Despite the excessive tension, the situation turned out relatively harmless.
Samuel could have dug in his heels and played the part of a complete lunatic.
But he decided not to create unnecessary problems for himself.
He had already caused himself at least a few years of regular sessions with a psychologist.
He continued to act quiet and withdrawn.
He answered most carefully asked questions with either “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember.” To be fair, he never once lied.
So he never got caught by Naomasa and his truth-detecting Quirk.
And the detective was clearly on alert.
Apparently, during a more thorough investigation of what happened in the underground complex, he had found the room where the boy had been kept.
He had found the wooden blocks ground to dust, the metal door torn out in a strange way, and had even traced Samuel’s route in detail thanks to finding Chameleon.
The picture that emerged was very troubling.
Not to mention that, during a search of the villains’ documentation, a thin folder had been found titled “The Superhuman Phenomenon.” It contained not yet very extensive or numerous, but quite serious experiments and observations of a boy who, by all parameters, should not have had a Quirk.
Since Samuel had no idea where the orphanage he had lived in was located, the police launched a search mission.
Thanks to the Quirk of a certain officer named Tsuragamae, it was found very quickly.
That wasn’t surprising.
A tall, strongly built man with a dog’s head was, according to Yuriko, exceptionally good at searching and pursuit.
So the boy’s former residence was found very quickly.
However, this discovery yielded no useful information.
All of the boy’s documents had simply vanished from the orphanage’s records.
Thorough interrogations of the children and teachers also revealed nothing.
Only the fact that the boy had been abandoned by his parents because he was Quirkless.
Beyond that, everything was blank.
No one even remembered his name.
By the way, a serious criminal case was opened against the orphanage’s staff.
The ensuing investigation somehow reached journalists.
As a result, so much filth was dumped on all those involved that they would never wash it off.
For this same reason, Samuel, as the main “victim” of the situation, couldn’t be placed in just any simple orphanage.
Although, here the guy thought more in terms of his past categories.
He had expected a dismissive attitude from the administrative bodies.
But he was pleasantly surprised when he was taken to what looked like a super-fancy boarding house.
For the rest of the day, Samuel was carefully and unobtrusively tested for signs of being crazy.
They tried not to put too much pressure on the child who had recently experienced a serious shock.
Though the fact of the tests themselves would probably have gone unnoticed only by a child, which was exactly who these subtle tests were designed for.
But Samuel was observant enough to notice.
So he continued to stick to his strategy of remaining silent on uncomfortable questions.
He was simply afraid that if he tried to play the part of a withdrawn child, he would make a mistake somewhere and the psychological tests wouldn’t add up.
It would be one thing if they were simple yes/no questions.
But a half-hour session with a smiling psychologist who showed him pictures and asked about associations was somewhat beyond his abilities.
The whole procedure was vaguely reminiscent of the famous Rorschach test, but the pictures were somewhat different from what Samuel remembered.
That wasn’t surprising, though.
After all, the canon of MHA takes place sometime in the future relative to the real world.
It was more surprising that something as archaic as the Rorschach test, which already caused some skepticism among psychiatrists and psychologists in the twenty-first century, had survived to this time.
And that he had landed exactly in the canon, Samuel had no doubt.
His indicator of certainty was All Might.
During the attack on the underground villains’ base, the number one hero had stayed in his muscle form for over an hour.
So, at the very least, the moment in which the transfer of power to the local protagonist, the ordinary high school boy, and just a wonderful guy, had not yet happened.
It was impossible to determine more precisely yet.
He didn’t remember any exact dates from the anime.
So there was nothing to compare it to.
On the other hand…
If Samuel understood the nature of that Goddess-Brat correctly, she would have sent him in such a way that he could participate in the canon.
Or not.
The psychological profile of Kalli was too vague and incomplete to say for sure.
But in general terms, it seemed that the lady was more decent than she appeared at first glance.
First, Samuel had received the previous memories of the body he had entered.
That helped him at least understand the language.
Second, superpowers.
It was too early to say for sure, but from his own feelings, Samuel could say that he had been given the powers of a peak Accelerator.
In a sane state, that is.
Kalli could easily have given him Level 1 esper abilities and left him no instructions at all.
That would have been a real problem.
‘Speaking of levels, do I have access to awakening?’ a thought flashed through the guy’s mind.
But the question of awakening was… debatable.
An unclear mechanism, an unclear type of influence, unclear conditions for activation, and a complete lack of confidence that he could control it prevented Samuel’s dreams of becoming an even bigger cheat than he already was from growing.
Third, returning to the previous topic, the timely appearance of the heroes.
Even if Samuel had done nothing and just sat still, the arriving heroes would have soon rescued him.
Very nice.
Fourth, independence.
To put it simply and cynically, it was much more comfortable for Samuel in this situation to be an orphan.
No need to pretend.
No hypocrisy.
He wouldn’t have to put on a friendly face every day and call someone “Mom” who wasn’t his mother at all, or even have to deal cheerfully with a “father.” In general, the likelihood of losing his mind even more than he already had would have been extremely high.
And his roof was already leaking quite a bit.
Too many shocks in an extremely short period of time.
Meeting a goddess.
A strange dream with someone else’s memories.
Being transplanted into another body.
The realization that the world isn’t the only one and that the fanfics he read could become reality.
Receiving superpowers.
His first kill.
All in a subjective couple of hours.
That was too much.
Not to mention that the features of vector control, such as increased brain performance and unreal potential, also hit his already unsteady consciousness pretty hard. This chapter is updated first at NovelPing.
And the paranoia that had emerged shouldn’t be forgotten either.
In short, if Samuel didn’t receive competent psychological help, he had a good chance of acquiring a decent bouquet of various mental disorders.
Or maybe not.
It was hard to say.
But he definitely wouldn’t be the same after this.
***
A strange dream.
Another one.
It was eerily similar to the one that had greeted him in the new world.
But the setting was different, and it was more abstract.
No less stressful for that.
Samuel had been placed in a quite sizable room in that “elite” orphanage (if the word “elite” can even be applied to such an institution) along with some other kid.
He was a couple of years older and didn’t pay any attention to Samuel at all.
Just like our protagonist.
Samuel didn’t like children and didn’t know how to communicate with them at all.
So he didn’t even have to pretend to be unsociable.
After a very tense day on all fronts, he was incredibly sleepy.
But the guy was a little apprehensive.
After all, the last time he went to bed, he had been isekai’d into an anime.
And given his recent experiences, which could result in a completely phantasmagoric, mind-blowing dream, such fears weren’t surprising.
Nevertheless, his body took over.
Samuel, resigned to the situation and fully aware that he couldn’t go without sleep anyway, decided to just go with the flow.
And there it was.
The dream.
Everything that happened, Samuel saw from a first-person perspective.
It was very similar to the previous night.
The overall feeling was also similar.
But the guy couldn’t even panic.
For some reason, everything around him seemed completely detached.
Samuel didn’t lose any of his thinking or mental clarity.
He perceived what was happening more than adequately.
But he couldn’t seem to form associative links with his past experiences.
At the same time, he clearly and distinctly understood that he was asleep.
The dream’s plot this time was somewhat strange and incomprehensible.
The protagonist simply walked along a bright sidewalk on a dazzlingly white street.
Samuel’s detached mind didn’t hear his thoughts but felt his emotions slightly.
Boredom.
Immense and somewhat unhealthy boredom.
The kind that makes you think, “Maybe I should go beat someone up to cheer myself up?” But the guy just kept walking.
Soon, people appeared on the sidewalk.
Or something representing people.
Absolutely identical white silhouettes wandered here and there, “communicated” with each other, and generally created a feeling of joy and calm.
Until you looked closer.
All their smiles, all their joy, all their happy emotions, actively radiated by the silhouettes, were just masks.
Literally.
Porcelain white masks tightly covered the silhouettes’ faces.
On them were drawn friendly smiles with black ink.
If you looked even closer, some of them had a barely noticeable thin vertical black stripe on their back.
And on the very top of their heads, a small zipper pull dangled innocently.
All their “whiteness” was just a costume.
As soon as the dream’s protagonist got close enough to them, the silhouettes’ masks cracked, revealing ugly, frightened faces underneath.
The zipper on the back of the white costume came undone, revealing a completely different color underneath.
A putrid green mixed with brown.
In the dream, Samuel didn’t perceive time at all.
He couldn’t tell how long he had been walking like this, scaring everyone and everything in his path.
It seemed like it would go on forever.
But the emotions the dream’s protagonist felt suggested otherwise.
As soon as the first people he met ran away in terror, the guy’s boredom turned into mild amusement and self-satisfaction.
That lasted for a while.
But then he kept walking.
People continued to run away.
Boredom crept back into his emotions.
Soon, it gave way to another, much brighter feeling.
Irritation.
It was unclear at what point the “last straw” fell.
But then, the dream’s protagonist, apparently at his peak, stopped.
Following the retreating, disgusting-colored silhouettes with an irritated gaze, he turned left.
Neat, precisely fitted, as if polished to a shine, light-colored multi-story buildings had been his companions throughout his journey.
Now, looking directly at them, his irritation multiplied many times over, turning into anger.
Anger turned into rage.
The slow, too-wide backswing of the dream’s protagonist would have been criticized by anyone who had ever practiced martial arts, or at least seen others practice them.
But when his raised arm shot forward for the punch, the effect was stunning.
With a sound like a plastic bottle hitting a thin copper sheet, his fist created a powerful shockwave that simply tore down the nearest building’s wall.
Samuel felt that after this outburst of emotion, the protagonist’s rage slowly subsided.
The dust from the destroyed building gradually settled on the ground, not touching the guy at all.
When it finally settled, the protagonist took a step toward the hole he had created.
It looked like a hole in space.
Like another world, living by its own incomprehensible laws.
Dark and gloomy, with a sky tinged with a disturbing purple light, like someone had spilled gasoline into a dirty puddle.
Narrow alleys that seemed ready to crush you into a pancake.
The walls of the buildings rising into the sky were made of blood-red brick.
The guy stepped through without hesitation.
As soon as the new sky finally settled over his head, he looked over his shoulder.
A wall.
Also rising into the sky.
But this time, Samuel was sure.
No matter how hard the dream’s protagonist had hit it, he would never return to that cloyingly white world.
But judging by his emotions, the protagonist didn’t care at all.
Indifferently glancing at the wall, he turned and walked on.
Into the winding, dark depths of a gloomy alley.
It seemed that each step carried the guy tens of kilometers, further and further away from the place where he had entered this frightening world.
But he remained just as indifferent.
Turning the next corner, the guy froze.
His emotions showed slight bewilderment with barely perceptible hints of confusion.
Lying on the ground, leaning against a brick wall, was a girl.
Her appearance sparked a faint emotion of recognition in the dream’s protagonist.
A light brown knitted sweater vest over a white blouse and gray skirt suited her not-too-long chestnut hair and same-colored eyes quite well.
She was short but looked quite athletic.
A pretty girl, except for a couple of details.
A bulky device resembling night-vision goggles on her head and what looked like glass eyes didn’t add to her beauty.
Plus, judging by the bloodstain on her clothes and those same eyes, she was already dead.
This fact evoked no feelings in the dream’s protagonist except the same bewilderment and slight confusion.
He looked up and saw a huge number one painted on the wall in black paint.
After staring at it for another minute, the guy shrugged and moved on.
It wasn’t long before, around the next corner, he came across an almost identical composition.
The same girl, but this time the bullet hole was in her head and was the first thing that caught his eye.
Behind the girl, the number two was on the wall.
The same bewilderment in his emotions.
The bulky device lay nearby, broken.
The guy moved on.
Two steps, another turn, number three.
The same girl, three gunshot wounds.
Slight bewilderment.
Another turn, number four.
Again, several gunshot wounds.
From an automatic weapon with a small caliber, apparently.
Two of them were in the head.
Boredom mixed with the bewilderment.
Numbers five and six weren’t long in coming, appearing just as sequentially in the dream’s path.
Only the number of bullet wounds and their locations differed.
Boredom.
Number seven.
On the girl’s chest, a distinct bloody handprint, as if someone had pressed their hand hard into a lump of clay.
Her eyes were almost popping out of their sockets from the excessive internal pressure.
A new emotion.
Barely noticeable interest.
Eight.
A shattered skull.
Blood and brain matter splattered across the red bricks.
The bulky night-vision device was smashed to pieces, some of which were deeply embedded in the skull.
The interest became more pronounced, and the boredom almost completely disappeared.
Another turn.
A bright flash.
Samuel woke up.
***
‘Au-au-au…’ Samuel mentally groaned, rubbing his throbbing head.
Colorful spots floated before his eyes.
He was also very thirsty.
The room was still dark.
He could hear his involuntary roommate snoring.
The guy glanced at the All Might merchandise clock hanging on the wall.
“Five-thirty,” Samuel groaned, burying his face in the pillow.
But sleep wouldn’t come.
His head throbbed, and his mouth felt like a desert.
Annoyed, he got to his feet, shoved his feet into soft slippers, and headed for the bathroom.
Luckily, there was one right in the room.
He turned on the light, walked to the sink, moved the step stool, stood on it (short child’s height was a real pain), turned on the water, and put his mouth to the life-giving liquid.
‘What was that?’ the guy thought, quenching his thirst.
He didn’t remember the dream at all.
Not a single detail.
But he clearly and distinctly knew that he had dreamed of something.
That had never happened to him before.
Straightening up to his full height, he looked into the mirror.
It was only the second time in the new world that he had seen his face.
He couldn’t say anything specific.
Just a kid.
A bit like his childhood self, adjusted for “Japaneseness.” Plus, slightly gaunt features for a child due to malnutrition.
His eyes looked reddish from lack of sleep.
A real beauty.
‘Hmm?
What’s that?’
Digging through his thick, dark hair, Samuel pulled out a strand that had caught his attention.
The mirror showed small, childlike fingers holding an absolutely white strand of stiff, fishing-line-like hair.