[Freja Helt]

Quirk class.

A class where students got to learn all about their quirks, how they worked and how to improve not just the way they use them, but how they think about their powers too. It was one of those types of classes that might be essential to a lot of freshmen, making sure they got a good head start into their school year so they could perform even greater feats as they advanced.

So naturally Freja was skipping.

The teacher for that class still didn't know what to do with her and it sucked. It wasn't just frustrating to not have a functioning quirk, at that point it was humiliating. With a sigh she walked down the same path she had so many times, going past the gym and around to the back where she knew she could be alone. With her bat over her shoulder she was determined to still get some training in... Or was she? Well, she had to, otherwise why bring the bat? Maybe it just brought her comfort? The one tool she could defend herself with in case something happened, but realistically what could happen? She was at school after all, not like villains could just walk in here. She was a total background character too, so it's not like she would be their goal even if someone did somehow invade the campus.

She stopped and eyed one of the windows, wondering how much strength it would take to break the glass. Could she do it? No notable muscles to speak of, but she did have a bat. She continued walking until she got to the familiar little set of stairs she always sat on. She pressed her index and middle finger up to her lips instinctively, remembering how she used to smoke. That was back when she was Elias. No matter how strong the urge was she couldn't ruin Freja's body with that stuff. ''At least it's a nice day.'' She muttered, using the bat as support as she leaned forward lazily.

Thea

[Thea]

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]間違い

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?

[attr="class","skullbody"]Pointless. The whole thing was pointless. There was almost no class in the school's curriculum that appealed to the Mentat. She thought she'd like Ethics; she knew more than the teacher. She gave Quirks 101 a go; it turned out that using hers was "in bad taste" and "beyond the scope of the class." Again and again, the greatest hero school in the world did nothing but disappoint her. Again and again, she added classes to her "no go" list until her whole schedule was nothing but red 'x's. Again and again, the days blended into each other, with only the barest points of light to distinguish them. And so, Thea did what she always did. She wandered through campus again and again.[break][break]

Time and place held no meaning as she meandered through the school. Her mind drifted between memories, forming a hedonistic amalgamation of senses that drowned out the world around her. Only the barest sliver of her mind reached out to the present. Enough to guide her and enough to see the girl smoking on the steps before her, a trail of smoke curving gently in the breeze. Thea blinked, The smoke vanished, and the cigarette was nowhere to be found. Even still, mentat could still feel the imagined smoke in her lungs.[break][break]

"You're supposed to be in class." She said as she exhaled smoke only she could see.[break][break]

Hollow eyes looked over Freja; extra attention was paid to the bat she leaned on. Already her mind was piecing together the countless fragments of memory from across her collection. "Freja Helt." Of course Thea knew who she was. At this point, there wasn't a soul in this school she didn't at least know the name of. "I would never have guessed you were a smoker," she pantomimed the act with her index and middle fingers before ending it in a loose point towards the blunt instrument. "You waiting for someone with that bat?"[break][break]

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[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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[Freja Helt]

Freja looked over, ready to apologize to whoever it was that told her she needed to go to class. A teacher? Faculty? No, ultimately it was just another student. The fact that she knew her name made it slightly more alarming. A bully? But Freja didn't recognize her. ''There's no point. The class I'm in sucks right now.'' She shrugged, completely apathetic to her circumstances. She looked down at her hand when Thea mentioned the smoking, was her habits really that obvious? ''I'm trying to quit.'' She looked back at Thea, furrowing her brow a bit at the pantomime. ''Do you smoke? No wait, who are you again?'' She seemed familiar somehow. ''Bomb class?'' Freja blurted out, seeming to remember having seen Thea among the crowd. Just another one of those students Freja had silently hoped she wouldn't have to go up against.

She blinked her eyes, looking at Thea's hand before glancing down at her bat. ''This thing? Not really.'' She hoisted the bat up so that it rested over one shoulder. ''My skills with a weapon is basically all I have, this is like an extension of me. In a way, you could call this my quirk. It's no different from someone who can shoot lasers out of their eyes or whatever. Not that I expect people with superpowers to understand.'' Yikes, she was definitely coming across as more angsty than she intended, but it wasn't like she had had a good day up until this point.

''Wait a minute.'' She narrowed her eyes at Thea as it finally dawned on her, at the speed of sloth. ''Aren't you supposed to be in class?'' She smirked, pointing back at Thea.

Thea

[Thea]

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[attr="class","skulloverlap"]How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"Every class here sucks," her response was fast, too fast. She had a pretty negative opinion of the school as a whole and wasn't afraid to share it at a moment's notice. "Nah, I don't smoke. Other vices, sure, but never smoking much spoke to me."[break][break]

The idea that they both may have been in Bomb class was funny to the mentat. She'd attended it a few times, which was more than what she could say for most. Just another series of red Xs on her calendar. "We haven't been in any classes together. You just have a reputation, and I just happen to have excellent memory," Thea tapped her temple twice to emphasize the statement. [break][break]

Thea approached the small staircase and leaned back against the railing. It was a few seconds of fidgeting until she managed to find a comfortable position against the metal. "Tell me how you really feel." she raised an eyebrow. "That's one hell of a chip on your shoulder. Not like I can shoot lasers outta my fuckin' eyes." Thea stretched an arm in Freja's direction, the Mentat's fingers spread, and she felt an ache in her palm as her body reacted to the potential of another fresh memory. "With that bad, you're a bigger threat to me than I am to you at this distance. It's not all sunshine and laser beams," Hollow orbs stared off into the distance as Thea's mind wandered in a million different directions. "Sometimes this shit sucks," she said wearily. "Not that your shit doesn't suck too."[break][break]

The mentat smirked at Freja's late realization. Despite her eyes betraying no emotion, the rest of Thea's face formed a smug look accentuated by a slight backward tilt of her head. "I am~," She said with a lilt. "But I didn't feel like it today." She never felt like it. "It's not like I really need to go. Aint shit this place can teach me right now. Big fuckin' letdown, ya know?" She looked Freja directly in the eyes. "You already figured that out, didn't ya."[break][break]

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[Freja Helt]

“I guess we all have some kind of vice.” She didn’t refute that all the classes sucked since she didn’t really know much about Thea. Was she the sort of strong, talented and cocky type of student? Was there a risk she would beat her up if she disagreed? If so, Freja had absolutely no interest in standing up for the school. “Really?” She could have sworn Thea was familiar somehow. Maybe they had just passed each other in the hallways, and for some reason Freja had committed her face to memory. “If you’re here to make fun of me like the others, just get it over with.” She sighed, knowing full well there was no chance in hell she could fight back against someone with a quirk yet.

“No, I don’t think I will.” She smirked at Thea. What kind of an icebreaker would that be anyway? ‘Hi I’m actually a twin brother stuck in the body of his presumably dead twin sister’. At best, it was hard to believe, at worst it was just blackmail Thea could sell to her bullies if she wanted to. “It is, but it’s not wrong. Having a quirk is always stronger than not having one.” She looked down at Thea’s hand. “Do you shoot them out of your hands instead?” She smiled, no, laughed at what Thea said next. “You seriously think so? You recognized me and you still think so?” After she was done laughing she continued, “Unless your quirk is conjuring up confetti with those hands I seriously doubt that.” What was her quirk anyway? She couldn’t be one of those academic overachievers. Not while skipping class and certainly not when she didn’t believe her quirk made her invincible. Hopefully Freja could get her to tell her. “Yeah, shit sucks.”

It was strange. How Freja felt the need to stay on the defensive and yet, found Thea oddly relatable in just skipping class when she didn’t want to go, or not being happy with what the school taught them. She was a bit thrown off by being looked directly in the eyes, but tried not to let it show. “…Isn’t that a good thing? Just means you’re so smart and strong that you’re ahead of the curve.” She mimicked what Thea had done earlier by tapping her index finger against her own temple.

Thea

[Thea]

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[attr="class","skulloverlap"]How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"If I was here to make fun of you, I'd be fucking doing it already now, wouldn't I," She spat back angrily. It wasn't often that Thea tried being even remotely sociable, and she was starting to remember why. "And yeah, really really." For a moment, she wondered if rumor of what she'd done to Jun had gone around, and maybe that's what Freja recalled. Thea cast the thought aside, by now, she probably had some reputation for being rude or high or whatever else people tacked onto her when she wasn't listening. [break][break]

"Fine, keep your secrets. I'll just have to conjure up some confetti and make you tell me," Thea gestured with her hand as if something would come out from it and attack Freja before laughing and resting the arm against the railing behind her. "Can you imagine that? If someone made it here with a confetti cannon quirk. That would be hilarious." [break][break]

The mere fact that Freja was here having this conversation spoke to her abilities. Thea wasn't one to doubt someone's abilities when the proof was there. For a moment, she considered taking some of the bat skills for herself if she got the chance to. "Yeah, I think so. Sure, If I catch you well," she ran her thumb against her neck, "but you could do the same to me with that, and there's no way I could be better than you with it." She weaved lies in with the truth. Revealing too much always felt uncomfortable, especially before a meal. [break][break]

Her palms burned. The more she spoke, the more the hunger grew. Part of her considered lunging. One touch would be enough to take some memories and then rewrite the last few seconds to fit a less aggressive narrative.[break][break]

"I'm not strong, that's for dame sure," She laughed, remembering the displays Farrin and Zenkai were capable of. "Smart, yeah, that's more like it. I'm the smartest person in any room I walk into." It was part gloat and part truth. Even when she wasn't the smartest, it only took a few seconds to remedy the issue. A simple handshake, a hand on the shoulder, or even a touch on the arm. Thea had learned all the ways in which she could take what she wanted from polite company. Though she vastly preferred it when she didn't need to have those considerations, it was half the reason she signed up for so many patrol routes. [break][break]

"Besides, if me skipping makes me smart and strong, wouldn't that make you some sorta roided genius?"[break][break]

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[Freja Helt]

''Oh yeah? Then why are you here? Aside from skipping class.'' She scowled, weirdly irritated by Thea's attitude even though Freja had totally warranted that kind of response. She flinched when Thea gestured with her hand even though it was clearly the setup for a joke. No matter how much she trained she couldn't shake her fear of the unknown, of quirks. ''Right,'' she smiled, trying to save face, ''about as hilarious as someone without a quirk making it.''

She narrowed her eyes a bit at Thea, as if she was trying to assess what the girl was after. Not like she was ever good at reading people, especially not people like Thea. ''Flattery will only get you so far.'' She remarked with a light pout. She was insecure, but that didn't mean she wanted to be a doomer about it. ''Yeah, that's a pretty impressive power.'' Smartest person in any room? Was her quirk leeching brain cells from others or something along those lines? She couldn't discount that theory since quirks could basically be anything as far as she was aware. What power you got just depended on your luck.

''Nah!'' She laughed at the roided genius comment before turning her thumb down. ''Grades are on the decline because training is such a pain in the ass. Is it good grades or do they want me to get in shape and get stronger? I feel like it would be a choice, but they're expecting us to do both.'' Even if Thea had caught her in a bad mood, Freja couldn't help but slowly be warming up to her. Hopefully her desperation to form friendships wasn't super obvious. ''What's your name anyway? You already know mine.'' Well, she knew Freja's current name. She reached her hand out for a handshake. Old habits die hard, and she was still getting used to the bowing culture.

Thea

[Thea]

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[attr="class","skulloverlap"]How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"I don't have a reason. I'm just here cuz I'm bored. I assume i don't need a fuckin' reason for that too do I." Thea pressed her attitude further. Something about the way Freja was acting put her off. Maybe it was how it reminded her of a cornered animal lashing out at perceived threats. Or maybe it's was how the fear of quirks resembled the fear of Thea some other students had developed. "Yeah, you're a fucking joke. Is that what you want me to say?" The words carried the mentat's now visible frustration.[break][break]

Quickly the mentat reeled in her frustration, setting herself back to neutral before continuing the conversation. It was weird enough that she was making an effort but even weirder that she almost wanted to. For a moment, she pondered whether this resulted from Zenkai's influence or Miroru's. [break][break]

"They really want us to do everything, and somehow they can't even fuckin spring for a decent ethics teacher or a course on not developing a god complex. You see half the schmucks here. I sure as hell don't want any of them showing up to save me in a crisis." She said, dodging the comment about her power. Thea couldn't deny the upsides were awesome. Her mind drifted to the pair of leather gloves in her back pocket and why she had them. Sometimes she wasn't sure if the ups were worth the downs. [break][break]

"Thea," she said curtly before even giving herself the opportunity to think of any other name. "You can just call me Thea. Everyone else does." She reached out her hand to shake Freja's. "Nice to meet ya," Thea said with a sly grin as the hands met and the connection between minds began.[break][break]

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[Freja Helt]

''I guess you fucking don't.'' She crossed her arms. ''My bad for asking, didn't realize that was a touchy issue.'' Speaking with Thea was... Different. She was hard to read, full of mysteries, not that plenty of other students weren't, but there was something about the way she carried herself. It almost reminded Freja of herself. Like she was looking into a mirror, but it wasn't exactly the same, just slightly off, slightly different. She could also just be imagining things. Her mind had been playing tricks on her a lot recently so that wasn't out of the question. How would Freja, the original Freja have handled meeting Thea? Probably with a little less spite and angst, but it was just like Elias to be an idiot at making first impressions. ''Sure. Someone has to be.'' She shrugged. ''We're not all meant to be revered superstars like Leonid.'' Freja was frustrated too, but most of all, she had started to buy in to what the bullies had said to her. Yeah, she could probably make it as a hero if she tried really hard, but was she ever going to amount to anything when she didn't have a quirk?

''I know, right?'' Finally someone else who saw it. Finally a confirmation that Freja wasn't going crazy. ''It's a damn shame they didn't test people on ethics and morals. The message they're sending is pretty clear, isn't it? 'We only care about powers and how you can use them to fight bad guys or save others.' It's exhausting. It's wrong.'' She buried her head in her palms to underline just how irritating it was. She didn't really pay attention to the fact that Thea didn't go into details about her power. Most people didn't in Freja's experience, not that there was anything wrong with that. Everyone had skeletons in their closets.

''Thea...'' She repeated, then the doors to her mind were opened.

Dark city streets and crammed alleyways. They looked nothing like any city in Japan, yet the shape of the concrete jungle was eerily familiar to Freja. The sky above was a black void, not because the darkness filled it out, but because it seemed to be lacking any form of proper texture. A door opened in the wall in front of Thea, beckoning her inside. The superstructure in Freja's mind was full of claustrophobic hallways, many that lead nowhere and some that seemed to overlap weirdly with no rhyme or reason. Almost like two building designs had been copy pasted on top of each other with no thought for either designs in mind. On the ceiling above, faint yellow lights danced, guiding Thea to the room that all the hallways inevitably pointed to. An empty room with a giant screen.

The place that contained her memories.

But not just the memories of Freja, there were memories of someone named Elias as well. Not only that, but Freja was distinctly different from 'Freja', the current one.

''I did it! I got accepted, I'm going to hero prep school!'' The black-haired Freja from the past celebrated by punching the air.

Then another memory played, a young man handed Elias a knife. ''Take a life. That's your final test, then you're one of us.'' Elias hesitated, but eventually took the knife.

Then, in another memory, an impossible inferno raged around them, a figure obscured by the smoke of the fire looking towards Freja and Elias as they bleed out, before yellow lights, similarly to those on the ceiling earlier begin to emerge from his unconscious body. Elegantly, meticulously, the lights seep into the dying body of Freja. Before the hotel burned down, Freja and Elias's bodies were saved from the fire.

''Freja!'' Freja woke up in a hospital bed covered in bandages, her black hair burned away. ''Where's my sister?'' Freja took a hand to her throat and nervously looked down her body, then over to a mirror. ''Freja?'' She put a hand up to the mirror. ''Why? I-I don't understand.'' Freja, or rather, Elias in Freja's body, would continue to mourn the loss of their sister for a long time, haunted by the fact that he was stuck in her body. No one in his family believed him either, everyone thought Freja survived and that Elias passed away.

When the time came to cremate Elias, Freja just stared into space at the headstone that had been erected in their old name.

Back outside of Freja's mind, she squeezed Thea's hand. ''Lucky me. ~'' She cooed, ''I've never met a Thea before, so that'll make it easier to remember your name.'' Completely oblivious to Thea's quirk having triggered.

Thea

[Thea]

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[attr="class","skulloverlap"]How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?

[attr="class","skullbody"]Thea's gripp turned vicelike as the memories played. Her mind running the sequence in parallel to the real world. Like an addict taking their first bump of the day, the mentat's hair stood and her skin developed goosebumps. Feeding was always good, but this, this was exquisite.[break][break]

"Not as easy to remember as Freja, but I'll take it," she tightened her grip further as she stepped forward to close the space between them. "And here you said you didn't have a quirk, but that's not entirely true now, is it, Elias?" She stared into their eyes, hollow orbs reflecting only the light. A little mental trickery would show Elias's reflection in them instead. Fear was a powerful paralytic, and the mentat was intent on taking her fill.[break][break]

In the space of Freja's mind, Thea wandered. Her presence multiplying and expanding in search of more memories in the eldritch cityscape. A pang of familiarity crossed the multitudes of her mind as shapes and buildings blended into each other in ways that defied not only the logic of the physical world, but the logic of a single mind. Thea knew this all to well, she called it 'folding' the melding of many separate minds into one. A daily occurrence for Thea, though she imagined that for Freja and Elias, this was far from the case. [break][break]

She stared at the duality pitifully for what felt like an eternity and released her grip. "Sorry, I kinda lost it there... Elias" Thea chose to stick with the name of the mind instead of the body. She knew all too well the difference between the two entities. "I guess this is the part where you hit me with the bat." [break][break]

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[Freja Helt]

Freja smiled nervously as she felt Thea’s grip tighten. Maybe that was just part of the greeting? She knew some people had intense handshakes like that and she didn’t want to judge. However, when Thea stepped closer? Freja leaned back uncomfortably and when she said the name Elias, Freja’s face went sickly pale.

“H-How did you know? …I can explain!” The eyes that stared back into Thea’s were full of terror, scared of what she would say, of what she could do with this information. “W-Who told you? Is this your quirk?” She looked down at their hands and began trying to withdraw her own, curling into herself once the Mentat let go of her grip. “E-Elias is dead and gone!” She protested. Was he really? So far she had been insistent that she was a guy trapped in a girl’s body, but it felt wrong to be referred to as Elias for some reason. “Hit you?” She looked down at her bat. What good would that do? “You’ll just use that as an excuse to do that thing you did again… What did you do?” Desperation came over her as she remembered Thea mentioning Elias’s quirk. Maybe she knew something Freja didn’t. “What do you know about my quirk?” So far everything Freja had theorized about it was just that. Pure speculation. If Thea had been able to see or read something she might already hold a lot more valuable information about The Curse than Freja herself did.

Thea

[Thea]

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[attr="class","skulltitle"]間違い

[attr="class","skulloverlap"]How do we forgive ourselves for all the things we did not become?

[attr="class","skullbody"]"I took the truth from you." She said casually. There was no point in lying with her hunger at least temporarily satisfied. "I can kinda read minds by touch." There was no point in saying the whole truth either. [break][break]

She watched as the duality curled up in an instinctive bid for self-protection. While it was what Thea had intended, it was no longer what she wanted. The person before her was changing in a way Thea was all too familiar with, a where many minds became one. "You're not dead, Elias. But I can call you Freja if you like since I guess neither is she."[break][break]

"If I wanted to do that again, I wouldn't have let go. You're lucky I even did. I don't remember the last time that happened." It was her way of saying she never did. "Now get your shit together. Aren't you trying to be a hero or whatever? Can't let something like this be what breaks you. Trust me. I could have done much worse." Something about how Freja responded kept pissing the mentat off. Even more so, Thea was mad that somewhere in this mess, she'd started to feel soft for her. [break][break]

"I only know what you know. Well, I might see more than you, but it's not like I'm clairvoyant or whatever. I know your quirk kept you alive. I know you and your sister were very different people. I know you're," she paused. A first conversation wasn't exactly the time to tell someone they were slowly becoming someone else. But who else would say it? Would they even notice the change? Was it worth drawing attention to? "You're like, melding. The space in your mind is two people stacked on top of each other. The mind likes to figure itself out and do away with things like that. Well, most minds do." She took a step back, giving Freja space to think but also moving away from her in case she decided that now was the time for bat.[break][break]

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[attr="class","skullcredits"]TAIKO!

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[Freja Helt]

''You...'' She put a hand up to her forehead as it finally clicked. Read minds? The thought was enough to send a cold, dead chill down her spine. Wasn't that easily the most terrifying quirk in existence? Someone who could read your mind at the touch of a hand. How was that even possible? ...How did it feel for someone like Thea? It was probably useful power in the right situation, but no different from Freja's own cursed quirk depending on how you looked at it.

''She's alive?'' There was an odd sense of relief that washed over her when Thea said that. All this time, Elias had never known, Freja had never known. All this time, the surviving twin had felt like the loneliest asteroid drifting through a vast and empty darkness, but it turned out that they weren't alone at all. This revelation was one she was incredibly conflicted about. On one hand, Thea had helped her resolve something that had been nagging at her all this time. On the other, it was a huge invasion of privacy. ''Who the hell gets their shit together moments after having their mind read? I don't even know what you saw.''

Inevitably, even though she was pissed off at Thea she took her advice and took a deep breath. ''Yeah, my 'Curse', I figured that was what caused this to happen..'' It was a quirk she had only named retroactively as she only learned what it did after it had already triggered. ''Melding?'' The implications were terrifying. Was that why she didn't feel fully alive as Elias, nor Freja? Was that also why both of their personalities were at odds so often? She looked down at her hands, her face pale as she turned her palms upwards. Melding, what did it even mean? What was going to happen to her? ''I...'' She felt light-headed as she looked over at her bat, before pushing it down the steps. ''There's others?'' She looked over at Thea, only realizing that actually made a lot of sense. There were probably a few dozen quirks that involved the mind or having other personalities of some kind.

It was a lot to grapple with. In life, Elias had always hated himself, hated who he was and what he was becoming, too self-destructive for his own good. She still didn't fully understand how original Freja had felt in life. Not until she finished sifting through her memories as they came back to her, but it was clear to her now that she wasn't original Freja with trauma. She wasn't Elias, who she hated to be. She was someone new who was the result of some kind of quirk fusion. It was terrifying, but also exhilarating. She had no reason to believe Thea would be lying about these things and therefore did the only thing she could think of.

''Thank you.'' She brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face as she looked back up. ''Thank you for going through all that trouble to look into my mind.'' She was doing her best to hold back tears. How lame would it be to break down crying right here, during her first meeting with Thea? ''I'm not gonna hit you.'' Damn, a cigarette would actually be really nice right now.

''What's it like? Your quirk. I bet you hate overcomplicated minds.'' She smirked.

Thea