Downtown Tokyo, Year 2304.
Narumi.
After Hiroshi's death, the Yamazaki's had fallen on hard times.
Supposedly.
Yes, Narumi had cried once she learned of Hiroshi's passing, and she had cried once more at his funeral. Narumi mourned the man that he used to be, the man she thought Hiroshi was. She couldn't help but feel ashamed of the actions that her ex-husband had yet to make. But even so, Narumi did not regret their relationship. For it was that very relationship that gave her the greatest gift that she's ever gotten.
Her little Seiki, her beautiful baby boy.
And now with both Hiroshi and the HPSC dealt with, they were finally safe– which was a little jarring to think about. From her perspective, Seiki had bested the might of the Japanese government in an instant. Narumi was starting to understand why the HPSC had decided to execute her child, but even if she could understand it, that did not mean that she liked it. No, Narumi hated the Hero Public Safety Commission with a burning passion.
As for 'Yuki-nee,' Seiki's handler, Narumi wanted nothing more than to track her down and bash her skull in with a frying pan... but she refrained.
After all, the Yuki Takisawa of the present hasn't done anything to her Seiki.
But even if she now had her son by her side, as well as his instant-win button (not that she'd ever abuse his Quirk), that didn't make life easy. At least not immediately. Sure, Seiki had gotten rid of the threats looming in the background, but they still had to deal with all of the mundane problems that life wanted to throw at them.
Like the fact that their car was totaled beyond repair.
Or that she didn't have a job.
Or that they barely had any money.
But once again, all of their problems were going to be solved by her little boy. Sitting in a rental car parked in downtown Tokyo, which was quite a ways away from their old apartment in Hokkaido, Narumi cooed as her son sat in the backseat, scribbling in his little notebook as his cute little pout slowly grew more and more pouty.
Narumi also couldn't help but stare into Seiki's eyes, watching as his left and right irises swirled and glowed every couple seconds. Red for Save, and blue for Load. It was such a tiny little thing, but it made his eyes look super cool! Fortunately Seiki didn't flash bright pink or something whenever he used his Quirk– anything along those lines would've made it a lot harder for him to hide its activation.
"This sucks so fucking hard," Seiki grumbled, but he didn't stop scribbling.
"Language," Narumi chided, but she didn't truly mean it. Her son was mentally a teenager at this point, and she had been cursing long before that. "How many tickets have we bought so far?"
"We've bought the first 10 scratchers of every ticket 1,000 yen and up. With an average of 44 different tickets per store, and 14 different stores..." Narumi watched as his left eye swirled and glowed, followed by his right. "That puts us at 6,160 tickets." Seiki sighed, setting his pen down for a moment. "We've already spent 19.8 million yen, and our biggest winner so far could maybe get us a used car. Christ, these are such a scam."
Narumi's chest ached. Even if she hadn't physically spent it, just thinking about wasting all of that money hurt.
"When'd you get so good at math?" she teased.
"Google-save," Seiki answered. At her obvious confusion, he elaborated, "I almost always have a save stationed near a computer. That way I can always just take a break from whatever I'm doing and browse the internet."
"Huh. That's pretty nifty," Narumi muttered. She could use one of those.
"It also doubles as a nap-save."
Fuck. Narumi would kill for one of those.
As for her son's current actions, they were very, very illegal. Every single precognition Quirk user was heavily monitored by the government, and while precogs could use their Quirks to make money in certain professions (like being a Hero), they could not gamble under any circumstances. Narumi knew this because she very nearly had that restriction placed on her.
In fact, if Narumi wanted to play poker or something similar at an official junction, then she would have to wear gloves the entire game. Even though she couldn't read minds directly, her Quirk fell under both the mind-reading and touch-based categories, so it was heavily frowned upon for her to gamble in any sort of public setting. If her Quirk had been sight-based, then Narumi wouldn't have been able to gamble in person at all.
Scratch tickets, though, those were fair game. Narumi wasn't a precog, but a postcog. It was impossible for her to cheat with her Quirk.
And Seiki's Quirk, Trickshot, wouldn't be any help either.
'After all, all Sei-chan can do is make trick shots,' Narumi thought to herself, stifling a giggle. It was honestly hilarious just how disappointed the Hokkaido Hospital doctors had been with Seiki's Quirk. It seemed like they had been hoping for something more, given that her and Hiroshi had Quirks with time and space aspects respectively. To be fair, Trickshot was rather bland and uninteresting compared to Flashback and Mine.
'If only they knew,' Narumi mused.
Her little Seiki had the strongest Quirk in the world.
And while a younger Narumi might've frowned upon her son's current actions, since he was using his Quirk to commit a crime, making him a villain... the current Narumi couldn't care less about what laws her little Sei-chan has broken. After all, the laws were put in place by the government, and if Narumi had to choose between the HPSC and Seiki?
'Hah.' That wasn't even a question.
Japan tried to mold her Sei-chan into a child soldier.
Japan could go fuck themselves.
And while Narumi was more than willing to put in the work to support herself and her son, not wanting to exploit Seiki's Quirk like the HPSC did, Seiki had put a stop to her "very heartwarming but also very stupid" idea instantly. Those had been his exact words.
Who calls their own mother stupid? Eh, Sei-chan was just at that age.
Either way, Narumi was not exploiting her son. She was just letting Seiki give into his impulses... and if it just so happened to benefit the both of them, what was the harm?
Not a minute later, Seiki cheered. "Hell yeah! We're rich, baby."
"How much did we win?" Narumi asked, her curiosity getting the better of her. They weren't playing the lottery, just buying scratch tickets, so her expectations weren't all that high. They couldn't have won that much, right?
"80 million yen."
Narumi's breath hitched.
"Holy shit."
That was all that they needed. That was so much more than they needed. Even if they only got half of it back after taxes, they'd never have to worry about money again. Especially once Sei-chan dipped his grubby little hands into the stock market.
"Language," Seiki teased back.
Narumi let out a huff. "Okay mister. Now where are we going, exactly? And shouldn't you... you know," she trailed off, gesturing towards Seiki's notebook. With a list of stores accompanied by their winning ticket numbers, that notebook was now physical evidence that hinted towards the truth of Seiki's Quirk. The best way to get rid of it would be for him to Load a previous Save.
Even if that meant she wouldn't remember any of this.
"What evidence?" Seiki asked with a grin, handing her the notebook. Raising an eyebrow, Narumi took said evidence from his hands, immediately letting out another huff. Seiki had drawn hundreds of squiggly little arrows, all of them pointing to the words:
[Made you look.]
"Very funny," Narumi snarked.
But even if her little Sei-chan was being a brat, Narumi couldn't be happier. She was going to remember this. Narumi's already missed 8 entire years of her son's life, and she didn't want to miss anything she didn't absolutely have to.
'Now it's time to make some mullah!'
*
Seiki.
"Welcome to 7-Eleven! How's your day been so far?" the cashier– Fukuda– greeted, his eyes just a tad dead inside. Seiki idly wondered if he was forced to ask that.
"It's been alright. How about you?" Narumi asked in turn.
"So so." Seiki figured as much.
They spent a couple minutes browsing around. To really sell the 'heist' (if you could even call what they were about to do a heist), they were going to buy themselves some drinks and snacks. Unfortunately for Seiki, the drink he wanted– a Cherry Pepsi– was out of his reach. 'Another reminder of my limited stature,' he cursed internally. Grabbing one of the water bottles from the bottom row, 'Save1,' Seiki chucked it haphazardly at the top shelf.
He missed.
'Load1. Load1. Load1. Load1. Load1...'
After finally knocking down a single Cherry Pepsi, Seiki caught them both and put the water bottle back. Yuki-nee had monitored his diet, since eating and drinking healthy was important or some bullshit. Now that he was free from those damn commies, Seiki was going eat and drink all the crap he could.
He also got a bunch of Twix. He loved Twix.
"Alrighty. Pepsi, Lemonade, some Twix and Kit-Kats..." Fukuda muttered. "Is that all?"
"Hmm..." Narumi frowned slightly, furrowing her brow. "Actually, could I get...? Let's go with 5 of number 16." Eh, Seiki would give her a passing grade. She was good enough for this, but he wasn't taking his mom on any undercover operations. At least not anytime soon.
Then she had to ruin it.
"I'm feeling pretty lucky today," she added, with a grin.
With a fucking grin.
"Dammit, mom," Seiki groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "We're committing excessive gambling fraud with the assist of a Quirk. That's a Class 2 Felony. That's up to 16 years of prison. Not to mention what'll happen if the government catches onto the true nature of my Quirk. And you have the gall to say 'I'm feeling pretty lucky today,' and then you follow it up with a grin???"
"Um... oops?" Narumi asked, blushing slightly.
Well, it was to be expected. His mom has no formal training in secrecy/espionage, and she's always been the type of person to wear her heart on her sleeve.
Not to mention that she was only 23.
"Uh," Fukuda stuttered, "Am I supposed to call the police–?"
'Load2.'
Holding his mother's hand as he walked down the street, Seiki huffed in annoyance.
"Mom."
"Yes, sweetie?"
"No feeling lucky. And no grinning."
"Ah..." Narumi blushed, clearly embarrassed. "Um, okay."
God, his mom was an idiot.
An adorable idiot.
*
A Few Months Later.
80 million yen.
51.2 million yen after taxes.
That sounded like a lot, but it really wasn't. It was barely enough to buy a house. But with the right investments, and just a little bit of stock manipulation, Seiki could increase their total funds 20% every month at the minimum. They'd easily be able to live off of that forever.
'The stock market shall feel my wrath...'
But first, Seiki had to take the necessary precautions.
A nigh-untraceable VPN.
A password security app he coded himself that assigns a randomized 20 digit password that change once every 15 minutes, with the old passwords being emailed to himself 12 seconds after they change. He wasn't much of a programmer, so it was pretty barebones, but this app could be linked to virtually any public account.
And after all of that, if someone still managed to worm their way into his finances, then Seiki would get a text/email saying that 'someone' has bought/sold his stocks.
Then he'd just have to Load.
Naturally, such a massive surge of steady income led to a better standard of living. The HPSC had never given Seiki any tangible money (it was all benefits until he was 16, supposedly), but he had gotten used to living lavishly. With Save & Load, there was no reason for them to live frugally– and he didn't want to live frugally. And while it took a bit of convincing, Seiki eventually got his mom to be a bit more brazen with her spending. Dresses, jewelry, knick-knacks, it didn't matter what she bought. Even if Narumi were to spend every waking moment filling up her Amazon shopping list, she'd never spend it all.
As for their new life, Seiki had to admit that it was pretty good.
A top of the line high-rise condo, 3 bed/2 bath with pool. 600,000 yen per month.
A 2199 Chevrolet Camaro. 4 million yen.
Top of the line furniture and appliances. 2.8 million yen.
And so much more.
And with their future secured, Seiki could finally do whatever he wanted. He's already mastered a number of different things under the HPSC's guidance...
-Melee Combat.
-Knife Throwing/Combat.
-Enemy/Quirk Analysis.
-Espionage/Secrecy Training.
-Mental Training (blood/gore/death/pain no longer phased him).
-Fluent in Japanese, English, Mandarin, French, Russian.
But now Seiki was free to learn the things that he actually wanted to learn. Well, with the nature of his Quirk, Seiki always could've done this– it just wasn't until he was no longer training around the clock to be a Hero that he realized there were other things he actually wanted to do, or at least try.
-Skiing/Snowboarding.
-Skateboarding.
-Skydiving.
-ALL of the video games.
-Steal a car and try to escape the cops/heroes in a high-stakes car chase.
-Robbery/Burglary.
And last but certainly not least, guns!
Guns hadn't really interested him before, but after firing one for the first time, Seiki was finally starting to see the appeal. He also understood why the HPSC never let him even hold a gun in the past/future– he was still unbeatable without one, but having both an instant-win AND an instant-kill button made things so much easier!
Fist and knife fights were still fun, but the allure of firearms was strong.
Unfortunately, not only was it all but illegal to own a gun in Japan (unless you were a Hero or a government employee, but even then it was still difficult), but Seiki would need to be at least 20 years old if he wanted to own one. After the Dawn of Quirks, Japan had cracked down on gun control hard, much to Seiki's dismay. Of course, Seiki could always just get one illegally and fire it willy-nilly in false-time whenever he wanted. But if he ever wanted to own one legally, AND be able to fire it in real time, the absolute youngest age that Seiki could achieve this would be at 14.
All in all, there was a very good chance that he'd be going to Texas in the future.
And the same went for Narumi.
Seiki's known for a while now that his mom's initial dream was to have a family, and he certainly wasn't going to complain about how much his mother loved him... but he still remembers the Narumi from the future. The Narumi that slowly broke under the HPSC's pressure, the Narumi that had nothing aside from him. The Narumi that had no hobbies, no dreams, no goals. The Narumi that, after her marriage crashed and burned, had stopped living for herself.
Seiki didn't want that to ever happen again.
That was why his mom was now attending college part-time, and why the walls were covered in his mother's paintings. Seiki never knew his mom liked to paint, and he certainly hadn't know that she was interested in Quirk Theory. But now Seiki knew more about the woman that his mom was, and the dreams that she had pushed aside for him.
Dreams that she could now pursue.
And with this, Step 2 of Seiki's "Live My Life to the Fullest" plan was complete.
Step 1: Convince mom that you're a time-traveling assassin.
Step 2: Financial and emotional stability.
Step 3: Start a cult.
Now it was time for Step 3.
*
*
*