Neotory

  The night the Nine-Tailed Fox attacked the Hidden Leaf Village was etched into the annals of history in blood and ash. It was a night of roaring flames, crushed stone, and the agonizing screams of shinobi dying to protect their home. But hidden away from the carnage, deep within a clearing far from the village walls, an entirely different kind of cataclysm was taking place.  

  The history of the world changed with a single, radiating pulse of light in Qingqing City, China. From the moment that glowing baby took its first breath, humanity was violently shoved onto a new evolutionary path. The age of the mundane died, and the era of Quirks—superhuman abilities woven into the very DNA of mankind—was born. Over generations, society adapted to this new normal. What was once the domain of comic books and mythology became the morning traffic report. Pyrokinesis, telepathy, localized gravity manipulation, gigantification; they all became biological functions, as ordinary as breathing or sweating. Quirks were physical. They had limits. They drew upon stamina, lipids, muscle fibers, and the nervous system.  

To understand the universe is to understand its rules. What goes up must come down. Time marches forward in a straight, unbroken line. Space is a constant, unyielding fabric that holds everything in its proper place. These were the fundamental laws of existence, the invisible pillars that kept reality from collapsing into madness.  

  The glow of a computer monitor cast a pale, flickering light across the darkened bedroom. Sitting cross-legged on a wheeled chair, leaning so far forward his nose practically brushed the glass of the screen, was a four-year-old Izuku Midoriya. His wide, emerald-green eyes reflected the chaotic, shaky-cam footage of a disaster scene. Buildings were reduced to rubble, flames licked the night sky, and sirens wailed in a dissonant chorus of panic.  

    The world was not created equal. This was a truth Izuku Midoriya learned not from the lofty philosophies of ancient scholars, nor from the gentle teachings of a loving parent, but from the brutal, unyielding concrete of a playground at the age of four. It was a truth etched into the very fabric of society, a cosmic joke played upon the twenty percent of the population left behind by the next stage of human evolution. Quirkless. It was a clinical term, but in the mouths of his peers, it was a venomous slur. It meant fragile. It meant useless. It meant Deku.  

  The ticking of the wall clock was the loudest sound in the Midoriya apartment. It had been that way for twelve years.   Inko Midoriya sat at her small dining table, a half-empty mug of green tea growing cold between her hands. She was forty-three now, though the lines bracketing her eyes and the silver threads woven through her dark green hair made her look older. The television hummed quietly in the background, a low murmur of news anchors discussing a recent villain attack, but Inko wasn't listening. Her gaze, as it did every evening, drifted to the small shrine resting on the bookshelf in the corner.   There sat a framed photograph of a four-year-old boy with a mess of curly green curls, a constellation of freckles across his cheeks, and a smile so bright it outshone the sun. In the photo, he was clutching a limited-edition All Might action figure, his eyes wide with the dream of one day becoming a hero.   That was the last photo she had ever taken o...