Chapter Text
Shimura Tenko constantly feels like he's forgetting something.
He doesn't know what it is, obviously, or else it wouldn't be forgotten, but he also doesn't have any ideas about what it could possibly be. He knows he put his toys away, because he checks them once and again and again until someone- usually Mom- tells him to either play with them or stop messing with them. He knows there's nothing he was supposed to do, because Dad would have gotten mad when it wasn't done. He just doesn't have the faintest idea of what is missing.
It's odd- sometimes he gets the feeling he's seen something before, or knows a stranger, but nobody else says anything about it. Maybe that'll be his quirk, some kind of fortune telling- or, with the bad luck he seems to be having, a quirk that makes him forget things.
Wouldn't that be something? A quirk that makes him forget things. He thinks it would be frustrating, especially if he doesn't know what he's forgetting- unless he forgets that he's forgetting things? It would be pretty confusing, then, to walk around forgetting everything without even knowing it, walking around in a mental fog, having no idea who you were or where you were supposed to go until someone finally gave you some kind of mercy-
There it is again. The feeling like this has all happened before. Day-ja voo, he heard it was called.
He can at least put it out of his mind, for most of the time. It's not that bad of an issue, really, just that he has to be very careful in making sure he remembers what needs to be done- if he always feels like he's forgotten something, then he won't know if he really has forgotten something- and that's usually the end of that.
There is no day-ja-voo on the day he kills his entire family.
Hana stole a picture from Dad's office- the picture of their grandmother, the Hero, the reason Dad says that Heroes are scum (and while Tenko wants to rail against that, wants to dig his heels in and scream that Heroes are good, always, some tiny part of him asks if they really, truly are- and he can't answer that voice in his head as easily as he can argue out loud)- and blamed him. He got thrown out of the house as punishment, and that's when it all went wrong.
He had, in the middle of sobbing, tried to pet Mon- and then Mon disappeared into a bloody pulp, surrounded by chunks of something that didn't look like dirt. Hana came outside, tried to say something, until she disappeared too. Mom was the same. So were Grandma and Grandpa. So was Dad.
So was everything he had ever known and loved, all in the span of ten minutes or less.
He doesn't know what to do (he's a murderer, he killed his whole family, he doesn't know how, he just knows that he did) and he doesn't know where to go and he doesn't know anything or anyone that can do anything to help. He doesn't even know who he's trying to get help for- himself? He's fine. The blood isn't his. His family? They're dead. There's no help that can help them.
There's a part of him- a very large part- that wants to stand in the street and scream, probably cry, and get someone to do something to fix it.
There's another part- a smaller part, yes, but a part that he knows is smarter than whatever other instincts are pulling him in other directions- that knows that there's no help to be had. Beyond that, if he decides to make a target of himself, he's just as likely to attract the attention of a villain as he is a hero.
(He doesn't recall just yet, not consciously, but this- among many other things- is a holdover from a time when the villains really did outnumber the heroes.)
So, instead of making a scene- a bigger scene- he runs. The house isn't far from the city, where he knows he can disappear easily. Since everybody in the city mostly just minds themselves, if he gets there, he can hide out until he either finds someone he can trust to help him, or until he becomes self-sufficient. Besides, Heroes are more plentiful deeper in the city, so that will work better for both sides of the argument. The part of him that wants to run and the part of him that wants to stand here and cry will both be happy.
He doesn't run very fast- he's small- but nobody stoops down to waylay him, or even investigate what's happening, before he gets deep enough into the city that there are alleyways he can duck down. He's suspicious of some of them, but they're not too dark, given that it's the middle of the day. He keeps running, breath coming out in short bursts, until he darts down an alley with a convenient wooden pallet leaning against a wall. He ducks underneath it, disturbing the nearby spiders, and takes care not to touch anything.
He sits down, curls up very small, and then- only then- does he begin to think about what's happened.
The best explanation is that he's having a nightmare. These things happen in nightmares, but so suddenly and violently in real life? No. Things have reasons for happening, even if he's not told what those reasons are. There's nobody who would have reasons for this to happen, so that means it doesn't have a reason. It means that it's a nightmare.
Unless... he clenches his hands, and they're sticky with blood.
Unless that's his quirk. Killing things. The doctor said he should expect something with plants or flight, since those are his parents' quirks, but there was a chance it could be something new. Killing things is definitely new.
He reaches out and touches the pallet he's hiding under, and the place where his hand was immediately crumbles to dust. He pulls back, and his hiding spot continues to collapse, until it all rains down on his head in a crumble of splinters and dirt.
He reaches up to his face, trying to wipe the dust away, but he discovers that in addition to the dust and dirt that have landed on him, his face is sticky with drying blood. He can't wipe it off with just his hands, so he starts scratching at it and at every other part of himself that's exposed. He runs his nails over his entire body, mostly his face and neck, and he discovers that the more he does it, the more he itches.
After a while, he doesn't know how long, he realizes that he's not going to get it all off without a bath or something. Maybe if he finds a creek, he could wash off, but his nails aren't going to fix it. Besides, he's out in the open and covered in blood, two things that he's sure aren't good things to be.
He doesn't quite know where the thought is coming from, that he has to run and hide and get clean and probably continue hiding for the foreseeable future, but he follows it. It comes from the same place that he trusts, implicitly, because it's smarter than the rest of him, so it won't steer him wrong.
So, he gets up and moves further down the alley, hoping to find a network of pathways that he can lose himself in, and he isn't disappointed. He scratches absently at himself as he goes, keeping to the shadows and the walls like it's second nature. He would almost think he's done this before and forgotten about it, maybe in a dream, except something this big wouldn't be forgotten, would it? Even though he always feels like he's forgotten something?
No. Not this.
... Maybe this. He keeps to whatever shadows there are- of which there aren't many, considering it's the middle of the day, but that's fine because the night is an entirely different battle without a hideout of some kind- and tries to find a longer-term hiding spot. Possibly something like another pallet, or the fire escape of an abandoned building, but not something like a dumpster- too many risks of diseases or rats or something- just somewhere he can sit down and take stock again.
This could be a nightmare- he's had a few that he doesn't remember very clearly, and he's oddly reminded of them in this moment- but he has the creeping feeling that it isn't. The alleys make too much sense for that, like a maze designed for kids that are even littler than he is, and a nightmare wouldn't let him get around this easily. He has to accept that this is real.
He doesn't know what to do with that. He doesn't know how to do anything beyond continuing to move, beyond the next step at a time, because he doesn't even know where to start thinking about it. He knows the cause of it- him, his quirk, same difference because it's his fault either way- but what is he supposed to do?
If he were an adult, he would call the police and the Heroes. They're the ones who are supposed to fix things.
The part of him that's leading him further and further into the maze of buildings whispers that that wouldn't do any good. It's not like they can bring anyone back to life. All they would do is punish the murderer, and the murderer is him.
He doesn't realize that he's started running until he has to stop from being out of breath. Something in him protests, says he should be able to go faster, farther, but there's only so much that a six-year-old body can take. He leans against a nearby brick wall- without touching it with his hands, since that seems to be how his quirk works- and tries to choke down a few more gasps of air.
Stopping reminds him of exactly the situation he's in. He's tired, he's thirsty, he's hungry, and most of all he wants to go home, but there is no home anymore. Also, there's nobody who will help him around here- he can't trust strangers. Stranger danger applies double when he's lost and alone. He doesn't know who told him that, if anybody ever did, but he trusts it. It sounds like good advice.
He clenches his hands into fists- does the quirk work even with his hands like that, or does that make them safe?- and slides down the wall. Now is as good a time as any to plan. He needs shelter, of some kind, and a way to get food and water. He thinks the rain might be helpful, since he saw it in a cartoon once, but the city water is dirtier than the water he sees in animation. Convenience stores have bottled water, but that costs money that he doesn't have. The same problem comes up with food, since every time he's had a snack or meal or anything, somebody has paid for it. He's not sure how to get things without paying for them, except by stealing, which he isn't sure how to do.
Something shifts- a cloud covers the sun, or something- and he blinks. He looks up, just in case the shadow that's suddenly over him was cast by something other than a cloud, and he sees the towering figure of a man crouching over him.
The man is very big, wide in the shoulders and taller than Tenko would be if his height were doubled, but that's somehow not scary to him at all. His clothes are dark, which is something that the bad guys in cartoons often do, but that's also not scary. Something about the way this man looks pulls at something in the back of Tenko's head, but when he tries to figure out what this man reminds him of, all he can think of is B.
He doesn't know what that means, and B is something that makes him think of a lot of things. Anger, mostly, and a bunch of indistinct things he can't remember enough to decipher.
"Hello, little Tenko," The man says, and that isn't B at all. Tenko blinks, looks the man up and down again, and determines that the white hair and holes in his hands make this man a stranger. B, he's decided, must be someone or something he knows, and this man is not that.
Secondly, this stranger knows Tenko's name. That's bad news. Usually, if someone knows his name, it's good news because they know him, but his skin itches even more at the thought of this stranger knowing him. He doesn't like it, somewhere in his gut, and he doesn't have a real reason for it beyond having the heebie-jeebies.
Still. Any kid with a brain knows that the heebie-jeebies are the real deal, so he turns on his heel and bolts.