Neotory

The twin suns of Tatooine were unforgiving, casting a relentless, bleaching glare over the spaceport of Mos Espa. The heat warped the horizon into a shimmering mirage, making the sandstone domes of the city look as though they were melting into the dunes. It was a world of scavengers, outlaws, and slaves. It was a world that ground hope down into dust.  

      The late summer air was thick, suffocating, and vibrated with the relentless drone of cicadas. It was the kind of heat that made the world shimmer like a mirage, distorting the edges of reality. For four-year-old Izuku Midoriya, reality was about to distort in a way he would never, ever forget.  

  The darkness in Tartarus did not merely exist; it possessed a weight. It pressed against the skin, crawled into the lungs, and suffocated the mind. It was an absolute, oppressive entity, designed to break the will of the most dangerous villains on the planet.  

  The wind howling across the rooftop of the Musutafu commercial building carried with it the bitter chill of reality.  

The morning light filtering through the thin curtains of the Midoriya apartment was the same as it had always been—a pale, watery gold that painted the walls in soft strokes. Dust motes danced in the quiet air of Izuku’s bedroom, disturbed only by the rhythmic, steady breathing of the boy tangled in the sheets.  

The X-ray on the lightboard was stark, unforgiving, and utterly ordinary.   Four-year-old Izuku Midoriya sat on the crinkling paper of the examination table, his small legs kicking back and forth. In his hands, he clutched a limited-edition Silver Age All Might action figure, its plastic smile beaming with an unshakeable confidence that Izuku desperately needed. Beside him, his mother, Inko, nervously twisted the strap of her purse. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes darting between the bald, bespectacled doctor and the glowing skeletal image of her son’s foot.  

    The wind howling across the rooftop of the nondescript apartment building tasted of ozone, exhaust, and the bitter tang of absolute finality.  

    The rain in New York City didn’t wash away the grime; it only seemed to make the city’s underlying sickness slicker, more visible under the harsh glow of the neon streetlights.  

    The day the universe shifted on its axis began like any other: with the smell of burnt paper and the taste of ash.  

      The planet of Musutafu was a world that the Galactic Republic had, for the most part, conveniently forgotten. Situated in the hazy fringes of the Outer Rim Territories, it was a sphere of sprawling industrial complexes, towering smog-stacks, and neon-lit atmospheric cities that never truly slept. It held no major hyperspace lanes, no precious deposits of coaxium, and no strategic value to the Senate on Coruscant.  

  The locker room of Class 1-A was entirely too bright, the fluorescent lights buzzing with an irritating, clinical hum that made Minori Mineta’s headache throb just a little bit harder.  

  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 waiting room of the Musutafu Private Quirk Clinic smelled intensely of sterile alcohol pads and faint ozone. It was a scent that four-year-old Izuku Midoriya would remember for the rest of his life, permanently etched into his memory alongside the blinding white of the fluorescent lights overhead and the anxious rhythm of his mother’s foot tapping against the linoleum floor.  

  The rain over Musutafu was acidic, tasting faintly of ozone and industrial exhaust. To ten-year-old Izuku Midoriya, it tasted like failure. 

    The wind howling across the rooftop of the Musutafu commercial building was deafening, yet to Izuku Midoriya, the world had gone entirely, suffocatingly silent.  

  The alarm clock buzzed at precisely 6:00 AM, a harsh, mechanical grating sound that violently tore Izuku Midoriya from the only sanctuary he had left: his dreams. 

        The sterile, fluorescent light of the doctor’s office hummed with a low, oppressive frequency. It was a sound that Izuku Midoriya, even at four years old, would come to associate with the exact moment his universe collapsed.