１話 // A HERO'S ATELIER

Eleven years ago, before the fall and eradication of the symbolic caricature of heroes, the planet continued to sail through the black blanket of space on an endless spiraling direction with the sun as its anchor. Our story begins in a country in Asia, nestled between the waves of the sea and the rays of the sun at dawn, though Japan was a small country its glory was magnified by its ensemble of triumph bound heroes. An empire of Quirks and a masterpiece of the sun and the endless horizon before its bays. The society of Japan thrived to tear asunder its nation's past reputations, rebuilding itself on top of the industry born from the shoulders of heroes. Though it wasn't always like this.

The first inception of Quirks created a wave of massacres, almost like a global pandemonium. Capital cities were submerged in a sea of fire and chaos while continents were shattered and torn apart, the ocean raged on a whim of one man and the wind carried lightning in favor of a warring woman. Those with quirks revolted against the system that oppressed their existence while the Quirkless did the same towards anyone who had the power to shape the world under their command, while still denying their hand in the oppression that they had caused in the first place. While crime rates rose, the graphs of death tolls rose even further in the height of the increased oppression against those who had manifested their abilities and those who haven't. 'Freak' had been a slur that was used against those who had manifested the gift of the gods, the evolutionary cells of humanity, the miracle of all miracles. The tireless wheel of oppression was only finally broken when the ratio of Quirk users to Quirkless stunned humanity. The 7:3 ratio may have been the catalyst to finally accepting the inception of those with the abilities of gods, and now, we live in a world where the ratio is 9:1.

(And yet the wheel still spins.)

Still, there are more simple things in this world that do not wholly encompass shattered continents, and this tale will not meet the eyes of a hero with a cape of victory nor a notorious villain. Our story begins in a country in Asia, nestled between the waves of the sea and the rays of the sun at dawn, where a little girl is among those who are born with the privilege to rise above all of humanity yet was never fated for glory or triumph. Only a little piece on the chessboard, and only ever a small cog on the grand schemes of the world. And though she was wholly made of her own ambitions, it was only a false epithet to her name.

At the age of fifteen, her achievements were only countable by two hands and its merits were labeled with an expiration date. When the world swallowed her whole and spat her back our with a glitch embedded to her ivory skin, she thought she had triumphed in the lottery of Quirks. But she isn't special—nor will she ever be—when she is forced to stand next to those who were born with glory to their names.

And so, Sanada Kei at the age of fifteen, learns what it means to be insignificant when she rips open a letter from U.A. with only a brief foreword of her failures. (So she lets the world swallow her whole, leaving her ambitions to rot at her feet.)