A Pale Imitation [MHA]

"... Are you serious?" a voice questioned from the darkness.

"Is that a no I hear?" another voice boomed.

"Would my answer really make any difference?" the first voice replied with dejection in its tone.

"No," the booming voice answered neutrally.

"... Well then, do your worst, you sadistic bastard," the dejected voice spat.

The darkness around them rumbled and writhed in response, causing the speaker to cry out in agony as the torment began. Whatever was happening, it was clearly wreaking havoc, quite literally.

His consciousness stirred. The pain, still tearing through his body from the inside out, was slowly beginning to subside.

With trembling eyelids, he managed to catch a blurry glimpse of his surroundings. The wetness enclosing him distorted his vision, but he could make out several figures outside the liquid, peering down at monitors and nodding to one another.

'So, that divine asshole took it personally, huh? Couldn't make my situation more ironic if I tried,' he mused bitterly.

His name was Jarrod, or at least, that's what he'd been called in his first life. The name stuck through his next two reincarnations, though he honestly couldn't care less about what people called him anymore.

The first time Jarrod died, some so-called "divine being" promised to fulfill any wish if Jarrod could entertain it. Naturally, he'd failed. Twice. And not because he wasn't trying, mind you. Both failures had been due to circumstances well beyond his control.

Now? He'd been tossed into yet another random fictional universe, chosen on a whim by a dice roll. His so-called "cheat" was also determined by dice, because apparently, life wasn't cruel enough already.

The first time he'd been reincarnated, Jarrod was granted Dracule Mihawk's talent for Haki and potential with the sword, an incredible gift in almost any fictional world. But of course, that wasn't meant to last.

Why? Because he'd been dropped into the Warhammer 40K universe, of all places, on an isolated human world. He barely made it out of his early teens before his planet was turned into a chaotic hellscape. Khorne's blood-crazed armies clashed with manic sex demons while the Space Marines tried (and failed) to save the day.

The second time, the divine asshole got even more creative. Jarrod woke up in the Naruto universe as a Uchiha infant, before the Uchiha massacre.

This life actually seemed promising at first. Jarrod's trauma from his previous death triggered his Sharingan almost immediately after birth, nearly causing him to have a brain aneurysm that would prematurely end him right then and there. And thanks to his memories of seeing his parents quite literally snorted through a flesh-made straw by a sex demon, unlocked the Sharingan the moment he could open his eyes, and this made him a natural prodigy in the eyes of the elders. To top it off, his "cheat" this time wasn't just the Sharingan—it was King Bradley's Ultimate Eye and the (untested) skills to match.

By the time he was a year old, he'd mastered using both the Sharingan and the Ultimate Eye in tandem. Everyone praised him as a genius. He almost started to believe it himself.

Then irony struck.

It took the Naruto world all of two years to kill him off. One night, Jarrod felt a kunai slit his throat in his sleep, and that was that.

And now, he was back in the void, a soul-like thing floating in the domain of the divine leech that clearly enjoyed watching his suffering far too much.

—

'So... what now? Are they going to experiment on me until they yank my organs out through my ears or something?' Jarrod thought to himself, morbidly calm in a way that even he found a bit unsettling.

"—ent ... rea-y f-r re--ase, e-pty th- vats! Hurry!" a muffled voice barked, barely audible through the thick liquid surrounding him.

Moments later, he felt and heard the viscous fluid begin to drain, gurgling through vents at his feet. The tubes in his mouth and nose suddenly grew heavy as the liquid receded past his chest.

When the liquid drained completely, his legs buckled beneath him, sending him to his knees. The tubes were yanked violently from his mouth and nose, leaving him gagging and disoriented.

'What the fuuu...' Jarrod's thoughts spun as his new body felt alien and unstable. Before he could gather himself, a shrill scream erupted from his throat—loud, unrelenting, and completely out of his control.

The sound warped the space around him, the air trembling with intensity as the scream grew sharper and more powerful. Then, without warning, everything went silent.

Jarrod remained frozen on his knees, jaw slack and filled with sharp, predatory teeth, while the figures observing him from beyond the tank stared in stunned silence. Time seemed to stop as a flood of memories surged into his mind, replaying in fast-forward like an old VHS tape stuck on fast-forward.

He was born as Jake Grimstone in the United States of America, the son of Annabelle Steele and Ethan Grimstone. That title, son, hadn't lasted long. His mother's apparent infidelity, coupled with Jake's "mutation," had earned him a one-way trip to an orphanage.

Jake's mutation had left him with pale, corpse-like skin, dulled physical sensations, and, most noticeably, a massive hole in his chest. While his appearance alone might have been alarming, it was his unnaturally calm demeanor that unnerved everyone the most.

Things went from bad to worse on Jake's sixth birthday. The morning began with an explosion and the Matron's blood-curdling screams echoing through the orphanage halls.

The Matron, a kind-hearted woman with a dog-like mutation Quirk, who always treated the children as part of her pack. Seeing her savaged by cloaked mercenaries armed with firearms, hatchets, and blades had been too much for Jake's even dulled emotions to bear.

Without realizing it, a strange katana materialized in his hands, and Jake, despite being only six years old, charged into the fray.

It went about as well as expected.

Though he managed to carve deep wounds into several attackers, a six-year-old couldn't stand against skilled adults for long. He was quickly knocked unconscious.

When he came to, Jake found himself blindfolded, gagged, and bound alongside dozens of other children in a shipping container. The journey across the sea blurred into a haze of fear and confusion until something was forced into his lungs, sending him into a deep, unnatural sleep.

Jake remained in stasis for years, his body used in cruel experiments. Eventually, a catastrophic failure in one of the experiments left him in a coma from which he would never awaken.

At least, that's how it should have ended.

But fate, or perhaps a certain divine asshole responsible for Jarrod's suffering, had other plans. Jarrod, now inhabiting Jake's broken body, stirred as the original soul moved on.

—

'Poor bastard.' Jarrod—now Jake thought to himself as he absorbed the memories. Considering this wasn't his first rodeo, it was surprisingly easy to process a boy whose mental faculties had been stunted by the ones who contained him in this place.

Time resumed, and the frantic screams of scientists reached his ears as the glass around him shattered, shards clattering to the floor.

The moment it happened, a sensation of overwhelming loss struck his chest, and the hole there pulsed with waves of searing pain.

"Ghhhargh!" Jake cried out, doubling over as the agony made his body lurch forward.

Something impacted his shoulder, but he ignored it. Another jab made him grit his teeth and lift his head in anger. His eyes locked onto a trembling scientist standing a few feet away, firing darts at him with a shaking hand. Each dart clinked off his skin, utterly useless.

"W-what the fuck d-do you want?" Jake growled, his voice rough and strained.

The scientist reeled back in panic, his face drained of color as he shouted at the remaining stragglers, "M-MONSTER!" He stumbled backward, scrambling toward safety.

Jake's attention shifted at the sound of violent clangs and crashes echoing from further down the hall.

Then he saw it: a glint of light in the distance. An object was hurtling through the air toward him, and with it came a strange sense of recognition. The hollow ache in his chest began to ease, as though the very sight of it could heal him.

A bird-like creature had been clutching the object—a katana. As the blade slipped free, the creature fell back with a startled squawk, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.

The katana landed in Jake's hand with an almost magnetic pull. The instant his fingers wrapped around the hilt, he felt it, a deep sense of wholeness that washed away the emptiness.

The creature stared up at him in shock, its wild eyes filled with terror. Before it could act, the air around Jake shifted, and an invisible force slammed the creature into the metallic floor with brutal intensity.

It screeched, the sound sharp and bird-like, as its body quivered under the weight of Jake's presence. Its eyes darted frantically as if it were standing before an apex predator.

"Amazing..." Jake muttered, his voice low as he regarded the blade in his hand. At first glance, it looked like an ordinary katana, but Jake could feel the immense power coursing through it and into him.

BOOOOOOM!

An explosion rattled the lab, the shockwave crashing into him like a tidal wave. Jake didn't flinch, his smile widening as he glanced at his recovered weapon.

His gaze turned back to the bird-like creature, now struggling to lift itself into a kneeling position. Its eyes were still wide with fear, its body trembling.

"Hmm... you seem familiar. What are you?" Jake asked, squinting at the creature.

It squawked in response, its movements frantic and erratic. Before it could respond, a metal plate from the ceiling came crashing down, the impact left a grotesque smear of brain matter across the surface.

"...Doesn't matter," Jake muttered with a shrug.

He jumped from the broken vat, landing heavily on the cold floor.

The previous feeling of weakness was gone entirely, replaced by something else, and did he not know any better, Jake would have called it confidence, but by now he had started to realize what cheat he had started with, and whose powers he had begun to integrate as his own.

Jake then began walking down the hall, toward where the explosion had come from, all the while shaking his head at the dozen vats containing the other deceased children who looked to have died in intense agony if their pained expressions were any indication.

"Such a shame. A world where heroes are put on pedestals for all to see, blinding the world to the darkness that lurks in their shadows..." Jake began, "... Or so I would say had I not experienced that fucking hell..." He shuddered at the reminder of seeing malevolent sex demons of nightmares grinding infants into chowder and snorting their gruel-like remains through a meat straw in the form of innards while masturbating furiously as their other victims had their intestines pulled from their still-living bodies akin to a child interacting with playdough.

"Nope, fuck that shit." Jake mused as he stood before the now-blocked hallway, filled with debris and stone from the ceiling.

"An underground lab... how original," Jake said with a sigh.

"Though, this allows me to see if I am indeed correct..." He continued, then held his finger pointed toward the collapsed section and pulled the power in his chest to his fingertip.

It took some effort, but soon something started to happen.

A blue orb began to materialize in front of his finger, Jake grinned.

Then, he fired the tiny blue orb forward, and said, "Boom!" while acting as if his finger was a gun.

The debris? It evaporated in white smoke as the intense humming of the orb swallowed the entire hall in a satisfying roar.

"Huh, neat." Jake hummed with a wide smile on his face.

—No-named Goon POV—

"Oy! Why the hell did ya blow up the fuckin' passage?!" A muscular man with a massive Kanabō strapped across his back bellowed at the frantic scientists, who were running in every direction.

One of them, pale and trembling, stopped just long enough to stammer out, "M-m-monster! P-project Asca is awake!"

The man tilted his head, narrowing his eyes toward the rubble now blocking the passageway. "Project Asca? Was that the—"

Before he could finish that sentence, a wave of pure dread washed over him. Acting on instinct, he threw himself to the side just as a blast of energy roared past, obliterating the scientist who screamed in terror as it swallowed him whole.

The blue wave of energy hummed with a bone-shaking intensity as it surged down the hallway, dissipating into nothingness after a few seconds.

"What the fuck?!" the man shouted, his voice laced with genuine panic as his gaze landed on the scorched remains of the scientist—nothing more than a pair of smoldering boots.

A young voice echoed through the smoke, calm yet mocking. "What the fuck, indeed."

"..." The man instinctively dropped into a combat stance, his muscles taut and his Kanabō at the ready. Sweat beaded on his forehead as an oppressive, unseen force made his hands tremble. Even the blade in his hands seemed to quiver in rhythm with his pounding heartbeat.

As the smoke began to clear, a boy stepped forward, dressed only in a pair of boxers. Recognition struck the man like a punch to the gut, it was one of the preserved mutants he'd seen suspended in the conserving fluids.

Agitation crept into his voice, though he tried to mask it with bravado. "W-what the fuck? How are ya even breathin'?! Yer supposed to be fuckin' high on shit that'd keep a herd of elephants down for weeks!"

The boy grinned, an infuriatingly confident expression that only made the man's grip tighten on his weapon. "If you impress me, maybe I'll tell you. What do you say?"

"Yer fuckin' tauntin' won't save ya, mutant freak!" the man roared, launching himself forward with the Kanabō raised high, its spiked head aimed to pulverize the boy.

CLANG

The deafening sound of steel meeting steel rang through the hall. The man's eyes widened in disbelief as he stared down at the boy, who had blocked the massive weapon with a simple katana.

"W-what the fuck?!" he stammered, his voice faltering as his mind struggled to register what he was seeing.

The boy stood there, smirking, his blade held in a single hand above his head. The strike, which should have crushed any normal human into a bloody smear, was effortlessly stopped as though it were nothing more than a light breeze.

The boy's smirk widened.

"Hmm, that is interesting," the boy murmured, almost to himself, as another swing came from the side. He blocked it just as effortlessly, his katana steady as a mountain.

"Not very strong, are you?" the boy added, a grin still plastered across his face.

"FUCK YOU!" He snarled, leaping backward. A scorpion-like stinger unfolded from behind him, firing a volley of green, needle-like projectiles.

The boy flicked his katana with casual precision, deflecting the needles in mid-air. They sizzled angrily as they struck the ground, but he didn't seem the least bit concerned.

"Well, mister goon, unless you have something else to show me, I'll be finishing this now, alright?" The boy's voice took on a sing-song, child-like tone that made the hairs on the back of the man's neck stand on end. That creeping dread from before surged tenfold.

"Fu—" The curse was cut short as his arm hit the floor with a wet thud, severed cleanly at the shoulder. The sudden loss of balance caused his Kanabō to tip, smashing into his head with a sickening crack.

He barely had time to process the pain before his vision twisted unnaturally. For a moment, he saw his body slowly falling to its knees, the Kanabō crashing to the ground beside it, and the boy, grinning, bright green slitted eyes gleaming like something out of a nightmare.

It wasn't until he saw his own headless corpse that the horrifying truth registered: the head tumbling through the air wasn't someone else's—it was his.

The world faded into darkness, but the boy's demonic smile was the last image burned into his mind.

Monster...

—Back to Third-Person POV—

Jake resumed his calm stride, stepping past the scorched boots with a satisfied smirk. Testing his new blade had been enlightening, to say the least.

"So... coma for five years, muscles and nerves avoiding atrophy thanks to that strange liquid. Makes sense for a fictional world, yeah," he mused aloud, his tone casual as he rounded a corner. His path was suddenly blocked by a massive galvanized door, freshly welded shut.

"Hmmm..." Jake muttered, running his hand across the cold, unyielding metal. "I wonder... can I do it here? If so, that'll be a game changer."

Faint sounds of shuffling feet and frantic movement reached his ears from the other side of the door. Jake gripped his blade with one hand, a grin forming as he focused inward, recalling the sensation of his core—the power he had honed on that underdeveloped planet with Mihawk's abilities.

To his delight, it responded.

A black, viscous matter began to creep from his hand, enveloping the blade. It pulsed and shimmered with otherworldly energy, and the cold, tangible weight of it made him grin wider.

"Fuck yeah!" Jake exclaimed, his voice echoing in the corridor. Without hesitation, he swung the blade twice in an X-pattern.

The air seemed to vibrate violently, and a sound like metal being torn asunder filled the hallway—a deafening shriek that would have left any normal person clutching their ears.

In mere moments, the massive door split cleanly into four sections, the heavy slabs crashing to the ground with a resounding THUMP.

Cries of panic erupted from beyond the doorway, a chaotic symphony of fear that brought a dark sense of satisfaction to Jake. As he stepped through the shredded entrance, his glowing green eyes swept over a dozen scientists, their trembling hands clutching firearms now aimed directly at him.

"Poor bastards," Jake said, his tone almost pitying. "It seems I'll do you one last favor, old Jake, by ridding the world of the filth that took you away from the orphanage."

He closed his eyes briefly, the memory of Matron Amara flashing vividly in his mind. The woman who had treated the previous Jake like a son, who had most likely died protecting the other children. Her dog-like mutation quirk and her kind smile were seared into his soul.

When Jake reopened his eyes, the smirk returned to his lips.

With a measured step, he crossed the threshold of the ruined doorway.

———

[Edit: Fixed some typos]

Prologue End.

Should I invest myself in this story? For even more clear-cut context, this is set in the My Hero Academia universe, and the MC is an 11-year-old boy. His appearance is a mix between Ulquiorra Cifer with more humanoid look, with black hair, green cat-like eyes, and pale skin.

Powers? If you're an experienced fanfic reader, you might already have a good idea of his abilities. To clarify, this is not a nerfed version of the powers he's been given, but he will need to train and work hard to grow stronger. While he'll have an advantage against most opponents, it won't be an easy ride. (MC will be strong, but not to the degree he can take on the goddamned world before chapter 50... if we get that far.)

His previous two power sets were temporary due to his situation of being a serial reincarnate who has moved on, though, he retains the experience of using them, especially Mihawk's abilities, which he had for around 12-14 years. His current strength comes entirely from that accumulated experience rather than starting as a blank slate.

Although he no longer has access to the exact "templates" of those past powers. By using his previous knowledge and skills, which are similar in nature, he might be able to adapt some of it to his new power to a lesser degree with both upsides and downsides.