The shadows began to lengthen as I trekked home. My house was a significant distance away from the school. I didn't own a cellphone yet, and having suffered such a defeat I was too conscious of myself to even consider re-entering the school in order to use an office phone.

No, my path was set, and I felt like writhing in my shame. I trudged onward up the main street out of the town proper, and I weaved in and around yards in the rich neighborhood along the way. At one point, I even became lost and found a swimming pool which I'd never even known was there. I walked on along the most perilous of roads, and after an hour out there,

Finally, I managed to return home. As I approached, I saw my mother pacing back and forth in the front lawn. As soon as she saw me, she made a proper B-line with almost no hesitation. For a stout librarian, she was really moving.

"Where have you been? I nearly called the police!" she exclaimed.

"I missed my bus, I'm sorry" I stated disheartedly.

"Well why didn't you call from the office?"

"I just wanted to come home, I didn't think about anything else."

"Did something happen?"

"No, I just missed the bus."

"...Next time this happens, you'd better call, otherwise there'll be BIG trouble." She relented.

With that, she reached out, and before I could dodge dodge away, took me into a firm embrace. "Okay, come on and help me make dinner."

Over the next hour I helped to assemble salads and spaghetti. No one at home really knew how to cook well, and so we often defaulted on something simple but satisfactory.

Afterward, I began digging through my mound of small assignments for the night. I had homework in almost every topic, but I managed to finish it by nearly 8, and proceeded to one of my favorite things: watching hero videos! I'd go to my dad's home office where the computer was and get right down to it.

All over the world, heroes were using their quirks for good and fighting the bad guys. I didn't even have all that much of a grasp of geography at the time. In fact, I probably knew more heroes than I knew countries!

Some of my favorites were DeeJay, who could make sound waves visible and use them as weapons or shields, and Carnival, with his ability to make super strong strings shoot out of any ninety-degree angle.

Of course, I'd heard of All Might from Japan. Although, despite being lauded as the world's symbol of peace and the number one hero, I thought that super strength was actually kind of boring. For a while, Endeavor was my favorite. He seemed even stronger, and I always thought that his flames looked super cool.

I'd watch these heroes save the day every day, and I had always had the thought in the back of my still-forming mind that "Maybe I could do that."

Finally, my dad would pop in and say "Enough's enough, time for bed." With that, I'd comply, however reluctantly.

Early the next morning, the first thing I heard was "Time to GET UP!" as my father would burst into the room and proceeded to turn on every light he could find, set the fan to maximum, rip off my comforter, and leave in what seemed like mischevious glee with the door fully ajar. This was how he made it difficult to fall back to sleep.

After laying there for minutes in painless agony, I began to shift my weight from side to side. with enough momentum, I rolled myself, lethargy and all, off of the bed and into the gap between it and the wall. *WUMFP* my body uttered as I hit the coarse carpet. Finally, I rotated myself to where my legs were below me, and I pushed myself to stand.

Now more awake, I turned the fan off and closed the door with a satisfying *click*, and after nearly fifteen minutes of calibrating my mind to my body, I emerged fully dressed.

The next forty-five minutes were their usual blur. I'd assemble a bowl of cereal and milk while Dad would watch a talkshow hosted by some mean cowboy, and My sister would already be gone for the day due to being three years older than me.

With the completion of breakfast, I grabbed my bag which had been only hastily packed the previous night, and made my way out of the house, down the street, and to the bus stop in the brightening horizon.

My days after that proceeded as usual for the next few weeks. Spring had just started, and so everything became warmer, brighter, and almost happier. However, the trio of bullies continued as an overlooked scourge throughout the school. What's worse is that they seemed to become worse as the days passed.

Their methods would become more cruel and varied. They'd not just steal the items of others or mock them incessantly, but it seemed as if anything short of violence was fair game. How could they possibly avoid punishment or even authoritarian acknowledgement was only considerable through conjecture.

Two of the three were star athletes, and so their antics may have overlooked due to their integral nature in their respective teams. However, that seemed rather cliché. It was more likely that they merely covered their tracks well, and when confronted by ignorant adults, ever so kindly denied the very possibility of the event.

Walking through halls, I would see them not only take bags but open them up and snatch things. These would often be non-school integral things like sketchbooks and graph-paper, or colored pencils and crayons. However, their most valued prize was chewing gum. I never understood it, but chewing gum was a commodity almost fought over from grade school and almost up into the end of high school.

Still, they'd get away with it under the pretense of pretending, really well, to just be good kids.

For everytime I'd been personally caught by them, I could count several more times that I'd see them at a distance and have to avoid them like a scared rodent. Having to be that way or risk being hassled to the result of being both late and losing some important personal item felt like some kind of injust torture.

It was a rigor that anyone who was alone at any given time to face. It was like an environmental hazard with no visible way to fix it. As this went on, I became more and more upset with the situation, I could see the problem worsening, but had no way to stop it. If simply telling an adult wouldn't work, what would?

This lead me to think, maybe if I could figure out my quirk, I could use it to put an end to their injustice. I would knock them down like Endeavor, and maybe they'd stop being so mean to everyone. Yeah, that sounded good.

So, I went about trying to learn what my power was. I already knew that I'd been tested and didn't have the joint on my fourth toe which signified that I indeed had a quirk.

I then started to observe my family. My dad's quirk let him draw anything just by placing a writing tool on a medium such as paper or wood, and instantly mark it with whatever he was visualizing. Of course, it only went as far as the tool could be used for normally. So if he had a very short, well-used pencil, the drawing he visualized, unless preportionally small, would be incomplete.

My mother, meanwhile, could expell a colored aura based on her mood. If it was bright, light, and lustorous, you knew she was happy. Appropriately, if it was dark and dense, something was terribly wrong. Thankfully, this happened infrequently; but when she was really upset, her aura would push everything around her outwards. If this broke anything, or shifted something significantly out of place, it would only make her feel worse.

My sister and I learned quickly that it would be best to grab her a snack and leave her be until she cooled down. My sister could often be the same as well, but her quirk was far less potentially dangerous. Like Mom, she exerted an aura of energy, but unlike like Mom, it had no mass. Instead, she used it like Dad used his drawing ability, except with the far-less limited medium of her energy aura. She could make anythng she wanted appear. Although, the more complex and the longer she held it, the more it would tax on her body. If she wasn't careful, she'd collapse to the ground.

Thinking along those lines, I started using what freetime I had and devoted it to exerting myself and trying to force out my own energy. Standing out in the backyard, I tensed myself up and yelled as loudly as I could. However, after a few minutes of that, my father bursted out from the back door and yelled "What the hell are you doing?!"

Without breaking my concentration I yelled back "I'M TRYING TO MAKE MY QUIRK COME OUT!"

"WELL DO IT QUIETLY," My Dad rebuted. "WE ALL THOUGHT THAT YOU WERE IN SOME KIND OF SEARING PAIN!"

"FINE!," I shouted.

"DON'T FORGET YOUR HOMEWORK!"

"I WON'T."

Thus, I began to quietly exert myself trying to unleash the energy hidden within me. Everyday for a week I'd get home front school, let my Dad know that I was there, and drop off my backpack in the kitchen. With that, I'd head to the center of the backyard to take in the fresh air and begin to exert myself again. This would go on for what seemed like hours of pushing and groaning. I thought that if I dug deep like that, I could somehow unlock my quirk.

One day, while getting off the bus, I was considering my approach. Could I try to exert but in a single point, or should I try to draw something like Dad and my sister could? What if it's only my fee-

"OH HECK!" I cried as I, previously lost in thought, began falling forward off of the high bus steps. Not long after I'd shut my eyes and braced myself for the impact. I noticed that I hadn't quite hit the ground yet. I slowly opened my eyelids to view only appeared be nothing but translucent, vibrant crimson.

I laid there upon my bed of hardened energy for several moments before I heard a voice from above me: "How long are you going to lay there and keep my doors wedged open, kid?! Other people here want to go home!" Yelled the bitter bus driver.

This exclamation startled me and I lost my concentration. I fell to the ground in a puff of dust and asphalt debris. "Move it or lose your legs!" the driver continued.

I swiftly scrambled out of the way and onto my feet as the bus started forwards. It wasted no time in accelerating down the road and was soon out of sight.

Walking for the rest of the way home, I tried to recall that feeling; the feeling of catching myself from a fall. I focused with the precision of a laser. I focused everything I could with that feeling. Finally, it paid out.

It was exhausting. I could feel the muscles in my legs buckle under my body's weight, but it paid out. On my chest appeared a plate of that same crimson energy. It wasn't very big like it had been before. It looked like it might have been two by three inches and a quarter inch thick. Yes, it was small, but it was there. It was mine. I'd activated my quirk.