“Hello,” a woman said warmly as she walked into the cozy office.
“How did you sleep?”
The guy sitting in the deep, soft armchair barely managed to suppress a smile that threatened to spread across his face.
The most dangerous person in his new environment.
That’s exactly how Samuel had labeled this slightly plump, “early thirties” woman.
Her long, slightly emerald-tinged hair framed her somewhat round, soft features, accentuated by the bare minimum of makeup.
She wasn’t tall, but judging by her appearance, she was quite “firm” in the right places.
She wore rather loose, soft-toned clothes.
Samuel also noticed a wedding ring on her ring finger.
“Miyamoto-san,” the boy nodded in greeting.
“Fine.”
The main reason this seemingly harmless woman was so dangerous was her Quirk.
It passively influenced the mood of those around her, improving it for the better (sorry for the tautology).
The influence wasn’t actually that strong, but Miyamoto Yasuko used it very skillfully.
“You look a little pale,” she tactfully noted (implying, “you look like you’ve been hit in the face with a shovel all night”).
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” She squinted worriedly at Samuel’s head.
The guy, without even tracking the direction of her gaze, knew exactly what she was looking at.
The strand of graying hair had been quite a shock to Samuel.
What’s more, he couldn’t figure out where it had come from.
He had two main hypotheses.
One was based on the influence of recent events.
The second was based on the direct actions of a certain goddess.
To be more specific, the first option was stress.
The strange dream, which he couldn’t remember due to his mind’s protective reaction, also fit in nicely.
The second option was that damn Kalli had decided to make his image more authentic and was gradually adjusting Samuel’s appearance to match Accelerator’s.
It was totally in character for that bitch.
Despite all the convenient bonuses she had thrown into the reincarnation, she was still a real piece of work.
If he were to assign percentages, Samuel would give the first option 35 percent, the second 60 percent.
The remaining five percent were other possible factors.
He wasn’t claiming omniscience or genius-level intellect.
So five percent was a decent cushion in case he one day learned all the background and found his assumptions to be wrong.
And that seemed to be it.
Conclusions drawn, he could breathe a sigh of relief.
But again, the question of outside observation came into play.
When a child who recently suffered a severe shock gradually starts to go gray, it’s not a good sign.
The result is even more attention to his person.
‘Although,’ Samuel thought, ‘there are advantages to this, too.
At the very least, no one will be able to push me aside.
And they won’t be able to investigate the “Quirkless phenomenon” too aggressively either.
And there’s no doubt that some investigations will happen.
The case is too unusual.’
And that was true.
A couple of hundred years ago, no one in this world had heard of Quirks.
Then, poof, they appeared out of nowhere.
Such a phenomenon couldn’t have happened without painful consequences.
The fact that science had barely progressed since the appearance of Quirks, despite receiving countless new building blocks of knowledge, speaks to that.
And now, out of nowhere, a child appears.
All possible tests and analyses say he doesn’t have a Quirk.
And yet he smears a crowd of villains thinly across a wall at the age of six.
There was no way they would let that slide.
Miyamoto continued to talk carefully with the boy.
Sometimes she asked questions, sometimes she talked about herself.
But mostly she answered the questions Samuel asked.
She answered them thoroughly and in detail.
That’s why her answers took up most of the conversation, even though the guy didn’t ask many questions.
After an hour of conversation, which surprisingly didn’t tire him out at all, the topic naturally shifted to Quirks in general and Samuel’s “Quirk” in particular.
“I don’t have a Quirk,” the boy said coldly, shattering the conversational web the woman had been weaving.
“This…” He raised the cup of tea she had offered him (which he hadn’t had the nerve to refuse. ‘Note to self: figure out some vector shield configuration to protect against mental influence’).
“…is something else.” He poured its contents directly onto his hand.
“Careful!” the woman jumped up in fright.
The tea was hot, after all.
But Samuel wasn’t destined to get burned.
Then it began to pulse, contracting and expanding.
Accelerator had pulled a similar trick in the anime only a couple of times, and not with liquid.
But Samuel remembered it.
That morning, when he couldn’t sleep, he tried to replicate it out of boredom, with slight modifications.
“Something like that,” the guy shrugged, admiring the tea hanging in the air as it took on all sorts of shapes under the influence of his power.
“…How do you do that?” Miyamoto-san whispered, mesmerized by the shimmering liquid.
“Secret,” Samuel answered indifferently.
A slight mental effort.
The world turned gray and froze.
A couple of changes to the closed equation.
A return to objective reality.
The tea flowed back into the cup in a thin stream, which he had continued to hold in his other hand.
“…Too bad,” the woman said with a slightly sad smile.
Samuel felt a sudden rush of guilt.
‘Note number two: URGENTLY develop a method to counteract mental suggestion!’ he internally screamed, flinching.
His face, however, didn’t change at all.
Luckily, he was fortunate in that regard.
The cold, indifferent expression of this body could be maintained without much effort, even despite his young age.
Or perhaps because of it.
That same “never blushes, never lies” type of personality and all that.
***
It took Samuel a few days to finally figure out where exactly he had landed.
And no, not in the new world, or even the time period.
He meant the very mundane building of this somewhat strange orphanage.
Good renovation, tasty food in the cafeteria, highly qualified staff.
And all this despite there not being that many children here.
Because of his quiet, silent act, he had to gather information indirectly.
A little eavesdropping here, a little overheard word there.
After four days, he understood what kind of facility this orphanage was.
It turned out to be simple and, in a way, even sad.
This is where the children of fallen heroes and villains lived.
Yes, exactly like that.
When watching the anime, you don’t really think about the fact that the desire to have a family extends to local outlaws, too.
Although here, heroes, by the way, are a full-fledged profession, on par with emergency services.
When they get their license, they sign a real contract.
Plus, the state gives them a pretty generous package of insurance benefits.
And this orphanage is one of them.
Being a hero is dangerous.
Yes, not every hero spends their time just killing villains.
There are plenty of rescuers, firefighters, researchers, and other such people.
But in ninety percent of cases, their work is still associated with risk to life.
And Quirks don’t always compensate for the potential danger.
It might seem that all sorts of dangerous rescue work was done by ordinary people in Samuel’s past world, and nothing, some of them even lived to retirement.
Most, anyway.
But here, you have to remember that most Quirks are garbage.
Remember the composition of the villains from the recent “adventure.” Extending fingers?
Wood-like skin with decreased bone strength?
It’s not even funny.
The guy with electricity seemed more promising, but even he took too long to charge his super attack.
You could tear his head off a hundred times over.
Even the seemingly so cool half-human, half-lion, whose name Samuel never learned, had a critical weakness.
His animal perception caused him, when feeling cornered, to completely lose his vaunted sanity.
He knew he wasn’t going anywhere.
He could have just surrendered calmly and not risked his health.
Not enough facts?
Fine.
Remember the students of the best class in the best hero academy, U.A.
The little freak Mineta comes to mind immediately.
And, frankly, most of the abilities of Class 1-A students were somehow incomplete and riddled with weaknesses.
And this is despite the fact that by this age, a Quirk’s power is gradually approaching its natural developmental peak. Visit g.com for the full chapter.
So it turns out that having a Quirk, even when fighting dangers quite common to humanity, only increases the chance of survival by a few percent.
Experience and personal skills still rule.
As for the children of villains, Samuel himself killed or severely maimed seven of them.
And they might have had children.
Not to mention that every week, a considerable number of various idiots are put in prison and deprived of parental rights.
Not all of them are sane enough to have a family and children.
But such people do exist.
This orphanage exists to help their abandoned children integrate into society as much as possible.
Apparently, it had a considerable number of sponsors from the most famous hero agencies in Japan.
Not to mention that donating to this orphanage is good self-promotion for various big businessmen.
The staff here was also top-notch.
It would seem that children of heroes and villains, two opposite poles, in one place.
They all, as a rule, have not the worst Quirks.
Some only recently arrived because their parents died due to the actions of a hero or a villain.
Conflicts are inevitable.
But there are none.
They are nipped in the bud.
Of course, there were also downsides.
Hero propaganda.
Unobtrusive, but damn conspicuous if you know where to look.
The themes and merchandise of various heroes everywhere.
By the way, by the quantity of specific merchandise, you can easily conclude which hero agency invests more money in the orphanage.
Probably.
The quality of education here was also top-notch.
Even though it might seem like “why does someone who already graduated from high school and university need to study?”, you have to consider that most of the subjects taught were unknown to Samuel.
Language study?
A necessity.
Biology?
Considering the program here is already adapted for Quirks, it was really interesting to study.
English?
Also wouldn’t hurt, because his knowledge of it was far from a high level, and a review wouldn’t hurt.
Even local literature was interesting and, in some ways, useful.
Of course, there were still art and PE classes, but that was a necessary evil.
And it would be stupid to deny their usefulness entirely.
Proper body formation in childhood is also important.
Otherwise, Samuel would grow up into who knows what, an incredibly strong guy due to his “Quirk.” However, he remembered that one of Accelerator’s main weaknesses was precisely his body.
So he wasn’t going to abandon physical training.
What he really didn’t need was mathematics.
Not only had he already studied all this in his past world, but with his new computational power, all the local problems were so… insignificant that he just wanted to lay his head on the desk and fall asleep.
The teachers were outraged at first.
But hello, Samuel could solve problems from complex differential topology like two times two, and that’s no exaggeration.
Although, given the specifics of this area of mathematics and its interaction with vector control abilities, it’s not surprising.
The guy had to strain a bit to convince the teacher that he couldn’t teach him anything in mathematics.
After that, he had to fend off a man in ecstasy over the child’s skills.
The teacher simply BURNED with the desire to send him to all sorts of Olympiads, or even to math seminars in higher education institutions.
Luckily, a couple of words about an overly annoying teacher, casually mentioned in another conversation with Miyamoto-san, and by the next day, the math teacher backed off.
Speaking of Miyamoto, with each passing day, she became more and more worried about Samuel’s condition.
That wasn’t surprising, considering that the unremembered dreams continued to plague him, and every morning greeted him with a new strand of gray hair.
The guy wasn’t even surprised by this anymore.
He treated it with some melancholy.
So his hair was turning gray.
His eyes had changed their shade slightly to a more reddish tone.
So what?
He wasn’t growing a second head, was he?
He wasn’t even shedding a tail yet.
So things weren’t that bad.
Though, a thought sometimes crossed Samuel’s mind that such indifference in his situation was somewhat abnormal, it was immediately suppressed by his suddenly awakened healthy rationalism.
It simply and unpretentiously shut down all possible worries with one simple question: “Can you, my friend, do anything about this situation?” It was strange to argue with his own rationalism, but, to be fair, Samuel didn’t argue.
Because he really couldn’t do anything about it.