Morning came too early.
Rei's eyes snapped open at 5:47 AM, three minutes before his alarm was set to go off. Old habits. In his previous life, waking before the alarm meant the difference between life and death on certain jobs.
'Guess some things don't change.'
He sat up slowly, letting his body adjust. No grogginess. No lingering exhaustion from yesterday's mental breakdown. Just clarity and a strange sense of anticipation humming beneath his skin.
His hands flexed unconsciously, and he felt it again—that subtle awareness of power coiled in his muscles. The Spider Quirk, awake and waiting.
'Alright.' Rei swung his legs out of bed. 'Time to figure out what I can actually do.'
The apartment was silent except for the faint sounds of the city waking up outside. Rei moved to his closet and pulled out the most worn set of clothes he could find—a faded black tracksuit that had seen better days. If he was going to test his limits, he needed something he wouldn't mind destroying.
He caught his reflection in the mirror as he changed. Still weird, seeing this younger face. Fifteen years old. Lean but not built. The original Rei had been active enough to stay in shape, but nothing compared to the assassin's body he'd spent decades honing.
'That'll change.' He pulled the tracksuit jacket on. 'Four weeks. I can work with that.'
But first, he needed information. Real, concrete data about what his Quirk could do.
Rei grabbed a notebook and pen from his desk—the original Rei had been meticulous about taking notes, apparently—and started making a list.
--:Spider Quirk - Known Abilities:--
- Wall-crawling/surface adhesion
- Enhanced strength (approx. 3-4x body weight)
- Enhanced speed and agility
- Enhanced senses (hearing, smell, touch)
- Enhanced reflexes
- Organic webbing (high tensile strength, controllable dissolution)
'That's what the original Rei knew.' He tapped the pen against the page. 'But he was just a kid. He never pushed it. Never tested the real limits.'
Because the original Rei Mizuki had been a normal teenager. He'd used his Quirk for practical things—climbing walls to retrieve stuff, moving faster during gym class, maybe showing off a little. But he'd never weaponized it.
Never turned it into something lethal.
'But I have.' Rei's jaw tightened. 'I know how to kill with less. So what can I do with more?'
He needed to test everything. Strength. Speed. Durability. Range of the webbing. How long it lasted. How much he could produce. Reaction time. Sensory limits.
Everything.
'But not here.' He looked around the small apartment. 'Too confined. I need space.'
His mind immediately went to training grounds, gyms, anywhere with proper equipment. But those would be crowded, even this early. People would ask questions. Heroes might show up if he did something too flashy.
'I need somewhere isolated. Somewhere I can break things without anyone noticing.'
A memory surfaced from the original Rei's knowledge of the area. The forest on the outskirts of Musutafu. Dense trees, rocky terrain, far enough from residential areas that nobody really went there. Hikers sometimes, but not at dawn.
'Perfect.'
Rei grabbed his apartment keys and shoved them in his pocket, along with the notebook. Time to see what he could really do.
---
The train ride to the forest's edge took forty minutes. Rei spent the time observing people, a habit from his old life. The morning commuters, half-asleep and clutching coffee. Students in various school uniforms, chatting or zoned out with headphones. A few heroes in costume, probably heading to early patrol shifts.
Normal. Mundane. Safe.
'This world has no idea what's coming.' The thought was bitter. 'All For One. The League of Villains. The Paranormal Liberation War. Everything.'
Rei's hand clenched around the train's overhead handle. He knew. He'd watched it unfold in his previous life as entertainment. But now it was real. These people—these strangers who'd never done anything wrong—were going to suffer.
Unless someone stopped it.
'Can I stop it?' The question gnawed at him. 'One person. One variable. Can I change the outcome of an entire war?'
He didn't know. But he had to try.
Because what was the alternative? Sit back and watch people die when he could've done something?
'I've taken enough lives.' His reflection stared back at him in the train window, dark eyes cold. 'Maybe it's time to save some.'
The train slowed to a stop at the edge of the city. Rei stepped off and followed the signs toward the nature trail entrance. The air was cooler here, fresher. Trees lined the path ahead, thick and green.
The area was quiet. A few early morning joggers on the main trail, but no one heading deep into the forest. Good.
Rei walked past the main trail entrance and found a smaller, less maintained path leading into the denser part of the woods. He followed it for about fifteen minutes until the sounds of the city faded completely, replaced by birdsong and rustling leaves.
Perfect isolation.
He found a clearing, maybe thirty meters across, surrounded by thick trees. Rocky outcrops jutted from the ground, and fallen logs lay scattered around. Natural obstacles. Natural training equipment.
'This'll work.' Rei set his notebook down on a flat rock and did a few quick stretches. His body responded easily, muscles loose and ready. The Quirk hummed beneath his skin, eager.
'Alright.' Rei looked up at a large tree trunk, maybe eight meters tall before the first branches. 'Let's start simple. Strength test.'
He approached a boulder half-buried in the ground. It was big, maybe a meter across. Had to weigh at least a hundred kilograms. He crouched down, found a good grip, and pulled.
The boulder shifted. Dirt crumbled around its base as he lifted, muscles burning but not straining. He got it to waist height before his arms started shaking.
'A hundred kilos. Maybe one-twenty.' He set it down carefully. 'That's... not bad. For a fifteen-year-old body, that's actually really good.'
But it wasn't enough. Not for what was coming.
'I need to build on this. Train harder. Push the Quirk further.'
He made a note in his notebook: Strength - Current max lift ~100-120kg. Room for improvement.
Next test. Speed and agility.
Rei stepped back and looked at the clearing. Trees, rocks, logs. An obstacle course made by nature. Perfect.
He took off running.
His body moved faster than it should. Enhanced speed kicking in, legs pumping, feet barely touching the ground. He hit the first fallen log and leaped—cleared it by two meters, landed on a rock, kept going.
The world blurred. Jump, roll, grab, swing. His body knew what to do, instincts from the Quirk guiding him. He scaled a tree trunk, flipped backward, caught himself on a branch, swung around it like a gymnast.
No thought. Just movement.
Rei landed back where he started, breathing harder but not winded.
'Holy shit.' He checked his watch. The whole run had taken maybe twelve seconds. 'That's fast. That's really fast.'
Faster than any human should be. Faster than Olympic sprinters. Not superhuman like All Might or some speed-based Quirks, but way above normal.
'And I wasn't even trying.' The realization sent a thrill through him. 'That was just... natural.'
He wrote it down: Speed/Agility - Significantly enhanced. Estimate 2-3x normal human limits. Instinctive.
The Quirk was more than just powers. It was instinct. Muscle memory. Like his body knew how to move, how to react, how to flow through space in ways that defied normal physics.
'Which means...' Rei looked up at the tallest tree, maybe fifteen meters high. 'Wall-crawling isn't just climbing. It's movement.'
He approached the tree and placed one hand on the bark. Focused. Felt that familiar adhesion click into place.
And then he ran up the trunk.
Not climbed. Ran.
His feet hit the vertical surface and stuck, momentum carrying him upward, body parallel to the ground but moving like he was sprinting on flat terrain. He reached the top in four seconds, grabbed a branch, flipped over it, and perched there looking down at the clearing.
'Okay.' Rei grinned despite himself. 'That's just cool.'
From up here, he could see the whole forest. The dense canopy of trees stretching in every direction. A stream in the distance. And far beyond, the edge of Musutafu City.
He jumped down, letting his body fall fifteen meters before landing in a crouch. The impact should've shattered his legs, but the Quirk absorbed it, muscles and tendons acting like shock absorbers.
Enhanced durability. Another note.
Next test. Webbing.
Rei held up his right hand and focused on his wrist. He could feel the glands there, just below the skin. Organic. Part of his biology now.
He aimed at a tree trunk eight meters away and fired.
THWIP.
A strand of white webbing shot out, crossing the distance in a blink, sticking to the bark with a wet splat.
Rei pulled.
The tree didn't budge—of course not, it was rooted—but the tension in the web was perfect. He could feel its strength through his hand.
'Strong.' He examined the webbing. Thin, maybe a centimeter in diameter, but tough. Like steel cable. 'How strong?'
He webbed a large fallen log, this time something he could actually move. Pulled with his full strength.
The log dragged across the forest floor, bark scraping against dirt and rocks.
'The original Rei's memories said it could hold over a thousand kilograms.' Rei cut the web and watched it disintegrate after a few seconds. 'Let's test that.'
He spent the next fifteen minutes experimenting. Webbing different objects, lifting them, pulling them, swinging from them between trees. He found that he could control the thickness of the web—thin strands for precision, thick ropes for heavy lifting. Could control the adhesion—sticky on both ends, sticky on one end, or just structural webbing that didn't stick at all.
And he could produce a lot. Way more than he'd expected. He shot web after web, never feeling drained or depleted.
'Organic production.' He made another note.
Webbing - High tensile strength, controllable properties, seemingly unlimited supply. No fatigue.
This was huge. In his previous life, weapons ran out of ammo. Knives dulled. But this? This was a weapon he could never lose.
'I could restrain people. Create traps. Build structures. Hell, I could probably swing between buildings if I wanted to.'
The image flashed in his mind—swinging through the city like Spider-Man from the comics. It should've seemed ridiculous, but after everything he'd just tested, it felt... possible.
'Later.' He shook his head. 'Too flashy. Too risky. Not until I'm ready.'
Last test. Senses.
Rei closed his eyes and focused. The world didn't go dark—it sharpened.
He could hear everything. A stream flowing maybe two hundred meters away. Birds in the canopy above. Small animals rustling through underbrush. Even the wind moving through individual leaves.
He could smell the earth, the moss, the bark. But also subtler things. Pine sap from a tree to his left. Wildflowers somewhere nearby. The faint scent of morning dew evaporating.
And he could feel vibrations. The air moving around him. The ground beneath his feet. Even the trees seemed to pulse with minute tremors as the wind hit them.
'This is...' Rei opened his eyes. 'This is borderline precognition.'
Not true precognition. He couldn't see the future. But he could sense danger before it fully registered. Could react to threats before his conscious mind knew they were there.
In his previous life, that would've made him unstoppable.
'And now I have it.'
He wrote it all down, filling page after page with notes, observations, theories. By the time he finished, an hour had passed, and the sun was higher in the sky.
Rei sat on a fallen log and looked at his notebook. All this power, and he'd barely scratched the surface. The original Rei had this Quirk for ten years and never realized its potential.
'Because he was a kid. A normal kid who wanted to be a hero.' Rei closed the notebook. 'But I'm not a kid. I'm a weapon with a second chance.'
The question was: how far could he push this?
In the original story, Spider-Man could lift cars, dodge bullets, sense danger seconds before it happened. Could Rei reach that level? Or was he bound by the limits of this world's biology?
'Only one way to find out.' He stood up and stretched. 'Train. Push the limits. Break through them.'
Four weeks until the UA exam. Four weeks to turn this body into something worthy of standing beside future heroes like Midoriya, Todoroki, Bakugo.
Four weeks to decide if he was going to save this world or just survive in it.
'No.' Rei picked up his notebook and started walking back toward the trail. 'Not just survive. I didn't get a second chance just to play it safe.'
He'd been a ghost in his previous life. A shadow that killed without consequence.
But here? In this world?
'I'll be better. I have to be.'
Because the alternative was going back to what he was. And Rei Mizuki—this Rei Mizuki—refused to be that person again.
Even if old habits died hard.
Even if every instinct screamed at him to operate in the shadows.
Even if being a hero felt like the most unnatural thing in the world for someone like him.
'I'll figure it out.' He made his way back through the forest. 'One day at a time.'
Tomorrow, he'd come back. Push harder. Test more. Build muscle memory, combat reflexes, tactical awareness with these new abilities.
And maybe, just maybe, he'd start building something else too.
A future where an assassin became a hero.
Or at least, something close to it.
'Four weeks.' Rei emerged from the forest onto the main trail. 'Let's see what I can become.'
Behind him, the forest clearing sat undisturbed except for evidence of his training—displaced logs, scuff marks on tree bark, strands of dissolving webbing clinging to branches.
Proof that someone was there. Someone testing limits.
Someone preparing for war.
And somewhere else in the city, a green-haired boy with newly gained muscles was probably finishing his own training, preparing for the same exam.
But Rei didn't know that yet.
Today, the forest belonged to Rei Mizuki.
Tomorrow, the real work would begin.
-------
Author's Note:-
Thanks for reading Chapter 2! Rei's starting to understand his Spider Quirk, and things are about to get intense. Training arc incoming!
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