basically just a toy that keeps getting more and more fun to play around with. The more you use your Quirk, the better you are at using it, and the more versatile you are with it.
And given how Quirk-centric society is, is it any surprise that my parents, and many other kids’ parents, set stuff up so we could experiment with our Quirks in the context of fun and games?
* * * * *
“Now Kanna-chan, you remember the rules right?” My father spoke in that particular tone that we all easily identified as ‘parental’; it’s the same voice that seems standard when you’re talking to a little kid or a class of kindergarteners, but if you started using that tone with anybody over the fourth grade, it meant they were in deep shit. Given I was not even old enough for kindergarten yet, it was being used the first way.
“Yes daddy,” I replied. For the fifth time. Seriously, soccer isn’t that hard.
“And whatever you do—”
“Don’t let that dumb Iida boy score all the goals!” A hand came out of nowhere to pat my head and ruffle my hair, and I tried to slap it away before it could do so. Key word? Tried. I failed.
“Atta girl. And we’re here!”
Dad and I walked through the gate of Hosu City Memorial Park, just a standard combination of field and playground, though there was a memorial placard off to the side describing the wishes of some or other hero who had passed on, and whose will had allocated the funds for the park. Imagine a school playground. Now adjoin a fairly decent sized field to it, a bit bigger than an American football field, but not quite as large as a soccer (or ‘footie’, or ‘futbol’, or just ‘football’, whatever) field. Also, surround it with apartment complexes full of families on the north and south sides, and housing on the east and west. Why that particular layout came to be I don’t know, but, well, you have Hosu City Memorial Park down to a T.
“Ah, Yaseiki-san! You made it!” I looked up to see a man with pale skin, jet-black here, and rectangular, rimless glasses waving to my father and me. Next to him stood two younger boys: one of them appeared to be in his teens, and was wearing a tracksuit with… wait, is that a UA tracksuit? Huh. The younger of the two boys next to him was probably my age, also sporting black hair in a fairly bland cut, but he was wearing what could only be prescription sports goggles. Either the kid wanted them himself because he thought they looked more like a hero’s headgear, or his parents were tired of having to constantly replace broken glasses.
“H-hello!” The boy ran over to me, a lot faster than I thought he would be capable of at that age… and promptly faceplanted two feet away from me, with… was that exhaust? I sniffed. Yeah, with exhaust billowing from shiny metal ports in his calves.
Yeah, definitely option two: fed up with broken glasses.
He sprung back up none the worse for wear, though, and soon extended his hand to me… which he then began to move up and down as though he was already shaking mine.
“My name is Tenya! Iida Tenya! And you’re Yaseiki… something!” I grabbed his hand to stop him from shaking. This did not work; soon my entire body was rocking and rolling like a ship on a stormy sea.
“I’m,” I tried to stop myself, “Kanna,” and it failed again, “please,” I grabbed his arm with my other hand, “let go,” and pulled, “of me!”
It didn’t work well. It took shaking side to side to get Tenya to let go, and even then he sprung right back up, none the worse for wear. How much pep did this kid have!?
“Anyways, you’re the first two to arrive. A few more and we can get this underway!” Mr. Iida gave my father a look and a smile, and while I could see him smile back at Mr. Iida, it was just a little bit strained. I didn’t have long to ruminate on this, though, because more and more kids and parents started showing up.
And then we were off to the races.
“C’mon Kanna-chan, you can do it!”
“Stop her Tenya-kun! Steal the ball back!”
And Tenya proceeded to do just that. Try as I might, I just could not move fast enough to keep the ball away from that boy. His footwork was unreal for a four-year-old. I had the advantage of being mentally much older… but against this kid’s raw physical ability, it was nothing! If I wanted to get an edge, I needed to match him in speed and agility—
Tenya’s leg-engines stalled out for a moment, and he faceplanted again, letting the ball fly well away from our goal and straight out.
—and beat him on endurance. But I couldn’t think of an animal that would do that off the top of my head. Tenya was like a cheetah; he was all flash and substance, but not much staying power. If I had to put him in a race, he’d blow away most sprinters, but more of them are longer affairs, and a long distancer would be hale and hearty like a wait a minute.
I thought of a horse. Not just any horse, though; a mustang. A wild, undomesticated horse, roaming the plains, constantly on the lookout, ready to dart at a moment’s notice if it saw something it didn’t like creeping across the grasslands. The glow came over my legs, and a moment later, I was dashing after Tenya, whose engines had fired back up during my pondering.
I got close while he zigged and zagged, his fancy feet making my teammates trip and stumble over themselves, but once he started off at a dead run towards our goal, I lost ground. It was only when Iida slowed to try and line up a shot that I managed to glide right past him—
—and steal the ball away!
Then I lost my balance. I tried to use my Quirk to get myself back on balance, and the glow spread across my entire body… for an instant. Then I felt an exhaustion fall over me, and the glow of my totem animal dissipated entirely, leaving me on the ground gasping for air.
Five minutes later I was back on my feet, keeping the horse to my legs, and stymieing Tenya’s every attempt to score!
Unfortunately, he did the same to me. His team beat mine, 3-1.
I don’t like Iida Tenya.
-------
And that’s how I learned how to better use my Quirk! Well, the ‘channeling a totem animal’ part, anyway.
The other aspect of my Quirk was that, if I was trying to do something human anatomy couldn’t, I would slightly shapeshift to allow for what I wanted. Like when I was playing Marco Polo at the community pool and accidentally shapeshifted gills to stay under as long as I wanted. Now that was a surprise, let me tell you. Overall, it’s a very good Quirk. Lots of potential, plenty of room for improvement, but I still hadn’t won the superpower lottery. I’d gotten a decent ticket, but not the golden one. That one went straight to All Might. Hoo boy, I’ve seen hammy people before, but All Might is something else entirely. I can see why people are so taken in with him; that kind of charisma is nothing to be taken lightly!
… wait. Something important with All Might happens around the time I’m supposed to be in high school again, right? Damn it, I can’t remember.
“Kanna-chan!”
My dad’s voice pulled me out of my musings. I looked myself over in the mirror. Long, jet-black hair pulled tight into a braid, tied at the end with a patterned leather strip. And, much as I really didn’t want to be wearing it… a white t-shirt, a soft leather jerkin over it, and a Native American-patterned skirt with similar sandals completed the ensemble. I still wasn’t used to wearing skirts.
I was even less used to suddenly being Native American… and Japanese. Wearing something like this was reserved for Halloween only, and even then you had to be careful not to go too overboard. This? This was overboard. This was so far overboard that even… huh, I don’t have a good analogy to go with this one. Darn.
“Coming!”
So, uh. Meet the new me, I guess? My new name is Yaseiki Kanna. Family name, wild spirit. Given name, shortened corruption of Kannagi, an archaic Japanese for shrine maiden, literally meaning ‘one who talks to/calms the Kami’. I think. Meanings are weird.
No, enough time for that later in life, I’m still a little kid here. And now poppa Native was going to take me into Hosu City and show off Daddy’s Little Girl to all the other Pro Heroes on his day off.
Joy…
-------
Once we got into Hosu City, the first stop was the Iida family, like Tenya from before. Apparently the whole 'leg-engines' thing wasn't just Tenya. Nope, they all had a similar Quirk, which I was told all about...
“—and the Iida all have this amazing Quirk, which lets them move super fast, zoom, zoom, and hit things real hard, ker-pow!”
… right now. In dumbed down child-speak, because it was assumed I couldn’t understand otherwise. A perfectly valid assumption I will admit, but my spoken Japanese comprehension had become flawless. It was just those damn Kanji that gave me trouble now.
“—Oh, and that boy you play soccer with, Tenya-kun! Also…” dad leaned in close while we walked, a hand keeping his voice from carrying, “I think he has a crush on you, Kanna-chan.”
I stopped dead. Nope. Nope, nope. Nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nope nop—
“Kanna-chan, Kanna-chan! What is it, what’s wrong?”
…
“W-was I saying that out loud?” I asked. Native nodded. “Darn it.”
“Language, young lady!” And there came the instant reply, aghast. “And where did you hear that language, little miss!?” I looked up at dad and had to suppress a smile. I saw my chance.
“Tenya-san.”
I saw dad’s face contort in a very entertaining way. The expressions he was making ranged from severely constipated, to trying to frown and sneer at the same time, to “I’m failing really badly at not laughing”, all the way back to a very good impression of a Moai statute.
“That Iida boy will never lay a hand on my precious little girl! Why, when I give those pretentious Tenka and Tensho a piece of my mind, they’ll—”
”I finally found you…”, a voice spoke, in English. ”Native…”
I felt a chill run down my spine. That voice… it sounded so cold. So dead.
I tilted my head up to look at where the voice came from, and set eyes on an absolute monster of a man. Thick, ropy, pale scar tissue covered nearly every inch of the man’s exposed skin, and a brown-red stained muscle shirt, particles flaking off of it with every small bit of wind that passed, covered the rest of his torso. He wore tattered, ruined camouflage fatigues, and heavily worn-out jackboots protected his feet. His hands seemed to have bony growths and protrusions along every joint and knuckle, with claws at the end of each finger, and jagged, bladed edges of bone following the lines of his arms up to his biceps, extending multiple inches from his skin and nearly half a foot out the end of his forearm, anchored to his elbows. Dog tags clattered around his neck, many more than any one person should have been wearing. He had a ragged, messy hole where his left eye should have been, and he bared the teeth in his snarling, fanged maw.
He smelled of blood and death. He smelled of murder.
“Wendigo…” My father looked up at the villain—for what else could he be?—perched atop the building. My mind took in the word: wendigo. A Native American monster, often former humans, similar in nature to the skinwalker depending on which tribe you asked. Monstrous demihumans, formed by malice and hatred and given life through cannibalism or autophagia.
Those were American combat fatigues.
“How did you get out?” Speaking English as well, Native moved carefully, positioning himself to block me from the villain’s line of sight. I wanted to move, wanted to run. I’d been in danger before in my previous life, but never at the hands of another person. And never something quite like this. For the first time I could remember, I truly felt mortal terror. And for the first time in either life…
As the fear took hold, I lost control of my bladder.
Wendigo sniffed the air. “Cute kid, injun. She yours? She smells just like you did back then…” The villain licked his lips, and his mouth seemed to expand larger than a normal face would allow. “Bet she tastes good too. Sugar and spice and everything nice.” His jaw parted, revealing rows and rows of fangs sprouting from inside his mouth. “Like you did, but so. Much. Better!”
With a motion I nearly didn’t comprehend, Wendigo spat. An aura flared to life around my father as he blocked… something. It clattered off of his skin and fell to the ground, and then I got a good look at what it was. Wendigo’s teeth.
He had spat his teeth at me like some kind of missile.
“Kanna.” I looked to my father, and saw something in his eyes that I couldn’t place.
”Run.”
I didn’t think twice. I called the horse to my legs and sprinted as fast as I could maintain.
“You can run, kiddo, but I will track you. I will find you! And I will gnaw on your bones!!”
I ran. Wendigo leapt for me. Native blocked and I heard someone impact a building. I spared a look back and saw Wendigo pulling himself from the brickwork, and a raging bear surround my father. He turned and saw me looking, and I flinched. I could see the rage building in his eyes.
“I said RUN!”
I turned tail. I could still feel some urine dribbling down my legs, the glow of the horse augmenting my legs doing nothing to stop the shame. I ran.
I ran. Maybe I should look back no he could be right behind me I had to keep going was Dad going to be okay no I had to keep running I can't outrun him oh God what do I do there has to be some way out of this duck down that alleyway no stick to the main street keep going head for the police station you can make it you have to—
CRACK
And I fell. My Quirk dissipated, but I know I could still sense it. It was still there. It was still going strong. And getting stronger every moment.
Then something in my left leg broke. And then something in my right leg broke. And then another, and another, and another. I’d felt pain in my legs before. I’d torn my ACL and given myself countless injuries in track and cross country. But not this. Not like this.
Never like this.
I could feel my legs shattering. They were coming apart, and I could feel every second of it. My bones splintered, my muscles shredded, my tendons ripped to pieces.
I screamed. And I cried. And I vomited. And I whimpered, and I heaved, and I trembled, and I shivered, and I suffered. And through it all, I felt every single bit of it. Until suddenly I didn’t.
I lay there, waiting on a side street, trembling in a pool of my own vomit and tears. I’d not felt anything like this. Not pain like this. Never like this.
Never like this.
“Kanna-chan! You there, call an ambulance, now! Kanna-chan, stay with me. Kanna-chan. Kanna, Kanna!” My vision was tinny. I couldn’t see from my peripherals. But I knew that voice. That was dad.
He was bloody. He was favoring an arm. He was staring at me, but not quite at me. He was looking lower.
“I c-c-c—” I heaved again, but nothing came out. I could hear the ambulance around the corner.
“It’s okay Kanna, just hold on a little longer!”
“c-can’t feel,” I choked out. “My legs… can’t—”
My mind shut down.
* * * * *
I awoke to an obnoxious, droning beeping, a painful crick in my elbow, and a pressure on each hand. I tried to lift my arms, but even if something hadn’t been holding on to my hands, I don’t think I would’ve been able to. I felt fatigued. Weak. Worn, and sore. Like I’d gone a hundred rounds as Little Mac’s punching bag, or thrown through every wall of a skyscraper.
My eyes started to adjust to the light, and I could see something on my face, covering my nose and mouth. An oxygen mask? I tried to look to what was on my hands, but even moving my eyes was hard, and that tiny bit of exertion was enough to almost exhaust me. I saw mom on my left, and I guessed that other pressure was dad on my right. They both looked like wrecks.
“Wait, is she—Kimiko, she, she’s awake! Kanna’s awake!” Dad reached over to my mother, wincing as he did so, and shook her awake.
“Mmm… what is—K-kanna?” My mother’s eyes filled with tears, and I could tell it took all she had to not throw herself on me. I don’t think I could have taken it if she had. I hurt.
“W—” I coughed. And then I kept coughing. Something was in my throat, and my gag reflex was choking me. Oh gods above I was going to choke to death in the hospital—
“I’ll help her, you call the nurses!” Mom helped me, removing the tube from down my throat and reaching under to pat my back as I coughed weakly. She poured water from a pitcher into a small cup on my bedside table and gave it to me, one infinitesimal sip at a time. I could barely swallow.
The doors to my hospital room opened with a slam and a nurse with some or other animal features barged in, what looked to be my chart in hand. I saw the front of the door behind him; I was in the Intensive Care Unit?
How long?
“We called the doctor, he’ll be right here!”
How long had I been here?
“Ma… ma…” I could barely talk. “P… p-pa?”
“We’re here, Kanna-chan,” my father said, clutching my hand tight with both of his, tears brimming in his eyes. I wanted to try to talk again. I had to know how long. I had to—
“She’s awake!” The doctor rushed in this time, her white coat swirling about her legs. The snakes twined around her arms hissed, but it was soft, not threatening. Her piercing, slit yellow eyes held more warmth in them than I could ever have imagined from a predatory gaze.
“Jakuzure-sensei—”
“Kimiko!” The doctor admonished. “How many times have I told you! Call. Me. Kaiya.” She flipped a lock of hair back behind her shoulder, and looked at me. “You’ve been quite the touchy patient, little lady. Even a three-day coma is hard on a kid as young as you are, and I would suggest you not expect to leave this bed for the next six.”
Three… days?
“Six!?” My father jumped up, flabbergasted. One look from the doctor had him sitting right back down before the snakes on her arms even had a chance to hiss.
“For every day spent in a coma, expect two days of bed rest and four days of rehab.” She looked at me, and her wan smile broke. “For you though, Kanna-chan…”
“W-wait?” My mom threw her hand out. “Are you sure now—”
“It would be crueler to wait,” Native interrupted. It was easy to tell; the way he held himself and spoke was different between when he was channeling his hero persona. “Kanna-chan. What happened is…” Native’s voice broke. Dad looked for the words. “Not all Quirks are perfectly safe. Not even for the user.”
“W-what—” I broke off coughing again, and mom offered me more water. I accepted, and looked to the doctor.
“From what your father tells me, your Quirk has more in common with his than your mother’s. Or at least, that’s what we thought.” I felt something like cold water flow down my spine. What was she saying?
Slowly, Jakuzure-sensei flipped the blanket off my legs. From the knee up, all seemed normal. But from the knee down…
Three-quarters down what should have been my calf, there was another joint, like a backward facing knee. From there, my legs thinned further, extending for the length of my changed calf once again before ending in… in…
“Hooves?...”
I don’t know how to walk on hooves. I don’t even know if I can walk on hooves.
“We have physical therapy waiting for you when you’re free from bed rest, but…” the doctor stalled. “This isn’t the kind of thing we’ve ever had to deal with before. I think… I think you need to maybe accept the reality that you might not ever truly run, much less properly walk again, Kanna-chan.” She bowed her head, and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. There was nothing more I could do.”
I didn’t cry. I just sat there, staring at my legs, my… my hooves.
I don’t know how long I sat there.
…
I…
I don’t know what to do.