The Character Creation tab opened up into something that looked like a full build interface. Not complicated, just clean. Fields for everything you'd expect and then some.
"So how does this part work exactly?" I asked.
"You're creating the end version," Crisis said. "The body your character will be in for most of the story. OmniCrafter handles everything before that. It'll generate the baby, the kid, all of it, and age them naturally through the world's timeline until they grow into whatever you build here. You just define who they're going to be."
"That's actually really clean," I said.
"Yeah," she agreed.
I was already thinking about something else though. "Hey, I think I want to add you to all my stories. Every world I put a character in, you come with."
She didn't say anything right away, which I was starting to learn meant she was actually thinking about it rather than just processing.
"I appreciate that," she said. "It would make things easier on both ends. But we should talk about how that works first."
"How does the story part work when it's autonomous?" I asked. "Like what am I actually watching?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. You're watching a person's life. The whole thing. The boring days, the slow weeks, the moments that don't go anywhere. It's not edited. If you want the highlight version, OmniCrafter can pull a show cut, same story but trimmed down to the parts that matter narratively. That's what the audience in the receiving universe is going to see."
"And if I go inside?"
"Then it's just life. You're in it. No narrator, no score, nothing telling you how to feel about what's happening. It's real in every way that counts."
I nodded. Then I remembered I still hadn't asked the obvious question. "What about you? If you're in the world, how does that work on your end?"
"It's like regular life for me too," she said. "I'd exist in the world as a real person as far as anyone there is concerned. But when I sleep, that's when I'm fully back. That's when you and I can actually talk the way we're talking now."
"So there's two versions of you."
"Essentially. There's the world version, who is living her life, going through whatever the story has for her. And then there's me, the ANI version, who you're always connected to. Both of them are me, genuinely. It's just that one of me only gets missions and requests and updates when she's asleep." She paused. "It's complicated if you try to think about it too hard. Just know that you'll never be out of reach."
"Okay," I said. "I can work with that."
I turned back to the interface and started building.
"Don't overdo it," Crisis said, almost before I could get started. "Whatever you create has to make sense in that world. The audience will feel it immediately if she doesn't belong there."
I typed in a name. Hazel.
For her Quirk I put down the Byakugan, which in the MHA world would just read as a perception ability. Enhanced vision, 360 degrees, no blind spots. And super strength on top of it. By the time she got to UA she'd also have years of BJJ and Muay Thai behind her. The physical stuff felt right for that world, something earned rather than just handed to her.
For her background I kept it simple. Born into a regular family. Mom, dad, an older sister. All of them with relatively low-level Quirks, nothing flashy. But they were comfortable. More than comfortable actually. Rich, just quiet about it.
Crisis read it over. "Okay. The Byakugan and super strength work. But when you say super strength, what's the ceiling?"
I thought about it. "Enough that she can actually get to Izuku and Todoroki levels by the time it matters. She's not starting there. She grows into it."
"Good," Crisis said. "That's the right answer."
I looked at the slot for a second character and decided right there.
"You're going in too," I said. "You're her best friend. You'll attend UA with her."
Crisis tilted her head slightly. "You know we'll be replacing two characters from the show."
"That's fine," I said. "You two can replace Mineta and Koji."
She laughed, an actual real laugh. "Not a big fan?"
"No," I said flatly. "I'm not."
I opened her character slot and started filling it in. Her name in the world would be Konan. Quirk: Paper Release, the ability to control paper, shape it, move it, use it however she needed to. I'd pulled it from Naruto and it translated cleanly enough into the MHA framework.
"That's it?" Crisis asked, reading it over.
"That's it," I said. "It's cool. It fits."
"It is from Naruto," she said, and there was something in her tone like she appreciated that I'd picked it for her specifically.
For Hazel I gave her black hair with purple running through it, wavy, the kind that looked a little effortless. Purple eyes to match. She had a school girl kind of look to her, quiet but not forgettable.
For Konan I went a different direction. Pink hair, twin tails with bows, blue eyes. Looked a little bubbly from the outside but I wanted that contrast. The paper Quirk under all of that would hit different.
"Okay," I said, looking at both characters sitting side by side on the screen. "I just hit start?"
"Yeah," Crisis said.
"Will it be weird for you? Having two versions of yourself running at the same time?"
She considered it for half a second. "No."
That was it. Clean answer, no hesitation behind it, just no.
I hit start.