Chapter Text
Kusuo Saiki had lived long enough to watch civilizations rise, fall, and reinvent themselves across the ashes of forgotten ages. He drifted through the centuries the way others might wander through weekend markets — mildly inconvenienced, utterly detached, and constantly thinking about coffee jelly.
Immortality hadn't been part of the original plan. Then again, nothing about Saiki’s life had ever gone according to plan. His powers had always been overwhelming, inconvenient, and absurdly powerful. They also refused to let him die. He had tried—oh, he had tried more times than he cared to admit. But every time, his abilities intervened on pure instinct, preserving him, regenerating him, keeping his existence intact no matter how much he wished for a quiet, normal end.
So after the first hundred years of failed attempts to live normally or not live at all, he finally gave up.
Fine. If I’m stuck here forever, I might as well make this planet slightly less irritating.
And so he did.
Saiki never intended to become a god… but he became something close anyway.
It started during one of the countless cycles of human collapse. Technology had grown, peaked, then crumbled under human stubbornness. Saiki watched the world fall apart again, saw old governments crumble, saw cities revert to chaos.
Humans needed something… different. Something to shake them out of their monotony.
He didn’t mean to create quirks — not exactly.
He simply released a controlled psychic pulse that restructured dormant potentials in human DNA. A small tweak, he thought. Something to reduce crime, to stabilize society, to make things marginally less boring.
Instead, the world rewrote itself.
Babies began to glow with light. Toddlers accidentally levitated objects. Five-year-olds burst flames from their hands or grew shimmering tails. Some people stumbled into powers too great for them to handle; others discovered abilities too weak to matter but fun enough for late-night party tricks.
The world panicked.
The world adapted.
The world forgot that the spark of quirks came from a single bored psychic.
Saiki, of course, tried to hide. He always hid. Let All For One, let the newly forming governments, let the heroes and researchers debate origins all they wanted. Saiki drifted behind the scenes, nudging events only when absolutely necessary. An earthquake diverted here. A villain in the making quietly mind-wiped there. A catastrophic accident reversed before anyone noticed.
He was the world’s invisible custodian, grumbling his way into forced altruism.
And for the next century, he watched the age of heroes form in full.
Eventually, even he got bored of watching.
So, for the first time in one hundred years, Kusuo Saiki made a decision that was entirely for himself.
Maybe… I should try school again.
Not just any school — U.A. High School. The center of hero society. The place where the loudest, flashiest, most inconvenient teenagers in the world gathered to become professionals.
This is going to be a nightmare, he thought, sighing.
And yet, he applied anyway.
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U.A.'s enormous gates towered before him like a challenge the universe had constructed specifically to annoy him. Students chattered, ran, tripped, or nervously shook with anticipation. Some already showed off their quirks; one boy sprouted engines from his calves, another floated herself accidentally from excitement.
Saiki walked past them quietly, keeping a steady psychic barrier around himself to avoid reading their minds. He planned to do the exam with the bare minimum effort. No teleportation. No psychokinesis. No reshaping reality. If he could get away with simply walking through the gates without accidentally vaporizing something, that would already be an accomplishment.
He stepped onto the testing grounds.
Robots swarmed the field like metallic pests. Alarms blared. Students tensed.
Just destroy a few robots. Easy, Saiki told himself.
For three seconds, he attempted to consider how to look just competent enough to pass without drawing attention.
Then a boy tripped directly in front of him, nearly face-planting into the concrete.
Saiki grabbed him by the collar using a millimeter of psychokinesis — just enough to appear like he reached out his hand quickly.
“Th-thank you!” the boy stuttered, cheeks instantly growing scarlet. “I—I’m sorry! I’m Izuku Midoriya! That was embarrassing…”
Saiki nodded silently and kept walking.
But Izuku kept following.
“Oh man, are you nervous too? This exam is terrifying! There are so many strong people here — did you see that guy with the engines? And the girl who could float? And I—”
Saiki continued walking. Izuku continued nervously talking. It was… oddly soothing.
When Present Mic yelled “BEGIN!” the crowd scattered like startled hens.
Saiki casually walked forward as robots exploded left and right — but none from him. He merely nudged certain students’ trajectories, slightly manipulated environmental factors, and gently redirected danger away from clumsy or nervous examinees.
He allowed the others to earn points while he pretended to use a “telekinetic quirk” set to minimal output. A robot fell here, a piece of debris crumbled there. Nothing spectacular. Nothing suspicious.
And then the Zero Pointer arrived.
Its massive shadow engulfed the block. Students screamed. The ground shook.
Saiki sighed. This is going to turn into a mess, isn’t it?
He was about to leave the battlefield entirely — then he sensed it. A spike of fear. A sudden cry.
“HELP!”
He saw Izuku Midoriya trapped under debris, his leg pinned, the Zero Pointer approaching.
Of course, Saiki thought.
He teleported beside him instantly — one of the few powers too hard to hide in emergencies, though he did so with precision invisible to mortal eyes.
“I—I can’t move,” Izuku gasped. “You have to run!”
Saiki didn’t run. He didn’t even move physically.
A silent psychic command rippled outward.
The Zero Pointer froze.
Its metal joints shuddered. Then… the monster simply collapsed in on itself, disassembling as though someone had pressed a cosmic “off” switch. Bolts and gears clattered like rain.
Izuku stared. “D—did you do that?”
Saiki glanced at him, expression unreadable.
“No.”
And with a snap of his fingers, Izuku fell unconscious before he could ask further questions.
Saiki transported him to a safe distance. Just far enough from danger. Just close enough to make it look like a rescue.
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Weeks later, Saiki stood in the U.A. auditorium in his newly issued uniform, looking painfully ordinary among a sea of enthusiastic future heroes.
He preferred it that way.
Class 1-A was… loud. Hyperactive. Chaotic. Every student radiated excitement except for him. He sat in the back row, hoping to blend in.
Izuku Midoriya, however, was absolutely incapable of subtlety.
“You’re here!” Izuku nearly tripped over his own feet in excitement. “I knew you’d pass! Your quirk must be amazing — I still don’t remember what happened during the Zero Pointer but—”
“Midoriya,” Saiki said mildly, “you’re shouting.”
“Ah—sorry! I just—thank you for saving me!”
Saiki considered denying it, but Izuku’s sincerity was disarming. He quietly nodded.
Izuku beamed like he had just won the lottery.
Then the sliding door slammed open and a tired man in a sleeping bag slithered into the classroom like a disgruntled caterpillar.
Aizawa Shouta. Eraserhead.
Fantastic, Saiki thought. A teacher who can erase quirks. This is going to complicate things.
Aizawa wasted no time announcing the Quirk Assessment Test.
Saiki sighed inwardly again.
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Out in the training grounds, Aizawa tossed a ball at Izuku. “If you’re going to be heroes, you must understand your maximum output. Midoriya. Softball throw.”
Izuku threw. It went far — but not far enough.
As Aizawa lectured, everyone began demonstrating their quirks for various tests: sprints, long jumps, grip strength, and more.
Now it was Saiki’s turn.
“Saiki Kusuo,” Aizawa said, scanning his file which, thanks to Saiki’s subtle interference, listed only: Telekinesis — low to moderate level.
A blatant lie, but effective.
“Let’s see your throw.”
Saiki took the ball. Fifty sets of eyes watched him. He couldn’t throw it too far, or it would be suspicious. Too weak, and he might stand out for the wrong reasons.
Just be average. You’ve mastered being average, he reminded himself.
He threw.
The ball arced across the field—
—and froze mid-air.
Aizawa’s hair flew up, eyes glowing red. His quirk canceled Saiki’s telekinesis automatically, but the psychic hold didn’t break — instead, Saiki let it go a millisecond before Aizawa fully activated his power, making it seem like it fell naturally due to loss of momentum.
The ball dropped anticlimactically.
“…Forty-eight meters,” Aizawa muttered, unimpressed.
Perfect.
“Your telekinesis is weak,” Aizawa said bluntly.
“Good,” Saiki thought.
The rest of the tests passed without incident. He matched average human standards with ease and avoided drawing attention.
Izuku exploded his finger again. Bakugo screamed at someone every five minutes. Iida did interpretive karate whenever someone broke a rule.
Saiki silently helped students whenever they struggled — a nudge here, a softened trip there, a frictionless patch of ground to slow someone’s fall.
No one noticed.
No one except maybe Aizawa, whose eyes lingered a little too long on Saiki’s nonchalant expression.
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As class dismissed, Izuku caught Saiki’s sleeve.
“Hey… do you want to walk home together?”
Saiki blinked. In a century of life, he hadn’t been asked to walk home by a friend.
“…Alright,” he said.
Izuku beamed. “Great! So, uh, what’s your quirk like? Telekinesis? That’s awesome! Can you lift big things? Or maybe—”
“It’s not very strong,” Saiki lied. “Just small objects.”
Izuku nodded earnestly. “Even so, that’s really cool!”
Saiki watched him ramble about training routines, All Might, and quirk theory. The sun dipped behind U.A.’s towering silhouette, casting warm shadows along the sidewalk.
Izuku’s footsteps echoed with excitement and hope.
Saiki realized something unexpected.
He didn’t feel bored.
And for the first time in a hundred years, he wondered if maybe—just maybe—this new life among heroes could be more than just another passing distraction.
Maybe… it could be home.