Chapter 1: A Quirkless Cog in a Superpowered World
The first thing I noticed wasn't the smell, though that came a close second—a dusty, old-paper and tatami mat scent, overlaid with the faint, ever-present ghost of miso soup. No, the first thing was the sheer, overwhelming quiet. Not a silence of peace, but the dense, heavy quiet of a small, insulated space in a world that roared outside.
My Tokyo had been a symphony of honking, chattering, and the distant hum of a million lives.
This room, my new room, was a muffled solo.
Sunlight, weak and filtered through a window that needed a good wipe, cut a sad rectangle across the worn floorboards, illuminating galaxies of dancing dust motes.
I sat on a thin futon, staring at my hands.
Small.
Smooth.
Utterly, devastatingly ordinary.
"What will you do if you were in my place?" I thought, the question a familiar, mocking refrain in my head. "You accidentally arrived in another universe, one full of a group of different heroes and also villains, and you went and found yourself in the body of a mere boy of ten years old who does not possess any special ability, while this world is famous for at least 80% of its people having supernatural abilities or what is known as 'Quirks'..."
Oh, if only it were that simple to explain.
My name, once, was something else. Now, it was (Suzuki Saito). A label on a life I hadn'tt chosen. I lived in a nondescript part of Musutafu, not Tokyo, but the vibe was similar enough to ache. And I had arrived in the universe of My Hero Academia.
Yes, that anime.
The wildly popular one that had ended its run a few months back in my old world. If you remember it, congratulations. You have a fantastic memory and probably too much free time, just like I did.
The irony was a bitter pill, coated in the chalky residue of childhood vitamins.
I hadn't arrived at the grand starting line, no. I'd been unceremoniously dumped into the backstory, six years before the main events would kick off. I was the same age as (Midoriya Izuku) and (Bakugou Katsuki) right now. But unlike the future Symbol of Peace's biggest fanboy, I was under no illusions.
There was zero chance I would ever get One For All.
Not a sliver.
Not a hope.
Even if I tried to pretend to be heroic enough, to throw myself into danger with a stupid, self-sacrificial grin, the ghost of a man on a rooftop wasn't looking for a ten-year-old with an identity crisis. He was looking for a specific, quirkless boy with a heart bigger than his brain and legs that moved before he could think.
That wasn't me.
"Why doesn't this stupid thing work?!"
The frustrated groan tore from my throat, sharp and loud in the quiet room. It was aimed at the sad assemblage of junk on the low table before me—my "project." A pair of repurposed gardening gloves, stripped of their floral patterns, now wired to a gutted remote-control car and a power bank that wheezed like an asthmatic mouse. The goal? Some form of hydraulic-assisted grip. The reality? A paperweight that occasionally sparked and smelled of ozone.
I stared at it, my reflection warped in the convex surface of a loose bolt.
In my previous life, I wanted to be a hero too. Not out of some profound, selfless calling, not really. I admired heroes, loved the adulation they received, the way people's eyes lit up when they appeared. I wanted that. I wanted to be the one people looked at with hope and awe. It was a selfish desire, especially when stacked against the likes of All Might, who valued the lives of others above his own without a second thought.
Of course, I valued human life. I wasn't a monster.
But I was no saint.
I wouldn't risk my life for a stranger on a pure, unthinking impulse. The survival instincts of a former office worker, used to calculating commute times and quarterly reports, ran too deep.
A soft creak echoed from the hallway floorboard, the one that always protested under weight, followed by a voice that was like worn cotton—soft, warm, and frayed at the edges.
"(Suzuki), come here. Dinner is ready."
I flinched, the sound pulling me from the depths of my brooding. I left the pathetic glove-thing on the table, its exposed wires seeming to sneer at my retreating back. The walk to the kitchen was short, the slippers whispering shuff-shuff against the wooden floor.
I slid onto a chair at the small table, its varnish sticky in places. Before me stood the only biological relative I had met since my... transition.
(Suzuki Hana).
She was a woman in her sixties, with hair the color of spun silver pulled into a tidy, if loose, bun. Her face was a roadmap of gentle wrinkles, each line seeming to tell a story of a quiet smile or a worried frown. Her hands, as she ladled rice and curry onto my plate, were thin, the veins prominent under papery skin, moving with a slow, precise economy.
She had no flashy Quirk either. She was normal, profoundly, beautifully normal in a world obsessed with the extraordinary.
The rich, spicy aroma of the curry, thick with potatoes and carrots, filled the small kitchen, a tangible warmth that fought back the evening chill. It was a homely, comforting smell that made my stomach growl and my heart twist with a complicated guilt.
As for the father of this body's original owner? Dead. A car accident. But not even a normally tragic one—no simple skid on a rainy road. A villain, some low-tier thug with a strength Quirk he couldn't control properly, had gotten into a fight near traffic. A stray punch, a launched car, a precipitous drop. A meaningless death in a world full of them.
That was the reason the old woman now carefully placing a perfectly portioned heap of curry next to my rice was so fiercely, silently terrified of the very concept of heroics. The original (Suzuki Saito), the boy whose memories I now wore like a slightly ill-fitting suit, had dreamed of being a hero. That dream had been crushed when his Quirk never manifested. No super strength, no energy beams, not even the ability to extend one's fingernails.
Just... nothing.
But unlike (Midoriya), who initially accepted his powerlessness with resigned tears, the original (Saito) had apparently decided to brute-force his way to heroism. He'd tried to train, to compensate. And during one of those overzealous, unsupervised sessions, he'd fallen. A misjudged climb, a slip, the sickening crack of a young skull meeting unyielding stone. He lost consciousness and never woke up.
Then I woke up in his place.
No one knew. Not the doctors who had chalked it up to a tragic complication from the head injury, and certainly not the kind-eyed woman now sitting across from me, blowing gently on a spoonful of her own curry.
Honestly, if this old woman in front of me, who is putting rice directly into my bowl, knew about this, what would she think, I wonder?
The thought wormed through me as I picked up my chopsticks. I wasn't consumed by soul-crushing guilt—the boy's death wasn't my fault. It was a brutal twist of fate, an accident layered on top of a tragedy. But if this sweet, worried grandmother knew her real grandson was gone, replaced by a twenty-eight-year-old salaryman's consciousness from another dimension... she wouldn't just have a heart attack. She'd probably short-circuit the entire emotional grid of the neighborhood.
I mechanically ate a mouthful of curry. It was delicious, savory and just the right amount of spicy. It tasted like care.
Anyway, this isn't important, I told myself, the mantra as familiar as the room's layout. I am (Suzuki Saito) now. I have to take on his responsibilities. I have to become a hero.
The conclusion was insane. Laughable. A quirkless ten-year-old aiming for U.A. in a world of walking natural disasters?
But the alternative—living a life of quiet, fearful normalcy, waiting for the next villain attack to maybe, possibly be saved by someone else—was a different kind of torture.
All I have to do is prepare myself. A hero isn't just superpowers. It's also intellect, adaptation.
I chewed slowly, the textures of potato and meat grounding me.
Humans are the creatures who dominated the planet. They didn't use Quirks at the beginning. They used only their brains and technology. And I possess a brain that can work, don't I?
It was true. I wasn't a genius like Tony Stark or Reed Richards from Marvel, or even the strategic, resourceful Batman from DC Comics. My old life had been spent managing spreadsheets and navigating office politics, not building arc reactors or solving cosmic equations.
But I'm still not such a failure that I can't take the first step to become a hero.
I finished the last grain of rice, the ceramic clink of my bowl meeting the table sounding oddly decisive.
(Suzuki Hana) looked up, her eyes soft. "Would you like more, (Saito)-chan?"
Her voice was full of a gentle concern that felt like a physical weight. She saw a quiet, traumatized boy who had lost his father and then nearly himself. She didn't see a scheming, desperate transmigrant plotting a path to glory on a foundation of stolen time and borrowed guilt.
"No, thank you, Grandmother. It was very good," I said, forcing a smile that felt brittle on my face. "I'll go wash up."
I took my dishes to the sink, the water from the tap shockingly cold, snapping me further into the present. I scrubbed the bowl clean, watching the curry-stained water spiral down the drain.
The first step.
It wasn't about the gloves. That was a child's toy. The first step was information. Analysis. This world operated on rules, on Quirk limitations and physical laws that, while bent, weren't entirely broken. I had six years. Six years to learn, to train my body—not to superhuman levels, but to peak human condition. Six years to study, to understand technology, support gear, tactics.
I didn't need to punch a building down.
I just needed to be smart enough to ensure the building never fell on anyone in the first place. Or to have the tools to get people out if it did.
Drying my hands on a rough towel, I walked back to my room. The failed glove-project sat in the center of the table, a monument to my initial, flailing frustration. I looked at it, not with anger now, but with a detached, analytical gaze.
Too ambitious. Start smaller. Fundamentals.
I opened the small, battered notebook I'd begun keeping. On the first page, in careful script, I wrote:
Project: Foundation.
1. Physical Conditioning (Cardio, Strength, Flexibility) - Daily regimen.
2. Academic Excellence (Focus: Physics, Engineering, Chemistry) - Top grades non-negotiable.
3. Quirk Analysis & Theory - Study all available public data on heroes/villains.
4. Support Gear Fundamentals - Start with mechanics, electronics.
It was a dry, clinical list. The to-do list of a ghost building a body, a life, a purpose from scratch.
Outside my window, the distant, cheerful jingle of an ice cream truck morphed mid-tune into the blaring, urgent siren of a hero patrol vehicle, racing towards some unseen crisis. The sound Doppler-shifted, rising and then fading away, a reminder of the world I was in—a world of bright costumes and dark alleys, of soaring dreams and crushing realities.
I was just a cog. A quirkless, insignificant cog.
But cogs were essential. They transferred force. They made larger mechanisms turn. Maybe I couldn't be the engine or the shiny exterior, but I could be the cog that, if precisely made and placed, prevented the whole machine from grinding to a catastrophic halt.
A faint, wry smile touched my lips. It wasn't the bright, optimistic grin of a shonen protagonist. It was something darker, drier, edged with the black comedy of my situation.
Welcome to your new life, (Suzuki Saito). Your audition for the role of "Hero" starts now. The script is blank, the director is absent, and the special effects budget is exactly zero.
Let's see what you can do.
I picked up a pencil, the sound of graphite scraping against paper a small, defiant counterpoint to the sirens fading in the distance.
Scratch-scratch-scratch.
The first line of a new chapter, written not with a Quirk, but with sheer, stubborn, human will.
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End of Chapter.
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A Note from the Narrator:
Well,there it is. A quirkless transplant with more existential dread than muscle mass, trying to science his way into a superpowered world. Did his internal monologue resonate? Does his plan seem brilliantly pragmatic or utterly doomed? Let me know your thoughts in the comments—your feedback is the real superpower here!