We live in a world where a child's destiny is essentially placed before them from the moment they are born. Someone either is born with a genetic mutation which gives them some sort of superhuman ability, colloquially referred to as a "Quirk", or they are not. If one is born with a Quirk, background is everything. Plenty of gifted and powerful children are accepted yearly into schools which train them to use their powers at their fullest capacity, while countless others are never even given the opportunity. Some drop out of these schools to become vigilante heroes, who are frowned upon by the public and the media. Others still develop a sick sense of justice and become villains.

Some of us never had that option to begin with.

Whether it was living conditions, poverty, abusive families, disabilities, or guilt by association, many children with Quirks that had otherwise plenty of heroic potential were kept out of these schools and forced into lives less than ideal.

As such, not all of us were exactly what you would call "heroes". Plenty of us were selfish, or underhanded, or overall not quite honorable fighters.

If anything, we were on the path to becoming full-scale villains.

You see, that sounds a lot worse than it actually is. No villain starts out as being some greedy, humanity-hating machine of death and destruction who twirls their evil mustache upon a throne of human corpses from their tower of despair. Most of us began as arguably just as noble as any hero - seeing injustice in a world which was promised to be equal and free, wanting to help the impoverished, or even just trying to survive in a world too cruel for us. No, it was when our ideals started to clash directly with those of the heroes'. See, they had a moral and ethical code to live up to, to make sure they did not corrupt in the heat of battle, to make sure that the people were safe and had a beacon of hope to look up to. Us, many of us would have to settle for being hated and cast aside by the public for trying to keep them safe, all because we couldn't follow the same moral code as the heroes.

And for that, they call us "delinquents". If we were to continue down this path, they would call us "villains".

My name is Aoikori Mizukara. My Quirk is called "Ice Body". See, my body's molecular structure is very similar to that of ice, and by relaxing my muscles, I can melt my body into water, which I can freeze back into ice by contracting my muscles again. My mom could liquefy her body, and my dad could turn his body into ice, so I got the logical combination of the two.

After I graduated from middle school, all my teachers told me that I could likely be accepted into UA Academy if I were to train hard enough over the summer. For the first few weeks that summer, I trained as hard as I could. I woke up every single day at five AM and practiced liquefying and solidifying my body faster and faster.

My dad was always considered one of the best heroes in the region. Perhaps nothing like worldwide or even nationwide acclaim, but everyone I knew understood who Glacier, the Icy Hero was. His victorious grin, imposing figure, and triumphant cry of "Freeze, Villain!" were iconic among us. Everyone would ask me how it felt to be the daughter of a famous hero like himself. He would often come home late at night because he was fighting against some new villain. For a while, my father was my hero. He meant the world to me.

Every day, my father would tell me how proud of me he was. He'd set up targets in the back for me to practice against, and bring me warm water when I was starting to heat up. He would always make sure I wasn't out training my body for too long and would bring me back inside during the midday heat so that my ice would not melt, or worse, so that my water wouldn't dry up.

I spent every moment wanting to be just like my father. When I came back inside to take a break during my training, I would always tune in to the local news stations to see Heroes fighting against Villains. I always longed to be a paragon of justice, protecting the innocent citizens from evil every day. I wanted to be like my father - the most noble, heroic man in the world.

During this time, my mother grew distant to us. She would spend all her time in the living room or just in her room, and wouldn't say more to my dad and I than a simple "good morning" or "welcome home". As the days went on, she stopped doing so much as showing us her face.

Around halfway through the summer, my dad told me I had earned a day to go out with friends for a night. I decided to go hang out with my best friend through middle school, a boy named Gahoko Tsukime. His Quirk was known as "Moth"; he had a lot of features similar to that of a moth, like wings, antennae, and powerful vision, which was a Quirk he inherited from his father.

Now, Tsukime's family was a lot less fortunate than my own. His mother had one day fallen very ill, and his father had to work longer and longer hours to support her and pay for her medication. Unfortunately, this was… the day of the incident.

Tsukime's house was all the way on the other side of town. There wasn't a whole lot to see here, just some houses and a shopping district. More often than not, I would just take the train over to his house, as walking was inconvenient for me. I arrived at Tsukime's house at around eight PM, and knocked on his front door. After a few seconds, Tsukime opened the door.

"Oh, good afternoon," He greeted me, his antennae twitching a bit as the light touched his face. He was a rather short and scrawny boy, only reaching around five feet, one inch, or around 154 centimeters. His yellow-brown hair was quite shaggy and reached down to his neck, and he had two feather-like antennae sticking up out of his head. On his back was a pair of flat, folded wings colored with a dusty brown. He was wearing a brown t-shirt with gray cargo shorts, both of which were covered in dust. For whatever reason, Tsukime had a sullen, somber look on his face and wouldn't look me in the eyes.

I raised an eyebrow at my best friend. "What's wrong?" I asked him, suddenly rather concerned. While Tsukime was always quite reserved, today he seemed more than that. He seemed worried. No - anxious.

"I-It's nothing…" He whispered, his hands suddenly shaking as he raised his hand up to shield his eyes from the sun. He then motioned to follow him into his house, which was always dark and unlit because Tsukime and his father had a bad habit of walking toward any sort of visible light and not walking away for hours. Well, that, and they were too short on money to pay too many electrical bills anyway. The two of us walked through his living room, which he had to hold my hand to guide me through, as I couldn't see a damn thing.

"How do you see anything in here?" I asked him as he guided me onto his , the two of us sitting next to each other as he let go of my hand. "I get that you don't do well with light, but it's like I'm wearing a blindfold in here!"

"Your eyes just adjust eventually," He replied, mumbling his words.

I sighed at Tsukime. There was something he had to have been keeping from me. "Okay, moth boy, what are you keeping secret? What's wrong?"

Tsukime shook his head and gave a sigh of his own. "Like I said, it's nothing you want to hear about… just that my mom's condition has gotten worse,"

I gasped upon hearing Tsukime's words and turned away. I had no idea what to say to Tsukime - both my parents seemed healthy, and I'd never really had to worry about somebody on the same level that he did.

"I'm… sorry," I replied, rubbing my arm. The two of us sat in silence for a few seconds, but I kept looking back at my downtrodden best friend. I didn't know how to cheer him up. What could I say? To stay strong, that she'd be okay? Does anyone ever mean it when they say something like that? No, I had to be genuine about this. "Hey, let's flip on the TV, I'm sure there's something on you'd like to watch!" I reached forward as if to grab the remote, but I couldn't see it anywhere and it didn't feel like it was in range. "Uh… can you grab the remote?" I asked sheepishly.

Tsukime gave a sigh and grabbed the remote on the rectangular, wooden coffee table in front of us and turned on the flatscreen TV across from us. The two of us gasped as a turn of events neither of us could have ever predicted unfolded before us.

It was a news story, on live TV. A reporter was standing outside a pharmacy, which had a large hole in its front window. Dust and broken glass were scattered all around the concrete below.

"Wait a minute!" Tsukime called out, sitting on the edge of the couch. "That's the pharmacy dad goes to when he picks up mom's medicine!

"Whoa, that's-" I suddenly gasped before I could finish my thought as I heard that iconic voice.

"Freeze, Villain!"

I went silent. Was my dad there? Did he think Tsukime's father was a villain?!

"M-Mizukara…" Tsukime muttered, his hands still quivering. "W-we need to do something!"

I looked down at the ground as my heart began to race. How would I confront my dad about this? Surely he would understand if I told him that Tsukime's father was just trying to help his wife.

"I know!" I replied, clenching my hands into fists. "We gotta tell my dad what your dad is doing! He's a hero, he'll-he'll listen! He knows just what good and evil are!"

Tsukime nodded and looked back at me. "Alright, let's go,"

With that, the two of us dashed toward the pharmacy, which was only a few blocks away. I turned my feet to ice and slid along the ground as Tsukime flew beside me.

"This way, right?" I asked, the two of us going Northwest.

"That's correct!" He replied.

In only minutes, the two of us arrived on the scene, where we saw Tsukime's father - who had his son's features except taller, with shorter hair, and a more rigid face - knocked on his back with his wings twitching, a medicine bottle in his hand. Dad was looming over him, crossing his huge arms over his broad chest, wearing a cyan-colored body suit with a diamond-shaped "G" written over the chest. His arms suddenly turned to blue-white blocks of ice. There was a crowd of people surrounding us, some of them holding cameras and phones to the scene.

"Please…" Tsukime's father coughed, spitting blood onto the ground. "I'm… only trying to-"

"It's too late for you, Villain!" my dad cut him off, walking toward him and raising a fist.

"No!" Tsukime and I called out at once, dashing toward my father at full speed. In a reflex, I jumped between him and Tsukime's father. I extended my arms, turning them to water and spraying my father's shoulders, slightly pushing him back.

My dad raised his eyebrows as his mouth hung open. He went silent for a few seconds and glared. "Aoikori… What are you doing…?" He asked, his voice carrying a harshness to it I'd never heard before.

"I…" I stepped back and gulped, choking over my words. "Th-this man, h-he's just trying to-"

"You've gotten in with the wrong crowd!" My dad shouted out loud enough for the people gathered around us to hear. "Not to worry, every teen goes through a rebellious phase! I promise I won't be too hard on you!" He then lunged toward me, his arms extended. He swiped at my waist, and in a heartbeat, I solidified my stomach. Chunks of ice chipped off and fell onto the ground as I fell downward. Damn, I should have liquefied…

"Ow…" I groaned, pulling myself back up. "Y-you can't do this!" I shouted, pulling back a fist and solidifying my arm before I punched my father in the stomach. The hit didn't even seem to faze him as my fist just bounced off, like he had become a solid wall of ice.

"She really thinks she can take on Glacier?!" one of the people called out.

"The villains are coming in younger and younger these days, aren't they?"

"Is her Quirk the same as his?"

I tried not to listen to the crowd as my dad suddenly gripped my arm and pulled me inside the pharmacy. I tried to liquefy my arm to escape his grasp, but the cold was too powerful. Every time I melted it down, it would solidify again.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" My dad shouted at me, the two of us now invisible to the crowd. "I had him right there, and you come in and try to stop me!?" He then shoved me against the wall, medical bottles falling onto the ground as stars appeared in my eyes.

My body began to tense up as my heart raced more. Sweat ran down my face only to freeze up in tiny balls of ice. "H-he was just trying to-"

In a move I would have never anticipated, my father struck me. He delivered a solid punch into my face, breaking my nose and sending blood everywhere. I went silent, unable to scream, unable to cry. My father, the one I had looked up to for so long, my hero. The one who taught me to always fight against injustice, the one who told me to be a hero… I slumped down onto the ground, unable to move.

"Stay down, and don't get up," My father commanded me. I froze completely, my eyes not once leaving him. I could never see him the same way again. He then stood up and turned away, and shook his head. "I told you to never take the side of the villains. Sting Moth, the Lunar Villain, has been on the run for a while - and today, we finally got him,"

"Y-you don't understand him…" I weakly let out, my voice shaking. "He d-doesn't want to hurt anybody…"

My father shook his head again. "At this point, what he means and what he's done are two completely different things,"

Before my dad could walk out of the pharmacy, Tsukime jumped out from behind the counter, flying in the air above my father. "What are you doing?!" He shouted at my dad. "You can't just hit your own daughter like that!" He shouted, fluttering his wings and scattering his dust in my dad's face.

"This isn't your business!" My dad shouted at him through coughs, trying shield his face the dust. "Get out of here!" He then delivered a solid punch into Tsukime's stomach, and in seconds my best friend collapsed, his antennae twitching. My dad then turned back to me shook his head. "I can't believe it… After all that time I spent training you… You're just as worthless as your mother,"

I fell silent once more as my vision went black. I have no recollection of the events which proceeded, and Tsukime doesn't either. All I can remember is the way I felt about my father. I wasn't angry at him. He was my father, I kinda couldn't help loving him. It was almost innate. While maybe not angry, I was let down. Disappointed. It was like everything I had built up about him had come crumbling down to reveal something about him he had been hiding from me. All I could hope was that Tsukime and his family were okay. Maybe the media would see my father's misdeeds and shun him, realizing he wasn't a hero this whole time? Or maybe I was just being too optimistic.

"Where am I…?" I asked myself, suddenly awakening. I opened my eyes to se Tsukime's innocent boy face in front of mine, soon realizing he was softly shaking my body to wake me. I would have liquefied my arms, but I found myself unable for some reason.

"Mizukara, you're awake!" He exclaimed. As my vision got more focused, I could see a whole group of people with us - there had to be eighteen others. Then I noticed that we were all inside of a rectangular moving vehicle, each of us sitting on the seats.

"Where are we?" I asked. "How did we get here?!"

Tsukime shrugged. "Honestly I'm not sure-"

"Nobody really knows," replied a taller, lankier boy with spiky blue hair and a lopsided grin.

A girl sitting next to him, with ear-long magenta hair and and a backwards, asymmetrical yellow baseball cap, gave a laugh. "We're all bein' kidnapped!" She then kicked her feet up and crossed her legs, giving a smirk.

Kidnapped?! Why was she so nonchalant about this?! Unless she was joking…

"Oh, and it's almost too late for us! We're about to shrivel up and die, like the victim of a venomous snake bite!" cried out a girl with long, curly green hair and visible fangs.

"Ato, don't scare them like that!" said a taller girl with a slender figure, though her head was a traffic light, currently unlit. "Sorry about that… We're just on our way to UA Academy,"

Oh right, summer vacation was over! How did summer end so quickly?!

"Well… there's more to it than that," muttered a tall, built boy with a ski mask over his face. "See, we're on our way to the Remedial Course."

"R-Remedial Course?!" I replied with a panic. Tsukime and I didn't do too badly back in middle school!

"Ah, but it makes you wonder why they decided to put us in the Remedial Course in the first place," said a blond boy with his hair parted to the side, covering one eye. "If I recall, I did quite well on my final exams,"

"This really isn't a surprise to me," said an androgynous-looking kid with an average frame, with flat red hair and square glasses. "I just barely passed the exams,"

"Do none of you remember anything?" asked a petite, pale girl with her dark hair down to her waist. "We're all here because we're delinquents. UA saw our potential and they're trying to set us straight, teach us how to be heroes or something,"

Delinquents? So I was being called a delinquent, all because I was trying to help a man get the medicine he needed? Tsukime was just being branded as a criminal simply for his mother being sick?

"I'unno why they're callin' me a criminal," replied the girl with the magenta hair. "All I did was spray-paint some abandoned houses!"

"I placed a coin on the sidewalk and made it too heavy!" laughed a boy with long, wavy brown hair.

"I was just trespassing~" said a small girl with a pink bow in her silver-pink hair, which was tied up behind her head. Her eyes were closed and she was fiddling around with a piece of string, and she wore an unsettling smile the whole way.

"Wh-what about you, Genkomo?" asked a shaky, skinny kid with curly white hair. "A-all I did was give some guy directions?"

The dark-haired girl in the corner turned back to us and sighed. "You really don't want to know,"

"Come on, tell us!" The traffic light girl called out. "Hey, my lights won't turn on!"

"None of you can use your Quirks in here," replied a raspy voice, presumably the bus driver.

"Am I the only one who listens around here?" asked a thicker girl with short green bangs and large hands. "The bus driver's Quirk enables him to disable the usage of our Quirks as long as we're in the same closed vicinity as him,"

"It's called, Nullify," the girl in the bow pointed out.

"Very astute of you, Ningyo," the bus driver replied. Before anybody could continue their thoughts, the bus came to a halt. "Anyway, we're here now. As soon as you go in, get ready, because this course isn't going to be easy,"

I gulped as everybody stepped off the bus. What happened?! Did my father send me and Tsukime here?

As I walked toward the bus door, the bus driver called my name and stopped me. He was a tall man whose face was covered in bandages, sort of like a mummy.

"Your dad is Glacier, right?" He asked me.

I rolled my eyes and gave a nod. "The Icy Hero, yep, that's him…" I replied.

The bus driver nodded. "Shame, really. Everybody was expecting you to get into our Honors Course with ease. Guess we can't all follow in our parents' footsteps,"

I looked down at the ground as I walked toward the school, thinking about what the bus driver had said.

He was right. We can't always follow in our parents' shoes. However, I didn't want to. I wasn't about to. There was no way I was going to become the type of hero my father was. And the moment I stepped into that classroom, I was going to spend every second making sure I became a hero like he could never be.