Chapter 1: Koto Yamada - Origin

------Author's Note------There are various different languages used in this story, so Japanese dialogue is in regular text, English dialogue is in italics (as well as thoughts), and sign language is in bold and italics. It should be easy to follow while reading.

I tried my hand at making an aesthetic board for our main character, Koto Yamada.

Please don't comment any spoilers or I'll delete your message!! Thank you

Now onto the story...

•°•°•°•

It was a lovely spring day in Japan when my parents first met. My mother had traveled from her university in America to intern at a journalism agency in Japan. With the country practically being the hero hub of the whole world, it was teeming with unwritten stories of the many heroes that brought the people peace. She had spent most of her life learning Japanese to get where she was and it certainly wasn't a waste. At that point, she was basically fluent. 

Her and my father were both interning at the same company and had sat at the same picnic table that day for lunch. They got stuck across from each other and, neither knowing anyone else, were forced into conversation. She wasn't fond of him at first, in fact, she thought he was a bit loud and rowdy. That was until she realized he was the twin brother of Hizashi Yamada, the well-known hero, Present Mic, making his debut at the UA sports festival just 5 years prior. She of course had watched this match and was impressed by his skill, yet pitied anyone who had to be in the same room with the guy. 

She felt especially bad for the man sitting before her upon discovering he was quirkless. To be the brother of someone who had made such a splash only to be seen as useless by everyone else seemed to take a toll on his self esteem, though he refused to admit it. She was more perceptive than most and could tell that he felt cheated, but couldn't help but look up to his brother. 

At the end of their first week working together, they still sat at that table next to the fateful cherry tree that sparked my parents' love story. My father plucked a blossom from the nearest branch and placed it behind her ear, saying quietly how the pink complemented her blue eyes. 

It all took off from there. My mother convinced him to move to the US with her so she could be closer to family. It only made sense to him. After all, in the villain-ridden city of Musutafu, it seemed obvious that a quirkless human would be at a disadvantage if they were to ever be cornered. 

And what was my mother's quirk? Well, she had the ability of teleportation. Although she was never really strong enough to use it on herself. She could only move small objects like a fork she forgot to grab from the drawer or a book from the bookshelf. When she was young, however, she had a nightmare one night and as she woke herself, her fear and helplessness were enough to teleport herself into her parents' bed. This drained her energy so bad, she immediately fell back to sleep. When she woke, she was only able to take a few bites of breakfast before falling asleep again right at the table. Alarmed, her parents brought her to the hospital, but they said she was okay as long as they kept feeding her between periods of rest. Waking up in the hospital was such a scare for her that she refused to teleport herself ever again. 

Eventually, my father got down on one knee and presented her with a ring, the diamond set in a simple, silver blossom. They got married the next spring. 

My grandfather didn't live long past that. I never knew him. 

It was then that I came along. All throughout my mother's pregnancy, she said that the baby would not stop kicking. It was as if I was dancing inside her womb. At the baby shower, my Uncle Hizashi (or Uncle Mic as I so fondly call him) gave my parents some earplugs as designed by the students of the support class at UA at that time. He said they would need them if I was anything like him. When he was little, his cries were so powerful they could shatter glass. After he was born, he had to be kept in a different room as all the other infants kept waking up from his cries. Even without his quirk, everyone knew he would be a LOUD kid. 

And I am slightly ashamed, yet slightly proud, to admit that I did not disappoint. I let out my first cry so loud, it could be heard throughout the whole wing of the hospital. 

Something my parents grew to detest with time (about one day) was that my feet wouldn't stay still. This made it very hard for them to swaddle me. Giving up on the whole attempt to swaddle, they soon learned of the glory of onesies with feet and soft blankets. They signed me up for dance lessons as early as they could to burn through all the extra energy. 

I grew up with an interesting family life. My parents never decided to have any more kids. After all, who would want their house twice as loud as it already was? We lived close to my grandma though, and she was one of my best friends. She held many of my favorite pieces of history; Disney movies. They had been passed down from her grandma who had lived at the height of the Disney era, right before quirks became known. These DVDs(so old fashioned) and even some VHSs(literally ancient) and their players were passed down through the family to those with the most interest in them. What with my mother having grown out of their childish charm and my ravenous hunger for every second of content, I was in line to receive them next. Now when I say "Disney movies," I really mean "every Disney creation." There were the box sets to TV shows and DCOMs. Every Marvel and Star Wars movie was also there. Even CDs from the soundtracks of the Broadway adaptations. Safe to say, our family is a little obsessed. 

Around kindergarten, my quirk started to develop, though I didn't really understand. At night, I would talk to myself, and if I believed hard enough, someone would talk back. I told my parents, but they were convinced I had just developed an imaginary friend. That was until they heard the voice coming from my room late at night. Then, they started to believe the house was haunted. 

They stayed in my room that night to discover that I was the one making the voice talk and sending it to sit at the edge of my bed. Though I didn't really understand, I knew one thing, and that was that I finally had a quirk and it was much better than Kati's.

Kati was a little bully. She always walked around the playground, controlling the wind so that kids would fall off their swings or get dirt blown in their face. I wanted revenge, and I wanted it bad. 

I didn't have a plan, exactly. I never said I was a smart kid. After training myself enough at night, I learned I could whisper mean things in her ear during class. She would always jump and then stick her finger in her ear like she could dig the sound out. She said it felt like a bee was talking to her. Like her ear was buzzing as it whispered to her. It was then that I realized something that most kids don't figure out until they are much much older: sounds are vibrations. 

This blew my mind and I started thinking up all my revenge fantasies. I would make the voice hum to me in my hand and would feel it vibrating the air around it. The voice was so much fun to play with that I almost forgot to use my own. I would watch movies with Grandma and imitate the characters as they would say something. 

"That's very impressive," she would say. "You could be a voice actor when you grow up and be as famous as these people!"

The idea was tempting. Very tempting. Though I knew of heros and their fame, these movies and these characters were my whole world. To me, you couldn't be more famous than Simba or Lightning McQueen or Elsa. That's where I was wrong, though. Pretty much no one in my school knew of these characters. Only the well-seasoned teachers knew who I was talking about. I was proud of myself for knowing something the teachers couldn't even follow, until I realized that Kati knew of them too. 

But she was the worst type of Disney fan. She only cared about the princesses. And not even the cool, brave ones like Merida, Mulan, or Elsa. She just cared about Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. She would even pretend to fall asleep on the playground and tell the boys to kiss her to wake her up. The sad thing was that she was pretty enough for it to work. She had bright, blonde hair and big, round, chocolate brown eyes that the boys would fawn over. 

One day at recess in the winter of fourth grade, she was playing on the monkey bars with her best friend when she hit her left hand really hard against one of the bars and made her arm go numb from shock. She called to her friend who was sitting on the ladder to help her. I happened to be looking on and told her she looked like Mufasa. 

"Who's Mufasa, you babbling freak?" She asked quite loudly, drawing the attention of a few of the other kids around us. 

I was used to being called a freak by her and her lack of knowledge, but that day, something snapped in me. How could she not know who Mufasa was? And after all, who's she to say that I'm the freak when she's walking around telling all the boys to kiss her?

I began to shake with rage and I finally used my new skill on her. Channeling Scar's voice into the bar she held onto, I projected "LONG LIVE THE KING" so loud I'm sure the whole town heard. The vibrations loosened her grip and she fell to the ground with a yelp. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only thing that fell. The vibrations were so strong, they broke through the worn bars and dropped the whole top of the monkey bars on her. The sickening crunch and the image that joined it will forever be in my brain. 

Splintered wood

Tears

Blood

Bone

It stuck out of her sleeve at a nauseating angle. The snow was dyed red. Nearly everyone threw up. Even the teachers. 

As expected, parents were called, students were brought home, while I was brought to the principal's office. Safe to say, my parents were furious. There was a long, grueling lecture, most of which I didn't pay any attention to. I could only think about two things: Kati finally getting what she deserved, and that I could use my power to break things. Eventually, I was in the backseat of our car, driving home. 

"I'm thinking after that stunt you pulled, we should just leave you home this weekend while we visit your grandmother," my dad threatened in his native language from the driver's seat. I could feel my eyes bugging out of my head. 

"NO!! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!!" I cried. How dare they try to withhold Grandma from me??

"I can do whatever I want, little miss," he said, turning back to glare at me, but it wasn't his expression that made my eyes widen even further. 

"DAD!!!" I screamed, pointing in front of us. A large truck was skidding on the ice in front of us and into the other lane. 

He turned forward and immediately tried to maneuver the car around, but when he pressed the brakes, we began to slide too. We had made it around the truck, which had ended up in a snowdrift, but our back tires were drifting left.

"I got it, dad! I'll crack the ice up there. That should work!" 

"No no! Don't do that! I just have to accelerate," he assured me, but it was too late. I had already focused on a spot and started to break it when the tires passed by. The sound of popping rubber filled my ears and the car went out of control, across the line into the incoming traffic. The first car tried to go around the front of our car, but had also slid. They crashed at almost full speed into the front driver's side. I watched helplessly as the metal crunched around my father. The force sent us spinning and I closed my eyes, hugging myself tightly. But no, it wasn't just me, I felt my mother holding me too. When we came to a stop, I dared to open my eyes despite the blood flowing into them. The view sickened me. 

I willed my eyes shut again and started to call for help. I wanted to use my other voice, but at what cost? It has already brought so much blood just today. Was that my only potential with my quirk? Was I a murderer who breaks people's arms and destroys cars and…kills my parents? My tears flowed hot and it wasn't long until I heard the police arrive. 

"There's a child in there! Get her out!" A gruff voice demanded. I saw the blinding light reflecting off the snow as someone removed the door on my left and pried me out of my mother's hold. They laid me down somewhere and I was pushed into a vehicle. 

"Blood on her eyes," the heavy voice of the man who had held me said. "Maybe a concussion and bruising with all the other cuts, but none go too deep. Her mother protected her from the brunt of the crash. At least she couldn't see what happened to them." I overheard as the door to the ambulance close. "It's enough to haunt someone's dreams." He said as we pulled away. 

But they didn't know. I did see them. And it would continue to haunt my dreams to this day. All the bloodshed I caused tormented me. I now knew what it felt like to use my quirk against a bully and also to try to help. Neither outcome was what I wanted. My mother teleported to my side, saving me, yet throwing away any chance of her survival. One of dad's airbags failed and left him unprotected from the wreck. After that day, I did not speak, neither with my own mouth, nor with my own quirk. I simply refused. Who knew what one voice could do to people?

But I knew one thing.

I, Koto Yamada, was a murderer.