First, she isn't. Then, she is.
The little red-haired girl blinks blearily. Disorientation, borne of not existing until this very moment, blares through her mind like alarm bells. Even 'her' and 'girl' feel tenuous, the weakest of handholds onto reality for a being that floats adrift in absolute nothingness. She looks up, and she looks down, and she looks around. New sights, sounds, and colours flood her sight, and for a while she just sits, soaking it in, half in amazement and half in absolute sensory overload. Time passes, and she has no idea it does. She learns a million new things as things move past the gap in the shadowy place between walls she sits in, and barely generates a single new memory.
The things that move look like her. They have legs and arms and heads and eyes, and their hands move when they talk. Some have more arms or more legs, or are different colours in their hair and their eyes. They're all equally unique and captivating. Occasionally, one walks past with a thing on a leash that the little girl feels a sort of attachment to, the good kind that she can't yet put to words. She feels an attachment to the ones holding the leashes as well, but it's a different and more hopeful kind. She wonders what the others are thinking. She wonders if everything's new to them too. She wonders if they can see her. What would they do if they did?
She decides to keep sitting. The world grows darker and the sounds become more quiet. The steady stream of people walking past slows to a trickle. The world stops changing in front of her, settling into a cool blue hue, and the occasional car that drives past is too fast to really observe. She feels two things. The first is irritation that the cars won't slow down so that she can take them in better. The second is boredom. Neither are feelings she can name, because she does not yet think in words but in pictures and sounds.
She decides to leave the alleyway and search for more things to look at. The world is far, far larger than the little crack of it she watched. It stretches in each direction almost to infinity, and standing on her short little legs it dwarfs her by an order of magnitude. Each building is covered in windows, some even seeming to be made of them and reflecting the moon so clearly that before she figures out that trick she believes there is more than one moon in the sky. The air blows, harsh and chilly, and she watches the clouds speed by.
The little girl finds herself bumping into a tall person wearing a coat. He mutters, unintelligible, and keeps walking down the road. She looks left, then right, and she finds nothing, so she decides to follow him.
She follows him, taking three steps for each long stride the far larger man takes, and stares at his back as he walks past building after building. Is he following someone as well? Why is his hair short and brown, and why is there some of it on his face? Why won't he slow down? He's walking too fast, and she wants him to slow down. Why won't he? It's annoying, but enough new things pass by as she follows him that she doesn't feel the need to act on the impulse.
After about thirty colourful signs all dulled by the dark go by - and each one is so unique and wonderful, and the odd scrawlings and mascots on them pique her curiosity - the man in front of her looks back. He stops and he stares, and the corners of his mouth turn downwards. She doesn't feel anything at this development, and stares right back in his eyes. He doesn't seem to know what to make of it. That's perfect, because neither does she.
He makes more noises. She keeps staring. He turns to leave. She follows.
He walks for a while longer, then stops suddenly. There are more cars in front of him, and he stares up at something she can't quite see. It's a box on a pole with a little red person glowing on it, and when time passes it flickers and the person turns green, starting to walk as other odd symbols flash atop it. He begins to move again, staying on the striped strip. Aha, she thinks, and the little girl understands the rules now. She likes them, and she likes watching the tall person follow them. Something about it tickles the back of her brain.
Finally, the man comes to a stop, but there is no stripey ground or red light. She's confused. He kneels down and says something to her. She doesn't understand. Should she make noises back? She decides to give it a try, and repeats the noises he made right back to him.
The coat person's mouth drops open and his eyelids rise. The expression makes the red-haired girl unhappy, and the idea that she's fundamentally missing some element or rule of this interaction makes her even more unhappy. He stands up and takes something out of his pocket, and makes noises into it. She doesn't think she should try to copy him again. With that disappointment, she decides to leave and walk down some other road. The person must have seen her begin to leave, and he speaks faster into his pocket-thing before he makes a loud noise. She turns back to see what gained his attention.
The man lowers his pocket-thing in front of her face so tha she can see the glowing screen on it, and then presses it. It starts moving and making sounds. Like the mascots on the signs she walked past, a yellow-haired man in red, blue, and white makes noises and moves. Comapred to the dull and boring coat-man holding the device, the sight is enchanting, and she stares at it.
Some time passes as she soaks in the sights and sounds the coat-man has given her. A few cars drive by, and she ignores them. No more people walk by. Coat-man mumbles something, and she ignores that too.
On the screen, yellow-haired man makes some sounds that signal happiness to a primal part of her brain. A dark and scary thing tries to attack him and he beats it up. It's enthralling. The entire length of whatever it is she is watching is seared into her mind, and it stimulates it like nothing else. She wants her own pocket-thing.
Finally, one car comes to a stop nearby, past another stripey path and stopping-box. Coat man presses a finger into the side of the pocket thing she's been watching and the screen loses its life, turning black and reflecting her yellow eyes, which glow dimly back at it with concentric rings. In the reflection, the corners of her lips turn down.
It was coat-man's fault. She really wanted to keep watching that. Why did he make it stop? It's not fair, and now she's bored. Acting purely out of instinct, she points a finger at him, and surprises even herself when a glowing yellow chain shoots out of the tip of it and pierces his head. She wants him to put the show back on, and he does.
She hears more loud noises, loud enough to disturb the yellow-haired man's show. Glancing to the side, she watches as two more people step out of a car, this one bearing red and blue lights and a black-and-white colour. Most cars she's seen have only one colour, so this is worth noting.
One of the car-man seems to be checking the coat-man, holding a palm on his chest and staring curiously back at her. This is an emotion she can discern, because she knows how it feels. She's felt it almost the whole day today. He makes more noises into a box on his stomach, and then both car-men guide her slowly into the black and white car with red and blue lights. They guide coat-man and his pocket-thing along with her, a chain linking his head to her finger all the while, so she lets them, and sits down in the back of the car. The door slams closed, but more importantly, yellow-haired man is about to fight a villain even stronger than the one he did before.
At 2:32 AM, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department takes a seemingly nonverbal little girl into custody, along with a man she appears to have linked to her quirk.
The red-haired girl finally runs out of energy, and the chain dissipates. The coat-man slumps back into the chair in the car, his pocket-thing dropping out of his hand. He looks drained. She reaches to pick it up but her attention is grabbed by the car's window. Staring out the window is fascinating, as lights pass her by and light up the inside of the car before they leave. They come in all colours, and almost as interesting are the poles and wires and other things in the sky she stares up at, even as the clouds and the moon stay in the same spot. She begins to feel drained as well, and lies back, copying the boring coat-man. Everything goes back.
When she wakes up, it's in a chair in a bright white place that hurts her eyes. People talk at her for a while and her head hurts. She remembers something from her dream, even though she can barely remember it - something totally cool and really awesome, red and sharp and metal-y and when you rip the cord it tears up everything it touches, and it eats stuff too. She doesn't know what to make of it, and the harsh white lights hurt her eyes enough to make her forget it.
They put her in another car. The world through the window looks almost totally different from when it was dark, so she watches intently and counts the clouds and the wire-poles and the windows that go by before she loses count and gives up. The things she can see slow down and stop, and she's guided out of the car and into a building. More people lead her to a room where she sits, bored, then another, then another. It seems all she's going to do today is sit in a chair as people talk on the other side of doors, so she tries to leave. The door is closed. She's tall enough to try for the handle but it doesn't budge. She feels irritated.
The new person, the one who was there when she was led into the building, finally enters the room. She gestures at herself in a friendly way and makes a sound. She does this again, with the same amount of patience as the last time. The red-haired girl stares at the subtle bags under her eyes instead. Why does she have them? Why is she wearing glasses over them?
Her attention returns to the taller lady. The taller lady stares back, equally amused and tired. Something clicks in the little red-haired girl's mind, and she finally understands the rules of the game. She just needs a sound of her own.
Like it was from a dream, the right sound to make comes to her, and she gestures at her chest in a perfect imitation of when the taller lady did it.
"Makima."
Makima sighs and lies back in her cot, staring at the bunk above her. She's learned a lot in the past six months. Words, for one. As it turned out, the man she'd followed through the city streets had been asking her what the hell she was doing before growing concerned. He called the police about a kid her age walking around the city at 2AM and then distracted her with an All Might cartoon on his phone when she started to wander away. She'd never had the chance to properly thank him, which is a shame because she's learning how to talk now. She's also been learning numbers. She could count all the way to a thousand and add and subtract as well. This, too, was better than others her age since she is six years old. This comes as a surprise to her. The care workers seem to expect her to look up to the older kids, but they're loud and annoying. She knows names and dates and times and things like that that she didn't understand before. She doesn't like being told what to do by the teacher the orphanage has, but at least she's told her learning level is well above her peers. It makes her happy to be above them.
That's another thing she learns. Makima is in an orphanage. They asked her her name and she said Makima, but she couldn't answer any other questions to the social workers the police took her to. She has no parents or family or siblings, so they had to set up an entire new record for her. Officially, her name is Satou Makima. The Makima part feels bone deep, but the Satou part feels paper-thin, like a cheap sticker that will wash off as soon as she put it in the yellowing laundry basket.
Her quirk is also important, and they call it 'Brain Chain'. Everyone has one, and they're all special and unique except when they're weird and creepy like hers. Everyone is scared she'll use it on them, but they're all mean so it's really their fault she uses it to make them stop being mean. This doesn't earn her any friends. In fact, they seem freaked out when she controls them. They call her a villain and throw things at her.
Life in the orphanage is bad. The corridors are cramped, and everything is old and a bit musty even if it isn't falling apart. The lights are dim and sometimes the one in the corner of the upstairs bathroom flickers. The lines for the bathroom are usually long and everyone bangs on the door when it's her turn. The food is boring and the people are boring.
Nobody likes Makima. She's weird. She's odd. They sometimes poke her in the face to see if she'll laugh or cry or smile or frown or do anything other than stare at them. She doesn't understand why they do it. When they get on her nerves enough she fires her quirk at them - though for some reason that word doesn't feel right either - and makes them go away or drop on the floor and bark like dogs, and this gives her a good hearty laugh before she's told off.
She usually does as she's told. Brain Chain is tiring to use, and the care workers are usually nice. One of them, Mrs. Miyashita, shows her pictures of her dog Coco on her phone, and even bought her a pastry with her own money one time. It was delicious, and despite the tiredness on her face she smiled when she cleaned the cream off of Makima's cheeks. Makima decides she likes her. Whether she likes her enough to not use Brain Chain on the other kids is another matter.
Because of this, the other kids avoid her in the yard, and sometimes whisper about how creepy she is when they're meant to be sleeping and not talking at night. Makima doesn't sleep, because she doesn't like it when they tell her what to do, but she doesn't talk either, because nobody wants to talk to her. They're scared of her quirk and what she could make them do. They should be scared. If someone sees her use her chain they scream and run away and cry to one of the other care workers and then it becomes a whole fifteen-minute ordeal. Fifteen minutes is forever.
After her 'supplemental' lessons to properly learn the language, she's sent to first grade. That's boring as well. There are different kids at school but they're even stupider than the ones in the orphanage. They make fun of her hair, which she always braids and keeps over her shoulder, and her eyes, which glow a little and have rings in them, and most of all they make fun of her 'villain quirk' and unchanging face. Nobody sits with her at the lunch table either. That suits her just fine. She would feel totally lonely if they weren't all beneath her.
One time, one of them makes fun of her for having a cheap pencil case. It's made of clear plastic and the edges are already cracked and it has pens in it, one which doesn't have any ink. She uses her quirk and takes theirs, and discovers she can even make them think nothing's wrong. For a whole period she gets to pretend she has a shiny new All Might pencil case with three pockets and sixteen colour pencils and erasers and sharpeners and rulers too, and then one of that person's friends sees it and realizes what she's done. They corner her during lunch time and beat her up against the cubby. When she's sent to the principal with a bruise over her weird eye and her braid pulled apart, he says they're both wrong for resorting to fighting but she shouldn't have used her quirk villainously. She decides she hates him and she hates school, even if she does well in it.
When school ends, she goes home and sits down and does her homework while everyone else plays. She finishes it quickly and rarely gets more than two answers wrong. Then, when everyone else is forced to do their homework by the caretakers, she can sit in front of the TV by herself and control what channel she wants. She chooses hero cartoons, which all the other kids choose anyway, but she likes having that choice. Sometimes the caretakers call her a model child and other times they call her a delinquent.
One day, some of the other kids - she doesn't bother to remember their names - invite her to play a game with them, because sometimes they're less mean. It's called the King game, and they all know it but she doesn't so they explain the rules to her. They draw numbered straws and some have numbers and one has a crown. Whoever gets the crown straw tells people what to do. Makima hears the rules and decides she wants to be the king every round, but the game doesn't work that way, so she picks a random one. Number ten.
The king tells three to do a handstand. Three fails. They draw straws again. This time, Makima draws the king straw, and she is delighted. She tells ten to hit four as hard as they possibly can. They both protest this, which irritates her, so she uses her quirk to make them do it.
She gets grounded for the rest of the night for this. She doesn't understand why. Those were the rules of the game, weren't they? They tell her that making the kids hit each other was wrong. What's the point of the king straw if you can only make the other kids do what they want to do anyway?
Sitting in bed and staring at the bunk above her isn't so bad. She's sat ad stared at things for longer.
One time, a couple comes in and Mrs. Miyashita says they're here to adopt. They bring her to a room with the two, who both have red hair. One has a chicken's face. Makima thinks she looks funny, but doesn't smile. It's not that funny.
"So, Satou-chan? Could you tell us a bit about yourself?"
It takes her a second to respond, because she knows her name is Makima and not Satou. She might have another name, but it isn't Satou. She doesn't know what it is.
She looks the wife in the eye. "My name is Makima and I am six-and-a-half years old. I like dogs and pastries. My quirk is Brain Chain and it lets me make people do whatever I want." She recites it like it's off of the whiteboard. The husband shrinks in his seat a little, and the wife grimaces. She doesn't think she's doing very well.
She keeps staring at them. Mrs. Miyashita clears her throat and squats down, giving Makima a gentle pat on the head. It's nice. " A-Ahem . Sorry, Makima-chan is a very… spirited child . She's fiendishly clever and a model student, she honestly seems to love her homework more than playing the other kids! She's just a little undersocialized is all."
"Yes, that does sound wonderful , but, uh…" the husband rubs the back of his head. "We weren't exactly aware of the quirk… oh dear …"
Makima gets the feeling she's already failed this. She wants out of the orphanage. Why is she being forced to stay here? It's not fair. Mind made up as the husband stammers, she points her finger at his wife and sends a chain into her head. "Adopt me!"
The husband screams, and she points a second finger at him. This chain shoots out halfway, before she's suddenly lethargic. Two at a time is one too much. Both chains retract and she drops to the ground, slumping against the itchy cheap carpet. The door slams open behind her and the couple flees, Mrs. Miyashita chasing after them and stammering apologies.
Nobody comes to check on her, and she falls asleep. When she wakes up, her cheek is red and itchy from the scratchy carpet and she's grounded for a week.
Makima doesn't think she's gonna get adopted, ever. It's probably not even possible. When she looks at the other kids, they all seem to get along and play with each other just fine. She doesn't get it. She almost doesn't feel like she's human.
At least animals seem to like her. In the movies they usually like princesses. Is she a princess? Sometimes she daydreams about being a princess, and one day a hero or a knight or a couple that doesn't think she's weird and creepy come to save her from the orphanage. When art class comes and she's told to draw something she wants, she stares at the paper for a long time. Some kids draw their favourite food, or themselves as super-strong heroes, or rocket ships and aquariums and things like that. Makima finally puts her coloured pencils to paper and at the end of class the art teachers asks her about what she's drawn. It's a picture of her inside of a crowd of other people, standing in the middle. They're all standing side-by-side, and they're all the same height. In the picture she's smiling. In real life she isn't. Everyone else in the crowd doesn't have a face, because she can't imagine anyone being there.
"What does this mean?" they ask. She can't answer, because she doesn't know what it means herself. She just drew what she wanted.
They set her up with the 'developmental psychologist', who's impressed she can pronounce her title but decidedly less impressed at Makima's… 'unhealthy mindset about consent and control', as she calls it. Makima doesn't understand, and she's sent back to the orphanage with a sheet.
After this, she hears occasional whisperings from the meaner care staff about her being a 'sociopath' or something. She doesn't know how she can hear them, because they're never nearby. One of them shoos a rat away.
She re-braids her hair before she goes to sleep, even though it's already perfect, because there's nothing to do before curfew. She likes it braided neatly, and does it all by herself every time. It shouldn't be wild or messy because she likes being in control of her hair. Sometimes she wants someone else to braid it for her, but everyone's mean so they don't get to touch her hair. They'd probably pull it or something, or do it wrong anyway, so it's fine.
When she brushes her teeth, she does it tooth by tooth with meticulous focus. The other kids make fun of her for this, for some reason.
Finally, curfew comes, and the day is over. Every day goes like this. She hates the mean kids and the mean caretakers and the principal and everyone else too. She has a secret wish, and nobody can know about it, because they would tell on her, and she'd be in super-massive trouble. She didn't even tell the school guidance counseler. Deep, deep down, she wants to control everyone in the world with her quirk, and make them be nice to her and braid her hair right and give her pastries and hugs, and nobody would fight or be mean. It would be amazing.
When she goes to sleep, she dreams of ripcords and huskies and tombstones and ice cream, and when she wakes up she forgets it all.
Makima is learning new things in her time at the orphanage.
The first is how to act properly and make people like her. It doesn't work on anyone who already knows she doesn't smile and smells people before she sees them and other weird things like that. It usually works well enough on the new people she meets at the library she goes to to avoid going back to the orphanage after school, as long as she doesn't mention her quirk. Still, it's not really worth acting nice. The things that make other people happy don't seem to make her happy, and the things that make her happy are weird. If it's possible to talk to everyone at the orphanage less, she does. Eventually, Mrs. Miyashita leaves, citing old age and health problems, and gives her a pat on the head before she goes. Makima hides in the bathroom and cries even though she didn't see the woman around very much anyways, and has to leave when the other kids start banging on the door and demanding their turn.
Another thing she learns is about her quirk. 'Brain Chain', though it is a catchy rhyme, is not quite the limit of her abilities. She consistently outperforms the other kids when it's time to run the track or play sports. As mentioned before, she can smell really well, and it's easier to smell people coming than to see then - she can only see one direction, after all. She can keep two chains working at a time now, and she can control animals even without her chains, even though it's really hard and the last time she tried she fell asleep in the grass near the corner where the rats make their dens and didn't make curfew.
She can also sometimes see through the eyes of rats and birds. In her opinion, this is totally awesome. She decides not to share these new developments with anyone, even though she wants them to be impressed, because they'll probably just say it's gross that she spends so much time with rats, or creepy that she can always see them.
Sometimes she borrows the ears of a rat and sends it into the walls, so she can listen to what the caretakers have to say. Usually they talk about adult things. Sometimes they talk about her. They've been talking about her a lot more recently.
"The other kids have are complaining about Satou-san again."
"Again? What did she do this time?"
"I don't know, something about rats. I swear, half of it's just made up."
"Well, kids can be mean, but it's not like she doesn't deserve it. She doesn't talk to or play with anyone, and her quirk… it even freaks me out."
"The kids just want a boogeyman" a third voice chimes in. "Classic schoolyard stuff. When my dad was a kid he says he and his friends were always reading creepy online stories about monsters who steal quirks or drink blood. When I was a kid, there was this little yellow house across the river, and me and my friends gossiped that it was a serial killer's hut where he stored the bodies. Nobody ever went in or out of there."
"You have to admit, it's like a movie monster's power. And she acts more and more like a villain with it every day."
"I think she's a danger to the other kids. We should keep them separate."
"Don't do that, she'll become even more reclusive!"
"What, like she isn't already?"
Makima listens and frowns. Listening to adults talking about her makes her gut feel heavy. A deep longing grows for someone to say something in rebuttal, but nobody does in any meaningful way. She tells herself it's because it's a bunch of grown-ups telling her what to do.
One day, Makima points her finger at the mirror and lines it up with her own head. She fires a chain out and it breaks the mirror, so she decides to point it at at her head directly instead. A chain fires into her brain.
"Be normal."
It does nothing. She gets grounded for the broken mirror.
While she's grounded, one of the other kids visits her. This is so rare that it actually shocks her, and the surprise must be evident on her face because the other kid looks shocked as well.
"M-Makima-chan, I need your help…"
She stares. "Why?"
They look embarrassed at the reply they give. "I lost my ball on the roof, and I can't get it down, and everyone is busy…"
It's a laughably stupid matter that can easily be solved with a bit of patience, or a bit of fortitude. The other kid looks pathetic to her. Why would she want to be friends with them anyway? She'd rather leave them to play ball in the yard without her. She's beat them all easily anyway since she can kick harder and run faster.
This is one of the kids that's mean to her. She sits with her hands on her lap and her legs crossed, and they stew in their own sweat simply from being in her vicinity. The feeling that dills her is good. She likes being in control, and in this instance she holds the strings. She has something they want. It's only logical they offer something in return. And, surprisingly, she manages to think of what this pathetic fellow can offer her.
"I will do it if you're not mean to me anymore."
"O-Okay…" they reply immediately, and a triumphant feeling swells in her chest. She lets them lead her to the ledge where the ball is, and she fires a chain at a bird and makes the bird knock the ball back down. The kid that asked for her help and promised not to be mean blurts out a rushed thank you and runs away, ball in hand. The rest of the yard had already cleared out as soon as she fired her chain.
Usually in the hero cartoons, when the heroes use their quirks to help they're thanked and hugged and the crowd surrounds them and cheers them on. The next time Makima is being bullied by the other kids, too cautious to use her quirk on them after her last reprimanding, the kid she helped doesn't say anything mean, instead standing off to the side. He doesn't try to stop the others either. It's enough for Makima, despite the hollow feeling in her chest.
It's always an event when a new caretaker comes in, because it's so rare - Makima overhears that the hours are long, the kids are hard to look after, and the pay isn't great. They show them around and then bring all the kids out to give them a hearty greeting. The new one, a young man with bright eyes, is delighted and ruffles their hair and compliments their cheap clothes and asks them about themselves. For a moment, Makima hangs back and deliberates, and then she decides to take the plunge into the crowd, and does her best to act normal. She puts on a smile that doesn't reach her eyes and holds her hands demurely behind her back, and walks up to the new guy. The other kids are scared, but they don't say anything, just tentatively watching.
"Oh, hey there! It's nice to meet you, my name is Nagao Yori, but just call me Yori, okay? What's your name?"
"Hello." She pauses and stares at him. His smile doesn't waver. "I'm Makima."
"It's nice to meet you, Makima! I promise to do the best job I can and look after you, okay?"
"You promise?" Hope grips her heartstrings with its devilish talons and her whole being feels giddy. An unfamiliar familiar sensation reminds her of things she never knew yet simply forgot. This man is making a promise, and she can hold him to it. Everyone lies and is mean and talks behind her back, but she can control that now. How could she ever forget?
She holds a hand out to him and stares him in the eye. "Makima will do nothing. Nagao Yori will look after Makima and take care of Makima every day and braid her hair and bring her pastries to eat and be her friend. This is a contract."
"What?"
Her hand is still outstretched towards him. She needs him to agree to the contract. The longer he stares at her hand the more she feels like her control over the situation is slipping? The others begin to whisper about her, and Yori looks a little scared.
"Sign the contract. Shake my hand," Makima explains. "A contract cannot be broken. That is how I will know you're not lying."
Yori still doesn't move to shake her hand, instead asking one of the caretakers what exactly Makima's quirk is. Her gut drops.
Even though she knows she shouldn't, she's impatient. A chain fires out of her hand and into Yori's head. "Sign the contract," she repeats, and he moves to shake her hand and obey before another caretaker tackles him to the ground and holds him down. The other kids and screaming and running away, and the other caretakers either swarm Yori and try to pry the chain out of his brain - a fool's errand - or yell and scream at Makima to drop the chain.
She keeps her face calm even as agony roils behind the facade. If she can't control anything else, at least she can control herself, and one day she might be able to make the nothing she feels real.
The day ends, and Makima is put in a separate room from the other kids and grounded for a month for the stunt she's pulled. She doesn't regret it. She really doesn't. The room is small and quiet, and it's hard to sleep without the whispers of the other kids to listen to. She wants to go to the bathroom, but the door is locked, so she lies back down and cries into her pillow silently. The sad feeling doesn't go away. When she falls asleep again, she dreams she's watching a movie with somebody, but she still feels lonely afterwards.
The morning after, Yori isn't there. He quit. When the next new caretaker comes, they make sure to keep Makima away from them. She wouldn't have tried to approach them anyway.
Makima is nine. It's cool to be older, because even if the younger children don't like you, they have that sort of healthy respect for their elders one can appreciate. For the other children, that is - for her, it's more of an awed fear. She's dubbed the devil child of the orphanage, and everyone is afraid if her. This, of course, is a natural reaction that was only inevitable as young minds reach a new stage of growth and the full scope of her quirk's possibilities become evident. Schoolyard running and poking becomes deep, genuine terror. Minds old enough to conceieve death envision the cursed chain piercing their heads, its ethereal and unholy light calling them onto train tracks with its siren's song. It's the punishment they imagine will be carried out if their bullying continues, and Makima would be lying if she says she hadn't thought of it.
Their fear makes a powerful feeling deep within her core thrum, as if it's natural to be feared. Some days she doesn't feel human in the slightest. It's probably not normal, but it makes the mulling stop, so she takes great care in cultivating it. The scurrying of rats is a common sound, and though none are aware she can see and hear though them and foolishly spill their secrets, fears, and desires well within Makima's earshot, all know they are the symbol of her power and reach. Stories propagate about her emotionless candour, peppered by flashes of monstrous fury or conniving domination, and the older kids teach them to the younger kids so as to spare them the fate of running across Makima's path. The halls clear as she walks, and the whispers quiet when she seems to listen. She is always listening, of course, which is natural for someone who has nobody to talk to. The others don't seem to realize this.
It goes a little something like this: In a supposedly secure room flanked by hollow walls and a pair of her ears, Gou confesses she has a crush on Yuu to Nakao. Makima listens until Nakao is alone, and then offers a deal: Nakao will give her a favour she can call anytime, and in return she won't tell Yuu that Gou has a crush. She will not use her contact powers for this, because contracts are rigid and objective and deals are flexible. Nakao, being a good friend, of course agrees to this. Makima could include a privacy stipulation, or force anyone to sign anything, but not only is that exhausting it's… crude. She prefers others to obey her of their own will. Then, she rests comfortably in her solitairy room and stares at the ceiling for a night. She will never be in trouble because Nakao will never tell, because a contract with Makima, any sort of contract, will make her a social pariah. To the other children, she will become Makima's eyes and ears, an extension of her will. The next day, she approaches Gou, and extorts a favour out of her too. Nakao and Gou are unaware of each other's favours, and neither will reveal their debt to her to each other. Finally, when Gou seems to be mustering up the courage to tell Yuu, if only to escape the bind she's in, Makima calls a previous favour to keep Yuu away until Gou loses her newfound bravery and slinks away.
Everybody fears her. Nobody approaches her. Suspicious glances are often traded between each other, paranoid that someone is in Makima's employ. In fact, most of them are. She will never call the favours from anybody, and that ensures they are forever in their debt. Instead of one single act of control she can exert, everything in their life becomes a potential target for her. It keeps them on their toes.
One time, someone calls her bluff. In return, she forces them to sign a contract dictating they will purposefully bomb the next chance they have to leave the orphanage via being interviewed by a family. They start to cry when they realize what she has done, and she forces them to shut up. A few weeks later they enter and leave the interview room completely despondent, dried tear tracks on their face. This does wonders to keep everybody else in line.
It's an odd thing that she has never felt more alone than when everyone listens to her. More than once she contemplates giving up the whole charade, but what would she have left?
Two-and-half years have passed in the orphanage. Makima rules it from the inside, and everybody knows it. Nobody dares call her out for it. At younger ages, they would chastise her quirk use on her lessers. Nowadays, they will reprimand her if they see it, but she has long mastered the art of working when backs are turned and eyes are blind.
To pass the time, she develops an affinity for television, and anything on it. Movies, especially ones about heroes, are her favourites. She will sit down and watch for hours until her eyes are sore and curfew comes and she reluctantly slinks away from the tatty old couch in the empty room, all the other kids finding something else to do when the mood strikes her to binge. Most of the movies she watches are about friends and family, and these are her least favourite, but she watches them anyway. They make her unhappy the whole way through, but after she finishes them she's always thinking about certain scenes, whether they be emotional crescendos and tearjerking confessions or mundane conversations around the dinner table. She recites them in her head and this helps her fall asleep faster.
Interviews come and interviews go. In total, Makima has had twelve, not including the first one with the red-haired couple and the wife with the funny chicken head. For these, she is on her best behaviour, and the caretakers that accompany her are careful not to say anything too negative about her. She smiles and laughs and talks about how good her grades are. She avoids her quirk as much as she can.
She fails every single one. Perhaps it's no wonder. Some days, she doesn't feel human. If even she doesn't feel that way, can she blame others for thinking it as well? There is a reason why when the other children call her evil or a monster, her retort isn't a heated "No! I'm not!" but silence. She doesn't have the heart to punish everyone who says things like this, because if she did the orphanage would become engulfed in such constant and abject misery that she wouldn't be able to suffer being in its vicinity. The unspoken arrangement between her and every other soul in the orphanage is of distance, wariness, and mutual avoidance. They are happy to ignore her, and she accepts being ignored.
The conclusion she comes to after these thirteen failed interviews is that there is something fundamentally repugnant about her, both in regards to her quirk and who she is. Who wants the unemotive, manipulative devil when they could have someone who laughs and cries and makes friends? Never mind that she, too, laughs at jokes and cries occasionally - these instances are infrequent and in solitude. The others are blameless for their obliviousness.
School is still boring, but even the other kids think so, so in this she is among her peers. Maths is rote, Japanese is laughably easy, science is a chore. The arts are more difficult, and she routinely struggles with them, but unlike her peers she struggles in different ways.
History is the most interesting. Makima learns about the pre-quirk wars, the dawn of quirks and the collapse of japan. The Meta Liberation War is touched on and skimmed over, which disappoints her, but that's probably saved for when she's much older. The end of the international dark age is captivating, and the rise of heroes awes her. So many terrible and great things happen in such a short amount of time that it saddens and excites her equally. The idea of great legions of people working together to make the world better speaks to her, fighting against poison gas and murderous fanatics and bombs and guns and warlords and the very concepts of rot, corruption, death, inequality. The world, Makima thinks, would be a much better place if these things were gone. If there were nothing to be afraid of or sad about, perhaps the other kids would not be afraid of her. That, or she would have to be purged along with the rest. What room does the most despised and feared person have in a world free of frightful and disgusting things? It should be scary, but it's almost comforting, the idea of cleaning the world of everything bad before departing from it. She holds this dream close to her chest.
The fourteenth interview goes better. Perhaps she's refined her act enough that it fools the balding man who enters the room. Her caretaker shives behind her. He's been convinced not to disclose her quirk unless it is explicitly asked for.
"Hello! You're little Makima-chan, right? It's nice to meet you!"
Makima smiles brightly, closing her eyes and holding her hands behind her back and popping up in a little half-hop. "Thank you! It's nice to meet you too, Mr. Asa-san!" This, of course, is grammatically incorrect, but she's learned it's the sort of mistake that is 'cute'.
"Aren't you polite? How long have you been here?"
"Three whole years!" This act tires her, hollows her out from the inside until she feels like she's wearing human skin. It's a disguise collated from how all the other kids act with each other and the caretakers, or how they did before the orphanage became hers, but this ensures it is decidedly not Makima. Not Makima, but somebody else draped over her, and that is the kind of person who could be accepted by people. It's a painful truth she constantly avoids, but on the quietest nights the certainty that nobody will ever be able to meet her eye to eye unless she forces them to with a yank on their chain consumes her thoughts. She will never be loved, and she cannot force love, because it would feel cheap and rotten if she tries. And she does, every so often at her weakest, forces a caretaker to hold her close and rock her to sleep, and makes them forget about it afterwards. It solves precisely nothing.
This is her hardest try yet. The man listens as she talks about comics she doesn't enjoy and shows she doesn't watch, flavours of chips she's never tried and games she's never played, all dressed up with enthusiasm she doesn't feel. She can feel her caretaker tremble behind her, impressed and horrified as they realize how much of her persona right now is fiction but how convincing her delivery is. The man, after two hours, sits up and dusts himself off with a smile on his face and changes her world with his announcement.
"She's a joy. I'd like to be able to look after her. What do I need to sign?"
Within three hours she's out of the orphanage, in a suburb she's never seen after a journey through unfamiliar streets. The Mr. Asa welcomes her into his house and introduces his son as her soon-to-be brother. He's friendly as well.
The next week is heaven, even if the mask she wears is hell. They buy nice clothes and school supplies, and she helps her brother with his homework. They congratulate her on her impressive grades, and she soaks the praise in. Mr. Asa tells her captivating stories of his time as a former hero, and these interest her the most, so she looks forward to each and every one. She sits down to watch the shows she never has before, and as she expects she finds absolutely no interest in them, but the whole family surrounds her on the couch to watch them with her. The feeling is completely, absolutely new, and it scratches her heart raw until she feels so happy it's painful.
Unfortunately, she cannot be perfect. She slips up and a teacher catches her with a chain in another student's head. Mr. Asa, her new guardian, is called into the Principal's office so her beahvious can be discussed.
This brings up the question of her previous misbehaviours and concerning history of maladjustment and antisocial tendencies. Mr. Asa, having forgotten to skim her file, reads it in full. He looks wary when he enters the office, Makima despondent on a a little plastic chair.
"Mr. Asa, please take a seat. Considering your comments on the phone I take it you were previously unaware of Ms. Satou's track record here?"
"To be honest, I just never got to it. The interview went well, and the process of adopting her was smooth as butter, and everything's gone so well this past week I didn't really feel the need… I guess in retrospect that was shortsighted of me."
"Indeed." The Principal steeples his fingers and sighs deeply, elbows on his desk. "She has displayed a constant and flagrant lack of regard for quirk use rules, and to be frank… most of her peers hate her. If she does not get her way, or if somebody annoys her, or if a squabble starts, she throws a tantrum and lashes out, forcing her quirk onto the other students and bending them to her whims."
"I don't!" Makima protests, tears in her eyes. Everything is falling apart.
"She does," he confirms. "I have over twenty different referrals and complaints and notes from her teachers and peers. She is clever enough by now that we rarely catch her using her quirk, and relies on plausible deniability and intimidation of the other students. If you'll look here, she even appears to be acting now. The Satou Makima we have known for three years now is unemotive to the point of stoicism, disregarding occassional sparks of vitriol or indignation."
"He's lying! He's lying!" She bursts out of her seat, the plastic chair falling on its side, and she runs up to the desk and scatters the papers Mr. Asa is reading everywhere. Dsperate, her ringed eyes meet his. He flinches, perhaps for the first time making the connection between her concentric gaze and that of a hypnotist. It's a dagger to the throat, and she feels like she can't even breathe.
"I…" her breath hitches. "I'm sorry. I wasn't aware of this. I suppose as her guardian it was my responsibility to-"
"NO! DON'T! I'M SORRY, I'LL BE BETTER!" Makima is shrieking now, and the Principal watches with a desperate afraid eye. She doesn't care. She can only see Mr. Asa right now, as he recedes in his seat and looks at her with a new light in his eyes. The man she's begun to see as a father stares at her finger, and then his gaze snaps to the Principal.
"A-About her quirk…"
Her last thread of desperation snaps. Her world is ending, and she will do anything to piece it back together. The Principal falls backwards in his chair as she points a finger gun directly at Mr. Asa's head.
"DON'T LEAVE ME!"
It's the most rotten of luck that he manages to dodge in time. He's a former hero, after all.
In three hours, she's back in the orphanage again, bearing only a red face and a bruised arm from when Mr. Asa subdued her against the floor of the Principal's office. She brings with her a note of expulsion, and instructions on how to find a new school. She brings nothing else, not the new supplies or clothes she'd been bought. She'll never see Mr. Asa again, or say goodbye to the boy who could've been her brother.
Everyone is afraid again, now that she's back, but when her back is turned and the rats listen nobody is surprised she only lasted a week. The kid whose interview she ruined scoffs and says it serves her right. Gou and Yuu confessed to each other the week she was away and in-between tender sweetness to each other they share their hatred for her. The caretakers busy themselves with the unenviable task of finding a school that will accept her, and the other kids are delighted to know they will be free from her for half the day now. She slumps back into the familiar indents on her bed's mattress and stares numbly at the ceiling. Perhaps she'll cry later, but right now the nothing on her face matches the hollow emptiness she feels inside. A new heart was grown in her chest and torn right out.
After that day, Makima gives up. She never tries to act normal again.
For the first time, Makima remembers something from a dream - something concrete, that is, not faint wisps and whispers that float away when the sun hits her eyelids through the plastic drapes of her little room, stuffed beneath layers of mental mothballs she cannot penetrate.
It is more accurate to say she remembers two somethings, but they are not equally helpful.
The first is a name, of sorts. "Chainsaw Man". Sounds heroic. Makima takes the next opportunity she gets to go on one of the library computers and search the web for a hero with this name. When this turns up no results, she Ramos up her efforts twofold. Under her spiral eyes the government database of heroes past and present is examined, then the available lists of worldwide prominents, and finally the villain registries. This takes all day, but Makima has nothing better to do anyway - what else waits for her on earth? Certainly not the caretakers and fellow children that stare at her like she's a ravenous monster that seeks to teethe itself on their free will.
She is late for curfew and her research bears no fruits. This pattern is repeated for two more days before she gives up and assumes that her dream was partially nonsensical. Not totally nonsensical, mind you, because the other part is what she ruminates on in the breaks she has these three days of searching.
"Necessary evil."
It's spoken in a silky-soft voice that sounds like amber and honey and sweet ambrosia, the velvet padding inside of a collar that would feel divinely smooth against your skin even while the chain tugs you into the abyss. It sounds eerily similar to her own, just older and… emptier, perfectly trained to be whatever its listener wishes to hear.
A necessary evil is an action taken that one would consider immoral or undesirable in some way, which is usually juxtaposed against an alternative considered significantly worse.
As an example: as an example: when the orphanage transfers Makima to a new school after her explusion, this one more run down and with a reputation for handling delinquency, they order the administration to announce her quirk to the student body and warn other students of the potential danger. Makima is on stage when this happens, and as every eye sticks to her in fear and disbelief her skin prickles painfully and the threads of her uniform stab through her nerves.
This, of course, is a logically bad move. By disclosing her quirk they have sewn chaos in the student body, and without the ability to hide her quirk Makima will have to use it both more surreptitiously and more forcefully in order to ensure she isn't consigned to bullying and beatings. In other words, they make recidivism almost inevitable.
However, they have avoided the greater evil. They have saved the hundreds of other children in this school from Makima. Now they know to avoid her, to stay in larger groups and not remain alone when she is nearby. Makima is cool-headed enough and rational-minded enough now to understand that what she is and what she can do are fundamentally wrong on a human level.
Brain Chain offers limitless control. Controlling people against their wills is forcing them to do any manner of things. It's wrong, plain and simple. The rules couldn't be clearer on this.
So why does Makima strengthen her hold on the orphanage, carve out a place in this new school?
It's a necessary evil.
Control is a way of life now. There is no other way. If she lets the leash slacken too much, somebody will do something drastic. The rougher delinquents at school both look at her like a tasty piece of steak, perhaps wanting her to bolster their own posses and harass the others, or as a threat to an environment already noxious. Makima begins to establish her web of chains immediately, because there is the ever so slight chance someone will do the smart thing and bludgeon her with a wrench in an alley before she can retaliate and until she can't move. The older kids in the orphanage probably want to kill her.
To sum it up, they're both trapped in this place with each other.
Makima knows she's rotten. Probably a villain. How else can she justify what she does when she watches All Might interviews five minutes before curfew, digging herself in between the couch cushions and holding the pillows tight? What else is she but the villains he talks about that hold innocents hostage or plot in the dark to twist the world to their nefarious whims?
Perhaps further in the future she can atone. She already has the basic fundamentals of a plan to rid the world of everything evil and filthy, to put herself to good use and make a world so great it can even forgive her for what she does to create it.
Yes, Makima is rotten to the core, evil at heart, and she feels it with every tremulous shake in her bones, with every day that passes. It'll all be worth it one day, for the good of so many more. A necessary evil. That plan is the balm that soothes the ache of her heart.
It's been a few months since her… fourteenth interview. She's ten now. It's unsurprising that the day passes with little fanfare, and she would not force anybody to. Instead, she spends the day in her room reading a science textbook two grades up. It's really boring, so she remembers little from it.
Her fifteenth interview is very much like the first thirteen. Her act is probably better but she's given up on pretending that she's a better person than she is. The couple, thankfully, finds some other kid they like afterwards and adopt them instead. The others look at the one freed from the prison they share in envy. They look so happy, or so she hears, and when she hears this it brings the faintest of smiles to her face. Oh, if only everybody else could be adopted and the staff could find other jobs, they'd all be happier that way.
Makima does not want to be surrounded by unhappiness. She even slackens her manipulations somewhat, focuses on warding the others away rather than fighting for dominance. This is probably borne of more sinister unconscious manipulative streak, she introspects. The gilded cage is better than the birdbox, is it not?
It doesn't matter. The game has been lost, and she will not be adopted, so why ruin it for everyone else? Why scrounge her way to the top and be her very best for interviews? Why expend all that effort just to make more people miserable? Is her time not better spent ensuring her survival and material comfort through the continuation of her dominion over the orphanage, whilst minimising her own presence to make everyone feel more secure, and let other, normal children take the spot?
Some people might call it melancholic, but it's simply a practical state of mind to stay in. Any other leads to frequent emotional complications. Makima is better off staying in her lane, and leaving the rest of the children to things like finding families and making friends and being adopted. Complete and total rejection faces her if she tries. She's just… too different.
"Makima."
The word is spoken quietly, the reserved tone of somebody who doesn't want to be the one delivering the news. Makima tilts her head and glances up at the nervous looking caretaker.
"Yes?"
It tastes bland in her mouth. There's only one reason a caretaker would approach her at this time of day at this day of the week if it's not for trouble - and by their demeannour it clearly isn't - an interview.
She already knows what they're going to say when they say it. "Y-You have… an interview."
A sixteenth.
It doesn't make sense. After her fifteenth, she realized her request to minimise the negative marks on her record and her quirk's workings in the misguided attempt that a shinier facade would make Mr. Asa love her. It turned out that you cannot make somebody love you, only hope they give you their love. Nobody is obligated to hand over their heart, least of all to someone who'd sooner pierce it with a chain. That request was made under threat of exposing one person's marital affair, another's financial habits, all avenues to control that were as much reassuring as to their reliability as they were bile in her lungs. She decided to avoid wasting time with inevitable disappointments and make it clear just what she is to anyone willing to look.
Every infraction, her explusion, her quirk, all there for potential adopters to view, and let the buyer beware. So why is somebody here now?
The only conclusions she can come to is that they are either a complete and utter fool or a misguided bleeding heart. It doesn't matter which, because the road they will travel remains the same: they will either fear or despise her.
This all rushes through her head in a split second, and then she looks back at the catetaker. "I see. Please take me to the room then."
She's lead through the halls of the orphanage in the way one might follow a nervous dog on a leash, until they reach a familiar door and enter with little fanfare. Sitting there is a lanky man and a plump woman, both of whom have different shades of purple hair. They both give winning smiles.
"Hello! I'm Shinsou Nori, and this is my husband Masato," the wife begins, gesturing to her spouse with a loving smile which he reciprocates. Makima takes note of this with some consternation, squirreling it away to some mental alcove, and reminds herself it's so she can use it against them. "Are you little Makima-chan?"
Makima glances back up at her caretaker, who seems just as flummoxed by their nonchalant attitude. She moves forward to sit on the provided couch, shuffling to find a comfy position, and stared right back at them without mirroring their smile.
"Yes."
The word hangs in the air. Enthusiastic little children who wish to be adopted would usually take this chance to blabber off about whatever it is endears people to them. Makima has eavesdropped on successful interviews, though only once has she been able to replicate their success, and the less she thinks about that time the better she'll be.
Not thinking about things really is an incredibly useful tool. She becomes better at it every day.
Mr. And Mrs. Shinsou stare at her quizzically. "Do you… know why we are here?" he ventures, perhaps perplexed by her passivity.
"You think you want to adopt me," she answers. An objective answer if there ever was one, with the same bland intonation. A perfectly controlled composure conveys the nothing she feels.
"Yes, well we-"
"My quirk is called Brain Chain," she pre-empts. Time to burst this bubble of foolishness while it lasts. "It allows me to take full control of people's bodies and minds and make them do whatever I want."
She sits back in the couch and stared at them, daring them to meet her spiralling eyes. Peculiar enough, they do.
"We knew that, dear, it was in your file."
Makima is unimpressed. "Then why are you here?"
Mrs. Shinsou fidgets in her seat. "Well… we just thought about adopting for a while, especially since we've always wanted another child, but it's been a long time since our first."
"There are other children here. You could choose one of them. Why are you here for me?"
She cuts right to the heart of the issue, a tactic generally better for when one is in absolute control of the situation. Makima is, because she knows exactly how this ends.
"Our little Hitoshi has a mind control quirk as well, and when we saw your file it-"
"How does it work?"
Makima is intrigued by this topic of conversation, though the answer turns out to be violently disappointing. Their son, Shinsou, has a quirk that lets him control people if they respond to him verbally.
"...so it can be avoided entirely," she bitterly concludes. It tastes like metal on her tongue. For a split second, there might have been somebody in this world just like her. An equal.
"I guess? Are you… okay, Makima-chan?"
Makima's hands unclench from her pants and her gaze snaps back up to the couple. The fabric is still creased where she'd gripped it, but a mundane observation like that flies under the radar compared to a question she's only heard one other time in her life, on city streets so many years ago.
"Of course." Of course she's okay. Why wouldn't she be?
"...Right…" Mrs. Shinsou murmurs. A flicker of familiarity in her eye. Is her child also difficult like Makima is? She amputated that strain of thought from where it grows, trying to shut it out of her mind entirely. This ship sailed a long time ago.
And so, Makima closes her hands atop her crossed legs and sits up straight, piercing them with a glowing yellow gaze. "Thank you for your time, but I do not believe you want to adopt me. You clearly have some misconceptions about my quirk and my track record. There are plenty of other children here you may want to adopt instead. Some of them even have purple hair."
Mr. and Mrs. Shinsou sit there in silence, struggling for a response. They glance up at her caretaker, who realizes she's in the room and hurriedly jumps in to… defend Makima?
"N-now don't say that, Makima-chan, you don't know that they don't-"
Her heart leaps in her chest for a fraction of a second before she realizes the angle here.
"You're only saying that because you want to get rid of me. You know I'll be back. Don't bother." Their mouth clicks shut.
Makima turns back to look at Mr. Shinsou, who is looking at her caretaker. Mrs. Shinsou watches her with an unguarded expression full of cloying pity. It makes Makima feel pathetic, but not a trace of it crosses the realm from her mind to her face.
"Could you leave us alone for a bit?" Mr. Shinsou asks, and Makima and the caretaker both think this is absolutely insane but they nonetheless comply, fleeing the room as fast as bounds of social nicety will allow, but this doesn't extend to their grasp of physics as the door comes flying closed behind them, rattling on its hinges and little flecks of paint falling from the cracked frame around it and onto the shaggy rug of the interview room. There's a moment of silence.
"Why did you do that?" Makima asks. She even lets a little curiosity through her controlled expression, just to sell how much she wants to know.
"Ah, well…" Mr. Shinsou scratches his chin. "I just thought perhaps you'd be happier without her in the room."
Makima stares back at the door. That caretaker was one of the meaner ones behind closed doors. Not only that, but with the only person knowledgeable about the full scope of her control out of the room, her control of the situation has improved drastically.
Makima counts the little flecks of paint that fell off the door when it slammed closed. "I guess."
"What do you like, Makima-chan?" Mrs. Shinsou asks.
There's no harm in telling them tidbits of useless information.
"I like watching movies."
"Oh? How come?"
She pauses, and searches through her memories. Nobody's ever asked that before. "Well…" she begins, measuring her words, "...I enjoy the craftsmanship behind them. Every single action the actors perform, every way the camera moves, every line of dialogue, all working together to convey the vision of the director. The more refined it becomes, the more… perfect the movie can be. The less control the director has, the more different actors fail to do their jobs, the worse it is. I've been looking for the perfect movie."
It's freeing to unload these thoughts, normally confined to being cooped up in her head, and speak them aloud to an audience. Perhaps this interview will not be a total waste of time after all.
"That's really interesting. A perfect movie, eh? Are you sure there can be such a thing?" Mr. Shinsou challenges. Mrs. Shinsou gives him a light cuff on the shoulder but he just looks curiously at Makima, a hand on his leg and the other on his chin. A fellow savant?
Makima blinks. "There has to be."
The man shrugs. "A movie's got a lotta moving parts. What about ad-libs, or lucky coincidences? Sometimes a movie's flaws make it more worth watching, right? And besides, nobody's perfect. Why would a movie be any different? They're made by us, after all."
"How could you accept a movie with flaws if there could be a movie out there without them?" Makima counters, sitting a little more forward now. Mrs. Shinsou sighs in exasperation, with more than a hint of fondness.
Mr. Shinsou chuckles. "Because then I've got two great movies! I don't need perfection when I'm an imperfect man," he continues, earning a "no, really?"from his wife that he snorts at. "And besides, wouldn't it ruin all the rest of them for me?"
"It would still be better if there were no bad movies," Makima begins to ramble. Speaking to another person like this is an alien feeling. "The world would be better. Everyone would be happier."
"I think you can find gold nuggets in the bad ones too," Mr. Shinsou grins. Makima frowns. "Sometimes, you even see a director find something worthwhile in a bad film, and they take that and make something beautiful."
She sits there in silence for a while, digesting what he's said and turning it around in her head. The thought collides with everything else on her mind, becoming a huge blurry mess. "I don't get it," she finally decides on.
"I don't either," he admits, throwing his arms back and leaning on them. "Anyway, would you still like us to adopt you?"
Three hours later, Makima stares up at a different ceiling. It's the guest room of the Shinsou family. She doesn't know why she accepted, feeling like she was led along by an invisible chain. The ground felt shaky beneath her shoes as she walked through the quiet hallways that night, their son Hitoshi already asleep in his room. With promises that the room would be refurnished for her, the Shinsou wife and husband abscond back to their own room. Despite seeing her record, despite not acting normal, here she lies in a bed that isn't the orphanage's. She isn't sure what to make of this.
Though she doesn't know it yet, Makima has been freed. Life in the orphanage will gradually return to normal. One week later, a representative of the Hero Public Safety Commission runs across Makima's despite the organization's byzantine bureaucracy and promptly arrives at the orphanage with a proposal. They are informed that Makima was adopted a week ago and leave with fists clenched.
Makima wakes up to an unfamiliar ceiling, clean and white and modern with the lights embedded into it.
Ah, right. The Shinsou household. Shinsou Nori and her husband Shinsou Masato brought her in for an unknowable reason. Her money still rests on foolishness. For now, she'll enjoy this brief reprieve before she's sent back.
Opening the drapes bathes her in warm weekend morning light. Sunbeams shine and bacon is sizzling in the air, wafting through the cracks of her clean white door. A few pairs of girl's clothes sit right in front of it. It's still the morning - when did the Shinsous find the time to buy them?
The smell of food is tantalising, but she's locked in her door by the sound of conversation, murmuring obscured by the length of hallway and stairwell between her and the kitchen. There's a jolly and boisterous laugh that explodes from below, probably Mrs. Shinsou.
She decides to stay in her room. It's a pity, because she's never had bacon before, and it would be nice to try it fresh. Eventually everyone else will vacate the kitchen and she can slip in for a bite to eat.
She pools through the small trove of belongings in her rucksack. Cheap see-through plastic pencil case, a few changes of clothes, school books. Shuffling the new clothes she won't get to keep back into the closet, she chooses what she has that's less worn - a white fleece and black slacks. The guest room has no desk, so she perches herself on the side of the bed and leans over the bedside table to work on her mathematics.
An hour later, all of her homework is done. History took the longest, as she spent extra time thinking through her answers and answering as creatively as the annoyingly stifling prompts would allow. After that, she spends the time staring at the wall and daydreaming. Hours pass in what feels like minutes.
Knock knock knock!
"Makima, dear, are you up? I'm sure yesterday was tiring, but would you like some breakfast? We're keeping it warm for you."
"I'm fine, thank you." Her stomach grumbles in consternation at the denial but breakfast, or as it now recedes into the murky uncertainty of brunch, can wait.
"Are you sure? You really must eat a little something. A girl your age ought to enjoy her food, you know!"
Makima doesn't respond. Frankly, she already knows she is everything a girl her age oughtn't be. What's one more way she can't be normal?
"We have pancakes with syrup!"
Damn her sweet tooth.
Makima follows Mrs. Shinsou out of the guest room and down the corridor, down the stairs, then another corridor, and finally they're in the kitchen/dining room. It's an awfully large amount of space for just three people to live in, Makima thinks.
Mr. Shinsou is, for some unfathomable reason, still at the stove, and his son Hitoshi sits at the table nursing a cup of coffee and reading a manga. Makima's read them before at the library but she really doesn't get the appeal.
"Ah, Makima-chan! Good morning!" The lanky man greets, gesturing to his son on the table who lazily flicks his eyes over to her. "This little layabout is Hitoshi! He's already drinking coffee at age ten. Between you and be, I think he gets it from his mother."
This earns him a cuff behind the ears and a giggle and a kiss. Makima looks away and states at Shinsou, who stares back, undaunted. Unbidden, thoughts of whether he knows her track record or her quirk or the way she is run through her head. How does she act here? Well, his parents probably already told him to be cautious.
Rather than make conversation, she turns to the counter just in time for Mr. Shinsou to pile up some pancakes on her plate with bacon on the side, and she sits down at the table with a bottle of maple syrup and absolutely drowns them. A perfectly precise cut of the stack grants her fork an aesthetically pleasing, even cross-section that hides the debauched nightmare of sugar her breakfast has become.
She glances up. Shinsou is still peeking up at her over his mug of coffee. What does he want?
Ignoring him, she takes a bite and her mouth buzzes with the sugar she doesn't often get to eat. It's exquisite, and it sends the dopamine in her body surging in a hollow yet fulfilling pantomime of the joy others feel. This first bite becomes another, and a third, and a fourth, and before she knows it half of her plate is massacred - this isn't to say her face is sticky with syrup or there is a mess, for Makima prides her self control and remains spotless. It's after she'ss halfway trough when, perhaps waiting for her to become acclimated to the meal, Hitoshi speaks.
"Dad says you've got a quirk like me," he states, taking a shallow sip of his coffee. It's a comical sight, and go be honest she will never understand anyone's love for the bitter brew of beans.
"I suppose. Mine is a lot more powerful." This is probably small talk. Makima is, to be frank, thrown off by a conversation as aimless as this, with an indiscernible goal and no stakes.
"Did people give you shit for it?"
"Hitoshi, language!" his father chides. Despite this, he doesn't seem too unhappy about it. This confounds Makima, who delicately makes an incision in yet another square of stacked pancake, drenches it in maple syrup, and stuffs it in her mouth to avoid answering right away. She chews, swallows, and clears her throat delicately. "That's irrelevant."
"Kinda is," he insists. "Mom says that if people at school are mean 'cuz of my quirk I should-"
"Hitoshi, how many times have I told you not to take your mother's advice? It's not healthy," Mr. Shinsou jokes. He dodges his wife's rolled up newspaper and gives his son a pointed glance, and Hitoshi chuckles. It's the exact sort of warm display that Makima will watch on replay in a movie to try and dissect its secrets, why it captivates her so, what aspect of filmmaking carves holes in her chest at the sight of it, but here it just feels distant.
Finishing the last of her pancakes, she stands up. "We are not similar in any meaningful way. I have homework to do."
It's a bold-faced lie that nobody calls her on, instead dejectedly watching as she returns up the stairs. She sits on her bed and stares at the ceiling, but at least her stomach is full.
School is similar, but different. Hitoshi doesn't seem too chatty for the most part, instead settling for suspicious glances at Makima, as if what she is and the danger she represents reeks off of her, but it's interspersed by a distinct aura of sadness, maybe pity. This makes sense, she thinks, because it must seem to him that she's encroaching on a space that is his. Humans can be territorial, so this is perfectly natural, and she cannot hold it against him.
She catches herself on that thought. She's a human too, of course. It feels so normal to forget that sometimes, so normal that the reminder chafes at a part of her brain she feels she hasn't access to yet, the same part that makes her forget her dreams. The moment passes and the errant thought goes, and she moves on to more productive things. Namely, school.
She's transferred to a new school, the third in as many years, due to the distance of the Shinsous from her last. As luck would have it, Hitoshi is her classmate, and they share the commute there. Warm, delicious syrupy meals are predicated on not ruining things with the Shinsou family, so for now she hunkers down, and doesn't rock the boat. The teachers give her suspicious glances, undoubtedly having read her record, but they do not spread the news throughout the student body, and a little gratitude wells up in her.
Classes pass uneventfully. It's a day that has a lot of tests, as the teachers explain apologetically to their only new student, and they offer her exemptions that get the rest of the students hollering with jealousy. She chooses to sit them, and does quite well in her own opinion. Hitoshi, she notices, does less well, and hunches over his paper in despair as if shielding it will prevent the teacher from taking it from his desk as time is up. It's reassuring to know that she has something this boy with a house and nice food and a family doesn't.
Periods of tranquility are few and far between for her, so she relaxes a little. Most of the time in class she daydreams about interesting scenes from movies and contemplates going about making her own one day, and when it's time to take notes she doodles chainsaws and dogs in the margins of her notebook, staring at them as if they'll begin to move and provide her the answers she seeks.
History is a little more interesting, as she goes too in depth when asked to give an answer to a question, and she doesn't realise until she's in it that she's going on a tangent about how much better the world would be if all pain, violence, and suffering ceased to be. The history teacher calls her naive, that she doesn't understand how the world works. In Makima's eyes, she is the naive one. There must be memory alteration or reality warping quirks that allow her to carry out her goal, but she doesn't pursue the debate any further. When she sits down, the small talk with her teacher having concluded, she notices Hitoshi glancing back at her with a curious eye.
The peace doesn't last. One of the teachers later in the day, during her customary introduction to them, asks her quirk. This, of course, is unnecessary, because one look in his eye tells her he already knows what it is. He wants her to say it aloud, or flounder and gain the antipathy of her peers. Zugzwang. A glance at Hitoshi sees him slump in his seat and stare at his desk.
Reviewing her memories of the day, it occurs to her that she hasn't seen anybody interact with the lilac-haired boy in any meaningful way. In fact, barely anybody speaks to him at all, and - most crucially, her meticulous memory supplies - they never respond to any of his questions, all of which are delivered with a quiet and half-defeated tone, like he doesn't expect an answer anyway.
Really, she should've expected this, but a rock settles in her stomach anyway. She regains her impeccable control over her face, choosing to ignore what emotion tore through it moments before, and speaks with a perfectly neutral cadence. "My quirk is Brain Chain. It lets me control people." She offers as little information as possible, and challenges anyone to challenge her with a steely spiral gaze. This is smaller school than before, so perhaps she can control the entire thing in a matter of months. It won't be hard, and it will be familiar, and what else is there to do?
All around her, suspicious eyes cast contemptuous looks, and mutterings colour the air. If she'd bothered to try and make friends in class before this, they would surely have abandoned her. A short glance back at Hitoshi shows his eyes shining with… sympathy?
When it's time to go to lunch, she does her best to tune out the inevitable flood to leave the classroom that houses her. She's used to it. What she's less used to is following Hitoshi to the cafeteria and sitting across from him, tucking into the bento Mr. Shinsou prepared for her. Hitoshi scrolls through his phone on what her keen eyes pick up as a heroics website - 'Top 10 Secrets they don't Tell You for Becoming a Hero' . He chews his rice silently and thoughtfully, and she her own. They don't exchange a word, and the distance between them is permeable, but it isn't a negative reaction. Nobody else tries to sit down at their table.
It's… odd, seeing them avoid someone the same way they avoid her.
Perhaps they are a little similar after all.