BNHA: I am Reiji Toga

The air was humid, heavy with the scent of earth and wet grass. Reiji adjusted his bandages and took a couple of steps back, looking for a better angle of attack. The sky was beginning to darken, dyeing the old ground they used to train in secret, away from the eyes of any curious heroes or civilians, a deep blue.

In front of him, Himiko was breathing slowly. She had improved.

She no longer charged forward. She no longer sought to bite without thinking. Her movements were more precise, more measured, though still tinged with that emotion she couldn't disguise. Reiji had noticed. He analyzed everything.

The hero course was beginning to bring out her hidden talent, and even living a life completely removed from the need for blood and, consequently, fights, she was still a total prodigy in hand-to-hand combat.

In a few months, the gap between them had closed considerably. But it was still not enough to reach his level.

"Come on, Toga," he challenged her calmly, using her last name as he always did when it came to fighting.

She smiled, tilting her head with a sparkle in her eyes.

"You asked for it."

And he launched himself.

The first few minutes were a simple physical display. Reiji read her like an open book, blocking every attempt, evading without wasting extra energy. She spun, lunged, retreated, and came back. Reiji knew her too well to be surprised by her movement pattern.

Until the dynamic changed.

He brought a tube of blood to his mouth, clearly thinking that his new form would likely be himself, tensing his muscles ready for the most powerful blows. His surprise was great when suddenly, in front of him, there was no longer Himiko, nor himself.

But Nejire Hado.

The physical change was exact. Absolutely perfect. The long blue hair, the soft features, the large, bright eyes. But it wasn't just her body. Himiko even mimicked the curious tone of voice, that sweet, almost mischievous timbre that characterized the U.A. student.

"Surprised, Reiji?" she asked playfully, spinning around as if showing off a new costume.

The clothes Himiko wore weren't made for that figure. They were tight in the most inconvenient places. And when she approached, spinning with that casual ease of Nejire's, the visual impact became hard to ignore.

She said nothing. She just resumed her offensive.

And once again, she dominated her.

Her form changed, her strength, her agility, and the very dimension of her attacks, but the patterns were the same. Nejire's legs, Nejire's spins, Nejire's voice... but the mind was still Himiko. Reiji anticipated her as always. He forced her to retreat, to improvise, until she had no room to maneuver.

He didn't know why he'd chosen Nejire to transform for, but it hadn't worked.

And then it happened.

A slight sprain. A foot that stepped wrong. An unexpected movement.

They both fell.

The blow was clean. She on top. He on the ground. Dust suspended all around.

And when Reiji opened his eyes, Nejire's face was watching him closely. Too close.

They didn't move.

Reiji remained calm, though painfully aware of his own body. The touch of her chest. The pressure of her leg on his. The scent of perfume that wasn't perfume: it was just Himiko's essence, trapped in another body.

She didn't say anything at first. She just looked at him, silently, as if gauging the effect of his proximity.

Then she spoke, softly:

"You know... When I don't look like myself, it's easier to be like this. Don't you think?"

Reiji didn't respond, knowing where her words were going.

"Maybe... if I didn't have my face, there wouldn't be a problem with us being siblings."

He said it as a gentle joke. A suggestion hidden in a casual phrase. But there was more. Much more.

She knew what he was talking about. And so did he.

But he didn't react.

He just looked at her. Serious. Calm.

Until she transformed again, with a slight flicker of change in her eyes. Nejire's figure disappeared without any special effect, returning to the usual Himiko, with her tousled blonde hair and golden eyes shining in the dim light.

She jumped away, wiping her hands on her pants with a forced smile.

"How clumsy of me. Falling like that in the middle of combat..." she said.

Reiji stood up without looking at her, brushing the dust off his back.

"It was a good try," he murmured.

She shrugged.

"I had to try. I wanted to know if... if you saw it differently when it wasn't me."

There was no immediate response.

He looked at her for a second. Then he put his gloves back on.

"Don't do that during a serious fight. It could turn out worse."

She smiled, this time toothless, calmer. More resigned.

"I know."

And she returned to her fighting stance. She'd recently resigned herself to his constant attempts to cross the line, but that didn't mean she'd give up... Rather, changing her approach was what she was trying.

***

Dagobah Beach was an abandoned dump. Flooded with meters and meters of trash that had accumulated for decades, no one seemed to care; there was no point in changing a part of the city that no one visited anyway.

But someone had decided to do something about it.

Reiji dug his shovel into a sticky mass of seaweed and bottles, and without saying anything, tossed it into a black bag.

A few feet away, Izuku Midoriya was smiling as he dragged a rusty wheel, sweat sticking to his forehead. He wore a backwards cap, gardening gloves, and an almost insulting enthusiasm.

Shinso, with an expression of chronic resignation, was picking up glass with metal tongs.

It was strange. They hadn't agreed to come. He just... showed up there, just like that. And stayed. Because, after all, he had nothing better to do.

'For all the free time I've had lately, this isn't so bad... Even though this shit smells awful, I shouldn't have let Izuku talk me into this.'

Cleaning wasn't just physical exercise. It distracted him. It kept him moving without putting him at risk. And it distracted him from his future problems.

Because Reiji knew: Once he entered U.A., his break would end. And even though he'd accepted it, he preferred to enjoy this moment of peace, which he couldn't do in his previous life and in this one either.

As he placed a metal chair on the pile of waste, he glanced at Izuku out of the corner of his eye.

He didn't know exactly how the idea had popped into Izuku's head. It just appeared one day during physical training, with a determined expression, as if he'd had an epiphany. He said he wanted to clean the beach. That it was his civic duty to start with the basics if he ever wanted to become a hero.

Reiji and Shinso bonded without too much objection. Not for pleasure, but out of simple camaraderie. Over time, the three had become... friends. Strangers, yes, but friends nonetheless.

Reiji was, without a doubt, the most unusual of them all. With two lives under his belt, he had the look of someone much older than his actual age. Hawks was, technically, his closest friend, but their relationship had been born in the shadows, amid secrets, pressure, and manipulation. In his previous life, not even his own father knew how to treat him like a human being, much less like a son. The word "friendship" was new to him. Fragile, but precious.

Shinso, for his part, had been ostracized since childhood. His Quirk, feared and misunderstood, had left him alone for years. Until Reiji, driven at first by curiosity, approached him. What began as a tactical assessment morphed into genuine respect, and then into a real friendship. Solid. Silent.

Izuku... was a different case. Also marginalized, but for lacking a Quirk. Reiji, who in his previous life had suffered precisely for having a special ability, found a strange parallel in him. Beneath that layer of shyness and clumsiness, there was a strong will and unwavering kindness. Izuku was, without a doubt, a good friend. And that wasn't something Reiji said lightly.

Three oddballs. Three loose pieces who, through a series of coincidences and shared pains, had ended up forming a small unit.

And Reiji... was fine with that. More than fine. Although there were still parts of his past that troubled him, and many questions about the world he now lived in that he couldn't find a way to articulate, especially considering, for some strange reason, that he was right here now.

'It's strange that... Even without All Might, this beach was cleaned up by Midoriya.' There's also Bakugo's accident, All Might's fight with AFO that left him badly injured, Endeavour's son's accident, and many other things, which at first I thought were the natural order of things... But I've changed more than I've noticed, and yet some things remain the same.

The idea bothered him as much as it fascinated him. However, he himself was living his second life; if there were ways to break destiny, he was one of them.

***

It had all started weeks ago.

Mei had dragged him to her workshop with her usual enthusiasm, under the guise of testing a new internal conduction component for active Quirks. Reiji, with more free time than he'd liked lately, agreed.

The experiment was simple: Activate his Quirk with a drop of blood. Repeatedly and without rest for a long period of time.

But he didn't measure the consequences.

His body reacted with an involuntary pulse; constant exposure to his Quirk, even for short periods of time, slightly activated his need. Needless to say, over long periods of time. His pupils dilated. His pulse quickened. It was a familiar physiological reaction: his need for other people's blood was beginning to manifest itself.

Mei realized it instantly.

She didn't say anything alarming. She just observed.

"Is it a side effect of your Quirk?"

Reiji nodded.

He didn't elaborate. It wasn't necessary.

From then on, Mei became obsessed with the idea. And now, finally, she had something to show for it.

"It wasn't easy," he said, grasping her wrist. "Your case doesn't fit into any standard Quirk regulation category."

On the table, a metal bracelet lay with understated elegance. It wasn't bulky or flashy. The design was subtle, technical. The kind of thing that would go unnoticed even in combat.

"At first, I thought of a hormone activity limiter, but that wouldn't do. Your impulses aren't emotional. They're physiological. Then I remembered some studies on emergency engineering... and others on indirect neural stimulation to calm aggressive reflexes in creatures with severe Quirk mutations."

Reiji raised an amused eyebrow.

"Are you saying I'm an aggressive creature?"

"I'm saying I need broader categories when working with you," he replied, and smiled. "So I combined both branches. This regulates your abnormal spikes without affecting your main Quirk. It doesn't shut you down. It just balances you out."

Reiji let me put the bracelet on.

He felt the touch of the cold metal adjust to his skin with a slight magnetic click. Not uncomfortable. Light. But firm.

"What if it fails?"

"It won't. But if it does, you'll know before I do," Mei replied matter-of-factly. "It has a continuous feedback system, tuned to your biology. If your impulses spike, this thing anticipates them with regulating microstimuli. Just enough to keep you functioning. Nothing invasive... Even if it only lasts for a while, that depends on the intensity of the impulse."

Reiji nodded silently, without taking his eyes off the bracelet.

"I didn't think you'd give me a solution so quickly," he said after a moment.

"It's not a solution. It's a clever fix. But yes... faster than expected. I guess having you as an assistant motivates me more than usual."

She didn't look at him as she said this, focused on her tools.

He didn't comment further either.

But knowing that his Quirk now had a way to calm itself was comforting.