Chapter 1: Takumi Kisaragi
AN: The MC is the same age as Aizawa, and this story takes place 12 years before MHA's main canon. And 5-6 years before MHA: Vigilante.
Also, CSM's power system (devils/fear) isn't being added to MHA since it obviously would break the verse. Instead, I'm converting their powers into quirks, as for their stories, you'll just have to read and find out.
Update: This used to be purely a CSM addition to the crossover, but I started having fun integrating characters from other verses so you can technically view this as a 'Multicross'. CSM is still the primary integrated verse, but don't be too surprised if you see people from other verses here and there.
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2-11-7 Midori Street, Naruhata Ward.
Damp, gray clouds started to gather overhead. The pitter patter of a slow drizzle gradually morphed into a heavy downpour, catching the ward's residents off guard, at least those who hadn't bothered to check the forecast in advance, forcing them to hang their briefcases and coats over their heads as they ran to shelter.
Situated alongside the street, like most in Japan, was a staple of the nation's retail industry. A FamilyMart, its lime-green, white and blue header shining firmly atop its exterior with its fluorescent shine. The store was currently being manned by two part-time high school students, their shifts running from 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM.
One was a boy responsible for working the register, Takumi Kisaragi, a third-year attending Naruhata Municipal High School.
He had jet-black hair combed in a neat, backwards fashion, though not jelled enough to make him look corporate. His eyes were a distinct steel-gray color and coupled with a pair of rectangular black-framed spectacles that gave him an exhausted, eager-to-go-home demeanour. The kind you'd expect from a salaryman living paycheck to paycheck.
When no customers were present, Takumi had a habit of insistently checking his watch. Painfully counting down the minutes until his shift ended, which in hindsight, only made the hours that much more excruciating. It was a bad habit he struggled to free himself from.
His co-worker was in charge of handling the stock and inventory. Miyu Aoyama, a girl who was both in the same school and grade as him, only in a different class. She sported shoulder-length brown hair which she typically kept tied in a low ponytail. Her eyes were dark-brown and soft in nature, giving her a gentle, approachable impression. Even during her shifts, she had a thin layer of lip gloss applied for reasons Takumi couldn't be bothered to probe her for.
"That'll be ¥350." Takumi's curt, mannerless voice reached a customer's ears as he scanned a bag of chips and a soda bottle. Quickly taking ¥400 worth of notes and handing over the change. Uninterested in offering the usual welcoming greetings and goodbyes most cashiers repeated like broken records.
Customers expected them, but virtually none cared enough to engage in the pointless endeavor of complaining when they didn't receive one. It simply wasn't worth the trouble, thus, Takumi's supervisor had never bothered to pester him about it.
Even if he'd prefer a more friendly-faced alternative to Takumi, the boy never complained or attempted to dip his hands into the register, so looking for a replacement would be an absolute waste of time.
As the customer was leaving, Takumi took a glance at his watch.
7:32 PM, it read.
"Tsk." He clicked his tongue in irritation, his thoughts centralized solely around the reassuring comfort of his own apartment.
"There! All done!" Miyu cheered, checking off the last box on her clipboard while crouched next to one of the aisles. Her footsteps nearing Takumi as she went behind the counter and took a seat on the stool positioned beside her co-worker, giving her knees a chance to rest. "You hanging in there, Takumi? It's getting pretty chilly, isn't it?"
She glanced out the store window. Sunset had already fallen half an hour ago, enshrouding Naruhata's streets in pitch blackness with the ward's poorly-maintained street lights being the only countermeasure.
"I'm fine, I'm wearing an undershirt." He replied without eye-contact, hoping the day would grace him with an abundant line of customers to kill the time. "And you have no reason to be complaining about the cold with a quirk like yours."
Miyu pouted at him. "Hmph, I shouldn't even have to use it in the first place! FamilyMarts are supposed to be heated during the winter, aren't they? I swear we're the only store in the country without proper insulation."
She stretched her arms outward and activated her quirk: Warm Current. An emitter-type ability that allowed her to subtly raise the ambient temperature within a 2-3 meter radius. It was by no means a particularly powerful quirk, but it did a good job of keeping customers comfortable during the winter.
"Oh, speaking of quirks!" Miyu faced him with a coy smile. "Isn't it about time you show me yours? We've been working together for a year already!" She squished her knuckles against her cheeks, looking at him with frustratingly stubborn expectancy.
Takumi exhaled, adjusting his glasses. "I've already explained it to you, it allows me to—"
"'Notice a few things here and there'. Yeah, yeah, you've told me." A rehearsed groan escaped her breath. "Do you seriously expect me to be satisfied with that non-answer? I want a demonstration! Or are you really just going to stand there and have a girl show you hers' without doing the same?"
"Wording please." He pinched his nose-bridge, shaking his head in second-hand embarrassment. "If I demonstrate, will it be the last time you pester me about it?"
"Pinky-promise!" Miyu nodded with enthusiasm, extending her hand towards him.
"Your word will do," he rejected the gesture.
Miyu's eyes came alive with anticipation as he turned to her, his eyes flicking from one random part of her body to another. Mental gears spinning in his mind at full-capacity, a process completely invisible to his co-worker, but one that was there nonetheless.
"I'll start with your body language, when you force yourself to look cheerful in front of a customer, there's about a 0.18 second delay before your smile reaches your eyes. When you're teasing someone, your left eyebrow arches a little higher than your right. When you're irritated, you tense your right cheek. When you're about to ask me or the supervisor something but decide against it, your lower lip presses inward."
Like clockwork, Miyu's jaw hit the floor.
"I could also describe your vocal tics. When you're excited, your voice rises by 12 hertz, 20 when startled. When you're anxious, you experience slight vocal thinning. You speak 0.4 seconds faster around me than you do our supervisor or some of the other co-workers we've had employed here. Whenever I respond to a customer in a way you find dry or awkward, you force a laugh half a beat too late."
Gradually, her childlike awe started to fade.
"I know your quirk activation cues as well. When your emotions surge, the air around you increases by 1-2°C. The spike is higher when you're embarrassed, like now for instance. When you're stressed, also like you are now, the warmth fluctuates in an uneven manner."
His analysis made Miyu reflexively disable her quirk which she had unknowingly deployed.
"There's also the conclusions I can make by interpreting your eye movement. For example, I know the average time you hold eye contact is 2.7 seconds. I also know you have a strange tendency to check my hands whenever you believe I'm tense or bothered in some manner. I know you like to study my posture when I go still. I know your pupils dilate when your laughter is genuine—"
"OK STOP!" Miyu's palm shot forwards, sealing Takumi's mouth with a mix of intense embarrassment and fear.
Unfazed, or rather, unsurprised by her reaction. Takumi gently brushed her hand aside.
"That was disturbing wasn't it?" He needed no confirmation, Miyu's facial expression was confirmation enough. "That's why I insisted on keeping my quirk to myself."
"D-Disturbing is an understatement! That was way too personal! And like… borderline creepy!" Her face flustered as be, Miyu began to stammer, struggling to gather her words. "H-How does that even work?! Are you reading my mind or something?!"
"No," he answered plainly. "If I was reading your mind I'd simply describe your thoughts aloud. I merely described the visual observations I made based on your body language."
"...Visual observations?" She repeated in disbelief, she couldn't say for certain whether or not his mathematical statements were true, but they certainly felt that way. "So you have some kind of… detective quirk?"
"You can interpret it that way if you'd like." He redirected his attention back from her to the storefront.
"Wait a minute…" She continued, her pupils dilating as if she had come to some kind of realization. "If you made all those observations about me… does that mean you've been using your quirk on me this whole time?!" Miyu jolted upright and shouted with indignation.
"I have not," he maintained an even tone. "That's just how my quirk operates in its passive state, it's quite bothersome if I'm being frank. But what can I do? That's the hand my genetics dealt me."
"...Passive? What does it do when it's active?" For the sake of her own comfort and desire to believe in him, Miyu chose not to entertain the thought of him being some sort of silent stalker.
Takumi exhaled in exasperation. He reached into his pocket and withdrew a ¥5 coin, pointing at a small bottle of water located on a shelf at the furthermost end of the store.
"See that?"
"Yeah?"
He proceeded to place the coin atop his thumb as if he were about to flick it, and pointed his hand at a seemingly random part of the store's interior.
'Trajectory Lock.'
Briefly, Takumi's pupils flashed a dim green. His mind burdened with a faint headache as seven data points entered his head all at once. The mass estimate of the coin, the material of the store's wall, the required spin direction of the coin, the initial velocity, the angle, the release point, and distance.
Clack!
In a display of freak accuracy, Takumi allowed the coin to shoot out from his clutches. The object ricocheting against the wall at an angle most would deem impossible to hit, and tapping the water bottle right at the edge of its cap. Obviously unable to knock it over because of the coin's insufficient weight and speed.
Without uttering a word, Takumi walked out from the register and picked the coin back up, returning to his post while pretending not to notice the comical face his co-worker was pulling, as if she had just witnessed an incomprehensible magic trick.
"H-How did you—?!"
"Math my brain crammed into me." He answered with a grumble. "Don't waste your breath asking me to explain it, even I myself don't fully understand how it works." His interest in the topic faded within his moments, his mind once again swamping itself with the desire to clock off as possible.
His quirk: Battle Algorithm, seemed like quite the boon on the surface, which was true in certain situations. But on a day-to-day basis, Takumi saw it as an unforgiving curse.
The quirk's passive state simply couldn't be turned off, there were no ifs, ands, or buts. Ever since he awakened it at four years of age, it had always remained on.
Why was that a burden?
For starters, Takumi couldn't experience 'moments'. If Miyu were to laugh, he couldn't just stand there and listen to the sound of her voice or simply acknowledge that she found something funny.
No, his brain would forcibly translate that laugh into data: the rate of her breath intake, how much her shoulders relax, even a percentage describing how genuine her laughter was. Joy was a calculation. Affection became pattern recognition. Not a single external emotion was allowed to exist in and of itself, his quirk demanded it be processed.
And it only got worse when he was in the presence of multiple people. Take school for instance, whenever he was in a classroom, his brain constantly funneled in unwanted information such as which student could overpower which, where the blind spots were at any given time, which objects in the classroom could be used lethal weapons, the method one would use to utilize said object in such a manner.
The list went on and on.
Takumi had absolutely no interest in harming others, yet this quirk insisted on telling him the best possible way to do so. It turned a classroom from an area containing desks and his peers into a place with 'x' amount of lethal weapons, 'x' amount of choke points, and 'x' amount of students that were physically vulnerable.
That level of awareness was exhausting. Not just mentally, but physically too. For his brain to operate on such a level meant it needed more energy than a normal person's would, namely, glucose. Which forced Takumi to sustain a high-sugar diet lest he wanted to pass out every other hour.
Like he had demonstrated to Miyu, his quirk could be used to pull a fun party-trick on people by reading their visual tells, but that wasn't its purpose, it wouldn't have been named "Battle Algorithm" if it was.
It was a combat-focused quirk, through and through.
It was optimized for survival and efficiency, it had no interest in accounting for love, trust, vulnerability, forgiveness, or any other emotions. All it wanted to do was tell Takumi the best possible way to defeat anyone who was within his line of sight, an unforgiving mechanical machine that had rooted itself in his brain.
His quirk labeled every living creature on God's green earth as an enemy, and the only thing fighting that warped perception was Takumi's own willpower.
Truth be told, Takumi wasn't sure how long he'd be able to keep fighting against that perception. According to the doctors, his quirk, like most that affected the brain, was tied to the natural development of the human mind. Most brains finished developing at 25 years of age, and Takumi was still 17. Which meant there was still at least another 8 years to go before the quirk reached its absolute peak.
That was a thought he preferred to keep stashed away at the furthest recess of his mind. He feared he'd truly go mad if he let himself dwell on it for an extended period of time.
The direct description of his quirk was 'real-time combat prediction and tactical optimization'.
In a fight, it was power.
In life, it was isolation.
Beep! Beep!
Takumi's eyes lit up in a rare display of joy as he heard his watch start to beep, its analog surface reading 9:00 PM.
"Finally." He breathed a deep sigh of relief, changing out of his work uniform and back into his casual wear, which consisted of a matte charcoal gray windbreaker hoodie, a plain black t-shirt, and slim dark cargo pants.
At last, it was time to clock off and head home.
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