Neotory

 The human body is a marvel of biological engineering. For centuries, before the advent of Quirks, scientists studied the precise mechanisms of bones, muscles, and tendons, marveling at the endurance of the human species. Humans were persistence hunters. Early man could run down prey for miles, slowly exhausting animals that were faster, stronger, and more lethal, simply because humans could sweat and cool themselves down. They could outlast.

 The sky above Musutafu was a brilliant, unblemished blue, completely ignorant of the fact that Izuku Midoriya’s world had just ended.

 The scent of morning in the Midoriya household was not defined by the sterile crispness of ozone or the metallic tang of city smog, but rather by the warm, umami-rich aroma of simmering dashi broth. 

 The world is not born equal. 

Long before the advent of Quirks, before the glowing baby in Qingqing City signaled the dawn of a superhuman society, there were myths. Stories passed down through generations to explain the unexplainable, to give a face to the terrifying forces of nature. Among the ancient Greeks, there was the legend of the Nemean Lion. 

The universe, if one looked closely enough, was nothing more than a pantry. 

The world is not governed by physics, nor by the whims of the gods, and certainly not by the heroic ideals plastered across every billboard in Musutafu. The world, Izuku Midoriya learned at the tender age of four, is governed by narrative.

 The world is not equal. That was the harsh, irrefutable reality Izuku Midoriya learned at the tender age of four. 

All men are not created equal. 

 The world at four in the morning was a canvas of deep indigo, silent and still, save for the rhythmic, gentle hum of pure cosmic energy radiating from within the walls of a small corner shop in Musutafu. 

 The scent of India ink was a sharp, grounding anchor in the suffocating sea of Aldera Junior High. 

Humanity had long since grown accustomed to the extraordinary. When the first glowing baby was born in Qing Qing City, the world’s fundamental laws of biology, physics, and society were irrevocably fractured. Over the span of a few generations, the bizarre became the mundane. Fire-breathing, telekinesis, and spontaneous crystallization were cataloged, categorized, and commodified. The era of Quirks had arrived, bringing with it a dawn of superheroes and supervillains.

The playground was bathed in the harsh, unapologetic light of a late summer afternoon. Woodchips scattered across the rubberized mats beneath the monkey bars, kicked up by the scuffling sneakers of a four-year-old boy trying desperately to scramble away. 

 The phenomenon of Quirks changed the world in a way that no historian, sociologist, or scientist could have ever predicted. When the first glowing baby was born in Qing Qing City, humanity crossed a threshold into an era of comic books and chaos. The extraordinary became the mundane. Flight, pyrokinesis, telepathy, and superhuman strength became as commonplace as brown eyes or left-handedness. Society restructured itself around the existence of these metahuman abilities, giving rise to a profession that had previously only existed in the fever dreams of fiction: the Pro Hero.

Not all men are created equal. 

The scent of ozone and burning sugar always brought Izuku Midoriya back to the day his life effectively ended—or at least, the day his life as a normal child in society was irrevocably shattered. 

 Before the age of four, Izuku Midoriya thought of sound as a warm, comforting blanket. Sound was his mother’s gentle humming as she cooked dinner. It was the upbeat, jazzy theme songs of the cartoons he watched on Saturday mornings. It was the heroic, booming laughter of All Might declaring that everything was going to be alright. Sound was the medium through which the world expressed its joy. 

The awakening of a Quirk is, for most children, a moment of wonder. A spark from the fingertips, the sudden ability to float a toy block, or perhaps a minor change in hair color. 

The wind howling across the rooftop was biting, carrying with it the ambient noise of a bustling Musutafu afternoon—car horns, distant sirens, the hum of millions of people living their lives. But to fourteen-year-old Izuku Midoriya, the world had gone entirely, deafeningly silent.

 The humid summer air of Musutafu hung heavy over the neighborhood playground, thick with the deafening drone of cicadas. For most four-year-olds, the heat was a minor inconvenience easily ignored in the pursuit of play. For Izuku Midoriya, it was just another sensory detail to file away in his rapidly expanding, highly observant mind. Even at four, he was a watcher. He watched the way the wind pushed the swings, he watched the way the older kids climbed the jungle gym, and most of all, he watched Katsuki Bakugo.