Chapter Text
Acclimation 1.1
Taylor Hebert
I was surrounded by a thick fog. I couldn’t see anything other than the floor, which was covered in patterns made from black lines and red squares. The fog was thinner in front of me, allowing me to see that the floor extended forward, though I couldn’t see where it led.
I proceeded forward. Staying still wouldn’t accomplish anything, and it wasn’t like I had any other options.
As I walked, I heard a voice speak.
“Do you seek the truth…?” echoed the voice. It was distorted in a way that made it impossible to tell the speaker’s age or gender.
Feeling uneasy, I sped up.
“If it’s the truth you desire, come and find me…” spoke the voice. This time, I could tell that it was coming from up ahead.
I broke into a sprint. Before long, I found myself before a door, one patterned with a red square surrounded by alternating layers of black and red. Inexplicably, I was able to sense someone beyond the door.
I pressed on the red square, and it split apart like a pair of sliding doors. The layers around it began to rotate in unison, one of them retracting every time they lined up with the empty space where the square had been. Within seconds, the unnecessarily elaborate door was fully open, and I was free to continue onward.
When I passed through the door, the world changed. The red and black floor was no longer visible, shrouded in fog like everything else. In my hands was a sword – a katana, supplied an unknown part of myself. The speaker stood before me, wreathed in a fog so thick that I could only make out a vaguely humanoid shape.
“So… You are the one pursuing me…” they observed. “Hmhmhm… Try all you like…”
My mind screamed that the individual before me was an enemy. I tightened my grip on the katana and took a fighting stance. Then, I charged at the figure and swung. The blade struck, but the cut was shallow.
Also, despite getting close enough to strike the figure, I still couldn’t discern anything about the person through the fog.
“Hmmm… It seems that you can see a little, despite the fog…” observed the individual, unphased by my attack.
Realizing that more slashes would be just as ineffective, I instinctively reached inside of myself and pulled out a power I hadn’t even realized was there. A card of blue light burst into existence before me. I took my left hand off the katana and used it to crush the card, which shattered like glass.
Another being manifested in front of me, its appearance so obscured by the fog that its only visible feature was the bladed weapon in its hands. A projection, created by the mysterious power within me. With just a thought, I had it slash the speaker with its blade.
“I see… Indeed… That is interesting information…”
I could tell that my projection’s attack had done more damage than I had with my katana, though the effect on the figure was still negligible. So, I made my projection perform a lightning attack that I instinctively knew was called Zio.
“But… You will not catch me so easily…”
Nonetheless, having a name didn’t make the attack any more effective.
“If what you seek is the ‘truth,’ then your search will be even harder…”
The speaker did something, which made the fog thicken until I couldn’t see anything. I swung my katana around, but it met only air.
“Everyone sees what they want to…” continued the voice as I futilely tried to strike them. “And the fog only deepens… Will we meet again…? At a place other than here… Hmhm… I look forward to it…”
Even though I could no longer see the speaker, I was able to feel their presence as they departed. With the figure gone, my consciousness began to fade. And then, I heard the beeping of my alarm clock.
When I woke up, all I could remember was that I’d had a nightmare.
If this had been before I dreamt of a cryptic, long-nosed man in a velvet limo who could predict the future and warned me of impending doom, I would have written it off as me being nervous about starting school today. But it wasn’t, so I tried my hardest to recall the details as I put on some cheap clothes and ate some toast. Unfortunately, I came up blank.
Once I was done eating, I left the Dojima residence and began running laps around the block. I would prefer to have a more diverse route, but I wasn’t all that familiar with Inaba’s layout yet. I would need to at some point, however, since I was here for the long haul.
About a third of the way through my run, I noticed Dojima’s car disappear from the driveway. It was weird, if unsurprising. Dojima was a workaholic, even if he usually didn’t leave until after breakfast. Why go to work early today? Had something serious happened?
(Unfortunately, I had no way of finding out now. Maybe I’d get lucky and overhear the answer at school.)
Once I finished my run, I went back inside and took a shower. Afterward, I got dressed in my new school uniform and straightened out my hair with a brush. The latter was a necessity due to the school’s dress code disallowing curly hair. It was a bizarre and annoying policy, one that I could only chalk up to cultural differences.
As I exited the bathroom, I crossed paths with Dojima’s young daughter.
“Good morning,” greeted Nanako. She was carrying a plate of food to the dining table, the last piece in a breakfast for two. “Breakfast is ready.”
Nanako was a grade schooler, but she was mature for her age. Sadly, it was the sort of maturity that came from tragedy. Her mother had died in a hit and run, and her father coped with his grief by throwing himself into his work.
“Good morning,” I responded, joining her at the table.
It still felt awkward having a little girl cook for me, but when I’d brought up my discomfort in the last, Nanako asked if I didn’t like her cooking. I told her I did, both because it was the truth and because I didn’t want to upset her, and Nanako replied that she wanted to cook for me with an innocent look on her face. I couldn’t bring myself to turn her down, so I settled for making her lunches in exchange.
“You’re starting school today, right?” asked Nanako as we ate breakfast.
I was. Dojima had somehow been able to enroll me at Yasogami High School in just a few days. I wasn’t sure whether to appreciate the effort he must’ve gone through in order to accomplish that or be annoyed that even on another Earth, I had to attend the hell that was high school.
Skipping wasn’t an option either. When the Inaba police investigated me, they found no records of me, my parents, or even Brockton Bay. With no proof that I existed and my parahuman powers gone, the only thing keeping me from being isolated and homeless in a foreign country-slash-world was a detective’s guilt. I couldn’t afford to cause trouble.
Of course, I knew better than to say any of that to Nanako, so I just nodded.
“My school’s on the way, so… let’s go together,” she suggested, seeming a bit restless.
I guess I wasn’t the only one who felt uneasy about school.
“Alright.”
After breakfast, we walked through the rain together as promised. I was beginning to regret that promise, though.
“Why is that girl wearing a Yasogami High uniform?”
“Isn’t she that foreigner who was arrested a week or two ago?”
“She certainly looks like a troublemaker. As if that Tatsumi boy wasn’t enough…”
“I bet none of the schools in her own country wanted her.”
Inaba had a prolific rumor mill. Dojima had complained about it in passing, and I’d gotten some exposure to it during my runs. Since I was a foreigner in a country with an almost nonexistent foreign population (and likely the only one in town), people would recognize and whisper about me whenever I passed by.
The scorn in their eyes made me feel like I was back at Winslow. The people here were wary of outsiders (probably why the police had been suspicious of me from the start), and my time in police custody had cemented my reputation.
It was especially bad today due to my uniform. Before now, the citizens of Inaba had assumed I was a tourist. Something minor enough to not affect their humdrum lives but interesting enough to give them a good story to tell. But the Yasogami High uniform I was currently wearing disabused them of that notion.
I didn’t care about being an outcast – I was used to it – but there was a possibility that the townspeople would turn some of their contempt toward Nanako just for associating with me. Unfortunately, I’d gotten so used to the judging gazes that I hadn’t thought about that possibility until after passersby had seen us together. At this point, it was too late for me to distance myself from Nanako.
My mood was further soured by my current attire. Public scorn aside, I wouldn’t have cared about wearing a school uniform. If anything, not having to agonize over my choice of clothes was a relief. Except, Yasogami High required its female students to wear knee-length skirts. I was wearing bicycle shorts to avoid accidentally flashing someone, but there was nothing I could do about the indignity of having my stick-thin legs exposed for all to see.
“You keep going straight from here,” Nanako told me, pointing ahead. She then turned around and smiled at me. “My school is this way. Bye.”
I waved goodbye and watched her as she walked away, not taking a step toward Yasogami High until her yellow umbrella passed through the front gate of her school. After that, I continued onward to my new school, reaching it without incident. As Dojima had instructed me yesterday, I reported to the faculty office and met my homeroom teacher, Morooka.
“You’re the new girl, huh?” said Morooka, giving me an appraising scan before scowling. “I don’t know what things are like in America, but this is Japan. If you try to ‘make memories’ by seducing any of the love-struck baboons I call students, you’ll go on my shit list.”
If Morooka’s attitude wasn’t so insulting, I might’ve snorted at the idea of me seducing a guy. And the fact that someone this was a teacher here gave me the impression that Yasogami High’s faculty wouldn’t be any better than Winslow’s.
Nonetheless, despite Igor’s ominous prediction ten days ago, no terrible catastrophes had occurred in Inaba so far. Just life’s ordinary crappiness.
Yosuke Hanamura
To Yosuke, today had been a series of disappointments. Because of the rain, he ended up losing control of his bike and crashing into a telephone pole crotch-first.
To make matters worse, the crash didn’t just damage his nads. It also cracked the DVD he’d borrowed from Chie, who would be absolutely furious. Yosuke wouldn’t have enough money to buy a replacement until his next paycheck came in, and Chie wasn’t the patient type.
Then, after getting to school, Yosuke discovered that King Moron was his homeroom teacher. That meant long-ass sermons every day for a year! A year!
The rumors of a foreign exchange student from America got his hopes up. After all, American girls were all blonde and busty, right?
“Now I hate wasting my time, but I’d better introduce this foreign exchange student,” said King Moron after giving his first rant of the school year. “This sad sack was dumped in the middle of nowhere like yesterday’s garbage. I know that some of you losers are horndogs with low standards, but don’t get any ideas about hitting on her.”
Wrong. While the foreign exchange student was a girl, she had black hair and was flat as a board. Her face was plain, too, with a constant frown. Also, she was by far the tallest girl Yosuke had ever met. Really, there was nothing cute about this girl.
“Aren’t American girls supposed to be blonde and busty? What a disappointment…”
“So tall!”
“Hey, isn’t she that girl from the rumors? The one who got arrested.”
She was a criminal, too!?
“Wait, if the foreign exchange student was really arrested, then wouldn’t she be in jail?”
…Never mind. But Yosuke was still unhappy.
“Shut your traps!” shouted King Moron, silencing the class with a glare. He then turned his attention to the new girl. “Tell them your name, kid, and make it quick.”
“…Taylor Hebert,” she said tersely. To Yosuke, she looked like she was resisting the urge to say something rude to King Moron.
“Do they not teach manners in America?” criticized King Moron. “You should at least start by saying ‘my name is’ before you…”
He continued to rant for a while. It wasn’t long before the scope of his complaints had expanded from Hebert to everyone in class, and then to kids in general.
Yeah, Inaba really sucked.
Chie Satonaka
Chie could feel her mind going numb from King Moron’s unbearably long lecture. Seriously, just how strong did a person’s lungs have to be to talk for so long without a break!? So, when he finally paused to take a breath, she took action.
“Excuse me,” interjected Chie, raising her hand. She gestured to the empty seat next to her. “Is it okay if the foreign exchange student sits here?”
“Huh?” went King Moron, his rhythm broken up by her question. “Yeah, sure.” He looked at Taylor. “You hear that? Your seat’s over there. So hurry up and sit down already!”
Taylor obeyed, walking over and sitting down next to Chie. Chie leaned over and whispered to the girl.
“Rotten luck for you to get stuck in this class… Well, we just have to hang in there for a year.”
Taylor gave a hum of acknowledgement but otherwise didn’t respond to Chie’s words. Chie couldn’t tell if the girl was being rude or shy, though she didn’t take it too personally. After all, the people around them were whispering about Hebert, mostly unflattering things about her appearance. Chie knew how that felt, so she couldn’t really blame Taylor for acting cold.
Either that or Taylor wasn’t all that fluent in Japanese. She had only said her name so far, so Chie had no idea how good foreign exchange student’s Japanese was.
(Very good, she would soon discover. Possibly even better than Chie’s.)
Yukiko Amagi
Yukiko thought it was a bit odd there was an announcement on the PA system after classes ended telling students not to go home.
The second announcement certainly didn’t help, given how ominous it sounded.
“There has been an incident inside the school district. Police officers have been dispatched around the School Zone. Please stay calm and contact your parents or guardians as soon as possible, and quickly leave the school grounds. Do not disturb the police officers. Head directly home. I repeat…”
When Chie and Yukiko began to leave, they passed by the foreign exchange student, Taylor. Now that they were up close, Yukiko could get a good look at the American girl. Taylor’s hair wasn’t just long; it also had nice luster to it. And her long, toned legs were comparable to Chie’s in quality. Yukiko couldn’t understand why her classmates had spoken so poorly of Taylor’s appearance.
“Hey Taylor, are you going home by yourself?” asked Chie, stopped to speak to the foreign exchange student. “Why don’t you come with us?”
Taylor blinked, looking confused by Chie’s offer.
“Oh, nearly forgot!” exclaimed Chie before Taylor could respond. “I’m Chie Satonaka. You know I sit next to you, right?”
“Yes,” answered Taylor. Her confusion was gone, replaced by a neutral frown.
“Well, nice to meet you!” Chie gestured to Yukiko. “This is Yukiko Amagi.”
“Oh, nice to meet you…” greeted Yukiko. “I’m sorry that this is so sudden.”
“C’mon, don’t apologize like that,” said Chie. “It makes me look like I got no upbringing. I just wanted to ask some stuff. Really, that’s all.”
Yukiko could be wrong, but Taylor seemed to tense up a little at Chie’s words.
“What kind of stuff?” asked Taylor.
But, before Chie could answer, a bleak-looking male classmate interrupted their conversation to return a DVD he borrowed from Chie. For some reason, he also apologized and said something about his next paycheck before running away.
Well, before trying to run away. Chie caught up to him before he could so much as exit the classroom and delivered a swift kick between his legs. As it turned it, he’d cracked her DVD.
“A-are you alright?” asked Yukiko, watching as the boy hopped in pain while clutching his ‘nads.’
“Oh, Yukiko… are you worried about me…?”
“He’s fine, Yukiko,” said Chie, angry about her DVD. “Let’s ditch him and go… Huh?” Her rage faded, replaced by confusion. “Where’d Taylor go?”
Taylor Hebert
I slipped away while Chie and Yukiko were talking to a guy. Considering how the people of Inaba had reacted to me so far, I had a hard time believing that their friendliness was genuine. I didn’t want to trust the girls only to find out they were Yasogami High’s version of the Trio.
And even if they weren’t, odds were that they’d ask questions about my past. Questions that would be difficult to answer, like why I had ‘decided’ to come to Inaba or where my parents were.
(Unbidden, the question of how Dad was holding up came to mind. He’d never truly recovered from Mom’s death, and now I was gone too. I forced those thought down. Again.)
Besides, I had something more important to do. The announcement said that some sort of incident had occurred nearby. It could be related to Igor’s prediction. I knew that this was a reach, but I had no other leads.
I started walking around the School Zone, searching for the scene of the incident.
“Hey, there you are! Why’d you leave without us?”
Unfortunately, my search caused me to cross paths with Chie and Yukiko on their walk home. Neither of them seemed angry, just curious.
“I was curious about the incident from the announcement,” I told them.
I didn’t see the need to lie. Wondering about a disturbance that warranted police intervention was perfectly ordinary, sort of like how drivers who passed a car crash would slow down to take a closer look.
“You too?” responded Chie, unknowingly proving my point. “Although, I guess that makes sense. Compared to America, Inaba’s pretty empty, huh? Oh, wait, there’s the Amagi Inn! Yukiko’s family runs it. It’s the pride of Inaba!”
“Huh?” went Yukiko, apparently not expecting Chie to bring up her family’s inn. “It’s… just an old inn.”
“No way, it’s been in all sort of magazines as a hidden treasure,” insisted Chie. “It’s a great inn! It’s been going on for generations, and Yukiko is going to take over someday. Their inn actually attracts a lot of visitors to Inaba. It pretty much keeps this town going.”
“…I don’t think that’s entirely true,” replied Yukiko, slightly uncomfortable.
Was she being humble, or did Yukiko have problems with her family’s inn? It didn’t really matter to me and wasn’t any of my business, though, so I didn’t say anything.
“So, tell me,” Chie said to me, shifting topics. “Why’d you come to Inaba?”
Fortunately, it was at that moment we stumbled upon the scene of the incident. I was spared from answering, at least for now.
Several people were gathered in front of a police ‘barrier’ of traffic cones connected by police tape. As we drew closer, we were able to pick up on some conversations.
“So that high schooler left school early, and as she came down this street…”
“Wow. Who could imagine that hanging from an antenna?”
“I wanted to see it too.”
“Uh, you got here too late… The police and fire department took it down just a moment ago.”
I felt a growing pit in my stomach. I had a feeling I knew what ‘it’ was.
“Well, I think it’s terrifying. I can’t believe a dead body showed up around here…”
A dead body. I felt sick, both because somebody had died and because those onlookers were treating that death like some sort street performance. I took some small comfort in the fact that Chie and Yukiko, at least, were horrified rather than fascinated.
“Hey, what’re you doing here?” asked a masculine voice, accusatory like usual.
The three of us turned to see Detective Ryotaro Dojima, Nanako’s father and my de facto guardian. He’d approached us while our attention had been on the crowd.
“We’re just passing by,” I replied defensively.
I could tell he didn’t believe me, which was no surprise. As the lead investigator for my case, Dojima knew about my suspicious past. Or rather, my suspicious lack of a past.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think he took me in as a way of keeping an eye on me. But, as negligent as he was toward Nanako, there was no way he’d leave her alone with somebody who he considered dangerous. Not that the real reason was much better.
“We told the principal not to let anyone through here,” stated Dojima, narrowing his eyes.
“The school only told us to go home,” I shot back. “They didn’t say anything about avoiding a specific area.”
If they had, then I would’ve gone straight here and not been caught by Chie and Yukiko.
Dojima stared at me a moment longer, evaluating what I said. His glare faded, and he grumbled to himself. “Damn principal…”
I didn’t relax. Relaxing would give away that I was hiding something, specifically that I’d searched out the accident scene. Dojima’s parenting skills may leave something to be desired, but his detective skills were the real deal.
“…You know this guy?” interjected Chie, curious.
“He’s my guardian while I’m here in Inaba,” I answered.
“I’m Detective Dojima,” greeted Dojima. “Uhh… Well, how should I say this… I hope you get along with Taylor. But you three really ought to stop wandering around and head straight home.”
We nodded. There was no point in fighting Dojima. The body was already gone, so there wasn’t anything more I could learn here.
After I got back to the Dojima residence, things were ordinary. Well, as ordinary as my life could be. I went for another run around the neighborhood, read a book, and made dinner with Nanako. We ate together while watching TV. Dojima was absent.
“I wonder if Dad’s not coming home again tonight…” said Nanako as if this was normal.
I felt a familiar anger toward the detective. A girl Nanako’s age shouldn’t be as used to being alone as I was.
“Our top story this evening concerns a bizarre case in a quiet suburb,” stated the TV announcer. “Around noon today, a woman was found dead near the Samegawa River in Inaba. The deceased has been identified as Ms. Mayumi Yamano, a 27-year-old announcer at the local television station. The initial results of the Inaba Police Department’s investigation have revealed…”
“Ah!” exclaimed Nanako. “The Inaba Police Department! Th-that’s where Dad works!”
My frustration softened. Even if I didn’t like Dojima, Nanako had grown on me.
“He’ll be alright,” I told her, trying to sound reassuring.
“…I know,” she replied, sounding calmer. “That’s his job, so this stuff happens.”
We returned our attention to the TV.
“The body was found hanging from a large television antenna atop a local resident’s roof. Authorities are uncertain as to why the body was in such a state. With the cause of death also uncertain, police continue to investigate whether the death is an accident or a homicide. A thick fog common to the area has slowed…”
A dead body found in an unusual place with no known cause of death. I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but could this death be related to the ‘terrible catastrophe’ that Igor predicted?
A single murder, while tragic, wasn’t really a catastrophe. But the unusual circumstances made me wonder if someone with powers was involved. An unusual power could be the reason for the unknown cause of death, while a Mover or Stranger could’ve placed the body up there without being noticed. And this murder could be just the beginning.
Or was I just grasping at straws?
“They found her on the roof? That’s scary…”
Nanako’s words snapped me out of my thoughts. It occurred to me that I probably should’ve changed the channel for her sake. With how gossipy the people of Inaba are, it wouldn’t have been difficult for me to find out more about the incident by eavesdropping on my classmates at school tomorrow.
Luckily, Nanako was quickly distracted from the grim news by an ad for Junes. I didn’t understand her fascination with the store, but I was glad for the diversion. It wasn’t long before she seemed to forget about the news report entirely.
The rest of the night passed uneventfully. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had begun.