The world came into focus not with a bang, but with the sterile scent of antiseptic and the crushing weight of déjà vu.
Ren Saito's first coherent thought was that the ceiling tiles were dreadfully boring. His second was a sprawling, panicked archive of another life—cramped apartments, flashing screens, the taste of coffee, the hum of repulsors, and a face with a goatee smirking from a hundred posters. Memories that were too vast, too detailed, to be a dream slammed into the consciousness of a four-year-old boy.
He tried to speak, to question, but all that emerged was a faint gurgle.
"Shh, my little star," a soft voice murmured. A face, young and etched with gentle exhaustion, filled his vision. Dark hair framed warm, brown eyes that held a universe of love. "Mama's here. The doctor's almost done."
Mother. Akari Saito. The knowledge surfaced from the child's memories, seamlessly intertwining with his own. A nurse. A widow. My son.
The doctor, a man with a kind face and a stethoscope that coiled like a living snake (a Quirk, his new-old mind supplied), listened to his chest. "Heartbeat is strong, little man. Just a routine check-up before we look for that Quirk!"
The word sent a jolt through Ren. Quirk. The central axis of this new reality. Superpowers. Heroes. Villains. The memories of his past life provided a flood of context—a popular culture franchise, now his terrifying, vibrant world. And the timeline… he was a child. All Might was still in his prime. The great turmoil was years away.
He had time.
The examination proceeded. X-rays were taken (by a technician whose fingers glowed). His joints were checked. A strange, tingling scanner passed over his small body.
Through it all, Ren stayed silent, observing, processing. His mother's hand never left his.
Finally, the doctor sat back, his smile growing strained. He looked at the results on a tablet, then at Akari, then at Ren. "Mrs. Saito… there's no easy way to say this. The scans are conclusive. Ren's toe joint… it's the double-jointed structure."
Akari blinked, not comprehending. "What does that mean?"
"It means," the doctor said, his voice dropping into practiced, gentle solemnity, "that Ren shows no biological potential for a Meta-Ability. He is Quirkless."
The room tilted. Not for Ren—the diagnosis was a grim confirmation of a suspicion he'd held since his mind awoke. His new body felt… ordinary. No inner spark, no hidden reservoir of power. But for Akari, the words were a physical blow. The color drained from her face. Her grip on Ren's hand tightened, then went slack.
"Quirkless?" she whispered. The word hung in the sterile air, heavy and final. In this world, it was more than a medical term. It was a social sentence. A life of limitations, of sideways glances, of being an afterthought in a society built for the extraordinary.
The doctor began talking about support groups, about modern accommodations, about how many Quirkless individuals led fulfilling lives in supportive roles. His words were a well-meaning murmur, a river flowing past Ren's ears.
Ren looked at his mother. He saw the future she was imagining for him in that instant—a future of closed doors, of pity, of struggle. He saw the ghost of his father, a man he knew only from photos, who had died a mundane death in a mundane accident, leaving them alone. He saw her dreams for her son crumbling to dust.
A fire, old and familiar, ignited in his tiny chest. It was not the heat of a Quirk. It was the cold, hard flame of intellect and a stubborn, reborn will. It was the memory of a man in a cave, building a way out with a box of scraps.
He would not wallow. He would not accept this footnote of a life.
As the doctor droned on, Ren slipped his small hand from his mother's limp grasp. He pushed himself upright on the examination table, his legs dangling over the edge. He looked directly at the doctor, his child's face uncharacteristically still.
"Doctor," Ren said, his voice clear and quiet, cutting through the man's monologue.
Both adults stared at him, startled by the focused intensity in his eyes.
"The scan," Ren continued, the words of a four-year-old, but the cadence of someone much older. "Does it measure the strength of the heart?"
The doctor blinked. "The… heart? Well, no. That's a separate—"
"Then your scan is incomplete," Ren stated, not with anger, but with simple, devastating fact. He turned to his mother. Her eyes were wide, swimming with tears of grief that now mixed with confusion.
He reached out and placed his small palm flat against her chest, where her heart beat a frantic, sorrowful rhythm.
"Mama," he said, and his voice softened, the steel melting into something achingly young and sincere. "Don't be sad. He's wrong. I do have a power."
Akari sucked in a shuddering breath. "Ren…"
"It's here," he said, tapping her chest gently. "You gave it to me. And here." He brought his other hand to his own temple. "I can think. And I can build."
He looked back at the stunned doctor, then at the world beyond the clinic window—a world where a man with a dazzling smile could punch away the weather, where flames and ice danced in the streets.
"They can keep their Quirks," Ren Saito declared, the promise solidifying in the quiet room. "I'll make my own."
The silence that followed was no longer heavy with despair, but charged with something new, fragile, and electric. Akari looked at her son, truly looked at him. She saw not a diagnosis, but a resolve that dwarfed his small frame. She saw the ghost of his father's stubborn kindness, fused with something entirely, brilliantly alien.
She pulled him into a fierce hug, burying her face in his hair. She didn't understand, not fully. But she felt it. The pity in the room evaporated, replaced by her own dawning, terrifying awe.
The doctor left, mumbling about follow-ups. In the echoing quiet of the examination room, mother and son held onto each other.
The path was set. The first line of the blueprint was drawn. Not for a suit of armor, not yet.
But for an iron heart.