Everything hurt.
That was my first coherent thought as consciousness dragged me up from the void. Not the sharp pain of a bullet wound or the searing agony of an explosion—I remembered those, remembered the mission, remembered dying—but a dull, hollow ache that radiated through every inch of my body.
I opened my eyes.
Wrong. Everything was wrong.
The perspective was off. The world seemed too large, too bright. My limbs felt distant, disconnected, like I was piloting a body that didn't quite fit. I tried to sit up and my arms nearly gave out—weak, trembling, small.
'What the—'
Pain erupted behind my eyes.
I gasped, clutching my head as memories that weren't mine came flooding in. Images, sensations, emotions crashed together in a chaotic torrent that threatened to drown me. I saw a woman's face, tired and regretful, as she left a bundle at the orphanage door before disappearing into the night. The orphanage itself followed—Sakura Heights, with its cold meals and colder glances from staff who saw the children as burdens rather than people.
Then came darker memories. Children disappearing without explanation, their beds empty one morning with no goodbye. Questions that were met with harsh reprimands. Suspicions that grew despite the fear. The director, a man named Goto who had no quirk but plenty of connections, selling children to "interested parties"—human trafficking dressed up in legal paperwork and false adoption records.
Being caught snooping through his office. The beating that followed. Three days locked in the basement with nothing but darkness and hunger. The escape, powered by pure desperation and a quirk that had just manifested—shadows that seemed to listen, a rift between spaces that opened when needed most.
Running into the slums. Hiding among trash and abandoned buildings. Cold nights. Starvation. And finally, dying alone in a forgotten alley.
The memories settled, and I understood.
Kiritani Ryō. Four years old. Abandoned at birth. Dead from hunger and exposure in this godforsaken place.
Except he wasn't dead anymore.
I wasn't dead anymore.
Two sets of memories existed in my mind now, overlapping but distinct. A special forces operative in his late twenties, killed during exfiltration after a successful mission. And a four-year-old boy who'd seen too much and paid the price for it.
Somehow, impossibly, we'd merged.
I forced myself to breathe slowly, applying the same mental discipline I'd used to stay calm during interrogations, during firefights, during the moment I realized that explosion was going to kill me.
'Assess. Adapt. Survive.'
The enhanced clarity of thought surprised me. The memories from both lives were crystal clear—not blurred or fading like normal recollections, but sharp and accessible. I could recall training manuals word-for-word, tactical procedures, even the layout of buildings from operations years ago. The soul merge had done something to my cognition, enhanced it, given me perfect recall and the ability to process information faster than before.
Small comfort when my current body could barely stand.
I looked down at myself—tiny hands, thin arms, ribs visible through a dirt-stained shirt that was more holes than fabric. The boy had been malnourished for weeks before his death.
And the hunger... god, the hunger.
It hit me all at once—a gnawing, desperate void in my stomach that demanded immediate attention. When was the last time this body had eaten? Two days? Three?
I needed food. Now.
I pushed myself to my feet, swaying as my vision blurred. The alley around me came into focus—narrow, filthy, wedged between two abandoned warehouses in what Ryō's memories identified as the industrial district's slums. Trash piled against walls. The smell of rust and decay hung heavy in the air.
I stumbled toward the alley's mouth, using the wall for support.
One step. Then another.
The district opened up before me—crumbling buildings, cracked pavement, the distant sound of traffic from the main roads. And beyond that, past more warehouses and industrial facilities, I could see it.
The beach.
Dagobah Municipal Beach Park, though "park" was generous. Mountains of trash dominated the shoreline, years of illegal dumping turning it into a wasteland.
But that name triggered another memory. Not Ryō's. Mine.
My Hero Academia.
The realization should have been impossible. Insane. But between the two sets of memories in my head, I knew where I was. Not just Japan, not just Musutafu, but inside an anime I'd watched during downtime between deployments.
I remembered late nights in the barracks, my phone propped on my chest, binging episodes. The entire series, from start to finish—whatever had been available before my death. I remembered the main character, Midoriya Izuku, the quirkless kid who inherited One For All and became the greatest hero. I remembered All Might's rise and fall, the Symbol of Peace crumbling under the weight of his responsibility. The League of Villains. All For One and his centuries of manipulation. The war that tore hero society apart.
Whatever I'd watched, I remembered perfectly now thanks to the enhanced cognition. Every major arc, every significant character, every crucial plot point stood clear in my mind. The entrance exam. The USJ attack. The sports festival. Stain's ideology. The summer training camp. Kamino Ward. Overhaul. The Shie Hassaikai raid. Gentle Criminal. The Meta Liberation Army. The Paranormal Liberation War. The prison breaks. Deku's vigilante arc. The final war against All For One and Shigaraki.
I knew what was coming. All of it.
And I knew what this world was really like beneath its shining hero society veneer. The Hero Public Safety Commission's manipulation and cover-ups. Lady Nagant, forced to assassinate threats in the shadows. Hawks, molded into a weapon since childhood. The ranking system that prioritized popularity over actual heroism. The way quirkless people were treated as lesser. The villain rehabilitation programs that were little more than prisons. Destro's ideology and Re-Destro's army. The corruption that ran so deep it would take a war to expose it.
Director Goto and his human trafficking operation wasn't an anomaly. He was a symptom of a system that valued power and image over justice and protection.
My stomach growled, pulling me back to immediate reality. Philosophy could wait. Survival couldn't.
I started walking toward the main street, each step carefully measured. The body wanted to collapse. I forced it to obey, drawing on every scrap of discipline from my previous life.
'Food. Water. Shelter. In that order.'
As I walked, something stirred inside me. An awareness that hadn't been there before—or maybe it had been there for Ryō but he'd never understood it.
Power.
Not the raw explosive strength of a combat quirk, but something subtler. More complex. I could feel it coiled beneath my skin, waiting. Multiple distinct abilities, all different, all connected to me.
I'd felt something similar once before, in the chaos of Ryō's escape from the orphanage. Shadows that responded to desperation. A rift that opened between spaces.
But now, with both sets of memories integrated, I understood what it reminded me of.
Valorant.
The only game I'd ever really played. During deployments, when internet was stable enough, I'd sink hours into it. Tactical shooter. Agent-based abilities. I'd mained duelists mostly—loved the aggressive plays, the outmaneuvering, the mind games. It was my way to decompress, to think about strategy in a context where failure just meant a lost round instead of a lost life.
And the abilities I could feel thrumming inside me matched agents from that game perfectly.
The rifts and teleportation, the ability to send out decoy footsteps and phase through reality—that was Yoru, the dimensional infiltrator who rewrote the rules of engagement. The shadows and teleports that felt different, darker, accompanied by an ability to obscure vision and instill paranoia—that was Omen, the phantom who controlled space itself. The shields that absorbed damage and that strange sensation of being able to isolate a single target in a pocket dimension—that was Iso, the duelist who forced fair fights. And the last set, the one that felt like awareness and information, like I could place traps and gather intelligence—that was Cypher, the information broker who always knew more than he should.
Four agents. Four complete ability kits. All compressed into one impossible quirk.
I stopped walking, leaning against a wall as the implications crashed over me.
This wasn't normal. Quirks in this world were powerful, sure, but they followed rules. One power per person, maybe two for rare cases like Todoroki's dual-element quirk. Limitations. Drawbacks. Clear definitions that could be registered and categorized.
What I had was something else entirely. Something that didn't fit the mold.
If anyone found out—if the heroes discovered this, if the Hero Public Safety Commission learned what I could do, if All For One realized I existed—
I'd never be free again.
The HPSC would try to turn me into another Hawks, molded from childhood into the perfect weapon. All For One would either try to steal my quirk or eliminate me as a threat to his plans. Even the heroes would see me as dangerous, unpredictable, someone who needed to be controlled or contained.
'No.'
The decision formed with absolute clarity.
No registration. No records. Complete anonymity.
I would master these abilities in secret. Train this broken body into something capable. Learn to survive in the shadows of this hero society while it still stood.
And when the time came—when the rot beneath the surface became impossible to ignore—I would act.
Not as a hero bound by licenses and regulations and the HPSC's manipulation.
Not as a villain seeking power and chaos like the League.
But as something this world desperately needed, even if it wouldn't admit it.
Someone who operated outside the system. Someone who could expose the truth that heroes were paid to hide, protect the innocent that the system abandoned, and eliminate threats that the heroes were too compromised or too blind to handle.
A vigilante.
My stomach growled again, more insistent this time.
Right. Grand plans later. Food now.
I pushed off the wall and continued toward the street, keeping to the shadows out of instinct.
Kiritani Ryō had died alone and forgotten in this alley.
But I would make sure that name meant something.
Even if I had to tear down the broken pieces of hero society to do it.
One step at a time.
Starting with not starving to death.