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A Mother’s one dream is to see her child grow up happy, and Kaminari Yua was no different. She wanted a life to be proud of, the kind of life the others pined for. She’d found a lovely man who she believed respected her, who complimented her quirk. Who made her feel loved.
Yua had learned to believe that she was blessed with the power of electricity, rather than cursed with it. He was always whispering in her ear after all, “It’s a quirk worthy of even a hero,” and Yua would be lying if she claimed she didn’t glow under the praise.
She gave birth to a son a few months later. A beautiful little boy with bright yellow hair and eyes to match.
Her skin was on fire, was she screaming? Was that her?
She passed him over, supporting his delicate spine with her fingers as she placed him in her lovers arms. He looked down at the baby before humming. “Just as I’d hoped.”
“How do you mean?”
“He’s got my quirk.”
It was in that moment that she finally realized who the man was,
“You have a quirk?” She’d been told he was quirkless, after years of dating it was shocking to learn. She couldn’t help but feel betrayed.
“I do,” was all Yua got in response.
“You lied to me.”
“For the greater good.”
and years later when she’d realize what quirk he’d cursed their son with.
“The greater good?”
“He will aid in my mission to wipe out heroes.”
“What? That’s not fu-”
“My successor,”
A quirk that steals other quirks.
———————————————————————————————
A boy watched his Mom cook dinner from his spot on the ratty sofa. He carted his plastic toy car over its worn out cushions mimicking the sound of engines.
The first five years of the boy’s life had been lived within the confines of a small, cheap, one room apartment in eastern Japan. So far he’d yet to actually step outside its doors, and the only thing he knew of the outside world came as fiction from the cartoons and picture books.
He used to ask his Mom questions like where she went when she left the apartment, or what the air outside tasted like. Sometimes he’d ask if the sky was really blue or if grass was actually green. Occasionally he’d hear a knock on the door and a voice he’d never heard before.
His Mom would shoo him into the closet and he could come out a few minutes later when its door received a knock, knock, pause, knock. It was their little game.
Today the question on the forefront of the boy’s mind was seemingly simple, “Do kids actually go to school?”
His Mother shot him a look filled with regret before she turned back to her plates. “…No,” She finally answered. “That’s just TV.”
“Oh,” the boy said. “What’s for dinner?”
“Pasta, your favourite.” She placed a plate in his lap before sitting next to him with her own. They didn’t have much, no dining table, no computer, no desks or extra chairs, just the futons they slept in, their appliances and bathroom, TV, and a couch.
The boy wasn’t sure where the imaginary people on the TV lived, but they had so much! Everyone seemed to have their own room and stuff and toys. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t jealous.
But he had his Mom, and that was really all that mattered.
—————————————————————————————————————————————
The boys quirk manifested when he was five.
It was the second day of the week, or so the good smelling piece of paper said, which meant that his Mom would leave the house for a few hours and come back with yummy food.
Usually, the boy would roam the house, standing on the couch and proclaiming victory over villains like the imaginary people. He’d run around pretending to be a doctor or a police officer.
Today though, today he just couldn’t help but wonder.
What was outside the door?
His Mom seemed fine whenever she’d come back, so surely it mustn’t be so terrible.
“You must never go to the outside, the bad people will find you,”
But he so desperately wanted to see.
“And they’d take you away,”
He wanted to know what the colour of grass was.
“Is that what you want?”
He wanted to know if there was a world out there.
“To never see me again?
He pulled down on the handle like he’d seen his Mom do over and over, and pushed.
“Do you want to die?”
The first thought that went through his mind was ‘is that really the sky?’ And the second was, ‘the air tastes fresh.’
It was like his universe expanded to three times the size, he could see grass and plants and sidewalks and-
People? A playground, like the ones the imaginary kids played on, except it was real and there were real people playing and laughing and poking each other with real sticks.
Before he could control his body he was running, not even circles, but actually running, towards the playground.
He never realized that he was missing this, that life was more than a one room apartment on the first floor.
“Can I play with you?” The boy asked, just like he’d seen on TV.
“Sure! We’re gonna play tag!” The little girl smiled as a small group formed.
“I’ve never played that before,” The boy admitted, and the other kids frowned.
“You’ve never played tag? That’s stupid.” A tall boy gave her a shove.
“We’ll show you how.”
“My name is Suzaki! What’s yours?”
The boy paused. What was his name? Everyone on TV had one, but the boy wasn’t sure what his was, his Mom told him it was safer that way.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing you need to worry about.”
But he’d seen words on an envelope once, when he was still just learning to read.
“It’s Kaminari!”
The children played for hours until the sun stretched below the horizon. Kaminari’s world was illuminated with colours that he didn’t even have names for.
Was this what he was missing?
Was this what was behind the door?
If this was the world outside, then he never wanted to go back. He wanted to see the rest of it-
“Do you want to die?”
He stared at the sky before he felt a grip on his shoulder and he was being dragged away. He briefly registered that he was begging, crying for one more minute with the sun before the sense of wonder had to end.
Suzaki and all the other kids he played with would turn out to be quirkless, even though they were each missing the extra joint in their pinky toes.
And the door to the world was closed again.
————————————————————————————————————————
Her skin was on fire, was she screaming? Was that her?
Yua grabbed at anything concrete, her body trembling under the currents, the feeling of pain overwhelming everything else.
She heard crying, was that her son? Yua couldn’t tell. She couldn’t even feel her electricity, and for the first time in a lifetime she felt what it was like to be shocked.
“He’s got my quirk.”
He had his Father’s quirk. She was missing her electricity, and her son seemed to have it.
“He will aid in my mission to wipe out heroes.”
So that was his quirk, that would be her sons curse.
“My successor.”
A quirk that steals other quirks, but she couldn’t think anymore. Any semblance of thought was being forcibly fried from her mind as her son let her electricity run rampant.
She reached for him, managing to rest a feeble hand on his knee before the last of her burned out from within.
She could only hope that her son would grow up happy.
Happier than she could ever make him locked away from the world.
She loved him after all.
———————————————————————————————————————————
Kaminari stayed in the apartment for one week after that. It’s what his Mother would’ve wanted, probably.
Eventually, the air became stale, and his Mom had yet to move, even on the second day of the week she stayed limp in the corner. Every time he looked at her all he could think of was the smell of burning flesh and the way the screams seemed to tear through the air.
He looked at the door. It was the same as it had always been, but somehow completely different from before.
“You know better than that, you know better than to leave,”
He wondered if he should get help, if that was something people do when their parents won’t move. Kaminari grimaced at the thought, the world was so vast, and his Mom’s dying wish would’ve been to stay inside, right?
Yet he couldn’t help but peer at the door, it was if it was beckoning him forward, and as if crossing the threshold was like stepping into an alternate dimension.
He looked away.
His Mom would’ve wanted him to stay inside.
So Kaminari continued to live in the apartment, by the tenth day the stench in the room was nigh unbearable. He’d heard of this, but he refused to face it.
His Mother was decomposing.
He’d killed his Mom and now she was decomposing.
By the eleventh day Kaminari started to go hungry. He’d eaten the last of what was left in the cupboards and the fridge, but it was hard for him to have much of an appetite at all.
It was his fault.
Deep down he knew it was.
“What’s a quirk?”
“They’re like a special superpower unique to each and every one of us.”
“Do you have one?”
“I can summon electricity!”
Perhaps he had his Mom’s quirk, but Kaminari knew it was different. Ever since the playground he’d been different, because on the third day he cut himself with a knife by mistake, except the cut was almost instantly.
No, Kaminari was different.
He heard a knock on the door.
“This is the police, we’ve received reports of a smell.”
Kaminari ran to the closet and curled in on himself.
“Anyone home?”
He heard the door click open as the man came inside.
“Ugh what is that?”
A clang, the sound of something being dropped, a sharp scream and scrambling.
“You must never go outside, the bad people will find you,”
Kaminari burst from the closet in a rare burst of speed unlike anything he’d ever felt before.
“And they’d take you away,”
He ran past cars and parking lots, through parks and fields and over sidewalks and fences, between houses and alleys, until eventually, he couldn’t run anymore.
Kaminari sat on cold pavement and summoned the familiar electricity. He was uncontrolled but it didn’t matter. This was all he had left of his Mom, and he would never ever forget her.
He killed her after all.
He didn’t even have a name to call his own.
So he named himself after the only thing he had left.
Electricity.
For his Mom, he would carry her lighting.
“Did I have a Dad?”
“Listen to me, you’re Dad was bad-“
“Like on TV?”
“Like on TV, and you? You are nothing like him.”
“You can’t be like him.”
From that moment, he was Kaminari Denki.