I met my first canon character around five in the morning.

Teka's demonstration of God Mode had mesmerized me and kept me awake for the rest of the night.

For the first time in my life, I realized the enormous potential of my Quirks.

I'll be able to create steam, control water... create lava.

I hadn't been this excited since the first time I successfully performed a chidori.

I must have been seven or eight at the time, and I had spent the whole week punching holes in the trees of our forest, exhilarated by the power and the way the lightning crackled between my fingers.

And then, after too many trees, I decided on my new project: the Sharingan.

A long-term project that would require me to devour fuinjutsu morning, noon, and night for years. I'd had to learn the proper way to inscribe fuinjutsu on a man, then unravel the way I could change my perception and reflexes on a fundamental level.

It was a bit like deconstructing his optic nerves and brain before rebuilding them with seals.

I'd spent months studying the way the dolichopods worked, trying to replicate it on a human scale.

I could perceive the world in slow motion, react faster thanks to my enhanced reflexes, and had exceptional copying abilities, but that was all.

My sharingan was simply the product of fuinjutsu and nothing more. There was no Mangekyo or anything else behind it.

The Chakra Encyclopedia had warned me that I'd been extremely lucky and advised me not to repeat such a pattern with another kekkei genkai.

However, new aspects of the book had been unlocked, giving me access to the optimal way to use/train my sharingan.

The next step for me was to become a genjutsu master.

That, and mastering the God Mode.

My fingers brushed along the blackish veins that connected the beach to the sea. I could still feel the heat from the cooled lava.

Granny Teka had told me that my young body and Quirk would not enable me to learn it until I was an adult.

And right after that she added that my father had mastered it at sixteen.

My eyes wandered as I looked up at the cold, gray morning sky.

Sometimes I wondered what it felt like to be powerful.

I wondered how far I had to go, how many more years of training it would take before I'd never have to look over my shoulder again.

I heard a cry in the distance. Someone running.

Probably a couple returning from one of the cheap clubs in the area.

Crouching on the beach, I ran my fingertip over the sand, absent-mindedly tracing furrows in it.

When I took breaks to look at my life, as I was doing right now, I always had the impression that it was just a collection of chaos to which I tried to add a bit of order.

Crossing paths with the wrong person, being in the wrong place at the wrong time... One gust of wind and it could all come crashing down.

The screams were closer.

Someone jumped down the beach.

Sharingan turning lazily in my eyes, I looked discreetly over my shoulder.

A woman jumped into the arms of the man on the beach.

The smell of blood rose to my nose before I noticed the way she held her stomach. The man, missing half a leg up to his knee, nearly fell over as he caught her.

I heard the woman groan in pain and force an arm under her husband's shoulders.

They limped along the beach, skirting the stone wall that separated the road, leaving a bloody trail in their wake.

My eyes scanned their shiny, matching shreds of clothing.

heroes.

Fueled by the energy of desperation, they continued to advance across the sand.

But there was nothing where they were going.

This place was a backwater, with a village of barely a hundred people a kilometer away - and that was where they seemed to be coming from.

If they keep going like this, they'll both die on this beach.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

There was a dull thud - like a heavyweight falling backwards.

There was a laugh, bordering on hysterical. The couple quickened their pace, paler than ever. My eyes wandered up the low stone wall to the source of the laughter.

A tuft of blond hair appeared. Then a neck as broad as a thigh and arms bigger than tree trunks.

It took me only a second to recognize him.

“I see you”

Japanese.

He jumped onto the beach, his eyes riveted on the couple only a dozen feet in front of him.

I stood still, my eyes darting back and forth between the two groups.

Even only walking, the villain was faster than them.

I could hear the woman crying and the man whispering to her to desert him and run, at least not to make their son an orphan.

“You were showing off earlier when you came between me and the baker, weren't you ?”

The man fell to the ground.

The woman recoiled with him and couldn't even hold him back. Her wide eyes darted back and forth between the dangerously close villain and her sluggish husband, his head in the sand.

He's going to suffocate.

“Keichiro !”

His skin was red, his eyes swollen.

Blood ran down her thighs.

“What happened to your arrogant attitude ?” The villain gloated.

His lips revealed a pair of unnaturally sharp teeth that were stained red.

“Keichiro!”

The villain was only a meter away. But the woman stayed at her husband's side frightened but loyal.

Admirable.

“I'll start with your husband, then I'll make you look”

The woman met the blonde's gaze defiantly. Her shaking knees knocked together, but her voice was firm:

“Over my dead body !”

I blinked.

The scenery changed, sand over a bridge where a bomb had just exploded.

'You'll only get to my son over my dead body'

The villain laughed, his blond hair suddenly turning red. He was getting fatter, his shoulders narrowing.

I was not here, not the same Shoto anymore.

“Who the hell do you think you are ?”

The villain raised his fist.

The muscles in his arms snapped, clinging together to become as tight as chain mail. My thoughts froze. A split second later, I was on top of the muscle, my leg pressing down on the arm he used to shield his face.

The villain stared at me in confusion.

“Where did you come from?”

I did a backflip and landed right next to the woman sprawled on the sand.

Muscular chuckled.

“But you're just a kid, right ?”

My eyes never left the blond giant massaging his forearm. His muscles clicked, fibers detaching and reattaching.

“Are you going to ?”

I felt the woman's eyes on me.I respected the 'no witnesses, no one to tell the story' rule as far as my chakra was concerned.

If she didn't leave with her husband, I would either have to let her die before using my chakra, or kill her right after - in which case my intervention would have been useless.

“You want to be a hero, child ?”

The woman whispered.

“I-I can't...”

Her husband struggled in the sand.

He fell on purpose to force his wife to leave him and run away…

I shouted.

“Go away !”

The hero couple exchanged glances: the woman closed her eyes for a moment and said a prayer.

“Forgive us for the boy”

Putting her scruples aside, the woman grabbed her limping husband and hurried off. The blond giant chuckled.

He sent me a right hook.

“Look here !”

I ducked, avoiding his fist by a hair's breadth.He laughed louder as I dodged each of his blows. The wind whistled in my ears and my chakra buzzed under my skin.

Muscular's smile widened until half of his face was hidden behind it. His eyes narrowed to two slits, a wild glint shining through it.

“I'm going to kill you, kid”

Cold fury washed over me. I ducked to avoid a backhanded kick. In the distance, I heard the woman hoisting her husband over the low wall.

Muscular kicked me in the ribs, which I dodged by rolling in the sand.I took half a second to look over my shoulder. They were finally at a reasonable distance.

“Where do you think you're looking ?”

I rolled and - thump, thump, thump - a swarm of punches landed where my head had been a split second earlier.

“Why are you running, huh? Hold still and let me see that ugly face underneath-”

I threw an ice pick at him to distract him: while he dodged and jumped back, I built a circular wall around us. He paused for a moment, whistling admiringly as his eyes took in the four-meter-high, two-meter-thick ice.

“Boy, you really are suicidal”

His muscles snapped, ripping out of his skin to sink back deeper and more evenly.

“Even if by some miracle you manage to kill me, my father will skin you alive”

He laughed at my words, clearly amused, and straightened up to his full height

“Oh yeah? And who the hell is your genitor ?”

His eyes widened.

He felt something crawl up his throat and opened his mouth: blood ran down his lips, instantly covering his chin.

Incredulous, he raised two fingers to touch it and - yes, blood. His blood.

He looked up from where I was standing: a flash of incomprehension crossed his features. His eyes rolled back into their sockets and he collapsed to the ground without another word.

I looked over my shoulder at him, the cries of a thousand birds fading to nothing, the flashes of lightning illuminating my face dying with them.

I crouched down and wiped my bloodstained hand on his pants.

“I hate people who think they have a right of life or death over me”

I smiled briefly.

The sound of police sirens and ambulances in the distance reached me.

Three kilometers ? Four ?

I raised my right hand over Muscular's body and a fire appeared.

It's time to get rid of the incriminating evidence.

A veritable geyser of blue flames erupted from the palm of my hand, charring the villain's body so intensely that his flesh began to melt.

The smell of charred pork filled my nostrils.

I think I'm desensitizing to it.

The ice wall gradually melted, forming large puddles around me at irregular intervals.

I could vanish into thin air and return to the Todoroki mansion with a snap of my fingers.

However, the couple would describe me to the police, and I was pretty sure there were no other ten-year-olds with two-tone hair, heterochromatic eyes, and masks hanging around.

It would only be a matter of time before old Teka found out, legally or otherwise.

Four white and blue cars with Polizia painted on them came to a hasty halt on the road overlooking the beach. Their tires squeaked on the gravel.

Men in bulletproof vests jumped out of the vehicles.

I frowned as they pointed their guns at me, my Sharingan activating for a split second before disappearing again.

“Mani in alto! Mani in alto!”

I still didn't understand Italian very well, but it didn't take a genius to figure out what they meant.

Slowly raising my hands, I scanned the eight agents flanking me without moving.

A ninth man stepped out of a car.

A cigarette in the corner of his mouth and a black cardigan flapping in the breeze, he didn't look like an ordinary officer. His green eyes were almost fluorescent.

He stared at me and blew a puff of smoke into the rising sun.

My eyes fell on the hand holding the cigarette. On his left ring finger was a ring engraved with an insignia I could have recognized among thousands.

The Familia's flame.

It was the same insignia my father wore on his cufflinks, the same insignia embroidered on all the clothes of Teka's retainers, the same insignia engraved on the forecourt of the Todoroki Mansion.

I met his gaze.

“Io sono Shoto Todoroki”