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The early evening is wreathed in Greek flames. Green light skitters and crackles around an unholy figure, a certain tornado of pure energy straining against mortal existence. The air seems to vacuum, taking the breath from nearby lungs, a certain weight to the air coaxing the need to stay still and stay down.
Though humans have crawled themselves bloody to the top of the food chain, there are certain beings that serve as a reminder that flesh is not absolute. Suddenly, the battlefield is a jungle, and every instinct serves as a reminder that even the strongest can be prey. It seems that in times of crisis, a god is born.
With quirks fully integrated into society, not many sights still serve as a shock. Though mutant and so-called ‘villainous’ quirks may be a cause for discrimination, quirks have become the new explanation for the unfathomable parts of existence.
Maybe someone you know can make things disappear out of thin air. Someone else can be in two places at once, and another can trick the mind. Though largely unstudied, it’s easy to write these feats off as less than modern day magic.
Even with all of the irregularities and unexplainable instances most quirks bring, there are outliers. A bystander on the edge of a particularly intense clash between a hero and villain may even describe such an event as a meeting of titans. But above all else, certain quirks have a presence.
Shinsou Hitoshi may be the victim of particularly harsh quirk discrimination, but most can’t explain away their fear as simple prejudice. No, some will report Shinsou’s voice as an almost lullaby, a coaxing of sorts that makes it easy to ignore the undercurrent of danger ready to pull the helpless from shore.
It’s a dagger and a balm all in one, a conch shell holding onto the sound of the ocean, even so far from shore. Maybe you’ll give it a listen. Maybe you won’t have a choice.
In quirk registries, Shinsou is defined by ‘brainwashing.’ To those easily cowed by fear, it’s more akin to a siren song.
It awakens something deep in the memory, something sounding more like turbulent waves and a storm in sight, something that tries to convince you of safety, only to quickly remind you just how cold the waters can truly be.
Maybe you’ll wake up one day in an unfamiliar place with no recollection of how you got there. Or maybe you’ll be forced to listen to that siren song head-on, and feel the inescapable pull of your own desire as it becomes the very last breath of your demise.
People are ruled by their fears daily, and the whispering darkness that threatens to drown pulls even some of the most rational minds to terror.
And so, Shinsou is kept controlled and quiet. Muzzled and feared. It’s much easier to hide away that which you don’t understand than it is to revel in the quiet fear of it. To plug your ears full of water and hope you don’t smell of blood.
Shinsou is not alone in this.
Yaoyorozu Momo is subject to countless etiquette courses, reminders to keep demure and quiet in the face of others. Better quiet and pretty than felt for the full weight of her abilities. Her mother keeps her thin, her power underutilized, lest she grow too cocky, too much. Her father can’t meet her eye from across the dinner table, lest all of those equations leap right out of a far-too intelligent gaze.
No, Yaoyorozu faces the burden of her family’s legacy, and so she is taught to be the perfect image, able and willing to fade into the background.
But when she uses her quirk? It sounds like metal clanging and gives the heat of a blacksmith. It reminds you of bloody creation and that we come into this world screaming. To meet her gaze head-on is to recognize that she will always know more than you, whether that stay in the realm of chemical composition or an origin of something much deeper, darker.
Some of her etiquette training masks the gleam that comes to light in her eyes as a new being is born. As if lightning flashed and gave life to something much more monstrous than a patchwork creation could ever be. After all, the real monster was never the one chased from the village. Indeed, that responsibility laid in the one ruthless enough to ignore hubris, ignore nature, and set a new meaning to alive, all the while living under unassuming noses.
You can try and deny the madness in her creation, the ever-present curiosity threatening to swallow you whole, but nothing can hide the encompassing weight of it, the absolute gravity that everyone around her desperately tries to escape.
Tokoyami Fumikage knows a thing or two about gravity, though more accurately to say, the lack of it. On sleepless nights, one may recall the twins of Gemini and the quirked duo in the same breath. Between constellations and ruffled feathers, Tokoyami is all too acquainted with the power of the night.
That’s to say, if you look at Dark Shadow long enough, you’ll blink twice as many stars burned into the backs of your eyelids. Kids do not have to be astronomers to be cruel, but Siamese twins are always seen as a pity, rather than the act of doubling in true nature. It’s easy to look at the pair and see the dark dogging their doorstep, rather than the true force of light keeping Pandora locked away.
Those that know the two well are accustomed to this double-think, the linking of two minds varied in power, but to first encounter the duo is to see a chain from the heavens, keeping the moon at bay so the sun can rise. The power has the potential to be earth-shattering and a weighted blanket all at once, but none can look at the pair and see anything but a merciless act of nature.
A reminder that the universe has been around beyond infinity, and that humans are a mere blip on the timeline. Tokoyami and Dark Shadow seem to carry around the weight of infinity, as if their sheer presence serves to prove that we are not alone in the darkness of the universe.
We are merely the only ones still around to observe such darkness.
If the duo serves as darkness, one may mistake Kaminari Denki for light. Between a kind-hearted personality and a penchant for jokes, it’s easy to write off Lichtenberg scars as sunspots, without knowing the true lines that they trace.
Growing up, kids failed to see past the light that blinded them, failed to see the livewire running underneath their noses and raising their hair. A harmless façade that ignores sharp eyes and sharper strikes, a mind capable of working beyond typical human limits in order to unlock enough volts to deaden and regrow the brain in one strike.
Neural plasticity is nothing to knock at, but even in the age of quirks, a brain should not be able to withstand the sheer number of volts Kaminari wields so casually. With each time he overloads himself, his resilience only grows stronger, yet others mistake his determination as foolishness, weakness.
And yet, to hear the crackle of his quirk is to witness a force standing in the face of a storm, harnessing danger like a blade. To stand on the other side of that storm is to be reminded that light is synonymous to heat; to see those sharp eyes across a battlefield is to know that you are in the eye of the storm, and you will be burned.
Kaminari Denki’s quirk feels like an inevitability. Lightning strikes one hundred times every second, and against the odds of probability and power, you will feel your skin begin to buzz. After all, a lightning rod is only a lightning rod because it absorbs heaven's power.
It is something else entirely to redirect it.
Similar in bubbly nature, Hagakure Toru could be mistaken as plain if you were blind enough. It’s easy to fade into the background without a visible form, but nothing sets off prey instincts like a danger you can’t see.
Her quirk feels like being watched, it feels like every hair raising as you plead the main character to not go into the basement. Hagakure’s power drips like anticipation down your spine until you’re jumping and jittery, too wired to sleep. She’s the whisper underneath your bed and covers pulled over head, not a shadow to be seen.
To understand her impossibility, you must shut down your sight in favor of other senses. You’ll close your eyes and hear a shuffle right behind you. You’ll whip around, heart pounding, only to be met with empty nothingness and a flicker in the corner of your eye.
The worst part is that you won’t find her. The feeling will fade, and you’ll trick your mind enough that you question if she was ever there at all. You will carry that weight, that second-guessing of your sanity until the time comes and you feel watched again.
After all, there are few things worse than the unknown.
Straddling the realms of unknown, a figure is split down the realms of normality. Todoroki Shouto is undoubtedly powerful, a tragic poster child for legacy heroes alike, and yet there is something more to his power than legacy alone.
One may mistake his movements for his Father’s, and yet, there’s something unpredictable in his flowing nature, a cold mask that speaks more to the unforgiving tundra freezing the hair off of your body. There’s a certain ruthlessness to the cold, a lesson in mistakes anytime one tests their skin against its winds of ice.
To fight against Todoroki is to fight nature itself, trying to pry your feet off the floor and to stifle your shivers. Just when you surrender yourself to the cold, get used to the sleepy spikes, sweat will begin to bead on your brow.
The flash of flames will send you reeling, and the cold reflection of ice does nothing for your vision. Your body will begin to feel the presence of heat rolling towards you, and for a moment, you are relieved. That is, until the sauna is turned up to one-hundred, and you’re encompassed in steam.
Todoroki balances the line of a human body’s capabilities with ease, never too cutting and cold, nor uncontrolled and hot.
Now, take that unknown, all that presence and heat, all that power that speaks of something older than humans, wrap it in green lightning, and call it Midoriya Izuku.
He was always a strange boy, mind too sharp for his own good. But to face him and that otherworldly power in battle is to look death in the face and come out shaking.
His classmates knew it best, saw it in small doses as it grew with each encounter. They’d fought alongside it enough to acclimate, to ignore the shivers zipping up their spines and the foreboding smell of ozone.
After all, most of them understood what it was like to hold that kind of weight, that kind of power. They could see their friend and that power in the same breath, never too far from each other.
But there were always whispers of it, moments they saw more of a god than the boy they knew so well.
The first time Blackwhip manifested, it came with all the cosmic dread of an eldritch abomination. It felt completely different from the flash of green lightning, less sky and more sea, more like the depths of the Earth cracked into existence with inky tentacles speaking of a tsunami. And maybe that was the scariest part of it all. To be pulled between realms and come out swinging.
And if Izuku got a little quieter, started looking in empty corners, they learned not to mention it. His eyes began to hold a gravity to them that lightning couldn’t cover, something haunting to see in glowing green eyes. It’s the kind of look that holds far more knowledge and intelligence than a mere teenager should be able to possess. As if this was not Izuku’s first time on this Earth.
From there, more quirks rolled into the mix, and Class 1A got used to the pressure Izuku’s quirk would bring to a room. They took to floating with ease, though to stare at him too long felt like you were on the wrong-end of a rollercoaster, stomach lost beneath you. They didn’t question when he started to see each attack from miles away, a certain sixth-sense that made him seem older than he was. They hardened like diamonds and adapted to whatever Izuku would throw at them because they knew that at the end of the day, even if the world was against them, he would be right behind them.
Unfortunately for the public, they did not get the same leniency.
The first true fight that a newly-debuted Hero Deku encountered, bystanders fell to their knees. His class surrounded him, and for all of his gravity, they didn’t falter, only brought their own impossibilities into the mix.
The streets were silent, not enough oxygen left to scream, and though nothing burned, it seemed as if every action was fueled by fire.
While the public was well-aware of the impossible fight UA’s Hell Class waged largely on their own, many of the more gritty realities were kept from the average person’s eyes. That’s to say that although many could acknowledge Pro Hero Deku’s otherworldly strength and intelligence, it was another thing entirely to feel it.
It seemed that the ground itself would crack open, that the sky would fall and leave only blood in its wake. The early evening air smelled sickeningly of ozone for all that the sky remained cloudless, and no citizen in the vicinity was spared from the urge to duck and hide away from something much larger, much heavier than human.
A number of heroes have held a similar gravity prior to Pro Hero Deku, but none quite to the same extent as the sky and sea, earth and beyond, all wrapped up in a too-sharp smile.
The villain herself seemed scared witless. S-Ranked Villain Serpentine had faced her fair share of hero fights, enough to place her in a previously-secure cell within Tartarus, and she wielded her own impossibility with all of the experience and cruelty she had become accustomed to in her time of villainy. She was well-aware that running was not her forte, and had spent countless years within her cell honing her mind and body for the very moment that she resurfaced with enough venom dripping off her fangs to smell like a threat a mile away. In the brief time that she remained free and underground, she learned the intricacies of the newest heroes, learned who exactly would come to face her and leave bloodied, a message to all other heroes to stay away or face the consequences.
Yes, she had heard all about the Hell Class, and especially its fountain of kindness, Pro Hero Deku. She quickly came to the conclusion that he was just another naive hero, one that smiles more than he saves, one that parades himself within the public eye in order to secure a paycheck, and nothing more. A hero that had never really experienced true darkness, the gritty underneath of society that withheld no punches, no matter how truly helpless you might be.
She went into battle armed with contingency plans because she was no fool, and she flashed her fangs at the new heroes, ready to prove that hero society was not all that it seems, and that although quite unrefined in their actions, the League of Villains started something she was well within her rights to finish.
Serpentine managed at first, the heroes she had researched and studied not exactly easy to take down, but still not refined enough to bring her down either. There was a brief moment of stillness on the battlefield. The street had long-been evacuated, and the buildings surrounding her melted and crushed as she traded blows and wreaked havoc. The new heroes, Creati, Chargebolt, and Uravity ceased all movement for a moment, an opening that spoke of their inexperience, and one that Serpentine was gleeful to take advantage of.
What she didn’t know was that these heroes had braced themselves for a much bigger threat while she remained unaware of the sudden change in atmosphere. She moved forward, quite ready to melt these heroes into the cracked street beneath them when she was suddenly tackled, thrown away from the heroes facing her and into a nondescript building behind her. The air was knocked from her lungs, and she naturally attributed it to the throw that was enough to cause spiderweb cracks in the concrete wall. That is, until she made eye contact with toxic green eyes and she felt every instinct within her scream to run.
Green lightning crackled around the figure, accompanied by a writhing mass of black tentacles, enough power to float him off the ground, and enough gravity to feel as if her very heart stopped beating within her chest. She felt as if the world itself had fallen on top of her, and knew with a certain inevitability that this was the end of her villainy. For all that she was relatively uninjured, she couldn’t move a single limb.
She felt removed from her body, distant from her mind, as she watched the figure approach. It was in that moment that she truly realized that there wasn’t a single thing that she could do. Try as she might, her body wouldn’t listen to her increasingly panicked demands, and her mind had already given up any means of escaping.
It seemed a kinder fate almost, to let herself give up as the godlike hero put cuffs around her and pinned her body to the cracked concrete. She had lived a full life, one of cruelty and ire at the world around her, and for this moment, she let it go, lest she feel every ounce of that impossibility, that inescapable power that kept her quiet, kept her down.
Snakes are not prey animals, and yet, something deep and human within her stilled as if she wasn’t more than a rabbit, panicked and flighty, heartbeat faster than her legs could ever take her.
The reporters nearby had lost any and all words as the camera continued to roll, but the heroes of Class A were undeterred. They aided in transporting the villain into a police car, shared some banter about the quick takedown. The power was gone from the air now, but the weight of it lingered like the smell of ozone in the air. No one could take in quite a full breath, half-stuttered under the feeling of too-fast hearts.
Pro Hero Deku approached the reporters after the villain was gone from the scene and the bystanders regained some of their composure. His fellow heroes flanked him like an unstoppable shield, yet no one would gain the courage to question this.
“Hello! I’m Pro Hero Deku, and these are my fellow heroes Uravity, Chargebolt and Creati. I’m assuming you have some questions for us?” His unassuming smile seemed out of place on such an otherworldly figure.
“Ah, yes. I’m Suzuki Himari from Heroes Daily. How- how exactly did you manage to take down S-Ranked SuperVillain Serpentine so quickly after her escape from Tartarus?” Not even her cameraman could scold her for her stutter.
“Well, my fellow heroes here did an excellent job at wearing down her stamina and keeping her away from civilians before my arrival! After I landed on the scene, I tackled her as she was attempting to attack them. It seems that my tackle stunned her enough that she didn’t resist as we were subduing her and subsequently taking her away. Does that answer your question?” Himari is quite certain that the tackle isn’t what stunned the villain, but can’t muster up the courage to say otherwise.
“Yes, it does.” She stalled for a moment, unsure of what else she could question him on, still reeling from being in the vicinity to so much power. It seems he had grown quite considerably since UA, seemingly to heights that no other human had managed to accomplish.
“Great! Then we will work on clearing the debris so the street will be usable again!” He bounded away before Himari would get out another word, his fellow heroes following him every step of the way.
It becomes a regular occurrence after that, other reporters stumbling through the insane aftershocks of power just like Himari. For the average person, it’s not something they can really get used to, for all that Himari has chased every hero fight with all of the fervor of a journalist. And yet, it becomes almost reassuring in its weight, a presence that speaks of unstoppable determination and safety, something that can be felt miles off, an inevitability only spoken through a distant flash of lightning.
UA’s Hell Class holds unfathomable amounts of power within kind hands. Sharp smiles and sharper blows suggest something deeper than human, something beyond the typical realms of possibility. Quirks are able to explain away most of life’s impossibilities, but nothing can capture the all-encompassing weight that shakes cities to their core.
Whether in the bump in the night or in broad daylight, flashes of green lightning remind everyone that there’s something more than human seeping through the cracks of society. Your hair will raise, the air will become electric; you’ll take one more breath in the eye of the storm, and hope it’s not your last.