Chapter Text
It all started because of the dreams, Kyouka mused as she stared at the pair of wakizashi on display. She wasn’t quite sure whether that was an accusation or a statement, but the thought was no less true for it.
(Years later, she would think back to this moment, to this thought, and measure it against the weight of her guilt. Because as much as the dreams were to blame, this was the real turning point of everything. Of the blood, sweat, and tears that came after. Of the victories and failures, conquests and routs. Of the countless deaths of friends and foe alike. Years later, when she was older, a little wiser, Kyouka would wonder if the swords were to blame for it all. Of whether she could have averted the countless tragedies that followed simply by choosing another path that day. But she had not been the same then, and the present Kyouka, without that worldweary wisdom, would have never walked away that day.
Still, that wasn’t really relevant. The musings of a future Kyouka had little bearing on the present, where (and when) her younger self was intently eyeing up a pair of swords.)
The blades themselves didn’t particularly stand out. The steel was unmarked with pits and scratches, gleaming in the dull light of the pawnshop. But despite the apparent lack of wear, the hilts had succumbed to the disrepair of time, wrappings rotting away on the hilts and tsuba nowhere to be found. To an average collector, this set of wakizashi was nothing special. Without being a daishō pair or otherwise holding some prestigious history, nobody would be willing to refurbish them just for display, not when there were so many other avenues to acquire traditionally forged swords. To Kyouka’s discerning senses, however, she could tell that this was not an ordinary pair of swords. The metal was of excellent quality, untouched by rust, and the workmanship was top notch. And to her sensitive ears, the wakazashi bore the faint hum of energy and potential unique only to nichirin blades.
It was odd, seeing a relic of her past life pop up in such a place. A reputable place The Twisted Snake was not. The old lady who manned the store was harridan of the worst order, and spent most of her time staring at customers suspiciously as they navigated the cramped and dingy labyrinth of the pawn shop. It was quite off-putting, considering her third-eye Quirk. Kyouka wasn’t going to let that scare her away though, not when she had snagged a couple of great steals from here. And by now the owner only grumbled under her breath instead of outright accuse her of being a filthy thief, so hey, what wasn’t to love about this second-rate back-alley pawnshop.
She eyed the plaque once more, eyes skimming over the display. Color Changing Swords, ha! As if their only feature was to sit and look pretty. Any swordsmith worth their salt would’ve died of sheer outrage considering the craftsmanship of the two wakizashi. God, they were beautiful. Absolutely flamboyant. Rundown and decayed the pair of blades may be, but the talent of their original swordsmith spoke for itself. No pits or scratches marred the surfaces of the blades, the metal gleaming in dim light of the shop. And there was no telling unless she started swinging them around, but she’d bet her guitar that the two swords were perfectly balanced.
“Oi, girlie. Hands where I can see them,” the old proprietor spoke up from around the corner. “Don’t think I can’t see you eyeing those swords up.”
“Fine.” Kyouka rolled her eyes. To be fair, it wasn’t like she wasn’t tempted to steal them. The price tag on display was about a year’s worth of her savings, and she’d much rather use that money for the newest Deep Dope album. Were they worth buying at all? Realistically, it wasn’t like she’d get to use the swords for anything anyways.
It would be nice to spend a life without having to get blood on his her hands.
But even as she turned to leave, she hesitated. Could she just walk away, abandon the last surviving legacies of her past life? No. Not when there had been so many sacrifices, not when so many brave souls had given up their lives to prevent the threat of demons. As much as she wanted nothing to do with her past life, who else could remember the deaths of those who died in secret? The vigilantes untouched by the sun, who lived and died in the night. Who would carry these memories?
And it would be nice to have a way to defend herself considering the reports of demons cannibal serial killers on the news.
So she sighed, and turned back to face the display. “Hey obaa-san. Can I ask you to hold on to these swords for me. I’ll come back later tonight.”
The old harridan scoffed, all three eyes unerringly fixed on Kyouka. “Those things? Ha, like you’d be able to pay up!” But as she paused, a considering gleam entered her eyes. “Still, it’s not like they’ll be selling anytime soon, considering they’ve been here for almost a year now. Bring the money and we’ll talk.”
“Fine.” And as Jirou Kyouka stepped out the door, she closed out a chapter of her life to begin an old new one again.
(There were perhaps a hundred different ways this day could have gone. Countless variations and changes that affected the course of an infinite amount of choices. In one world, she hesitated just a bit less and left the swords where they were. In another, she walked past The Twisted Snake without even entering, not realizing the opportunity she had missed. In yet another she decided to steal the swords, changing the trajectory of her life to that of crime and chaos.
But in this one, she purchased them. Took on the burden of his her legacy willingly. It was no wonder the trials she would face, the struggles of her second life. After all, a demon slayer’s strength was defined by the tragedy of their sacrifices.)
Jirou Kyouka didn’t start dreaming until middle school. Up until then, she had been a normal child with a perfectly normal upbringing. She lived a comfortable life with her parents and their small instrument shop, and never really wanted for much. And why would she? Life was good, after all. She had a cool Quirk and a bunch of kids at school thought so too. She didn’t need to worry either because All Might was there to protect them from villains and criminals. Personally though, she thought Edgeshot was a lot cooler even though he was only ranked No. 5 on the billboards. (He was a ninja! How flamboyant!)
Things changed when she graduated from primary school. She started dreaming of things she had never seen before. Things that she should have no way of knowing. Things like shining blades and black uniforms. A kind face, marred by purple scars and the weary lines of illness. The monsters that lurked, that hunted in the dark. She dreamed of pain and sacrifice, of both wounds won in battle and the excruciating strain of pushing past her limits. Of breathing that set her lungs ablaze. And one morning, everything suddenly clicked together, and Jirou Kyouka remembered that she used to be Uzui Tengen, Sound Hashira.
It was odd, reawakening to a past life. The memories and instincts never did quite fit properly, for all that her soul remained the same. There had been far too many incidents of launching pencils at things that startled her ever since she started to remember. Tengen and Kyouka were not exactly the same person, having been shaped by different experiences and upbringings. Every luxury Tengen had to fight for, Kyouka had easy access to thanks to the convenience of the modern era. Assassinations were a complete foreign idea to Kyouka, despite the many missions Tengen had taken. It was a struggle to find a balance between the two, and Kyouka was only glad she could blame her sudden changes on the onset of puberty.
Still, things weren’t so bad. For all that they had led drastically different lives, Kyouka and Tengen were the soul in different bodies. The same person in different points in history. Their intrinsic values and beliefs were one and the same, only shaped by the differences of their experiences. So sure, Kyouka now had the memories of a shinobi-turned-demon-slayer, with all the reflexes that came alongside it. It was’t like it changed much, outside of a couple awkward situations where she almost stabbed a classmate. There wasn’t much else she could do anyways, so Kyouka continued onwards with her middle school life. Ninja instincts weren’t all that helpful when your biggest concern was about midterms.
But for the longest time, Kyouka felt unmoored. Purposeless. She remembered the day her class was meant to fill out a career choice form. She had stared at the empty form while her classmates chattered excitedly around her, happily discussing their future prospects. In the end, she just wrote down the first three things that came to mind. Everything felt so superficial. What was the point of toiling away for the rest of your life just so that you could make money and live comfortably. Sure, she could be a doctor or a policeman – or hell, even a Hero – but that hardly measured up to the noble and secret legacy of the Demon Slaying Corps.
(And if she was being completely honest with herself, there was something viscerally satisfying about the extermination of demons that the modern era simply lacked. None of the emotional highs or adrenaline rushes of a brutal victory were present in a mundane day-to-day job. Not when a career was defined by structure and consistency. So dull. She he loved the fight, for all that she he hated the casualties of it. And her his past upbringing had given her all the tools to excel at it flamboyantly.
She he loved to kill, and she he hated it.)
Kyouka shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. Dwelling on her present-past (and some of her past-past) would do her no good here. Right now, she needed to focus, needed to let her instincts back into full force, lunging her body forwards and—
And she tripped, ankle twisting unexpectedly as she stepped forwards, blades sent flying as she overswung.
“Ow.”
For all those ninja instincts, Kyouka sighed, they didn’t magically give her any skill in sword fighting. She sighed and picked up her swords again, glad she didn’t managed to accidentally cut herself again. How had Tengen managed to use his massively oversized pair of cleavers again? Her arms were already shaking in exertion after a few basic katas, and her wakizashi were lighter than standard ninchirin katana. If she didn’t have the memories to prove it, she’d never believe Uzui’s cleavers were usable, let along Gyomei’s stupidly heavy axe and flail.
It was frustrating to lose something you spend years of effort on. Tengen was a vain and flamboyant man, proud of his body and musculature, and for good reason. That sort of physique took a lifetime of training and conditioning alongside a healthy side of good genetics. Kyouka wasn’t lucky enough to have those benefits, neither brought up in a dying shinobi clan nor born with a body suited to building muscle. As a girl, her strengths lay with flexibility and agility rather than raw strength. And judging by her current development, she’d never really get more than lithe muscle, which unfortunately was far more suitable for acrobatics than her breathing and combat style. Kyouka would never be able to do what Tengen could. No amount of training would let her swing a pair of swords as effortlessly as he did.
The thought was devastating. Compared the other Hashira, Tengen lacked talent. He was no prodigy like the Mist or Love Hashira, had no elegant sword skills like the Fire or Water Hashira, nor could he match the respective speed or strength of the Insect and Stone Hashira. The Sound Hashira was just a killer, who Ubuyashiki-sama saw fit to redeem. All of his accomplishments were forged on backbreaking toil and training. When his strength couldn’t measure up to Gyomei’s, he trained his body to exhaustion to keep up. When his shinobi skills was not enough to slay demons, he spent decades creating and refining a new breathing form. When that wasn’t enough, he spent months collaborating with Shinobu to find a formula for wisteria bombs and spent even longer incorporating them into his fighting style. And when even that wasn’t enough, he taught himself how to listen to a demon’s heart, how to track and predict their movements until he could read them like a symphony unfolding. All that was lost to him when he died and became Kyouka.
God, was this what Suma, Makio, and Hinatsaru felt as kunoichi? To be stymied by a mere biological fact of your birth? To be intimately aware of an example of strength but knowing full well you would never be able to reach it? What a dull existence. She didn’t give them nearly enough credit back when she was still Tengen. As she stepped forwards to repeat the kata again, the handles slipped from her sweaty palms, swords clattering to the ground. She stared at the pair of wakizashi, making no moves to pick them up from where they were laying. God, she was weak. If she were back in the Taisho era, she wouldn’t even make it past one night of the Final Selection.
In truth, it’d be easy to give up here. If she wanted to even come close to the capability of her past life, she would need to rebuild the Sound Breathing forms from scratch to account for her lesser muscle mass. It would take years of trial and error, not to mention the time she would need to devote to drilling muscle memory and strength into her body. But even as her hands shook, Kyouka reached down for the blades. It wasn’t like this was something new, after all. Tengen had carved his place in the world through sheer bloody bullheadedness, so how could Kyouka do any less? Their strength was the consequence of loss and sacrifice, of blood, sweat, and toil.
So Kyouka hefted the swords up in spite of her aching, quavering muscles. As she cleared her mind, let her instincts take over, she drew her body into a familiar yet foreign form. This time, when she stepped forward, her grip remained firm on the swords. And as she lunged, as she swung, she breathed.
Sound Breathing First Form: Roar.