Chapter Text
Hatake Kakashi dies alone in the ravaged ruins of a village he'd never quite considered home. He dies pinned between two slabs of crumbling concrete, blood and ash soaking his mask and making it hard to breathe. He dies of sheer exhaustion as he gives up the last threads of his strength in a last-ditch effort to save the only other person with the critical knowledge to stop Pein from destroying everyone.
Shinsou Hitoshi is born in a tiny hospital room to a mother who hadn't wanted a child and a father who was too high to care that his wife was in labor. Hitoshi is born with a shock of white hair and a single blood-red eye.
The maternity ward is a place of joyful parents and the celebration of new life. Hitoshi's mother looks at her baby, a child who refuses to cry and stares listlessly at the ceiling, and wishes she were anywhere but here.
--
Hitoshi knows there's something wrong with himself before he's even old enough to have a sense of self. He looks at his reflection and knows that the infant looking back at him isn't what he should be seeing.
His dreams are a maelstrom of grief and fear, his mind overwhelmed with a lifetime of emotions his brain isn't developed enough to comprehend. There's an ingrained instinct blaring that everything is wrong wrong wrong.
He's completely dependent on two people who spend most of their time screaming at each other and passing out in drunken stupors.
He spends hours in silence with nothing but the faint sounds of the neighbors to keep him company. Their faucet drips sluggishly, lights flickering from an overtaxed electrical system. Floorboards creak with age and a lack of care. Their apartment is little more than two tiny rooms and a bathroom, all with paper-thin walls.
Hitoshi is two and a half years old when he finally starts to understand why nothing in the world makes sense. He knows, in a distant sense, that he'd died. He understands that in another lifetime, in another reality, he'd been known as Hatake Kakashi and death had been more welcomed than feared.
So why is he here, in a place filled with chimera-like hybrids of humans, animals and technology so wildly different from everything he'd ever known?
There's no one to ask. Even if there was, he knows there wouldn't be any good answer.
--
Hitoshi is three years old when the full extent of his memories finally sinks in. Realistically, he knows the slow trickle of knowledge is because his brain had to develop enough to be capable of processing everything. More emotionally, he's realizing it's been three years since he died and left his friends and students to fight for their lives against an opponent with almost no weaknesses. They'd been losing, overwhelmingly so.
He hopes against hope that his dying actions helped turn the tide of the war, but he knows better than to believe it. The odds had been stacked so heavily against them it was a wonder they'd lasted as long as they had.
He wonders what Obito would think, if he could see him now. He'd probably laugh at the sheer absurdity of it all. The great copy-nin of Konoha, a man begrudgingly elected as next-in-line to become Hokage, now reduced to a powerless toddler.
The side of himself that still thinks of himself as Kakashi wishes he could laugh. Instead he closes his eyes and sees Chouza lifeless on the ground, Chouza's son - a boy barely into adolescence - sobbing inconsolably as he clutches his father's bloody jacket. Kakashi sees countless shinobi with empty gazes and broken bodies, men and women he'd fought side by side with for over two decades who'd all taken their last breath on the battlefield their home had turned into. He sees the village he'd once sworn to protect reduced to chunks of concrete and charred wood.
Kakashi should still be there with them. He'd be honored to be counted among the dead, to become nothing more than another name carved into the Memorial Stone for making the ultimate sacrifice for his people.
He should have finally been able to pass into the afterlife, where most of his important people were waiting for him. He'd seen them, right after he'd died. They'd been smiling with hands outstretched to welcome him.
But then.
Then.
Something went wrong. He's not sure what. There's a gap in his memories, between that barest touch of his hand to Rin's and the moment he'd woken up here.
He's not naive enough to think he's going to find a way back. Even in the unlikely event he does find a way to return, he'd be faced with the grim reality that there might not be anything (or anyone) left to make it back to.
Kakashi forces himself to start to accept this new reality, at least for the time being. He can't live like this, with a fractured mind divided between a twenty-nine-year-old war veteran and a child not even old enough to go to school yet. He adapts. He lets go of the name Hatake Kakashi and takes on the name Shinsou Hitoshi instead. He convinces himself it's like taking on a long-term undercover mission.
For Konoha. For his students.
--
This world is mind-blowingly bizarre. People walk around with animal or mechanical features that aren't the result of human experimentation, unperturbed by the strange appearances of the others around them. For them, it's a way of life, nothing unusual. Others hold special abilities reminiscent of jutsu Hitoshi once used as easily as he breathed, with electricity sparking at fingertips and fire being conjured from nothingness.
There's no such thing as chakra here, at least not in a form familiar to Hitoshi. The focal points in his body and the energy stored within them that he'd always taken for granted - that in another world he'd once exhausted to the point of death - are gone, leaving a hollow ache in his body that feels like a phantom limb. His sharingan spins idly, somehow always activated despite the lack of power source to draw from. Hitoshi keeps it closed most of the time anyway - while it doesn't tire him out like it used to, it gives him killer migraines when exposed for too long.
Instead of chakra, this place has something called quirks, unique abilities typically developed by children by the time they're four years old. They remind him somewhat of the bloodline limits in his own world, especially given the genetic factor here. Children's quirks are often passed down from or manifest as a blend of their parents' quirks. Instead of those with abilities being considered special, it's rarer to receive no quirk at all, enough so that there's a stigma against those deemed "quirkless."
Hitoshi's mother, Shinsou Kasumi, has a quirk that allows her to disrupt the thoughts of the people around her with her voice. She doesn't use it often and Hitoshi's not certain he's identified it correctly. But he's experienced firsthand the disorienting effect of having his thoughts entirely derailed without warning, left blinking and trying to reorganize his thoughts. A part of his mind instantly goes on alert every time she speaks, just in case, but he'd take her quirk any day over his father's.
Shinsou Yoichi's quirk gives him the ability to alter the emotional state of anyone within a certain radius of himself. Hitoshi estimates the range is only around three meters, though it's hard to know for certain. Regardless, its effects linger even after escaping its direct influence. Based off his experiences at the receiving end of that vile quirk, he's pretty sure it works by manipulating the hormonal balance within the body, therefore explaining the time needed to restore a natural equilibrium after being caught in its crosshairs.
Hitoshi isn't sure whether or not he'll develop a quirk, or if his sharingan will take the place of it. If he does, it'll likely be something mind-based like theirs, though if he had a choice he would have opted for a quirk that allowed him to use jutsu again. There's not much purpose in dwelling on it in the end. His sharingan is powerful enough in its own right; while he hasn't had the chance to extensively test it, it appears to be about the same as it always was. Better, in fact - it's not draining his energy like it always had, though it's gained a tendency to give him splitting migraines instead.
This world is so much larger than anything Hitoshi has ever considered possible. The population of Tokyo alone, the capital of the island country he lives in, is easily a hundred times larger than the entire shinobi world. Even harder to comprehend is the fact that Japan is only a tiny segment of the planet.
The moment he can get his hands on them, he starts reading every book he can find. The written language is similar enough to his own that he has little difficulty adapting to it. When he's finished the meager selection in his own apartment, he teaches himself how to use the tiny mobile devices his parents carry around with them and is stunned by the sheer amount of information now at his disposal. It's all freely available for anyone to find, with detailed records of just about anything he could imagine published out in the open.
He doesn't understand it at all.
He's used to secretly recorded scrolls hidden away and marked as classified, only those with clearance allowed to look at them. The history of the shinobi villages is murky and fraught with inaccuracies despite being only a couple hundred years old - the history here stretches back thousands of years. It's hard to understand how all these countries are okay with sharing so much information, though he's sure there's plenty still locked down out of sight.
Advancements in technology, science and most other areas of study are much more pronounced here. Hitoshi reads of the development of cars and phones. He learns about flying machines called airplanes that can carry hundreds of people at a time across oceans, of televisions and the subway. He learns about the origins of quirks - a history far more recent than he would have expected - and how it's shaped the way society works. He reads of a vast universe outside of Earth, of other planets and that the sun is just one of countless stars, of theories of space travel and the possibility of life on other planets.
It's staggering, just how much he can read and read and never even come close to reaching the end of all the information out there. He's not sure he could ever grow tired of this constant influx of knowledge.
As far as Hitoshi can tell, shinobi don't exist here, not in any sort of modern capacity. The only references to them are in Japan's ancient history. It makes him briefly wonder if he hadn't changed worlds at all but merely been reincarnated centuries in the future, but given the lack of even the slightest mention of anything he can remember he's inclined to believe he's found himself in more of an alternate dimension or timeline. The lack of chakra or other natural energies he used to be able to use supports that hypothesis as well.
Instead, modern society here is built on a system of "heroes." The crime rate has dropped significantly since the ascension of the current number one hero All Might a couple years before Hitoshi's birth, but even with his presence the number of villains is strangely high. It seems like every news station is constantly reporting on another villain attack and the multitude of heroes who run to society's rescue daily. It's almost a miracle that Hitoshi hasn't witnessed any firsthand yet.
Their role in the spotlight instead of the shadows is completely at odds with Hitoshi's past and leaves a sour taste in his mouth. Maybe some of these heroes do it because they genuinely want to do good in the world, but with the way these so-called heroes are constantly vying for attention he'd guess they're a minority. He far prefers the system of quiet recognition or none at all, doing what's right not for recognition but merely because it's right.
Not that Hitoshi has ever considered himself to be a good person. At best he could call himself morally gray, but he's not naive. He knows some of the things he was ordered to do during his time in Anbu would make some call him evil. He can't fault that.
No, he wants nothing to do with this realm of heroes. He's not sure what he'll do with his life as he gets older, but he can already rule that out as a potential career path. He's spent a lifetime at war, and frankly, he's tired. He has no desire to jump back into yet another life of bloodshed and death.
--
"There's something wrong with that kid," Kasumi hisses, waving a box of medical masks frenetically. She's standing in the corner of Hitoshi's vision where she seems to think he can't see her, but he doesn't need to look at her to know what expression she's wearing.
Eyebrows drawn tightly together, chewing at the corner of her lip where the skin has cracked and bleeds, dark shadows under her eyes accentuated by a darting gaze and shifting feet. The older Hitoshi gets the worse it seems to get. She almost never looks directly at him, and it's not hard to know why.
She's terrified of him.
Where everyone else sees him as the three-year-old child he appears to be on the surface, she sees something else.
"Not this again," Yoichi groans. He scrubs a hand over bloodshot eyes and slouches further in his seat. A mostly empty bottle dangles loosely from his fingers. "What the hell do I care if that brat wants to wear masks? Let him wear the damn things if it keeps him quiet."
"It's not normal. I don't know why you refuse to see it," she snaps, the side of the box crumpling under her tightening grip. "He won't play with other kids. One of the workers at the daycare told me she caught him taking apart their radio while reading an instruction manual. He's three! He almost never talks. He doesn't smile, he won't laugh, he won't cry, he doesn't show emotions, and you don't find that even a little disturbing?"
"Don't talk to me like that. Just wait, it'll end up being something about his quirk and then you're gonna feel real bright, aren't you?" His face is stormy, body tense. The mood of the room tangibly plummets as his eyes glimmer with the usage of his quirk.
Hitoshi has been through two major wars. He graduated and became a legal adult at five years old and had killed his first man before he'd turned six. He'd lost two fathers by the time he was fourteen, his biological one through suicide and an all-but-adoptive one in self-sacrifice. He'd watched one teammate be crushed before his eyes and accidentally stabbed the other through the heart, his own jutsu turned against himself.
Hitoshi is not scared of Shinsou Yoichi. The man is a coward who takes his anger out on those weaker than himself, twisting their emotions to manipulate their actions and stop them from fighting back. Hitoshi has faced men so much worse than this pitiful excuse for a father.
His heart starts beating rapidly anyway, a pit of fear growing in his throat and behind his eyes as he beats a hasty retreat from the room. It's the effect of a quirk and not a reflection of his true feelings. But there's something viscerally terrifying in the loss of control over his own emotions, a facet of himself he's always kept locked down with almost obsessive fervor.
No, Hitoshi isn't scared of him.
He hides a knife and razor blades in tiny corners of the apartment where they won't find them anyway, just in case.
--
Hitoshi is four years old when his quirk appears. No one else realizes.
He can feel it in his mouth and throat, a buzzing sensation every time he utters a word. It's like static electricity in his voice that only he can hear, and naturally, he immediately gets the urge to put it to the test.
He doesn't dare.
Both of his parents' quirks deal with the mind. It stands to reason that his will too, but he has no way of knowing what exactly that would entail. It could be a copy of one of their quirks, but what if it's not? What could he end up doing to someone else's mind if he blindly puts it to the test?
In the privacy of their tiny bathroom, he tries to test it on himself. He speaks and focuses on his words and feels the way his quirk fizzles out with no target to latch onto. Whatever it is, it seems it needs a secondary target to have any sort of effect.
He resigns himself to leaving it unknown. It burns at his mind to have an ability he can't explore, but while his parents are hardly good people, they aren't the sort of evil that he'd feel okay with experimenting on them. Not like this.
Hitoshi's fifth birthday passes, and people start exchanging worried looks when they think he isn't paying attention. His preschool teachers whisper words of concern amongst themselves. When he turns six and he still hasn't shown any visible signs of a quirk, those whispers change. Maybe his single red eye is a minor mutation quirk. Maybe he has some sort of special eyesight. The school tests his vision and he lets them believe the color is the only thing "special" about it.
They start tossing a label around that no other child in this world would want to hear:
Quirkless.
It doesn't bother him. It's an advantage, one none of these people seem to understand - the advantage of obscurity. There are so many facets of power that don't involve quirks. Rather, many people with powerful quirks seem to suffer from the weakness of over-reliance and fail to develop skills such as martial arts or actual strategy.
No, Hitoshi would have been content to remain quirkless in the sight of the rest of the world. He has nothing to prove to anyone who would tie a person's worth to the existence of a quirk.
So the day he finally learns what his quirk is, it's thanks to an accident. A crack in his sanity, the exhaustion of listening to fights and battling a constantly gyrating cycle of emotional turmoil at the hands of a man without any desire to control his quirk.
His parents have just reached the tail end of another one of their fights. It's a near-daily occurrence now and even from the other side of the room, he can feel his adrenaline spiking. His palms sweat and his heart races, breathing resting on the edge of hyperventilation.
He's sick of this. Of living in an environment that's constantly manipulating his emotional state.
Yoichi is saying something to Hitoshi now, waving an empty bottle in the air frenetically. To be honest, Hitoshi isn't listening. He doesn't really care what useless things this man has to say today.
The oppressive atmosphere seems to lift for just a moment before growing even heavier than before, and
that's
it.
"Would you just quit it for once in your life?" Hitoshi says, words sparking with annoyance and the buzzing tendrils of an unknown power. He intends to reel it in and control his quirk like he always has. He really does.
Okay, he mostly intends to reel it in.
Yoichi's eyes flare in fury. "Who the hell do you..." he starts to spit out. Instead of flying into a blind rage like expected, though, his voice trails off. Hitoshi stares in disbelief as the man's eyes glaze over and the tension seeps out of his body, even the heaviness in the air starting to recede.
What the hell?
"Turn off your quirk," he says, glancing at Kasumi. He hadn't heard her talk. Her quirk shouldn't be active right now and it had never before resulted in such a lasting, unsettling blankness.
The oppressive atmosphere disappears entirely.
Hitoshi's eyes narrow. No, this wasn't her quirk. This was something else entirely. There's a charged undercurrent linking himself and his father right now, one that grows more pronounced as he focuses inward on it.
"Move away from me," he instructs. He watches impassively as Yoichi turns and walks sluggishly to the other side of the room. He doesn't turn around after the command has been executed; he just stares blankly at the wall inches in front of his face as if in a trance.
Kasumi lets out a choked laugh, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. "I should have known you'd end up with a villain's quirk," she says.
Hitoshi doesn't refute it.
She locks herself in the bathroom and turns on the faucet to muffle any sounds. He's left alone with the unnaturally still form of his father and contemplates his new dilemma - he's not entirely sure how to release his quirk's effects. Not that he really wants it to stop working right this second. He can only imagine the level of fury he'll be treated to as soon as it wears off. Instead he focuses on the tenuous mental thread he can feel between them, keeping it whole and unbroken for as long as he can.
A quirk that allows him to control minds isn't exactly what he'd expected when he'd considered what quirks he could have. With the maternal bias he's noticed in quirk development he'd assumed his would end up similar to his mother's. In a way, he supposes it's not all that different, though his appears to be much more pervasive and long-lasting.
At least now he has a rudimentary idea of what his quirk entails. He'd start experimenting further, but he doubts it would be taken well if he were caught doing so. He'll have to be careful how he moves forward with this, if he intends to use his quirk in the future.
A short while later Kasumi reemerges from the bathroom. Her eyes are red-rimmed and she avoids meeting Hitoshi's gaze, carefully looking everywhere but at him or at Yoichi.
"Come on," she murmurs, motioning impatiently for him to follow without any explanation.
"Where are we going?" he asks.
"To see a quirk specialist," she says. "We need to figure... this... out. Before you do it again." To me is left unsaid.
--
The visit to the specialist is short and filled with people who make no effort to hide that they want nothing to do with Hitoshi. His quirk is given the name "brainwashing" and determined to be activated by people responding to his questions.
Hitoshi doesn't correct the assumption it has to be a question for the quirk to work. Even the staff won't answer him if he asks something after they've come to that conclusion and he has no doubt it would only get worse if he suggested general statements may work as well, though he hasn't had a chance to test it for sure one way or another. It's a potential advantage he'll keep to himself.
The secretary calls him a little villain and disguises it behind a sugary-sweet tone. No one calls her out on it; it's obvious in the apprehensive glances he keeps getting that she's not alone in her prediction of his future.
This is not the first time Hitoshi has been treated with suspicion and disdain for something outside of his control. He's already lived a childhood of distrust because of the actions of a father he barely remembers. No, this is nothing new.
His tenuous grip on his quirk had long dissipated by the time they make their way back to the apartment. He endures Yoichi's rage and lets himself be locked into the bedroom, muscles trembling with the lingering effects of forcibly induced adrenaline. He presses a hand over his mask to muffle his breathing while his parents speak in low, hissing voices just out of earshot.
Hitoshi doesn't think he can stand to take twelve more years of this charade, pretending to be a child as his body grows but his mind stagnates. By this time in his last life he'd already graduated and been promoted to chuunin, legally considered an adult and expected to take care of himself. He'd been a prodigy who'd excelled far beyond his peers with a one-track mind and sheer determination in the face of those who doubted him.
Here, in this body, he's a disorienting mess of remembered reflexes without the muscle memory to back it up. And he's sick of it.
When he'd first recovered his memories, he'd decided he didn't want to lead another life of fighting. That sentiment hadn't changed, but he'll be damned if he lets himself stay like this.