Dreamer Awaken!
Fukuchi's Debut
[Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc5o7DyI0-4 ]
"Fu-ku~n!"
The voice of Fukuchi's mother draws him from the depths of sleep. He opens his eyes to the morning sunlight filtering in through his windowblinds, which banishes away the dream-addled memories of desperate battles against robot hordes that he and so many other kids faced recently. He smiles and stretches his arms up towards the ceiling.
He made it. He got into his dream school. The Best in the West! Shiketsu High. He sits up and rubs the sleep from his eyes, then cheerily calls out from his bedroom.
"I'm up!"
There's the soft pad of footsteps approaching his door as he climbs out of bed. He changes out of his striped pajamas even while conversing through the door with his Mom. It's his first time wearing the school uniform, and even though it's stiff from being freshly laundered and pressed, there's something about the stiffness that feels good, too. It makes it all real.
"When you're finished getting dressed," says his mother through the closed doorway of his bedroom, "I have breakfast sitting out for you. Your Dad is a little too excited about helping you move in, so go easy on him."
It's a good thing Fukuchi has some privacy at that moment, because his cheeks burn with embarrassment just at the thought of the scene his family might make today.
"Yeah, okay. Thanks for the warning. I'll be down in a minute."
There's a tap of acknowledgement from the door, and the footsteps go downstairs again. Fukuchi slings his travel sack over one shoulder and picks up his father's beat up old suitcase, then opens his door a bit awkwardly with only three fingers.
The moment he does, his little brother's doorway directly across from him and down the hall bursts open in excitement. Deki, seven years old only last week, bloom into a massive, lop-sided grin. Fukuchi stops himself from laughing at the way it makes Deki's lost tooth look, but can't stop himself from smiling back. And he wouldn't want to.
Deki charges out and grabs onto the bottom of Fukuchi's blazer in his enthusiasm.
"Is it true? Is today the day?" Deki looks up at his older brother with broad, shining eyes.
Pride lifts Fukuchi up from within. "That's right, Squirt! We'll be driving out there soon."
Deki flings up his hands and jumps up and down. "It's incredible! My big brother is going to be a Hero! I'm going to see so many of them today, right? Hey, do you think I could do it too, someday?"
Fukuchi finally laughs, while trying to walk forward and get somewhere he can put this heavy stuff down. He has to walk stiff-legged because Deki makes it a game, stepping up on Fukuchi's socks and getting carried along too.
"Why not? If you still want to when you're older, you can do whatever you work for!"
Once Fukuchi gets to the stairs, Deki hops off his Mecha-Walker of an older brother and goes running down the steps, yelling in glee. His upraised hands shoot off a little cloud of colorful, celebratory sparks, which immediately gets a soft chastisement from Mom.
"Not inside the house, De-chan...!"
[ Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQJqOP0NkUc ]
It made him cringe and be nervous while his whole family was on campus, all helping Fukuchi move things into his new room and having too-long conversations with the dorm manager. The way his parents wanted to make small-talk with the other kids who were moving in on the first available day over the break, just like him. Or the way his Dad waited for everyone else to leave his dorm room first so he could quietly tell his eldest son, "Be careful to keep it in your pants around all these pretty girls, alright?" No amount of his father's chuckling and back-patting could make that moment easier to swallow.
But there were nice things about it, too. He already misses all the noise of them in the silence of watching the family car, newly unburdened, go puttering away. He sees his little brother sitting up in the back seat, nose pressed against the glass, trying not to cry. The little guy hadn't really let it sink in that Fukuchi moving into a dorm meant that he wasn't going to be living with his onii-san for months and months. That's as good as a decade when you're seven.
Fukuchi lifts a hand high up so Deki can see. He remembers how exuberant Deki was just looking at the vending machines with him just to kill time together. It breaks his heart when the last thing he can make out is Deki waving back as fast as he can, like windshield wipers, and unmistakably letting his head fall in sobs.
Almost nobody is on campus. Maybe he should have waited longer so he could get a little more time with them. Fukuchi puffs out his cheeks and lets it all out as a quick puff of air. Probably more waiting would have made it harder, in the end. He sticks his hands in the pockets of his slacks and idly walks back into the student dorm.
"They were nice people," Mrs. Teel says casually when she spots him. Whenever she looks at him, a foreign emotion plunges into him, feeling something like when you're in a warm bath and open a tap to cold water. It intrudes, then diffuses, and the temperature of the whole bath shifts in that direction. The feeling she's giving him now is something he believes only people with very long lives can generate: a nostalgic, relaxed melancholy of concern for his sake. When she has the temperature of his thoughts, she politely looks away to break the connection.
"Yeah. Thanks for letting them go on for so long. It must've helped."
Mrs. Teel titters matronly. "They were doing me the favor, young man. But I won't take the same from you, so off you go. They've informed me that all the new students, at the very least, need to stay on campus once they arrive until the official start of the term, so let me know if you need anything, dearie."
Fukuchi awkwardly smiles back to her and bobs his head, then wanders off again. He rides the elevator up to the top floor and back down to his floor out of an idle curiosity, but it all looks the same through the transparent walls of the shaft. It reminded him of a cruise ship when he first saw it, but a cruise that looked this empty would be a bad omen for sure.
"I hope it gets more lively soon," Fukuchi mumbles to himself after stepping onto the second floor. He drops into an overstuffed leather armchair in front of the bigscreen television in the common area and flips mindlessly through the channels.
[Soundtrack: John Cage - 4'33"]
"Pick a card, any card." Fukuchi says it like a real pro, or at least a pro does in the library-archived 'net footage from old world media. Yasu, his roommate, twitches his eyebrows in confusion and frowns at him a bit. It makes his stage fright act up a little bit, fluttering in his stomach, but Fukuchi doesn't let it show anywhere on the surface. He knows his act. His smile is confident, affable. His body language is inviting and relaxed.
"Is this your Quirk or something?"
"No, it's legerdemain! Prestidigitation! Sleight of hand, my friend, in short: a magic trick."
Yasu's face drops into disinterest. He twists his pinky in his ear and grunts. "Oh." Then he goes back to whatever he was doing on his phone.
Fukuchi's smile breaks like glass. He clears his throat and walks back to his side of the bedroom, then finishes out the card trick alone for the practice, patter rattling off in his head. The cards fan and spin, get stacked, cut, and palmed, and at the end, the replacement covered by a little flame of flash-paper sparked out from his sleeve. A bit of wow-factor for the misdirection. He sighs and flops back onto his bed.
Fukuchi literally twiddles his thumbs. There's not even a window to stare out of.
"Wakata," he grunts, getting back to his feet.
"I'll be in the living room," he says pointlessly, since Yasu doesn't care.
[ Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqdQiWjP2jo ]
Smokin'-sensei, as Fukuchi is calling his teacher in his head, calls out his name. He stands and by the time he's on his feet, he's in the stage persona. He's not boring old Fu-kun. He's MusÅ-ka, the Dreamer! And he's ready to put on a show.
Strutting to the front of the room, he openly pulls a prepared deck of cards out of his inner coat pocket. It's not like card tricks is the only thing he knows, not by half, but it's a recognizable symbol and they have some other uses for making friends and a little unexpected utility here and there.
With his eyes closed and in a partial bow, swathing himself in more dignity than he's ever actually felt in his life, Fukuchi splits the deck in half, one in each hand, and performs a one-handed bridge shuffle in ambidextrous tandem. He plants a foot and turns, spraying the cards in a fountain from his grip, and the intended effect works perfectly. The minority of treated cards cling to the board in a legible approximation of the kanji of his name. He faces the class and grins, more to himself in joy than as a proper showman.
"Fukuchi Arai! I'm an illusionist two-fold. Both with and without my quirk, I can make the real seem unreal and the unreal seem real. Pleased to meet you; I hope we'll all be able to achieve our dreams together."
When he tries to go sit down again, act performed, Smokin' Sexy clears his throat to get Fukuchi's attention and quietly says, "Could you... clean up the--"
Fukuchi's cheeks redden. He bows apologetically and rubs the back of his neck. "Ah, right, yes, sensei." And he crouches down to quickly play 52 Card Pickup with the remainder of his deck.
Question One: What is a Hero to you?
Anybody can help someone else, even save someone else. That's respectable but I don't think it's what makes a Hero. A Hero has to be able to seem to do the impossible. Whenever a person is at their lowest, they have to be able to believe that no matter how bad it is, a Hero could show up and turn things around in any moment. So a Hero is a symbol that inspires hope when people would otherwise be hopeless. A Hero helps people dream.
Question Two: Can I get a five minute smoke break?
Can I get a five minute phone break?
Question Three: Who do you think you can get along with the best, and the worst?
Truthfully, people say I'm idealistic. So I would like to get along with the other idealists. In my mind, that's Kamiya-san, Hiro-san, Mitarai-san, and maybe Ohene-san.
Also said in the interest of honesty, I don't think I'm going to get along well with Aquila-san, sensei. He scares me. Actually, so does Romero-san... I hope I'm wrong.
Question Four: How do you feel about your quirk?
I think most people misunderstand what my quirk even is, sensei! While it's true I set the stage, and can even do it with great detail, it's much like when you are asleep. Nothing that Magic Tricks can make someone experience can ever hurt them, though I guess it's true that it's not the dreaming that harms a sleep-walker. And I only set the stage. What happens after that first moment is entirely from their own heads and technically under their direction.
I've heard of lucid dreamers. They probably wouldn't come under Magic Tricks' sway for more than a second or two. And, since it's using all the same neural pathways as a normal dream, it only works on animals, not things like monster plants or machines. It was hard work dealing with exam robots so indirectly! Since it's a waking dream, people can force themselves to wake from it if they catch on to what's happening.
But I believe in its usefulness in Hero work! I don't have to tell a professional like you how important information and misdirection are in a crisis situation.
I now have a very little bit of fighting experience without using a quirk because of applying to Shiketsu, but it would be important to get more. I put myself in your hands, sir.
Question Five: If you were to schedule your perfect day tomorrow, what would it look like?
I've been a little homesick, so my perfect day right now would be to go across town and see them for a bit. I'd play whatever game my little brother wanted, no matter how silly it was, and I know we'd get to have my favorite dinner (yakitori and toasted rice balls!) Then it might be fun to go around by myself on a wild shopping spree, since it's a fantasy and all!
Ask me again in a few months and probably I'll have a different answer.
Final Question: What is your most cherished memory?
Before my brother was born, I had way too much free time. My childhood school friends were busy frequently, and my family lives in a quiet neighborhood where we have to make all of our own fun. That's before I could learn to appreciate things in Kyoto like dojos, museums, and shrines.
I remember when I first went to the library. I know this is going to sound cheesy, but it was an incredible place to me. There was so much new stuff, I couldn't get through it all in ten thousand years! By the end of the day, I was trying to bring ten books home with me, and one of the librarians had showed me how to go into the Old World Archives.
I've learned a lot from videos and websites that first disappeared generations ago. I whole-heartedly thank that young librarian, and all the archivists that recovered and preserved the vestiges of our ancestors so I could mine the wisdom of the past.
Synergies
Quirk-wise, there's nobody in the class who couldn't benefit from being the only one awake in a situation full of wide-eyed sleepers. Surprise is the strongest advantage and there's no better set-up in the entire world. Even people like Cheshire who already have stealth abilities have their efficacy increased.
Personality-wise, Fukuchi desperately wants to be a headliner but he has a very long path before he can get there. Right now, he makes for a great side-kick, not a Hero's hero. So he would do worse with people who can't share the spotlight or who are sidekick types themselves. Him and Yasu might as well be two Noble Gases: occupying the same space and yet totally unreactive.
I think he'd do best with someone blunt and attention-grabbing, like Koru, even though he can't see it himself. (He's intimidated by talking plainly with girls, especially pretty ones.) On the opposite side, he could be led astray by a strong but subtle personality, like Higana's. At least, until there's enough red flags, and then his "don't kid a kidder" alarm bells go crazy!